The Secrets of Happiness

by Lucy Diamond

  The hours passed, everyone got along without major injury or World War Three breaking out and it ended up being a pleasant enough day all in all – an easy sort of day. What was more, she had coped single-handed, which gave her a huge swell of triumph. Well done, Rachel. You did it.

  By nine o’clock the children had gone up to bed, the water of the paddling pool was silently floating with leaves and dead flowers and the dishwasher rumbling politely through that day’s crockery. She mixed herself an exceedingly pokey gin and tonic – sod it, she’d earned a drink – and switched on her laptop for the now nightly ritual of checking whether Violet had replied to her Facebook message. It had been four days since she’d sent her own tentative enquiry, but so far it had been met with a deafening silence.

  Clicking through to the site, she saw at once that a reply had finally come in and her breath stopped for a moment. Moment of truth, as they said on TV. So what did Violet have to tell her?

  Dear Rachel,

  Thank you for getting in touch. I must say, I had been rather expecting to hear from you after our conversation at your father’s funeral. I am very sorry if I unwittingly spoke out of turn.

  From what I know of your mother, she was an unhappy lady. She and Terry split up when you were about six months old, I think. He was too polite a man to speak ill of anyone, Terry, but I know they had terrible arguments and he ended up feeling as if Emily (and you) would be happier without him, and all the shouting. He felt quite low about it when we first became friendly – ashamed of himself. What kind of father am I, walking out on my own daughter, he said, more than once. But he honestly felt it was the best solution for you. He didn’t want you growing up with parents at each other’s throats all the time.

  Terrible arguments? Parents at each other’s throats? The words on screen seemed to cut straight through Rachel’s heart. This was not the idyllic babyhood she had always fondly imagined. This was not Terry and Emily, love’s young dream! She shut her eyes for a second, wanting to delete the message, pretend it had never arrived. But of course, having read this far, there was no way she could turn away now.

  Me and Terry started seeing each other around the time of your first birthday. We were at a bonfire party, and I remember him being sad that he hadn’t been allowed to celebrate the day with you. He lived in a little flat off Hyde Road and sometimes got to take you to the park in your pram. You were such a sweet little chick, with that cloud of yellow hair.

  The first we heard of the trouble was on a Sunday, the following year. We’d been to Blackpool for the weekend, our first proper trip away together and it had been a really happy time. When we got back, we dropped into the pub and everyone was talking about it, how Emily had been arrested and the little girl – you – taken into care. Well, I thought your dad was going to keel over, he was that upset. He just ran from the pub – ran full-tilt – to the nearest police station, me chasing after him.

  You probably know what happened next. Your dad decided that the two of you should make a fresh start, away from Manchester and all the talk. He was so hurt and angry with your mum for putting you in a vulnerable position that he was determined to get away. Sadly (for me), that meant that we split up. ‘I’ve got to focus on Rachel,’ I remember him saying, clear as day. ‘I can’t let her down again.’ Broke my heart, that did, but I knew it was just him stepping up as a good father. I couldn’t hold it against him.

  Oh God. So it was all true, then. She really had been left alone all night, crying, wet, hungry, frightened. Tears pricked her eyes for the sad little girl – her! – and for her mum, too, arrested and put in a cell. It seemed so dramatic, so serious, and yet she couldn’t remember any of it. She imagined the police breaking down the door of the flat, an officer lifting her crying from her damp cot, and it seemed unreal, like something you might see on television. Yet, according to Violet, it had all happened. To Rachel.

  A tear rolled down her face and plopped into her lap. She had not wanted to believe the words of the newspaper article, preferring instead to cling to the things her father had always told her. She’d gone on to have a happy childhood, after all; she hadn’t been traumatized. Why should any of this matter now? she reasoned fiercely. What difference did it make? But it did matter. It had changed everything.

  As for your mum . . . I’m sorry to have to tell you that she died some time afterwards. She had always been a bit of a drinker, and after the trial, where she was charged with neglect and ordered to pay a fine, she slid downhill and could only find comfort in the bottom of a bottle. She must have been in her early thirties when she died. Liver disease, I heard.

