by Imogen Clark
‘Hi,’ Ray shouted as he came in. Melissa heard him take his coat off and hang it on the banister. ‘Missy, are you here?’ he called, confused by the darkness of the house.
Melissa sat where she was, the empty wine bottle on the table in front of her.
‘Oh, there you are!’ said Ray as he came in, and flicked on the overhead light. Melissa flinched as her eyes objected to the sudden glare. ‘What are you doing sitting here in the dark with your coat on?’ Then he spotted the wine bottle and added more urgently, ‘Is everything okay? Is Leah all right?’
‘Leah’s fine,’ replied Melissa, her words slurring together. ‘Who is Charles Montgomery Smith?’
She heard Ray swallow before answering. ‘You know who, Missy darling,’ he said, his smile broad. ‘He’s my half-brother.’
‘Not a twin?’ she asked.
‘No. You know that. What’s this all about? I thought we were having a nice night in, just the two of us, but you seem to have started without me. Shall I go out and get another bottle?’
He edged towards the door, but Melissa picked up the crumpled copy of the Chronicle and waved it in the air.
‘He’s in the paper,’ she said. ‘Your half-brother. Seems he got promoted.’
‘Oh?’ said Ray. ‘Let’s see. Ah yes, that’s him, the bastard.’ He gave the paper a cursory glance before picking it up and folding it again so that the picture wasn’t visible.
‘Looks a lot like you,’ slurred Melissa.
‘Well,’ replied Ray. ‘I suppose there’s a little bit of a resemblance, but we are brothers, you know. You’d expect us to look alike.’
‘You look very alike,’ spat Melissa. ‘Right down to the friendship bracelet. Did his little girl make one for him, too? Just like yours did?’
Silence rang out. Ray, usually so effervescent, opened his mouth to speak, but no words came and he closed it again. Melissa could almost see the cogs turning in his mind from the expressions that passed over his face. She suddenly understood these silences, the way he paused before answering when certain questions were asked. She had always assumed this was part of his personality, had found it endearing. Now it was obvious it was just a mechanism to buy time whilst he constructed yet another story.
‘Ah,’ said Ray now, all his lie-telling skills finally deserting him as he seemed to realise that he had got to the end of the tracks. His shoulders sagged and he took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for . . . It all just got out of hand. I mean, I love you, Melissa. I really do. Do you think I’d have gone through all these lies for so many years if I didn’t?’
‘But we’re married,’ Melissa said. ‘You married me. Remember? Or was that Charles? Who exactly is my husband, Ray? Does he even exist?’
‘Listen, Missy,’ Ray said, sitting down on the sofa and taking her hand. ‘It’s not as bad as you think. I can explain.’
Melissa snatched her hand back. ‘I don’t want a fucking explanation!’ she shouted. ‘I just want to know who I’ve been married to all these years. Are you married to her, too, to that Grace?’
Ray looked like a rabbit caught in headlights, panic crossing his face as he tried to decide what to say – how to answer this, the ultimate question.
‘Well, technically, yes, but . . .’
‘And is that where you go when you’re not here? To her and her children and your other life as a what, a fucking violinist? I didn’t even know you could play the bloody violin.’ Melissa’s anger was building now as all the ramifications of what had been going on under her nose for nearly two decades finally started to dawn on her. ‘It’s against the law, you know, being married to two women at once. You could go to prison. And it would bloody well serve you right,’ she added.
The colour seeped from Ray’s face and his jaw tightened. ‘Let’s not be hasty, Missy,’ he said. ‘I love you. And Leah too. I know I’ve been an idiot but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want you both.’
‘That’s your bloody trouble!’ shouted Melissa. ‘You want everything. Well, you can’t have it. Does she know? Your wife? Your other wife? Is that why you told me to steer clear of her? Scared we’d start comparing notes? She came back, you know, and I let her in, not that she said anything. She kept your dirty little secret for you. I reckon she does know, though. She’s not as stupid as me. Maybe she’ll report you to the police, too.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Ray said, his eyes wide like a little boy’s. ‘Everything’s worked for years without any problems. I’ve made it work. Why should that change just because it’s all out in the open?’
