“You really haven’t seen many naked women, have you?”
I look up from my reverie and shake my head. “Why, have you?”
“I’ve lost count. Not that I’ve been a hound. I really haven’t. Just that, in my business, the dressing room doesn’t always offer a lot of privacy. And the girls often use it as a little bit of an outlet for their closeted exhibitionism.”
I lean in and whisper, “Up until a few months ago, I didn’t see Susan without her clothes on in the daylight. She’s… changed. She would always, and I mean always, ask for the lights off. And there would often be… lingerie. Covering up bits, you know?”
“And she’s become a filthy naked exhibitionist now? And you’re complaining?”
“No, not complaining,” I groan, “the woman has the legs of an athlete. She does that plate thing or spinning or maybe both, anyway, she has the legs, fuck does she have the legs… but she’s always been trying to cover up her scars.”
I gesture at my midriff to let him know what I’m getting at.
“She must be becoming more at ease then.”
“And she used to be a little bit of a prude, too. Not, you know, I mean… she’s always liked it… she’s always… we’ve always… but… I don’t know, it’s making me crazy.”
Theo rolls his eyes. “Welcome to my world, kid. Lily is the kinkiest little slut you could ever meet. You wouldn’t believe it. She gets me doing things… and I’m like… whoa, is this happening? And after… I’m like… okay… that happened. And it’s intense. And I’m like, did I really have my… well, too much information!”
“She even used to say she thought sex toys are revolting… nowadays I don’t know if I’ll be waking up to the sound of her buzzing her clit so we can just get on with it. You know?”
Theo snickers and almost chokes on his toast. “Well, fucking hell.”
“Yep.”
“So… do you think she might ever conceive naturally? Do you think that’s what she’s hoping for?”
“I don’t know… I don’t know. It’s not impossible. Just really unlikely.”
“Hey, I mean… I don’t want to scare you, but they’re probably swapping notes up there right now and Lily’s giving your wife ideas. I’m just warning you now… none of that dark shit came from me. It’s all her. She instigates it.”
Theo chuckles as he stands and clears his crockery away into the kitchen sink.
“What you got planned for today?” I ask, watching as he washes up even though we have a dishwasher. I guess he’s used to doing it by hand.
“Few things,” he says, “and maybe call a few people, email, blah blah blah. Me and Lily will stay one more night if that’s okay and then head back home?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And we’ll be back for the funeral in a couple of weeks.”
“What about the house?” I ask. “Won’t it need… packing up? Things sorting out?”
“Eventually.” His jaw ticks and he looks aggravated. “I don’t want to think about that right now… but I suppose I’d better go, really. If only to find the will, even though she said she was writing me out of it.”
“I’m sure she wasn’t.”
“Well, the only other person she could leave money to is Aunt Karen. She hated her nieces and nephews. And my aunt said she wouldn’t allow my mother to wreck her own son’s life and would ensure I get everything. Unless, of course, she’s done a twatty thing and left it to cats or dogs or science or something.”
“Well, we could go this evening, if you want? I’ve gotta work today and Susan is back in the office but after I’ve cooked dinner, I could drive you up and we’ll… you know… do a bit of an assessment. Scope it out. Maybe even, exorcise the demon?”
“Yeah, yeah… I think we’ll do that. Without Lily. She doesn’t want to go. Says ghosts frighten her.”
“What’s a ghost, eh? Between two friends…”
“Okay, that’s settled then.”
He walks away to the door and carries his remaining coffee with him. He’s wearing that expression of his… the one where he looks a bit puzzled.
“Your wife… what is it about her? She sees through people.”
“I don’t know,” I admit, “maybe she’s a bit of a medium or something. I think that’s what I love best about her, though. She pushes me to be more because I know if I falter, she’ll see it a mile off. I wouldn’t have much without her. She’s… something special.”
“And the lies?” he mumbles.
“All gone, I hope. I really believe so, anyway.”
“Good,” he says, smiling. “Good.”
I hear him jump the stairs and Susan shout, “She’s still bathing but you’re okay to go in now.”
“Thanks, Susan.”
“You’re welcome, Jim-Bob.”
I titter and clear away my dishes, heading upstairs before she comes down and leaves for the day.
I find her in the bedroom and shut the door, watching as she admires her outfit in the mirror. She’s wearing a smart dress with a belt and a nice pair of smallish heels. The dress is very conservative but she still looks sexy as hell.
“You look nice. Are you ready to go back?”
“I think so,” she says, “I’ll give it a try.”
“Take the car if you like but I’ll need it tonight. Theo wants to go up to his mother’s house. He seems a bit weird about it.”
“That’s no problem. Are you making dinner?”
“Yeah, what do you want?”
“Whatever you choose,” she says.
“They’re just staying tonight and then popping back.”
“I know,” she whispers.
I notice she’s still got the braid in her hair, the length of it revealed for the first time to her colleagues no doubt. She’s not attempting to hide it anymore, nor her natural waves, running prominently through the plait. She looks different somehow. Calmer.
“So, what were you two ladies discussing in the bathroom?” I ask, trying my hardest not to sound jealous or perverted.
