The Butterfly Storm (19 page)

The backs of my hands are damp and sobs catch in my throat. I feel in limbo, unsure of where I
belong or where I want to be. At least it’s peaceful here. I’m sure Mum and I could manage not to see
each other all day if we chose not to. I wipe away my tears. Goosebumps steal across my arms. The
wind has picked up and rustles through the leaves, catching some and twirling them on the breeze
before allowing them to float to the ground.

I close the back door on the grey sky and turn on the kitchen light. I’d like a kitchen like this:
homely, warm, countrified but with a sleek stainless steel cooking range. It’s a proper kitchen, with
wooden work surfaces and normal sized pots and pans unlike the
O Kipos
kitchen that we use
whether we’re cooking for a hundred people or just the four of us. It’s a simple meal tonight
at Mum’s request: ham, boiled eggs, new potatoes and salad and it doesn’t take me long
to prepare it. It’s raining by the time I knock on Mum’s study door to tell her dinner’s
ready.

‘I’ll eat it in here,’ she says.

She’s at her desk, working on her laptop. She barely looks up at me.

‘You don’t want to sit at the table?’ I ask.

‘No, I’ve still got emails to send and then I’m going to bed.’

That’s the extent of our conversation for the rest of the evening. Ignoring me is not going to make
me go away. I eat in the kitchen on my own, clear away and wash up. Afterwards I sit down in the
living room and choose one of Mum’s DVDs to watch. She’s replaced all our old videos with DVDs and
bought a load more. I’m not in the mood for anything sad so that rules out
Braveheart, Beaches
and
ET
. I want something to take my mind off things and I finally decide on
Friends
. I curl up on the sofa
and snuggle into the soft cushions. An hour later, at nine o’clock, Mum’s study door creaks open.
There’s a brief silence before a slow rhythmic thud as she makes her way upstairs. Despite wanting to
make sure she’s okay, I stay put and only relax when I hear her bedroom door slam shut.

The flowers arrive the next morning. I open the front door to find a shrivelled looking man with broken
veins in his cheeks and a tobacco-stained grin. He stands on the doorstep, not with a bouquet of
flowers, but a van-full in the drive.

‘Is Leila not in?’ he asks. I thought Marcy’s accent was strong but his beats it, drawn-out and thick
Norfolk.

‘She’s still asleep.’

‘Terrible, terrible what happened.’

‘You’ve heard?’

‘Word gets around,’ he says. ‘Is she?’ He gestures with his hands, which I take to mean ‘is she
coming down?’

‘She’s not up yet.’

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Best get these flowers in.’

I follow him out to his van.
Wilde’s Flowers
is written on the side in green. He slides open the side
door and climbs in. The smell is sweet and potent. I recognise some of the more common flowers: roses,
lilies and carnations, but there are exotic ones too. He passes Mum’s order of flowers to me in buckets
and I put them down on the gravel.

‘I’ll give you a hand taking them in,’ he says after handing me the last lot.

‘It’s okay, I’ve got nothing else to do.’

He shrugs. ‘You’re the boss.’

‘Do I need to pay you now?’

‘No, no need, Leila will settle up with me later. Tell her there’s no rush.’

After taking the third bucket of flowers upstairs to Mum’s workroom, I regret being so generous
with my time. No wonder he gave me such an odd look. I’m not unfit but I’m no wonder woman –
certainly not after the fifth trip upstairs.

The workroom looks like a florist’s by the time I’m done. I tentatively clear a space on the table,
ensuring I don’t muddle up any of the paperwork and drawings in the process.

The door creaks open and Mum thumps in on her crutches. ‘You should have called
me.’

She surveys the room. Her cheeks have more colour than when I saw her last night. Her hair is loose
around her shoulders and she looks cool and comfortable in a cardigan and floor-grazing summer
skirt.

‘How many flower arrangements do you have to do?’ I ask.

‘A lot,’ she replies, hobbling across the room. She inspects the flowers one by one and sniffs them.
‘They want things done in style.’

‘It’s a big wedding then?’

‘The bride’s mother is a social animal. She wants this wedding to be talked and no doubt written
about. The reception is in a marquee in their garden. You’ll see it on Saturday.’

We work in silence for a while. She even trusts me to cut the flowers to the right length. It’s
satisfying snipping and crushing the stems.

