Dylan’s right. It’s just coincidence. It could have got there a million different ways.
Or could it?
And then. Oh God. I hear the front door open, and Owen and Matty coming in.
Alarm drills inside me. I just know that this is incredibly bad timing.
It’s all a bit of a blur now. Owen’s shouting through from the hallway about not answering my phone, and how he needs to talk, and Matty’s urging caution, and they both come in like something’s playing on their minds.
And it’s like he doesn’t even see her there. He just walks in, clocks the necklace, picks it up and slips it on.
‘Oh God, is this mine? I’ve been looking for it everywhere.’
And then carries on talking about this thing he wants to tell me. He’s been to visit his nan. He’s got the shock of his life. Matty’s telling him to calm down, he’s warbling.
Then he notices Lucy stood there, drained of colour. He stops talking.
‘Oh sorry, Lucy. Didn’t see you there. You OK?’
She just stares at him.
‘You all right, Lucy?’
She just says, ‘How long?’
Oh, shit. The bad thing I imagined. She’s imagined it now too. Which means she considers Dylan capable of it. Which isn’t a good sign.
‘Sorry?’
‘How long has it been going on?’
She is less combative now. The fight has evaporated from her along with the colour. But her tone seems even more threatening than before.
Before, when she was angry at me. Now she is angry with him.
I see Owen’s eyes dart towards Matty.
He has hesitated.
‘What you on about, Lucy?’ Matty says.
She fold her arms and does a an outraged shriek to the heavens. Then a big long shake of the head. Then . . .
‘Let your boyfriend tell you.’
Owen speaks. ‘I . . .’ but then appears to forget what he was going to say. He looks at his necklace. ‘Shit.’
‘What’s going on?’ Matty is genuinely bemused. He looks to me. ‘Do you know?’
I shake my head.
‘While you were getting beaten up, Matthew,’ Lucy says, her tone now more like a petulant schoolteacher, ‘your boyfriend was in bed with my husband.’
Matty actually laughs. He does, he giggles. Then apologetically raises his hand to his mouth.
Owen is staring at the necklace.
The smile freezes on Matty’s face. ‘Bubsy?’ he says. His voice is small. He sounds scared.
I honestly can’t believe this is happening.
‘It was only a couple of times. A few. It didn’t go on very long.’
I want to be sick. I am going to be sick. I run to the back door and into the garden and throw up into wet soil. Back inside, I can hear the noise of a chair sliding. I think Matty has hit Owen. I hear him crying, ‘I’m so sorry!’ Owen’s voice is high, girly, unlike him.
I hear footsteps behind me. I know it’s Lucy before she speaks.
‘You wanna sort your family out. No wonder Danny fucking left.’
I feel the anger erupt in me. I’m a volcano.
‘Get out of my house!’
‘Like Danny did?’
‘No wonder Dylan had to go looking elsewhere!’
‘Like Danny did?’
Her voice is so annoying. Thinks she’s clever. Maybe she is. But in that moment, I am too caught up in my anger. She is walking towards the front door. I follow. I’m not sure why. Am I going to push her?
‘Yeah, well, at least my husband’s not gay!’ I add. She spins round.
‘Neither was mine! Till he met your slut of a son!’
‘Don’t shout at me, you aggressive bitch! Go and take it out on Dylan! None of this is my fault!’
‘You gave birth to it!’
And she opens the front door. I see a skinny girl skating past, but I don’t care. I’m not thinking of the potential audience when I scream, ‘He’s old enough to be his father! He must’ve groomed him!’
But she’s not listening. She heads straight to her car and gets in. The skinny skater skids past again, not wanting to miss a thing. Lucy bangs her foot on the accelerator as she revs up and the car bunny-hops forward, almost onto the pavement. Then she realizes her mistake and smoothly reverses, does a three-point turn, and is gone.
Here’s Skinny Skater again.
‘Everything all right, Natalie?’
I give her an evil look.
‘Fine.’
‘You don’t look it.’
‘Neither do you.’
