The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  ‘Well,’ says Sean, ‘I daresay Claire won’t suffer much if she misses a meal.’

  Linda sniggers. From where she sits, Simone spots her planting a hand halfway up Sean’s thigh. She glares at her. This is totally out of order, even she knows that. Sean doesn’t seem to notice. He just reaches out and sups his wine like an emperor.

  ‘Really,’ she says, ‘I don’t mind. It would be a pleasure. My way of saying thank you for this amazing hospitality.’

  Robert beams and Maria emits her usual warm approval. I’m a credit to you, she thinks. That’s what you’re thinking right now. Good. I like it when I’m approved of.

  ‘Well, if you insist,’ says Imogen. Linda has shown no sign of remembering – or caring, anyway – that three of the sleeping children are her own. She probably genuinely doesn’t remember, half the time. They spend a lot of time at their grandparents’ house in Godalming so their parents can pursue their itinerant careers. They’re only here now because Granny wanted to go on a cruise. ‘I can’t say I’m going to fight you for the honour.’

  Simone turns to Sean and gives it more with the eyelashes. ‘Besides,’ she says, playfully, ‘you know I’d do anything for you, right?’

  Sean laughs deep in his throat, mouth closed, and puts a hand on her shoulder. Strokes it fondly with his thumb, sending shivers down her spine. ‘You really are a little miracle, aren’t you?’ he says.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  My phone wakes me at half-past eight. I think it’s the alarm at first – I didn’t have a smidge of a signal yesterday – but it’s India. Cocktail time where she is, though all I hear is the rumble and the ding-ding-ding of a passing train. She’s the only person who’s rung me this weekend. Awkwardness? Or just the old out of sight, out of mind? Do I really have no friends who remember me when I’m not there?

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asks. ‘Oh, did I wake you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and try to wipe the sleep fuzz from my brain.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, though she doesn’t sound it. She’s so used to her six-thirty starts that it doesn’t occur to her that other people might need to sleep. She will end her life far wealthier than I will, I can guarantee that. ‘So how’s it going?’

  ‘Splendid. I had the great pleasure of sitting between the Clusterfucks last night.’

  She shudders at me down the line. ‘And how are the dear Clusterfucks?’

  ‘Same, only more. Imogen’s had herself laminated and Charlie’s the colour of a beetroot. They’ve gone off to stay in some big-face hotel in Ilfracombe, if there is such a thing, thank God. I’m not sure how much I could take of his bonhomie at the moment.’

  ‘He’ll be next,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe not. You’ll never guess who else stumbled in here yesterday. Only Jimmy Orizio.’

  ‘Jimmy Orizio? He’s not dead already?’

  ‘Walking. Well, shambling. I keep expecting him to try to bite me.’

  ‘And how’s the Child Bride?’

  ‘Weird.’ I consider my answer. ‘No. Even weirder.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She’s treating the whole thing like some sort of weekend hosting competition. With tantrums.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Ruby and I and Joe were up till two a.m. washing up the wine glasses.’

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘Joaquin Gavila.’

  ‘Wha-keeeen? What’s he like these days? Still hitting things with sticks?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be. He’s turned out a bit of a dreamboat, actually. Doe eyes and that. Ruby couldn’t speak for about twenty minutes. I think the name-change seems to have made him more attractive.’

  ‘And he washes up?’

  ‘Yep. I know. Who’d have thought?’

  ‘I should think there must have been a lot of wine glasses.’

  ‘You would be right. How are you?’

  ‘Okay,’ she says, and sighs. ‘Up and down. I’m quite surprised, actually. I ended up taking the day off on Thursday. I didn’t know I had any tears left for Sean.’

  ‘Me too! I had no idea!’

  ‘But I wonder…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What are we crying for? I mean, it’s not like we’ll miss him, exactly.’

  I think. She’s right. When I think of him, I only see him in my mind’s eye with his cronies. A life force, certainly, grasping his pleasures with both hands and squeezing the juice from them, but I don’t remember any of those dad things people talk about. Not since I was little, anyway. A bit of me has always assumed that all that stuff was a con invented by advertising agencies, like Mother’s Day.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I keep waking up in the night remembering all the crappy things he did. D’you remember the day he fucked off? And it turned out that all his stuff was already gone before he was, so he didn’t have to come back and get it. Sneaking it all out bit by bit so she wouldn’t notice.’

