by Lesley Lokko
It seemed as though he’d been gone for hours when she finally heard the crunch of tyres on the gravel outside. She sat upright, longing for the whole thing to have been a terrible dream. Her whole body was concentrated in that second when he would walk through the doorway, a laughing, gurgling Josh in his arms. She was wide-eyed with tension when he came in and he carried no child. She felt her own face crumple as though watching someone else. ‘Rufus … where did you go?’
He didn’t answer but strode over to her, bending down so that his face was on a level with hers. He gripped her upper arms, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh. ‘Diana … I’ve got an idea. I’ve just been to see Khadija. We’re going to sort this out, all right? Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘Wh-what are you talking about?’ Diana’s voice rose uncomfortably in her own ears. ‘Josh is dead, Rufus … I killed him. I killed him.’
‘Stop it. We’re going to sort this out. There’s no point blaming yourself, Diana. It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone.’
‘But it didn’t! It happened to me! I made it happen!’
‘Shh.’ His grip relaxed and he drew her into his arms, stroking her hair. ‘Shh. It’s all going to be fine, you’ll see. I need you to pull yourself together, Diana. Get a hold of yourself. This is what’s going to happen.’
She listened to him in growing disbelief. For a sum of money he didn’t disclose, Khadija would give up her child. His assurances came flooding out. The child was the same age as Josh. They looked almost identical, hadn’t she said so herself ? He was even genetically related. Khadija would go back to Algeria and finish her schooling without the burden of this child that she didn’t even want. Diana would take the new baby back to London; all would be as it was. Everything would be smoothed over, forgotten about. It would be as if nothing had happened. Mohammed had agreed – he had been as distraught over Khadija’s pregnancy as she was. Rufus had taken care of everything – all that remained was for Diana to buy into it … and that would be that. It all came down to her. ‘It won’t work,’ she said flatly, her mind racing ahead. ‘It won’t work. Harvey’ll never believe it. It just won’t work.’
‘Diana, listen to me. Harvey will believe whatever you tell him. You know that. He’s always been a fool where you’re concerned. You know that about him. If you say there’s nothing wrong, he’ll believe it. Christ, he wouldn’t believe it if he’d seen it with his own eyes. It’s up to you, Diana. It’s up to you.’
She was silent. In her heart, she knew it was true. Harvey worshipped the ground she walked on. He would no more believe her capable of deceit than he would himself. Rufus was right. It was up to her. If she decided to go along with it, everything would be fine. All she had to do was say yes. She took a deep, shuddering breath. The shivering rose in her like a dog’s hair along its back. ‘Yes,’ she gasped, as if there wasn’t enough breath in her to expel the word. ‘Yes.’
‘Good girl. Finish the rest of that,’ he pointed to the half-empty glass lying on the hearth beside her. ‘And then come upstairs.’
‘No.’ She shook her head, still shuddering. ‘I can’t. I can’t go up there again. Don’t make me, Rufus, please don’t make me.’
‘OK, OK. You need to get some rest. Here, lie down on the couch. That’s it … just close your eyes. I’m here. Everything’s going to be fine, d’you understand, Diana? Everything’s going to be fine.’
And it was. Three days later the two men arrived late one night and disposed of the tiny body that Rufus had hidden, God alone knew where. She couldn’t help herself; she walked out into the night and stood watching them as they prepared the shallow grave. They buried Josh underneath the paving stones of the driveway that she’d told Harvey simply had to be replaced, immediately. Rufus was there; he would help her supervise the workers … by the time they all came back in September, it would be done. Harvey agreed immediately. ‘You sure it’s not too much work for you, darling? After all, you’ve got Josh to look after.’
‘No, n-not at all. It’ll be f-fine. Rufus is here. He’ll help.’
‘All right. Whatever you say.’
And that was that. They buried him; the earth was patted over and stamped upon. The two men left, their silence paid for by Rufus. The following morning, workers arrived with the new paving stones. It took them the better part of the morning; by lunchtime, it was almost done. No one would ever know or believe it.
