The Darkest Secret (3 page)

I heard it often as a child, but I am still shocked when I hear my mother crying.

I sit up. An old, faded tartan boy-duvet, pillows so thin they must be cast-offs, as no one would have bought them like that. Dim grey winter daylight filtering round the edges of mean rental-house curtains, a collection of cardboard boxes and an exercise bike that's doubling as a clothes horse. I could be anywhere. I don't remember much about last night. I mean, where even
am
I?

‘Mum? What's wrong?' I ask.

‘I'm sorry, darling,' she sobs down the phone. ‘I didn't mean to cry. I mean, I don't even really know why I'm doing it. It's the waste, I suppose. All the things that could have been but weren't. I thought I was way past caring.'

Coming to the point. Not her greatest skill. She rambles around subjects with all the abstruseness of a metaphysical poet. ‘What's wrong, Mum? Are you okay?'

The body in the bed beside me starts to stir. He's pulled one of his sad little pillows over his head to block out the light, so I have no idea what he looks like. I have some vague memory of long dark hair and a Jesus beard, of hair getting in my mouth and giving me the giggles, but it could be a race memory from another night, another hangover. I don't even remember his name. It could be somebody I know. I sort of hope it is. It has been known to happen. But this room of Xboxes and bare magnolia walls gives nothing away beyond the fact that the owner is probably male, and probably in his twenties.

She sighs, and her voice steadies. ‘I'm sorry, darling. I'm useless, I know. I have bad news, I'm afraid. Maria Gavila rang. She's been trying to track you down since yesterday, but she couldn't find you, so she rang me.'

Maria Gavila? What the hell? I know she's stayed in touch with Mum all these years but it somehow still feels odd to hear her name. ‘Uh-huh,' I say, non-committally. I know at least that it's not Mum or India that the bad news is about, and the rush of fear I felt when I heard her weeping is receding. Now I'm sitting up, I feel giddy. Dry-mouthed and nauseated. Too many mornings like this, Mila. You need to take stock, get a grip on your life. Was it just drink last night? I know it started with bitter brown cocktails in a members' bar in Shoreditch, and that's always a bad start. No food. Certainly no food. So there must have been drugs or I would have got hungry at some point. That's why booze makes you fat, far more than its own calorie content. I don't want to be here. I want to be magically home. ‘What did she want?'

‘Milly,' she says, ‘I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it. Your father. I'm afraid your father died the night before last.'

A thud, somewhere in my chest. ‘Oh,' I say. I'm not sure how I should be feeling, but right now I feel nothing but a weird curiosity. So this is what it's like when your father dies, I think. Nothing at all.

She's waiting for a response. I can feel it through the ether. But I don't know what response to give. They've not been married for the best part of twenty years, so I don't suppose telling her I'm sorry is the thing I'm meant to do. ‘Does India know?' I ask, eventually. My voice sounds strangely dull, and far away.

‘No. I'm going to call her next,' she says.

‘What happened?'

‘I don't know the full story,' she says, and I know from her tone that she's lying. My mother was always a terrible liar. She always clears her throat, as though the untruth is stuck down there somehow, and needs help to get out. ‘He was in a hotel. The Dorchester. Have they given up the London house, or something? I knew they'd gone to Devon, but he spends so much time in London… anyway, that's where he was. They've taken him to the Chelsea and Westminster, apparently. A heart attack sometime in the night, they think. The housekeeper found him yesterday morning.'

There's a bottle of water in my handbag. I flip the top and take a suck. Give myself a bit of thinking time. Stare at the blank wall and wonder what I'm meant to do. I could do with a cigarette right now, but if this is a rental house then there will be smoke alarms going off in seconds. Sean Jackson, my absentee father, his famous charm and his Savile Row suits no use to him now.

‘Darling?'

‘Sorry,' I say. Then, ‘Shit.'

‘I know,' she says. ‘It's a shock.'

‘Yes,' I say vaguely.

‘You can call Maria,' she says. ‘She says she'll be in the office all day. They're going to have to have a post-mortem and an inquest because he was by himself. Or at least…' She trails off. She's clearly changed her mind about however she had been planning to finish the sentence. ‘Anyway, there are no witnesses, so that's how it's done, apparently. You should call her. I'm afraid you might need to ID the body.'

Now I'm bolt upright. ‘No!'

‘Um,' she says.

‘Why me?'

‘Someone has to do it, Milly. And I think… maybe Maria or Robert could do it. I don't know. Does it have to be family? Maybe it does. I'm sure Maria will know by now. She seems to be able to find out anything in minutes.'

‘But why can't… why can't
she
do it?'

I can't bring myself to say her name, even now. Not to my ma. Even after all these years, naming the latter wives feels a bit like slapping her in the face.

‘Darling,' she says, apparently feeling no such queasiness herself, ‘Simone is in Devon with a small child, and I should think she's in a state of collapse. Robert's on his way down there now and Maria's going tonight. You don't really want to make her come up to some London morgue to look at her dead husband on a slab, do you?'

