The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (22 page)

Harry shuddered. A milky substance shot from the end
of his penis and I stared at it as it spurted out over my hand. Stupidly, I hadn’t even known about that. I supposed it was the baby-making side of the business. ‘Oh, God,’ he mumbled, and collapsed backwards on to the bed, releasing my grip.

I looked at the sticky stuff all over my hand. Harry still had his eyes closed, so I wiped it on my bed sheet. It smelled odd, sour almost.

‘You’re beautiful.’ Harry was looking at me through half-closed lids. He stroked my arm, and I felt as cold as winter. I sat still, until he’d sighed, pulled on his clothes and left, kissing the top of my forehead just as he used to back in the more innocent days.

Afterwards, I heard him moving around downstairs, opening another beer, going into the lounge to watch television. I’d pulled on my nightie and picked up the hidden base of my jewellery box where I’d put the chain he’d given me, holding it against my manhandled breasts as evidence of Harry’s love.

Now, as I stood in the bedroom, folding a jumper into a tight roll in my arms, I heard the click of a key turning in the front door, and then a thud as someone entered the house. The door closed with a tight bang, and my heart shot into my throat.

Five seconds later, I heard the door to the front room open and my mother’s gasp – no doubt as she came across a strange girl with her shoes on the sofa.

I stuffed my clothes any old how into the bag and struggled to close the zip. Voices rumbled back and forth below me, my mother’s fast and frantic, Star’s slow and laconic.

I finally closed the zip, picked up the bag and hurried
downstairs. My mother was just inside the front room, and I almost walked into her in my rush. She turned with a startled yelp and said in an almost whisper, ‘Rosie.’

She was wearing a matching wool skirt and jacket; I supposed she’d dressed up to see the solicitor. Her hair was ruffling loose of its curls. She’d put on a dash of make-up: pearly lips and cream-edged eyes. I squeezed past her into the room. Star was on her feet, some sort of excuse on her lips.

‘Mum,’ I said. ‘This is my friend Star. I invited her to … um … to …’

But Mum was already taking in the zipped bag in my hands. She put a hand to her chest and bit her lip. ‘Oh, Rosie,’ she said. ‘Do you really hate me all that much?’

A blur of guilt heated my head. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she’d think that. ‘No, Mum, no. Of course not.’

‘I’ll just …’ Star walked to the door, squeezing past Mum. ‘I’ll be outside, okay?’

I wanted to ask her not to go, but I stayed silent as she left. We listened to the front door opening and closing and I said, utterly inadequately, ‘I came back to pick up a few things.’

She sat down heavily in the armchair. ‘You want to avoid me that badly,’ she said, staring glassily at the coffee table. ‘You knew I was going to be out, so you came by.’

‘It’s not how it looks,’ I croaked, sitting down too, on the sofa arm. But then again, it was exactly how it looked. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She glanced up at me. ‘What did I do? That’s all I want to know. What on earth did I do to drive you away?’

‘Nothing.’ I put out a hand towards her, and she whipped her own back. ‘Of course you didn’t do anything.’

‘Then why all this?’ She waved a hand. She’d lost weight; the jacket hung loose on her frame. ‘And before you left. Don’t think I didn’t notice you avoiding me, leaving the room if I came in. I mean, God, Rosie, I can take it, but I need you to tell me the truth.’

I shook my head fiercely. ‘I just needed my independence.’

‘What, am I so smothering? I’m not as strict as … well, as lots of people.’ She got to her feet and walked towards the sideboard, hugging herself. Absently, she began putting the photographs back in their proper places. ‘You must think me a complete bitch.’

‘Of course not.’ I blinked away my shock at Mum swearing in my presence. I stood up too. ‘I’m so sorry. I never wanted this.’

‘What did you expect?’ I noticed she was holding the photograph of the baby, the one I’d picked up earlier. ‘That I’d say, “Oh well, my daughter’s suddenly left home in the middle of her A levels and won’t tell me why. Never mind, I’m sure it’ll all come out in the wash.” ’

‘That photo.’ I indicated it. ‘Is it you?’

‘Mmm?’ She glanced at it. ‘Yes. I found it when I was going through Mother’s things at the farm. My uncle Peter took it with a Box Brownie just after I was born.’

‘I think I’ve seen it before,’ I said. ‘Very recently.’

‘Well, you can’t have, dear.’ She sighed. ‘I haven’t seen it myself for years.’

‘There’s something about it …’ I began, but I saw I
wasn’t going to get away with changing the subject that easily. ‘I can’t talk about what’s going on, that’s all.’

