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Author’s Note: “Night Blooming” is the third in a series, it’ll make more sense to you if you read “Nightlight” and then “Pooky Night”, both of which can be found on my profile. And I’ll give you big love if you make it through all three.
NIGHT BLOOMING
“Shit!” Tabbie hisses through gritted teeth, before shoving her thumb into her mouth. It's not the babyish gesture it might look like; she's just trapped it in her bedroom door.
“Tabitha!” Instantly, she knows she is in trouble. Her mother walks in from the landing, an outraged look on her face. “I heard that, young lady. Where on Earth did you learn language like that?”
Tabbie scolds herself for not checking the coast was clear before trying out the new word. When she first heard it, she knew it was one of those select things people say that are bad, something her parents wouldn't want to hear.
“Jas,” she blurts out, hoping to deflect the blame. “She didn't know I was there when she said it though, I overheard it by accident.” From the look on Mum's face, she thinks this might have worked.
“You know not to use words like that, Tabs,” she says, less harshly. “Maybe I ought to go over and have a word with Jasmine.”
“No!” Tabbie shakes her head quickly. “I won't say it again, I promise.” She doesn't want Mum going down the street and shouting at Jas. She likes Jas; she talks funny and wears hoop earrings that remind Tabbie of gypsy girls. Ever since she arrived on the street, it's been sort of like having a big sister. Jas is like Mona; she doesn't talk to her like a little kid, she treats her the same way she treats everyone. If they weren't different colours, Tabbie might think they were related. As it is, she can at least pretend that Jas is her big sister.
She arrived on Bonfire Night, just as people were starting to gather on their lawns to watch the fireworks. They were probably coming from two or three streets over, or maybe the field on the other side of the block… in the dark, it was hard for many people to tell. But nary a one missed the sight of a leggy, dark-skinned girl getting out of a taxi with a suitcase and heading to Number 27. Mona Brown's house.
She's halfway through her cuppa when the phone rings. It's Sita, from two streets over; her little girl and boy have been playing with Tabbie lately, a huge breakthrough in Lou's mind, as she'd been having concerns about her daughter's lack of friends. It wasn't that Tabbie was antisocial – she just preferred to live in a world of her own making, inside her head. None of the other children seemed to live up to the high standards set by her imagination, until she started playing 'hide and seek' with Sonny and Saffron Patel. Now, all she talks about is the two of them, and every now and then she'll mention the mysterious Jasmine...
Actually, there is no point in trying to turn Jasmine into some sort of shady character. Lara closes the journal and opens her bedroom window, hoping a cigarette will clear her head. The only reason she doesn’t like Jas is because Scott is interested in her. He says he isn’t, but Lara has got to know him quite well lately, and she reckons he is. The two of them are going to the pub tonight. He asked Lara if she wanted to go, but she declined – watching Scott Dalton and Jasmine Brown perform the mating ritual wasn’t her idea of a good time… it gave her a strange feeling.
Not jealous exactly, but something close. A sort of unpleasant sensation in the stomach, like the one you get if you run around after drinking vodka. A hot feeling, like your insides are hissing. Lara knows that she shouldn’t be crushing on her neighbour, especially one that is five years older than her and has only recently stopped taking drugs. But since when has knowing something ever helped? When she was thirteen, she’d known smoking pot was illegal, but she still went ahead and did it. She’d also known she didn’t want to sleep with Ollie, but she did.
Her whole teens so far have been a series of things she’d known she shouldn’t do, but did anyway. Scott says she has some odd complex. The first night they’d met, she asked him if he fancied her. She had been relieved when he said no, because it mooted the possibility that she might compete with herself to seduce him. It sounds ridiculous, now that she thinks about it, but that doesn’t stop it from being true.
Somehow, knowing that he wasn’t attracted to her in that way had sparked the problem that she has now. She wants him, she wants him bad, and she knows that she can’t have him. Alright, so a five year age difference isn’t unheard of, but she is seventeen, he’s twenty-two, and they both live with their families on the same street.
They don’t even have a lot in common; he regrets going off the rails at school, because if he hadn’t then he would have a degree by now. Lara, on the other hand, hates almost everything about sixth form, but will probably end up doing literature at university, if only to please her dad. Scott has a passion for all books, while Lara finds the “classics” that he recommends to be contrived, precious drivel.
And yet hanging out with him doesn’t make her feel thick or unsophisticated – in fact, quite the opposite. She finally has someone to talk to about all the little things she notices that everybody else either ignores or just chooses not to see. She doesn’t get self-conscious when she mentions her diary, something that had lain forgotten for years until recently, when she picked it up and started recording her life again.
