The Darkest Secret (29 page)

I can't. I just can't.

I know nothing about my father. Even the things I
did
think I knew, I know no longer. And on Monday I have to stand up in front of a churchful of people and give an account of his life. I know what's expected of me. I've been to funerals where the dead person was far younger, far less high-achieving, than Sean – people who had done nothing at all with their life other than empty themselves out with drugs and drink till there was nothing left to sustain their bodies – but still the speaker made their life seem rich, their character full and lovable, the people left behind bereft yet glad that once they were there.

And all I have is a blank sheet of paper. Well, blank apart from the words ‘Dad Eulogy' written at the top and the collection of spiky doodles that are all I have produced in two hours. Downstairs, the house is quiet, footsteps occasionally passing along corridors but otherwise nothing. There will be no dinner tonight. Joe's leaving the fish pie for people to help themselves and everyone has retired to separate rooms as though the thought of any more communal time is frightening.

What do I say? Robert's talking about the achievements: the houses built, the money made, the public face. I have to do the daughter. The happy family memories, the anecdotes that will make them laugh and cry. And my mind is blank. All I can think is this:
what was that bracelet doing there? What was it doing there?

It's seven o'clock. Time moves on and on so fast and the funeral will be upon me before I'm done if I don't get it started now. I decide to try a list. India likes lists. She says they're the basis of all life. She says that no reasonable person can do any complicated task without them. Maybe she's right. I start. ‘Things I know about my Dad,' I write, below the headline.

Five minutes later, the page looks like this:

I have to have a change of scene. This is getting me nowhere. These bland surroundings, the could-be-anywhereness. Something new to look at might jog my mind. On the far side of the lawn, down by the swimming pool, I noticed a fussy little Roman temple when I was down with Ruby and Emma this morning, put up by some Devonshire squire who fancied himself a global traveller in the 1800s and barely restored by Sean. It's all moss and chipped marble; but sheltered from above and deliciously isolated. I won't be able to hear Charlie booming from there, won't even really be able to see the house from behind the trees. I grab a blanket and my notebook and go in search of a torch.

 

Cold. These near-the-sea places never really get that crisp cold you get further inland. The garden is dank and dripping, and wears that air of winter neglect, everything straggling and waiting for shears and binder twine to bring it back to order. The ground is slippery and the bushes look as though they're lying in wait, as I catch them with my torch beam. I almost turn back. But back is worse, in its way. It'll be fine when you're there, I tell myself. Once you've got your back to a pillar and you can see what's in front of you. Once your eyes have adjusted to the dark.

I'm so intent on keeping my footing that I don't notice that the folly isn't empty until I'm too close to turn back. Jump in shock when I see her at first, then realise who it is.

She's lying on a curved bench, wrapped in a blanket. Her hair has come loose, and tumbles in tangles down towards the leaf-strewn floor. She is so still that for a horrible moment I wonder if she's dead. I consider backing quietly away and fleeing back to the safety of the house. But no. I have to be bigger than all these feelings. I clear my throat and speak.

‘Simone?'

She moves slowly, like an animal emerging from hibernation. Raises her head from the arm that's been supporting it and turns her face slowly to look at me. She's crying. A slow, thick wash of tears coats her cheeks, runs in rivulets down the side of her nose. She looks at me blankly, as though she doesn't know me; she's dazzled by the torch, of course, but there's more than that. She's gone from Echo to Andromache to First Mrs Rochester. I'm not sure if she even really registers that I am there.

I want to run. I want to run so fast. Go and find someone else to deal with this. Simone is nothing to do with me. She was his choice, his damage. I sit down carefully on the bench, keeping my movements slow as though she were a feral cat I didn't want to startle. ‘Are you okay?' I ask. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?'

She doesn't answer. Sits up on the bench and pulls her heels into her buttocks, wraps her arms round her shins and stares and stares.

‘What are you doing here?' she asks, eventually, in her little-girl voice.

‘I – I'm trying to write the eulogy and I thought… I'm having trouble. I thought maybe if I came away from the house…'

‘Yes,' she says. ‘What a sensible plan.'

Oh, lord.

‘It's a beautiful house,' I say, experimentally.

‘It was,' she says. ‘It will be again. Once we get it back to ourselves, Emma and me. Once you've all finished and gone.'

I jolt. She's not balanced, Camilla. Don't take it personally. She doesn't know what she's saying. I had no idea my father could have produced such grief, but she's fairly much out of her mind.

‘I can't be in there right now,' says Simone. ‘It's like having my whole life sucked away.'

‘Oh, love,' I say. ‘I think I understand.'

‘No, you don't.' Her voice hardens. ‘If you understood, you wouldn't be here.'

‘Wow,' I say. I can't stop myself: it's out of my mouth before I know it's there. But God, Simone, you're not the only person. ‘He was my father,' I say.

