The Flavours of Love (20 page)

Do you understand why I say the things I do, sometimes? I feel I’ve missed out on so much.

Please, you carry on living your life however you want to, you are fine.

A

‘I suppose we can call this our first family meeting of the year.’

‘It’s our first family meeting, ever,’ Phoebe helpfully points out. She’s scaled back the outward resentment of me over the past couple of days and I’m not sure if it’s because I haven’t mentioned the pregnancy since I went out with Mr Bromsgrove or if she doesn’t like to talk to me like that in front of Aunty Betty, but I accept it gratefully.

‘All right, as I’ve been so kindly corrected by Phoebe, this is our first family meeting. I would like us to be aware that our new living arrangements mean that we all have to show each other some more consideration and stick to some basic rules.’

‘And you’re the one making the rules, yes?’ Aunty Betty ‘helpfully’ interjects. She is wearing her shocking pink, bobbed wig today and because of that, everything else about how she’s dressed and what colours she’s used to make up her face disappears into insignificance.

‘I’d say that was a distinct possibility.’

‘Is that a yes or no?’ Zane asks.

Zane is fresh-faced, his plump cheeks are smooth and dewy, his liquid-mahogany eyes he inherited from his father are clear and bright. He loves having Aunty Betty here, and it’s the first time in a while that he isn’t constantly showing signs of struggling with his grief.

‘It’s a yes. Although why I feel guilty saying that I don’t know. It’s not as if there are any other adults in the house.’

‘What about Aunty Betty?’ Phoebe asks. I’m surprised she hasn’t tried to assert herself into that role.

I regard Aunty Betty, who reclines on the sofa, an e-cigarette holder
in her hand with Zane on the floor in front of her, resting his back against the brown leather sofa, and Phoebe on the floor beside her feet. ‘Your mother’s right, Sweetness, I’m not an adult,’ Aunty Betty states.

‘As I was saying. I’d like to set some ground rules that we can all stick with.’ Over my shoulder, behind me on the mantelpiece is a picture of Joel. I wish I could step into the picture to ask him what I should say and how I should say it. I wish I could fall into a pleasant time pothole and remember the conversation where we agreed how we’d do this. ‘I would like us all to clean up after ourselves. I know we usually do, but it’s started to slip again and I don’t have time to pick up after everyone any more.’

They all seem to agree and nod thoughtfully.

‘Next, I am instigating a rule of no mobiles or electronic devices at the kitchen table.’

Uproar. I wait for the protests from my son and daughter to fade away before I continue: ‘That used to be the rule and then for some reason it’s been lost by the wayside. I want us to enjoy our food, concentrate on what we’re eating and take time to enjoy each other’s company at mealtimes. Those are the only times of the day we’re all together so I don’t want you off in CyberLand, Phoebe, and you off in NintendoLand, Zane.’

‘Nobody calls it CyberLand,’ Phoebe mumbles.

‘Wherever it is you go, I want you both to enjoy being with each other and Aunty Betty and me at mealtimes, OK?’

Reluctantly, they nod.

‘And one final rule: no smoking in the house.’

Aunty Betty, who has been smugly nodding along to my rules while dragging on her e-cigarette, freezes mid-nod. Zane immediately curls his lips into his mouth to hide the laugh that has built up behind his face, and Phoebe murmurs, ‘Ohhhhh, buuurrrnnnneddd’ before a loud smirk.

‘I don’t smoke in the house,’ Aunty Betty eventually says. She waves her chrome and ebony holder in my general direction. ‘This isn’t
smoking, it’s what we call vaping. No smoke, just vapours. I could get different flavours of vapes if you want.’

‘No thank you,’ I say. ‘Because there’s no smoking of any kind in this house. And that includes vapouring or whatever it is you want to call it.’

‘But why?’ Aunty Betty wails.

‘I do not want cigarettes in the house. Or cigars or cigarillos or pipes, before you try to get around it that way. I do not want my children to think that smoking is something I condone because it isn’t, OK? If you want to smoke or vapr? Vape? Vaporise? Whatever you call it, then you can inconvenience yourself by taking a trip to the garden.’

‘That is so unfair, you know,’ Aunty Betty grumbles.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘What rules will impact upon you, Mum?’ Phoebe asks.

