‘Richard, please will you let go of me. Pop round tomorrow, if you want to talk to Matt. It’s none of my business, and I’m not having this conversation with you now. It really isn’t the time or the place. If you don’t want me to call you a taxi, drink some water and go and join the others. We’ll pretend this conversation never happened.’
Under her steady gaze, he dropped his hand – but as he did so he half turned, and the glass in his hand tipped, spilling the dregs of red wine over her skirt. They both looked down at the small spreading stain, edging out like dark blood over the black silk.
‘Sorry,’ he said sarcastically, without a hint of apology in his voice.
She looked at him, appalled. ‘That’s all right. I am sure it will wash out.’ She glared at him, and he stepped backwards, away from her. His eyes were full of knowing.
Just go home, you bloody man, she thought, walking swiftly away from him towards the kitchen. She felt deeply disturbed, not just by his drunkenness but by the way he had looked at her – almost as if he pitied her. If only she hadn’t had to invite him. She must tell Matt that he was horribly drunk – he must have been drinking long before he arrived. Sara normally tried to see the good in everyone, but right now Richard was testing that ability to its limits.
However, she kept getting waylaid, and didn’t have a chance to talk to Matt before the speeches started. Collected in their living room were almost all the friends they had made during their twenty-six years of marriage, former neighbours from their three homes before the apartment, friends Sara had made from the girls’ primary and then secondary schools, clients of Matt’s who had become friends. Richard was the only friend he had kept since childhood. Sara had wanted to invite his mother, but Matt said there was no point as she wouldn’t come. She hated leaving her bungalow in Manchester, and she drove Sara mad by constantly asking how much everything in the apartment had cost.
Half an hour later, Matt tapped on a low coffee table with his champagne glass. When that failed to achieve quiet, he paused, and then said loudly, ‘Will you all shut up for one minute?’
The good-humoured babble within the room faded to a series of whispers and then there was silence. Everyone turned, smiling, towards Matt.
‘I thank you. I am very glad to see you all here, given how far some of you have come. Now, since you have all spent the evening drinking my very expensive drink and eating my delicious food, you can pay me the honour of listening to my considered thoughts on the subject of my attaining the extraordinary age of fifty.’ He gesticulated around the room with his champagne glass. ‘Goodness, that is old. At least I don’t look it,’ he said, smiling self-deprecatingly. ‘I certainly don’t feel fifty. The picture in the attic –’ he leant forward, conspiratorially ‘– looks even younger than I do.’ He raised his eyebrows, and everyone laughed.
Emily, who’d worked her way across the room to stand next to him, raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Boasting again,’ she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. Laughter rippled across the room.
‘If I can’t show off tonight, when can I?’ Matt argued. ‘I was told never to count my chickens, but I think that, tonight, they are well and truly hatched . . .’
Out of the corner of her eye, Sara saw Richard stumble into the room, the people nearest to him glancing over, alarmed and embarrassed at the fact he was so unsteady on his feet. She must try to get him home, she thought, right after the speeches. She had thought about asking him to make a speech – thank goodness she hadn’t.
‘Just get on with it,’ heckled one of the guests.
Matt held his glass up in front of him, a smile on his lips. ‘This is my party, and I can do what I want to. Little did I think that I would be standing here today, twenty-six years on from my wedding, surrounded by so many people who claim to be my friends, and, of course, my family. I am a fortunate man,’ he added. ‘I’ve been lucky in business – well, actually, it’s mostly genius, but I’ll pretend it is luck so the rest of you don’t feel too inferior – but most of all I have been extremely lucky in my family. I promised my wife I would not embarrass her tonight, but I can’t help myself.’ He reached out to take Sara’s hand and she took a step towards him, her face pink. ‘I have not always been the most demonstrative of husbands and I haven’t always been there when I was most needed, but I have a beautiful wife who has stuck by me for an inordinate length of time, and given me two stunning daughters, for which I am truly thankful as we used to say before our school dinner . . .’
