Peppermint Kiss (7 page)

“And there's no news about jobs for me, either,” said Saff gloomily. “I went back round everywhere today, and made sure I spoke to the managers, and yes, I did wear my happy face, Grace, but it's the same as Mum found – everyone's taken on their summer staff already.”

“It's so unfair,” Grace grumbled. “I'm more mature than most sixteen-year-olds, but it seems like no one will even
consider
me for a summer job.”

Mum sighed. “I don't want to upset you girls even more, but I'm afraid I've seen the R-A-T again.”

That was the final straw for Saff. She collapsed onto the revolting brown sofa (which was a bit less revolting since Mum had spread one of her huge Hermes scarves over the back of it) with her head in her hands, groaning.

“Oh, thanks, you could have told me!” Grace moaned, pushing her chair out from the table and pulling her knees up under her chin.

“It was hours ago now. It ran across here and in there and it hasn't been out all afternoon,” said Mum, pointing at a hole in the skirting board. “Still, I've mopped the floor anyway.” She shuddered. “Twice. But don't worry, I'm going to ask Liam – you know, the neighbour we met – to come round and get rid of it.”

Grace looked horrified. “Mum!” she shrieked. “That's so sexist, just assuming that he can deal with the rat because he's a man and we can't because we're women.”

“I'll take that to mean
you'll
kill it for us then,” said Mum, reaching for the broom and leaning it on the table beside Grace. “Sorry we don't have anything heavier to clunk it on the head with,” she added, “you'll just have to hit it
really
hard. Then you'll need to pick it up and bury it outside, oh and block up the hole afterwards.”

Grace gave her a surly look.

“No?” said Mum breezily. “I didn't think so. Put the kettle on then, I'll be back in a minute.” And with that she ruffled her hair, smoothed down her top and skirt, and swanned out.

She came back a few minutes later with Liam in tow. He was so big and muscly that he filled the whole doorway, and he was carrying a spade. He looked scarier than I remembered, until he walked in and gave us all a big warm smile, and said, “Hello, ladies. I hear you've got a problem.”

I felt like I ought to lean over to Saff and shut her mouth for her, because it was hanging open again. Grace seemed completely immune to Liam though, and just said a quick hello, then went back to her room to study.

After teas all round, Mum, Saff and I went and sat on the slightly-less-revolting brown sofa to wait for the rat. It didn't take long, as it turned out. As soon as we were quiet, it came out after the bit of cheese Liam had put on the floor. We all screamed and scrambled onto the back of the sofa, with our feet on the seat and our fists in our mouths, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the fatal blow.

But, instead of despatching the rat (to, erm…rat heaven?), Liam screamed too.

“Hit it with the spade!” Saff coached unhelpfully as he danced from foot to foot.

“I can't, I can't! It's massive!” he squealed.

The rat looked just as panicked as us by this point and went to run back into the skirting board, but Liam brought the spade crashing down, blocking the hole, and the rat started running round the kitchen instead.

“Kim, open the front door!” Liam shrieked. “Come on, quick! And Abbie, run downstairs and open the main door!”

I felt like saying, “Erm, hang on, why can't Saff go?” but I just leaped up and bolted for the stairs – I didn't fancy being halfway down them when the rat came scurrying past me. As I ran, I heard Liam screech, “Sapphire, go and close the other doors and I'll herd it past you,” and I decided I'd got the better job after all.

There was a lot of screaming and swatting and thumping around from above, and the next minute the rat came shooting past me and scampered away into the nearest bush. I slammed the door and raced upstairs, my heart pounding.

Back in the kitchen, we were all trembling and giddy and in near hysterics – re-enacting all the leaping about and teasing each other about how freaked out we'd been.

When we'd calmed down, Liam sealed up the rat hole with a manky old breadboard we found in the Hoover cupboard. He said he'd pop back soon with some humane traps in case there were any more, and a new bit of skirting board to finish the job properly. Mum couldn't thank him enough and somehow it felt like we'd known him far longer than half an hour. He ended up staying for dinner, which was cannelloni, but without the expensive crème fraîche or mozzarella or basil (so tomato pasta, basically). Still, he kept saying how nice it was and what a good cook Mum was. Then, after we'd eaten, we sat round the table chatting for ages (well, apart from Grace, who sneaked off again to study). Mum gave Liam a cleaned-up account of what had happened back in Ealing and why we'd moved into the flat, with Saff throwing in barbed comments about Dad.

Then while Mum was getting the kettle on, Liam had another look at the breadboard-covered rat-hole. “You know, it's probably best to replace that whole piece of skirting board, Kim,” he said. “I've got some offcuts from my last job that should colour match okay. I'll measure up and trim them down to size, and it's sorted.”

