Kind of Cruel (32 page)

I’m not sure my eyes will stay open for much longer. I need to sleep. If Simon would only leave, I know I’d be able to black out for at least an hour, curled up on this lumpy floral sofa. I am not allowing myself to hope that I might sleep better here, at Hilary’s house, than I do at home. I don’t know where the idea came from, and I’ve been trying to push it out of my mind ever since I first became aware of it lurking.

Another detail I haven’t shared with Simon: how Luke and the girls and I ended up here. I made sure to present our new living arrangements as unmysterious and self-explanatory: we’re staying with our extended family. He hasn’t queried it because it makes sense. What makes less sense is that, in spite of Hilary’s house being easily large enough to accommodate six people, she and Kirsty have temporarily relocated to Jo and Neil’s, which, as of today, is even more problematically not-big-enough-for-the-people-in-it than it was before.

It was the only way. I’m trying not to think about how it happened, because it terrifies me. It makes no sense; it made none while it was happening, and yet everyone present, including me, knew what was coming and greeted it as if it were an old familiar friend when it arrived. We are all so used to the madness; no one is thrown by it. As soon as we were alone, I said to Luke, ‘This is beyond irrational.’ ‘I’m not complaining,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a big house all to ourselves for as long as we need it, and it’s on the school bus route. Count yourself lucky we didn’t end up at Jo’s. Would have been a nightmare.’

That was when it hit me: we might all be used to it, but I am the only one who thinks of it as ‘the madness’.

It should never have felt inevitable that we would end up at Jo’s. It scares me that Luke doesn’t see this as plainly as I do. She tried to insist we move in with them; it was the first thing out of her mouth, before ‘Are you all okay?’ We could have said, ‘No, thank you.’ Instead, we ummed and ahhed and tried tentatively to suggest that having us all descend on her might not be the best thing for her. We appealed to her self-interest and nothing else.

Because there is nothing else.

She told us not to be ridiculous, that she’d love to have us all to stay, and started talking about special beds that pull out of fat-armed chairs, with properly sprung mattresses. I wasn’t really listening. I was trying to alter something in my brain in order to make it possible for me to say yes without wanting to die. Did I wonder how Luke felt, or was that later? I knew he wouldn’t be keen on the cramped conditions at Jo’s, or on living with his dad for the first time in twenty-five years, but was it any more than that for him? I couldn’t face asking him how he feels about Jo, and still can’t. He would want to know why I was asking, turn the question back on me.

Hilary saved us. She said, ‘I’ve got a better idea, Jo. Why don’t Kirsty and I move in here for a few weeks? You and Kirsty would be able to spend more time together, which would do wonders for both of you, and Amber, Luke and the girls could move into our house and—’

‘Thank you,’ I said before she’d finished. ‘That would be so kind of you, Hilary. Are you sure you don’t mind?’ She didn’t answer straight away. I worried I’d misunderstood, but how could I have? There had been nothing ambiguous about her suggestion. That’s when I noticed that everyone was looking at Jo. Everyone: Luke, Neil, Hilary, Sabina, Quentin, Dinah and Nonie. William and Barney were upstairs asleep. Part of me was surprised Jo hadn’t woken them too; the family meeting could have been better attended, the room fuller. Quentin, Hilary and Sabina had all been summoned from their beds for no reason that I could understand. Hilary had had to wake a neighbour to look after Kirsty while she went out. Ritchie, Jo’s brother, had been invited but had pleaded illness. He had an upset stomach.

‘Brilliant, Mum!’ Jo grinned. ‘Perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.’

Did Hilary sense that I was desperate not to stay at Jo’s but too afraid to say so? Was she saving me, knowingly?

‘Amber? Are you awake?’
Simon’s voice
.

My eyelids are as heavy as concrete. I force them open. ‘The answer to that question will always be yes. I don’t have any other answers, apart from the ones I’ve already given you.’

‘You’re better at answering questions than anyone I’ve ever interviewed,’ Simon says gravely. ‘That’s why I’ve got more, because you’ve told me so much. Does that make sense?’

