Wandering the aisle of Wholefoods, Melissa sips from her Starbucks’ cup, closing her eyes as the extra hot, extra shot latte suffuses her bloodstream. She has tied the scarf around her hair and is wearing make-up for the first time in a week. It feels, pleasantly, as though she has stepped back into her own skin.
Maybe having a prosaic, domestic problem to deal with has forced her back to normality.
But she is in no hurry to rush home to face her sulking, red-eyed daughter.
Stopping to look at the vegetables, she idly picks up an aubergine just because the taut, midnight skin is pleasing to look at. She places it in her basket.
It’s always therapeutic, shopping in here.
The shelves are loaded with organic produce that is almost aggressively healthy and wholesome. Melissa pictures the mean little Spar at the end of the road when she lived with her mother. Newspapers, porn, sweets, tinned crap. Maybe a wizened banana or two and a sad collection of tomatoes that tasted of nothing but acid.
She belongs here, not there.
She wants all of it, from the sweet, scarlet tomatoes on the vine to the grimy potatoes designed to make rich metropolitan buyers feel at one with nature.
Tonight they will eat as a family.
Something has to change.
Hester was round early, before nine. Melissa realized immediately that the other woman’s expression was cool and distant.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she’d said, not quite meeting Melissa’s eye. ‘But when Tilly has friends staying until the middle of the night, could they avoid slamming your front door? It woke me up, you see, and I couldn’t get back to sleep.’
Melissa smiled, awkwardly. ‘I … don’t know what you mean. She didn’t have anyone here last night.’
Hester coughed and her mouth twitched into a tight smile.
‘Well, I’m sorry, Melissa,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I looked out of my window at around 3.30 a.m. and clearly saw that Nathan boy exiting your house. I do apologize if you didn’t know about this … relationship.’
Melissa felt a tumbling sensation inside. The little bastard …
‘Thank you, Hester,’ she’d managed to say, in a controlled voice. ‘I’ll speak to her. And please accept my apologies.’
Hester had walked back into her house without another word. Melissa felt a flicker of relief. Maybe things would go back to normal between them now and they could resume the polite distance that had worked so well.
There had been a loud, tearful row with Tilly, who claimed her mother didn’t let her do anything, but only cared about exam results. Melissa had half wanted to slap her, this ungrateful child who had no appreciation of her riches. Tilly was told her allowance was to be cut for the next month. When she went into her bedroom, she slammed the door so hard the house shook.
She knew the phone call to Saskia wouldn’t be easy but it had taken even more of a sour turn than she had expected. Melissa should have known that the one boundary she couldn’t cross was to criticize her golden son; apparently, they were ‘only doing what young people do’. Melissa told her he was to keep away from her daughter, who was not going to waste her promising future on boys. The phone call ended frostily.
Unpleasant though it had all been, the events of the morning had forced Melissa to take stock. She’d felt lately that she was watching everything through a Perspex screen but now it was time to try and reconnect.
The focus must be on her family now. So they are eating together tonight, whether Tilly likes it or not.
Mark has promised he will be back by seven. Melissa isn’t going to tell him about Nathan; a concession that Tilly accepted with mumbled thanks through the bedroom door. He doesn’t need to know about this.
She is cooking a lamb tagine and can almost taste the warming cinnamon and ginger on her tongue. They will have a hazelnut meringue torte to follow; the raspberries are in her basket, dusky and beautiful, beaded with moisture that might be early morning dew rather than condensation from the chiller.
They will eat together and anyone looking in the window would see an enviable image: an attractive family unit, talking about their respective days and eating a delicious meal made from expensive, organic ingredients.
Half an hour later, Melissa opens the front door and comes into the hallway, which smells of polish and the fresh flowers she had delivered this morning. The cleaner came today and the oak floorboards gleam with warm, honeyed light. She takes a deep, satisfied in-breath and feels something approaching peace.
She’s putting her keys in the little ceramic bowl that Tilly made in her first year at secondary school when she becomes aware of voices.
Coming into the kitchen now, Melissa comes to an abrupt halt.
Tilly is sitting at the table with a woman who is perhaps in her twenties. Melissa doesn’t recognize her. She doesn’t look like anyone Tilly would know, in her cheap sweatshirt with its flower design and her mousey hair pulled into the sort of harsh ponytail that Mark calls a Croydon facelift. The woman looks at her with an open hostility that confuses her further. Melissa’s eyes then shift to a movement on the other side of the kitchen.
A small girl with blonde hair in a straggly topknot is standing there. She stares at Melissa through bright blue, distinctively shaped, eyes.
‘Hey Mum,’ says Tilly, still slightly warily. ‘This is Kerry … and Amber.’ She says the second name in a chummy children’s television presenter voice.
‘They’re looking for Jamie. Any idea where he went?’