‘Do you swear on a locked box?’ said Sasha. Everyone was quiet then.
‘Locked box isn’t for swears,’ said Peach at last. She sounded like a child. ‘It’s for secrets.’
Buck got to his feet and walked over to stand in front of Sasha, his face inches away. ‘What are you playing at?’ he said. ‘Why are we all here again?’
In the silence that followed, we could hear footsteps outside in the passageway. Kim was approaching.
‘Here!’ I shoved the teapots down on the end of a bookcase and held out my arms. ‘Give it to me. I’ll use it up in the kitchen.’ Sasha thrust the hamper at me, then flung the little card into the back of the fireplace as Kim entered the room.
‘There she is!’ he said. ‘My bride!’ She had pulled herself together and in the low light there was no trace of her crying.
‘Darling Kim,’ said Rosalie, getting to her feet and wrapping her arms round the girl.
‘Budge up, bruv,’ Peach said, elbowing Buck in the ribs. ‘Come and sit by me, Kimmie. We’ve got to get to know each other from scratch. Let’s start now.’
‘And let’s hear three cheers for Sasha,’ said Paul. ‘Now we’re all here.’ Like me, he had forgotten Jennifer already. ‘So, Sasha, how did you do it?’
‘How did I do what?’
‘How did you get this organized?’ said Peach. ‘None of us could have found it again if we’d tried. How did you even know it was still a holiday home? We couldn’t believe it when we rolled up, could we?’
‘I did nothing,’ Sasha said. ‘Kim did it all. Found the house, booked it, got the staff, did the flowers, got you all here, got me here.’
‘So…’ said Paul, sending a look round the others ‘… you’re saying it’s a coincidence.’
‘Gift from the universe we decided to call it, didn’t we?’ Sasha said, walking round behind the couch and planting a kiss on Kim’s head.
‘Wow,’ said Rosalie, her voice like a stone in a pool.
‘Spooky,’ said Buck. ‘Hey, Kim, since you’ve got some kind of witchcraft going on, to take us back to old times, you didn’t by any chance plant a little surprise for us, did you? Rosie, go and get the box. It must have cooled down enough by now.’
‘I could…’ I said. It was weird for me still to be standing there, but there hadn’t been a good moment to slip away. Suddenly this room seemed kind of cramped after all.
‘Shut up, Buck,’ Peach said. ‘Oh, but, actually, Kim, did you?’
‘Box?’ said Kim.
‘What do you mean “cooled down”?’ said Sasha.
Rosalie was on her feet and gone. We heard her light steps along the length of the corridor, then silence, then ‘Shit!’ faintly.
‘Don’t burn yourself, you daft moo,’ Paul shouted, as we heard the footsteps coming back again.
‘It’s gone,’ Rosalie said, coming back into the room. ‘Someone’s moved it.’
‘Who?’ said Ramsay.
‘Same joker who moved the hamper,’ Sasha said, letting his gaze travel over everyone. ‘Come on, don’t thrash it to death. Whose little joke is this?’
Whoever it was was a good actor. It’s easy to avoid looking guilty if you’re hiding something. Where people get it wrong is they forget to look curious. But all of this lot were looking pretty sharply at all the others, as if waiting for someone to crack.
‘No?’ said Sasha. ‘More to come, maybe? Oh, goody. What a treat we have in store.’
‘Moving on, then,’ said Paul. ‘A lovely weekend beckons. And my wife has had one of her rare good ideas.’
‘Kick him for me, Peach,’ said Rosalie. ‘And, Paul, take a gold star for subtlety, casualness, adroitness and stealth, why don’t you?’
‘What do you think to the idea of handing over our phones and laptops?’ Paul went on, ignoring her. ‘Until … say, Sunday morning. Have a proper break?’
‘What a marvellous idea,’ said Sasha. His voice was dripping with scorn. ‘Since we’re here anyway, why don’t we go back in time? Shall we all listen to Madonna singles all weekend and start smoking again?’
‘No,’ said Buck, ‘it wasn’t Madonna. God, what was that song we all got so sick of?’
‘I’m for switching off,’ Ramsay said. ‘There’s mounting data from research in this area. Well-designed longitudinal studies.’
‘Oh, do tell us more,’ said Sasha.
