The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  ‘Yes. What can I say? Yes. I think they were probably doing cocaine, but they were certainly smoking dope. You can’t really miss the smell of that stuff.’

  ‘So I hear,’ she says, archly. I ignore her.

  ‘And they were drinking and gorging and shouting at each other the way grown-ups do when they’re tying one on. I’ve no idea why they brought the kids, really. If they wanted to behave like kids themselves they should have made arrangements. But they didn’t, and your ma had fallen out with your nanny, so they had no one but us and Simone to do the donkey work. And then, obviously, just Simone. There was this horrible staircase Linda had put in to appeal to the yuppies. It was all hardened glass and sharp edges and gaping handrails, and you two were going through a phase of wandering, so after the first night they decided to put you in the maid’s room on the ground floor to sleep. They thought you’d be safer there.’

  ‘The Law of Unintended Consequences,’ says Ruby.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way. Don’t be angry with your mum, Ruby. She’s had the whole world blaming her, and I don’t suppose there’s been a day gone by when she hasn’t blamed herself.’

  Ruby is silent. She folds her arms and stares through the windscreen at the unfurling road ahead. It’s going to be a long drive.

  Chapter Nineteen

  2004 | Friday | Simone

  She hears them coming from the other side of the garden, from her sun-lounger by the pool. The girls’ voices shrill, defensive, Sean’s fruity tenor booming across the still air. The building machinery, which threw her from her sleep half an hour ago, has come to a standstill and every word of their row rings across the neighbourhood.

  ‘Fuck you, Daddy!’ shouts India. ‘Just – fuck you!’

  ‘You can’t speak to me like that! You cannot speak to your elders like that! My God, I’m ashamed to have brought you up!’

  Milly’s voice: ‘Well, isn’t it lucky you didn’t, then! Perhaps you’ll do a better job with the next lot, eh?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

  Simone sits slowly forward and cranes round the edge of her seat to watch. Milly and India, still in last night’s clothes – no surprise to Simone, given that she has had the annexe to herself for the entire night – stand with their backs to her, clenched fists dug deep into their waists like fishwives. Sean has both sets of fingers buried deep in his thick hair to show his frustration.

  ‘Are you to going to bear a grudge forever? Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Milly. ‘If you want an honest answer, yes, why not?’

  ‘That’s the thing you’re always saying to us,’ says India. ‘If you didn’t want to deal with the consequences, you shouldn’t have made the choices, should you?’

  ‘I have done everything in my power,’ he says, ‘to make sure you weren’t affected. I’m sorry Mummy and I couldn’t get along, but you can’t punish me for it forever.’

  India thrusts a sardonic laugh in his face. ‘Everything in your power? You think? My God, you didn’t even remember we were coming down this weekend, Daddy!’

  Simone sees him blush to the roots of his hair. For a moment, he looks as though he might actually admit to being at fault, then he draws himself up and says, ‘Nonsense.’

  I must remember that, thinks Simone. Alpha males like Sean can never apologise. It’s just not in them. You just have to live with that, if that’s the sort of man you want.

  ‘I’d just been expecting you to call and let me know when you were coming, not just pitch up and climb over the fence without telling anyone. Anything could have happened.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ says India. ‘My God, you don’t half talk some bollocks, old man. Oh, and we climbed through the fence, not over it. Your security’s not what you think it is.’

  Milly shakes her head. ‘I suppose once you get into the habit of lying,’ she says, ‘it becomes second nature.’

  She turns to her sister and Simone watches a wave of that weird psychic communication you see happening between siblings cross between them. ‘He probably actually believes it,’ she says. ‘Now, anyway. It probably took him an hour or so, but now he’s rewritten it in his head so he looks good.’

  ‘Is that something the therapist I lay out a hundred quid a week for told you?’ asks Sean. ‘I can see my money’s being well spent.’

  ‘Oh, piss off,’ says Milly. ‘If you didn’t want us to have to see a therapist you should have tried not buggering off at the first opportunity.’