Yes
. I’m too exhausted to try to formulate unnecessary words.

‘Your sister-in-law, Johannah. Jo. You say you told her before she stood in for you on the DriveTech course that she had to remember all the details to tell you later. Why was it so important to you to have those details?’

‘I was supposed to have been there. I knew what Jo and I were doing was . . . well, I don’t think it was wrong, actually – I don’t think it matters in the grand scheme of things if people lie about going on pointless courses that are a waste of everyone’s time – but I knew it was illegal. Officially, it was supposed to be me on that course, and it wasn’t, but at least if I knew exactly what had happened, if I could feel as if I’d been there . . .’ I shake my head impatiently, sick of my longwinded justification. ‘Self-deception is the short answer,’ I say.

‘And Jo, when you told her you wanted to know about the course in microscopic detail, she didn’t query it, didn’t wonder why?’

‘No. I think she assumed I’d need something to say, in case people asked me how it went.’

Is he dissatisfied with my explanation? It’s hard to tell. There’s something critical about the set of his features even when he’s dispensing praise.

‘You described Jo as being “addicted to the moral high ground”. Why would she agree to do something illegal that she herself thinks is wrong?’

‘She’s equally addicted to power. If she sacrifices her . . . moral purity as a massive favour to me, I owe her one.’ I chew my lip, unhappy with my answer. It’s true, but there’s so much more to it than that. ‘She’s often vicious to me, but . . . quickly, almost like a subliminal flash of nastiness, over before I know it. And she’s never quite horrible enough, or for long enough. I never feel I can prove it. I’ve started to wonder recently if it could be deliberate.’

‘How do you mean?’ Simon asks.

‘A tactic. She reels you in by doing more for you than anyone could ever expect: sacrificing more, cooking more, saving you from all bad things. Then, when she’s got you close enough and trusting again, she aims another killer jab at your soul.’

‘Go on.’

Really?
He must be a masochist.

I have official permission to say some of the things I spend my life trying not to say. ‘She should either do what she can to help me, without trying to make me feel guilty, or not help me because it’s against her principles. One or the other. I didn’t ask her to go on the DriveTech course for me. She offered. I should have said no. I’d have lost my licence for a bit. So what? Some of the oldest points on it are due to come off soon anyway. Sorry, Jo, but you don’t get to do the evil deed and still pass yourself off as the virtuous one. If it’s so terribly wrong, don’t do it unless what you really want is to be seen performing a grand gesture, so much greater a sacrifice because you
doubly
disapprove. You disapprove of my willingness to break the law by having you stand in for me on the course, and you disapprove of my reason for not going on it myself.’
Damn
. I seem to be yelling at Simon as if he were Jo. How embarrassing. ‘Sorry,’ I mutter under my breath.

Why do I find it easier to free-associate in a police interview than in a hypnotherapy clinic? Perhaps Simon Waterhouse can cure my insomnia.

‘Carry on,’ he says. I decide that he would make a good therapist. Not demanding that I design a staircase, that’s the secret of his success.

‘Jo got exactly what she wanted out of the situation. She got to bear the burden of my sin, like Jesus or something, and pass herself off as a saint. She wasn’t doing it for me. She made that clear. I would have deserved everything I got. Dinah and Nonie were the innocents who couldn’t be allowed to suffer . . .’ – I make quote marks in the air with my fingers – ‘. . . “any more than they already have”.’

‘She said that?’

I nod, pleased that he thinks it worthy of special notice. Ever so subtly, Jo placed me in the same category as Sharon’s murderer and portrayed herself as Dinah and Nonie’s rescuer.

Simon is looking at me, waiting.

‘I need to be able to drive the girls around,’ I explain. ‘To friends’ houses, horse-riding, ice-skating . . . just about everything. For their sake, Jo allowed herself to be morally compromised. It’s always for someone else’s sake. A few years ago, I confided in her about something, asked her to keep it from Luke. Something I’d done.’

Why are you telling him this?

I’m not. Describing how Jo responded to the secret and revealing the secret are two different things.