“Oh, just how she plans to bring up the baby and things like that. I think she wants Theo to keep the house and move them back up here. I don’t think she envisages them bringing up a baby in that filthy city. It’s no place for a little one, is it?”
“It isn’t,” I agree.
“But I sense he’s going to take some convincing. I think he wants shot of that house and to live down south for the foreseeable future. He also just finished a short film and has the pick of jobs but he’s digging his heels in, Lily says. Doesn’t know what to do with himself. Can’t decide his next move even though TV execs have shown an interest… and other film work has been tabled.”
“What the fuck is he doing?” I ask, aghast, trying to keep my voice down.
“Trying to be around while Lily is pregnant, I guess. A lot of those kinds of jobs involve long days, depending on what it is he’s doing.”
“I’ll speak to him this evening,” I assure her.
“We know you will,” she says, winking and breezing a kiss across my mouth.
She sweeps out of the room and heads downstairs, “I love you, honey. See you tonight.”
I hear her grab the keys and the car engine starts outside. She leaves the property and the house is silent so I try the bathroom door again.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake…”
There they are, in the bath together, Theo sitting behind her. I cover my eyes and demand, “I’d like my shower back now, please.”
“What? That empty shower?” Lily chuckles.
“Shut up, you… you pregnant beast, you.”
She laughs her dirtiest laugh and I hear Theo chuckling into her hair.
“I promise not to look,” she says.
“I’ll go and start work and you can let me know when it’s safe,” I chuckle, leaving them to it.
I get upstairs in my office and start to load everything up when I have that feeling again. A little niggle in
side me. Susan has changed recently. It’s not the sex, either. It’s her confidence. It’s increased… a lot. I know she’s never showered naked with girls before. All her schoolfriends hated her and were exceptionally jealous of her beauty.
Does my wife have a thing for Lily?
Or are they such good friends they get naked together now?
She didn’t used to like to admit that she enjoyed pleasuring herself either, but now she’s doing that all the time… her pocket vibrator not so in the closet anymore.
I really shouldn’t be complaining… but when did my wife get so bad?
We enter the house which feels cold and damp. I see Theo shudder and lift his eyes to the staircase in the hallway, all his mother’s favourite photos lining the walls. It’s a woman’s house, you can tell. The pink sitting room… the soft furnishings. It mustn’t have been much of a home for a teenage boy. I doubt it was a home at all for him… just somewhere he sometimes stayed whenever his mother was in town. It feels spooky and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and when we look at one another, he acknowledges he felt that too.
“Creepy,” I murmur, and he hastily finds the light switch, illuminating the dark hallway and shedding some light on all the rooms that you can access off it.
“I’m gonna check the safe in her bedroom,” he says, “for the will and everything.”
“Want me to come with?” I’m looking around the sitting room, hoping he says yes, just so I don’t have to be alone.
“I’ll be okay. I’ll be like two seconds.”
“Okay.”
I wander around, remembering times we’d come here in the summer, when she was away on another of her cruises or art tours. We’d trash the place of course and a number of times me and Paul walked home wearing a couple of her hats or scarfs of broaches or something – anything we could find that we didn’t think she’d miss. Fun times.
I can’t say anything to Theo, but god, I miss Paul. I miss his waywardness, his cheekiness. I miss that he’s everything I’m not and that, together, we were a pair – always getting up to mischief, my blue eyes always getting us out of it. True, he was a bad influence and probably always will be, but I have fond memories of messing around and wiling away days and days trying to find our next calamitous project, like a ramp to build or swing to hang or some shop to rob. Susan really warmed to Paul when she first met him, but then a few meetings later, there was that one time he told her she needed to loosen up a bit and it made her wary after that. That was the day I had to choose. I picked her, of course. Sure, maybe I should take some responsibility for him going downhill ever since – I haven’t been around that much, my guiding hand gone. The truth is though, he goes abroad to vacate himself but every time he comes back, he’s just that little bit more addicted, a little bit more soulless and a lot more of a fucking prick. He’s getting too used to doing and being whatever he wants while he’s out of the country. One day, maybe in the not too-distant future, he will have to come home and salvage some sort of life for himself – and I know when that time comes, he is going to struggle more than he ever has before in his life. Because he will be forced to face everything he’s been running away from – and it’s a lot, it’s not good. His father Brendan is the worst kind of person you could ever meet. I cottoned on quick and learned to laugh along and stuff, but Paul and I always shared that knowledge that his father is basically a bully, a lout and a waster – but with a poisonous ego the size of Texas. And his mother Lydia? She’s the embodiment of victim if ever I met one.
I wander around the house, through the dining room, her French dresser stacked with fancy seaside plates and mugs, little knick-knacks from her travels. There are a lot of paintings of dancers dotted around, mostly oil paintings. Perhaps she once wanted to become a dancer and never fulfilled that ambition. I know Susie wanted to dance once. She has the perfect body for it. But her knees…
The kitchen at the back of the house is spotless, like it hasn’t been used in weeks. The draining board is clear. The fridge is empty and even switched off. I have a feeling she must have gone into a hospice for the last few weeks of her life… and either she never told Theo, or he was too upset with her to visit. I think she may have never told him.