  My apologies for what must be a very difficult message to read, Rachel. It has not been an easy one to write either, but you did ask me for the truth. Families have a way of surprising you when you least expect it, and I can see that this must have been a terrible shock. But I’m glad that you went on to have such a lovely stepmother at least, and that Terry found such happiness again.

  My very best wishes

  Violet

  Now the tears were really falling. So Emily had plunged headlong into alcoholism, by the sound of things – Rachel glanced guiltily at her own gin and tonic – and died a lonely death, unmarked by either her daughter or ex-husband. Oh God. How pitiful, to sink so low. How desperately sad, especially that she had never got to make amends in the years afterwards. She and Rachel could have got to know each other, formed some kind of relationship, leaving her with something more than just a few faint flashes of memory. But Dad had taken the decision to freeze Mum out, and none of that had happened.

  What a mess it was. A mess of secrets and lies. She supposed she could understand why her dad hadn’t told her the truth back when she was growing up; the story of her mother being beautiful and good and kind was way more palatable to a young, impressionable girl than the bald facts of neglect. Fair enough. She probably would have done the same. Just look how she kept gilding the situation with Lawrence in her own marriage break-up, never stooping to slagging him off to the children, however much she felt like it. Of course Terry had glossed over Emily’s real character, back in the early days; it was the kind thing to do.

  But for the lies to go on and on, for him never to have sat her down and said, Listen, I think you’re old enough for me to explain things now . . . Well, that was different. That was a total cop-out, frankly – lame and cowardly. And now she had lost out on those years while Emily was still alive, forfeited any chance of getting to know her. It felt like a terrible double blow.

  Finishing her gin, she got up without a second thought and went into the kitchen to make another. She could only find comfort in the bottom of a bottle, Violet had said. Well, guess what, Mum? Me too! Like mother, like daughter, eh? I’m just thrilled that we’re so alike, after all my worrying that I could never live up to you!

  It was ironic, when you thought about it. Parents at each other’s throats – tick. Father moving out – another tick. Mother drinking too much – yep, here I am. Next on the list was clearly liver disease, and early death to look forward to. Whoop-de-doo.

  She felt a momentary pang of guilt then, remembering Violet’s last comment about Wendy. I’m glad you went on to have such a lovely stepmother at least. And there she had been all along, despising Wendy for not being Emily, constantly measuring them up and finding Wendy a failure in comparison. You’re not my mother! she had yelled hundreds of times, usually before a slam of the door. It gave her a creeping sense of shame now, on discovering that Wendy had actually made a better job of it than her real mum ever had.

  Had Dad told Wendy about Emily? she wondered. Had Wendy spent those years biting her tongue and thinking, You don’t know the half of it, love?

  She stood there silently in the half-lit kitchen, as the darkness thickened outside. TODAY WE ARE . . . proclaimed the writing on Becca’s whiteboard, and it was all Rachel could do not to snatch the pen and write IN DANGER OF SELF-DESTRUCTING underneath. She poured herself another dr
ink instead and drained it in two gulps, not wanting to think any more.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  It wasn’t the most scintillating weekend of Becca’s life, all said and done. Wendy had gone off on some spa weekend for a friend’s sixtieth and Meredith was in Devon for her brother’s wedding, so the flat was empty and quiet, bar an elusive bluebottle that spent the entire time buzzing neurotically from room to room and ignoring all the open windows like a total thicko. Becca couldn’t help reflecting on how small and poky the flat seemed compared to Rachel’s elegant house and garden, how the walls seemed to contract ever smaller the longer she stayed in a room. Bored and restless, with nothing planned, she felt like a fraud whenever she thought about how she’d lied about going on her amazing date. Her amazing, unmarried date, obviously, she corrected herself, remembering her sister’s words.

