by Clare Boyd
‘I’m just glad nobody was hurt,’ I murmured, backing away from her.
She moved close, holding my forearm. ‘Thank you, Heather,’ she said, but she was looking at Lucas.
‘I’d better go tell Dad. He seems to have slept through it. Ear plugs, I’m guessing,’ I said.
I left them, hurrying away, avoiding eye contact with Lucas.
But Lucas ran after me, catching up with me behind the guest barn.
Out of sight, he began to cry. He covered his face and said, ‘Heather.’ That was all. There were no words big enough to encompass his loss.
I put my arms around him and let him sob into my shoulder, stroking his hair, which reeked of smoke.
I wondered now how little he had consciously processed about his own childhood. Elizabeth’s psychiatrist’s letter had talked of her childhood experiences informing her behaviour as an adult, suggesting they were integral to her paranoia and her suicidal ideations, and to the emotional trauma she inflicted on Isla specifically. In isolation, her behaviour was unacceptable, could characterise her as a monstrous mother. In context, it was a logical chain of events when preceded by a trauma that had remapped the pathways of her tender young brain. The same for Lucas, perhaps. His housemaster at Winslow House – his name escaped me now – had been in loco parentis for boys from the age of seven, and he had abused his position, humiliating Lucas, undermining him, inflicting a grinding routine of bullying and cruelty, drilling him to believe he was worth nothing, that he would amount to nothing. The stories had shocked me at the time. And the housemaster had got away with it, been celebrated at an assembly when he had retired. ‘He didn’t break me. He wanted to, but he didn’t,’ Lucas had said to me one evening by the pool, after some good news about a new commercial property investment. He had believed he had successfully exorcised the housemaster, but the man’s legacy perhaps lived on in Elizabeth.
When his crying abated, I asked him the more pragmatic and immediate questions that had been gathering in my head.
‘Where will you all sleep? Does anyone need to stay at ours? We’ve got camp beds in the loft,’ I said, pulling away from him, knowing he had to go back to the others. ‘And do you need clothes?’
‘That’s kind, but no. Bo and Walt are going to lend us some stuff to wear. They’ve ordered a car to take them to a hotel in London, and Elizabeth and I will stay in the guest barn. And Agata’s okay for tonight. The camper’s untouched, ironically.’
‘Why ironically?’
‘If there was anything that needed to burn to the ground, it was that,’ he said, shooting it a dirty look. ‘They refuse to let go of the bloody thing.’
‘Really? But why?’
‘It was how they escaped their traffickers. Symbolic of their independence, I guess.’
‘You know, you’re wrong about Dad bringing them here to pay for his debts. I know he’s made mistakes, but he’d never do anything so awful. You must know that.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. It was probably a misunderstanding. Your father has been very loyal to our family, which is why I never took it any further.’
I tried not to hear the mechanical edge to his voice as he said these conciliatory words. If I was wrong about my father, if he was capable of lying for so long, and doing evil to others less fortunate than him, what did my own blood run with? What legacy had I inherited?
I said, ‘I’d better get back.’
His voice was croaky when he said, ‘Yes. Take care.’
* * *
When I reached home, I couldn’t bring myself to wake my father. Not simply because letting him sleep would be kinder, knowing how upset he would be, but for another reason too. If I woke him, everything I had learned about the Huxleys would come tumbling out. After reading the blue file, I was eager to set the record straight about Lucas: show my father the psychiatrist’s letter, ring my mother, prove to them that Elizabeth was the one to distrust, that she had developed delusions about Lucas sleeping with Agata. In turn, I hoped that Dad would come clean to my mother about the loan on the van and confess to his ongoing gambling debts. Lastly, I wanted to hear him verbally counter Lucas’s claim about Agata and Piotr, prove to me that he had brought them to Copper Lodge in good faith.
But now wasn’t the time for any of that.
