Behind Closed Doors

by Catherine Alliott

  I’d already spotted from the racecard, as Dad always called it, what was next, but nothing could prepare me for the horror of what was about to unfold. Amanda slid past us, and didn’t just stand at the front like Ned, but made her way to the pulpit, ascending the spiral stone staircase to the top. It took her ages, her head bowed in a sombre manner. As she turned to face us, though, and as her eyes roved around the congregation, it was in a much less misty fashion. There were no damp eyes, no swallowing either. And when those bright eyes finally came to rest, they were firmly on me. It was a look I knew. It was challenging. Triumphant, even. I took a deep breath and held it. It seemed to me the rest of my family did the same. This was her moment.

  It started predictably enough. In a high but reasonably calm voice, she detailed her and Michael’s happy childhood. The loving parents they’d shared, the delightful house in the country – Esher wasn’t mentioned. She told us about the rambling garden, and the games they’d played. The rural idyll they’d enjoyed. And then, tragedy befell the family. Everyone looked and felt, I’m sure, very sad. It was a dreadful story. Amanda told us, however, that one good thing did come out of the tragedy: she and Michael bonded over their loss, became inseparable. To give their grandparents a rest, every summer they stayed with the Taylors in Norfolk, sailing every day and living a Swallows and Amazons existence. I saw Millie and Simon glance at each other. It was the first I’d heard of Michael’s enthusiasm for sailing; he’d told me he hated it and stayed behind to read books, but who’s to say. Anyway, so far so bland. I almost began to relax.

  But then she got going. She told us how, after Michael married, everything changed. How, bit by bit, that bond had weakened. Disintegrated. I felt Imo stiffen beside me. How, despite the best efforts of both siblings, something was lost forever. Something was keeping them apart. Some force, beyond the control of these two lost children, these babes in the wood, was stronger than even their most desperate efforts, and was determined to drive them apart. A glance told me Ned’s face was white, Imo’s purple. I put a hand on her arm. She was trembling.

  ‘We tried so hard,’ Amanda told us, in a voice choked with emotion. ‘We tried desperately to hold on to our love.’ The vicar was frowning, looking perplexed. ‘But it seemed the darker side of love, the jealous, possessive side that Jesus warns us about, and which Ned, my darling nephew, has just reminded us is always there, would not let me in. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not self-seeking, and – most importantly – it does not dishonour others.’ Her gaze rested on me. ‘Isn’t that what Jesus taught us?’

  My breathing became laboured. She’d tricked Ned into that reading, of course she had. It was the one Amanda had wanted him to read all along. The one that served her purpose. I couldn’t look at him. I knew he’d be looking stricken.

  ‘Love does not delight in evil,’ she told us softly, quoting entirely out of context, for her own convenience. ‘Evil,’ she repeated quietly, to a horror-struck, silent congregation. ‘For that is what it is, to keep a brother and sister apart.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Imo was on her feet, shaking with rage. ‘You’re the evil one, you mad cow! How dare you even suggest such a thing? How dare you stand there, protected by some pious institution, when my mum did everything to include you? Your brother wrecked my mother’s life, he nearly wrecked all our lives, and now you’re trying to extend his legacy beyond the grave – how fucking dare you!’

  ‘Imo – darling—’ I was on my feet. She shook me off.

  ‘No, I will not let her get away with that! Just because we’re in a church, I will not!’

  Ned had his arm around her shoulders. He tried to lead her away. The vicar was looking horrified. But she shook Ned off, too.

  ‘Haven’t we suffered enough at the hands of your family?’ Imo screamed to Amanda up in the pulpit. Amanda’s face was white. Livid. ‘Isn’t it enough that a bullying, frightening, terrifying man was able to control us for so long?’

  Ned had her elbow in a vice-like grip now and was leading her away. And actually, she was done. Spent. She broke suddenly into noisy sobs. As one, we vacated the front pew, and with Ant, Helena and the girls hot on our heels, legged it down the aisle. Helena dashed to catch up with her niece.

  ‘Quite right, darling,’ she hissed. ‘Quite fucking right.’

