The Bad Mother (29 page)

THIRTY-NINE

It was with conscious irritation that Tessa inserted the key into the tiny padlocks at the side of the doll’s house. She’d promised Erin, who’d promised Pamela, that she’d put back the dolls, even though she herself thought it was stupid. People weren’t dolls, and removing these symbols of humanity all those years ago had not succeeded in rendering Averil’s make-believe world powerless or safe. Her grandmother’s attempts to neaten and tidy away the tumultuous realities of life, to miniaturise the huge emotions within her family down to the bearable scale of this toy house, had been both foolish and cruel. No wonder she’d always felt so ambivalent towards this shrine to Averil’s need to control her family.

Tessa pushed back the door, which stretched the width of the house, and took the three dolls out of the tin in which Pamela had safeguarded them for nearly forty years. The obvious way to arrange them was around the Formica kitchen table, but if these toys were supposed to replicate life, then, to her mind, they did not belong together. Since
Erin’s reappearance, Tessa felt as if her whole family had dissolved in front of her. Defiant, she stuck each little figure in a separate room, hooked the door shut and fastened the padlocks.

She was upset, had been upset for days, but no one seemed to notice. Pamela was taken up with Erin, who showed no sign of wanting to return home. She barely seemed to exist for Sam. Mitch diligently did everything asked of him, but only so that he could disappear off at the earliest possible moment to be with Tamsin Crawford.

Tessa missed Lauren most of all. The house seemed horribly empty without her. She knew she shouldn’t have lost her temper over the flooded bathrooms and cracked ceiling, and had rung her daughter a couple of times to apologise and suggest she come home. But Lauren had answered with polite monosyllables then cut her off, leaving Tessa hurt and frustrated and also guiltily relieved that, for once, Sam could take charge. Tessa felt daunted by Lauren’s ability to arouse in her such a helpless and complicated fury, when all she wanted was to drag her daughter into her arms and tell her she loved her and wanted her to be happy. What was wrong with the child that she couldn’t be happy? Where did she get the power to resist so ruthlessly?

Tessa went to stand in the bay window, seeking the calming view of the sea. It had been raining all morning, so although the summer season was well under way the beach was virtually deserted. She looked out towards the
horizon, silver-grey against silver-white, losing herself in the vast movement and emptiness of sea and sky.

Sometimes she wanted to be a child again herself, and flee to her own parents, let them sort everything out. That was their job. But they’d messed up, and expecting comfort from Pamela and Hugo was impossible. She no longer belonged with them. Pamela was intent on making out that everything was now rosy, cloudless and bright, and refused to notice the permanent sadness that hung over Hugo. He, as always, continued to smooth things over and make everything work, but his reasonable tone dismayed and infuriated Tessa: could he not see that things had never been right, that patching them up wasn’t going to do the job any more? It was scarier than anything to discover that even Hugo, on whom she had always depended to make her feel safe, was fallible and mistaken.

Underlying all her hurt and irritation was suppressed panic at what Erin had really meant by her story. Was she the child of rape? Even if ‘only’ date rape? The thought was terrifying. Too terrifying to be true. It could not be true. Averil had not believed it, and even Erin herself was uncertain. Erin had left her to decide. Tessa knew Roy, knew what he was like, what he might be capable of, and she refused to believe it. He must have been convinced that afternoon he was doing what Erin wanted, had failed to comprehend her inexperience, and, yes, maybe got a bit carried away. He was a young man, maybe not that experienced himself, but that did not make him a rapist. She could find nothing in what he had ever said or done
during their meetings or in his letters that lent any weight to a counter-argument. She was not stupid: she’d discussed her impressions candidly with Declan, an open-minded, sensible man, and he’d not flagged up any alarms. She wished Erin had not spoken!

And besides, whichever way Tessa worked her way around the ambiguities of the past, she came up against one absolute certainty: it was incomprehensible that a man who’d gone to such trouble to find a birthday card with cherries on it had simultaneously carried in his mind the knowledge that he was sending it to the offspring of a callous and deliberately brutal encounter. The two facts simply did not fit together. He was a loving father, not a predator.

