19
Matt was up and dressed by the time I woke.
I sat up quickly. “I haven’t overslept, have I?”
“No,” he said with a smile. “There’s plenty of time. I just thought I’d get out of your hair while you dressed. I’ll see you downstairs in the lobby, shall I?”
I pulled the duvet up to my chin, suddenly aware of the skimpy T-shirt I was wearing. “Sure. I won’t be long.”
When Violet turned up five minutes late, at eight fifty, her gaze went straight to Matt.
“Is this Alex?” she asked, staring.
“No, this is my friend Matt. Matt, meet my sister, Violet.”
“Hello, Violet.”
“Just friends, eh?” she said. “I’ll believe you. Thousands wouldn’t.”
That was the thing with my little sister. I adored her, longed to see her, and then when we did meet, she drove me crazy within minutes. It was frustrating in the extreme. As if, because we’d never been teenagers together, we were having to make up for lost time now.
I opened my mouth to make another rebuff, but Matt placed a reassuring hand in the small of my back. “I’ll leave you both to it. Call me when you’ve finished, Lily. See you later.” Then he smiled and walked away.
I watched him go for a moment—a decent man intent on finding a decent cup of coffee. A man who would draw glances whatever country he lived in. But I wouldn’t think about the future and his probable move to Spain. Not now. I needed to focus on Vi’s meeting with her dad. Even if Violet and her smug expression were the most annoying things on the planet.
“What are you pretending to be just friends for?” Violet asked.
“Because we are just friends.”
She shrugged. “Could have fooled me. It’s obvious you feel something for each other. And who cares? You’re not with your boyfriend any longer.”
“I told you; Matt and I aren’t together. I’m not with anyone at the moment.”
Violet shook her head, giving me an I know better smile, and I sighed, leaving it.
“Anyway, how are you feeling?”
She shrugged. “A bit shagged out. I was up late dancing. Found a great club. Nottingham’s cool.”
“I meant, how are you feeling about meeting your dad?”
“Can’t wait. In fact, we’d better make tracks, hadn’t we? If we don’t want to be late?”
She said it as if I was the one holding us up, but I just lifted my eyebrows and let that one go too.
We didn’t speak much as we headed for the café. Violet was walking quickly, head down, the heels of her shoes staccato on the pavement, her body tense. I wanted to tell her not to get her hopes up too much. To take things as they came. To basically be a killjoy big sister so she wouldn’t get too hurt if things didn’t turn out the way she wanted them to. But I knew Violet wouldn’t want to hear all those warnings, so I kept quiet and hoped and prayed for the best.
There was no one who looked as if he was Kevin in Starbucks when we arrived. Just a couple of businessmen and an elderly couple.
“Why don’t you grab a table while I get us some coffees?” I said to Violet.
“Yeah, cos a coach-load could suddenly turn up and fill the place out,” she said sarcastically, not budging from the counter.
The café door opened. A man came in. I heard Violet’s swift intake of breath. My gut told me this wasn’t Kevin, and my instincts were proved right when the man went over to join the elderly couple. Their son, by the looks of things.
“It would be good to get a table by the window, wouldn’t it? So we can see Kevin when he arrives?”
“All right.” She went, looking as if it hurt her to do what I’d suggested, but by the time I got to the table, Kevin still hadn’t shown up.
“He’s late,” Violet said.
“Only by a few minutes. It’s a busy time of day.”
“Nine a.m. was his idea, not mine.”
I didn’t bother to try to find another excuse for Kevin. The guy hadn’t seen his daughter since she was a baby. Traffic or no traffic, he ought to be here on time. There were no excuses.
Then suddenly the door opened again, and there was a man with long, mousy-brown hair and a wary expression wearing a T-shirt that showed off muscular arms. And despite all the years that had passed, I knew it was Kevin.
He came over, the wary expression stretching into a smile. “Blimey, look at you,” he said, not to Violet, but to me. “You must have been nine or ten when I last saw you, but I’d still have recognised you anywhere. How are you, Lily?”
