The Truth About Melody Browne (18 page)

‘No, not really. Life’s been a bit, you know, a bit of a blur.’

‘Well, not for me it hasn’t. It’s been a long old wait. And you, look at you!’ She grabbed Melody’s knee with her angular hands. ‘So big, so pretty, so grown up. What happened to those fat cheeks of yours?’

Melody didn’t know what had happened to her fat cheeks. She wasn’t aware that she’d ever had them to begin with. ‘I don’t know,’ she smiled, wanting to be polite, hoping, for some inexplicable reason, that Aunt Maggie would think that their life was all lovely and perfect, like a TV show instead of all weird and echoey like a spooky dream. ‘Maybe they fell off!’

Aunt Maggie laughed loudly and looked delighted. ‘Maybe they did. Fell on the pavement. Got swept up by the roadsweeper! Ha ha ha!’

Melody felt that Aunt Maggie was laughing a little bit too loud, and it struck her that maybe she was feeling nervous.

Claire and Nicola stared at her shyly, from across the room. Claire was wearing eyeliner and Nicola had on a very short skirt. Melody had a feeling that neither of them was about to whisk her upstairs to their bedroom to play with dolls.

‘Why don’t you girls go out in the garden for a while?’ said Maggie. ‘Me and Aunt Jane have lots of things we need to talk about.’

Melody followed her cousins out into the garden, but stood near the side window so that she could hear the women talking.

‘Have you told him?’ she heard Maggie saying.

‘Yes,’ said her mum. ‘I told him last night.’

‘And?’

‘Well, he’s delighted.’

‘And you?’

‘Never felt happier.’

‘Well, I’m happy for you, if you’re happy. But I just hope you know what you’re doing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. This Ken. Who is he? What’s he like?’

‘He’s, well, he’s not like anyone else. He’s
special
. He’s got a kind of power over people.’

‘Hmm,’ said Maggie, sceptically.

‘Oh, no, in a good way,’ her mother said urgently. ‘He’s not arrogant. He’s not cruel. He’s just … he makes life simple. No decisions. No options.’

‘You mean, he just tells you what to do and you do it?’

‘No! The opposite. He expects nothing. He accepts me. Just as I am. Fat and a mess and full of all this shitty rage and sadness and … and … pain. He just takes it. Absorbs it. He is a great man. Honestly.’

There was a brief silence. Melody held her breath.

‘Well,’ said Maggie. ‘I’ll take your word for it. I’ll have to since I’m never going to meet him. And Melody? Have you told Melody?’

‘No! No, absolutely not. Not yet.’

‘Does she get on with him?’

‘She adores him. Idolises him.’

‘Good,’ said Maggie. ‘That’s good.’

‘And what about you? How are you coping?’

‘Oh, you know, good days, bad days.’

‘And have you seen him yet? Have you seen Michael in prison?’

‘No, no, no. Not yet. Not ready yet.’

‘So you think you will?’

‘I really don’t know. It’s so dreadful. Like a nightmare. Sometimes I dream about him. I dream that it never happened, that everything’s back to the way it was. But then, nothing ever really was the way it was, was it? It was all an illusion, Jane – my perfect life, my perfect husband, all a sick, beautiful illusion. And sometimes I have nightmares too. I see those girls, those lovely, lovely girls and …’

From her vantage point at the windowledge, Melody could hear her aunt Maggie crying.

‘… And I feel so guilty, Janey, so horribly, horribly sick with guilt. I mean – I’ve got two daughters, and the idea of … of …’

Melody heard her mother sighing sympathetically. ‘Don’t, Maggie,’ she said. ‘Don’t do it to yourself. There’s nothing you could have done.’

‘Oh, but there is, Janey, there is. I should have wondered more, I should have questioned things: his absences, his moods, his distance … but it’s too late now, there’s nothing I can do now. Those poor girls’ lives are ruined for ever and that’s just something I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.’

Melody tugged at her mother’s skirt. ‘I need to do a wee,’ she whispered.

Her mum smiled at her. ‘Can you remember where the bathroom is?’