‘And a beautiful girlfriend.’
The murmur of laughter stopped as if someone had clicked their fingers. One by one, like dominoes tumbling, everyone turned towards the doorway. Richard stood, swaying, a look of triumph on his face.
‘Don’t forget your beautiful girlfriend, Matt. Shouldn’t you thank her, too? Oh, has she not been invited?’ He looked owlishly around him. ‘How peculiar. But I suppose you did your celebrating earlier, didn’t you? Somewhere a little more private.’
Matt’s fingers tightened in a spasm around Sara’s hand. He was staring at Richard, his face taut with fury. He wore an expression Sara had never seen before – rage, blind rage, distorting his features into a man she did not recognize. A pulse beat beneath one eye and the corner of his mouth twitched convulsively. She looked slowly down at his white-knuckled hand, gripping hers – time seemed to have moved into a surreal dimension, as if she was underwater, unable to reach the surface. Then she caught his eye and the shadow became the man. A stranger. In that moment, she knew that it was true. Matt seemed completely lost for words. There was no denial, no defence, nothing to save the appalling moment.
‘That’s right,’ Richard said loudly, trying to stand upright, putting out a hand to balance himself against the door frame. ‘No mention of her, is there, in your little résumé of your perfect life?’
He turned to leave, and, as he did so, his hip caught a cut-glass rose bowl on a table just inside the door, filled with exquisite pale pink roses. For a moment it spun, and then seemed to hang in the air, before crashing to the ground. As it shattered, the shards of glass, like perfect daggers of ice, flew out across the pale floorboards. How beautiful they are, Sara thought, as, one by one, the roses dropped to earth and lay among the broken glass and rivulets of clear water.
‘I’ll clean it up,’ she said, clearly, into the silence. ‘Don’t worry.’ Before her the guests parted as she walked, with dignity, towards the kitchen to fetch a dustpan and brush.
Chapter Three
The caterers had finally left. Sara couldn’t find the chequebook, and had had to turn out several of the kitchen drawers to try to locate it, when all the time it was sitting in its folder in her leather handbag in their bedroom, the handbag Matt had bought for her when they were on holiday in France last year. Sara didn’t normally like designer labels, but this was just the right size for popping over her shoulder when she walked to the shops.
Her signature was little more than a squiggle, and the words on the cheque jumped about as she wrote them, as if they had a life of their own. She had thought Matt had paid the caterers in advance, but apparently not. As she handed it over, she glanced at the printed names on the cheque. Mr M. S. de Lall and Mrs S. L. de Lall. They had had a joint account for twenty-six years, ever since they married.
In the appalled silence, Richard had stood aside to let her pass, and then moments later, she heard the front door slam. He had gone, his mission accomplished.
‘He’s an idiot, a fool, you can’t believe him, this is madness.’ Catherine was the first to reach Sara, her hand reaching out to grasp her shoulder, to make her turn. Her fingers dug into Sara’s skin, but Sara pulled away from her. She could not bear to be touched, she did not trust herself to speak. She put a hand out to steady herself against the cupboard door.
Catherine’s voice rose. ‘It can’t be true. How can it be? Sara, listen to me. Turn round. Please, darling. Matt would never . . .’
‘Not now,’ Sara
said, calmly, without looking at her, taking out the dustpan and brush and shutting the door. ‘Not now.’ She paused and took a deep breath. She couldn’t seem to make her eyes focus, and for a moment she felt so dizzy she thought she might faint. ‘Could you . . .’ she whispered, resting her forehead on the hand placed against the closed cupboard door.
‘Yes? Anything.’
‘Could you see everyone out? I think we’d better, I’m not, I really need to, just for now . . .’
‘Of course. And put that away, please, darling. You must sit down.’
Sara, still holding the dustpan and brush, said nothing and walked away from Catherine, through the kitchen, past the waitresses, who stared at her, stunned. She could not go back into the living room, could not face any of the familiar faces, could not bear to register their shock. What could she say? How could she face any of them again, the people who had witnessed such an extraordinarily public humiliation of Matt, and her family?
