by Clare Boyd
‘Okay, everyone, time to sit down,’ she announced.
She instructed Agata to serve them, which she wouldn’t usually ask of her, but she couldn’t trust her own limbs to respond correctly to the messages from her brain. Plates would be smashed on the concrete, dollops of food would end up on laps, glasses would be knocked over. Her neurological pathways were being short-circuited by the terror that shot through them every time she pictured her plan succeeding.
They sat down.
The talk of New York art shows moved on to the Seacarts’ excitement about their son starting at Yale.
‘We’re so lucky we can pass on our legacy to him. Some can’t do that for their kids,’ Bo said.
‘He must be very bright. To have got in,’ Lucas said.
‘He does okay,’ Walt said, chewing his fish, picking out a bone, adding, ‘The new Seacart bursary scheme helped.’
‘Walter. That’s unfair, honey. Julian’s a smart kid.’
‘I paid for him to be smart,’ he snorted, scraping up the jus on his plate with his dessert spoon and dribbling it onto his forkful of fish before piling it into his mouth.
Bo laid the back of her hands flat either side of her plate and exhaled. ‘You’re so competitive with him.’
‘Competitive? With that couch potato?’
Elizabeth wanted them to simmer down. If the evening turned sour, they might go to bed early. ‘Isla’s the same. She’s capable academically, but her teachers say she’s bone idle. Sometimes I think I should throw her into the local school and see how she gets on.’
‘We should make it tougher for them, like we had it, right, Elizabeth?’ Walt said.
‘Right,’ Elizabeth agreed, relieved that she had steered him towards a topic she knew he responded well to. At the summer party, she had discovered that Walt had not come from money. He had grown up in a crime-infested neighbourhood in Cleveland, Texas, and his mother’s determination to home-school him and keep him off the streets had driven him to succeed. Hearing about Elizabeth’s education at a failing London state school – although she had concealed how well educated her mother had been – had fired him up that night.
‘Maybe Isla can learn how to tie bullies to wheelie bins,’ Lucas laughed, taking the baton.
‘What’s that?’ Bo asked, her interest piqued.
Elizabeth refilled their glasses to the brim. ‘He had it coming.’
‘A side to you I haven’t seen?’ Walt asked, winking. ‘Go on. I wanna hear this one.’
Enjoying herself suddenly, Elizabeth described her one heroic moment at school. After witnessing one of the skinheads in Year 9 making fun of Jude’s dyslexia, she had grabbed the lanky bully by the tie in front of the whole playground, dragged him to the bins and fixed him there. It had felt like a film scene, in which everyone should clap and cheer. Not that anyone had. Her peers had slouched off giving her sideways glances, wary of her gallantry rather than celebrating it.
Walt began sharing stories of his own childhood, some of them funny, some of them heart-wrenching, and the evening was kicked into life. By the time they had scraped the last smears of cream from their pudding cups, they were all drunk and over-sharing. Or at least Lucas, Walter and Bo were.
At the perfect point, before offering coffee, Elizabeth grinned and said, ‘I saved some pot from the party. How about a sneaky smoke, a shot of sambuca and a swim?’
Bo’s face lit up. ‘Let’s get this party started!’
Elizabeth flicked Walt a persuasive smile. All evening he had been flirting with her, and she had hoped that the idea of her frolicking half naked and stoned around the pool would be a turn-on.
‘You English girls are so naughty,’ he said, taking a toothpick from his top pocket and inching it between his capped teeth.
Bo clapped. ‘All set? I’m so hot.’
‘I’m up for it,’ Lucas said stiffly, plainly not up for it at all, which tickled Elizabeth. His discomfort was only going to get worse.
‘You guys get your swimsuits on. I’ll bring the drinks down to the pool.’
She nipped down to the camper van and knocked on the door. Agata was awake, ready and waiting for her. Elizabeth explained what was going to happen.
‘No, Elizabeth. It is not good. Not good at all.’
‘It’s the only way.’
‘You get in big, big trouble.’
‘How? Accidents happen, Agata. I can’t be blamed for that.’
