The Truth About Melody Browne (13 page)

On Friday her mother collected her from school, looking dreadful.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think you’ll be able to go to see your father tomorrow.’

Melody felt sick with disappointment.

‘Why not?’

‘A big bill came in this morning and Ken asked us all to contribute and now I’ve got no cash left for the train fare.’

‘But, Mum …’ Melody felt hot tears coming to her eyes.

‘Don’t talk to me in that whiny voice!
Don’t make me feel worse than I already do
!’

‘But, Mum …’

‘
What do you expect me to do about it?
Sell my miserable body on the streets for a few quid, just so you can go and see your precious father?’

Melody gulped, feeling embarrassed that her mother was shouting at her in front of her school mates and also a little shocked to learn that there were people on the streets who would pay her mother for her body. She found it hard to imagine what they would do with it.

‘I’ll phone him,’ Melody said, a moment later, having given the matter plenty of thought. ‘I’ll phone him and ask him if he can send me some money.’

‘And then what? The money won’t arrive until next week.’

‘Well, then, I’ll ask him to come and get me.’

‘Melody, your father has just
had a baby
. Jacqui will not want him disappearing off to the seaside for half the day. Especially not just to come and get you. You can’t go tomorrow. You’ll just have to wait. Now stop dawdling. We’re never going to get home at this rate.’

Melody picked up her pace and fell into step with her mother. She couldn’t wait another week to see her new sister. There was something small and painful gnawing away at the pit of her stomach, and she knew it wouldn’t stop until she’d felt Emily’s newborn breath against her cheek.

* * *

Ken brought Melody to London in the sidecar of his motorcycle. Melody didn’t even realise he had a motorbike until she shared her predicament with him that night. The following morning he took her to a garage at the bottom of the street. As well as the bike, which was cloaked in green tarpaulin, there were several cardboard boxes full of leaflets and lots of big signs on sticks that she didn’t get a chance to read.

He lined the seat of the sidecar with a soft blanket, strapped her in and put a bulbous green helmet on her head.

The journey to London was exhilarating. The wind battered her cheeks and threw the ends of her hair into disarray. Every time they stopped at a traffic light, Ken turned and smiled at her and she smiled back and felt like the most important girl in the world. She scanned the roads as they went for other five-year-old girls in sidecars, but didn’t see one. If she’d had any friends at school, she would have been desperate to tell them all about her adventure. As it was, she would tell Charlotte, who would pretend that it was of no interest to her whatsoever.

Ken didn’t wait outside for Melody when he dropped her off. He said he had to go and see some people and that he’d be back for her at six o’clock.

‘Give your new sister a big kiss from me,’ he said. And then he wedged his head back into his crash helmet, revved the engine of his bike and disappeared around the corner, like John Wayne rounding his steed out of the corner of a cinema screen.

Jacqui was lying in bed. The room was curtained and dimly lit, and pungent with a yeasty, milky scent, like Ovaltine. Jacqui was wearing a filmy bed jacket with a bit of cream fluff around the edges and a turquoise nightdress. The baby had been taken out of her with a knife, apparently, and she wasn’t allowed out of bed yet. She smiled as Melody walked into the room and Melody smiled back nervously.

‘Come,’ Jacqui said, patting the silky bedspread, ‘come and meet Emily.’

To the side of the bed was a small white crib. Melody held her father’s hand and stepped softly around the bed with him. She took a deep breath and peered into the crib. Inside was a tiny creature with a thatch of thick black hair and a full red mouth, set into a pursed-up grimace.

‘How do you like your sister?’ said her dad.

‘Is she really my sister?’ said Melody.

‘Yes, of course she is,’ laughed Jacqui.

Melody looked at her again and assessed her. She wasn’t very pretty. But she was quite cute. She picked up one of her tiny little hands and stroked it. ‘She looks like a Red Indian.’

Jacqui and her dad looked at each other and smiled.

‘She looks exactly like you looked when you were a new baby,’ said her dad.

‘What, like a Red Indian?’

‘Yes, just like a Red Indian.’

‘Did baby Romany look like a Red Indian, when she was born?’

Her dad smiled sadly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘she had no hair at all, and a tiny rosebud mouth. She looked more like a little leprechaun.’

‘Did she?’ said Melody, forming for the first time in her life the beginnings of a picture of her dead sister. ‘And did she have brown eyes? Or blue eyes?’

‘Well, all babies’ eyes are the same colour when they’re born. The same colour as Emily’s. Look. A sort of murky blue. And when they’re a few months old they become the colour they’re going to be.’

‘So did I have murky blue eyes when I was born?’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘And then they turned hazel.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I wonder what colour baby Romany’s eyes would have been.’

‘Well,’ said her dad, ‘sadly, that’s something that none of us will ever know.’

Melody stared at the little baby, stared really hard, trying to bring the picture of her other sister into her head, but already it had started to fade. Already the more tangible, immediate features of this new sister were starting to imprint themselves over the blurred picture of Romany’s little leprechaun face that existed only in Melody’s imagination. Already her earliest memory was starting to fade.

Melody kicked a tennis ball across the courtyard and watched it come to a rest between two flowerpots.

‘So,’ said Matty, whittling the tip of a large twig into a sharp point with a Stanley knife, ‘what’s the deal with your dad?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, why did he and your mum split up?’

‘I think it was because they were cross with each other.’

‘About what?’

‘I think they were cross about me.’

Matty stopped whittling and glanced at her thoughtfully. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes. Well, a bit sure. I mean, I had a baby sister called Romany and she died when she was two days old, and I think my mum and dad were sad about that and then they were cross with me. Especially my mum.’

