She tilted her head from side to side, trying to iron out her thoughts. She couldn’t allow herself to think about Edward today when so many different feelings were already competing for attention. And yet, for the past five months, ever since a routine mammogram had detected a lump in her breast—a lump that had led to the discovery of secondary tumors in her liver and cancer in her lymph nodes—Audrey had become preoccupied with the past. Knowing she would most likely be dead in eighteen months’ time had caused the floodgates to open on memories she had spent decades trying to forget.
She gripped the solid black finial at the end of the bed and ordered herself to stop thinking. But as she leaned forward and pulled the packing tape from the top of the next box, she remembered sitting around the kitchen table nearly three decades before, feeling the air thicken with a tension she could neither cut through nor explain, as Jess glared at Lily and refused to tell anyone why suddenly she couldn’t bear to be in the same room as her sister.
Chapter 2
Jess
Standing in front of a small square monitor, watching actors repeat their lines for an eighth time, Jess rubbed the back of her neck where the muscles had compressed into tight knots. Halfway through his final speech, the male actor stumbled on words he’d already fluffed seven times, and Jess sensed a murmur of exasperation among the crew.
She’d known when she arrived on set at six o’clock that morning—before anyone else, as was her responsibility as senior location manager—that today would be one of those days. First-day shoots on new drama shows invariably were: the cast adjusting to performing outside the rehearsal room, crews reestablishing acquaintances from previous jobs or forming new alliances. There was always a tense anticipation, like the moments before the first guests arrive at a party you’re hosting.
“Right, let’s take it from the top again. Izzy, can we freshen up Lucia’s powder, please?”
Justin, the director, started talking to the two lead actors about commitment to the scene while the makeup artist refreshed their powder. Jess pulled her thick padded coat tighter around herself, wishing she’d had the foresight to put tights on under her jeans and thermal socks inside her sneakers. The trouble with filming in listed buildings was that they were perennially cold, especially in late February. She’d warned the producer, when she’d first found this location a stone’s throw from Spitalfields Market, that she feared it was one of those buildings that would be arctic no matter how many portable heaters they installed, but he’d wanted to go ahead with it anyway.
The director’s assistant called for quiet and the cameras started rolling again before the two lead actors launched into the scene for the ninth time.
Jess sipped the sugary tea rapidly cooling inside a styrofoam cup corniced with the firm indentations of her teeth. She put the cup on the floor, undid the makeshift bun she’d wound her hair into at 5 a.m., and tied it back tightly into a ponytail, her hair protesting at the roots. Watching the monitor as the actors worked their way through the scene, she tried to quash her frustration that she was on set at all. Professionally she knew she had to be there today but that didn’t stop her wishing she wasn’t, didn’t stop her resenting the fact that she wasn’t at home helping her mum to unpack instead. Her mum had said that she understood, that she’d be fine and had lots to sort through, that she’d have Mia for company. But Jess knew how difficult it was for her to give up the house she’d lived in for forty-five years, the house which had seen all the defining moments of her mum’s adult life.
“Excellent. That was great. Right, let’s take a fifteen-minute break before we reset downstairs. Jess—where’s Jess?”
Jess swallowed hard as she walked across the seventeenth-century mahogany floorboards into the first-floor drawing room, where Justin was sitting in a canvas-backed folding chair.
“Jess, Sam says there’s a dodgy plug socket on the top floor where we’re filming later. Could you check it out? I’d rather not electrocute the entire crew on the first day if we can possibly help it.”
Justin laughed, and Jess fabricated a smile, mumbled a reply, and trudged up the stairs, her toes beginning to numb in her sneakers.
Locating the loose plug socket and covering it with black gaffer tape while cursing herself for not having spotted it sooner, she glanced back down the stairs to check that no one was on their way up before pulling her phone from her pocket and switching it on.
No messages, no emails, no missed calls.
She dialed Mia’s number, the tips of her fingers stiff with cold, five rings trilling in her ear before she heard a breathless answer.
