The Betrayals: The Richard & Judy Book Club pick 2017

by Fiona Neill

  ‘Barney’s always been out of control. That’s part of his genius,’ I smiled. ‘He just needs a few things to go right and then you’ll get into a more positive cycle again.’

  ‘No one ever warns you about doubt, do they?’ said Lisa, wiping the sweat off her face with the back of her hand. ‘But I think of all the human emotions it is probably one of the most corrosive.’

  I should have asked her what she meant but I think we both knew.

  ‘The best cure for doubt is activity,’ I said quickly, pointing at the empty trolley. ‘I need to get back to help Max with his ladybird odyssey.’

  ‘You’re a good dad, Nick.’ Lisa smiled and pulled out the list from her pocket.

  I took the trolley from her hands and began wheeling it to the fruit and vegetables section.

  ‘Okay. So what do we need?’

  I closed my eyes and reeled off all thirty-seven items from Lisa’s shopping list without any hesitation. When I opened them she was open-mouthed. There was such childish wonder in her reaction that I couldn’t help beaming with self-satisfaction. She laughed and it made me realize how little I had heard that sound over the past five days and how good it made me feel to make her happy.

  ‘How do you do that?’ Lisa smiled.

  ‘It’s an old trick. Never to be divulged. It’s a great way to impress my graduate researchers. I use it to remember their names from day one, like Cyrus of Persia. He knew every soldier in his army.’

  ‘I won’t breathe a word to anyone,’ she pleaded.

  ‘If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,’ I teased.

  We headed to the woefully stocked spice shelf and I stared at it for a minute, scanning each row. I closed my eyes and performed the same trick again, remembering every spice in alphabetical order from allspice to thyme.

  ‘You’re freaking me out, Nick Rankin!’

  ‘Come on, we need to increase our productivity.’

  I honestly can’t remember whether it was Lisa or me who suggested we stop at the beach for a swim on the way home. I can see why the question warrants reflection but there’s only so much a busy brain can recall. I’m not being evasive – all the science shows that people who claim to remember events in the greatest detail are the biggest liars. In fact, if you remember something often enough, even if it didn’t happen, it will become real. It’s a terrifying but beautiful notion that every day we wake up with a slightly different personal history. Remember that. It’s important. The past is a vanished shadow.

  From the car park, the sea beckoned beguilingly, all turquoise-blue promise, but as we walked on to the beach I noticed a frothy menace to the surface that made me wish Rosie were with us because she could read its unpredictable moods better than anyone I had ever met. There was an offshore wind but I couldn’t remember how this affected the ebb and flow of the tide. We plunged in and I felt the indecisive currents batter my legs at cross purposes. Usually the shallow sea floor took most of the punch out of the waves but as I looked towards the horizon I saw the sky was streaked with bruise-coloured ribbons in purple, grey and yellow, indicating a storm at sea.

  The noise of the waves breaking was so intense that we couldn’t hear ourselves speak. Lisa’s head rose and fell in the swell. I watched over her as she took a deep breath before diving into the waves just before they broke and whenever she disappeared from view I felt a surge of anxiety. She was completely fearless. I preferred to let the waves suck me beneath the surface and spit me out on the stony shore like a passive piece of driftwood. When we got out we were both completely breathless from the exhilaration and the sense of doing combat with a force more powerful than ourselves. We faced each other for a second, panting like dogs.

  ‘You’re right. I feel so much better,’ said Lisa, shaking her hair so the cold drops rained down on my bare torso.

  ‘Hey, get away from me!’ I shouted, picking up my shirt and waving it matador-style to shield myself from her salt storm.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ she said. Then she grabbed the shirt from my hands and used it to dry her face and arms, sidestepping my feeble attempts to get it back. When she was finished she scrunched it up into a damp ball and threw it at my stomach, laughing when I dropped it on the sand.

  I didn’t want to put my trousers on over my soaking-wet boxer shorts because Max would realize that I had been swimming instead of rushing home to help him collect up the dead ladybirds. I felt guilty without feeling any regret. At that moment I didn’t want to be anywhere other than here with Lisa.

