The Darkest Secret (13 page)

‘I can't sleep.'

Joaquin stands at the top of the stairs, rubbing his eyes.

Claire glances at the clock. It's gone ten. The men look up for a moment and go back to shouting at each other. Linda doesn't shift on her perch on the kitchen island in among them, like a little pixie statue, smoking a Vogue and flicking the ash into the sink.

Maria clicks across the marble floor. ‘Hello, darling,' she says. ‘Why aren't you in bed?'

‘You're making such a racket,' he says, ‘I can't sleep.'

Maria trots up the stairs. Scoops him up and carries him out of sight. The third downstairs visit tonight. Joaquin's been once already and the twins, together, hand-holding on the brink of disaster at the top of the stairs until she swooped up there and grabbed them. Claire doesn't doubt for a second that they'll be back soon enough.

‘Maybe we should move through,' she says, vaguely. ‘We
are
making a lot of noise.'

‘Through to where?' asks Charlie, crushingly. He's always been crushing to her, Charlie Clutterbuck. No man so short of stature should have been able to master looking down his nose at women the way he does. She doesn't know if his dislike is related to some residual loyalty to Heather, whether he simply despises her on a personal level or if it's a simple gender thing, but she has no desire to find out. His pupils are like pencil tips and the smile is frozen back from his teeth, no humour in it, though he probably thinks he looks as if he's having a great time. Maybe I should do a line, she thinks. That's the trouble with cocaine. It's really unbearable being around people who are doing it when you're not. It's like being a dog surrounded by wolves.

He gestures expansively at the open-plan room. No doors to cut off noise, nothing soft to soak it up. It looks like hell. Scattered with discarded glasses and ashtrays, shoes on their sides, empty bottles under furniture. The kitchen table, that great slab of polished cherry wood, is a mess of half-empty plates and half-drained wine glasses. I'll be clearing this lot up tomorrow, she thinks. What a weekend. He complains about no nanny, but I knew when he said he didn't want a housekeeper because we wanted our privacy that it would end up like this.

‘We wouldn't have dared to get out of bed when we'd been put in it when I was little,' says Imogen. She has a lot of opinions about child-raising for someone who's never actually done it.

‘That explains a lot,' Claire says sarkily. She just can't stop herself. Really: Imogen's either forgotten everything about being a child or she's been abused into this rigid set of rules that had her threatening to take away a three-year-old's nuggets if it didn't eat its peas this afternoon.

Imogen doesn't respond. Perhaps she hasn't heard her. Her husband is, after all, making as much noise as a fire engine. ‘I see Jimmy and Linda's children understand the rules, at least,' she says.

‘Ah, we've got a technique,' says Jimmy, and waves his joint in the air like a conductor's baton.

‘What about the garden?' ventures Claire. The French doors are all open, in an attempt to air the place, get some sea breeze through the muggy atmosphere. She'd like to be out there. In the cool, on one of those sofas under the gazebo. Maybe I'll just go anyway, she thinks. It's not as though anyone's acknowledged I'm here for the past hour. Even Maria doesn't really bother talking to me any more. I'm yesterday's woman. No longer interesting now I'm not Sean's princess.

‘Is there somewhere to plug the alarms in, in the garden?' asks Imogen, looking up for a sharp moment from the lines of cocaine lined up on the island countertop. Such things you find out. She looks like such a matron on the ten o'clock news, following sternly along behind her boastful husband, but she's hoovering up the drugs like a Frankfurt whore.

Claire sighs. The alarms are lined up side by side next to the stove: one for Gavila, one for Jackson. There is no Orizio alarm. ‘We don't need one,' said Linda, smugly, as they were plugging them in. ‘They won't wake up. We've got them trained.' Claire puts an ear to her own alarm, hears her children snuffling in the dark above her. They'll be up at dawn, whatever time the adults get to bed. She feels weary to the bones just at the thought of it.

‘No,' she says, and resigns herself to a long night under the glare of the halogen spots. Linda is one of those designers who think that the point of lighting is to show up every flaw in the paintwork, every speck of dust. It's not a restful room.

