The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  2004 | Thursday | Simone and Milly

  She had her first dream of Sean when she was seven, and the memory still makes her shiver. It wasn’t much of a dream by the standards of what has followed, as hormones and knowledge have shaped her brain. But the first time – that shiver of surrender and the feel of his imaginary arms encircling her – will always stay there at the back of her mind.

  And he doesn’t even know I’m alive, she thinks. I got all dressed up and he barely even glanced at me. I hate my age. He can’t see me because of it. Can’t see that I would do anything for him. Anything. And the Anything I’ve been given is taking the children to the beach so his spoiled sour wife can take time off.

  She glances up the sand. Milly and India have the twins and Joaquin, and they’ve gathered around something that lies in the sand. Tiggy and Inigo Orizio wobble hand in hand at the water’s edge, jumping back in shock each time a tiny wave – more wake from passing boats than actual waves; Poole Harbour in high summer is more like lake than sea – breaks over their plastic-sandalled toes. Tiggy sports an inflatable doughnut around her waist and Inigo wears a pair of waterwings. They’re fine. It would take them so long to get out of their depth that there would be time to launch the coastguard long before they did. Fred sits nearby, studiously burying his legs in sand with a tin shovel.

  Simone settles down on her back with Harry Potter. She’s not reading. She rarely reads, but looking as though she is doing so makes her look less lonely. She longs to take a swim, but she’s too conscientious about her job and doesn’t want to leave the three kids she’s somehow ended up watching while the other two just stick to their own siblings. This bikini, pink gingham with a pair of shiny buttons between her breasts, picked with such scrupulous care when she had found out she was coming down here, has never got wet. I’m such a fool, she thinks. All those daydreams, and he just thinks that I’m a kid. I need to stop. He’s got a new wife now. A man like that was never going to wait.

  But oh, if I had his children… I would never be casting around for people to take them off my hands. They would be the most precious things in my world, not an inconvenience to be dealt with by employing staff. Not every woman is made for a career, like Maria. I don’t want suits and BlackBerries and expense accounts. I want a home. A home I can call mine for my love to grow in.

  She thinks about Claire. The streaked highlights and the perfect manicures and the suspiciously still forehead though she’s only thirty-three years old. I hate her, she thinks. Not only because she has what should be mine, but because I just hate her. She has my life. She has the life I should have grown up to have, and she doesn’t even appreciate it.

  ‘Have you seen what she’s wearing?’ asks India. Joaquin has run off to the sand dunes in one of those explosions of boy energy that come in very useful when you want to do a bit of bitching.

  ‘Can’t exactly miss it,’ says Milly.

  ‘She’s not gone off Dad, then.’

  Milly laughs, nastily. ‘God almighty. It’s like – how sad can you be?’

  ‘It’s disgusting. It’s like she doesn’t realise how old he is.’ Fifty, to both of them, seems as far away as the moon. The twins seem to them unnatural phenomena enough, evidence as they are that he and Claire have been having creaky old-man sex. The thought that anyone of their own spectacular generation could see him as anything other than an object of pity makes them shudder.

  ‘She’s weird, though,’ says Milly. ‘She always has been. Daddy’s little duckling. You don’t think she really… you know… do you?’

  ‘Soppy Simone? Oh, please. I know she’s creepy, but she’s not that creepy.’

  ‘No. You’re right. Besides. She’s not exactly, you know, sexy, is she?’

  ‘String bean.’

  ‘And all that stringy hair all down her back like seaweed.’

  ‘Do you think she’s even snogged anyone?’

  ‘She’s saving herself for Daddy,’ says Milly, and they both roll over in the sand and make gagging gestures.

  Coco pokes at the jellyfish with a stick. Ruby, always the follower, sits and watches. Claire has dressed them all matchy-matchy again, like dollies, in little elasticated skirts over their ruched swimsuits and pink cotton sun-bonnets, their soft baby skin white with factor 50. They’re nice little things, thinks Milly. It’s not their fault who their mother is.

  Coco looks up at her enquiringly. ‘What that?’ she asks.

