The Bad Mother Read online

  ‘Oh, a lifetime ago!’ The woman walked further into the room, running a hand along the back of a chair then going to look out at the view. ‘The beach hasn’t changed. It’s just like I remember.’ She turned and sank down on the window seat. ‘You’ve done a fabulous job,’ she said, her eyes on Tessa rather than the decor.

  ‘I’m sorry that we can’t accommodate you,’ Tessa responded politely. ‘Let me show you the breakfast room.’ She moved encouragingly towards the door, but the woman continued to sit and take in her surroundings. ‘All our food is organic and locally sourced,’ Tessa added, taking another step backwards. This time the woman rose and followed her.

  The breakfast room, in neutral creams with classic chintz curtains, was big enough for one large and four small tables with twelve matching chairs, all modern and the least ostentatious Tessa had been able to find. Although the woman’s gaze travelled approvingly around the room, Tessa again had a sense that her thoughts were elsewhere. Perhaps, Tessa thought, she was remembering some family holiday here long ago and this visit was not professional after all, but merely nostalgic.

  ‘Our email is on the brochure and the website. Do get in touch if you’d like to make a future booking.’ Tessa spoke briskly, glancing deliberately at her watch.

  The woman gave a deep sigh. ‘Thanks, but I’m only over for a few days.’ She nodded to herself, and then led the way back to the front door. There she turned and held out her hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Tessa.’

  Noticing her expensive fashion rings and varnished nails, Tessa shook the offered hand but avoided the slightly searching gaze. ‘Goodbye. Have a safe trip home.’

  Tessa closed the door with relief. She doubted the woman had truly wanted to stay here, imagining rather than she had rung the doorbell on a passing whim. Repeat business was good, but one of its hazards was that people often wanted to share their memories – of first meetings, honeymoons, long-dead parents, grown-up children. At least the woman hadn’t produced photographs over which Tessa would’ve had to fake some interest. She remembered she hadn’t shut the doll’s house properly, and went to fix the little padlocks top and bottom that prevented any curious guest from rearranging its contents. With a final satisfied glance that everything was properly in order, she resumed the tasks of her busy day.

  TWO

  As the nearest road bridge was several miles inland, it was almost as quick for Tessa to walk to her parents’ house as to drive. The next morning she set out along the footpath that led to the narrow metal bridge over the river. The sea, a distant freshness, lay to her left; she’d noticed as she left the house that the tide was on the turn. She’d lived by the coast all her life, growing up half a mile inland in her parents’ Edwardian semi but always adoring Grandma Averil’s seafront terrace. She had been surprised, during her few years away at college, by how much she missed the sea’s constant and pervasive presence. Even indoors a quick glance out at the sky, the gulls, the wind animating garden hedges and bushes, and she could predict the colour of the water and the size and appearance of the waves. Out of doors she could tell by the smell and dampness of the air when a storm was brewing miles out to sea.

  Her grandmother’s attic room, in which she used occasionally to sleep as a child, now belonged to her son, and she was pretty sure that Mitch loved it as much as she had at his age. When he was a baby and she’d needed to feed him during the night, she’d loved to sit there enclosed in the darkness with him in her arms listening, even in the wildest weather, to the familiar sounds of the sea. And even now, when he was at school and she had a little time to herself, she would sometimes rest on the window seat, stare out at the mesmerising waves and clouds and allow herself to be soothed.

  As she walked, Tessa’s thoughts once again became occupied with the conversation she needed to have with Sam. When had they stopped truly sharing their lives? She had to admit that it was probably some time before Grandma Averil had died. In her will Averil had, with Pamela’s full approbation, left everything to Tessa, and while Sam was in London Tessa had been excited to pour her energies into a complete makeover of the B&B, cherishing the house she’d always loved and finally making real all the ideas that Grandma Averil had dismissed as unnecessary. On Sam’s irregular visits home it had seemed easy enough to ignore their lack of physical intimacy; after all, they’d been married fifteen years by then. Equally committed to building on their talents now they had the freedom to do so, they’d simply never questioned that each passionately supported the other’s potential. And yet something had been lost.