Melody shook her head.

‘I’ll take you,’ said Nicola, who’d followed her in.

Melody followed her cousin up the stairs. On the landing she saw the same painting of a hairy cow on a windswept dale, and in the bathroom the same pine-framed mirror over the same heavy Art Deco sink.

‘Nicola,’ she asked, as she came out of the bathroom a moment later, ‘can I see something in your room?’

Nicola smiled sweetly. ‘I haven’t got my babies any more,’ she said. ‘We gave them to the hospital, for the ill children.’

‘I don’t want to see babies,’ Melody replied, ‘I want to see something else.’

It was there, just as she’d known it would be, hanging on the wall between posters of David Bowie and Queen: the Spanish girl with the blue eyes and the black hair and the red polka-dot dress. She stared at it in silence and felt something hot and cold slither down her spine.

‘Are you OK?’ said Nicola.

‘Mm-hm.’ Melody nodded.

‘Do you like David Bowie?’ Nicola asked.

Melody didn’t answer. She was mesmerised by the painting and puzzled by her reaction to it. ‘Have you always had that painting there?’ she asked after a while.

‘Yes,’ said Nicola. ‘Since I was a baby. Why?’

Melody sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It just … reminds me of something, that’s all.’

‘Do you like it?’

She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I really do. I love it.’

‘Well, you can have it, if you like?’

‘What, really?’

‘Yes. I’m not that keen on it any more.’

‘But won’t your mum mind?’

‘No,’ said Nicola. ‘She doesn’t mind about things like that. Not any more.’

Melody sensed something sad in Nicola’s voice and thought about what she’d just overheard Maggie and Mum talking about. Their dad had done something really bad and now he was in prison, but Melody decided not to ask Nicola about it.

Nicola got off the bed and stood on her tiptoes, reaching to pluck the painting from the wall. ‘Why do you live so far away now?’ she asked.

Melody shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I wish we didn’t. I wish we still lived in London.’

‘Maybe you’ll come back now,’ said Nicola, blowing a thick layer of dust off the top of the painting and smoothing the glass with the side of her hand. ‘Maybe your mum will change her mind.’

Melody nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘maybe.’

Nicola passed her the painting and she held it in her hands. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I really, really love it. I’ll keep it for ever and ever. And it will always remind me of you.’

Nicola smiled then and put her arms around Melody. ‘You’re so sweet,’ she said, hugging her, ‘so, so sweet.’

Melody hugged her back, intoxicated by the smell of her big girl hair and watermelon lip gloss, and amazed that there was this person, flesh and bone, solid and real, who she hadn’t seen for two years, who was her
family
. Not a pretend family like Ken and Grace and Laura, not a patchwork family like Jacqui and Dad and Charlotte, but her real family, the one she’d had before everything had changed. She squeezed her back and hoped her tears wouldn’t leave a wet patch on the shoulder of her lovely blue Chelsea Girl sweater.

A
lady called Janice accompanied Melody to Los Angeles that Easter. She told Melody that she had a daughter who was six and a half too and that her name was Rebecca.

‘Where is she?’ asked Melody.

‘She’s at home,’ said Janice, ‘with her dad.’

Melody smiled and clutched her blanket to her, feeling that although she was neither home nor with her dad, and a hundred miles up in the air, she was exactly halfway between the two and that was as good a place to be as any.

‘I’m going to be with my dad soon,’ she said.

‘Yes, you are,’ said Janice. ‘Are you excited?’

Melody nodded and smiled. ‘Really, really, really, really, really excited! I haven’t seen him since January.’

‘Wow. Three months. That’s a long time not to see your daddy, isn’t it?’

‘And my sister,’ she replied. ‘My baby sister, Emily. She can sit up now. And play with toys.’

‘Wow,’ said Janice again. ‘I bet she’ll be so excited to see you.’

‘I hope so,’ said Melody, ‘I really hope so.’

