The Chateau

by Catherine Cooper

  I spot Nick mingling with others from time to time, both men and women, but it’s fine. We’re going to be fine. There must be around two hundred people at the party, spread out around the garden on this surprisingly warm night, others under the marquee and some in the chateau reception rooms, so I lose sight of Nick for an hour or more at a time. Seb and Chloe are flitting around filming – Seb seems to have stuck to his word of not drinking, but I see Chloe sneak the odd glass or two. Even Helen seems to be enjoying herself in her own quiet way.

  At midnight there are fireworks. Not just a few – a full-on, twenty-minute display not that different to the ones we used to watch at the local park on Bonfire Night when we were still in London – when one of us (me) always had to come home early because the bangs and crashes would upset Sorrel and Bay. By now the children are all asleep, or at least I assume they are – the nannies don’t bring them out to see the display. The final fireworks have been arranged to make the shape of a big red heart, shot through with an arrow and a flurry of smaller, red starbursts, as if it is dripping with blood. And it’s in that quiet lull after the fireworks have stopped that there is a scream.

  21

  October, Mozène

  Aura

  Everyone rushes out to the front of the chateau where one of the waitresses is crying hysterically. The fact that she is dressed as a zombie somehow makes the scene almost ludicrous rather than frightening at first glance. I realize with a stab of panic I haven’t seen Nick for a while – where is he?

  Never mind. He’s a grown man and first I need to check that my boys are safe. I rush back through the throng to the children’s tent, where I’m relieved to see all the children are fast asleep, the nannies quietly fiddling with their phones as they watch over them. I guess they wouldn’t have heard the commotion all the way back here. Bay and Sorrel are on a big red cushion, cuddled up together and covered with an orange-and-black blanket. I feel a rush of love for them. If anything happened to my boys, I would die, I’m sure of it.

  Confident that they are safely asleep, I run back out to the front of the building where the entire party is now gathered in a chaotic, frantic melee.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ someone is shouting.

  ‘Is anyone a doctor?’ yells someone else.

  ‘Is he breathing?’

  ‘Don’t move him!’

  Some of the women are crying as another shoves through shouting, ‘Let me see – I’m a surgeon.’

  I follow in her wake. My hand flies to my mouth as I see that, on the ground, illuminated by the burning flambeaux, blood spills from the face-down prone figure who is wearing a big black cape. His scythe lies on the ground beside him.

  I scream.

  The hurt doesn’t diminish, and neither does the anger. Her short life taken away so cruelly and so young. She is never coming back. Grief is a long process, but the anger I feel is somehow harder to deal with. I know what I need to do. I know what will make me feel better. Taking revenge. It’s the only way.

  PART TWO

  22

  TEN MONTHS EARLIER

  December, London

  Nick

  I take a deep breath as I put my key in the lock, steeling myself. Inside someone is crying, loudly. I turn the key and push the door open, arranging my face into an expression of empathy in advance, as I know is required of me in this situation. The one I come home to almost every day.

  Once the door is open I can hear that it’s Bay screaming, and that he’s upstairs. To my left I can hear the tune from some irritating kids’ programme booming out from the TV in the living room – it’s on far too loud. I put my head round the door where Sorrel is staring wide-eyed at the screen, sitting in his favourite position in the corner of the sofa, sucking his finger and clutching his squirrel.

  ‘Sol?’ I say. He doesn’t hear me over the blare of the TV. ‘Sol!’ I repeat louder. He looks round at me and grins, his finger falling from his mouth as he does so. He waves his squirrel at me. ‘’Beebies!’ he cries in delight. ‘Me watch ’Beebies!’

  I smile, feeling a surge of love for him. He’s so adorable. ‘That’s nice, Sol.’ He loves TV. He turns his head back to face the screen, putting his finger back in his mouth and clutching his squirrel against his face. Bay’s screams are getting louder and more urgent. ‘Where’s Mummy?’ I ask.

  ‘Mummy ’sleep,’ Sorrel says, not looking away from the colourful creatures dancing and singing on the screen. ‘Me watch ’Beebies.’