‘I thought you might be having a baby.’ She looked down at my stomach. ‘I’ve been asking around, you know. I’ve spoken to all your school friends. They said you’d been acting a little strangely recently.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not having a baby.’

‘Then there’s a boy involved.’ She tilted her head back and looked at me, and I had the feeling she saw straight into my warped little brain. ‘I thought so.’

‘No …’ I said miserably.

She turned and walked a few paces away, throwing her arms in the air. ‘I’m not some innocent, Rosie. You can talk to me about … about boys, or sex, or … well, you know.’

‘Not this,’ I whispered. ‘Not this.’

She sighed, and when I looked up saw she was leaning on the doorway. She took me in slowly. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said.

‘So’ve you,’ I said.

She tugged at her skirt. ‘Oh, I’ve been trying to do that for years. Very fashionable now, isn’t it?’ She rested her chin on the edge of the door. ‘How are you doing in that draughty old place?’

I shrugged. ‘Fine. I’m working. Paying my rent.’

‘And that girl?’ She indicated the hallway, where Star had gone. ‘Is that the one I spoke to on the telephone the other day?’

I nodded. ‘She lives on the top floor. She’s … um … she’s nice.’

‘I’m sure she is,’ said Mum, with just a hint of scepticism in her tone. ‘A little self-obsessed, perhaps, but I’m sure I was the same at her age.’

‘I’ve made a heap of friends,’ I said earnestly, nodding the white lie into truth. ‘There’s an old man in the basement.’

‘An old man?’ Mum coughed.

‘I mean, he’s adorable. He’s sort of … um, grandfatherly.’

Mum took a step towards me. ‘People aren’t always what they seem, you know.’

‘No.’ I wished I’d never said grandfatherly. ‘But he is. I mean, he’s rather a lost soul. He can’t remember things, you see, and he turned up with a ton of money and a photograph …’

I trailed away as I looked again at the sideboard. ‘Perhaps you ought to keep yourself to yourself a little more,’ Mum was saying, but I wasn’t properly listening, because I suddenly twigged where I’d seen the photograph of the baby before.

‘Oh my goodness.’ I picked it up and showed it to her. ‘He has the same one. I mean, his is ruined, but still … it’s the same.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She stalked towards me, snatched it back and returned it. ‘Why would some old man have a photograph of me as a baby?’

‘I don’t know. It just looks …’ I squinted at it, remembering a splash of grass, a blurred hint of a baby’s forehead. ‘So similar,’ I ended lamely.

Mum held my chin and turned my face towards hers.
‘Come home, Rosie,’ she said softly. ‘It’s not too late. The school will take you back. I’ve spoken to them: Miss Waverley’s very anxious about you.’

My stomach sagged, because the thought of waking in a warm bed, with nothing more to worry about but unravelling the origins of the Hundred Years War, was so appealing I nearly burst into tears right then. I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Tell them I’m sorry.’

She let go of my chin. ‘Wait there,’ she said, and clipped away to the kitchen on her heels. I picked up the photograph again and peered at it. Perhaps she was right. After all, Dockie’s photograph was almost completely obliterated.

When Mum came back into the room she was holding a roll of notes held tight with an elastic band. She pressed it into my hand. ‘Take it. Please.’ She smiled in a wobbly way. ‘Buy yourself those sandals you wanted.’

I swallowed, and took the money. ‘Thank you.’

She held me by the shoulders. ‘Look, if you can’t bear to move back, at least return my telephone calls.’

I nodded. ‘I will. I promise I will.’

‘And you could visit, you know? Just to let me know you’re alive.’ She paused. ‘How about on Sunday? You could come for lunch. I’ll pick up a joint of beef from Dodds. Just the three of us: you, me and Harry.’

‘I can’t. Um … not Sunday,’ I said, my heart racketing hard in my ribs. At her disappointed face I said, ‘I could come on Tuesday. I get Tuesdays off. I could come for lunch. How about that?’

‘But Harry won’t be there,’ she said, frowning.

‘No. Well …’ I trailed off, and then in half a second saw
her face change as a new idea lit up her brain. Before it had time to plant itself, I leaned forward and groped her into an embrace. ‘I love you, Mum,’ I said, and she laughed, startled, because I wasn’t the sort to show affection usually.

‘I love you too.’ She hugged me back and kissed my cheek. I pulled away from her as quickly as was polite, and picked up my bag. ‘Just a second, Rosie,’ she said.

