Cuckoo (51 page)
‘Rose.’ Simon stepped in and pulled her away. ‘Take it easy, Rose. It’s not Anna’s fault. Look, she was frightened. Are you OK, sweetie?’ He knelt down and stroked her hair.
Anna nodded dumbly, but her eyes showed the shock and pain of her mother’s attack.
Rose felt giddy. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, and staggered past them both, through to the kitchen.
‘She’s got a lot on her plate, Anna,’ Simon said as he led her through into the house. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘No,’ Anna said, bewildered.
‘Look, I’m sorry, darling.’ Shaking, Rose knelt and took her hand. ‘Please forgive me.’
Anna looked at her and nodded. Flossie’s cries from upstairs had by this time reached a crescendo.
‘Come on, young lady,’ Simon said. ‘Let’s go and see to that sister of yours. And it’s the middle of the night, so let’s get you to bed.’ He led Anna back up the stairs. ‘I promise you that your mum will be here from now on. She’s not going out again, are you, Rose?’
‘No,’ Rose said, although she was desperate to go down to the studio and see what had happened since she was last there. When Simon and Anna had gone, she curled up deep into the worn, comfortable kitchen armchair. She stayed there for what seemed like an age, holding on tightly to what remained of herself. Then she got up, stretched herself, opened a fresh bottle of Gareth’s Laphroaig and set it on the table with two glasses. She poured herself a good two fingers and topped it up with a splash of water. Gareth would have been horrified about that. She switched off the main kitchen lights and lit a couple of candles, which she placed on the work surface.
Eventually, Simon came downstairs.
‘That was a mission,’ he said, smiling. ‘But they’re both down now.’
‘Good,’ Rose said. ‘Drink?’
‘Like daughter, like mother,’ Simon said.
‘What?’
‘You don’t want to be left alone tonight, do you?’
‘You got me in one,’ Rose poured him a stiff glassful. They knocked the whisky back and she refilled their glasses.
‘Thank God for the au pair,’ Simon said. ‘Miranda’s away again, but Janka can deal with the kids if anything comes up.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to report you to the authorities. So long as you don’t tell on me for daughter-shaking.’
They sat down at the table, facing each other in the flickering candlelight.
‘I’m worried about you, Rose.’
‘I’m a big girl. I’ll get by,’ she said. She really believed it now. Going to France would solve all her problems.
‘Where do you think Gareth is, then?’ Simon asked.
‘Brighton.’
‘Ah.’
‘He’s gone to get me, so that he and Polly can lock me up.’
Simon looked at her, slightly astonished.
‘She’s making me out to be mad, you know,’ Rose went on. ‘I’m trying hard not to believe it myself. She’s infected us all, one way or another, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ Simon looked grim. ‘She has.’ Rose refilled both their glasses.
‘Rose,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve been a fool. Gareth’s an idiot. There’s a point, you know, with us men, where there’s too much blood in our dicks. It drains our brains.’
‘I don’t think men have the monopoly on that effect,’ Rose sighed. ‘Except for the dick bit.’
Simon held his hand out across the table and Rose took it, grateful for his friendship, thankful that he was someone she could talk to.
‘We’ve all been idiots,’ she said. ‘It’s like we’re making it up as we go along.’
Simon got up and moved round to her side of the table. He knelt at her feet and looked up at her. He took her face in both his hands and looked into her eyes, his long blond lashes flickering as he spoke.
‘I hate to see you like this. I feel it’s my fault. If only I had been more forceful right from the start, Rose. If only I had made you get rid of her. But can’t you see, too, that Gareth is to blame as much as her? He doesn’t know what he’s putting at risk. He’s got it all. He’s made up and he can’t even see it. He’s got you, Rose, and he can’t even see what a precious, precious thing you are. You are so lovely, Rose. If only . . .’
And he pulled her face towards his and kissed her. Perhaps it was the whisky, but she found herself responding to him, letting his tongue into her mouth, pushing hers back into his. Then she broke away and looked at him, her heart pounding.
‘We’re all fools,’ she said, standing up, bringing him with her.
She grabbed at his hair, drawing him back onto the table, so that he was on top of her. He pulled up her skirt and delved his fingers deep into her, pushing her knickers aside. She opened the buttons of his tenting jeans. Then suddenly, violently, he took her by the hips and thrust himself deep inside her.
‘What are we doing?’ she gasped, but his answer was lost in the drive of his hips. It was almost immediate, the rush and the release. She came instantly, her whole body pulsing, opening and closing like a sea anemone. She threw out her arm and knocked over the whisky bottle. It tumbled over and rolled, spilling its earthy contents on to the two of them before clattering to the kitchen floor and shattering.
Simon, taken by her contractions, pushed into her a couple more times then pulled himself out just in time to come on her belly, which was exposed by her flung-up skirt. He collapsed on top of her, licking the whisky from her cheek.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Never in my wildest.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘I’ve wanted to do that for so long,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘What did you say?’ She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Pushing him off her, she sat up.
‘It’s true. She – Polly – was my way of trying to get you out of my system.’
Rose suddenly felt disgusted, defiled by what they had just done. How low could they sink? Men are dogs, she thought, getting up and pulling down her skirt.
