I sat back down at my end. It felt hotter than before; my bra was sticking to me, and my forehead felt damp.
A few minutes later Ailsa said that since the kids had eaten, perhaps we could squeeze in ‘another session’. Ferg was resistant – ‘not that again’ – and today Rose, who had drunk several glasses of rosé, didn’t seem in a mood to insist, but to my gratification Max seemed quite happy to accompany me and Maudie back down to the piggery.
He picked up a stick and slashed at the long grass as we walked down the steps. ‘Anything rather than sit any longer at that boring table.’
‘It was hot, too, wasn’t it? Sorry Ferg isn’t coming.’
‘I’m not. It’s nicer without him.’
It was stuffy in my bedroom, and a bit messy. I’d left a few clothes lying about and Maudie had found a J-cloth under the basin in the shower room and had torn it to pieces. I began to pick up the clothes and collect the bits of shredded blue while Max sat at the table.
‘We could play that game where we make up long words,’ he said.
‘Or we could go for a walk?’
I put Maudie on the lead and we turned right out of the piggery, across to the far side of the yard, and took a small path behind the barn which led down to the stream – a tributary, I think, of the one along which Ailsa and I had walked the day before. It was a shallow, stony sort of stream, straggly and shaded by great towering walls of trees. The light was limpid and we walked on the garden side of it for a bit, the water to our right, until at a narrow section we reached some stepping stones which we crossed gingerly over to the other bank. We stood for a moment or two in a sunlit clearing. Noises from the house reached us: the drone of voices, a pick-pock from the tennis court; Bea squealing, a splash. Insects buzzed. A dragonfly skittered.
‘I’m not going to play World of Warcraft any more,’ he said. ‘Dad says it’s rotting my brain.’
‘Oh dear. Do you think it is?’
‘I don’t know.’
In the distance, some way down the valley, there was the sound of a tractor.
‘It’s good to game less if it’ll please your dad,’ I said.
He had picked up a stick and he swished at some large cow parsley heads. ‘Nothing I do ever pleases my dad,’ he said. ‘He’s never going to like me.’
His tone was easy. If he had sounded more upset, I might have put more thought into my answer. But my head was still thick with what I’d heard the night before. I said, ‘Your dad doesn’t appreciate what he has.’ Max looked at me – and I saw the appeal in his eyes but again I missed my chance. ‘I appreciate you,’ I said, ‘and I’m not properly family so it counts double,’ and then I changed the subject. ‘That cow parsley looks suspiciously like hemlock.’
He walked off up the path then and I followed. It became more overgrown, brambles and long grass, huge thick flower-heads scratching Max’s bare legs, and we doubled back on ourselves and turned left on the track up the field that tilted, across patches of thorny scrub and broom, towards the single tree. I tried to think of something that would count as work, and together as we climbed we made up a story about a spaniel who ran away from a home where he was mistreated, and went to live with some foxes in the country. We were supposed to come up with a sentence each, to take it in turns, but Max began to take over. The spaniel got caught up in a pack of beagles, forced to hunt one of the foxes he’d made friends with. I can’t remember it all now – though I typed a copy for him when I got back to London – but it was rich in sensory and emotive detail: the conflict between the dog’s excitement in the chase, his instinct to kill, and his emotional connection with his prey, was really quite inspired. It makes my spine tingle thinking about it.
‘That’s brilliant,’ I said.
‘How would it end?’
‘I don’t know – maybe you could circle back to the beginning in some way.’
‘Like he takes the foxes back to the home where he was beaten and takes his revenge?’
I laughed. ‘I love a revenge story.’
Max stopped in his tracks. ‘Was that, like, literacy?’
‘It was indeed.’
‘Wow.’
‘My work here is done,’ I said.
Melissa and Bea were in the kitchen when we got back. The dishwasher was whooshing and the drying area by the sink was a rickety pile of upside-down dishes. Melissa told us Rose and Gary and their kids had left, and that ‘Mum and the guy’ were playing tennis. Delilah was having a lie-down. ‘The others’, she said, were up at the pool.