  ‘Shall we go and bake ourselves in the dunes for a while?’ I suggested, pointing to a spot close to where the old pillbox was buried in the sand.

  ‘Good plan.’

  She carelessly rolled her leggings around her bra and flip-flops and carried the sausage of clothes under her arm. If anyone noticed we were in our underwear, they didn’t give it away. We scrambled to the top of the dunes, using the marram grass to steady ourselves, oblivious to the scratches on our fingers.

  When we reached the summit we stood for a while in silence like royalty, imperiously surveying our kingdom below. The wind had blown a perfect bowl-shaped shelter. I got down on my hands and knees to smooth out the bumps in the warm, silky sand until it was comfortable enough for us to lie on while Lisa hung our wet clothes to dry on the marram grass, using our shoes as weights to stop the breeze from blowing them away. It all felt strangely domestic. I lay down on one half of my shirt, enjoying the way the heat from the sand soaked into the back of my body. Lisa collapsed beside me, turtled on to her back and closed her eyes to block out the glare of the late-afternoon sun. We were completely cocooned from the world.

  ‘It’s strange how in life your good qualities always end up being your bad qualities, isn’t it?’ Lisa said with a deep sigh.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I shifted on to my side, and propped myself up on my elbow so that the sun was on my back. My right toe found itself resting on the soft flesh on the side of her foot.

  If she noticed anything she didn’t give it away. Her T-shirt had wrinkled up, revealing a stretch of tanned flesh on her stomach that drew my eye down to her knickers. For a split second I wondered what she would do if I rested the flat of my palm between her legs. I would stay still until she could feel the pulse beating in my hand and wait until her legs parted. I sneaked a quick look at her face, to check her eyes were still shut, because if she saw me she would see nothing but hunger in mine. I noticed how her hair had completely escaped from its noose and her half-parted lips were dry with salt. Her left arm was stretched above her head and the strap of her T-shirt had slipped down, revealing the perfect round tip of her clavicle. It was shiny and hard like a boiled sweet, so close that I could open my mouth and lick it. My stomach somersaulted and I felt my dick stir inside my boxer shorts. God, what was I thinking?

  I remembered a trick I had last used in my early twenties and ran through the bowlers and batsmen playing for England in the last test against Australia. By the time I reached Monty Panesar I had regained control. Thankfully Lisa kept talking.

  ‘What I’m trying to say is that the things that make you good also make you bad. Barney’s irresponsibility makes him really attractive but is also the cause of his downfall. My optimism that everything will turn out fine means I don’t deal with problems until they’ve mushroomed into impossible situations.’

  ‘I get what you’re saying but I’m not sure it always works. Do the traits that make me boring also make me exciting?’ I was teasing her and she had the good grace to blush.

  ‘I can’t believe Rosie told you that. And I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. What I was trying to say is that when you deal with complete uncertainty every day, being with someone who plans everything suddenly seems like a good thing. I’m so grateful to you for looking after me. It feels like such a long time since someone has done that.’

  I had allowed reason to govern my heart for many years but in a moment this vanished. I was helpless before her
. The urge to kiss her perfectly shaped lips was overwhelming. I wanted to explore her mouth with my tongue and then run it down the rest of her body. Once the idea entered my head I couldn’t see any other possible ending to the day. But just as my lips were so close to hers that I could feel her breath on my face, Lisa unexpectedly sat up and her chin smashed into my nose. The pain brought me back to reality.

  ‘I feel like we’re being watched.’ She gripped my shoulder with her hand.

  ‘You are. By me,’ I joked, holding on to my throbbing nose.

  Lisa pointed at the black window of the pillbox. We both stood up to take a look but there was nothing. The thunder that had been growling in the distance for the past hour bellowed overhead and huge drops of rain started falling so hard they bounced back off the sand at calf height so that our shoes and socks were twice-soaked. Families caught up in the storm began running back to the car park from the beach, belongings spilling from haphazardly stuffed bags. Magnificent forks of lightning illuminated the sky as we pulled on our clothes, and by the time we began running down the other side of the dunes the sky was dark grey.