Matty nodded sagely.

‘I think my mum was annoyed with me because I wasn’t properly sad and because I still wanted to keep doing things, like making cakes and going to the playground. And then I think she got cross with my dad because he didn’t want to be sad any more either and wanted to try and have another baby.’

‘Why would that make her cross?’

Melody shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It just did. Maybe she thought it might die again, or something.’

Matty nodded and returned to whittling his stick.

‘She got furious with him when he said it.’

‘God, you’d have thought she’d have been pleased.’

‘Yes,’ said Melody, nodding vigorously, ‘I know.’

‘But adults are really fucking weird. Like, take my mum.’

Melody looked at him expectantly.

‘No, really, take her …’

Melody furrowed her brow at him, feeling slightly worried that she was being slow.

He sighed. ‘Sorry. Just a stupid joke. Never mind.’

‘Tell me, though,’ said Melody. ‘Tell me about your mum. Why is she weird?’

He shrugged. ‘Just is. My dad, right, my dad is this great, great bloke. He’s really big and strong and funny and stuff. We lived in this really cool house in London and Dad was really rich and took us to cool places and stuff. And Mum just decided to go.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. She said that she didn’t like it when he’d been drinking but you know, he didn’t really drink that much.
I
never saw him drunk, not really, just funny. And now my dad’s all sad and lonely and my mum’s married to some
idiot
who think he’s Jesus fucking Christ.’

Melody wondered who he was talking about for a moment. ‘What, you mean Ken?’

‘Yeah, Ken.’

‘Why do you think he thinks he’s Jesus?’

‘Oh, come on, look at him. With his stupid ponytail and his little beard and his big eyes all the time.’

‘Oh,’ said Melody, feeling a little deflated. ‘I really like him.’

‘Well, then you’re an idiot, Melody Ribblesdale.’

Melody blanched. Nobody had ever called her an idiot before.

‘Ken is just some bloke, that’s all, some bloke who’s basically
stolen
a house, who’s never had to work and gets stupid gullible women to do whatever he wants them to do just by fluttering his big puppy eyes at them.’

‘Oh,’ said Melody again.

‘Oh God,’ said Matty, ‘he’s got to you too, hasn’t he? Well, listen, Melody Ribblesdale, you’re a bright girl and you’re young. Take my advice. Get your mum away from him before she’s giving him baths and having babies for him too.’

He then ran his fingertips around the point of his sharpened stick, held it to the light, examined it from every angle and turned to leave.

‘Where are you going?’ called Melody.

‘Fishing,’ Matty said. ‘See you around.’

After he’d gone, Melody stared at the yellow tennis ball really hard, until her eyeballs started to ache. Thoughts and questions flew around her mind like sheets of newspaper in a windy street. What did Matty mean about baths and babies? Why did he need a sharp stick to go fishing? And when was someone going to sit her down and tell her what was happening?

Melody felt more certain of what needed to be done as she climbed aboard the train to Broadstairs at Victoria Station later that week. She had specific goals and was armed with the reassurance that the strange story that had been stitching bits of itself patchily into her consciousness was real.

She glanced around at the other passengers on the sparsely occupied carriage. She smiled to herself.
Hello
, she wanted to call out,
I’m Melody! I’m on my way home
! Instead she turned her gaze to her phone, to the message she’d received from Ben ten minutes ago, the one that said: ‘Hello stranger. Not stalking you, just concerned about you. Hope all’s OK. Would be great to hear from you (but not holding my breath). Ben x’

Melody paused, halfway between a sigh and a smile. He was persistent, that was for sure, but she had yet to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Softening to his complete disregard for the Rules of Attraction, she started to type: ‘Hi. Sorry haven’t replied to your other texts, life’s been hectic and’.

She stopped, abruptly. What was she doing? She was entering into a dialogue, breathing life into a delicate, fledgeling relationship at a point in her own existence when she had barely the slightest idea who the hell she really was. No, she thought, closing down the unfinished message, no, not now, not yet. Maybe later …

Broadstairs was even busier than it had been the week before. The grey, lukewarm tones of the day had not dampened the holidaymakers’ enthusiasm for wandering in a meaningless way around the few streets that constituted its centre. They sported cagoules and brightly coloured Crocs, furled umbrellas hanging from crooked arms ready to be employed at the first sad splashes of rain. Melody, with a far greater sense of purpose, headed for the house on the square.

She stood in front of the house, closed her eyes and tried to think what else may have lain beyond that front door thirty years ago. She saw another baby, this one a boy, fat and solid, chewing on a spoon. She saw a boy, olive-skinned and unruly-haired. And then she saw a young woman, pale and drawn, with long hair and a yellow dressing gown. She felt the softness of the letter L playing upon her tongue, lelelele …
Laura
.

One day, about a week before Emily was born, a woman called Laura moved into Ken’s house. Melody didn’t know she’d moved in until she saw her coming out of the bathroom the following morning, in a yellow candlewick dressing gown, clutching a drawstring toiletry bag and looking slightly nervous.

‘Hello,’ she said, passing her on the landing, ‘who are you?’

‘I’m Melody.’

‘Melody?’ she said. ‘That’s a lovely name.’

‘Thank you,’ said Melody, who was used to people telling her that she had a lovely name.

‘I’m Laura. It’s very nice to meet you.’

‘Nice to meet you too,’ said Melody.

Laura had long brown hair that was parted in the middle and hung in strands over each shoulder. Her skin was very pale and shiny and she had big splodgy freckles all over her face and neck.