 

The fish pie so carefully thought about and transported from London in a cool-box has gone largely uneaten because Charlie Clutterbuck has brought cocaine enough that the dealers of north Kennington must have been able to take the weekend off on the profits.

Claire hates Charlie Clutterbuck. If she'd met him before she had been in too deep to back out, she might have thought twice about Sean purely on the basis of the company he kept. There are lots of Sean's friends she doesn't like much, but Charlie is the worst of all: a walking stereotype of Tory manhood. High red in the face, the teeth whitened till they look like dentures, a lock of oily hair detached from the slicked-back whole and flopping over the forehead, the booming voice drowning out everything around him, the spiky wife laughing that boys-will-be-boys laugh whenever he sweeps another group of people into a heap and dismisses them. We've had Lefties and Suburbanites and Poofs and Oiks already: words he would never use in his many handrubbing vox pops on
Newsnight
but ones he's happy to scatter about when he thinks the doors are closed. It's only a matter of time before we're on to the Coons and the Towelheads, she thinks. Only a matter of time.

The lads are discussing business. More specifically, planning law, and how it impedes Sean's march towards global domination. ‘Well, I can tell you this for nothing,' says Charlie, ‘English Heritage will be having its wings clipped pronto when the election's over. Bloody lefty busybodies.'

‘Tell you another thing,' says Sean. ‘This Special Scientific Interest malarkey. I've lost literally years across my portfolio. Bloody bat-breeding sites and special sand lizards.'

Robert Gavila, partner at the law firm of Kendall, Wright and Macy, school governor, stalwart of the Wandsworth Conservatives, leans over the kitchen island and fills his nose. Stands upright at the speed of sound, licks his finger and scoops what's left on to his gums. ‘Ahhhhh!' he declares.

‘I just think it's an outrage,' says Sean, ‘that Tesco seem to get superstores waved through on a daily basis and I can't stick a garage on to a house just because it's Elizabethan.'

‘Here,' says Jimmy. ‘Have any of you lot ever tried sniffing vodka?'

 

Claire stopped drinking at eight p.m., when she realised that she and Simone were the only sober people in the house. Someone's got to be responsible, she thinks. Simone has retreated to the annexe with the laptop and a DVD of
Love, Actually
, so it's basically me. I wouldn't trust any of these people not to drop one of the babies down the stairs.

She studies her guests, one by one. The four men, three of them pudgy from their love of chateaubriand, the doctor thin in that way that suggests that forgetting-to-eat nights are a familiar concept. Jimmy's skin is pinky-grey and he has a mop of black curls in which tufts of white show his age. He laughs at everything, but the laughter has a mirthless edge. He's not really taking in anything anyone's saying, she thinks. Just laughing because he needs to show the world he's having a good time. That Linda will be moving on at some point, she thinks. She's ambitious, the way I was, back when I was a fool. Keeping her figure despite the children because she wants to keep her options open, and practising her flirtation with everybody else's husbands.

And what husbands! Kings of the world, full to the brim with self-congratulation. Hair that was once fair and is now mostly gone, tufts of wire in their ears. They come from the sort of background that insulates them from ever thinking that their good fortune might have an element of luck in it. ‘I've worked
hard
to get where I am,' they would say, to a man, if anyone suggested it, and indeed, they
have
all worked hard. They've all put in their late nights and their early mornings, done the kow-towing and the ruthless defeat of their enemies. And yet, and yet. Privilege rarely knows it's privileged. Sean is constantly bemoaning his tax bills and never seems to remember that you only pay tax on money you've received.

Charlie has suddenly got interested in the fish pie, and is eating it from the dish with a spoon, going back in for more without a thought for hygiene. He'd probably be eating it with his fingers if the spoon weren't there, she thinks. I'll have to think twice about giving the leftovers to the kids tomorrow. I bet he drinks milk straight from the carton and puts it back in the fridge, too.