  On Sam’s eventual return to Felixham, Tessa’s inheritance had enabled him to secure a mortgage on an abandoned joinery in the High Street. It had always been his dream to open his own restaurant, and she wholeheartedly applauded his decision. The town centre needed a bistro-diner that would please both locals and weekenders and draw those tourists attracted by Felixham’s retro chic, and the synergy of recommending his brasserie to her guests for lunches and dinner was perfect. She and Sam had even insisted to their sceptical kids that he’d rented the studio flat only to avoid getting drawn back into the day-to-day running of the B&B and to be next door to the joinery while he concentrated on its conversion. But she had been foolish to believe in the fiction they’d spun to everyone else. The brasserie was due to open in a matter of weeks, and it was time to put a stop to the pretence and get their marriage back on track.

  Leaving the estuary marshes, Tessa now turned onto the lane that served the ribbon of sixties houses that fringed South Felixham, picking out her parents’ driveway by the clump of pampas grass in the middle of their lawn. Hugo and Pamela had moved into the small detached house soon after Hugo’s retirement. He’d worked all his life for the local brewery, ending up as a senior manager, and Tessa suspected that he still missed the company.

  She spotted a pile of discarded twigs on the lawn and Pamela’s grey head bobbing about behind a flowering shrub where she was cutting away dead winter wood.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ she said, returning Pamela’s preoccupied wave as she made for the front door.

  Hugo responded swiftly to the chiming front-door bell. ‘Hello, Tessie,’ he said. ‘Come on in. Got something for you to try, a new bread recipe. Used a different sort of flour this time, and …

  He petered out, and Tessa turned to seek the reason for his distraction. A local taxi had drawn up by their driveway and inside it Tessa could make out the blonde woman who had wanted to look around the B&B yesterday.

  ‘Who is that?’ she asked, faintly annoyed. ‘What is she doing here?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Hugo, peering short-sightedly. ‘Must have the wrong house.’

  But the woman paid the driver and got out of the car. She wore a smart pink tweed suit and gold earrings, and her nails were the same scarlet as yesterday. Catching sight of Tessa standing beside Hugo, she looked almost as if she might retreat. But the taxi drove off, so she settled her handbag firmly over one arm and came forward, an uncertain smile on her face.

  ‘Hello again,’ said Tessa.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here.’ The woman turned to Hugo, who stood mystified beside Tessa. ‘It is Hugo, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do I know you?’

  Pamela emerged from behind the shrubbery, staring at the woman, who smiled tentatively back. Pamela dropped her secateurs and handful of cuttings and ran forward. ‘Erin!’

  Hugo and Tessa both looked more sharply at the woman.

  ‘Aunt Erin?’ Tessa asked.

  Erin, abashed, nodded in confirmation. Pamela pulled off her gardening gloves and threw her arms around her sister.

  ‘Oh, Erin! My God, you gave me such a shock!’ she cried. Tessa had never before seen her mother so elated. ‘When did you get here? You never said you were coming! Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Last-minute decision.’

  Seized in her sister’s embrace, Erin closed her eyes and held tight for a
long, long moment.

  Tessa kept her eyes on Hugo, who turned ashen and took a step back, unconsciously clenching and unclenching his hands. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked as soon as the women finally let go of one another.

  ‘Hugo, I promise you I’m not here to upset anyone,’ said Erin. Tessa could see how nervous and pale she was under her suntan and glossy hair. ‘I only came to … I had a chance to come to London on business,’ she recovered herself, ‘and I wanted to see Felixham again. I didn’t plan on disturbing any of you. I really didn’t.’

  ‘Disturbing us?’ interrupted Pamela, clearly hurt. ‘Oh, Erin, don’t be ridiculous! How could you think it?’

  ‘We appreciate that, Erin,’ said Hugo, his voice carrying a note of warning that Tessa did not understand.

  ‘Seeing the old house yesterday …’ Erin went on.

  ‘She came to look round,’ Tessa explained.

