by Helen Kitson
Chapter Nineteen
It was done. My full confession, circa five thousand words, signed and dated. I handed it to Simon, asked that he read it while I was out at work, adding that I didn’t want to have any kind of discussion about it. Everything I had to say on the subject was set out unambiguously on the pages he held in his hands.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘it’s a deal. And when you get home, we’ll lock it in your wall safe.’
The safe in question was a fairly cheap model, purchased after a spate of burglaries in the village and now home to the few bits of valuable jewellery I owned. I’m sure an expert could have opened it in moments, but professional cracksmen tended to target mansions, not the kind of place I lived in.
I wasn’t sure Simon could be relied upon not to open a post mortem on the document, but really there was little I could usefully add. All the salient facts were there. I’d omitted nothing relevant, even the things it most pained me to admit. I would have defied any lawyer to quibble with it. I had stated the facts plainly, scrupulously shying away from interpreting or manipulating them.
When I returned home, I found the table laid with a fresh gingham cloth. Two plates, a quiche, lots of salad. He grinned, a tea towel tucked into the waistband of his jeans, oven gloves draped over his shoulder.
‘I wanted to do something nice for you. I know it must have been tough to write all that stuff, and you needn’t have done it. You could have told me to fuck off, but you didn’t.’ He placed glasses and napkins on the table. ‘I didn’t mention this before, but I bought a bottle of champagne – we can have that tonight.’
And now, of course, I wanted to know what his reaction had been when he read my confession. Did he think less badly of me? Did he understand? Was I, indeed, forgiven? The lunch spread suggested this.
‘There’s also a fruit salad thing for dessert. And I bought some elderflower cordial.’
‘You have been busy.’
He sat opposite me and grabbed my hands. ‘I know I’ve been a pain in the arse and I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I just want to say – reading what you wrote, and how honest you were – it made me understand what you’d been through, how it all happened.’
‘You don’t despise me?’
‘I didn’t understand the full picture, because it’s not clear-cut, is it? I mean, it’s definitely one of those grey areas, ethically speaking. I was wrong to go off at the deep end with you. Can you forgive me?’
That was all I’d wanted. His forgiveness. His affection.
‘In my heart I knew it was a mistake to pretend the book was mine. I thought I was doing what Madeleine wanted, but maybe that wasn’t what mattered most. At the time I thought it was.’
‘You did what you thought was right. Let’s eat.’
‘Yes. But did I do what I thought was right, or was that an excuse?’ I held out my plate for Simon to heap it with salad.
‘No point beating yourself up about it.’ He cut the quiche into four equal segments and offered one of them to me.
‘Thanks. I’m guessing you didn’t actually make the quiche.’
‘I heated it up. That counts, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose so. You might have burnt it, after all.’
‘I reckon there’s one more thing you need to do before you can move on properly.’
‘Oh? And what might that be?’
‘You should visit her grave.’
I froze. How did he know I’d never been back there since the funeral? It was, perhaps, a reasonable supposition. A few times I’d even bought flowers intending to place them on her grave, but something always held me back. Once or twice I’d got as far as the cemetery gates, on one occasion roughly thrusting my bouquet into the arms of a shocked woman in black whose grief can’t have been helped by my bizarre gesture.
‘I never go there,’ I told Simon. ‘I couldn’t. I can’t.’
‘Never?’
I shook my head. ‘The funeral was bad enough.’
‘Yet you like cemeteries.’
‘Not when they contain the mortal remains of my dearest friend. That makes a huge difference.’
‘What are you afraid of?’
‘I’m not afraid. I can’t bear it, that’s all.’
‘Too sad?’
‘Too final.’
‘Think about it. I really, truly admire you for writing everything down. You’ve spent most of your life running away from stuff instead of dealing with it. You put up with Russell because it seemed better than being alone. You probably put up with me for the same reason. How will you ever move on if you can’t face up to the past, especially the shitty stuff?’
‘I know she’s dead. Going to see her grave won’t make her any less dead.’
‘You can never look her in the eye and explain how you feel. Visiting her grave is the nearest you can get. Why can’t you do that?’
One day I would have to go there, face the demons, face the ghosts. It might even help to have Simon with me. What did I fear? Breaking down. The sight of fresh flowers laid on the grave by Madeleine’s parents. The inscription on the headstone, the wording of which I couldn’t remember and didn’t want to know.
Simon witnessed my placing of the written confession in the safe. It was a mere gesture, after all. Once he’d moved out I would destroy it. He relied too heavily upon whatever integrity I had and the burden of guilt I’d carried with me for over twenty years.
We spent the rest of the day reading and, in Simon’s case, writing. He worked in half-hour bursts, reporting regularly when he came down to make coffee.
‘It’s going well, then?’
‘I don’t want to tempt fate, but I reckon I’ve got a handle on it now. Couldn’t you try to write a book, one that was truly yours?’
‘But I have nothing to say – nothing at all.’
He leaned against the sink, one foot resting on top of the other. ‘You could write a book about Madeleine.’
‘A novel? No, Simon. No.’
‘Just a thought.’
