by Rebecca Done
But now I feel guilty – maybe he has it much more together than I’ve been giving him credit for.
‘Tea?’ he asks me a little flatly, without even hugging me or asking what I’m doing here.
‘No, you’re okay,’ I say. ‘Had a coffee on the way over.’
He nods. ‘Take a seat, then.’
I sit down on the olive green pillow-back sofa and dive straight in. ‘What’s going on, Gray?’
He perches on a striped armchair near the rather grandiose fireplace. It’s large and impressive, set in a surround of polished black granite, a backdrop that makes him seem more imposing somehow.
Instead of asking me to clarify, Graeme just waits for me to say what I mean.
‘What happened to Australia? America? Seeing the world?’
‘We’ve been through this,’ he says, because we have – sort of. We’ve shared a few snatched exchanges about it over the phone or by text, but we haven’t yet had the space and time to really unpick what’s going on. And now I’m starting to think that wasn’t accidental.
‘It’s been nearly a year, Gray.’
‘So what? There’s no rush, is there?’
‘But what about the money from your flat?’ He bristles suddenly, and it makes me nervous. ‘Tell me you’ve not spent it all.’
‘Oh, don’t, Alex,’ he says sharply. ‘Don’t come round here and lecture me about money. Mr Moneybags himself.’
I stare at him. ‘I’m no better off than you are.’
I realize too late it’s an insensitive thing to say; that on paper I am several hundred thousand pounds wealthier than Graeme.
‘I mean,’ I stammer, ‘it’s not like I have loads of spare money washing around. It’s all tied up in that cottage.’ For his benefit I phrase it to make it sound like the burden we both know it’s not.
‘Right,’ Graeme says wearily.
‘So – have you spent it all?’
‘Not all of it.’
‘Not all of it? Well, how much then?’ When he sold the flat, Graeme had about sixty grand of equity.
‘Why do you care so much, Alex?’
‘Because I care about you. Because I wanted you to have the opportunity of a lifetime, not piss all that money away dossing around London.’
‘Well, maybe London’s fun to me! I stayed in Norfolk with Dad to look after him, remember, while you swanned off to London the first chance you got! Maybe this is an opportunity – maybe this is all new to me!’
‘Fine,’ I say quietly. ‘Say what you want. But I don’t think it’s what you intended when you sold the flat.’
‘Well, maybe that’s what spontaneity’s all about. Changing your plans when they don’t suit you any more. Maybe I don’t want to be Mr Predictable.’
The implication being, of course, that I am.
‘So you’re not going at all, then? Travelling, I mean?’
He shrugs. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’
I hesitate. ‘Have you … have you met someone?’ It’s my last-ditch attempt, I guess, to confirm that Graeme might actually be living out the dreams I had on his behalf.
‘I meet people all the time, Alex,’ he says, leaning back in his chair and examining the back of his hand like I’m boring him.
‘I mean, someone special.’
‘Someone special,’ he repeats, glancing up at me with a smile.
‘Well?’ I press. ‘Have you?’
‘That would make you happy, wouldn’t it? Appease your guilt.’
‘What guilt?’ I say, at a loss.
But he doesn’t clarify. ‘So, look, mate – I’m not being rude, but I’ve got a bit on today.’
‘What are you doing for work?’ I ask him, ignoring his attempt to brush me off.
‘Work?’ he repeats.
‘Yeah, like stuff you do for money?’ Why are you being so obtuse, so deliberately cold?
‘Nothing,’ he says flatly. ‘I’m living off the flat money.’
‘Bloody hell,’ I say, more out of frustration than anything else. ‘You’re really going to waste that money, aren’t you? And then what? Then what, Gray? You’ll have nothing to show for it except a few mildly interesting stories and a hangover!’
‘Well, cheers for stopping over,’ Graeme says, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll see you some time.’
‘No,’ I say, also standing up. ‘I wanted to come over to invite you to ours. For Christmas.’
He smiles again, but it’s a hollow smile, slightly scornful, like everything that comes out of my mouth is complete drivel. ‘For Christmas?’