Tessa comforted herself that she already had another visit booked with Roy. It was important to see him again before the fears aroused by Erin’s doubts became nightmares. In fact, she found the idea of returning to the prison empowering. As Roy had told her, there was no love without fear, and facing up to difficult realities could only make her stronger. How else was it ever possible to maintain authentic relationships? Her childhood, deprived of essential truths, had proved that. A contemptuous glance at the doll’s house convinced her how her relationship with Roy had enabled her to open a window in a stuffy room and allow herself to breathe freely again.

Carol put her head around the door. ‘I’ve finished the stairs,’ she said. ‘Thought I might have a cup of tea before we start on the beds. Would you like one?’

‘Oh, yes, thanks.’

Tessa followed Carol down to the kitchen and placed the kettle on the Aga’s hotplate. ‘Sit yourself down,’ she told her. ‘I’ll make it.’

‘It’s the big party on Saturday,’ Carol observed.

‘Party?’

‘At the Crawfords’. Thought Mitch would’ve mentioned it.’

‘You know what boys are like. Never tell you anything.’

‘You not invited?’

‘Me?’ asked Tessa. ‘No!’

‘I heard from Sonia Beeston there’s to be fireworks and all sorts.’

‘That’ll be fun.’

‘Mr Crawford’s here for the whole summer, apparently.’

Tessa busied herself putting tea bags into mugs. ‘I hope the rain clears up before the weekend.’

‘So Mitch is still seeing Tamsin Crawford?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

Carol nodded. ‘Sonia says he spends a lot of time over there.’

‘I think they take the dog for walks.’

‘They grow up so fast these days, don’t they?’ Carol gave Tessa a shrewd look.

‘They’re just kids,’ smiled Tessa, not wanting to encourage Carol’s speculation. She willed the kettle to boil faster.

‘Sonia cleans Tamsin’s bedroom,’ Carol persisted. ‘She thinks Mr Crawford ought to keep a closer eye on what the kids get up to.’

‘That’s the nanny’s job, isn’t it?’

‘If that’s what she is,’ Carol remarked darkly.

Tessa had just finished making the tea when the letterbox upstairs rattled. She saw that Carol, too, had heard the muffled thud of post hitting the floor, and quickly handed her a mug, picking up her own. ‘I might take my tea upstairs, if you don’t mind. There’s a mound of paperwork to get on with.’

‘I can manage the beds on my own,’ sniffed Carol. ‘I don’t have to disturb you.’

Tessa realised she’d offended her, but there was no way she wanted to condone Sonia Beeston’s gossip. ‘Give me a call once you’ve had your tea,’ she said. ‘No rush.’

Scooping up the damp mail, she smiled at the sight of Roy’s handwriting on one of the envelopes. Even though she’d be seeing him next week, and even though the number of letters he could send was limited, he had chosen to write anyway. Nevertheless, she still felt a certain trepidation opening the envelope, as if somehow he could know that there had been a shift in her perception, sense that she might read his words less innocently, testing them for hidden evidence. Her doubts felt like a betrayal of trust.

My dearest Tessa
, he wrote in his elegant italic.
I have a proposition to put to you, and wanted to offer an opportunity to consider it before we meet. My hunch is that you will refuse, and I’d like you not to
. Tessa’s throat tightened with apprehension.
You know how important family is to me, even though I’ve been deprived of it. I’ve read in the papers the expense these days of university tuition. I told you I’m not short of money, so I would like to help Mitch with his university fees. And Lauren, too, in due course. I hope you will allow me this small indulgence: they are my grandchildren, after all
. Under Roy’s signature was a PS:
I assume Hugo will be doing the same. I don’t want to tread on anyone’s toes. I’ll give whatever’s appropriate
. The way in which the letter’s contents were laid out on the sheet of paper suggested that the PS was not an afterthought but an integral part of the design. Familiar now with Roy’s love of exactitude, Tessa decided the lack of spontaneity was not strategic but evidence of his reluctance to make demands, of his fear that she might view his generosity as an imposition.

The shameful dread that had gripped her since Erin’s muddled account of the summer tryst amongst the gorse bushes lifted and was replaced by remorse at how she would have to disguise the hostile reality that Mitch was unlikely to accept Roy’s offer. Her own fear that she might have been wrong about Roy made her yet more impatient with her family: why couldn’t they credit her with enough sense to have thought through their objections for herself, and be willing to accept her judgement? For how much longer did her father have to go on being so misunderstood? Why couldn’t any of them focus on how hard this all was for her?

