by Rebecca Reid
‘I should go and help her,’ she whispered.
‘Stay,’ said Drew in a voice that sounded warm but absolutely wasn’t.
‘It’s fine,’ said Gina. ‘I’ve got it. You stay where you are.’
‘I meant to say,’ Emma called across the table. ‘I’ve got a friend who runs an interiors magazine. Country houses – that sort of thing. I’m sure he’d love to do a feature on this place.’
‘On Thursday House?’ Poppy was grateful for the change in topic.
Emma nodded. ‘And on you. It could help if you’re serious about doing this professionally. Would you be interested?’
‘That would be incredible,’ she replied. ‘Drew, did you hear that?’
He smiled. ‘Brilliant idea.’
‘I’ve got loads of before photos, too,’ Poppy said, pulling her chair around next to Emma.
‘I’ll go and see where Gina’s got to with that coffee,’ said Drew. Poppy wanted to tell him not to nag Gina, that she’d get it done in her own time. But just as she opened her mouth to do so she found a picture of Emma and Ralph’s bedroom before it had been wallpapered. ‘Look – this is where you’re sleeping, before the work,’ she said. Emma’s gasps of surprise sounded genuine.
‘Drew is quite right,’ she said. ‘You really have got an eye for this sort of thing. You could make a fortune.’
Mac got to his feet, swaying slightly. ‘Right. Time for a swim, I think.’
A roar of objection went up across the table. ‘It’s freezing,’ said Emma.
‘We’re far too old for that,’ added Ralph.
‘Speak for yourself.’ They all turned to look at Dilly, who was, to Poppy’s enormous shock, peeling off her neat cashmere cardigan as she headed for the door. ‘It’s heated, isn’t it, Poppy?’
Poppy nodded.
‘Well then.’
Dilly unzipped her neat trousers and stepped out of them. Her underwear was nude lace, matching but deliberately unexciting. Poppy watched in utter bemusement as the rest of them followed, skipping across the dewy lawn towards the pool which glowed aquamarine in the darkness. She trailed behind, fiddling with a knot on her dress where she had tied it.
‘Come on, Pops!’ called Ralph from the water. ‘It’s bloody lovely.’
If someone had told her earlier that day that these people, these civilized, proper grown-ups in their forties, would be naked and splashing each other in the swimming pool at midnight she would have laughed in their face. ‘Let me get Drew and Gina.’
‘They’ll be out any minute.’
Gasping, she looked down. ‘You bastard!’ she shouted. Mac had splashed her, soaking her legs and the bottom half of her dress. He looked guilty, worried he had gone too far. Poppy grinned and pulled the dress away from her body, leaping into the blue water and soaking Mac in the process.
‘Oh Christ,’ she heard Drew’s voice from above them. ‘My eyes!’ He pointed and Poppy saw Ralph’s skinny, hairy legs sticking out of the pool, leading down to his soft, square arse. Also hairy.
‘He’s doing a handstand!’ said Emma.
‘He’s scarring me for life,’ called Dilly from the deep end where she was treading water, apparently without effort.
‘Aren’t you coming in, darling?’ Poppy asked Drew.
By way of answer he stepped out of his trousers, pulled his shirt over his head and dived, long and graceful, into the pool. Poppy still couldn’t dive. She hadn’t told Drew, for fear that he would insist on teaching her. The ease with which he did it – no fear, no horror that he would misjudge it, knock his head on the bottom and crunch his spine – impressed her.
‘Very good,’ she laughed as he surfaced.
‘Seven out of ten,’ called Mac.
Poppy took the steps, relieved to find the water warm and wrapped her legs around Drew’s waist and her arms around his neck, letting him carry her as he bobbed up and down in the water. ‘Where’s Gina?’
‘She went to bed.’
Fuck. She’d left Gina to do half the clearing up, disappeared down here to have fun with Drew’s friends whom Gina had spent most of the evening saving her from. ‘I should go and check on her.’ She untangled herself from Drew’s body and swam towards the steps, but he caught her arm.
