The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  She sighs. Four days. Four long days with people who barely bother to speak to her, who all remember Heather and, though they never say it, all clearly see her as someone who’s passing through. But I must be nice, she thinks. If this marriage is to survive, I must be nice.

  On Saturday, thinks Sean, I shall be fifty years old. It’s natural to question your life when you turn fifty. I look at my life, and I should be pleased. Every goal the western world holds dear, I have achieved. I’m rich by standards my parents wouldn’t even have dreamed of. My children are healthy, and just about speak to me. I am the king of a thriving business, and those who don’t respect me are, by and large, still afraid of me. I am sitting in a new, expensive car, going to my multi-million-pound property in one of the country’s most sought-after locations. In a few weeks I’ll be another million better off. My friends are influential, well known and wealthy. My wife is thirty-three and a beauty by anybody’s standards, even if she has been letting herself go. I have a swimming pool. My life is a resounding success. So why am I so unhappy?

  Chapter Four

  India calls when I’m on my way down Clapham High Street. It must be going on work-time in Auckland, I guess. High summer, so she’ll be wearing a sleeveless top under her conservative lawyer suit, her hair pulled back into a stern nanny bun, as I shiver my way through the freezing drizzle, shrugged deep into my leather jacket with a scarf pulled over my head like a dupatta. We couldn’t be more different, my sister and I. She’s reacted to the chaos of our upbringing by imposing order on every corner of her life while I’ve embraced it, refuse to make plans, can barely remember to take my keys out with me, have no idea where the documents are stored that say I own my flat. She loves the law, loves its rigid boundaries, the minute detail to which each inch can be nailed down. She used our grandmother’s legacy to get herself out of the country, set herself up in a waterside apartment lined with pale wood floors and full-wall windows where she starts each day with sunrise yoga, and drinks a single glass of sauvignon blanc on her balcony each evening. Me, I got my act together enough to buy a couple of rooms on the same road as the house-share I was in at the time, and I’ll probably get carried out of there one day, if they ever find my body beneath the sea of paper.

  ‘Hey,’ I say.

  ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘You know. Life goes on, eh?’

  ‘Right,’ she says. She doesn’t sound particularly upset either. What would he feel, I wonder, if he knew that the only person who’s shed a tear for him so far is the first of the wives who weren’t good enough? Knowing Dad, he wouldn’t even notice. Out of sight, out of mind was always his policy. He always sounded surprised to hear from me back in the days when I did ring for a duty chat.

  ‘I’m going to identify the body tomorrow.’

  ‘Blimey. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Freaky. Can’t decide whether I should go before lunch, or after.’

  ‘I’d go before, if I were you. Better to be put off your lunch than throw it up. So what’s the scoop on inquests and funerals and that?’

  ‘They’re going to do the PM after I’ve done my bit. Apparently if they can work out the cause of death the body can get released before the inquest.’

  ‘Even with the… other stuff?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Even with that. If he had a heart attack or something, the handcuffs and that don’t make a lot of difference. It’s still natural causes.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says doubtfully.

  ‘Though there were poppers on the bedside table, apparently, so that’s nice.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘Oh, God, oh, God, could he be any more embarrassing?’

  ‘Farmyard animals?’

  ‘Okay. Stop.’

  ‘When are you coming over?’

  A pause. ‘Milly, I’m not.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  She sighs. ‘What’s the point? He’s dead already. He’s not going to notice. There aren’t going to be any affecting deathbed reconciliations. It would just be… no. I’m not going to fly right across the world to pat the Constant Nymph and make like I’m sorry. I know he was my father, but I barely knew the guy.’

  A memory flits through my mind. The four of us in a swimming pool somewhere hot, Indy and I little enough to still be in rubber rings, Mum laughing, laughing, Dad throwing us up, up, up into the air, our delighted shrieks as we plummeted into the water, sunlight shattered on blue. He loved us once, I think. He did. Or he did a good job of looking like it.

