As a tourist town, a seaside resort, and a university town rolled into one, Bournemouth had a thriving culture. There were museums, historic buildings, and parks. The Bournemouth Pier, and the shorter but more architecturally significant Boscombe Pier, still provided fun activities and entertainment; there were multiple open air concert venues, theaters, and night clubs. There were festivals that ran every year and drew visitors from all over England, a nationally renowned orchestra, and a football club that played fierce and well attended matches. There was even a hot air balloon known as the “Bournemouth Eye” tethered in one of the gardens and allowing people, twenty-eight at a time, to rise up above the ground and see the town from above.
Melanie was about as aware of all of that as someone on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean who had only read about it in books would have been.
She sat on the window seat, knees tucked under her chin, and stared vacantly out of it. Not that there was much to see, really. The sun wasn’t even up yet, although it was trying to be, and the sky had been completely clouded over as long as she’d been sitting there. As she watched, a heavy mist rolled up to obscure the view from the window.
She sighed heavily. Another day trapped indoors.
Honestly, it was worse than when they were kids (she thought, as if they were so very grown up at the ripe old age of fourteen). Being trapped indoors when they were small had at least lent itself to games of hide and seek, even if they’d quickly got bored of not having new and innovative places to hide. But now they were too mature for games like that, and besides, Mrs Sims was even more convinced they were doing sinful and unholy things when left alone than she had when they had first started coming to visit. If she believed for one minute they were running around the house, crawling into closets and under furniture still covered in dust sheets and giggling as they pounced at each other, she’d be dragging them both to the priest screaming for an exorcism, at best.
Melanie bit back a groan as the thought chased another out of hiding. It was Sunday. Which meant that even if it did start raining too hard for Mrs Sims to be willing to venture out (doubtful, it was only ten minutes’ walk and she was quite likely to call one of the women from whatever committee she was on this year if she felt it to be too much for her), they would be expected to sit quietly in the living room and watch whatever service being broadcast on the telly she was able to find, or failing that a radio broadcast. And once it was over, they wouldn’t be allowed to do much anyway. No work—or play—on Sundays, only quiet reading. At least she’d given up trying to force them to read the Bible after Jon had asked her too many questions about Song of Solomon.
A creak from behind her almost drew her attention, but she made herself keep staring out the window, just in case the old bat had somehow climbed the stairs and was coming in to check on them, which was a distinct possibility. A moment later, however, she saw—just—Jon’s reflection in the window as he seated himself opposite her, tapping her foot with his as he drew them up to mimic her pose.
“Nightmares?” he asked by way of greeting.
“How’d you guess?” Melanie turned to look at Jon and noted the way his hair stood on end. “Never mind. You, too?”
“Just the ocean this time, anyway.” Jon sighed. “I wish there was a way to make them stop for good. You know, without a lobotomy.”
Melanie turned that word over for a moment. “Okay…the tomy at the end probably means taking something out, like hysterectomy or appendectomy. So…what, taking out dreams? Memories?”
“Something like that, I guess. It’s actually taking out part of the brain.” Jon smiled grimly as Melanie recoiled. “Yeah, that was my reaction too. It was most common in the United States, less common but still popular in England, and even less common in the rest of Europe. The Soviet Union banned it outright as being too inhumane.”
“And that gave nobody a clue that maybe it was a bit much?”
“Apparently not. It was a recommended treatment for mental illness, especially in women.” Jon picked at his sleep pants briefly. “And for homosexuals.”
Melanie sighed. “Don’t give That Damn Woman any ideas.”
Jon actually snickered. “Do you remember where we picked up on that? I still can’t. She’s just always been…well, That Damn Woman.”
Melanie cracked a grin. “Must’ve been one of our parents. Since Dad doesn’t swear and Mum always made a point of making us leave the room before she chewed anybody out, I’m guessing it was Mama.”
“You don’t know that Mum didn’t start making us leave the room before exploding because we started calling Her that. We’ll have to ask Dad.”
“If we remember by the time we get home.” Melanie let her head fall back against the wall with a light thump and a bounce. “Assuming we get to go home.”
Jon scoffed. “She can’t actually keep us here forever. We do have to go back to school at some point. Anyway, the papers say we only have to stay three weeks, so…two more?”
“You keep acting like she’s going to be remotely reasonable about this. You know half her sewing circle or…charity group or whatever they are thinks we’re being raised by wolves.”
