Spooning coffee into the cafetière, Melissa’s hands shake so hard that dark grounds scatter over the stonework surface. She tries to scoop the mess into her palm but the kitchen surface is damp and the coffee streaks, reminding her of Jamie’s bright blood smearing her floor tiles.
Her breath has become lodged in her chest and she has to force herself to suck it in and blow it out again. Oh God, she thinks, please help me through this.
The act of making coffee, heating milk and putting it into a jug, and then carrying all this over to the kitchen table feels like an overwhelming, momentous thing. How can she look this woman, Kerry, in the face?
If only Tilly hadn’t been here, she could have denied ever having had Jamie visit them. Damn Tilly, she thinks and for a sickening, confusing second she hates her daughter.
Instead, she had pretended to look puzzled and said that, yes, Jamie had visited, but no, she had no idea where he was now.
She wanted to scream – ‘Get out! Get out of my house!’ – at the woman and her sweet little girl but Tilly was offering coffee and now Melissa is making the coffee and wishing the process took ten times as long as it does so she can think what to do.
When she comes to the table, too soon, to lay down cups, pot, and milk she can feel the young woman’s eyes fixed hard upon her.
‘Lemme see what Amber’s up to,’ she says in some sort of northern accent and moves to the kitchen door where she shouts the little girl’s name.
Melissa and Tilly both wince, as though it were choreographed, and briefly meet eyes. Melissa keeps her expression blank and then watches Kerry as she stands there in her Primark clothes. She has olive, sallow skin and light-brown eyes and could be quite pretty, were it not for that tired patina of poverty and stress Melissa recognizes so well.
She has worked her whole life to scrub that look from her own skin. It offends her now that this person is here, bringing a tsunami of remorse in her wake.
‘Aw, she’s so cute!’ says Tilly as the little girl toddles back into the kitchen. ‘How old is she?’
‘Five,’ says Kerry like the word is a hard, unsavoury pip. ‘But it’s like she’s younger.’ All her sentences have this rat-a-tat quality. She is nervous and attempting to cloak it with aggression.
Amber becomes shy then and presses herself against her mother’s side, turning her face away. She’s holding a pale yellow muslin cloth of the kind Melissa remembers from Tilly’s baby days. It’s wrapped around her hand and as she sneaks her thumb into her mouth, she gently rubs her cheek with the cloth.
‘Mind out, Amber,’ says Kerry grumpily as she reaches for coffee, and then, as though she has been waiting for the right moment, she blurts, ‘So are you 100 per cent sure that he didn’t say owt about where he was going?’
Melissa pours milk into her coffee and shakes her head, keeping her focus on the cup. ‘No, not at all,’ she says.
Finally, she forces herself to look up and meet Kerry’s eye.
She braces herself against the harshly appraising look and she feels heat creep, treacherously, across her cheeks. Flustered, she lifts her cup and takes a sip of the coffee, which is far too hot and burns her mouth. She wants very much to cry.
‘I dunno,’ says Kerry gnomically and sits back, lifting her own cup to her lips. She takes a long drink and then continues. ‘It’s just that he told me he was coming here.’
‘Oh?’ says Melissa, too distracted to notice the bitterness in this statement. ‘Well, Kerry,’ she says, ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. He did come here and I let him sleep in the spare room because we were having a party that night.’ God, she thinks, why am I giving all this detail? She doesn’t need to hear that.
A sudden image of Jamie’s muscular back and taut, rounded buttocks as he got up in the middle of the night floods her mind and she forces more unwanted coffee down.
‘We talked about the past a little bit and then in the morning he got up and left. And that’s really all I know about it.’
The young woman opposite blinks and, to Melissa’s total horror, swipes at a tear that brims over her eyelids.
‘It’s just, Amber’s really missing him, and I don’t know what to tell her.’
Tilly’s head swivels to her mother. She is shocked and not a little entertained by all of this. Amber is wriggling and Melissa gives her daughter a meaningful look, cocking her head slightly towards the door.
‘Hey Amber, shall we go and find something to watch on telly?’ says Tilly. The little girl unpeels herself and smiles angelically.
‘I like Peppa Pig,’ she says in her flat voice.
Tilly, who had always longed for a younger sister, holds out her hand and Amber takes it easily. They leave the room as both women watch.
‘Look, Kerry,’ says Melissa in a low voice. ‘I’m really sorry that you can’t find Jamie but it’s really nothing to do with me. I was very surprised that he turned up here and …’
‘Were you now?’ says Kerry in a hard, accusing tone, swiping angrily at her face.
‘Well, yes, of course,’ says Melissa, confused. ‘Why wouldn’t I be? I hadn’t seen him in years.’
‘Yeah but you were dead close as kids, weren’t you? That’s what he told me, anyway. He reckoned you and him had some kind of special bond.’
She emphasizes the last two words and Melissa sees, with a clarity that punches her in the stomach, that this young woman loathes her. Jamie has clearly exaggerated a past that Melissa wanted wiped out of existence, burnishing it with gold.
She swallows, sure that her heartbeat is echoing and booming around the room now. ‘I think he has exaggerated things a little bit,’ she says, her mouth suddenly dry. ‘We were in care together for a relatively short time. I’ve honestly barely thought about him since.’
Kerry looks up, stung, and Melissa sees that she is only making this worse. She doesn’t want Jamie to have been close to Melissa. But for Jamie to have no value in Melissa’s life hurts her pride in some complicated way too.
‘What I mean is,’ she says more gently. ‘We knew each other briefly at a very difficult time in my life. Can you understand that I don’t really want to revisit that period of my childhood?’