She’s finally found, as Anne of Green Gables would put it, a kindred spirit. But that’s all they’ll ever be in his eyes, because Lara is a half-baked seventeen year old, and Jasmine is a model with long legs and hips that aren’t bony or boyish. The bitch.
“So, Debs, where’s your lad tonight?” Evan asks innocently, but the frosty look he gets from Deborah quells some of his cheery demeanor.
“He went to the pub with that girl from down the street, Jezebel…”
“It's Jasmine, actually,” Louise pipes up, for some reason compelled to correct her. “She's great, apparently. Or at least, Tabs loves her.” She doesn’t seem to know exactly how to read the look on Deborah's face, so changes direction.
“So how old is Scotty again? You must have told me, but it's just clear gone from my mind!” A nervous laugh.
“He's twenty-two,” Deborah replies coolly. “And he's never been a Scotty. Just a Scott.”
How quickly the good humour of a dinner party can go down the pan… Deborah tries to steer the conversation away from Scott and the Brown girl by asking Louise about her own daughter. She has no way of anticipating the outburst of maternal angst. She finds herself tuning out half of what the other woman is saying, before forcing herself to pay more attention, if only out of the politeness that is expected of a hostess.
“…she’s spending tonight with the Patel family, they’re celebrating Diwali and all that Hindu stuff is like Miracle-Grow for her imagination… not that it needs to grow at all, I mean she still asks me questions I don’t know how to begin to answer. And even now she is half-convinced that you have a monster in your house…” Lou shakes her head, then asks; “whatever were those noises, anyway? I never got around to asking you.”
Deborah freezes, and before the truth can come spilling from her lips like blood from a fresh cut, Harold walks in with a bottle of brandy and four glasses clutched between his work-worn fingers. Deborah busies herself taking the glasses off him, and he pours them each a generous measure.
“This’ll keep the chill out for a little while,” Harold says good-naturedly, raising his glass. The Parkers raise theirs too, and it is evident that Lou has lost her train of thought once again. She doesn’t know whether it is because of his impeccable timing or just because, but Deborah has never loved her husband more.
“So whereabouts were you?” Jas asks, tilting her head and looking him up and down as if she can guess.
“Brixton.” He says, even though the dingy squat had actually been in a much rougher part of the Lambeth area. “You?”
“Camden.” Scott smiles and nods slowly; that fits in perfectly, somehow.
“I’d have loved to live somewhere like that,” he says. “How come you left?”
For the first time all evening, Jas breaks eye contact.
“Fancy a game of pool?” The subject change isn’t even half subtle, but Scott goes along with it.
“Okay,” he says, “but I must warn you – I am fairly crap.”
“I have no problem with that,” she grins, meeting his gaze again, “just so long as you don’t mind being beaten by a girl.”
As it turns out, she’s nowhere near as good as he anticipated. Jas exudes the kind of confidence that initially made Scott believe her capable of anything, but he suspects that if you scratch beneath the surface, it’s a different story. She’s like the swan that looks ever-so-relaxed, but is in truth paddling furiously beneath the water.
The first game goes on for nearly twenty minutes, with Scott getting gradually better as Jas gets gradually worse. He finds himself falling back into it quite comfortably, whereas the two double rums that Jas imbibes during the game probably impair her game, despite that stellar confidence. She wins, but only just. Scott wins the second game, and by the time it comes to best of three, Jas is on her way to being drunk and Scott is finally finding a perk to his newfound sobriety.
“So how come you don’t drink?” Jas gestures to his water, almost reading his mind. She reminds him of Lara in this way, although he doesn’t know why he is thinking about her…
“I just don’t,” he shrugs. He has already poured his heart out to one girl on Eyre’s Crescent, and by some bizarre twist of fate, this had led to one of the best friendships he’s ever had. He doesn’t want to jinx everything by doing it all over again with this stranger, no matter how charismatic she might be.
“Fair enough,” Jas smiles again, and knocks back her rum. “I’ll just have to drink enough for both of us.”
“Love you,” he whispers in her ear as she unlocks the front door.
“Love you too,” she smiles back at him, and the door swings open. Moments later he’s on top of her, both of them arched uncomfortably on the stairs, but they don’t give a toss. His hands go under her dress; her tongue traces the outline of his jaw. He breathes in the fruity scent of her hair, and she fumbles with his belt buckle. They don’t even bother taking their clothes off – his smart dinner trousers fall down to his knees, and her dress rides up to her waist.
Evan can’t remember the last time they had sex like this – spontaneously, not caring who might see or hear. For these few precious, hot moments, they traveled back to a time before kids, before suburbia, a time when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other and they didn’t have to cover their mouths to stop their guttural moans from escaping.
