Chapter 38
Mallory
She looks the same.
Stylish. Neat. Her hair remains a silvery grey, cropped short, her lipstick a subtle shade of red – not overpowering, but enough to be noticeable.
A refined statement. Her clothes hang perfectly around her small, angular frame.
An oversized trench. Black boots and tidily fitting trousers with a deadstraight crease down the front of each leg.
She is holding the handle of her suitcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other.
It isn’t raining. The umbrella is the same shade of peacock blue as her nails.
‘Is there a camera on the doorbell? I didn’t want to touch it in case it exploded.
’ Her voice sends an age-old warning into my bloodstream.
She’s here, she has arrived and she is using the accent.
The accent I forget about (or choose not to remember) until I hear it: altered to remove any trace of evidence that she grew up on Druids Heath council estate, in deepest Birmingham.
Her posh accent. A deflection from the truth.
Exactly how she likes it.
But I know the truth. I know that the clothes she is wearing have been meticulously chosen from Vinted.
The nail varnish from , and the umbrella from a charity shop.
She will have spent weeks looking for the perfect one.
No one would guess. But I know. I know my mother.
She is brilliant at it. At appearing how she wishes to.
They said something in AA... Fake it till you make it. And she is living proof that you can.
‘Oh, yes – that’s just another one of Ronan’s gadgets.’
‘Fancy.’ She takes a few steps back from the porch, moving her eyeline up the exterior walls of the house. ‘I forgot how beautiful it is.’
I wait, watching her take it in, attempting to calm the adrenaline that has come with me from the kitchen, now ringing in my ears. I hone in on the top edge of what appears to be a wilted tissue, sticking out of the top of my mother’s coat pocket.
She would hate that I can see it.
I can still feel Ronan’s fingers around my wrist.
‘You look well,’ I say. ‘You look really great, Mum.’
‘Thanks, you too,’ she says, still looking up.
I find myself glancing behind her, to where Leo stood two weeks ago covered in blood. Part of me wonders if I will see him around still, crouching, hiding behind a car. Part of me wants that. For him to disrupt this. To make it go away.
Mum’s eyes lock onto something and narrow. ‘Is the wisteria trunk broken?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I answer, shrugging. ‘I’m not sure how.’
‘That’s such a shame – it won’t flower.’
‘It’s cold, are you coming in?’ She looks at me, eyes widening a fraction at the sharpness in my tone. I smile to offset it. ‘It’s so nice to see you!’
As she advances towards me, the heels of her little boots clicking on the pathway, I hesitate, wondering if there will be a hug or a kiss on the cheek, and I can see she is wondering the same thing.
Undiscussed, we opt for a jolty hug, with a pat on the back.
‘It’s nice to see you, too, Mallory,’ she says into my ear.
I fight a shudder. I can smell her. Lavender soap.
She has used that soap since I was young.
I impulsively squeeze my eyelids tightly closed, in an attempt to shut down the memories that threaten to flood my consciousness with the scent.
When she lets go, she moves past me, into the hallway, leaving her suitcase on the step. ‘Did you repaint in here? It looks bigger. Oh, Mal, it’s so nice.’ She straightens out her coat sleeves.
‘Go through,’ I say. ‘I’ll bring your bag.’
I close the door with my foot and pull the bag along the tiles on its wheels, following her down the hallway and into the kitchen.
I was wrong. She does look a little different.
She looks – dare I say it – older. It’s not in her features, but in the way she moves.
More timidly, trepidatiously, which jars slightly with the way I’ve always thought of her.
She’s in her sixties now, but it’s the first time I’ve ever really seen her as ageing.
She would loathe that.
‘Stacey!’ Ronan’s voice bounces off the work surfaces. ‘Oh my God, you look – amazing! Is that a new coat?’
‘Ronan!’ I hear the Brummie slip out as she careers straight towards him, arms open.
Her poise slips. It sometimes does when she’s excited, angry or taken off guard.
This is the former. ‘It is new! Sweet of you to notice.’ From the kitchen doorway – where I linger momentarily – I see him practically pick her up into a hug, so her feet nearly leave the floor.
When he releases her, she is giddy, like a child, light-headed at a theme park.
‘Here, take this,’ he says, handing her a glass of wine from the top of the island.
‘Oh – I shouldn’t, it’s only six o’clock.’
‘You absolutely should,’ he protests. His eyes are glinting. He’s undone his tie and his top button. He looks so handsome. ‘How was the journey?’
