‘Mum, he’s not here,’ I said, trying to hold her hand. She shook it away.
‘He is. I know it. I can feel him.’
‘Mum, he’s not here.’ I felt tears welling. ‘He’s gone.’
Her head twisted round to me immediately then and her voice lowered to a whisper. ‘He’s not gone, Tamara. They only said he was but he’s not. I can feel him.’
I was crying now. ‘Mum, stop, please. That’s just…that’s just…his spirit that you feel around you. He’s always going to be with you. But he’s gone…he’s really gone. Please…’
‘I want to see him,’ she demanded of Rosaleen.
‘Jennifer,’ she said, her hands reaching out even though she was too far away to touch her, ‘Jennifer, just relax, go back and lie down.’
‘No!’ Mum shouted, her voice trembling now. ‘I want to see him! I know he’s here. You’re hiding him!’
‘Mum,’ I cried, ‘she’s not. Dad’s dead, he’s really dead.’
Mum looked at me then, and for a moment she seemed so sad. Then she was angry and ran down the stairs. Rosaleen ran for the door.
‘Arthur!’ she yelled outside.
Arthur, who was only in the driveway with Weseley, loading equipment into the Land Rover, jumped to attention.
Mum ran out to the garden, shouting, ‘Where is he?’ over and over.
‘Jen, stop it now. Relax, it’s okay,’ Arthur called to her calmly over and over.
‘Arthur,’ Mum cried, running for him and throwing her arms around him. ‘Where is he? He’s here, isn’t he?’
In shock, Arthur looked to Rosaleen.
‘Mum!’ I cried. ‘Arthur help her. Do something to help her, please. She thinks Dad is still alive.’
Arthur looked at her with what seemed to me to be a broken heart. He took her in his arms and as Mum’s skinny body shook with tears and she asked over and over again, where he was and why, he rubbed her back soothingly.
‘I know, Jen, I know, Jen, it’s okay. It’s okay…’
‘Please help her,’ I cried, standing in the middle of the garden, looking from Rosaleen to Arthur, who was keeping Mum up. ‘Send her somewhere. Get somebody to help.’
‘My dad’s at home now,’ Weseley offered quietly. ‘I can call him and tell him to come round.’
Something twisted inside me. A cold fear. An instinct of some sort. I thought of the burned diary, of the fire in my dreams. I had to get Mum out of the house.
‘Take her to him,’ I said to Arthur.
Arthur looked at me in confusion.
‘To Dr Gedad,’ I said so that Mum couldn’t hear.
In Arthur’s arms, Mum twisted and slid downwards, grief overtaking her.
Arthur nodded at me then, solemnly. Then he looked at Rosaleen.
‘I’ll be back soon.’
‘But you—’
‘I’m going,’ he said firmly.
‘I’m coming too,’ she said hurriedly, swiftly taking off her apron and rushing into the house. ‘I’ll get her coat.’
‘Weseley, stay with Tamara,’ Arthur instructed.
Weseley nodded and took a few steps closer to me.
Moments later they were all in the Land Rover, Mum in the back crying and looking so lost.
Weseley put his arm round my shoulders protectively.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said gently.
When we arrived here I felt like me and Mum were all washed up, two people who’d landed on the beach coughing and spluttering after our boat had gone down. We were a mess, we had nothing, belonged to nothing, felt aimless, as though we were trapped in a waiting room with no doors.
I’ve realised that when things are washed up, they haven’t just been torn apart—they’re the survivors. I didn’t think it until I was forced to watch some nature documentary such as Arthur loves. It was about the South Pacific islands, how they’re so far apart it was difficult to explain how life spread from one to another at all, apart from the birds. Then these coconuts came bobbing along. All washed up, the narrator said. Two lost things that had survived the seas and arrived on a coastline. What did they do? They implanted themselves in the sand and grew into trees and lined the beaches. Sometimes a lot can come of being all washed up. You can really grow.