‘I didn’t know Jo as well then as I do now, otherwise I’d never have told her. I was still dazzled by her good side. She agreed not to say anything – for Luke’s sake, on that occasion. And I’m expected to be grateful to her for being willing to sacrifice her pristine moral integrity because she cares so much about whoever I’m currently failing. Sorry if none of this makes sense.’

‘It makes sense.’ Simon, writing in his notebook, shifts in the green wing-back chair. Torn threads of its fabric rest on his shoulder like skinny green fingers. Most of Hilary’s furniture has an air of house-clearance-sale about it. She is too busy looking after Kirsty to think about furniture. In spite of its disrepair – cracked and flaking paint on the windows, pieces of coloured stained glass missing from the panel above the front door – it’s a lovely house.
Especially when the alternative is Jo’s.

‘You know what really gets me?’ I say. ‘Jo could have told Luke what I asked her not to tell him. What was stopping her? She kept saying
I
had to tell him, laid such a guilt trip on me about how she hated lying to him that it took me more than a year to notice that, hate it or not, she was doing it anyway. If not telling someone something they’d want to know counts as lying.’ I sigh, close my eyes, force them open. ‘When I said I wasn’t going to tell Luke, ever, it was as if Jo didn’t hear me. She just kept saying I had to tell him, and the reason she gave over and over again was herself: for as long as we were colluding to keep it from him, she was morally compromised.’

Simon is frowning. ‘You say she kept quiet for Luke’s sake, but if she tried to persuade you to tell him . . .’

‘Yes, for his sake: he deserved to hear it from me, he deserved my confession. Translation: she wanted trouble for me that I couldn’t accuse her of directly causing. That’s why she didn’t put her so-called principles into practice and tell Luke. Morally compromised! As if otherwise she wouldn’t be, as if, without my murky secret staining her soul, she’d be free of sin! Funny that she doesn’t seem to think being obnoxious to me whenever she feels like it affects her moral status at all.’

‘Playing devil’s advocate for a minute – didn’t you put her in a difficult situation by confiding in her? If you knew she wouldn’t be happy about participating in a deception . . .’

‘I needed someone to talk to. I thought she was my friend.’ I rub the hollows under my eyes with my fingers. They feel too deep, too tender. ‘Isn’t there something admirable about accepting that other people’s messes have fuck all to do with you and resisting the urge to cast yourself in the leading role, as judge? Accepting that your thoughts and actions are ethically irrelevant, because it’s not
your
dilemma, giving someone else’s morality room to breathe, even if it’s . . . questionable?’

She turned out to be right, though, didn’t she? You told her it wouldn’t matter, but it did.

I wonder if Jo felt morally compromised at Little Orchard, when she forced Neil out of bed in the middle of the night and refused to explain why they had to take William and Barney and disappear. I’d bet all the money I have that she didn’t; since the need for secrecy originated with her rather than with me, wrongness can’t have been involved.

‘I don’t suppose you want to tell me what this secret was?’ Simon asks.

‘I’d tell you if it were relevant to anything. Trust me, it isn’t.’

‘You said Jo disapproved of your reason for not going on the DriveTech course yourself?’

‘I was planning to, until Terry Bond phoned me.’ From one upsetting story to another, without a break. It would be rude to groan. None of this is Simon’s fault.

‘Terry Bond as in former landlord of the Four Fountains pub?’

I nod. ‘He’s in Truro now, but we talk from time to time. He rang to tell me his restaurant was finally open. He’d wanted to open months ago, but there were various setbacks. He’d organised a buffet lunch to celebrate, sort of like a launch party. He said he had to have me there or it wouldn’t be worth doing. It was the same day as the DriveTech course and very short notice, but . . . I couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to say no.’

Simon waits for me to go on.

‘He needed me there.’ I would probably be crying if my eyes had any moisture left in them, if lack of sleep hadn’t dried it all up. ‘Because of everything that had happened with Sharon and because . . . I’m important to him in my own right. And for the sake of a bullshit driving course . . .’