Free The Truth About Melody Browne by Lisa Jewell Page B

why you say you’re anti your parents.’
    ‘Christ, Ed, stop it, will you! My dad did not abuse me, OK?’
    ‘Then what were you doing living in a squat in Broadstairs with a bloke called Ken?’
    Melody sighed and let her head flop into her chest. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking up again. ‘I don’t know, OK?’
    ‘What was it – like a commune, or something?’
    She shrugged. ‘I don’t really remember. I remember the man called Ken. He had …’ she squeezed her eyes shut, ‘a tattoo on his hand – it was a symbol – and he smelled …’ she sniffed the air, ‘of rolling tobacco. And his hair, it was long, but shaved off at the sides, like an overgrown Mohican.’
    ‘Mmm,’ said Ed, ‘sounds really nice . You’ll have to phone them, then.’
    ‘What – Mum and Dad?’
    ‘Yeah. You’ll have to phone them and say, “Mummy, Daddy, what on earth was I doing in Broadstairs?”’ He said this in the put-on plummy accent he always used when he talked about the grandparents he’d never met, imagining them to be far more genteel than they actually were.
    ‘I can’t phone them,’ Melody sighed.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because,’ she sighed again, ‘if they lied to me then, then they’ll just lie to me again. I need to know the truth. And I think I need …’ she paused for a moment to find the right words, ‘I think I need to let this happen bit by bit, you know, like a jigsaw. I think that if I knew everything, all at once, I might just …’
    ‘ Explode? ’
    ‘Yes. Or implode. Or maybe both. So,’ she said quietly, ‘what do you think I should do next?’
    ‘Go back to Broadstairs,’ said Ed. ‘Go back and see what else you can get.’

Chapter 13
1989
     
    ‘Pregnant?’
    Her mother rolled the word off her tongue like an unexpected piece of gristle.
    ‘Yes,’ said Melody, pulling at the skin around her fingernails.
    ‘ Pregnant? ’ her mother repeated. ‘But I –’
    ‘It’s OK,’ said Melody, ‘I’m dealing with it.’
    ‘You’re dealing with it?’ Her father rose from his armchair like a mantis reaching for a fly on a distant branch, his neck wattles quivering, his shiny forehead gleaming in the early evening light.
    ‘Sit down, Clive.’ Her mother threw him a fearsome look.
    He leaned back into the Dralon upholstery and shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘Whose is it?’ he asked. ‘That boy, is it? The one with the scooter?’
    ‘Yes,’ Melody said. ‘Who else would it be?’ She hated the inference that she might have slept with someone other than her boyfriend, even though she had.
    Her mother turned to gaze through the window. Her blonde hair was brittle in the low sun, translucent like the tufts of horsehair and cotton inside an old sofa. Her pretty face looked old, as though someone had unstitched the skin from the bone and let it land where it fell. And her eyes, Melody was pained to see, were glazed over with tears.
    ‘How far gone are you?’ she said, turning back abruptly, her tears dried up.
    Melody shrugged. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’m five weeks late.’
    ‘ Five weeks? ’
    ‘Nearly six.’
    ‘Oh my God.’
    ‘What? It’s fine.’
    ‘Fine! How can you say it’s fine? We’ll have to take you to the doctor’s as soon as possible, get this sorted out. I mean, it could be that you’re just late.’
    ‘I’ve been sick every day this week.’
    ‘Well, then …’ Her mother paused and pursed her lips. ‘We’ll just have to ask him about … options .’
    ‘You mean about abortions?’
    ‘Yes, about abortions . Oh God, Melody, what were you thinking, what on earth were you thinking? ’
    Melody shrugged again.
    ‘She wasn’t thinking, Gloria, that’s patently obvious, otherwise she wouldn’t be in this hideous mess.’ Her father rearranged his legs beneath his blanket, slowly and painfully.
    ‘How could you do this to us, Melody? How could you do this to your father after what he’s been through these last