  We all sped down the nave, through the ante-room, out of the door. Down the steps we went, the spring sunshine glaring at us. Tess and Maudie were silent for once, their eyes huge and frightened. Imo was still shaking with noisy sobs. So many tears. So many years. Only we knew. Ned knew too, and I realized he was pale and struggling to compose himself. The sight of his face was too much for me. I burst into tears. We all held on to each other and Helena did too, her arms around us, holding on. She knew enough. Even Ant didn’t try to calm us. Although he did nip back to shut the church door. It was only when Tess and Maudie joined in the group hug and Maudie rubbed her heroine’s back and, echoing her mother’s words, murmured, ‘quite fucking right,’ as if permission had been given for all sorts of misdemeanours, that hysteria turned to hysterics. That fine line between the two worlds that gives the word its meaning was crossed. A lot of hiccupping and repeating of Maudie’s phrase occurred, and then, with much laughter and tears, we all mopped ourselves up. We came to our senses and calmed down. Ant, who always had a clean hanky, passed it around as Maudie, delighted to have broken the spell, tried not to beam triumphantly.

  Suddenly our heads turned as we heard singing. The choir was soaring above the rest.

  ‘We have to go,’ Ant said at once, taking the lead, which was so unlike him. ‘That’ll be the final hymn.’

  We all agreed, nodding and murmuring our accord.

  ‘We can go, can’t we?’ I said, mopping my eyes. ‘Don’t have to go to the wretched drinks thing she’s organized?’

  ‘Of course we bloody can,’ declared Ned, in a most unecumenical manner. At that, we moved off collectively, out of the front gate.

  ‘No – she’s having it at the Bluebird,’ I remembered suddenly, sniffing hard and jerking my head towards the Fulham Road. ‘We need to go left.’

  Hurrying to get away as quickly as possible, we hastened, heads down, around the side of the church and Helena and I fumbled in our bags for tissues. Helena passed one to Imo, who was very quiet now. As she took it wordlessly, I hoped, I prayed, for my darling daughter. Prayed that there wasn’t something darker, something incredibly frightening and sinister that had provoked that outburst. Something that I didn’t know about. I had asked her once, twice, even, and she’d always said no. But would she say that? To protect me? She was that nice.

  ‘No,’ she said in a low voice, her hand on my arm. She stopped me in the street a moment. ‘No, I promise. I know what you’re thinking.’

  I exhaled shakily. Regarded her with huge relief. Helena had stopped too, and I think she’d heard the exchange and understood. A shadow cleared from her face, in recognition. Being my sister, it’s possible she’d asked the same question of her niece in the past. I blew my nose and we made to move on, to follow Ant, Ned and the twins, not to the Sydney Arms, the obvious watering hole which Michael’s Soho mates might fall into, but to the Builders Arms in Britten Street.

  We still hadn’t got past the vast church. It was enormous. We quickened our step. Ahead of us, a side door opened. I stiffened in alarm. The hymn hadn’t finished; it was still in its final throes. Yet someone appeared to be leaving early. A blonde woman emerged on her own. She was wearing a short, pale grey suit with a fox fur collar. As she turned to go in the other direction, taking the path through the churchyard to Andrews Street, I saw her profile. I realized it was Ingrid Schroeder.

  19

  The pub was disappointingly full. Everyone was eating and looking pretty permanent, but luckily, at a large table in the far corner, a party of youngsters were looking set to leave. My sister’s no slouch at this sort of manoeuvre: she’s got very sharp elbows. She hovered and pretended she h
adn’t seen the group at the bar also set to stage an ambush, and had her bottom on a chair the moment someone moved theirs. Ant, well used to such an operation, deftly cleared away the glasses and popped them on the bar, ignoring the glares of the usurped party. He then ordered gin and tonics all round and brought them to our table. The twins, thinking for one mad moment they’d got one too, sipped, and realized it was lemonade.

  ‘You could have made an exception today, Ant,’ Maudie reproved him hotly. ‘We’ve had a very traumatic day. In fact, I think I’ve got PTSD.’

  ‘Bollocks, you’ve enjoyed yourselves enormously. You love a bit of drama. And anyway, I have made an exception. It’s lemonade, not water.’