  ‘Yes.’ I remember Mum standing in front of his wardrobe, the drawers hanging open, empty. His study table, the surface swept clear but for a telephone sitting in the middle, his business line already disconnected.

  ‘And he didn’t say goodbye,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ says India, and I hear her gulp back her emotions.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says. Back to business. ‘How are you getting on with the eulogy?’

  ‘Oh, God. Not good. It’s awful how you realise you don’t know someone else at all, really, when you have to speak about them in public.’

  ‘Oh, I know. I had to do the professional eulogy for my boss last year and I realised that all I ever knew about him was this rather grey man who handed me files and gave opinions. Thank God for Google, that’s all. I had to create a LinkedIn account just to find out what university he went to.’

  ‘God, where did Dad go to university?’

  ‘Really, Milly? That ignorant? Sheffield. Same as Robert.’

  ‘Okay. And what do I do about the wives? I mean, two you can skate over, but four’s straying into comedy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, Linda can be the tragedy Simone saved him from,’ she says. ‘So that’s one down. And I don’t suppose Mum or Claire are going to be there, are they?’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Well, the old fundamental incompatibilities will do with Ma. And Claire… oh, God, I suppose you can’t avoid the Coco thing, can you? How’s the Demon Spawn, by the way?’

  And that’s the thing about sisters. You’ve got all this stuff, these mutual memories, the common language, that only the two of you know. We couldn’t be less alike, India and I, but we will always be bonded together because we are the only people who know what it was like.

  ‘She’s really sweet, actually. A big clomping thing, like a young shire horse.’

  ‘Doesn’t take after her mother, then?’

  ‘Not so much. She’s got our teeth. She’s got exactly the same braces we had.’

  ‘Oh, how funny. They must’ve been Dad’s, then.’

  ‘I guess so.’ None of us really looks the way God intended, these days. In this world of plastic surgery and ‘procedures’ and orthodontics, you basically have no idea how your kids are going to turn out. The richer you are, the less of an idea you have, because the rich have more procedures at younger ages. The only way a man can be sure of what he’s breeding with is to pluck a peasant girl from a field when she’s nine and keep her till she’s old enough, a bit like they do in the Caliphate. And even then you need to make damn sure you’ve met the grandmothers.

  ‘And she looks as if she’s been at the dressing-up box. I half expect her to turn up to the funeral in a pirate costume.’

  ‘What are you going as?’

  ‘Wednesday Addams.’

  ‘Good choice.’

  ‘Actually,’ I sit up in bed. Another anonymous Jackson bedroom, cream walls, boutique hotel artwork designed neither to annoy nor to stimulate hung upon them, fabulous water pressure in the en suite. ‘I should probab
ly go. The Demon Spawn and I have to go through a box of trinkets and she’s probably been up for hours.’

  ‘Trinkets?’

  ‘I don’t know. Dad’s bling, I think. Simone pretty much threw them at us last night. Says she doesn’t want them.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘D’you want me to pick some stuff for you?’

  A little pause. Then, slightly huskily, ‘Yes. That would be nice. It’s funny, isn’t it? All those houses and there’s not so much you’d think of as personal, is there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Something – yes, something would be good. It’ll probably end up in a drawer somewhere, but… yes. Thanks. I’ll try to call you on Monday. Have you spoken to Mum?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t suppose you like talking to her about Dad stuff any more than I do.’

  ‘Divorce,’ I say. ‘It might be your easy way out, but it’ll stay with your offspring for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Too bloody right,’ she says, and for the first time I hear an edge of a Kiwi twang in her voice. My sister’s going native and she’s never going to come home.

  ‘I love you, Indy,’ I say.

  She sounds surprised. ‘Yeah. Love you too, Shorty.’

