‘Forget it,’ she says, giving Rory a strange look. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
HELEN
Serena and Rory’s living room is empty, as I had hoped it would be. It looks even lovelier than usual – the high ceilings, the huge bay windows looking to the front and the back. There is a grand piano at the garden end, and a courtyard of sofas at the front, arranged around a mango-wood coffee table holding architecture books with gold-embossed spines and the bowls they bought in Morocco.
Serena has made up a log fire; the kindling crackles and spits softly, a plume of smoke rising. It doesn’t seem possible that it is the time of year for fires, already. The thought of winter fills me with gloom. I think of the early darkness, the layers of scratchy clothing, of collars pulled up against the wind.
I hear snatches of laughter from the dining room. I should go in, but I just need a minute. A minute to sit. And be away from Rachel.
After our awkward breakfast this morning – and Serena’s visit – Daniel stood up as if he could take no more. He grabbed a bag and strode out of the house saying he was off to play squash, even though he hadn’t mentioned anything about it before. Rachel said she was going out, too. Something about getting her nails done, for the party, as she kept calling it.
As soon as I heard the door close after them both, I was in Rachel’s room, throwing open her suitcase. No more messing around. I had to know what she was up to, why that note had been in her bag. I couldn’t bear to think about what I might find. A whole load of those red envelopes, a whole string of her and Rory’s letters to each other? A diary, photographs even?
I searched through her case, carefully at first. Then – deciding it was such a mess she’d never know either way – I turned the whole thing upside down, slid my hands inside all the pockets.
But there was nothing. The laptop had gone. The note addressed to W was nowhere to be found. Nor were the things missing from my book – the note I found at Rory’s, and the taped-together photograph – even though I’m sure, now, that it must be her who has taken them.
I looked everywhere, then. The chest of drawers, the bedside table. Behind the books on the shelves. Under all her clothes on the floor. No sign. By the time I got to the end, my hands were shaking.
I stare into the crackling fire. There is a scrape of chairs. People must be sitting down to eat. I know I should go and join Daniel and the rest of them next door, but the thought of eating turns my stomach. I hear a muffled chorus of happy birthday. Charlie must have arrived – as usual, he is singing the loudest, completely out of tune. Then I hear Rory laughing, telling them all to shut up. Starting a speech. He is so good at speeches. He always makes everyone laugh.
I feel a prickle of anxiety, the dull ache of dread. Is it possible I imagined it? Finding the note, the laptop? Impossible. I can’t have done. But if I didn’t, then where have they gone?
‘Helen? Are you in there?’
That sounds like Serena. I haul myself up, straighten my spine. Rub at my eyes so no one can see I’ve been crying.
KATIE
Rachel has found a coffee mug from somewhere and is pouring what looks like an expensive bottle of red wine directly into it. Everybody’s conversations sort of trail away and quieten until the glug, glug, glug of her pouring is the only thing any of us can hear.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll just drink out of this,’ she says. She says it as if it’s the answer to a question.
She is standing right in the middle of the room, by the kitchen island. She is wearing a red dress, cut low over her breasts. I can’t seem to not look at her, her dark, catlike flicks of eyeliner, her glossy-painted mouth. I see other eyes darting at her, too. It takes a few moments before I realise it isn’t just the crimson dress, the pale, exposed décolleté, which is attracting these glances. It is the ugly necklace of marks, like huge purple welts, all around her throat. What on earth has happened to her?
With dinner over, the kitchen is filling up. People are gathering in groups, eager to finally be in company of their own choosing. Me included.
I search the kitchen for Charlie, or Helen. I’d hoped Serena would seat me next to Helen for the dinner. I’d been feeling guilty that I hadn’t seen her since that lunch – she keeps asking if we can go for a coffee, and I keep having to tell her I can’t, that work is just too busy because of the trial. But I looked at the plan as I came in, and both of them had been on the other side of the room. I knew from experience that no one would dare defy Serena’s seating plan, the little name cards propped up on the plates. The dining room had been full of candles and roses, the cutlery on each plate tied together with little scraps of lace and a sprig of rosemary. Anyone would have thought they were hosting a wedding reception. When I glanced over to see who Charlie was sat with, I could see he was next to Rachel.