  ‘You’re only saying bollocks because Imo did,’ Tess told him. ‘It’s not something you usually say.’ She turned, starry-eyed, to her cousin. ‘I thought you were magnificent, by the way.’

  ‘Magnificent,’ her sister echoed.

  Imo grinned sheepishly and sank into her gin. ‘Can’t believe I actually did that,’ she said in amazement. ‘I mean – where did that come from?’

  ‘The heart,’ Helena told her. ‘And if you hadn’t done it, I might well have done it myself. Why should we all sit there listening to her lies? Our silence giving credence to them? You were right, she thought she had us trapped.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ I told them. ‘I should have been brave enough not to go. Not to put us all through it. And that poor vicar …’

  ‘I’ll go and see him,’ Ned said. ‘Leave him to me, he’ll understand. And trust me, it won’t be the first family fracas he’s witnessed. I once had a punch-up at an actual funeral, by the grave. Two wives and a body – both current wives, incidentally.’

  ‘No!’ The twins were gripped. ‘What – like, bigamy?’

  Ned entertained the girls with his tale of marital deception which meant the rest of us could talk quietly without the twins overhearing.

  ‘I don’t think we ever have to see Amanda again after this, do you?’ said Imo in a low voice.

  ‘Certainly not,’ her aunt said crisply as I hesitated.

  ‘She literally has no one else—’ I began, but my sister’s face was right in mine.

  ‘After what she’s done? After what she said in there? Tell me you have more backbone than that.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed quickly. ‘No. You’re right. Never again.’

  The relief that flooded through me, that somehow I’d been given permission to cut all ties with Michael’s family, was almost as huge as when I realized he’d actually died. Or, should I say, when I’d killed him. I was trying that out occasionally in my head. Trying to get used to it. It had been far harder than I’d thought it might be. In the early days, I’d kidded myself I’d been so numb with shock I’d been unable to move. But the moment I admitted the truth to myself, it rang alarm bells. And not in a ding-dong sort of way, more of a high-pitched screech. And the thing was, I’d fantasized about it so often, Michael dying. It had been a constant preoccupation. Sometimes it was all that got me through the day. And then, blow me down, a friendly burglar handed me my dreams on a plate. What was I to do, your honour? That was where the fantasy took a dive, as your honour reached for his black cap, or perhaps that didn’t happen any more. But anyway, as I was led away in handcuffs. Down to the cells. I took a deep breath. Fell into my gin.

  ‘Lucy?’ I realized Helena, Ant and Imo were all staring at me.

  ‘Mum, are you all right?’ Imo looked worried.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘It’s just you weren’t answering us and you’ve gone absolutely white.’

  ‘Have I? No, I’m fine.’

  ‘We were wondering if we should order some lunch?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t eat a thing. Also, I have this irrational fear …’ I glanced at the door.

  ‘That she might storm in in her widow’s weeds and make a terrible scene?’ said Helena. ‘She won’t.’

  ‘But Mum, you go,’ said Imo softly. ‘I know that feeling. Of wanting to be a million miles away.’

  I thought of her in New York. Looked at her gratefully.

  ‘Yes, go,’ Helena agreed, suddenly realizing too. The old terror surfacing. ‘If she so much as sets a foot in here, Ant will sort her out.’

  Ant, the mildest of men, and the least likely to sort anyone out, was looking at his phone, but glanced up at his name. ‘Eh? What? D’you know, it says here that in the sixteenth century the cure for female hysteria was lower pelvic massage.’

  Maudie’s head whipped round. She seized his phone, and as her father tried to grab it back, tossed it to Tess.

  ‘But that a cure for the now defunct medical condition,’ Tess read quickly, ‘was made possible by a new technological advance – the vibrator.’ Her eyes widened.

  ‘Thank you, girls.’ Ant snatched it back.

  I grinned and stood up. ‘Well, on that note, I’m off.’

  ‘God, imagine Ant trying to calm three women down with a vibrator outside church.’ Maudie’s eyes boggled.

  ‘And the vicar walks out,’ said Tess. ‘Typical of some man, though, don’t you think, to decide female hysterics are caused by sexual frustration.’