‘You crazy. You crazy!’ she repeated. Her hands were squeezing the sides of her head.
Elizabeth was used to being called crazy. It didn’t mean anything. Crazy simply meant she thought differently to other people. Perhaps Lucas had driven her beyond normal.
‘Just promise me you’ll stay away from the house. For your own safety,’ she said, unmoved by Agata’s remonstrations.
Agata nodded, dropping her hands, realising there was nothing she could do.
Elizabeth returned to the house and headed for the bedroom, where Lucas was changing.
‘I really don’t feel like a swim,’ he grumbled, stumbling as he tried to aim one leg into his trunks. ‘I might drown, I’m so drunk.’
‘It’ll be fun,’ she said, locating the Tupperware box in a shoe at the back of her wardrobe. She opened it to check that the vaporiser and the lump of hash were still inside. ‘Take that down to Bo. I’ll bring the sambuca shots,’ she said.
‘I hate pot,’ he said, taking the box and padding off.
Within a few minutes, there were sounds of shouting and splashing from the pool.
Carefully, so as not to disturb the candles, Elizabeth made room on the dining room table for a tray. She poured the sticky drink into four shot glasses, licking it off her fingers where it had spilt. She would use long matches to light the coffee beans she had dropped into each glass.
Her hands shook. This was the moment of truth. She still had the opportunity to change course: light the drinks, swim with the others, get stoned with them, and buy a house in the Hamptons. That would be the path of least resistance.
The image of Lucas’s hand on Isla’s head, pushing her under, blocking her airways, was fading; if it disappeared, she would weaken and nothing would change.
She struck the match along the side of the triangular box printed with a strip of 1930s dancing ladies kicking their legs high.
‘It’s only a bit of fun, Lucas,’ she said under her breath.
The first sambuca shot was lit. The blue flame danced about on the liquid’s surface. The match burnt down to her fingers. She struck a second and glanced up at her brother’s three paintings.
‘I’m sorry, little brother,’ she said, hoping Jude would understand.
With one last glance around the house that she had built, she held the shot glass under the dried flowers for longer than she should. They caught instantly. She dropped a napkin on top of a cluster of tea lights, then another, watching for a second as the flames took hold. Then she darted off into the toilet behind her, sat on the loo seat and started the timer on her watch. The smell of smoke was already permeating the room. The smoke alarm was not sounding, as she knew it wouldn’t, having swapped the batteries. She began to cough. Stubbornly she focused on the timer on her wrist, fearing that five minutes was too long, determined to make sure the fire had taken hold.
When her watch beeped, she opened the door. The handle was already hot. A magnificent bonfire rose above her where the dining table had been. She could see the black shadow outline of the chairs, eaten alive. She held a wet towel to her face and ran to the glass doors, catching sight of the flames crawling along the garland that hung from the beam, all the way to the three paintings on the wall.
She saw the seawater in the pictures sloshing out of the canvases, trying to dampen the fire that had begun charring the top corner of painting No. 3. She laughed at herself, setting off a coughing fit, bursting outside into the garden. Five minutes had almost been too long.
Before she ran down to the
pool, she eked out as many minutes as she could bending over her knees, knowing that if she was seen, she would have to look like she was in the throes of a coughing fit. The laurel hedge by the pool was thick and tall, but she wouldn’t have long before they would see or hear or smell that something was wrong. She didn’t want them to try to put it out too soon.
When she heard a smash of glass, as though the heat had blown something out, she began to run, glancing back only once. Behind her, the inside of the house glowed like a huge lantern in the dark.
‘Fire!’ she screamed, charging through the pool gate. ‘There’s a FIRE!’
Lucas stopped swimming. Walt and Bo jumped up from their sunloungers. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Call the fire brigade!’ she yelled at them.
Lucas was out of the pool, phone in hand.
Bo dropped the vaporiser and reached for her own phone. ‘What’s the emergency number in the UK?’ she cried.
‘I’ve got it,’ Lucas said, running from the pool towards the house.
