‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
* * *
It was close to midday but upstairs at The Laurels the curtains were drawn. From the driver’s seat Paul looked up at Alison as she hesitated between the stucco pillars of the Carters’ porch.
His expression was the same one he’d had in the hotel room as she changed: he looked entertained by her discomfort. Alison had gone to put on lipstick in the gleaming bathroom, reflected back at herself in half a dozen shining surfaces every time she moved.
‘You don’t have to go, you know,’ he said, though his amusement made it impossible to stay. If she stayed it would end in the row about Morgan that had hovered since Alison had first read the invitation parked on Paul’s mantelpiece – or maybe that would just be where it began. ‘Morgan won’t mind.’
‘She’s winding me up,’ said Alison. ‘You know she is.’
‘Then call her bluff,’ said Paul, good-humoured from the desk. He’d said he’d drop her then come back and work till she reappeared. Then with a lifted eyebrow, ‘You look nice.’
She’d put on more lipstick than she intended: her lips were a hard red in the bathroom mirror. He stepped inside the room and taking hold of her elbows he kissed her. Alison tried to pull back, knowing the red would come off on him, but he held her, his mouth pressing hers almost until their teeth met and then he let her go. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Don’t want to go overboard,’ he said, looking at her in the mirror. The lips were softer, blurred. He ran a finger under her mouth where there was a smudge. ‘You don’t need to impress Morgan, you know.’
She saw herself colour in the mirror, and said nothing. ‘And if you give Morgan an inch…’ he added, turning back into the bedroom.
There had been a reminder from Morgan waiting at the front desk when they walked back in. Longing to see Alison. Sometime this morning? Hand-delivered – so someone at least in The Laurels had been up early. Alison noticed in passing that the writing was the same as it had been on Paul’s invitation. There’d been no misunderstanding, then, no farming out of the guest list. She felt the murmur of secrets between Paul and Morgan. A wind-up.
From the porch she watched him drive away. She’d told him she’d walk back.
If she hadn’t got back by two, he said, he’d be out with Christian, doing some stag activity. A round of golf. ‘Isn’t there supposed to be a whole gang for a stag party?’ Alison had said, her turn to stir.
Paul had just laughed. ‘The Carters like their incomers to be unattached,’ he said. ‘It makes them more manageable. It’s why I got on so well with them.’
The door was answered by Lucy Carter in a dressing gown, her face taut with hangover, two sharp lines between her eyebrows. ‘Oh, hello, dear,’ she said without enthusiasm. There was no trace of curiosity in her look or her voice. She couldn’t know who Alison was. Esme. She stayed in the doorway and turned to call up the stairs, ‘Morgan?’ Wincing. ‘Little Alison’s here.’ Only then did she step back, pulling the thick dressing gown tighter around her.
‘Thanks so much for last night, Mrs Carter,’ said Alison, and then she did catch a sharp look from under the drawn brows but Lucy Carter didn’t reply. Morgan was on the wide staircase, soft-footed, a light silk thing flying out behind her that she tugged at as she stopped, halfway down.
‘You came!’ she said, delighted by some prospect Alison couldn’t determine. She leaned down over the banister. Alison saw cleavage carelessly revealed, two pale curves soft under the silk. ‘Up here.’ And was already halfway round the galleried landing when Alison started up the stairs behind her.
The room was huge, cream and pink, with a big bay window, a deep carpet and a four-poster bed that dominated the space. A doll’s house stood on a table by the wall, the front open, the tiny furniture laid out, not a single chair overturned, not a trace of dust. For a second Alison imagined Lucy Carter up here on her knees, cleaning the minuscule kitchen implements. It was a princess’s bedroom, the room of a child who always got what she asked for, and more.
On the deep window sill there was a tray with an ice bucket and glasses, and Morgan was standing beside it fiddling with the foil on a champagne bottle. Expensive champagne. Morgan would always have money, one way or the other, that seemed obvious. Alison realised she didn’t know if Paul was rich or poor – he owned his flat, she knew that much. He was comfortable. Would that have been enough for Morgan? She’d have made something different out of him, maybe, or would have tried. Not for the first time, she wondered why they’d broken up.
