Free The Truth About Melody Browne by Lisa Jewell Page A

‘Probably.’
    ‘So, then, you know, maybe you and him …’
    She shook her head slowly. ‘No, there is no me and him.’
    ‘What – it’s finished?’
    ‘Well, no, not finished, but not really even started.’
    ‘But why not?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just can’t quite get my head around him.’
    ‘Around him, or around having a man in your life?’
    Melody paused and glanced at her son in surprise. What an astute question. Was it possible, she wondered for just a moment, that she’d raised a good man?
    ‘Look, Ed,’ she said uncertainly. ‘There is something going on in my life now and it’s got nothing to do with Ben. It’s got to do with …’ She paused, feeling that she didn’t know enough to start sharing this with Ed, feeling that she wanted to be able to give him more: more absolutes, more facts, more black-and-whites. That was her role, as a mother, to paint the world in the cleanest lines, the brightest colours, to protect him from the vagaries and uncertainties of life. She took a deep breath, chose the right words. ‘It’s to do with my childhood and what happened at the Julius Sardo show.’
    Ed threw her a confused grimace.
    She sighed and continued, ‘Ever since I fainted that night, I’ve started remembering things.’
    ‘What sort of things?’
    ‘Well, I’m not sure really. They’re more like little snatches of time, rather than proper memories, but they’re to do with my life, you know, the bit I can’t remember, before the fire. I haven’t quite made sense of them but I know this much – I used to live in Broadstairs. I went there today. I found the house, and everything.’
    ‘What?’ said Ed. ‘You mean, where you lived with your mum and dad?’
    ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I can’t remember. I just know that it was a squat and I remember this man called Ken. He had a motorbike. And there was a woman called Jane, and I think …’ She was about to say, I think I called her Mum , but stopped, as she still hadn’t properly absorbed the full implication of the memory. ‘I mean,’ she moved on, ‘I even recognised a knot in the floorboards, you know, that kind of detail. I can’t be imagining it. It’s almost like … like I lived a different life.’
    ‘You mean like you were adopted or something?’
    Melody caught her breath. The possibility had already occurred to her in the deep, muddy darkness of her night-time ruminations, but she’d discounted it as too far-fetched, even given the unusually pale outline of her childhood recollections.
    ‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘nothing like that. But I think I might have been sent away for a while, sent to the seaside, for some reason …’
    ‘Oh shit.’ Ed put down his pint and threw her a nervous look. ‘You don’t think, you know, like those books, that bloke, those, you know, those fucked-up things that can happen to kids?’
    ‘What, you mean abuse? ’
    ‘Well, yeah.’ He shrugged unhappily. ‘What’s it called when kids forget bad stuff and then they go to a head doctor and it all comes out and then their dads get sent to gaol when they’re, like, really old men?’
    ‘ Regression? ’
    ‘Yeah. Because that’s like what that Sardo guy did to you, isn’t it? He made you think you were five, and maybe when you were five something really bad happened and you shut it all away, and now it’s coming back. I mean, seriously, I know it’s not very nice, but your dad, do you think … ?’
    ‘No!’ exclaimed Melody, half amused. ‘No way!’
    ‘Yeah, well, you say that, but they all look like nice old men, these kiddy-fiddlers. How do you know? If your memory got broken, how do you know?’
    ‘I just do,’ she replied.
    ‘Well, it might explain some stuff, if it was true.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘You know, like not wanting a man …’
    ‘I do want a man!’
    ‘No you don’t. And you being so anti your parents …’
    ‘You know why I’m so anti my parents.’
    ‘Well, I know