The Rose Petal Beach

  I know Beatrix has a right to be scared right now, but she is asking too much of me. She is asking for my help, my companionship. She wants me to be with her while she tries to stay alive. Through all of it. Through going into this flat that maybe has a psycho killer waiting for her to the long journey she is now facing. She hasn’t said that, of course, but that’s what she’s thinking. She doesn’t want to go into that playpen on her own.

  ‘You have no right to ask this of me,’ I tell her.

  ‘I know,’ she says. Her eyes find mine, the corners of her mouth turn down. ‘And I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.’

  Mirabelle, she’s there again. She’s at my shoulder, she’s in my head, she’s weighing on my conscience over the last time I saw her. ‘Just go and get your stuff,’ I say to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, immediately brimming over with tears. ‘Thank you.’ She slides her key into the door and dashes off to pack, obviously moving at speed in case I suddenly change my mind.

  I won’t change my mind. I’m not doing it for her. I’m doing it for the friend I let down.

  Beatrix

  ‘I’ll take the girls to school on Monday, if you’d like?’ I say to Tami.

  She is pushing laundry into the gaping hole of the washing machine. The kitchen and house smell of the chicken roasting in the oven. This is a Saturday job for her. Once the chicken is done, she’ll strip it of its meat and put the pieces in separate bags, two for the fridge and the rest will go in the freezer. She’ll put the carcass into a bag in the freezer, too. When she has five carcasses she’ll make a batch of chicken stock. At the same time she’ll make vegetable stock. Today isn’t a stock-making day. While the laundry washes, she’ll start making food for the freezer for the fortnight. Once the laundry is done, she’ll hang it out. At some point she’ll do the Hoovering and clean the bathrooms. Another batch of washing will go on. Usually, she has the girls while she’s trying to get things done. Usually, she will be keeping them busy while trying to organise the house so they can maybe go and do something in the afternoon. Usually, she does this all alone because Scott is in bed with me.

  Tami continues to push clothes into the washing machine and without raising her head says, ‘No thank you.’

  ‘It’s no trouble. I’d love to do it,’ I say.

  She raises herself to her full height, slams shut the porthole to the laundry, and concentrates on setting the dials, on pouring the powder in the drawer, on pushing the ‘start’ button. ‘I said no thank you.’

  ‘I want to help out,’ I explain. ‘Take my mind off things.’

  When Tami rotates to regard me for long silent seconds, I forget for a moment who I am, what I am facing, and I see my friend. She looks horrendous. That’s not me being bitchy, that’s me being concerned. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail and shows that her face is a greyish brown, and a mass of blotches and pimples. The dramatic weight loss is apparent on her cheeks, her neck, her shoulders … her entire body. She is swamped by the Goonies T-shirt she has pulled on, the jogging bottoms that are sitting on her hips like baggy clown trousers were once figure-hugging and flattering. ‘When was the last time you ate?’ I want to ask her. ‘When was the last time you took care of yourself?’

  ‘Do you really want to help out, or do you want to go back to playing replacement mummy to my children?’ she asks.

  I wasn’t expecting that. Like that moment back when she told me she knew Scott and I were lovers, I wasn’t expecting her to say that. I don’t know what I was expecting, what I thought would happen if I stayed here, but not this. I suppose I hoped she would hold my hand. She’d ask me if I wanted to talk, would let me express my feelings and fears, would sit with her arm around me and reassure me. Maybe she would encourage me to cry, to unplug the bottle of terrors that are inside me and release them.

  ‘I, erm, it wasn’t like that,’ I say.

  ‘It was exactly like that. From day one it’s been like that. You wanted my husband, my house, my children when they came along. I thought your interest in us was because you were on your own and needed a family, that’s why I kept encouraging you to become part of our lives. That’s why I didn’t mind Scott going to the football with you, coming over to do odd jobs for you, going for a quick drink with you. I thought … I thought you were my friend and all along you were after my life.’