“Hi, Mum. What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to check everything’s OK with you and Granny?”
“Yep, we’re fine. I’m doing my homework and Granny’s unpacking.”
Jess pulled at a loose piece of skin at the base of her thumbnail, felt a sharp skewer of pain as she tugged it free. “I’m hoping we won’t wrap too late today. I’ll ask Justin if Sacha can clear up for me and then I should be home in time to give Granny a hand.”
“Honestly, don’t worry about it. We’re totally fine. We’re fine, aren’t we, Granny? Granny says yes. Seriously, it’s not as if there’s much you can do here anyway. Granny said she’d rather unpack by herself and I’ve already made a fish pie for dinner. If you’re not home in time, Granny and I will eat, and we’ll save you some for later.”
Jess sucked at her thumb where a small speck of blood was seeping through. “OK, if you’re sure. Just don’t forget you’ve got that history essay to write this weekend. You don’t want to be rushing it at the last minute.”
“I won’t, I promise. Have a good day and we’ll see you later. Love you.”
“I love you too.”
As the call ended, Jess opened the address book on her phone and scrolled through the names, trying to find someone she might text to avoid the professional small talk downstairs. There were so many entries—school friends, university friends, former colleagues—and yet no one to whom she could send a chatty unsolicited message without it seeming strange. It was as if her address book were a directory of ghosts, a reminder of all the friendships she had allowed to lapse over the years.
She hesitated, felt temptation prickle the tips of her fingers. She watched her thumb hover over the internet icon, felt it goading her, enticing her, drawing her in.
Stop. Don’t do it. You’ll only regret it afterward.
The voice of reason spoke clearly in Jess’s head but her hand now seemed to be working independently of common sense. She watched as she began typing in a name she had entered so many times before, and so frequently, that Google’s search engine knew precisely what she was seeking after only the third letter.
Do not click on the links. It’s not too late. You can still stop.
But it was too late. It was always too late once the seed had been sown. A moment’s boredom, a sleepless night, a frustrating day. Jess could never stop herself once the thought had occurred.
Lily Goldsmith.
The sight of her sister’s name caused a tightening of the muscles across Jess’s stomach.
Jess scrolled down the list of results, hunting for an unread article. Three pages in and every item was something she’d seen before: Lily speaking at international conferences, Lily collecting awards, Lily in receipt of yet another promotion.
Jess clicked the news tab, hoping it might bear more fruit. But there was nothing there that she hadn’t read before either. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or exasperated. Part of her was pleased her sister hadn’t managed to garner any more press coverage in the forty-eight hours since she’d last checked but another part of her felt cheated.
Put the phone away, Jess. There’s nothing new to see. Don’t do it to yourself.
But it was too easy. All that information, all those photographs, just waiting for her to look at them. It wasn’t really stalking. It wasn’t as if she were checking the social media account of an ex-boyfri
end. But Facebook hadn’t been invented when Iain had walked out on her two weeks before Mia’s first birthday, failing to give any explanation other than that he just couldn’t handle the relationship any more. Google-searching your own sister was different. Jess was only finding out the facts of Lily’s life that she’d already know if she ever let her mum talk about her. She knew it wasn’t rational, knew that hunting for information about someone you’d refused to see for years didn’t make sense. She knew that whatever she found would only burrow beneath her ribs and tap out a rhythm of envy for the rest of the day. But still she couldn’t stop herself. She had a compulsion to know, even though the knowing would hurt her.
Jess clicked on a link that Google informed her she’d last visited five days ago: a magazine article with the headline “Having It All.” As the piece opened, she stared, unblinking, at the lead photograph.
Lily, Daniel, Phoebe: the three of them sitting on a pale gray sofa against a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, multicolored spines providing wallpaper to a scene that spoke of confidence, culture, prosperity. It was the kind of room Jess might have chosen as the location for a drama series about an affluent metropolitan family. Except this wasn’t a TV set. This was Lily’s perfect home. Lily’s perfect life.