She just stares at me. I’ve heard this about people with eating disorders. They’re in denial about the extent of their problems. I have an idea. In that instant, it is genius.
‘Wait there!’
She looks surprised. I run inside. I go to the fridge. I catch Matty out of the corner of my eye, in the garden, smoking. Owen is sitting, crying, at the kitchen table.
‘Mum? I’m so sorry.’
‘Oh, piss off.’
I appear to be channelling common or garden fishwife today. So sue me!
I grab the chicken and mushroom pie, and zoom back outside again.
‘Have this!’ I call as I run towards Harmony. She backs off – slowly, she’s not quite mastered reversing on skates – but I’m practically jumping on her, forcing the pie into her hands. ‘Go on. Have a pie. Chicken and mushroom. You must be starving . . .’
‘What are you . . .’
‘I don’t want it. You have it. You need feeding up. What’s the matter with you?’
‘But . . .’
‘Have the bloody pie, Harmony!’
‘I don’t want it!’
‘You need it!’
‘I can’t eat too much!’
‘Eat it!’
‘I’m dying!’
‘Well, you will, if you don’t fucking eat!’
‘No, I’ve got cancer!’
My breath catches. And freeze. I can’t breathe. She stands before me. So thin she could break. And in that instant I see every mistake I’ve ever made sweep past me like train windows. And I realize that this is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. She’s unsteady on her skates. She looks like she might topple backwards. I grab her to steady her. The pie falls to the ground. But instead, I find that I am falling. To my knees. Still holding onto her. She’s coming down too. We fall to the pavement in a mess of limbs and skates and I think I might have broken her. I am crying.
‘I’m so sorry.’
She doesn’t say anything.
‘I’m so sorry.’
I hear her mum coming across the cul-de-sac. I hear her panicked screams.
‘Harmony? Harmony! What’s the matter? Natalie, what have you done now?’
But by the time she gets to us and sees me sobbing my heart out, she is instantly sympathetic.
‘Is it your husband?’
I shake my head. Margaret just looks from me to her daughter. Harmony says quietly, like it makes perfect sense, like it’s something people do all the time, ‘She had a fight with her friend. And then tried to give me a pie.’
Margaret nods, though I can see she is as wrong-footed as any rational person would be.
‘Would you like to come over for some tea?’
I nod. I don’t know why, but I nod. Possibly because I can’t face going back indoors yet. I’m pathetic. A woman I barely know, and her dying daughter on skates, help me stagger across the road. For a cup of tea. They carry me like the walking wounded, even though their suffering is surely greater than mine.
‘How old are you, Harmony?’ I ask, sipping sweet tea in their through lounge. Suddenly their world feels welcoming, cosy, warm. A grandfather clock ticks away, and I can’t help but hear it as a countdown to her passing. This is no longer a home, but a very comfortable waiting room.
‘Seventeen,’ she says cheerfully, like this is an achievement.
‘And what sort of cancer do you
have?’
‘Pancreatic.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘That’s OK. You didn’t give it to me!’
And she laughs. Like this is funny. And even though I want to cry for her, I laugh along too. After a while she gets bored and says she’s going for a lie down.
‘What’s it like losing someone you love?’ Margaret asks when she is safely ensconced upstairs.
I feel guilty. I originally put her scraggy hair and tired eyes down to lack of vanity. Now I realize there are other reasons. Her question stings me. Not because I don’t want to go there. But because I can’t compare my loss with what she might be going through. She can.
‘Is there no hope? There’s all sorts of treatments these days.’
‘The prognosis for pancreatic cancer hasn’t changed in forty years. It gets the least amount of research, and . . .’ she sighs, ‘I could go on. It’s my bandwagon. But no. We have hope, but we also have sense.’
‘My husband disappeared. He went out one day and never came back.’
‘And in a way, one day she’ll do the same.’ She chuckles ironically. ‘I know what you’re thinking. Thank God you had twins, a matching pair, at least you’ll have one of them left.’
‘No, I’d never think like that.’
