‘No.’
‘We didn’t. We didn’t.’ I could hear her anger, still raw after all these years. ‘I dare say it would have been grim—possibly I would have divorced him, though I doubt it—but he would have been alive to give his daughter away on her wedding day. Don’t you want to accompany your daughter up the aisle on her wedding day?’
I smiled, despite everything, at the unlikely image of Kate in a white veil. ‘She’s not that kind of girl.’
‘Mine was, but her father wasn’t alive to see her married. He couldn’t see any way out. That’s what he said in his letter. No way out. No choice.’ She shook her forefinger, admonishing the long-dead husband. ‘If he’d asked me, I would have told him! There are always other choices.’
‘Not for me.’
‘Yes, for you!’ Her voice was almost a shout. ‘It’s been fifty years since Jonathan left me. My children, my grandchildren . . . all of us haunted by that one terrible act. His parents never recovered. They died in grief. When I see him at the pearly gates, I’m going to give him a damned good kick up the backside.’
‘I’m sorry. I really am.’
Her eyelids came down for a second, heavily, as though I’d bored her. ‘Have you murdered somebody?’
‘No.’
‘Have you raped or maimed or tortured anyone?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then. Whatever your “crime”, your wife has the right to know about it.’
The unshed tears of decades began to scald my eyes. Eilish was my closest friend. She knew me better than anyone in the world. I longed to confide in her.
‘She’d think me a monster,’ I said.
‘Are you a monster?’
The door at the end of the carriage slid open, and a guard came noisily click-clicking. ‘Tickets, please; all tickets, please.’ He woke crisp-packet boy. The woman tucked her anger away, attacking the knitting with pursed lips. I finished my letter to Kate, slid it into an envelope and wrote her name on the outside.
When the train pulled into Liverpool Street, I stood up and lifted our bags from the rack. Hers was small and very light. She thanked me coolly as she put on her jacket.
‘Let me carry your case to the taxi,’ I said.
‘Don’t leave that beautiful woman alone. Don’t leave her with unanswered questions. And anger. And guilt. She deserves better. Take it from someone who knows.’
It took quite a while to get up the platform and past the barrier. The station was packed with Friday travellers, and my companion was alarmingly shaky on her feet. She used a stick, but even so I was afraid she was going to tip right over. I saw her to the covered rank and waited with her until we were at the front of the queue.
I was helping her into a taxi when she gripped my forearm. ‘You will continue living? Promise me.’
I had no answer. No promise.
‘There’s a drain,’ she said, lowering herself into the seat. ‘There, by your foot. Drop the keys to your flat down there. Buy yourself a little more time.’
I thanked her, and we said goodbye. I stood irresolute as her cab drew away. Three women waited in the queue behind me. They were dressed to the nines, perhaps for the theatre: sparkling earrings, high heels, swirling skirts. I caught a puff of scent mingling with exhaust fumes, hot tarmac and midsummer dustiness. Their heads were bent together in easy intimacy—if you watch a group of women together, you’ll see that they manage this as men cannot—talking very fast, never quite finishing a sentence; never needing to, it seemed. Suddenly all three burst into helpless laughter, and I felt the familiar agony of envy.
The rope was waiting for me. I’d already made it into a noose, already tied the knots in exactly the right way. It’s amazing what you can find on the internet: step-by-step guides to suicide by every possible method. I had an email ready to send to Bruce, the retired SAS man turned property manager who might or might not have feelings. I’d be long, long gone before he found me.
The next taxi was mine. The journey would take no time at all. Within an hour, I’d be free.
Now was my time. Now. Tonight.
I reached into my pocket to turn off the phone. I couldn’t bear to hear her voice now. Two black cabs pulled in from the road, and the first stopped in front of me. I took hold of the door handle. I could feel the vibration of the engine under my fingers.
All around me, life roared and rolled. The three women waved at the second taxi. I glimpsed a flurry of heels and skirts as they threw open the door and piled inside. My driver looked out and spoke to me.
‘Sorry?’ I said.