  ‘Like all we need is them,’ agreed her sister, ‘and their – you know.’

  ‘Dicks,’ whispered Tess.

  Imo came round the table to hug me. ‘Will you be all right driving?’

  ‘Perfectly all right. Will you?’

  ‘I came with Ned, in an Uber.’

  ‘OK.’ We hugged hard. An awful lot was said in that hug.

  ‘Text me when you get to G and G’s.’

  ‘Will do,’ I promised.

  My son was also on his feet to say goodbye. His quick nod assured me he’d look after his sister, and then I left. The thought of food actually made me gag, but I knew they’d share a hamburger, bolster each other, and that with Helena at the helm all would be well. I didn’t always, but right now I blessed my sister for being the captain in the family, and allowing me, on this, and many other occasions, to be the crew. We’d always scrapped and argued, but we’d also always been there for each other, always had each other’s backs. Particularly on the rare occasions when only your sister will do. Like when she needs to be injected in the bottom for IVF at a very specific time of day, on a number of very specific dates. We’d always risen to the occasion. I remembered her grief when the first round of treatment didn’t work. How I’d knelt before her and held her as she’d sobbed and sobbed, Ant with his head in his hands, helpless on the sofa beside her. And then the sobs of joy when she came round to tell me the next round had worked. She’d literally fallen through the door with tears streaming down her face, shouting with laughter, as we’d held one another. We’ve always been a rather loud, emotional family. See my parents on this score.

  As I drove through the pretty Chelsea streets, I wondered if that was the problem. Michael had once told me that I was emotionally incontinent, which had astonished me, because he had no idea how much I kept inside. But perhaps if he’d married someone as constipated as he was, as damaged and repressed, for fear of exposing himself and getting hurt again, of being abandoned, as he’d once been as a ten-year-old boy, perhaps his life would have been happier too. Oh yes, I often tried to remind myself that there had to be two sides to every marriage. And that however much I blamed him for everything, in some way – in many ways, perhaps – I surely had to be culpable too.

  I drove on through more familiar streets now, on the outskirts of Fulham, pretending I didn’t know where I was going. Pretending I was in a bit of a daze. And that in some strange, compulsive way, my hands on the steering wheel just seemed to be taking me home. To my house in Sands End. How odd. How really very peculiar that not only did I appear to be parked outside my old house, but that here I was, walking down to the meter to get a ticket, and sticking it under my windscreen. Extraordinary.

  I locked the car door and stared up at the house. I knew he was in; th
e sitting room lamp was on in the bay window. And I knew that if I took a few steps to the left I’d be at the correct angle to see him at the round table he’d moved there. The one with the fringed paisley throw. Maybe wearing a crumpled white shirt and jeans. Bare feet. I took a deep breath. I badly needed to speak to him. It was going to be acutely embarrassing, particularly, I realized, as he was someone I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of. Which was why I’d pretended I wasn’t driving here. But there was no one else to turn to about this. I’d decided that. Regrettably, it had to be him.

  To stop myself from chickening out, I put one foot in front of the other and climbed the steps quickly. I rang the bell. I heard light footsteps coming down the passage, which should have alerted me, but because I was running purely on adrenalin, it didn’t. The young woman who stood smiling in the open doorway was slim, blonde and stylish in a casual, leggings and ballet pumps sort of way. It was a look I’d tried myself once, but failed to pull off, my bottom looking enormous, my legs short and fat.

  ‘Hello?’ She smiled enquiringly as I failed to speak, transfixed as I was by her beauty. That mane of blonde hair.

  ‘Oh! Hi. Um … is Josh in?’

  ‘Yes, he is. Come in.’

  She stood aside, still smiling, then shut the door. She overtook me to lead me down the hallway. ‘Joshy!’ she called out, as she went. Joshy.

  I followed her down into my – or perhaps her – kitchen, where a pan was about to bubble over on the cooker.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ She lunged for it, and just managed to catch it before it came to fruition. ‘Thai green curry,’ she told me as Josh appeared behind us from the sitting room. ‘Or it will be, if I manage to find a lime and some coriander to shove in it. I’m Tilly, by the way.’