  When we got home, everyone was standing in the driveway at the front of the house, heads bowed beneath the relentless downpour, so they resembled characters in a religious tableau where the object of worship appeared to be Max. The flower beds at the side of the driveway had turned into small, dark rivers that looked as though they were about to burst their banks and a big branch had fallen from the copper beech on to the gravel. Rex was attempting to drag it on to the lawn single-handed.

  I was worried that this gathering had something to do with our absence. Lisa and I had been gone for the best part of a day and the shops must have shut hours ago. Even worse, I had forgotten to get the main ingredient for dinner. There were no crabs. But to my relief, when we got out of the car carrying only three bags, I realized we were not the object of any search party and our sopping clothes and wet hair meant we could blend in without too many questions asked. Perhaps there had been a calamity involving the copper beech. Our car certainly looked a little beaten up.

  I signalled my confusion to Daisy who was sheltering in the porch, but her attention was resolutely focused on Rosie and Barney who were talking animatedly to Max. I carried the shopping bags to the front door and asked Daisy to take them inside but she stared straight through me.

  ‘Big problemo,’ gushed Ava excitedly. ‘Dad took Max out for a spin in your car and he was so drunk he crashed into the gatepost and Max nearly died.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ protested Max, who appeared completely fine. ‘Don’t exaggerate.’

  ‘Lived, lived, lived,’ muttered Daisy under her breath.

  I frowned. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that she worried way too much about her younger brother, when it was obvious Max was one of life’s survivors.

  ‘Do you want to help me cook dinner, Daisy? I could do with your help,’ I asked, wanting to get her away from Ava.

  ‘She’ll only agree if you ask Rex as well,’ Ava teased.

  Daisy shook her head. She needed to develop a harder shell if she was to survive in this world. I headed towards Barney. In many respects I was thankful for his folly that day. He provided welcome distraction from my own unsteady state of mind. I couldn’t believe what had almost happened. I was wary of too much scrutiny in case someone could sense my lurch from euphoria to despair, so I marched over to him and did my best to dredge up anger that I didn’t feel. At one point I even found myself trying to put my arms around him, more for my own benefit than his. No wonder he looked confused.

  By dinner the storm had passed and we had all found our equilibrium again. As I chopped garlic and crushed chilli I began to relax. I tipped the crabs from their shells and broke up their flesh between my fingers. It was a beautiful evening, warm without being humid, and I went outside to join everyone else sitting around the table on the terrace. The sun hung low and sultry in the sky, casting a benevolent glow over us. The plague of ladybirds had ended as mysteriously as it had started and Max seemed almost relieved that his experiment had drawn to an abrupt end.

  ‘Some of the best scientific discoveries happen by accident when things don’t go according to plan,’ said Rosie, cleverly steering him away from his failure to collect up the last of the ladybirds.

  ‘Like what?’ asked Max.

  ‘Mustard gas was accidentally found to cure cancer cells,’ said Rosie.

  ‘How did that happen?’ asked Max. He had an enviable ability to shake off a mood.

  Rosie began explaining how American pathologists analysed the effects of the bombing of Ypres on survivors after the First World War and found that their white blood cell counts were always below normal. My attention wandered as she began describing how this was the way it was discovered that mustard gas damages DNA and kills nearly all the dividing cancer cells. I stole a glance at Lisa, willing her to look at me, but she was too busy fiddling with her camera.

  I think it was Lisa’s idea to take a photograph of us all before we ate dinner. She managed to cajole us out of our seats and on to the front lawn, where she balanced her camera on top of her big legal briefcase. She bent down to check that we were all in frame and I stared at the lens, hoping she was looking only at me. I felt like a teenager searching for hidden messages in everything she said or did that evening and liked to think she wanted a photograph to remember the day we had shared together. She set the timer and ran towards us, wriggling in beside me, her toes carelessly glancing my instep, mirroring our earlier position on the beach, and I spent hours later trying to work out if she did this on purpose.