‘Don’t go. She’ll be asleep by now.’
‘I should just see if she’s OK.’
‘She’s fine! Just said she’d had a lot to drink and needed to go to bed. That’s all. Stay out here. Please?’
Poppy looked guiltily over to the house.
‘Mr and Mrs Spencer, out of the way, please,’ yelled Ralph. ‘Mac and I are about to set a new speed record for the butterfly.’
She had meant to go inside and check on Gina, really she had. But instead she’d found herself sitting on the steps in the shallow end, arms crossed over her naked chest, water lapping at her torso, laughing so much that she had to struggle for breath as Mac and Ralph attempted an utterly shambolic butterfly stroke, smacking into each other, the sides of the pool and finally the wall of the deep end. By the time they finally heaved themselves out of the water, shivering and giggling, it was too late to check on Gina. She’d have been long asleep. It was too late to do anything other than follow Drew, laughing all the way, back up to the house to go to bed.
BEFORE
‘Where’s Daddy?’ asked Ella as Poppy strapped Grace into the car seat.
‘Shh,’ she said. ‘Remember? We have to be quiet? That’s the game.’
Guilt flushed through Caroline. But there really wasn’t another way. Asking, or telling, or explaining: all of it would have led to shouting and screaming and possibly being stuck here. He wasn’t himself when he was angry, he’d make threats about taking the children, say things about what kind of a mother she was. It was cleaner this way. Jim would get a taxi to the airport and a flight. He would calm down before he reached England and then they would be able to talk about it. And, she told herself sternly, she wasn’t the one who had tried to force herself on the nanny.
‘He’s staying here, darling,’ she said, turning the engine on.
‘Why?’ asked Jack.
‘It’s complicated,’ Poppy replied. ‘We just need you to trust us for now. OK?’
Jack shrugged and went back to his mobile. He’d do anything for Poppy.
Caroline’s stomach tightened; the engine seemed a thousand times louder than it did in the daytime. But nothing. No movement from inside the house. No lights. Grace was still sleeping in her car seat, Jack was playing with his phone and Ella’s eyelids were flickering shut. They’d managed it. She pushed her foot towards the floor and looked out over the long, sliding road and the red sky.
‘Red sky in the morning,’ she said, almost to herself.
‘Are you OK?’ whispered Poppy from the passenger seat. She’d brought her feet up, twisted them underneath her body.
‘Yes,’ said Caroline. It was at least half true. A part of her – quite a big part – wanted to believe that waking up to find all of them gone would shock Jim straight, that he would be so horrified at experiencing life without them that he would come home changed.
And, when Jim had apologized and when Poppy went back to Durham, they would try again. He’d finally agree to go to therapy. They would do all of those silly magazine-advice things that people did, like taking solo trips away and going out for dinner and having whole evenings where they weren’t allowed to talk about the children. All of the things that she wanted but felt embarrassed to admit to.
‘I think so, anyway,’ she went on. ‘I feel guilty. I keep wondering if we should go back.’
Poppy shook her head. ‘Can I say something?’
‘Of course.’
‘You always put him first. I think maybe it’s time to think about yourself.’
Caroline gave a half-smile. Poppy wasn’t wrong. It had been nearly two decades of trying to predict Jim’s moods and understand what triggered his dark patches. This was the first truly selfish th
ing she’d done since walking down the aisle at the Islington Register Office eighteen years ago.
‘Caroline?’ Poppy sounded worried. The road was long and wide and totally empty.
Caroline turned to look at her drawn face. ‘Yes?’
‘Do you want me to leave when we get back to London?’
Caroline shook her head. ‘God no.’
‘Are you sure?’ There was a note of hope in there now.
‘Yes. I won’t be able to cope without you.’
Poppy twisted in her seat. ‘Does anyone want a sweetie?’ she said, clearly testing to see whether the children were really asleep. She was a smart cookie. Caroline’s children were not above faking slumber to overhear what the grown-ups were talking about. But for once they were fast asleep.
