‘He’s only just up,’ Mrs Taylor says, as though that might explain his transformed appearance.
Feeling winded, Dan returns to the deeds; he doesn’t need Yvette to tell him that: Seb’s feet are bare, he’s wearing a white T-shirt and sweat pants.
Will rubs his brother’s shaven head. ‘Bloody hell, Seb. What the hell? I can’t decide. Gay icon or English Defence League.’ He laughs unsteadily. ‘What do you think, Dan?’
Dan lifts his head, but finds it hard to look. Without the long fringe, the full glare of Seb’s sculpted face is exposed. It’s like staring at an eclipse when he knows that he shouldn’t. And there’s a feeling in his chest, a nauseous mix of lust and danger and repulsion.
Seb shakes off Will’s hand and turns his attention to the kettle, filling it at the sink, then flicking it on. He shrugs. ‘Photo shoot. Not my choice. You like the tattoo, don’t you, Ma?’ He puts his arm around his mother. ‘Coffee, Mum?’
Mrs Taylor nods. She appears to have lost focus again. ‘Yes, coffee. I’ve a bit of a headache so I’m going to lie down. The weather, I expect. Bring it up will you, darling?’
She leaves the room, tall, straight and dignified, but with an air of acute sadness.
Will clears his throat, breaking the silence. ‘Right, I’m going to the tip with the damned fridge. I’ll be back in forty minutes or so.’ He looks at his watch. ‘It’s quarter past now, make sure you’re ready,’ he says tersely to Seb. He walks away a few steps before turning back with a tight angry face. ‘I suppose your hair will grow, but you’ll never get a proper job with that monstrosity on your arm. Sometimes you’re so bloody stupid, Seb. If Dad was here—’
‘Well, Dad’s not here and my job is proper. See you in forty minutes.’
Dan follows Will outside, relieved to get out. He helps shift the fridge from the neglected side garden, then heave it into the back of Penny’s four-by-four. But Will leaves, stony-faced, declining Dan’s offer to go with him, so he waits in the cold, his feet rooted to the brick driveway, trying to settle the hot panic in his chest. He stares at his car; he’d like to escape, to work out his jumbled emotions, but the title deeds are in the house and he promised to write a letter to Yvette’s neighbours.
‘I’m in here,’ Seb calls, when he returns to the house. ‘I’ve made you a coffee.’
Dan steps into the lounge, his eyes sweeping the draughty room. Despite its decline, it’s still noble and handsome, but there’s an aura of pathos about it. The floor is covered in threadbare Chinese rugs and those parts of the parquet which show have lost their shine. Seb is slouching on a worn and scratched Chesterfield sofa, his legs stretched out on a leather ottoman, apparently doubling up as a coffee table.
Taking a breath, Dan thinks back, trying to remember if the house and its furniture was so tatty when Alex Taylor was alive. Would the child Dan have noticed? Perhaps he would; Annette is still obsessively house-proud, the furniture new, every surface sparkling and straight and clean.
That smell of hygiene, not home.
After a few moments’ indecision, he sits down in the armchair. But he’s unable to speak, let alone look at Seb’s face. He can’t grasp his strange feelings, but knows one is anger. Staring at the floor, he understands Will’s irritation completely.
‘You can’t bear to look at me,’ Seb states and Dan finally lifts his head. The short crop emphasises Seb’s angular face and his startling eyes. Yet the shock is still there. And there’s a prickling of anxiety in Dan’s gut; he can’t put his finger on why. ‘The tats are temporary. They’ll scrub off in time.’ Seb stares, tapping his foot. ‘What, that’s it, is it? You’ve gone off me because I’ve got tattoos and had my hair cut. Not girly enough for you now? You’re so bloody conservative—’
Dan’s sudden anger takes himself by surprise. ‘Don’t you fucking dare,’ he says, standing up. ‘My dad has been a paid-up member of the Labour party all his life. He did two bloody jobs to scrape enough money together to pay for my school uniform. I didn’t go on a foreign holiday until I was twenty-five.’ He spreads his arms. ‘What would you know with all this? Wealthy dad, Chesterfield fucking settees, spending all summer in your holiday home in Abersoch with all the other spoilt rich kids.’ He stalks to the door. ‘Your bloody hallway is bigger than my childhood home.’