  I find Ruby in the garden, wandering slowly around the empty swimming pool. She’s in polka dots today: white-on-black on her skirt and black-on-white on her jumper, grey and black striped tights and a bandana covered in bananas. Over the top, a Barbour and a pair of wellies borrowed from the back hall. Emma is with her, toddling back and forth across the lawn of the walled garden. It’s still misty. The grass crunches with frost where I step, and I leave clear dark footmarks in my wake. It hardly seems to have even got light yet.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Hi,’ she says gloomily.

  ‘Did you sleep?’

  She shrugs. ‘Those people. I just feel so bad for him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just… looking back at your life and thinking that those were your friends.’

  ‘Those aren’t friends,’ I say confidently. ‘They’re drinking buddies.’ And then I think: God, what are yours, then, Camilla? When was the last time you spent any time around any of them without drinks in all your hands? And where were the people on your doorstep with the casseroles, or even the bottle of comforting whisky? The cards and letters? The phone calls? I like to think I’ve moved on from the way I grew up, but I need to sort myself out.

  ‘We should go through that box,’ I say.

  She grimaces. ‘I suppose so.’

  Emma has found an earthworm in a newly turned rose bed. She squats down to watch it struggle to return to the frozen earth, chattering to herself.

  ‘How old is she now?’ I ask. I’m a bit ashamed that I don’t know.

  ‘I’m not sure. Just gone two, I think.’

  I look at her properly for the first time. Try, unsuccessfully, to dredge up some family feeling. She’s Sean’s last hurrah, part of my family for the rest of my life whether I like it or not.

  ‘Poor little sod,’ I say.

  ‘Does she look like anyone, to you?’ asks Ruby.

  I study her. Nut-brown hair – his first brunette – and fat little calves in her woolly tights. It looks as if she’s going to be a mophead, no sign of the poker-straight locks Simone has been cursed with. Of course, in the noughties we grudged Simone her good fortune as we obediently scalded our cheeks on straightening irons because Fashion Told Us To, but I like my no-point-in-trying Celtfro now. I’ll never look sophisticated, but I’ll never look older than I am, either. ‘She has his hair.’

  ‘Does she? I don’t remember. There wasn’t much of it left by the time I was old enough to notice.’

  ‘Well, hopefully she’ll keep hers. But otherwise, no, not much. Mind you, she’s still a baby, really. No time to develop a nose, for a start. You two had little button mushrooms yourselves, at her age.’

  She looks at me as if seeing me properly for the first time. ‘Gosh. We have the same nose.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock.’ I flash her a tentative grin. She grins back.

  ‘Isn’t that funny? I’d always thought it was mine.’

  ‘No, it’s Dad’s.’

  Emma pokes at the worm with a poky little sausage finger. It flips on the earth, rears up its middle like a snake and makes her leap back in surprise. She loses her balance, lands with a flumph on the lawn.

  ‘Bugger,’ she says, in a clear little voice.

  We burst out laughing. ‘Dad,’ we say.

  We return to the house via the back in the hope of finding someone to take the toddler. Maria says that there’s a cleaning lady and a sort-of-nanny from the village who comes in every morning, and we hope that this means Sundays too. Simone wasn’t keen on live-in staff. None of the wives was, apparently.

  In the courtyard on the way, we come across a small knot of people. Simone, Robert, Joe, in front of the wheelie bins. There’s a great bank of them – council spending at its best. A black one for waste, a green one for glass, a blue one for paper and a brown one that’s simply marked ‘recyclables’. Simone has the lid of the brown one open, and is dumping a pile of shirts inside. Joe sways silently behind her, his face almost hidden by the mound of suits he holds in his arms. Robert is pleading.

  ‘Darling, please. Slow down. You don’t have to do this now. You don’t have to be in such a hurry.’

  Simone is throwing the shirts in one by one, with a relish that seems surprising in a newly minted widow. She doesn’t reply; just hurls and shoves and hurls and shoves. By her feet is a cardboard box filled with ties and brogues. Sean had his own last at Lobb. Each pair of those shoes was made to last a lifetime, though he had a new pair made at least once a year. Simone’s lip is curled, as though there’s a bad smell under her nose. She reaches back to her half-brother and starts to give the suits the same treatment.

