The Darkest Secret (32 page)

Maria's hand flies to her face where the slap has landed and she stares at her stepdaughter the way someone stares who's been petting a pussycat and has just been informed that it's a cougar.

Simone shows no sign of being disturbed by what she's done. In fact, she's smiling, that weird
Mona Lisa
smile I remember from way back. Dropping her head to look up at her stepmother through her hair, the way she does.

‘Simone,' says Robert, and his voice is full of despair.

‘Shut up,' says Simone. Her voice is calm, as though she's handing out orders to the cleaner.

Ruby lets out a breath beside me, and it's only then that I realise that I have been holding my own. I exhale, breathe sharply in. Simone's eyes swivel to take me in, but her face doesn't move.

‘Don't you ever, ever speak for me again,' she says to Maria.

Maria stands there holding her cheek, her mouth half open.

‘
Simone
.' Robert's voice comes out as a low moan.

‘This is my house,' says Simone. ‘You have no jurisdiction here. I don't need you to speak for me. I would appreciate it if you remembered your place.'

‘I'm sorry,' says Maria, humbly. ‘Simone, we were only trying to help.'

Her voice turns scornful. ‘As if I need your help.'

‘Simone —' Robert tries to begin but she snaps him silent with a raised hand. Have you ever seen a cobra about to strike? Something about her reminds me of that. Robert gulps and falls silent. He's scared of her, I think. My God, this family is just wall-to-wall secrets. Was Dad scared of her?

‘I've never needed your help,' she says. ‘You interfered and you interfered, but I never did. He was my husband, and this is my house. He was always going to be mine. I didn't need you interfering, persuading yourselves that you somehow
gave
him to me when he was always going to be mine. I didn't need you to do
anything
. Do you get it? You think you're so… clever… but you're not. You never controlled
anything
. It was all me. I did it all myself. You're just… ' – she curls her upper lip, as though she's smelling drains – ‘you're just
bit
players.'

Ruby's face is scrunched up with confusion, her eyes flicking from person to person. The drawing-room door opens and Joe emerges, sees us all standing in the porch like an early American action painting and freezes. Doesn't say anything, just watches.

‘I'm sorry, Simone,' says Maria again. ‘We've only ever wanted to look after you. Your father —'

‘Shut up, shut
up
!'

Ruby, still kiddish, trying to be grown-up, puts her head on the block. ‘Are you okay, Simone?'

Simone whips round, bares her fangs in my sister's face. ‘What are you even
doing
here? You don't deserve to be here.'

Ruby recoils, goes pink. ‘I – sorry – I…'

‘Christ,' says Simone. ‘Stupid little girl. He didn't want you. He couldn't even stand to be in a room with you. You don't even deserve to be
alive
.'

Ruby gasps. Turns on the heel of her Doc Marten workboot and runs off up the hall.

‘Jesus!' I say. I start off after her, but Simone shoots a hand out, grabs my wrist. She's surprisingly strong; jerks me back so I feel my shoulder give. Digs bony fingers in around the bracelet.

‘I'll go,' says Joe, and jogs towards the stairs as Ruby runs up them. Oh, God. Oh, my
God
. Oh, my little sister. I want to chase her up there, throw myself on her, smother her with love, tell her lies about how it will all be okay. What sort of person says something like that? Was she always this vicious?

And then it's my turn. The smile is back. She looks – God, she looks pleased with herself, as though she has some fantastic trump card that she's ready to play.

She plays it. Pushes back my sleeve and holds out my wrist so Robert and Maria can see. ‘I see you've found it, then,' she says, and treats me to a smile of such cold sweetness that I can't suppress a shiver. ‘Daddy, Maria – did you see that Milly's found Coco's bracelet? Why do you think she hasn't said anything to anybody? What do you think that
means
?'

Silence. I have a horrible, disturbing feeling that all three of them are as old as time, that I'm being watched by dragons, that calculations are being made and odds weighed up. The house and grounds suddenly feel terribly far away from anywhere else. I feel myself sway.