Mum was looking confused. “From your last job?” she repeated. “What do you do?”

“I'm a builder.”

“A builder?” she cried. “But that's so…I mean…” She blushed the colour of the tomato pasta then. “Oh sorry, I just assumed…”

“What, that because I'm gay I must be a hairdresser or something?” he teased.

“Well, you weren't exactly manly about the rat!” Saff fired in.

“Oooh, get you!” Liam cried, pretending to be really camp. “Actually, building isn't the greatest career for me at the moment,” he said then. “My back's really been playing up the last few months, especially with all the lifting I have to do. I've been in agony most nights.”

“Oh, you poor thing. I could give you a massage,” Mum offered. Then she blushed again. “Sorry, that sounded a bit odd. I mean, I'm a qualified massage therapist. I might be a little bit rusty, but you never forget the basics. And I'd love to do something for you, in return for sorting out the R-A-T situation.”

“That would be amazing,” Liam said eagerly. “If you're sure.”

“Of course I am,” Mum insisted. “We could do it right now.” She pressed her hands down on the table. “I think this will hold you, and we can make it a bit nicer in here…”

Mum, Saff and I sprung into action then. I went and got the rest of the massage oil I'd mixed up recently for Mum's shoulders – it was a nice warming spicy one with cinnamon, clove and frankincense, just the thing for relaxing knotty muscles. Saff found some emergency candles for power cuts under the sink, and we stood a few along the counter in washed-out tomato tins.

Then me and Saff made ourselves uncomfortable on the revolting brown sofa and read magazines as Mum got started. Liam seemed to be enjoying it in general, but we couldn't help bursting out laughing because every time Mum touched a sore spot he shrieked like a banshee.

“For a big bloke, you're a bit of a weed,” Saff sniggered.

“He's being very brave,” said Mum kindly. “His back's in a terrible mess.”

I felt really proud of her then. There she was, really making a difference to Liam, using this amazing skill we'd almost forgotten she had. And she didn't have that nervous, worried look on her face any more. She was deep in concentration, working her magic, and she just seemed really relaxed. After a while, Liam stopped screeching and seemed to go into some kind of coma, and a bubble of calm surrounded them both.

When Mum finally finished, he thanked her about a million times and declared that he felt like a new man. He also said Mum deserved a drink after all her efforts, so he popped over to his flat and came back with a bottle of wine.

I went off to read my mag in our room after that, but I had to go into the kitchen a couple of times to get stuff. Each time I noticed that the bottle had less wine in, the emergency candles were burning lower and Mum and Liam were discussing the total rubbishness of men even more loudly.

Not that I was listening or anything, but apparently Liam is on his own too now, because someone he called The Egotistical Brazilian Ballroom Dancer dumped him a few weeks ago for The Arrogant Scottish Skiing Instructor. The last thing I saw was Mum leaning right over the table, trying to tell him that the two of them both sounded utterly horrible and deserved each other, but not being able to pronounce the name of either. I decided it was time to go to bed then.

Tuesday was pretty awful. Mum woke up with a banging headache, Saff said she felt too depressed to even get dressed, let alone go out to ask about work, and Grace just looked like she was going to burst into tears at any moment. The gloom cloud hanging over us was so big now, it was going to take more than a jar of perfume or a shower with some almond shell body scrub to cut through it. I hardly saw the point of going to school, what with our landlord's deadline looming, but I did anyway, because it was better than hanging round the flat being miserable all day.

Summer kept giving me tragic looks in our lessons, and at break she asked me about ten times if I wanted to talk about things. I really didn't but she wouldn't get the hint, so at lunchtime I made an excuse to stay in and skulked round the library instead of hanging out with her and the boys. I grabbed my stuff and hurried straight off after school too, and for once I didn't even think about whether Marco might ask me for coffee ever again or not. I had way bigger things to worry about.

Mr. Vulmer would be back for the rent tomorrow, and we just didn't have it. I walked home with Grace trailing along silently beside me, and when we got back into the flat, none of us even talked about jobs turning up or benefits arriving in the nick of time. We were beaten – and we knew it. This time tomorrow night we'd probably be in emergency housing – a B&B somewhere, or worse, a homeless shelter. Summer's yurt was beginning to seem quite appealing. Liam had offered for us to stay at his, but he only had one bedroom, so we'd all be in the lounge (although he'd probably insist on sleeping on the sofa and giving us his room). I wondered if we'd have to split up – me and Grace at Summer's and Mum and Saff at Liam's. I decided that would be worse than all being together in a horrible B&B somewhere. Our family had been fractured enough already.

