Dead Romantic (21 page)

No, I think, not ridiculous at all. Since I walloped my head there are many things that make far more sense than they did before.

But I won’t tell Alex Thorne this. No way. It’ll make him far too smug.

“And I really feel that today we’ve started to find our way back, don’t you?” Dad adds hopefully. “I know things can never be the same – but you, me and Tolly, we’re still a family. Mum wouldn’t have wanted us to become strangers because of a choice she made. She’d have hated that.”

Dad’s right. There was once a time when the Carpenter family was a tight unit. We travelled together and played together, and Mum and I had even tentatively started working together on the Aamonic period. As I sit at the table, the tired sunshine squeezing its last hopeful rays through the ragged net curtains, memories flicker through my mind like faded snapshots in an old album: Dad and Tolly in the garden; Mum and I wielding spades and grinning like loons on our first dig; the flat we rented in Cairo with its cracked tiles where lizards basked before we chased them; a lonely railway station at Christmas…

I exhale slowly. Some memories are best left buried and others are bittersweet. Are we finding our way back? I look at my father’s hopeful face and suddenly it’s as though I’ve just shrugged off my biggest rucksack, packed to the brim with my heaviest textbooks. A rucksack I hadn’t even known I was carrying.

“Yes, I think so too,” I agree.

Dad smiles and silence falls, along with the evening.

“I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea, shall I?” he says finally, and then winks at me. “Thank goodness for tea, eh? Where would the British be without it when emotions run high?”

While he bustles with chipped mugs and hunts out the same tartan biscuit tin I remember from childhood, the oddest feeling comes over me. It’s a bit like pins and needles, but in my head. Dad’s still speaking – something about how Tolly might be taking his latest girlfriend to the Caribbean for Christmas – but I can’t take it in.

As my oblivious father chats away, Mum is standing right next to him as clear in every detail as though she were really in the room. The peachy light of the sun’s last rays bathe her and she looks exactly as I remember her, tall and slim and with her thick red hair loose in ringlets to her shoulders. As I watch her she’s looking at Dad with such love that my eyes fill with tears, and when she turns and smiles at me they spill over and the whole room becomes a kaleidoscope of shimmering light. By the time I’ve dashed them away she’s gone.

Was that another trick played on me by my damaged cerebral cortex, I wonder as I sip the tea, or was she really there? I know what the former, logical Dr Cleo Carpenter would say, but the new me – the one who talks to dead rock stars and breaks into houses – thinks very differently. I feel as though my mother has put her arms around me and given me a hug, the hug she couldn’t give me on her last Christmas Eve. I close my eyes and allow myself just to be for a moment or two, to enjoy that sense of love and acceptance. I have the strongest conviction that now she knows I’ve made my peace with Dad I won’t be seeing her again, but rather than being sad about this I’m calm. It feels right.

I
feel right.

And maybe it’s a coincidence – maybe it is my injured brain playing tricks – but when I go to bed that evening in my old bedroom, the sense of peace stays with me. I lie in my single bed and burrow under my duvet, feeling warm and as safe. If I did see Mum then she’s happy and at peace. And even if I didn’t, I’ve still taken the first steps towards making things right with my father. Whether the vision was my imagination or not, I can’t remember when I last felt so calm. Nothing else matters right now. Not the museum, the research, the job or even Simon Welsh.

Alex had been right all along: making peace with your loved ones does help to make sense of it all. Now all I need to do is figure out a way that I can do the same for Rafe. That won’t be easy. If he sees me again he’ll probably call the police.

Hmm. That’s a problem for another day. Right now I can hardly keep my eyes open.

I click off my bedside light.

“I love you, Mum,” I whisper, and although she doesn’t say it back I feel it. Moments later I tumble into the deepest sleep I’ve had for a very, very long time.

Chapter 18

You know that wonderful feeling you get when the school summer holidays start and you lie in bed knowing that you don’t have to get up and have nothing to do for ages and ages? Well, this is exactly how I feel when I wake up the next morning. I have nowhere to go and nothing to do today. That makes a huge change!

For a moment I’m a little disorientated to find myself back in my old single bed listening to the rumble of traffic outside as Taply-on-Thames wakes up for the day, rather than being in my flat and hearing Susie crashing about in the kitchen – but seconds later I remember the events of the day before, and everything falls into place again.