Breathing hard, she slid open the glass doors leading out on to the roof terrace.
Outside, the cold wind hit her, and she wrapped her bare arms around her body. Before Sara, the lights of London stretched away. It was a perfect, clear night, the stars overhead iridescent in the black velvet sky.
She took a step forward and placed one hand on the wrought-iron railing. The metal was icy under her hand, but she gripped it without feeling the cold, rocking backwards and forwards without knowing that she did so. Richard’s words ran through her mind, over and over, as if on a loop of tape. ‘Your beautiful girlfriend, your beautiful girlfriend, your beautiful girlfriend . . .’
She did not care about the humiliation. What mattered most was the fact that Matt had been shamed in front of his own children.
Richard was not lying. She knew that. He had looked at Matt with a bizarre kind of triumph, as if challenging him to deny the accusation in front of all those people, the people who knew him best in the world, knowing that he could not do so. And he had not. The smiling assassin had hit his target, and he knew that there was nothing Matt could either say or do.
If it was revenge, it could not have been better executed. Whatever. The words were said, and could not be unsaid. They had dropped, like perfect pools of poison, on to the shining floorboards and they could never be retrieved, and now the stain was spreading inexorably outwards over every part of their life.
She dropped the dustpan and brush on to the decking, and brought both hands up to her face. Gently, she touched her skin, feeling the ridge where the soft flesh under her eyes met her cheek. How guileless and naïve have I been? she wondered. Her fingers came to rest in the defined creases at the very corners of her eyes, and she closed them, feeling her pupils flickering and darting from side to side. In that one moment, the familiarity of her life had become an alien landscape.
She stood looking out over the city with no notion of time, until through the glass she heard her name. She half turned just as Emily wrenched the doors open.
‘He’s gone!’ she shouted, her eyes wild.
Sara started. ‘Who? Richard?’
‘Dad.’ Emily was sobbing, her beautiful face twisted with grief. ‘Dad’s gone. I tried to stop him but he pushed me away! Like he didn’t care! What’s happening? It’s completely insane . . .’ Emily’s words seemed to catch in her throat, and she fell forward, through the open doors. ‘Why didn’t he just say straight out it was rubbish, how could he just leave? Didn’t he think about us at all?’
Sara held out her arms, and Emily folded into them, trying to make herself as small as possible, and through the thin chiffon dress Sara could feel her daughter shaking. ‘Why?’ she repeated, over and over again, her voice rising hysterically.
‘Shush,’ Sara said, holding her tight. ‘Shush, I don’t know. I don’t know anything, at the moment. Come on. You’re cold.’ Silently, she led Emily back into the kitchen. All the guests had left, and the apartment was eerily quiet. The waitresses were standing in a huddle around the kitchen table, and, as Sara put a hand on Emily’s shaking shoulders, one coughed and then asked if they could, possibly, have payment and then they could leave. They had cleared up the glass, the woman said, her voice low with embarrassment, emptied the ashtrays, collected the glasses and all of Sara’s cutlery and plates were stacked in the dishwasher. The trays which had held the canapés were piled up neatly on the central island in the kitchen, its black marble surface wiped and gleaming. They had done an impeccable job.
‘What do you want to do with the cheese?’ the waitress asked.
Sara looked at her, stunned. She realized they had not reached the cheese. ‘Just take it away with you,’ she said, trying to smile.
‘Do you want me to deduct it from the overall cost?’
‘No, no, please, just take it away.’ Just go! Sara screamed, inwardly. Where was Lottie? Leaving Emily sitting at the table, she walked quickly through the hall into the living room. Someone had left a coat on the chair in the hall, she thought, as she passed, a rather lovely black velvet one. Part of her brain began to work out whose it might be, while another part thought, ‘How can you be thinking this, now? How can you think anything is important? Your life has exploded, and you are worrying who has left a coat?’
