The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  Linda snatches them from him and starts popping the pills from their foil.

  ‘And may I say’ – he plants a groping hand on her lace-clad buttock – ‘that you’re looking especially tasty this evening?’

  Linda swats him away, doesn’t even look at him. He shrugs, as though this is the normal course of his day. ‘Anybody want anything else, while I’ve got it open? Any aches and pains? Low mood? Little blue pill for the birthday boy?’

  Everyone ignores him. No doubt they’ll be changing their minds once they get back from the restaurant, but there’s something about formal dress that seems to steer people towards alcohol. ‘No?’ He looks around with swimmy blue eyes. ‘Okay, well, just a little Oxy for your poor old doctor’s aching back and away we go.’

  He taps a capsule out from a brown bottle, swallows it and washes it down with vodka. Smiles around the room triumphantly.

  Maria comes back from the loo, leading Ruby by the hand. She’s stripped her down to her bathing suit, and throws her little pink dress into the washing machine. Ruby is pale, with a greenish tinge.

  ‘Oh, lord.’ Claire goes down on her knees in front of her daughter, feels her forehead. It’s hot. Not burning hot, but certainly warmer than it should be. ‘Are you feeling sick, darling?’

  ‘My tummy hurts,’ says Ruby.

  ‘I hope you’re not going down with something.’

  The corners of Ruby’s mouth curl down and her eyes fill with tears. ‘I threw up,’ she announces.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ says Claire, and wraps her in her arms. Ruby is unresponsive. Just stands in the hug and tolerates it.

  ‘Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t sort out,’ says Linda, wielding the pill-cutter.

  Claire sits back. Holds her daughter’s shoulders between her hands as she stares at Linda in astonishment. ‘No! No way! I’m not giving her that stuff if she’s ill. I’m sorry, but I’m just not.’

  Sean erupts. ‘Oh, great! Here we bloody go again!’

  She looks around, and all the others are giving her The Look. There we go, Claire Jackson, pouring cold water on the fun as usual. There’s not one person who looks as though they might support her. They’re all his friends. Even the ones like Maria who pretend to be Claire’s as well. In the end they all follow the money. And their own pleasures. Even Imogen doesn’t seem to have an opinion to offer on her lousy mothering skills, in this instance.

  ‘Oh, look, I’ll stay home,’ she offers.

  ‘No!’ Sean is so close to shouting that she glances at the door. She suddenly has a horrible feeling that the entire neighbourhood is listening as they argue about whether or not to drug their children. ‘Oh, you’d bloody love that, wouldn’t you? Princess Claire the martyr, spoiling the evening by making all the rest of us look bad. You’re so… ugh!’

  ‘Sean! Come on! Ruby’s under the weather. I can’t just go off and leave her!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he snarls bitterly. ‘Your child. For God’s sake, she’s just got a twenty-four-hour bug. She gets them all the time. I don’t know why you’re suddenly coming over all Mum of the Year tonight.’

  Because I’m not usually feeding her narcotics.

  She gulps. I knew it. I knew it. He’s jealous of them. He can act the loving daddy when it makes a point, but he’s been in a sulk since they were born because he’s no longer my only priority.

  ‘You just —’ he cries, ‘— you’re just always spoiling everything! It’s my birthday! My birthday! My fiftieth birthday! I’ll never have another! I’ve gone to God knows how much trouble, let alone how much expense, to organise this dinner and you can bet your arse I won’t get out of paying your share at this sort of notice. It’s so typical of you. Throwing spanners in the works when anything is about me having a good time. Well, you can fuck off, Claire. I’m sick of it.’

  ‘Sean, I just… I’m not trying to… I just… I don’t…’

  Seven pairs of eyes boring into her, six enjoying the marital drama. Absolute silence as they face each other. ‘It was fine,’ says Sean. ‘You know how you went on about it last night and it was just bloody fine, despite all your best efforts. Jimmy’s a doctor, for God’s sake. He knows what he’s doing. What, you’ve got a medical degree, all of a sudden?’

  ‘But we won’t be here!’ she wails.