They also have a huge conservatory just off the kitchen. I remember watching films in here late-night in the summer, the wicker furniture not enough to house us all so we’d bring in cushions and blankets from other parts of the house and scatter them everywhere. It was also handy because if you wanted to be sick, you could mop the floors in here.
Theo was never wild, not like Paul. He wasn’t standoffish or withdrawn but he was always restrained. If people accused him of being boring for not drinking shots or downing pints, he would climb on a stool and recite some monologue from Shakespeare or a poem from Keats or a speech from some famous film. He could impersonate anyone and if you said the title of any book or film, he’d have some line archived away in his mind that he would come up with out of nowhere, delivering it with gusto. Everyone envied him and couldn’t quite figure him out. He was the best-looking of us all and the cleverest next to Tom, an obvious savant.
Allegra – just the name sounded exotic – was loaded and we never thought he had it rough. Not at the time. We thought it was absolutely brilliant that his mum often left him home alone and gave him the run of such a massive place. Now, as a fully-fledged adult, I see everything differently. I see that if Susie and I ever have a child, to neglect him or her after everything we’ve been through would be unthinkable, cold and heartless. Obviously, many people don’t know what they’ve got… can’t see what’s right in front of them. From what I’ve heard about this Gustav, Theo is nothing like him. He’s his own man. He’s never used women. He’s only ever loved one girl – ferociously, tempestuously and seemingly aimlessly – but power to him. He held out and she crashed into his arms the moment she realised if there is anyone in this world she can trust, it’s him.
It’s dark outside but I see the garden is unkempt, the grass four feet high and the flower beds full of crusty old dead stuff. The greenhouses are in need of some repair and the trees have got out of control. I wonder if it all went to the bottom of her list in recent years.
I wander the library and finger the books on the shelves. If there’s anything Theo won’t be throwing out it’s all of this. I open one book and notice it barely looks read. I know Theo will have read it at least once – as well as everything else in this room – so perhaps she encouraged him in some way. Certainly, I don’t think she ever read any of these.
I might even ask Theo about the tall lamps and chandelier in here. If he doesn’t want them, we’ll have them. They’re beautiful. And the reading chair by the window with its very tall back and generous wings… classic. This house must be worth a lot of money – but everything in it must be worth more.
There’s another room that we never used to go in because Theo said it was her room. Opposite the sitting room door, there’s a door to ‘her room’ as he used to call it. The door is shut but I turn the handle and sure enough, it opens. All the ceilings in this place are intimidatingly high and the ceiling cornicing is decorative and bold, but somehow this little room is snug, cosy and feels tiny, probably because of all the stuff in it.
It’s like one of those secret rooms people have, or a cupboard full of junk someone just can’t let go of. She has shelves running along every wall and they are full of photo albums.
I open one and discover black and white glamour shots of Allegra herself. Wow. This must have been during her modelling days. I see where he got his famous cheekbones from. Unlike Lily, his mother was rake-thin. Lily has ridiculous legs but a full chest and a little bit of a bum. He didn’t fall for someone like his mother, then? Quite the opposite, in fact.
There are also albums in which she’s posing in the most outlandish fashions of the late 70s and early 80s. She has eyes full of pain, a mouth that would have made most men go weak at the knees and a girlish, i
nnocent look that would have been so popular at the time.
I find other albums containing pictures of Theo as a baby and a tot. They’re not the usual family shots, either. These were carefully shot and artistically arranged in all of her albums here. As I make my way along the shelves, I discover more images… most in colour suddenly. These are shots she took of various people. Some seem to be her contemporaries… perhaps for dust jackets on memoirs or for articles in magazines.
Something occurs to me. If she really did love Gustav and she was meticulous about her photos, she must have some of him, somewhere. I doubt she would keep them within reach, though. She wouldn’t want Theo to stumble upon them.
I rummage through cabinets full of boxes of negatives and old flashes, lenses and all kinds of tiny little hand-held cameras she might have taken with her on holiday. I start opening and closing drawers in her desk before something clunks around in the bottom drawer. I shake it a bit more and realise there’s a false bottom.
Taking everything out and then the false bottom, too I discover a pile of loose photos and an album she intended to keep from prying eyes. The photos are in a brown folder, some held together with paperclips, others loosely bundled with elastic bands. I take one last look around the room for anything else that seems of interest, but something is telling me this is what I was meant to find today.
I walk out of the room with the stuff in my arms and notice on the back wall of the room there are quite a few portraits of Theo framed and hung on the wall. There’s even a recent one.
Christ… that’s one of the publicity shots I saw in the programme for Hamlet. Perhaps Gustav sent it down for her. All I know is that it proves she really did love him, even if she couldn’t show it.
I switch on the big chandelier over the dining table and spread out what I found in the bottom drawer of her desk.
I realise it’s been a while now since he went upstairs and I wonder if I should go and see if he’s alright. I don’t have to wait long as I hear him coming down the stairs, the creaking steps signalling he’s coming.
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