Keep You Close

by Lucie Whitehouse

  ‘She’s lost her child. Do they understand that? Her daughter is dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ Greenwood said, flat, and Fintan realised his mistake.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Oh, Jesus, James, I’m so sorry.’

  The photographer lunged forward suddenly and snatched his equipment from the ground, triggering a new rush of blood. He swiped his nose with the back of his hand, wincing at the contact. ‘This is assault – I’ll sue.’

  ‘Do it.’ Fintan’s breath made clouds in the air as Adam and Greenwood led him away towards the car park. ‘Do it,’ he’d shouted back over his shoulder.

  Rowan got out of the car now, raised her umbrella and walked over to the Audi. The photographer was biting into a baguette and looked up, startled, as she rapped on the glass. He pressed the button and the window came down.

  ‘How much do you want for the pictures?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to buy your pictures from the funeral. How much are they?’

  ‘They’re not for sale.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Why would you take them otherwise?’

  ‘They’re not for sale because they’re already sold – sold and emailed. They’ll be in the Mail tomorrow if you want to see them.’

  The camera was on the passenger seat together with a laptop. Rowan imagined reaching in and grabbing it. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ she said. ‘Papping a funeral.’

  ‘Never look at that sort of stuff yourself then?’ he said. ‘Turn the page, do you? Do me a favour.’

  ‘You’re like a carrion crow.’

  He shrugged. ‘We’ve all got to eat.’

  She nodded at his sandwich. ‘Well, enjoy your lunch.’ She turned and walked away.

  A few seconds later, he called after her, ‘Hey!’ and as she spun around, the flash went off in her face.

  The china button was still cracked and when the doorbell rang inside, the sound was so familiar she might have heard it yesterday. From the top of the steps, she could see through the bay window into the sitting room where a girl in a black body-con dress and biker boots was perched on the arm of the old tapestry chair talking to a man in torn jeans. Through the glass came the muffled conversational buzz of a large group of people.

  The door swung open and there was Jacqueline. Before Rowan had a chance even to drop her umbrella, she was pulled into a hug so tight it made her ribs buckle. Under Rowan’s hands, Jacqueline’s vertebrae felt like stones through her silk shirt, shocking. She must have been thinner anyway; she couldn’t have lost so much weight so quickly. She was warm, though – Jacqueline had always seemed warmer than other people, as if her natural thermostat ran hotter – and with another pang of nostalgia, Rowan smelled her smoky bergamot scent. ‘Goes round smelling like a pot of Earl Grey,’ said Marianne’s voice in her ear.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Rowan said.

  The hug tightened for a second and then Jacqueline let her go and stepped back. The shock of seeing her face up close – a network of capillaries marbled her cheeks and her eyelids were so swollen that they didn’t fully open. She scanned Rowan’s face as if she were looking for something. ‘You haven’t changed.’

  ‘God, I hope I have.’

  A glimmer of a smile. ‘Well, maybe a bit. Come in – come and have a drink.’

  ‘Jacqueline?’ A woman in a long white apron appeared at her shoulder. ‘Sorry to interrupt: could I just ask you quickly … ?’

  ‘Go on in, Rowan, I’ll catch up with you in a moment. You’ll know lots of people. If I see Adam, I’ll tell him you’re here.’ Jacqueline turned to the woman in the apron as another indicated to Rowan that she’d take her coat.

  The hallway had the same dust-and-paint smell it had always had, though today the scent of warm pastry was also in the air. There was the same wallpaper with the same green trellis pattern, the same telephone table with its lamp with the bronze elephant base. Rowan had a momentary mental image of Marianne sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, twisting the phone cord around her finger and rolling her eyes. It had probably been Peter Turk on the other end, telling one of his shaggy-dog stories.

  At the entrance to the sitting room Rowan took a glass of wine from a man with a tray – disorientating to see waiting staff here – and began to edge her way around the crowd. Though the double doors were open and the dining room was full of people, too, the room felt claustrophobically packed. It was large, running almost the whole width of the house, and the furniture had been pushed back but the only pocket of space she could see was by the fireplace. She made her way towards it, holding her glass aloft and trying not to knock anyone else’s, catching snippets here and there above the quiet roar of conversation.