‘I would understand,’ Poppy said, ‘if you didn’t want me around?’
‘Well, I do,’ Caroline said. ‘I need you.’
‘He’ll be so angry.’
‘He should have thought about that.’
‘What if he says—’ She stopped.
‘What if he says what?’
‘What if he says that I’m making it up? That he didn’t really come on to me?’
‘Poppy.’ Caroline put a hand on Poppy’s arm, holding the wheel steady with the other. ‘I get that maybe this hasn’t always been the case for you, but I need you to understand. I believe you. I think you’re telling the truth. You have no reason to lie to me. I trust you. OK?’
Poppy nodded as a tear spilled down her freckled cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Caroline nodded, not trusting herself to speak in case her voice cracked. Instead she reached for the radio, putting it on. The gentle hum of Europop filled the car, stripping away the silence.
Two hours later, Caroline’s phone buzzed and she handed it to Poppy.
Poppy silenced it, but it kept ringing. Again and again. Eventually, Poppy put the phone to her ear. ‘She doesn’t want to speak to you, Jim,’ she said. There was a crackle of voice from the other end, saying something that Caroline didn’t catch. Poppy hung up the phone.
‘Thank you,’ said Caroline.
‘It’s OK,’ said Poppy.
CHAPTER 36
Poppy’s eyelids were pulling down, as if her eyelashes weighed several pounds. The chlorine from the pool had made her skin stiff and dry. As she reached up towards the lamp, wondering if she could reach it without sitting up properly, she heard a noise at the door. Was it a knock, or just the movements of an old house? There it was again. A knock.
‘I need to talk to you,’ said Gina, standing in the fuzzy darkness.
Poppy pulled her dressing gown tighter around her body. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Not here,’ said Gina. ‘Upstairs.’
Poppy rolled her eyes. ‘Gee, I’ve got a house full of people. I’m tired. Let’s do this tomorrow.’
‘Please,’ said Gina, raising her voice. ‘Please.’
Poppy turned to look at Drew’s sleeping figure, long and lean in their beautiful new bed. ‘Shh,’ she said. ‘You’ll wake everyone up.’ Poppy pulled the heavy white door of her bedroom shut behind her.
She followed Gina around the square landing, looking over the bannisters down to the beautiful floor, quiet and dark below them.
‘Let’s go to my room,’ said Gina.
‘Fine,’ whispered Poppy, checking the doors of the two bedrooms next to her own for a bar of light, a sign that they had woken one of the guests. The stairs to Gina’s room had a little door on the main landing, and then a twisting staircase. A stark contrast to the huge wedding cake stairs in the hall.
Gina pushed her door open and Poppy looked around, struck with guilt that she hadn’t been up here for weeks. Gina had covered the bed with a silky Indian blanket and put pictures on the walls. There were bottles of nail varnish, perfume and body lotion scattered across each surface. Somehow she’d managed to make this stark room feel like a home.
‘So,’ said Poppy as Gina sat on the bed and pulled her knees up to her chest, ‘what’s going on?’
In the light from the single ceiling bulb, Gina looked about fifteen. From the twisting of her lips it was clear that she was wrestling with how to say what was coming.
‘Gee,’ said Poppy, ‘I have to go back down in a minute. If Drew wakes up and I’m not there—’
‘Drew said things before – when we were inside, when you were in the pool. He said …’ Gina trailed off.
‘What did he say?’
She shook her head.
Poppy stood up. If Gina didn’t care enough to tell her, then it couldn’t be important. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want Gina to say yet more things which made her life feel precarious, not now when she was starting to feel safe. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want to talk to me, I’m going back to bed.’
‘He paid me,’ said Gina, the words spilling out into the room.
‘Who paid you?’ said Poppy. ‘Drew? For what?’
A silence.
‘For what?’ she asked again. ‘Gina. What did he pay you for?’
‘To meet you,’ Gina whispered. ‘He paid me to help him meet you.’
There was something tight and hot constricting Poppy’s head.
‘Drew?’