Sometimes I felt he was even more obsessed with Madeleine’s memory than I was. But he was young enough to be captivated rather than repelled by the morbid romance of her death, all that potential and promise wilfully expunged, the stones of expectation heavy in her pockets as she dragged herself beneath the water.
‘Besides, if I did that I’d still be shackled to the past, wouldn’t I? I thought the whole point was for me to free myself from Madeleine and move forward.’
‘Writers use their past in their fiction, don’t they?’
‘Some more than others. There’s a difference between drawing upon it and using it wholesale.’
He turned to face the sink and rinse out his cup. ‘Like I said, it was just a thought,’ he mumbled.
Had I hurt his feelings? Why was he so bothered? His interest in my life was something I still couldn’t fathom. I had long ceased, in his eyes, to be the writer he thought I was.
‘I know you mean well,’ I said, ‘and that you’re only trying to help. I’m sorry if I sounded brusque.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’d better get back to the writing, hadn’t I, else I’ll be no better than you.’
He swept past me after he’d uttered this comment. In time he’d learn that insults are more effective when delivered with subtlety.
Simon emerged from his room at around six, when I was about to start cooking. ‘What’s for dinner? I’ll cook if you tell me what to make.’
What sort of person would he be in ten years’ time, I wondered, once he’d lost that raw quality that was a measure of his youth and also part of his charm? At least I hoped he would lose it. Qualities that are endearing in a young person are far less appealing in people old enough to know better. I often wondered what sort of woman Madeleine might have become and if we’d have liked each other. Would she have married, had children? Would she have written other, greater, novels and swung right out of my orbit, my jealousy pois
oning the well? The pointlessness of such questions didn’t prevent me from asking them.
I handed Simon a recipe book, a Post-it note marking the relevant page. If he wanted to cook, let him cook.
Ice cream and champagne. The ice cream exquisite. Vanilla, in a sexual context, means plain, no frills; the Lidl of sex. I’ve always thought this unfair. A really good vanilla ice cream, made with cream, sugar, free-range eggs and Bourbon vanilla pods, is surely proof that excellence can always be achieved if one uses the finest ingredients.
The champagne was equally good, a Veuve Clicquot that couldn’t have cost much less than fifty quid.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ Simon said. Simon says put your hands on your head. Simon says…
I nodded.
He caught my hand in his, turned it over, kissed the inside of my wrist, the pulse point.
Here we go again…
‘More champers?’ I asked.
His mouth still pressed against my skin, he shook his head.
Pleasure; tenderness; a sense of awe. This body – his body, my body, our body. The softness and warmth of his skin, the smell of it, a smell I wish I could capture. I need to analyse it, so that I can remake it when he’s gone. Sweat, lemons. Tangy, sweet.
The weight of his body on mine. The warmth of his breath against my ear. The rhythmic movements of love, skin against skin, my fingers in his hair. Our mouths opening as wide as they would go. The taste of him. His tongue flicking inside my mouth. The gentle nip of his teeth. A list, a catalogue. Impossible to describe an experience at once mundane – easy as eating, as breathing – and extraordinary, unique, unexpected. A gift. Tears.
‘Simon—’ I want to say his name over and over, like a prayer.
Never leave me.
But of course he will.
I glance up at his face. He’s a million miles away, his head tipped back, the Adam’s apple prominent. And I am merely stunned – stunned with love for him. Love I cannot, must not, speak.
I love you, I mouth, then dip my head, my cheek resting against his belly. This love has no use, it’s irrelevant. It won’t be long before he leaves me. He’ll return to uni, find himself a lovely girl with skin as apricot-soft as his. Will he be kind, or will he tell her about me, smiling when he sees her little moue of disgust?
‘How could you?’ she might ask. And he’ll shrug, reach for her, lose himself in her arms.
A little death, a sour taste; bruised fruit.
Chapter Twenty
‘Are you ready?’
‘As I’ll ever be.’
Sheer folly. All these years I’d avoided visiting Madeleine’s grave. Had my mother chosen to be buried rather than cremated, I suppose I should have had to pass through those high metal gates, and likely the other mourners would have attributed any nervous reaction to understandable grief for my mother’s demise. A big black hat might have hidden my tears, the deathly paleness of my face.
‘I bet it won’t be as bad as you think,’ Simon said. ‘And afterwards we’ll have afternoon tea in that quaint little café. Scones with jam and cream. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Shall we go, then?’
The cemetery was not a large one. Situated roughly half a mile from the church, it had been constructed to take the overflow as the village expanded and the small graveyard abutting the church was no longer adequate. A heavy padlock hung from the gate. For a moment I thought the gates were locked. Simon pushed and they parted.
He turned to me with a weak smile. ‘You don’t get out of it that easily.’
‘Let’s get it over with.’
Few of the graves dated from before the twentieth century, the headstones a mixture of plain white marble and polished black granite. No lichen-encrusted monuments, no weeping angels, the older headstones were equally plain, recognisable by virtue of being made from stone, weathered by time, the inscriptions harder to read.