Claire is used to being the sober one in the room among people who are wasted. Back in the day, it was because of the calorie content, and men never notice if you're drunk or sober, once they're gone themselves; they just assume that you're whatever they are. Sean was quite drunk when she met him at the Gavilas' Christmas party five years ago. She's wished for some time that she'd left him there.

 

She goes out to the gazebo with a glass of Montrachet. Kicks off her shoes and curls up on a sofa and tries to tune out the sounds of singing from indoors. The men have moved on to whisky and rugby songs have followed. This wasn't what I had in mind, she thinks. When I met him he couldn't do enough to impress me with his sophistication. It was all Paris Ritz and private dining rooms, though those were mostly about Heather's friends not spotting us, I suppose. And now I'm married to a fifty-year-old yob who eats with his mouth open. Be careful what you wish for, she thinks, and lets out a small sarcastic laugh, because it might well come true. I wanted money and I wanted position, and, when I saw that Sean had both, I wanted him. It serves me right, really, because he wasn't mine to have. And suddenly I'm just another woman who stole someone's husband, and nobody ever really forgives you for that, whatever they say.

She sips her wine. It's quite exquisite on the tongue. There are good things, she thinks. I must remember the good things. The cars and the houses and the guilt diamonds, and the never having to poison my liver with cheap wine again. And my girls will never want for anything. God knows, the amount of money he pours into Milly and India, the alimony that goes on and on, the school fees, the skiing trips, the bloody riding lessons, my own will never go short even if he trades me in. Maybe it would be better if he
did
trade me in. Then I could sit in the quiet and drink my wine and never have to listen to him moan about his haemorrhoids again.

She hears her name being bellowed through the open door. ‘What?' she calls.

An upstairs window at Seagulls, the genteelly dilapidated pebbledashed semi on the other side of the fence, is slammed pointedly shut. They must love us, she thinks. Six months of contractors and now this.

‘Twins are awake!' shouts Sean.

For a second she considers telling him to go and sort them out, and then she sighs. The state he's in, he'll probably drop Ruby on her head on that hard tiled floor. She puts her glass regretfully down on the table and uncurls from her comfortable nest.

‘Coming!' she calls.

 

‘God almighty,' says Charlie. ‘Do they never fucking sleep?'

‘That's our godchildren you're talking about, Charlie,' slurs Imogen.

‘Yes, but they're meant to go to sleep! It's grown-up time now!'

‘Grown-up time?' enquires Claire. Charlie is splayed out on a dining chair like a scarecrow, legs straight as broom handles, shirt stained with wine and whisky and fish pie and cigar ash, wiry grey curls creeping out around his open buttons. Robert and Maria are snogging like teenagers on a sofa. Jimmy is lying face-up on the sheepskin rug, yet another joint scattering burny flakes on to the ruined hairs beneath him. Linda is doing a dance – some cross between Bollywood and stripper – and her husband is staring at the narrow waist and bulging buttocks in her bandage dress like a Bedouin staring at a water hole. Imogen bounces Coco on her chest. She's fallen back asleep, worn out by the constant up-and-down the night has entailed, and her head flops loosely on her shoulder. Imogen flashes Claire the sort of you-see? look that makes her want to start laying about her with the fire tongs. You see? She goes to sleep for
me
. You see? I
never
have trouble getting them to eat their peas. I don't know what the fuss is about. Childcare is
easy
.

‘I suppose it's two o'clock,' says Maria. ‘We should probably turn in anyway.'

‘I just…' mumbles Charlie. ‘Oi!'

He looks up at Linda, wobbles on his chair when he sees her breasts swaying in the night-time breeze.

‘What?' She twirls, puts her hands above her head like a ballerina, kicks one hip out to the side.

‘How come your lot haven't been down?'

‘Zopiclone,' she says.

‘Zopiclone?'

‘Zopiclone.'

‘Marvellous stuff,' croaks Jimmy, from the carpet. ‘I love being a doctor.'