  He gasps. Then looks suddenly, spitefully triumphant. ‘Oh, Milly,’ he says, ‘trust me, it wasn’t the first opportunity.’

  All three Jacksons fall horribly silent. Did he really say that? thinks Simone. It can’t have been what he meant. Sean would never deliberately hurt someone’s feelings like that.

  Milly turns away and her face is a picture of devastation. She starts to walk towards the annexe, stiff-backed, and her sister takes two swift steps to catch up with her.

  ‘No, look,’ says Sean, ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Come on, girls —’

  ‘Oh, can it, Dad,’ says India, and slams the annexe door.

  He stands in the sunlight for a few seconds, staring after them. Right now, he looks every year of his age, and not in a good way. Simone has always liked mature men, ever since she can remember. She likes their strength, their authority, their confidence. She’s never seen the virtues of the spotty youths who hang around the girls at her school, with their gangling, gropy hands and their way of dropping into some weak imitation of Rasta speak when they’re feeling insecure. But right now she can see the old man Sean will become, and just briefly it frightens her. I wonder if I should show myself? she wonders. He looks as though he could do with someone to talk to. But, before she can decide, he turns and walks slowly back to the house, his head bowed and his shoulders slumped.

  She leaves it a few minutes, then she goes into the annexe herself. Curiosity drives her, and a tiny twinge of glee. The Jackson girls have always been snarky with her, enjoyed finding opportunities to mock. She can’t help but be tempted to relish their upset.

  They’re packing.

  ‘Hello!’ she says. ‘What are you doing?’

  India whirls round, surprised by her entrance as though she’d forgotten that she was even there. ‘We’re going,’ she says. ‘You can have this place to yourself.’

  Simone apes a look of astonishment. ‘But why? You’ve only just got here.’

  ‘Mind your own beeswax,’ says Milly, and they turn back to their bags, throwing clothes unfolded in through the zippered tops with vengeful energy. She can’t stop herself from letting her thoughts out, though, even though Simone is standing there. They start to talk to each other as though she is invisible.

  ‘He can’t talk to us like that,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe he thinks it’s okay to talk to us like that.’

  ‘He knows it isn’t,’ says India. ‘Stupid old bastard. Typical. He knows perfectly well it’s not okay, but he does it anyway. I’m done. That’s bloody it.’

  ‘If he thinks I’m coming for another of his stupid access visits he can think again,’ says Milly. ‘He can stick it up his arse.’

  India plonks herself on to her mattress and dials Directory Enquiries on her mobile. ‘A minicab company in Bournemouth, please,’ she says. ‘Oh, I don’t have a pen. Can you put me through?’

  She looks up at her sister. ‘It’s okay, Mills,’ she says. ‘It’s not like we didn’t know what he was like.’

  Milly sighs, and her face starts to crumple. Then she shakes her head like a dog in the rain. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Sod him.’

  ‘Hi,’ says India. ‘We’d like a car to pick up in Sandbanks and take us to the station, please. Yes. Soon as possible.’

  Simone watches them stalk away to the front drive, and goes back to her sun-lounger. The grown-ups will be needing her help soon. It’s gearing up to be a lovely day.

  Chapter Twenty

  Her mood turns to a
nger at the service station outside Arundel. I get into the queue for coffee and Big Macs, and she goes off to the loo, and when she comes back there are two vertical lines on the bridge of her nose and her cheeks are flaming. She stomps across the concourse and parents dive upon their children to remove them from her path.

  The chairs are fixed to the tables at a distance designed to discourage lingering, and the gap is too narrow for her to fling herself into it. She manages a slide, nonetheless, that communicates the violence of her emotions.

  ‘I got you a Big Mac and fries and a vanilla shake,’ I say, propitiatingly.