Even though Mum had a hissy fit, thought that Dad was still alive, and appeared to be falling apart, I felt like it was the start of something new, something better. And as we watched them drive away, Rosaleen looking back at us with concern, not wanting to leave us but not wanting to leave Arthur and Mum alone, I really couldn’t help it. But I smiled and I waved.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
K is for…Kangaroo
As soon as they were gone, I raced into the house. On the coat stand, Rosaleen’s apron had been messily strewn across the top in her effort to hurry outside. I grabbed it and dug my hand into the pocket.
‘Tamara, what are you doing?’ Weseley was close behind me. ‘Maybe I should make you a cup of tea or something, to calm you dow—What the hell is that?’
He was referring to the container of pills I held up in my hand.
‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’ I gave him the pills. ‘I caught Rosaleen putting them in Mum’s breakfast.’
‘What? Whoa, Tamara,’ Weseley said. ‘She was putting pills in her food?’
‘I saw her opening them and emptying the powder stuff into the cereal and then mixing it around. She doesn’t know I saw her.’
‘Well maybe they’re prescription pills.’
‘You think? Let’s see, shall we? Despite the fact Rosaleen likes to pretend that I know nothing of my own mother’s medical history, I do know that her name isn’t…’ I read the label of the container, ‘Helen Reilly.’
‘That’s Rosaleen’s mother. Let me see them.’ He took them from me. ‘They’re sleeping pills.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It says it on the label. Oxazepam. That’s a sleeping pill. She’s putting these in your mum’s food?’
I swallowed, tears sprung in my eyes.
‘Are you sure you saw her do this?’
‘Yes I’m sure. And Mum hasn’t stopped sleeping since we arrived. Non-stop.’
‘Does your mum usually take them? Is Rosaleen just trying to help her, maybe?’
‘Weseley, Mum is so drugged she can barely remember her own name. This is not helping her. It’s almost like Rosaleen’s trying to make her worse. This is making her worse.’
‘We have to tell somebody.’
The relief at hearing ‘we’ came like a tidal wave.
‘I have to tell my dad. He’ll have to tell somebody, okay?’
‘Okay.’
I felt relieved then that I was no longer alone. I sat on the stairs while he phoned his dad to tell him.
‘Well?’ I jumped up as soon as he’d hung up.
‘They were in the room with him so he couldn’t comment on it. He just said he’d take care of it. We’ll just have to keep these safe in the meantime.’
‘Right.’ I took a deep breath. What will be, will be. ‘So will you help me get Arthur’s toolbox, please?’
‘What do you need that for?’ he asked, completely baffled now.
‘To break open the lock on the garage.’
‘What?’
‘Just…’ I searched for the words, ‘help me, please. We don’t have much time and I’ll explain everything later. But for now can you please, please help me? They’re rarely out of the house. This is my only opportunity.’
He thought about it in a long silence, turned the container of pills around in his hand while thinking. ‘Okay.’
While Weseley ran into the workshed beside the house, I paced the garden, hoping they wouldn’t return before I’d had a chance to have a good look round. I stopped pacing to peer at the bungalow, wanting to see if the glass that shone directly into my bedroom was still there. It was gone. But something on the garden wall caught my attention. A box. I moved close
r.
‘Weseley.’
He immediately heard the warning in my voice and turned round, following where my finger was pointing.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
I crossed the road and examined it. Weseley followed me. The package was covered in brown paper and my name was written on the front along with ‘Happy Birthday’.
I picked it up and looked around. There was nobody at the windows, behind the net curtains. I opened the brown paper to reveal a brown shoe box. I lifted the lid. Inside was the most beautiful glass mobile, a series of different-sized tears mixed with hearts, joined together with wires through tiny holes. I lifted it up and raised it to the light. It sparkled against the sun and spun around in the breeze. I smiled and looked to the house to wave, to smile, to thank somebody.
Nothing.
‘What the hell…’ Weseley said, examining it.
‘It’s a gift. For me.’
‘I didn’t know it was your birthday.’ He took it and examined it.
‘Well, she did.’
