The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

‘So are you seeing him again?’ asks Jono.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jesus-boy.’

  Ah, Tom. Not exactly likely. We couldn’t get away from each other quickly enough, though manners made him give me a mug of instant coffee, no milk because the milk was off, and manners made me drink it while wishing that there was milk because then I could have drunk it faster.

  ‘Naah,’ I say. ‘What do you think this is, a Richard Curtis film?’

  They all laugh again. We all hate Richard Curtis because our mothers love him. ‘Well, he certainly wasn’t Hugh Grant,’ says Jono.

  ‘I – I – I – I say – fuckitty fuck,’ Vickie puts on an accent that no one British has spoken in outside the movies in thirty years, and we all laugh again. Sam comes back with my drinks and I sink half of the first one in one go. I feel empty and distant, as though a glass wall has fallen down between me and these people I call my friends. But then, I feel like that a lot of the time, so nothing’s new.

  Chapter Five

  2004 | Thursday | Camilla

  ‘God almighty,’ says India. ‘I could be at a festival right now.’

  Milly raises an eyebrow. ‘What festival would that be?’

  India frowns. ‘The… um…’

  ‘Creamfields? Glasto? Reading? T in the Park?’

  Her sister’s eyes narrow. ‘Oh, shut up,’ she says. ‘Just because I’ve got better things to do with my time than read the NME all day.’

  Milly considers jacking up the wind-up by asking what those things might be. She loves winding India up, puncturing her self-regard, but they’re alone on this doorstep and she knows that, despite her family reputation as the Good Girl, her sister’s temper can be explosive, and erupt with little warning. ‘Well, look,’ she says, ‘there’s no point hanging around here. How about we go over the chain ferry and get a drink at the café? No point just sitting here all afternoon.’

  India picks up her overnight bag. ‘What are you doing now?’ asks Milly.

  ‘I don’t want it getting stolen.’

  Milly sneers. The brickwork of the driveway is soaking up the heat and it’s like sitting on a barbecue. I can’t believe you’re the elder sister, she thinks. You’re scared of everything. ‘Who’s going to steal that? We’re in Poole, not Peckham.’

  ‘There are people,’ says India, ‘all over the place. Tourists. And, you know – builders.’

  Milly bursts out laughing. The builders working on the house next door have come and gone through the gate as they’ve been sitting there, bellowing to each other in some language she doesn’t recognise. Six feet tall and generously muscled, half of them with moustaches, only distinguishable from gay porn by the loose fit of their jeans. ‘Yeah. I can see that. They’ll be after your polka-dot sundress to wear down the pub.’

  India throws the bag on to the drive. ‘Oh, shut up! Just shut up!’

  She considers baiting her sister for a little longer, but it’s too hot and the fight isn’t in her. She picks up India’s bag and her own – canvas, matching flower patterns, one red, one blue; their mother is scrupulous even in her division of luggage – and carries them over to the rhododendrons that line the fence. ‘We can hide them here, look.’

  ‘Has it ever occurred to you that they might have girlfriends?’ India can never leave an argument alone.

  ‘Yeah,’ she replies over her shoulder, ‘and I’m sure they’re just longing for a second-hand dress from What She Wants.’

  She ducks beneath the low branches, looking for a space that will take the bags. Spots something and turns back to her sister. ‘Hey, Indy, come and look at this!’

  India shuffles sulkily over. ‘What?’

  Milly holds a branch back so she can see. ‘Look!’

  There’s a hole in the fence. One that has been used several times before, by the looks of it. The leaf drop from the bush has been swept off to either side, making a clean run of sandy earth.

  ‘Ooh!’ says India.

  ‘Right?’

  ‘Do you think we should?’

  ‘It’s our house, eejit!’

  ‘Well, sort of. But what if he’s got security? Cameras, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Come on, when was the last time he had cameras on a house he was turning? Anyway, I’ve got my student travel card. It’s not like we can’t prove we’re family. Come on!’

  India still hesitates.

  ‘Oh, whatever, India. I’m not sitting out here looking like a pillock. There’s a pool in there, and sun-loungers. I’m going for a swim.’