  Linda has finished the cutting. She goes round the kitchen table as Sean rants, giving the littlies their ‘special vitamins’, one by one by one. Coco opens her mouth, lets her pop hers on to her tongue, swallows it down with a swig of orange juice. So wonderfully co-operative, my little girls, Claire thinks. They’ll do anything if you’re nice to them. He should want them there, on his big day.

  ‘You just… you spoil everything,’ he finishes. ‘Whatever. Don’t come. I don’t care. Seriously, Claire, I’m done with caring.’

  He turns away from her in disgust and storms out to the gazebo.

  Charlie and Robert follow him, and, after helping himself to another vodka, Jimmy follows. Claire kneels on the floor by her daughter and strokes her hair with a thumb as she stares after her husband. It’s over, she thinks. I think that was me getting my marching orders.

  Maria is the first to speak. ‘I really think you’re worrying too much,’ she says. ‘Nothing happened last night, did it? It’ll be just the same. They won’t be able to get out of the annexe, even if they do wake up.’

  ‘But Simone was there last night,’ says Claire. ‘Don’t you see? They weren’t alone.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ suggests Imogen, ‘why don’t we take it in turns? Someone can go back every half-hour and check on them. How about that? It’s only a five-minute walk. We can just pop up and check on them between courses. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘But I…’ she begins, but she realises the fight has gone out of her. If I don’t go, she thinks, it really will be over. I can feel how pleased that bitch is feeling from over here. A horrible, horrible woman. She goes on holiday with my kids but still she’s ready to steal their father.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Have it your way.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Time hasn’t been kind to Jimmy Orizio. When I was a teenager, I thought he was the only cool one of Dad’s lot, though I didn’t really understand where he fitted in until Linda jumped over the wall. He always seemed so carefree and cheerful, in the afternoons and evenings, anyway, and he dressed like a rock star, and he’d kept off the couple of stone that success had put on my father and his other friends, and weight is a huge thing in a teenager’s eyes. It’s only now I’m older, and a few of the lovely teenagers I knew back then have gone to Little Baby Jesus because they didn’t know when to stop, that I can see what he must have looked like to them.

  I didn’t know he was still part of their gang. I’d assumed he’d been dropped the way my mother was dropped, and Claire was dropped, once their function was exhausted.

  Twelve years on he looks like a medical specimen in a pickle jar. Were it not for the mop of curly hair – grey now, but the curls still intact, something he no doubt puts down to not having washed it in thirty years – I doubt I would have recognised him at all. He’s concurrently skinny and swollen: the face puffy and lined, the skin yellowy-white, like something you find if you kick a log over in a wood, knobs sticking through the shoulders of his Metallica T-shirt and a little belly that looks as hard as stone against the straining waistband of his skinny jeans. Jimmy Orizio is a poster boy for liver damage.

  He and Charlie have been drinking in there for three hours now. The sound of their monologues wafted through the house as Ruby, Joe and I laid the table and threw away the flowers and did what we could without Simone fighting us off. She’s cooked a leg of lamb, insisted on filling the dining room with every piece of silver, crystal and china in the house. Joe is lighting candles. Ruby is upstairs, putting her little sister to bed.

  ‘Oy oy,’ Jimmy says, as I come into the drawing room. Imogen and Robert have joined them and are drinking champagne as th
ough there’s something to celebrate. ‘I thought you said she’d done away with the staff?’

  ‘That’s Milly,’ says Imogen, who hadn’t remembered me herself. ‘Don’t you recognise her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mila,’ I say. I don’t know why I’m bothering, really. It’s what families do with you, isn’t it? Put you in a box and never let you out of it. ‘Sean’s daughter. I remember you, Jimmy.’

  ‘But she’s only a kid still, isn’t she?’ Jimmy looks suspicious for a moment, then merely confused, through his vodka. His drawl has become more pronounced over the years, climbed so far up his nose he can barely manage a glottal. Weird how drugs will do that. Something to do with the septum, I suppose.

  ‘I’m one of the older ones,’ I say.

  ‘There were older ones?’ Faded blue eyes swim around the room.

  Shit. Yes, of course. There you go again, thinking that just because you noticed people they will have noticed you too. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We met several times, actually.’

  Jimmy waves his glass in the air. ‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘the old memory’s not what it was.’ He takes a drink, tacks a ‘sorry for your loss’ on to the end as an afterthought.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I just came through to say that dinner’s ready.’