And in the center of the photograph sat Jess’s sister, looking a decade younger than her forty-three years, with her neat dark chignon, cap-sleeve fitted dress, and minimalist makeup, as though she were a model in the pages of a fashion magazine.
Jess skim-read the article, text she was so familiar with she could have recited it verbatim, searching for something—anything—she might have missed before.
Lily Goldsmith has had what many regard to be a meteoric rise. Winning her first international award at the age of just twenty-three, she is now one of the most revered marketing professionals on either side of the Atlantic. She is, to many in the industry, a symbol of the penetrability of the glass ceiling.
Jess exhaled loudly, watched her warm breath condense in the cold air around her.
Married to millionaire entertainment lawyer Daniel Goldsmith, Lily has managed to achieve what so many women aspire to but few successfully accomplish: a happy work-life balance. The couple share their Holland Park home with their teenage daughter, Phoebe, currently a sixth-form pupil at an exclusive all-girls school in west London.
“If I knew the secret of success, I’d bottle it and sell it,” Lily laughs. “What I do know is that I’ve worked incredibly hard and I’ve always set myself very clear goals. Sometimes the landscape changes and you can’t always predict where you’ll be in five years’ time, but knowing where you’d like to be gives you a much better chance of getting there, I think. And I’ve been incredibly lucky in having amazing support at home. I imagine it’s nigh-on impossible doing a job like mine if your family aren’t 100 percent behind you.”
Jess studied the face of the brother-in-law she’d never met. He was exactly how she imagined a hot-shot entertainment lawyer to be: arrogantly handsome, oozing the kind of self-confidence that only extreme wealth and constant admiration could bring. Phoebe was pretty in the haughty, disinterested way that screamed of teenage entitlement, and there was something familiar about her that made Jess swipe through the other photographs, her finger jabbing at the right-hand arrow, propelling her through images she’d seen dozens of times before: the ebony grand piano gleaming in sunlight that streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows; the kitchen with its white bespoke units, shiny butler sink, white-painted floorboards, and wall of glass leading onto a manicured garden beyond; Lily’s study, empty but for a stark metal desk, a MacBook, and a mobile phone. All so neat, all so clean and bright, as though Lily had whitewashed her past with a spotless designer home.
Jess thought about her own house in comparison: the tattered brown sofa she’d bought secondhand sixteen years ago and had never been able to replace. The cheap melamine kitchen cupboards sporting wonky hinges and peeling edges, their multiple chips like battle scars. The small round table that just about accommodated three people as long as you breathed in when someone wanted to pass behind you. The mortgage payments she feared, every month, she might not be able to meet.
She tried to imagine what her sister’s life must be like: a carousel of dinner parties, cocktail parties, awards ceremonies, celebrity encounters. A diary filled months in advance with Saturday night plans, Sunday brunches, exotic holidays and, no doubt, an endless supply of friends to suit every occasion. Jess couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone out on a Friday or Saturday night, couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anyone around for dinner other than her mum. There always seemed to be more pressing things clamoring for her attention: washing and ironing, sourcing the next freelance job, preparing her accounts, helping Mia with her homework.
As Jess stared at the photograph of Lily sitting at her desk—the face so familiar yet so unknown—she was aware of her breath becoming shallow, of something lodging in her throat. She found herself thinking back to the day, almost three decades ago, when they had seen one another at their dad’s grave on the first anniversary of his death. Jess had sneaked out of school in her lunch hour only to find Lily already kneeling by his headstone, crocodile tears streaking her cheeks. Jess had screamed at Lily that day, words she had forgotten the moment they’d erupted from her lips. She had been so filled with fury and bile that it hadn’t been the words themselves that had mattered but the violence with which she’d delivered them. Now all she remembered about that gray September day was the feeling of ferocious certainty that Lily didn’t deserve to be there. After what Lily had done, she had forfeited the right to weep at their father’s grave.