* * *
The desolation of the blackened ruins and the stench of toxic embers was far worse than the fire itself. My father stood on the sooty, puddled gravel of the drive staring through the wreckage. The copper roof had survived, held in place by the concrete pillars. It was mottled purple and black and green and gold, still sheltering the grey powdery remains of the Huxleys’ lives.
Lucas and Elizabeth were standing where the study had been, staring down at what looked like a large blackened fridge at their feet.
I waited for my father to exclaim or cry, even to speak, but he was silent, holding his emotions together with the strength that characterised him.
‘It’s horrendous, isn’t it?’ I said stupidly, filling the gap.
He walked off towards Lucas and Elizabeth, and I followed. It felt disrespectful to be stepping across the detritus. A metal sign that said Love was in one piece, covered in ash. A desk lamp was tipped over, its bulb blown out. I had the urge to pick it up and set it upright.
After last night’s uninhibited display of affection from Lucas, I dreaded seeing Elizabeth. Her voice rang out, higher and clearer than I had ever heard it before. ‘Lucas doesn’t need your services today!’
At first I thought she was talking to me. Before I could respond, she began running towards us, her yoga pantaloons flapping and a hoodie dropping off her head, revealing wet hair combed back.
‘Come to collect Lucas’s debts, have you?’ she yelled, pointing her finger right into my father’s face. Her eyelids were pink and swollen.
My father looked down at her. His fists were clenched into large balls at his thighs.
‘Elizabeth, please,’ Lucas said. ‘This isn’t the time.’
‘Don’t worry, I understand,’ my father said.
‘You understand everything, don’t you, Gordy?’ Elizabeth said. ‘You certainly understand who’s boss. But when you’re taking envelopes of cash from Piotr, do you understand that his baby nephew is ill in hospital because they can’t afford damp proofing? Because Uncle Piotr hasn’t been able to send any money home?’
‘Elizabeth, Gordon isn’t taking envelopes of cash from Piotr,’ Lucas said.
My father still didn’t speak.
‘You would say that, wouldn’t you, my darling husband? Look at you both, protecting your own backs. It’s disgusting,’ she spat.
I remembered the psychiatrist’s detailed explanation of Elizabeth’s delusions, but I also remembered what Lucas had said about my father luring Agata and Piotr to Copper Lodge, and my bones seemed to bleed with fear.
‘I don’t know what you saw, but you’re mistaken,’ my father said.
‘Ask Agata, then! Where’s Agata? Agata! Agata!’ Elizabeth screeched, running towards the camper van.
‘Neither of us slept a wink last night,’ Lucas explained.
My father nodded. ‘I’m so sorry this has happened to you.’
Lucas shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. ‘It’s only stuff.’
‘Stuff you’ve worked bloody hard for,’ I piped up, remembering his tears the night before.
‘It’s a good excuse to start over again,’ he said, smiling almost giddily, and I realised how little I had seen of this childish, light-hearted side of him over the past few months. He crouched down beside the large black object that sat in the middle of us and heaved it onto its side, revealing a safe dial.
‘If there’s anything we can—’ my father began, but his offer of help was interrupted by Elizabeth, who was dragging Agata across the rubble.
‘Agata! Tell them,’ she said. ‘Go on. We might as well have it all out now.’
Agata looked haggard, as though she hadn’
t slept either.
‘What do I tell them?’ she said.
‘Tell them about Gordon doing Lucas’s dirty work for him!’ Elizabeth shouted.
Lucas stood up from his haunches, abandoning the safe.
‘You mean the money?’ Agata asked.
‘Yes. The cash. How much does Piotr have to give Gordon every week?’
‘One hundred pounds,’ Agata replied, looking at the floor.
Lucas stepped towards her. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You borrow us money and we pay it back!’ she yelled, losing her cool.
Lucas turned away from her and looked at my father. ‘But Gordon, I’ve never asked Piotr to pay back any of the money I’ve lent them. Not a penny.’
‘Gordon take it every week! Every week!’ Agata screamed.