‘Yeah, at the flat.’
‘Hey, why not the cottage? You could hang stockings around the inglenook, pin paper chains to the beams.’
I swallow. ‘That’s not fair, Graeme.’
He shrugs. ‘I’m being serious. I thought you and Moll were moving in.’
‘We are. I’ve been trying to find a job first.’
‘Any luck?’
‘Yes, actually. You wouldn’t know because you’ve been AWOL, but I actually had an interview last week. I start in the New Year. I handed my notice in at my place yesterday.’
‘Well, congratulations.’
‘Molly’s going to commute until …’ I pause, unsure for the first time in my life if I should be sharing absolutely everything with Graeme. The doubt is a horrible, unfamiliar sensation, and it throws me off.
‘Until what?’
‘Until we’re settled,’ I say, not wanting to divulge our plans to start a family. In fact, we’re already trying – to no avail, yet. ‘You know, until she’s sure Norfolk is what she wants.’
‘Careful, Alex,’ Graeme says. ‘You’re starting to make her sound a bit spoilt.’
His needless passive-aggressiveness angers me. ‘Do you resent me?’ I say suddenly. ‘For the cottage? I offered to sell it, Gray, give you half – but you told me not to!’
‘I didn’t want your pity.’
His words stun me, then quickly anger me. ‘Why the hell not? I’m your brother! Why not let me do what was right? I’d have sold it in a heartbeat!’
‘And have that hanging round my neck as well as everything else?’ he spits. ‘No thanks.’
‘I can still do it,’ I say quickly, because it’s patently clear the financial windfall he awarded himself by selling his flat hasn’t so much worked out as run out. ‘I can still sell up.’
For no other reason than lack of time and disorganization, I haven’t yet got round to adding his name to the title deeds.
‘What – now you and Molly are set to move, now that you’ve quit your job? You think I’d let you do that?’
‘We can find a place for half that money,’ I insist. ‘It doesn’t have to be the cottage.’
‘Not everything’s about money, Alex,’ he replies coldly.
‘Then, Gray,’ I say, suddenly exhausted, ‘please just tell me what would fix things between us. Since Dad died, it’s been almost as if you …’
‘As if I what?’
‘As if you can’t stand to be around me any more.’
My words stagnate in the air like smoke. I want to blow it away but it clings to the space between us, polluting it. I can feel his disdain for me now, I can almost taste it. The brother who got everything, who landed on his feet. But what he doesn’t understand is that I don’t want it to be that way. I want Graeme to be happy, to have everything that I have and more.
‘Maybe for the first time in my life I’m discovering who I am,’ he says now, and his failure to deny my suspicion breaks my heart.
‘Does that mean you have to shut me out?’
‘You’re overthinking everything as usual.’
‘Am I?’ I counter. ‘So are we going to see you at Christmas?’
‘You’re not the only person in my life, Alex,’ he says then. ‘I’ve got other things I might be doing at Christmas, you know.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, maybe I’ll spend it on the beach in Austral
ia. Who knows?’ he says, and it’s like he’s taunting me, teasing me for my childish, naive vision of how his future could look. The rest of us, he seems to be saying, didn’t get as lucky as you. The rest of us have real-world shit to worry about while you plan your idyllic little escape to the country with your wife. ‘Come on. I’ve got stuff to do.’ He moves away from me now, towards the front door.
I work my jaw, humiliated by his disdain. He’s always had that ability – to make me feel a bit idiotic – but he’s never before used that power deliberately, taken full advantage of it. And now he has, it hurts more than I expected it to. He’s actually asking me to leave.
We pause next to the front door, and I turn to face him. ‘Whatever you want me to do to make it better, I’ll do it.’
‘This is all in your head, Alex,’ Graeme says. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Please come for Christmas,’ I implore him again. ‘We can wipe the slate clean.’
His mouth is set firm. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
And then, because there is seemingly nothing more to say or do, I turn to head off. But as I do, something catches my eye on the coat rack.