Then Maria bursts into tears. Puts a hand on the door jamb as if to support herself and turns her face to the sky. ‘Oh, God, Simone,' she sobs, ‘how could you? How
could
you?'

Simone laughs, a nasty, triumphant laugh, and walks off. Her footsteps click their way up her cold and lifeless corridor, but no one moves to follow.

‘Darling,' says Robert, and goes to comfort his wife. He touches her on the shoulder, then enfolds her in an embrace. That's what I should be doing, for Ruby. And I find myself overwhelmed by a sense of loss because there's no one to do it for me, never has been, because I never learned how to hand out such comfort myself. Their daughter might be a crazy fuckup, but the Gavilas themselves are strong and united. And I envy and admire that in equal measure.

And I'm torn. I want to go and do the right thing by my little sister, to learn how to do the caring thing properly. But I'm so close, now, to finding out what Robert and Maria know. And it's clear that they
do
know more than something. A lock of hair drops loose from Maria's elegant chignon and covers her flaming cheek. Robert gently tidies it away behind her ear with the back of his knuckles. Such a tender gesture. They look into each other's eyes and he nods. Just twice; slowly and regretfully. Then they both turn to me and he speaks.

‘I'm sorry,' he says. ‘We've not been honest with you.'

 

I follow them into the drawing room and he closes the door behind him. ‘Come and sit down, Milly,' he says.

‘Mila,' I say, some feeble attempt to take some modicum of control back into my hands.

Maria perches on the edge of a sofa, takes the clip from her hair and puts it down on the coffee table. Shakes the hair loose, a waterfall of shiny chestnut. ‘Mila,' she says. Her voice is soft and low and carries the burden of the ages. ‘Yes, I'm sorry. We've not been listening to you, have we? I'm not surprised you want to be a different person. God knows we all do. There's not a person among us who wouldn't go back to the beginning of that weekend and do it all differently.'

I wait. They're going to tell me something that will break my heart, I know that.

‘I think you must have guessed that what happened to Coco isn't the same as the public story,' says Robert.

I nod. Maria takes in a gulp of air and covers her face with her hands. ‘Oh, God. Oh, God, Mila. We didn't mean any harm. We didn't mean it to come out like this. You have to understand. Everything we did, we did with her best interests at heart. We had to protect her. She was so little.'

Protect her? Didn't do a very good job of that, did you?

‘And it was stupid,' says Robert. ‘A rash, panic decision, and we've all regretted it every day since, but once it was done it was too late to change.'

‘What?' I cry. ‘Please! What? What are you telling me?'

Robert sits down beside his wife. I continue to stand; cling to the dominant position while they gaze up at me like supplicants seeking absolution. I stay over by the door, space between me and them, my exit route easily accessed if I need it. I no longer feel secure in this house, not that I ever really did. Even if you suspect that you've been lied to, confirming it still shakes your whole world.

‘Her whole life would have been ruined,' says Maria, and another sob comes out with the words. ‘She didn't know what she was doing. Claire would never have forgiven her. She could never have lived with it; it would have ruined her
whole life
.'

They
can't
be talking about Coco. They're talking like Fundies explaining why they burned their tainted daughter in her bed. ‘Who?
Who are you talking about
?'

She tosses her hair off her face and looks me direct in the eye. ‘Ruby! I'm talking about Ruby!'

I judder to a halt. ‘Ruby?'

‘It can't… oh, God, Mila. It was the worst moment of my life. Worse than – than
anything
.'

The strength goes out of my legs. I sink on to one of the hard ebony thrones that sit either side of the door. ‘What happened?'

‘She didn't mean to do it,' says Robert. ‘God, of course she didn't mean to do it. She was three. She won't even have known what drowning was, really. She just thought – well, I can't say what she thought. She was just little.'