“I should leave the earring in and really make her mad,” Jon mumbled, tugging at his left ear. The tiny jeweled stud winked, picking up the slightest bit of light and flashing it back like a star. “Except I’m not altogether convinced she wouldn’t use it as an excuse to go back to court.”
Melanie’s heart lurched. “And do what?”
Jon shrugged. “Say Dad’s not taking proper care of me. Say the house isn’t good for me with only one parent, because Dad works all the time whereas she stays home and can watch me properly. Say the custody arrangement was based on Mum and Dad being married. And, honestly, fuck Dad’s life up even more than it already is.”
Since Jon didn’t normally swear when they were in Bournemouth out of fear of what Mrs Sims would do—even saying That Damn Woman was a step beyond what he usually allowed himself—the force of the fuck knocked Melanie back on her metaphorical heels. “You don’t think she’d…win, do you?”
“Melanie, of course not.” Jon gave her the same exasperated look he’d given her a year ago when telling her he wasn’t going to Eton. “It’s not a guardianship anymore, remember? Mum and Dad adopted me good and proper. There’s nothing to contest. Their names are on my birth certificate, and I’m—”
He stopped abruptly. A vacant look came over his eyes, and they strayed towards the window. It was still foggy—or maybe hazy—and there wasn’t anything to see out there, but nevertheless he seemed to be looking at something. Or maybe he’d heard something. Or maybe, Melanie thought, he was just focusing on something other than her so he didn’t disconcert her, because his lips were moving ever so slightly as he stared, like he was running calculations on something. She considered what he’d said, trying to figure out what sudden revelation had struck him in the middle of the sentence. She didn’t think it was bad, necessarily, because he didn’t look upset or frightened or angry. Pursing her lips, she reeled the conversation back, one ponderous sentence at a time. Dad, Jon’s newly pierced ear, going back to court, the papers—the papers.
“The order from the court said Jonathan Sims,” she said triumphantly, slapping one hand against the knee. “That’s not your name anymore.”
“No.” Jon turned back to Melanie, his eyes gleaming almost as bright as the earring behind his glasses. “It’s Jonathan Sims-King. Which means we’ve been coming here for eight years when we don’t even have to. God, if we’d known that, if we’d thought about it when we were kids, maybe we wouldn’t have…”
“Don’t,” Melanie said swiftly. Jon wasn’t wrong, necessarily—maybe they could have spared a lot of trauma if they hadn’t come to Bournemouth—but neither of them needed to be blaming themselves for that, not now. And they didn’t need to think about what had happened to Andrew and get into an argument over whether it was their fault. “We were kids, and even if we had thought about it…you know Dad would have insisted we come anyway. Remember what he used to say before we got on the train? ‘Give her a chance, Little Flame. She’s family.’” She imitated their dad’s voice as best she could.
Jon snorted. “She’s not family. She’s blood. There’s a difference. You’re family, you and Dad. Auntie Jean and Auntie Rose and everyone up in Sheffield, they’re family. And Mum and Mama and Papa, and the cats…and Lucy.” He bit his lip. “Can you imagine what That Damn Woman would have done to her if she’d lived?”
Melanie shuddered. “She’d have tried to get custody of her. Or you, and leave Lucy with us. Or—”
“Or both of us,” Jon completed, “and the judge might have looked at things differently if there were three of us and two of us were going to be sent to live with her. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.” He was quiet for a moment. “You realize she’d be turning twelve this year?”
“I think about it a lot,” Melanie confessed. “What she would have been like. You remember those books I said I could read on my own, about the schoolteacher in Canada?”
“Yeah?”
“In one of them, she gets married and has a baby. Only something goes wrong, and the baby is too weak to live more than a day, just like Lucy.” Melanie folded her legs beneath herself and leaned forward over them. “Anyway, she’s crying to one of the other characters later and says something about how she’s afraid she won’t recognize her, and he says something like ‘I reckon the Almighty will manage better than that.’ And then towards the end of the book she has another baby, and her mum—well, not her mum really, but the woman who raised her—says the baby will take Joyce’s place, and she says no, he has is own place, and says she can picture in her mind what Joy would be like if she’d lived.” She took a quick breath, aware she was rambling but also aware that Jon never minded. “It’s like that with Lucy sometimes. I don’t remember what she looked like—I don’t know if we even got to see her—but I picture her sometimes, tagging along after us or running ahead or just waiting for us to come home. It always feels like she’s there on her birthday. You know?”
