The Reunion (10 page)

‘I miss you.’

Silence.

‘Claudia? Are you there?’

‘I’m here, yes.’

Dan didn’t want to know, but for some reason he couldn’t help himself, and he asked her: ‘Have you slept with him?’

‘Dan!’

‘Well, have you?’

‘I’m his wife, and I’ve been away from him for five weeks. What do you think?’

‘Jesus, Claudia.’

‘Listen, I have to go. He’s coming now, we’re going to lunch. Just… be patient, OK?’

She ended the call.

Dan sat back down on the desk chair, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. He felt nauseous. Why did she tell him that? Why did he ask? Bloody idiot. Suddenly he was beyond furious; he leapt to his feet, grabbed the stupid little pot with the stupid little purple flower in it and made to hurl it against the wall. He stopped himself in time. He put the pot back down and carefully brushed the bit of soil which had spilled out under the rug. He sat down on the floor, crossing his legs and resting the backs of his hands on his knees, thumb lightly touching the third finger. He closed his eyes and breathed, in and out. He felt a little better. He tried to clear his mind, to forget the here and now, but the sick feeling in his stomach wouldn’t go away and he couldn’t banish the image from his head of Claudia’s head thrown back, white throat exposed, someone else moving on top of her.

17 November 1996

Dear Jen,

I don’t know if this will reach you. Andrew says he sends his letters to you care of your parents, but isn’t sure if they pass them on.

It’s been almost five months. I waited, because I knew you’d need time, I knew you’d probably want to be left alone. But I didn’t want you to think that I wasn’t thinking of you, spending every moment wondering where you are and what you’re doing. Wondering whether you’ll be OK, whether you’ll ever come back.

I understand why you went, but please come back.

There is no reason for you to feel guilty. None of this was your fault. It was mine, mine and Andrew’s: we were the ones who were driving too fast. The terrible part of it is that I have escaped without punishment. Without formal punishment, anyway.

Andrew will not be so lucky. His sentencing is next month. His legal career will be over, though they think he will escape a custodial sentence. Nat is doing better. Still at her parents’ place, but she’s out of the chair most of the time now, which I think is a huge relief. She talks about coming back to London, taking up her old job. I haven’t seen much of Lilah. I don’t think she’s doing too well. It’s hard to tell because she won’t talk about it. She isn’t strong, though. She isn’t strong like you.

We miss you, Jen.

I can’t know what you’re feeling, but I know that mixed in with all the grief there will be something else, and I know I am the cause of that. Can I be sorry without feeling regret? Because I can’t, Jen, I can’t regret it, I wish that I could, that I could wish it had never happened, but I can’t. I can’t bring myself to wish for that.

Please, give me a chance to help you through this, Jen. I just want a chance.

Come back.

Dan

THEY WERE RUNNING
low on firewood and Zac volunteered to fetch more. Lilah jumped at the chance to go with him, to have a cigarette and get away from baby talk. She’d never been good at enthusing about maternity. Zac went upstairs to get their coats and they went out the back door, past the barn and up the hill, hand in hand, towards the woodshed. They squinted into the sunshine.

‘You want to go back for your sunglasses?’ Zac asked her.

‘It’s OK,’ she said, raising a hand to shield her eyes. They were looking up towards a clump of trees halfway up the hill, beyond the shed. Suddenly, Lilah stopped dead.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, and started to walk again. Just for the briefest of moments, she’d thought she saw someone moving, just beyond the tree line. It gave her a fright. She blinked hard into the brightness, but there was nothing there. No one there. Still, it made her feel a little strange. There was something about those woods, something frightening and yet alluring. She gripped Zac’s hand a little harder; he turned to her and smiled, and kissed the top of her head.

‘Beautiful girl,’ he said and at once she was safe.

Zac filled a basket with logs while Lilah sat on a tree stump and smoked. There weren’t many decent-sized logs left, so Zac opted to chop some more. He took off his jacket, picked up an axe and grinned at Lilah, who was taking pictures with her phone.

‘There you go, baby. Very Tom of Finland.’

‘Tom who?’

She just smiled at him and shook her head.

After a couple of minutes he stopped chopping, wiped the film of sweat from his forehead with the back of his glove. Shielding his eyes from the glare, he looked down over the house and into the valley.

‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’

‘Mm-hmm,’ she murmured, but she was looking at him rather than the view.

‘Look at it, Lilah! It’s incredible. All this space. This clean air!’ Lilah took a long drag on her cigarette; Zac raised his eyes to the sky. ‘You’re hopeless. I have to say, I agree with Andrew,’ he said, picking up his axe again, readying himself for another swing. ‘Jen’s mad to sell this place.’

‘I wouldn’t want to be out here all alone,’ Lilah said, shivering a little. ‘Not in winter, anyway. It’s different in summer, though. It was lovely in the summer.’

‘Ah, the fabled summer of… what was it? Ninety-eight?’

‘Ninety-five. You were still at school,’ she said, eyebrow arched. ‘Running around in short trousers.’

‘And you were with Andrew.’

‘I was.’

‘He seems like a nice bloke, but I just can’t quite see it, you and him.’

‘He was different, then. Very different.’

‘Different how?’

‘More… alpha. He was very much the alpha male.’

‘Andrew? Andrew in the comfy jumper? He was never the alpha male.’