  They’re a bit thick, though, she adds to herself. I’m sure they should be reading or something by now. ‘Jellyfish,’ she says. ‘It’s called a jellyfish. Cause it’s like jelly, look.’

  She pokes the dead animal with a toe and thinks actually, it’s not like jelly at all. There’s no wobble to it; it’s more like rubber.

  ‘Fish!’ cries Ruby, and splays her hands in the air.

  ‘Fish!’ says India.

  ‘What time are we meant to go back?’ asks Milly.

  ‘Oh, who cares? If they want free babysitters they get free service.’

  ‘Pay peanuts, get monkeys?’

  ‘Yeah, as if anyone’s going to pay us. I’m so pissed off. It’s quite obvious he wasn’t expecting us, the gnarly old sod. So now he’s just going to use us as staff so he and Claire can get pissed. He can bugger off, quite frankly.’

  Milly grunts in response.

  ‘I’ve a good mind to go back to London,’ says India.

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s not that bad.’

  ‘Whatever. It’s not exactly going to be a barrel of laughs, is it? All those blustering old blokes drinking brandy. If Charlie Clutterbuck tries flirting with me again I think I’m going to throw up.’

  ‘Oh, he’s harmless,’ says Milly. ‘It’s that new guy, Jimmy. Not sure about him at all.’

  ‘Junkie,’ says India, authoritatively. ‘Pupils like pinpricks.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And as for his missus, I mean. What’s all that about?’

  ‘She’s quite pretty,’ says Milly.

  ‘Well, if you like that sort of thing,’ says India. ‘She’s all a bit too Daddy’s Little Girl for my liking. I bet she does baby-talk in the sack.’

  ‘You’re obsessed with sex,’ says Milly.

  ‘Said the kettle. Not that I’m going to get any of that this weekend,’ says India glumly. Then she spots three lanky figures moseying up the beach and brightens up. ‘Ay-ay! Maybe I spoke too soon!’

  Simone hears laughter and looks up from her book. The Jacksons have attracted a small knot of boys. Three of them, sun-browned skin and salt-bleached curls falling into their eyes as they look at whatever it is they’ve got over there on the sand. One, the tallest one, digs in the pocket of his long-line surf shorts – as much use on this piece of sea-line as a shark net – and hands over an object that proves, when Milly flips out a blade, to be a Swiss army knife. The twins sit complacently side by side, straight legs in Vs and toes pointed at the sky. Her half-brother dances on the balls of his feet, doing jazz hands with excitement in that stupid way he does.

  Curious, she leaves Fred and saunters over. Milly sees her coming and pulls a face, then pretends that she’s unaware of her presence. They don’t like me, thinks Simone for the millionth time. They never have. It’s as though they’re suspicious of me. It doesn’t matter what I do, they just turn their backs when they see me coming. Even when we were kids, the same. I wonder if they know that I know the names they call me. Soppy Simone. The Limpet. The Little Mermaid. And, this year, Slimeoan. They probably don’t. It probably never occurs to them that just because they can’t see someone, it doesn’t mean they’re not there.

  She reaches the group and sees the focus of their attention. It’s a jellyfish the size of a dinner plate, a deep-water animal washed up from God knows where. Beautiful, in its way: translucent white with an inner circle of palest pink. And India has sliced it open with the knife. As though it were a cake. ‘Look,’ she’s saying. ‘It has air bubbles. I guess that’s how it floa
ts. How on earth do they get air in there?’

  ‘I guess they’re born like that,’ says one of the boys.

  ‘Yes, but they must get more as they get bigger. Don’t you see? Where do they get it from?’

  ‘Are you sure it’s dead?’ she asks.

  One of the boys looks up, looks her over and finds her unfascinating. ‘It is now,’ he says, and looks at Milly with a yearning sort of greed. ‘Besides, it can’t feel anything. Jellyfish don’t have brains. They are the only animals that don’t.’

  ‘Well, not the only ones,’ says Milly, pointedly looking at Simone, and the whole group bursts out laughing. Simone feels her cheeks burning.

  ‘This is Simone,’ says India, and again she hears the sound of a joke in the tone: a joke that, as ever, she’s not allowed in on.

  ‘Hi, Simone,’ says the youngest of the boys, and once again she feels a ripple of mirth run between them all.