No, I think. Much better that I go and look at my father on a slab, obviously. She's a grown-up. She chose to marry him. She must be more grown up than me. I can't imagine ever being adult enough to want to be married, let alone have a child. ‘No,' I say, reluctantly, because it's the right thing to say. Form matters, in my family. At least the surface bit of doing the right thing, the things that people can see. ‘But I don't know what to do.'

‘I think Maria will be able to tell you,' she says. ‘She's probably got her PA finding everything out right now. We're lucky to have her, really. The resources of the Gavila empire.'

‘Okay,' I say.

‘I'm sorry, darling,' she says. ‘I'd better call India now. Are you going to be okay?'

‘Sure,' I say, though I'm not certain I'm telling the truth.

‘I'll call you later, just to see how you are.'

‘Okay.'

‘And darling?'

‘Yes?'

‘I love you. Very much.'

‘I know,' I say, automatically. ‘I love you too.'

I hang up, drop the phone back into my bag. My companion, seizing his moment, peels the pillow away and looks at me out of one eye. That's right, I remember now. It wasn't just the drink; my mother's news must have been more of a shock than I'd thought it was. Dark hair and a Jesus beard and lovely smooth brown skin. Tom. Works in a gallery next to the Shoreditch club where I gatecrashed a private view last night, lives in Kentish Town. Damn, I'm in Kentish Town. A million stops on the black line before I can get home. I wish I had a teleporter. Why can't they hurry up and invent them, for God's sake?

‘All right?' he asks. He's probably hoping he's going to get to make use of that morning glory, being as how I'm still here.

‘Yeah,' I say, brightly. ‘My dad died.'

He looks at me with an open mouth and I see the whites of panic in his eyes. He has no idea what to do, what to say. He's not even sure, from the tone of my voice, that this isn't some sort of crazy-person prank. This is not a good situation to find yourself in with a naked stranger. Still. It'll make a good story once you've got over the fear, I think. Don't worry about it.

‘Christ,' he ventures. ‘I'm sorry. Are you okay?'

‘Sure,' I say. ‘He was a fucker. I hadn't seen him in years.'

A whooping gasp from the back seat and the telltale plash of liquid.

‘They didn't,' says Sean. ‘Oh, God, tell me they didn't.'

Claire pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head and cranes to look behind her. Coco, strapped into her car seat, holds her hands up splayed and stiff: Wile E. Coyote contemplating the ever-shortening fuse on the dynamite. The cardboard cup is upside-down in her lap, lid and straw off, ice sliding down her thighs, diet Sprite pooling on the Range Rover's cream leather seat. Ruby leans out of her booster seat to look, her face a strangely triumphant blank.

‘I told you it was a bad idea,' says Claire. She can't stop herself. Because she did, and, as always, he ignored her. ‘I said we should use the sippy cups. That's never going to come out.'

Sean's grip on the steering wheel tightens. ‘Of course,' he says in his carefully measured in-front-of-the-children voice, ‘the original plan was to send them in the Prius, with
Emilia
.'

‘Yes, well,' Claire snaps, ‘if some people could be
trusted
around
Emilia
that would have been dandy.'

‘How many times do I have to…' he starts, then sighs, like a patient teacher dealing with a toddler, and reins himself in. ‘You're paranoid.'

Claire shoots him a look.

‘Christ,' snaps Sean, and swings off on to the hard shoulder. The traffic is nose-to-tail on the M3 – the whole country going somewhere other than their own house for the last bank holiday of the summer, and God knows how they've all managed to get off on a Thursday – and it will probably take ten minutes for someone to let them back out into the flow again. He's noticed that, about the provinces. London drivers let each other in all the time – the whole city would grind to a halt if they didn't – but get outside the M25 and people behave as though you're trying to steal their road. So weird, he thinks. And people are always claiming that Londoners are rude.

He sits behind the wheel and waits for his wife to show some signs of movement. No, thinks Claire. It's your mess. You were the one who insisted on buying them a great big drink and not waiting to decant it. It's your mess. Your turn to clean it up. She carries on sitting, hands in her lap, dark glasses back on and staring ahead at the rubbish scattered on the grass bank.

‘Well?'

She turns her head slowly. ‘What?' Waits two beats. ‘They're your children too, Sean.'

 

Sean feels a small surge of rage, but unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out. Takes five deep breaths among the ragweed and the fast-food bags before continuing. I must keep my temper under control, he thinks. It's not her fault. She's a three-year-old. This is what three-year-olds do. You can't blame her for her mother.

Beyond the glass, he sees Coco's mouth go square and hears the beginnings of a wail, like a police siren in the distance. ‘It's okay, baby,' he calls through the hot August air, ‘hold on. I'm coming.'

He walks around to the back of the Range Rover and throws open the boot. His brain clunks into neutral as he surveys the devastation within. Claire has no talent for organisation at all. He remembers finding it charming when they were starting up – ditzy, classic bohemian, carefree – but now he just finds himself enraged. It's not as though she's got anything else to do all day, he thinks. How did it get like this? What happened to my life? At least with Heather the huge quantities of Stuff – the clothes, toys, medicines, books, essential teddy bears, mysterious electronic gizmos, nappy wipes, sun cream, shady little hats, bibs and sippy cups that seem to follow every child around these days – were organised. I used to sneer behind her back at her collection of Cath Kidston carry-alls, her love of pockets and dividers and ziploc baggies, but anything – anything – would be better than this.