‘Sorry. You develop quite a dark sense of humour.’
‘I know.’
She looks at me like she is with a kindred spirit.
‘But Margaret – someone walking out. A grown adult. That’s very different from losing a child. I can’t begin to imagine what that feels like.’
‘It’s the worst feeling in the world.’
I nod.
‘Magnified by about a million. Some days I don’t want to get up. But as long as she’s here, I have to.’
‘Margaret, I’ve said some terrible things to you recently. To her . . .’
‘Grief, I guess.’
Her pragmatism humbles me.
‘How’s Melody taking it all?’
‘Denial. Buries herself in her music. The neighbours have no idea. They’ve never bothered to ask. They even know she’s been in hospital. But that idiot Betty Caligary just assumed she’d been sectioned, and d’you know what? I couldn’t be bothered to disabuse her of it. Let them think what they like. And when we take her out of here in her wooden box, I hope they feel guilty.’
‘Are you a Christian?’ I ask, remembering her words to me the other day about prayers maybe bringing back Danny.
‘I am,’ she says falteringly. ‘But I have good days and bad days. I’m a yo-yo believer.’
And again she makes me smile.
‘I want to run away, Margaret.’
I didn’t even know I thought it till I said it.
‘Join the club.’
We sit in silence for a while. It’s a comforting silence, with no pressure to fill it, even though this woman is more or less a stranger. She’s probably a similar age to me. And today, somehow, we have found each other. And it might only just be for today. For now. But there is nothing wrong with that.
‘I always think,’ she continues, ‘that I can walk out and never come back. And that when I’m gone . . . an illustrator from Walt Disney will come along and work his magic with . . . some pastel crayons. Paint everyone happy. Cartoon birds in the trees. Rainbows. Healthy happy kids.’
‘Disney does death these days,’ I correct her. ‘The Fault in Our Stars.’
Margaret rolls her eyebrows. ‘I didn’t last five minutes in that film. Couldn’t stop crying.’
Again, silence.
‘Actually,’ I say, embarrassed, ‘I’m not sure that was a Disney film.’
‘Oh well. I mostly talk rubbish. But said with conviction, you can get away with murder. What would you be running away from?’
And I tell her. I tell her about the necklace. And Lucy. And how she’s one of my oldest friends. And how I’ve just found out that her husband and my son . . . blah blah blah. How I just don’t know how to react right now.
‘You’ve had a shock. I’m sure you’ll make sense of it soon.’
‘But what if Owen’s fractured my friendship?’
‘Then you’ll just have to find a way to cope.’
‘I thought she had it all.’
‘Nobody has it all.’
Again, silence. I notice a framed photo on a low shelf next to the fireplace. Melody and Harmony when they were about twelve. A school photo. Before one of them lost weight because she was ill. They’re the double of each other; they could literally swap heads. Bright as buttons. Hair in bunches. Smiles. Hand-knitted cardis.
‘Did you hear about Tamsin from across the way?’
I shake my head. ‘The one with the baby?’
‘Yes. She’s left her husband. Walked out one day with the baby and left him a note in the fridge. On top of a cheese salad.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. Husband’s devastated.’
‘Poor thing. Does he know where she is?’
‘On a round-the-world cruise.’ And then she adds, like this explains why anyone would want to go on a cruise, ‘She has a history of depression.’
‘Maybe I should go round.’ I, more than anyone, know a little of how he feels.
‘Just don’t take an apple pie. Apparently there’s been a steady succession of women from the estate going round, batting their eyelids at him, getting coquettish over an apple pie they’ve made him, or a midweek lasagne.’
I smile.
‘You have cheered me up, Margaret. When you threw me that party I thought you were a fame-hungry showbiz mum.’
‘It was Harmony’s wish to go on X Factors one more time before . . .’ and she stops herself. ‘But I don’t think she’s up to it.’
It’s X Factor, I want to say. But you can’t say that to a woman whose child is dying.
Just then the doorbell rings. I hear Harmony coming down the stairs, slowly.
