The Bad Mother (6 page)

‘A few days? I’m sorry, honey, but I honestly don’t remember very clearly. Pamela will know.’

The impossibility of asking Pamela such intense and personal questions brought home to Tessa that she might not get a second chance to find out about the past. ‘Was it you who named me?’

‘No. I think Hugo chose your name.’

Tessa hugged that thought. ‘And you never wanted more children? Weren’t ever tempted to come and reclaim me?’

‘Can you imagine how your grandmother would have dealt with that?’ protested Erin, laughing. ‘Not likely to happen!’ She appeared to reflect before speaking more seriously. ‘I guess I refused to think about having another baby. A shrink would say I was in denial. But so what? Turns out it’s suited me fine.’

Tessa took a deep breath. ‘What about my father?’

‘Ah!’ Erin gave a well-worn laugh. ‘He was so good-looking. An architectural student. Older than me. Swept me off my feet.’

‘Do I look anything like him?’ With a sinking heart, Tessa interpreted Erin’s blank look to mean that she had no idea. ‘If you don’t remember, it doesn’t matter,’ she said hastily. ‘Don’t make it up!’

‘Let’s just say he was tall, dark and handsome,’ teased Erin, as if this were an old story she had told many times – to herself, if not to others. ‘Well, not tall, I don’t think. But the same cheekbones and dark hair as you.’

Tessa tried not to gasp at the idea of a man walking around somewhere with the same features as her.

‘And a northern accent. He came from Manchester, I think,’ Erin added.

‘How long were you together?’

‘Well, he was here on holiday. A summer romance.’

‘Did you tell him you were pregnant? About me?’

Erin shook her head. ‘No. My coffee’s gone cold. Won’t be a second.’

While Erin was in the kitchen, Tessa reflected how she’d always assumed she’d inherited her dark hair from Hugo. But plenty of people had dark hair: it was nothing extraordinary. She waited until Erin had stopped fussing over refilling her rinsed-out mug from Pamela’s thermos jug. ‘What was his name?’

‘Roy Weaver. But look, we were kids. Well, he was a bit older – twenty-three, I think. But it’s an awfully long time ago.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Tessa, not knowing how else to respond.

‘You’re not angry with me, are you?’

‘For what? Revealing the big secret?’

‘For having you.’

Tessa was astounded. But then Erin laughed. ‘I guess I’m caught in a time warp,’ she apologised. ‘Last time I was here in Felixham, you’d think the bloody sky had fallen in. Everything was my fault. No one wanted to listen to me. Even now, I keep expecting Averil to walk in and start nagging at me again. She was furious. I’d done a terrible thing to my family; I was a useless, delinquent teenager, risking everything she’d worked so hard for. Coming back here makes it all seem like yesterday.’

Tessa tried to make sense of this: a minute ago Erin could barely remember what her lover had looked like, or how old her baby had been when she’d given her up, but now she could vividly recall her mother’s anger.

‘I should’ve stayed away, shouldn’t I?’ Erin sighed. ‘All
I’ve ever done here is cause trouble. I don’t think any of them could forgive me.’

‘Not even Pamela?’

‘Especially Pamela.’

‘But why?’ Reflecting on how undemonstrative Pamela could be, Tessa again considered the possibility that she had been landed with a baby she never wanted. ‘I suppose she did what Averil told her to do,’ she said. ‘She must’ve resented getting stuck with me.’

‘No.’ Erin shook her head. ‘The complete opposite. You were what she most longed for.’ She paused. ‘It’s not true that she never forgave me: she never forgave
herself
. Averil put her and Hugo in an impossible position. My guess is that Pamela’s never recovered from the guilt of getting what she wanted and of getting it at my expense.’

Tessa tried to make Erin’s words fit with all the other elements that went to make up her idea of Pamela, and discovered that guilt did indeed slip readily into the mix.

‘And now I’ve made it worse for her,’ Erin went on. ‘I didn’t think it would turn out like this, or I would never have come. Whatever he thinks, I haven’t done this deliberately.’

‘You mean Hugo?’

‘Yes. He always thought I was a nuisance.’ Erin laughed. ‘I probably was, too. But I promise you that I haven’t done this out of spite.’

Tessa gazed across at this other mother. They had each, in different ways, been sacrificed to this peculiar family history, but in spite of this bond she had little idea of
what lay beneath Erin’s smooth, professionally groomed exterior.

