Deep Blue Sea

by Tasmina Perry

  Diana looked at her with a sense of disappointment. Ralph and Barbara Denver hadn’t tried to disguise their unhappiness that she had left the funeral under such dramatic circumstances, and she had only agreed to seek help as a way of pacifying them. But even though she was here under duress, she had secretly been hoping for a miracle cure that would free her from the intensity of her grief. She wondered whether she should just stand up and walk out of the door, then told herself that she would only get out of this session what she put in. If she was going to circle Olga Shapiro in wide, distrusting circles, then this trip to Highgate would only be a waste of time.

  ‘I don’t like myself right now,’ she whispered, hoping that the relationship between doctor and patient really was private.

  ‘Why not?’ Olga Shapiro did not react with any surprise, and Diana felt reassured by her calmness and the orderly surroundings that seemed to help make more sense of the world.

  ‘I’m looking into his death. Myself,’ she said quietly. ‘I thought it would make me feel better, I thought it would make me feel empowered, as though I’m finally in control. But I think it’s actually making things worse.’

  ‘Worse?’

  ‘I feel so guilty,’ cried Diana. ‘What do you think it says about me, about my relationship with my husband? It’s as if I’m saying I didn’t trust him, like I’m looking for evidence, secrets he kept from me.’

  ‘Do you think he kept secrets?’

  She nodded. ‘He’s been unfaithful before now.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  She told the therapist about how she had discovered Julian’s infidelity, seeing it on the front page. But she left out the part about her sister’s involvement. That was a story for another day.

  ‘Was it a surprise?’

  Diana shook her head ruefully. ‘I didn’t want to believe it, but deep down I think I’d been expecting it.’

  She remembered Rachel telling her once that it was her instinct that made her a good journalist – and perhaps that instinct ran in the family. Yes, she had known Julian was cheating. Not just with the eighteen-year-old model he had been caught out with either; her instinct told her there were others. Although none since the scandal. Even though they’d worked at their marriage, she had still kept her eyes open for evidence of marital guilt – credit card entries for jewellery or roses, text messages – cursing her paranoia when she found nothing suspicious.

  ‘You know, women were even flirting with him at our wedding reception. It was as if the fact that he was now married was just a minor irritation . . .’ She felt the tears running down her cheeks again.

  ‘We should probably keep today’s session quite short.’

  ‘No, sorry. I haven’t been too bad with the waterworks so far. I guess it’s talking about it that set me off.’

  Olga waited while Diana wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  ‘You should talk about it. Is there anyone else you can share this with? Your sister, perhaps.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said softly. It had been hard to tell Rachel any of this when she had probed. She hated admitting her weaknesses.

  ‘I always find it’s useful to surround yourself with people who make you feel better about yourself,’ continued Olga, as if she had detected an undercurrent of difficulty between the siblings. ‘Spend time with people you like. Think about who makes you smile.’

  ‘My son,’ said Diana. ‘But he’s at boarding school. I think that’s the best place for him right now.’

  ‘Couldn’t you arrange for a day out of school? Might be good for both of you.’

  Diana nodded. It wasn’t a bad idea at all.

  ‘Is there anyone else?’

  A face came into her head, so vividly that it was impossible to push it out.

  Adam Denver.

  ‘Well, there is someone, a . . . a friend,’ she said vaguely. She wasn’t about to share everything with this woman, and she wasn’t at all sure how a psychologist would interpret her desire to see her brother-in-law. But then why not? Adam understood better than anyone what she was going through, and more importantly, he was fun. She could do with a bit of that right now.

  ‘Great, then go and call your friend as soon as you leave my office. Make a date. Take a drive. Fly a kite. Smile.’

  Diana nodded, avoiding the doctor’s eye. She felt sure that she had blushed. ‘Thank you, Dr Shapiro,’ she said, standing up and picking up her clutch bag. ‘I’ll do that. I really will.’