“I know,” Jon said quietly. “Mama and Papa and Mum always seem like they’ll stay the way they were—but Lucy’s growing with us, in a way. I wish she’d had the chance, but I’m glad she’s spared this.” He scrubbed his eyes briefly with his arm, then spoke more seriously. “Anyway. Not the point.”
“No,” Melanie agreed. “The point is that we don’t have to come back any more after this. We can tell Dad when we go home that we’re done. I reckon he’d have let us stop in a couple years anyway, but we only have to stick it out a couple more weeks, right?”
Jon tilted his head to one side, studying her. After a moment, he asked, “Why?”
Melanie blinked. “Why would Dad have let us stop?”
“Why do we have to stick it out a couple more weeks?”
“Be…cause that’s when we’re supposed to go back?”
“Right, but why do we have to wait?” Jon asked. “We’ve got open return tickets, so they’re good for up to a month, right? We could just…leave whenever we want. Like today. Hold on, I’ve got a Railtrack in my bag.”
“Yeah, but—wait, Jon, hold on a moment.” Melanie put out a hand to catch Jon’s arm and stop him as he hopped to his feet. “She’ll never take us to the station. She’ll insist we have to stay out the full length of her time with us.”
“So we’ll walk.” Jon shrugged. “It’s only, what, a few miles to the station? We can walk that in an hour, easy. We’re about halfway between Bournemouth and Poole, we could go to either. She doesn’t have the right to keep us here against our will. She’s got no legal right to us.”
There was probably a flaw in the logic, but Melanie couldn’t think of it. Oh, wait. “Don’t we have to…have an adult to meet us at the other end?”
“We can call Dad from the station. We should probably do that anyway, so if the police call him and say we’ve run away he doesn’t panic.” Jon went over to where he’d left his bag and began rummaging through it. “And we packed light, so it shouldn’t even be that hard to carry. We’re far and away old enough to travel on our own, so—aha.”
He emerged, triumphant, with the thick booklet in hand, then came over to the window seat again and began leafing through it. “Let’s see, let’s see…here! Bournemouth. Couple options for routes. Let’s see which one gets us out of here faster.”
Melanie darted back to the nightstand where she’d left her watch and brought it back to the window seat. There was just enough light to see the dial. “It’s just going on five now. That means—probably need to catch a train after seven, just to be on the safe side, right?”
“Mm. Well, there’s a train out of Poole at nine, Bournemouth at quarter past, that goes direct to Manchester Picadilly without having to change trains. That might be our best bet. Not a lot of runs on that route, and it is Sunday, after all.” Jon made a face. “I really want to be out of here before she tries to drag us to church.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Melanie agreed. “I suppose we could leave now and just sit around the station, but what if she follows us, or sends the cops after us and has us dragged back? Unless we call Dad and he calls them and says…but that might be too much. I reckon we ought to leave with just enough time to get there, get our tickets, and leave.”
“Agreed. Let’s see what else there is.” Jon placed a finger on the page and flipped back to the index, then forward to another table. “Hmm…there’s one leaving a bit after seven, but—no, that’s a transfer, it’s the same as the one on table 158…right, so if we leave from Bournemouth at seven, we can get to London Waterloo by quarter past nine.”
“But we want to get to Manchester, right?”
“The only train direct from here to Manchester is that nine o’clock one…blast, if we go through London we’d have to go out of Euston, not Waterloo.” Jon looked up at Melanie. “So. Leave later and go direct, or leave now and change stations?”
“If we change trains, Dad can meet us in London maybe,” Melanie pointed out. “We’ll have to hurry. You’re sure you know how to get there from here?”
“Easy. Straight down the Promenade and up Bath once we hit the pier.” Jon slid a scrap of paper into the book. “Come on. Get dressed and grab your things, and for goodness’ sake, be quiet about it.”
Melanie considered arguing about why he thought she needed to be told that, but decided, on the balance, she’d rather be gone than win a pointless argument.
