The Flavours of Love (31 page)

She drops heavily onto the bed, kicks off her slippers and rubs the hip she broke. ‘If you were male, ten years younger and not related to me, I’d have you stripped to the waist and rubbing my feet by now,’ she says and adds a dignified cackle.

‘I really don’t need to hear things like that,’ I say.

In two weeks she has made this room her own: every flat raised surface is covered in photo frames – snapshots of the people she’s loved, the places she’s visited, the ‘other celebrities’ she’s allowed to be photographed with her. The bed has been adorned with her shiny, chocolate-brown diamante-studded quilt. She has a chocolate-brown, ruched, heart-shaped rug on either side of the bed. In the belly of and around the fireplace she has piled up some of her books, probably her most precious ones. She has hundreds of them in storage. This is what her bedroom looked like in her old mansion flat, this is what her bedroom looked like in each of her ‘apartments’ in the various complexes she’d moved into. In the bathroom I know she has lined up all her wigs on black, faceless mannequin heads.

‘My brother called me earlier,’ she says, quickly, decisively like delivering unsettling news should be delivered. ‘He wanted to know if I’d spoken to you because he said Elizabeth’s been calling you for a while.’

‘Yeah, she has.’

‘Didn’t want to speak to her?’

‘Not especially.’

‘They want to come and visit.’

‘I know.’

‘I told them the guest room is occupied by me – he was a bit surprised by that – so they’ve agreed to either come for the day or find a hotel.’

‘Right. Did they say when?’

‘This weekend, I think, because of the bank holiday. But you’ll have to call them to check.’

‘Yes, I suppose I will.’

‘Do you want me to go and live with them?’ she asks as quickly and decisively as she told me Joel’s dad had called.

‘What?’ I reply. ‘No! Why would you even think that? Have I made you feel unwanted or unwelcome? Because I’m sorry if I have.’

‘No, no, Child, it’s not that, there’s so much going on here right now. You don’t need me and my stuff cluttering up your life.’

‘You’re a part of what’s going on, Aunty Betty. For better or worse, unfortunately for you. And do you know why we went through the deep,
deep
agony of having the attic converted? Joel always planned to have you living with us. Before you went into your different “villages” he knew you’d need to live with other people at some point. And then when you did move into your “homes” he knew you’d be chucked out of one place too many eventually and he wanted you to live here when you were. I thought I was the control freak, but turns out it was my husband. I wish you’d given me more notice, like, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is your home now.’

Aunty Betty smiles her trademark grin of mischievousness. ‘You’re a good girl, Saffaron. I like you.’

‘Even though I won’t let you smoke in the house.’

‘Even then.’

‘I should get on with work,’ I say, despite it being the last thing I want to do right now. My mind keeps going to Phoebe, the brave look on her face as she marched in through the school gates, waving away any suggestion I come with her to see the headmaster and Mr Bromsgrove. My head goes to Zane, who is slipping back to being quieter than normal these days. Since Joel he has been quiet anyway, his exuberant nature whisked away almost overnight. He talks to Aunty
Betty and for a while he was almost himself again, but now he’s struggling. I’ve even rescinded the ban on telly because he seems so damaged, insular. My thoughts go to Fynn and how much I hurt him. My guilt goes to Lewis, who is at school unaware that I’ve decided I can’t see him – not right now. My heart goes to the photo and letters downstairs and it begins to race, stirring the sickness within faster and faster.

‘No one tells you, do they, that the biggest loss when someone you love dies is the loss of who you are,’ Aunty Betty says.

I lower myself onto my seat and refocus myself on Aunty Betty.

‘You get to my stage of life and you lose so many people. I remember when the first man I had sex … Now take that look off your face, Saffaron. I had sex, get over it. Where was I? I remember when the first man I was intimate with died. He was the first person I was close to who passed. He wasn’t that nice in the end, and it wasn’t some big love, but when he was gone, I cried. I sat in my house and cried because he was the first. He was the first of the people my age to go, and I knew I was going to be losing people, they were all going to leave me until it was my turn. And there was nothing I could do about it.