  ‘Seriously,’ says Robert, ‘there’s thousands of pounds’ worth of stuff there. Those shirts are Turnbull & Asser, most of them.’

  ‘Good,’ she says. ‘I don’t see why beggars should be excluded from wearing high-quality clothes.’

  ‘Yes, but darling,’ says Robert, ‘they’re his clothes! They’re memories, as well. You don’t have to keep everything, but they’re still memories. And someone else might like them.’

  ‘Not my memories,’ says Simone. ‘And that’s why they’re going in the recycling, not the trash. And who wants them, anyway? You?’

  She spins on her heel and spits the last word at Joe. He blushes. I would guess that he would very much like a collection of Bond Street’s finest. He must be starting work in a couple of years. But he just shakes his head and looks at the ground. Simone grabs another suit and shoves it, hanger and all, on top of the others. I hope he comes back in the night with a bin liner and takes as much as he can.

  ‘Darling, please!’ says Robert again. ‘It’s like you’re throwing your husband away!’

  She turns to face him, and that big old mechanical smile from last night’s dinner is back. ‘Don’t be silly, Daddy. These are the clothes from before! Everything from now is safely upstairs. But these things don’t belong here. They’re not from us. They don’t belong to this house.’

  ‘So you’re…’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘He couldn’t do it, but I can. It was silly, holding on to all those things from before he was happy. Having them hanging around reminding him. I should have done it for him, I see that now. It’s the very least I can do for him now. Only things from us in this house. This was our home.’

  Oh, my God, I think, she’s gone mad. We all stand around in awkward silence, unable to think of anything to say. There used to be photos of us in his study. I wonder if they’re still there.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a shirt,’ says Ruby eventually, humbly.

  Simone stares at her as though she’s only just registered her presence. As though she’d wiped her from her database along with
everything else that pre-dated their fine romance. ‘Fine. Help yourself. Any particular one?’

  ‘No. Just… something of his.’

  Simone makes a strange little tut of disgust. Sweeps an arm, ballerina-style, towards the bin. ‘Don’t let me stand in your way.’

  Ruby shuffles forward, leafs hurriedly through the pile of cloth and comes back with a blue-and-white-striped long-sleeve, the elbows worn thin. She clutches it against her chest like a blankey. Simone glares at her father. ‘Happy?’ she asks.

  We take the box up to Ruby’s bedroom. It doesn’t seem right, somehow, to start sharing out the dead man’s belongings downstairs. Especially under the nose of a man who’s clearly nursing some financial grievance. Ruby has been put in the attic. At her age I would probably have felt slighted, treated like a parlourmaid, but as it is it’s the most characterful room in the house, all beams and sloped ceilings and a wonderful view through the dormer over the treetops to the estuary. Appledore. Such a wonderful name for a town. Probably all pound shops and charity shops, like the rest of coastal England, of course.

  Inside the box is a jumble. A tangle of chains and watch straps, as though it has all been thrown in by someone fleeing the advancing enemy. I can’t imagine my fastidious father treating his precious gold like that. Simone must have bunched it all together while she was out of the room at dinner and hurled it in, the way she’s done with his clothes.

  ‘I think Simone’s reached the anger stage,’ says Ruby. I guess it’s inevitable that she’s read at least one book on the grief process, if she’s already consulting the DSM on a habitual basis.

  ‘Looks like it,’ I say.

  ‘I think I’m still in denial myself,’ she says, and buries her face in the rescued shirt.

  ‘Oh, Rubes.’

  ‘It still smells of him,’ she says, and passes it over. I take it reluctantly and give it a sniff, mostly to please her, and then I find myself breathing deeply. It’s been washed since he last wore it, of course, but under the neutral scent of fabric conditioner he is still there. A faint, faint ghost of his custom-mixed cologne, heavy on the cedar and rich with citrus oils; the spice of once-warm skin; phantom Cohibas. And I’m back in the South of France, a little kid who’s climbed over on to his lap to nod off as a long dinner progresses, bright moon-globes on the corniche, feeling safe and loved. What happened to us? God, he’s been dead such a short time.