A Hidden Life (3 page)

And Lou watched as her mother, who almost never spoke her mind, who was terrified of making an exhibition of herself, burst into noisy tears and sank on to the sofa.

‘Don't cry, Mum!' Lou ran to her side and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘It doesn't matter.'

‘But it does! It does matter. She's putting the knife in from beyond the grave … It's hateful and unkind. She's saying it loud and clear, Lou … can't you hear?
You loved him while he was alive, didn't you? Well, here are his books and you're welcome to them. No one else wants them.'

‘Never mind, Mum. Honestly.' Lou stared at them, her family, all talking, all tut-tutting and shaking their heads. Suddenly, she had a longing to be somewhere else. To be with Poppy in the grotty flat. Anywhere but here, in Milthorpe House.

‘I'm going home now, I think,' she told her mother. ‘I'll see you soon.'

‘Let me drive you to the station, darling.' Phyl wiped her eyes, and sat up straighter. She stood up and gave Lou her hand. For the first time that day, Lou felt as though she wanted to lie down and cry for ever. She nodded, unable to say a word.

‘I thought you might need cheering up, that's all,' said Ellie, sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘You stormed out of the drawing room looking like thunder. Anyone could see you were about to explode or something.'

Nessa went on washing up, taking care to rinse every single plate and cup and teaspoon in hot water. It never failed to amaze her how quickly the dishes mounted up whenever more than two people got
together. Who'd used all this stuff? And when? She didn't bother to turn round to face her mother.

‘I don't need cheering up. It's too late for anger.'

‘Doesn't stop you from feeling like hell, though, does it?'

Nessa decided that how she felt was none of her mother's business. She'd forfeited the right to be involved when she'd handed over responsibility for her children to a husband she'd tired of almost before the honeymoon was over, and then later to his boring new wife. Nessa made an effort not to think along these particular lines now. It wasn't an appropriate time to go into every single grudge she held against Ellie. There were many of them and just at this moment Nessa was too furious with Constance to be able to attend properly to her mother's failings. And she could certainly do without this belated effort at cheering her up. She changed the subject, ‘This is the only house I know which doesn't have a dishwasher. It's quite relaxing really, all these suds and hot water.'

‘You don't look relaxed, darling. I can see the knots of tension in your neck from here.'

‘It's Justin's neck you ought to worry about. I could strangle him.' Why am I saying this? Nessa asked herself. I don't want to sound off to Ellie. God, I wish Mickey was here. She ought to have come to the funeral with me instead of Gareth.

Michaela Crawford was her best friend. They'd met ten years ago when Mickey was working for the florist who dealt with Nessa and Gareth's wedding. In those days, Nessa worked part-time in a bank and was going mad with boredom. When Mickey confided her ambition to start a business selling artificial flowers, it was Nessa who suggested that she might be able to help with the business side of things. Together they set up a company called Paper Roses, which had been a bit of a struggle at first but was doing very well now. They provided artificial flowers of every variety for businesses, for town dwellers who didn't have a garden, and for anyone who loved flowers but didn't have the money to keep forking out for fresh ones. She was the business expert and Mickey the creative brain, and for the last five years Nessa had known that there was someone in her corner. Someone who'd support her whatever she did. Gareth was always, typically, mouthing off about Mickey's lesbianism, but Nessa
couldn't have cared less about that. She'd never talked to Mickey about her sex life. Her friend never discussed it and Nessa would have died rather than ask about it. Mickey's lover, Dee, used to live with her in the small and pretty house outside Haywards Heath which was also the Paper Roses HQ, but Dee had gone off with a Jamaican bikini designer and, for a while, Mickey was heartbroken. Nessa consoled her as best she could, but privately thought she'd had a narrow escape. Dee had always struck her as frivolous and selfish, happy to live off Mickey without contributing too much to the relationship. It didn't surprise Nessa in the least to discover that Dee was unfaithful: she'd even flirted with her a couple of times, and she was married. Good riddance to her, Nessa had thought.