‘I’ve got a friend who works on it.’ Either Ramsay didn’t hear the sarcasm or didn’t care. ‘They’re finding that for every hour online, and Ezli says it’s unrelated to click freque—’
‘What’s EZLI?’ said Peach.
‘Ezli’s his name,’ said Ramsay.
‘Oh, well, if your boyfriend thinks we should all surrender our phones,’ Sasha said, ‘who am I to argue?’
‘And then you say he’s not your boyfriend,’ Paul said, in a bored drawl, ‘and then Sasha asks why you broke up and Kim wonders why she married such a prick…’
‘What is wrong with you today?’ Rosalie said.
‘I floated your suggestion,’ said Paul. ‘Be happy with that.’
Rosalie gave him a long look, then shrugged. ‘So how about it?’ she said. ‘I go three days without my online Scrabble, you go three days without … I draw a veil.’
‘Put them outside your bedroom doors tonight,’ I said, ‘and they’ll be gone by morning.’ With that, I managed at last to edge my way to the door and leave.
* * *
I threw the hamper back down on the breakfast table. ‘You are fair game, little basket of goodies,’ I said. ‘If no one else wants you, I’ll happily plunder you. Ooh! Snails. Lovely. But for tonight, sausage, beans and chips.’
They were my homemade game sausages and my homemade borlotti beans stewed for hours with duck fat and bacon bones. And the chips were quartered spuds tossed in olive oil, garlic and rosemary, glittering with salt chips like a frosty morning. It was the best Friday night comfort food I could do on my own.
And maybe they’d all had a rough week and really needed the comfort. For whatever reason, supper went down a storm. When I took the wine in, every single one of them had a hunk of bread to mop up the juices. That’s always a giveaway. The only bum note came because I’d set too many places.
‘Are you joining us?’ Sasha said. ‘This table seats eight and there seems to be someone missing.’
‘Oh, no, that’s terrible!’ said Peach, with an uncomfortable giggle. ‘We forgot about her. Sasha, Jennifer’s not here.’
‘She came,’ said Rosalie, ‘but then she went.’
‘You only missed her by a hair,’ Ramsay said. ‘Surprised you didn’t lock bumpers at the gate, actually.’
‘She had some kind of stomach bug, poor soul,’ said Peach. ‘And she was kind enough to take it away instead of staying and passing it round.’
‘I’ll bet,’ said Sasha. ‘I imagine finding herself back here would make Jennifer pretty sick. So, are you joining us?’
I gave a polite laugh and told them I had work to do on the pudding.
‘I wish you could,’ Kim said. ‘We were balanced with Jennifer. We’re short of a female now.’
No one spoke but that pinball look went ricocheting round again.
‘God, who cares about all that shit, these days?’ said Paul at last. ‘Turn to your other partner after the fish and ladies leave the men to their port.’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Rosalie. ‘What do you say, Kim? Peach? Will we go and loll after dinner? Leave this hairy lot to drone on about golf clubs and stock options?’
Kim glanced up the table at Sasha. They were sitting at head and foot, yards apart.
‘Perhaps not quite the right note for an anniversary,’ Sasha said.
I left them to it, clicked the monitor on so’s I’d know when to take second helpings through and rolled up my sleeves to get a jump on the dishes.
* * *
It was hard to tell the voices apart in the hubbub of a dinner table.
As Peach got louder she sounded more and more like Buck, both of them cracking jokes. The Buchanan brothers were identical except that Ramsay offered information, while Paul cut in at the end of stories and capped them. Even Sasha and Rosalie sounded alike: the brother’s light voice and the sister’s professionally lowered pitch ending up in the same key. Only Kim stood out.
It had almost got to where I thought I was listening to a radio play when all of a sudden: ‘Don’t go scampering through to the kitchen like a skivvy,’ Sasha said. ‘We’re paying through the nose for an actual skivvy. Let her do her job.’
‘You get more charming with age, brother mine,’ Rosalie said. ‘But he’s right, Kim. The servants won’t thank you for going into their kitchens and interfering.’
‘Ring for Jeeves!’ said Peach. She really was drunk. ‘Bread, Jeeves, and plenty of it!’
