Cuckoo (49 page)
She dried herself. With the towel wrapped around her, she tiptoed along the corridor. There was a sort of foot-level opening, she saw, on the half-landing that turned and led to the attic floor. She squatted down and peered through the wooden spindles that fenced it off from the room below, which Rose saw was the kitchen. From this spot she could see and hear Polly and Lucy, as they sat at the kitchen table, chatting with Anna. Lucy had Flossie on her knee. Anna was telling Lucy about what had happened to her eye. She and Polly seemed to have turned it into some sort of joke-story – Anna was enacting what the kitten had done, swiping her hand across Polly’s face as if it were a clawed paw.
‘So, they don’t need me, then,’ Rose muttered to herself. Polly looked sharply up and clearly clocked her. She didn’t alert the others to it. Instead, she just carried on as if nothing had happened. Rose got up and went to the bedroom, where her clothes had been hung on hooks on the back of the door, a travel cot had been put up for Flossie, and Anna’s cuddlies had been arranged on a camp bed. Rose picked up her own night-dress, which had been laid out on what was presumably Molly’s bed, and pulled it over her head. Then she lifted back the clean duvet and curled up underneath it. Within seconds she was fast asleep, in a deep, dreamless hole.
When she woke, she had no idea what time it was or where she was. Gradually she remembered that she was back in Brighton, in a teenager’s bedroom. She could hear the whiffle and snore of her two daughters, who someone had put into the room with her. She got out of bed and tiptoed across to the window. It was raining heavily and the night was pitch black. She could see the outlines of the houses on the other side of the back garden. They were all in darkness, so it must be quite late. Rose realised she felt hungry, and wondered if she had missed supper. Taking care not to wake the girls, she slipped out of bed and padded along the landing. She heard voices coming from the kitchen, so she stopped and squatted by the little galleried opening, putting herself to one side so that she couldn’t be seen. At the table were Lucy, Polly and two young people, a heavily pregnant girl and a boy, both about twenty. The boy looked familiar to Rose, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.
‘I’m sorry, Frank, darling,’ Polly was saying. She was leaning across the table, her hand on his forearm. The boy, a pink-cheeked, round-faced, indie-dressed kid with a mop of dark hair, nursed a can of beer. His body was twisted around and his head was inclined in a way that shouted disappointment to Rose.
‘She’s just not up to it,’ Lucy added. ‘She’s obviously in a real state.’
‘I can’t believe she did that to her husband’s work,’ the young woman said.
‘She’s ill, Molly. She’s not herself,’ Polly explained.
‘I wait for twenty years to meet her, and this is how it ends up,’ Frank said, putting his face in his hands.
Rose gasped and put her hand to her mouth.
‘You’ve got plenty of time. She’ll get better soon enough, and then you can take it from there,’ Lucy said.
‘It’s just the wrong time, Frank,’ Polly said. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. The signs were all there that the time was right. I just didn’t have an idea just how deranged she is. But she is your mum, there’s no doubt about that. And you’ve met your sisters, at least.’
‘It’s not your fault, Aunty Polly,’ Frank said.
Aunty Polly!
Rose bit her fingers to stop herself from crying out.
Rose bit her fingers to stop herself from crying out.
‘And thank God you’ve stayed in touch down the years,’ Lucy said. ‘It’s only because of Polly here that you’re even going to get a chance to meet her.’
‘It’s only because of Polly that we met,’ Molly said, taking Frank’s hand and looking into his eyes.
Rose’s stomach lurched. So this was why Polly had brought her back to Brighton.
‘Do you think they’re going to take her away?’ Frank asked.
‘I should imagine so,’ Polly said, patting his hand. ‘It’ll be for her own good. She’s probably a danger to herself right now.’
‘I feel bad about leaving those children in there with her,’ Lucy said to Polly.
‘I think it’s important to act normal,’ Polly said. ‘We don’t want her to suspect anything.’
Rose looked at the young man, who was sitting so that she could see his face now, turned up to the light. Of course. His features were familiar, because they were her own.
‘Do you want to see your baby?’ the midwife had said, as Rose lay, weeping and groggy from the Pethidine that Polly had insisted she used.
‘She doesn’t,’ Polly said. ‘She was very clear about that.’
The midwife shrugged and carried the bundle of blankets out of the room, into the arms of its new parents. It was all out of Rose’s hands. Polly had contacted a Catholic adoption agency which, with her input, had overseen everything.
She must have kept in touch with that agency. Had she kept in touch with Lucy with this reunion in mind? Had she engineered the relationship between the two young people? And
Aunty Polly
? What was all that about?
Aunty Polly
? What was all that about?
Rose had been wrong to trust Polly with anything, ever.
All Rose had known about the adoptive parents was that they, too, lived in Brighton. That was one of the reasons she had got out of the town so quickly. It is, as her parents had told her before they left for Scotland, a small town. A place for scandal. A place where you couldn’t sneeze without everyone knowing about it.
‘Gareth should be here in an hour or so, Frank,’ Polly was saying. ‘You two had better leave. He’s going to be in enough of a state as it is. We’ll save all this until he’s got over the immediate stuff that Rose has done. Then we’ll move on to her past.’
Rose tore her eyes away from the boy, got up and went to the bathroom. Locking the door behind her, she knelt over the toilet, expecting to be sick. But nothing came. She was beyond even that. She closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing down. Gareth was on his way. They all thought she was ill. Things were not looking good.