Ellie had fallen silent. She screwed a cigarette into a long, black holder and lit it. Was it worth telling her to go outside? Probably not. As Nessa thought of Gareth, a vision of his round pink face and chubby hands came into her mind and produced a wave of irritation. Even here in the kitchen, she thought, she could hear his voice booming away in the drawing room. What was the matter with her? What kind of wife was she? Gareth was cheerful. Pleasant. When they'd first met, she'd loved his jolliness, his bluff, ex-rugby player's easy manners. She had fancied him rotten then and he was good company: generous and outgoing. He worked for an insurance company, and although Nessa was never quite sure what it was he actually did, he was obviously quite successful at it. Now he was stockier and a lot less fun. She couldn't really pin down what it was that annoyed her lately whenever she looked at her husband, but she was painfully aware that her misgivings were making sex – okay, not awful, but a hell of a lot less enjoyable than it used to be. She simply didn't find him as attractive as she used to. Perhaps that was normal when you'd been married for ten years. And there was Tamsin. She would always be grateful to Gareth for their daughter, whom she loved more than anything else in the world. The way she felt about Tamsin from the moment she was born made it even harder for Nessa to understand Ellie's lackadaisical attitude to her and Justin.

She thought, blushing and hoping that her mother couldn't see her, of the fantasies she'd trained herself to conjure up the moment she felt Gareth's hand slide over to her side of the bed and rest on herthigh.
Nowadays, when he touched her, she closed her eyes and summoned up stuff she tried hard to keep out of her head once daylight came. Things which … Never mind. Just the memory of them made her shiver a little with remembered pleasure. Nessa shook herself to clear her head.

Concentrate on Justin, she told herself. That was what was making her angry. She said to Ellie, ‘Why the hell didn't Constance sell the property and divide the proceeds? Why on earth should Justin get all this?' She waved a hand in the air to indicate Milthorpe House and everything that went with it.

‘You heard that ginger lawyer. She thought, quite rightly, that you were taken care of already. You've got a husband who makes lots of money, a super house, a business which is doing better and better. What more could you possibly want? You'd never live here, would you? Count yourself lucky to be getting half the estate. It'll be a lot of money, you know. Much more than most people see in a lifetime.'

‘That's beside the point!' Nessa was almost crying at the injustice of it. ‘Just because Justin hasn't done anything with his life and is wasting his days showing people round grotty flats he gets rewarded with a property that must be worth over two million. Not fair. I hate things that aren't fair.'

‘Oh, God, Nessa, you're always so hard done by!' Ellie laughed and leaned back in the kitchen chair.

‘I
am
fucking hard done by—'

‘Language, darling!'

‘… and I always have been. First of all, my mother ups and dumps me with a husband she's obviously totally bored with – and then his wife. What on earth possessed you, Ellie? I can't even call you Mummy, can I? You've never been a mother. Not to me and not to Justin either. And just think: we always called Phyl and Matt by their names and not Mummy and Daddy. From the very beginning, because Matt felt we should remember our real parents, at least notionally. What that means is I've never had anyone I can call Mummy. Or Daddy.'

‘Well, heavens, Nessa, I'm sorry really, but change the record, sweetheart. We've been through this before, haven't we? Don't you think it's time to let it drop? I wasn't cut out to be a mother, that's
all. I don't
do
little kids – you're okay now of course. You've turned out very pretty and I'm proud of how well you've managed with Paper Roses and so on, but back then, well – I won't hide it from you, there's no point – I couldn't wait to leave. In spite of Constance loving me like a daughter, and in spite of Matt's devotion, before he realized my attention was fixed on something else. Paolo was a ticket out, that's all.'

‘And Constance was there to pick up the pieces. D'you know, I think you were the only person she really, really loved. I've often wondered why that should be, but she was a law unto herself, right? Maybe she'd been disappointed in Matt for some reason, I don't know. But she saw her chance with us. I reckon she encouraged you to go off with Paolo because she wanted total control of me and Justin. She wanted
us
to be her children. Partly because we were yours and she loved you but partly because, well, she seemed to like us, in those days anyway. You were too old. She could start over with us.'