And now I would appear and watch them squirm. I put a fresh napkin in a basket, took a second loaf out of the warming oven and started sawing it into hunks. I’ve noticed people hate breaching a loaf for themselves. But I couldn’t hear properly with the sound of the knife on the crust so I stopped to listen. Kim was speaking.
‘… don’t want to get all New Agey on you, but some of the techniques that sound daftest of all are the most useful.’
‘Om!’ said Paul.
‘Not crystals,’ said Peach. ‘And I’m not going to fork over hard cash to have someone wave their hands over me. A good deep-tissue massage is one thing.’
‘And a happy ending?’
‘Shut up, Buck.’
I started in on the bread again. I could have heard Peach over a blender. ‘But a little something to calm me down when I actually have to go and face him in the courtroom.’
‘Should you really be talking about your divorce at Sasha and Kim’s anniversary?’ That was Paul.
‘It’s not catching!’ Peach said. ‘You sound like an etiquette guide.’
I headed back through, and by the time I lost the sound of the monitor, I could hear their voices for real.
‘Our senior partner gave us all a lecture on the plane on the way to Beijing this one time,’ Paul said. ‘“Dinner party rules,” he told us. “No sex, religion or politics.” Some boring dinner parties he must go to. And then he had sex in a fountain at the conference hotel.’
‘More bread!’ I said, backing into the room. ‘And more wine if you’re getting low, which I see you are.’
‘I’ll take another glass,’ said Sasha, reaching back with his closest hand. I put the bottle into it. If the gesture had been him reaching out to draw me towards his chair, I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t help a look up to the other end of the table, though, to see if Kim had noticed.
‘But I really think I can help you, Peach,’ she was saying, and something about the way her face was turned so hard towards the other woman told me everything. ‘There’s no need for anything elaborate or costly. Have you ever heard of holding another’s fear?’
‘Holding another’s what?’ said Buck. ‘Filthy!’
‘Tell me later when we withdraw and leave them to their rough talk,’ Peach said.
‘No, go on, Kim, I’m sorry,’ Buck said. I was halfway down one side of the table now, offering the bread and topping up the wine.
Kim shook her head to both as I got to her. ‘You find your fear – locate it in your body – and you draw it into your lungs by breathing in hard, then you cough it up. You literally cough it up.’
‘“Literally” abuse!’ said Ramsay. ‘Ten-pound fine.’
‘Cough it up into your hand,’ Kim said. She was leaning forward to talk directly to Peach past Paul and Ramsay and Jennifer’s empty chair. ‘And roll it up into a little ball.’
‘Or you could go with the crystals after all,’ said Sasha. There was an odd note in his voice.
‘And that’s where I come in,’ Kim said.
‘This is hardly a topic for the table, Kim,’ Sasha said.
‘Does this mean we can all have sex in a fountain?’ said Buck. I wondered if I should have filled his glass.
‘Shut up, Buck,’ said Peach, but she was looking at Sasha.
‘You give it to me to hold!’ Kim said. ‘It’s not my fear so it does me no harm and you really do feel as if it’s gone. I hold it as long as you need and then I give it back.’
‘Who told her?’ Sasha muttered, half under his breath.
‘It works!’ said Kim. Paul drained his glass as I reached him, then held it up to be filled. ‘It really does work. It lightens the one who gives it away and it physically weighs down the one who takes it to hold. It’s amazing.’
‘It would be,’ said Ramsay. ‘It sounds like a basic placebo effect.’
Sasha was rising to his feet. He dropped his napkin on the seat of his chair and walked, slowly and deliberately, to the other end of the table. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he said.
‘I saw it online, I think,’ said Kim. She glanced at the others and then at me as he came right up to her and put his hands down on the carved arms of her dining chair.
‘Same website that sold you the hamper?’
‘What?’ said Kim. She was recoiling from him. She was physically shrinking into her chair as he loomed over her. The others were transfixed, not eating, not drinking, not even chewing. I could see a white lump of bread in Buck’s open mouth.
Sasha leaned in close and Kim closed her eyes. Then he kissed her with a loud smack and stood up, laughing. ‘You’ve been had, sweetheart,’ he said, strolling back to his seat and flinging himself down in it. ‘Which one of you jokers has been selling snake-oil to my bubble-head of a wife? Come on, out with it!’
