by Luana Lewis
This is not the time to tell him. He’s exhausted and his words are a little slurred.
‘I was so angry,’ he says. ‘It frightened me, how angry I was with her. I could have hit her.’
‘You’re under extreme stress. And you didn’t hit her.’
I look at the red mark underneath his eye, and I wonder what did happen. I hope he didn’t hurt her. ‘Ben, alcohol isn’t going to help with the stress you’re under. I think you need to be careful about how much you’re drinking.’
He nods, but I’m not reassured. He is deteriorating in front of me, losing control. He isn’t coping.
‘Go to bed and get some rest,’ I say. ‘I’ll stay. I’ll go to her if she wakes up again.’
Ben sways, then braces himself against the doorframe.
‘Please, go back to bed. I’ll stay another couple of hours and then I’ll let myself out. That way you’ll get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep and you’ll feel better.’
I sound more like myself. Authoritative and in control. I’m comfortable in this role.
Ben turns away from me. He opens the door behind him, the one that has been closed all this time. The door that leads to their bathroom. My blood turns cold as he disappears inside and I hear the click of the lock. I imagine Vivien, lying on the floor. She is waiting for me, desperate, hoping her mother will come and save her.
I have to get out of here. I lurch down the short passageway and out onto the landing. I can’t bear to look at her wedding portrait. I can feel her, staring at me. Begging for help. No wonder Ben drinks.
The basement kitchen is a long and narrow space, with stainless-steel worktops and stone floors. I flick on the lights, glad to be as far away as possible from Vivien’s bathroom, though this room is not much of a comfort. Even with the lights on, it’s a gloomy space, and full of shadows.
Outside, rain drums down onto the square patch of lawn.
One end of the kitchen is dominated by a cast-iron Victorian fireplace; the other has narrow windows looking out onto the back garden. In front of these there is a row of potted herbs in ceramic containers: basil, sage, mint and coriander. The plants are wilting.
I had intended to make myself a cup of tea, but I decide I don’t have the energy. Tall grey cabinets loom over me on each side, and I don’t know where to start looking. Instead, I lift a coffee-stained mug out of the sink and I give the plants a little water.
When I hear the sound of the buzzer, I am not surprised. I was expecting her. Cleo is waiting outside in the rain.
Chapter 10
Cleo rushes inside. Water drips onto Vivien’s tiles as she takes off her long, hooded coat. She opens the cupboard next to the front door, helps herself to a hanger and hangs it up. Then she unzips her knee-high boots and pulls them off, leaving them lying next to mine, under Vivien’s mahogany table.
I’m taken aback by the ease with which she moves around my daughter’s home.
‘Ben’s upstairs, asleep,’ I say. ‘He’s exhausted. Lexi’s having a really bad night.’
My somewhat impatient tone implies this is not the right time for a visit, but Cleo doesn’t seem to notice. She pats her cheeks, wiping away the last of the rain. She looks elegant tonight, in a navy polo-neck and tapered jeans. Her hair is tied back again, this time loosely knotted into a bun at the base of her neck. Large hoop earrings dangle from her ears.
‘Let’s have a glass of wine together,’ she says.
‘Cleo, I think …’ I say. ‘Forgive me for being blunt but I think it’s best if you go home. Ben really needs to get some rest, Lexi has been in a terrible state.’
‘I’ve struggled across London in this awful weather,’ she says. ‘Have one drink with me before I head out into the rain again.’
She smiles at me as she goes through into the living room and makes her way to the open drinks cabinet. ‘I see the whisky bottle is missing,’ she says.
Cleo’s noticed the drinking too.
‘Ben must have taken it upstairs with him. Is he drinking every night?’
She nods. ‘I’d drink too, if I was alone in this house, thinking about what happened upstairs in that bathroom.’
Her cavalier tone disturbs me. She peruses the wine rack, pulls a few bottles out and scrutinizes the labels before choosing a Merlot. She locates the bottle opener with ease, in a small drawer next to the mirrored cabinet. Then she chooses two large wine glasses and pours.