‘Who? Rosaleen’s mother?’
‘No.’ I stared at the bungalow again. ‘The woman.’
He shook his head. ‘And I thought my life was weird. Who is she? My mam and dad didn’t think anybody other than Mrs Reilly lived there.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Let’s go in and meet her. To say thanks.’
‘You think I should?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘You were given a present—it’s the perfect opportunity to go in there.’
I chewed on my lip and looked at the house.
‘Unless, of course, you’re afraid.’
That’s exactly what I was.
‘No, we’ve got more important things to do right now,’ I said. I crossed the road and hurried to the back garden, to the garage.
‘You know, Sister Ignatius has been going crazy trying to see you. You just ran off that day and you gave her a fright. You gave us both a fright.’
I glared at Weseley while he poked around in the toolbox for the correct tool to break the lock.
‘I heard about what happened. You okay?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it,’ I snapped. ‘Thank you,’ I added more gently.
‘Heard your boyfriend is in a bit of trouble.’
‘I said I don’t want to talk about it,’ I snapped. ‘And he’s not my boyfriend.’
He started laughing at that. ‘So you know just how I feel.’
Despite all that had gone on that morning, I smiled.
It didn’t take Weseley long to pick the lock. We were in and I was immediately faced with my old life, all of it piled up, out of order, the kitchen with the living room, my bedroom piled on top of the games room, the spare bedroom with the bathroom towels. It fit together as perfectly as the thoughts in my head. Leather couches, plasma TVs, ridiculous-shaped furniture that seemed cheap and soulless now.
I was more interested in seeing what Rosaleen and Arthur had hiding in here. As Weseley threw the dustsheets off the far end of the garage I was highly unimpressed. Just more old furniture, destroyed by time, eaten away at by dust mites and smelling of mothballs. I don’t know what I’d been expecting—a dead body or two, a money printer, boxes of guns and weaponry, a secret entrance to Rosaleen’s batcave. Anything else other than this mothball-laden stinky furniture.
I made my way back to my belongings. Weseley soon followed, oohing and aahing at a few items as he rooted around in the boxes. Taking a break from his investigations of Arthur and Rosaleen’s hidden life, we sat on my once-upon-a-time living-room couch, looking through my photo album while Weseley laughed at the various stages of my adolescence.
‘Is that your dad?’
‘Yeah,’ I smiled, looking at his happy animated face, on the dancefloor at a friend’s wedding. He loved dancing. He was crap at it.
‘He’s so young.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What happened?’
I sighed.
‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t mind.’ I swallowed. ‘He just…borrowed so much money, he couldn’t pay it back. He was a developer, very successful. He had properties all over the world. We didn’t know but he was in big trouble. He’d started selling up everything to pay back the debts.’
‘He didn’t tell you there was a problem?’
I shook my head. ‘He was too proud. He would have felt he’d failed us.’ My eyes filled. ‘But I wouldn’t have cared, I really wouldn’t have.’ I was protesting too much. I could have imagined Dad trying to tell me he was selling off everything. Of course I would have cared—I would have moaned and whinged. I wouldn’t have understood, I would just have been embarrassed about what everyone thought of us. I would have missed Marbella in the summer, Verbier for New Year. I would have shouted at him, called him everything under the sun and I would have stormed off to my bedroom and slammed the door. Greedy little pig that I was. But I wish he’d have given me the opportunity to understand. I wish he’d have sat me down and talked about it, and we could all have worked it out together. I’d live anywhere—in one room, in the castle ruin right now—if it meant we could all just be together.
‘I don’t care about losing anything now. I’d rather have him anyday,’ I sniffed. ‘We’ve lost everything now, including him. I mean, what was the point? When they repossessed the house, I think that was it for him.’ I studied him golfing with Mum, his face serious as he looked into the distance for his ball. ‘They could take everything but not that.’
I turned the page and we both laughed. Me, two front teeth missing as I hugged Mickey Mouse in Disney World.
