One Secret Summer

by Lesley Lokko

  At last they were summoned from the chapel to the Great Hall for the wedding lunch. She held Aaron’s hand tightly as they walked across the yard. No sign yet of rain, she overheard Lady Barrington-Browne say. The gardens shimmered in the late morning sunlight. It seemed to her that she was the only one who saw the beauty of the early winter light, the pale gold of leaves and the green grass that was slowly fading to silver. She disappeared along with the others under the archway, smelled the damp mossy air of the short passage before emerging into the light. Gold, silver, incense and light – that was how she would remember it always, the most important day of her life.

  Across the spectacular foyer where the guests had gathered for a pre-lunch drink, Maddy watched Julia being passed from one set of relatives to another, just as she’d been a few months earlier. Julia and Aaron’s wedding was altogether a very different affair. Julia looked lovely, Maddy thought enviously. She was wearing a slim-fitting ivory dress and elegant heels; her dark hair had been smoothed off her face and swept up into an sleek chignon. The high emotion of the day was caught in her normally reserved face. Yes, she looked lovely. Maddy, on the other hand, looked terrible. She held a glass of sparkling water in her hand. She was four months pregnant and felt like a whale. ‘I look fat, don’t I?’ she’d asked Rafe as she struggled with the zip on her dress earlier that morning.

  ‘No, you don’t.’ It was Rafe’s standard response. He didn’t look up from the newspaper he was reading.

  ‘I do,’ she hissed, annoyed at his lack of interest. She was being childish but she couldn’t stop.

  ‘Champagne, ma’am?’ A waitress suddenly appeared at her elbow, breaking into her thoughts. Maddy looked at her – a teenager, a tiny slip of a girl – and felt the slow burn of panic begin to set in. She had once been that slim – but not any more.

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, I’d love to, honey, but I can’t.’ The girl looked at her, puzzled, but said nothing and passed on to the next guest instead. Maddy looked around the room. Rafe was over in one corner, talking animatedly with Aaron and two older, distinguished-looking men whom she assumed were Aaron’s colleagues. She watched Aaron and Julia exchange a private, loving glance. No one had so much as looked in her direction. She felt out of place and out of sorts. She looked around for the toilets. They were across the room. She put down her glass and walked towards them, passing Rafe on the way.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ he said, putting out a hand absently. ‘Where’re you off to?’

  ‘Nowhere. The toilet, I mean.’ She crossed the room quickly, her high-heeled shoes marking out a quick staccato on the parquet flooring. She opened the door and locked it behind her. It beckoned to her – gleaming white porcelain, shiny taps, fluffy white towels … everything she needed to make herself clean again. She tucked her hair behind her ears and knelt down. It took her a few attempts to get started, but once she did, it was over in seconds. She leaned back on her haunches, dizzy with effort. Her eyes were smarting and there was a soft ringing in her ears. But she felt lighter, free of the nervous worry that was beginning to plague her. She stood up, rinsed her mouth and flushed away the evidence of her distress. It was all over. Everything nice and calm. Everything under control. For now.

  63

  It wasn’t in her nature to be impressed by such things but now, looking around the exquisite interior of Hayden Hall, Diana grudgingly had to admit she was impressed. With Julia. She thought back to the conversation they’d had after coming back from Mougins in the summer. Although she shouldn’t have been surprised when Aaron announced it, the news that he and Julia were engaged had still come as a shock. She’d barely recovered her breath when Julia followed up with the news that they intended to have the ceremony at Hayden Hall. ‘In November,’ she’d added.

  ‘Hayden Hall? Are you sure?’ Diana asked her, surprised. Yes, of course she knew the girl was friendly with Dominic Barrington-Browne … but to that extent?

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ Julia said shortly. ‘Dom’s my best friend. It was his idea.’

  Diana’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh. Well. It’s a beautiful setting. It’s very generous of them.’