‘They were sleeping in the downstairs room,' says Maria. ‘It was boiling hot down there. We should have got a fan. All these things you think of after the event. If we'd got a fan, we should have checked the locks,
why
was the alarm not on? But I keep thinking: if they'd had a fan… I don't know. I was boiling. I woke up at four in the morning and the house was silent and I couldn't get back to sleep because it was just too
hot
. So I went downstairs, and I thought… I thought maybe if I had a swim and cooled down… it didn't even occur to me to look in their room. The door was half open, I remember that. But I thought, you know, that Sean must have left it that way to give them some air. And that damn door lock. I don't think any of us had realised it wasn't working. The key turned fine, you see. So I think, you know… everyone just thought when they went through it all weekend that someone else must have been through before. I didn't even think about it then. Just thought, oh God, someone must have forgotten to lock it, I must remember to do that when I come in.'

I stare at them both. They look broken. Robert seems to have shrunk inside his big-man suit, and Maria's face is streaked with mascara and eyeliner despite her attempts to quietly mop it up. It's a chilling sight: both of them naked before me, undone.

‘… and she was by the pool,' she says. ‘Sitting on a sun-lounger, wrapped in a towel, and Coco… oh,
God
.'

She starts to sob again. I go cold. Then hot, then cold again. Oh, God. ‘What happened?'

‘You remember how much she loved the water?' asks Robert. I nod. Having to shepherd her back from the sea that day in Poole Harbour, over and over; Coco always happy to just sit in the sand, but Ruby always wanting to go out there, to paddle just that bit deeper, wanting to wade, wanting to feel the little waves from the boats slosh up her chest, always in danger of taking herself out of her depth. I remember thinking that she was weeks off being able to swim. A water baby.

‘She only wanted to swim,' says Maria. ‘She didn't
mean
it. But Coco wouldn't go in. So she pushed her. No ring, no waterwings; nothing to help her keep afloat. She didn't even know what she'd done when I found them. She thought Coco had learned to swim under water, that she was at the bottom of the pool because…
oh
…
'

Robert puts an arm round her.

‘And we couldn't,' he says. ‘We just couldn't. Your father was
destroyed
. And we thought, you know… the blame. Not just her, but him. They would probably have prosecuted him, even though none of it was… meant. And we looked at Ruby, and we thought, oh, poor kid, poor, poor little kid, she's so small. Imagine carrying that burden with you for the rest of your life. The child who killed her sister. And Claire. How was she going to live, knowing what had happened? Living with the daughter who'd killed her other daughter? You've seen her. She's fragile enough as it is…'

‘It was a stupid thing to do,' says Maria. ‘But we were in a mess. Everyone crying, and all these thoughts – the other kids, how we could explain. And Ruby. She was just sitting there, all smiles, thinking she'd been clever. She wanted to go back into the pool. When her dad came down. And he couldn't even
look
at her.'

‘So you…'

I remember them. Stupid little puppy creatures, still half formed. Oh, God, poor little Coco. I have dreams, sometimes, in which I'm drowning. The breath, that last breath, getting bigger and hotter in my lungs as it fights to burst out, the struggle towards the surface. Would it be less bad, if you didn't know what it was? If you didn't really understand about death?

I realise that tears are pouring down my face. I think about Ruby, crying upstairs, enough of a burden as it is at being the surviving one. I can't do this. I can't tell her this.

‘It was all such a rush,' says Robert. ‘None of us was thinking straight.'

‘You're saying you… disposed of the body?' The words sound vile. Like a police report read out on the news. Something gangsters do, or rapists, or men who don't want the expense and inconvenience of a divorce. Not us. Not people like us.

They both go silent. Both thinking about the things they've done, how it must look to the world.

‘Yes,' says Robert, eventually.

I don't want to know. I don't want to know how they did it, what they've done. I think back to them all, that weekend: those glossy, handsome, confident people, so sure of their place in the world, so certain that their money and status had armoured them against everything.

‘It was stupid,' says Maria. ‘I know you think it was stupid. But we had to make a decision before the other children woke up. I think that was partly it. Just the thought of the other kids, all those little children, waking up to discover what death was. I know. We were half out of our minds and we did what we thought was best. We didn't want that poor little girl to have to grow up like that.'