The cork popped, the bottle foamed and Morgan handed her a glass. It was so full Alison had to put her lips straight to the brim to stop it spilling, and looking over it she saw Morgan’s smile. She straightened, the champagne dry and good on her tongue: it was not even midday. Swallowing, she thought of her father, slipping to the pub from his workshop at lunchtime; Simon Chatwin, on Ron’s doorstep; and she felt the warm hit of alcohol softening the outlines of things, like mist.
Morgan lifted her own glass, no more than half full. ‘Cheers,’ she said, bringing it away before it touched Alison’s. ‘So sweet of you to come.’ Alison looked around for a level surface and set her glass down carefully on Morgan’s bedside table.
‘What a room,’ she said, putting a hand to the curtains around the four-poster, some kind of stiff heavy silk. The bed was king-sized, where Esme’s had been a narrow single under the window, posters stuck over it. A girl’s bedroom, the place she ran to, burying her face in the pillows to cry over some boy, her parents oblivious downstairs.
The image of the room at the top of the crooked house hovered at the back of Alison’s mind, but she didn’t step into it, she didn’t allow it into focus. The shapes sat in soft darkness, the letters of her name on the shelf, the alarm clock, the door, ajar. The line of light from the stairs, and voices.
You drink too much.
You’ve got a problem.
You’re a fine one to talk.
Had Morgan ever done that? Lain up here, and listened, lain and sobbed. It was hard to imagine. Had Paul slept in this bed with her? In her stomach the sip of alcohol warmed, burned, provoked her. Next thing, they’d be scrapping, she and Morgan in a catfight and Morgan just holding her at arm’s length. Perhaps that was the plan. She smiled, instead.
‘How does it feel?’ she said, feeling nothing herself but a kind of dread. ‘Tomorrow you’ll be a married woman.’ Paul had said Marry me, it came back to her with a jolt. She looked over at the glass she’d set down, wanting just another sip.
‘How did Christian propose?’ she said on impulse and Morgan made a small, distinct sound in her throat, quickly suppressed. She didn’t like the question: it was why Alison had asked it. Because it raised the possibility that Paul might ask Alison, might already have asked? And because from what Alison already knew it was quite possible that Christian hadn’t actually proposed at all, that all this was some kind of an arranged marriage, contracts signed between professionals.
But like the lawyer she was, after that first intake of breath Morgan just blindsided her opponent, standing there looking without answering, champagne glass in hand, the dressing gown pulled tighter. Everything about this set-up seemed designed to remind Alison that she was the lesser woman, the upstart, the child with no breasts and a single bed. I’m not the one playing princess, she said, in her head.
‘Lovely bed,’ Alison tried again, thinking, Horrible. ‘Most girls would dream of one of these.’
Morgan wrinkled her nose. ‘I must have loved it once,’ she said, wafting an indifferent hand. ‘Cost a fortune.’ She set down her glass, untouched; her dressing gown slipped from her shoulders, a collarbone gleamed, the velvet hollow of an armpit was exposed before she pulled the material together again. In her head Alison saw Paul’s hands on her and she had to blink to clear the image.
‘D’you want to see the dress?’ said Morgan, picking up the glass Alison had lef
t beside the bed and handing it back to her. ‘I don’t believe in bad luck.’
‘Yes, please,’ said Alison obediently.
‘Drink up,’ said Morgan. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’ And she disappeared through a door without waiting for an answer. Alison glimpsed shoes ranked up to the ceiling beyond her, coloured leather, tall heels, the edge of a hanging rail. Sod it, she thought, and drank.
The dress was a column of raw, white, heavy fabric. Morgan hung it from the four-poster and it dominated the flounced room straight away, not floating or ghostly but statuesque, as if it already had a body inside it. It was discreetly laced down the back but otherwise quite plain. Alison touched it, then coming closer she saw tiny stitches, made by hand; she felt the weight of it, she imagined Morgan’s strong shoulders rising up out of the column.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, and she supposed it was, though for a moment it seemed like a kind of expensive straitjacket, with the lacing and the rough dull silk.
