Sworn Secret

by Amanda Jennings

  At that moment Jon decided against telling them about the pregnancy.

  ‘And how anybody can think that the painting of the Sistine Chapel isn’t an important moment in the history of art is beyond me. I mean, that’s verging on the criminal.’

  ‘She didn’t actually say that,’ said Jon, fighting to keep his voice level. ‘She said she didn’t class it as a catalyst of stylistic change.’

  ‘She certainly did not use the word catalyst, darling. I doubt very much if she could even spell catalyst!’

  Jon took a deep breath. ‘Was there anything you liked about her?’

  ‘Well, if you pushed me, I suppose she was occasionally amusing, though brash-amusing, not witty-amusing. But I do think it’s rather tasteless that she used to be with Daniel. I mean, is it Daniel? Or is it you? These modern women have fewer morals than common street girls.’

  ‘She had a couple of drinks with Daniel,’ Jon said, trying to ignore a surge of jealousy. ‘It was nothing more than that. We’ve been together for nearly three months and,’ he paused, ‘you know, it’s actually pretty serious.’

  His mother snorted.

  ‘I thought she was rather delightful,’ his father said, from behind the Sunday Times. ‘And jolly pretty.’

  Jon gave his father a grateful smile, but his mother’s second scoff saw it off.

  ‘Not jolly pretty, Peter. Pretty I’ll give her, but she’s too self-consciously avant garde to be jolly pretty. And, darling,’ she said, wrinkling her nose against an undetectable smell. ‘Where on earth is that ghastly accent from?’

  ‘She doesn’t have a ghastly accent.’

  Jon’s mother cocked her head like a toy poodle.

  ‘Fine,’ Jon said. ‘Have it your way. My girlfriend’s accent comes straight from the gutter of Bristol, her father left when she was no more than a baby, she can’t play Für Elise on the piano, she says ta instead of thank you, and she failed her maths O-level, twice. But how about we pretend, just for one moment, that none of these things matter a jot in the real world, and acknowledge that we’ve all had the privilege of spending time with one of the most fabulous women I’ve ever met. I love her, and God help me if I won’t do everything I can to make sure she marries me before some other lucky bastard nabs her.’

  For a moment or two there was a stunned silence, and then his mother calmly laid both hands palm down on her lap and looked straight at him. ‘The girl failed maths O-level twice?’

  And with that he walked out and hailed a second cab to Dalston.

  ‘They hated me, didn’t they?’ Kate said, as they lay tangled in the sheets.

  ‘No. How could they?’

  ‘I said “ta for dinner”. That’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  ‘You were being polite. That’s anything but wrong.’

  ‘But you call it lunch. I remembered that as soon as I said it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you call it.’ He kissed her perfect nose, small and upturned with freckles and a mole on one side that looked like a full stop. There we go, one beautiful girl with a perfect nose, he imagined whoever-made-us-all saying, as she was finished with that full stop and a flourish.

  ‘Ta ever so truly very much for my super-duper delumtious luncheon, Mrs Lady Thorne, your ohsoloftyhighness, would’ve been best. You should have warned me.’

  He laughed.

  ‘They won’t be happy about the baby.’ She patted her washboard stomach.

  ‘They’ll be over the moon.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘If not, then, well, fuck them.’

  ‘Jon! You swore!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them!’

  ‘No,’ she whispered as she leant in to kiss his neck with soft, lingering lips. ‘I’ll fuck you, ta very much.’

  Jon’s mother had eventually come round, and until the day of Anna’s funeral, she and Kate got along fine, because as much as his mother disapproved of her accent and her views on the importance of Michelangelo, or her lack of mathematical prowess, when the baby-out-of-wedlock appeared, the two of them were immediately united. His mother loved Anna, and then Lizzie, nearly as much as Kate did, and that shared love was enough to cement them. It broke Jon’s heart when he thought back to those days, all of them together, maybe watching one of Anna’s countless dance shows in the living room, being presented home-made tickets, Lizzie at the CD player on music duty, his wife and mother both grinning with love and affection as Anna performed and Lizzie followed her with a bike-lamp spotlight. They had barely spoken for nearly a year, their only exchanges brief and perfunctory. Jon was at a loss. His mother’s harsh lack of forgiveness and Kate’s stubborn refusal to offer any apology or regret seemed to make the chasm unbridgeable.

