I stare out the window as the bus judders along the road back to Thorn House. The narrow road is lined with overgrown hedgerows and snarls of brambles. My head is spinning. I keep thinking about missing girls and ghost hitchhikers and the bowlful of round, ripe tomatoes that sits by the kettle in the kitchen and makes my stomach curl every time I look at it. I’m thinking about Kim and Edie and the way poor Mimi’s brain seems to be full of holes. I’m wondering about what really happened the night she fell down the stairs, alone in the house with Alex.
Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself, you’ve already got his dad pinned for getting Edie pregnant and bumping her off and now you think Alex is trying to harm his mum? What for?
I know what for. I don’t even have to think about it. He’s been closeted by fear of her disapproval for years. A young man having to make clandestine trips to London and Brighton to meet men, to forge relationships and just to be himself. How tortuous to carry that secret around with you for your entire life.
By the time I get back to Thorn House the weather has turned. Low, ponderous clouds gather, charcoal-grey and heavy as iron. It’s going to rain. I carry the bags of shopping into the kitchen and take out the fruit, putting it into the sink to be washed. I’ve been teaching myself how to brew the fragrant tea Mimi likes, using flowers from the garden. Rosebuds and petals of chamomile, dandelion, jasmine and pale yellow chrysanthemums. After I’ve tidied the shopping away I take a pot of it into her room, nudging the door carefully open with my hip.
‘Rosebud and jasmine t—’ I cut off.
Mimi’s flushed, the colour creeping up her neck into her cheeks. Her hands grope blindly across the bedside table, knocking against the phone, which dings brightly. I rush towards her, putting the tea tray down on the bed, noticing the thin sticks of her legs beneath the covers. I catch her hands gently, surprised at the wiry strength I can feel thrumming beneath her skin, and wonder if this is delirium, passing through her like a voltage. I call for Alex and William, but by the time they come running through the doorway Mimi is calming down, glassy-eyed and a little vacant, looking around her as though she has just woken up. She says there were black spots on her bedside table, ‘crawling all over it like insects’. William, Alex and I exchange concerned glances over the top of her head. Alex begins to insist on calling the doctor but Mimi abruptly shuts the idea down, telling him, ‘All I need is the company of my boys and a good rest. Thank you for my tea, dear heart. Sit with me, William. I’d like to hear you read.’
‘I’m busy, Mum. I’ve got a conference call in ten minutes. Can Frances do it?’
Of course I do it. I read her the headlines and some articles from the supplement, her horoscope. ‘Use your excess energy today to get out there and do some exercise!’ We both laugh at that. I quarter her some oranges and put them in a bowl on her lap. The bright smell of them fills the room, almost tropical.
‘You look better now, Mimi,’ I tell her.
She nods and smiles. ‘I feel it. It’s hard to be unhappy when you’ve got all this garden to look at. See those roses? Edward planted them for me. He wanted us to have a daughter called Rose but sadly, well – these things can’t be planned, can they?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me again the story of how you and William met.’ She squeezes my hand and her eyes are misty. William has always told me his mother was a born romantic, not the Barbara Cartland kind but deeper and more destructive, the kind Kenny Rogers would sing about. I swallow. She’s heard the story before, of course. That’s all it is, a story. Entirely fictional. It’s a tall tale about a man (William) and a woman (me) sitting opposite one another on the 20:22 to Reading. Two people, catching each other’s eyes, both thinking the same thing: How can I strike up a conversation? Alas, these two lovers seem doomed to remain silent and separate as the train pulls into the woman’s station, but when she leaves the man notices – oh no! – that she’s left her purse behind. He gallantly leaps out of his seat and off the train despite the fact that his own stop is another forty minutes away. As the train pulls out of the station he catches up with the woman at the turnstiles, who is getting increasingly upset and frustrated at being unable to find the purse containing her tickets. But wait, what’s this? (I often pause here for dramatic effect and watch as Mimi’s face is dimpled by a small, knowing smile.) It’s William, purse in hand, reaching out to her through the crowd, and their hands touch and their eyes meet and that, as they say, is it.
Mimi has her eyes closed, leaning back against the pillows, hands folded on her lap. I move the bowl of oranges gently aside, so as not to disturb her, and let the silence spool out. I wonder how she would react to the real story of William and me meeting: the smell of white spirit, the dingy studio flat, the word Whore in bold letters that would only fade and not disappear, not even beneath three coats of paint, my pupils inky-black pools, white spittle collecting at the corners of my mouth because I’m still high. Even when we got together years down the line, it wasn’t simple, our jerky, stop-start relationship characterised by reluctance and hysterical bonding, punctuated by my abrupt disappearances, sometimes for whole weekends. All the times he came to help me, all the comedowns he nursed me through, all those nights he carried me to bed after too much wine, too many cocktails. The states he found me in. My white knight.
‘Your white knight,’ Mimi says quietly, the way she always does when I reach the part of the fictional story where William catches me at the ticket barriers. ‘Just think of all the ways it could have been different. If one of you had sat in a different seat, if you hadn’t left your purse behind, if William hadn’t jumped off the train in time – all these little things we don’t know are actually cogs in the engine.’ She leans forward, smiling tightly as if imparting a great secret. ‘You know how Edward and I met?’
I’ve heard this one before. Sunday. At the bandstand, listening to jazz. Eighteen years old. He asked her to dance and showed her all the flowers in bloom on the village green. They never spent another night apart. Since his death, whenever she tells this story her eyes fill with tears and she has to dab at them with a hanky, even now.
‘I do, Mimi. I remember.’
‘Do you know how he died, Frances?’
I stiffen. In all the years I’ve known her, Mimi has never spoken about his death with me. Not in real detail, and certainly not without dressing it up in euphemism. Despite my interest I try to look nonchalant, reaching for the bottle of nail polish on her bedside table beside the phone. My heart skitters, my mouth dry. This man, this man. He’s everywhere, still.
‘I don’t think so, Mimi. Shall I do your nails while you tell me? It’s such a pretty colour.’
She extends a thin pale hand over the coverlet and I lift it into my own, surprised at the lightness of it. Bird bones.
‘It was a car accident. Something on the road, they said. An animal maybe. He skidded off the bridge. It was autumn, and it was dark and maybe he was going too fast. That doesn’t sound right, though, does it? He was always so careful. Such a careful man.’
‘He was,’ I say, although I never met him. I don’t want to interrupt her flow. Her eyes have misted over with recollection.