Why was he speaking to me instead of Violet? Hugging me, not Violet?
“Hello, Kevin,” I said, moving deliberately to one side so he had to look at her.
“Whereas you look pretty different to when I last saw you!” he said to her. If it was meant to be a joke, it wasn’t in the least bit funny. I expected Vi to make some sarcastic crack, like, “ I couldn’t find a Babygro in my size ,” or, “What d’you fucking mean? I was a baby when you took off! ” But she didn’t say anything like that. Instead, she just smiled a polite, very un-Violet-like smile, and somehow that upset me much more than her rudeness would have done.
“Can I get you a coffee, Kevin?” I asked, deciding to give them some time alone.
“Oh, thanks. A double espresso, please. Here, I’ll give you the money.”
I moved quickly away as he started to scrabble about in his pockets for change. “No, that’s okay. I’ll get it.”
There was a small queue at the counter. I deliberately turned my back on Violet and Kevin, focusing my gaze on the display of cookies, willing the two of them to connect.
It was impossible to tell whether they’d made any progress or not when I returned to the table with Kevin’s coffee, and when Kevin immediately began asking me what work I did, I wished I hadn’t come with Vi, after all. I’d come because she’d asked me to, but my presence was turning out to be a hindrance, not a help. Violet was getting fidgety, turning her cup round and round on the table and swinging her crossed leg, her gaze lowered to the froth on her drink as if it was the most important thing on earth. I ached for her, easily able to imagine how much she was hurting. How desperate she was to hide that fact.
Suddenly she scraped her chair back and got to her feet. “I need the loo,” she mumbled, and off she went, leaving me and Kevin alone together. I watched him watch her go, searching his face to try to detect some kind of emotion. Any kind of emotion. But still, what he said when he finally turned in my direction came as a surprise.
“You know she’s a user, don’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
He jerked his head in the direction of the toilets. “Violet. She’s a user. Probably taking something right now. Takes one to know one, as they say. I’ve done a lot of drugs in my time. Not any longer; I’m clean now.”
“Violet doesn’t take drugs.”
He couldn’t be right, could he? No. He was just a useless piece of shit who didn’t care who he hurt.
“Didn’t you notice how she couldn’t keep still? The look in her eyes? Desperate for a high.”
“She was nervous about meeting you, that’s all. She hasn’t seen you since she was a baby. This means a lot to her. Everything.”
Kevin looked suddenly shifty. “Ah. About that. I can’t do it, I’m afraid.”
“What d’you mean?”
He sighed. Sipped some coffee. “I’ve got three other girls. Grandkids too. My wife knows nothing about Violet. I probably should have told her, but, well, I didn’t. And now ... I just can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
I was shaking with anger. Was so furious I wanted to shove him right off his chair. “Why did you agree to meet up with her then?”
He shrugged. Oh, that shrug. “Curiosity, I suppose. And she seemed like a kid who wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Well, I wish you’d tried harder. She’s going to be devastated.”
Another shrug. “She’ll get over it. Let’s face it, I’m hardly much of a prize, am I? Look at me. I scrape a living together, live in a shitty falling-down house. She’s not exactly missing much.”
My coffee was getting cold. I had no desire whatsoever to drink it. My mind was too busy scrabbling about, trying to think of a way to get Kevin to change his mind. He was right; he wasn’t much of a prize. The exact opposite, in fact. But Violet deserved to have the right to decide that for herself, and I’d do anything to make this useless excuse for a human being let her do that.
“Look ...,” I started to say, but he interrupted me.
“Have you heard anything from your mum?”
And bam, the question sent me straight back to the aftermath of the fire. To the wrecked house, still smoking. Me yelling to the firefighters, “Where’s my mum? She was in there, I tell you! She was in there!”