‘You know I didn’t mean it like that,’ Seb replies. ‘I meant that you’re …’
‘What?’ Dan asks, turning.
‘Fucking parochial, actually.’
Dan points his finger, the anger heavy in his throat. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘And you know it all, do you, Dan? Spoilt rich kid?’ Seb leans forward, his eyes blazing. ‘See this lovely room, this fucking Chesterfield sofa? My dad died right here. I was eighteen, my whole future before me and he dropped dead on me. Literally on me, here on this sofa.’
Dan stares at Seb’s face. He knew Alex Taylor had died of a heart attack when Will was in his early twenties. He’d felt unwell, went for a walk to clear his head and when he came back he had a massive coronary, but he didn’t know Seb was there when it happened. He wants to ask more, but still feels irrationally hurt.
Seb speaks again. ‘We were watching tennis on the TV and arguing. He said I’d gone soft and lost my competitive edge, that I’d be a complete failure if I wasn’t careful. “Sometimes I can’t stand being in the same room as you.” That’s what he said to the spoilt rich kid, Dan. He was angry, went out for a walk, came back and tried to apologise. But I refused to speak to him, even to look at him. Next thing, he was slumped on me and I knew. I didn’t move; I couldn’t move. Not for God knows how long, until Mum came in and found us.’
The sound of a door closing upstairs breaks the quietness.
Seb drops his head. ‘Even now I wonder if I had moved, or called for Mum, or done something, Dad might have …’ His voice trails off. He shakes his head and stands, his expression so similar to his mum’s absent look earlier. ‘Well, there you have it. It is what it is. I’d better get ready, have a shower before Will gets back.’
When Dan returns to the kitchen, the plan attached to the title deeds has tried to fold itself back like an arthritic hand. He stares for a while, sighs and pulls out his mobile to text Will. Then he waits at the table, listening to the sound of near silence.
‘I’ll give you a lift home,’ he says when Seb reappears dressed in torn jeans and a chunky jumper. ‘I told Will I was headed that way, so …’
Seb nods, grabs his overnight bag and follows Dan to the car.
Dan drives down the busy parkway, taking a short cut through tree-lined lanes littered with million-pound houses without speaking. Then he indicates left, accelerates up the sweep of Oak House’s drive and pulls up outside the front door, the engine of his car lightly humming.
Seb climbs out, then opens the boot for his bag. Dan stares ahead through the windscreen, watching a bird pecking hopelessly on the frosted manicured lawns, wanting Seb gone, yet still wanting him. But the only sound is the crunch of pebbles under Seb’s feet. He walks to the door, selects the correct key from his key ring and lets himself into the starched building without looking back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jen
Jen soon discovers putting on a smile is exhausting, though it probably isn’t the best description. It’s more a question of not looking worried. Smiling constantly would surely alert Ian and the girls to her anxiety about bloody everything. Will’s text and Holly’s blood tests, Ian’s frequent strange glances and frowns.
She and Holly went back to the doctor’s to see the blood nurse on Friday. In fairness she was lovely, though she never stopped talking. ‘Just be quiet for a moment!’ Jen wanted to yell. ‘Just for a moment while you insert that evil-looking hypodermic into my gorgeous girl’s arm.’
‘Do you pluck your own eyebrows?’ the blood nurse asked Holly when they sat down. ‘Of course you don’t,’ she continued before they could work out the question, le
t alone answer it. ‘You’re just lovely as you are. But your mum will understand.’ She looked at Jen and smiled. ‘It’ll be less painful than that.’
Holly looked away and flinched, but only a little.
What a brave girl, the blood nurse prattled as she filled several phials. She wasn’t very good at faces, but could remember every patient by their veins. She was called Gwendolyn, Gwen for short. Was Holly born at Christmas? Is that how she got her name? What did she want to do when she was older? She’d wanted to be a violinist but found her real vocation when she failed her exams, which shows you never can tell. And how was Mum coping? The children are brave, it’s the mums who’re the trouble.
