Want to Know a Secret? (Choc Lit)

by Moorcroft, Sue

  ‘But she was nearly better.’

  ‘I know.’

  Presently, Bryony crept in to give her father a huge hug. ‘Dad, the nurse told me. Poor Valerie! Dad, poor you. And Pops and Tamzin and everyone.’ She put her head down on her father’s chest and began to cry.

  Diane didn’t feel she could leave Gareth until well on in the evening but did have to take Bryony home in the end, promising Gareth that she’d be back in the morning and that they’d talk to the doctor then about getting Gareth to the funeral. ‘I must get to the funeral,’ he kept saying. ‘I’ve got to be there.’ Fixating on it, where it would be and when it would be and how he’d manage.

  Diane drove home in a dream, Bryony beside her, dazed into silence, apart from the occasional, ‘I so can’t believe it. Poor Dad! Poor Tamzin. Poor, poor Pops, he was so happy this afternoon.’

  And Diane’s automatic, practical, ‘We’ll have to help everybody as much as we can.’

  She didn’t think she’d sleep but she climbed into her new bed in her new bedroom to watch mindless TV for a while. Bryony padded in, her big spotted T-shirt making her look about twelve – if not for the bump of the baby. She perched cross-legged on Diane’s bed. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. It’s been such a weird day.’ Her eyes looked very big in her pale face.

  Diane reached up to tug a curl. ‘We’re going through a weird time, aren’t we? Poor Valerie, Dad in hospital, you going to be a mum, me to be a grandmother – I haven’t got my head round that, by the way.’

  ‘There’s something else for you to get your head round.’ Bryony looked sheepish, almost embarrassed. She hesitated. ‘Pops told me today that all his grandchildren come into some money when they’re twenty-one. He set up a trust, or something.’

  Diane felt a smile spread across her face. ‘Does that mean that you’ll get a bit of money on your birthday? He’s such a sweetheart.’

  Bryony looked awed. ‘I get forty thousand pounds.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Tamzin had spent the night in her bed, curled on her right side.

  She wasn’t aware that she had slept. Whatever the doctor had given her had locked her up like a fly in amber so that she felt immobile and remote.

  And it hadn’t altered the horrible truth.

  Now, as the light stole around the curtains, she tried to make herself believe that her mother was dead.

  Mum’s dead. Mummy. My mother is dead.

  She can’t be. She was right there, propped up in bed and talking about coming home in a few days and how odd her legs felt and that the physio was a sadistic bastard and then she began to frown and get short of breath. My God, James, open the damned window, I think I’m having an asthma attack. Gasping, panicking, grabbing her chest, coughing for breath, suddenly white and waxy and Dad shouted her name and slammed his hand against a red button on the wall.

  People had run in like a scene from Casualty. Heart monitor. Oxygen mask. A tube in Valerie’s arm. Then Valerie passed out. And even though they tried, even though they’d worked and worked, ignoring Tamzin and her dad backed fearfully into a corner, Tamzin had known that Valerie was dead before they stopped trying.

  But still she’d wanted them to carry on, had even shouted, ‘Don’t stop!’

  Horror.

  My mother is dead.

  She can’t be. She was right there in the room with me. She was coming home.

  Tamzin thought about the house without Valerie in it, not just as it had been the past few months, waiting for her to return. But forever. The same house she’d grown up in. But different.

  Growing up with Valerie had been like being a living doll. Natalia and Alice were tomboys who were always building tree houses that were too high for Tamzin or jumping brooks too wide for her to clear.

  So Tamzin had hung out with Valerie. She could still hear her mother’s proud laugh. ‘You should hear my baby fuss about her hair. Everything has to be just so for my pretty princess.’

  But that had been then, not now. In the last couple of years, when the pretty princess had been wandering the grey caves of depression, Valerie had done exactly what Tamzin wanted everyone to do. Leave her to find her own way out.

  Her gaze fell on the shelf above her computer. Empty. At some time since coming home from the hospital her CDs had been whisked away. James, probably, or one of her sisters, had – as they thought – removed temptation from her path.

