The Darkest Secret (2 page)

 

P3 WITNESS STATEMENT

 

P4 WITNESS STATEMENT

He waits while she pulls up her dress, then helps with the zip. In the grey dawn light she looks washed out, her blonde hair brassy rather than rich, her forehead shiny from too many preservative treatments. But still: better than the woman almost ten years her junior who's stormed off across the lawns ahead of them. Sean suddenly feels every year of his five decades. I'm going to have the hangover from hell in a few hours, he thinks. And I bet Claire won't give me a hall pass just because it's my birthday.

‘Shit,' says Linda. ‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.'

Absently, he reaches out and kneads the muscles at the back of her neck. They're tense, like granite. He's sure they weren't like that when he had his hand there ten minutes ago. Claire spoils everything.

‘It'll be okay,' he says.

She rounds on him, her eyes narrowed, but still not a line to be seen on the shiny, shiny skin above. ‘
How
will it be okay, Sean? Go on. Tell me. What, you think she's going to keep this to herself? Think she's going to just meekly ignore this? She'll be on to her lawyers before they've even opened. You'd better check out your pre-nup, because you're going to need it to be watertight.'

Sean sits down on the nearest sun-lounger. ‘Maybe it's for the best,' he says ruminatively.

‘Best for who?' she snaps.

‘For… well, it's not as if we stood a hope in hell. I can't even remember why I married her. I'm just sorry about the kids, that's all. They deserve better than this. And, you know, if it all comes out, you and I…'

She starts back, her mouth open in surprise. ‘You and I
what
?'

He gapes back. ‘I thought…'

‘What? That this was some sort of… middle-aged
Romeo and Juliet
thing? You didn't think that, did you?'

‘Well, no.' He lets out a short, nasty laugh, salving his dignity. ‘Hardly
Romeo and Juliet
, but…'

‘Oh, Christ,' she says. ‘I'm married, Sean.'

‘Not exactly,' he says, and tries his naughty-little-boy smile on her. ‘And so am I.'

The disgust in the look she gives back is more eloquent than any words.

‘Okay,' he says. ‘Well, at least I know where I stand.'

‘Oh, don't come the wounded soldier with me. It won't work. Come on. We'd better get back. I need to get to my
common-law
husband and father of my children before
she
does.'

She bends to retrieve her strappy gold sandal, lost in the heat of the moment and lying on its side beneath a stone urn that weeps lobelia. It's an exact colour match for the lace from which her dress is made. Sean is constantly amazed by the time and concentration the women he lives among put into these things, trawling from shop to shop, twisting and turning themselves in full-length mirrors and frowning as though on their decision rests the very secret of the universe. Some part of him admires it – he wouldn't be drawn to these high-maintenance women if he didn't – but as he ages he is beginning to long for simplicity; for an artless creature who holds these fol-de-rols in lower regard and him as a man in higher. ‘Shit, it's broken,' she says, and stares mournfully at a piece of gilted leather that flaps uselessly in the damp air. ‘Five hundred quid, for God's sake.'

‘Happy birthday, Seanie,' he says, contemplatively.

‘Oh, lord,' she says. ‘Honestly, you men.'

She pulls off her other shoe and sets off ahead of him across the lawn, stepping where Claire has stepped only minutes before. Sean sighs and falls into step behind her. ‘Don't just follow me,' she hisses over her shoulder. ‘Go for a walk or something. We don't want to be walking back in together. Maybe I can head her off, if it's just me.'

I very much doubt that, he thinks. ‘D'you think there's any point?'

‘Yes! Look, your marriage might be fucked, but that doesn't mean mine has to go down with it. Go on!'

She gestures to her right, to the slope down to the front gate and the ferry road. Sean shrugs and peels off.

It probably is a good thing, in the end, he thinks as he trudges in his dew-damp shirt, a lock of the thick sandy hair of which he is so proud broken loose from its gel coating and flopping into one eye. It's not something I'm proud of, but I'd rather be the bad guy than drop her because she's nasty. And she is. I can't think how I didn't see it before it was too late.

‘Got to stop thinking with your todger, Seanie, old boy,' he says out loud into the silent air. It's not as though it's ever a rewarding way to go. Women like that can only keep up the performance for so long. Once they've got the legal papers, the blow-jobs dry up and the headaches begin. My God, he thinks, I didn't even get a birthday treat this year, and it's a Big Birthday. You'd have thought at the very least she could have put in a bit of effort today. No wonder I'm forced to look elsewhere.

The gazebo is filled with party detritus. Discarded champagne glasses lie on their sides on the table and three empty bottles of Bolly sit in a row down the side of the sofa. There's a half-smoked Cohiba in the ashtray from earlier and he picks it up and lights it as he passes, to keep him company as he walks. It makes him feel a bit sleazy, doing that, but sleazy suits his current mood quite well.