  If the remark had been about Lawrence, as she was coming to suspect, then what exactly had he said? Had he been shit-stirring? she wondered uneasily. The whole night seemed like a surreal dream now: the overheated dining hall at the hotel, fat boas of golden tinsel swaying overhead, the huge artificial Christmas tree in one corner with ribboned presents artfully scattered about its base. By the end of the night some braying idiot in a suit would have fallen over into it, landing on his back like a tux-clad beetle as his mates all cheered. And then there had been Lawrence, catching her eye across the room and closing in for the kill.

  It had been him, all him, she insisted to herself afterwards whenever she replayed the evening in her head. Him grabbing her waist, him trying to pull her onto his lap despite her awkwardly twisting away, him writing his room number in black marker on her hand like that, laying claim. It wasn’t just rude, it was arrogant. Presumptuous. Insulting. ‘Lawrence, I’m working,’ she’d protested, feeling embarrassed, as all the yobs on his dinner table started whooping and clapping. Get in there, my son.

  He’d played to the crowd, of course, tipping them the wink. He always had been a show-off. ‘Got to love a working girl,’ he’d said, loud enough for everyone to hear, and the laughter rose even higher, Becca’s face turning crimson in response. Was he trying to insinuate she was a prostitute? She had wriggled from his grasp and walked away, ears burning at the sound of the jeering mob behind her.

  ‘What a wanker,’ her friend Niall had said indignantly, seeing her trying to scrub the black numbers from the back of her hand. ‘Want me to swap tables with you?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she’d muttered, fanning her hot cheeks and trying to regain her composure. She needed the money, otherwise she’d have ripped off her apron and gone home there and then, stuff the morons and their sales conference dinner. As it was, with rent to pay and Christmas looming, she would just have to suck it up as best she could. Not literally.

  Thanks to Niall, she’d managed to avoid her brother-in-law for the rest of the evening. Then the two of them had marked the end of their shift by going and getting completely hammered in a cocktail bar down the road, singing along with the cheesy piped Christmas hits as they became more and more drunk. ‘Idea,’ Niall declared after a while, raising a finger in the air. They were onto their fourth or fifth round of mojitos by then, and the room had started to spin. ‘Naughty idea,’ he added.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Becca. ‘My favourite.’ She leaned forward, her elbow slipping off the table. ‘Whoops. Go on. What’s your idea?’

  ‘That prick who wrote his room number on your hand. We should totally get him back. Can you still see the number?’

  Becca squinted at her hand, where the figures were still smudgily marked despite her attempts to erase them. ‘Yeah. Three-one-two,’ she sighed. ‘Why? What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m thinking, let’s order him up some little room service surprises,’ Niall said wickedly. ‘Maybe a nice pizza delivery at four in the morning. Or a wake-up call heinously early. Or a stripper . . .’

  ‘You are a genius,’ Becca said, saluting him with her cocktail glass. ‘Hell, yes.’

  The flat Niall shared with his boyfriend Marc was the closest, so they staggered back there to put the plan into action. It wasn’t long before they had ordered not only an American Hot pizza to be delivered to Lawrence’s hotel room at three in the morning, but also a room service breakfast at four (‘A large bowl of porridge and some figs, please’), followed by a wake-up call request at six. ‘Just in case the figs aren’t enough to get me going, if you know what I mean,’ Niall had said on the phone, his eyes boggling with the strain of trying not to burst out laughing. ‘Yes, I realize I’m not calling from the room right now, is that a problem? Do I need to speak to your manager?’

  No, it had not been a problem, thankfully. No, the terrified-sounding minion did not want to get the manager involved. After Niall hung up, he and Becca had a moment where they felt bad for the poor innocent hotel worker who’d had the misfortune to take their call, before they fell about laughing at the thought of Lawrence’s increasingly furious face as he was woken again and again.

  Served him right, Becca thought as she clambered into Niall’s spare bed later on, the room spinning about her in a worryingly vomit-inducing manner. Even if it had just wiped out most of what she’d earned that evening, revenge felt good.