  ‘Very.’ Julia’s chin lifted a fraction. They’d stared at each other, but it was Diana who was forced to drop her gaze first. She’d been forced to admit there was more to the girl than the accent that jumped out at you like a barking dog and the quiet watchfulness with which she seemed to endure the world around her. She’d never quite grasped what it was that Aaron saw in her – now she realised that underneath the quiet exterior there was something altogether tougher to be had. Julia was obviously no fool; one didn’t get to Oxford on a wing and a prayer, certainly not from a background like hers. It was clearly not the privileged upbringing that Diana’s own sons had had. But she’d never given Diana much of a chance to see beyond the prickly defensiveness. Now Diana wondered if it hadn’t been a ruse all along. The girl was smarter and more ambitious than she’d guessed.

  And now here she was, married to Aaron, her son. Diana shook her head in disbelief. She still couldn’t get over the speed at which everything had happened. In the space of a few months, two of her boys were married. Taken from her. Just like that. Worst of all, she hadn’t even had a chance to get to know the women they’d chosen beforehand. Maddy had been a fait accompli, practically presented after the fact. Now Julia was, too. That only left Josh. Her stomach gave a sudden, horrid lurch. She looked around her, almost furtively. No, Josh hadn’t come, not to this wedding either. Nor, thank God, had Rufus. It had been over a decade since she’d seen the two of them together; she wasn’t sure she had the stomach for it, not now.

  64

  DIANA

  London, Christmas Day, 1997

  Diana walked around the dining table putting the finishing touches to the place settings, then stood back to admire her work. The table was beautiful. There were sprigs of holly at each place, a huge wreath of Christmas flowers in white, red and green at the centre; sparkling crystal wine and champagne glasses off which the light bounced and scattered in every direction; starched white linen napkins and the beautifully embroidered tablecloth she’d received from her mother on her wedding day, almost thirty-five years earlier. She folded her arms suddenly and ran her hands up and down them, hugging the memory to herself. What was it her mother had said? Something about gifts often outlasting their recipients or the occasions for which they’d been bought … exactly the sort of bizarre, straight out of left-field thing her mother could be counted upon to say. She shook her head slightly. What a time to be thinking about her mother, she thought to herself with a frown. She hardly ever did that, least of all at Christmas. It was one of her small triumphs to have conquered the ghost of Christmases past. Christmas in the Pryce household had always been an unhappy time, fraught with tears and tension. There was something about the forced jocularity of the festive season that brought out the worst in her parents and therefore in herself. If it hadn’t been for Harvey and Rufus next door, she didn’t know what she’d have done.

  There’d been that one Christmas, the worst she could remember … her mother sitting in her bedroom upstairs, drinking herself into oblivion as quickly as possible; her father preoccupied in his surgery at the end of the road with last-minute patients, delaying the moment when he had to come home to a drunk wife and a silent, tearful daughter. She’d gone round to the Keelers’ as soon as she could, taking with her the single present that her mother had somehow managed to buy. She was still in her nightie, she remembered. Dot, Harvey and Rufus’s mother, opened the door. If Dot had ever found it strange that the girl who lived next door spent more time in their home than in her own, she never said a word. She treated Diana as if she were simply one of the family. ‘Come on in, darling,’ she’d said, giving Diana a hug. Diana could still remember the warm, faintly perfumed feel of Dot’s arms, more comforting and familiar to her than her own mother’s. ‘Boys are upstairs, pet. Cocoa or milk?’ It was a ritual that they performed nearly
every holiday.

  ‘Cocoa, please.’ She’d gone upstairs and knocked on Rufus’s door. She very much wanted to open her present in front of him. Of the two of them, Harvey was by far the nicer … but it was Rufus whose approval she longed for. It was Rufus whom she adored. Not Harvey.