  Jon walked up the steps to the police station and saw Kate through the glass door, sitting on a chair beside the vending machine near the front desk. He stood for a moment or two outside the doors and watched her. She looked like a frightened child, a refugee, thin and pale, her fingers clutching her knees, her feet pressed together, shoulders stooped. She must have sensed him and looked up. As he walked through the doors he made himself smile. She didn’t give one back. There seemed to be no emotion whatsoever on her face. She was usually such an open book, her thoughts and feelings displayed for all to see in both her eyes and body language. But right now he couldn’t tell what was going on inside her and he found this disconcerting, perhaps worried that when she finally did try and explain there would be a lack of contrition which he’d be unable to take. As he approached her he felt like the young soldier charged with the job of defusing his first landmine.

  She stood up as he reached her. They were no more than a foot apart but there was a stifling awkwardness between them. He knew he should hug her, but he wasn’t sure how to instigate it. But seemingly this was something he needn’t have worried about, for despite the stilted air she fell into him, pulling him into her so hard he felt momentarily alarmed. He closed his arms around her and felt her lambswool cardigan soft beneath his fingers. He breathed in her freshly washed hair, clean and familiar, and for a moment everything else faded to nothing. He wondered if they could stay like this for ever, in that needy embrace, but he knew it wasn’t possible, that soon they’d have to split. When they did he turned and walked out of the police station with her following.

  Despite the evening drawing in, the sunshine seemed to have grown brighter, too bright, perhaps, to do justice to the gravity of their situation. A sky the colour of faded underwear would have been more appropriate, Jon thought. And maybe some drizzle to make the air damp, the type of damp that cuts through to the bones.

  ‘Will they press charges?’ Jon asked as they stepped on to the pavement.

  ‘They were vague,’ she said. Her voice was thin and tired. ‘It has a lot to do with—’ She stopped talking suddenly and stumbled, collapsing on to her hands and knees on the pavement. His stomach turned over. He dropped to the ground beside her and placed a hand on her back, trying his best to ignore the looks from curious passers-by. He watched helplessly as she tried to breathe. At last her knuckles lost their whitish tinge and her body relaxed a fraction. She rocked back on to her haunches and faced him.

  ‘It depends on what Rebecca wants to do,’ she whispered.

  They walked back to the car in silence. They didn’t hold hands. Jon walked a step in front of Kate, leading the way, using his arms every now and then to guide people out of the path she walked blindly. He wanted to talk. He wanted to tell her that it was going to be OK, that Rebecca was OK, that she wasn’t scared or hurt, and that when he dropped her off she laughed and said to pass the message on that she was fine. But of course he couldn’t say those things, and saying anything else seemed pointless.

  Eventually, though, when they were both strapped into the car and he’d put the key into the ignition, the silence became impossible.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Did the police treat you well?’ It was all he had.


  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘They gave me tea.’

  ‘You must have been scared.’ Jon meant to be sympathetic, but the words came out too forced and he worried he sounded insincere.

  Kate didn’t answer.

  Then without warning a sudden swell of anger hit him. He slammed both hands against the steering wheel so hard he felt Kate jump.

  ‘Damn it, Kate, what the hell were you thinking! I mean, how? How could you do that?’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Wasn’t what?’ he asked, exasperated.

  ‘Thinking.’

  They didn’t speak again.

  He pulled up outside the house and she got out of the car. He watched her walk up the path to their front door then disappear indoors. He didn’t make to follow; it was better where he was, alone in the car. The car was like a bubble, comfortable, quiet and protected. He closed his eyes and imagined many pairs of invisible hands sealing him inside, working quickly and quietly, before an enormous remote-controlled machine dropped the car with him inside into a large hole, then filled the hole, shovel-load by shovel-load, until he was buried and all that was left was a scar of freshly turned soil on the ground above.

