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‘Marielle, she’s in A&E waiting to be seen. Apparently she fainted when she got off the bus in Slattercove and someone called an ambulance.’
Marielle waved Teddy over and told him.
‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and get her.’
‘I’ll be back in half an hour, tops,’ said Flick, grabbing her jacket and rushing out of the restaurant. Antonio and George exchanged looks that said,What the hell is going on this morning? First Marielle had rushed in with her face drained of blood and then she and Teddy had taken off, and now Flick had gone AWOL.
Cilla lived in one of the bigger houses on a nearby estate up the hill from the centre of town. Flick ran all the way there to expend some of the excess energy her body was churning out. She wasn’t even breathless by the time she got to her mother’s; if anything, her energy had grown. It wasn’t a nice energy, either: it was full of anger and it needed an out.
She rang the bell to be polite, but when her mother didn’t answer straight away, she used the key she still had on her keyring. Cilla was just coming down the stairs in a pink satin peignoir as she barged in.
‘What on earth is the matter?’ Cilla asked her. From upstairs a male voice shouted, ‘Everything all right there, Cilli?’
Silly. The word didn’t even come close, thought Flick.
She tore into the lounge and opened the top drawer of the dresser in there.
‘Where is it then?’ she demanded.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ said Cilla. ‘Stop that immediately.’
Flick ignored her, moved to the next drawer, then the cupboard beneath where Cilla kept her box of important documents. Nothing. She skirted past her mother and into the next room, the pink parlour. It had been a dining room originally but for some reason Cilla had redecorated it into a place she might receive friends and take tea as if she were the Duchess of Devonshire.
Flick made to open the drawer in the antique cocktail cabinet. Her mother grabbed her arm hard.
‘I don’t know what your game is, Felicity, but—’
Flick rounded on her. ‘My game? My game, Mum?Yourgame, you mean.’
‘You’re talking gibberish. I think you need to calm down.’
Cilla’s grip was tightening.
‘Open that drawer, Mum.’
Cilla slapped her arm hard. ‘Felicity, get out of my house.’
Flick shook her mother off and pulled the drawer so hard that it left its housing. She knew it was where her mother kept her fripperies and pretensions. She tipped the many contents out onto the carpet: old love letters, boxedjewellery, posh invitations she’d been sent in the past, her envelope of emergency money, her cheque book in its gold, monogrammed casing. And, looking quite out of place among them, a battered brown purse. Flick knew it instantly because she herself had bought it for Auntie Marielle. She snatched it up.
‘I think you should go, young lady,’ said Hugo, appearing in the doorway, clad in a ridiculously showy maroon velvet smoking jacket.
‘I think you should keep your fucking nose out,’ Flick snarled.
‘Disgraceful language,’ said Hugo.
‘Felicity, don’t show me up,’ said Cilla.
Flick rounded on her mother. ‘My god. You, you, it’s always aboutyoubeing affected, isn’t it?’ Cilla made a grab for the purse, but Flick was much quicker and taller and held it out of her reach. She opened it and took out the bank card that sat in one of the slots. The name on it wasMrs Marielle Bonetti.
‘It’s not what you think,’ said Cilla, patting her breathy chest.
‘It’s exactly what I think,’ replied Flick, her eyes narrowed with disgust. She couldn’t look at her mother, she had to get out of there.
‘How dare you talk to your mother like that,’ said Hugo as she flew past him and headed for the front door, hot, furious tears sploshing out of her eyes. Behind her she could hear her name being shouted on an exasperated, continuous loop:Felicity, Felicity.She’d always hated it. And at the moment, she hated even more so the woman who had given it to her.
As Teddy and Marielle walked across the hospital car park, they saw an unmistakable figure carrying a bin liner, headingfor the bus stop. For a few seconds Teddy doubted his own eyes because the woman seemed so much smaller than Sabrina, and fragile as eggshell. He wanted to bound across, pick her up and take her home but it was his mother who first broke into a run, calling her name, reaching her, throwing her arms around her.
‘Oh my darling Sabrina.’ She couldn’t say any more because her throat was clogged with a lump of tears and explanations and apologies.