Like Lucas, I was fixated on my father’s face, on his pallor, on his look of distaste. ‘She’s talking nonsense,’ he said, and began walking away.
I ran after him. ‘Dad! Dad! Where are you going?’
Behind me, I heard Lucas say to Elizabeth, ‘Let him go. I never want to lay eyes on him again.’
‘Dad! Why didn’t you defend yourself?’ I gasped, jogging next to him as he strode on, my breathing too fast for my lungs to keep up. I tugged at his jumper to hold him back, but he was impervious to my questions and to my attempts to stop him.
As we turned into Connolly Close, I slowed down, worn out by his guilty silence, and trudged behind him. I wanted him to tell me the truth, but that wasn’t going to happen. Admitting to his daughter that he had lured a vulnerable young couple to Copper Lodge and extorted money from them would be too much to concede. My respect for him would disintegrate into an ashy ruin, like the house next door, as though the substance of him had been a similar illusion to the luxury and desirability of the Huxleys’ life.
I stopped walking in his footsteps.
Standing still in the middle of the close, I watched how his steel-toecapped boots crashed into the tarmac, one step after another, and how they came to a stop. He shuffled around slowly, his shoulders hunched. His eyes were hangdog, his lips slack.
‘Don’t tell your mum, please, Heather, I beg you,’ he murmured. It was not the tone of a begging man; it was that of a defeated man, a guilty one. I saw bitterness and disappointment behind his eyes. I saw his mistakes. I saw that he was a bully: weak and insecure.
Silently he was admitting to the crimes he had been accused of: procuring slave labour to service his gambling debts; taking money from Piotr while pretending Lucas had ordered it; accusing Lucas of increasing the loan payments so that he could hide the truth about his ongoing habit from my mother. My poor mother! The truth was going to destroy her.
I mulled over the ramifications of that horrible reality and I thought back over my childhood. My father’s silences had not been inner strength and his beatings had not been discipline. I wanted nothing more to do with him.
I wanted to wash him out of my mouth with soap.
Thirty-Six
Lucas turned the dial of the safe and Elizabeth held a hand to her chest in anticipation.
The devastation of their home and the hatred she felt for Lucas and his web of lies dissolved into the background. All she cared about was retrieving the documents inside.
Her vision was tunnelled towards that one goal. Nothing else mattered.
‘There you go,’ he said, opening up the safe. The inside was clean and neat, untouched and whole, contrasting with the mess around them.
She dropped to her knees and scrabbled around, searching for the documents she needed. Two passports fell into the dust, but she left them there.
‘Where is it?’ she screamed at Lucas.
‘They’re here,’ he said, picking the passports up out of the charcoal, blowing the ash off and handing them to her. ‘Their work papers are in there too. For what they’re worth. Which is nothing. At least Agata has finally accepted they need legal help.’
‘Where’s the blue file?’
He put both his hands on his head. His elbows stuck out like wings. A strange cough or laugh, Elizabeth couldn’t tell which, spluttered out of him.
‘That’s what you wanted?’ he asked.
‘I want to read Mum’s letter,’ she said, looking up at him.
‘Is that what you’ve really wanted all this time?’
‘No,’ she said, picking up the passports. ‘Not just that.’
She pressed her fingers to her lips to stop them crumpling, but two streams of tears made stripes through the soot on her cheeks.
Lucas approached her and she cowered from him. He was undeterred. His arms encircled her in a firm hug. ‘That letter brings up too much. It took you days to recover last time.’
Sobs heaved from deep inside her. ‘But I didn’t read it properly last time,’ she cried through her tears. ‘I need to check it. Everything gets scrambled in my head and that letter tells me all the facts and then I know that I’m not going mad. It tells me what is real and what’s not.’
‘What happened to you back then was real. Very real and very horrible.’
His words were familiar. For a moment, they were soothing. She began to feel the panic subside. Then she thought about the fire and surveyed the charred remains of her life.