Had Polly told Anna about this Frank? About the big secret her mother had kept from everyone? Had she – and here she reached for the toilet bowl again – told Gareth? Gareth who, because of his past, could never, ever know? Rose couldn’t begin to think about it. She had an instinctive need to get home, to regroup, to sort herself out. While she was here, in Brighton, she couldn’t see straight. And, more to the point, she was in danger. She had to get out, and there was only one place she wanted to go.
A phone. She had to find a phone. She tiptoed towards the front bedroom, the one she imagined must be Lucy’s. She could still hear them talking in the kitchen. Their hushed, concerned tones sounded like they were standing vigil over a corpse. Rose was right about the bedroom being Lucy’s, and there, by the bed, was a phone. Carefully she picked it up and dialled a taxi number that had been so cleverly designed to be memorable that it came back to her even after a break of two decades.
‘Hello. Taxi please, twenty-five St Luke’s Rise. To go to near Bath. Yes, the Bath in the West Country. Yes, I know it will cost me. I don’t care. And – and please don’t call, or sound the horn when you arrive. I’ll be watching and when you get here I’ll come out. And we need a car seat, for a baby.’
Rose darted back to the bedroom where Flossie and Anna were sleeping. She put on her clothes and threw what she could back into her rucksack and suitcase. Then, very carefully, she woke Anna up.
‘Anna, come on, it’s a game. We’re going to pretend to escape. No one can hear us. You’ve got to be quiet as a mouse and tiptoe down the stairs.’
Anna was sleepy and confused but, happily, as obedient as Rose had hoped she would be. Rose picked Flossie up, then the three of them quietly waited in the front bedroom until the taxi pulled up in the wet, dark street. It stood there, its orange light reflected in the puddles.
‘Quick,’ Rose said. ‘Down the stairs and straight out into the street. Don’t stop!’
Rose led, suitcase and buggy in one hand, Flossie tucked under her free arm, rucksack on her back, and Anna holding on to her skirt as they flew down the stairs and into the street. By the time Polly, Lucy, Molly and Frank had reached the front door, Rose had thrown everything and everyone into the cab.
Then she stopped, turned, and looked back at the stunned group standing in the doorway. Despite everything that was propelling her forwards into the cab, she found her legs taking her back, up the steps, to the door.
She noticed Lucy taking a small step backwards, to shield her pregnant daughter. But it was Frank that Rose headed for. She took his face between her hands and looked straight into those dark brown eyes as if she were looking in a mirror.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘One day, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.’
As she leaned forward and kissed him, just once, on the cheek, she felt Polly’s skinny hand dart forward and grab her arm. But she slapped her away and stumbled down the steps again, hurling herself into the taxi.
She slammed the door shut and saw that Polly had broken out of the doorway and was coming after her.
‘Just go,’ she said to the driver. ‘Get the hell out of here.’
Whatever the taxi driver thought, he didn’t want any trouble. He lurched forward, aquaplaning as he turned the corner at the end of the street. Rose looked back for an instant to see Frank standing, stunned, in the street as Polly ran after the cab. He had his arm round Molly, who had her face buried in his shoulder, her round belly pressed into his side.
Then Rose realised, for the first time, that if Molly was pregnant, if Frank was her boyfriend, then that was her grandchild in there. She gasped and clasped her hand to her mouth.
My grandchild!
‘Are you all right, love?’ the taxi driver asked.
‘Um . . .’ she said, leaning back and trying to breathe. She focused on the windscreen-wipers as they swished backwards and forwards, giving a second’s clarity before the pelting rain obscured her view again. She counted ten swipes.
Then she shook herself. She hadn’t strapped Flossie, Anna or herself in. What was she thinking? She got busy with buckles and straps.
‘No one’s going to come after you, are they?’ the driver asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, leaning over Flossie to anchor the baby seat to the car.
‘And you know it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg?’
‘Needs must.’
‘Just so long as you know.’ The taxi driver, a fatherly, thickset man with a deep Estuary accent, reached forward and switched on Radio 2. Soon the sounds of Easy Listening filled the warm, chemicalcoconut-scented cab as it headed west across the sodden country. The rain washed the bollards and crash barriers, the service stations and the mobile phone masts masquerading as trees. It brought the shiny edges into sharp relief so that, even in the yellow sodium glare of the streetlights, everything seemed to be clear; everything looked flushed out, brought up to the surface.
‘Look, love, I don’t want to interfere or anything, but you’re sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘Oh yes,’ Rose said. ‘I’m on my way home, actually.’
‘That’s a relief to hear. Just so long as you know what you’re doing. With the kiddies and that.’ The man settled back to his driving.
There was very little traffic on the road, and the driver was smooth, fast and confident. Rose wished that the journey could go on forever, because she didn’t want to face what awaited her at home. She put her arms round her sleeping daughters, glad that the driver wasn’t one of the chatty sorts. She tried to concentrate on her girls, but seeing Frank back there had made it difficult for her to pin her mind down.
Despite all that, the relentless sound of the rain, the rhythmic swiping of the wipers, the gentle music and the warm glow of the car interior began to lull Rose towards an uneasy sleep.
As she finally drifted off, the last thought she had was that it was very likely that, at some point, Gareth would be passing them, coming in the opposite direction. She hoped against hope that when he did, he wouldn’t see them. Because then the taxi driver really might have something to worry about.
Forty-Five
It was the deadest part of night when the taxi pulled into the empty parking space at The Lodge. The house stood at the bottom of the steps in complete darkness. There was no wind, and the rain fell arrow-sharp in great, straight torrents, coursing over the edge of gutters, bubbling up at the drain-covers.
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