In the end, I had a bath to try and escape the gloom cloud in the kitchen. I lit a yummy-scented candle, filled the tub with hot water and lashings of my warm spicy orange, cinnamon and geranium bath foam and smoothed an avocado face pack onto my skin. I got in, laid back, closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was still in our posh bathroom in Ealing. Then my mind began to drift and I started thinking about how much Summer had loved the solid perfume I made her, and how excited the girls at school and Mrs. Lurman had been over my creams and lotions, and about Mum giving Liam that massage and us all making those essential oil blends together on Sunday…

I opened my eyes a little and gazed at my home-made lotions, foams, oils, creams, scrubs, gels and butters, all lined up along the side of the bath. They each had their own properties, like magic potions – the power to make you feel relaxed or revived or uplifted, some pizzazz to wake you up in the morning or little bit of heaven at the end of a long day…and not forgetting a cool, fresh peppermint lip balm – for perfectly kissable lips…

Suddenly everything came together in my head. And in that second, I had it – the solution to all our problems.

By the time I was dry and rubbing the last of my avocado body butter into my legs, I'd worked the whole thing out. I strode out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam and delicious smells, straight into the kitchen. Everyone was sitting at the table – Grace just staring at her maths workbook without seeing anything, Mum tapping her fingernails on the pay-as-you-go phone that never rang, and Saff flicking listlessly through a magazine.

“I've got an idea,” I announced. They all looked up, surprised. I couldn't stop grinning. “We'll set up our own beauty parlour in the empty shop downstairs. I'll create the products to sell, and use in our treatments – all natural and freshly home-made, of course. And we can do smoothies too, so it's about looking after yourself on the inside as well. There must be business loans for this kind of thing. Mum, you and Saff can run it full-time, at least until your course starts, Saff. Grace can handle the budgets and accounts and all that stuff. Oh, and I've just thought, me and Summer can photograph the products and make a promotional leaflet as our Media project.”

They were all just staring at me, like I was speaking Japanese.

Finally Mum spoke. “Well, wow, Abbie. It's a good idea but, I don't know… With things as they are at the moment… Setting up a small business is a massive risk, especially in this climate when people just aren't spending. Not that we've even got the capital to start up, and as if that pig landlord would let us use the shop! I know you're trying to help, love, but it just sounds like chasing rainbows to me.”

Chasing rainbows. That was one of Mum's phrases. It meant chasing an impossible dream.

But my dream wasn't impossible, was it?

“Surely anything's possible, if you try hard enough?” I asked her. “That's what you always told us when we were little.”

Mum blinked at me. “I did used to say that, didn't I?”

“It's not chasing rainbows,” I said firmly. “It's the beginning of a whole new adventure. It could bring us the pot of gold we need and be a proper new start. Not just surviving, but really living. Getting our lives back – not our old ones, but brand-new ones. It could make all our dreams come true.”

“Cool!” cried Saff. “Let's do it!”

“We could look into the figures,” said Grace. “Maybe talk to the bank. There's nothing to lose in that.”

“And if we explain our plans to Mr. Vulmer and say we'll have the money soon, maybe…” Saff added.

We all looked at Mum. “Oh, I don't know – maybe I am being too negative,” she said. “Things have been so easy, so comfortable, for the last few years. Bigger house, better car, smarter area, more time, more money. Not that I'm complaining, of course. But, when it all came crashing down, I didn't know what to do. I used to be so capable. Maybe I've lost something since those times. You're right, Abbie – nothing's impossible.”

I grinned at her. “Thanks, Mum.”

“And besides,” she added, “they do say you should only start a business in an area you understand, and what I don't know about spa treatments isn't worth knowing!”

“Too right – you've spent half your life in those places!” I teased.

“Erm, Abs—” Grace began, but Saff cut in, saying, “We could have cool pink uniforms and—”

“Abs!” shrieked Grace, as the bathroom lit up brightly behind me. The hand towel had caught fire! Turns out Grace had been trying to tell me that my candle (home-made of course, uplifting jasmine and bergamot) looked a bit too close to it. We all screamed and dashed into the bathroom, where Mum flicked the burning towel into the bath water and snapped the light on.

She looked cross for a moment but then she started to laugh. “I always said you'd set the world on fire, Abbie,” she gasped. “I just didn't think you'd start with the bathroom!”

Later on, when Liam popped round to fit the new bit of skirting board, I told him about my idea. I only mentioned it to chat, but amazingly he said, “That sounds brilliant. I'll help you fit out the shop, if you like.”

I thought Mum would be pleased but instead she just looked flustered. “Oh, Liam, that's an amazing offer,” she said, “but I'm afraid it's all just dreams and ideas at the moment. We don't have any money to get started, and I very much doubt the bank would consider lending us any. In fact, we don't even have the rent for this place, which means that by this time tomorrow we'll be evicted.” She sighed. “So I'm not sure why I spent so long cleaning those windows,” she added, trying to make him laugh, but looking as though she was about to cry.

