The Truth About Melody Browne by Lisa Jewell Page A

close she could see the scales on their feet.
    Splat. Like a broken egg. Seagull poo, grey and murky, all over the pavement, just inches from her black plimsolls.
    A doorbell that sounded like a clock chiming.
    And then a man at the door, a man with long hair, shaved bald above the ears, and a kind face.
    He smiled, first at Melody’s companion, and then at her. His eyes were grey and his teeth were white. He was wearing a blue shirt without a collar and baggy linen trousers.
    ‘ Hello, Jane ,’ he said to her companion, ‘ and hello, Melody. Welcome ,’ he said, ‘ welcome to your new home .’
    She sat down on the kerb for a moment, to steady herself. This was the strongest flashback yet, vivid and overwhelming. Here was fact, strong and irrefutable. She had lived here. With someone called Jane. This had been their home.
    She gazed at the house for a while, drinking in the details, the windows, the door, the freshly painted ironwork. It was a beautiful house, elegant and well cared for, very different from the one that had just presented itself to her in her head. That house had been shabby and run down, its stucco work streaked green, its ironwork peeling and pockmarked. And that man with the long hair. She knew him. She really knew him.
    A notice in the bottom window caught her eye then and she got to her feet.
    ‘Rooms available.’
    She rang the doorbell. A woman of around her own age came to the door. She had a yellow duster and a can of Mr Sheen in her hands and was wearing an apron. She looked distracted and slightly cross.
    ‘Hello,’ said Melody, ‘I was just …’ She paused for a moment, unsure exactly what she was doing.
    The woman stared at her impatiently.
    ‘Do you have a room available?’ Melody asked eventually.
    ‘Yes,’ said the woman brusquely, ‘but only for tonight. We’re fully booked from tomorrow for the rest of the season.’
    ‘Could I see it?’
    ‘Yes. Of course.’
    The woman opened the door and allowed her in. The hallway was neat and elegant, with a tessellated tiled floor and beige walls with lots of framed black and white photos of Broadstairs. The house was double-fronted and doors went off both sides of the entrance hall. Every angle, every corner of the house meant something to Melody, in some unfathomable way.
    ‘It’s only small,’ said the woman, ‘but if it’s just for you, just for one night …’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Melody said, hoping she sounded like an ordinary woman doing an ordinary thing, rather than someone in the throes of existential mayhem.
    ‘Have you lived here long?’ she asked the woman.
    ‘Well, we bought the place six years ago, but it took us two years to put it back together.’
    ‘Was it derelict?’
    ‘As good as, yes. It was in a terrible state. We lived in a caravan for over a year.’
    ‘Wow.’ Melody couldn’t imagine this prim, pristine woman living in a caravan. ‘So who was living here before then?’
    ‘No one, as far as we know. It was a squat in the seventies and then the owner reappeared in 1980 to reclaim it, kicked the squatters out, boarded it up and left it to rot. We bought it at auction. An act of love. And madness.’
    She turned and smiled at Melody. ‘OK, well, this is the room,’ she pushed open the door to a small boxroom overlooking the back garden. It was beautifully presented, a cut above the usual guesthouse fare of floral quilts and cheap pine wardrobes. It housed a single bed with a white duvet and pillow case and two black and white cushions, a white French antique bureau and wardrobe and a framed monochrome photo of Paris at night above the bed. The floorboards were stripped and varnished and full of whorls and knots.
    ‘It’s beautiful,’ Melody said, ‘really beautiful. But I’m not sure I can really stay tonight. I think I should really get home. I’ve got a son … I’ve got to …’ She paused as her eye was caught by a particularly large whorl in the floorboards,