A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
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No, not Matt. Not Matt, most of all.
Dinah went into the kitchen and slowly, deliberately made herself a cup of tea. As an afterthought she tipped a measure of Scotch into it. She stood by the uncurtained window and stared out into the darkness of the yard as she drank the peaty tea. She began to see faces other than her own mirrored in the black glass.
At one a.m. she called Nancy Pinkham. Nancy answered the phone after two rings but her voice was thick and bewildered with sleep.
‘I know I’ve woken you up,’ Dinah said.
‘I’ll be right over,’ Nancy answered, when she had explained.
Ten minutes later she was sitting in Dinah’s kitchen in her blue terry robe. She drank the whisky that Dinah poured for her and rubbed her smeared eyes.
‘Listen, don’t you worry. Not yet, anyhow. I’m certain the kid will be back when she’s ready, when she thinks she’s done enough mischief. Don’t you think?’
Dinah nodded, Nancy’s prosaic common sense like a buoy to catch at in a riptide.
‘Yes, I guess so. But I’m so scared something’s happened to her, that it’s my fault …’
‘Sure you are. Who wouldn’t be, with any imagination? But it isn’t your fault, okay? The kid’s a monster, how can you be responsible for that?’
‘She isn’t, it’s not that …’
Nancy took her arm and the whisky bottle and drew them into the den.
‘We’ll just make ourselves comfortable here and wait for madam to get back.’ She looked shrewdly at Dinah as they both sat down. ‘I’m more worried about you than her.’
They drank some whisky. Nancy punched the television remote and found an old Clint Eastwood movie that had only just begun. They watched it to the end and then dozed a little in the grey light from the screen.
Dinah woke up with a shudder. The television light had been replaced by the beginnings of daylight, and Nancy was standing over her.
‘She’s back. Coming down the road, large as life.’
Dinah jumped up. Through the window, she saw Milly swinging up the path to the porch steps. She looked no more dishevelled than usual.
‘Where’ve you been? Do you know we’ve sat up all night, you thoughtless little tramp?’
It was Nancy who began shouting as soon as the door opened. Dinah had never seen her so angry. ‘How d’you think Dinah felt? If you were mine, I can tell you, I’d cane your ass.’
Milly walked straight past her into the kitchen.
‘Shit. I’ll leave you to it,’ Nancy muttered. ‘If there’s nothing else I can do?’
‘Nothing. Thanks, Nancy. You’re a good friend.’
‘Do the same for me sometime. Although, Jesus, if Laura and Brooke turn out like her …’
Milly scowled in the kitchen when Dinah came wearily in.
‘Go on, then.’
‘Go on where?’
‘Say your piece, like mother tightarse out there.’
The softness of relief was wrapping itself around Dinah. The kitchen, and its everyday instruments looked sweet and wholesome in the strengthening light.’
‘I wasn’t going to say anything. Only that I’m pleased you’ve come back.’
Milly suddenly smiled, the merry, upward-slanting smile that transformed her face. Her shoulders dropped and her head lifted. ‘Well, great. Yeah. Thanks.’
Dinah wanted to hug her, but remembered in time that Milly didn’t like to be touched. She asked her instead if she was hungry.
‘Starving.’
‘There are some English muffins.’
‘Why are they called English? They aren’t English, are they, they’re bloody American.’
Dinah toasted the muffins and spread jelly on them. She made rosehip tea and gave Milly a mug, and Milly wrapped her black-varnished fingers greedily around the warmth. Dinah noticed for the first time a clumsy tattooed flower in the vee between her thumb and forefinger.
‘Did you go to friends?’ she asked at length, when Milly had drunk two mugs of tea and eaten the muffins.
‘What?’
‘You said you were going to see some friends. Last night, before you went out.’
‘I haven’t got any friends here.’
She said it coolly without inviting sympathy but Dinah’s heart still twisted for her.
‘So where did you go?’
‘I walked around a bit. Then I remembered some people Sandra and Ed know, across the other side of Main Street, they’ve got, like, this big barn thing at the side of their house. They keep all the garden furniture and stuff in it. The door, wasn’t locked so I just went in and slept on a kind of padded seat thing. It was fine. I can look after myself.’
‘Yes, I suppose you can.’
Milly was studying her tattoo.
‘I’m sorry about last night, right?’
‘I’m sorry I slapped you. I shouldn’t have done.’
Milly laughed. It was the first time Dinah had heard her laugh and it was as attractive as her smile.
‘Actually that was kind of funny. It felt like we were two kids fighting. Let’s have a look.’
Dinah realised that she meant the bite on her hand. Obligingly she held it out to show the red weal. Milly sighed.
‘Maybe you should get a tetanus shot. You know, I asked Sandra if she could fix it for me to come here this weekend. After that time I met you I thought you were kind of okay, and I liked you. Only when I like someone I can’t believe they could like me or anything because I’m so shitty, and then I have to be like, really as bad as I can be so they won’t like me and then everything’s sort of proved for me so that I don’t have to speculate.’
It was the speculate that touched Dinah. With an effort to find the right neutral voice she said, ‘I think I understand. But why were you so determined not to go to LA with your parents?’
‘Because that’s what they always do. Or what he does and she lets him do. He just announces that we’re going somewhere, to suit him, and up and off we go. Franklin, Zermatt, London, back to bloody Franklin. For his writing. As if it’s some kind of art, instead of crap paperbacks with swastikas on the front.’
Milly paused, trying to arrange her words. ‘And it’s like, that’s how she needs it to be. She wants him to act that way so she can, I don’t know, accommodate him. It’s like a deal between them.’
Yes, Dinah thought. That’s what it’s like. We all have our different deals.
‘Anyway, I didn’t want to be taken like some parcel and left to sit in a hotel. I thought of asking to come here. Like I said, I do like you.’
And showing her liking, however grudgingly, was an added way of attacking Sandra. Milly was no fool.
‘Thank you,’ Dinah said. She would not make the mistake of offering clumsy reciprocal assurances just yet. The conversation was about what Milly thought and felt.
‘Is there any more tea?’
‘I can make some.’
While her back was turned Milly said, in a rush of words, as if she wanted to get it out while no one was looking at her, ‘I’m adopted,