Gina nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘We met in a bar. On the side of a road … How? You couldn’t have done. You—’
‘You told me where you were. And I told him. He went there to meet you.’
Poppy sat down on the bed, trying to slow everything down so that she could process what Gina was saying.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why would he do that?’
Gina shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You didn’t think to ask? You didn’t want to know why he was offering you money to meet me? Or you just decided to take the money and not give a shit what it meant?’
Gina’s eyes were full of tears. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘He – you know how he can be. He said he’d seen you at a party and he liked you. He was so charming about it.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Poppy said. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said you know how he can be – he’s so—’
Poppy got to her feet. ‘I know how he can be because he’s my husband. What the fuck do you know?’ She looked down and caught sight of her wrist. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Is that where this came from?’ She held the bracelet to the light. ‘You bought this with the money he gave you? Because you felt guilty?’
Gina opened her mouth and then closed it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said weakly.
The pathetic tone of her voice only made Poppy angrier. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’
It was clearly a question that Gina had predicted, and didn’t want to answer. She twisted the silk blanket in her fingers, unable to meet Poppy’s eye.
‘I think he might be dangerous,’ she said slowly.
‘What? Why?’
‘Dilly told me some stuff last night. She said—’
‘So you were in the bathroom with her?’
Gina rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, OK, I was, but that’s not the point. Dilly asked me not to tell you that we were talking—’
‘The same Dilly who treated you like a servant all weekend and keeps treating me like I’m Drew’s teenage daughter? You’ve got secrets from me with her now?’
‘She said he’d had problems in the past – she asked me if you knew but I didn’t think you did. Do you? Because of this stupid fucking deal.’
Poppy shook her head, trying to find the words to make Gina stop.
‘Poppy, she seemed really worried for you. Don’t you think there’s something off about him?’
‘Dilly’s just jealous.’
‘Maybe.’ Gina looked away. ‘But the way she said this stuff – I just—’
‘You’ve never even given him a chance. You decided you didn’t like him from day one.’
‘Poppy, for God’s sake, list
en to me. I’m not trying to burst your bubble, I’m telling you he’s not who you want to think he is. He’s not who I thought he was. There’s something bad going on. When we were inside earlier he was saying all this stuff.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Like …’ She paused. ‘Argh.’ She let out a frustrated noise. ‘It was how he said it. It all sounds normal when I say it but when he was saying it, it was scary, all right? It felt like he was dangerous, like he would …’ She left the sentence hanging. ‘Look, you need to talk to him. Ask him what he’s playing at. Ask him about life before he met you.’
Poppy gave a cold laugh. ‘And then what happens when he asks me to return the favour? I tell him all about the Walkers? I love him. I love my life with him.’
‘You really think you’re going to be happy with someone who won’t even tell you where he went to school or what his mum’s name was? You think that’s normal? You think that’s how marriages work?’
‘We don’t need each other’s pasts, we’ve got a future.’
‘You sound like you’re in a fucking cult.’
‘Are you just angry that he’s stopped paying you? You didn’t have a bad word to say about him when you were making money out of him. When I rang you from Ibiza and asked you if I should marry him, you told me it was a great idea and we should go for it. You didn’t think he was dangerous then, did you? When there was something in it for you.’
‘You said you were happy. I didn’t know what he was like.’
‘Like? What do you know about him? You’ve hardly spent five minutes with him since you arrived.’
‘I told him that I wanted to tell you and he threatened me. Not even three hours ago – in your fucking kitchen.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Poppy hissed. ‘I have people sleeping downstai—’ She stopped. Was there movement in the corridor? Had she heard something? She turned to the door and threw it open. The corridor was empty. She closed the door behind her and looked at Gina.
‘I’m sorry. I lost my temper. I just – I know it might sound odd to you, but none of this has exactly been conventional.’ Poppy sat back down. ‘I think it’s romantic, he wanted to meet me that much. But yeah, he should have told me that he paid you. He’s a rich businessman. He pays people for services. That’s what he does.’