‘Aren’t you…I don’t know…angry at him? If my dad did that, I’d…’ Weseley shook his head, unable to imagine it.
‘I was,’ I replied. ‘I was so angry at him for so long. But over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about what he must have been going through. Even in my lowest days I never could do what he did. He must have felt so much pressure, he must have been so miserable. He must have felt so trapped, must just not have wanted to be here so much. And…well, when he died they couldn’t take anything else. Mum and I were protected.’
‘You think he did it for you?’
‘I think he did it for a lot of reasons. For all the wrong reasons, but for him they were all right.’
‘Well, I think you’re very brave,’ Weseley said and I looked up at him and tried not to cry.
‘I don’t feel brave.’
‘You are,’ he said. Our eyes locked.
‘I’ve made the most stupid embarrassing mistakes,’ I whispered.
‘That’s okay. We all make mistakes,’ he smiled wryly.
‘Well, I don’t think I make as many as you,’ I added, trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘You seem to make different mistakes with different people almost every night.’
He laughed. ‘Okay let’s see what Rosaleen’s hiding under here.’
Unable to take my eyes off the photo albums, I began another and found my baby photos. I got lost in another world and lost time. In the background I could hear Weseley commenting on things he was finding, but I ignored him. Instead I stared at my beautiful dad, happy and handsome, with Mum. Then there was a photo of my christening day. Just me and Mum. Me so tiny in her arms all that was visible beneath the white blanket was a little pink head.
‘Holy shit, Tamara, take a look at this.’
I ignored him, lost in the photo of me and Mum in the church. She was holding me in her arms, a big smile on her face. Whoever had taken the picture—Dad, I assume—had left their finger over the corner of the lens, blocking the priest’s face. Knowing Dad, it was probably on purpose. I rubbed his big white finger bright from the flash, and I laughed.
‘Tamara, look at all this stuff.’
The photograph captured half of the priest, Mum, me in her arms at the baptism bowl, another person cut off on the right-hand side, thank
s to the dodgy photo skills, but somebody’s hand was resting on the top of my head. A woman’s hand, I could tell from the ring on her finger. Probably Rosaleen, my godmother who never seemed to do what my friends’ godmothers did, which was just send cards at every occasion with money inside. No, my godmother wanted to spend time with me. Puke.
‘Tamara.’ Weseley grabbed me and I jumped. ‘Look at this.’ His eyes were wide. He took me by the hand and a tingle shot up my arm.
I shoved the christening photograph in my pocket and followed him.
Any funny feelings for him quickly evaporated. I looked around the section that Weseley had unveiled of its sheets.
‘What’s the big deal?’ I asked unimpressed. It was hardly as exciting as he was making it out to be. Old furniture as dated as anything I’d ever seen. Books, pokers, crockery, paintings all covered up, fabrics, rugs, fireplaces leaning up against the wall, all kinds of bric-a-brac.
‘What’s the big deal?’ His eyes were wide as he jumped about the place, picking things up, unveiling more oil paintings of evil-looking children with collars up past their ear lobes, and fat unattractive ladies with big boobs, wide wrists and thin lips. ‘Look at all this, Tamara. Look, don’t you notice anything?’
He knocked down a rug and kicked it with his foot. It unrolled onto the dusty floor.
‘Weseley, don’t make a mess,’ I snapped. ‘We don’t have long before they get back.’
‘Tamara, open your eyes. Look at the initials.’
I studied the rug, a dusty-looking thing that might belong on the wall as a tapestry instead of on the floor. It had Ks all over it.
‘And look at this.’ Weseley uncovered a box of china. It too had Ks stamped all over the plates, the teacups, the knives and forks. A dragon draped around a sword, climbing up from flames. Then I remembered the same emblem on the fireguard in the living room of the gatehouse.
‘K,’ I said dumbly. ‘I don’t get it. I don’t…’ I shook my head, looking around the garage, which at first had felt like rubbish and now seemed like a treasure chest.
‘K is for…’ Weseley said slowly as though I was a child, and looked at me, holding his breath.