  She crawls into the dark cave beneath the shrub. She doesn’t have to force her way through the hole. Use has made it comfortably body-sized already. A couple of wriggles, pulling herself along by her forearms, and she’s in the flowerbed on the other side. It’s planted with roses and azaleas: the easy-colour low-maintenance plants her father always dresses his properties’ gardens with when they go on the market. Tough enough to survive the skimping he always does on topsoil at least until the house is sold. She shimmies past them and stands up on the newly laid turf on the other side.

  India follows a few seconds later, pushing the bags ahead of her. Crawls red-faced on to the grass and drops back on to her buttocks. ‘Cor!’ she says.

  The house is totally Sean and totally not. Totally Sean because it’s what he makes his money from, and totally not because he would never be seen dead living in a place like this. The homes they have lived in through their childhoods have always been period houses, filled with antiques and tulips in vases like Dutch still lifes, always dressed for sale even when they were staying a while. But Sean has never let personal taste get in the way of profits. There has always been a collection of modern buildings on his books, nice easy modern buildings with no listing issues, waiting to be demolished or given the Deco treatment to hide their antecedents. And for these he has a warehouse of furniture: things with no handles, things with no frills; the sorts of characterless expensive things the newly minted, still unsure of their taste, like to buy in shops they know are safe. Sometimes he even sells the houses furnished, and turns a tidy profit on the contents in doing so. This house on Sandbanks, gold-rush destination of the seagoing stockbroker and the digital millionaire, is very much one of his turnaround jobs: picked for its location rather than its looks and filled with mod cons to tempt the yuppies.

  ‘Oh, hurrah!’ says India. ‘It’s a jacuzzi house!’

  They set off to explore, both of them feeling instantly cooler at the prospect of what they are likely to find. The house itself is of little interest to them. A three-storey box of white-painted concrete, balconies and sliding doors dotted here and there. They know that the doors and windows will be alarmed. Their father might not think it worth installing cameras, but he’s certainly not going to leave the place wide open to squatters, or burglars with a taste for the Conran catalogue. Plenty of time for that later, when the grown-ups arrive. Meanwhile, there is a garden in which the only thing that’s old is a monkey puzzle tree, with three sets of patio furniture, a croquet set and, oh, the joy of it, over there behind a white picket fence, a pool.

  ‘Why do you think it’s called Harbour View?’ asks Milly, looking at the back of a small apartment building that stands between the house and the water. It, too, is covered in scaffolding; it’s as though the whole of Sandbanks is being developed to cash in on its voguishness.

  ‘Maybe it had one once.’

  ‘Doesn’t any more. You could probably get done under the Trades Descriptions Act.’

  ‘Naah. They’d probably just claim it was an ironic name. Or historic or something. There’s a house on the King’s Road called Sea View Cottage. I don’t think anyone expects to actually be able to see the sea from there.’

  Milly is fifteen, India seventeen. They have their mother’s tall, dark-Celt colouring and their father’s patrician nose and heavy brows. People sometimes assume that they’re from a more exotic parentage than the bog-standard British-with-a-dash-of-Jew
ish they are, and they’re happy to play along with that. Last summer in Tuscany, Milly convinced some boy from Haberdashers’ Aske’s school that she was an Arab princess. His Islington parents were all over her until her mother came to collect her from a pool party and they learned that her name was Heather Jackson.

  It’s the end of summer and both of them are brown as caramel, their black hair cut into mops about their faces, toenails painted neon orange. They duck and shriek and dive-bomb each other from the pool’s fixed board for a bit, then settle on sun-loungers and rub themselves with low-factor, tan-encouraging Soltan from India’s bag. That’s Indy all over: ever cautious, ever equipped, always trailing along behind her foolhardy younger sister with sting remedy and sticking plasters. ‘Is there any noise from Dad?’ she asks.

  ‘No, but there’s a bloody lot of noise from those builders next door,’ says Milly. ‘Claire’s head’s going to spin round on her neck if they’re still at it when she gets here.’

  She tries her phone again. No voicemails, no returned calls. Their father, it seems, has entered a long dark tunnel without a signal. ‘Should we call Mummy, do you think?’