I pause, and Graeme follows my gaze.
It’s a black leather coat with a distinctive faux-fur trim, and slung over the top of it, a tan leather handbag I’d recognize anywhere. I turn to face Graeme, but his expression has darkened. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he says, which is his way of telling me in no uncertain terms to say nothing further.
So I obey, turning my back on him and heading back out of the building and down the steps. But my head is whirling from what I’ve just seen – the coat I know so well, the handbag I’m so familiar with.
And the reason I’m familiar with it is because, once upon a time, that handbag cost me a month’s wages. I know it intimately. I painstakingly picked it out and wrapped it up one Christmas many years ago.
That handbag, and the coat, belong to Nicola.
22
Molly – present day
‘I need to see you.’
‘Is this about what happened at Mike’s?’ Graeme asks me, like he’s relieved. ‘God, I’ve been so desperate to talk to you about it …’
‘No,’ I say, my voice quiet but taut. ‘It’s not about Mike’s.’
‘Then what?’
‘It’s something else. But it’s urgent. It can’t wait.’
‘Moll, you’re scaring me now –’
‘Alex is fine,’ I say, more out of reflex than anything else.
Pause. ‘Okay. I can get the next train.’
‘Alex is out with Darren until mid afternoon. Come to the cottage as soon as you can.’
At first, I couldn’t believe what Nicola had said about Graeme. As in, I wouldn’t. If Nicola had told Alex back then she’d been seeing his brother, as she claimed – he would have come straight home and told me, surely? It’s not as if it would have particularly upset me – other than Nicola potentially having a shortcut to my husband via Graeme, of course. She’d been trying to get close to him again for years.
It may have made me uneasy, but upset me? No.
But now, I can’t shake the thought of her claim that Alex was devastated – and however much of a lying cow I think Nicola has the potential to be, I can imagine her sleeping with Graeme would have upset Alex.
What if she’s not lying? I think to myself. She’s already admitted to realizing Alex isn’t the man he used to be – so what would she possibly have to gain from lying to cause a rift between us now? My thoughts begin to gallop, to veer dangerously out of control. Did Alex pick a fight with Graeme that night, and was Graeme only defending himself?
But then comes the thought that really chills me. I think back to Alex’s last text to me before the accident.
Great night, love you xxx
Could Graeme have sent me that from Alex’s phone, to cover his tracks? To pretend everything was harmonious?
A knock at my front door startles me back to reality. I hesitate for only a moment before heading through the living room into the hallway and opening it.
It’s started to drizzle outside. Graeme’s got his coat on and looks pink-cheeked, harassed.
‘Sodding taxi driver,’ he mutters. ‘He’s got a sat nav and he’s asking me the way.’ He kisses me on the cheek and moves past me into the cottage so quickly I don’t even have time to flinch. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’ he calls over his shoulder from the living room. He’s being friendly, which is throwing me off, because in my mind the conversation we’re about to have is the most serious of either of our lives. Momentarily I am paralysed where I am in the hallway, unable – or perhaps unwilling – to move.
But finally I mobilize myself and follow him into the living room where he has shed his jacket and is examining, as he so often does, our Mexican honeymoon photo on the mantelpiece. ‘What I wouldn’t give to be on that beach right now,’ he says.
‘Graeme …’
‘I know,’ he says quickly. ‘We need to talk.’
Does he know why he’s here? Has Nicola spoken to him?
‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘We do.’
‘Okay, but at the risk of sounding ungentlemanly, I need to go first. What happened at Mike’s –’
‘Graeme,’ I say quickly, urgently, ‘this is nothing to do with what happened at Mike’s.’ Or rather, what didn’t happen.
‘Oh.’ He seems thrown off balance for a moment. ‘Okay, what’s up?’ For a moment, I think he’s going to add, This had better be good, Molly. The sun’s shining in London.
‘When Alex had his accident,’ I say, ‘I need you to tell me exactly how it happened.’
He stares at me then, and it’s the kind of stare that says, How do you know?