He spoke again, but I heard no words. The sky was billowing. I saw Eilish in the garden, among the roses. She had a silk scarf in her hair, and she was alone. She was alone.
Out on the road, it had begun to rain.
Two
Eilish
I felt the first drops of rain speckle my arms. It was a gentle, happy sensation; a caress.
When the mower ran out of fuel I made a cup of tea, carried it out to the terrace and settled myself on the wooden bench. Honeysuckle grew in fragrant clusters up the old wall of the barn. A tendril dipped into my mug, but I didn’t mind. The air was rich with the scents of summer, intensified by wet. Life was good. School term had finished at last. I’d spent the afternoon in the garden, demob-happy amid peace and grass clippings.
Luke made the bench about twenty years ago, when the children were small. Sitting there, leaning against the wall, we could keep an eye on them without spoiling their fun. They and their gang built dens in the bushes beside the pond; we could hear giggling over naughty songs, and the war cries of pitched battles. Beyond the terrace, birds darted around the claret leaves of a maple. Charlotte’s tree. One day, we’d told each other as we tucked it into its bed of soil, it would be magnificent. Charlotte’s great-nephews and -nieces would hang their swings from its branches.
Luke had phoned from the train, to say that his conference was finished. He was cut off in mid-sentence—a tunnel, probably. He hadn’t called back, but I hadn’t really expected him to. He hates public phone conversations, doesn’t like to draw attention to himself. All the same, something in his tone—a heaviness—unsettled me. I’d call ours a very happy marriage, but Luke hasn’t always been a very happy man.
Rubbish. I shook myself, spilling tea. Why should he be in trouble now? Life couldn’t be better! The mortgage was paid off, the children safely launched into adulthood. We were planning a fabulous party, to celebrate thirty years of marriage. Best of all, he and I had organised three months’ leave next spring, to be spent in a villa in Tuscany. I told myself these things, and stubbornly ignored the grasping chill in my stomach.
All at once, the heavens opened in earnest. Drops were splashing into my mug. I gave up on the lawn and took refuge inside, slipping off grass-clogged shoes as I stepped through the folding doors into the kitchen. I tried Luke’s phone, hoping he might be at the flat by now, but got his voicemail. He was probably on the tube.
The air was warm despite the rain. If Luke had been home, we’d have shared a bottle of wine and sat out on the bench with an umbrella each. He always said we were like two old peasants in front of their log cabin. Never mind: I’d never been afraid of solitude, and tomorrow would come soon enough.
The sky darkened. The rain was relentless.
Kate
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
‘Bastard!’ she yelled, glaring at the screen. ‘You thieving, backstabbing prick.’
The cash-dispensing machine wasn’t offended. It asked her if she’d like another transaction. No, she told it, she didn’t want another frigging transaction, she wanted her money. Then it spat out her card.
There was some guy waiting in the queue behind her. She could hear him chuckling, and his face was reflected in the screen. He had a ridiculous moustache. What was it with losers and moustaches?
‘Overdrawn, eh?’ he remarked, as though he and she were good mates.
Jerk alert.
‘Looks like you overdid the spending on your holiday,’ he said. ‘Too many piña coladas in nightclubs.’
‘Go stuff yourself.’
There was a wounded silence before he muttered, ‘No need to bite my head off.’
‘No need for you to be a patronising tosspot,’ she retorted, and stomped off to the luggage carousel, where she could see her backpack gliding through the rubber strips.
Moustachio had obviously used both his brain cells to think up an insult, because he sidled up to her as she was heading for customs. ‘Watch you don’t set off the metal detectors,’ he said narkily, ‘with all that hardware on your face.’
She didn’t have hardware on her face. She had one garnet stud in her nose. Just one. It was a lot less offensive than wearing half a hedgehog on your upper lip. She held up the middle finger of one hand. With the other, she was writing a text:
WTF happened to the bank account???
She sent this message while walking past the mirrored walls of customs. She imagined uniformed officers, rubber gloves at the ready, watching beadily. Or perhaps they weren’t; perhaps they were drinking coffee and playing cards while thousands of people streamed past, pulling suitcases stuffed full of heroin and exotic birds.