  Slowly, she straightened her legs, waiting out a storm of pins and needles. Sliding to the edge of the bed she rose, feeling the familiar whiz in her head that told her she hadn’t eaten recently. Opening the wardrobe doors she found her old brown suede coat and felt in the big square pocket at the front. The pocket was just the right size for the CD case. And if it wasn’t there she knew where there were others. Taped beneath the wardrobe, slotted behind the chest of drawers. They waited, like best friends, to be needed.

  Back on the bed she drew the quilt around herself and carefully prised the CD case apart with her fingertips, discarding the dark grey inner and the paper inserts with the retouched photos of a moody-looking band. Her counsellor had known that most people like her had a favourite instrument – scissors, knives, shards of plastic. Tamzin had denied she had one, because she liked to keep bits of herself private. What was that phrase? Knowledge is power.

  Delicately separating the clear plastic parts she chose the front and began to flex it between her hands, forcing it into a curve with her two thumbs.

  It snapped almost immediately with a satisfying crack. It always made her jump, that bit. But she liked it.

  She selected the biggest piece. It had broken on the angle to leave a long, knife-sharp diagonal edge. She pulled up her left sleeve and set the broken edge of the plastic against the soft white underside of her arm just below the elbow. Drew the clear plastic slowly across the skin. She winced. The first stroke always sent a strange sensation up the back of her neck. She waited for the beads of blood to appear. Grow.

  And then came the burning that made her gasp and curl her toes. The throbbing would come later, so tender that she’d feel shadows glide over the wound. But at least she would feel something. Know that she was still here.

  James had dealt with the formalities surrounding the deaths of each of his parents but that hadn’t prepared him for doing the same for Valerie.

  An untimely death, he discovered, meant a lot of new stuff to deal with. There would be a post mortem and Valerie had been moved to the mortuary at the district hospital.

  Two of his daughters were distraught and one had, quite obviously, retreated into her grey caves. His father-in-law had aged ten years overnight to become a silent old man.

  Harold’s doctor had attended him at James’s house and pronounced himself concerned. Harold didn’t have much medication with him and the doctor left a prescription but there was nowhere in Webber’s Cross to fill it. James had to wait for a phone call from the mortician. Arrangements could only be pencilled in until James had a death certificate and the funeral director had a body.

  Valerie’s body. The words made him feel sick. Once Valerie’s body had been something that filled him with desire. Now it was the name used to describe the husk left chilling in a drawer.

  ‘I don’t mind driving to the pharmacy in Wisbech,’ Natalia offered. ‘But I haven’t got my car because I came here in yours last night.’ She swallowed. ‘I suppose I could take Mum’s …’

  Valerie’s car waited in the clean expanse of the garage and it was almost an obscenity that such a piece of machinery should stand unused. He’d given it a run periodically while she lay injured but it took too much driving for his taste. And it was so much Val’s car ...

  ‘Mum’s car isn’t insured for you and neither is mine. There’s Tamzin’s –’

  ‘For God’s sake, Dad!’ Natalia exploded. ‘Now is not the time to obsess about details. Who gives a crap about insurance, today?’

  James kept his voice neutral. ‘I don’
t see that you getting prosecuted for driving without insurance will make any of us feel better.’

  ‘I’ve been driving nine years and never been asked for my insurance details. How many years have you been driving? And have you ever been asked for yours?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ offered Harold, trying to sound firm. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’

  ‘It does matter,’ declared Natalia and James, simultaneously.

  ‘Couldn’t she drive Tamzin’s car on her own car insurance?’ suggested Alice.

  ‘Oh, I expect that only covers me third party or some other bloody fusspot thing,’ declared Natalia, before James could say that it was insured for any driver, because he’d seen to it.

  He hung on to his temper but he felt it swelling behind his eyes. Why was Natalia giving him such crap for making sure things were done? Did she see it as her role now that Valerie was gone? He had a sudden vision of Valerie lighting a cigarette and leaping up to grab a bottle of wine from the fridge, crying, ‘For God’s sake, James. Lighten up!’