  She sends her charges to join the others, and takes her swim. Pounds along against the current twenty yards out and repeats and repeats her daily mantras. It’s not for long. Not for long. I don’t need friends. I don’t need their approval. I don’t need friends. All I need is Sean. Time, time, time. All I need is for time to pass. One day, all this will be behind me.

  No one believes in love the way I do. If I told them, they would laugh. They think that at fifteen you don’t know your own mind, let alone seven, but I always have. I just knew. In the way I knew how to eat, or knew how to breathe. I knew it again and I know it now. And if I wait, wait, wait, one day he will know it too.

  When she gets out, panting from the exertion, she takes her time about dressing, gives attention to every detail, because soon it’ll be time to get back to the house. She has brought a big beach bag with everything she needs. She hops and jumps, skin sticky with damp and salt, back into her white shorts and ties her top back up above her midriff. Smooths lavender – she heard him exclaim how he loved the smell in the South of France when she was ten – body lotion on every limb, checks that her toenail varnish remains unmarked by the eroding sand. Lets down her hair from its swimmer’s topknot and combs it out slowly, slowly, with a little serum so that it ripples, sleek and fluid, over her shoulders and down her back. She pulls out her mirror and checks the waterproofness of her mascara. Slicks a touch of pale tan colour on to her lips. It’s only when she’s finished and is packing her stuff away that she registers that the laughter she hears from up the beach is aimed at her.

  ‘Gawd, look at her. She’ll be dabbing perfume on her fanny in a minute.’

  The boys laugh awkwardly. They’re quite unsophisticated compared with the lads Milly and India meet around Camden Town: the difference, she supposes, between London and Salisbury, where they’re from. But they’re boys, and Josh, the eldest of them at nineteen, is quite lush in a gangly sort of way.

  India stretches in her bikini, shows off her breasts with a look of knowing insouciance. Beside her, Milly feels quite young and gauche. India’s moved to Camden for the sixth form, and she’s soared ahead in the year she’s been there. I’m not sure I’m ready for grown-up yet, she thinks. All those new people, and they’ve probably been going to nightclubs and that for years. I suppose I should get some practice in, but – boys. I don’t really know what to do with them. They don’t seem to be interesting the way girls are. It’s all football and showing off, with them. She’s had a few encounters at parties, because it’s pretty much a hiding to Coventry not to be seen to have a snog and a feel, but she’s found them clumsy and unsexy, their skin rough and their fingers poky. It’ll be okay, she thinks, when I meet someone I fancy. I’m just choosier than India. She really doesn’t seem to be fussy about anything much. So funny. It’s usually me who wants to push things, kick over the traces and see where an adventure will lead me, but when it comes to boys it’s like there’s ten years between us.

  ‘So what is there to do around here at night?’ she asks, and gazes at Josh over the top of her sunglasses.

  Chapter Thirteen

  People often use animal metaphors when they’re describing teenage girls. It’s not that surprising: with the long legs and the big eyes, you can’t help thinking of deer and fawns and cats when you see them. A group of Year 12s who’d found their way into a gallery show I was at recently, swaying on giddy heels in micro shift dresses, looked to me exactly like a small herd of giraffe gazing over the Serengeti.

  Ruby looks like a yearling foal. A Clydesdale yearling. She clops into the room on momentous platform wedges, reels to a halt, snorts and tosses her mane. Okay, so I made up the bit about snorting, but the rest is accurate. When she sees that I am alone she panics for a second, backs off a couple of paces and does a clumsy gavotte.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘hello.’

  I unfurl myself and get to my feet. She towers over me. In those shoes she’s a good couple of inches over the six-foot mark. ‘Hi,’ I say.

  She gives me an uncertain attempt at a smile, reveals heavy braces on both sets of teeth. Exactly the same ones both Indy and I had to suffer through, though hers are a disconcerting shade of swimming-pool blue. ‘You’re Milly.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You look… different.’

  ‘So do you.’