“Jess! If you’ve fixed that socket, can you come back down? I want to check on something for Monday’s shoot.”
Jess stole one last glance at her sister’s face, wondering how Lily managed to sail through life as though she had nothing to hide, nothing to feel guilty for, wondering whether her sister had managed to convince herself of her innocence or whether she was content living with the knowledge of the damage she had done.
A scene flashed into Jess’s head, flickering in her mind like an old Super-8 film: standing outside the spare bedroom, looking into Lily’s eyes and knowing what must have taken place behind that door, yet being too weak—too afraid, too overwhelmed—to raise the alarm.
“Jess! Can you come back down?”
Jess blinked away the image of Lily with her hands clasped around the door handle, breathed against the persistent memory of all that had happened later that day and all that had come after. Swallowing against the regret and the grief catching in her throat, she switched off her phone and traipsed back down the stairs.
Chapter 3
Lily
Laughter pealed from the far end of the table and Lily wondered what joke she’d missed. She passed the prosecco bottle to Pippa without filling her glass and sipped her mineral water, glancing at her phone for the second time in as many minutes, wondering how soon she might be able to escape.
“So, has Phoebe signed up for the China trip? Honestly, how lucky are our girls? In our day no one went further than France on a school trip. Clementine is so excited. She’s done nothing but read up on Chinese history for the past two weeks. I’ve booked her a Mandarin tutor but I don’t know how much she’ll pick up in eight months.”
Lily racked her brain for any mention of a school trip to China. She was sure she’d remember if Phoebe had told her but had no recollection of it. “Yes, it sounds amazing. I don’t think Phoebe’s decided yet. When’s the deadline?”
“Monday, so she’d better get her skates on if she wants to go. It does sound marvelous. I said to Tom that perhaps he and I ought to go to China, but he said that if he’s only got seven weeks’ annual leave, he’d rather spend them in a place he knows and likes rather than risk ending up somewhere dreadful. Honestly, he’s so unadventurous. Sometimes I think I should just pack up and head off somewhere exotic
like that woman in Eat, Pray, Love.”
Lily tried to picture Pippa’s husband, but men were so rarely expected to get involved in school-related social activities that they all morphed into one nebulous mass in her head. She glanced around the table at the group of mums she’d first met six years ago when Phoebe had started secondary school and with whom she’d dutifully been attending a termly get-together ever since. She knew some of the other mums met more regularly, that they had an encyclopedic knowledge of each other’s lives, but then, some of these women hadn’t worked for as long as Lily had known them.
“How’s Daniel these days? Still hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities?”
Lily turned toward Annabel and glanced briefly at her phone. “He’s fine, thanks. Great. Busy, as always.”
“We should organize a supper soon. I haven’t seen Daniel for ages and he’s such a great guy. I’ll WhatsApp you some dates. Maybe I’ll invite Anoushka and Pippa too—what do you think?”
Before she had a chance to reply, Lily’s phone buzzed and her hand shot out toward it, knocking over Annabel’s prosecco glass, its contents trickling across the wooden table in thin, determined rivulets. “God, I’m sorry. That was so clumsy of me. Here let me mop it up.” A moment later, Lily handed the sopping napkins to a passing waiter and retrieved her phone, only to discover that it wasn’t the message she’d been hoping for.
“Everything OK, Lily?”
“Yes, just my boss. Nothing urgent.”
“They’re sending you work emails on a Saturday? God, they really do squeeze every last drop out of you, don’t they? But I’ve been meaning to ask, how’s your mum getting on? Is she still living at home?”
Lily studied Annabel’s face, wondering if somehow she’d found out the truth. “She is, yes. I wanted her to come and live with us but I can understand why she’s keen to stay in her own home. I speak to her every day, she comes for lunch every Sunday, and I’ve got caregivers lined up to help look after her whenever she needs them.”
If Only I Could Tell You Page 2