Towards the end of the afternoon, when the sun was beginning its slow descent towards the horizon and the air was still thick with pulsing insects and bees, Rufus drove up. He got out of the car carrying something wrapped in a bundle of white. He came into the kitchen. For one long, dreadful moment they looked at each other, the knowledge of what they’d done in their eyes, between them; she looked at the beautiful, sleeping infant and then slowly that knowledge disappeared, rolling away in light, empty waves, like the waves at the beach at Antibes where they sometimes went swimming. She couldn’t believe how easy it was – she looked at the tight, tiny face swaddled in cloth and fell in love. He was so like Josh – a little darker, perhaps, but nothing that couldn’t be explained by the sun. The same dark eyes, dark eyebrows, thick, rich dark hair … just like hers. Just like Rufus. Slowly, as she took the infant in her arms, she felt herself dissolving, the terror and guilt of the previous few days suddenly slipping away. He wasn’t just like Josh – he was Josh. She hugged him to her tightly, hot, silky tears of relief sliding down her face, unstoppable. Rufus said nothing; just watched her holding him, the only sound in the room the three of them breathing steadily, quietly, as one.
101
JOSH
London, October 2000
He stumbled down the stairs, running from the disclosure that had just been made. He couldn’t think straight. Somehow he found himself walking along Northumberland Park Road, turning right on to Ball’s Pond Road and walking up towards Highbury, to the station. Interspersed with the creak and sway of the train and the shouts that came from further down the carriage, fragments of Diana’s story came back to him, washing over the outside noise. He accepted the facts as she told them; it had happened. This decision followed that. But he couldn’t accept their finality. They had pulled his world out from underneath him and now there was nothing left to stand on, nothing to hold. He listened to her with the intuitive understanding of someone who knew the story before it was told, familiarity and distress breaking over him in equal amounts. In the train, sitting opposite him, an elderly gentleman sat reading. Josh blankly followed his eyes as they moved across the newspaper from left to right; he was in his own trance. He got out at Shepherd’s Bush and crossed the road without looking. He made it across the road in one piece, God alone knew how.
The flat was empty. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was almost four. Niela would be home in an hour or so. He felt the need for her wash over him, almost bringing him to his knees. He threw his jacket on the dining room table and walked into the kitchen. He needed something to drink – anything. He found a bottle of whisky in the cupboard beside the cooker. He twisted off the cap and poured himself a glass, looking around him uneasily. It was like being in someone else’s home, he realised suddenly. His duffel bag lay on the living room floor, but apart from that and a few toiletries in the bathroom, it was essentially Niela’s flat into which from time to time he inserted himself and his strange, peripatetic life. He took a gulp of whisky. Was that part of the problem? he wondered slowly. His inability to attach himself to anything, to anyone … wasn’t that what Rania had thrown at him, always? ‘You don’t love me,’ she’d screamed at him time and again. ‘You can’t love me. You can’t love anyone because you can’t love yourself.’ He’d dismissed it, of course, lashing back at her in anger and rage … he’d put it down to the ridiculous magazines she read or the friends she spoke to – a silly, trite comment of the sort that women always made, a comment that had no place in reality, least of all his. But today, this morni
ng, listening to Diana, a horrible sense of déjà vu had come over him as she spoke. It was Rania he was listening to, and Niela, though Niela’s judgements were never as harsh. He had to put out a hand to steady himself. He couldn’t wait to see Niela, to explain. She would understand – Niela understood everything. That was why he loved her. Diana was dying; he was not his father’s son; his brothers were not his own. He lay down on the couch, his head spinning. Nothing was as it had been; nothing was as it seemed. Niela. Everything would be fine as soon as he saw her. He’d known that about her, always. Right from the start.
She saw him sprawled out on the couch as soon as she opened the door. He was fast asleep, one hand flung away from him as if he was warding off something, even in sleep. She closed the door quietly, hung her bag and jacket on the back of a chair and then crossed the room to where he lay. She looked down at him; his face was troubled … there was a flicker of a frown between his brows and the muscle in his cheek clenched and unclenched itself as he slept. Something was wrong. She wondered if he’d been to see Diana. She was just about to turn away and walk into the bedroom, leaving him to sleep, when he woke suddenly. ‘Niela.’ His voice stopped her. She turned around.
‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ she began hesitantly. ‘You were fast asleep.’
‘Niela,’ he repeated and there was an urgency in his voice she hadn’t heard before.
‘What is it?’ He sat upright and ran a hand through his hair. He was agitated. ‘What is it?’ she repeated.
‘I … I … there’s something … I need to talk to you about something. I need to tell you something.’ He looked up at her. ‘It’s Diana.’
‘Diana?’ Niela repeated, surprised. She’d been expecting something else – someone else. ‘What’s wrong with Diana?’
He seemed unable to answer immediately. ‘It’s … she’s not well,’ he said eventually, slowly. ‘She’s ill.’
‘What d’you mean? What sort of illness?’