‘You look like you need this,’ she says.
The adrenalin rush of earlier this evening has dissipated. I’m on edge, unsettled after my journey upstairs, into Vivien’s bedroom. It doesn’t take much for me to relent.
‘You’re right, I do need a drink.’ I take a sip from the glass that Cleo gives to me. My mouth fills with a soft, plummy taste; the Merlot goes down so smoothly, soothing my throat and my aching head.
‘If Ben’s having trouble coping, he should see his GP,’ I say. ‘Maybe he needs an antidepressant. That would be better for him than alcohol. Maybe you can have a word with him? I’ve mentioned he should be careful but I don’t think I’m having much impact.’
‘Sure,’ she says.
We stand and sip our wine at the back window as we look out at the garden, at the rows of tiny lights and the sad concrete lion. Before I know it, my glass is almost empty and I feel myself unwinding, like a rope that’s been twisted tight.
‘Do you remember how Vivien and I first met Ben?’
‘I do,’ I say. ‘You met him because of me. Ben’s father was a patient on the stroke ward, and the entrance is directly opposite the Weissman Unit.’
Cleo nods. ‘It was in the December holidays, Vivien was back from performing-arts school and we were hanging around the vending machine, waiting for you to finish your shift and take us Christmas shopping. Ben came out of his father’s ward to get a coffee. He was smitten with Vivien the moment he laid eyes on her.’
‘Vivien was already seeing Sebastian at that stage, wasn’t she?’ I say.
Sebastian was as tall, chiselled and blond as Vivien was petite, Eurasian and dark. He was from old money; she was from a council estate. He was in our lives for five long, fraught years and all Vivien wanted for those five impressionable years was a ring on her finger.
‘That’s right,’ Cleo says. ‘Vivien wasn’t interested in Ben at all. He asked her out and she said no. I, on the other hand, knew the moment I met him that there was something special about him.’
Cleo refills my glass. I’m feeling calmer. I’m pleased she stayed, pleased to be standing next to her, reminiscing about my daughter. I understand what Ben means, how it helps to be with someone who knows Vivien’s history; all of our history. It seems so sad, that Cleo and I – for different reasons – both lost contact with Vivien these past years.
‘I was desperate to see Ben again,’ Cleo goes on. ‘I made sure we went back to the ward the next day and I asked him out myself. It was the first time I’d ever done anything like that and I don’t think Ben was even remotely interested, but he humoured me by agreeing to go out to dinner. We became friends and we kept in contact by email while he was at Cambridge. At first I was pretty sure he was only friendly with me because I could feed him information about Vivien. But then she and Sebastian got engaged, and Ben got a job in London, and we ended up moving in together.’
‘Vivien and Sebastian were so unhappy,’ I say. This sounds as though I’m making excuses for my daughter, but I feel as though I need to explain, to stick up for her. ‘Vivien always worried about where Sebastian was, when he wasn’t with her, she thought he prioritized his friends over their relationship, and she was devastated when she wasn’t included in a family holiday to some or other island or Scottish castle. She idolized him. She tried so hard to make herself part of his family and to ingratiate herself with his sisters, but she was out of place, out of their league. Sebastian moved in a world she could never be a part of. So no one was more surprised than I was when he asked Vivien to marry hi
m.’
I find that the second glass of Merlot is now empty and I’m feeling a little light-headed. I lean against the back of the sofa. I want to keep looking out at the pretty lights in the garden. Vivien made everything around her so beautiful.
‘The engagement didn’t last long, did it?’ Cleo says.
‘I suspect Vivien pressured Sebastian into it somehow or other,’ I say, ‘and he soon regretted it.’
‘Vivien knew you wanted the relationship to work,’ Cleo says. ‘She thought you’d be devastated about the break-up.’
‘That’s not true.’ I’m surprised to hear this; something else I did not know. ‘I was relieved when they broke up. I worried that Vivien was with him for the wrong reasons. I always felt that Sebastian’s money and status were more attractive to her than Sebastian himself. Not that I would have blamed her if that was the case. You remember what things were like, growing up?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘While Vivien was growing up I was always afraid,’ I say. ‘Money frightened me, or rather, not having enough of it to survive.’