‘She likes to answer the door,’ Margaret says quietly, ‘and I like to let her. Usually she takes so long they’ve gone by the time she gets there.’
And we share a conspiratorial grin. I hear voices in the hall, and then Harmony comes in with Matty.
‘You have a visitor,’ she says, and then positions herself carefully in an armchair. She picks up a magazine, but we all know she’s only here to eavesdrop.
‘Hi, Matty. This is Margaret.’
They say a polite hello to each other, then Matty turns to me.
‘Nat, can Owen stay with you for a bit? I don’t want him around.’ He looks like Margaret. Tired. Sick of everything.
A good mother might beg him to take Owen back. A good mother might fight her son’s corner.
‘Don’t you worry about Owen. You just concentrate on getting yourself better.’
‘Did you know?’ His eyes go glassy with imminent tears.
I get up and hug him. And tell him I didn’t. This lovely boy who my son has treated so badly. I feel his body vibrate like he’s crying, but he makes no sound. I see Harmony peering over the top of her magazine. When she sees me looking she lifts the magazine higher so she disappears from view. Embarrassed, Matty makes his excuses and leaves.
Harmony’s looking again. And disappearing from view again. I look to Margaret.
‘I better get back. Face the music.’
She nods. ‘Well, I’m here if you need me.’
‘Thank you.’
As I leave, she gives me a comforting hug. I let it go on a bit longer than I usually would. Since Danny left there has been a paucity of physical contact, and now that I have some I relish it.
As I cross the road I see Matty heading off in a taxi. Owen’s car is outside the house. I go in, and then I remember the chicken and mushroom pie that’s still on the pavement. I go back and get it. It’s all squashed from where we fell on top of it, and gunk oozes out of its polythene wrapper. I head inside.
Owen’s in the living room. He
’s staring out of the back window, so he’s not seen my return. He’s on the phone. I stand. Watch. Listen.
‘Yeah, well, she knows, and she’s absolutely furious about it, and now Matthew’s kicked me out, so yeah. Nice one. I wish I’d never fucking met you.’
He hangs up. He turns. He’s wearing that Barbour coat of his father’s.
‘Take that off,’ I say.
He looks to the coat. ‘This?’
I nod. He visibly relaxes. He looks younger. He smiles.
‘I can stay? Oh Mum, I thought . . . well, I don’t know what I thought . . .’
‘You don’t deserve to wear it.’
He keeps the coat on. ‘My dad wasn’t all that, you know.’
His voice is steely. Like a put-upon villain in a period drama.
‘Get out of my house.’
His eyes widen with incredulity. He is affronted. If he had pearls, he’d clutch them.
‘I’ve got nowhere to go.’
‘That’s not my problem.’
I head into the kitchen. He follows me. ‘Whatever it is I’ve done . . .’
‘Oh, you know what you’ve done, Owen!’
I chuck the pie in the bin. What a waste of money.
‘It doesn’t make my father a saint.’
‘We’re not having this discussion.’ I’ve got some of the mushroom-sauce gunk on my hand, so I run it under the tap.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m really sorry. Me and Matthew have been going through a hard time and . . . Dylan reached out to me.’
‘Yeah, that’s not all he did.’
‘I was so wracked with guilt, I finished it.’
I dry my hands on a tea towel. It has a map of the Lake District. Owen made me buy it when we were on holiday there. He said it would encourage him to help with the washing and drying up. It didn’t.
‘What were you doing at Lucy’s house when Matty was beaten up, then?’
‘Finishing it!’
‘In his bed?!’
‘I went round there with the best of intentions!’
‘Oh, you’re your father’s son, all right! Couldn’t keep it in your pants. Don’t care about anyone else’s feelings, and guess what? The whole thing goes off in your face! And you get hurt. And I get hurt. And Lucy gets hurt. And as for Matthew!’
‘I am not like my dad,’ he says softly, almost menacingly.
‘Get out, Owen.’
‘Where will I go?’
The Secrets We Keep Page 27