The Darkest Secret (11 page)

People often use animal metaphors when they're describing teenage girls. It's not that surprising: with the long legs and the big eyes, you can't help thinking of deer and fawns and cats when you see them. A group of Year 12s who'd found their way into a gallery show I was at recently, swaying on giddy heels in micro shift dresses, looked to me exactly like a small herd of giraffe gazing over the Serengeti.

Ruby looks like a yearling foal. A Clydesdale yearling. She clops into the room on momentous platform wedges, reels to a halt, snorts and tosses her mane. Okay, so I made up the bit about snorting, but the rest is accurate. When she sees that I am alone she panics for a second, backs off a couple of paces and does a clumsy gavotte.

‘Oh,' she says, ‘hello.'

I unfurl myself and get to my feet. She towers over me. In those shoes she's a good couple of inches over the six-foot mark. ‘Hi,' I say.

She gives me an uncertain attempt at a smile, reveals heavy braces on both sets of teeth. Exactly the same ones both Indy and I had to suffer through, though hers are a disconcerting shade of swimming-pool blue. ‘You're Milly.'

‘I am.'

‘You look… different.'

‘So do you.'

And then some. Last time I saw Ruby she barely came up to my hip. They were stunted little pixie creatures then, all Cupid's bow lips and soft blonde hair that fell constantly into their big blue eyes. Really, Coco was the ideal kidnap victim for the tabloid press. She personified all the fantasies white people no longer admit to about what their children might look like. I would never, in a million years, have predicted that one of those eerie little doppelgängers would grow up to look like this. Nor, it seems, would the age-progression artists who did the poster of a thirteen-year-old Coco for the tenth anniversary.

Ruby is what they call strapping. Nearly six feet tall, with shoulders that could carry a beam across a building site and hands and feet that suggest that there's more growing to come. They may have taken after their mother when they were little, but there's no question who she takes after now. And her hair is black. Synthetic black, obviously, with a hard-cut fringe and pink – bright pink, the sort of pink you find on gynaecological doodads – tips draped over her shoulders. Her skin is pale – not snow-pale but the pale of risen dough – and caked in a layer of clumsily applied foundation, and her cheeks are round with puppy fat. Her mouth is still the same, though: a perfect Cupid's bow, strikingly rich in colour in contrast with her face. Above the platforms, she wears black leggings and a black jersey dress, and a cardi that must have cost a fair few quid on Etsy, so covered is it in small crêpe appliqué roses. And she rattles as she moves. There must be ten, fifteen bracelets strung up her arms, a couple of ankle bracelets, four or five necklaces, half a dozen earrings and a nose ring. Her eyes, still blue, have been outlined in wobbly black eyeliner. She looks a sight. And I love her immediately.

She hovers in the doorway. Eventually, she says, ‘Thank you for coming.'

‘That's okay,' I reply. ‘I guess in the end we're the only ones who really understand, aren't we?'

Ruby's chin wobbles and I see that she's very much not okay. That the make-up has been put on for my benefit, to hide the fact that the eyes are red-rimmed and the skin on the upper parts of her cheeks is roughened by salt. Oh, poor kid, I think, and feel a sudden urge to cry myself. Don't, Mila, I think. You're the grown-up here.

‘How did you hear about it?' I ask.

‘Godmother Maria rang,' she says.

‘I'm so sorry, Ruby.'

A patch of red appears on her throat, beneath the necklaces. She squirms in the doorway, wrings her hands.

‘I need to feed the chickens before it gets dark,' she announces, and flees.

 

The tea is a brackish minty swill in a pot that doesn't seem to strain. Bits of half-hydrated herb float at the top of my mug, surrounded by little oily halos. I take a taste and it's acrid like nail varnish remover. ‘I don't suppose you've got any sugar, have you?' I ask.

Claire looks surprised that I should ask such a question. ‘Um, no, sorry,' she says. ‘I've got honey, if you like? I keep a hive. Still can't guarantee they're not getting to GM plants, of course, but it's better than nothing.'

