by T. M. Logan
‘The gossip is,’ Jennifer said, leaning forward, ‘they’re now talking about lawyers, divorce, custody – all of that.’
Lawyers, divorce, custody. Each word felt like a slap across my face. What did Jennifer know about it, anyway? What right did she have to be gossiping about people she barely knew? Sticking her nose into someone else’s marriage? With considerable effort, I managed to stay silent.
Rowan was shaking her head, genuine sadness on her face.
‘All that over a dumb speeding ticket; it seems so unfair. Their poor kids.’
‘I know, right? She was only trying to help him out of a tricky situation. I’d have done the same.’
‘Me too,’ Rowan said. She looked over at Sean and Alistair. ‘How about you, boys?’
‘Perhaps,’ Alistair said with a theatrical flourish.
‘Probably,’ Sean said, refilling his wine glass.
Jennifer looked over at me. ‘What do you think, Kate?’
‘Me?’
‘About the Laura and David thing?’
I shrugged. ‘I heard some of the rumours. Didn’t realise they’d separated.’
‘But what would you have done? Do you think she was right to take his points?’
‘Right?’ I shook my head. ‘Of course not.’
‘Even though she was trying to protect him, help him keep his job? Wasn’t she trying to do the best thing for all of them?’
‘Doesn’t make it right. She broke the law, made herself into a liar.’
‘For the right reason, though.’
‘It’s either right or it isn’t, Jen. It’s not complicated. There isn’t a third answer.’
I felt myself getting wound up, the simmering heat of my anger over Sean’s betrayal threatening to boil over.
Not here, not now! I needed to be calm. Do what Sean sometimes gently suggested: let things go more often, bend a little, smile and shake my head and just move on. He would joke about it sometimes, asking me, What’s the view like up there on your high horse, Kate? The irony of that seemed particularly dark considering the evidence I had discovered of his affair.
‘The truth,’ Sean muttered into his wine, ‘the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’
There was another awkward silence.
Jennifer grabbed her fork and tinged it loudly against the side of her glass. ‘How about we have a toast?’ she said brightly, filling the glasses nearest to her with more of the smooth local red wine. ‘As it’s our first night here.’
There was a general murmur of agreement, glasses being raised. I held my own glass up, forcing my mouth into a smile.
‘To Rowan,’ Jennifer said. ‘For making it possible for all of us to stay in this wonderful place, and bringing us all together.’
All the adults clinked glasses and drank.
‘So, Rowan,’ Jennifer said briskly, ‘I hear great news could be on the way for your company?’
‘Fingers crossed,’ Rowan said.
‘Is it happening, then? It’s really going to go ahead?’
Rowan nodded slowly, smiling like a proud parent.
‘All the signs are looking good at the moment.’
Her company specialised in ethical PR – total transparency and commitment to the very highest ethical standards, both in her own operation and the people she worked for. It set her apart from some of the competition and had won her an impressive roster of clients over the last ten years, principally tech and social media companies keen to avoid the stigma of privacy breaches and fake news that had afflicted Facebook and others. So much so that she had caught the attention of a global leader in the ethical field, a US-based company, which was proposing a buyout. As founding partner and CEO, Rowan stood to become very wealthy from the move.
‘Hopefully it should go through in the next month or so,’ she added.
Russ returned from another cigarette break. Even though the cigarette was out, a fug of stale smoke came with him as he sat down next to me at the table, opposite his wife, folding his long frame into the wicker chair.
‘As long as you can convince them you’re absolutely squeaky clean, right, darling?’
It was virtually the first time I’d heard him speak since his outburst at Odette. His voice was loud, with a tone of forced joviality that was impossible to miss. I watched as Rowan turned her gaze on her husband, something in her eyes I couldn’t place, a slight narrowing of the eyes. As if they’d had this conversation before.
‘The due diligence has been very thorough,’ she said. ‘No stone unturned.’
