The Rose Petal Beach

  10

  Tami

  Fleur is standing in front of the mirror in our bathroom, practising shaking hands with people. ‘Hello, lovely to meet you,’ she is saying under her breath. She’s dressed in a tight, ankle-length t-shirt cotton stretchy dress she’d brought with her. Her wild mass of ringlets is gathered into a low bun that sits at the nape of her neck. The heels she has on make her tower over almost everyone and I’m working up to suggesting she borrow a pair of my flats.

  She reminds me of Anansy and Cora combined. She has Anansy’s exuberance and Cora’s tenacity. I look into her eyes sometimes and see the six-year-old whose mother left; I see a little girl who is still struggling to come to terms with grieving for someone she didn’t really know.

  Although, did any of us know Mirabelle? Honestly. How could she have kept this from me? I opened up to her about my whole life, I told her things I hadn’t told Scott and she hadn’t even shown me anything below the very top layer of who she was. She had a daughter.

  ‘Fleur,’ I say to the girl in my bathroom, who I can’t help but treat like a third child, ‘You can’t wear those shoes. Well, actually, you can. But you’re going to freak everyone out.’

  Today is the funeral.

  It hasn’t taken us long to arrange, I didn’t realise things could get done so quickly. I didn’t want Fleur to feel as if I was taking over but she seemed almost petrified of making a decision. I wanted to talk to her about Mirabelle, I wanted to talk about her life, but we ended up talking mainly about books. She is a voracious reader and loves them because they are her way of escaping from everyday life. She stumbled over revealing that to me, and yet it was obvious she’d needed an escape from her life at home. I read a lot, too, as a child. It was where I learnt about the outside