I really ought to be at the museum getting ready for my interview and helping my team with the latest exhibits, not lying here in my teenage bedroom. I glance at the digital clock on the bedside table, the very same clock whose insistent beeping and flashing neon display drove me out from under the covers every morning until I left home, and I’m taken aback to see it’s almost midday.

Midday? Seriously? I’m staggered at this, because I never sleep late nowadays. Since adulthood, my internal body clock has always prompted me to be out of bed and bustling around by six at the latest. It’s one of the (numerous) things about me that have driven many ex-boyfriends absolutely crazy – not to mention Susie, who could give Rip Van Winkle a run for his money.

“For God’s sake, Cleo!” she’ll complain, appearing in the sitting room bleary-eyed on a Saturday morning, while I’m dashing around with the vacuum cleaner trying to do some chores before I nip into work for a few extra hours. “Why can’t you just chillax for a bit? It’s Saturday! It’s the sodding weekend!”

But I’m not very good at “chillaxing”. I’m normally about as relaxed as a coiled spring, and I can’t stand the thought of lazing in bed. I’m a busy person with lots to do. I can’t afford to waste time snoozing.

“There are other things to do in bed, besides sleep,” Suse will grumble, rubbing her eyes. “Read a book? Eat breakfast? Shag a gorgeous man’s brains out?”

Since most of the gorgeous men Suse brings home have the same IQ as a particularly dim cabbage, I can’t believe shagging their brains out would take very long at all. And as for eating breakfast in bed? I had quite enough of that during my enforced stay in hospital. So, no. Cleo Carpenter likes to be up with the lark, getting things done and moving on with her day – unlike Susie, who’s right up there with John and Yoko for staging a bed-in.

Anyway, my having slept for most of the morning is yet another unprecedented event to add to the growing list.

Sunshine slips through the curtains and warms the ancient carpet. I stretch my arms above my head and yawn. The long sleep has done me good; maybe Susie was onto something after all. I feel as though I’ve exhaled after holding my breath for a long, long time. Everything seems lighter – even my psyche’s refreshed. I don’t know what today will bring, but whatever happens I feel more than ready to face it.

Let’s be honest, I decide as I jump out of bed and pad downstairs, nothing could be worse than yesterday’s meeting with Rafe Thorne. As I boil the kettle to make tea I relive the entire episode and my face feels hotter than the water I slosh onto my tea bag. I can hardly bear to think about the impression he has of me right now. I’ve gone from being the muse of his most famous hit to a housebreaker and possible kiss-and-tell girl in one easy move. Nice work.

Try as I might I can’t stop my skin prickling with embarrassment when I recall the moment Rafe opened his eyes and found me in his house. Next to displaying my red spotty knickers to all and sundry in the Wellby Museum, this has to be the single most mortifying moment of my life.

“Don’t feel bad. Rafe’s bloody difficult these days,” remarks Alex. He’s leaning against the oven and regarding me from beneath his floppy dark fringe. “You tried.”

“Shit!” I practically leap out of my ancient Snoopy tee shirt, and boiling water sloshes all over the kitchen table. “Will you stop creeping up on me like that?”

“Sorry,” says Alex. He doesn’t look it though. In fact he seems rather pleased with himself. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right after yesterday?”

I grab some kitchen roll and do my best to staunch the flow of water now surrounding a pile of my father’s marking like a moat around a castle of exercise books. Ink is already starting to bleed across the pages and my frantic dabbing isn’t helping.

“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Totally embarrassed and humiliated, but otherwise fine.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Alex says kindly. “Rafe’s like that with everyone. No wonder his girlfriend dumped him. Not that she’s much loss.”

I pause in my dabbing. “Wasn’t he dating some model?”

Alex nods. “You’ve been doing your homework, I see. Well, I guess research is your thing. Yeah, Rafe was dating Natasha Lacey.”

Even I’ve heard of Natasha Lacey. She’s a model who’s plastered over billboards everywhere, wearing bras that would fit Barbie and tossing her mane of honey-coloured hair. With legs as long as a racehorse’s, a bee-stung pout and teeth that would give dentists orgasms, she’s absolutely stunning. I bet Natasha Lacey never wears spotty knickers or sleeps in a tee shirt she bought in 1998.