  13

  Rachel stood in the kitchen at the Notting Hill house and closed her eyes. It was late morning and sunlight flooded into the room, the trees in the garden casting sinewy shapes on the marble worktops, but Rachel tried to push all that from her mind and picture the house as it was on the night of the party. She imagined laughter and the clinking of expensive crystal. She imagined beautiful women in designer dresses and the alpha males in Mad Men suits, all of them feeling pleased with themselves. All except one. Julian Denver had known that under that glittering surface something was wrong, very, very wrong. But what was it?

  She opened her eyes as the kettle huffed and clicked off. God, she needed coffee. There was a shiny Gaggia machine standing on the side, but she didn’t have time for that, so she made a cup of double-strong instant and walked towards the stairs.

  Rachel had been in Diana’s London house since eight that morning. She could have slept here, of course, but she wouldn’t have felt comfortable. She wasn’t squeamish – she couldn’t have been a tabloid reporter if she had been – but even so, she didn’t want to spend the night with Julian’s ghost. Instead she had checked into a hotel in the West End, taking the tube to Notting Hill after breakfast. She was glad she had. Even now, with the sun slanting across the stairs, the house felt cold, empty and depressing.

  Stop being such a wuss, she scolded herself as she walked into the master suite. She had started her search of the house on the ground floor, methodically working her way through the kitchen, two reception rooms, dining room and study, checking drawers, bookshelves, even down the backs of chairs. It hadn’t taken that long. It was not a cluttered house and it was easy to spot that this was no longer Diana and Julian’s main residence. It had a masculine vibe, compared to the floral whimsy of Somerfold; Diana had confessed that it had been mainly Julian’s London crash pad, underlined by the fact that it had a full-spec media room and an extensive wine cellar. Rachel didn’t know a great deal about fine wine, but she felt sure there was enough good stuff down there to buy most of Ko Tao. The reality was she had come here looking for a reason why a man would take his own life, but all she had found was a thousand reasons why he shouldn’t.

  She stopped at the doorway of Julian and Diana’s bedroom, hesitating before she went inside. As a journalist, she had spent most of her professional life snooping round, sniffing for stories, doorstepping widows, peeping over walls. But somehow this was different; it felt like she was trespassing, somehow stepping into her sister’s private world.

  She walked softly over to a glass dressing table by the window. It was hard not to compare it with the rickety old desk from Diana’s youth. That had been laden with magazines and cheap lipsticks. This was a far more pared-down and luxurious space. There were a few items of make-up – a blusher, a Chanel mascara – lying on one side, and a pair of Julian’s cufflinks in a little glass tray, just sitting there waiting to be put on. Had he decided not to wear that particular shirt? Would it have made a difference? Or maybe it was all meaningless, just fading footprints on the beach.

  She felt her mouth curl down with sadness.

  ‘You need to toughen up, my girl,’ she told herself. Perhaps three years swimming with the fishes had softened her more than she knew.

  She put down her coffee, tiny brown spots of liquid spilling on to the glass surface. She rubbed at them w
ith the edge of her T-shirt, knowing that her ferocious scrubbing was just an outlet for her frustration.

  She had interviewed Julian’s secretary, searched both the houses, and what had she come up with? No insights into how they lived, no telling details about Julian’s state of mind, no evidence of his supposed troubles. But what had she expected? Prescriptions for antidepressants? An address book packed with secret assignations?

  Still, there had to be something. Had to be. She took a deep breath. She did not want to let Diana down. Not again.

  ‘What do you see?’ she muttered, sweeping her eyes around.

  She walked over to the small dressing room at the side of the bedroom, predictably dominated by Julian’s clothes, and ran her hand along the line of suits. No surprises here either: sober, well-cut, almost certainly Savile Row, no bright colours or checks. His shoes were polished, with little wear to the leather; a row of identical white shirts were ironed and ready to go. It was bland, colourless and unexciting.