Jen had wanted to ask what Gwen thought the tests would reveal, to glean something from the doctor’s notes, but there wasn’t a gap in her patter.
There’s more chatter now at the hairdressers, but Jen doesn’t mind as she stares blindly at her reflection. It’s therapeutic to listen to other people’s stories, often banal, but important to them. And it blocks out her own thoughts, if only briefly.
A lilac-haired lady is describing her day out with an over-sixties walking group and Jen drifts, wondering if her mum would be interested in joining. Nola likes to keep busy. She picks up litter in the local playground, spends time with the elderly at a nursing home, helps out in a charity shop. Always volunteering, never paid. At least not since Jen and her brothers were born. It’s what their dad wanted when they married; a wife who was entirely dependent on him. Their dad who uprooted Nola from her friends and family in Cork because he got work in Manchester; their dad who repaid Nola’s loyalty and sacrifice by fucking some other woman in Ireland.
The heat spreads in Jen’s chest. There he is again. Her bloody, bastard father. He still pays for Nola’s keep, as she puts it. She wonders if the two of them ever talk.
Lindsay appears in the mirror and speaks, bringing Jen back to her surroundings. Jen has travelled the five miles to this salon for a couple of years now, so no longer notices the zebra-patterned chairs, the leopard-print towels or the black-haired clones who wash her hair. It’s Lindsay who counts and she has a three-year itch with both employers and men, a six-week itch when it comes to hair colour.
‘You could try something different,’ she’s saying, peering at Jen’s roots. She bends down to the mirror. ‘What do you think of this shade?’
Lindsay’s hair is pale pink today, but it suits her pastel eyes and pale face. Jen wonders what the girls would say if she returned home with cerise hair. ‘Embarrassing’ or ‘peng’, undoubtedly; she never knows which it will be. After a feisty period at the end of primary school, Holly seems to have mellowed, but her eldest is the opposite. Jen feels she can do nothing right, from the contents of Maria’s packed school lunch to the style and shape of her trainer socks, never mind the brand. There’s her hair colour too; she’s desperate to change it to ‘ordinary brown’, but Jen thinks she’s too young, and besides it’s a glorious shade.
‘People pay good money to make their hair such a beautiful colour,’ she reasons.
‘You have no idea what it’s like to be a ginger,’ Maria replies.
For now Anna is just Anna, sunny and affectionate, not even noticing her red hair, but who knows for how long?
Having fended off Lindsay’s pink suggestions and listened to her latest romantic adventure, Jen lifts her head to a small television screen. She doesn’t want to stare at the mirror; she knows her face is pallid and stark, the hair dye a seeping stain on her forehead and temples. Since her teens she’s had a silver line in her hair, not particularly wide, but against her dark colour it always showed. At university she didn’t care, it looked funky, done on purpose, but Maria came home from primary school in tears one day, saying that a boy in her class had described her mummy as being the twin of Cruella De Vil. Jen had looked at Ian in horror, but he’d struggled not to laugh. ‘In the nicest possible way,’ he’d said, hugging her, but the damage was done; she’s had her hair dyed to uniform dark chestnut every six weeks since.
‘I don’t know why you worry about your hair,’ Ian said after meeting Lisa for the first time. ‘Her hair is a problem. It’s so feathery, it looks as though it might fall out.’
Jen was surprised he’d noticed, more surprised when he asked if she thought Nick and Lisa were really suited. Both diminutive and Catholic, true, but it seemed to Ian there the similarity ended. Nick was introspective and shy; Lisa loud and Welsh.
‘Well the website said they were,’ Jen joked at the time, but she’s paid more attention since. Ian doesn’t comment much, but when he does it’s measured. He’s generally right about things, which can be annoying at times. He never goes so far as to say, ‘I told you so,’ but he doesn’t need to, it’s there in the slight rise of an eyebrow.
She thinks of Nick’s call in the week. She sensed he wanted to talk, that she’d come home from the pub to face Ian’s raised eyebrow, but she made her apologies and didn’t go. Will would’ve been there and she’s not ready to face him.