  ‘I…’ I say.

  ‘I’ll send flowers,’ she says. ‘But I’m not a hypocrite.’

  But what about me? How about how I feel about it, India? I’ll have to go for both of us, and, if that’s the case, you’re making me a double hypocrite. A double hypocrite who has to do everything alone.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. Wonder what we’ll do about each other’s funerals, when the time comes. Will we even know each other then? ‘You’ll come back for Mum’s, though, won’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says. ‘It’s completely different. Listen, I’ve got to run. I’ve got a deposition at nine-thirty.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. There’s no point in arguing about it. India is one of those people who decide and, once the decision is made, there’s no going back on it. And she decided to move as far away in the world as she could manage without having to share her space with actual icebergs.

  ‘I suppose you’re on your way out, are you?’

  I laugh. ‘It’s Tuesday. What else would I be doing?’

  ‘Milly,’ she says, ‘have you ever thought about getting a job?’

  I laugh. ‘Please. What on earth is the point of a trust fund if you’re going to do that?’

  I hang up and push open the door of the Handful of Dust.

  I am my father’s daughter. He loved a party, and so do I, especially in extremis. He was good at parties, too. No one could work a room like Sean Jackson, be noticed by all, make everyone feel special. You would literally see faces light up when he entered a room. The glad-hander, the joke-teller, the man of influence, the charmer of the ladies. He had many, many people who called him a friend, my father Sean. And he never forgot a name

  The bar is buzzing, as it buzzes every night. The good Trustafarians of Clapham Common: not as rich as the Chelsea lot, not as desperate for attention as the ones in Notting Hill, not as driven by hipster rage as everyone east of the Old Street roundabout. But as reliable and predictable as a clockwork doll: clothes whose cut (ragged hemlines, overlong sleeves) and colour (black with just the one touch of something else) declare their membership of the counterculture, but which never have a tear or a burn or a stain that might suggest that they’ve bought them at a charity shop. People who say they’re artists, people who say they’re writers, people who call themselves journalists and people who have given their days spent clicking through the internet names like ‘viral visioneering’. My tribe, the one I’m part of. The staff here despise us. You can see it in the way their shoulders move up towards their ears every time someone puts in an order. But we don’t care. We spend too much money for them to ever do anything about it. And besides, anyone who works in a place that sells Indonesian-Peruvian fusion dumplings as bar snacks is sort of asking for it.

  I weave my way through the crowd and order a vodka, lime and soda from a woman whose lip-ring looks as though it might be getting infected, change my mind and order two. The dieting drunk’s favourite drink: barely any calories and the bubbles get you drunk faster. And I need to get drunk tonight. If I can do one thing to mark my father’s life, it’s that. I lean against the bar and scan the room as I suck the first one down through a straw as quickly as it will go, look around to see if there’s anyone I know, or at least want to know, here yet. Someone will turn up soon. The people I know don’t do staying in. And besides, I know a lot of people, just as my father did.

  While I wait I amuse myself wi
th my favourite game: Spot the Personality Disorder. It’s a good game, this, especially when you’re alone in a crowd. When there’s two of you, you can play ‘yours’, but this is lovely for those quiet moments before the fun begins. I keep a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders beside my bed and refer to it often. I wish I’d gone to university and read psychology. I still think about going. I’ve even got the application forms a couple of times, but somehow time flows past with them sitting on the counter in the kitchen and suddenly another year has passed and I’m still propping up the bar, wondering what to do with my evening. I can’t be an Avoidant, can I? No, I’m out all the time, and you almost never see Avoidants out in crowds. Though I do see them tucked into corners of dark restaurants, having monosyllabic tête-à-têtes with Dependents, or resentfully listening to Borderlines’ tales of being hard done by.