  Still, Rachel had worked on the tabloids long enough to know that what happened under the surface of supposedly straightforward lives was often very strange indeed. Husbands with double lives as transvestites, students who were covert hookers, the cuddly TV presenter who was a wife-beater, the very macho movie star who liked effeminate boys. But their secrets always had a way of leaking out, because however careful they were, they always left clues: receipts, voicemails, letters. Someone, somewhere had always seen something. But what?

  She went back into the bedroom and opened the bedside cabinet. There was a literary paperback – unread, no bookmark – some lip balm and a box of condoms still in their cellophane. Rachel made a mental note about that one, not relishing the thought of asking Diana detailed questions about her sex life. Unopened condoms might not mean very much at all, or they could be significant. Were Julian and Diana having sex? Presumably – Diana had struggled with conception, but that suggested they were trying. In which case, why the condoms? Rachel blew out her cheeks. Was that all she had? A jangling sense that something was wrong about an unopened packet of condoms? It was pretty thin.

  She was so lost in thought that she didn’t hear the front door open, and the footsteps were almost at the top of the stairs before she looked up.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Rachel’s heart gave a lurch.

  ‘Mum,’ she said, startled.

  Rachel rarely got nervous, but her mouth was dry and her heart was hammering. She had been dreading this confrontation ever since she boarded the plane in Thailand, and now it was here, catching her unawares.

  Sylvia stayed silent, as if she was waiting for Rachel to reply to her question.

  ‘I’m here . . . Diana asked me to come. She gave me the keys,’ Rachel said, feeling quite dumbstruck.

  Sylvia Miller twisted her mouth disapprovingly.

  ‘You’re here to help her, presumably.’ There was no trace of any maternal warmth in her words. Her mother had always had an edge. She was a difficult woman to live with; much as Rachel hated to admit it, she wasn’t exactly surprised that their father had left her for another woman.

  ‘Did she tell you that?’ she asked, assuming there was no point in lying.

  ‘There had to be some reason she went careering off to Thailand.’

  ‘She needs me,’ said Rachel, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

  ‘Well, it’s not helping.’

  ‘I think that’s for Di to decide.’

  Sylvia turned on her daughter angrily. ‘Diana is a grieving woman half out of her mind, imagining all sorts of ridiculous things; she needs reassurance, kindness, not a reporter snooping around looking for reasons to make her more unhappy.’

  ‘I’m her sister, not a reporter.’

  ‘You could have fooled me,’ Sylvia replied acidly.

  Rachel wanted to strike back, to set her mother straight, put her side of the story, but something made her stop and look at Sylvia Miller for the first time. She was looking old. She hadn’t seen this woman in over three years, but it looked as though she had aged ten. No one else would think that, of course; her mother had certainly made the best of herself: well-tailored clothes, blow-dried and coloured hair, and whatever treatments were de rigueur that month; it all added up to an image of elegance and quietly wealthy self-confidence. But Rachel could see beyond the mask, could see that she looked tired, worn out. What had made her that way?

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Sylvia goaded.

  Rachel blinked hard, trying not to show that this was upsetting her. Deep down, all she wanted was for her mother to ask how she was, ask about her new life in Thailand: did she enjoy her new job, had she found anyone to love, did she have good friends, a nice life? Questions that showed that a mother cared about her daughter. But she knew those questions were never going to come.

  ‘Anything I say will just slide off like water off a duck’s back,’ she replied quietly. ‘You’ve made up your mind about me – and about Diana too. What’s the point in discussing it any further, because you are never going to get past this.’

  ‘Past this? You betrayed your sister, your brother-in-law. You were the one who cut yourself off from the family.’

  Her mother’s remarks toughened her.

  ‘If anyone almost destroyed their marriage, it was Julian. I didn’t try to cover his tracks, no, but he was going to get caught out at some point, and somewhere in all the mess and finger-pointing at me, all that got forgotten.’

  ‘You still don’t accept any blame, then?’ said Sylvia with ice in her voice.