‘The train was incredibly busy,’ she says, taking the wine, posh voice resuming. She lowers its volume. ‘But thank you so much.’
He winks at her. ‘Don’t mention it.’
Mum takes a sip from her glass, then makes a pleasurable groan. ‘Oh, that’s lovely – just what I need—’
‘Don’t mention what?’ I interject, pulling the suitcase down the step onto the herringbone kitchen floor so it clunks loudly, alerting them to my presence.
Mum turns, a little startled, as if she had forgotten I existed. ‘Oh!’ She glances playfully at Ronan in a way that makes my jaw clench. ‘Oh – whoops. I wasn’t meant to say.’ She mouths to him: Sorry.
‘Sorry for what?’ I look at Ronan. ‘What?’
He smiles back at Mum in a way that is so secretive, so coded with the nuance of a gated-community in-joke that it makes me imagine throwing the suitcase at him.
His head splits open, blood pouring over the marble countertop, and Mum is desperately attempting to stem the bleeding with her little wilted tissue.
She turns to me. ‘Ronan booked me into first class.’
‘Oh!’ I say.
‘It was incredibly kind of him.’
‘We couldn’t have you standing by the toilets for two hours,’ he says, winking again. He winks a lot around my mother.
I make myself busy, pushing the suitcase against the wall. ‘That’s so nice – I’m glad.’
When I turn back round, Ronan is right in front of me, his hand out, holding a glass of what appears to be tomato juice.
‘Here, darling.’ He kisses me on the forehead, then places his hand gently on the base of my spine.
When he removes it, a tingling feeling remains in the exact place he touched me.
‘Oh, lovely – thank you.’
Everything is lovely.
And everyone is polite.
‘Are you not drinking at the moment, Mal?’ Mum says, in a way that sounds more like an allegation than a question, then takes a large gulp of her wine.
‘No – no. Not at the moment...’
‘I suppose that makes sense.’
I nod. ‘But please, you enjoy it!’
She smiles – I intend to – then turns on the spot, looking at the walls, the pendant light hanging from the ceiling. Still giddy, eyes wide with awe. ‘God. It always feels like I’m on holiday when I’m here.’
Ronan laughs loudly. ‘Good! That’s exactly what we want. Mal, take your mother’s coat, for God’s sake!’
‘Yes, of course – Mum?’
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘Get comfortable, Stace,’ he says.
In the moment that follows, I watch my mother’s face change, just slightly, into the smallest wince.
It would be unnoticeable to anyone else, but I see it, because I have seen it before.
The wince is not directed at Ronan, but at herself.
She hates her name. She hates being called Stace even more than Stacey.
And for as long as I can remember she has made a point to correct people. But she has never corrected Ronan.
To her, both versions are ‘common as muck’, but at least Stacey is a little less – for want of a better word – basic. She has worked so hard. All her life. She has worked so hard to appear not basic.
She slips her arms out through her sleeves and hands the coat to me, eyes roaming around the kitchen. ‘Have you painted the hall, Ronan?’
‘Ah – yes, I did, about six months ago. It’s just a slightly lighter shade.’
‘It makes the place look bigger. If that’s possible. Well done you.’
He nods. ‘Thanks!’
I picked it.
I picked the slightly lighter shade.
I notice that in the time it took me to open the front door, Ronan has lit the candles. The ones we save for important people. The Diptyque set in their earthenware containers.
‘You’ll have to see the dormer conversion,’ I say, ‘I had so much fun designing it.’ I hear my own voice, altered slightly, almost morphing into hers. Competing.
Already competing.
‘Oh, wonderful,’ Mum says, not taking her eyes from Ronan.
Is she tipsy already? She has always been a lightweight to both mid-priced white wine and Ronan’s magnetism. I just can’t tell which it is that is getting her high.
As I take her coat back into the hallway and begin to hang it in the cupboard, I hear eruptions of her laughter behind me – at a pitch and frequency that I know is completely authentic.
He is so good at making her laugh. I’ve never known anyone to do it.
Around others – me included – she has always been so serious.
There is something else in her pocket. Along with the wilted tissue.
I pause. I don’t want to look, but my hand seems to reach down without any consideration or desire to gain approval from my brain. I glance down at my palm, half squinting, as if whatever is in it will disturb me less through a blur.
A half-empty packet of Polo mints. The foil twisted at the end where she has opened them.