Russ took a long drink of wine, emptying half the glass in one gulp.
‘Squeaky clean,’ he said again.
‘Will the deal make you a millionaire?’ Jennifer asked. ‘That’s so exciting. You could retire at forty and how awesome is that?’
Rowan smiled again.
‘It’s all got to be ironed out yet, still a lot of back and forth to be done with the lawyers. But they’ll want me on the board of directors – they’ve said they admire my “killer instinct”.’
She made air quotes around the words, with a broad smile.
*
The silence resumed as we walked home.
There were no streetlights, nothing but the bright glow of the summer moon to show us the way up the little road back to the villa. Rowan had pointedly ignored all of Russ’s further attempts to talk to her and she strode on ahead, holding Odette’s hand as the little girl skipped along beside her. Jennifer loosely linked arms with her husband, shooting uncomfortable looks at Russ as he weaved his way up the hill. Lucy was sullen, refusing to meet my eye. Arms crossed, she walked in a ragged line with the teenage brothers.
Daniel drowsed, half-asleep, on Sean’s back, his cheek laid across his father’s shoulder. Sean tried to catch my eye a couple of times, nodding with a smile towards our slumbering son.
But I kept my eyes firmly on the road ahead.
11
I couldn’t sleep.
Sean’s soft snores had taken on the slow regularity of deep sleep perhaps an hour ago. He’d always had the annoying ability to drop off as soon as his head hit the pillow, not bothered in the slightest by the low hum of the air conditioning. But it wasn’t the barely perceptible noise of chilled air circulating that was keeping me awake.
Every time I closed my eyes, I started to feel sick. So instead, I stared up at the darkness, crisp cotton sheets cool against my skin, my mind shifting through an endless carousel of possibilities: round and round, and then round and round again. With every circuit, my inadequacies became clearer. Inadequacies as a woman, wife, mother. How come I’d never seen this before? It seemed so obvious now.
My friends.
Rowan, who was cleverer than me, always had been.
Jennifer, prettier than me, then and now.
Izzy, who was funnier than me, always able to make Sean laugh.
How could I compete against that? What was I good at? What did I contribute? Where did I fit in, compared to them? Somewhere in the middle, I supposed. Somewhere in the background.
Round and round, went the carousel.
My friends.
Rowan. On the verge of becoming wealthy enough to afford the lifestyle Sean had always yearned for and never had.
Jennifer. His university sweetheart, his first love. And, he had told me in a moment of either a) drunken candour or b) misjudged humour, the best sex he’d ever had.
Izzy. Sean’s oldest female friend, who had suddenly reappeared in our lives, apparently with a plan to settle down. What was she to him? Freedom, lack of commitment, no kids, no ties. Another chance at youth, another chance to start again.
Rowan. Jennifer. Izzy. We were all intertwined, had been for years. I had worried that we’d been drifting apart as our lives took us in different directions, but in reality it was the opposite – at least for one of them. One of them had got closer to my family than I would ever have wanted.
But which one of them was it? Whic
h one was playing this elaborate game? The more I thought about it, the more sleep eluded me, and at one o’clock I gave up.
Pulling on my thin summer dressing gown, I padded out of our bedroom, marble tiles cool against the soles of my bare feet. I went to Daniel’s room first, opening the door as quietly as I could and waiting for a moment as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. He had turned the air-conditioning unit off, insisting the low, blowing noise would keep him awake. He often didn’t sleep well on the first few nights in a new place anyway – away from his own bed, his own pillow, his own things – but tonight he was fast asleep, curled into the sheet. I moved closer, leaning in until I was above him, close enough to see the rise and fall of his chest in the shadows of his room. I held my breath and stood very still, turning my ear towards him until I could hear slow, steady breathing, hear the breaths in and out . . . in and out.