‘Is all this real?’ she asked him, tasting the soot on her tongue.
‘This is real,’ he said. ‘I’m real, right here, holding you now.’
She blinked her blue eyes at him. ‘Was there a fire?’
‘I’m afraid the fire was real.’
‘Yes.’ She hung her head.
Now that the material gains were gone, the false construct of a functioning life had been destroyed and the reality of the state of their marriage was evident all around them.
She had one more question to ask, to clear up one last thing.
‘Is Heather real?’ she asked.
He sighed and kicked at the dust.
‘Yes. Heather is real. But I’ve been straight with you about that.’
‘No more smoke and mirrors, Lucas?’
‘No, Elizabeth. What you see is what you get.’
She smiled at him. It seemed the smoke had cleared but the reflection was still ugly.
And she knew exactly what she had to do.
Thirty-Seven
The gathering storm blew a dustbin over. It scuttled towards the car. I righted it and slammed the boot, worrying about the drive to the coast. The reports on the news showed tidal waves over promenades and sandbags outside riverside cottages. My father had warned me against driving south in this bad weather. It was the only sentence he had uttered since we had returned from Copper Lodge.
I was clearing the crisp packets and old water bottles from the back seat when I saw Lucas staring at me through the car windscreen. He smiled goofily, and stuck his thumb out to the right, like a hitchhiker. He was dressed in a seersucker jacket and a pair of beige slacks that were, respectively, too short in the arms and legs for him. I shuffled out of the car and bit the side of my mouth to stop myself from laughing.
‘Any chance of a lift?’ he asked.
‘Where to?’
‘London.’
London had not been in my plans.
‘What’s in London?’
‘Isla and Hugo.’
I imagined their distraught faces when they heard about their house.
‘What happened to your car?’
‘They all blew out in the fire.’
‘Oh Lucas. Is there anything left?’
‘Nothing but the clothes on my back.’
I chuckled. ‘And they don’t even look like yours.’
‘Walter Seacart’s. The last thing he’ll ever give me, no doubt. After last night.’
‘Do you need anything from Dad? A jumper or toothbrush or anything?’ I asked, looking back at the house, not relishing the thought of nipping back in.
Lucas stuck his hands in his pockets, letting the wind blow through hi
s hair, closing his eyes as the raindrops fell on his face. ‘Nope. I have everything I need.’
‘Except a lift,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Except that.’
‘I’ll meet you in the lane outside Copper Lodge in half an hour. I won’t drive in.’
‘Give me an hour,’ he said, striding off, his hair bouncing from the top of his head.
* * *
When I closed the red front door of Connolly Close for the last time, I thought of my mother, who would be returning from Scotland next week after Aunt Maggie’s funeral. She would clean the house from top to bottom and make a pie for the Huxley children next door, and pretend that life could continue as normal.
Before pulling away, I saw the front door open.
My father stepped out and ran with a heavy step towards me, motioning for me to wind down the window.
I did as he asked, and looked down at his huge hands, which he had hooked over the open window, as though holding onto me. A gust of wind blew through the car.
He said, ‘I’ll miss you.’
His earnestness broke my heart. The power of his contrition seemed to swipe the storm out of my path. It cleared out my brain, sweeping it of all the indecision and self-doubt. He was a man of few words and I had been a child with many. He had disciplined with his strength and I had fought back. My life under his roof had been complex and controlled, yet there had been happiness.
‘I’ll miss you too, Dad,’ I said, and held back my tears: a rip tide in shallow waters.
He paused on the doorstep. ‘Drive safe in this wind,’ he shouted, and walked back inside.
Before pulling out of the close, there was another knock at my window and I rolled it down again.
‘You leave now?’ Agata said.
‘I am leaving. Yes. I’m sorry I haven’t said goodbye.’
‘It’s okay.’
Her ponytail whipped around her head. The millions of tiny muscles in her pretty face were pinched and wrinkled. I waited for her to speak.