Melissa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Bigamy is illegal, Ray. Illegal! Do you know what that means? And you’ve lied to me. You’ve been lying to me from day one. Do you think I can just forget about that and carry on like nothing’s happened? Well, here’s some news for you. I can’t. And I won’t. I’m worth more than that and I owe it to Leah, too. You can pack your bags and get out. Go back to Grace, the poor bitch. I never want to see you again.’
‘But Melissa . . .’ he began.
‘I mean it. I want you gone. Now!’ Melissa got to her feet as if she were scaring away a stray cat. She wobbled a little, the alcohol rushing to her head. ‘Get out!’ she screamed.
Ray’s expression changed in an instant from imploring to angry. ‘Fine,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ll go if that’s what you want. But don’t expect me to come crawling back. That’ll be it. You’ll never see me again. I mean it,’ he added, in case there was any room for doubt.
Melissa just shrugged. ‘You can do what the hell you like,’ she said. ‘That’s pretty much what you’ve been doing from the start anyway.’
He shook his head. Did he look sad? Melissa didn’t know, didn’t even care.
‘Goodbye then, Melissa,’ he said with a finality that made her want to grab hold of him and make him stay. But she couldn’t. She owed it to herself to let him leave.
He stalked out of the room and, stopping only to pick up his coat and car keys, he left the house, slamming the front door behind him. Melissa saw him stride down the path and on to the street and then heard the engine of his car starting up. He really was going to go.
Well, he could do as he pleased. She didn’t need him anyway. He could fuck off back to where he came from. She and Leah would be just fine without him. She had the house and her job. They would be totally fine.
Melissa flopped back on to the sofa and curled herself into a tiny ball. She felt so stupid and humiliated. Her cheeks, flushed with the wine already, burned hot. He had made her look like an idiot. She would never forgive him. And how would she explain it all to Leah? Well, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t bear to. She grabbed at a cushion and pulled it tight into her chest and then she let out a howl.
47
GRACE – THEN
Grace stared at the television. The newsreader had already moved on to the next item but the words that he had just spoken hung in the air, suspended like a bomb in the instant before it falls. Melissa Allen was dead. She was dead. And with her death the balance of Grace’s life was restored in some sort of cosmic realignment.
From the few details that Grace had managed to snatch from the half-heard story, it sounded as if she had taken her own life. Others in Grace’s position might have allowed themselves a tiny spark of celebration at the news, but Grace felt nothing but heart-wrenching pity. None of this had been Melissa’s fault. She had got herself caught in a sticky web like an unsuspecting butterfly with no understanding of the peril she was in.
Grace let her mind’s eye visualise Melissa as she had been the last time they met, a little plumper than before maybe, her hair less blonde and with soil under her fingernails. She had certainly lost the girlish charms that she’d had when Grace had first encountered her, but she’d seemed happy, contented with life – in a good place, as that awful expression went. How quickly things could change and a situation could spiral out of co
ntrol, so that the future suddenly looked more bleak than could be borne and death the only endurable solution.
That must have been how it was for Melissa when she finally discovered what Grace had known for years, for Grace knew without a second’s hesitation or doubt that that was what had happened. The pain and despair, the humiliation, the sickening realisation that everything you thought you had built was actually made of nothing stronger than gossamer. Grace was certain now. If Melissa had taken her own life, then Grace knew exactly what had pushed her to do it and where the blame lay.
Things had changed radically at Hartsford Hall over the last two weeks. It was as if the gods had tired of the previous arrangement and needed something new to entertain them. First Charles had come home with news. He was shouting for her the moment he burst through the front door, like a child with a carefully chosen gift, quite incapable of holding on to the secret of its contents but driven to expel it at the first opportunity.
