Hush Hush (28 page)

She half-fell into the taxi’s
back seat. The taxi driver’s face swam into her line of vision,
distended by her fuddled senses into something half-animal and
half-human, like a creature from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

‘Who?’ he asked,
turning into Robert. Robert had resented ‘arty-farty stuff’.
Angela’s ability to recognise a few famous paintings had
infuriated him with its elitism, even though she’d been
introduced to most of them by biscuit tin lids.

‘Where to?’ repeated
the taxi driver, turning to Rosie for enlightenment. ‘And
wherever it is, make it fast before your friend here ruins my
upholstery.’

Angela shut her eyes and dozed,
lulled by the taxi’s smooth progress through late-night
streets. When Rosie’s sharp fingers began to snap at her again,
she groaned in protest. ‘Don’t be like this, dearie! I
may be a big girl but I didn’t get this way by heaving coal
sacks around. Gimme some co-operation here.’

Angela tried to oblige. The
sooner she got out of the taxi, the sooner she’d be sheathed in
her sleeping bag. She clambered out, hugging the jacket around her
ridiculous pink puffball dress. The taxi sped away. She’d have
to settle up with Rosie later.

‘Well, here we are.’
Rosie inserted a key, pushed open a door. ‘Later than I
planned, thanks to the detour.’

It was only inside that Angela
made a discovery. She wasn’t back at Pauline’s. She was
in a small, windowless kitchen heaped with dirty crockery. Flowers
sprang from a vase on a small kitchen table. They were long-dead,
decomposing headily in the airless room, their musty petals folded
over drooping heads like rotting mantillas. Angela shivered and sank
into a chair.

‘You’ll be right as
rain in a minute,’ said Rosie’s voice from a cupboard.
‘Hair of the dog is what you and I need.’

She loomed suddenly over Angela’s
chair, her face blotchy from drink and the cool spring night air, a
flower wilting on its engorged, purple stalk. Angela shrank back by
instinct. ‘I want to go back to Pauline’s,’ she
whimpered drunkenly.

Rosie stalked to the table,
shoved the vase aside. Paper-crisp petals shook onto the table with a
final death rattle. Rosie banged down a half-full bottle next to a
bread board. ‘There’s bloody gratitude for you! I direct
the taxi out of my way to show you evidence he’s skipping the
country, and you want me to back-track all the way to Pauline’s.
Well, diddums.’ She went to a drawer, then stuck her head in a
cupboard under the sink.

When she turned round again to
face Angela, a long-handled knife gleamed in one hand. Angela gasped.

‘I suppose it’s the
shock,’ mused Rosie, dumping two lemons on the bread board with
her other hand. She cleaved one cleanly with the knife. ‘Gin
and tonic should do the trick, going easy on the tonic. Fuck it,
glasses!’

Her next trip was to the sink.
She scattered dishes with crashes that jolted through Angela’s
skull, before extracting two greasy tumblers. ‘You know, it was
a shock for me, too. I mean, meeting my successor. Just when you
think you’re getting over being dumped, you meet the proof of
how little time he needed to get over it. The bastard!’ She
stuck the knife in the other lemon. A bolt of pain shot through
Angela.

‘Ow!’ Rosie held up a
thumb and squinted at it. Blood gushed from a flesh wound, red and
fresh. She jammed the thumb in her mouth and sucked noisily. Then, as
an afterthought, she held her thumb over the rim of a glass and
squeezed. ‘Homemade bloody Mary,’ she cackled and looked
at Angela.

It was the look that did it.
She’s mad, panicked Angela. She thinks I ruined any chance of
her getting back with Conor. She’s going to make me drink her
blood, then finish me off with the knife. I’ll never get out of
here alive. There’s no window I can run to and yell for help.

‘What’s the matter
with you?’ Rosie’s face darkened with a frown. Her voice
rose fractiously. ‘Why are you looking at me like that!’

She darted forward, the knife
still in her hand, blood staining its handle.

Angela
gasped as the pain ripped through her. After that, the last thing she
saw was Rosie’s look of shock, before she pitched forward and
fell off the chair.

When she woke up, her first emotion was panic.
Then came pain, sharp and orbital. Her eyes had opened onto womb-like
darkness. Now, as she strained to discern the outline of her
surroundings, her eyes felt like rawly peeled grapes. How long had
she been out cold, with her contact lenses still welded to her
eyeballs?