  The Shed

  Lizzie hoped her dad was OK. She wasn’t sure if he’d properly heard her when she told him she needed a walk. He hadn’t replied, just gave a dilute smile through the gathered crowd, his eyes clouded, full of her mum and Rebecca.

  She went straight to the shed. It was the first place she thought about. She kept her eyes on the pavement in front of her and didn’t dawdle or look in any shop windows. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her school blazer and tried to keep her mum and Rebecca out of her head. She knew the shed would help. It always did. Even before Anna died it was a place where she felt safe.

  The shed was at her grandparents’ house, and though she and Anna had called it their shed for years and years, it was really her grandmother’s. She’d given it over to them when they were small. Their mum and dad had gone away for the night – their anniversary or something – and Lizzie was missing them. Grandpa told them he would make them a special place at his and Granny’s home, so that if they ever felt lonely or sad, they had somewhere to go. Their grandmother said she didn’t need the old shed because she now used the lean-to conservatory, which was more convenient than traipsing up and down to the top of the garden anyway.

  It took a whole day to clear out her clutter, a heavenly mix of terracotta plant pots, old-fashioned tools, almost empty bottles of gloopy black liquids and about a million spiders and their old torn webs. Then the girls swept it out, the clouds of dust making them cough and splutter. They found wooden crates for seats and a table, and an old tea towel for a tablecloth. They filled a jam jar with pretty weeds. And begged for tins of food and a few chipped ornaments to decorate the shelves and make it look homely. Even when they grew older they would go to the shed and sit and chat, away from the eyes and ears of grown-ups. Anna would light a Marlboro Light and the air would quickly become unbearable with smoke and dust, and Lizzie would stare at her delicate fingers holding the cigarette, envious of her perfect nails. Anna had always had perfect nails, even as a small child. They were long enough to look grown-up, but not tart-long, and neatly filed with a flawless white tip. Lizzie’s own were bitten to the quick and red around the edges where she’d gnawed too low.

  The shed was their special place and, just as Grandpa had said, she felt safe there. It was the first place she thought of when the end of Haydn’s music dropped her back into the reality of the heaving, whispering playground. There was a gate straight into the back of the garden from an access road that ran parallel to the street on which her grandparents lived. It was narrow and made of wrought iron and was mostly covered with dark green ivy, and when Grandpa had been well it was where he had to take the rubbish because her grandmother said that bins at the front of the house looked shabby.

  Lizzie paused at the entrance to the shed and looked down towards the house. Her view was almost completely obscured by leaves and branches, but she could just about see the kitchen window and behind it the ghostly figure of her grandmother coming in and out of vision as she moved slowly about. Lizzie imagined she was making a pot of tea, and perhaps putting some chocolate Bourbons on a plate because they were her grandpa’s favourite. She considered running down to see her. She loved her granny. She always knew the right thing to say, always had a hug and a kiss. She never tried to tell Lizzie how she should be feeling, but would listen and nod, and then, and only if Lizzie asked, she might offer some advice, concise and calm, as if she had a thousand years of wisdom. Lizzie had spent a lot of time with her in the weeks immediately after Anna’s death. Her dad would pick her up late at night and apologize all the way home for not coming sooner, saying this was a transitory phase, that he and her mum just needed to find their feet, get back to some sort of routine. Lizzie didn’t mind at all. At least her grandmother always had food in the house, and whenever she was there they would sit down together and watch Countdown, both with pen and paper and play along as if they were real contestants. Every other adult in her life seemed permanently wedged into a long meaningful silence, heavy hands on her shoulders, tissues at the ready, eyes full of irritating pity. Her grandmother’s controlled company, Carol Vorderman and a plate of Bourbons had been a heavenly retreat. But Lizzie couldn’t go to her today. She couldn’t tell her what happened at the memorial. It would be like betraying her mum.

  Lizzie sat on the upturned crate and collapsed forwards on to the little dusty table. Her thoughts were all Haydn. How had he known just what she needed? She would never have thought of music. But it was perfect. Amazing, even. The way everything nasty disappeared. Her mum, Rebecca, all the others, the staring and whispering girls and boys who looked at her like it was her that did it. And it was just the right music, too, and the right volume. It was incredible what he did, how he appeared out of nowhere and came to her rescue.