‘I’m surprised you’re not married yet,’ she says.

I bite my lip and don’t say anything. Despite the fact I have every intention of inviting her to our
wedding saying anything now will seem like an afterthought. I try to judge the comment and tone. I
can’t tell if it’s an honest question. History makes me think otherwise.

‘I had you down for calling within a year saying you were Mrs Kakawhatsit and you had a bun in
the oven.’ She looks at the flowers and not me.

‘That’s ironic, considering the last thing you said to me before I left for Greece suggested you didn’t
think we’d stay together.’

‘I remember the last thing you said,’ she says.

‘With good reason.’

Her face flushes. ‘Pass the scissors, would you.’

‘It’d been building up for years,’ I say. I pick half a dozen pink carnations from the
bucket by my feet and start snipping the ends. I look across at her. ‘Why did you lie to
me?’

‘About what?’

‘Don’t play dumb. You know exactly what I’m talking about.’

‘I’ve always done what I felt was right at the time.’

‘Even if it meant deceiving me?’

She bites her lip and focuses on the arrangement she’s working on. Her fingers grip the thorny stalk
of a pink rose. I watch her across the leaf- and petal-strewn table. So much for tiptoeing round each
other these last few days. If she wants to ask awkward questions then I can play that game too. ‘Do you
ever think about him? My father?’

She sweeps the discarded leaves and petals off the table into a bin. ‘Not in a long time.’

‘Were you ashamed?’

She glances at me. ‘Of what?’

‘Of what I’d think about you, having an affair with a married man.’

‘You really think I’d care about that?’

I snip and crush the stem of the last carnation. ‘I guess not. I thought you might have some shame
about him and his wife being best friends with Gran and Grandad. No wonder you fell
out with them. It was a bit more complicated than Gran disowning you because you were
pregnant.’

She looks at me sharply and her blue eyes narrow. ‘How do you know?’

‘I do occasionally talk to Gran.’

She catches her breath as if I’ve just winded her with my words. She places her hands palm down on
the table; blue veins are prominent through still fragile skin.

‘She hates me because she’s had to keep our affair secret to save his marriage. Elliot chose his wife.
Mum was happy. She didn’t make me leave. Elliot managed that by himself. I’m no angel but it takes
two.’

‘Why did you wait so long to tell me about him?’

‘I’d as good as erased him from my life and I wanted to keep it that way. I didn’t want you asking
awkward questions. If he didn’t exist, then there was nothing you could do. No chance of you wanting
to contact him. It was easier. I’ve never said it was the right thing.’ She busies herself again, cutting a
roll of pink ribbon into lengths.

‘When you opened his letter that night, why did you destroy it?’

She shakes her head. ‘I was angry with him. It was unexpected. I hadn’t seen or heard from him
since I left Sheffield, pregnant with you. I’d kept my promise and stayed out of his life and
then he did something like that.’ She snips angrily at the ribbon. ‘I wasn’t going to write
back. What was I going to say? Your daughter, the one you’ve never met, is doing fine.
Finished university. Just graduated. I’m proud of her. Hope you are too. Waste of bloody
trees.’

‘You could have let me read it.’

‘It was an accident that I even told you that night. I was drunk and his unexpected letter shocked
me into saying something.’

‘Otherwise I’d never have found out?’

‘By telling you those stories about not knowing who your father was made me almost believe them
myself. Except he’s always played on my mind. You remind me of him so much. The older you got, the
more you looked like him. He said in his letter how proud he was of you. He’s never even met you.’ She
sniffs hard to fight back tears. The arrangement she’s working on is taking shape: pink and cream
miniature roses woven into a circular display. ‘He’s an architect. Well respected. Intelligent, creative,
focused, impulsive. You’re alike, I can’t deny that. You’re more like him than you are me.’ She puts
the rose she’s holding on the table and looks at me. I mean really looks at me, her eyes
searching my face. ‘That night, when you walked out, I was devastated. I felt I’d failed
you.’

I suddenly realise how tense I am. I move beside her and slide my arm around her slight shoulders.
She shudders, whether from my touch or her tears, I’m not sure.