I’d found a bowl which I’d filled with water for Maudie and she was gulping it down messily. Bea, who had crouched down to stroke her, asked if she could take her for a walk around the garden.
I agreed. I shouldn’t have. It left me idle, hot, aimless. If I’d still been holding Maudie’s lead, I wouldn’t have gone up there. I wish I hadn’t. When a house has been busy with people, and then some of them have left, it’s hard to adjust to the change in numbers. I was curious to see the pool. But I should have done the maths.
The terrace wrapped around the house, and at the far end of it, around the other corner of the building, was a square lawn with stone steps running across the middle. Beyond this was a row of tall, thick bush-like trees – the crown of each trimmed into a round shape – and in the middle of these was a wrought-iron gate decorated with hearts and leaves.
It was closed and as I pushed it open, the prong at the bottom of it dragged against the ground where the grass had become worn away; as a result I pushed too hard and, once free, it sprang backwards on itself, swinging into the foliage so that, after stepping through, I had to turn round to release it. The leaves brushing against my fingers were thin and dark, pointy. The shape of them was familiar, but I couldn’t immediately recall what the tree was called. I had a feeling it was poisonous; certainly I associated it for some reason with death.
It was the pool I noticed before anything else. A long oblong, with the water on a level with the edge, it was disappointingly green and dark, murky even; not what I thought of as a proper pool. To my mind, if you’re going to go to all the trouble and expense of having a swimming pool, you should make sure it’s a proper blue: the blue of aertex shirts, and melamine picnic plates, of 1950s summer dresses, and the shutters on French houses. Not this dreary school uniform grey.
Most of the water and half the lounging area were in the shade now; which was why, presumably, the beds had been moved into a cluster on one side. A crowd had been here: there were trails of towels; a bikini top spreadeagled on the ground like the guts of an animal; a wine bottle on its side; empty glasses in the pots of lavender; a tub of melting ice cream.
But there were only two people here now, and they were both staring at me.
‘Good afternoon, Verity,’ Tom said. He was sitting on the edge of one of the sunbeds, with his back to me, his head awkwardly turned. He was wearing nothing but swimming trunks, and the position in which he was sitting had pulled them low at the back, so I could see the line between his buttocks.
‘Hello there.’ Pippa was lying on the next bed beyond him, only inches away, her shoulders bare, her legs long and white and naked. She had hardly moved. ‘How are you, then?’
I could have turned round and gone back through the gate. It was my immediate instinct, to flee. And yet by doing so I would compound the intimacy of the scene I had interrupted. Because it was intimate. I had no doubt of that. They had stopped talking when they saw me, and I had a sense now that their voices had been low, and private. The water glinted in the corner of my eye; bottomless depths. Beyond were more of those trees with their intimations of death. A sleepy wasp crawled along the edge of the ice cream. But she had spoken to me; I had no choice but to keep moving forwards. Tom got to his feet and it was only as he did so that I had a full view of Pippa: the strap of a crimson swimsuit pulled down entirely on one side – she was feeding the baby.
Tom took two steps towards the pool and sort of slid
into it from the vertical; hardly making a sound, only a slight splash, more of a watery quiver. His head emerged and he shook it and then crossed his arms on the edge of the pool facing Pippa, his chin resting on his hands.
I had no idea what to do with myself. I walked slowly, as if I were just taking some air and had wandered in this direction as part of a general garden tour; I let out a sigh meant to express appreciation of the view, of the day. I kept my eyes averted from Pippa, but I was aware that her face was tipped upwards and I was almost sure she was looking at me. ‘Here you go,’ she said. ‘There are some down here.’
I saw then that she had gingerly manoeuvred her right leg off the side of the lounger, and with her foot, she was steering a plate in my direction. And then, still holding the baby in the crook of her elbow, she dropped her spare arm and started fishing under the lounger, her hair slipping sideways, her neck white and long, as she reached for a used bowl just out of her reach.
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, taking a quick step towards her. ‘I’ll take it into the kitchen.’