  No, a bar like the Handful of Dust is Narcissist Central. The walls are lined with cream leather pouffes and every one of the stripped-back walls bears at least three mirrors. You can look at yourself from every direction in here. I’m surrounded by women glancing sideways while sucking in their stomachs, by people pressing their heads together like space robots exchanging data as they pose for selfies to put on Instagram, by people nakedly checking their phones in case they could be somewhere better. People so busy checking in that their brains have checked out. I’m sure there’s the odd psychopath among them, but they’re harder to spot unless there’s some drama going down. They’ll be easy to single out then: they’ll be the only people still smiling.

  I know, or have known, a few of the people here, but none that I want to speak to. Over there, Anne-Marie, dyed dark brown hair like a mountain of seaweed left on a rock after a storm, pouts up at a man in Armani who clearly hasn’t yet seen the crazy glint in her eye. I put up with her narcissism for a couple of years because it was so extreme it amused me, but when she added orthorexia into the mix and started talking about nothing but her bowel movements it stopped being entertaining. Propping up the bar, eyes going slowly up and down the women’s bodies like a scanning machine, Anthony, too old to be in here but too vain to recognise it, mane of silver-grey swept up and back into two loose wings the better to emphasise its glory. I’ve never fucked him. I’ve never got that drunk.

  I finish my drink and take the other on a wander. A young couple are gazing at each other as though they’re looking in mirrors, discussing their eyebrows. ‘Do you get them waxed?’ she asks, admiringly. ‘No, threaded,’ he says. ‘It looks so much more natural.’ I don’t understand eyebrows these days. His look like plastic stick-ons, the skin between and around bald like chemotherapy, the ends squared off with geometrical precision. ‘They look amazing,’ she says, and she seems to mean it. ‘You should try some of that clear mascara on yours,’ he says. ‘It’ll tidy them up.’

  I can’t resist drifting up behind Anne-Marie. ‘Oh, no, I never go there,’ she is saying, ‘and I tell my clients not to, too. I said to him: bad mistake, pissing off a celebrity publicist and a high-end events organiser.’ ‘Oh, right,’ says her prey. ‘I thought it was pretty good. The food’s amazing.’ ‘That’s as maybe,’ says Anne-Marie, ‘but they know nothing about service.’ ‘And how did the shoot go, yesterday?’ ‘Oh, God,’ she says, ‘total nightmare. I had a photographer all lined up to be outside the restaurant and he pulled out at the last minute. Said his son had been run over.’ ‘Oh, my God,’ says the man, ‘how awful!’ ‘I know,’ she says, ‘do you know how hard it is finding a papp at no notice?’

  I see a tiny flinch. Ah, London, I think. I love you so. And then I see Sophie and Vickie in the garden, then, sitting at the table with them, Jono and Luke and Sam, and I push my way through the crowd to join.

  They cheer when they see me coming. In my world, if you don’t get a cheer when you turn up, you’re nobody.

  ‘I’m here,’ I say. ‘You can start having fun now.’ They all laugh. They laugh every time I say it. It’s the joke that never gets old. I slip into a space on a bench and put my drink down. I feel weird tonight. There, but not there; glad of the company but despising them all. There’s a joint going round, and I take a puff. I feel sorry for the people who live next door to pubs since the world got laissez faire about cannabis and judgey about smoke. It’s not a lovely smell, is it? There’s a reason they call it skunk. And now even the winter won’t keep the shouty drunks indoors. I’m wearing a black halter dress, fifty-denier tights and cowboy boots with my leather jacket. The halogen heaters should keep the worst of the cold at bay.

  ‘What’s been going on today?’ I ask. ‘Any scandal? Anyone been arrested?’

  They all look at me slightly oddly. Oh, don’t say they know, I think. But you know, it made the Sidebar of Shame at some point this afternoon, some bastard at the hotel topping up their minimum wage, and though these people never read a newspaper they pretty much have the Mail on alert on their phones. It helps fill the silences, when you don’t want to talk about your own stuff, if you can have gleeful discussions of the pratfalls of people you’ve never met.