  But it had always been his job to keep everything together, to know that everything was insured, maintained, arranged, booked, working, even though he was completely sick of the role, because Valerie would let everything go to hell while she cantered about –

  It hit him like a blow. He would no longer have to worry about Valerie. Not driving or flying, smoking or drinking. It had all finally ceased to matter. A hole opened in his chest and grief flew in to squeeze his heart.

  Then the mortician rang for James and the doorbell chimed and the argument had to be postponed.

  When James returned from the phone he halted, shock bolting up his spine. Diane.

  She wore a straight denim skirt and her plait gleamed like an ornament over the shoulder of a plain navy shirt. Her eyes looked very blue and she gave him a tiny smile. He thought he had never seen anything more reassuring in his life. ‘I came to see if you needed anything.’

  Your tranquility, he told her silently. ‘We seem a bit disorganised,’ he said. And they’re not playing nice. I need help with them.

  ‘I can be useful.’ Diane began by making everybody tea and toast, two slices each, seeming to understand that nobody had eaten that morning – possibly explaining the shortness of tempers – as if to have done so would somehow besmirch Valerie’s memory. At first Harold refused brusquely, but Diane crouched before his chair and took his hands and explained how worried she was about him and he came to the table like a lamb and ate half a slice of toast and drank two cups of tea.

  The final slices of toast she put down at an empty place, left the room and returned five minutes later holding Tamzin’s hand as if she were a little girl. Dressed in last night’s clothes Tamzin was silent but at least she was there and some food passed her lips. Everybody ate something, even if not much more than four mouthfuls, and Diane cleared away.

  She seemed to have appointed herself general factotum. ‘OK,’ she said, returning to the table. ‘What needs to be done?’

  James explained about his appointment with the mortician at four, Harold’s prescription, Natalia’s car. It’s too difficult, he added, with his eyes.

  ‘I could drop Natalia off to pick up her car while you keep your appointment, so she can fill out the prescription.’ Diane turned to Tamzin. ‘Will you come with me to Pops’s house and pick up some things for him? Your dad thinks he shouldn’t go home alone yet and I expect that we all agree. Alice, will you stay here with Pops while she’s gone?’

  And everybody nodded, preparing to perform their allotted tasks without a grumble.

  James, when he went out to his car, found Diane right behind him.

  ‘How are you?’ Her voice was low and sympathetic, and he was ashamed that he wanted her to hold him. Just for a moment.

  Instead, he leaned against his car, letting her presence comfort him. ‘It’s a nightmare. I see her everywhere. I feel as if I let her down. I let her die.’

  Her eyes brimmed with sympathy. ‘But it’s not true, James. You couldn’t stop her dying – that’s not the same thing as letting her die. Nobody could stop her. Fully trained medical staff with all the gadgets and gear tried and failed.’

  ‘But I keep wondering if the kids think I let her die.’

  ‘I’m sure they don’t.’

  He touched her hand and she didn’t pull away. ‘The guilt’s incredible.’

  ‘It always is.’

  ‘I don’t mean about being alive when she’s dead and the usual survivor’s remorse. I mean because I was thinking about you when she began to struggle for breath.’

  She nodded, once, jerkily, and blinked. ‘Bryony’s with Gareth. I feel guilty that I’ve left him to come to see if you needed help. But I had to.’

  James was finding everything painfully unreal by the time he got home after keeping his appointment with a kindly mortician and a doctor from the Ackerman in a sterile-looking room that smelled funny and then having to fight rush-hour traffic that seemed intent on siphoning him into lanes he didn’t want to be in. He’d grown so used to the thorn of Valerie piercing his side. But now the thorn had been removed, without anaesthetic, and with no dressing to keep his guts from spilling out.

  Emotions were racketing around inside him like bagatelle balls. But he wasn’t certain what the emotions were.

  In his kitchen he found Diane sliding a chicken casserole into the oven.

  The sight of her in the house he’d shared with his wife for twenty-seven years screwed with his heart. He’d wanted to leave Valerie for this woman. He’d made love to her while his wife lay in traction. He’d planned an affair; even taking a six month lease on a flat where they could meet on the outskirts of Peterborough, a flat that he was now arranging to be sublet because Diane had pulled back.