* * *

Charlotte’s bedroom had a bed with a gilded canopy, like one that Melody had seen in one of the state bedrooms at Sandringham last summer. Cascading from the gilded canopy was a circle of white chiffon that draped itself around the bed like a wedding dress. The carpet in her bedroom was soft cream shag-pile and she had a dressing table with gold curly bits on it and a triptych mirror on top. A door to the left led to a small bathroom, with a shower cubicle, a bidet and
two basins
, which was, apparently, only for Charlotte to use and was called an ‘on sweet’.

‘And look at this,’ Charlotte said, pulling Melody across the shag-pile carpet towards a pair of glazed doors at the rear of the room. ‘My very own sun terrace!’

The terrace was semi-circular and furnished with a teak lounger and a giant orange parasol. It had a view directly over the small turquoise swimming pool in the back garden and a lantern that clicked on and off whenever anyone stood near it.

‘No one’s allowed on this terrace, except me. And you, when you’re here. If I say it’s all right. So –what do you think?’

Melody took another look around the grand suite and exhaled. She had never before encountered such opulence, such glamour and elegance. It wasn’t a big house, not by the standards of the surrounding mansions and haciendas, but it was so modern and so thrilling. ‘I think it’s the nicest bedroom in the whole wide world.’

‘Good.’ Charlotte smiled with satisfaction and flopped backwards onto her big double bed. ‘You know, some of my friends at my new school have got
much nicer
bedrooms than this. You know, Christie’s got
two
double beds, and her own pool.
And
a real diamond necklace. But then, her dad’s a big producer – and she’s an only child, so, you know, she gets more stuff.’

Melody nodded, mutely. The idea of there being a bedroom somewhere close to here that was nicer than this one was impossible to conceive of. Melody herself would be sleeping in what Jacqui uncharitably, and perhaps insensitively, referred to as ‘the maid’s room’. It was a tiny whitewashed room near the utility room behind the kitchen with a small window overlooking the driveway. Someone (Melody hoped it was Jacqui, but thought it probably wasn’t) had made an attempt to cheer it up a bit, with a Mexican blanket and a vase of orange blossom from the garden, but it was still an altogether gloomy box of a room.

‘Where does Emily sleep?’ she asked Charlotte.

‘In the nursery,’ she replied.

‘Can I see it?’

Charlotte looked at her in confusion, as if having seen the eighth wonder of the world that was her own bedroom she should have no reason ever to wish to see another bedroom as long as she lived. ‘If you want,’ she said, ‘it’s next door.’

Emily’s nursery was big and airy, with arched shuttered windows that shared Charlotte’s view across the pool. She had a large white cot with a mobile overhanging it and huge Disney decals all over the walls. Melody breathed in deeply, relishing the scent of talcum and detergent, the piquant undercurrent of nappy and scalp.

There was a large framed portrait on the wall outside Emily’s nursery, a studio photograph of Charlotte in a cream crocheted minidress and waist-length plaits tied with wool pompoms, holding Emily on her lap. Charlotte looked self-consciously beautiful and Emily looked slightly precarious in a matching cream dress with a pink Alice band holding back her curls.

Melody gulped. They looked so complete, the two sisters. Nobody looking at that photo would ever stop and wonder where the other sister was. No one would think that there was someone missing, a sister with Emily’s hazel eyes and determined jaw, the same dreamy, faraway look in her eyes, the same spirit. They would just look at it and think: look at those lovely sisters, so beautiful, what a pretty family.

‘When did you have that photo taken?’ she asked Charlotte.

Charlotte glanced up at it, as if she’d never seen it before. ‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘A couple of weeks ago. It was your dad’s birthday present to my mum. Do you like it?’

Melody nodded. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, ‘though I
hate
my teeth in it. Look at the way that one overlaps that one.’ She shuddered. ‘Horrible. So I’m going to an orthodontist next week. I’ll probably have a retainer. They might even have to pull one or two, but it’ll be worth it, worth it to have nice straight teeth …’

But Melody wasn’t listening. She was staring at the photo of Emily and Charlotte thinking: for the sake of a couple of weeks, why didn’t they wait for me?