Kerry barks a short, harsh laugh and looks around at Melissa’s kitchen. Melissa knows exactly what she is thinking. Stuck up cow with her four-by-four in the drive and her kitchen that’s bigger than my whole flat. Probably. Something in her hardens. She was once a Kerry. And she’s worked for this. She’s Melissa now and she’s buggered if she’s going to sit here and feel guilty. About that, anyway. Her stomach contracts.
Tilly comes back into the room chatting to Amber, who is holding her hand and looking up at her with open interest. Melissa feels herself free-falling. Oh God, that little girl had a daddy. And that daddy is now bloated and dead in a river in Dorset.
Kerry is getting to her feet.
‘C’mon, Amb,’ she says. ‘Time for us to go.’
Amber makes a moaning sound. ‘Mummy we stay. Tilly going to show me her room.’
‘I said we’re going!’ snaps Kerry and everyone flinches. The little girl moves to her mother, her eyes downcast.
Tilly looks at Melissa, aghast at the other woman’s harsh tone. Melissa makes a movement to indicate that it isn’t their business.
She knows what her daughter is thinking but Melissa can see that Amber is a perfectly adequate mother. It’s evident in many ways that this little girl is loved and cared for. Kerry is simply a woman who has no power over her circumstances, that’s all. Tilly can’t begin to imagine what that feels like. Melissa has been on the sharp end of bad mothering, and she knows the difference.
By the time they reach the front door, Melissa is able to be almost upbeat in her hopes that they find Jamie soon and that she is sorry Kerry had a wasted trip. There’s a soaring euphoria that they are almost out of her house.
‘Hang on a minute.’ Kerry roots in her handbag and emerges with a flyer for a hairdresser and beauty salon. She finds a broken Bic biro in the bag and begins to scribble on the paper, the pink triangle of her tongue-tip protruding as she concentrates. ‘Here’s me number. In case he comes back or summat. All right?’
When Melissa goes gratefully back to the kitchen on trembling legs, Tilly is engaged in a phone conversation in the next room. She probably knows she’s in trouble and Melissa intends to have some serious words with that girl, inviting random people into the house. What was she thinking?
Her mind buzzes and hums as she begins to clear up the coffee things with shaking hands. Then she spots something pooled on the floor under the table and lets out a frustrated gasp.
It’s the muslin cloth that Amber was holding.
Melissa snatches it up and rushes outside into the garden, then through the back gate into the alley where the bins are kept. She’s breathing hard; she can’t bear the soft feel of it in her fingers. The little girl’s face burns into her mind.
She stops in her tracks when she sees that Hester is coming into the alley from the other direction. Her heartbeat begins to gallop again as she goes to her own bin and stuffs the cloth inside, keeping her head down.
But Hester, it seems, isn’t going to be denied a conversation. Melissa dimly registers that the other woman is holding a plastic bag that clinks as she places it into her own bin.
‘Did you have a nice visit?’ Hester’s voice is shrill. She looks windswept and pink-cheeked. Her chocolate-button eyes gleam with a sickly shine. ‘Lovely little girl, isn’t she? Amber?’
‘Uh, yes, I suppose so,’ Melissa replies, wary. ‘How do you know her?’
‘We were chatting through the fence,’ says Hester. She comes closer and peers up into Melissa’s face, so she has to take a step back. ‘You never told me that young man had a family!’ Her voice is even shriller now and Melissa glances around nervously, willing her to be quiet. ‘What were you thinking, letting him into your house? Leading him on, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Melissa can’t seem to compute what Hester is talking about.
‘What?’
Hester barks an outraged laugh.
‘If you hadn’t encouraged him,’ she says, still loudly, ‘then he wouldn’t have tried it on with you. That’s what I think!’
‘Tried it on?’ she says, feebly.
‘Forced himself on you; whatever you want to call it!’
‘Oh God, Hester.’ Melissa lets out a weary, mirthless laugh. ‘He didn’t do that at all.’
‘But … you said …’ Hester’s composure slips for the first time. She presses a hand against her chest, whispers now, ‘I thought he tried to rape you?’
Melissa closes her eyes for a second, trying to gather strength for this conversation. She can’t think any of this mess through while Hester is going on at her. ‘I never said that,’ she says with quiet weariness. ‘You made that assumption.’
Hester blinks rapidly and her face flushes a blotchy red. ‘I saw him on your landing that morning, you know,’ she says shakily. ‘In just his underpants. Where had he been sleeping, that’s what I want to know? What do you think Tilly and Mark would say if I told them everything? All of it?’
Something ignites inside Melissa and she is suddenly filled with strength. She moves quickly, shoving Hester hard against the rough brick wall. She can feel the precise contour of the other woman’s scrawny collarbone under her palm.
‘Shut up!’ she hisses in a hoarse whisper, looking into wide, frightened eyes. ‘You should have let me call the police right at the start! I never wanted your help and now it’s too late! And don’t you dare speak to my family. Don’t you even think about it. Do you understand me?’
Hester gazes melodramatically up at the sky, mouth twisting, blinking repeatedly.
Melissa doesn’t wait for an answer. She lets Hester go and stalks back down the alleyway on legs shaking with fury and adrenaline. Just before she turns into her own garden, Hester’s cracked voice rings out again, wobbly and elderly sounding.
‘You think you’re so clever, Melissa? You think it’s all over and done with?’
Melissa turns. Her scalp tingles unpleasantly and sweat prickles in her armpits. The alleyway seems to expand and shrink before her.
Hester’s lips twitch with pleasure.
‘What do you mean?’ she hisses but then Tilly’s voice rings out from the garden.
‘Mum? Where are you?’
Melissa gasps and stumbles back to the garden gate.