Wendy stopped still. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“Did she tell you what she did? She lied to me! Told me her own son was dead so I wouldn’t be able to see him anymore.”
Cherry waited for her words to have the right impact, for her mum to back down, like she always did. For her to be afraid of upsetting her daughter, for her to say what Cherry wanted to hear, so as not to estrange her even more. But Wendy was looking at her differently—in a way that Cherry had never seen before and it scared her.
“I can’t believe you did that,” said Wendy. “All that stuff. You killed a puppy . . . ? What’s wrong with you?”
“Oh, Christ, will you stop going on about it. I saved it from a miserable existence. You should have seen it, poor thing, all cooped up with nowhere to run, no light, no air. It had a shit life. It had no future because of where it wasborn,” she spat.
Wendy’s voice caught in her throat: “You meanyou,don’t you?” She took a step toward her. “After your dad died, I worked hard all those years. Nearly killed me sometimes, but you never went without. I didn’t see you as much as I wanted to, but I hoped you’d see something good in what I was doing, look up to me. I may not have had much. But Iworkedfor everything I ever got. Never sucked it out of someone else like a leech!”
Shaking, Cherry slapped her across the face. Wendy gasped and put her hand to her cheek.
“Excuse me?” The man with a van was hovering awkwardly in the doorway.
Cherry reeled around.“What?”
He held up his hands. “It’s all in. I’ll be off.” He couldn’t leave quick enough.
Cherry apprehensively turned back to her mum.
“I know you’re ashamed of me,” said Wendy quietly, “but I’m also ashamed of you.” And she turned away.
Cherry’s eyes blazed. Suddenly she felt like the nobody Croydon girl again—the one whose future was limited, who couldn’t keep a boyfriend who came from a better background. She was overwhelmed with emotion and needed to get out. She rushed out of the flat and clattered down the stone steps and into the air. The man with the van had gone and was now making his way toKensington. Cherry marched, trembling, down the street to Daniel’s Mercedes, arms folded, eyes stinging.
How dare she! How dare that fucking woman stick her nose in . . .Hate poured from her, contaminating the very air she breathed.What the fuck was Laura doing, coming to see my mother. As if I was a child! She is stifling, suffocating—the way she behaves about Daniel. So fucking possessive! It isn’t fair to control other people’s lives like that, smother other people’s dreams....
Cherry fiercely wiped away her tears with the heel of her hand and clamped her throat shut so no more would come. As she got in the car, her anger settled like a hard stone in her chest. So Laura was intent on breaking her up with Daniel, she hadn’t listened. The more she tried, the more Cherry raged. Why couldn’t Laura just fuck off? Disappear? If only some bus would come and knock her over. Some accident or something. That was the thing about accidents, you never saw them coming, but one little slip, one badly timed moment, and you were history. Wiped out. The problem no longer existed and no one was to blame. That would be fantastic. Cherry wallowed in the idea for a moment, steeped in resentment and self-pity.
But then reality hit. Accidents didn’t just happen when you wanted them to. Still angry, she drove away sharply, slamming the car into gear. Hands tight on the wheel, she stared hard ahead, cursing at anyone who didn’t move fast enough off a green light, anyone who hesitated at a roundabout. She drove toward the Webb Estate, not quite aware of doing so, then stopped the car and looked through the mechanical gates, shut fast. Blinding lights came up close behind her and she watched as another car went past, the gates gliding open for it. Without thinking, she put the car into gear and followed in its slipstream. The other vehicle turned off down one of the residential streets and Cherry took the route she remembered, to Nicolas’s.
She arrived in Silver Lane, flanked on either side by four rows of silver birch trees, and stopped halfway along. There it was, the large, detached, eight-bedroom mansion. She moved the car another few feet, so she could peer through the trees up to Nicolas’sbedroom. She wondered anxiously, hopefully, if she would see him. His arms around his wife, silhouetted in the window. Maybe he’d spot her. Come down. She’d make sure he saw her ring, then casually drop Daniel into the conversation.
Suddenly she felt like a complete fool. He’d gone. He and his wife. They’d have their own place now; they were living their own lives. They’d moved on. With a crushing sense of humiliation, Cherry drove out as quickly as she could.
51
Friday, November 6
IT WAS SIX A.M. DANIEL, FULLY DRESSED, LOOKED AT CHERRY SLEEPINGin their bed, her shiny dark hair falling across her slightly flushed face. Her arms were outside the duvet, the skin smooth and inviting. He wondered whether to give her a kiss good-bye. They’d had their first fight the night before and hadn’t yet made up, not properly. And he still didn’t really know what it was all about.
The evening had started pleasantly enough. While Cherry was at her mum’s flat, Daniel had had a call from his friend Will, delighted to find him not on a shift. Will was looking for someone to celebrate with, as he’d just learned he’d gotten the promotion. He invited himself round and they were waiting for Cherry to come back, so they could all go out together. Daniel was aware none of his friends had seen Cherry since just before the accident; and now that they were back together, it would be good if they got to know each other a little better. The guys grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge while they were waiting.
“Got to say, Dan, you’re pretty forgiving. Especially after the way she gave you the elbow,” said Will as he popped the top of his bottle.
Daniel remained noncommittal. He didn’t want to incriminate his mother by divulging the whole story, so he settled on a vague: “It wasn’t as bad as you think.”
As was the way with men, Will didn’t dwell on the subject long. He clinked his friend’s bottle with his own. “Good luck to you,” he said without malice. “What do you fancy doing tonight? We could try out that new Japanese—you know, the one Theo’s friend owns. Cherry like Japanese?”
Daniel didn’t know. The front buzzer sounded, and answering, he saw on the screen the man with the van already unloading the boxes onto the street, ready to carry them upstairs. “She’ll be back in a minute,” he said, “we’ll ask her.” The man carried the boxes up the stairs and into the apartment. He barely said hello and wasn’t interested in a cup of tea. Daniel asked him where Cherry was and if she’d followed him back; the mover raised his eyebrows.
“Hope not, mate. She slap you about like she does her old lady?”
Daniel’s mouth dropped, and realizing he’d said too much, the man was in a hurry to leave.
“Got to get going, if that’s all right, mate. You got the cash?”
“Hold on, what did you mean, ‘slap about’?”