  She refuses to look at me. Peels open her burger and devours it in three disgusted bites. Chews like a wolf devouring a helpless lamb and sucks on her shake so hard she goes purple with the effort. Eventually I see the shudder that accompanies brain freeze, and she slams the drink down on to her tray. Then she peels off the lid and starts dunking the fries in the remainder. God. The things people think up.

  ‘She fucking lied to me,’ she says.

  Thanks, Claire. Leave it to me to talk your daughter round, why don’t you? After all, we’ve always been so close.

  I sugar my quadruple espresso and take a draught. It’s lukewarm, and the grind has been horribly burnt by overheated steam, but it’s coffee. Another one of these and I’ll make it to lunchtime, hopefully. I long for a cigarette. It’s been almost sixteen hours. These people have no idea.

  ‘They all fucking lied to me,’ she says. ‘No wonder she’s been keeping me at home like a freak, pretending she was doing it for my benefit. What was the point? I mean, what was the fucking point? Did they really think I wouldn’t find out? I’m not going to stay at home forever.’

  She’s like one of those princesses in a fairytale. Kept away from the world because the King didn’t want her to come across a prick. Or something.

  ‘I think it’s more complicated than that,’ I venture.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ she says.

  ‘She loves you very much.’

  ‘Oh, please.’

  She returns to her fries, feeding them one by one by one into her mouth like paper into a shredder, and I concede defeat for the time being. Sip my coffee and wait for whatever’s coming next. Ruby is not the weeping willow I’d been imagining on my way down to collect her. I’d been thinking that I would be an angel of mercy, glowing in my own virtue as I coaxed confidences, dabbed tears, draped consoling arms round shaking shoulders. Amazons don’t seem to qualify for the same levels of sympathy accorded to dainty people. They’re meant to do the comforting, not seek it. Looks like Ruby’s learned her lessons well.

  ‘It’s all a big bloody lie,’ she says. ‘When I get home I’m tearing that bloody shrine down wholesale. D’you know what it’s like, having to look at that every single day? She’s mawkish about it. It’s all Coco, Coco, Coco, and me keeping my mouth shut because… I don’t know what. I don’t even know why. She’s lying to me and I’m going out of my way to protect her from it. I’ve not had a single birthday that’s just mine. Not one single one in twelve years that didn’t end up with her blubbing over the cake. And every summer’s spoiled because I know she’s going to go into mourning again, and I thought… oh, fuck. At least I used to think it was because she was dead. Now I just look at her and think, why? Why are you lying to me?’

  Yeah, I think, actually it’s worse than that. Claire’s been waiting for a child who’ll never come home, and telling this facile lie because a bit of her knows that she never will. I can’t imagine anything worse than that. I always wondered how Sean managed to live with it so well. I guess men are just different. I can see why she would tell this stupid lie to Ruby when she was too little to grasp the complexities, but that time is long past and now they’re trapped, both of them. All those things the general public in its infinite wisdom have had to say about her mother: and Ruby has had no one to ask. I need to calm her down before they speak again. If Claire finds out that Ruby has known it all, all this time, all by herself in the Coco museum, she will want to die. I would. I would have wanted to die every day since she vanished.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ruby,’ I say.

  ‘What are you sorry about?’ she asks, suspiciously. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Not fair. You know sorry doesn’t always mean that.’

  ‘Oh, right, so it’s sympathy. Lucky old me.’

  She reaches the end of her snack, crumples up the cardboard holder and throws it on to the tray. Glares at me as she sticks the straw back into the top of her milkshake and drinks. ‘So you still haven’t told me what happened,’ she says. ‘Your version. Not anyone else’s.’

  ‘Okay. But we’re going to have to do this outside. I need a cigarette.’

  We take our drinks out into the car park and sit on a hump of pine-needle-covered bare earth as I roll a smoke. I’ve seen a lot of the world’s glamorous places in the course of my habit. ‘When they came to get you for breakfast on Monday morning, you were fast asleep in the bed and Coco was gone,’ I tell her.