A rush of air escapes from my mouth. It makes a strange sort of sound I’ve never heard before.
‘Why? What … what did Alex say?’
I can’t take my eyes off him. It’s almost as if he’s transforming into a stranger before me. The darkness of the clothes he’s wearing, his height, the set expression of his face, suddenly begin to look all at once sinister.
‘You pushed him,’ I say then. ‘Didn’t you? Alex didn’t fall in the middle of the night. You were fighting, and you pushed him.’
There is a long silence, save for the plaintive call of rooks from beyond the kitchen window.
When he finally speaks, his voice sounds hollow and fraught. ‘I saw it all unfold in slow motion. I tried to grab him, Molly, I tried to stop him falling …’
‘You pushed him,’ I repeat. ‘Didn’t you?’
The silence that follows seems almost unbreakable.
‘Yes,’ he says eventually.
My breathing threatens to lurch out of control as my legs begin to give way. I grab on to the top of the armchair next to me for support.
‘What … what were you fighting about?’
‘Lots of things.’ He is twisting his hands over and over, the same hands that pushed my husband to his near-death. That destroyed his life for ever. ‘Money. Nicola.’ He hesitates. ‘You.’
‘Me? What about me?’
He stares at me like to answer this question will break his heart. It’s a wordless plea to let him stay silent.
But I won’t. ‘Tell me.’
‘You know, Molly. You must know.’
Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say. I don’t think I can take it.
I let the stillness of the room envelop us, and pray despite myself that it will smother the next words that come out of his mouth. The ones I do, but do not, want to hear.
‘I’ve always loved you,’ he breathes. ‘That very first night, at the bar, when we got talking … I thought you were incredible.’
I stare at him, devastated.
‘And then Alex ended up going home with you. I was … well, I was gutted.’
Suddenly, my sadness turns to anger. ‘Alex put me in a taxi that night. And, Graeme, we talked for – what, five minutes at the bar? Then you got o
n the phone to your ex!’
‘No. She called me, and straight away I told her I’d met someone. Presumptuous, I know, but … I thought you were amazing, Moll. I was … excited. I couldn’t wait to get back inside, to talk to you some more.’
‘All this time,’ I breathe. ‘All this time you’ve been pretending to be on my side, to be there for me, there for Alex. And, God, I nearly kissed you, at Mike’s flat! You let me risk everything! Have you been planning this all along – get Alex out of the way and then swoop in?’
‘Don’t be insane, Moll! What happened to Alex was …’ But then he trails off and can’t finish.
‘Go on,’ I say sharply. ‘What hand did you really have in his accident, Graeme?’
‘I’ve always loved you, Moll. You may hate to hear me say it, but it’s true. I fell in love with you at arm’s length. Loved my brother’s wife from afar. And I guess that night … I was just so angry with him. You know, I always used to call him Golden Boy. And he was. He got everything: my dad’s love and respect, all the sympathy when Mum died – because nobody wanted to hear from the horrible little tearaway who caused it all – Dad’s cottage when he died. And he got you.’ He shakes his head. ‘You know, the only thing I ever had over him was my ability to … get the girl.’ He laughs. ‘And he even managed to take that away from me.’
‘Nice,’ I say, trying to steady my breathing.
‘Yeah, I was being – am – a selfish prat, but I was furious. I hated him for all that. I couldn’t think clearly, didn’t stop to think logically. I was having serious money problems, and he was lecturing me about being responsible. And then he started confronting me about … Nicola.’ He glances up at me.
‘I know about you and her,’ is all I say.
‘Who told you?’
‘She did,’ I say simply. ‘And she also told me you fed her all sorts of lies when you were seeing her – that Alex had stolen money from you. That he turned Kevin against you …’
He shakes his head vehemently. ‘She’s twisting everything I said. Every time I saw her she’d get me to talk to her about Alex … open up to her, so I’d feel as if she gave a shit. But all along she was only using me to get back at Alex. Or get back with him. I have no idea.’