  I turn away and dash up the stairs into what is notionally Bay’s room, though he never actually sleeps in it. He’s on his back in his cot, fists balled and face puce. His cries are more like hiccups; it’s almost as if he’s struggling to catch his breath. I lift him up and cradle him against my shoulder. ‘It’s OK, little guy,’ I soothe. ‘I’ve got you.’ His nappy is soaked and so is his Babygro. I put him down on the changing table and get him sorted, which is tricky as he’s kicking and wailing so much. ‘Shhh, Bay, it’s OK,’ I say. ‘Look, you’re all clean and dry now. That will make you feel better,’ I add, though he is still crying his heart out.

  Once he’s dressed, I pick him up to cuddle him against my shoulder but he won’t be consoled. ‘You hungry, little guy?’ I ask, as he continues to scream. ‘Let’s get you something to eat.’ I take him downstairs and put him in his bouncy chair while I prepare him a bottle. His wails are getting more and more urgent as he tries to stuff his little fists into his mouth and kicks his legs furiously. I put a bottle in the sterilizer and whizz it through the microwave, then clip the corner off one of the ‘emergency’ ready-made formula packs and pour it in.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ I mutter to myself, in between saying to Bay, ‘Sssh, sssh, little man, it’s coming.’ Why does all this have to take so long? You’d think someone would have come up with a better – quicker – way of doing this by now? Oh yes, they did – breastfeeding. I feel a stab of annoyance at how that didn’t work out followed immediately by a rush of guilt. It wasn’t Aura’s fault.

  I fill the bottle and put it in the microwave – Aura would be appalled if she saw me do this but the plug-in bottle warmer takes too long and I need to stop Bay crying. Thirty seconds later, the microwave pings. I squirt the milk onto my wrist to check its temperature and plug it into Bay’s mouth without lifting him from the chair. He stops crying instantly, sucking greedily. My back quickly starts to hurt from the awkward position I’m crouching in but I don’t want to take the bottle out of Bay’s mouth and set him off again. I ease myself down to sit on the floor, still holding the bottle while Bay finishes, stroking his little foot through his stripy Babygro. Before the bottle is even empty, his eyes droop and he falls asleep. I gently ease the bottle from his lips, his rosebud mouth still making a gentle sucking motion before stilling. I carefully lift the chair, carry it through to the living room and put it on the floor, then take the remote control from the sofa next to Sol and turn down the volume. Sorrel looks up at me, horrified, so I say: ‘I’m turning this down so Bay can sleep, ’kay? You be a good big brother and come and get me if he wakes up.’

  Sorrel nods and turns his attention back to the TV. ‘Bay watch ’Beebies with me!’ he says, smiling.

  ‘Yes. I’m going to go upstairs and see Mummy, OK? You shout for me if Bay wakes up, OK? Don’t forget.’

  Sorrel nods, still staring at the TV. I run up the stairs to our bedroom. I’m expecting to find Aura asleep. She hasn’t been sleeping well lately – none of us has – but even so, I’d be surprised if she could sleep through all the noise Bay was making.

  But she’s not asleep. She’s lying flat on her back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, a pillow pressed up around her ears.

  ‘Aura? What’s going on?’ I say gently. Inside I am screaming, Why the fuck did you leave our baby in a soaking wet nappy and bawling his head off because he was starving? but I know I can’t say that to her, not at the moment.

  She continues staring at the ceiling. I’m not s
ure whether she’s oblivious or if she’s simply decided to ignore me.

  I gently grasp her wrists and pull them away from her ears. She lets her hands fall on to the bed and finally turns her head to look at me. ‘Aura. What’s happening?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice calm and neutral, the way we were taught to at teacher training college when the kids are playing up. ‘Why did you ignore Bay? He was crying. Screaming, in fact.’

  I hold myself back from demanding how long she’s been here on the bed, how long Bay was crying for, how long Sol has been watching TV, entirely unsupervised. She turns her head away from me and looks back towards the ceiling.

  ‘I can’t do this anymore, Nick,’ she says. She is dry-eyed and her voice is flat.

