Back to the Farm Ch. 07

"Oh, I think it will." Taken aback by the nearness of his voice, Melissa turned to find he'd followed her across the room. "Getting nervous?" he teased.

She made a sound of exasperation. "I'm fine," she muttered as he peered over her shoulder to take a look at the pink and gold remnants of what had been a stunning sunset, anxious not to reveal she was more unnerved by his proximity than the thought of an impending storm. And feeling very uncomfortable, she had an inexplicable desire to make him uncomfortable too. "That painting in your office," she began casually.

He gave a short groan. "What about it?"

"You do know how good that is, don't you? 'Course, it would've been better without me in it--"

"Lissy--" Breathing a sigh, he pulled back from the window. "It's nothing, okay? Whatever Paula says. Though--"

"Then why didn't you want me to see it?"

"--I don't agree it would've been better without you in it, okay? Youhad to be in it."

As Melissa witnessed the exact moment her words registered in his consciousness, his words registered in hers. "I had to be in it?"

"Yes, of course you did. It wouldn't have worked otherwise."

"Then why--?"

"Don't say I should paint more, okay?"

Melissa hadn't been going to say anything of the kind, being more interested in why he'd been reluctant to show her the picture in the first place. But on realising that determining the truth might make things even more awkward between them, she decided to run with his response. "Why not? You've clearly got a talent--but then, we always knew that. And it's becoming pretty obvious how much you hate your job."

"I don't hate it, exactly."

"Okay." Melissa rolled her eyes. "You're sick of it."

"Sick of all the globe-trotting, yes. But I can't make a career out of painting, Liss."

"Says who?"

Matt made a growling sound low in his throat. "I do. Anyway, never mind about me, what about you?"

"Whatabout me?"

"You're a fine one to talk, aren't you? Why the hell are you still a housing officer?"

"I'mnot a housing--"

He held up his hand. "Fine, yep. You haven't got the qualifications to call yourself that. I was listening. So why haven't you got the qualifications?"

She blew out a breath. "Because getting them costs money, that's why."

"Well, now you've got the money--or at least, you soon will have. So are you going to go and get them? Or..." And suddenly, Matt's voice softened. "How about taking yourself back to university and doing what you actually wanted to do in the first place?"

Melissa hesitated, turning back to the window. She couldn't deny the thought had crossed her mind. "I couldn't go back to university now. I'm too old," she muttered at last.

Matt rolled his eyes. "Lissy, you're twenty-nine."

"I'd be thirty by the beginning of term."

"So? More and more people aren't going straight to uni from school these days. You wouldn't be the only mature student, I promise. And I bet there'd be plenty of others older than you."

"It's not just that." She pulled a face. "I don't think anywhere would accept me, not now. Things have changed. These days you have to know about computer design."

"It's not that difficult to pick up, you know." Matt found her reluctance puzzling. This was the girl who, according to Charlie, would've received a first class honours degree in art had she not dropped out of college in her final year.

"But I'm not sure I want to pick it up. I don't even think I'd want to do that course again. It was okay, but I always felt a bit of a fraud."

"A fraud?"

She smiled. "Matt, I'm not you. I can draw a bit, enough to get by--"

"You're better than that. Those sketches you did this afternoon were fantastic."

Melissa raised a dismissive hand. "Oh, I'm not saying I can't capture an image. I can do a fair representation of a bowl of fruit. But there's nothing special about what I can do. There isn't that added depth, that special something that sets it apart--like there is in that painting in your office. Now that's amazing--it's the way you've captured the light. Me, well. All I can do is a pale imitation of a photograph. In fact, you'd be better off with a photograph."

"Lissy." Matt rolled his eyes.

"It's true." She shrugged. "I'm not going to delude myself. And to be honest, I hated doing all the history of art stuff. I tried to like it, but I didn't. In fact, the only thing I really enjoyed was ceramics."

He nodded, remembering she'd always liked pottery. "Then just do ceramics. I'm pretty sure you can do a degree in that on its own."

"You can," she agreed, almost sheepishly. "Mickleton College runs a course, actually."

"Well, there you are then." He shot her his most encouraging smile. "Get yourself on it."

She sighed. "Oh, I don't know. What would I do with a degree in ceramics, for heaven's sake?"