‘I was crying for myself because of all the loss to come, or so I thought. In time I came to see that I was crying, also, because the Betty I was when he was alive was gone. He was a part of me whether I liked it or not and he was suddenly gone. Who I was, how my role in the world was defined by him, was over. The closer you are to someone, the bigger that loss of part of who you are is, I think.’

For the first time, ever, I see Aunty Betty beneath the mask. She is incredibly human, suddenly, her face streaked with pain, her eyes, that unusual liquid-mahogany brown colour that Joel, Phoebe and Zane shared, are swimming in tears. I’ve never seen her cry. I don’t think she’s seen me cry, either. Despite everything, we have not cried together. Even without the tears, I’ve known how sad she was. Sad she is.

‘I would have moved the moon for Joel,’ she says while blinking away her tears. ‘I’m lucky, I think, because I still have you, I still have
the children, you’re all a little part of him and you sort of play the same role in my life. I am still Aunty Betty. It’s not the same, though, I’ll never be the woman who did all those things his parents never knew about. You know, I bought him his first packet of condoms.

‘Oh take that look off your face! I didn’t want to be Great Aunty Betty before my time and my boy was so handsome. Lots of girls were after him. That’s why I knew you were special when he brought you to meet me. You were the only one he willingly brought – with everyone else I had to engineer meetings.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

‘Do you feel angry sometimes that you’re not the woman you were with him any more?’ she asks. ‘That sounds off-key, but you understand me, don’t you?’

I nod. ‘I don’t feel angry sometimes, no,’ I reply. ‘To be honest, to be more honest than I’ve been for a long time, when I’m not numb and unable to feel anything, all I feel is angry. Really angry. With the world, with myself, with Joel. Everything. I can’t talk about it, of course, because you’re not supposed to feel that, are you? Especially if you’re a woman because being angry will make you seem cold and unlikeable. I’m supposed to be all whimsical and fragile, and searching for someone to help heal my heart and really, all I want to do is scream at whoever’s in charge for letting this happen. Or smash things to get all this rage out.

‘I can’t, but that’s what’s there all the time. I thought by now it’d be over with because that’s what I was kind of promised by all these things that I read on bereavement. They said I’d feel angry and then I’d move on to something else, another “stage” like depression or acceptance or something else.
Anything
else. I think even despair would do. Unfortunately, it’s still this deep, relentless anger.’ I think sometimes that I live in my sleepwalking state because I do not want to deal with the anger that brews inside. I don’t want to be the woman who gets angry. I don’t want to be unfeminine, unpretty because I feel such a non-feminine emotion. I’m expected to be depressed, or quiet, or a sobbing wreck; it’s easier to be the
woman who wistfully stares into space while taking a demotion, while being patronised by teachers and friends, while being terrorised by a killer than to be the woman who feels so much rage at the injustice of everything. To be the person who fucked her husband’s best friend because she needed sex and she needed physical release and she needed to feel what another person’s skin felt like. I am the Angry Widow, but I can’t be that on the outside because that’s not what the world expects to see. Tears, yes; sticking up two fingers at everything because the world screwed me over, no.

‘And then, of course, there’s all that guilt,’ Aunty Betty says.

Is it that obvious?
I wonder. I must be wearing the guilt like a cloak for Aunty Betty to mention it after Lewis did yesterday, too. Or is it simply Aunty Betty guessing at what I might be feeling? ‘What about the guilt?’

‘Don’t you feel more of that than anger?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know.’ All I know is that I have a knot inside, twisted, convoluted, complicated, that I can’t untie. Every chance I get, every time I think I’ve got a reason to smile, a reason to relax and simply be me, another strand will be added to the knot – woven through and tugged tight, cementing itself over the original knot.

Aunty Betty closes her eyes, then immediately forces them open.

‘Time for me to get to work, I think.’

‘Thank you for the talk,’ she says.

‘You, too.’

‘Joel wouldn’t mind if you found someone else,’ Aunty Betty adds. ‘As long as he was good to you and the children, Joel wouldn’t mind if you found someone else, even for a little while.’

‘You’re probably right. But I’d mind. Quite a lot, actually.’