  ‘Can’t do what?’

  ‘All this. The full-time mum stuff.’ She looks at me again. ‘I really wanted to, but I hate it.’

  A tear forms and runs down her cheek. I wipe it away. A surge of panic wells inside me. I kind of saw this coming, but I don’t know how we can cope financially if she’s not at home. Childcare is so expensive in London.

  But I don’t say that. ‘Come on, Aura,’ I say. ‘You’ve had a bad day, that’s all. You stay here, I’ll get you a cup of tea – or a glass of wine, if you like – then I’ll do the kids’ tea and baths.’ I lean forward to kiss her on the forehead. ‘You’ll feel better tomorrow. You’ll see.’ There goes the night out I’d planned this evening.

  Aura sits up and rubs her eyes. ‘No, Nick, I won’t feel better. This has been going on too long. I can’t take it anymore. I mean it. I need to think about me for a change. It can’t all be about the children.’

  I hold in a sigh. ‘OK,’ I say, trying to keep the irritation I am feeling out of my voice. ‘How do you want things to change? I can’t give up my job to be at home more – you know that, don’t you? We have to pay the mortgage. Your inheritance was a good deposit but there’s still a huge wedge to pay every month. It’s already a stretch as it is.’

  She bites her lip and nods determinedly. There’s something child-like in the gesture. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And childcare is expensive so …’

  She picks up the iPad which is lying on the other side of the bed and waves it at me. ‘It doesn’t have to cost as much as you might think. I’ve been looking into it. Sorrel will be eligible for free childcare in a few months.’

  ‘You’ve been looking … since when?’

  Aura gives me a look of exasperation. ‘God, Nick, you don’t know what it’s like! You’ve got no idea! I put up with it when it was just Sorrel at home as I was pregnant again about five minutes later and feeling so sick I was in no fit state to even think straight let alone go to work but now! With two of them! It’s too awful. I can’t do it.’

  I nod. It’s not as if I didn’t know she was finding it hard. Every day when I get back from work the house is in a mess, often no one is dressed and nine times out of ten Aura shoves a child at me and says, ‘Take him – I’ve had him all day,’ when I’ve barely had time to take my coat off.

  And it’s not as if we haven’t talked about it. We have. But all those discussions degenerate into Aura wailing about how she’s such a rubbish mother and how terrible she feels about never learning to breastfeed properly and if only, if only, if only … And I have to calm her down, tell her she’s doing an amazing job. It’s no wonder we haven’t managed to come up with a solution.

  I’m not some unfeeling and callous bastard. I get it. I know it’s hard and I’m happy to do my share. I’ve said she should go out with the girls, let her hair down, maybe go to stay with an old friend for the weekend or something – have a proper break. But she won’t do it. She’s been out a couple of times locally, but each time she’s come home early saying she missed the children. And she won’t admit it, but I don’t think she trusts me to look after the children for more than a few hours. So I don’t know what else I can do.

  ‘I’ve been looking into it for a few weeks now, when I can get a moment to myself, which is almost never,’ Aura says. ‘I’m going to retrain.’

  ‘Retrain? As what? Shouldn’t we … discuss this?’ I say, all the while thinking: how are we going to afford this? Aura hasn’t worked since early in Sorrel’s pregnancy and my teacher’s salary barely covers the too-large mortgage Aura insisted on so that we could afford a house with a postage-stamp-sized garden in a nice area of South London close to a park and good schools so that our children could have the ‘idyllic’ childhood she pictured for them.

  Aura sighs. ‘I knew you’d react like this. I knew you’d only find reasons for me not to do it. So I decided I’d work it all out and present it as a fait accompli. I’ve signed up for a counselling course at the local college. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for ages – I think I’d be a brilliant counsellor. I’m also going back to work part-time – which will pay for both the course and a nursery for the children. Since it won’t affect our finances one way or the other, there’s no reason I shouldn’t go ahead and do it. And once Sorrel’s free childcare kicks in, we’ll actually be slightly better off than we are now.’

