The Detection Collection Page 15

  If these clothes seemed all too familiar, even dreary, the evening dresses she pulled out of the wardrobe more than made up for it. There were four of them, all brand new, all long and slinky, in bright satiny fabrics with glittery straps and embroidered tops. She’d hesitated over the red one because its low-cut back would necessitate going bra-less, not something she was too confident about, but when she’d phoned from the shop Debbie had brushed her doubts aside. ‘Go for it, girl,’ she’d cried. ‘Don’t give it a second thought. You’ve got great boobs! Sport ’em and flaunt ’em, I say!’ And Melanie, in a surge of recklessness, had bought not only the dress but an expensive pair of matching shoes as well.

  She hung the four evening dresses high on the wardrobe door and stood back to admire them. Even in the gloomy November light they shimmered and gleamed like jewels. Though she could never hope to compete with Debbie in the beauty department, with these outfits she could at least match her for style. And they had chosen a cruise where style was going to count. Thirteen nights on the QM2, New York to the Caribbean and back.

  Originally they’d thought of going on a package to St Lucia, but most of the resorts there seemed to be geared to couples or families, while the rest didn’t offer much in the way of social fixtures, and both women agreed they wanted somewhere with a bit of life to it – Debbie because she was naturally sociable, Melanie because she’d always feared missing out. Brought up in a neat semi, the only child of quiet, home-loving parents, she’d felt from a young age that life would always pass her by, a suspicion that had deepened in adolescence and been reinforced ever since. But with Debbie there was no danger of missing out, and for once in her life Melanie could look forward to being in the thick of things.

  Fanning out the skirt of the red dress, seeing the way it caught the light, Melanie had the overwhelming urge to tell Debbie how wonderful it looked. During the week, unless Debbie was especially busy in her hairdressing salon, they usually spoke mid-morning, Debbie chattering about the laughs they’d have on holiday and the people they’d meet and the champagne they’d drink ‘morning, noon and bloody night’ while Melanie laughed, and fought back tears of gratitude because she couldn’t believe how lucky she was to have such a friend, someone who had not only scooped her up and set her back on her feet when she was at her lowest ebb, but now, astonishingly, was coming on holiday with her.

  But it was Saturday morning, the salon’s busiest time. Melanie phoned a little nervously, and wasn’t surprised to wait a good two minutes before Debbie came on the line.

  ‘Sorry,’ Melanie said immediately. ‘Is it a bad time?’

  ‘It’s a madhouse,’ Debbie declared with satisfaction.

  ‘I’ll call back later, shall I?’

  ‘No!’ Debbie exclaimed, with a snap of her lighter and an audible intake of smoke. ‘Let ’em wait. I’ve been dying for a cig.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve just been laying out my clothes.’

  There was a puzzled pause. ‘Laying out? As in flat?’

  ‘Putting them where I can see them.’ In case Debbie should think this a bit odd, Melanie added quickly, ‘To make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.’

  ‘Oh, right! Bloody hell, Mel, wish I was half as organised as you. But you know me – I’ll be up till two the night before, chucking things in and out of suitcases. Packing for England.’ Debbie gave her distinctive throaty chuckle. ‘Never have been able to get my act together.’

  ‘It’s two weeks tomorrow. I can hardly believe it.’

  ‘Well, it can’t come a moment too bloody soon, that’s for sure!’ Debbie liked nothing better than to complain about her business and her clients, both of which she adored.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s really happening.’ Melanie’s voice caught with emotion.

  ‘’Course it’s happening! And you and me are going to be the belles of the ball.’

  ‘The red dress – it’s so lovely, Debbie.’

  ‘Just wait till you make your grand entrance. They won’t know what’s hit ’em.’

  ‘Oh, Debbie …’

  ‘Now, don’t get all wobbly on me,’ Debbie said kindly.

  ‘No, no … I’m just so happy to be going, that’s all.’

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Even when you could have gone with anyone?’