Lilah laughed, ran her fingers through her hair, flicked her cigarette away. ‘Oh, he was. When we were at university, Andrew was the golden boy. He was gorgeous and clever and good at everything – captain of the rugby team, editor of the college newspaper, all that crap. He was also friendly and outgoing and everyone liked him. If we’d been at an American high school, he’d have been the one voted most likely to succeed, most likely to marry well, get rich, be happy ever after.’

She lit another cigarette, looked up at Zac who was watching her expectantly, waiting for her to go on. She shrugged. ‘Things didn’t turn out so well for him. It wasn’t his fault, there were… circumstances.’

‘Oh. What circumstances?’

‘It’s a long story.’

Zac went back to chopping; he didn’t press the point, he never did. Which suited her perfectly. Never one for analysing the past, she’d always found it less painful to let things slip away. She knew that this was cowardice. It was her way of not facing up to things, her way of shirking responsibility. Most people did, in some way, she supposed: Jen ran away, Dan made up stories and rewrote history.

Not Andrew, though. It still amazed Lilah, all these years on, that there was never a moment when Andrew had hidden from what had happened. If it had been her, behind the wheel, there is no way in hell that she could have gone to the funeral. But it never crossed Andrew’s mind not to go. Lilah was terrified that there might be a scene – she had melodramatic visions of Conor’s mother flinging herself at Andrew, calling him a killer. Andrew said that if he was asked to leave, he would. But of course no one did ask him to leave. When they arrived at the church, Conor’s mum was standing outside and she’d greeted them like friends, kissing them and telling them how much her son had loved them both. She asked them to sit with her, at the front of the chapel. Lilah could remember walking up the aisle, holding Andrew’s hand, stupidly, drunkenly (because she’d already started, that morning, in the bathroom), wondering if they’d ever take that walk in the opposite direction, with her in white not black. She remembered looking for Natalie before realising that of course she wouldn’t be there because she was lying in a hospital bed, unconscious, possibly crippled, possibly brain damaged. She’d stumbled halfway up, and Andrew had caught her arm. She’d turned towards him but he wasn’t looking at her, his eyes were fixed ahead of them. He’d told her not to wear such high heels, they weren’t practical.

Zac had stopped chopping again and he was looking at her, a small smile on his lips.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. You just look pretty today, sitting there on your stump, lost in your thoughts.’ She laughed, shaking her head. ‘I think he must have been bonkers,’ he said.

‘Who’s bonkers?’

‘Andrew. Leaving you for Natalie. I mean, I’m sure she’s a nice girl and everything, bit high strung for my tastes, lovely eyes, I must say, but… compared to you? Absolutely bonkers.’

Lilah got to her feet, went over to him and kissed him on the mouth. ‘You are lovely, my darling, but you don’t know the half of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

She turned away from him, looked down at the house, picture-postcard pretty blanketed in snow, smoke curling from the chimneys. ‘It’s all much more complicated than you think. These things always are. I was hurt, obviously, I was very hurt by everything that happened, but with hindsight, with the wisdom that my advanced years have afforded me, it all makes sense to me that he would fall in love with her.’

Zac shook his head. ‘I don’t know how you can say that.’

‘I was hard to love, Zac. Sometimes, I was very hard to love.’

He put the axe down and took her hand. ‘You could never be hard to love.’

Lilah laughed out loud. ‘Oh, you know that’s bullshit!’ she said.

‘No, it isn’t,’ he said crossly, ‘you are
not
hard to love.’

‘Oh, darling,’ she purred, ‘you are so sweet,’ and she gave him a shy smile, looking up from beneath lowered lashes. She could almost see him melt.

They walked back down the hill, carrying a basket of wood each. As they passed the barn, they noticed Dan, sitting on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed. He seemed to be doing some sort of yogic breathing.

‘Ommmm,’ Zac said, and Lilah giggled.

Inside the house, Jen had put some music on, something folksy and gentle. She was talking to Andrew, animated: they were laughing, she watched him reach out and place his hand on her belly. Her big brother, that’s what he used to call himself. The sight of them together made Lilah feel happy and bereft all at once; guilty too. The iPod shuffled, the track changed and a new song came on, ‘Can’t Be Sure’. Instantly Lilah was transported back in time and space to a campsite in St-Malo, a muddy field on the side of a hill, sitting inside the tent because it was raining, drinking wine out of a plastic bottle, listening to The Sundays.

The previous day, Nat had been dumped by a monosyllabic northerner with bad hair and an even worse attitude and Lilah had persuaded her to leave college immediately in search of ‘cathartic adventure’. They’d borrowed Jen’s car and driven south through the night, arriving at Dover in the early hours, finally getting to rainy, miserable northern France around lunchtime, with no adventure in sight and nothing to do but get drunk and listen to The Sundays, so that’s what they did, for two days running.
Did you know, desire’s a terrible thing
? Natalie, washing up in the kitchen, looked over at her, and Lilah smiled. Natalie looked away.

15 April 1999

Email, from Lilah to Natalie

Dear Natalie,

No, I bloody well do not want to come to your wedding.

Did you honestly think there was a chance I would?

Lilah

THEY WERE STAYING
. He’d managed to persuade her. Or, she was persuaded, in any case, by the snow or the baby or just the fact that it would be embarrassing to leave now. Andrew carried their case back upstairs, and they unpacked.