‘I have to get some sleep now,’ she said. ‘I am half dead.’
He reached up and put his hand on her breast.
‘You don’t understand, Rose. I want to stay.’
She shook her head. ‘The children . . .’
‘I want to be here when they come back, Rose. They’ll come back, you know.’
‘This is none of your business, Simon. Don’t complicate things even further.’
He looked at her.
‘Look, I’ll see you soon, OK?’ she went on. ‘The next bit is for me alone.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘Go. Please.’
‘All right then, Rose. I’ll go. But call me, any time, if you need help. OK?’
‘OK.’
She walked him to the front door, where he held her in a deep, long embrace that felt like it might be the last shot of human kindness she was going to get for a while. Nevertheless, she wanted it to be over, and for him to be gone.
He staggered up the steps like a man who had seen it all, then he disappeared. The night was receding, and the birds were beginning their morning reveille. Rose noticed that the rain had stopped, and it had left behind air that was clearer.
Feeling bruised around the lips and between her legs, Rose took herself upstairs and slipped in between her daughters, where she passed out into a deep and dark sleep that seemed to be threaded with poison. Everything had been done to her, and she deserved none of it.
So fast asleep was she that she didn’t hear the phone as it rang on five separate occasions.
Forty-Six
Flossie didn’t wake until nine in the morning. Rose, in a hungover fug, rolled over, lifted up her blouse and flipped her breast into her mouth. Flossie latched on almost immediately, and it wasn’t long before Rose felt her milk letting down. She was surprised she still had it in her.
The bedroom was at its best in the morning sun, which lit up the far reaches of the eaves, throwing everything into a golden relief. It felt warm and safe in there. Lying with her daughters, Rose felt relieved that things had come to a head. She had the sense that anything was possible during the day to come. Her old optimism had not deserted her, after all. In a strange way, she was excited at the potential for change. She held that picture of Frank, of the kindness she saw in his eyes, in her mind.
As Flossie pawed and sucked at her breast, she focused on the little free-standing calendar she kept on her bedside table. She had put it there when they moved in so that she could keep on top of everyone’s comings and goings. The plan had been that she would wake knowing, for example, whether she had to send Anna into school with swimming gear, whether she had to provide tins for harvest festival, or money for a school trip. But it hadn’t worked out. She had never kept it up to date, and for the past couple of months it had stood there completely unmarked. Looking at it now, she realised that today was the first of May, a day she had always tried to keep special, as the mark of a new beginning.
‘Wake up, Anna.’ She nudged the sleeping form beside her. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out there and wash our faces in the dew.’
Anna was bleary, but she knew the form. It was a ritual she had repeated every year of her life. So, a few minutes later, she and Rose were kneeling in the middle of the back lawn, rubbing dew into their faces, Flossie lying on a rug by their side.
‘Bright and happy we shall be, the whole day through!’ Anna sang and looked up at her mother, smiling.
‘I’m sorry about last night, love. I was just really tired.’
‘’S’OK. Just don’t let it happen again,’ Anna said.
Rose put her arms around her and they held each other close, there in the middle of the sodden lawn, while Flossie tried to put a daisy in her mouth.
They went back to the house, where Rose ran a deep, hot bath and tipped in a decadent amount of her Aveda bubblebath. She lay back in the water and scooped up a mouthful of foam, letting it gently pop in her mouth. She saw parts of her body bob up from the clouds of bubbles, little glimpses of crepey imperfection that seemed not to have anything to do with the Rose that was now living in her head.
She gave the girls a breakfast of French toast and maple syrup, and then she brought in the sodden rucksack from outside. She and Anna sorted out the soaked things and arranged them, with the damp buggy, out on the stone steps to dry in the sun. It felt good for the two of them to be working on something together. It gave Rose some hope for a future.
When everything was dry, they would pack it up again and head off.
But underneath this veneer of calm, Rose kept feeling a thrill of dread, a feeling like hunger, that grabbed her guts and twisted them tight. She knew this feeling well. She usually had it when a storm was forecast.
But today, the weather promised to be fair. When they had laid out all the wet clothes and set the upended kitchen to rights, Rose and Anna made sandwiches and took some of the flapjacks Rose had put in the biscuit tins a couple of days earlier. They packed them all in a day-sack and, with Flossie strapped to Rose’s front in the baby-carrier, they set off for a long walk, climbing the breast hill and slogging it up to the brow of the ridge that lay beyond. They looked down into the far valley, where there was a field full of sheep, who were moving from one end to another in what looked like a giant ‘S’.
‘I didn’t know sheep could spell,’ Anna giggled.
Rose smiled, and even Flossie craned around in her sling to take a look.
They worked their way along the ridge, which curved round into a semi-circle that would, eventually, take them back towards home.
The sun was beating down by one o’clock, and Rose and Anna stripped down to their vests, letting the new season’s warmth touch their skins. They made a camp underneath a hawthorn tree in full bloom, and ate their little feast. Rose spread her sweatshirt on the ground and she and Anna lay back, with Flossie sprawled across the two of them. Rose told Anna the story of Beltane, of fire and new beginnings.
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