‘She adored you and Justin. She told me so often. I was quite happy about leaving you because I knew, I just knew, that she'd look after you and make sure Phyl and Matt didn't squash the life out of you.'

Nessa said nothing. It was true that her grandmother had taken good care of them both, her and Justin. They'd never wanted for a single thing, but at nine years old, she'd felt unloved, and still did sometimes. Her mother had chosen to go and leave her behind, so it followed, didn't it (that was the way the young Nessa had explained it to herself), that she wasn't really lovable. Nothing anyone had said or done in the years since then had altered this view; not really, not deep down. Deep down she wasn't worth loving. She wasn't worth staying with, and she worried often about what would happen if her world were to be blown apart by something. She was aware, more than anyone she'd ever met, and much more than Justin, of the precariousness of everything; the fragility of so much that most people thought of as solid and fixed. She'd tried to discuss this with Gareth early in their relationship, but he was almost allergic to any kind of serious talk and had seemed so genuinely puzzled when she'd brought the subject up that she'd dropped it at once.

One day, when the business had started to do well, when things seemed to be on the up and up, she'd asked Mickey a question out of
the blue. They'd been sitting at the twin desks that took up most of the space in Mickey's study and Nessa had suddenly said, ‘What if we lose all this, Mickey? What if we fail?'

Mickey had looked up, surprised. ‘We'll manage,' she said. ‘We'll recoup what we can and think of something else to sell. Don't worry, folk are forever needing things, aren't they? We'll work out what and give it to them. Now, stop fretting and get on to Prague and see what they're doing about the silk orchids. Should have been here two weeks ago.'

‘And do you think it's okay to call the business Paper Roses when so much of our stuff isn't made of paper at all?'

‘It's fine – it's a song title, for goodness' sake – everyone knows that. And we're famous for the paper range anyway, aren't we?
Prettiest paper flowers in the world
 … Look, it says so, right here in this catalogue! Relax, why don't you? I know you find it hard.'

Nessa took a tea towel from the drawer and began drying the spoons and putting them away. She wondered what Mickey would say about this will and its implications.

‘I'll talk to Justin,' said Ellie.

‘It won't do any good. He won't let this slip out of his grasp. He's been after it for years. You've been abroad, you don't know how he's been sucking up to Constance in the last couple of years. He practically lived here. She had him running errands for her all over the place. And they were quite sickening together – darling this and sweetie that and forever kissing her and saying how beautiful she was still – that kind of thing. And, naturally, Constance saying he was beautiful too. It made me sick to my stomach listening to them sometimes.'

‘Aaah!' Ellie stabbed the air with her cigarette. ‘That's it. He knows how to talk to women. You have no idea, darling, how important it is to be told over and over again how beautiful one is. And you have to admit Justin
is
rather gorgeous. Though I'm probably not the one to be saying so, he takes after me.'

‘And I take after the person who was your husband so long ago you've practically forgotten his name.'

Tears sprang into Nessa's eyes. Her father had never been around much even when he was married to Ellie, and his early death from a
fever caught in Kenya on a business trip meant that he disappeared from his children's lives when they were both very young. No one ever asked children anything. No one consulted her and Justin about being adopted by Matt and Phyl. Even though they called their new parents by their first names, they had both taken on the Barrington surname. As it happened, Ellie's first husband's name had been Connor, which was okay but not something whose loss one would actually mourn. Unless it was yours, of course, Nessa thought, remembering how long it took her to get used to the change. Justin had loved Barrington from the very beginning. He said, ‘It's long. Long names are better than short names, aren't they?' No one contradicted him.

‘Pat Connor. You can thank him at least for your lovely colouring, dear. Black hair, white skin, green eyes. A proper Colleen.'

But not gorgeous, just about okay. A bit too thin, no tits to speak of, good hair. That's it. Justin, on the other hand, has people staring after him in the street and has done since childhood.