  She hadn’t seen him since Anna died. He didn’t come back to school after it happened, which meant rumours about his involvement that night flew like wildfire with the other rumours – work-pressure suicide, heroin addiction, a jealous love rival from another school – there were so many it made Lizzie’s head spin. Thankfully, the conspiracy theories fizzled out as quickly as they flared. People also seemed to forget about Haydn. Everyone apart from her mum. She blamed him for most of that night, for feeding Anna alcohol, for taking her up on the roof, for goading her on to the ledge. But she was wrong to blame him. It wasn’t his fault. Anna wouldn’t have done something because Haydn told her to; she was strong-headed and stubborn. Lizzie knew she would have climbed up herself, that Haydn was telling the truth when he said how worried he was, how he’d begged her to get down again and again, how traumatized he was when Dr Howe found him, shivering and huddled in a corner.

  The police had confirmed how shocked he’d been at witnessing the fall. But her mum didn’t care. She needed someone to blame, that’s what her dad said. He said it made it easier for her. So Lizzie let it go and listened quietly to the mutters and rants about Haydn and Rachel and Rebecca and the man in the corner shop who sold vodka to children. She kept reminding herself that the police had confirmed Anna’s death an accident, and as far as Lizzie was concerned an accident, by definition, absolved them all of blame, which totally suited her, because if it wasn’t an accident, if Anna had done it on purpose, for whatever reason, then they were all to blame, and nobody more than the sister who wasn’t enough to confide in, and that thought, that dark lingering thought, was the worst bit of any of it.

  Lizzie lifted her head and rested her chin on the splintery wood. She brought his iPod into sight and stroked the side of her thumb against it. Then she pushed the earphones into her ears and pressed play. His music began again and she closed her eyes, remembering his sandpaper skin and his cigarette smell and the way his sad eyes lit up when he smiled.

  Painting a Laugh

  ‘
Your laugh,’ Kate said to herself. ‘Where’s your laugh?’

  She’d gone straight up to her studio. She’d been desperate to get there ever since Jon asked her how the police had treated her. The police had treated her well. Better than well. The WPC who’d brought her a plastic cup of watery grey tea had been almost apologetic. Kate assumed she didn’t know why she was there. That she thought Kate was the victim of some type of street crime, maybe an attempted rape, or domestic abuse. She shuddered when she imagined the moment the woman found out.

  Really! she saw her exclaim. All these years and you never can tell, can you?

  Jon’s question had made her stomach clench. It was as if he wanted her to tell him how dreadful they’d been to her, how aggressive and rough. She knew that would have made it easier for him to be kind to her.

  She needed to paint. She didn’t want to think about Rebecca, or the police, or the fury with which Jon had hit his hands against the steering wheel; all she cared about was Anna’s laugh. She picked up her paintbrush and breathed deeply as the heady mix of oil paint and white spirit stole into her blood like an opiate.

  ‘Remember something funny,’ she whispered.

  As the fumes took hold of her, and the soft noises of people on the street below bounced along beneath her thoughts, she saw them all together. They were in that odd little hotel in Devon. It was July. The girls were eleven and twelve. Anna was dressed in a halter-neck top tied around her swanlike neck, graceful as a Sixties model. The outline of her budding breasts turning her from girl to woman were just detectable beneath it. Her legs and arms were tanned from playing on the beach, her hair tied up in a high ponytail. Everyone in the restaurant turned at some point during their meal, some subtly, some not so, to glance at the exquisite girl. Her daughter. Anna. With each look Kate had at once felt a burst of pride followed by a pang of sympathy for Lizzie, the haze of static hair hovering around her, so small and thin and plain in comparison. Kate prayed she didn’t notice people not looking at her. She watched her youngest daughter, ready to give her some sort of compliment if needed, but Lizzie was oblivious, only concerned with what pudding to order. Kate remembered the swell of love she’d felt for her then – such an untroubled child, happy in her own place, the rest of the world something that happened around her.