It was a habit I’d developed when Lucy was a baby, standing over her Moses basket in the middle of one broken night, unable to sleep until I was sure she was OK, listening in the silence, punch-drunk with fatigue, until I was sure I could hear her breaths coming and going. And here I was now, sixteen years later, still doing it with her brother. Still listening. Still checking, even though I knew it was not entirely rational. Daniel was fine – he had been fine when he went to bed, and he would be fine in the morning.
But it was a hard habit to break.
He was still in his pyjamas, despite the heat. I touched my fingertips lightly to his forehead. Satisfied he wasn’t too hot, I closed his door quietly behind me and went across the hall to his sister’s room.
Lucy was awake, her face illuminated by the light from her phone screen. I opened the door a little wider.
‘Lucy,’ I whispered, ‘it’s one o’clock in the morning. You should turn that off and get some sleep now.’
‘Not yet.’
I took a step into the room and saw that there were tears on her face, shining in the iPhone’s cold glow. ‘What’s the matter, Luce?’
She turned onto her side, away from me, the phone still inches from her face.
I sat down on the edge of her bed and put a hand on her shoulder. Her skin felt hot, despite the air-conditioned chill of the room. I made a mental note to check she was using enough suntan lotion tomorrow.
‘What’s happened, Luce?’
‘Nothing, Mum. It’s fine.’
‘Doesn’t look fine. Is something bothering you? Something the boys said earlier?’
‘No.’
‘You know you can talk to me about anything, don’t you?’
She nodded and sniffed, wiping tears away with the heel of her hand. ‘I know, Mum.’
‘Anything at all. Doesn’t matter what it is.’
She half-turned towards me but wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘Even if it’s something . . . bad?’
‘Especially if it’s something bad.’
‘Something awful?’
I took a tissue from the box on the bedside table and handed it to her. There was a lot about her that I didn’t know – more and more each day, it seemed. ‘I can help you, Lucy. Whatever it is.’
She wiped her eyes with the tissue. I waited, letting the silence stretch out between us.
‘Sometimes I hate myself,’ she said quietly.
I felt an ache, deep in my chest. Fingers squeezing my heart. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m . . . worthless. I’m a horrible person.’
‘Of course you’re not, Lucy! What’s happened?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Can’t do anything about it now, anyway.’
‘About what?’ I said gently. ‘Is it a boy?’
She said nothing.
‘Is it one of your friends? Being mean?’ I was constantly amazed by the capacity of teenage girls to be horrible to each other. Girls who were supposed to be friends but who seemed to delight in making each other miserable. Was I like that too, as a teenager? Did we still carry it with us now, this capacity to spite and sting and wound those closest to us, hidden under a thin veneer of adult civility?
Lucy gave a tiny shake of her head, fresh tears welling in her eyes.
‘Is it Poppy Monroe again?’ I said. Poppy bloody Monroe, as Sean and I referred to her, who seemed to be involved in every falling-out, every fight, every argument that rippled across their friendship group on a daily basis. ‘What’s she said this time?’
Without another word, she sat up suddenly and hugged me, close and fierce, clinging on tight like she used to when she was a little girl. She used to love hugs, especially when she was upset. But now, as a sixteen-year-old, she was so blasé and stand-offish that it took me by surprise when she hugged me. It was one of those things she wouldn’t do any more in front of her friends, wouldn’t do in public. A few years ago – I wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened – she had suddenly become embarrassed by me, the closeness we had had seeming to fall away as she grew taller and more beautiful with every day. Sometimes, when she looked at me, I thought I saw open contempt in her eyes.
But not now, not in this moment. This hug was real. The real Lucy.
We sat like that for a minute, me stroking her hair and shushing her, my heart brimming. Her hot tears on my shoulder. I mentally berated myself for being so caught up in my own self-pity, in the revelations about my marriage, that I’d not picked up Lucy’s signals sooner. I thought she would say more, tell me what was bothering her, but she simply hugged me in silence. She would tell me when she was ready; forcing the issue would make her clam up even more. I knew enough to know that.