  India glares at her. ‘And what’s she going to do? She’s on a plane. And besides, she’ll be furious.’

  Milly stares at her for a moment. This is the difference between us, she thinks. Indy will do just about anything to avoid awkwardness, and she’s constantly on the edge of rage as a result. And it’s not like it even gets her anything. Everyone’s so scared of her, she’s barely got a single friend.

  ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ she asks. ‘We don’t actually know if he’s even coming down today, do we?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ snaps India.

  Milly sighs. ‘I’ll try him again,’ she says.

  She dials her father’s number and is diverted straight to voicemail. ‘Maybe he’s driving,’ she says, ever the optimist. ‘Maybe it’s a good sign if he can’t pick up.’

  India has a bottle of Ribena in her bag, and Milly, after some rummaging, turns up a bag of M&Ms. They share them in sisterly silence, basking beneath the azure sky in their heart-shaped Primark sunglasses.

  ‘So who’s coming this weekend, anyway?’ asks Milly.

  ‘Not sure. The usual suspects, I suppose. I know the Clutterbucks are coming.’

  ‘When aren’t they? Anything for a freebie.’

  ‘I know. Sometimes I think Dad loves Charlie Clutterbuck more than he loves his family.’

  ‘Well, school, you know,’ says Milly. ‘Boys can develop lifelong attachments at public school. All those cold baths and rugby scrums.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Rugby scrums are clusterfucks, really. Charlie Clusterfuck.’

  India sniggers. ‘Charlie Clusterfuck. Love it.’

  ‘Imogen Clusterfuck,’ says Milly, and they both crease up.

  ‘Okay, so the Clusterfucks. Who else?’

  ‘I guess probably the Gavilas.’

  India groans, ‘Oh, God, not Soppy Simone? Tell me they’re not bringing her.’

  ‘I don’t know. Are they all bringing the kids? I hadn’t even thought.’

  ‘Well, Maria won’t go anywhere without Joaquin,’ says India. ‘Remember when she insisted on bringing him when Dad married Claire?’

  ‘Screaming!’

  ‘And throwing up in the register office! Priceless!’

  ‘To be fair,’ says Milly, ‘he was only acting out what we all thought.’

  ‘The look on Claire’s face!’

  ‘You could tell the difference? She always looks like a slapped arse to me.’ Milly fiddles with her phone, gives their father another fruitless go. ‘Is that it? Not much of a fiftieth birthday, is it?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got much energy for partying when you’re that ancient. God, it’s going to be boring, though. I think there might be more people, but they’re work bods. Some woman who’s taking over his interior design or something. And her kids.’

  ‘Gawd. It’s all just fun, fun, fun in Sean Jackson’s world, isn’t it? How many kids?’

  ‘Three, I think. Tiggy, Fred and Inigo.’

  They do the gagging mime again.

  ‘Yes,’ says India, ‘well, I suppose you do need to work quite a lot when you’ve got an expensive wife.’

  They fall into silence, ruminate on their father’s choices. It’s not much fun, living with an angry mother.

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ says Milly. ‘I actually look forward to going back to school these days. It’s so much easier there, isn’t it? You know the rules.’

  India turns on to her front. ‘Mmm. And no brats you’re expected to be nice to because they’re your sister. Ugh. I still can’t believe he’s breeding at his age. It’s just – wrong.’

  ‘Ugh,’ echoes Milly, ‘I know. Some sort of man thing, isn’t it? Wants to show it all still works?’

  ‘Well, I wish he wouldn’t. It’s disgusting.’

  Milly finishes off the chocolates and washes them down with a swig of Ribena. ‘We should probably make a plan, you know. In case they don’t turn up.’

  ‘Oh, shush, Milly,’ says India. ‘Of course they’re going to turn up. It’s just her, isn’t it? She’s never been on time for anything, ever. I’d be surprised if they got out of the house before ten.’

  Milly checks her watch. ‘Well, it’s gone lunchtime now.’

  ‘Oh, honestly.’ India reaches out and pinches the skin on her hip. ‘It’s not like you’re going to die of starvation if you miss a meal, is it?’