I was at Peach’s place now. She nodded, telling me to fill her glass.
‘Sasha, get a grip!’ said Rosalie.
‘Yeah, gaslight someone your own size,’ said Peach.
‘Actually, now I think about it,’ Sasha said, ‘it was Jennifer’s invention. But that’s irrelevant. The question is who’s been stuffing Kim up with it?’
Rosalie was sitting on his left side, and as she waved a hand at him to brush off his words, he caught her by the wrist and pulled her round to face him.
‘Was it you?’ he said. ‘Is this your idea of fun? We’ve only got your word that the famous “box” disappeared.’
‘Get your hand off my wife before I lay you out,’ said Paul.
‘Your wife?’ said Sasha. ‘My sister.’
‘I’m not joking,’ Paul said. Sasha dropped Rosalie’s wrist. Flung her away, really.
I was near the door and I fled, putting the bottle down on the sideboard but taking the bloody bread out with me again, before I realized what I’d done.
‘More burgundy, Vicar?’ came Buck’s voice – I think it was Buck’s voice – through the monitor.
‘You don’t do séances as well as the crystals and other claptrap, do you, Kim?’ said Paul.
‘What?’ Kim’s voice was strained.
‘Ouija board, maybe? Knock once for yes? We could go straight to the source.’
‘Stop it,’ said Rosalie. ‘How can you?’
‘And I thought this was going to be dull,’ Buck said. ‘You Mowbrays should sell tickets. You’re the same as you ever were.’
‘Shut up, Bu—’ I clicked the switch and silenced them.
Chapter 6
1991
My shadow looks like a crossbow. I’ve been walking with my arms out from my sides all the way from the house and I can feel the sweat trickling down inside my top. We’re nearly there, though. I’m going to stop at the mouth of the drive, wipe under my arms with a tissue, throw the tissue in the bushes, then ring the bell. Or, if it’s a party, are you just supposed to walk in?
Ten paces behind me, Lynsey’s still moaning. ‘Why have we got to go? We don’t even know them. I don’t even like them. They’re stupid. I want to go home.’
‘How do you know they’re stupid if you don’t even know them?’ I say. I don’t
twist round, in case my top sticks to me.
‘They’re old,’ Lynsey says. ‘They won’t play proper games. They’ll play stupid games.’
‘One of them’s the same age as you,’ I tell her. Mum said the girl called Morag’s thirteen and Lynsey’s twelve.
‘And they’re snobby,’ she says. ‘My shoes hurt. Why have I got to carry the stupid present? They’ll make us do things. They’ll make us do the dishes.’
I sigh. Loud enough so she’ll hear me. And I wait for her to catch up and walk ahead of me. Her shoes hurt because I made her take her socks off. It’s nearly September but hot enough for July, the bees lazy in the verges and the tractor ruts pale and crumbling after weeks of dry weather. Even so, Lynsey came downstairs with her grey school socks pulled up to her knees under her party dress.
‘For ticks,’ she said. ‘If we’re going over the fields.’
So we’ve come round by the road, all that extra way in the heat, because I knew she’d never take them off when we got there and then those girls Mum told me about – the one with the black hair and the one with the loud laugh and the other one that wasn’t here yet – they’d all see me at a party with my twelve-year-old sister in her grey school socks and they’d point and then the boys would notice. The two tall ones and the short one and the one with the wetsuit.
Lynsey stops walking and bends to ease her sandal-straps off her heels then starts up again with them slapping against her soles like flip-flops. It makes me feel a bit bad to see a bright red mark across the back of each ankle. If Mum was here she’d tell her to put them back on before she wasted her good shoes that cost good money. Wasting good things that cost good money is the biggest sin going, in Mum’s book. Showing her up is another.
‘Don’t show me up,’ she said, as she watched us setting off. She didn’t need to tell us what she meant. We know. Don’t eat too much, don’t chew with your mouth open, don’t talk with your mouth full, don’t drink with food in your mouth. Don’t ask too many questions, don’t tell everyone our business, remember to say please and thank you and thank you very much for having me. She added one thing, whispering to me: ‘If you need to go to the toilet, Carmen, don’t announce it. Don’t ask where it is. Just go. There’s one right at the back door on the left.’
Go to My Grave Page 6