Again there was a hesitation before he spoke. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he said, patting the space beside him. Niela stared at him wordlessly for a few moments, then walked back over to the couch and sat down gingerly next to him. He took her hand in his, turning the palm over slowly. ‘I’ve been with her pretty much all day. I got back in this morning and you’d already gone to work so I rang her at the office – they said she wasn’t in. I went round to the house, and that’s when she told me.’
‘Told you what?’
‘It’s cancer, Niela. Breast cancer.’ His voice was strained. He let go of her hand; his own dangled helplessly in front of him. ‘We’ve been talking all day. Niela …’ He got up suddenly, almost catching her off balance. He strode to the window and picked up his jacket, fishing around agitatedly in the pockets for his cigarettes. He lit up and she could see his hand shaking ever so slightly. She sat back, stunned by the news. Cancer? She couldn’t believe it; couldn’t take it in. She’d seen Diana only a few days earlier … she’d looked tired, yes, and a little withdrawn, but Niela had put it down to the strain of what it was they’d talked about. Cancer? She felt the cold hand of fear travel slowly up the length of her body.
‘Is it … treatable?’
Josh turned away from the window. ‘She says it’s not. I don’t know … I need to speak to Dad … to Rafe …’ He stopped again. He swallowed. ‘We talked about a lot of things, Niela. I … I don’t know what she’s told you. She said … she said the two of you’d become close.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s changed, somehow … she’s different.’
‘I like her,’ Niela said slowly, a note of wonder in her voice. ‘I never thought I would … or that she’d like me. I was always so afraid of her. But she’s nothing like that … like how I thought. She’s … she’s great.’
‘Niela.’
She looked up at him. There was such anguish in his voice. His whole face was contorted with pain. She didn’t know what to make of the way he dropped his hands to his sides. He stubbed out his cigarette and came over to her suddenly, pulling her to her feet. He bent his head to bury it in her neck. She could feel his lips moving against her skin; his arms bound her tightly. ‘Shhh,’ she said quietly, feeling his whole body tense. ‘Shhh.’
‘Niela.’ He was holding on to her so tightly she was unable to breathe. ‘There’s something else … she told me something else. About me.’
‘Shhh,’ Niela repeated, lifting a hand and running it through his hair. She let her fingers come to rest on the nape of his neck, stroking it lightly. ‘Not now. Don’t think about that now. Diana’s going to get better – that’s all. Nothing else matters. Everything else will heal with time.’
He pulled his head away from hers slightly, looking down at her. His eyes were dark pools in which she could see herself reflected. ‘Everything else?’
The question hung in the air between them; the slight emphasis on the ‘every’ was not lost on her. She understood immediately what he was asking. She closed her own eyes for a brief, halting second. When she opened them again, his were still on her. The question was still unanswered. He tightened his grip on her arm.
‘Everything,’ she said quietly, firmly. ‘Everything.’
102
MADDY
London, October 2000
Maddy looked at Rafe in disbelief. She struggled to get her mouth around the word. Cancer? Diana? ‘No,’ she said automatically. ‘No. Not Diana. That’s crazy.’
Rafe’s eyes were half-closed. He looked exhausted, utterly drained. He’d spent the last few hours with Harvey and Geoffrey Laing. In addition to his fears as Diana’s eldest son, there was a deeper layer of knowledge that only he and Harvey were privy to that made it difficult to speak. ‘Not crazy, Maddy,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s serious. It’s happening.’
‘Not to Diana!’ Maddy blurted the words out. ‘No, not to her. Anyone else, but not her.’ For all her insecurities where Diana was concerned, Maddy was suddenly aware of Diana’s strength. She was the one who held the Keelers together; not Harvey. Diana’s hand was everywhere. It was she who organised the Sunday lunches, the dinners … she never forgot a birthday, never missed an important event. Why, only the other day Maddy had received a card from her: Break a leg – the traditional actor’s good-luck greeting. A beautiful hand-drawn card from one of the museum collections; the sort of thing only Diana would choose. She felt a sudden chill pass through her. Diana demanded much of others; you either rose to the challenge or sank beneath it. Maddy had sunk at first – unnerved by the weight of an expectation she sensed in her. But in the past few months, another side to Diana had emerged. It wasn’t just her generosity – that was on evidence week after week, at one family gathering or another. That much was easy to see. In Mougins, one evening, they’d sat over a glass of wine, talking about the theatre. Diana was far more knowledgeable than Maddy had ever guessed. Perhaps more important was the way she held herself back, allowing Maddy a chance to show off, and therefore to shine. It was a small gesture – Maddy couldn’t even remember who or what they’d been talking about – but it spoke volumes in a way that nothing else could have, or did. She’d come away from the conversation that night with a renewed sense of faith in herself. The resentment she’d harboured towards Rafe and everyone else for forcing her to make the choice between an audition and Harvey’s birthday party had suddenly gone out of her. She knew her own best qualities, and after that evening, she trusted Diana to see them. A small triumph, but a significant one nonetheless. And now here was Rafe … telling her something she didn’t want to believe. Diana was dying. No, it wasn’t possible. Not her. Somewhere buried deep down and pushed to the back of her mind was the horribly familiar fear. Another source of strength in her life was about to disappear. She turned to Rafe, gripping his arm fiercely. ‘No, it won’t happen. Not to her.’ Rafe was silent. His eyes were still closed. She could feel the fear of what they couldn’t bring themselves to say emanating from him, like sweat. She wasn’t the only one whose se
nse of self had been quietly bolstered all along. She let her hand fall from his arm, lacing her fingers through his instead. They sat there together in the deepening gloom, not speaking or moving, simply holding on. Holding each other. Holding fast.
