Cuckoo (40 page)
A feeling of contentment warmed her as she sipped her tea, and she began to relax and feel as if she could sleep a little more. Flossie had settled and her eyelids were heavy in that spinning-away way that babies have. So Rose snuggled down with her and drew the duvet back over them both, burrowing down into a primeval place of shelter.
Much later, she woke to a clean, medical smell. It took a while to register where she was: for the first few moments she thought she was back in the hospital. Then she remembered that she had gone to sleep with Flossie in her arms and now there was no one there. She turned over quickly, and only just managed to stop the scream that sprang to her lips.
Lying in bed next to her was not Flossie, but Anna. One of her eyes was covered with a large pad, strapped around her head with bandages. Rose’s movement in the bed had woken her, and her good eye slowly opened.
‘What happened, Anna?’
‘Monkey scratched me. She was trying to catch my eyelashes. I thought it was funny, but then she got my eye.’ Anna spoke in a small voice. ‘It was my fault.’ Her good eye welled with tears. ‘Don’t blame Monkey.’
‘How bad is it?’ Rose said. Why hadn’t anyone told her? What time was it?
‘They think it’ll be OK. It’s a bad scratch though, Mummy. It hurts lots.’
‘Poor baby,’ Rose said, pulling Anna to her.
‘They gave me some drops, but it felt like a sharp knife. It’s a lot better now, though, without the light.’
‘Poor Anna.’
There was a gentle knock on the door, and Gareth came in, holding Flossie.
‘Hi honey,’ he said, sitting down on the bed next to Anna and reaching over for Rose’s hand.
‘What’s happening, Gareth?’ Rose sat up.
‘It’s not so bad, Rose. They say she’ll see again.’
‘Again?’
‘It’s too painful for her to open her eye at the moment, that’s all. It’s a deep corneal scratch. We’ve just got to keep it free of infection. They flushed it out at the hospital, and—’
‘Hospital?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When did you go there?’
‘This morning. It happened just before school so I dashed off with her to Bath. Didn’t you know?’
‘No. Polly didn’t say.’
‘She probably didn’t want to worry you. It’s not as serious as it looks or sounds.’
‘Don’t you think I’ve a right to know if my own daughter has been taken to hospital?’ Rose realised she had raised her voice, and was breathing heavily. Anna’s one eye was registering some alarm, and she leaned towards Gareth, who had removed his hand from Rose and put it round his daughter instead.
‘And you are demonstrating exactly why it was better not to tell you,’ Gareth said. ‘You’re not well yourself. You need to take it easy.’
‘I’ve had enough of this!’ Rose said. She jumped out of bed and headed towards the shower. She owed it to her daughters and herself to put herself back in charge. ‘I’m getting up. I’m making supper. I’m perfectly well.’
She stopped for a couple of seconds as those black dots swam again. She tried her hardest not to sway or stumble.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Rose?’ Gareth asked. He had turned himself on the bed so that he was resting his back against the headboard, his big, safe arm around Anna.
‘I’m absolutely fine,’ Rose said through teeth that were gritted partly through the effort it was taking to remain conscious, and partly to contain the anger she was feeling. If anyone asked her that question again today, she was going to – quite literally, probably – explode.
‘Rose?’ Gareth asked.
‘What?’ Don’t say it again, she was thinking. She turned and saw him looking at her bloody and bandaged shin.
‘Rose? What did you do to your leg?’
‘Oh, oh, it’s nothing. I – um – fell.’
‘When? How?’
Rose rushed to the bathroom and locked the door behind her, leaning against it until she regained her composure.
Thirty-Seven
Leaving Anna, Gareth and Flossie behind, Rose went downstairs. It was early afternoon, and the kitchen was deserted. Despite all the clutter, she couldn’t see any signs of supper preparation. This she saw as an invitation to take on the task herself.
She went over to the hooks by the kitchen door and reached down her blue and pink floral apron. Looping it over her head, she pulled the waist straps really tight and tied them at the front. She reached in the front pocket, found the grip she kept there for cooking, and swept her hair up away from her face.
She leaned against the pantry door, surveying the empty shelves. Where had all the food gone? One lone onion lay in the vegetable basket; a forlorn, half-empty packet of conchiglie rested against it. All that remained of her jams, chutneys and pickles that once covered a whole wall in sturdy jars, was a small group on the shelf that was too high to reach without a ladder.
It was bizarre. Surely they couldn’t have eaten the whole lot? Certainly not with the portions Polly had been serving up. It was as if Rose’s influence had been expunged from the kitchen. First the form of it – her sense of order – had been dismantled, and now the contents had been cleared away. In a slight panic she rushed to her saucepan cupboard and knife block. With relief, she saw that her Le Creusets and Henckels were all still in order.
She picked up her favourite knife, a twelve-inch deeply curved blade with a riveted black handle. Holding it firmly in her right hand, she ran her left index fingertip along its razor-sharp edge and watched with satisfaction as the tiny cut first gaped slightly, then beaded up with blood.
There were some things that couldn’t be removed.
Wiping the knife on the side of her apron, she replaced it in the block and went to the table with a pad and pen, to work out a list for the village shop. She needed to cobble something together for supper. She sat there gazing out of the window at the rain, which had bled beyond its nighttime reign and was now falling steadily in the afternoon, putting paid to predictions of an early, hot summer. Rose had difficulty finding focus enough to get her shopping list down onto paper. As she sat there, doodling, she became aware of a tapping sound coming from the living room. She crept across the kitchen floor and stood like a spy, leaning up against the half-open door so that she could see what was going on.