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘There was a hole in the fence. Indy and I found it on Thursday afternoon when Dad left us hanging around on the street, and we let ourselves in and had a swim. It had probably been there all summer. Even by the sea, people can’t resist the lure of an unguarded swimming pool. I should think half the teenagers in the area knew it was there. And the lock on the patio door was broken. No fingerprints. Well, no fingerprints apart from all the people who’d been there all weekend, and the cleaners and the builders and the craftspeople, but they were all ticked off the list one by one and after that there was nothing. No DNA, no traces of anything you wouldn’t expect. It was like… like she’d vanished into thin air.’

  ‘And I didn’t wake up?’

  I shake my head. Light my cigarette and drink my coffee and, just briefly, all is well with the world.

  ‘Where was everybody? I don’t understand. How could they not have heard anything? If someone broke in they’d have made a hell of a noise, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ruby. It’s possible the lock was already broken. No one remembers if it was actually locked when they arrived. If you didn’t try it before you turned the key you’d probably just think you were locking it and unlocking it when actually nothing was happening at all.’

  ‘And there wasn’t anybody else sleeping downstairs?’

  ‘There was a baby alarm,’ I say.

  ‘And they didn’t hear anything?’

  God, it sounds awful. It is awful. They deserved every bit of the what-sort-of-people coverage they got in the papers. What sort of people do something like that? I bet he took a sleeping pill, too, though he’s never admitted it. He didn’t hear the baby alarm because he was snoring off a weekend of red wine and God knows what else.

  ‘It was just Dad. Your mum went home on Saturday night – well, more like very early Sunday morning. I think they had a row, though the official story was that she had always been going to go because she had to get on with recruiting a new nanny first thing Monday.’

  ‘So she left me with those people?’

  ‘She left you with your father. That’s really not that unusual, Ruby. You’re sounding like the papers now.’

  ‘The papers have a point,’ she says, sulkily.

  I can’t be cross with her. It’s not as though it’s not been said over and over by people who had no link at all with any of it. If everyone who ever bought the Mirror has a right to an opinion, then God knows Ruby has one.

  ‘You know what? You had a lovely weekend. Lovely. Ice cream and seashells and sandcastles and paddling and all the things kids really love. We all went to the beach. You remember that, right? The jellyfish? And it was like that all weekend. You had a brilliant time. You need to remember that. Coco and you were really happy on your last weekend together. You need to remember that.’

  ‘I don’t,’ says Ruby. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. I don’t even remember
her, really. Not at all. I see her photo every single day, but I don’t remember what she felt like.’

  She looks suddenly, horribly miserable.

  ‘I wish I did,’ she says.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  2004 | Friday | Claire

  ‘Sean, I really don’t know about this. It just doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Sean, and lays his end of the mattress down in preparation for a fight. ‘Here we go again.’

  ‘But I —’

  His face suffuses with red as it always does when he senses a thwarting coming on. She will never get used to it, this change in the charming man who couldn’t find a fault in her. But of course, she never thwarted him before she married him. ‘Yes, you, you, you. It’s always about you, isn’t it? Do you ever think that there might be other people in the world?’

  Same old story. When Sean feels as though he might not be going to get his way, the accusations come tumbling out. You’re so selfish. You never think about what I might want, do you? You’re ruining my life. You pretended to be someone completely different. I would never have married you if I’d known what you were really like.

  ‘But Sean,’ she protests feebly, ‘they’re just little kids!’

  Their disagreements always go the same way. He wants something, and, if she points out the disadvantages of that thing, he reverts immediately to infancy. A giant toddler kicking and screaming I-hate-yous at Nasty Mummy. Over the years she has retreated from battle, taken to avoiding conflict if she can manage it, but her frustration leaks out in passive aggression all the time. She hears her own hurt little stiff voice saying, ‘Oh, do what you want, you always do,’ and despises herself. Passive aggression is still aggression, after all. Just the dishonest version.