Elizabeth followed him. ‘Don’t go too close! It’s too late.’
Confronted by the sight ahead of him, Lucas stopped in his tracks. The house was engulfed in flames. The heat could be felt from where they stood on the lawn.
‘Oh my fucking God,’ he murmured. His wrist fell limp. A voice spoke from the handset. As he stared slack-jawed at the blaze, he put the phone back to his ear and gave the emergency services their address with a calm that sent goose bumps up Elizabeth’s arms. It was clear he knew it was too late.
When he hung up, he turned to her and said, ‘You started it?’
‘What? I almost died in there!’
Then his skin whitened. ‘Where’s Agata?’ he shouted, taking a step towards the house.
‘It’s okay. She’s in the camper. I just saw her there.’
He frowned. ‘Did you plan it?’
‘It was an accident, Lucas! I swear!’
Walt appeared next to them. ‘What the hell happened?’ he asked, eyes wide.
Elizabeth spoke breathily, full of angst and confusion. ‘I don’t know. I lit the sambucas … and then … I don’t know … I was so stupid … I left them there on the table for a few minutes while I went to the loo. I’m so stupid. Oh my God, I’m so stupid.’
Bo’s arm was around her. ‘It’s okay. We’re all safe. We’re all safe.’
Lucas brought his hands together with his fingers pointing towards Bo and Walt. ‘The paintings are in there.’
Bo let out a cry and jerked forward instinctively towards the house. ‘Our paintings!’ she screamed.
Walt pulled her back, offering soothing words. ‘They’ll be insured, honey. It’s just stuff.’
Elizabeth knew that they weren’t insured, that Lucas had not been able to afford to insure them; knew that he had risked it, aware that he only had to keep them safe for a couple of days.
As though hearing her thoughts, he hurtled towards the house. She dived at his legs, tripping him up, saving him from doing something stupid – she didn’t want his death on her conscience too.
‘What have you done!’ he yelled right in her face, wrestling her onto her back.
She felt his hands around her throat and the weight of him on top of her. His pumping flesh pressed the life out of her. She relished his touch, knowing that she had broken him. He hadn’t held her like this in years, not with such passion and intensity. Sex had been mechanical. A need rather than a want. A stress-reliever. Before the summer, when he had lifted her from the shower rail, saving her life, he had cradled her like a child, not like a lover. At the lock-up, she had covered her neck to protect herself from him, pressing her own fingers into her throat in abject fear of his attack, imagining his hands were there, willing them to connect with her. Gordon had come to the rescue, but she wondered who would help her now. Perhaps she wanted to die like this, in his arms.
‘LUCAS!’ Walt bellowed, yanking him away, pulling him off her.
Her head fell back as Lucas let go. He collapsed next to her, panting.
A window blew out. Bo screamed. She and Walter backed off from the house, but Lucas and Elizabeth stayed there on the grass, deaf to the warnings of the others to move away.
‘We’ve lost everything,’ Lucas said quietly, the reflection of the flames turning his golden hair red, as though it too was on fire.
‘Not everything. You have Isla and Hugo.’
He let out a guttural wail.
Sirens rang out, drowning his cries.
Before long the house was swarming with firemen and white bolts of water.
Elizabeth listened to his blubbing. Everything he cared about was gone. Everything she cared about would be intact. She pictured the blaze encircling the fireproof safe, unable to dominate and destroy the vulnerable papers inside, however furiously it tried.
Thirty-Five
In my sleep, I heard sirens. An acrid smell filled my head, waking me up. Bleary-eyed, I climbed out of bed to get some water. A strange glow, like the sunrise, edged my blind. I checked my clock, which rested on top of the blue file that Lucas had given me, and saw that it was only an hour after I had gone to bed. I pulled back the blind, almost yanking it off its rail. A thick cloud of smoke piled into the sky, and I dropped the blind as though it were hot.
Grabbing a sweater and shoving my feet into shoes, I ran out of the house, not stopping to wonder if my father had woken up.
From around the side of the house, I crawled through the hedge, just where I used to sneak in as a child, and emerged into the horror show of Copper Lodge on fire, green flames licking from the roof.