‘Twenty grand,’ said Morgan carelessly, taking Alison’s glass and turning to refill it.
‘No,’ said Alison, too quickly, before softening it. ‘No thanks.’
Morgan stopped pouring but she gave the glass back to Alison, half full. ‘I always get what I want, you see,’ she said, smiling, leaning back against the wall beside her doll’s house. ‘Christian insisted. Has to be the best.’ And then without drawing breath, tilting her head. ‘He’d come back in a heartbeat, you know.’
Paul.
The glass trembled in Alison’s hand, what she’d already drunk pushing her to be reckless. She stayed silent.
Morgan examined her. ‘I suppose he has some idea of … I don’t know. Moulding you? That might be fun for him. For a bit. Curiosity value, a little tiny challenge.’
Hostilities were laid out, unmistakable. My enemy. Alison found herself holding her breath at the nakedness of the attack, looking around for witnesses. Lucy Carter, in her dressing gown? She’d just smile and pretend she hadn’t heard.
‘A challenge,’ Alison repeated, feeling the stiffness of her smile but keeping it there. Pretend it’s a joke. ‘Maybe.’
You’re the first one that’s meant anything. She said nothing.
‘He always liked one to put up resistance,’ said Morgan. ‘Have you found that?’ She shifted her hip and the doll’s house quivered. In its kitchen a figure fell, bringing a tiny clatter of miniature implements with it.
‘What about Christian?’ said Alison, finding some small space for manoeuvre with the sound. ‘They’re off on some stag thing this afternoon, Paul said. They seem to get along so well.’
The ghost of annoyance passed over Morgan’s face. ‘Christian does what he’s told,’ she said shortly.
As if on cue there was the sound of a heavy door closing downstairs, followed by voices raised in hearty conversation, getting louder. Men’s voices, in the big baronial hall below them.
‘Is that Paul?’ said Alison, starting up from the bed. Morgan shook her head, too quickly.
‘This has been nice,’ she said, not even pretending to sound sincere. ‘But I think I’d better get dressed.’
Alison set her glass down. ‘I’ll get going,’ she said, but Morgan had already turned away, fabric floating behind her.
Christian was in the hall as she came down the stairs, and he looked up at her, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a T-shirt, trainers; he looked different, not bland at all.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, frowning, as she reached the bottom, and she was startled by his concern.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. Christian set a hand on the banister, drawing closer. He hadn’t shaved – Alison hadn’t noticed that in the hotel’s dining room this morning, but then she’d been distracted.
‘She likes to wind people up, you know,’ he said, and she heard his odd accent come out stronger. ‘Only happy when she’s making trouble. Pay no attention.’
Alison laughed awkwardly. ‘I don’t think you’re allowed up there,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to catch sight of the wedding dress.’
He smiled, his grey eyes cool on her. ‘I wouldn’t dream of dropping that kind of money on something I hadn’t seen,’ he said.
So he’d paid for the dress. And neither of them believed in bad luck.
As she came out through the front door Roger Carter was standing on the drive, chest puffed, hectoring a man with the marquee company’s logo on his overalls. She was pulling her scarf back over her ears as he turned to eye her, in mid-rant. She raised a hand and smiled but kept walking, and he watched her go. She felt his eyes still on her back as she turned out into the lane and smelled the hedgerows in the sun, saw the cow parsley dancing along the verge. What had she seen in his face?
She came around a bend in the lane and saw the sea, the wide channel snaking olive-green out to the horizon and the big dark sails, gliding across each other’s paths as they made their slow way across it.
Roger Carter might have had trouble with her name at first, but there was something about her he recognised. She wondered how long it would take him.
Chapter Twenty-three
Gina’s daughter danced between the mooring ropes on the quay. She looked down, intent on her own small clever feet, hair tangled down her back.
From the pub’s backyard Alison heard the girl’s breathing as she skipped, heard her count her steps. May was nine. Not far off the twins’ age when they died, not far off Esme’s when she saw the crooked house for the first time. When they unloaded all their belongings and smelled the mud and the strangeness of their new home, hoping to start again.