‘So how do you feel now?’ Tessa risked asking. ‘Now you’ve met me at last?’ She instantly regretted her question: Erin’s answer seemed too important. For a moment Erin studied her as if she might say something big. Tessa held her breath, longing for some connection to be made.

‘Thrilled to bits!’ Erin said at last, crinkling her nose in a gesture that Tessa imagined she used when addressing her dogs. ‘You’re a real poppet, an absolute doll!’

SEVEN

The SUV with the privacy glass was there again, parked on the raked gravel behind the security gates. Mitch still had almost a week of school before the Easter holidays, but he was pretty sure that private schools had shorter terms. The house’s painted shutters, which for most of the year resolutely blanked the coveted windows that looked straight out to sea, had also been fastened back, so maybe it
was
possible that she was here with her father.

Mitch had only spoken to her that one time, last half-term, when she’d been walking a cute Dalmatian puppy that had taken a liking to his trainers, but she’d seemed glad to have someone to talk to. While he could scarcely believe how flawless she was, and how impossible it was to tell whether or not such perfection was the result of skilled and expensive artifice – Were her nails manicured? The blonde streaks in her honey-brown hair natural? Was the healthy golden glow of her skin genuinely from winter Caribbean sun? – he sensed and responded to something lonely and sad in her. Her voice was low and her accent
a mixture of posh English and American high school movies, which would normally have had Mitch sneering in contrived contempt, but her blue eyes –
were
the lashes tinted, the way Lauren said she wanted? – had pleaded with him to like her. And so he did.

After all, it wasn’t her fault that her dad was some kind of film producer who worked in Hollywood and knew lots of movie stars. Or that last year her parents had bought the prettiest house in Felixham – a town with many pretty houses, most of them owned by weekenders – and then spent ten months painstakingly recreating the exact patina the place had possessed before their builders had gutted it inside and out. It was not the renovations that turned the good people of Felixham against Charlie Crawford – everyone knew the deep abrasions to brick and wood caused by salt winds and rain – but the fact that all the work was done by ‘craftsmen’ from London. They came in fancy liveried vans, some with ‘By Appointment’ crests on their sides, and made midweek block-bookings at the local B. & Bs, including Tessa’s. That income was welcome, especially in the winter, but the local builders resented these outsiders who stole their work and, in one case, even a wife, who’d run off to Essex with a specialist plasterer once the job was done. Her son, who was at school with Mitch, had reported how his dad still wondered morosely just how specialist a plasterer had to be.

Mitch stirred himself. He couldn’t stand here outside the gates until she came out with the dog, which anyway she might never do. But he’d rather think about Tamsin
than about the thing he knew for sure he didn’t want to think about: his mum being upset over Nula. All the same, he did not want to risk looking like some demented fan. After Christmas, a rumour had swept around town that Cameron Diaz was staying at the house. Overnight, groups of strangers were literally camped outside, rather like the crowds of twitchers who would materialise out of thin air whenever a rare bird was sighted on the marshes. It was embarrassing.

But then, weeks later –
after
Mitch had got tangled up with Tamsin’s Dalmatian puppy at half-term – Carol, who came in to help Tessa with the beds and cooked breakfasts, told them that Charlie Crawford’s housekeeper, Sonia Beeston, had said it was true. But, Carol confided, Sonia would’ve been sacked if she’d uttered a word at the time because, even though the house was mostly empty, she was paid a full-time salary in return for signing a confidentiality agreement.

All of which left Mitch very much in two minds. He would rather die than have Tamsin think he was creeping up to her. (Cameron Diaz might be hot, but only girls were impressed by celebrities.) On the other hand, he was certain his first impression was right: she was lonely, a princess in a tower. Hardly surprising if no one dared be normal and friendly just because of who her mum and dad hung out with.

He made his way down to the beach, sat on a rise of shingle and passed some time throwing stones into the sea, focusing on exact aim and distance. He reckoned Tamsin
was older than Lauren but definitely younger than him. Though of course it was difficult to judge, given the ineffable perfection she carried with her. He thought of Daisy Buchanan in the book they were doing for his English exam –
The Great Gatsby
 – and the thing their teacher had quoted about the rich being different to us. And how Hemingway – who appealed far more to Mitch than Fitzgerald – had remarked: Yes, they have more money.