He decides to go and investigate the works in progress at Seawings. Even when he finds himself in a Situation, Sean can never resist a good building site, and his dealings with the Poles who are working this one haven't been cordial enough so far to allow him a good poke around. He slips out through the gates of Harbour View and hurries into the shadow of the digger parked on the shared driveway. Though he's not doing anything much wrong, just a little light trespassing, he doesn't really want to be seen doing it at five in the morning, for there will be little he can say to explain it away.

A small crane sits on the house side of the digger, the long chain with its spider arms already unwound and draped up the slope ready to be attached to the holes in the lip of the pool liner. The liner has been inverted like a dome to keep out the rain that hasn't come. He clambers up in his formal shoes, leather soles slippy in the sandy mud, and inspects it. It's a good solid thing, though the blue Perspex it's made of is far thicker and heavier than is really necessary to get the job done. Typical amateur developer, he thinks, in the spirit of self-congratulation that makes inspecting other people's works such a pleasure. The liner to the pool at Harbour View is half the thickness and cost half as much, and didn't need all this costly equipment to manoeuvre it into place, just eight burly builders and a lot of swearing. He pats it as he passes and it lets out a pleasing hollow boom.

The chaos up above is of a familiar sort. Builders' bits: ladders and buckets and slabs piled high ready for laying, a concrete mixer standing by to prepare for sealing the pool's rim once it's in place, a pile of roughcast and assorted rubble awaiting disposal from where a patio of 1970s crazy paving was broken up to make room for the hole. Spades and pickaxes and smoothing tools lie in a pile by the front door, an invitation to passing thieves – something that would earn his own contractors an educational fine if he saw it on one of his own developments. A new diving board lies on its side on the lawn, its back jutting into a flowerbed and crushing the hydrangeas. He drags it out as he passes, tutting that anyone would treat something so beautiful, so delicate, with such careless contempt. Some stems have snapped almost clean off.

The garden, inside the fence, is bordered with Leylandii. Troublesome weeds, in a general context, but the poor soil here is keeping them in check, at least for the time being, and it will be some time before they get big enough to blight Harbour View's garden, which by then will be long-sold. Beech trees. He loves a stately beech, himself. In a few weeks their green will turn to gold and light up the landscape like beacons while these things remain blackish green all year round. It all passes so quickly, he thinks. These last ten years: it only seems like yesterday that I turned forty, and I haven't done half the things I swore I'd do that year alone. Still haven't drunk an icy cocktail at the foot of Ayer's Rock, still haven't flown my own helicopter, still haven't swum with sharks, other than the ones in the business world. I thought it was Heather holding me back, squashing my dreams, but then it was Claire doing the same thing, and I'm as much on the hamster wheel as I ever was. Maybe I need to face the fact that it's me, not them, at all. I'm not the buccaneer I always fantasised, just a middle-aged man who's hoping he won't lose his life savings in his next divorce. Thank God I
did
get a pre-nup this time.

He reaches the edge of the hole they've dug for the pool. It's disconcertingly deep, but then so is the liner, at its deep end. But he doubts the liner will reach the bottom. Perhaps they're planning to fill it up to the water line with the piles of rubble. It would certainly be the thrifty way of disposing of it, rather than paying for the dump.

The builders have been true to their word and have even switched off the pumping equipment during their absence. The bottom of the hole has filled with water: black, brackish, with saline scum floating on the top. If the average homeowner only knew, he thinks, how many of their smooth, expensive walls were just wire cages filled with rubble and covered with plasterboard, they wouldn't be throwing their money about as though they would stand forever.

Out on the drive, he hears the beep and clunk of a car door, and, seconds later, an engine revs and a vehicle starts to back out. Hopefully that's Claire, he thinks, running off again the way she does. Good. It's too late and I'm too tired to go into Round Two tonight.

He starts to cheer up and heads back to the house. He often finds that, once decisions have been made for him as they were tonight, his first feeling is actually one of rushing relief. It's not been easy, keeping up a mistress and a nag. If the mistress has really dispensed with him, it's a clean sweep. No one harbouring any illusions about him, no more dreams to shatter. I'll miss the kids, he thinks. But, once I'm done with her, there's no question that she'll have full custody. If there's one thing a pet lawyer like Robert can do, it's find another lawyer to do one a good divorce. And then I'm free. No more sulking, no more accusations, no more we-can't-because-of-the-kids, no more going to restaurants to give us something to distract us from our enmity. She can have the London house. I don't need more than a mansion flat myself anyway. I can start slowing down. Buy a big house in the countryside, have a few house parties, start working my way through my wine cellar. I've done well for myself. Even after paying Claire off, I've still got enough to live well for a long, long time.

As he nears the house, he begins to pick up the sound of raised voices. His house-guests: Robert and Maria, Linda, Charlie and Imogen: all awake, all calling out, shouting, the women hysterical. Oh, Christ, it's kicked off already, he thinks, and slows down. You'd've thought she'd have the dignity not to involve the rest of them. Bloody Claire. Never content with a crisis when she can make a drama out of it. Maybe I'll just…

And then the words begin to separate themselves from the hubbub. ‘Christ, Jimmy! Oh, my God, do something! Jimmy!'

Sean begins to run.