Owen’s response made her jaw drop. Took your share of the rent.
She stopped dead, firing off her reply. Bollocks!! I haven’t been there for weeks.
U never gave notice so am entitled. I have ur stuff in bin bags. Pls collect asap as its in my way. Also extensive damage to my shirt. Vet bills. Welcome home BTW.
So. After two years, their grand love affair had come to this. It wasn’t so long ago that she and Owen couldn’t spend more than a night apart without phoning one another and babbling. They were like an old married couple—like Mum and Dad, come to think of it—until it all went wrong. She’d hoped to patch things up when she got home from Israel but, God almighty, she wanted to kill Owen now. She was thinking about exactly how much she’d like to kill him as her thumb hit the keys.
VET BILLS???
He was really enjoying himself.
Baffy got chicken bone from bin pierced gut infection almost died emergency surgery cost a fortune. Ur dog too remember?
Well, that was true. Sort of.
She was out, and into the arrivals hall. Not being met at Heathrow, she reflected bitterly, makes you feel like a spare prick at a wedding. Everyone else seemed to have fans yelling at them from the barriers. She was almost knocked over by a family who’d begun crying and throwing their arms around one another; then she had to step around a snogging couple. Get a room. It was like being an extra in the opening sequence of Love Actually.
She’d taken that flight, a day earlier than those of the others on the dig, because it got her home in time for Mathis and John’s party. She was regretting this decision as she headed for the train. She loved Mathis and John, and she loved a party, but she’d been sleeping in a tent for six weeks and had no clean clothes. It had been a long flight followed by an emptied bank account. The last thing she felt like doing was staying up all night, getting ratted, and passing out on a sofa among the empties.
She found a seat on the platform and perched like a turtle, her pack still on. Then she scrolled down to her father’s mobile number. It would do her good to moan about Owen, and Dad was the man for that. He and Kate had an ancient alliance. Dad could be counted on to toe the party line and agree that Owen was a sociopath. Her mother had a bad habit of demanding details, maybe even—heaven forbid!—suggesting that Kate could be in the wrong.
‘This is Luke Livingstone’s phone. Press four if you would like to be put through to my direct line at Bannermans. Otherwise, do leave a message.’
Kate smiled to herself. Lovely Dad, so courteous and gentle. Some of Kate’s friends found her father too reserved, but he wasn’t at all. Quite the opposite, when you were his daughter.
She rang home, hoping he would answer the phone.
‘Eilish here.’
Bugger. ‘Hi, Mum. Bit of a rush, I’m just—’
‘Darling! Where are you?’
‘Still at Heathrow.’
‘How was the dig?’
‘Fascinating. Hot. I’ve got hundreds of photos, I’ll bore you with them when I see you. Um . . . is Dad there?’
Kate could tell her mother was multi-tasking, filling the kettle, probably with the phone jammed under her chin. ‘He’s staying at the flat tonight,’ she said. ‘But I expect you’re rushing back to Owen, are you? Or did he meet you at the airport?’
Kate thought about Owen’s place, and the bin bags with her things stuffed into them. He’d be hanging around like a moray eel under a rock, waiting for her to turn up so that he could play mind games. Suddenly she wanted to be at home again, wearing fluffy socks, drinking tea in the kitchen with her mum and chortling at Blackadder with her dad.
‘Um . . .’ she said. ‘I might come home tomorrow. I have to be there Sunday anyway, don’t I, when we plant Grandad’s tree? I’ll just arrive a day early.’
‘Terrific! Wonderful! And Owen too?’
‘No.’
‘He’s very welcome.’
‘He can’t get away from work.’
Kate could hear her mother’s antennae whirling around. That woman had some weird telepathic gift. When Kate had first lit up a cigarette, at the age of thirteen, she knew immediately. Kate had no idea how, because she’d gargled for about ten minutes with minty mouthwash, but Mum went ballistic and stopped her pocket money for a month. Her own father had died of lung cancer, so perhaps it was fair enough. When Kate was being bullied at school, she guessed that too, and went storming off to see the class teacher. It made things worse, but Kate appreciated her going into battle.