So quietly it was almost a whisper, she said, ‘It’s just Alex, that’s all.’
Alex?
There was a girl in her friendship group called Alex who would be inseparable best friends with Lucy one day: sharing anything and everything with her – and would then blank her completely for a week straight. Had they fallen out again? She’d not mentioned it to me, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
‘What about Alex? Has she been leaving you out of things again?’
‘No,’ she said, resting her cheek on my shoulder. ‘Not that.’
‘Just rise above it, sweetheart. Don’t get drawn in.’
‘Hmm . . .’
Before I could ask her anything else, she lay back down, switching her phone off and pushing it under the pillow.
‘Night, Mum.’
I kissed her on the forehead and crept out of her bedroom. Downstairs, the huge open living room was eerily quiet apart from the ever-present hum of the air conditioning, the full moon casting long shadows across the tiled floor. The room had an ethereal glow in the moonlight, the grand piano lit across its dark surface. I fetched myself a glass of water from the kitchen and was about to go back up when I stopped. There was another sound: the crickets in the garden. Someone had left the sliding glass doors to the balcony slightly open.
I stepped outside, drawn by the smells of olive trees, pine, and rich red earth cooling in the darkness. The chirping of crickets was a continuous soft background tone beneath everything else, the sky ink-black, a perfect blanket of stars stretching from one horizon to the other. More stars than I could ever remember seeing at home.
My eye was drawn down again, and from deep within the shadows I saw a tiny flicker of movement. An orange glow.
I wasn’t alone on the balcony.
12
I flinched as something flew out of the darkness, fluttering close to my head.
‘The bats are out in force tonight,’ a deep voice said.
I turned towards it, the orange glow of a cigarette end like a firefly in the dark.
‘They come out for the insects,’ the voice continued.
‘Russ?’ I said, gathering the dressing gown more tightly around my body.
‘Evening.’ His voice was low and slow. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘I needed some water.’ As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I made out Rowan’s husband slumped in one of the big w
icker chairs at the edge of the balcony, long legs splayed out in front of him, a bottle on the small table next to him, a brandy glass next to it with an inch of amber liquid in it.
‘Fancy a drink?’
‘I’m OK with water, thanks.’
He held up the bottle. ‘This will help you sleep. Twenty-year-old cognac, the finest sedative money can buy.’
‘Really, I’m fine.’
‘Works every time, guaranteed.’ He sloshed more brandy into his own glass.
Another bat flittered overhead, a tiny black shape against the dark sky. Arms crossed over my chest, I looked behind me at the villa. All the windows were dark; everyone else was asleep. It was just the two of us still awake. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a chat one-to-one with Russ, a conversation that hadn’t been an awkward few minutes at a barbecue or New Year’s Eve party. In fact, I’d seen Odette’s live-in nanny, Inés, far more often than I’d seen him at the family home.
I wanted to get away, go back to bed, but part of me was also intrigued.
‘Have you been out here long?’ I asked.
He plucked a new cigarette out of the packet and lit it straight off the old one before flicking the butt away with a practised snap of thumb and forefinger. The glowing orange butt spun in a high arc, end-over-end, and there was a hiss from the darkness below as it hit the swimming pool.
‘Not long enough for my darling wife.’
I didn’t know how to respond to that. A row, I guessed, although I’d not heard anything.
‘Can’t believe how warm it still is,’ I said. ‘Will you close the sliding door when you come in?’ I turned to go and was almost at the door when he spoke again.
‘You probably think,’ he said abruptly, ‘that I was too harsh with Odette this evening, don’t you?’
I stopped, turning back to him. ‘I know how difficult it can be sometimes with small children.’
‘The bloody nanny lets her get away with anything. No discipline. Nothing. And she’s so bloody stubborn, just like her mother. Always has to get what she wants, never does what she’s told.’
‘It’s just a stage, all kids go through it.’