  When Valerie had begun to arch and gasp on her hospital bed had he leapt fast enough for the red button on the wall? In the seconds that seemed hours before the staff burst into the room could he have done something to save her?

  Guilt rose in his throat like black bile.

  Diane met his eyes and seemed to read his mind.

  She whisked off the tea towel that had served as an apron around her waist and picked up her car keys. ‘Harold’s watching the news and Natalia and Alice are keeping him company.’ She hesitated. ‘I hope it’s OK, but I rang George. He’s up in Tamzin’s room with her. I had a word with him, told him to let her grieve, just to keep her company – he’s never had to deal with anything like this. I’ll leave you with your family now.’

  He nodded, too scoured out with guilt and grief to speak. As he made his way to the sitting room he heard her car start and the crunch of tyres across the gravel.

  When he entered the room, Harold pointed the remote control at the television and cut off the Look East presenter mid-sentence. James sat down heavily, suddenly sick with fatigue. All eyes were fixed on him, the family focused on every detail of the process of losing Valerie.

  He reported his meeting bluntly. ‘They asked me formally to allow a post mortem – although I’m not sure I really had a choice. It’ll take place tomorrow, and after they’ve given me the result I can get a death certificate and arrange for her to be moved to the funeral home.’

  After several moments, Harold murmured, ‘Does she really have to be … disturbed?’

  ‘They have to know how it happened. We all need to.’

  The evening stretched ahead. Abruptly, fiercely, James wanted Diane back, making them cups of tea and knowing what to say.

  A curious aimlessness descended. No plans could be made without the death certificate. It felt indecent to sort through Valerie’s things so soon. He hadn’t told their solicitor of her death. Or the bank. Or, indeed, her friends or any family but the most immediate. He could begin on the family this evening –

  But he remained in his chair, eviscerated by death and tragedy. He shut his eyes. So tired. Soooo tired ... He’d do it in the morning. She’d been only in her forties. It
no longer mattered how she abused her body. Never again would she endanger herself or anyone else. She had made him angry and made him sad and he’d wanted rid of her.

  But not dead.

  He managed a few hours sleep, which helped. Awake since dawn, he sat down at the kitchen table with a spiral-topped pad from the kitchen drawer and began to list necessary phone calls. Solicitor, bank, insurance companies –

  He’d been sitting there for a couple of hours, trying to force his brain to work, when an unfamiliar cough mad him turn. He found himself staring at George Jenner.

  George hovered awkwardly, hands jammed inelegantly in the back pockets of ripped jeans so that his elbows stuck out like cup handles. ‘Um, I gotta go, ’cos I’m on a work placement. Tamz said it’s OK. I’m already having time off for the gig in Liverpool on Friday.’

  ‘No, of course. Right.’

  George shuffled and cleared his throat. His eyes flicked to James and away. ‘Um … did you know … Tamzin’s done stuff.’ He fidgeted. Itched his calf with the opposite foot. ‘To her arms.’ He took his hands out of his pockets to make a tentative cutting motion with the side of his hand to the inside of his elbow.

  James felt his stomach plummet. ‘Oh hell, has she? Very bad?’

  George cleared his throat again. ‘Like, about three …’ He made the cutting motion again. ‘That’s to do with this depression she had, right?’

  ‘Self-injury. It seems to be a reaction to when something bad happens that she has no control over.’ James pushed his fingertips through his hair.

  George shook his head. ‘Amazin’. And you can’t get her to stop?’

  James decided to ignore the faint note of accusation. George had no experience of dealing with self-injury. As Diane had pointed out, he was a nineteen-year-old boy. He was talking so awkwardly not because he was rude or inarticulate but because he was excruciatingly embarrassed. He and James scarcely knew each other. ‘Not so far. Unless you’ve got any bright ideas?’

  Slowly, George slipped his feet into a pair of oversized trainers that seemed to have spent the night with the family collection of footwear in the corner. ‘I dunno. It’s weird.’ He hesitated. ‘Would it help to, like, make her do stuff?’