It didn’t take them long to get themselves put together. They had made this journey every summer since they were five years old, and they had quickly learned not to take more than they could easily carry on their own; after the first year, until last year when they’d been old enough to travel unaccompanied, they had been placed in the care of an aunt, and most of them weren’t willing to help with luggage. They also were reluctant to use the dressers or other storage areas, so they mostly lived out of their suitcases. They weren’t going to be winning any prizes for speed, hauling these, but, well, that was why they were leaving now. Melanie slung her knapsack over one shoulder and hefted her suitcase. “Ready?”
Jon adjusted the strap to his messenger bag and nodded. “Let’s go.”
The house was old, and had all the requisite problems of an old house—creaky floors, loose steps, rattling windows, the lot. After nine years, though, they knew most of its quirks, and more importantly, knew what to avoid. The owner might also be old, but she still had sharp ears and keen eyesight and she would hear them if they stepped wrong. So they treaded carefully, avoiding particularly iffy boards and joists. The fifth step from the top was loose and hollow and would flip up slightly if they stepped on it wrong; usually they jumped it altogether, but Melanie saw Jon turn his foot sideways and gingerly set it against the back of the riser. She understood. Jumping it with the suitcases could result in too loud of a thump on the next step down, and she would hear that just the same. They had to be careful.
They weren’t careful enough. Or maybe they just got unlucky. They hadn’t taken more than one step from the foot of the stairs when a sharp voice stopped them in their tracks. “And where do you think you are going?”
Melanie gasped. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing a silken wrapper and a pair of house slippers, curlers in her hair and a face like thunder, was Mrs Sims.
Jon shrank back momentarily, then rallied and faced her, thrusting his chin out defiantly. “We’re going home.”
It was said with fierceness and firmness and a tone that he clearly meant to brook no argument. Unfortunately, his voice, which was beginning to settle into a low tenor, chose that moment to crack back into a boy’s treble. Melanie knew it for hormones and the snapping of an elastic cord that was still getting used to a new shape, but Mrs Sims took it for fear. For weakness.
“Are you now,” she said icily. “By whose leave?”
“We don’t need your permission,” Jon said, enunciating every word carefully. Melanie knew it was to keep his voice from squeaking again. “You don’t have any legal hold on us. You can’t keep us here against our will.”
“I am your guardian, Jonathan,” Mrs Sims said. “While you are under my roof, you are my responsibility.”
“Well, we’re leaving your roof,” Jon shot back. “Solves that problem, doesn’t it? We’re old enough to travel on your own, so you don’t even need to put out for someone to watch us.”
Mrs Sims narrowed her eyes. “I am entitled to three weeks with you every summer.”
“The court order said Jonathan Sims.” Melanie decided to add her voice to this one. Mrs Sims didn’t like her anyway. “’S not his name anymore. Hasn’t been for a long time.”
“Whatever you choose to call yourself, it does not change the name on your birth certificate,” Mrs Sims snapped.
“No, but the legal adoption from eight years ago does,” Jon said. “It’s Jonathan Sims-King. Mum and Dad adopted me, fair and square, and we all changed our names. They let us keep coming as a courtesy, but we’re done. We’re going home.”
“Talking of courtesy,” Mrs Sims said sharply, “I have allowed her to come along with you as a courtesy to your guardians. I am only required to allow you to visit.”
“Tough! Where I go, she goes.” Jon’s hand tightened around the handle of his suitcase. “And I don’t want to visit you! I never did! You’ve never, ever been even the least bit kind to us, you were horrible to Mama—even Papa didn’t want you anywhere near me! And the first thing you did when I was scared and hurt and grieving was try to take me away from the people who loved me. Why would I want anything to do with you, you—you damned old bat!”
CRACK!
The sharp, wet sound of flesh on flesh echoed through the foyer. This was no ladylike discouragement, no quick but firm tap to get attention or make a point. The flat of Mrs Sims’ hand landed hard and heavy on Jon’s cheek with the force of a metal gauntlet, in a way that was clearly in anger and not worrying about being excessive and also, Melanie remembered with sudden crystal clarity, in a way it hadn’t done since the first time they’d been left alone with her, nearly twelve years ago now, when he had dutifully replied with a yes, Grandma to an instruction and she hadn’t known that he still pronounced his G-R combinations as a D sound. Just like he had back then, Jon stood stock still, his eyes wide and fixed on her even as his head still turned slightly to one side, too shocked and frightened to cry.