  ‘Yes, I do. And I was reminded of it every day in Thailand, when I saw families playing on the beach, when you didn’t answer my calls on Mother’s Day, when I was lonely at Christmas. But I never once heard you blame Julian.’

  ‘He was a good man,’ Sylvia said quietly.

  ‘He was good to you. He got you that flat in Bayswater, sent you to couture with Diana, gave you use of the villas . . .’

  ‘So you think he bought me?’

  ‘Money talks,’ she said, looking away. ‘It always does.’

  Words that had been on the tip of her tongue for so many years were ready to tumble out of her mouth.

  ‘I’ve always been a disappointment to you, haven’t I? No matter how hard I tried, what I did, you never quite got me, did you? What is your problem with me, Mother? I mean, seriously. I know you’ve always given all your attention to Diana, but what’s wrong with me? Why have I always disappointed you?’

  A million memories came flooding back. How Diana’s mediocre school reports were rewarded with ice-cream sundaes for ‘good effort’. How Sylvia would slip Diana twenty pounds to buy something new to look pretty for a date. How she would drive her thirty miles to a pop concert, when Rachel had to get the bus and a train to swimming galas because they started too early. Diana’s surprise pregnancy had been a small setback, but Sylvia had been instrumental in deciding that her daughter and grandson should move to London to better themselves, and had even found a thousand pounds to help them make the move.

  Part of Rachel was expecting her mother to deny the obvious favouritism that had always existed in the family, but Sylvia had never been a woman to keep her feelings hidden.

  ‘You could have been so much more,’ she said finally. ‘Look at Diana. Yes, she had looks, rather than smarts, but she was clever enough to know how potent that was. She wanted to make the best of herself, so she went out and found herself a good husband. But you? Running around town half drunk, spreading lies about decent people . . .’

  ‘That’s it?’ asked Rachel, almost relieved that Sylvia had voiced her thoughts. ‘That’s why you’re so angry? Because I didn’t marry some rich banker and get a big house in Kensington?’ Her eyes were filling with tears and she brushed th
em quickly away. ‘Because I’m not beautiful and vulnerable and attractive to alpha men like Diana is?’

  ‘No, I’m angry because you tried to take away what Diana had, because your jealousy for your sister ruined their marriage. If you hadn’t been so bloody selfish, perhaps Julian would still be alive.’

  ‘I did not have anything to do with Julian’s death – and any problems in their marriage were there before the Post published a word.’ She could feel herself trembling, not sure if she was trying to convince her mother or herself.

  ‘We’ll agree to disagree then, shall we?’ said Sylvia, turning for the door and leaving without another word.

  14

  Rachel hadn’t smoked in a long time. Not since the nineties. Not since she had interviewed a sixty-year-old woman with emphysema who had seen a packet of Marlboro Lights poking out of her bag and had told her with the brutality of someone who didn’t have long left in this world that she was a stupid, stupid girl for killing herself. But standing on the pavement outside one of the City’s most fashionable power-broking restaurants, the fix of nicotine from some hastily purchased cigarettes felt very good indeed.

  She glanced at her watch, wondering if she could while away any more time out here. Lunch with one of Julian’s old friends was the last thing she felt like after her confrontation with her mother, but it was all arranged, space made in Greg Willets’s busy diary. She couldn’t turn back now, no matter how much she wanted to.

  A taxi stopped by the pavement in front of her. The door opened and an elegant leg swung out, its high heel hitting the concrete with a brusque tap.

  ‘Hello,’ said Diana flatly. She looked exquisite. Wearing a pale pink knee-length dress and grey shoes, her dark hair pushed off her beautiful face with two tortoiseshell clips, she could have been a Russian tsarina on a royal visit.

  She looked her sister up and down, and Rachel could tell in an instant that she disapproved. After all, Rachel was still in the same clothes as yesterday. Black jeans, a white T-shirt, ballet pumps, all of them a bit tired and smelly.