  ‘What? What course? What job? And the one time I suggested scraping some money together to put the children in a nursery to give you a break, you said I was accusing you of being a bad mother and didn’t speak to me for days.’

  Aura gets up off the bed. ‘Things change, OK? I’ve done the sums. I’m going back to my old job at Evergreen three days a week – well, not fundraising any more, it’s more of an admin role as that’s all they can offer me because I only want to work part-time, but that’s OK. I’m doing the course in the evenings. The children will go to nursery three days a week. It’s all arranged.’

  I nod. ‘Right. I thought we had the kind of relationship where we talked about fairly major decisions like this. Clearly I was wrong.’ I am fuming. I knew she was finding things tricky, but I’ve always tried to help, and to talk to her about it. And this is the first I’ve heard of her wanting to be a counsellor. How dare she shut me out like this?

  She wanders into our en suite bathroom and splashes her face with water. I follow her and stand at the door.

  ‘Oh, don’t be like this, Nick! I need something for me. I can’t do this anymore, staying at home changing nappies and making food that almost invariably gets thrown on the floor. I’ve had enough.’

  She turns round, walks over to me and takes my hand. ‘You understand that, don’t you?’ she asks.

  I pull my hand away. ‘Yes. But I would have preferred that you’d discussed it with me first.’

  ‘Is this the Fifties? Do I need your permission?’ she says sarcastically.

  I run my fingers through my hair. ‘Of course not. But we are a couple, parents, with joint responsibilities. You could have at least told me what you were planning.’

  ‘You’ve said several times I should get out of the house more. Find a hobby. Make new friends. Arrange my days so I’m not stuck at home with two small boys. This ticks all those boxes, except it’s much better than going to baby yoga or hanging about in Starbucks talking to dull women a decade older than me about mastitis and sleep routines. This course will get my brain working again and eventually be a new career for me.’

  ‘You’re serious about this?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Starting when?’

  ‘After Christmas.’

  ‘What? In a couple of weeks?’

  ‘Yes! Honestly, I don’t understand why you’re being so grumpy about it. I already feel lighter just thinking about it. You can see that, surely?’

  ‘You didn’t look very light when I came in,’ I counter, remembering Bay’s screams.

  She smiles tightly. ‘Yes, well, I haven’t had a good day. Haven’t had a good week or month, for that matter. But this will sort all that out – I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Dada! Bay wake up!’ Sorrel shouts from downstairs.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Aura says. ‘I’m feeling much better now I’ve
got that off my chest. Positively buoyant, in fact. I’m really excited about starting my course. You still going out this evening?’

  ‘Oh … I don’t need to if …’ Can I trust her to look after the kids right now? They didn’t seem very looked after when I arrived home.

  ‘You should go,’ Aura interrupts. ‘I’m totally fine now, honestly. Why don’t you help me with teatime and baths, and then you can go off if you like?’

  From her tone this doesn’t sound like one of those loaded statements where I’m actually supposed to say no, no, no, I’ll stay here with you, but it’s getting so difficult to tell with Aura these days. And either way, after her bombshell, I could do with being away from her right now.

  ‘Well, only if you’re sure. I’ll keep my phone on and you can call me if there are any problems.’

  23

  December, London

  Nick

  I don’t go out much these days, but tonight it’s Dan’s leaving drinks, and I’m glad to be here. We both started at St Benedict’s High at the same time straight out of teacher training and we’ve been mates ever since. He’s moving to Australia with his new (Australian) wife and I can’t help but feel a pang of envy. I will still be here in rainy South London, same job, same old shit, dealing with an ever-increasingly-erratic Aura and a barely affordable mortgage. And apart from all that, I’ll miss him. He’s a good mate.

  A couple of drinks turn into a few more and then suddenly it’s closing time and someone is suggesting going to a club down the road. By now I am well on the way to being drunk and the thought of going home to three people in tears, as has happened so often lately, seems too much to bear. So I check my phone – I’m delighted to see there are no messages or missed calls from Aura, so I send a text saying, OK if I go on to a club with the boys? Don’t wait up xxx

  Without waiting for an answer, I turn my phone off.