One of them, an older fatherly guy, came over and placed a big, dirty hand on my shoulder. “There was no one in there except your sister, love.” I could see Violet, over by the ambulance with a blanket around her shoulders. She was crying, looking over in my direction. I couldn’t go over, not until I knew what had happened to Mum.
“We’ve done a thorough search,” the firefighter went on. “I promise you, your mother’s safe.”
Safe, but absent. Gone out God only knew where and left her eight-year-old daughter alone in a burning house. Never to be heard from again.
“Why should I have heard from her?” I asked Kevin bitterly now. “Why would I even want to?”
“I just thought, you know, over the years, things might have mellowed.” He sighed again, moving closer to me across the table. “Look, I can see your sister needs someone in her life. That she’s searching for someone. But it can’t be me, I’m really sorry.”
With that, he drained his espresso cup and pushed his chair back.
I stared at him, shocked. Panicked. “Wait, aren’t you going to speak to her yourself?”
“It’s best if you do it. If I tell her, she’ll only make a scene.”
“She won’t.”
“Come on, Lily, we both know she will.”
“Oh, and that’s based on five minutes’ acquaintance, is it? Or are you counting how she cried as a bloody baby in that assessment too?”
“Goodbye, Lily,” he said, turning away. “Give your sister my very best for the future.”
“Kevin!” I called after him, desperate, but it was too late. He was gone, out through the café door, past the shop front and out of sight. Just as Violet returned from the toilet.
“Where’s Kevin?”
My expression no doubt said everything. “He ... had to go.”
She snatched up her shoulder bag from the back of her chair. “What did you say to him?” she yelled. “What the fuck did you say to him, Lily?”
“Vi ...”
But she was running out of the café, pausing to stand on the pavement, looking desperately about, not knowing which way to go.
I joined her. Tried to touch her arm.
She flinched away from me. “Don’t you touch me!” she screamed. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”
“Vi, listen to me, I tried to get him to stay.”
“I should never have asked you to come with me. Just because you haven’t got a father yourself, you didn’t want me to have one. You were fucking jealous!”
“That’s not true, Vi. Please, come back inside. Let me tell you what he said.”
“No! Fuck off, Lily. Just fuck off!”
She walked quickly away—as it happened in the same direction Kevin had gone in. Not that it would do her any good, because even if she managed to track him down, which I doubted she would, his mind was made up. Bastard.
I walked aimlessly along for a few minutes, not knowing what to do or where to go, my brain blasted by it all. Vi’s outburst. Kevin’s utter selfishness and cruelty. The fire on TV. Remembering the way Violet and I had been parted that night—Vi taken off to hospital to be checked out, me taken by a social worker to the hostel that would become my so-called home for the next few years. “ Where’s my sister? I want to be with my sister! ” No amount of reassurances that she was okay, that the trip to hospital had just been a precaution and she was on her way to a caring foster family had made any difference. “ Violet’ll be calling for me. She needs me! ” And I had needed her too. Badly. Just as, last night, I had needed Matt.
All around me, people were hurrying to work. There were cars, buses, trams. Noise. The busy hubbub of a big city starting the day.
I stood on a quiet corner to get myself together, my shaking hands reaching up to rake back my hair, trying to think. This was now, not back then. Violet was still a vulnerable woman, it was true. But she wasn’t the completely helpless child she’d been back then. And she’d end up going back to the hotel at some point, surely? We had to check out by twelve. I could wait for her in reception. She had my phone number, didn’t she?
If I wasn’t careful, I was going to crack up. The memories and old hurts I’d stuffed down inside myself for so long were building up and up inside me, like a pressure cooker about to blow. It was all too much. Vi hadn’t even given me the chance to tell her what had happened—she’d just assumed Kevin’s departure had been my fault. I guess it was easier to blame me than to accept a second rejection from him. I got that; I did. But understanding it didn’t make it any easier to take, and, if I wasn’t going to go under myself, I had to stop putting Vi first every single time. I had to think about myself.