Ah. So the control issues haven't gone away; just transformed. No more trailing round Knightsbridge looking for a suitable manicurist; now it's sugar-is-the-devil and is-that-phosphate-free? Typical Paranoid/Histrionic. Clearly has an OCD in there, to boot. She goes back to the kitchen and returns with a jam jar half filled with honey.
HONEY
, proclaims the label on the outside. I wonder if she has a label on her toothbrush reading
TOOTHBRUSH
.

‘Would you like a slice of toast?' she asks. ‘We don't have biscuits, I'm afraid.'

Of course you don't. Some things never change. I well remember those long, hungry afternoons after a salad lunch. I bet you don't make butter from that goat, either. God knows what you use for fats. The toast will be dry, most likely. There will be no more biscuits after the zombie apocalypse.

‘No, thanks,' I say, and silently regret having bought only one of those tartlets.

 

Ruby comes back in after dark, face flushed with the cold, unwinding a scarf from around her neck. ‘I've done the hens and the pigs and the donkeys,' she says.

‘Oh, thank you, darling,' says Claire.

Ruby goggles at me as though she'd been hoping I would have disappeared while she was out. ‘Tea?' asks Claire.

She pulls a face. ‘No, thanks.'

‘Come and talk to us.'

A micro-expression that looks like fear, then she comes over to Roughage's sofa and plonks herself down. The dog lets out a little squeak, then leans his chin on Ruby's thigh. Gazes at me.

‘So what are you doing with yourself now, Milly?' asks Claire.

‘Mila,' I say. ‘I'm a designer.' I always say I'm a designer. You say you're an artist and everyone immediately thinks ‘Trustafarian'. Say you don't do anything much and they look as if their heads are about to come off with the effort of trying to think of the next question. And besides, I
have
done a few logos for my friends' various businesses. Mostly importing knick-knacks and sustainable clothing from places they think of as spiritual, like Indonesia, or things to do with hemp. God, I despise my friends.

‘A designer!' she says. ‘What sort of design?'

‘Oh, you know,' I say airily. ‘Corporate branding, logos and the like, mostly. And labels. I'm good at labels.'

I could do you a few labels, I think. You certainly use them enough.

‘Oh, great,' she says. ‘You always were creative. Are you with a company?'

‘Self-employed,' I tell her. See the ‘ah' cross her face. Oh, well. I never really wanted to impress you anyway, Claire. You're just a secretary who shagged my father.

‘Ruby wants to go to art school,' she says.

Ruby blushes.

‘Art's your thing, is it?' I ask.

‘I like it,' she says. ‘I don't know if I'm any good or not.'

‘Oh, pooh,' says Claire. ‘She got an A at GCSE last year. And English, and French.'

‘Wow.' Where did
those
brains come from? ‘Where's school?'

‘Oh, I don't go to school,' she says.

‘I home-school her.'

‘
Home
school? I thought that was for Christians and stuff? Have you gone Christian? How do you square it with the council?'

I realise once it's out of my mouth that I've been blurting. Claire looks slightly annoyed. ‘Quite easily,' she says. ‘I'd have thought that three GCSEs at fourteen wasn't a
bad
reflection of whether it works, wouldn't you?'

‘And I go to tutors for the things she doesn't do,' says Ruby. ‘I do maths and physics in Lewes and philosophy in Hove.'

‘Yes,' says Claire, and raises an eyebrow.

But don't you worry, I want to ask, that she's going to end up completely handicapped, stuck up this hill with you going on about additives and nobody else to talk to? Because trust me – she's not going to make friends talking about Wittgenstein until she's at least seventeen, and then only in a six-month window.

‘She goes to the youth club in the village,' says Claire, as though she's heard my thoughts. ‘And people have her over all the time. And we go out, a
lot
. To galleries and the theatre and the cinema and such.'

Ruby's eyes flick between me and her mother repeatedly. But she doesn't say anything. I decide to change the subject. ‘So when did you move here?'

Claire breathes, goes with the change. ‘When Ruby was five. We went to Spain for a year, but… you know. It was lovely and sunny, and people left us alone, but it felt like being in exile.'

