If Ronnie is Veronica, what is she doing at Sugar’s?
Why didn’t she tell me that she is one of the women in the photo?
Maybe I’ve got this all wrong and she’s not his lover after all.
The house is in darkness. Sugar has an early to bed, early to rise routine. But what about Ronnie? What if I’m wrong and she is in a relationship with my adoptive dad? What if she’s in his bed? I feel suddenly angry again.
With quiet hands and silent feet, I let myself into the house. And the scent of Cherry’s favourite perfume surrounds me instantly. Sweet, orange and so unbelievably alive. Closing my eyes, I inhale, wishing with all my heart that Mummy Cherry was still here. Leaving my memories of her behind, eyes back open, I move towards Ronnie’s room beyond the stairs.
The door to her room is slightly open. There’s light here, in contrast to the rest of the house, which spills out into the hall. Peering inside, I get ready to whisper her name. But there’s no sign of Ronnie. I look up as my heart momentarily drops. Please, don’t let her be with Sugar.
I should go. Instead, I give Ronnie’s room my full attention. I’m struck again by how bare it is, without the personal stamp of a human presence. The only individual touch is the small lamp on the low table by the bed. She’s a woman in her late forties-early fifties, so how can she have so little? Something about this whole set-up doesn’t add up. Call it sixth sense, but I realise that Ronnie isn’t Sugar’s lover.
I step inside and look around. Maybe if I check the chest of drawers I’ll find something, some paperwork that identifies her as a Veronica and not a mere Ronnie. Something that leads me to connect her with what happened in the past. Heading deeper into the room I see an object on Ronnie’s bed.
A knife.
A flick knife with a serrated edge.
My breath stalls in my chest when I sense I’m no longer alone. Maybe it’s the sound of a step, or a heartbeat that beats to a different rhythm than mine, or the noise of another’s breath on the air. I twist around so fast I almost tumble into the chest of drawers. It’s Ronnie standing inside the doorway. She stares back at me. At the knife on the bed. Back at me. Then she turns the key in the lock.
The fuzzy lamplight buries half of her face in shadow. Her features appear half-dead, half-alive, the yellow haze of the light mixing with the brown of her flesh, twisting her features into a rubbery wax texture. There’s not enough oxygen in the room. I suck in as much air as I can and assess my situation. I’m locked in a room with a woman who’s practically a stranger, a knife baring its serrated teeth at me lies on the bed.
Ronnie speaks, voice rasping and grating across each word like nails scratching down a blackboard. ‘You do have a habit of finding yourself in rooms you haven’t been invited into.’
‘Are you my mother?’ I whisper.
That is not what I meant to say. Well, not yet anyway. After leaving Patrick Walsh, the question hadn’t come to me straight away, but struck with a hammer blow intensity just minutes away from reaching Sugar’s. I’d almost lost control of the car when the thought caught me unawares. Hitting the brakes hard, I’d hung on to the steering wheel as if my life depended on it. Are you my mother? The mother who gave me away but left me with the Good Knight? The idea left me gagging and gasping.
Ronnie’s eyes flick towards me, then the knife, then me again. She answers, measured and controlled, ‘I’ll never be anyone’s mother.’
‘Is that a yes or a no, Veronica?’
I observe her carefully for her response. The only one on display is a tightening of the skin covering her jaw. Nothing else. No gasps. No trembling. No quick denial. What she does do is inch closer to me. To the knife?
‘What is it that you want from me?’ It’s her tone that shows her reaction. Whispered words she’s barely able to get past grinding teeth.
Ronnie’s in her joggers and T-shirt, her head covered in a satin bonnet to keep her hair neat at night. I can smell the clean, unperfumed soap she uses. Her obvious tension matches my own. No wonder: we’re two women who usually can’t stand the sight of each other.
‘I should’ve figured it out,’ I inform her with, I admit, a know-it-all tone. ‘Ronnie is short for Veronica. The girls I ran with at school, one of them was called Veronica. But we used to call her Nica.’
‘And so what if I’m called Ronnie or Veronica?’ she bats back, never raising her voice. ‘Brother Son or Sister Moon? That doesn’t—’