  She soon understood why there was a space. A fire had been lit to make the room look welcoming but with so many people crammed together, the extra heat was stifling and she felt light-headed within a minute. She undid her collar button, taking the opportunity to scan the crowd. Among the sea of faces and backs of heads, was there someone who knew something? Who knew what had compelled Marianne to get in touch with her after all this time? That, one way or another, had taken her to the roof-edge? Despite the heat, the idea sent a shiver down Rowan’s arms.

  On the mantelpiece, the Glass family photographs occupied their ranks of frames. The largest, unchanged since the last time Rowan had been here, was a simple silver one with rounded corners that held a picture of the family in the Mediterranean somewhere – Corsica, was it? The picture was twenty years old now, more even: Marianne looked to be nine or ten, Adam twelve, although he’d been so skinny in those days he could have passed for ten, too, with his narrow chest and xylophone ribs. They were having lunch at a beach restaurant, plates of calamari in front of them, glasses of wine and Coca-Cola making condensation rings on the white paper tablecloth. In the background, the sea was visible as a blue stripe beyond a handful of parasols. Marianne was grinning and her front teeth looked enormous, adult-sized in a face that was still a child’s. She was wearing a stripy bathing costume with a halter-neck similar to the one that her mother had on, though Jacqueline’s, Rowan thought, was working significantly harder, containing those boobs.

  And there was Seb. He was laughing, leaning back in the canvas chair, a glass of white wine in his hand. He looked like a French film star taking a break from the Cannes Festival, his eyes and teeth bright against his tan, his chest covered with thick black hair. It wasn’t the physique of your typical academic at all but he’d always run and played squash, and he’d swum at the health club on the Woodstock Road, too. He had taken care of himself.

  ‘Rowan.’

  Turning quickly, she saw that the hand on her elbow belonged to a tiny woman in a navy bouclé jacket. It was a second or two before her brain made sense of that face beneath white hair. Of course, she must be in her seventies now: she’d retired the summer they left St Helena’s.

  ‘How are you?’ the woman was saying. ‘It’s good to see you again though I wish, I wish, it weren’t like this. What a terrible thing – what a waste. All that talent – just … gone.’ She made a starfish gesture with her fingers, pouf, a magician’s disappearing trick.

  ‘I know. And poor Jacqueline.’

  Mrs Orvis glanced at the photograph, too. ‘A husband and a daughter – very cruel. But you’ll miss her as well. I remember the pair of you, your friendship – you always used to interest me. In many ways you were different – with respect, my dear, you were one of the worst draftswomen I ever had to teach.’

  Rowan smiled.

  ‘But you were similar, too – I could see why you were close. Marianne had her talent and you had your brain and you were both … driven. You sparked off each other.’ She took a sip of her sherry. ‘I had a friend like that but she’s been gone for many years now. Breast cancer.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Mrs Orvis tipped her head a little. ‘Some people in life change us. Not many – two or three, maybe, over the course
of a lifetime. Speaking as one of great age.’

  A woman inched past with a tray of canapés. Mrs Orvis – ‘Please, call me Rosemary’ – took a miniature quiche. ‘But tell me, what are you doing now? I hoped I’d bump into you at one of Marianne’s shows – she always invited me – but we never seemed to cross paths.’

  ‘I’m a student.’

  ‘Still?’ She looked shocked.

  Rowan smiled again. ‘No, I’ve gone back. I was in TV production – documentaries, history mostly – for a long time, straight from college, but it wasn’t really … I didn’t feel … satisfied. I’m doing a PhD now.’

  ‘Interesting. What are you writing on?’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Rowan saw James Greenwood come into the room. ‘Sorry?’ She pulled her attention back.

  ‘Your thesis.’

  ‘Oh. Catholic rebellion in the seventeenth century.’

  ‘Guy Fawkes and friends?’

  ‘Exactly, yes. Among others.’

  ‘Here? You did your first degree here, didn’t you?’

  ‘Wow, you remember everything.’