‘I’ve got to go.’ I made a show of looking at my watch. ‘The bus’ll be here any minute.’

She stayed me with a hand on my arm. ‘Harry …’ she began.

I pulled my arm away. ‘I’ll call you,’ I said, forming a telephone shape in the air. ‘About Tuesday, okay? See you later.’

And with that I dashed into the hall, pulled my jacket from the peg, opened the door and hurried down the path, swinging through the gate, past a surprised Star, who was leaning on the wall, and walked rapidly down the street.

Star found me at the bus stop outside Drover’s News. I tapped a nervous tattoo on the post, pretending to look down the street for the bus. ‘Should be here any minute,’ I muttered.

She gazed down at me. ‘I take it that didn’t go too well,’ she said.

‘I didn’t think …’ I said quietly. ‘It just didn’t occur to me how upset she’d be that I’d left home.’

She laughed softly. ‘Hey, if you can’t go through life without devastating your mother at least once, then you’re not really normal.’

I leaned on the pebble-dashed post. ‘The thing is, I didn’t have a choice, but of course I can’t explain that.’

‘Then I take it you haven’t told her about you and Harry?’

I grimaced and looked away. ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ I muttered.

‘God, Rosie, I’m not judging you.’ I looked up; she was balancing the soles of her feet on the edge of the kerb. ‘Remember when I spoke to your mum on the telephone a couple of days ago? She said your stepfather had been coming by to see you. And I thought,
Oh, God, not the chap in the Jag who’d shag a tree if it had tits?
Plus that saucy note, of course. I worked it all out then.’

‘Well done, Miss Marple,’ I muttered. ‘Now you see what kind of a nice person I am.’

‘But you are.’ Star flung her arm out in a dramatic gesture. ‘
He’s
the filthy pervert.’

I shook my head. ‘It was both our faults. Worse for me. I’m … you know … I should have known better.’

‘How old were you when it started?’

‘Seventeen,’ I mumbled. In the distance, I saw the bus rounding the corner.

‘Then he’s the one who should have known better.’ She put a hand to the post and swung on it. ‘I suppose he told you a load of lies, did he?’

I wrinkled my nose. ‘I was an idiot.’

The bus drew closer. Star stuck her arm out to hail it. ‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I was. I thought he really liked me, you know? That I was the one for him and he’d only married Mum by mistake. And all the time I was just … I was just …’

‘Just a challenge?’ suggested Star, and I nodded. The bus drew level and we climbed on to pay our fare back to Helmstone. Star threw the driver some coins, saying, ‘My treat, and no argument.’

We settled at the rear of the bus against the rickety back of the seats. ‘The worst thing is,’ I said in a hushed tone, although as we moved off my voice was drowned by the rattling of the engine, ‘I didn’t even leave straight away after we … well, I mean, I didn’t … you know … that is, maybe we would have …’

‘Spit it out,’ said Star. ‘Which, by the way, I hope you did.’

She chortled, and I wondered if I felt as she had an hour earlier when she’d accused me of not taking her problem with Johnny seriously enough. ‘I went into Mum’s bedroom to borrow her hair irons,’ I said crossly. ‘And in her drawer I found all these notes and cards – all from him.’

Star dug in her bag for a cigarette. ‘You hadn’t realized they were having a full relationship, so to speak.’

I blushed. ‘I was such a fool.’ As soon as I’d read Harry’s messages to my mother, the language in them, much dirtier than anything he’d ever written to me, all the things I’d witnessed and ignored slotted back into place. A memory of Harry pinching my mother’s bottom as she hung out the washing, of her squealing hysterically as they sat in the front seats of the car while I read a book in the back, of the muffled noises that came through the bedroom wall at night.

If he’d professed love for her, I wouldn’t have minded: I’d have thought he was lying. But all the references to
body parts and what he wanted to do to her where – I’d read them and flung them back, feeling sick at the thought of it: partly at the thought of my mum as a sexual being, partly at the thought of them together in bed, but mostly just because I’d been weaving a fantasy in my own head. I couldn’t even blame Harry for that. The illusion of the two of us as star-crossed lovers fractured as quickly as the time the cinema reel caught fire and melted Sean Connery’s face in Technicolor, right in front of us on the screen.

‘The thought of living in the same house as them,’ I said to Star, as we bounced up and down on the bad suspension while Petwick passed by, ‘I just couldn’t bear it. I got the bus, just like this, saw the notice in the window of Castaway, rented the room and went back home to tell Mum I was moving out.’