Page 29

Rachel

“Thank you,” I murmured politely as I accepted the cup of tea my mother offered me.

I hadn’t been surprised that she had let me in.

Appearances were everything, and she’d welcome Satan himself into her home if it meant her neighbours didn’t suspect anything was amiss.

And I’m almost certain she thought I was the spawn of Satan.

What had surprised me was how calm she was being. She had recovered quickly from her little stumble. She had simply straightened her smile and responded to my question with, “I think that’s probably for the best. I’ll put the kettle on.” And that was it. We hadn’t spoken a word since.

A cup of tea solved everything as far as my mum was concerned.

You discover the paint is too dark after decorating?

Cup of tea. Burned dinner? Tea. Your husband is spending life in prison?

Endless tea. Your daughter has just returned home, having washed the blood from her hands? Tea. All the tea. Nothing but tea.

I had closed the front door behind me, taking a quick glance over my shoulder, and kicked my boots off at the door, straightening them into a neat line just in the nick of time.

My mother had thrown many a fit over the years over something so simple as me not making sure my shoes were neat and uniform against the edge of the wall.

It just didn’t do to leave them wherever they were kicked off.

Civilised people just didn’t act that way.

I slipped off my leather jacket, hanging it on the hooks on the wall, and looked in the mirror hanging over the radiator cover, quickly straightening my hair. I had left the helmet over the handles of the bike.

I didn’t look the most presentable, but I looked less threatening out of the leathers and massive boots.

I walked into the front room, which was the same as it had always been, except my pictures had been removed from their frames on the fireplace, and the one award I had received as a child removed from the cabinet in the corner. I had been erased from this room completely.

But that was typical of my mother. She removed the dark stains in her life and never thought about them again.

Plus, the fewer reminders there were of me, the fewer people would ask questions.

Time was a healer, but my mother was in a rush.

There were no awkward questions to be had if she stopped acknowledging my existence at all.

She didn’t want to be healed. She just wanted to forget it had ever happened at all.

You can’t be healed from something that never happened.

I sat on the small beige sofa, right on the edge so I didn’t mess up the cushions at the back, and that’s when my mother had come back in with the cup of teas, almost as though she didn’t trust me enough to leave me on my own for too long.

She sat on the opposite sofa, the coffee table between us, and crossed her legs, one over the other, straightening her dress over her knees.

An uneasy silence fell over us. My mother had her nose in the air, refusing to look in my direction. She had taken a quick glance when I first knocked at the door, but had quickly looked away again.

“How have you been?” I asked finally.

“Fine,” she replied, swinging her foot gently. “And yourself?” She asked out of politeness, out of habit, more than genuine interest, but I didn’t want to begin on the wrong foot. So I answered, determined to keep any tone out of my voice that she could take offense to.

“I’m okay. I’ve been in America.”

“I know.”

“Oh,” I said simply, not really knowing what else to say. My mother and I had never really had much in common and hadn’t had much to say to each other at the best of times. And that was before we had the massive elephant in the room coming between us.

“I did write you a few times…”

“I know. I read them.” She nodded back.

“Oh,” I repeated with a nod of my own. “I, err… I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“No, you don’t,” she said with a small smile. “You always hated my taste in decor.”

“I didn’t hate it; it just wasn’t me. We’re just different.”

“Yes.”

“Mhmm,” I replied awkwardly, and looked around the room again.

“You look… Well, you look healthy. Good.” My mother said, and I almost fell off the sofa in shock.

“Thank you.”

“That hair colour suits you.”

“Natural is best, as you always told me.”

“Mhmm,” she repeated my earlier mumble, and we fell into an awkward silence again.

Fuck me, this was painful.

“Do you… do you visit much?” I asked, nodding my head to the picture on the fireplace.

“Every week.”

“And he’s… he’s okay?”

“Well, he’s not the one who’s dead,” she responded coldly, meeting my eyes for the first time since I had arrived.

“Mum—” I began, leaning forward to place my cup on the coffee table. She cut off anything else I had been about to say by standing up, snatching my cup off the table, and tutted at me. “Coaster. Are you staying for dinner?”

“I err… what?”

“I need to start dinner. Are you staying?”

“I… yes.”

“Fine. You can go upstairs and freshen up. You still have some clothes up there, and it looks as though they’ll still fit you.

Don’t come back in that hideous thing. You can have one night, Rachel.

One. And then I want you gone. I don’t know what’s brought you back here, and I don’t want to know.

I don’t care. You are my daughter, but that doesn’t mean I want you here bringing all your troubles and drama.

You’re running out of parents to take the blame for your actions.

I will let you stay here for the night because it’s the right thing to do. But in the morning. I want you gone.”

“Mum…” I began, but she cut me off.

“No, Rachel. I won’t hear it. You have never had something to tell me that didn’t come with problems. I can’t deal with any more of your problems. You are my daughter,” she repeated, tears in her eyes.

“And I will always love you, but you are not welcome here. Not until he,” she nodded at the same picture I had nodded at, “is back home where he belongs. Then we’ll talk.

For now, you get one night. Dinner will be at seven. I’ll see you then.”

Her eyes had teared up as she spoke, but she didn’t give in to her emotion. She sniffed, turned, and walked towards the kitchen.

I looked at the clock, noting that it was only two in the afternoon.

Dinner was at seven, same as it had always been.

She wouldn’t speak to me before then. My mother was more stubborn than Dante.

More stubborn than myself, even. Once she set her mind to something, she saw it through to the end.

She’d give me the bare minimum, and nothing more.

And after what I had done, I couldn’t really ask for anything else.

With hours stretching ahead of me, and being left to my own devices, I started doing some mental calculations.

I had set off around nine. It took me over four hours to get here, but that was accounting for half an hour's worth of mistakes.

If Dante had been right behind me, he would be here by now. I had sat outside the house a good fifteen minutes, and inside another fifteen.

He would have definitely noticed my absence by now. Which meant he would be looking for me.

I had stupidly left my purse behind, but I hadn’t kept my ID in there, anyway.

The Gellers had my ID, along with my passport and boarding pass.

He had no way of finding out my surname unless he rang them.

I had only been away from them a day, and they’d be recovering from jetlag and getting used to being back on US time zone.

They were eight hours behind, so it would be six there.

They were not answering the phone at six in the morning when they had just returned from a summer long trip around Europe, so even if Dante somehow managed to find their number and ring them, they wouldn’t answer.

And I had to hope they weren’t stupid enough to give him any information.

So Dante would have to find another way to find out my surname. The police hadn’t given it to them, thank God.

I’m sure a man like him was more than capable of finding out who I was, but it would take a hot minute. And then he had to join the dots to find out my parents and where they lived.

I should be okay here. I should be fine to stay until the morning, and then I could get out of here and put more distance between myself and Dante until I could either get my passport back or apply for a new one. My mother would have the documents I needed. She always filed away documents.

I could make this work. I just had to get through tonight.

Dante couldn’t possibly know where I was. He didn’t know my name, my mother, or anything about my life prior to the moment he saw me, other than the fact I had worked in America.

He couldn’t even tell you my age.

I was okay.

With those reassuring thoughts in mind, I decided to head upstairs to my old bedroom and try to take a quick nap.

There was no point dwelling on it. I had nowhere else to go right now.

Dante either found me, or he didn’t. It was out of my hands.

I just had to have hope and trust I had made the right call.