  Hugo looked furious, but Erin nodded and laughed. ‘I just had to see the old place again. Couldn’t help myself. So I rang the bell.’ She smiled apologetically at Tessa.

  ‘But why didn’t you say anything?’ Tessa asked. ‘You told me you’d stayed there before. You should’ve introduced yourself.’

  Hugo clenched his hands into fists again, and Erin looked in appeal at Pamela before she spoke. ‘I wasn’t sure what to say. Whether you’d know who I was.’

  ‘Oh, Erin!’ said Pamela again, reaching out to stroke her arm. Tessa could make no sense of the anguish in her mother’s voice. ‘When did you arrive? Why on earth didn’t you tell me you wanted to come?’

  Erin turned to Tessa. ‘Your mother—’ she shot a look at Hugo, ‘has sent me lots of photos over the years, of you, and of Mitch and Lauren too, of course. And Sam – what a dish! Pamela’s been wonderful about keeping me up to date.’

  Hugo appeared to relent slightly. ‘You’d better come in,’ he said, holding open the door.

  ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ said Pamela. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually here! After all these years.’

  The normally undemonstrative Pamela took hold of Erin’s hand to lead her inside, leaving Tessa and Hugo on the doorstep. Tessa looked to him for an explanation but he shook his head and turned to follow them indoors. She detained him. ‘Dad?’ she asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  Hugo seemed to collapse inwardly, his spare features suddenly gaunt. He gripped her shoulders. ‘You know how much we love you, don’t you, Tessie?’

  ‘Of course.’ Tessa was taken aback; though generous in his affection, Hugo seldom spoke about his feelings. ‘But whatever’s the matter? I don’t understand.’

  He made an effort to smile, though his grip on her shoulders tightened. ‘Nothing! It’s just the shock of seeing her here again after so long. I didn’t expect it. I don’t see why she’s suddenly decided to come back.’ He sighed and stroked Tessa’s hair – an unaccustomed gesture. ‘You’d better come in.’

  THREE

  When Tessa entered the kitchen she found her mother and Erin standing side by side at the worktop, a steaming kettle, open biscuit tin and plate half covered with Pamela’s homemade shortbread beside them. Erin looked around guiltily, and Tessa saw that she was comforting Pamela, who was weeping, oblivious to Tessa’s presence.

  ‘I couldn’t bear it,’ Pamela was saying between sobs. ‘It was the worst day of my life. I’ve never got over it, what we did to you. I’m so sorry, Erin. So sorry.’

  Erin flapped her hand at Tessa, urging her back out of the kitchen. Tessa obeyed, closing the door behind her. She stood in the empty hallway, the low sun shining through the ribbed glass of the front door, muddy marks from Pamela’s gardening shoes on the usually spotless oatmeal carpet. She listened to the ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the hall table. It had been presented to Hugo’s father on his retirement from the brewery, where he had been a driver, as had his father before him, though her great-grandfather had taken care of horses rather than engines. She looked at the picture hanging on the wall above it, a reproduction of an Edwardian flower painting that used to hang in the guests’ breakfast room at the Seafront B&B and that Pamela had salvaged from Tessa’s refurbishment. Tessa had known these items all her life, but never before had she seen her mother cry like that.

  She went into the lounge where she found Hugo standing at the picture window looking out onto the muted April colours of the sheltered back garden. He turned to her with a stricken expression she could not read.

  ‘What’s going on, Dad?’

  He seemed unable to find words. Instead he came and wrapped his arms around her in the kind of bear hug he used to offer when she was a little girl. Letting go, he said merely: ‘We’d better wait for them.’

  Out of habit, Tessa plumped some cushions on the couch before she sat down. She had never met Erin before, but her long-lost aunt’s clandestine visit to the B&B yesterday and her decision to turn up unannounced here today seemed to Tessa not only pointless but also mean and unfair. Although Grandma Averil used to talk about her younger daughter, and showed pride in Erin’s life in Australia and her career in the travel business, Tessa had always assumed everyone was content with little more than the sending and receiving of Christmas cards. Certainly she could recollect no plans to visit, nor even any regular phone calls. But it was obvious now that the apparent placidity of these relationships had not been due to indifference. Tessa felt deeply wary of this unknown woman; the fact that Erin could provoke such strength of feeling in her normally reserved parents left her cross and resentful. She hoped her aunt would soon go back where she belonged.