  When we sat back down I was relieved to see that everyone had moved from their usual positions at the table so I wasn’t next to her. Too much proximity in the presence of others would have been difficult to manage. So I went beside Max, hoping to compensate for my earlier absence. Rex sat down the other side of me and I suggested Daisy sit next to him but she shook her head and said she would go next to Rosie, who had decided she should collect the laundry from the washing line in the front garden in case we forgot it when we left the following morning. Living in the moment was never Rosie’s strong suit.

  ‘Come on, Small,’ commanded Rex, patting the space beside him. ‘It’s our last night.’

  ‘You’d better make it one to remember then, Rex,’ said Ava.

  Daisy blushed.

  ‘I remember every second I spend with Daisy,’ Rex teased, but Daisy didn’t smile.

  Fortunately Max diverted attention away from her, firstly by spilling the Coca-Cola that he was desperate to have as a treat on his last night and then by asking one of those seemingly innocent questions that is in fact so complicated it should be a TED Talk.

  ‘Dad, how can you make sure that when you’re old, you remember the good memories and not the bad ones?’ he suddenly asked. ‘Is there some way you can delete the past?’

  ‘What bad memories could you possibly want to get rid of, Maxi?’ asked Ava, putting her arm around him. ‘You haven’t lived long enough to be bad.’

  ‘Chelsea losing the Champions League, for one,’ teased Barney. Three-quarters into a bottle of wine Barney resembled his old self, all good-natured congeniality and wit. He put his arm around Lisa and she didn’t shift. I felt a stab of something that felt horribly like jealousy.

  ‘I watched a horror film with Ava and I can’t forget it,’ said Max. ‘The Mummy.’

  ‘Why on earth did you let Max watch that with you?’ Rosie asked Ava.

  ‘I like the way he snuggles into me when he’s scared,’ said Ava. ‘Max is so soft and cuddly.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ protested Max.

  ‘You are,’ said Ava, pulling him to her.

  ‘It’s not a proper horror film,’ said Lisa. ‘It’s just Max is susceptible.’

  Daisy looked up from her plate. I noticed how she had separated the crab from the pasta and felt sorry for her for having to pretend to like it, to please R
ex. If I had been sitting next to her I would have discreetly removed it so she could save face.

  ‘Are you susceptible, Dad?’ Daisy asked me. The way she looked at me made it seem as though it was a question she had always wanted to ask and that my answer could be life-defining, and yet it was meaningless.

  ‘Susceptible to what, Daisy?’ I asked in confusion.

  Fortunately Daisy was spared by Rosie coming in from the kitchen with news that the storm had blown away all of Lisa’s underwear and saved her own. At the time this seemed hilarious. Barney did a whole riff on how Lisa’s knickers had been planning their escape for years and had finally made it across the North Sea to a new life in Holland with a Dutch family who would treat them far better and wash them on a lower heat with the right colours. God, he could be funny.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question, Dad,’ said Max when it hurt to laugh any more.

  I tried to find the simplest way to explain a complicated concept. ‘Some people think if you try to push away thoughts about the less obvious background to bad memories, like sound and smells, then they fade quicker,’ I said. ‘It’s like removing the scaffolding that holds the memory in place.’

  ‘So you could watch the scene that frightened you but listen to different music and it would change the memory?’ said Rex.

  ‘Precisely.’

  Lisa told the story of how I remembered everything on the supermarket list without any prompts and although everyone was impressed I felt wounded that she didn’t want to keep the details of our day together secret.

  I wanted her acknowledgement that something had shifted between us. I wanted to know if she had really seen someone in the pillbox or whether it was a clever diversion to preserve me from the humiliation of rejection. I wanted a legitimate excuse to spend time alone with her again. I swung from elation to despair like a hormonal teenager. The alcohol softened my resolve and as I stared at the ice cream melting on my plate, all I could think about was how much I wanted to have sex with Lisa. I stirred the ice cream round and round, imagining her hand sliding into my unzipped trousers.