It was Matt's turn to shrug. "Anything you wanted. You use it as a stepping stone."

There was a long pause before she shook her head. "No. It would just be a waste of money. If I do anything, it ought to be something to do with housing."

"What? No..." He experienced a pang of frustration. Why was she being so stubborn? "Don't sell yourself short. Not this time. I don't think Charlie would've minded you using your inheritance to do something you really wanted. God knows, you've made enough sacrifices already--"

"No," she interrupted, her tone oddly fierce. "I wasn't the one who made the sacrifices, okay?"

"But Lissy, you gave up university to look after your mother," he protested, though he took care to keep his tone gentle. "You spent years putting someone else first. Don't you think it's time you did something for you?"

"Something forme?" And suddenly, she made an odd half-sob, half-choking sound. "Oh God, Matt, I don't deserve to do anything for me."

"Hey!" Instinctively, he put a hand on her arm. "What on earth do you mean by that? Of course you deserve--"

"No, I don't. I really don't."

"What?" Shocked by the tension in her body, he had to fight the urge to scoop her into his arms, certain she'd resist. "Liss, you're not making any sense."

She released a shaky breath, staring resolutely at the window. "She gave up everything for me, okay?" she said, every word sounding tortured. "Mum. She wanted me to have it all. But she didn't tell me--she didn't tell me what it... If I'd known..."

"Known what?" Matt found himself at a loss to know how to comfort her. Her grief was so palpable it actually seemed to causehim pain. "Known what, sweetheart? Tell me."

When at last she turned to meet his gaze, he saw her eyes were brimming with tears. "Mum's car crash," she whispered.

He nodded slowly. "I know," he murmured, desperate to say the right thing. "Poor Aunt Jane, it must've been awful. And pooryou..." It suddenly occurred to him he knew very little about what had actually happened, a surge of guilt flooding through him. "Lissy, I'm sorry. I should've been there. I should've been there for you after the accident--"

"That's just it." And to his astonishment, a hint of a smile flickered across her expression. A sad, rather twisted smile. "You see, I don't think itwas an accident."

"What?"

"I think she was trying to commit suicide."

*

It felt good to have finally said those words aloud, Melissa decided, leaning forward to drain the last of her white wine before settling back on the settee beside Matt. She'd never previously given voice to her fears. In the years following the accident, it'd seemed wrong to discuss such dark thoughts with anyone, and to do so after her mother's death seemed disrespectful to her memory. When the police had first queried the delicate matter of Jane Barton's mental health shortly after the crash, Melissa had been adamant nothing was amiss.

"I probably should have told them about all the unpaid bills," she confessed as Matt reached for the bottle on the coffee table and topped up her glass. "But she'd have hated for anyone to think she'd gone nuts. Not that I think she went nuts. I just think she didn't know what to do for the best. She'd got herself into a mountain of debt--and all of a sudden she thought that maybe--well, who knows what she was thinking? Smashing your car on purpose isn't exactly a rational thing to do, is it? I guess she saw a way out." She let out a sigh. "Your mother was right, she really was useless with money."

"Liss." Matt's lips twisted slightly.

"It's true. Whenever she had any, she spent it. She just wasn't capable of saving. Not that I knew that before the accident." She shook her head slightly. "We never talked about it. But she really wanted me to go to university. Kept going on about how she wanted me to have the opportunities she never had. I guess if you get yourself knocked up aged seventeen, you do wonder what life might've been like if you hadn't. She never actually said she regretted having me, but..."

"No." Matt's hand landed over hers. "Of course she didn't regret having you. You were a wonderful daughter. The two of you were so close. I wish I could've had the relationship with my mother that you had with yours."

"Yes, but it was all based on a lie. She told me I could do whatever I wanted to do, be whoever I wanted to be."

"That wasn't a lie."

"Yes it was." Even Melissa could hear the note of barely repressed anger in her tone. "You see, being who you want to be takes money. Going to university takes money. Tuition fees, accommodation, food, books..." She bit her lower lip. "The list just goes on and on. But we didn'thave any money--and instead of telling me that, instead of being honest, she made out she could afford it. Told me she'd taken on a second job. When it turns out that what she'd actually taken on was a second mortgage."

In the brief silence that followed, there came a distant rumble of thunder. Matt sent her a rueful smile as they exchanged glances, his fingers tightening around her own. "You shouldn't have dealt with all that by yourself," he said softly. "You should've told someone."