I’d said I’d call Matt when I was finished, but I hadn’t expected it to be so soon, and I was reluctant to inflict this latest crisis on him, even though I knew he’d offer words of comfort. Hold me, maybe, the way he’d held me last night, after the nightmare. Poor bloody Matt. It would be better for him if he did get the job in Spain. I couldn’t dump all of this on him.
“Lily?”
I turned, and there was Matt himself, seated at a table outside a café, a newspaper open in front of him.
“Meeting finished already? Where’s Violet?”
I took the chair opposite his, tears already filling my eyes despite my resolve not to burden him. “Oh, Matt, it was awful. Kevin didn’t want to know. He showed up, barely spoke to Violet, and left. And she’s somehow convinced it’s all my fault.”
Just as I’d know he would, Matt listened. Sympathised. Expressed opinions about Kevin that matched my own. It was comforting, of course it was. Sometimes, many times lately, I thought Matt was the only reliable, dependable thing in my life.
“Why don’t you text Violet? Tell her we’ll be in the hotel foyer at eleven thirty?” he suggested, and I did. Then we whiled away a few hours exploring the city, me doing my best not to worry about my sister or to wonder, when Matt’s phone rang, whether it was the company in Spain to say he’d got the job.
“My mum,” he said, ending the call. “Reminding me it’s Dad’s birthday next week.”
“I don’t imagine you’d forgotten,” I said.
He shook his head. “No. I bought him something in Barcelona.”
Barcelona. Jesus. Matt may be reliable and dependable, but he wasn’t going to be around much longer. It was almost a relief when it was time to go to the hotel to meet Violet.
Inevitably, she didn’t turn up at the appointed time, though. And so, going against all my instincts, I told Matt we should set off for home.
“She’s got my phone number, and she’s a big girl now, isn’t she?” I said, justifying my decision.
“She travelled round Europe on her own, as well, didn’t she?” Matt reminded me. “I’m sure she’ll be okay. But whatever you want, Lily. If you’d prefer to stay another night, that’s fine. I don’t need to rush back for anything.”
“No,” I said. “Let’s go.” After all, Violet had made the decision to ignore me when I’d tried to explain. She was her own worst enemy. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier to drive away.
Matt and I talked now and then on the way home, but not much. I guessed he could probably tell I was wallowing in the misery of things not turning out well in Nottingham.
“I bet you wish you hadn’t offered to drive me now,” I said bitterly as we passed King’s Lynn, an hour away from home.
“Of course not,” he said. “I was happy to be there for you; you know that. Anyway, I’m not sure how much help I was.”
“ It would have been bleak without you, ” I could have said, which was the truth. But I didn’t, because I didn’t want him to know how utterly devastated by everything I felt, and because I didn’t want him to start feeling guilty about going to Spain if he were to be offered the job. To be a burden to him. Difficult or not, I needed to find the strength to deal with things on my own. It was pretty much what I’d always done, anyway.
When we finally pulled up outside my house, I turned to him.
“D’you want to come in for a coffee?”
“No, I’ll get home, I think. Back to my owls.”
I smiled weakly. “Say hello to them for me, won’t you? And let me know when you hear anything from Spain.”
He nodded, pulling me in for a quick hug. “Will do.”
Inside, there was a note waiting for me from Amy. Gone to visit my parents for the weekend. Hope all’s well?
I folded the note up and put it on the coffee table, hoping she wasn’t mad I hadn’t left a note for her before I dashed off to Nottingham, feeling both sorry and glad she wasn’t home. Sorry because I didn’t feel like being on my own; glad because I didn’t want to have to talk about the disaster of the last few days.
I kicked off my shoes, made myself a cup of tea, and sat on the sofa to drink it. I ought to check on Inga. Check my emails. But I did neither of those things. Instead, I sat, sipping my tea, worrying about Violet. Was Kevin right? Was she using drugs? I couldn’t bear to believe it. But if he was right, should I have stayed in Nottingham and made sure she came back here with me? Helped her get clean if she needed me to? But I wasn’t sure how I would have even found her if she wasn’t answering my texts and calls, let alone persuade her to come with me. She had my number if she wanted me. Or did she? For the first time it occurred to me that Violet might have lost her phone. Had it stolen, even. Sold it to buy drugs.