*

I’d love for us to be friends?
Joel’s killer wrote. For some reason that upsets me. I suspect she means it. I suspect she really believes anyone could be friendly with someone who killed the person they love. And that upsets me in ways I’m still not able to articulate.

‘How was school?’

One-shoulder shrug.

‘Did you see any of your friends?’

Two-shouldered shrug.

‘Did you see Curtis?’

‘Yep.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Yep.’

‘About the pregnancy?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to talk to me in proper sentences any time soon?’

Two-shouldered shrug.

Maybe sending her to school was a bad idea, it seems to have set her communication abilities back a few rungs on the evolutionary ladder.

‘Considering how much you said you liked him, and how you ended up in this situation in the first place, I’ve got to wonder why you aren’t talking to him more about the pregnancy and what you plan to do next.’

‘You’re going to tell me what to do, so what’s the point of talking to him about it?’

‘I’m really not, Phoebe,’ I say. I hope she doesn’t notice how my hands clench at the steering wheel, and how I delay changing gear a second too long because I fear I’ll wrench the gearstick out of its socket if I touch it. Few people can frustrate me like her, I’ve realised. Few people know, with only a few words, how to get me going. ‘If you want advice, if you want to sound me out about anything, or if
you want me to find people for you to talk to, then I will, but I am not going to tell you what to do. I thought I made it clear that while I will support whatever you choose to do, this is your decision.’

I don’t even need to see her thin, oval face to know she’s cut her eyes at me, then rolled them.

‘What did you and Curtis talk about then?’

‘He told me that you and his dad were talking for hours on the phone last night and that you were going out with each other again and you were planning when you could hook up. That’s what we were talking about.’

‘I’m really surprised you can love a boy who lies so much. And so badly, too. First it was about not getting pregnant the first time you do it, now it’s about hooking up with his dad after spending hours on the phone. What’s he going to make up next? That the Loch Ness Monster lives in his attic?’

‘No, that’d be our attic,’ she mumbles.

I stop myself from smirking. ‘Aunty Betty is a lovely woman, never let her hear you say that.’

‘She’d laugh louder than all of us,’ she retorts. ‘And be gutted she didn’t think of it herself.’

True. ‘Don’t change the subject. How do you feel about your boyfriend lying all the time? Because I’m not planning when I can “hook up” with his father and since you’re pregnant …’

‘He didn’t lie to me actually, I misunderstood. He meant it was unlikely you’d get pregnant the first time, but if you’ve used tampons and stuff it can stop—’

‘What, stop the woo-woo magic from working? My goodness, I think it’s time I had a proper chat with this boy because he has got some really strange ideas about reproduction. Or maybe I’ll just get his dad to explain it to him again. For some reason Mr Bromsgrove told me that he’d had the “always use a condom” chat with his son several times. Maybe he’s lying, too? Maybe I should sit them both down and call them out. See what happens.’ Theatrically, I look at the car clock. ‘I reckon they should be home soon. Mr Bromsgrove
gave me his address, maybe we can drop round now.’ With as much theatre as the clock-checking, I peer into my rear-view mirror and hit my left indicator to pull into the next left. ‘I’ll turn the car around, and go back to his house and we can all sit down and get—’

‘No, Mum, don’t,’ she says, alarm in her voice, in the way her whole body has tensed. ‘He didn’t say that exactly, I’m probably remembering it wrong.’

‘Right.’ I turn off my indicator and carry on past the road, ignoring the angry beep from the car behind me.

‘You’re not going to tell him or his dad off, are you?’ she says after we’ve driven in silence for a minute or two.

‘Not right now, no, but I might do.’

‘If you do, I’ll never speak to you again,’ she states with the certainty of a teen.

No real change there, then
, I’m tempted to say. ‘If that’s what you feel you have to do then I can’t stop you, just like you can’t stop me talking to Mr Bromsgrove and his son if I feel they are both lying to my daughter and thereby lying to me.’

‘They’re not lying,’ she eventually says. ‘It was a misunderstanding.’ Every time she lies to me/defends the lies of the father to me, I know Curtis isn’t the father. These are the manipulations of an older, more experienced man. Damien, possibly, but I suspect someone older who is used to subtly manoeuvring people to get what they want.