Up until Vivien came back to live with me, I sent most of my salary home to my mother. In those years, I had enough money for one bus fare per day: I could travel either to or from the hospital by public transport, I had to walk the other journey. I had to choose and I’ll never forget how that felt.
And I told Vivien how hard it was. I shouldn’t have, but I did. She knew what it was like to worry about money, all the time; I put my fear and my exhaustion inside her. She saw how the years of struggle as a single parent on a nurse’s salary had eaten away at me. I didn’t hide it from her and I didn’t protect her.
‘Vivien told me she was the one who broke off the engagement,’ Cleo says, ‘but reading between the lines, I knew Sebastian must have been sleeping around again. I think the humiliation was so bad that even Vivien couldn’t keep up the pretence any more.’
Cleo’s words have become sharp objects, striking at the side of my already tender head. I feel my shoulders tense up and I have the same sensation I had in the park, where I can’t help feeling that, even if she isn’t consciously aware of it herself, she has a desire to hurt me.
She was always this way, she has a tendency to say exactly what she is thinking. I can’t help but rise to the bait.
‘It was different when she got together with Ben,’ I say. ‘They were good for each other.’
The wine was probably a mistake; I’m bound to say something I regret. I feel woozy, but I don’t want to lie down in case I fall asleep and I don’t hear Lexi calling out. I put my glass down and I stretch my arms, interlacing my fingers and pushing them out in front of me, straightening my spine, setting my shoulders back. I should go upstairs and check on Lexi, but I’m still too light-headed.
Cleo walks slowly around Vivien’s living room. She trails her hand along the edge of the leather-topped desk. She lifts the large silver frame, with the photograph of Vivien, and then she places it back down again. But it’s not quite right now; the angle is wrong. Vivien no longer faces into the room, she’s been turned a fraction towards the wall.
‘The strange thing is,’ Cleo says, ‘that it wasn’t Ben I thought about for all these years so much as Vivien. She was my closest friend and I missed her like crazy.’
She looks at me, as though expecting me to say something, but I don’t. And each time Cleo touches something that belongs to my daughter, I want to yell at her to stop.
‘I’ve typed the words Vivien Kaye into the search bar more often than I like to admit,’ she says. ‘There are lots of women with that name: business people, even an art historian. But none of the profiles or photographs belonged to your Vivien, to Ben’s wife. She had no Facebook page, no Twitter account, there was no trace of her at all across social media. She was always so private.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes she was.’
Perhaps with good reason, I think.
‘I had better luck with Ben,’ Cleo says. ‘There are hundreds of photographs and articles about him; he’s all over the internet. Did you know his firm’s just led a five-hundred-million-pound investment in the Central European broadband industry?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I only ever found one photograph of Ben and Vivien together,’ Cleo says. ‘They were at a charity fundraiser. Vivien looked so beautiful. She had her hair swept back, away from her face, and she was wearing a white, sleeveless dress. I can still see the muscles in her arms. And she looked so happy, like the cat that got the cream. As though she had everything she’d ever wanted.’
I’m not sure what to make of what she’s told me. After all, we all Google each other. I’ve looked up Isaac’s name, read some of his articles online. I’ve searched for pictures of Andrew Lissauer and his wife. But I wouldn’t admit this to anyone.
‘It’s surprisingly easy,’ Cleo says, ‘to find people and to see how they live. I found bits and pieces of information and I put it all together, like a jigsaw. I knew where Ben and Vivien lived; I knew the events they attended, the charities they supported. There’s really no such thing as privacy any more, is there?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘there isn’t. But it doesn’t mean you should go intruding into people’s lives, Cleo.’
She blinks and looks around the room. ‘Vivien’s house is quite breathtaking,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it?’
She takes a sip of her wine and the colour is a deep red, like blood, and it stains her lips so they’re almost black.
