Page 58 of Love Unlocked

She hugs her mother but it’s not as tight as she’d like because of the muddy apron and gloves. Her mother is keeping distance – like an air hug. Melody could have done with more, a squeeze and a hold, someone to hold her in place, to stop the springs and screws from falling out of her completely because she’s still shaken from her encounter with Sam. She follows her busy mother around the side of the house, who points out things she’s doing and needs to do this month for the garden, readying it for the spring planting. She’s distracted by her monumental tasks that must be done before she loses light.

‘Do you have time for a break?’ Melody asks. ‘I’ll make you tea.’

‘Okay,’ Belinda says reluctantly, eyes racing across the garden with a list of things to do in her mind. ‘Yes, that would be nice. I’ll have camomile, please. I’ll just finish up here.’

Melody enters the kitchen. She heats the teapot, locates the teacups. Belinda is old-school and likes teacups and saucers, and, like the interiors of the house, and her mother’s wardrobe, the patterns are gloriously mismatched.

Belinda’s hair was always fire-engine red, dyed, and now she has left it to go naturally grey, apart from two bright red streaks in the front which she leaves down as the grey is pinned back. Melody sits at the green wooden table, and green wooden chairs, with mismatched cushions on each seat, and watches her mother hunched over her beds, in the bright day. The kitchen feels different. Silent. No mucus-clearing coughs, no rustling newspaper, no radio with a political debate or anything from Porgy and Bess. A ticking clock in the hall is the only sound. The house is lighter, emptier, echoey. All of Derek’s clutter is gone. A pain rises in her chest, an ache of loss. How hurt he must feel, at seventy-five years old, to be turfed out on his own.

She raps on the window and Belinda begrudgingly drops her tools and slowly gets to her feet. She stretches her aching joints and comes inside to wash her hands.

‘The cottage looks so different,’ Melody remarks.

‘Doesn’t it look better?’ She sits at the table. ‘I can hear myself think again. It was taking him so long to come and collect his things I had a brainwave and put everything in the camper van and told him to take that, so he drove away with everything, which was handy.’

It seems so cruel, she can’t understand how her mum could be like this, as though a spell has been cast over her. ‘What happened?’

Belinda sighs. ‘I don’t really want to get into it but it began over his jigsaw puzzle. You know the way he takes over the entire table with his horrendous puzzles. This was a particularly difficult one that was taking him months. Months, Melody,’ she says, rolling her eyes and getting agitated at just the thought of it. ‘He was finding one puzzle piece a day if he was lucky. It was a dark Dutch painting, I can’t remember what it’s called. Miserable. Unless it was a pear, or an orange, all the pieces looked the same. He was never going to finish it. It was taking up so much space, I couldn’t invite anyone over and he wouldn’t let me move it. And I just flipped.’

It sounded very much like the dishwasher argument. About the dishwasher but not at all about the dishwasher.

‘How are you now?’

‘I’m great thank you, love, as you can see, busy, busy.’

‘So … no regrets?’

‘None.’ Belinda’s eyes flash with defiance and Melody leaves it alone. ‘I see you survived your nights alone?’

‘I took a gig on the first night. And then the second night …’ a silly smile arrives on Melody’s face quite unexpectedly. ‘I met a guy, a really gorgeous guy, and I stayed with him.’

‘That’s nice, love,’ she says pleasantly, the smile not reaching her eyes. She sips her tea.

She’d expected her mother to want to hear the juicy gossip.

‘Do you not want to know about him?’

‘Should I?’

‘What do you mean? If you care, I’ll tell you, but if you’re not bothered, I won’t.’

‘I suppose I’m hesitant, Melody, because you’re never really that bothered. I don’t want to get invested in the poor man and then he’s never seen nor heard of again. But that’s okay because that’s how you want it.’ She leaves a silence. ‘I actually understand you now.’ She looks around the kitchen again and then closes her eyes, hands hugging the teacup. ‘Being alone is bliss.’

‘How are you at night?’

‘Absolutely perfectly fine.’ She’s almost chirping, but there’s something daring in her voice and her eyes.

‘But you were in love with Derek. It seems so sudden.’

‘But what is love, pet? Being slowly driven crazy by someone? Losing your identity as you get pulled into their stratosphere of what they want all of the time. Their needs, their problems. I have enough of my own thank you. I’ll use my energies to look after myself. We enter the world alone, and we die alone. Who said we had to couple up in the middle?’

Melody doesn’t want to die alone. She can’t even sleep alone. ‘I thought you enjoyed travelling with him.’

‘We went where he wanted to go all of the time. If we chose my spots then I couldn’t stand the complaining so I went along with his because it was easier. I slowly disappeared, Melody, my soul was being zapped, sucked into his. That’s what love is. A kind of vortex where you lose yourself.’

Melody stares at her, aghast. She somehow doesn’t believe anything she’s saying. ‘Is there somebody else?’

‘Well yes, there is as a matter of fact.’