  ‘Go away,’ Rufus had growled. Diana held her breath. ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘It’s me. Diana,’ she whispered into the keyhole. Across the landing, Harvey was still asleep. She was ten at the time. Harvey was eleven and Rufus was an age away, thirteen. Grown up, at least to her eyes, aloof and utterly unapproachable. He hadn’t always been that way. She’d lived next door to them in London since she was two; as long as she could remember, the Keelers had always been there. Later, to her delight, Dot and Jim had bought the old villa at the end of the lane in Mougins, in the south of France, where her parents had a holiday home. Their lives had a perfect symmetry that reassured and sustained her. She would live next door to them for ever. Dot was the perfect mother; Jim the perfect father. And Rufus and Harvey were the perfect brothers she didn’t have but desperately longed for. Only sometimes she wasn’t sure that what she felt for them, especially Rufus, was entirely right. She didn’t think of him as a brother, at least not in the way her friends at school seemed to feel about their brothers. Those relationships seemed to be about mutual hatred, buffered occasionally by reluctant tolerance. Diana loved Rufus; she couldn’t wait to get home from school so that she could go round and show him what she’d been doing all day, what she did in those painful hours when she wasn’t with him. At first Rufus appeared to like it; he seemed flattered by her devotion. She couldn’t say when it changed; when he became different. Meaner. Colder. More demanding. At first she was bewildered, then devastated. There were days when she went home in tears; being rejected by Rufus was worse than anything she could have imagined. No amount of explanation on Dot or Harvey’s part could comfort her. She was inconsolable. She would come round, day after day, begging him to talk to her. He refused. He went out, ignored her, sometimes he even taunted her. Then, when it appeared as though he would never speak to her again, he’d suddenly change tack. He would notice her again and the sunshine would be returned to her world; all was well. So long as Rufus liked her, everything would be fine.

  That morning, she bent down to the keyhole, her heart in her mouth. She wasn’t sure she could bear the thought of being sent away again, not on Christmas Day. ‘It’s me,’ she whispered. ‘Can I come in?’

  There was another second’s agonising pause, then, reluctantly, ‘Oh, all right. But make it quick. I’m busy.’

  She opened the door. Rufus was lying in bed, his knees drawn up to his chest. He was reading something. A comic book. ‘Wh … what are you reading, Rufus?’ she asked, advancing into the room, her unopened present still in her hands.

  He lowered the comic book to look at her. There was a funny expression on his face. ‘Come here,’ he said softly. ‘Look.’

  She clambered on to the bed beside him. He had one hand underneath the duvet cover and the other hand held the comic book open across his bent knees. She looked at the page and swallowed. It wasn’t a comic book at all. She struggled to take in what he was showing her. Naked women, their bare breasts jumping out at her at all sorts of strange, contorted angles. Wide, open mouths; eyes all with the same vacant, glossy stare. Other things, too. Things she knew about, somehow, but had never seen. There was a horrible leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach as he turned the page with his free hand, the other moving rapidly up and down beneath the covers, touching himself. He too had a funny, glassy stare and his breathing had suddenly gone very rough and shallow. She sat very still next to him, not knowing what to do or say. Slowly, without taking his jet-black eyes off her, he peeled back the covers and—

  ‘Diana?’ A voice broke through the fog of memory. She almost jumped out of her skin. Harvey had come upon her in the doorway. ‘All set?’ He bent his head and kissed the back of her neck. It took every ounce of self-control not to twist herself away. ‘You smell lovely,’ he said against her ear. ‘New, is it?’ She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. ‘They’ll start arriving any minute now.’ He gave her shoulders a small squeeze. ‘Glass of wine, my love?’

  She nodded. Wine. Champagne. Anything. Anything to take the edge off. Damn him, she thought to herself furiously, accepting a glass a few moments later. Damn him.