  ‘It’s Vickie’s birthday,’ says Luke.

  ‘Oh, no!’ I say. ‘I didn’t know! Happy birthday!’

  Vickie beams. She’s quite a poppet, Vickie; thick as slurry and good-natured, makes her living from doing people’s colour mood boards. I think of her as Thicktoria in my head. If I think of her at all. She’s definitely not a narcissist. Narcissists enjoy their birthdays in anticipation, their heads filled with thoughts of how this time, this time, they will be the centre of attention all day and everyone will give them all the presents they want. On the day itself, they always look like a slapped arse, disappointment in other people’s performance seeping from every pore, grudges building against the ones who’ve gone down with flu or late work days. I feel around my wrist and select a silver bangle. I buy them by the dozen from a jewellery designer that has warehouse sales every season down in Southfields. They make good presents; people always think they cost more than they did.

  ‘Here.’ I take it off. ‘I’m sorry. If I’d known I would have wrapped something properly.’

  She looks stunned. It’s a nice little bangle, plain and shiny. I think it cost a fiver. ‘Oh, no,’ she says, ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘No, please,’ I say. ‘I’m just embarrassed it’s not something proper.’

  ‘But…’ She looks up at my face with big brown eyes. ‘This is proper. It’s yours.’

  ‘And now it’s yours,’ I say, firmly, and close her hand around it. She beams again and slips it on her wrist. Turns her hand this way and that so it catches the light. I get my cigarettes out and light one. The ashtray is already full. I lean over to the next-door table and swap it with the empty one that lies there. Vickie smiles at me as though she’s seeing me for the first time. Amazing how easy it is to make a new BFF with a bit of cheap jewellery.

  The conversation moves on. Hangovers, launches, holidays. Sam tries to tease me about the Jesus figure I shagged last night. ‘Didn’t he have a topknot?’ he asks. ‘No,’ I say, ‘I would never shag a topknot. Where do you think I’m from, Shoreditch?’ And everybody laughs. Luke’s been backpacking in Thailand. He says they have great beaches and the Full Moon parties were still rocking. ‘Oh, you should go to Mozambique,’ says a fierce-looking Australian woman called something like Gaia or Euphrosyne or some other name she’s picked out of a hat, ‘they’ve got a great party scene there.’ She has a Bedouin scarf wrapped round her head like a turban and a dozen piercings. She looks like she’s fallen through a hole in the space–time continuum from the 1990s. ‘Wasn’t there a war there or something?’ someone asks. ‘Yeah, well, that’s over now and all they want to do is party,’ she says. ‘It’s amazing how much joy the simple people can feel when they’ve got nothing at all. I slept on the beach. You have to show the landmines you’re not afraid.’

  Schizotypal. No doubt. Probably protected herself from malaria with homeopathy, too. I finish
my drink, put in an order for two more when Sam says he’s going to the bar. Give him £20, because that’s what two drinks cost in a bar like this, even in the tail end of a raging recession.

  Sophie turns to me and lowers her voice. ‘I saw about your dad,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. Are you okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  ‘Because, you know… I know how I’d feel…’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’re not me,’ I snap, and then I think: gawd, that was nasty of you, Mila. But I never know. People are always wanting to know about my family, and most of the time it’s so they can gossip about it. Okay, so maybe I’m a Paranoid. But at least I’m not an Obsessive-Compulsive, like my sister. ‘Sorry,’ I add. ‘I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘But if you need to… you know. I’m around.’

  Oh, lord, a Caretaker. God preserve me from them, working out their own issues by taking on everybody else’s. Narcissist parents, of course. Narcissists always produce at least one Caretaker if anyone is fooled into breeding with them.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, and turn away to put an end to the conversation. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t. Don’t want to think about it. What’s the point? It’s going to be nothing but thinking about it, over the next few weeks. I just want to get obliterated and forget about it, tonight. Isn’t that the point of spending time around other people? To forget about yourself?