Come on, Cleo. Who cares what Rafe’s girlfriend looks like? He’s a rock star; of course he dates gorgeous models. It’s practically obligatory. Anyway, I bet Natasha Lacey can’t decipher hieroglyphics.

Alex grimaces. “Natasha might look good, but her head’s as empty as a Ming vase. God knows what Rafe found to say to her.” Then he grins at me and shrugs. “I guess they weren’t about
talking
? Anyway, Rafe didn’t see much of her after the accident. She wasn’t into sticking around once the good times stopped and, much as it pains me to say it, I can see why. He isn’t easy to be with these days.”

“That’s an understatement.” I lob the wad of soggy kitchen roll into the bin and pick up my tea. “Look, Alex, I’m really sorry about yesterday and I’m really sorry about Rafe too, but I don’t think there’s much I can do to help.”

“So could I please push off and leave you in peace? Let everything go back to the way it was?”

Actually, this was exactly what I’d been thinking.

“It’s nothing personal,” I say. “It’s just that I’d like to stop seeing things now and get back to normal.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but as I’ve said before I don’t think it works like that. I can go away and leave you alone, but that won’t stop you seeing things. That hasn’t come from me: it’s in you.”

I’m about to correct him when I recall the conversation I had at this very same table with my father only hours earlier. He’d told me that my mother had a gift. What if he’s right? What if the bang to my head has unlocked something that was lying dormant within me? If that’s true then life will never return to how it was before. Is that really such a bad thing? Yesterday I saw my mother in this kitchen, I know I did, and I know that she’s at peace now. I can feel it. Last night I slept the best sleep I’ve had for years, which has to be a positive. I look at Alex and wonder if maybe there’s a way I can come to balance these two parts of my life.

Or maybe I could just find a bloody good shrink?

“Anyway, aren’t you going to get dressed?” Alex is asking. He points to the kitchen clock. “Look at the time. It’s a lovely day outside. I thought it might be fun to go for a walk and, sexy as you look in that fetching nightie, you’ll probably freeze.”

It’s gone midday, and I had been quite content just to stay indoors and enjoy the quiet while my father was at work, have a bath, catch a bit of afternoon telly and call the Prof to chat about when they’ll schedule my interview. I was quite inclined to stay in my tee shirt too, even if it is stretched out of shape and keeps slipping off my shoulder. I can’t remember the last time I had a duvet day. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever had one: I’ve never wanted to bunk off work.

It’s official. I’m weird.

“Don’t look like that.” Alex folds his arms and fixes me with a determined look. “Go and get dressed and then come for a walk. It’ll blow the cobwebs away.”

“Why are you so determined to make me get up?” I grumble. “What are you up to?”

“I’m hurt,” Alex says, placing a hand over his heart and adopting a wounded expression – but he can’t quite meet my eyes. He looks shifty to me. “What must it be like to be so distrusting? I just thought a walk would be nice.”

I don’t believe him for a minute. I’m starting to get to know him, after all, and he’s definitely up to something. Still, the world outside the kitchen window does look all bright and glittery, and the thought of getting some fresh air is quite appealing. Maybe I’ll wander along the Thames as far as the lock and then grab a coffee? I could even visit Mum’s grave and have a quick tidy-up. Normally the thought of visiting the little churchyard fills me with dread, but today I’m rather looking forward to it. Perhaps I’ll even pop into the florists and buy some flowers.

“Fine,” I say, putting my mug down with a thud. “I’ll go for a walk.”

“Brilliant!” Alex looks pleased. “Wear something warm!” he calls after me as I stomp out of the kitchen and up the stairs. “And put some make-up on too. You don’t want to scare anyone!”

I ignore that comment; although when I venture into the bathroom I must admit that my white face and deep red hair do make a bit of a scary contrast. Dumping the Snoopy tee shirt into the old wicker laundry bin that’s been unravelling for as long as I can remember, I jump into the shower and wake myself up with a blast of cold water. A good dollop of some faded-looking pineapple body wash – which I’m pretty certain was discontinued sometime in the nineties – and one hair wash later, I’m back in my bedroom. The world outside looks bright but chilly, and bearing this in mind I pull on my new skinny jeans, my soft green sweater and a thick pair of socks. A quick slick of lip-gloss, some mascara across my lashes and a brush pulled through my hair, and I’m good to go. My reflection doesn’t shatter the mirror, so Alex has nothing to be worried about; the good people of Taply won’t be terrified.