  ‘Contrary to popular belief, we teachers do care about our students, you know.’

  ‘As a teenager, you can’t imagine that. But no, I’m not here. I’m in London, at Queen Mary.’

  ‘Well, good for you.’ Mrs Orvis – Rowan really couldn’t call her Rosemary – drained the last sticky drops from her glass and edged it onto the mantelpiece among the frames. ‘God, that fire’s hot. Do you think Mrs Glass was expecting so many people?’ She lowered her voice. ‘You can see how highly Marianne was rated – it’s a Who’s Who of British art. Pennie Muir is over there,’ she tipped her head like a grass giving the nod to the police, ‘and there’s Jenny Higgins. Charlie Gilpin took my arm on the steps on the way in. Now, I hope you’ll excuse me but I have to go. My husband’s not very steady on his pins these days and I told him I wouldn’t be gone too long. Good to see you, my dear.’ She squeezed Rowan’s forearm. ‘Best of luck with the thesis and look after yourself – it’s hard, losing someone important, especially like this.’

  When she was gone, Rowan angled herself for a better view of the room. Charlie Gilpin was easy to spot, with his height and auburn hair. Together with a shaven-headed man who was almost as tall, he was looking at a large framed sketch that Marianne had made of Adam asleep in the garden the summer before he started Cambridge. Beyond them, talking to a woman with a sharp hennaed bob and hands knuckled with turquoise rings, was another man Rowan knew was an artist. After a moment she remembered his name: Simon Freemantle, the sculptor. He and Marianne had had a show together, Marianne’s first professional exhibition, at the gallery in Westbourne Grove that had taken her on while she was still at the Slade. Freemantle made angry, sexually explicit bronzes of figures from mythology; Rowan still sometimes thought about his liberally endowed Minotaur, five feet tall, who’d stood in a corner thrusting his groin at browsers like a vertically challenged pervert at a bus stop. Freemantle commanded huge money these days, apparently; he’d been profiled in the Sunday Times Culture section not long ago.

  Over by the window stood the Dawsons, the Glasses’ next-door neighbours. They had to be in their late sixties now: Mrs Dawson’s blonde hair had faded to silver and her husband had developed a vulture-like hunch in the shoulders. It was strange to see them again after so long; Rowan felt as if she were watching time-lapse photography, life fast-forwarding to the grave.

  With a small start of recognition, she spotted Martin Harriman and Josh Leavis. They were with two women she’d never seen before, their girlfriends maybe – both were good-looking, one very. Martin and Josh had never had any trouble on that front, though: back then, girls stuck to the band like flypaper, and all four of them had cleaned up, or could have. Turk only ever had eyes for Marianne, of course. Josh, Rowan thought, looked better now than he had at nineteen; he’d filled out. She remembered his stomach, the seam of light brown hair that had tapered down from his breastbone to his navel. Sometimes, before he’d had breakfast, his stomach had felt hollow when she ran her hand over it. She looked away before he could feel the pressure of her eyes on him.

  But where was Turk? She hadn’t seen him at the crematorium, either, but he had to be here. She turned to check the crowd in the dining room but as she moved, she locked eyes in the mirror over the fireplace with the shaven-headed man who’d been talking to Charlie Gilpin. For a moment they both held the stare. Even reflected, his expression was searching – almost confrontational. The natural thing would be to smile, nod, break the tension, but neither of them did.

  After what seemed like several seconds, he took a sip of his water and Rowan reached after a passing tray of canapés, largely as an excuse to move. She was embarrassed, as if she’d been caught eyeing him up, and maybe that was what he thought: he gave an impression of physical confidence even though that wide, full face and heavy brow weren’t what most people would call attractive. Hazarding another glance – he’d turned and was heading into the dining room – she saw that though he was in his early forties at most, he was nearly bald, his remaining hair shaved as a pre-emptive measure. He was one of those men who suited it, though: his head was well shaped, and his neck and shoulders strong-looking, so that rather than prematurely aged, he looked sophisticated. Urbane. Who was he?