  ‘Well, I’m not going with anyone, am I? I’m going with you.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Oops,’ Debbie cried suddenly. ‘Got to rush. My next lady’s getting restless. Bye, now, darling. You take care, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now, you’ll call me if you start to get wobbly, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Good girl,’ she sang. ‘And, Mel …?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That dress is going to knock ’em dead!’

  She laughed as she rang off, and Melanie felt a fresh wave of relief. However often Debbie might reassure her, Melanie could never shake off the worry that her new friend would have second thoughts about the holiday and wish she was going with one of her more outgoing girlfriends, not to mention one of the two men she was currently stepping out with. Debbie said she wanted a rest from men, that they were too much like hard work, but Melanie couldn’t believe she really meant it. Debbie had been married twice, admittedly, and was never short of admirers, but to reject all men on principle seemed unwise. Melanie could only hope that, after all the support Debbie had given her, she didn’t find the holiday a disappointment.

  Melanie’s terrible year had started with her fortieth birthday, which she’d been quietly dreading for some time. To be single at thirty was a disappointment, but at forty it was an admission of failure. People began to think there must be something wrong with you, and deep in her heart Melanie suspected they were right. She’d been married once, in her early twenties, to a cabinetmaker called Darren who’d upped and left after less than a year, saying he couldn’t stick marriage after all. She thought she’d never get over the shock, but at that age you can get over almost anything and within six months she’d persuaded herself that she was well rid of him. As the years passed, though, she’d begun to look back on the loss of Darren with something like regret. She wondered if he hadn’t been her best bet after all, that with more effort she might have kept him, though quite what form this effort might have taken she couldn’t think, since she’d been the one to do all the shopping and cooking, cleaning and ironing, saving and budgeting.

  After Darren, love had never seemed to come her way. There’d been occasional drink-fuelled episodes with men she could barely bring herself to look at the next morning. There’d been men who’d made it clear they wanted to keep it at friendship. And there’d been a couple of relationships she’d had hopes for which had fizzled out for no apparent reason. She began to wonder if she put men off in some way, but when she went back over everything she’d said, the gestures she’d made, the expressions she’d used, she could never work out what it might be. She wasn’t especially pretty, of course, and she’d put on a bit of weight over the years, but you only had to see the wives of some of the men at work to realise that plain looks were no barrier to getting a good man. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t make the most of herself, dressing neatly in the bright colours that suited her best, having her hair cut by Debbie, and going up to London for her clothes. Once, a man had remarked on how well groomed she was, a compliment she had treasured over the years and done her best to live up to. But grooming clearly wasn’t enough, and after all this time she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever find out what was.

  Debbie suggested she might be setting her sights too high, but if you didn’t aim for love, what was the point? And it wasn’t as if Melanie didn’t know what love meant. Ever since childhood, she’d enjoyed a vivid inner world, which, as she grew older, intensified into a rich, all-enveloping dream-life
, an exquisite universe of beauty and success, misunderstandings and reconciliations, love and rapture. Most of the time she loved dream-men, singers or film stars or TV celebrities, but then, out of the blue, it would be someone at the insurance company where she worked, a handsome man glimpsed in the canteen or through the glass partition of a meeting room, or the manager of the bowling alley where she went on Thursday evenings, or a cousin’s brother-in-law, and then she would experience long months of sweet, agonised longing, heightened by distant sightings of the loved one, even the exchange of a few treasured words. When her dream-life was at its best, it became so intense that she would often experience a kind of euphoria, like the rush of a drug, that lifted her free of the real world into a state of ecstasy.

  She knew what it was to experience the ultimate; if it hadn’t yet come her way in real life, she was prepared to wait.

  In her dreams, though, she never reached forty. It sent a shiver down her spine, the first hint of the long winter ahead.