  And then some. Last time I saw Ruby she barely came up to my hip. They were stunted little pixie creatures then, all Cupid’s bow lips and soft blonde hair that fell constantly into their big blue eyes. Really, Coco was the ideal kidnap victim for the tabloid press. She personified all the fantasies white people no longer admit to about what their children might look like. I would never, in a million years, have predicted that one of those eerie little doppelgängers would grow up to look like this. Nor, it seems, would the age-progression artists who did the poster of a thirteen-year-old Coco for the tenth anniversary.

  Ruby is what they call strapping. Nearly six feet tall, with shoulders that could carry a beam across a building site and hands and feet that suggest that there’s more growing to come. They may have taken after their mother when they were little, but there’s no question who she takes after now. And her hair is black. Synthetic black, obviously, with a hard-cut fringe and pink – bright pink, the sort of pink you find on gynaecological doodads – tips draped over her shoulders. Her skin is pale – not snow-pale but the pale of risen dough – and caked in a layer of clumsily applied foundation, and her cheeks are round with puppy fat. Her mouth is still the same, though: a perfect Cupid’s bow, strikingly rich in colour in contrast with her face. Above the platforms, she wears black leggings and a black jersey dress, and a cardi that must have cost a fair few quid on Etsy, so covered is it in small crêpe appliqué roses. And she rattles as she moves. There must be ten, fifteen bracelets strung up her arms, a couple of ankle bracelets, four or five necklaces, half a dozen earrings and a nose ring. Her eyes, still blue, have been outlined in wobbly black eyeliner. She looks a sight. And I love her immediately.

  She hovers in the doorway. Eventually, she says, ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I reply. ‘I guess in the end we’re the only ones who really understand, aren’t we?’

  Ruby’s chin wobbles and I see that she’s very much not okay. That the make-up has been put on for my benefit, to hide the fact that the eyes are red-rimmed and the skin on the upper parts of her cheeks is roughened by salt. Oh, poor kid, I think, and feel a sudden urge to cry myself. Don’t, Mila, I think. You’re the grown-up here.

  ‘How did you hear about it?’ I ask.

  ‘Godmother Maria rang,’ she says.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ruby.’

  A patch of red appears on her throat, beneath the necklaces. She squirms in the doorway, wrings her hands.

  ‘I need to feed the chickens before it gets dark,’ she announces, and flees.

  The tea is a brackish minty swill in a pot that doesn’t seem to strain. Bits of half-hydrated herb float at the top of my mug, surrounded by little oily halos. I take a taste and it’s
acrid like nail varnish remover. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any sugar, have you?’ I ask.

  Claire looks surprised that I should ask such a question. ‘Um, no, sorry,’ she says. ‘I’ve got honey, if you like? I keep a hive. Still can’t guarantee they’re not getting to GM plants, of course, but it’s better than nothing.’

  Ah. So the control issues haven’t gone away; just transformed. No more trailing round Knightsbridge looking for a suitable manicurist; now it’s sugar-is-the-devil and is-that-phosphate-free? Typical Paranoid/Histrionic. Clearly has an OCD in there, to boot. She goes back to the kitchen and returns with a jam jar half filled with honey. HONEY, proclaims the label on the outside. I wonder if she has a label on her toothbrush reading TOOTHBRUSH.

  ‘Would you like a slice of toast?’ she asks. ‘We don’t have biscuits, I’m afraid.’

  Of course you don’t. Some things never change. I well remember those long, hungry afternoons after a salad lunch. I bet you don’t make butter from that goat, either. God knows what you use for fats. The toast will be dry, most likely. There will be no more biscuits after the zombie apocalypse.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I say, and silently regret having bought only one of those tartlets.

  Ruby comes back in after dark, face flushed with the cold, unwinding a scarf from around her neck. ‘I’ve done the hens and the pigs and the donkeys,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, thank you, darling,’ says Claire.

  Ruby goggles at me as though she’d been hoping I would have disappeared while she was out. ‘Tea?’ asks Claire.

  She pulls a face. ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Come and talk to us.’

  A micro-expression that looks like fear, then she comes over to Roughage’s sofa and plonks herself down. The dog lets out a little squeak, then leans his chin on Ruby’s thigh. Gazes at me.

  ‘So what are you doing with yourself now, Milly?’ asks Claire.