A spring dug into her back,
clawing her spine through a couple of heaped cushions. So she must be
lying on
‒
a
mattress or sofa? And someone had put cushions under her. Rosie! She
sat up suddenly in the darkness and a wave of nausea swept over her.
She flopped back. She was covered by a thin blanket. Underneath it,
she wore only bra, knickers and tights. She didn’t recall
undressing! She stretched her arms out in front of her, paddled wide
to both sides and finally, dropped her hands to her sides. Her
wedding ring hit plastic, clanging noisily. Seconds later, a shaft of
light from the hallway hit the room and Rosie loomed above her in
striped pyjamas.

‘You want something?’
she whispered hoarsely in the gloom and righted the bucket placed
strategically next to the sofa. ‘Try and use it if you feel
like chucking again. You didn’t make it to the bathroom first
time.’

There was a suppressed reproach
in her voice that forced Angela to rack her scrambled brains for what
had gone on earlier in the evening. Memory drip-fed titbits to her. A
knife, blood, terrible pain.

Suddenly, she was alert again,
springing upright on the sofa, fighting the dizziness that overcame
her. ‘What have you done to me?’ she trembled. ‘Why
am I here?’

Rosie’s padded bulk dropped
next to her on the cushions. She grasped Angela’s feebly
flapping hands and pinioned them across her chest, ignoring the panic
on her captive’s face. ‘Calm down, will you! You’re
here because I haven’t got a spare room, and I can’t let
you have my bed in case you pebbledash the mattress. Not very
hostessy of me I know, but there it is. You got stomach cramps and
barfed up Pauline’s party nibbles all over my kitchen and that
posh frock of yours. What were you eating all night?’

Angela gaped at her, a terrible
realisation dawning. ‘Prawn sandwiches! Oh God, this happens
every time I eat shellfish. I never learn. Mind you, I wasn’t
paying proper attention.’ She’d been off guard at
Pauline’s, wolfing down the sandwiches without thinking,
distracted by Rosie’s presence and revelations. So in a way, it
was poetic justice that she’d made a fool of herself at
Rosie’s, and added to the unholy stink in her kitchen. Just as
she was thinking this, Rosie patted her hand awkwardly. ‘Look,
I’m just across the hall if you need anything. There’s a
towel next to the bucket. I sponged the worst bits off your dress and
hung it over the sink for the night. You should be able to wear it
home tomorrow without stinking out the borough. Looks like a
dry-cleaning job, though.’

‘Th-thanks. Contact lens
bottle,’ whimpered Angela in a tone she hoped Rosie would
interpret as a request. ‘In jacket pocket.’

Rosie leant across her and
plucked the black jacket out of the shadows behind the sofa. She
draped it over Angela’s throat.

‘Thanks. And Rosie?’
Angela shifted experimentally, newly aware of a fresh horror, one
brought on by her upset stomach. Humiliating confirmation crept
damply down her thigh. She gulped. ‘Rosie, I hate to be even
more of a pain, but I’ve just started my period. It can come
early if I’ve just heaved my guts up. Would you
‒
have you got
‒
?’

‘Christ, not a thing!’
Rosie’s hand tightened over her own. ‘Tell you what I
have got, if it’s any use to you. A box of disposable nappies I
keep for when my sister comes round with her baby. Otherwise, you’ll
have to stuff another towel down there. Sorry.’

Angela crimsoned in the darkness.
She was the one who should be apologising, first barfing, then
bleeding all over the soft furnishings of a woman she’d only
met a few hours ago. But of course, it was easier for Rosie in a way.
She could be magnanimous, amused even, at this close encounter with
the bodily functions of her romantic successor. No doubt it would be
all round Pauline’s next therapy group. ‘Beggars can’t
be choosers,’ she mumbled ungratefully.

Rosie bounded off and returned
with two large, white nappies flapping in her arms like trapped
seagulls. ‘Can you make it to the bathroom on your own OK?’

‘Yes, thanks,’
replied Angela, struggling uncertainly to her feet.

‘I would’ve put the
light on in here, only I thought it would blind you.’

‘I prefer it this way.’
Her pants were soaked. She didn’t want to look at Rosie’s
sofa cushions until the morning.

‘Need any Anadin for the
pain?’

‘No thanks. I feel much
better after vomiting. The period pain’s like being stroked
with a feather compared to upset stomach pain.’