‘Where's the cleaning stuff?'

Claire holds one hand out in front of her face and gazes at her nails. She's had them done dark blue, and he hates that. It's as though she chooses it to spite me, he thinks, because she resents the fact that I like a woman to have a decent manicure. Those dark colours: you never know what's lurking on the underside. When we were going out, when she was still the competition, she listened to what I said; took up pinks and golds and silvers so that her nails flashed like jewels in the candlelight. She'd do anything to make me happy, when she was doing it to spite Heather. Now she's got me, it's a different game.

‘In the bag,' she says, that ‘tchuh,
men
' edge to her voice.

He surveys the high-piled chaos, twitches hopelessly at the yawning lip of a Harrods carrier. The only thing he recognises is Claire's leather vanity case, which he gave her the first time he took her to Paris, to give her a little chic. The same chaos will reign inside, colours and unguents and eyelashes thrown in without thought, but at least the cover is glamorous. A metaphor for our lives, he thinks, and feels clever for a moment. He rummages. A black bin liner reveals bundled children's clothes, un-ironed. What do these staff I pay for
do
all day, he thinks, that my kids run about like scarecrows?

He plunges a hand in among them and draws out a corduroy pinafore with an OshKosh label. It must have cost more than his mother's entire clothes budget for a year, and it's been shoved in like an old rag. He flaps it to get rid of the worst of the creases, rummages until he turns up a pack of wet wipes, its adhesive closure open and flapping, and returns to the back seat.

Coco is wailing now, and Ruby has her fingers in her ears. ‘It's okay,' he says, brimming with his own parental virtue, ‘it's all right, Coco, my love. Can't be helped. These things happen. Come on.' He unbuckles her seatbelt, gets his hands under her armpits and lifts her out with an ‘oopsadaisy'. Despite the aircon in the car, she's hot, her golden curls plastered to her forehead and her cheeks flushed livid red. He feels her forehead. Prays silently that she's not going down with something. Not this weekend, of all weekends.

He throws the wet wipes at Ruby. ‘Come on,' he says. ‘Make yourself useful. Mop that lot up.'

Ruby stares at him. ‘She's three years old, Sean,' says Claire. But she picks up the wipes and starts dabbing at the pool of sticky drink herself. She flicks the empty cup out through the door, where it lands in a polluted hawthorn. It'll be there forever, thinks Sean, then forgets about it as he puts his daughter down on to the hard dry mud and starts to unbutton her dress.

 

A suspicious smell starts to rise from one or other of their nappies outside Southampton. Claire looks at them in the rear-view. It's Ruby, she thinks. Her cheeks are getting that chapped look. God help me, how can identical twins be so different? Coco's almost done with nappies, though of course he claims that they should have been done with yonks ago, that India and Milly were totally on the potty by the time they could speak or something, and she talks twice as much as Ruby, and she's always laughing while Ruby just stares, half the time. It would be hard to believe that those two came out of the same womb at the same time, if I hadn't pushed them. I hope she's learned to poo on her own by the time she starts school. I'm sure it's not normal. It's like she does it to spite us.

Her husband drums his fingers on the steering wheel. He drums his fingers all the time when he's sitting still, and it drives her frantic. How can you go from love to irritated indifference in less than six years? she wonders. I don't understand. Though at the same time I do. I really, really do. You do it by marrying someone who was pretending to be someone else. Someone whose first wife's lack of interest in him had made him miserable because he was only interested in himself. I married what I thought was a man damaged by lovelessness, and discovered that lovelessness starts at home.

The aircon is cranked right down to tundra, but she can still feel the heat from outside beat against the tinted windows. A fantastic weekend for a birthday party. Just a shame she's got to spend it with all his friends. Not that she has any of her own any more. One by one by one they have dropped away. Sean never made an effort to welcome them in, of course. She hadn't thought it odd that he would never agree to meet them when they were an affair: discretion, secrecy, the necessity to keep things under wraps – there were so many reasons. It hadn't occurred to her that the real one was that he wasn't interested.

She sighs. Four days. Four long days with people who barely bother to speak to her, who all remember Heather and, though they never say it, all clearly see her as someone who's passing through. But I must be nice, she thinks. If this marriage is to survive, I must be nice.

 

On Saturday, thinks Sean, I shall be fifty years old. It's natural to question your life when you turn fifty. I look at my life, and I should be pleased. Every goal the western world holds dear, I have achieved. I'm rich by standards my parents wouldn't even have dreamed of. My children are healthy, and just about speak to me. I am the king of a thriving business, and those who don't respect me are, by and large, still afraid of me. I am sitting in a new, expensive car, going to my multi-million-pound property in one of the country's most sought-after locations. In a few weeks I'll be another million better off. My friends are influential, well known and wealthy. My wife is thirty-three and a beauty by anybody's standards, even if she has been letting herself go. I have a swimming pool. My life is a resounding success. So why am I so unhappy?