Astonishing Splashes of Colour (37 page)

I ring the doorbell twice before anything happens. An elderly lady with ragged grey hair peers round the door.

“Hello,” I say. “I’m sorry to be so late, but do you have a room for me and my daughter?”

The door opens a bit wider as she studies us. She’s wearing a pink nylon overall over a knee-length orange flowery dress and enormous hedgehog slippers, and she’s holding a kettle. “It’s a bit late,” she said.

“Yes,” I say, nodding vigorously. I struggle to find an explanation as the silence grows longer. “We meant to get here earlier, but the car broke down and we had to take the train.”

She looks vaguely puzzled. “Was I expecting you?”

“No, no. We’re on our way to Exmouth.”

Her eyes fall on Megan and her lined, scrubbed face becomes more tender. “Well,” she says, “you can catch an early train tomorrow. The station’s only five minutes away.”

“Yes, I know. It would be so helpful if we could stay here.”

“You’ll have to make your own beds.” She opens the door wider and we go in.

I am woken by a sudden sharp sound. My eyes fly open, and there are a few seconds of confusion while I struggle with the unfamiliarity of the darkness. Then I remember. We’re in Exeter, in the bed and breakfast. I’m in a creaky double bed which has a headboard made from yellow and black tiger-striped acrylic fur. Megan is in a
little camp bed at the foot of mine. As my eyes become gradually accustomed to the dark, I can pick out the forest of plastic plants in one corner of the room and a pile of fluffy toys in another. The orange and blue teddy bear that was on my bed went straight into the corner to join the others, but Megan kept her orange fluffy cat and went to sleep with it in her arms.

The same sharp sound that woke me comes again. A flickering light briefly illuminates the room, and there’s a strong smell of matches. I sit up.

“Megan?” I whisper. “What are you doing?”

Complete silence.

I wonder if I’m dreaming, but I’m sure I recognize the smell. I lean over and fumble for the switch on the bedside lamp. It clicks on and I spend a few more seconds adjusting, focusing my eyes on the lamp, which I’d hardly noticed when we came to bed. It is made out of brass and shaped like a swan, its long neck arching upwards to the head.

Then I lean over and look at Megan. She is lying with her back to me, the quilt pulled up tightly round her neck.

“Megan,” I whisper.

There’s no reply and her breathing sounds calm and even. I lean over to pull the duvet back, but it won’t come. She’s resisting me.

“Megan,” I whisper more urgently. “What are you doing?”

I relax my hold on the duvet, then try to yank it off, but she’s still pulling hard in the opposite direction. I give up, get out of bed and walk round to her other side. I am still in my underwear because we didn’t think about nighties when we decided to go to the beach.

I grab the duvet from the bottom and pull it off very quickly. Megan is hunched up tightly, hiding something with her hands.

“Come on, Megan,” I say. “Give me the matches.”

She screws up her eyes and doesn’t move.

“It’s all right,” I say more gently. “I won’t be cross.” I stroke her arms, hoping she’ll relax. She refuses to acknowledge me.

“Give me what you have in your hands,” I say, willing her to obey me, but still nothing happens.

I start to get annoyed by this ridiculous situation. It’s the middle of the night. I want some sleep and I don’t want to wake up in a burning bedroom. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Give it to me.” As soon as I’ve said this, I realize it’s a mistake. She doesn’t respond to the authority in my voice and I have no way to make her obey.

I reach out and start to pull her hands apart. She doesn’t say anything, but she resists me with all her strength. I have to pull really hard, prising every finger apart and holding them back until I can grab the box of matches. Just as I free them she bends her head down to my hand and I snatch the matches away before she bites me.

“Go away,” she says angrily. “Leave me alone.”

“Shh.” I lower my voice and speak slowly, hoping that she’ll copy me. “You mustn’t play with matches, Megan.”

“Go away,” she says again. “You’re stupid.”

“Shh. You’ll wake up Mrs. Benedict.”

“I don’t care. It’s horrible here anyway. I hate it.”

“Matches are dangerous.”

Megan doesn’t reply.

“We can buy a torch tomorrow if you want one.”

“You’re stupid and horrible.”

I stare at her in bewilderment. I don’t understand why she was playing with matches or why she’s turned against me. The bubble of pleasure that we constructed together has inexplicably collapsed and I don’t know how to reconstruct it.

There is a knock on the door. “Are you all right, Mrs. Wellington?”

I close my eyes and try to breathe evenly. “Yes—yes. I’m sorry. Megan hasn’t been feeling well.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No, really. We’re fine. I’m sorry we disturbed you.”

“Well—as long as you don’t need anything …”

If Megan starts shouting now, I shall gag her. “No, thank you. I think we’re all right now.”

She goes back down the landing. The light switch clicks off and her door opens and shuts.

I turn back to Megan. “We have to be very quiet,” I say. “Mrs. Benedict might be really annoyed if we disturb her again.”

“So?”

“Well—we should consider other people when we do things.”

“You’re stupid.”

She might be right. “Why were you playing with the matches?” I say.

She doesn’t reply.

“Where did you get them?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you must know.”

“Oh, shut up.”

I give up. At least I have the box of matches and we’ll all wake up alive in the morning. Then we can talk about it properly. “We’ll feel better when we’ve had a good night’s sleep,” I say, with no real faith in the truth of this.

“I hate you,” she says as I climb back into bed. The pain of her rejection hits me like a fist coming out of nowhere.

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. I want my mum.”

