Let Me Lie(50)

‘Did she call you?’

Billy nodded. ‘We went out for a drink. Had dinner a few days later. I took her to see Simply Red at the Albert Hall, then …’ He stopped.

‘What happened?’

‘I introduced her to Tom.’

We sit in silence for a while, and I think about poor Uncle Billy, and wonder how I feel about my parents breaking his heart.

‘I saw it straight away. She’d had a laugh with me, but … I went to get the drinks, and when I came back I stood in the doorway and watched them.’

‘Oh Billy, they didn’t—’

‘No, nothing like that. Not for ages. Not till they’d both talked to me, and apologised, and said they never meant to hurt me. But they had this connection … I already knew I’d lost her.’

‘But then you all worked together. How could you bear it?’

Billy gives a rueful laugh. ‘What was I supposed to do – lose Tom, too? By the time your granddad got ill and Tom and I took over the business, you were on your way and it was water under the bridge.’ He shakes himself and turns to me with his trademark jollity. Except that I know it’s an act, and I wonder how many other times I’ve been fooled.

I wonder if Mum and Dad were fooled.

‘I love you, Uncle Billy.’

‘I love you too, sweetheart. Now, let’s get you back to that baby of yours, shall we?’

We drive back sedately, Billy cornering the Boxster like he’s in a Toyota Yaris. He drops me off outside Oak View.

‘One more sleep!’ he says, the way he used to when I was a kid. ‘I’ll see you first thing in the morning.’

‘We’ll have a great Christmas.’ I mean it. Billy didn’t let his past dictate his future, and I can’t either. Mum and Dad are gone, and whatever the circumstances of their deaths, nothing’s going to change that.

Joan isn’t due back with Ella for another hour. Ignoring the damp seeping through my running clothes, I put on an apron and make two batches of mince pies. I fill the slow cooker with red wine, orange slices and spices, pour in a generous slug of brandy and turn the heat on low. The doorbell rings, and I rinse my hands and look for a towel. It rings again.

‘All right, I’m coming!’

Rita barks, just once, and I put my hand on her collar, half to chastise, half in reassurance. She lets out a series of miniature growls like a revving engine, but doesn’t bark again. Her wagging tail tells me there’s nothing amiss.

Our front door is painted white, with a stained-glass panel across the top half that catches the afternoon sun and throws colours onto the tiled floor. When visitors arrive, their silhouettes stretch out across the floor, interrupting the rainbow. As a child, I would tiptoe around the edges of the hall when I answered the door. Stepping through someone’s shadow felt like walking on a grave.

The winter sun is low, and the visitor’s outline stretches thin like the reflection in a carnival mirror, their head almost touching the base of the bannister. A child again, I skirt the wall towards the door. Rita has no such qualms. She bounds across the shadow, her claws skittering, and comes to a skidding halt by the front door.

I turn the key. Open the door.

And then the world falls silent and all I can hear is the blood pounding in my head. I see a car pass in the street but it makes no noise because the drumming in my ears beats faster and faster, and I put out my hand to steady myself but it isn’t enough and my knees are buckling beneath me, and it can’t be – it can’t be.

But there on the step. Somehow different. And yet the same.

There on the step, undeniably alive, is my mother.





PART TWO





TWENTY-SEVEN


ANNA


I have lost the power of speech. I have lost the power of thought. A thousand questions race around my head and I wonder if perhaps I’ve gone mad. If I’m imagining that my mother – my dead mother – is standing on my top step.

Her hair – long, and kept ash-blonde for as long as I can remember it – has been dyed black, the length cropped harshly to above her chin. She wears unflattering wire-framed glasses and a shapeless, baggy dress unlike anything I’ve ever seen her in.

‘Mum?’ I whisper it, afraid that speaking out loud will break whatever spell has been cast, and that my mother – this odd new version of my mother – will vanish as quickly as she appeared.

She opens her mouth, but it seems I’m not the only one lost for words. I see the tears build above her lower lashes, and as they fall I feel wetness on my own cheeks.

‘Mum?’ Louder, this time, but still hesitant. I don’t know what’s happening, but I don’t want to question it. My mother has come back to me. I’ve been given a second chance. Pressure builds in my chest and it seems impossible my ribs can contain the thumping coming from my heart. I let go of Rita, because I can’t breathe and I need my arms free; I need to put my hands on my face, to feel that I’m real because this can’t be happening.

It can’t be happening.

Rita springs forward and jumps at Mum, licking her hands and weaving between her legs, whining and wagging her tail furiously. My mother, whose frozen stance has until now mirrored mine, bends to fuss her, and the familiar movement releases an involuntary gasp from within me, as though I’m emerging from water.