Joe had been the older by so little, but already he’d known so much more. His face had been pale and watchful climbing out of the car. He’d looked from Mum to Dad, checking for something, as they stood and looked at their new home. Following suit, Esme had seen only tiredness. When the last bag was set down inside the hall and Dad put his arm around their mother’s shoulders, narrow over the big belly, Joe had turned away.
They’d found their rooms, Joe slinging his bag down in the gloom, the two of them alone together. He’d put his arms around his sister. Joe had known.
Even as she had the thought Alison saw May’s head fly up, saw her look around, monitoring her surroundings, seeking her mother, eyes skating over the empty tables. The younger one is protected, but May had no older sibling to hide the truth from her, to allow her to think she was safe. She had Gina, though.
Gina came out of the pub’s back door with two pints of lager in her hands and an unlit cigarette in her mouth. Straight away Alison had said, I’ll get them, but Gina had given her that look. Alison had known she was at the pub when she called from the lane, something unmistakeable about the too-loud voices in the background. She wondered if Chatwin was still there.
Two o’clock: Paul would be on his way to the golf course with Christian. Alison eyed the lager, grimaced. Lighting her cigarette, Gina laughed. ‘You’ve been away too long,’ she said.
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ said Alison. Gina looked away, her eyes narrowed. In the lee of the building, the tables were still damp from last night’s dew. The backyard was filling up: a couple in anoraks were on the next table, watching the boats through binoculars.
‘Stephen Bray was the last one to see my dad,’ Alison said. ‘That night.’
Gina tilted her head, looking at her through the smoke. ‘Was he?’
‘As far as they know,’ she said. ‘And now he’s dead. You knew that, right?’
Gina threw her head back, blew smoke straight up, brought her chin down again. ‘I knew he was dead,’ she said carelessly, stubbing out the fag and taking a long drink from the tall glass. ‘He was old. He was a pisshead.’ She shrugged, but her free hand on the table jittered a moment, and Alison shifted her ground.
‘You said there was something you hadn’t told me,’ Alison said. ‘On the phone.’
Gina stared her down, mulish. ‘You said you a
lready knew,’ she countered. She leaned forward and Alison smelled smoke on her. ‘You said you couldn’t talk,’ she went on. ‘That boyfriend of yours. He doesn’t know, does he? He doesn’t know who you are.’
She pushed the big glass over towards Alison, moisture beaded down its sides. The champagne had gone from her system, leaving the nagging beginnings of a headache, and a small, horrible emptiness. A hundred yards away at the water’s edge May had stopped and she stood watching them. Alison lifted the glass to her lips, and something inside her came loose.
‘My mother had an affair,’ she said. ‘They moved here to get away from it. But Mum did it again.’ Bitch. ‘Another man, someone here.’ Gina was sitting back against the wall, relaxed, her hand out on the table and her green-brown eyes shining gold in the reflection off the water, lager eyes. ‘My dad had just found out the twins weren’t his.’
Joe knew. She suddenly felt sure of it. Joe had known something about Mum, and he’d been angry that Simon Chatwin had kissed Esme, but as she held those two certainties in suspension they seemed to move together, they bumped softly. A connection.
Gina sat up a little. ‘Never,’ she said, but her disbelief was detached, almost dreamy, and she lifted her glass. Alison put out a hand to stop her.
‘Was it Simon?’ she said. Gina frowned. She tugged her hand with the glass in it out of Alison’s and the liquid slopped.
‘You what?’ Her voice was sharp.
‘Simon. Having an affair with my mother. I came home and he was in our backyard. More than once. The time he kissed me, I thought he was waiting for me…’ That distance that had opened up between Esme and her mother had a shape now.
Gina was scrabbling for her cigarette pack on the table. May was standing on the edge of the pub’s yard now, scuffing a foot, not coming any closer. The anoraked couple were watching her, disapproving. Behind them the back door to the pub opened and someone stood there.
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