  Two months after her birthday, she went as usual to her mum’s for Sunday lunch. Her dad had died when she was eighteen and she’d stayed close to her mum ever since, living at home till she met Darren, persuading him they should take a place in the next street, then, when he left, finding the basement flat in Albany Road so she could drop in on her mum three or four times a week. But on this Sunday Melanie arrived to find the curtains drawn, the back door locked, and her mum lying cold and dead on the bathroom floor. She must have screamed because a neighbour appeared. Then there were ambulance men and people she didn’t know, and a doctor she’d never met before who treated her for shock.

  A pulmonary embolism, they told her the next day; death would have been almost instantaneous. The almost rang and rang in Melanie’s brain. She saw her mum lying alone and helpless on the cold floor, her life slipping away and no one to hold her hand. She saw her crying out for help and berated herself for not phoning the evening before, for not going round earlier, for not realising that something was wrong. Her mum had died alone, and she would never, ever forgive herself for it.

  People handed her forms and asked for documents. They told her she must register the death, but the place where she had to go was miles away and she couldn’t face it. Instead, she sat helplessly in her mum’s kitchen, drinking warm Chardonnay and shuffling papers through a fog of tears. A couple of words swam into focus. Post mortem. Hastily she pushed the paper away, she didn’t want to read things like that; yet the more she tried to blot out images of her mum’s body lying exposed on a slab, of unspeakable humiliations being visited on it, the more graphic these images became, and then it got so bad she couldn’t eat or sleep, and when she did finally sleep it was so deeply she could barely wake up again.

  Eventually her cousin Dave arrived and took over the arrangements. Neighbours called round to offer their condolences or pushed notes through the letterbox before hurrying away. Melanie’s boss phoned to say she must take as much time off as necessary, and her colleagues in the accounts office sent a large wreath. But once the funeral was over and her cousin Dave had gone back to Ealing, everything went quiet again. No one came round, except to leave a cake on the doorstep, which Melanie ate in the course of a single afternoon. In the end, she took her mum’s cat back to the flat in Albany Road and drew the curtains and unplugged the phone and switched off her mobile and went to sleep. She slept all day. The doorbell rang a couple of times, but she didn’t answer. Then, it must have been a day later, there was a loud hammering on the door which kept on and on without stopping. It was her cousin Dave, saying she was ill and really had to go and see a doctor.

  She didn’t think she was ill, but she was too tired to argue. When they got to the surgery the receptionist said her old GP had left and she would have to see someone new. But she didn’t want to see anyone new, she wanted to go straight back to the flat, but her cousin calmed her and wouldn’t let her leave, while the receptionist assured her that the new doctor was really very nice.

  As soon as Melanie entered the consulting room she realised the receptionist had tricked her. The new doctor wasn’t nice at all, he was large and bull-like and his tone when he asked her to sit down was brisk and unsympathetic. He ignored her while he tapped something into his computer, and when he finally turned to her his eyes were cold and hard. She began to cry, she couldn’t help it, she buried her head in her hands and sobbed loudly. To her surprise she felt a light hand on her shoulder and heard a kind voice say he was very sorry about her mum and she was to cry as much as she wanted to. She must have poured out her heart for well over the allotted fifteen minutes, but he never tried to cut her short. He just listened and patted her shoulder from time to time, and told her that her mum wouldn’t have suffered, that in the unlikely event that the embolism hadn’t killed her instantly, then it would certainly have rendered her unconscious. He explained that post mortems were done with thoughtfulness and dignity, and told her very firmly that she mustn’t think about it again. She might have stopped crying at that point, but he asked if she had anyone to look after her, if there was a friend or relative she might be able to stay with for a while, and then the grief and loneliness welled up again.

  When her tears finally ran dry, he pressed some fresh tissues into her hand and said that regular crying and plenty of exercise and fresh air were worth a hundred anti-depressants, but he would still prescribe some if she wanted him to. He looked proud of her when she said she would try without. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Remember – plenty of long walks and fresh air. And cry whenever you feel like it.’ He told her to pop in again the following week, sooner if she felt the need.