  ‘How’s Simone?’ he asks, and again it seems like a latter-day brain-fart rather than an actual question.

  ‘Not great,’ says Robert. ‘I’m not sure if it’s completely sunk in yet. We’re all a bit worried about her.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ says Jimmy, and waves his glass once again. ‘All that lovely money must help, eh?’

  I hear a universal intake of breath. ‘Right,’ says Robert, ‘let’s go and eat, shall we?’

  Simone sits at the foot of the table, that shocking smile still fixed gaily to her lips. ‘Come, come,’ she says. ‘Sit. Eat.’ Was this how she used to greet people at their dinner table before she was a widow? I can’t imagine the girl I knew doing anything other than gawp at them through her hair. So much has changed while I wasn’t looking.

  The place at the head, where my father used to bask in his glory, has been left unlaid, empty. We fill the table from the bottom end, as though everyone is unwilling somehow to sit near the empty space, until eventually what would once have been the honoured guests’ seats are filled by the two drinkers. Robert and Maria have seated themselves either side of their daughter, with Imogen next to Robert and Joe next to Maria. I haver for a second, and Ruby dives in between Joe and Jimmy. You snooze, you lose, says her look. I’m surprised she doesn’t actually make an L sign with her fingers. I seat myself in the deepest circle of hell, sandwiched between two Clusterfucks. Of course they’re all too grand to sit next to their partners. That sort of behaviour is reserved for the non-commissioned officers.

  Jimmy has brought his glass of vodka through from the drawing room. No need, for Charlie has been down in the cellar helping himself to Sean’s Crozes-Hermitage and a couple of bottles of Austrian Gewürtz for the ladies. He circles the table, dispensing the dead man’s hospitality, then puts a fresh bottle on a coaster in front of him and settles down. Jimmy drains his vodka, with a clatter of ice.

  ‘By the way,’ he announces, ‘we’re out of tonic.’

  Ruby turns to him. ‘There are loads of shops in Appledore,’ she says. ‘I’m sure Simone would be delighted if you made a trip tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine,’ says Jimmy, ‘but I find myself temporarily out of funds. Temporarily I hope.’

  He looks down the table at Robert, who ignores him. ‘How’s your mother, Milly?’ he asks me instead.

  ‘Mila,’ I correct. ‘She’s good. She’s living in Sutherland.’

  ‘Sutherland?’

  ‘It’s in Scotland,’ I say.

  He flips an eyebrow and gives me a smile. ‘I know. I was just wondering what took her there.’

  ‘It’s where she comes from.’

  ‘Really?’ He looks astonished. ‘She didn’t sound Scottish.’

  Doesn’t, Robert. Just because you couldn’t be bothered with her, it doesn’t mean she no longer exists. ‘You’d be surprised by how many Scots don’t. And even the ones that do don’t all sound like they’re from Glasgow. Anyway, she took over my grandmother’s house when she died and that’s where she is.’

  ‘Is she… doing anything with herself?’

  ‘Tourism,’ I say. Which is Scots code these days for ‘landowner’. I’m amazed how little anyone asked my mother about her background over the years they knew her, given that Dad’s entire fortune comes from money she brought with her.

  ‘Ah,’ he says, and loses interest, which is generally the point.

  ‘God, darling, you never listen to anything, do you?’ says Maria. ‘How’s Barney?’

  ‘He’s great. They’re great.’

  ‘Any sign of them getting married?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘I think she went off the idea of…’ And I find myself stalling. Simone’s smile is trained on me and I can see all sorts of stuff going on behind those empty eyes. Four wives. The much-married have no idea how complicated they make life for their descendants. ‘No,’ I finish.

  ‘And how about your mum, Ruby?’ asks Robert.

  ‘Fine,’ says Ruby, ‘she’s fine. She grows things.’

  ‘Still in Sussex?’

  ‘Yep.’ She helps herself to a couple of spoonfuls of couscous, studded with dates and prunes and apricots. It’s madness. If I were Simone I would be lying in bed waiting for other people to bring me soup, not cooking banquets for selfish people. Ruby offers the dish to Jimmy. He peers at it.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Couscous.’

  ‘Isn’t that for lesbians?’