‘Yes, Mummery,’ Zane says, using a nickname for me he hasn’t used in at least two years, ‘what aren’t you allowed to do any more?’

I inhale to the bottom of my lungs, exhale for so long that I’m sure my breath touches the wall on the other side of the room. This is the only way to keep them safe. They won’t like what I’m about to tell them, but it’s necessary. The woman who killed Joel is seriously stalking me and I have no idea what she is going to do next. I felt intimately violated when I pulled the cords to shut the bedroom blinds when keeping them open was another way I connected to Joel, but she is watching. It’s not enough for her to write letters, she has to watch, too. She has to get near enough to notice that I still wear Joel’s clothes to sleep in.

I can’t have Phoebe or Zane out on the streets until I know what Phoebe is going to do about the pregnancy. Once that is settled, I can talk to her, explain to her that we have to go to the police about what we know and take the wrath of not telling them sooner. Until then, I can’t have them exposed, easy pickings for
her
to harm in any way. This is the real reason for the meeting. The other stuff I could have told them about whenever they cropped up, for this I need their
undivided attention, I have to underline the seriousness of needing to stick together and doing as I say.

‘Lots of things will impact upon me,’ I say. ‘Like, not coming straight home from work because I have to collect Phoebe from afterschool library homework club and then Zane from whichever afterschool club he’s got on or from Imogen’s house.’

‘I don’t need to go to library homework club,’ she protests. ‘I’m old enough to come home on my own.’

‘I know you are, but you’re still going to start homework club. I’ve already signed you up.’

‘But—’ Phoebe begins.

‘Yes, Phoebe?’ I reply. She has no leg to stand on, of course. Not when there is a giant elephant currently sitting in the middle of the room with ‘PREGNANT’ tattooed in giant letters onto its side, that none of us have forgotten about.

‘Nothing!’ she snarls and picks up her mobile from the armrest of the sofa and starts to press buttons.

‘Ohhhhh, buuurrrrnnnneddd,’ Aunty Betty murmurs. She moves to take a drag from the e-cigarette in her hand when she spots my questioning, arched left eyebrow, and stops.

‘Child, you really are the fun police, aren’t you?’ she says.

‘And proud,’ I say, through the sudden pain that has pleated itself across my chest.

In our house if an adult was going to say no at some point, it would be me. Joel would actually call me the fun police when my foot would hit the ground in relation to him as well as the kids (usually about him buying some unnecessary gadget for the kitchen – who seriously
needs
a bean cutter?).

Without a word or look to each other, even though they’ve both been catapulted back to a time before
that day
, Phoebe and Zane stare at the photo over my shoulder. It’s obvious that the memories of how we used to be are swirling around their hearts, too.

Monday, 22 April
(For Tuesday, 23rd)

Saffron
.

Are you OK?

You seemed so sad on your way to work this morning. Or are you feeling a bit jumpy? I saw you looking around before you got into your car with the children. Were you possibly trying to see if you could spot me? There’s no point trying because you can’t.

Please don’t worry about me being around. Think of me as your guardian angel or something – I’m always there, but you can’t see me.

Don’t worry, OK? It’ll all be fine. Really it will.

A

My phone beeps with a text and

•

is the message that comes up under Fynn’s name.

It’s one o’clock Tuesday morning. I’m not even close to going to sleep, but do I want this? It’s been a year, things have moved on, and after the conversation in the kitchen on Saturday and his ignoring my ‘how are you?’ texts, I thought he didn’t want to see me at all, let alone be up for this.

I stare at my phone. I want to see him, talk to him, to make things right. But if he thinks … Surely he can’t believe we’d do it again after all this time?

In one move, I throw back the covers and climb out of bed. I struggle into Joel’s large, V-neck Arran jumper, take the purple silk sleep scarf off my head. My heart is back to fluttering out its wild staccato beat, compressing my lungs as it does so. I inhale and exhale in regular bursts, trying to placate myself as I quietly descend the stairs and head to the front door, mobile phone in hand.

He grins at me when I open the door to him, relieved that I’ve answered, I think, but makes no move to come in. ‘Hi,’ he says simply.

‘Hi,’ I reply, confused and wary.