I turn the light out with a trembling hand and lie sleepless in the dark. I can’t understand the change in her. We seemed to be getting on so well. I thought she wanted to run away from her
mother. A sick and panicky feeling is creeping up from my stomach. I try to push it back. I need to think of something else. James. Where is he? I want him to come and find me. If I rang up tomorrow, would he come for me on the train? Would he walk in here, assess the situation, tell Megan to get dressed immediately and take us straight back to Birmingham? I think of him doing this, although I have no idea if he’s any good with children. He always leaves Emily and Rosie to me. I think of the emptiness of his flat, the calmness, the light and the space, and I begin to relax. His flat has become good for me. I can shut the door on my cluttered, muddled life and find an easy, untroubled world with James.

I listen and realize that Megan must have gone to sleep. I can hear her slow regular breathing. She may be pretending, but if she keeps it up long enough, she’ll fall asleep anyway.

I wake into the sunlit room and see from my watch that it’s 8:30. I sit up. The night seems to have taken a long time. I look at Megan, but she’s still asleep, so I get up and go to the bathroom.

When I return, Megan is sitting up, looking confused.

“Hello,” I say cheerfully. “Have you forgotten where we are?”

She stares round her. “I like that,” she says, pointing to the plastic plants in the corner. They are arranged according to height, with several spectacular flowers that are not arranged according to colour.

We go down to breakfast. Mrs. Benedict is cooking an enormous meal of sausages, bacon and tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs and fried bread.

“Come and sit down,” she says and leads us into a back room opening out from the kitchen where she has set up a table for breakfast. A television is on in the corner. Two of the walls are decorated with bright yellow wallpaper, a profusion of sunflowers. The wallpaper on the other two walls is covered with half-metre
images of the top part of a naked woman, barely covered with an elegantly draped, inadequate piece of material. She is repeated over and over again, like a series of negatives.

Mrs. Benedict sees me looking and giggles. “Aren’t they lovely, my young ladies?” she says. “You can’t buy them any more, so I am looking after them very carefully.” She’s wearing black trousers, held down with foot straps, and she looks different in daylight. Her hair is fluffed into a challenging white bush round her face and she’s wearing makeup. Very blue eyeshadow and very red lipstick.

She brings our plates to the table. “I have to leave early—my son’s picking me up. We’re taking part in a car rally. So if I leave you a key, could you lock up when you leave and pop the key through the door?”

“Of course.” I start eating. The television is telling us about a bomb in Jerusalem. Mrs. Benedict hovers, but I don’t know why, so I wait for her to say something else. Megan is looking at her plate with an expression of disgust.

“I’ll be going shortly,” Mrs. Benedict says.

I nod.

“Only, I didn’t tell you how much—”

I put a hand to my mouth in embarrassment. “Yes, yes, of course. I’ll go and fetch my bag.”

I rush upstairs. I’ve never done this sort of thing before. James has always taken charge. I’m missing him and we’ve only been gone for a day and a night. I find her at the bottom of the stairs and count out the money in cash. “Thank you for taking us so late,” I say. “I’m very grateful.”

She beams, a wide, cracked, lipsticked smile. “It’s a pleasure.” She lowers her voice. “Is the little one all right?”

I am confused for a minute. “Oh, yes, of course. She’s fine now.”

“Only I couldn’t help noticing—”

I look at her, not at all sure what she is going to say. Does she know Megan doesn’t belong to me?

“She doesn’t look well. Shouldn’t she be in school?”

I nearly panic. I hadn’t thought about school. I grope for some explanation, any explanation. “She’s ill, you see—leukemia. I wanted one last holiday with her.”

Mrs. Benedict covers her face with her hands in a truly dramatic gesture. I wonder if this is spontaneous or if she’s seen it so many times on the television that she knows the appropriate response. “Poor little thing. No wonder she looks so thin and pale.”

She’s right, I think, suddenly shocked. Perhaps Megan really does have leukemia.

Mrs. Benedict picks up the money and hands it back. “I don’t need this. Go and spend it on something nice for the little one. Give her whatever she wants while she has the chance.”

I’m embarrassed. I try to give it back to her, but she’s insistent and it’s clear that she’s gaining considerable pleasure from her sacrifice. I don’t know how to refuse her, so I take it and decide to leave it on the table when we go. I return to Megan, hot and uncomfortable.

Megan isn’t eating. She’s wandered into the kitchen and is standing looking at the cooker. I think again of her matches in the night and have a cold sense that everything is slipping away from me. She hasn’t touched her breakfast.

“Come and eat something,” I say.

She looks up at me and her eyes are a darker blue and even bigger than I remember. “I’m not hungry,” she says.

“You’ll have to eat something if we go to the beach.”

“I don’t have to eat if I don’t want to.”

I decide not to press it. If I sit and eat something myself, she might join me. But the food has cooled down. It looks like Granny and Grandpa’s congealed breakfast and I have to force
myself to cut up a piece of sausage and put it in my mouth. I feel very sick and want to spit it back out again, but continue chewing to set Megan an example.

“Disgusting,” says Megan as she watches me. “Why aren’t there any Coco Pops?”

“She might have some.”

“No, there aren’t. I’ve looked.”

I swallow the sausage with difficulty. “How old are you, Megan?”

She stands still, but turns her head away from me. “Guess,” she says.

“I don’t know.” If I guess too low, she will be offended, and if I guess too high, she might be tempted to exaggerate. “Eleven,” I say eventually, hoping this will flatter her.