  The next morning, waking up with a shocking hangover and the feeling that she had behaved quite badly, Becca had been braced for a frosty response from her brother-in-law – a terse phone call telling her that she was immature, perhaps, or even – you never knew! – an apology for having been out of order. Dream on. Nothing came from either him or her sister, and so she concluded that Lawrence had decided to stay quiet about the whole thing. She figured he wouldn’t exactly be in a tearing hurry to explain to his wife why her sister had gone after him seeking vengeance, funnily enough.

  But maybe he had said something about that night after all. Maybe he’d complained to Rachel about her in some way, and Rachel was still cross with her about it, she thought now, remembering the hardness of her sister’s eyes as she’d made that strange comment.

  Or maybe, of course, Becca was just madly overthinking all of this and getting stupidly paranoid. Either way, she certainly wasn’t going to raise the subject of What Happened at the Copthorne with her sister to find out, no chance. Tell a woman that her husband had tried it on with you, drunkenly manhandled and pawed at you . . . how did you even start to go there?

  The weekend limped by in a rather pathetic fashion. She had a new diadem to make, this time for Meredith’s friend Alianor, which she enjoyed; but otherwise, time seemed to drag. Her mum’s words about getting out there on the pull and setting her life back on track kept nagging at her, and it made her feel even more of a loser. Asking Meredith’s help on the man front hadn’t exactly turned out well, either.

  Something had to change, though. Because here she was, on her own again, with nothing to do on Friday or Saturday night for the second week on the trot. That wasn’t right, was it? That wasn’t how things were supposed to go when you were thirty. Much as it killed her to admit it, maybe her mum had a point.

  Perhaps it was Becca’s guilty conscience still at work over the room service revenge, but when she arrived back at the Jacksons’ house on Sunday evening, Rachel’s first words to her weren’t quite the welcome she might have hoped for. To be fair, her sister did manage to say, ‘Hi Becca, come in,’ but then almost immediately plunged straight into, ‘Listen, I’m not being funny, but why do I keep getting phone calls from old ladies asking me to take them gardening? Is this anything to do with you?’

  Becca’s shoulders slumped. Seriously, Rachel? Do we have to do this right now? she thought. ‘Hi,’ she replied, stepping into the hall. She was half-inclined to step right out again. ‘Did you have a nice weekend? Yes, my journey was great, thank you. No problem.’

  Rachel’s look of exasperation became tempered with sheepishness. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Fair enough. Did you have a nice weekend?’

  ‘Not really,’ Becca said, abandon
ing her bag and the new box of arts and crafts things she’d brought in the hall. She’d ended up bringing quite a lot more with her, including her silversmith equipment – Mabel had been a keen earring-maker the week before and might want to try something more complex next, she figured – as well as a nearly-finished lampshade she thought she would crack on with. She had remembered the bare light bulb swinging so dejectedly in Michael Jones’s hall, and wondered if it would be cheeky of her to present him with the completed effort. Probably. ‘Can I make a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes. Look, I’m sorry to have a go the moment you walk in,’ Rachel said. Clearly not that sorry, Becca thought, sighing to herself as she went past her towards the kitchen. ‘It’s just that the phone has been ringing all afternoon. If it’s not the old ladies wanting gardening lessons, it’s that bloke Michael, wondering if you’ll go round and help him make ginger biscuits. I mean . . .’ She threw up her one good hand in annoyance as she followed Becca into the room. ‘I’m trying to run a personal trainer service here. That’s the business – fitness and health! It’s not gardening or painting or cooking or whatever else you’ve been doing. It’s got to stop, Becca, all right?’

  ‘All right,’ Becca said through gritted teeth, filling the kettle. She noticed that the whiteboard had some new additions. Under the TODAY WE ARE . . . heading, Mabel had written HATING BOYS, Luke had drawn what looked like R2D2 and Scarlet had put ‘Missing Harvey’ with a sad face. It looked as if she’d missed out on a fun weekend in Hereford.

  Rachel was still talking. ‘I mean, it just muddies the waters if you—’

  ‘I said all right. Point taken. Loud and clear.’ Becca banged the kettle down onto its base. ‘Jesus, keep your hair on. Rita loves gardening, that’s all. And it’s good exercise! I just used my initiative, I don’t see what the problem is.’