You
are
in exile, I think. You're still hidden away where no one can find you, sticking to a tiny village where the big house clearly rules the roost. ‘And then Tiberius saved us. Literally,' she continues. ‘I knew him when we were young, and he tracked me down at my lowest point. It was a complete lifeline, this place. I don't know what I'd have done without it. He said he was having trouble letting it because of its position. I'd been thinking about Wales at that point. Somewhere in Snowdonia or something. Where it's cheap. But here is better. I don't want Ruby growing up with no access to the world, even if I
don't
send her to school.'

There's an edge to this last remark. I guess I know what she means, really. My last three years at school were fairly much a living hell, after the Coco thing; every experimentation with the way I looked resulting in a trip to the counsellor, people's parents shying away from having me over because – I don't know what? Scared I'd steal their younger children? Or scared I'd find their copies of the
Sunday Times
lying around, with its lengthy editorials about me and my family?

‘Anyway,' she says, ‘I must get on with supper. We eat early around here. Go to bed early, get up early. It's the healthy way to live. Are you sure I can't tempt you to a glass of rhubarb wine?'

 

Me and Ruby alone again. She scratches the back of Roughage's neck and Roughage grunts approvingly.

‘She just wants to keep me safe,' she says. ‘The Coco thing – she's scared, you know? She doesn't want to lose me too.'

I take my time about answering and my eyes drift over to the Coco wall. A lock of blonde hair tied up in a ribbon. A battered Barbie that looks as though she's had her face chewed off. A christening shawl, framed and hanging on the wall beside the shelves. Handprints in a lump of plaster of Paris. She's not got over it, not at all. How could one?

‘Modern food is full of nasty stuff,' says Ruby, as though she's reciting a mantra. ‘People get cancer from it all the time. She's just looking out for us.'

It's a modern disease, this neurosis about being poisoned by your food. We've never had a diet this healthy, food so readily available, medicines so effective, and people are giving their kids rickets by deciding they're lactose intolerant. Has Ruby been deprived of all the vaccinations too?

‘It's fine,' I say. ‘As long as you're happy.'

She doesn't reply, just bends down and kisses Roughage's snout repeatedly. Jesus. I wouldn't let my face anywhere near those teeth if I were her.

‘How are you feeling about this weekend?' I ask.

She sits up and looks at me again. ‘I don't know.'

‘It's going to be tough.'

‘I know that. But I want to do it.'

‘I've got to do the eulogy,' I tell her. ‘Can you help me with that?'

She brightens. ‘Of course!'

‘Some – an anecdote or two, maybe? Something a bit poetic about how you felt about him?'

‘Feel,' she corrects, and her face starts to crumple again. Oh, Ruby, I think. What am I meant to do? You so clearly need a cuddle, need someone to put their arms round you and tell you it'll be okay, and I'm so not the person to do that for you. And nor is your mother.

‘Are you packed?' I ask. ‘We should get off at a decent hour. It'll take five hours or so, plus finding the place.'

‘Finding the place? Don't you know where it is?'

‘I know the
address
,' I say.

‘Haven't you been?'

‘No. I – Simone, you know…'

She look surprised, then relieved. ‘Oh. I thought it was just me,' she says, and looks away.

‘No,' I tell her, ‘not just you.'

 

Supper is pork chops with kale and quinoa. ‘I didn't ask if you still ate meat,' says Claire, and places a glass of rhubarb wine firmly by my tablemat. The table is long and sturdy, a big lump of roughly hewn something that would be quite beautiful if you could see it. But it's piled high with stuff. Papers and unopened envelopes and tools and folded clothes and shopping bags full of empty jars and a couple of dozen schoolbooks. She's cleared an extra space for me by shifting some things up, put a couple of candles on saucers in between us all in an attempt to make it look pretty. The kitchen surfaces are cluttered too. There's a space a foot square by the stove where I guess she crams in a chopping board. When she opens a cupboard to get me the salt I see her automatically put a hand up into it to stop the contents cascading on to her face. On the fridge, more childish drawings, held on with magnets, yellow with age and curled at the edges.

‘Thank you,' I say, ‘I love meat.'

‘This one was Blossom,' says Ruby, with a gloomy glee.

‘I told you not to give them names,' says Claire. ‘Haven't I always told you not to?'