I wake with a start in the dark. Someone is creeping along the corridor outside my room. I hear a door open, a voice whisper, a reply, and a dim light goes on. Burglars, I think. I've got burglars. And then I remember where I am and realise that it's Claire and Ruby, getting up before daybreak like some crazy cultists. I grope for my phone on the tea chest and see that it's seven-thirty. Living the boho life in the big city, you forget that day starts late, in the winter, as well as ending early.

I lie in the dark and listen to them move about, hear water run in the bathroom, their feet tread off towards the stairs. A couple of minutes later I hear the front door close. They must have gone out to do the chores. I hope so. They can't have gone off and left me, can they? I creep up the bed, taking the duvet with me, and peep out through the curtains. The window is covered with condensation, but through a small patch I wipe with my hand I see them trudging by torchlight across the yard towards the feed shed in their wellingtons, coat hoods up against the bitter air. I don't understand the country. I can't imagine why animals need feeding in the dark. Would they thrive less if they waited a bit? Does the food lose its goodness? I crawl back down the bed. It's already cold to the touch where the duvet has come with me. I go back to sleep.

 

When I wake again it's daylight and the phone tells me it's nine o'clock. I bound from bed and hurry into clothes, strip off my bedclothes and, after thinking about it a bit, leave them folded on top of the bed. I never know whether people would prefer your dirty laundry cluttering up their living space. It seems so ostentatious to take them down, as though you're expecting congratulations for a quite basic bit of manners. I don't bother to brush my teeth. It took hours for the tap to run warm last night and I suspect I'm late already.

They're at their places at the kitchen table eating toast and honey. Claire jumps up when I come in, puts the kettle on the Aga. ‘I didn't know whether to wake you,' she says, ‘but I thought best not. I know you city people like to sleep late.'

Late? Jesus. This is practically bedtime where I come from. ‘Sorry,' I say. Late people always have to apologise to early people: it's the rules.

‘Mint tea?'

I consider asking if she has coffee, but I already know the answer. ‘No, thanks. A glass of water would be great.'

She shrugs, takes the kettle off again and fills me a glass. I sit down. There's one of those see-through cereal boxes filled with something that mostly consists of oats, and a jug of milk. I'm light-headed from sleeplessness, and starving hungry as I always am after a bout of insomnia. I reach for it.

‘Home-made muesli,' says Claire approvingly, ‘and goat's milk, fresh this morning. There's apple juice in the fridge if you want to sweeten it.'

It's too late now. I can't put it back down without being rude. I pour a dessertspoonful into a bowl and slosh strong-smelling white stuff on to it. It's still warm. And not because it's cooling down after being pasteurised, I'll warrant. ‘You must need more than that!' she says. ‘You've got a long journey ahead of you!'

Funny how people who live on sawdust always want to fill you up. My stomach growls for a bacon sandwich. Blossom probably didn't go for bacon. There's salt in bacon. ‘I'm saving room for some of that lovely toast,' I say. ‘Is it your own honey?'

‘No. Sort of. There's a beekeeper who puts his hives in the wildflower meadow for a month in the spring. He pays us with product. And of course, they do a lovely job of pollinating the vegetables.'

‘Of course,' I say. ‘How clever.'

I stir the cereal around and take a little on the end of my spoon. It doesn't seem to have soaked the milk up at all. I put it into my mouth and close my lips over it. God damn, I need to go to the dentist. Longevity shot up worldwide when they invented white bread; people got to keep their teeth. The milk tastes a bit funky, but it's not as bad as people say. The cereal, though. It coats the roof of my mouth, scrapes between my tongue and gums, doesn't seem to give under my molars at all. I catch Ruby looking at me. There's a twinkle of amusement in her eye. I gulp it down. ‘Lovely,' I say, meeting her eye and not looking away. ‘I bet it's really healthy.'

‘Fantastic for the heart,' says Claire. ‘The commercial stuff is loaded with sugar.'

‘Absolutely,' I reply. Take another teaspoonful and gnaw. In the modern world, ‘home-made' means ‘nobody would buy it twice'.