  She went back four days later. The sign over his door said, Dr Geraint Davies. Now that she wasn’t crying, she got a proper look at him and realised he was younger than she’d first thought, probably in his late thirties. She couldn’t imagine how she’d ever thought him unsympathetic. Certainly his features were large and rugged, with heavy brows and a sportsman’s broken nose, but his voice was just as kind as before, and he had an attractive way of tilting his head and looking at her a little sideways when he spoke, of telling wry jokes against himself and muttering conspiratorial asides she couldn’t believe he made to anyone else. She felt she could trust him, and took his advice to heart. She cried as often as she felt like it and made herself walk to the shops and back, even dusted off her old bicycle and went for a ride around the park. When she saw him again the following week, she was able to tell him truthfully that she was feeling much better. He beamed at her. ‘Good girl. I knew you’d do it. One more bit of advice – go out and enjoy yourself. Remember, laughter’s good for you. It’s just been scientifically proven that it boosts your immune system and cheers you up.’ He added in that confidential tone of his, ‘That’s scientists for you – spend a fortune to tell us the obvious!’ He grinned, sharing the absurdity of it with her, and she found herself smiling back, the first time she’d smiled since her mother died. ‘I don’t know whether I can enjoy myself,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Of course you can,’ he insisted. ‘It’s what your mum would have wanted. Phone up a friend. Go to a film. Have a drink. I don’t usually recommend drink in cases of bereavement, but’ – he peered sideways at her in that comforting way of his – ‘I think you’re sensible enough not to get too carried away.’

  Melanie tried to carry out his instructions, but it wasn’t easy. Every evening she resolved to be sensible with the Chardonnay, only to get carried away to the tune of a whole bottle. And she much preferred to stay at home with a DVD than phone one of her two friends from work to suggest going to a film. She did persist with the exercise, though, because it made her feel better. And, imagining how she must have looked to the doctor, she tried to make an effort with her appearance. The obvious place to start was her hair, which had got long and straggly, and she booked herself in to Debbie’s salon for a cut.

  She dreaded sympathy, it upset her badly, but Debbie expressed hers so naturally, so warmly, that it didn
’t upset her at all. Though they’d always chatted amicably while Debbie did her hair, Melanie would never have dared consider Debbie a friend, not when she was so popular, yet the moment Melanie came into the salon, Debbie embraced her and whisked her off to the staff room at the back of the salon for a coffee and a cigarette, and listened sympathetically, with real understanding, even at one stage made her laugh a bit. Melanie felt so happy after this, and her hair looked so good, that somewhat to her surprise she embraced Debbie back, and they arranged to meet for an early evening drink two days later. Soon, the evening drinks became a regular weekly event. And one Sunday Debbie suggested they go clothes shopping together, persuading Melanie to buy two rather glamorous suits, though neither was quite suitable for the office.

  Melanie began to realise how lucky she was to have found not just one new friend, but two. The other, of course, was the doctor, and when she saw him in the adjacent queue at Sainsbury’s one Saturday she didn’t hesitate to wheel her trolley over and say hello. Since he was off-duty she was careful not to talk about herself, keeping instead to the wet weather and the length of the checkout queues that day. She could tell that he appreciated her thoughtfulness, because, having looked a little startled when she first rushed up, he quickly relaxed and talked about the international rugby match that afternoon and how he reckoned the wet ground would suit Wales, and she guessed, with the pleasure that comes from gaining a sudden insight, that his broken nose had come from his own love of the game. He certainly had the physique for it, the height and the broad shoulders and the muscular arms, and she had a sudden vision of him in white shorts, pounding down the pitch.

  ‘Do you play rugby yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Used to at medical school. But I’m way past the serious stuff now. Too slow, too unfit. Too old!’ he added with a grin. ‘These days I just play the occasional seven-a-side with friends. Lots of running and wondering where the hell the ball’s got to. But it keeps me out of trouble.’