The Truth About Melody Browne (14 page)

Melody waited for a moment on the landing to see where exactly this new person would head and felt shocked when she saw her casually push open the door to Ken and Grace’s bedroom and walk in.

‘Mum! Mum!’ She leaped up the stairs to the attic floor, two at a time. ‘There’s a woman!’

Her mother emerged from behind her wardrobe door, clutching a green sweater and looking slightly puffy. ‘What?’

‘A woman. In Ken’s room! She’s called Laura!’

‘Oh, yes, Laura. I met her yesterday.’

‘Who is she? And why is she in Ken and Grace’s room?’

‘Oh, I’m sure she wasn’t.’

‘Yes, she was. She had on her dressing gown and she just walked straight into their room without knocking or anything.’

‘Well, maybe she had the wrong room.’

‘Hmm.’ Melody sat down on the foot of her bed and stared at her toes. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘why are we living here?’

‘Well,’ said her mum, in her annoyed voice, ‘where would you suggest that we live?’

‘I don’t know,’ Melody said. ‘With Auntie Maggie?’

Her mother tutted and sighed distractedly. ‘Maggie’s got her own problems right now. The last thing she needs is her wreck of a sister landing on her doorstep with another mouth to feed.’

‘Well, what about Auntie Susie?’

‘I thought you didn’t like it at Auntie Susie’s.’

Melody shrugged and banged her toes together. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t. But at least …’

‘At least what?’

‘At least she was family.’

Jane inhaled noisily. ‘Melody,’ she said, ‘I’m very tired. And you talk too much. Why don’t you go and play?’

‘I don’t want to play.’

‘Well, then, why don’t you go and read a book?’

‘I don’t want to read a book.’

‘Well, then, just do anything. Just leave me alone.’

Melody sat on the end of her bed for another moment after that, staring disconsolately at her feet. Then she walked to the door and left. She walked slowly enough for her mum to change her mind about being annoyed and call her over for a hug, but she didn’t. She just stood there with the green jumper in her hands, looking like she’d forgotten something.

Melody stood outside the bedroom door for a while, and listened to her mother sobbing, quiet and soft as a whispered prayer.

Melody couldn’t find the man called Matthew. She walked around the town three times, peered through the windows of lard-scented cafés and wandered the aisles of off-licences. She scanned the beaches and benches and found not a trace of him. In a musty, grafittied man-made cave, dug out beneath the sea front, she came upon two young men with cider cans, stretched out across slatted wooden benches. They didn’t look like they were homeless or down-and-out, but they were the only people she’d seen in two hours who looked vaguely like they might know a drunk called Matthew, so she stopped and waited to be addressed.

‘You all right?’ said the older-looking of the two boys. He seemed nervous, and it occurred to Melody that maybe she resembled a plain-clothes police officer.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m looking for someone. A man called Matthew.’

The youths glanced at each other and frowned. ‘Matthew? Nah. What’s he look like?’

‘Forty-ish,’ said Melody, ‘dark hair. Drunk.’

They glanced at each other again. ‘Ah,’ said the spottier of the two, ‘
that
Matthew. The pisshead?’

‘Yeah,’ said Melody, ‘I guess so.’

‘He should be in town. He usually is.’

‘Is there a special place where he hangs out?’ she asked.

‘Nah. He just hangs about everywhere, really.’

‘Yeah,’ said the other one, ‘scaring the out-of-towners.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘I dunno,’ said the older-looking one. ‘Rough, I reckon. Round here, most probably. This is where the vagrants live, come night-time, down here in these caves.’

‘Why d’you want him, anyway?’ said the spotty one.

‘Oh, I used to live here, when I was a kid. I think he might have known me.’

‘Yeah. Matthew’s been around since we were kids.’

‘Has he always been a drunk?’

‘Yeah, pretty much. But he goes dry sometimes. Every few weeks. He just disappears and comes back with a haircut and some new clothes and then starts drinking again.’