‘All well between you and Owen?’ Eilish asked now.
‘Sorry? The train’s coming in. Can’t hear a thing.’
Eilish started bellowing like a foghorn. ‘CAN . . . YOU . . . HEAR . . . ME . . . NOW?’
‘It’s no good, I’ve lost you. I’ll phone tomorrow. Bye, Mum.’
Bloody typical, Kate thought sourly as she lurched down the carriage, smacking people in the face with her backpack. Owen’s a saint in her eyes. He can do no wrong, even though he’s a total dildo.
It was her last coherent thought before she fell asleep with her head on the shoulder of the Japanese tourist in the next seat.
Three
Luke
Rumbling. A train, passing beneath my feet. The keys were cutting into my fist. They were my certainty, in the darkness and rain. I needed them because everything was ready in the flat. I wasn’t afraid of dying, you see. I was afraid of living.
I hadn’t got into that black cab. I’d let go of the door, stumbled out of the station and into the rain. Now I had no idea how long I’d been walking, and I didn’t care. What did time matter? I was non-existent in the bustle of humanity. I felt so much like a ghost that I accidentally collided with a group of city suits as they stood smoking, huddled under a dripping canopy outside one of the bars near the Barbican. Bless them, they were in a jovial weekend mood. They assumed I’d had one too many; they even offered me a cigarette.
Indecision was tearing at me. I would shatter Eilish by my death or by telling her the truth. Either way, I would lose her. There were no other options. You might find that impossible to understand, but, believe me, there were none. I had twisted and turned and come to this final, inescapable conclusion.
The pubs emptied; the traffic thinned. Blocked gutters became muddy streams through which I waded. People eyed me as I walked past, puzzled by my saturated clothes and aimlessness. My overnight bag was slung over one shoulder, my briefcase in the other hand. They felt more and more heavy. I thought of dumping the overnight bag into a skip, but there were things in it that I didn’t want to be found. If I was going to end my life tonight, I must dispose of them more carefully.
It was long after midnight. There was a blister on my
right heel, but I limped on. The night buses were carrying Friday-night revellers home, windscreen wipers flicking, when I turned into Thurso Lane.
Well done! purred The Thought. Its voice was affectionate and understanding, as though coaxing a tired toddler on a long journey. Nearly there. Soon you can put down those things you’ve been carrying. You can let go of the tree, at long last.
The rain was a torrent as I walked down the basement steps. I dropped my bags beside the dustbin. The security light flickered into life, glinting on falling drops. Water coursed down my face.
I fitted my keys into the locks. The bottom deadlock first, and then the Yale.
‘This is it,’ I said out loud.
I’d made my choice. I wouldn’t see how Kate’s life turned out, or Simon’s. I wouldn’t see my grandchildren grow up. I wouldn’t grow old with Eilish. Perhaps she’d be angry for the rest of her life, like the woman on the train. It was better than the alternative. Probably.
The Yale turned with a quiet click. The door gave way under the pressure of my hand. The security light went out.
Four
Eilish
After Kate rang off, I danced a little jig. Well! This sounded like very hopeful news. Luke and I disliked Owen more every time we saw him, though we made herculean efforts to hide the fact. There was something infuriating about the boy’s mousy nondescriptness. Kate was a free spirit and yet he tried to stifle her with his manipulative poor-me-I’ve-had-a-rough-childhood clinginess. He’d even brought a crazy little dog home from the RSPCA, in a blatant attempt to play mums and dads. Kate took the bait (‘He’s never had any happiness, Mum’) but Luke and I saw right through the ploy. Our abiding terror was that a real baby would be coming along next.
The whole thing was baffling. Ever since adolescence, Kate’s been a feminist of the old school. If Owen had been a rugby-playing banker with a square chin and a Range Rover, she wouldn’t have touched him with a barge pole. It seemed ironic that she’d let a needy, controlling boy rule her life just as surely as any bullying mobster.
The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone Page 2