"Who?" she fired back. "The only person I could've told was Charlie. And you know Charlie, he'd have paid off the debt--even though he didn't have much money either. I couldn't have him do that. Not when it was all my fault."

"Your fault? Liss..." He gave an uneasy laugh. "It wasn't your fault."

The light fading fast now, Melissa stared at his hand, conscious of the unfamiliar warmth of those long slender fingers. Though part of her wanted to pull her own hand away, a larger part seemed to be demanding she leave it right there...

"Hell, is that why you did it?"

"Did what?" Jerking her head up to meet his gaze, she then rather wished she hadn't, the look of sudden comprehension in his eyes acutely unnerving.

"You dropped out of college to look after her. You thought you were to blame for her trying to kill herself?"

"Of course I was to blame!" She stared at him in disbelief. "She wouldn't have done it otherwise, would she? There wouldn't have been a problem. She wouldn't have had to borrow all that money."

"What?" Matt shot her an equally disbelieving glance. "How could you be to blame for that?"

"Because she did it for me!" Melissa groaned in exasperation. "Don't you see? She was trying to give me what she never had. What you'vealways had."

"Money?"

"No! A future, okay? A better life. A dream."

"A dream?" Matt's expression was curiously unreadable.

"O-o-oh." Frustrated, she wrenched her hand away and struggled to her feet again. "Whatever made me think you'd understand?"

"Oh, I do understand," he said, his voice so near she realised he too had risen from the settee. "But don't you see?"

"See--oh!" Facing the window, Melissa couldn't repress a gasp as a blinding flash rent the sky in two.Lightning... "See what?" she continued hastily, already counting in her head.

One thousand... two thousand... three thousand...

"That means it was all for nothing."

"What?" Startled, she swung around to face him. "What the hell are you trying to--?" But before she could finish, the thunder began, a low, reverberating boom which rapidly crescendoed into a floorboard-shaking roar.

"It's okay." Matt rested a hand on her shoulder. "It's all right. Don't panic. We're--"

"Nothing?" she spat, ducking away out of reach. "How dare you?"

"But it's true, Liss. Do you think that's what she would've wanted? Do you really think she'd have wanted you to give it all up for her?"

She gazed at him, aghast. How was he managing to make something so outrageous sound reasonable? "I couldn't have gone back to college. She needed me. She couldn't do anything for herself."

"Agreed, she needed someone," he said, nodding. "But it didn't have to be you."

"You don't understand. She needed twenty-four hour care. To start with, they said she'd never be able to come home." And maybe it would've been better if she hadn't, a little voice added, somewhere in the darkest recesses of her mind... "She'd have hated that," she went on quickly. "To be in a nursing home--at thirty-eight years old? How could I have let that happen to her?"

"But would she even have known?" For a moment Matt looked slightly nonplussed. "Charlie didn't say it in so many words, but I got the impression she didn't know where she was most of the time anyway. Surely--"

"What are you saying?" Melissa felt a renewed surge of anger. "That I should just have dumped her somewhere? Had her locked away for her own good?"

"No, of course that's not what I'm saying."

"Then wh-what?" She winced as the room was once again momentarily filled with light. "Whatare you saying? That I shouldn't have bothered? That I just should've given up hope? That I--" And then she gasped, the violent clap of thunder so loud, so immediate, she felt rather as though her heart had leapt out of her chest. "Shit!"

"Lissy! Calm down. It's all right."

"No, it's not all right, okay?" The note of sympathy she could hear in Matt's voice only served to heighten her agitation. "It's not. You're right, she didn't know where she was. God, she didn't even know whoI was. Her own daughter."

"I'm sorry." But this time when Matt put an arm around her shoulders, she made no attempt to move away. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"No..." Closing her eyes for a moment, she forced herself to take a deep steadying breath. "I'm sorry. Look, I know how it sounds. I think everyone thought I was mad."

"Hey." Smiling, he lifted a hand to stroke a stray curl back from her face. "I didn't say that."

She returned the smile, her cheek still tingling from his touch. "You didn't have to."

"You thought she'd get better."

"I had to believe she'd get better. I thought if I spent enough time with her, she might start remembering more. So I told her about all the things we'd done, all the places we'd been..."