Even as he called out the single syllable of her name, Grace could hear the excitement in his voice. She had barely made it into the hallway when he was on her. He picked her up by her waist and spun her around as if she were a girl again.
‘What?’ she laughed, as she struggled to get her feet back on solid ground. ‘What on earth has happened?’
‘They’ve only gone and made me leader!’ he said with a smile that would have lit up the moors for miles. ‘You are looking at the new leader of Apollo Philharmonic Orchestra.’ Charles gave a little bow, his hand sweeping down to the tiled floor. Grace noted that the bald spot on the top of his head had increased a little in size since last she noticed it. Charles, of course, had never mentioned it.
‘That’s fantastic!’ replied Grace, opening her arms wide and pulling him to her. ‘I am so thrilled. Well done you,’ she added emphatically, and Charles beamed as the rays of her praise fell on him.
And it was a big deal. The leader of the orchestra was a senior and much respected position, and whilst Charles had had his eye on it for years, Grace had not really believed that he would get it. He always seemed too rascally to be given proper responsibility, but maybe others recognised a more serious side to him that she was neither looking for nor seeing.
A small flurry of publicity had followed. Grace watched as Charles seemed to swell with pride. There was a nice piece in the Sunday supplements’ arts pages and he was interviewed on the local radio station and Classic FM. There had even been a spread in the Newcastle Chronicle which the staff at the Hall had seen and then chattered about. It seemed that after years of living in the shadow of her barony, Charles was finally getting his own moment in the sunshine.
‘Now that I’m leader,’ he said one morning as he bashed the top of his boiled egg with a spoon, never having quite mastered the more refined way that Grace simply sliced the top from hers, ‘I think things are going to change. I shan’t be able to go away so often, for a start. There’s more to the job than just turning up for rehearsals like I used to. I’m going to have to kick the Grand Prix into the long grass for a while, too.’ He looked up then and caught her eye. ‘You won’t mind having me around here a little more often, I hope?’
What was that expression on his face? Grace wondered. Was he telling her something, asking for forgiveness for all the times he had been away and she had just stoically accepted it? Was it something more significant than that? At the time, it had been a fleeting thought that she had dismissed, but now, in light of this terrible news about Melissa, it occurred to Grace that it might have been something more. Had Charles being made leader marked the end of his marriage to Melissa? Was Grace now, finally, after eighteen long years, going to get her husband back?
Next there were flowers. Charles had returned home one evening with a huge bouquet. He was taken to grand gestures and flowers were not an unusual gift, even though the Hall had a budget for floral displays and a garden well stocked with cutting blooms. These were special, though, a hand-tied arrangement of unseasonal roses, anemones and peonies in her favourite pale pinks and blues. It was an expensive and thoughtful gift.
‘What’s the occasion?’ Grace asked as he produced the bouquet from behind his back with a comical little bow.
‘Do I need an occasion to buy my beautiful wife flowers?’ he had asked, but Grace had the sense again that something had shifted.
And now, not two weeks later, came the news that Melissa had committed suicide. The two things had to be connected.
The weather forecast came on the television and Grace’s thoughts were interrupted. She pushed herself up from the sofa awkwardly as if she had aged ten years in ten minutes, and went to turn the set off.
Leah!
The thought sprang urgently into her mind. Who was going to look after Leah? She could only be eighteen, like Clio, no age to be left without a mother. And it was almost Christmas. The thought of Leah being alone now, of all times of the year, made her eyes flood with tears. Yes, technically Leah was an adult, but she was far too young to be alone in the world. Grace tried to imagine Clio on her own in a tiny house with no one to comfort or protect her, but found that the thought was too shocking to contemplate.