  Erin came in carrying a tray laden with coffee, cups and plates. ‘Pamela’s nipped upstairs to change out of her gardening clothes,’ she told Hugo brightly, and then took charge of serving the coffee.

  ‘So what took you to London?’ Hugo asked with studied politeness when Erin had settled with her own cup. ‘Have you been over before?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Always avoided it.’ She flushed. ‘I mean, most of my work is with the Far East. Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, rather than Europe.’

  ‘So why now?’

  ‘One of the airlines had a promotion. My company puts a lot of business their way. And a first-class seat makes everything so much easier!’ Erin spoke with a professionally friendly manner that Tessa recognised from her own interaction with guests. The familiarity made her look at her aunt with fresh interest; maybe now that the first shock was over, they would all be their normal selves again. ‘I’m not even sure if I’ve ever been to London before,’ Erin went on. ‘Strange. Somehow, being an expat, I automatically imagined I knew it well.’

  They fell silent, and sat sipping their coffee until Pamela came in carrying the plate of shortbread. She had brushed her hair and put on a little powder and lipstick, though Tessa could discern faint traces of puffiness around her eyes. Hugo, too, looked closely at her as she handed around biscuits for which no one had any appetite.

  Pamela took a seat on the couch beside Erin. Both sat straight-backed. They were of almost identical height, and had the same clear foreheads and wide mouths, though Erin’s features seemed somehow stronger, less faded. Pamela, nine years older, was grey-haired and narrow-shouldered, but Tessa could see that they would be immediately recognisable as sisters.

  As Hugo asked more inconsequential questions about Erin’s flight and where she’d stayed in London, Tessa was soothed by the evident intention to smooth over the shock of her arrival. Yet she couldn’t help being curious about what she’d overheard in the kitchen. ‘What made you decide to go to Australia in the first place?’ she asked.

  The others stiffened and exchanged furtive glances. Once again Tessa was piqued by the ability of a stranger to arouse in her parents a force of emotion they had never shown towards her. No one answered, so Tessa let the question hang in the air for a moment before probing further. ‘You must have been quite young?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ said Erin. ‘Same age as your kids, right
? What, Lauren’s fourteen and Mitch seventeen?’

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Tessa, surprised that she was so well informed.

  ‘So young,’ murmured Pamela.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Erin went on. ‘Last time I was here, you were a babe in arms. And look at you now – all grown up, kids of your own, flourishing business.’

  Tessa shrugged politely, suddenly wondering if perhaps Erin had come to make trouble over Grandma Averil’s will. If so, she would fight: the B&B had been left in its entirety to her because for the past decade, without the hard graft she and Sam had put in, it would not have survived. Besides, Sam’s new restaurant depended on the security of her inheritance and she wasn’t about to have that interfered with.

  ‘What made you change your mind? Why have you come back now?’ pressed Hugo.

  ‘Cousin Brenda died,’ Pamela answered for Erin. ‘That’s why, isn’t it?’

  Erin nodded, her expression sad as she smoothed her pink skirt over her knees. Recovering, she turned to Tessa. ‘Brenda was my second cousin,’ she explained, ‘and a second mother too. I lived with her family when I first went to Sydney. She was wonderful to me.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Hugo.

  ‘She passed away three months ago,’ Erin told him, ‘of breast cancer.’

  ‘My condolences,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘If Erin had stayed, our lives would have been very different,’ said Pamela.

  ‘She could have come back any time she wanted,’ Hugo told her sharply. He turned to Erin. ‘We never stopped you.’

  ‘Mum didn’t want me here,’ said Erin.

  ‘That’s not true,’ objected Pamela.

  ‘She made me promise to stay away.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. You weren’t supposed to know, but … She did what she thought was best.’

  ‘We thought you might’ve come to her funeral,’ said Hugo.

  ‘It was too difficult, after so much time.’