  It honestly isn’t that simple. Remember how I sort of told Rufus that I wanted that love at first sight thing? That I needed to find that with a man who, when I looked into the future, I’d know we’d be together? I had that with Scott. That very first time we met, I felt a pull towards him that I had never experienced before. As he spoke, I knew I wanted him to be talking about me like that. I wanted him to call me amazing, to be quietly euphoric that I was having his baby, and starting a new life together. I didn’t set out to get him, but I did love him from afar. I wouldn’t have done all this if I didn’t love him. ‘Tami—’

  ‘That’s why you hated Mirabelle, isn’t it? She saw right through you.’

  ‘I know you won’t understand this,’ I speak carefully, knowing how much this will hurt her, ‘but I loved him. Since … since we met, I fell in love with him and I never wanted to hurt you. I was your friend, it was genuine. I just loved him, too.’

  Even before anything began I used to feel sick sometimes visiting when he was at home because I was terrified she would see how I felt about him. I used to crave seeing him, though, anything to be around him. If not him, the girls because they were a part of him. Sometimes it was enough to be around Tami because she had been with him. It scared me how much I wanted him, wanted to be with him. When we started our affair, I was frightened every day that he would end it. That he would choose Tami, or that his guilt would kick in. I was never relaxed, never stable about us. I had to keep myself available, play games by telling him about other men to keep his interest, do things I’d sworn after my husband left I wouldn’t do again because of how degraded, dirty and worthless they made me feel. I hated myself for it, but I would have done anything to keep him, I did do anything to try to keep him. I did everything he asked me to.

  ‘Well, as long as you loved him, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’ she says.

  ‘No, Tami, I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘When’s your next appointment?’ she says in reply.

  ‘Wednesday. Further tests, pre-op information.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll book a taxi for nine o’clock. Driving into Brighton at that time will be an exercise in the hell that is parking, otherwise. We can go to a café until it’s time to go in. I’ll make sure the girls can have tea at a friend’s house in case we’re not back in time.’

  ‘You’re still coming with me?’

  ‘Did I ever have any choice?’ She stares at me while awaiting my answer.

  We all have choices. Every single one of us. Some of us are too blind to see them. Some of us don’t make use of them. Some of us don’t use them correctly. And some us are completely robbed of them because we are trapped in a situation we can’t escape. We still have choices, though.

  I lower my gaze and turn to leave the room. ‘I really did love him,’ I say quietly. I don’t know if she hears me but she does not reply. Or maybe she does. She must have because I hear in my head, ‘Why was your love so important it had to destroy someone else’s life?’

  Beatrix

  Call me? Bea x

  ‘Bix, are you going to live in our house forever?’ Anansy asks.

  I am taking them to school. Tami asked them if they wanted me to, and they said yes. She was doing it for them, I knew that. And me, I suppose. She knows that although my motives were not pure originally, I do love them. Right now, I need my life to be filled with love. No, I haven’t heard from Scott in case you’re wondering. I’m tempted to send him a text telling him what’s really happening. See if that will shock him into getting in touch. I don’t want to th
ink badly of him, I know he’s under immense pressure, but I need him. I need him to come here and make it better with his presence and his love.

  I’m sleeping in the master bedroom. Clearly she didn’t believe me when I said we hadn’t done it the house, we hadn’t infected their home with what she obviously thinks of as our treachery.

  You see, I should feel that what we did was treacherous, but I don’t. I’m a terrible person for not feeling horrendously guilty but I simply can’t summon it up. Maybe it’s the diagnosis, maybe it’s because we didn’t do it to hurt her. It did hurt her, but we didn’t sit there and go, ‘Let’s make love in front of the fireplace the weekend she takes the girls to visit her folks because that will really traumatise her.’ We did it because we wanted to express how we felt about each other with our bodies.

  ‘No,’ I reply, ‘I’m not going to live in your house forever.’ Anansy’s hand fits into mine perfectly. Cora is too much of a big girl to hold my hand, except when we cross the roads, when she has no choice in the matter. ‘I’m staying until I feel better. I don’t feel very well at the moment and your mum said I can stay until I feel better.’

  ‘If Dad gets a bit sick do you think Mama will let him stay until he feels better?’ Anansy asks.