Louise comes loudly, throwing her head back and nearly concussing herself on the banister. Seconds later Evan buries his head in her neck and shakes, almost silently – seven year old habits die hard. They stay on the stairs for a few more minutes, catching their breath and just enjoying the uninterrupted closeness, before Lou stands up takes off her dress. Evan rises and steps out of his trousers, almost falling over as he does so. She takes him by the hand and leads him upstairs to the bathroom, turns on the shower and steps in. Finally catching her drift, Evan tugs off the rest of his clothes in record time and jumps in with her. A tiny part of him hopes that her delighted squeals don’t travel to next door… but then again, a tiny part of him hopes they do.
An hour or two later, they are on the sofa, her in one of his work shirts, him in a bathrobe. They’ve just drained the last drop of wine in the house, and for the first time, Evan regrets not keeping a fuller alcohol cabinet. What exactly just happened? It feels like a spell has been cast over them, and as long as they stay here, in this alcohol-flushed cocoon, only good things can happen. They need to do this more often, he thinks, in fact as often as possible. Every day would be fine by him.
“Some night,” Lou says, kissing him. He can taste red wine on her, and imagines she is probably quite drunk. Damson gin and brandy at the Daltons, then a bottle of red here, punctuated by spontaneous sex… yep, she’s hammered. And so is he. He nods in agreement, and then they both burst out laughing. Laughing so hard, so loud, that they almost don’t hear the doorbell. Lou mock-shushes him, and they walk to the front door hand in hand.
Mrs. Patel is standing on the doorstep, Tabbie in front of her. Their daughter is decked out in a bright yellow sari, and her face has all manner of colourful smudges. Evan spots what he supposes is meant to be a bindi on her forehead, but guesses that Tabs got a bit carried away with the exotic makeup.
“Sorry we’re so late,” Mrs. Patel says, “we were having so much fun, we lost track of time, didn’t we Tabitha?” Her initial earnest expression followed by one of confusion and vague distaste. It takes the Parkers a second to remember their current state of undress, and the clothes that are still on the stairs. Louise starts to giggle, so Evan takes charge.
“Thank you so much, Sita,” he says, struggling to keep a straight face himself. “We’d love to have your two over here to return the favour, any time.”
Sita Patel smiles and nods graciously, even though they both know that will probably never happen. She says goodnight, pats Tabs on the head, and leaves. Now that the grown up conversation is over, Tabbie can’t contain herself anymore.
“Mum! Dad!” She shouts, making both her parents wince. “Guess what! I want to be a Hindu!”
Don’t be taken in as if butter wouldn’t melt; her charm and looks are just tools she uses to hide her wickedness and get whatever she wants.
But Mona doesn’t yet know if there is any truth in these words. She’s still been unable to get anything out of Jasmine, other than the simplest details; she had a huge fight with her mother and left London, swearing never to go back. By the looks of things, Jasmine did or said something pretty unforgivable… and Mona knows a lot about Lindy’s powers of forgiveness. Mona loved her son right up until the day he died, but she is under no illusions - he was far from the best husband or father. He adored Jas and Lindy, but he drank and gambled away most if not all of their money, leaving his two ladies with nothing when he shuffled off the mortal coil.
When Jasmine showed up on her doorstep a couple of weeks ago, Mona had been too surprised, too pleased to see her, to wonder about why she was here. Just earlier that night, she’d been feeling so lonely, thinking about Ivan and Sam, her man and her boy, both gone. Then Jas showed up, and Mona was reminded of the ever-changing nature of family.
When Mona was Jasmine’s age, she’d been a baker in Derry, a farmer’s daughter. Then she came to England with Ivan and had Sammy, and she was a new person, she had a whole new clan. Now, she realizes, Jasmine is all she has left.
She knows that some people on the Crescent are curious as to the origins of this new arrival; Mona rarely talks about her late son, preferring to keep her love and sadness to herself. And the few people that do know about Jasmine find the thought of this Irish grand-dame and mulatto beauty being of the same blood quite mind-boggling.
It’s late at night, or early in the morning, when Mona hears Jasmine stumble in through the front door, making the kind of noise that only happens when a drunk person is trying to be quiet. Jas obviously enjoyed herself at the pub - she’s a night bloomer, just like her namesake. Mona lies in bed, listening to the muffled sounds of her granddaughter settling down on the sofa-bed.
Thinking back to the note, Mona decides to give Jasmine a chance to come clean in her own time. And if they’ve not got anywhere by Christmas… Well, she’ll think of something. One way or another, she will get the truth.