Oh, God. I closed my eyes tight shut, resisting the urge to scream. Even if I did give Inga a ring, I wouldn’t be much help to her in this state. And anyway, I wasn’t entirely sure what she’d think of me and Matt going off to Nottingham together, especially if she found out we’d shared a room. So, I sent her a text, saying I was back and that I’d pop round in the morning. Then I took my empty cup into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of wine, and went upstairs to the studio, suddenly needing to paint so badly, the impulse couldn’t be denied. Not to produce anything good. Not to follow on sensibly from the work I’d made last time I’d been in the studio, whenever the hell that had been. Just to whack some paint about. To express my worries and frustrations through splatters and swipes of colour.
It was perhaps no big surprise that many of those colours were flame red, ember orange, and charcoal black. Sheet after sheet of paper covered with flickering flames with brightly coloured Nottingham trams riding through them as I imagined Violet hopping onto one to escape everything—me, Kevin, rejection. I painted the café we’d met in like a footprint, squashing Violet beneath it. A man—Kevin—jumping up and down on it, a speech bubble coming from his mouth. Has your mother been in touch?
I painted and I painted into the early hours of the morning, half-crazed, seeking relief, escape, I don’t know what. Not looking at any of my paintings because I was afraid I’d see a kind of madness in them.
And finally, I closed the studio door, went into my bedroom, and fell into bed. Only to dream about fire again, my paintings somehow coming to life, complete with smells and smoke tearing at my throat. I woke on a scream, no Matt to comfort me this time, just me and the memory of Kevin’s question going round and round my brain. “Have you heard anything from your mum?”
When I reached for my phone, I saw my hands were still covered in dried-on paint. At least I’d used acrylics, not oils, so the bedsheets weren’t covered in it.
Without much hope, I googled my mother’s name. It wasn’t the first time I’d done it, though it had been years since I’d last tried. Because every time I did, it brought me face to face with Mum’s abandonment of me and Vi, and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to find an obituary, which would explain her silence, or evidence that she was alive and well.
Nothing ever showed up, anyway, and it didn’t now. A few women on Facebook with the same name whose profile pictures couldn’t be turned into images of my mother no matter how long and how hard I stared at them. Nothing anywhere else on social media.
What had I expected, really? What had I even wanted? Even if I did find her, I was never going to be able to forgive her, was I? It really was time to move on. There was never going to be a happy ever after to our story.
I left my search and checked my emails instead, still waiting for the nightmare to recede enough for me to go back to sleep, scrolling through emails from mailing lists I needed to unsubscribe from, the adverts that had slipped through into my inbox instead of going to my spam folder. There was one email with the title Christmas Exhibition Opportunity —surely another spam email. Then I saw the sender’s name. It was from Diane, one of my students in Cromer—the one who had a husband with an art gallery in Norwich—and I clicked on it to open it.
Dear Lily,
We’ve had an unexpected cancellation for an exhibition due to take place at the Bond Gallery, Norwich, for two months from the end of November and wondered if you’d be interested in taking the slot? I showed Ken, my husband, some photos of your work, and he was very impressed. We’d like to give you first refusal if you could reply asap.
An exhibition! I knew the Bond Gallery—it was an amazing space. But it was large. Would I be able to get enough paintings together for an exhibition that size? It was a tall ask. But it was such an opportunity; and it would definitely be an excellent distraction from my troubles. How good of Diane to think of me; to have that much faith in me. Though if she were to take a look in my studio and glimpse the work I’d just produced, I was pretty sure she’d withdraw her offer pretty damn quickly. Was I just setting myself up to be embarrassed and humiliated if I accepted Diane’s offer?