  ‘I don’t suppose Simone’s turned that quickly,’ says Charlie, and cackles at his own wit. Nobody else joins in. They just look at him until he stops and fills his mouth with Crozes-Hermitage. Jimmy scoops a heap of couscous on to his plate, doesn’t take the dish to pass it on though Ruby sits there holding it, blinking at him. Eventually, she turns and offers it to Joe. ‘Couscous?’

  ‘Why, thank you,’ he says, and helps himself. ‘I’ll pass it on, shall I?’

  ‘That would be nice,’ she says. ‘I gather that’s how it’s done, isn’t it?’

  Gawd. There are few things more self-righteous than a teenager who’s caught an adult out at table manners. But I remember the frustration at mealtimes with Sean, waiting as dishes piled up at his left hand until someone got up and moved them on. Some people just aren’t made to notice the rest of the world. Interesting how all his best male friends were cut from the same cloth. Charlie Clutterbuck didn’t even bother to leave the drawing room to say hello; just left it to his clumsy wife. Though I don’t think narcissism is Jimmy’s primary driver. I must look up substance-related disorders when I get home.

  ‘Mint sauce?’ asks Imogen vaguely, like a duchess reprimanding the staff.

  ‘Oh,’ says Simone, and pushes her seat back. ‘I’ll go and make some.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no,’ says Imogen; a phrase that almost invariably means yes. ‘Sit down, Simone, do. This is all perfect.’

  ‘No,’ snaps Simone. ‘I won’t have people saying I can’t make a simple meal. While I’m out there I’ll see if I can’t find some lesbians with potatoes, shall I?’

  ‘I wasn’t —’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Simone’s lips draw back from her teeth and Imogen looks slightly afraid. ‘I’ll get your mint sauce.’

  She flounces from the room. Imogen draws breath, but Charlie puts a hand on her arm and she pipes down. Maria gets up and follows her stepdaughter. ‘Don’t,’ she says from the door as I put my napkin down. ‘Leave it with me.’ I do as I’m told.

  ‘I didn’t…’ begins Imogen. ‘Oh, dear, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to —’

  ‘It’s okay,’ says Robert. ‘She’s upset.’ Imogen gives him a look of liquid admiration, as t
hough he’s just declared world peace.

  Jimmy starts scooping couscous from his plate into his mouth with a fork. ‘Looks like someone’s not handling things too well,’ he says, and a few pale grains fly from between his lips and sully the bleached white tablecloth.

  ‘Really?’ Robert sits back in his chair and glares at him. ‘How did you expect her to be?’

  Jimmy shrugs.

  ‘Look,’ says Robert, ‘I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you all mind trying not to wind my daughter up? Seriously, Jimmy. Do you have no empathy at all?’

  ‘My empathy’s a bit short at the moment,’ says Jimmy, and doesn’t pause in his shovelling. ‘Along with my funds. I’ve got worries of my own.’

  Robert blinks. ‘I’ve told you, Jimmy. This is not the time or the place. I’ll discuss it with you tomorrow. I’m sure Sean wouldn’t have wanted you to go short.’

  ‘You bet he wouldn’t,’ says Jimmy. Drains his glass and helps himself from Charlie’s bottle. There’s a chill over the table. Charlie and Imogen are staring at him like frightened children. Ruby and Joe frown, look confused. ‘He knew how desperate other people can get.’

  ‘Please, Jimmy,’ says Robert. ‘Just shut up, will you? I don’t want any of this nonsense in front of my daughter, do you understand?’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Nonetheless. It’s not appropriate. Not at all. Let’s just try to have a civilised dinner, shall we?’

  Jimmy snorts. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Cause Simone’s such an innocent.’

  ‘She’s deeply upset,’ says Robert. ‘Her husband is dead.’

  Jimmy snorts again. ‘Yeah. Funny old way to go, too.’

  ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ says Imogen, ‘shut up. Do you really not care that two of his daughters are sitting here?’

  He shrugs. ‘I don’t suppose they’ve exactly been missing the Sun on Sunday, have they? Well? Have you?’

  Ruby goes red. Damn that smartphone.

  ‘Shut up, Jimmy,’ I say. ‘It’s his funeral on Monday.’