‘Oh right, so he could be doing that now?’

The spotty one shrugged. ‘Yeah. I suppose so. If he’s not in town.’

‘And you don’t have any idea where it is he goes to?’

They both shrugged. ‘Maybe to his mum’s? Maybe to hospital? Dunno. Never asked.’

‘Right.’ Melody bit her lip. ‘So, you’ve spoken to him?’

‘Nah. Not really. Just in passing. Just like, you all right, that kind of thing. No one really talks to him.’

‘Why not?’

They both laughed. ‘Because he’s a pisshead, innit!’

Melody smiled, and nodded. She was done here. The man called Matthew was out of town. She would have to come back another time.

Melody stood on the beach with her hands in her pockets, surveying the curve of the town in front of her. It seemed to curl towards her, like arms opened for embrace. A building in the middle of the sweep caught her eye, an ice-cream parlour with a salmon-pink exterior and chrome 1950s signage. She moved immediately, took the stone steps up from the beach two at a time and was a little breathless when a moment later she pushed open a large pair of heavy glass Art Deco doors into a shiny, brightly lit 1930s-style parlour, all chrome, Formica and Bakelite fittings in shades of mint and salmon pink. Melody stopped, for just a moment, on the threshold and looked around her, this way and that, across the heads of dozens of water-proofed families. A woman walked past holding a tray. On the tray were four fat goblets, each containing a different medley of coloured ice creams, sprinkles, wafers and sauces. Knickerbocker glories.

This was it. This was the place – she knew it immediately – the place she’d been to with Ken.

Ken and Melody got back from London at eight o’clock, the day he took Melody to London to meet her new sister. As they approached the coast, the October sun was setting over the sea in streaks of peach, silver and gold. There was a cruise liner moving slowly away from land, across the horizon, lit up from inside like a lantern. They rode up the sea front, past the flashing neon of the empty arcades, the vinegary fish shops and sickly sweet souvenir shops, and pulled up outside Morelli’s Ice Cream Parlour.

‘Fancy a sundae?’ said Ken, sliding off his helmet.

‘What, now?’ said Melody.

‘Yes, why not?’

‘But we told Mum I’d be home by eight.’

‘Well, we’ll just tell her we got stuck in some traffic. Come on, how about a knickerbocker glory?’

Melody gazed through the door at the pastel-hued utopia inside, at the happy families clustered together inside salmon-pink booths, dipping long spoons into oversized goblets of ice cream. She’d seen this place from a distance many times over the past year but her mother always told her that they couldn’t afford ‘unnecessary luxuries’ like ice cream.

‘My treat,’ said Ken, as if reading her thoughts.

She felt like someone else as she walked in. Visiting ice-cream parlours after dark with a handsome man and a crash helmet in her hand wasn’t the kind of thing she expected to find herself doing. It was the sort of thing that Charlotte did.

She ordered a raspberry ripple sundae and Ken ordered vanilla with chocolate sauce and a cup of coffee. His hair was all messy where his helmet had been and his cheeks were pink from the autumn wind. He looked less like Jesus and more like a teddy bear, which made her feel less shy about being in a restaurant with him.

‘So, you liked the baby, did you?’

‘Mm-hm,’ she nodded. ‘She was cute.’

‘I bet. Must be a great feeling to have a new sister.’

She nodded again.

‘Bet you felt sad having to say goodbye, though, didn’t you?’

Melody dipped her head and smiled. She always hated leaving Jacqui’s house, even when she’d had a horrible time there, even when Charlotte had been a pig and Jacqui had barely acknowledged her. But this afternoon had been the worst ever. She’d spent the whole day with Emily, she’d helped change her nappy and Jacqui had even let her give her a bottle of milk. Dad and Jacqui’s bedroom had become more and more magical as the day went on. By late afternoon the sun had started to sink and Dad switched on the table lamps and they all sat on the big soft bed just staring at the baby.