And what about Charles? Had he washed his hands of Leah, abandoning his child when he abandoned her mother? Grace could not believe that he could be so callous, but he wouldn’t be the first man to walk away and never return. When her own father had left the women he’d consorted with, it had seemed to be without a backward glance. And maybe Charles had no idea that Melissa was dead. He took no notice of the ‘trivia’ that appeared on the local news, and how else would the news reach him? Neither did he appear to have gone back to Whitley Bay since his reappearance full-time at the Hall. In fact, he had been so irritatingly under her feet that she had suggested that he might want to take up golf to get him out of the way. Well, if Charles had run from his responsibilities in Whitley Bay, Grace’s conscience would not let her do the same. Melissa was dead and poor Leah was Grace’s stepdaughter of a sort, although this thought stabbed so hard at her heart that she had to take a deep breath and hold on to it until the pain subsided.
Shakily she crossed the room to the drinks cabinet and poured herself a large whisky, which she swallowed down neat. The heat burned her throat and she grimaced as the alcohol hit her stomach. Looking out for Leah would have to be down to her. If she confronted Charles with her understanding of the situation then the sorry truth would come out, and her years of keeping his secret and protecting their children would all have been for nothing. But she could no longer ignore what she knew to be true.
Grace had pieced it all together years ago. To start with, there had been what she had supposed to be an affair when she had caught Charles going into the house in Whitley Bay, but Grace had only truly understood the full enormity of what her husband had done on her third visit to Melissa’s house. It had been the photograph, so proudly displayed on the mantelpiece, that had given him away. Grace had known that Ray and Melissa were married. Melissa had told her that when they first met, but the man in the picture that Melissa had shown her with such delight was definitely Charles. There had been no mistaking him.
Since that moment Grace had known the truth. Her husband was married to someone else. He was a bigamist.
But what could Grace do? Bigamy was a crime and a salacious one at that. Charles was a public figure in certain circles. If the story got out, it would be in all the papers. Hector and Clio would be publicly shamed, hounded at school, ostracised. She had pictured the headlines. ‘Shocking bigamist comes a cropper.’ ‘Double trouble for Apollo’s fiddle player.’ How could she put her precious children through that? And then Charles would be arrested, probably sent to prison. That would be the end of the business here, too. She wouldn’t be able to bear opening the Hall to the public knowing that people were just coming to visit out of morbid curiosity or scorn. She would have to dismiss most of the staff as well, for if the Hall didn’t open there would be nothing for them to do.
/> The only solution available to Grace, as she saw it, was to keep her mouth shut and pretend that she believed Charles’s story about following the Grand Prix, attending other races and going to random work meetings that appeared to make no sense. She had let him carry on for the sake of everything she held dear, and now the burden of keeping his double life a secret still fell to her, for if she let it escape out into the world it was she that had the most to lose.
And poor Melissa. Her solution to Charles’s infidelity was to take her own life. Grace would never know how her mind had tortured itself into seeing suicide as her only solution, but Grace had to assume that part of her reasoning was Charles’s decision to abandon her. The timing was too big a coincidence to be otherwise. Melissa must have found out who Ray really was, and for her that truth and all it dragged along with it had been too much to carry.
How much responsibility for that, she wondered, would fall at her feet? Charles’s behaviour was unforgivable, and yet it was Grace herself who had let it go unpunished for all those years. Did that make her as culpable as Charles? In her heart, Grace knew that it did. Through her silence she had caused almost as much damage as Charles. In protecting her own life and those of the people she loved, she had not given any thought to the other family caught up in this mess. And now it was too late.
Grace poured herself another finger of whisky and drank it without even being aware of what she did. She sat there numbly until her thoughts settled. Well, she couldn’t do anything about Melissa now; that ship had sailed. But perhaps she could help Leah. She wasn’t sure what she would do, but she had to do something.
48
GRACE – THEN
Grace had no real plan when she pulled the car into the road in Whitley Bay for the fourth time. She had an aim, though. She was determined to make what must be an intensely difficult time for Leah run a little more smoothly.
She had to assume that Leah knew nothing of the quagmire that her parents had dug themselves into, and it was vitally important that Grace didn’t do anything to undermine her understanding of her parents’ relationship. She most definitely wasn’t intending to make a bad situation any worse.