Polly sat on the sofa. She had kicked off Rose’s sheepskin slippers and tucked her feet underneath her legs. Resting on the arm of the sofa was an empty coffee mug, and beside her was the box of Loukoum that Rose had brought back from Karpathos two summers ago and never opened. It was open now, though. And half-empty.
Polly was chewing and looking at something on a laptop perched on her knee. The laptop appeared to be Gareth’s 17-inch MacBook Pro, which surprised Rose. He normally didn’t allow it out of his studio.
Polly’s hair framed her face and shoulders like a curtain of wild seaweed and she was dressed in a beautiful long black floral velvet dress that clung to her. She looked like a dissolute child.
‘Hey there, G. How’s her ladyship then?’ She spoke, helping herself to another lump of Loukoum, without taking her eyes from the screen.
Rose pushed the door. It slowly opened, creaking slightly, revealing her standing on the other side.
Polly looked up. ‘Oh!’ she said.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Rose said. ‘Look – I’m up. Weren’t expecting that, were you?’
‘How’s Anna?’ Polly said, snapping the MacBook shut.
‘Careful with that,’ Rose said.
‘Where’s Gareth?’
‘He’s upstairs with her. She’s going to be fine. Bloody cat.’
‘It wasn’t the cat’s fault. She was holding it too close.’
‘What are you doing?’ Rose went over to the sofa and sat next to Polly, taking the laptop off her and opening it. Polly pulled it back onto her lap and, before the display woke up, she performed a series of key strokes to close the windows down, so all Rose saw was a snip of flesh and a slice of leather before it dissolved into the plain, non-distracting blue screen wallpaper that Gareth liked to keep.
‘I didn’t think you knew how to turn a computer on, Polly.’
‘I’ve been having lessons.’
‘Ah.’
‘I’m researching our Brighton trip. Seeing what’s on. We’ll probably get a chance to escape the kids on the Saturday. Lucy’s got a babysitter.’
Brighton. Rose had completely forgotten.
‘You know, I’m not sure about taking the kids out of school.’
‘Oh, details, details.’ Polly waved her hand in the air. ‘We’ll phone them in sick. Look,’ she said, touching her fingertip onto the screen, ‘Fusion: House, R&B and indie night at the Honey Club. Remember the Honey Club, Rose, eh?’
‘But what about Anna’s eye?’
‘You’re not still trying to find excuses? It’s only a scratch. It’ll probably be better by the time we go. If the worst comes to the worst, there’s always doctors and hospitals in Brighton, you know.’
Rose felt hot, as if she had a fever.
‘What’s that on your cheek?’ Polly asked, reaching over and touching her with her thumb. ‘Looks like blood.’
Rose rubbed her cheek. It must have been from the knife cut.
‘You’ve got to be more careful, Rose. Anyway, Lucy’s dying to see you and the girls. And us, of course. It must be, what – eighteen years? – since we were last back in Brighton.’
‘Twenty years, three months and two days,’ Rose said.
‘Wow.’ Polly looked straight at her, frowning slightly. If there was meaning, or empathy in her look, Rose chose to ignore it.
Rose stood up. Up until this point, going back to Brighton had been an abstract notion, but now it was suddenly, horribly, real. The question, though, was how was she going to deal with facing up to the place again, and everything that had – or hadn’t – happened in all the time that had passed since she had left her hometown.
The door from the terrace burst open and Nico and Yannis tumbled into the room, a whirlwind of schoolbags, mud and ruddy, snotty faces.
‘Scumbag!’ Nico cuffed Yannis round the head.
‘Fuck off!’ Yannis yelled. ‘Mum!’ he pleaded.
‘Shut the fuck up, will you, you two?’ Polly said, returning her gaze to the computer screen. ‘Some of us have work to do.’
Rose wanted badly to tell the boys to go back out and come in through the kitchen door, where there was a doormat and a place for dirty shoes. Anna would have done that without thinking. But Rose didn’t feel able to interfere. Her sphere of influence seemed to be narrowing down to a dot.
‘Did you have a good day?’ she asked, as Nico sprawled on the other sofa and flicked the TV on with the remote. He still had his dusty shoes on. If her sofa hadn’t been a practical slate grey, it would be looking pretty sad by now.
‘Whatever,’ he said, already distant and focused on the flash of colour and loud sound he had let loose into the living room.
‘No school tomorrow,’ Yannis said. ‘Boiler’s bust.’
‘Or the next day,’ Nico scowled from the sofa.
‘Or possibly not till next week, Miss Richardson said,’ Yannis reported to Rose.
‘There you go,’ Polly said, looking up at her. ‘It’s a sign.’
‘How’s Anna, Rose?’ Yannis quietly took her hand and searched out her eyes.
‘She’s OK. Bit sleepy. Why don’t you run up and see how she is yourself?’
He slipped off. A few minutes later, Nico sighed heavily, dragged himself away from the screen, and got up to follow his brother.
Polly turned back to the laptop. She was busy Googling herself. Rose watched as she clicked on a link. There she was, at twenty, in that iconic photograph where, skeletal, she caressed the mike, practically fellating it. She looked dirty in the picture, in all senses of the word, but strangely beautiful, too.
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