‘Katie! So good to see you again!’
Rachel has noticed me. I smile, trying to stop my gaze from drifting down to her throat. She smiles back, her mouth wide, glassy and cherry red. Her lip liner is slightly off, making her smile appear lopsided. Most of her body is sparrow-thin, but her breasts are swollen full, her tummy starting to curve. She still doesn’t really look pregnant so much as someone whose torso has been inflated like a blow-up doll.
‘Hi, Rachel,’ I say. ‘How are you?’
Apparently, Rachel is living at Helen’s house now. Over dinner, I tried to ask Daniel about it, but he was sitting diagonally across, a few seats away, and we couldn’t hear each other properly. He just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
I glance at the doors out to the veranda, wondering if Charlie might have gone out to smoke. The doors are open, and Serena has set out lanterns on the decking, fairy lights in her cherry tree. It rained a little earlier, but now it is cool and fresh, the plants wet, the air from outside thick with the smell of earth.
‘How’s the rape case?’
Rachel asks this loudly. A few people turn round to stare at me, silenced by the mention of the word ‘rape’.
‘Hard work at the moment, actually. I’m glad to have a night off.’
It had been past midnight when I’d finally got back last night. The drive home from Cambridge was a nightmare. The motorway had been closed because of an accident, and I’d had to take a detour down a rabbit hole of dark A-roads, the rain pelting, my windscreen wipers on full whack.
Hugh had told me to get a hotel. ‘You’re shattered, Wheeler. Don’t drive in this weather.’ He was being kind, but I couldn’t stay – I just wanted to be home, to be away from it for a bit. I only had one CD in my car, and I listened to it on repeat, the volume turned right up. I had hoped it would help me forget about the evidence that afternoon, about the splinters they said they had found under her fingernails. The way she’d looked down at the floor of the witness box, her hair falling in her face, as they’d said it. As if she was the one who should be ashamed. And how the defendants, in their expensive suits, just sat there looking bored, or passing notes, or smirking when the jury weren’t looking. Even when she had told the court how she felt after it had happened. How she thought she might be better off dead.
When they’d gone through the medical evidence, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it must have been like for her when they collected it, the fibres, the fluids. A white examination table, the cold touch of the metal instruments. I wondered whether I’d have had it in me, to go through all of that, after what had come before. As I was leaving court, I saw her across the street, belting her coat. Her lawyer was saying something to her, but she didn’t seem to be listening. She saw me and our eyes met, just for a moment. I nodded, and she looked away.
Afterwards, as I’d typed it all up in the pub down the road from the court, my jaw had clenched at having to be balanced about it, to report their side too. Both of the defendants deny all of the charges against them. When I’d pressed send I’d taken a long, deep breath.
I’d been so grateful to see the signs for London, the lights on the motorway, the
drunk faces of the stumbling revellers in Camden Town. The scruffy terraces of the end of my road. The sound of my key in the lock, the purr of Socks, rubbing his cheek against my legs. My flat was a mess, the doormat piled with unread letters, the fridge empty. I’d turned the water on full, peeled my clothes off, and shoved them all on a boil wash. I’d stood under the shower for what felt like a long time.
‘I read your piece today,’ Rachel is saying now. ‘About those scumbag rapists.’ I startle at her language.
‘You know, I reckon they should just hang blokes who do stuff like that to women.’ She takes a swig from her mug. ‘Or, you know, firing squad, electric chair.’ She pops an olive into her mouth. ‘Whatever. Just as long as they’re fucking dead.’
To my relief, Helen appears in the kitchen. She heads to one of the cupboards, and then starts filling up bowls of nuts and crisps, as if this is her house, and not Rory and Serena’s. When she sees me, she smiles, then eyes Rachel warily, her smile slipping. Her nose and eyes look pink, as if she has been crying. Her bump looks so heavy under her dress.
I hug her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Hmm? I’m fine.’
‘Your eyes look a bit red.’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m fine,’ she says again.