‘I feel like I’m being seduced every time I step through the front door,’ she says. ‘I almost can’t bear to leave.’
She turns to me and smiles, as though we’re chatting at a cocktail party, not standing inside the house where my daughter died. ‘I don’t want to go back outside into the real world,’ she says. ‘I want to stay here, inside Vivien’s fantasy.’
Her expression darkens as she drifts further away from me, to a place inside herself. ‘I think we’re very alike,’ she says, ‘you and me. You of all people know what it’s like to be alone. We’ve been on the outside, looking in at Ben and Vivien and their gilded life. We’ve been standing out there in the cold, peering in through the shutters. But now it’s our turn, we’re inside. Admit it, Rose, don’t you like it better, being on the inside?’
‘That’s a very odd thing to say, Cleo.’
She smiles at me again, as though she hasn’t heard the implied criticism.
‘Rose, you look so tired. You should go home and get some sleep.’
‘I told you, Cleo, I’m going to stay in case Lexi wakes up again.’
She walks round the sofa and puts her glass down on Vivien’s Perspex coffee table. She rubs at her eyebrow. It’s not that Cleo is unattractive. It’s only that, next to Vivien, her features always seemed rounded and plain. Her hair is mouse-brown, while Vivien’s was a dramatic, raven black.
I steady myself against the back of the sofa.
I don’t have the patience to mince my words. The blasted throbbing in my head makes tact impossible and the wine makes it even easier than usual for me to be blunt. I no longer hold back for fear of hurting her feelings.
‘Look, Cleo,’ I say, ‘you’re visiting Ben every night and I don’t think it’s a good idea. You’re basically foisting yourself onto this family. We haven’t even had a chance to give Vivien a proper funeral yet, and Ben is struggling. I understand you still have feelings for him, but I would ask you to do the right thing and give us some space. Ben and Lexi are extremely vulnerable.’
Her cheeks flush, but Cleo doesn’t say a thing. I’m not sure she’s even letting my words reach her. I suspect she doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. I carry on, hoping to have some impact.
‘I think your relationship with Ben might get in the way of his grief. Your presence in this house is a distraction, like putting a plaster over a deep wound. It may make him feel better in the short term, but in the long term it could lead to problems for both of you i
f you start a relationship so soon.’
‘What sort of problems?’ she says.
Her response is bizarre, as though she’s chosen not to hear half of what I’ve just said.
‘If you really have Ben’s best interests at heart,’ I say, ‘then wait a while. If it’s meant to be, it will happen. But not now, not while he’s still traumatized. You don’t want to be a temporary solution to his pain, do you?’
I’m trying to find something that will appeal to her rational side, something that will make her understand that it might be in her own interests to give Ben some space.
‘Vivien wouldn’t have waited,’ Cleo says. ‘Vivien always understood that if you want something, then it’s up to you to grab it by the throat.’
I’m angry now, because she has no respect for the loss this family has suffered. All I want is for her to leave. Right now, right this second.
Tonight, standing in front of me in my daughter’s home, Cleo no longer seems awkward or uneasy in her own skin. She is coming into her own. Like some sort of vulture, feeding off the corpse of my daughter.
Though I haven’t spoken, she has noticed the expression on my face.
‘Rose,’ she says, ‘please don’t be offended. You know me, I’m just being practical. I know Ben better than anyone, and he isn’t good at being alone. He’s a family man. And he is rich, attractive and still young. Think about it. He will marry again, it’s inevitable. I’m not going to stand aside and take the chance of losing him a second time. It’s in your interests to have me around too. I adore you. I’ll make sure you’re always an important part of Lexi’s life.’
I see now she wants it all. It’s not only Ben she’s interested in. She wants this house, she wants his child and perhaps she even wants me, too. A mother.
‘Cleo,’ I say, with what I think is admirable restraint, ‘it has been a difficult day. For now, what I want is for you to go home and leave us in peace. Please. If you respect me, as you say you do, then you will do as I ask.’
‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Cleo says. ‘That’s the last thing I’d ever want.’