The toast is much better. The bread is firm and nutty and full of seeds and the honey is… well, honey. It still feels weird, though, eating breakfast without caffeine. It gives one a glimpse of what the dawn must have been like in the Middle Ages, and not in a good way.

‘What time do you think you ought to be off?' asks Claire.

‘Tennish? It's quite a drive.'

‘Sure.' She turns to Ruby. ‘Have you packed?'

‘Pretty much.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Mostly,' says Ruby. ‘It means mostly.'

Claire sighs the sigh of parents of teens the world over. ‘Well, you'd better go and finish, then. And get out of those old jeans. I'm not having people think I don't look after you.'

Ruby's head wobbles, and she licks honey off her fingers, one by one. ‘What should I pack for the funeral?'

‘Something black,' I say. Sean would want all the bells and whistles, I know that.

‘And some tights without any holes in them,' says Claire, ‘and some shoes that don't make you look like Bela Lugosi.'

She turns to me as Ruby lollops away. ‘You will look after her, won't you?'

‘I'll do my best, Claire.' How can I promise? People make promises so lightly. I don't want to be one of those people who make promises and break them.

‘Because she looks all right, I know, but she's really not. She's pulled herself together because you're here, but I doubt she'll be able to keep it up. She's only fifteen. And those people…'

The sentence drifts away to nothing. I think back to Dad's friends: bluff, boastful, snobbish Charlie Clutterbuck; that sharp-faced Imogen, who never gave you a moment's attention if she didn't think you were useful, or if her husband was ignoring you. All those glad-handers and hangers-on, and the men who laugh too loudly in restaurants, the women whose faces can no longer move, odd weirdos like Jimmy Orizio leering blearily down your top from the sidelines; Simone…

‘Robert and Maria will be there,' I remind her.

Claire wrinkles her nose as if she's smelled ammonia. ‘Oh, God, those two.'

‘I thought they'd stayed in touch?'

‘Well, what was I meant to do? They were the only godparents who showed the remotest interest. All the others, all
those people
' – the words come from her mouth as though she's spitting them – ‘couldn't have got themselves further away. Once I'd cut myself loose. But there wasn't a single person from then still in our lives. Not a single grown-up she'd known since she was little. She'd lost everything. What was I meant to do? Leave her with one single present under the tree at Christmas?'

‘They always seemed okay to me.'

‘Relatively,' she says. ‘Relatively.'

‘Yeah, maybe,' I say. ‘At least they're not psychopaths.'

‘I guess. Small mercies.'

I think about it. ‘Claire,' I ask, ‘what happened to
your
friends from before?'

You know, it's only just occurred to me. I know nothing about Claire from before she met my father. Their house was always full, they were always on their way out to dinner or drinks or some reception thing, but it was always
his
friends. All those people who didn't bother to keep up with my mum, who just carried on as normal as though the wives were just a bit of background scenery, providers of food and clean bed linen like an elevated housekeeper. They were all there, all the time, and with Linda too. It's as though marriage to my father came with a no-baggage clause.

Claire sighs again. ‘You know what? I've asked myself that over and over again. I mean it, it's not like I didn't
have
any. I don't really know what happened. But your father was so – full on, you know? He filled up every little corner and somehow there was never the time for my friends, or they wouldn't fit with the people he wanted to see, or he would turn up at the last minute with a helicopter and a booking at the Paris Ritz, and reminding him that we'd got something set up already would upset him so much, like I didn't love him enough.'

I nod. Nothing got in the way of Sean Jackson's whims, not ever. The weekend when Coco disappeared was just one of dozens where he ‘forgot' about our access visits. We always blamed Claire, of course. Wouldn't you?

‘I was blind, and stupid,' she says. ‘He said his whole life had started when he met me, and I believed him. He said we should both be as though nothing had come before us, and I thought that sounded like romance, even though somehow he never actually acted on his own words. And you know… most people don't like it if you turn back up years later being needy when you've not had time for their lives in between,' she continues. ‘They tend to take it badly, especially after… you know… I'd been in the papers so much. But there have been some. People who just came back without my asking. Tiberius. I hadn't seen him since I was twenty-three and he didn't seem to care at all. But there aren't many, no.'