To her credit, she also seemed shocked that she had done it, standing frozen before them with her hand still hovering in midair where it had landed after leaving Jon’s face. Her face was as white as her hair, but her eyes still blazed with fire, and Melanie could see the words forming behind them: Now look what you’ve made me do.
Fury, white hot and choking, rose in Melanie’s throat. She wanted to lunge forward and tackle the woman—send her to the ground and bash her head against the hardwood—wrap her hands around her neck and squeeze, her thumbs pressing into the jugular, and not slowly either—wanted to not just hurt her for the slap, but for her words, for the lost summers, for Mister Spider and the ocean, for the phone call, for the criticisms, for the baptisms. For every moment she had stolen from them and every precious memory she had tainted.
Before she could do anything, Jon reached over and suddenly grabbed her arm in a surprisingly strong grip. Without another word, he dragged her out the front door and into the fog. He didn’t even bother shutting it behind them.
They didn’t speak. Not just because Melanie’s rage was still threatening to suffocate her, not just because Jon was setting a pace down the road and then the Promenade that made talking difficult, but because there was no need for words. A few people passed them on their way down to stake out spots on the beach before it filled up, but thankfully, none of them tried to speak either. The sun struggled, but didn’t manage to burn off the haze by the time they made it to the railway station. By unspoken agreement, Melanie took Jon’s suitcase from him, handed him her open return ticket, and sat on a bench to wait while he went to the ticket booth. The platform bustled with early morning commuters likely heading for London, but none of them noticed her, let alone tried to talk to her. It gave her time to practice some of the breathing techniques Mr Dumphrey had tried to teach her.
She wasn’t very good at them.
“We have to take the same route back that we took getting here,” Jon said quietly as he settled down on the bench next to her and handed her a ticket. “It’s the way the returns work. Want to get something to eat? I’ve got the money I didn’t spend on the way down.”
“Are you okay?” Melanie asked, turning to look at him. She reached up and cupped his chin lightly, turning his face so she could examine his cheek. It had been at least an hour, but there was still—to her eyes, anyway—the faintest outline of a handprint on his skin.
“Are you?” Jon parried. He rubbed slightly at his cheek.
“She didn’t touch me.”
“If she had, I would have killed her.” Jon’s voice didn’t change in inflection or intensity; it was a quiet, simple statement of fact. “I was asking about you.”
Melanie hesitated. “I wanted to kill her.”
“I know.”
“You stopped me.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
Jon shrugged. “She’s not worth it.”
Melanie glared at him. “You just said you would have killed her if she’d touched me!”
“Yeah,” Jon agreed. “She’s not worth it. You are.”
“Well. You’re worth it, too.” Melanie hugged Jon tightly. “Do you remember when she came down for Papa’s funeral? She hit you like that because you called her Damma.”
“I—n-no.” Jon hugged her back, and she felt the hesitation in his fingers, the slight tremble, and knew he was telling the truth. “How do you remember that?”
Melanie huffed. “I didn’t, not until she hit you again. Well, I guess it’s no use asking you why we didn’t tell anyone, since you don’t remember it in the first place, but…we’re going to tell Dad about this, right?”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Jon admitted. “In the first place, it’ll add weight to our arguments for not going back, even if I don’t think she’d do it again. Not to me, anyway. But I’m also pretty sure I’m still going to have a mark by the time we get home, and I can’t lie to him about how I got it.”
“Are you going to tell him now?”
“No, not until we get home. But we should call him. Our train should be getting into Manchester Picadilly about quarter past three, and since we both know the trains don’t run to Woodley on Sundays he’ll have to pick us up. And then we really ought to eat something. There’s a tea shop over there.”
“I know. It’s the one we always wanted to stop at when we were little and she said was a waste of money.” Melanie grabbed Jon’s hand and squeezed it quickly, one two three—he returned the gesture—then stood resolutely. “I’ll go. You wait here. Be back in a jiffy.”
They were beginning to be phased out, but Bournemouth still traded enough on its tourist image that there was a row of shiny red phone booths against the station. Melanie went over to one that was unoccupied, shut herself into it, found a couple of coins in her purse, and dropped them into the slot. She waited for the tone, then dialed the familiar digits and waited through the ringing, studying her return ticket as she did so.
“Dad?” she said when a slightly muddled voice answered on the other end. “It’s Melanie. Can you meet the 3:21 from Bournemouth this afternoon? We’re coming home.”