Liam looked really worried. “That won't happen,” he said, but he didn't sound convinced. “And if it does, like I said, you can all crash at mine till you sort things out. As for the beauty parlour, it's a fantastic idea, and you mustn't give up on it. If you can pull something out of the hat cash-wise, I'll do the shop fit for the cost of the materials. I've been using the same suppliers for years – I can call in a few favours, get some really good discounts.”

Mum blinked at him. Then something happened that none of us were expecting. She threw her arms round him and burst into tears.

He hugged her back. “Kim, hon, I'm trying to cheer you up, not upset you!”

Mum pulled away and smoothed her blouse down, suddenly self-conscious. “You
are
cheering me up!” she insisted. “Honestly! I'm so sorry, it's just…this is exactly what we need, a bit of support. Even if this beauty parlour idea never gets off the ground, it's so nice to feel that we're not on our own.” Then she giggled, and burst into tears again. “I'm sorry,” she sniffled, “I mean, we've only known you a few days. I'm being ridiculous.”

“No, you're not,” said Liam. “You've been through a lot. Try and look at coming here as an exciting new start, yeah? And I'm your first new friend.”

“Bleurgh!” Saff shuddered. “Have I accidentally walked into a musical? Are you two going to start singing or something?”

Mum sniffed and smiled (and ignored Saff). “Oh, come here,” she giggled, and hugged Liam again, and this time she didn't let go for ages and ages.

When Liam went, we had a few games of cards, and then watched
Embarrassing Bodies
on the ancient TV on the kitchen counter (and decided that, actually, things
could
be worse – we could all have raging red boils on our bums!). Then we went off for early nights.

I woke up about two o'clock with the spiny bits in the mattress digging into me and realized that Mum wasn't there. Knowing that the flat was now rat-free and so it was safe to get out of bed for some water, I headed for the kitchen.

I found her sitting at the table. She'd taken her engagement ring off and was staring at it, like she was going to tell someone's fortune.

I wasn't sure whether to go in or not – I thought maybe she just wanted to be alone. But then she glanced over and said, “Hi.”

“Hi. Drink?” I asked, reaching for a glass.

She shook her head. “You know, I really thought my marriage would last for ever,” she said, as I turned on the tap. She laughed, but not in a good way. “Well, I don't suppose
anyone
gets married thinking they're going to split up. But still, I feel like such an idiot.”

I turned round and leaned against the sink. “You're not. Dad is.”

She shrugged. “I was lying in bed just now, racking my brains, trying to remember whether I'd packed anything valuable that we could sell, just to pay this blessed rent and keep a roof over our heads. I can't believe I didn't think about money when we left Ealing. There was my whole jewellery box – I could have sold the really good pieces and sent the rest to one of those ‘We Buy Gold' places. And my scarves – the one I was wearing is on the sofa, but I could have shoved the others in my bag. That would have been another thousand pounds right there, even just selling them on eBay. And those little delft figurines in the front living room… Goodness only knows how much…” She sighed. “Oh well, it's all gone now. I just thought of grabbing things like underwear and our toothbrushes! How hopeless! How can I expect to start a business thinking like that?”

“But no one can run a business without clean knickers on,” I said, trying to make her smile.

She did, for a moment anyway. “Then I realized…my ring,” she said. “It would pay our rent for the next few months and set the beauty parlour in motion.”

I felt my heart quicken. Was she serious?

“But Mum, would you really want to sell it?” I asked.

She spun it on the table. “I don't know. Urgh! It means so much to me, and at the same time I'm so angry with your dad that I never want to see the bloody thing again! Every time I look at it, it just reminds me of the hopes and dreams we had, and how they've all been shattered. But then, it also makes me remember that we
did
have so many happy times too. I thought your dad and I would still be chatting and laughing about them in our old age, but now I'm on my own.”

I felt awful for her then. “You've got us,” I said. “We'll always be here for you.”

“Oh, Abbie, bless you, love,” she said, her voice going wobbly. “And honestly I do know that even with what's happened, I'm still so, so lucky. I love you girls more than you'll ever know. I just wish I could stop feeling so angry all the time. Okay, so things weren't perfect between your dad and me, but marriages never are. Still, we had more than most people could wish for, and I don't mean money – I mean three wonderful daughters, good friends, a lovely home full of laughter and happiness. Why did he have to wreck it all?”

That gave me a start. For the first time, it struck me – our
home
was gone. Not just the house, but the
home
. I'd always assumed Mum and Dad would be there, together, and that I'd go back in the holidays from uni, and take my kids there, and have birthdays and Christmases there. But now…would they even be able to be in the same room as each other again? What about when one of us graduated or got married – would we have to leave Dad out?