In the living room Lottie stood with her back to her, her outstretched palms resting on the window, as she looked out into the night.
‘Dad’s gone,’ she said, into the window.
‘I know. Emily told me.’
‘I think he hurt her. She went to stop him, and he pushed her away. Like he had to get away from us and he couldn’t bear to stay.’ She spoke mechanically, as if too shocked to register emotion.
‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to . . .’
‘Stop defending him!’ Lottie shouted. She turned, and Sara could see her heart-shaped face was streaked with lines of mascara, her beautiful hair falling down from the chignon she’d had put in, today, at the hair-dressers, as a treat.
‘Darling . . .’
‘I can’t think.’ Lottie put her hands to her face, her hands shaking. ‘Don’t say anything. Don’t even try to defend him. You can’t make this OK, Mum.’
‘I know. Not tonight. We all need to sleep.’
‘Where do you think he has gone?’ Her voice became low, child-like, afraid.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You could call him.’ There was a pleading note to her voice. ‘Just ask him if it is true. I have to know. I can’t sleep, not knowing.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll call him.’
‘He won’t answer his mobile. What would you say to him, anyway? We’re all going to have to calm down. Tonight isn’t . . .’
Lottie’s face crumpled. ‘I know.’
‘Hush.’ Sara moved forward, to embrace her.
‘Some party!’ Lottie said, into her mother’s neck, a trace of her normal voice. Sara laughed.
‘Memorable, certainly.’ Her voice was low, and bitter.
‘You can say that again. Do you think it could be true?’ Lottie said the word slowly, with appalled fascination, as if examining it from every angle. ‘We would have known, surely. Dad’s not that much of an idiot. He loves you – us. He does. What do you think, Mum? You know him best. Surely you would have known – you must have known?’
‘Darling, I have absolutely no answers. I promise you this is as much of a shock to me as it is to you. We need to sleep and then tomorrow we can try to . . . I don’t know, see what is to be done.’
‘How can you be so calm? How could Dad do something like that? It’s repulsive, gross. You’ve always been . . . how could Uncle Richard say that? And in front of everyone?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’
‘If it isn’t true, why did he walk out? This was his party. He’s a coward to just leave like that, it’s pathetic, like a child, running away.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘It must be true. Otherwise why would he run away like this?’ Sh
e clenched a hand against Sara’s shoulder. ‘I hate him. How could he be so stupid? Such a bloody coward?’
‘You don’t hate him.’
‘If it is true, he isn’t who I thought he was. And I need him to be the same. He’s my Dad. This doesn’t happen to us, it’s like being in some kind of film.’
‘This isn’t about you,’ Sara said. ‘Please don’t think it is.’
‘But it is, isn’t it? It’s about all of us, our family, and nothing can ever be the same again.’ She began to cry, the tears sliding down her face.
Sara said nothing, because there was nothing she could say.
Lottie reached up and angrily wiped away her tears, smearing mascara across her cheek. ‘I haven’t even given him his present, yet. I bought it in Thailand, and I was saving it right to the end, when everyone had gone and it was just us, just family. I thought it was really special, and now it’s all – it’s all fucking ruined.’ She wrenched herself away from Sara and ran out of the arched living-room doors, her footsteps echoing through the silent apartment. Her bedroom door slammed.
Sara walked out of the living room, having blown out all the candles which had not burnt themselves out. As she reached forward to pull the double doors closed, she saw Matt’s Blackberry lying on the table next to where the glass bowl had stood, just inside the doorway. He never normally went anywhere without it. She stepped back into the room and picked it up. Almost without knowing what she was doing, she pressed the arrows until she reached his message inbox. The latest message read ‘private number’. As if in a dream, she pressed the ‘enter’ button.
‘I love you,’ the screen said. ‘This will be our year.’
Chapter Four
The cottage huddled against the hillside on the far peninsula, as if trying to shelter from the driving wind and rain.
Too Beautiful to Dance Page 4