‘Well, then, goodnight.’
Rosie watched solicitously as Angela hobbled into the bathroom. ‘Oh,
and don’t worry. I’ve no intention of sharing tonight
with Pauline’s lot or anyone else. G’night. Again.’

‘Night,’
croaked Angela, shutting the door. She collapsed on the toilet lid,
fiddling shakily with the adhesive tabs on a nappy. Once swaddled, a
duck’s bum filling her tights, she waddled back to the sofa and
rearranged the cushions, touching them gingerly for wetness. It took
a long time to get semi-comfortable. Before she drifted off to sleep,
the daftness of the situation sank in. Across the hall was a woman
she had everything and nothing in common with. A woman who’d
seen her at her most vulnerable. A woman who’d also slept with
Conor McGinlay.

Sadie paused
on the doorstep. She hoped this wasn’t a ploy by Angela, trying
to outsulk her. It wasn’t easy for Sadie to make the first move
twice. The first time was that morning, when she’d phoned
Goss!
and discovered that Angela was off sick. Sadie had been overcome with
confusion and embarrassment, but the woman she spoke to
‒
Paula? Pauline?
‒
hadn’t sounded the least surprised or interested that a mother
and daughter who lived in the same town didn’t keep abreast of
each other’s illnesses. Maybe half of
Goss!
knew that Angela was just lazing at home and particularly didn’t
want her mother to know.

Sadie jabbed the doorbell. Her
readiness to forgive Angela jibed with her concessionary arrival on
Angela’s doorstep. It was Angela who should be calling on her.

The door inched open. ‘Ma,
come on in. I’ve meant to ring you.’

Angela plodded inside, leaving
Sadie to follow uneasily. Angela seemed quite unfazed and her tone
was heavy with resignation. She shuffled into the kitchen and flicked
the kettle switch. Sadie’s opening speech died on her lips.
‘Ange! What are you doing in your dressing gown this late in
the afternoon? So you really are sick!’

‘Thanks for the vote of
confidence in my honesty.’ She moved wearily towards the
teapot.

Sadie drew herself up. Sickness
took precedence over unsettled scores. ‘You shouldn’t be
up and about at all, by the look of you. Go and sit in the warm, and
I’ll make tea. Would you like soup as well?’

Angela turned. ‘Look, Mum,
I’ve been dying to apologise for what I said to you about
Robert.’

‘Water under the bridge,
lovey.’

Angela’s pale face scanned
her mother’s. ‘Is it? Really? And about the other things
I said, about when I was growing up.’

‘No need to say anything.’

‘Shush, Ma, I’ve got
to! You know how crap we are in this family about baring our souls
and going for the group hug, so let me finish. It wasn’t true.
I didn’t row with Robert about you on the eve of his death. As
for the other stuff, I was looking for the handiest stick to beat you
with, and came up with being a bad mother. I neglected to mention all
the times you sat up with me when I was ill, the effort you put into
making my first communion dress and loads of other things.’

Sadie had been listening
‒
right up until the moment her gaze fell on the swing lid of the bin.
Poking out of the top were flower stalks.

‘Mum, you do believe me,
don’t you? You had nothing to do with Robert’s heart
attack, indirectly or otherwise.’

‘I know that, lovey.’
Flustered in case she’d been caught staring at the bin, Sadie
looked quickly out of the window, at the row of washing on the line.
She concentrated on a pink and black dress flapping in the wind.

‘Nice dress. You don’t
wear it often enough.’

‘That’s because I’ve
only had it five minutes. Conor bought it for me off Rachel’s
stall. It’s a Rachel cast-off.’

Sadie frowned. A submerged memory
shifted in murky depths, struggling to break free and float to the
surface.

‘And no, I’m not mad
at you because you said something to remind me of Conor. Tea’s
ready.’

Sadie followed her into the
sitting room, troubled by the fact that a key part of her speech was
still unsaid. ‘I don’t love Owen more than you,’
she insisted in a dangerously wobbly voice. ‘But I’ve
examined my conscience, and maybe I didn’t play fair.’

‘Oh, Mum, I’m a
grown-up and got over it years ago. You were a good mother, and only
human, like the rest of us. I was just mad with you for phoning
Conor.’

Sadie nodded tremulously. ‘And
now?’

Angela stirred tea vigorously,
her lower lip jutting out like a precipice. ‘The bottom line
is, I love you, Mum, and don’t make me say it again or
elaborate because I find it bloody hard to say things like that. Park
your bum and sip it slowly. It’s hot.’