Her tears have dried up. She wipes her puffy eyes with a corner of her blanket and looks at me the way a duchess looks at a salesman. ‘Oh, come on,' she says. ‘You didn't love him. None of you loved him. I was the only one who loved him properly. And he loved me.'

Another wow bubbles up, but I clamp my jaw over it. And all the other things I want to say. Like: didn't you notice the way he died, Simone? Does that look much like love?

‘He was the best, best man,' she continues. ‘And
none
of you could see that. I remember the way you used to talk to him, Camilla, don't think I don't. He was strong and brave and generous, and he did everything for you all, but all you could manage was sneering.'

Must not. I must not. ‘I'm sorry you feel that way, Simone,' I say. ‘I think it was a bit more complicated than that.'

‘Not really,' she says. ‘Poor Sean. I'm only glad he got to be loved the way he deserved, eventually.'

‘So am I,' I say, because yes, obsessive possessiveness, and ignoring every inconvenient truth, might well have been exactly the sort of love that Sean deserved, in the end. It was the sort of love he specialised in giving, after all.

‘It's freezing cold out here,' I venture. ‘Do you think we should go in?'

‘No,' she says. Then she ploughs on. ‘He was the only person who ever loved me,' she says. ‘He said he wished he'd waited all those years, you know. He said he felt like his whole life started when he met me.'

I'm sure I've heard this phrase before. Where? Claire? Yes, maybe Claire.

‘You lot know nothing about love,' she says. ‘Even Daddy and Maria don't really understand how big it was, that thing between us. And they'd do anything for me, just the way I would have done for him. Anything. And I did. I did everything for Sean. Everything. Nothing before me matters. Do you understand?'

And how's this going to help me get my eulogy done? Maybe you want to do it yourself? I'm sure everyone will want to hear about your great romance. ‘Oh, Simone,' I say. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘Oh, whatever,' she says. ‘Anyway. We'll all just go through the motions, eh? You can pretend you cared and I can pretend I think you did, and once the funeral's done and dusted you can all go back to your little lives and leave me and Emma alone. We don't want you here, you know. We were happy when it was just the three of us, and Emma and I will be happy when you're gone.'

‘Where's Coco?'

Godmother Maria jumps in the air at the sound of her voice. ‘Oh, hello, darling!' she says, her hand on her chest. ‘You're awake, then?'

‘I was sick,' says Ruby, proudly.

‘Again?'

‘No. When everyone was asleep. Mummy came and put me in the shower.'

‘Oh, so
that's
what happened to that sheet.' She glances at the washing machine, going through the drying cycle quietly beneath the sink. ‘Poor old you.'

‘Where's Coco?'

‘She went to the beach with Simone and Mrs Buttercup and Ms Innes and the other children. Joaquin's in the garden, though.'

‘Oh,' says Ruby. She likes the beach and she doesn't much like Joaquin. He's too big and noisy.

‘We didn't want to wake you up,' says Maria. ‘You were sleeping so tight after your nasty night.'

‘Oh,' says Ruby again, ‘but I'm better now.'

Godmother Maria comes and squats in front of her, strokes her hair off her forehead with a finger. Grown-ups are always stroking her head, or patting it as if she's a dog. Ruby finds it annoying. She can't wait until she's big enough to do it to them.

‘Do you know the funny thing?' she asks. ‘I could have sworn she was you.'

Ruby giggles. The fact that people can't tell them apart has become a favourite game with her sister. Several times they have swapped their clothes and swapped their bracelets over and pretended to be each other, to see if anyone can tell. Mummy always can, even when they insist that they have the other's name, but they fool Daddy often. When they do it he calls them his Little Criminal Masterminds. She likes that. She doesn't know what it means, but it sounds better than Tiny Drunks, which is his other name for them. And far better than Go Away Daddy's Busy.

‘She's playing the game,' she says proudly. ‘Fooled you!'

Godmother Maria straightens up, her eyes all wide. ‘Why, you clever little sausages! How long have you been doing that for?'

‘Ages!'

‘Goodness, aren't you naughty? But she had her bracelet on this hand' – she holds Ruby's right arm in the air to show her – ‘and Godfather Robert and I got them for you specially so we could tell you apart.'

Ruby giggles, and shows her that she can slide the bracelet over the joint of her thumb.

‘Well, I never!' cries Maria, impressed. ‘You can still get them off! I thought you were much too much of a big girl now to do that!'

‘No, we're still little,' Ruby tells her. ‘We're the littlest ones of all.'

‘Well, not quite the littlest. Inigo is littler than you, I think.'

‘Yes,' says Ruby impatiently. ‘We're bigger than
some
children, but we're the littlest
Jacksons
. My big sisters are grown-ups.'