‘Until you have a child of your own, Sophie,’ she says after a while, ‘you won’t understand the
amount of responsibility, time and love they take. They’re your life, your whole fucking world.’ She
pulls away from me. ‘I’m going to lie down. I’ll finish this later.’

I close myself away in my bedroom too. We’re walking away from each other yet again. There’s a
lump in my throat but I’m all cried out. Ironically, when I was growing up there was only one person I
would turn to at times like this. I haven’t thought about him in a very long time but right now I can’t
get him out of my head.

Before the night Mum told me the truth about my real father, I often daydreamed about my Dad. He was
real in my mind, not the nameless, faceless one-night stand Mum described him as. He always stayed
the same age, somewhere around the age I am now, I guess. I invented a father when I realised I was
different from my friends. Even the friends whose parents had split up still had a dad. He might not live
with them anymore but he would take them to the park or watch them play football, give them
presents on their birthdays and at Christmas. So I invented a father figure that I’m sure
no man could live up to. I called him Dad: his surname was Keech, the same as mine of
course and if anyone asked I said his name was Mikey, after Sean Astin’s character in
The
Goonies
.

He always sided with me whatever I’d done wrong. I had his green eyes and red hair. He was quieter
than Mum, didn’t embarrass me, didn’t show me up in front of my friends or get me drunk on
my fifteenth birthday. In fact he frowned on all of that. He was a voice of reason when I
needed him. Mum came to school plays and parents’ evening, friends’ parties and sports
days. Dad was there when no one else was, during my exams, when I was alone, when I was
sad.

He was real until the night Mum destroyed him. I never got him back. Instead I was
given a poor replacement, a stranger with a meaningless name, a man far removed from the
perfect father I’d constructed since the age of seven. I don’t know how I can forgive her for
that.

I stall the car on the first attempt and then when I do get it going my right hand automatically reaches
for the gear stick and finds the door handle instead. Mum fidgets in the passenger seat. We crunch out
of the gate and bump up the lane and on to the road. It’s a much newer car than Alekos’
hand-me-down and doesn’t sound anywhere near as rough.

‘Nice car,’ I say.

‘I should have bought a van.’

It’s true; there are flowers everywhere, squashed into the boot, obscuring the rear window, piled
high on the back seat, even on Mum’s lap and arranged around her leg cast.

It’s good to be driving again, even if it is with silent company. Mum only speaks to give directions.
We drive the few miles to the church along a fast main road and then down winding lanes not wide
enough for two cars to pass. Each lane looks identical to the last, with tall grasses on either side
speckled with hogweed and mugwort. The fields beyond are varying shades of green and yellow and
misted with the morning light. Last night’s dusk and pink sky promised a sunny day, but there’s a nip
in the air.

‘Pull over here,’ Mum says when houses begin to line the sides of the road. I do as I’m told and stop
on a grass verge. Through closed gates I spy a church with a clock tower soaring above the
trees.

‘Let’s get to work,’ she says.

Armed with flowers, I follow Mum up the path to the entrance. Inside it’s dusky and cool with
enough dark wooden pews to seat a hundred guests on either side of the aisle, but it’s still small enough
for an intimate service. I place the flowers on one of the pews for Mum to deal with and go back for
more.

By the time we finish the church smells of roses and the darkness of the wood and stone is offset by
the pink and cream petals. I can imagine the scene in a few hours’ time when the sun streams though
the stained glass and the pews are filled with guests in suits or dresses and wide-brimmed hats. The
bride and groom will emerge from the church to be showered by confetti. Mum places two large
arrangements on either side of the gate. Variegated ivy trails down and entwines itself around the bars
of the fence.

‘We’ll drive to the house,’ Mum says. She hobbles back to the car and eases her way on to the front
seat. ‘It’s not far.’

Next to wrought-iron gates, the sign reads,
Kingfisher Hall
. We drive along a sweeping gravel drive.
Kingfisher Hall
is obscured by trees, until the drive curves and the house finally comes into view. I’m
not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this. It looks secretive – if a house can be described as that
– reminiscent of a National Trust property. The walls are covered in creepers, trained around the many
windows. I park alongside a BMW, Porsche and Land Rover. The front door is ajar and Mum pushes it
open and goes in. The entrance hall houses a staircase that curves to the first floor. Our shoes tap
across chequered black and white flagstones. There are distant voices coming from different parts of the
house.