‘Oh, could you? Thanks so much. You’re brilliant.’ She was pleased with herself for being so kind to the help. Her hand was still groping at empty space, but then she let out a cry. Her body crunched forwards and the baby detached. ‘Ow, ow.’
‘What, what?’ Tom pulled himself out of the pool.
‘Ow, idiot. Just when I . . .’ She was half laughing but then her face contorted. ‘Actually. Ow.’
She hauled her legs to one side and stood up, flapping her hand, bringing it to her mouth and away, moving from foot to foot, agitated. She was still holding the baby in the other arm, but loosely, and it had started emitting small angry cries, its neck bent back.
Tom was standing beside her now. ‘Are you all right?’
She was looking closely at her hand, at the skin between the index finger and the thumb.
‘Been stung. Shit, was it a wasp or a bee? I’m allergic.’
‘I don’t know.’ His wet trunks clung to his buttocks. The elastic in the waistband had left a row of red marks on his skin.
‘I need my EpiPen,’ Pippa said, a new note of hysteria in her voice. ‘It’s in my bag. Where’s my bag? RICKY!’
‘Is it here?’ Tom was looking under the lounger. ‘No. Where is it?’ Pippa’s head started making odd jerky motions as she tried to control herself. Her eyes flicked from where I was just standing, hopeless, over to Tom still crouched on the ground, back to me. I took a step towards her. She was panicking properly now. I felt I should perhaps stroke her arm. The crying had got louder, and more insistent, and as I reached her she suddenly thrust the bundle at me. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Can you just hold him?’
And in my hands, out of nowhere, was the baby, skin and flesh and bone – not bundled, but loosely tied together with a dangling piece of muslin and a white babygro, its arms and legs tiny and wrinkled, like the arms and legs of a shrunken old person. The face was scrunched, eyes closed, toothless mouth open, chin vibrating, and nobody noticed as I stood there holding this noisy creature, a possession so precious to its owner, and yet me not knowing what to do, breathless, shaking, totally ill-equipped for the task. Tom, with a backwards glance, was on his feet now, hurrying Pippa through the gate. They were both shouting for Ricky, and I could hear Ricky shouting back, a battering of feet, movement, activity – beyond the gate at the house, a door slamming. Here by the pool it was still just me and the baby, who was crying now, thrusting backwards into an arch, impossible to hold, bony and delicate; no longer complete, not a wrapped package, but dissolving into a collection of shaking limbs and neck, the head falling to bang against my chest, a smell of sour milk – and chlorine, the treacherous water gleaming beside me. I tried to stay still, to hold its head still against my clavicle, but it twisted away, so I began to move my hips from side to side, my hand trying to keep the head still, the dusting of black down under my fingertips, and somehow my thumb brushed against the soft breach of tissue at the centre, the ghastly pulsing abyss of the fontanelle. And it wasn’t just stress I felt then, the normal everyday panic a screaming baby inspires in everyone around it – on a bus, say, or in the queue at the post office – but something more precise and physical: a wave of sickness, not in my head, but in my body.
‘Here. Let me take him.’
Hands scooped the baby off me, deftly collecting the muslin from the ground and re-wrapping it, and I don’t know what happened next, but the noise from the baby eventually slowed to a hiccup.
But it was too late, too late for me. My mouth and nose were pressed into the synthetic fabric of the lounger, my knees against hard stone. And I kept my face buried there even when Ailsa was patting my back, pushing a glass of water in front of me, urging me to sit up. At some point, the physical distress I’d felt began to ease, but I didn’t raise my head for a little longer because, as so often happens when one has made a scene, mortification had taken over and it seemed better to keep my face hidden.
We all agreed later that I’d had a ‘funny turn’. It was the phrase Ailsa chose, and it was perfect: benignly comic and vague enough to cover a multitude of sins. It was better than ‘Off-legs’, which was what had come into my mind: a phrase health professionals use, as in the case of my mother, to describe a deterioration in the health of the elderly. Ailsa had wanted to call a doctor – she remembered my breathlessness on our walk – but I assured her I was OK. I would see my GP when I got home. Tom gave me an odd look, his eyes narrowed. He muttered in Delilah’s ear and he made a little tipping motion with his hand to show he thought I’d been on the sauce.