And sometimes she thought she'd succeeded in making a breakthrough. There would be brief, wonderful intervals where she'd manage to persuade herself she'd seen light in her mother's familiar blue eyes. Sometimes she was able to string enough words together for Melissa to feel sure something had triggered a memory. But each time it happened, each time she dared to hope, the moment would promptly vanish, that awful vacant expression returning to her mother's face.

Yet as she tried to explain just why she'd kept trying, she realised she could remember less and less about that awful time. Mostly she recalled the constant cycle of feeding and bathing, the months of sleepless nights. She'd had help from various homecare assistants--she couldn't have managed without them--but the bulk of the responsibility had been hers and hers alone. And aside from the burden of caring, upon forcing herself to work through the pile of bills, she discovered the only way to clear her mother's debts would be to part with their small terraced house.

"You sold it?" Matt looked aghast. "I had no idea things were that bad. Did Charlie know?"

"I didn't want anyone to know. No one needed to know. And actually, it worked out pretty well, in the end."

Selling the house to the housing association had proved to be her salvation. Not only had the manager of the Mickleton branch been willing to rent the house back, he'd also offered Melissa a part time job. It'd been very part time at first--just two hours every morning between ten and twelve, answering the phone and making tea.

"To be honest, it probably saved my sanity," she admitted. "And when the office manager retired, just after Mum died, Jonathan offered me her job. I owe him a lot. So it's all very well saying I should go back to college--" She stopped abruptly, sidetracked by yet another flash of lightning.

"But you should," Matt put in solemnly. "Come on, Lissy--you owe it to yourself."

"You're as bad as Gemma," she said with a frown, finding it tricky to count seconds at the same time as concentrating on her defence. "I can't just--God, that's getting close!" she gulped as the thunder began, glancing back towards the window. "I can't just leave them in the lurch, can I?"

He gave her a knowing look. "You mean you're too scared to try."

"What?"

"You heard me. You--" But still watching her as the low rumble developed into a deafening roar, Matt suddenly grimaced, seeming to think better of pursuing his argument. "Never mind," he said as the noise faded away at last. It's pretty dark now--let's put some lights on, shall we? Maybe some music too. See if we can drown all of this out a bit."

"Music?" Unnerved by the thunder, she stared after him in astonishment as he strode across the room to flick on the switch. And finding it difficult to adjust to the brightness, let alone the abrupt change in topic, she had to blink hard before turning to give her uncle's ancient radiogram a dubious look. "You have to be kidding."

He shot her a grin, kneeling in front of the huge wooden cabinet and opening one of the doors. "It's a good job Charlie's not here to hear you say that. Are you saying you're not interested in his vast collection of Elvis on vinyl? Or..." Pulling out a stack of albums, he began flicking through the sleeves. "Ooh, Englebert Humperdinck. Or how about some Cliff Richard?"

"Spare me," Melissa said faintly, nonetheless drawn to peer over his shoulder. "Those would've been Aunt Suzie's--do you remember?"

"Indeed I do," he murmured. "Wow, just look at all these. They'd probably be worth a fortune on eBay."

"I daresay." But distracted by the sound of the rain now hammering down on the roof, she glanced back towards the window just as a thick streak of blue-white light tore through the night sky. The storm clouds behind thrown into sharp definition, this time there was no time to even start counting. She squeezed her eyes closed as the world seemed to explode around them, the first almighty clap developing into a deep, sonorous boom. "Oh my God, Matt! It's right overhead!"

"Hey heyhey." She realised he'd almost had to shout the words to make himself heard. "I'm here--you're safe. It's all right." And not having dared to reopen her eyes, she was startled when she felt him pull her into his embrace, his arms folding securely around her. "Ssh, ssh," he murmured into her hair as the thunder finally faded away. "It's okay, sweetheart. I've got you."

"Matt..." Could he feel her trembling? Of course he could, he couldn't have failed to notice.

"Dance with me."

"What?" She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let her go, his arms tightening. "Dance with you? But there's no music."

"Isn't there?" He sounded amused.

Barely audible above the drumming rain, she could hear a crackling hiss. It was only as the opening bars of a familiar tune rang out into the room that she was able to identify the noise, the half-forgotten, yet distinctive sound of a stylus on a record.