‘You know, in some ways I’m really glad you had to have a Caesar,’ her dad had said to Jacqui. ‘It’s forced you to sit still and enjoy this time.’

Jacqui had smiled at him and said, ‘I know, I know, you’re right. I’d have been trying to do the hoovering. And I’m glad too, because this is the nicest time. This is the time you look back on when they grow and want to snatch back …’

Melody wanted to snatch it back already. She wanted to absorb her sister, drop by drop, into her own skin, and keep her there. She didn’t want to leave her in London, to wait a week before she could see her again. She wanted to live with her, sleep with her, watch her wake up in the mornings. She wanted to see her grow, day by day, each sliver of fingernail, each millimetre of hair. She wanted Emily to know her, the same way she would know Charlotte.

She glanced up into Ken’s soft grey eyes and felt her jaw go soft and wobbly. Then she started crying, silently and heavily.

‘Oh, now, now, now,’ Ken passed her a paper napkin. ‘Oh, Melody, your poor, sweet thing.’

‘I love her so, so much,’ she sobbed. ‘I love her and she lives in London and I live here and she’ll forget all about me.’

‘Oh, she won’t.’

‘But she will. All she’ll see is Charlotte and she’ll think Charlotte’s her only sister and when I come she’ll cry because she won’t know who I am!’

‘No, honestly, I promise you. Babies are very clever. She’ll remember your smell, and then, when she gets older, she’ll remember your face and, you know, she’ll save all her best smiles for you, because when she sees you it’ll be like a special treat. Not like Charlotte.’

‘Do you think?’

‘Yes, I think. And because you won’t see her that often, you’ll be much nicer to her than Charlotte. In fact, I’ll bet you anything that you and Emily end up being best friends.’

Melody sniffed and stirred her spoon in circles around the base of her sundae glass. She liked what Ken was saying. She liked the idea of being Emily’s best friend.

It occurred to her that this was the first time in as long as she could remember that anyone had said anything to her that had made her feel better rather than worse, something that made sense of her world, and she felt something hard and heavy lifting from her chest that she hadn’t really noticed was there until that very moment. She felt a lightness come upon her, a sense that there was a centre to everything after all. And as she sat there, in the steamy warmth of Morelli’s Ice Cream Parlour, her dismantled world spinning around her head in a dozen separate pieces, she suddenly knew what that centre was. It was Ken.

She wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand and smiled at Ken. Then she took his hand in hers and squeezed it, really hard.

‘Are you my friend?’ she said.

‘Of course I am,’ he said.

‘Will you always be my friend?’

‘I’ll be your friend for as long as you’d like me to be.’

‘Well,’ said Melody, ‘that will be for ever then.’

Ken squeezed her hand back and smiled.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’

They got back to the house at nine o’clock. Melody had pictured her mum on the front step, pale with worry, pacing and panicking, wondering where her daughter was. But she wasn’t on the front step. Neither was she in the kitchen or in the bathroom or in their room in the attic. Melody and Ken ran around the whole house twice, looking in all the rooms, and in strange places like airing cupboards and larders. Then Melody noticed that her handbag wasn’t in the hallway. And Laura said she’d heard the front door slam at about five o’clock, so they all calmed down and assumed she’d gone out for dinner, or to see Auntie Susie.

Melody washed herself in the chilly bathroom that evening and tried to picture her mother sitting at her auntie Susie’s table, laughing and giggling and forgetting the time. It didn’t seem right at all, so she tried to imagine her mother sitting alone in a restaurant, at a table for two, her face in flickering candlelight, tucking into a steak and chips. That was completely wrong too.

As she slipped under her quilt and closed her eyes, the silence in her room overwhelmed her and she started to picture different things. Her mother squashed flat by the wheels of a juggernaut. Her mother face down and blue in the sea. Her mother sliced into segments by the metal wheels of an express train. She didn’t know where these images had come from. She’d never thought about things like that before. But then she’d never not known where her mother was before.