Pippa was fully recovered by then; she’d fully recovered even before the EpiPen was unearthed at the bottom of the nappy bag. And in fact it was never deployed – adrenalin not being necessary in the case of a bee-allergic being stung by a wasp.
Ailsa didn’t leave my side, even as Pippa and Ricky and the now sleeping baby were taking their prolonged, drawn-out leave. (‘I wish when people said they were going, they would just go,’ she murmured.) She sat by me at the garden table while I drank the sugary tea she’d forced upon me, watching me carefully. Once she even patted my leg. ‘You must look after yourself,’ she said.
‘I will.’
‘Ask if you ever need anything. Don’t just . . .’
‘Of course.’
‘Anything, Verity. I mean it.’
A thought came into my head then. It was an old thought, like an enemy, that slipped into cracks in my mind, waiting for the middle of the night or a moment of lowness to pounce. And because she was being so nice to me, I let it out into the light.
‘If anything happens to me,’ I said. ‘Would you look after Maudie?’
‘Yes, of course.’
I felt all the horrible emotions of the last twenty-four hours, the sense that she had slipped away from me, dissolve.
She had put me in the formal sitting room, and a little later Melissa and Bea came in, snuggled under blankets, and switched on Love Island. I don’t suppose it’s a surprising admission to say it wasn’t my thing. But I didn’t care. I was so grateful to feel included, so giddy with relief, nothing else mattered. Tom’s infidelity – everything that needed to be told: for now it could wait. On the sofa, with a plaid rug pulled over my knees, a toffee gumming my jaws, I even re-cast in my memory the moment I had walked in on Ailsa. It seemed touching. If she had seen me, she should know it didn’t matter, that I wasn’t shocked. Good God, no.
I wouldn’t have imagined such a sterile room could feel so cosy but that’s the effect of people, I suppose; that’s what happens when you’re part of a family.
Chapter Nineteen
5 wire coat hangers, tissue attached
Trepidation, noun. Tremulous agitation; confused hurry or alarm; confusion; flurry; perturbation.
Standling rang yesterday to say that, as a consequence of Ailsa’s letters, Cecily Tilson had agreed to a supervised visit with the children. A date has been given at a contact cent
re in Vauxhall. I watched Ailsa carefully while she took the call; her face went ashen and then quickly red, the colour leaching back in across her cheeks. A blush is made of blood: one forgets that. After hanging up, she bowed her head for so long that, until I’d coaxed out of her what he’d said, I thought something awful had happened, that there had been another death. She was in her spot on the sofa in the front room and she pushed her head back into the cushions, raised her fingers to flick back the lace curtain. Light trickled in.
‘Fuck, Verity,’ she said, finally. ‘I don’t know if I can do it.’
I patted her shoulder. ‘Of course you can. I’ll be there. I’ll look after you. I always do.’
They dragged, the ten days they were still away and I was back in London. I tried to keep busy. I went to the pub quiz but Maeve and Sue had decamped to France for the summer and it was a flaccid affair. Fred usually invites me down to Oxford during his long holiday but there had been no word from him since our picnic at Granary Square. It’s an indication of my state of mind that I didn’t care.
The house reproached me for my absence. Thieves had been into the front garden and stolen the rotary dryer, and a mini-fridge. Also some of my timber and a lawnmower. Inside, the smell was worse – it clawed at the back of your throat, particularly on the upstairs floor. The wallpaper was disintegrating, the wall behind it black and mottled, dirty with mites. Outside the bathroom, a strip had peeled entirely back, and hung over the dado like a filthy stocking. On the bedroom ceiling, dark-yellow drips had started appearing. I put saucepans down and tried to ignore it.
Finders, Keepers: The mesmerising new thriller from the author of LIE WITH ME Page 21