The Man Who Built the World (2 page)

She recognised the sound immediately.
She knew it well herself. She had often choked down her own tears. It was easy with practice; you just had to clench your chest tight and squint your eyes a little.
Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you cry. Don’t let him think he’s won.

‘Matthew?’

He opened his eyes. They were still bleary from sleep, but had regained the familiar drunken sheen that she saw so often these days, telling her the drink wasn’t the first even at this early hour. She sighed and closed her eyes briefly, tired and upset.

‘What did your father want?’

‘Nothing much,’ he slurred, and closed his eyes again.

‘He rings you up for the first time in fourteen years, and he wants "nothing much"?
Come on, Matt, you can do better than that.’

‘Don’t
nag me.’

‘I’m not nagging you.
I just want to know why you’re getting hammered again at nine-thirty in the morning.’ She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. ‘You usually wait until lunchtime at least.’

His eyes jerked open and he fixed her with a long stare.
Rachel wondered if she had pushed him too far. He had only struck her once, and it hadn’t been that hard, only enough to leave a small bruise

(
it was the surprise that caused you to slip and fall, was it? Come on Rachel, be honest, he really went for you)

b
ut so much latent energy had emerged with that strike, enough to terrify her, open a chasm between them that would take months, maybe years to close. Assuming, of course, either of them had enough strength left to try.

‘Please Matt, it was obviously important.’

As if to emphasize the point, the glass slipped from his hand. It didn’t shatter, just bumped on the carpet, spilling its contents across the beige pile. The spots of golden whiskey, where they landed and began to sink in, looked like urine.

Matt made no attempt to pick up the glass, and Rachel didn’t dare get any closer.

‘You really want to know?’

‘I’m your wife, Matthew, of course I do.’

He looked away from her, out of the window. The second floor view reached over the rooftops of the street opposite, down the angling hillside of their town, towards a church at the bottom, its spire reaching proud and ancient up into the sky. It was a nice day outside, cold but with a bright sun. She would love to be out there now, walking in the park, breathing in the fresh, unthreatening air. Despite the open window, the air in here was stale, dangerous.

When he looked back at her his eyes shone with tears.
‘Oh, he just rung me up to say hi, to have a chat, you know the usual. Us being best buddies and all. Oh, and yeah, to let me know my sister is dead.
Dead
.’

Rachel stared, incredulous.
‘Um, excuse me? Your
what
?’

They
had been married ten years, most of them happily, often blissfully so. But in all that time, he had never, ever mentioned a sister. He had claimed to be an only child. He had told her that his mother was dead and he was estranged from his father, and wouldn’t go any deeper. She had accepted his secrets, partly because she loved him and partly because everyone had things they didn’t like to talk about, even her. It was a trust thing, and she had trusted him with her life, and her heart.

But why lie about a sister?
What possible harm could it do?

‘My sister.
Bethany. Dear sweet loving Daddy rang me up to tell me Bethany is dead. Now wasn’t that nice of him?’

He looked up at her, and his tearful eyes became suddenly desperate, pleading.
For all the years of hurt he had caused her this was one moment he couldn’t deal with alone. Rachel felt a terrible sense of guilt, as though it had been her who had shut
him
out, rather than the other way around.

‘Oh, Matthew,’ she said, and went forward to put her arms around him.
He hugged her back hard, his hands gripping her waist and his head pressing against her stomach. She felt him shake as sobs wracked his body, and, overcome by the situation, she found herself crying too.

‘Bethany’s dead,’ he murmured once more, his voice muffled by the pullover she wore, his desperate words all but lost.
‘At
last
. . . Bethany’s
dead.
’

Rachel was a little shaken by this, but she said nothing and helped him to bed to let him sleep a while.
He needed time, not just to get the alcohol out of his system, but to let the news sink in. When he woke he might just deal with it a little better.

And Rachel needed time too.

Bethany.

Did he really have a sister?
Or more exactly,
had
he really had a sister?

Part of her wanted to hate him for lying to her all these years, and for the easy, flippant way he had given up the information after he found out about her death.
But that relentlessly loyal part that still loved him fiercely had raised its head again, and all she could feel was pity, sadness, and a companionable loss. Technically, this Bethany was Rachel’s sister–in–law. They were family.

Rachel left him to sleep and went out for a walk.
She circled the block a couple of times, then walked down to the High Street and glanced into a few shop windows. She didn’t have much money to buy anything, and found herself looking at job advertisements in the window of the Post Office, aware that if Matthew’s books didn’t start to sell better soon she would have no choice. While Matt’s books had been selling well they had enjoyed a degree of comfort, but now, with his sales slumping and with a complete absence of any fight to spur him on, the future looked bleak. She could see herself behind the checkouts that she had once felt a little snobbish towards as she stood there in line, her basket full of the kind of products most people only bought for special occasions, and she realised just how close to a precipice everything stood. Success, wealth, happiness, love, it could all plummet in an instant.

Who was Bethany?
Could he really have had a mystery sister? Part of her felt betrayed. Another part felt desperately sorry for him and yet another part wondered just what had happened to him all those years ago to make him hide a sister from her.

Perhaps he would tell her, now the floodgates had opened.
She could only hope.