The earrings flash again in her mind, along with his expression when he gave them. Trying to shake the image away, she goes back to Nick. She feels bad for not going to the pub. Called ‘Mouse’ at their primary school, he struggled with teasing, so when they went up to St Mark’s she took on the role of big sister, stopping the other kids repeating the name, telling him straight when his armpits were smelly, to take a joke and man up. Even buying him Head & Shoulders when his blazer collar was dandruff-sprinkled.
Now Lisa’s on the scene she tries to hold back, but the desire to help out still remains. Like the runt of the litter, he’s smaller and slighter than Will and Dan, a little fragile too. Not that they don’t have their moments, but they’re better at hiding it, Will behind his thickset frame. And Dan? There’s a thought. She’s never been sure what lies behind his humour.
‘Silly Mouse,’ she now whispers. She liked that special place in Nick’s life, but even as a teenager she was perplexed why his mum didn’t sort his BO or mention the dandruff. Perhaps Mrs Quinn didn’t like to upset him, perhaps she never noticed. As an adult, Jen knows mothers do all sorts of things to protect their kids. Lies, really. Like her mum hiding the truth about her father. When Nola finally told her, she was incandescent with anger before the real pain set in, but now as a mother she can’t help but applaud Nola’s desire to shield her child, and admire her selfless love.
Lindsay’s voice interrupts her bleak thoughts. ‘Two more minutes and you’re done.’ She picks up Jen’s mobile and squints at the screen. ‘Looks like you’ve got a message from Will.’
‘Cheers,’ Jen says, trying hard not to snatch.
She holds her breath before looking. Texts from Will have never been a problem before. The messages were always routine, it didn’t matter if the girls or Ian picked them up, but after Ian’s odd comment about her nap, she’s activated her passcode. Though strange in the context of her and Will’s long relationship, it makes her feel seedy.
‘I want to have you on the floor of the bluebell woods. Remember?’ Will’s text said on Wednesday night, shortly followed by another. ‘Sorry, Jen. Out of order in a text. Won’t do it again. You weren’t at the pub this evening. Just miss you.’
Today’s text is back to the mundane. ‘Just back from Withington. Seb has shaved his head and has a ridiculous tattoo. Mum seems very down. More so than usual. Would you look in when you have time? I’d really appreciate it.’
Closing her eyes, she tries to dip under a sudden wave of grief. She still visits Will’s mum regularly and almost every time she’s due to leave, Yvette disappears upstairs and then returns, placing an item of jewellery or a small ornament in her palm, then covering it tightly with her large elegant hand. ‘For your girls when they’re older. You should’ve been my daughter, Jennifer,’ she always says.
For years Jen protested, saying one day Yvette would have her own grandchildren, but now she accepts the beautiful pieces graciously and says s
he’ll put them away safely. And of course she tells Will she’s saving them for him and Seb, for when they have kids.
She takes a quick breath. Will’s kids. It had always seemed far away and theoretical, but now it feels real.
And the bluebell woods. Of course she remembers. How could she possibly forget?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Dan
Parochial, Dan thinks, fucking parochial!
Though the stunning anger fell away before he left Withington, the word still sizzles and stings. It’s undeserved, bloody undeserved. He’s just a regular guy these days, not as opinionated and political as he was at university, more tolerant in many ways, but still with firm values and beliefs. Small-minded, blinkered, insular, Seb had implied. What the hell does he know anyway?
Fucking offended; the description isn’t fair.
Trying to loosen the tension in his jaw, Dan hops up the steps and opens his front door. His warm house always smells spicy, even when there has been no cooking, musty aromas in the ceilings and the floorboards; a distinct contrast to the smell he was brought up in, and not unpleasant, just different.
Geri gives a small jerk when he walks into the lounge. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she smiles from the sofa.
‘Just closing your eyes,’ he replies, remembering a similar comment from Jen the night of Nick’s wedding. It seems so long ago. He was a different person then. Or was he?
Parochial, Seb called him. The hurt is still there.
‘Think I’ll pop over to see Mum and Dad this afternoon,’ he says over a sandwich at lunchtime. ‘Do you fancy coming? We could walk over if you haven’t already had enough walking for one day.’
My Husband's Lies Page 17