  Turk would know. Putting her glass down, she sidled back towards to the door. He wasn’t in the dining room so she took the stairs to the lower-ground floor, passing three waitresses who seemed in a particular hurry to come up. When she reached the kitchen, she saw why. Jacqueline was standing at the door to the garden, her back to the room, and she was crying.

  Rowan hesitated a moment but then, remembering the hug at the door, she crossed the room and put her arms around her. Jacqueline gave a sob that she seemed to heave up from deep inside; Rowan felt it rise and break, shudder out. She tried to think what to say but nothing would make the slightest difference so she just held on to her and hoped that in the tightness of her arms, Jacqueline would read solidarity and support.

  It was a minute or so before she lifted her head and wiped the heel of her hand under her eyes. She pulled a piece of kitchen roll from her sleeve and blew her nose. ‘What did I do wrong, Rowan? What did I do – or not do – to make this happen? Marianne – all of it.’

  There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and Fintan Dempsey appeared in the doorway. When he saw Jacqueline’s face, his creased in distress. ‘Oh, sweetheart.’

  Coming back up, Rowan glanced out of the small window at the turn of the stairs. Peter Turk was standing under the dripping eaves of the garden shed, his collar pulled close around his throat with one hand, cigarette smoke curling from the other. She let herself quietly out of the front door and made a dash along the side of the house and through the gate.

  ‘There you are,’ he said as she stepped under cover next to him, as if it were he who’d been looking for her. ‘I saw you at the crem.’

  ‘Why are you out here?’

  ‘I’ve been inside – briefly. I can’t face it.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette and a column of ash joined the small pile of sodden dog-ends at his feet.

  ‘Can I have one of those?’ She’d regret it later but what the hell; she needed it now. Turk came closer and stooped to light it for her, his face inches from hers. He was what most people would call attractive – for a few months in 2005, he’d been the heart-throb of thousands – but Rowan found him faintly unsettling, she always had. Nothing about him made sense. He was tall and strongly built, for example – burly – but the way he dressed bordered on effete. Even today he’d pushed the concept of a black suit to its limits with his drainpipe trousers and Nehru jacket, the eighties-style skinny tie. The last time she’d seen a picture of him – in the Evening Standard, out with Marianne at some hip event in East London – he’d been wearing a velvet jacket with a cluster of Victorian cameos pinned to the lapel. It was just the latest variation on
a theme, though: he’d been like it at seventeen when they’d first met him. He’d gone through a nail-varnish phase long before he’d had any professional justification.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

  Rowan looked at him but his expression was curious rather than hostile. ‘Jacqueline rang to tell me, and I said I would come.’ She exhaled a lungful of smoke, watched it feather in the damp air and disappear. ‘It wasn’t just that – I wanted to. I needed to, even though Marianne and I hadn’t seen each other for so long, even though we’d fallen out. She was such an important part of my life.’

  He shook his head as if he’d despaired of them both a long time ago.

  Rowan thought of the letter on her kitchen table, Marianne’s heart-monitor handwriting. ‘Pete, had she mentioned me to you recently?’

  He shrugged, shook his head again. ‘Should she have?’

  ‘No, I just wondered. Now’s she’s gone, I …’

  ‘The whole thing was such bullshit. You should have sorted it out then, the two of you.’ He took another deep drag on his cigarette. ‘Anyway, you’ve missed your chance now.’ His eyes kept returning to a spot in front of him and, following his gaze, Rowan saw a patch of lawn by the patio steps that was completely ruined. The grass was worn away, the earth underneath turned to mud, and with a shock she realised it was where Marianne had landed: the grass had been rubbed away by all the feet that had come and gone since, the paramedics and police. Crime-scene investigators.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The accident.’

  ‘She fell, didn’t she? The roof was slippery and she fell off it.’

  ‘Do you remember when we used to go up there?’

  ‘Of course.’ He sounded insulted by the implication that he might have forgotten anything so sacred. ‘We still did it occasionally, she and I, when we had something to talk about.’

  ‘Was she the same?’

  Turk turned and gave Rowan a long look. ‘If you’re talking about the vertigo, yes.’