  Maddy turned her attention away from the bowls of snacks and plates of small, mouth-wateringly delicious canapés and focused on the conversation unfolding around her instead. It was safer that way. She was nearly six months pregnant; she had no business stuffing her face and then escaping to the bathroom shortly afterwards. There was no telling what sort of damage she was doing to the child she was carrying inside her. But she couldn’t help it. Pregnancy just didn’t suit her, physically or emotionally. She was swollen from head to toe; she was tearful and irritable and she’d long ago stopped thinking of herself as anything other than a whale, a hippopotamus or a cow, depending. She’d been dreading the Christmas lunch, from the food to the conversation. But it seemed to be going … well, OK. She’d managed to limit herself to a small triangle of toasted rye thickly spread with caviar – she’d cut it into three and eaten each piece slowly, concentrating on the flavour and texture and resisting the urge to cram the whole thing into her mouth and reach for another one, and another. So that was good. She’d resisted sneaking a quick gulp of champagne, which also helped. She’d even managed a bit of light-hearted banter with Aaron, whom she’d never found particularly easy … All in all, it was a good, safe start.

  She looked around her. The whole family was there – Diana, Harvey, Aaron, Julia, Rafe and herself … a proper family Christmas. The day was carefully planned – presents wouldn’t be opened until much later. That was the way Diana liked it. Lunch first, then the Queen’s speech, which Maddy thought hilarious. They would all sit in the upstairs living room, the heavily decorated tree twinkling beautifully in one corner … Harvey would bring in wine and port and cheeses and only then, after another hour or so of conversation, would the presents be brought out and opened. Maddy was used to sneaking downstairs before dawn; not in this household, clearly. Diana spent weeks preparing for the Christmas lunch, or so she’d heard. Maddy allowed herself a small smile. Actually, the housekeeper would have spent weeks preparing it, not Diana. She’d been busy – she’d been on television a couple of times in the past week. Maddy had been at home, doing something boring and mechanical like the ironing or folding towels, when Diana’s face popped up on the screen. She’d only just managed to resist the temptation to hurl a shoe at the screen. ‘I saw you on television the other day,’ she said to Diana as she got up to open a bottle of red wine. ‘You were really impressive. How do you manage to stay so calm with all those microphones in your face?’

  Diana’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, as if trying to work out whether Maddy was being facetious or not. ‘You get used to it,’ she said shortly.

  ‘I don’t think I could.’ Maddy smiled. ‘I mean, it’s one thing to remember to smile but it’s a whole different ball game when you’ve got to give an opinion, too. I mean, I know you must rehearse what you’re going to say, but you make it seem so effortless.’

  Diana paused. She seemed to be struggling between disbelief and flattery. Maddy saw it and was pleased. ‘Well,’ she said after a moment, ‘it’s not as difficult as it seems. You generally know what they’re going to ask … it’s all a bit of a game, to be honest.’

  It was the most Diana had ever said to her, Maddy realised with a growing sense of wonder. She glanced quickly at Rafe. He smiled back encouragingly. Maddy felt a warm glow of satisfaction slowly start to spread within her. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Flattery will get you everywhere, as someone once famously said – and if anyone could act the part of flattering sincerity, she could. ‘Game or not,’ she said, warming to her role, ‘you play the part really well.’


  ‘Why, thank you, Maddy.’ Diana picked up the bottle she’d been aiming for. ‘That’s sweet of you to say. Can we tempt you with just one little glass? I know you’re not supposed to, but I did … didn’t seem to—’ She stopped suddenly, a reddish blush spreading over her face. She seemed about to say something, then changed her mind. ‘Will you?’ she asked again, her voice unnaturally loud.

  Maddy quickly held out her glass. ‘Just one,’ she said, smiling at her. She caught sight of Julia’s faintly sneering glance. I can see right through you, Julia seemed to be saying. Oh, fuck you, Maddy thought to herself, suddenly defiant. Who cares what you think?

  All of a sudden, the doorbell rang. Diana frowned. It was almost four o’clock and they were just about to start lunch. ‘Now, who on earth could that be?’ she said, putting her napkin aside and getting up. ‘It’s Christmas Day. Hang on, let me just go and see who it is.’

  65

  NIELA

  London, Christmas Day, 1997

  As they turned into Northumberland Park Road and the houses began to flash past, a sense of panic suddenly swept over Niela and she reached out to grip Josh’s hand. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ she asked nervously.