103
JULIA
London, October 2000
Some things didn’t bear thinking about. Not now, at any rate, not whilst the damage had already been done. She sat alone in the kitchen of their flat, her hands going automatically to the hard, rounded dome of her stomach, as if in protection of what lay there. Aaron believed her; he had no choice. She did. She alone knew the truth – as did Josh. But if there was one thing she’d learned it was that sometimes the truth wasn’t enough. Or, perhaps more accurately, sometimes the truth was too much. What would be gained by telling anyone what had happened? She would destroy two marriages in the process and probably the entire family to boot. Diana was ill; Aaron had gone to her. She didn’t know precisely what was wrong but from the garbled messages Aaron had left her, it didn’t sound good. No, now was not the time to start making a disclosure of her own. There would probably never be a time.
She got up from the table and walked over to the sink. Outside, the late summer’s evening was slowly drawing to a close. It had been an unusually warm September. She looked down into the gardens. A red-breasted robin picked his way delicately across the lawn, dipping his beak every now and then in a sharp, staccato movement to root out a worm or a grub visible only to him. She stood there for a few minutes, her concentration utterly absorbed, lost in a world of buried memories, the sound of her father’s voice coming to her as if he were there, standing next to her, watching for what she might do or say. He’d been such a stickler for the truth; that, and nothing but. It was from him she’d learned the true meaning of integrity, grit, determination … the stuff she’d always thought herself made of. Her mother’s lessons had been gentler: compassion, perhaps, and the importance of feelings. Mike didn’t hold with feelings. Feelings got you into trouble – much better to stick to facts, concrete things, concrete concepts like justice and truth. She grimaced. How hard she’d tried to live up to that expectation; her whole life thus far had been to that end – Oxford, law, becoming a barrister … even this last unexpected path that her career had taken had, at some subliminal level, been addressed to him. For him. The only time she’d deviated from what she thought he’d expect of her … well, look what had happened. She glanced down at her stomach. It was almost ironic. In the end, her child would be her greatest achievement, especially if she and Aaron were unable to have another. This child was it; the rest would fall away. She only had to look at Diana to understand what she didn’t want to become. Three sons; none of them properly hers. She’d never fully understood what the source of tension in the family was – clearly, it was something to do with Josh – but her own intuition prevented her from enquiring any further. Dig a four-foot hole and you’ll find two bodies; dig a ten-foot hole and you’ll find twenty. The line from a film or a book she’d read suddenly came back to her, startling her. There was a secret at the heart of the Keeler family that was struggling to repeat itself now, with her. But she was damned if she would let it. As painful as it might be to keep the truth to herself, she couldn’t allow the same thing to happen to her child as she suspected had happened to Josh. Feelings. A half-smile lifted the corner of her lips. That was her mother’s voice. She didn’t know; she had no proof – but the feeling that somehow, in some buried, deeply hidden way, Josh didn’t belong in the Keeler family the way Aaron and Rafe did was stronger than any fact she cared to admit. She couldn’t allow that to happen again. She wouldn’t. The moment of truth was now; not back then, not in Mougins, or the café on Gray’s Inn Road or the mornings she spent lying in bed with the memory of what she’d done swirling endlessly around in her head. Now mattered; not then. Now, and what would happen next. She turned away from the window feeling strangely lighter than she had done in months. Like Diana, she supposed, her dogged search for the truth in her everyday life had obscured her to a much deeper truth. What was it Dom had said to her once? People rarely remember what you do or say, Jules, but they do remember how you make them feel. If there was ever a moment to trust her own intuition about what to do next, it was now. The child belonged to her and Aaron; nothing more would ever be said.