A dirt path ran from the gates. Graves either side, and in the middle a group of three or four spreading yew trees. I knew precisely where Madeleine’s grave was, but I stood in the middle of that path, my eyes fixed on the trees, as if I’d suddenly and irrevocably lost my bearings.
‘Gabs?’ Simon’s hand cupping my elbow. ‘You haven’t forgotten where she is, have you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Come on, then. Take me to her.’
I looked at him. ‘Why do you care so much? About Madeleine?’
He shrugged. ‘She matters to you, therefore she matters to me.’
I’d shown him photos of Madeleine and he’d pored over the pictures, murmuring about how pretty she’d been. Did he have some necrophiliac interest in her? But that was absurd! No, just a common or garden fascination with a beautiful, gifted girl who’d died too young – the same kind of glamour that pulls visitors towards the grave of Jim Morrison in Père Lachaise.
My hands and knees trembled as we approached Madeleine’s last resting place. The first thing I noticed was the bouquet of fresh flowers. Her parents, of course, would come here regularly; would feel it a terrible dereliction of duty if they failed to keep her grave looking pristine. I imagined her mother on her knees, plucking each weed from between the green glass chippings. There was a proper grave vase for the flowers, Madeleine’s name inscribed upon it in gold, a far cry from the dirt-clouded jam jars that served as flower holders on some of the graves.
Simon crouched next to the headstone. Something in his manner – the slow, deliberate tracing of each letter with his fingers – made me freeze.
‘Simon?’
I wanted to reach out to him, touch him; wanted him to reassure me that the prickling of my scalp and the nausea rising to my throat were the result of my own emotions rather than a reaction to his.
‘Simon!’
Still crouching, he looked up at me. No tenderness in his expression, no pity. He opened his hand. Dangling from it, a chain with a gold locket. Hers. Madeleine’s. Was he a thief on top of everything else?
‘Where the hell did you get that?’
The pendant swung gently to and fro. ‘You recognise it, don’t you?’
My first thought was that, whatever happened, we mustn’t bicker beside her grave. But he’d brought me here for a reason, one that had nothing to do with helping me come to terms with Madeleine’s death. This was all about him. Him and her. I’d always suspected his interest in Madeleine was excessive, but had shut my eyes and ears to the possibility of there being some backstory about which I knew nothing. A connection as complicated as the one I had with her.
‘Did you ever wonder where she went, that year she dropped out of uni?’ Simon spoke softly, but it was the softness of a tiger stalking its prey on silken paws, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
The succession of postcards. Foreign postage stamps. But no details, no substance.
‘You must have wondered, surely?’ he insisted.
‘She was travelling. Sorting her head out.’ Even at the time I’d known there was more to it than that. But did I really want to know?
‘She didn’t even need a passport,’ he said. ‘She hardly ever left one room for months. For as long as it took.’
‘What are you talking about? I can show you the postcards, for God’s sake.’ The postcards were real, the postmarks genuine, the handwriting hers.
‘And I can show you a birth certificate.’
‘What? Whose?’
‘Look at me, Gabrielle. Look at my face. Look properly.’
Didn’t I know every perfect inch of it?
‘We all resemble somebody,’ he said.
The penny dropping and still – still – a stubborn refusal to believe what was being revealed to me.
‘No… No, it can’t be that!’
Simon nodded, satisfied. He’d made his kill.
‘I was born,’ he said. He sat on the kerb that enclosed her grave. ‘I was born,’ he re
peated, gazing at the headstone.
My stomach lurched. Everything now made complete, terrible sense. What on earth had I done in telling him I’d passed off Madeleine’s novel as my own? Had he known all along that I wasn’t the author? Either way it wasn’t lost on me that I’d confessed to the one person who would, with some justification, wish me to suffer for what I’d done. Madeleine’s parents had no appreciation for literature, might have looked at me blankly had I explained to them about her book. If they’d read it, they wouldn’t have understood it. But Simon – her son – did understand. He would never forgive me.
‘Aren’t you going to say something?’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to know how it was managed?’
I couldn’t speak.
‘My father was a university lecturer,’ he continued. ‘His wife… I doubt she was happy about it, but… In any case, I’ve never heard the full story. Versions, that’s all. I never called her Mum – she didn’t want me to. She was just Sophie. An inoffensive woman, weak and timid. A lot like you, in fact.’
‘I think we should talk about this somewhere else.’
He shook his head. ‘This is where it must be.’
‘So many lies—’ Mine as well as his. I was no better.
‘Dad gave me the locket on my eighteenth birthday. He said Madeleine sent it to him shortly before she died. Sophie didn’t even know he had it. She went mental. She was all right most of the time, but sometimes she’d lose it. She was never violent or anything, she’d just get into these terrible rages when she’d spew out all these resentments she normally kept locked up. She thought I was a nasty piece of work. She knew how much I despised her.’
There was nothing I could say. Nothing I wanted to say. I wondered why he’d waited so long to reveal his identity to me. He didn’t seem triumphant; he was no moustache-twirling villain standing over the prone body of the helpless female victim, even if that’s more or less how I felt.