‘Almost grown-ups,' says Maria, with her lovely warm smile. ‘Tell you what, shall we play the game too? It would be a shame if only Coco was playing it.'

‘Daddy will be able to tell,' she says staunchly, though she knows it probably isn't true.

Maria slides the bracelet off her wrist and pops it on to the left one. ‘Well, why don't we see?'

‘Okay,' says Ruby, and laughs with delight. She's not had a grown-up join in the game before. Well, apart from Mummy, but she sometimes thinks Mummy's only doing it to annoy Daddy. She always goes ‘You
see
?' in That Voice when he realises he's been fooled.

Godmother Maria gets her comb from her bag and combs the parting across so it's on the other side. Squats back to look at her handiwork and smiles.

‘Coco!' she cries. ‘There you are! I thought you'd gone to the beach!'

Ruby giggles with delight.

 

Joaquin comes in in swimming trunks while she's drinking her juice. His hair is wet and he carries the stick that seems to go with him everywhere, so he can hit things with it.

‘Oh, God, Joaquin,' says Godmother Maria, ‘you haven't been in the pool? Tell me you haven't been in the pool.'

‘It's hot,' he protests.

‘Oh, God, why can't you listen to
anything
anyone says? You
know
it's not safe to go in the pool by yourself. I couldn't bear it if we had —'

She breaks off mid-sentence and looks a bit green all of a sudden.

‘Chill, Grandma,' says Joaquin, ‘I'm a big boy now. And besides, Uncle Jimmy's out there on a sun-lounger.'

‘Fat lot of good he'd be if you got into trouble,' she snorts.

Joaquin rolls his eyes and hits the door frame with his stick.

‘And put that bloody thing outside,' she orders. ‘No sticks in the house. You know the rules.'

The eyes roll again, but he hurls the stick out into the sunlight.

‘God preserve me from disobedient children,' she says. ‘Your sister was nothing like this.'

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Simone's perfect, I know. Well, if I can't have any fun here, can I go to the beach?'

‘
Please
,' she says. ‘And no. I don't have time to take you. And Coco's feeling under the weather. It's too far for her.'

‘God almighty,' says Joaquin, ‘it's only the beach. What do you think I am? Five?'

‘Seven. And they went to the one on the other side. I'd probably get arrested if I let a seven-year-old loose by himself on the chain ferry. And don't swear, Joaquin.'

‘That's not swearing.'

‘It's taking the Lord's name in vain, which is the same thing.'

‘Ooh! Get you! Why aren't you at
church
, Grandma?'

Maria heaves a huge sigh. Ruby watches, fascinated, from her bar stool and pops mango chunks, one by one by one, between her lips. Mangoes are yum. She thinks they're her favourite. She doesn't understand big boys, though. Joaquin doesn't exactly scare her, but she and Coco avoid being alone with him. They're never quite sure what he might do.

Joaquin releases an ngggh of frustration.

‘Tell you what,' says Maria, ‘let Coco finish her breakfast and we'll pop to the café and get an ice cream.'

‘Ooookay.' He sounds mildly mollified. Then, ‘That one's Coco? I thought that one was Ruby.'

Ruby beams with delight. ‘I'm Coco, stupid!' she cries, and waves her left wrist in the air.

 

There are lots of cars on the road outside the gate, all sitting in a line, like when they arrived. She feels sorry for all the children in them. They look hot and bored and their parents won't let them out into the lovely sunshine. Godmother Maria holds her hand as they follow the pavement and Joaquin runs ahead, whacking at bushes with his stick. Milly and India call him Whacking, which she thinks is very funny.

‘How are you feeling today?' asks Maria. ‘You're not feeling sick any more, are you?'

‘No. I think I sicked it all up last night.'

‘Good-oh. We wouldn't want you to miss Neptune's Kingdom this afternoon.'

‘What's Neptune's Kingdom?'

‘It's a big water park.'

‘What's a water park?'

‘You'll love it. Slides and rides and great big pools where you can go paddling.'

She feels herself glow with anticipation. Ruby loves water, far more than Coco does. She can almost swim already, throwing herself up and down the shallow end of the pool in her blow-up ring, flailing her arms, as Coco sits on the steps with her feet barely in the drink and flinches every time a drop from one of Ruby's splashes comes her way. ‘Oooooh,' she says.

‘Well, let's see how you cope with your ice cream,' she says. ‘What sort of ice cream would you like?'

‘Chocolate.'

‘Is that what Coco would have? Cause you're Coco, remember.'

She ponders the subject reluctantly. She adores chocolate. Chocolate and fries, though she doesn't get to eat much of either.

‘I bet Coco's having chocolate, if she's being you.'

‘Yes,' she says sadly, ‘the pink one, then.' She understands that if you're going to tell a lie you have to follow it all the way through.