And you were too scared to make more, I think. I get it. Once you've been public property you're never really sure of other people again. There were a couple of girls in my school year who were suddenly all over me when I went back after that summer holiday and all the rest of them were giving me the cold shoulder. Their gleeful curiosity, their sugary sympathy, was worse than all the awkward silences put together. India and I both failed our exams that year. Indy didn't go up to university until she was twenty.

‘I —' says Claire, ‘please keep an eye on her, that's all. People seem to assume that she's robust because of the way she looks, but she's vulnerable. She really is.'

‘I get it,' I say.

‘Can you – can I give you her medications? I just… You know. Responsible adult and all that?'

‘Medications?'

‘It's okay,' she says. ‘It's mostly supplements. A multivitamin and fish oil and ginseng and goji berries.'

I feel my eyebrows start to rise and my eyes begin to roll, and hurriedly suppress it. It's her thing. It's how she shows her care. Let her have that. She's not the monster you knew back then.

‘And an antidepressant,' she says, and blushes scarlet. Shame burns off her from across the table. All that care, all that control, and still my kid's fucked up. I have failed, and now I have to share it with the kid I fucked up before.

I keep my voice even, endeavour to hide my surprise. ‘Oh, poor love,' I say. ‘What's she taking?'

‘Sertraline. It's a serotonin adjuster. It's not a cosh. She's not psychotic or anything. She just has a chemical imbalance.'

She's beginning to sound defensive. I throw her a bone. ‘I took that for a while. It's good stuff.'

Claire gives me a funny look. Part relief, part – guilt? Really?

‘Life is a tough old bugger.' I'm not there yet with, you know, patting her hand or anything, but a bit of kindness never did any harm. ‘Whatever gets you through.'

‘I'm sorry,' she says, trying to meet my eye. ‘I guess I must have played a part in that.'

I brush the remark away. I'm not so evolved that I can go from years of contempt to forgiveness overnight.

 

Ruby clomps back down the stairs with a bag on her shoulder. She's changed into cobweb-patterned tights, one of those tube skirts in a giant houndstooth check and a striped matelot shirt with an off-the-shoulder sloppy joe over the top. It all very eighties. She carries a pair of battered boots with three-inch heels. No fear of being taller than the boys for our Ruby. I kind of admire her for that.

‘Right,' she says.

‘Have you got your inhaler?' asks Claire.

‘Yes.'

‘Blue one
and
brown one?'

‘Yes.'

‘Rescue Remedy?'

‘Yes.'

‘Antihistamines?'

‘Yes.'

‘Eumovate?'

‘Yes, Mum,' she says in that ‘that's enough' voice. She must be tired of thinking about her allergies, if that list is anything to go by.

‘I'm sorry,' says Claire. ‘I can't help worrying.'

‘I'll be fine, Mama,' she says. ‘I promise.'

‘You've got your phone and your charger?'

She has her back turned, and allows herself an eye roll. ‘Yes.'

‘And you'll call me, won't you? Let me know how you're getting on? Every day? I'll come and get you if you need me to, you know that, don't you?' Claire's brow is furrowed with worry. ‘I'm so sorry I can't come. I wish I could. But I just can't. You do understand, don't you, darling?'

Ruby turns round and flings her arms around her mother, envelops her small body in the bounty of her bosom. ‘It's all right, Mummy,' she says. ‘It's okay. I'll be fine. Really. Please don't worry.'

After a few seconds I realise that Claire is crying. Ruby holds her, strokes her hair, soothes her like an infant. ‘It'll be okay. You will be okay. Don't be scared. You'll be fine. You'll be okay. I'll be home soon. Don't be scared.'

 

We load the car up and set off not long behind schedule. Ruby winds the window down and waves a hand until we round the corner. I watch Claire in the rear-view, standing in the yard, her cardi wrapped tight around her. She cuts a solitary figure, frail and lonely. After all these years of hating her, now I feel sorry for her.