FORTY

Quinn and Sonia had been busy since first thing in the morning supervising the various florists, caterers and stylists arriving from London to prepare the house for Charlie’s party. Tamsin had a couple of school friends staying, Emily and Phoebe, and Mitch could see how much the three of them were enjoying the flurry of activity and the rapid transformation of the downstairs rooms and enclosed garden, where colourful paper lanterns were being hoisted and a tree adorned with fairy lights. He felt a little guilty at lending a hand here when he should have been at home helping his mum, especially given that some of Charlie’s party guests were probably booked to stay overnight at the Seafront B&B. He compared the misplaced pride Tessa took in her imagined heights of sophistication to the money-no-object magic they would witness here, and immediately condemned his own disloyalty. It was only money, yet it created such a gulf between his worlds.

Over the course of the afternoon a small army invaded every corner of the house, and by eight o’clock the house
and garden were already filling with people. Tamsin had changed into a shift dress that she told Mitch had cost over a thousand pounds, even though it looked to him like no more than two panels of golden fabric sewn together at the side and shoulder seams. She said Charlie had bought it for her in London on a weekend exeat from school. She wore nothing else except golden flip-flops, and, with her long gold hair, looked amazing.

At dusk Mitch suggested that they take Blanco for a quick walk before he was shut away for the night. He was glad to have a moment alone with Tamsin. He’d been apprehensive about meeting her friends, though they turned out to be not so different from Lauren, just chatting about clothes and hair and giggling over what celebrities were coming. They found every parking space taken up by expensive cars; two even had uniformed drivers, eating sandwiches and watching TV on their dashboard screens to pass the hours before gliding their clients back to London in the wee small hours. The air was warm and muggy after the rain of the past few days, and as they waited for Blanco to sniff around the base of one of the Napoleonic canons on the Green, Mitch could hear the strength of the swash and backswash of the waves against the shingle. A few windows in the houses clustered around the Green were lit up, the curtains not yet drawn. In one a man sat reading the newspaper, in another a woman in yellow gloves was washing up. He thought of
The Great Gatsby
, the book he’d studied for his exam, and the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock. Despite the
unreality of Charlie’s party preparations, Mitch felt that Tamsin was the only solid, real, dependable thing in his life. He moved closer, close enough to smell her hair and feel her warmth. She turned her head and, smiling, kissed the tip of his nose.

Back indoors, he was glad that she kept tight hold of him, and hoped it was because she was proud to be seen beside him. He saw that he blended in unremarkably with the other men, and understood why she’d told him to wear black jeans and his least faded black T-shirt. In fact, Tamsin whispered, giggling, she’d seen at least one casting agent take a second look, just in case she’d missed the new hot acting talent Charlie had discovered. She seemed to know most of her father’s guests and was punctilious about introducing Mitch and her friends to everyone who stopped to greet her.

Mitch spotted Charlie beckoning to them. ‘Your dad wants you.’

Charlie held out his arm, drawing Tamsin against him. ‘You remember my daughter?’ he asked the hawk-eyed woman in designer glasses beside him. ‘You should get her to come and intern for you. She’s learning the saxophone at school. She’s very musical.’

‘One lesson, Daddy.’

‘But you play drums too, right?’

Tamsin agreed politely. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she told the woman, taking Mitch firmly by the hand to lead him away. ‘She’s a sound designer,’ she explained to Mitch. ‘Dad tells
the DoP that I take terrific photographs and the production designer that I’m an incredible artist.’

‘Do you want to do any of those things?’

‘No. Though I might like to do costumes, like my mum.’

‘Maybe I should tell them I’m related to a serial killer,’ he joked.

‘Yeah, cool!’ She saw him roll his eyes. ‘No, seriously. They’d love that!’

Emily caught what they were saying and stared at Mitch with fresh interest. ‘You’re not, are you?’ she asked.

Despising himself, but unsure how else to repudiate the girl’s frisson, Mitch played along. ‘Yeah, actually. My grandfather’s serving a life sentence for murder,’ he told her.