Joaquin comes barrelling back up the pavement. ‘Instead of ice cream,' he says, ‘can I have chips?'

‘Oh,' says Ruby, sadly again. She'd had no idea that chips were on offer. This early in the day she'd rather have a punnet of hot, salty, crunchy goodness than a soppy strawberry ice. ‘I like chippies too,' she ventures.

‘Tell you what,' says Maria, ‘if you don't tell anyone, I'll let you share a portion of fries between you. How about that?'

Ruby lets go of her hand and claps her own together with pleasure.

‘I spoil you,' says Maria, ‘I really do.'

 

She feels very grown-up, out at a café without her sister or either of her parents. She hasn't even wondered where her mother is yet today, or her father. ‘Where's Mummy?' she asks over the top of a dish of ice cream so pink it almost matches the naked back of the fat man drinking beer at the next-door table.

‘Oh,' says Maria smoothly, ‘she had to go back to London, sweetie. She realised she had something to do that she'd forgotten. But Daddy's still here. He'll take you both back up tomorrow.'

Ruby nods. She's a placid child, not prone to panic. If her mother has gone away, she will see her again. The thought of permanent loss has never crossed her mind.

Joaquin has picked a vivid green mint choc chip ice and is squeezing ketchup on to the lid of an open polystyrene package of fries. ‘Now don't eat all of those yourself,' says Maria. ‘You're sharing, remember?'

The eye-roll again, then he reaches out with a fry between his fingers and dips it into Ruby's ice cream.

‘Hey!' she protests.

‘Oi!' says Maria. ‘You should ask before you do that.'

Joaquin puts the ice-creamy chip in his mouth. ‘Sorry, Ruby. Can I dip my chips in your ice cream,
please
?'

‘Yuk,' she says.

‘Don't knock it till you've tried it, grasshopper,' he says.

‘I'm not a grasshopper.'

He dips another chip. Puts it in his mouth with evident glee. Tries it with his own dessert and pulls a ‘meh' face. ‘Definitely better with strawberry.'

‘Honestly, where do you learn these things?' asks Maria.

‘Everybody knows about chips and ice cream.'

‘Well, I don't.'

‘Sorry,' he says. ‘Everybody who's not a
million
years old.'

Ruby giggles. She's never heard a child cheeking its mother the way Joaquin cheeks his, but Maria doesn't seem to be taking it badly at all. She's still nervous of his big gangly body and his loud voice, but she admires him now. Joaquin is a risk-taker. He knows no fear. She takes a fry from the box and scoops up a lump of ice cream with it. Looks at it apprehensively – grown-ups are always telling her she will like foods, like spinach and peppers and broccoli, that turn out to be yuk – and screws up her courage to impress the big boy. Puts it in her mouth… and a whole world of culinary adventure explodes on her tongue. Up until now, everything she's tasted has been carefully divided on her plate. She has never even known that these things, these tastes and textures,
could
be combined, let alone that soft can make crispy better, that sweet goes so well with salt, that hot and cold taken together can expand the universe. It's horrid and beautiful, wrong and so, so right, all in one fleeting chew.

‘Oh,' she says.

‘Right?' says Joaquin.

‘Oh,' she says.

‘Don't tell me
you
like it too,' says Maria. ‘God, kids. Can I get you to eat simple buttered peas? Of course I can't.'

She sips her black coffee and watches with a pained look as the two children dive back into creating their hideous snack.

‘I had the weirdest dream last night,' says Joaquin. ‘I dreamt all you grown-ups came into the room and you were making a great big hoo-ha. And someone was crying. And then when I woke up this morning I was in your room and I thought I'd been kidnapped for a minute.'

‘Oh, yes,' says Maria, ‘something went wrong with the plumbing in the annexe and the loo started overflowing. When Daddy came in to check on you there was an inch of water everywhere. We had to evacuate you or by the morning you would all have been floating to China.'

Joaquin bursts out laughing. ‘No, we wouldn't, silly. We'd have bumped into the Isle of Wight first. Didn't I wake up?'

Maria lets out a hoot of laughter that sounds funny to Ruby. As if she's not really laughing at all, but screaming. But then it's just gone, again, and she's laughing once more. ‘When have you
ever
woken up, Joaquin Gavila? I could let a bomb off next to you and you'd just turn over on to the other side. No, we carried you all, one by one, up to the house and Simone was up half the night mopping up, and you all slept right through the whole thing.'

‘Freaky!'

‘It was very late.'

‘So who was crying?'

‘Oh, that was Uncle Sean,' she says. ‘Realising he wasn't going to be able to put the house up for sale till he'd fixed it. He's very emotional when it comes to money, is Uncle Sean.'

‘Cry baby,' says Joaquin, and cackles disdainfully.

‘Come on, you two. Finish up that disgusting mess. Coco's daddy will be wondering where you are,' says Maria.