Charlie appears through the open veranda doors. ‘Hey you.’ He leans in to kiss me on the cheek and misses. Instead he catches the bottom of my ear, the side of my neck. He smells of tobacco and shampoo and something else, something that is uniquely him. I glance out at the garden behind him. I wish we weren’t standing in this hot kitchen. I long to be outside, in the cool. Charlie shoots me a curious look. Helen looks cross. Rachel is staring at me. No one is saying anything. Drinks, I think. I will get us all a drink.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Does everyone want a drink? Are you, um, all right, Rachel?’
It turns out that everyone has a drink, and Helen doesn’t want one. All I’ve done is draw attention to Rachel’s coffee mug of wine. The four of us all look at the mug, the dark red liquid inside half drunk. The silence is deafening.
‘I’ll have a top-up,’ she chirps.
It feels odd, filling up a mug of red wine for a pregnant woman.
‘Cheers,’ she says, lifting up her mug. Everyone smiles politely, tilts their glasses to the middle. Rachel extends hers, insisting on a loud clunk with everyone before taking another gulp. It is all deeply uncomfortable. Charlie seems to be staring at Rachel, an odd expression on his face. Helen is looking nervously at me, as if hoping I will resolve the situation. I grasp at the only other passing person I recognise – Lisa, who works with Daniel and Rory.
‘Rachel, have you met Lisa?’
Lisa spins round when I say her name, as if I’ve caught her doing something wrong. As usual, her dress is elegant, expensive for a PA – though perhaps she just has a good eye. High at the front, bare on the shoulders. The kind of dress not many people can get away with. I suspect she spends a lot of time in the gym.
‘Hi, Rachel,’ Lisa says. She puts out a hand to shake Rachel’s. It feels a bit odd, overly formal, as if she is still in work mode, welcoming a client to the Haverstock offices.
Rachel looks at Lisa’s hand like it might be a trick. Then she takes it, but doesn’t shake it. Then she lets it go again.
‘Have we met before, Rachel?’ Lisa’s face is somewhere between a smile and a frown. ‘At the office, maybe?’
Rachel shakes her head, bemused. ‘Rory’s office? I don’t think so.’
Helen is staring at Lisa. Lisa looks at her, then back to Rachel.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Right. My mistake.’
‘I’ve been reading about Haverstock. About your latest project,’ Rachel is saying now, loudly. Lisa’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly, like an animal scenting danger. I can’t decide whether to cringe or stifle a laugh. No one else would dream of broaching the subject of Rory and Daniel’s latest project – not with the coverage it’s been getting lately.
‘Sounds like a lot of people are pretty unhappy about that estate being knocked down, doesn’t it?’ she blunders on.
‘Yes, well, housing in London is quite a complicated issue,’ Lisa breathes. Her tone is a warning, but not one that Rachel can hear.
‘Complicated? Hardly,’ she snorts. ‘Do you know how long the list is for a council house in Greenwich?’ She looks around. ‘Anyone know?’
Everyone else in the room has studiously turned away now. Even Charlie looks awkward. The atmosphere feels heavy, as if a storm is coming. I realise I’m holding my breath.
‘Eighteen thousand people,’ Rachel announces triumphantly. ‘And you’re knocking down a load of council houses for a few fancy apartments with a gym.’ She rolls her eyes, grinning, as if this is all hilariously funny, instead of hideously uncomfortable. ‘I bet most of it is foreigners, isn’t it? Buying from abroad? I bet half of them won’t even live there.’
Lisa’s expression hardens from lukewarm to glacial.
‘Lovely to meet you, Rachel,’ she says. ‘Excuse me.’
She turns to join another group who have gathered around the kitchen island. Charlie excuses himself too, says he is going for a smoke. Rachel’s eyes follow him out of the room.
The space around Helen, Rachel and me seems to be getting smaller, filling with noise and elbows. Arms reach into cupboards for spirits, extra glasses. There is a pop of more champagne corks. I glance again at the doors to the garden.
‘So, Helen,’ I say, ‘have you decided on whether to do the fireworks this year?’
A fireworks party at Helen’s house is an old tradition. When we were little, the Haverstocks used to have one every year, with the most amazing bonfire. When Helen and Daniel moved back into the house, she told everyone they were going to bring her parents’ tradition back. But then, with everything that’s happened over the past few years, I don’t think she’s felt up to it. I was hoping this year might be different.