  ‘Ooh, you bitch!’ squeals Milly, and only half of her is joking. She developed a habit of eating as much as she could during the silent meals that characterised the end of her parents’ marriage, because fullness somehow dulled the ache, and now she’s no longer forced on to a sports field every schoolday the food is catching up with her, and she knows it. Doesn’t like it, doesn’t seem to be able to stop, but she knows it. She flicks some drink out of the top of the open bottle she still holds on to her sister’s bare back. India shrieks and leaps to her feet. And then they’re off, filled with one of those sudden surges of teenage energy, India chasing Milly through the garden, in the sunlight, until Milly flings herself back into the water to get away. India throws herself in after, ducks her, and they retreat to opposite sides, sweeping armfuls of water into each other’s faces, laughing, with an edge of desperation, because this might be the last fun time they have this weekend.

  They’re making so much noise, and are so intent on acting out their pleasure, that they don’t notice that they are no longer alone until a shadow falls across Milly’s shoulder and their father’s voice breaks into their shouts. ‘What on earth are you two doing here?’ he asks.

  Chapter Six

  Someone’s been training the staff at the morgue. It’s not wall-to-wall counsellors or anything, but the receptionist walked me to the waiting room rather than waving me to a seat and the room itself has a relatively comfortable sofa rather than the usual rock-hard NHS benches. The table is scattered with helpful leaflets. I half expect them to have titles like So You’ve Lost Your Dad, but the patronising touchy-feelyness of the People’s Princess era has passed and we’re on to Plain Speaking for Hard-Working Families now. I leaf through a Guide to Services for the Bereaved as I wait. It’s divided into sections like ‘What Is Probate?’ and ‘Choosing a Funeral Provider’. I’m sort of glad it’ll be a few more years before I need to know about this stuff. Robert, as Dad’s solicitor and Simone’s father, has been named as executor. All I have to do is say whether the man on the slab is really my father.

  And all the time, I’m watching myself; studying Mila in Mourning and wondering at my emotions, because as far as I can see there aren’t any. Just curiosity. Fascination at doing something I’ve never done before, that no one I know has ever done. All I feel is the occasional faint surge of anger. Here’s the thing I know so far about death. All those things you’ve put to the back of your mind, the things you’ve decided
it’s best to just ignore because protest has got you nowhere, they come creeping back around your barriers when someone dies. All my resentments at his failures and his neglect and his selfish choices that I’ll never be able to call him on now: my brain seems to be cycling through them like a couple in a traffic jam, going ‘and another thing, and another thing’. But missing him? No. You know why? Because there’s nothing to miss. It’s one of those things that people don’t get about the children of divorce. I did most of my mourning when I was nine years old.

  The door opens and a woman in a white coat appears. I assume she’s a doctor.

  ‘Camilla Jackson?’ she asks.

  I nod. Put down Post-Mortems Explained and look at her.

  ‘I’m Dr Badawi, the duty pathologist here. He’s ready for you now,’ she says, and gives me a neat little smile that must have taken years of practice to get right. I don’t know if they have bedside-manner lessons in med school these days, but this smile is familiar to me. Not too jolly, not too mournful, sympathy denoted by a tiny head tilt but never a stray into overfamiliarity. Keep the rellies calm, it says, and we can keep the interruptions to our working day, these irritating hold-ups in the important business of chopping and slicing and sawing the tops off skulls, as brief as is humanly possible. But it feels weird, the way she calls him a ‘he’, as though there’s a human being waiting beyond that door on the other side of the corridor, rather than a quietly decaying corpse.

  She leads me to the viewing room, talks as she goes. ‘We’ve just left his face visible,’ she says. ‘It’s standard practice. I’m afraid it’s all rather clinical in there. But don’t be afraid. It’s not the way it is in the movies. There’s only him. But I’m afraid quite a lot of people find the whole procedure distressing anyway. You’ll let me know if you feel faint or… anything, won’t you? We have chairs in there, if you need. I’ll come in with you and let you have a look, and then I’ll ask if it’s him by his full name and all I need you to do is give me a yes or a no. Is that okay?’