  ‘That’s not how it works when you get a divorce,’ Cora says to Anansy. There was a time when she would have been frustrated and cross with her sister, she would have snapped at her. She is being kind and gentle here. ‘That’s not how it works when you get a divorce,’ she says to me, in case I didn’t know.

  ‘Mama didn’t say they were going to a dee-vort,’ Anansy replies. ‘She said Dad was on business for a very, very long time.’

  ‘Do you even know what a divorce is?’ Cora asks her.

  ‘Yes!’ she says. ‘I do,’ she says to me. ‘I honestly do.’

  ‘I know you do,’ I say. I think my bra is too tight – my breath seems to have trouble expanding my lungs, allowing air into them.

  ‘Mama said when they know when Dad’s coming home they’ll tell us,’ Anansy says.

  ‘That’s what adults say when they mean someone isn’t coming home. They say, “we’ll see” when they mean no and they say “when we talk about it then we’ll tell you”, when they mean it’s already happened.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Anansy says. I’ve learnt over time that when she says that she actually means, ‘That’s not right.’

  ‘It is. Isn’t it? Bix?’ Cora asks, drawing me back into this argument. This argument that I caused.

  Maybe Tami didn’t have the purest motives for letting me take the girls to school, after all. Maybe she wanted me to see this devastation close up, maybe she wanted me to experience for a few minutes what it felt like to be her and dealing with two children whose Dad has gone.

  ‘That’s not fair, is it Bix?’ Anansy asks.

  They used to call Mirabelle ‘auntie’ like she was a relative, and I used to love that they didn’t do that to me. I was their mate, I was their Bix. Now, when they call me it, it cleaves a knife through my core. I am not their friend, am I? I have done some terrible things to their family. I stop in the middle of the street, lower myself to their level.

  I pull them into a hug. ‘I love you two,’ I say to them. I release them and they both look confused. ‘I didn’t have a dad growing up.’

  ‘Everyone has a dad,’ Anansy explains. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have been borned.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Cora says.

  ‘Yes, she is. I mean, my dad left when I was very young.’

  ‘Why, were you a bad girl?’ Anansy asks.

  ‘Were you?’ Cora adds, suspiciously.

  ‘Would you not eat your dinner?’

  ‘Did you draw on the walls?’

  ‘Did you break your mama’s favourite necklace and hide it down the side of the sofa?’

  ‘Did you spill drink in the car when your mama told you to be careful?’

  ‘Did you break your sister’s favourite doll and then pretend it was someone else?’

  ‘I didn’t do that!’ Cora screeches, rounding on her little sister.

  ‘You did, you did, you did!’

  ‘I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t.’

  I only wanted to reassure them, give a pep talk that would make them feel loved and wanted; reassure them that their lives would turn out OK even if their dad was away. I wanted them to know that Scott would never do what my dad did – he wouldn’t leave for someone else and then refuse to pay for his child or even to see them. He wouldn’t reject his offspring every time by saying her mother was the town bike and he had no way of proving she was his; Scott would never say, when confronted with DNA evidence, that he had no room in his life for her no matter how old she is when she tries to contact him. He wouldn’t make her feel worthless.

  I watch Cora and Anansy bickering, and I’m reminded of the time I rowed in the street with my best friend from school.

  Twenty-seven years ago

  Eilise Watford was a redhead like me. We both got called ginger snap and we didn’t care. We didn’t care about anything because we were best friends and we lived on the same road. We used to walk to school together and we’d walk home together. And sometimes we were even allowed to play out front together. Last summer we’d spent lots of time outdoors when Eilise’s mum went to visit her sister in Wales who’d had a baby. My mum looked after me and Eilise when Eilise’s dad was at work and we always had her over for dinner. Sometimes Eilise was allowed to stay over and we slept in the same bed.

  That day, when we were walking to school because we were big girls now and we were allowed to go to school together on our own, she called my mum a bad name.