She resisted the urge to drop round to see Liz, her best friend, who lived a couple of streets away, because she knew the revelation would slip out, and right now there was little to tell that wouldn’t bring up more questions she couldn’t yet answer.
Instead she headed back to the house, made herself a sandwich for lunch and stared blankly at Australian soap operas for an hour or more while she waited for him to get up.

#

At about half past two she heard him stomping along the upstairs landing, heard him groan and could imagine him rubbing a hand through his tousled hair, wiping sleep from his eyes. She got up and went into the kitchen, filled the kettle and switched it on.

Matthew appeared in the doorway a moment later.
He was still wearing the same clothes from that morning.

‘I’ve just put the kettle on.
I’ll make you a coffee.’

‘Thanks.’
He grimaced. ‘My head hurts.’

‘Are you all right?’ She made no move towards him.
They sometimes still had sex, but there was rarely any tenderness. Otherwise they hardly touched each other anymore. There didn’t seem to be a reason why they should.

‘What do you think?
It’s like a bad nightmare. Fuck.’

‘Sorry.
I was only asking.’ The kettle clicked off. She turned around and made two mugs of coffee, unable to shake a nervous feeling that grew from him standing behind her and out of sight. Her grip instinctively tightened on the kettle, and she hated herself for thinking that the boiling water would make a useful weapon.

She turned around
and handed him one of the cups.

‘No,
I’m
sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped. It’s just that this is a bit of a shock.
Christ,
my head hurts.’

She reached behind her into their medicine drawer and tossed a packet of Ibuprofen towards him.
It slipped through the clumsy fingers of his free hand and fell to the floor. He groaned, put the mug down on the corner of a dresser by the door, and picked up the packet.

‘Here.’
Rachel handed him a glass of water.

Matt pushed two capsules out of the foil packing and gulped them down.
He wiped his mouth and handed the empty glass back. ‘Thanks.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Rachel asked.
‘This is a bit of a shock to me too, you know.’

Matt grimaced again, closed his eyes and shook his head.
‘Yes I know, I should have told you –’

‘How long have we been married, Matthew
? How long?’

‘Rachel –’

‘
How fucking long
?’

‘I get your point, okay
? Bethany was just . . . just part of a life I wanted to leave behind. Things happened . . . bad things. Things I wanted to forget about, things I ran away from a long time ago. Until my father rang, those things, that time . . . didn’t
exist
anymore.’

‘But she was your sister!’

‘Huh, you could hardly call her that.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

He scowled. ‘
Fuck.
I don’t know. She was sick. She had something wrong with her. Something I can’t explain.’ He scoffed. ‘We weren’t close, let’s put it that way. And it doesn’t really matter now, does it?’

‘Why wouldn’t it?’

‘I don’t know. Look, it’s complicated. Bethany just wasn’t
right
.’ He looked exasperated, struggling to find the right words. ‘She just wasn’t all there. Just used to sit in her room all day, staring out of the window like some sort of goddamn statue. She didn’t speak, didn’t react to anyone, anything. My father tried all sorts, but nothing could snap her out of it.’ He scratched his head. ‘She was much younger than me, too. She was just a kid when I left. If you want the truth, she scared the hell out of me.’

Rachel ignored this last comment.
‘She was, um, handicapped?’

‘I don’t know.
Look, I told you. It’s complicated.’

‘It doesn’t seem you were particularly close to any of your family.’

He put the coffee back on the dresser, hard enough to make some spill over. ‘Just because my family doesn’t ring me every five fucking minutes, Jesus Christ –’

Rachel held up a hand.
‘Matthew,
please
. I’d just like to know. I’m your wife, remember? How – how did she die?’

Matt’s eyes blazed.
‘He didn’t say, all right? Just because you’re my fucking wife doesn’t mean I have to tell you every goddamn thing about me, Rachel. I don’t
like
talking about it, and I don’t
want
to talk about it. Okay?’

Rachel shook her head, lowering her eyes to hide her tears.
‘No Matthew, it’s not okay. But right now I have to go pick the kids up from school and nursery.’ She fumbled in her pocket for the car keys, found the right one, held it in her hand with the point sticking out through her fingers, the rest of the key ring clutched in her palm.

I can’t believe I’m holding it
like a weapon.

‘I’ll see you later, Matthew.’
She started past him, the hall so like a walk to freedom she found herself resisting the urge to make a bolt for it. She didn’t think he would ever hit her again, but once she had never thought he would hit her
ever.

‘I have to go to the funeral this weekend.’

Rachel stopped dead. She turned to face him. ‘You’re going
home
?’

‘I guess I have to.
I’ll stay in the village, or at Father’s if I have no other choice. I’ll take the Vectra as it’s a long haul, and the Ford’s getting a bit old for that sort of distance.’

‘Oh . . . okay.’
She paused. ‘Do you want us to come with you?’

His reply was instantaneous.
‘No. I guess there’s no point really, is there? It’d just upset the kids, and it’s only a funeral, after all.’

‘It’s your
sister’s
funeral. I’d say that’s quite important.’

He held her gaze until she looked away.
‘I’ll be better on my own. It’ll only be for a day or so. I’ll probably be back by Sunday evening, or Monday at the latest.’

‘Whatever.’

She turned to go, and felt a hand close over her arm, a rough hand. She froze. Suddenly the key between her fingers seemed so useless, so ineffectual.