I thought my chest would burst open with fear when I thought of the children and Lucas inside. The noise of the hoses blasted my eardrums as I made my way around to the back, past the camper van and the guest barn. When I reached the back lawn, I spotted people far down at the bottom of the garden. Dark shapes wrapped in foil. There were no small children amongst them. The smoke filled my lungs and I coughed as I ran towards the figures. I counted three, four, five people. Still no children.
‘Where are Isla and Hugo?’ I screamed, seeing random faces in a blur as my eyes stung, unable to recognise features, viewing them only as mouthpieces that could tell me the children were safe.
‘It’s okay, Heather,’ Lucas said, stepping forward. ‘They’re safe. Everyone is safe.’
My head fell into his shoulder and I cried, ‘Oh! Thank God. Thank God.’
His arms were around me and I remembered we were not alone. I pulled away.
Elizabeth, Agata and the Seacarts – whom I knew Lucas had been hosting tonight to celebrate their merger – stared at us.
‘Bo. Walt. This is Heather,’ he said, holding his arm around me still, as though introducing his girlfriend at a party.
We exchanged handshakes; grave smiles, nervous glances.
The strange circumstances could explain Lucas’s possession of me, but not for long. I took a step away from him.
Elizabeth’s eyes were burning as brightly as the flames behind us.
The blue file had been filled with documents that provided a timeline of the deterioration of her mental health, taking me back through the years to her childhood. There was no doubt that she was unstable, and that she would be unable to cope with her jealousy at the sight of Lucas’s affection towards me.
The clinical psychologist’s letter dated 22 July 2013 had described her as a delusional and narcissistic patient suffering from pathological jealousy and hallucinations triggered by severe migraines, for which she had undergone MRI scans. He had diagnosed her with a borderline personality disorder and referred her to a psychiatrist for treatment. The social workers’ letters of earlier this year had built a picture of Isla as a traumatised child who was deemed at risk after being forced by Elizabeth to watch her multiple suicide attempts. They had recommended a conference to discuss further action. There was a letter from Elizabeth’s mother, dated 10 January 2015, a heartfelt scrawled
plea to Lucas begging him to restart her monthly payments, pleading for forgiveness, racked with guilt after the discovery that her live-in boyfriend had molested Elizabeth as a child. An old school report from Kensal Rise Grammar was full of complaints about Elizabeth’s ‘active imagination’, her violent outbursts and poor attendance.
At the back of the file, there was a yellow legal pad filled with pages and pages of dialogue written in a child’s hand. It was a play about a bailiff and a young girl arguing at the door. The bailiff wanted to come in and seize the family’s television set, but the girl told him that her mother was at work. Inflections and underlining had been scribbled in Elizabeth’s mother’s handwriting, with instructions on how to act the scene out. Another role play, written by her mother this time, was set in the hallway of a block of flats, where a girl told a man that her mother wanted to break up with him. Further dialogue and scene direction covered the A4 sheets. Each play starred a young girl called Elizabeth who ended up in altercations with various unsavoury characters. It explained why she might have trust issues, and why she might struggle to distinguish between reality and fiction.
I had read this personal file as I sat on the low wall that overlooked Elizabeth’s beautiful wildflower meadow, and I had cried. In spite of all of her wealth and beauty, her life had been one long battle to stay ahead of her paranoia and her fantasies. Sometimes winning, sometimes losing. Lucas had been like a firefighter tackling the blaze at Copper Lodge; he had tried to control the spread of her neuroticism, tried to mitigate the damage on the children and protect Elizabeth from the bad influences in her life. Sometimes winning, sometimes losing.
When I looked across at the burning house, it seemed that they had both finally lost that battle. I could not imagine that the fire was an accident. It would fall to Lucas to decide Elizabeth’s fate now.
‘How kind of you to show such concern,’ Elizabeth said, stepping towards me, shedding her foil blanket. She pushed a wave of blonde hair up and away from her forehead, and it stayed sticking up in an angular shape.