‘I know it’s late, but I was hoping you’d come for a walk with me. We don’t have to go far, I know the kids are asleep, but I’d really like to talk to you away from the house, if that’s all right?’

My answer is a hesitant silence.
Well, at least he doesn’t want sex
, is my first thought. Swiftly followed by:
Maybe that’d be easier because when we had sex we didn’t talk, and when we talked it ruined things.

I’m not sure I should leave the house in case that woman is out
there. But she wouldn’t be. Not at this time. When would she have the chance to sleep?

‘If anything happens I’m sure Aunty Betty will cope until we come back,’ Fynn reasons. ‘I promise, we won’t go far.’

I reach into my coat pocket hanging on the row of hooks by the door and retrieve my bunch of house keys, before sliding my feet into my trainers. I have to wriggle my feet about before they’ll go in and the backs pop up over my heels.

The air is cool, there are no clouds in the dark sky, and the light pollution isn’t as potent tonight so I can see the halo of stars that circle the Earth. I probably should have put on my coat, I’m not that warm, but I don’t want to go back for it and prolong this any longer.

On the pavement side of the gate, he holds out his hand, and cautiously, I slip mine into his. Again, he grins in relief as we start to walk down the road. Our hands feel comfortable together, they fit, like our bodies had fitted. He runs his thumb gently and affectionately over the back of my hand. Our bodies had fitted like that, too: gently, affectionately.

The road I live on is narrow, hard to navigate when there are cars parked on both sides, and it seems smaller, more compact being out here at night. A fox darts out from a house across the road and disappears down the narrow walkway along the side of the house next to ours. I’ll have to tell Zane about that, he’ll be very excited: we thought that all the foxes had gone from this road because in all the nights we’d sat up waiting to see them, we’d been disappointed. We’d guessed they’d moved on, had got on with their lives as we’re all supposed to, but they haven’t. Or maybe they did, maybe they tried to move on and found that where they landed wasn’t right for them and they had to run as fast as they could back to where they had come from.

‘I had a sister,’ Fynn says when we are six houses down from mine.

‘Do you mean “had” like I
had
a husband?’

‘Yes, I mean, “had” like that.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I never knew that. Joel never mentioned her.’

‘Joel didn’t mention her because he didn’t know. She died before I met him. We don’t really talk about her in my family. It’s too painful.’

‘God, I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks, it was a long time ago now.’ That was Fynn’s sadness, what he used to carry around with him like a heavy burden. That was why he knew the pain didn’t go away, it simply got easier to live with, to slot in beside the rest of your life, allowing you to continue around it. ‘I don’t talk about her at all,’ he says, ‘but I think about her every day. When Joel … A lot of those feelings came flooding back.’

‘How … I mean, was she killed, too?’

‘I sometimes think so. She was nineteen and she died of heart failure. That’s what the death certificate said and that’s what we say if we ever talk about it. But, you know, we
never
talk about it in our family. It’s the subject that dare not say its name because Nell actually died of anorexia.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘She was anorexic from about thirteen, I think … I can’t be sure because I was a bit younger than her – but the constant not eating and over-exercising, as well as everything else she was doing because she was in the grip of it was too much for her heart.’

My fingers come closer to his, holding him secure like he used to hold me a year ago when we fell asleep tangled up with each other. ‘That’s awful.’

‘Yeah, it is. It was and it still is. I blame myself because I could see what was going on, but I didn’t say anything. I literally let her waste away.’

‘What could you have done? You were, what—?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Fifteen. How could you have helped?’

‘I could have told her that I was there. That I understood, even though I didn’t. That would have been better than following my parents’ lead and ignoring it. I sometimes wonder if what she was doing was a way of screaming at us for attention, for us to notice her.’

‘Sometimes it’s hard to confront the things that are right in front
of you. Like Phoebe and me and what I suspect was her desperate need to be loved which has resulted in her being pregnant at fourteen.’ The fear of that rushes up through my body, making me light-headed as the memory hits my brain. My daughter is fourteen and she is pregnant.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’ He tugs me nearer by taking our linked hands and pressing them to his chest. He changes his mind and takes me in his arms, holds me near enough for me to feel the rhythm of his heart against my chest. ‘I’m awake half the night thinking about what to do for the best, so I’m guessing you don’t sleep at all with the worry.’