  ‘Don’t say that about my mummy,’ I screamed at her and grabbed handfuls of her hair, pulling at it. I’d heard the big children who smoked in the park call one of the girls that word and laugh at her and she’d cried and ran away. ‘Don’t call my mummy that!’

  ‘She is! She is a whore!’ Eilise screamed back, trying to get my hands off her head. ‘My mummy said so. She kissed my daddy so she’s a whore.’

  I clawed at her, feeling my short, ragged nails touch her face. I wanted to get her eyes, I wanted to hurt her like her word had hurt me. Her hands pulled at my clothes. We screamed at each other, no words, just screaming, and then Mr Johnson who lived in the house we had stopped in front of was pulling us apart.

  ‘Stop this at once!’ he said, holding us apart. He was big and strong and was practically holding us off the ground. ‘You’re nothing better than common street trash. I shall have both your mothers tan your hides.’

  He dragged us both back to our houses. My house was nearest to his so we stopped there first. When Mum opened the door she was shocked that I was there, being held firmly by the neck by Mr Johnson.

  ‘What the devil?’ she said.

  ‘Fighting in the street,’ Mr Johnson said, sounding very cross. ‘The pair of them. I’m going to take this one home. I hope you tan her hide.’ He let me go and marched Eilise off to her house.

  ‘Bea, what do you think you’re doing?’ Mum said, snatching me into the house but checking the road to see who was looking. I didn’t care who was looking.

  ‘She called you a bad name!’ I screeched at her. She had to know it wasn’t my fault.

  Mum frowned at me, not understanding. ‘What bad name?’ she asked.

  ‘She said you kissed her daddy. She said you were a—’ I heard our creaky backdoor open, and creak shut again as the latch went. My eyes doubled in size because someone was in the house. I heard footsteps in the backyard. I was wrong: someone was leaving. I’d only just left for school, who could have been in the house?

  ‘Bea,’ Mum said, pretending she didn’t hear someone going out the back.

  I ran. I couldn’t get my legs to move fast enough to get me upstairs but I tried. I knew who had been in the house. Even at nine I knew that Eilise wasn’t going to be my friend any more. And I knew it was all my
mum’s fault.

  ‘Do you think we can hold off on the arguing until I get you into school?’ I say loudly to Cora and Anansy. ‘We don’t want to be late.’

  Cora looks at Anansy and she shrugs in reply. ‘Suppose so,’ Cora says.

  ‘Yes,’ Anansy adds. ‘Suppose so.’

  At least I haven’t got children. At least they’ll never feel about me how I used to feel about my mum sometimes.

  16

  Fleur

  From The Flower Beach Girl Blog

  Things I want to do before I die (in no particular order):

  See the big Jesus in Rio.

  Paint every toenail on my feet a different colour.

  Spend time in Italy learning to cook authentic Italian food.

  Have sex on a beach. Any beach will do, it’s never been a specific one.

  Dance naked in the rain. (I got that one from that song.)

  Donate a month’s wages to a charity. (Have to get a full-time job first.)

  Maybe get married.

  Maybe, possibly have a baby.

  Earn enough so I never have to work after the age of thirty-five.

  Understand my mother.

  I’ve been a bit distracted. By sex. By that wonderful, all-powerful thing called sex. It might be love, but at the moment it seems to be sex that is the main reason for my distraction. Sex with Noah, obviously.

  It’s not new to me, sex; I am not a fresh-cherry, nothing like that. I’ve been doing it since I was eighteen. That’s what I told her, Mirabelle, Mum, anyway. (To Dad, I’m obviously a virgin.)

  I knew that she’d done it younger – obviously she did because I exist – but she would flip if she thought I’d done it younger. Like, say, at fourteen. I didn’t. Like Dad ever let me out of his sight long enough for that to happen! I was sixteen and he was safe. Like, you know – safe. Nice. Didn’t rush me, didn’t do anything I didn’t want. Safe. He was a boy who was in his second year of university, and he thought I was older. By that I mean he said he thought I was older when Lariska’s brother got hold of him, but he knew I wasn’t. I didn’t look it, I didn’t talk it, I might have acted it a little, but at the end of the day we both got something out of it.