Mitch decided to think like Hemingway. Not the drinking and the
cojones
, but remembering that Tamsin was no different from him, merely another kid marooned here for Easter without even the distraction of a holiday job. If she were to spend the summer here as well, then she’d probably be unbelievably bored and isolated. And he liked her. Why not be friends?

Mitch shifted his feet amid the shingle: he knew how badly he wanted to touch her flawless skin, maybe even kiss her. He remembered the girl he’d snogged at a party over Christmas. He’d chosen her because the other boys said she was easy; he wasn’t bothered about her, just wanted to know what it was like. They were in the hallway of someone’s house and he pushed her back against the wallpaper. Her mouth tasted of rum and coke, a sweetness he found rather repulsive. But he put his tongue in her mouth and then a hand up her top and finally got a finger inside her bra, felt a nipple, and had the biggest hard-on ever. Yet part of him remained detached, watching himself do this to a girl he didn’t particularly like, and felt ashamed. He was almost relieved when she refused
to let him slide his hand inside her knickers. He absolutely did not want to feel that way with Tamsin.

But, now that he’d seen her dad’s car in the driveway, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

EIGHT

Tessa chose to follow in her daughter’s wake as Lauren proudly guided Erin around the B&B. Unlike Erin’s earlier fleeting and anonymous visit, this time Tessa was acutely aware of how Erin, like Lauren, had grown up here – or at least in the original house. In Averil’s lifetime Tessa had innovated by stealth, but, free at last to impose her own taste, she had transformed the place into a boutique seaside destination. Aware of her desire to impress, she observed carefully as Erin took in the many changes, and was childishly pleased by her praise.

Yet her pleasure was mitigated by the forced acknowledgement that while she’d been immersed in the intricacies of a hip new website, brochures and costings for designer bathrooms, and Sam had been working fearsome hours in a London kitchen, their marriage had begun quietly to unravel. How stupid she’d been to tell herself that many marriages went through such arid patches, to cling to the mistaken hope that shared business interests were sufficient, that romance would return in its own good
time, that in fact they were being brave and realistic to take the long view. Nula had brutally given the lie to all that.

They finished their tour in the guests’ sitting room where Erin, instantly comprehending the clever compromises and attention to detail, complimented Tessa on her sense of style and imagination. Tessa also saw Erin’s gaze drawn to the doll’s house, though she said nothing, instead entertaining Lauren with stories about how awful the place had been when she was Lauren’s age, never mind the visitors who used to stay there! When she was little, Erin recounted, the self-contained attic flat didn’t exist. When Averil first began to take in guests, they had to give up the nicer bedrooms. Erin and Pamela had shared the box room while Averil slept on a divan in the basement snug. They had no other living room, and had always to be on their best behaviour while pretending to be blind and deaf to whatever the guests got up to.

Lauren pulled a face: ‘That’s still the same,’ she complained. ‘And Mum’s always working.’

‘I’m here though,’ Tessa protested. ‘You never come home to an empty house like some of your friends.’

‘You should get a dog, honey,’ said Erin. ‘They’re great company. I’ll show you a picture of mine later.’

‘Yeah!’ Lauren looked to her mother for encouragement. But Tessa’s thoughts were elsewhere, observing the doll’s house through new eyes, no longer as a charmed talisman, but as a relic consecrated and set apart when Erin went
away. The coat left over the banisters and little white vanity case in the hallway took on a new resonance.

Erin and Pamela’s father Stanley had made the replica of their single seafront home before it became a B&B as a present for Pamela when Averil was expecting Erin. The joke, according to Grandma Averil, had been that after Erin’s birth, nine-year-old Pamela preferred to play with the baby, and it was Averil herself who’d fallen in love with the imaginary rooms. After Stanley’s sudden and premature death three years later, his terrified young widow had thrown herself into turning the real property – her only asset – into a viable business. As she’d set her sights on purchasing and extending into first one and then another of the neighbouring properties, the doll’s house had continued to occupy the same hallowed place in the guests’ sitting room. All her life Tessa had watched Averil offer her heart to the endless stream of guests who sustained the family, and realised now that it had been for them that she had sacrificed her daughter – and granddaughter. Even in old age, whenever the doorbell rang Averil had sprung to life like an actor in the spotlight, and as time went on, ensuring the guests’ comfort had seemed to provide her with all the expression of love she needed.