‘Ooh, you didn’t tell me we were having a bonfire party, Helen,’ Rachel says abruptly, taking a fistful of nuts from a bowl. She fixes Helen with her gaze. ‘Sounds brilliant!’
Helen looks blankly at Rachel, as if she is speaking another language. Then she turns to me, gives me a hard stare.
‘We’re not having a bonfire party,’ she says. ‘I never said we were having the bonfire this year. Katie, what are you talking about?’ Her tone is unusually firm.
Before I can answer, there’s a huge crash. Everything happens at once. Rory has arrived, holding a bottle of champagne, but he seems to have slipped and dropped it somehow, and in the process, smashed a load of glasses that were set out on the side.
There are gasps, cries of ‘Careful, Serena!’ Serena is standing with her back to Rachel, her hands on her bump, a deep line etched across her brow, as if she is clamping her face shut. There are glinting shards of glass everywhere. Rory is staring at his hand. It is red with blood, coursing from his thumb to his elbow. Hands reach for napkins, kitchen roll, wet cloths. I crouch down to help. Serena and Rachel are urged to avoid the glass. Hands are held out as they are lifted over the jagged puddles of red.
36 WEEKS
SERENA
It is nearly ten. I have been up for hours, sitting on the veranda wrapped in my cashmere blanket, with my mint tea on the table. I hadn’t posted on Instagram for a while, and I wanted to get the light just right.
It is so gorgeous in the garden at this time of year. Shafts of pale sunlight illuminate a lawn dusted with yellow leaves. A wet mist blurring the edges of everything. The wall climbers behind our hammock have started flaming orange and red, a last hurrah before they are claimed by the cold of winter.
It was a day like this the first time I came to Greenwich, the day I first met Rory’s parents. The first time I really met Helen, and Daniel too, or at the least the first time I spoke to either of them properly.
Rory and I had been in bed in his college room all afternoon. Now he was at the window, blowing
smoke out over the quad. From his window all you could see was a rippling mass of golden leaves from the sycamore tree outside. I was reading a battered book I’d picked up off his nightstand, the duvet pulled up over my bare breasts. All of a sudden, he had stubbed his cigarette out on the sill. Started getting dressed, fishing at the back of his wardrobe for a shirt.
‘Are we going somewhere?’
Rory hadn’t even turned round. It was his little brother Charlie’s birthday, he said. He was going home for a dinner. Did I fancy joining him, meeting the parents? I closed the book, looked up from the bed, surprised.
‘They’re dying to meet you,’ he said. ‘If you’re up for it.’ Helen would be coming home too, he added, sensing my hesitation. She was bringing a new boyfriend. ‘They haven’t met him either, so you wouldn’t be the only one getting a grilling.’
I knew his younger sister Helen only a little, then. She was at the same college, but we didn’t exactly hang around in the same crowd. Since Rory and I had been seeing each other, she’d started waving to me sometimes, shyly, in the queue for hall, or in the bar, where she and her friends never seemed to be able to get a table. She waved to me on King’s Parade while she was cycling past me once, and nearly wobbled off her bike.
Anyway, I agreed to go, and when Rory and I got to the station, Helen was there, grinning and waving. She was bundled tightly in a winter coat, a thick scarf wound like a neck brace at her throat. ‘Hi, Serena,’ she gushed. Helen had already bought the tickets, and she doled them out to us from her mittened hands, like a teacher shepherding a school expedition. ‘This is Daniel. Have you met Daniel? He’s studying architecture with Rory.’ She motioned to the tall, quiet boy standing next to her, dark overcoat buttoned up like a pallbearer. Daniel locked his dark eyes on mine, held out a wiry hand, hair flopping over his glasses.
It seemed like a long time before we finally reached Greenwich. Rory and I walked silently, hand in gloved hand, under the soft glimmer of Victorian gas lamps dotted along the edge of the park. The trees rustled, their brown leaves falling like crinkling paper bags. When we passed the pub at the end of their road, a blast of warm air escaped from the door, the cackle of laughter, the snap of a roaring fire. I noticed the walls enclosing Greenwich Park were studded with tiny doors. It felt so mysterious to me. Their street seemed hidden away, as if lost in time, perfectly preserved, untouched.
Greenwich Park Page 13
