He picked up the glass again, sipped more gin. Slowly. Steadily.
‘I’ve been seeing that bargirl in the Two Bridges. The blonde one. I’ve been seeing her for a year. I met her at the kids’ party there, last year.’
Tessa sat back, utterly stunned. She didn’t know whether to feel hurt or relieved. So this was it. This. This thing. This crap. This was the feeble explanation. It was simply an affair?
Yet: it was an affair. He was sleeping with that girl, the one with the piercings, the tats, the short blonde girl. Tessa recalled her, from her many visits to Two Bridges.
Dan shrugged, his face flushed. ‘Usually I take her to anonymous hotels, places by the motorway, Tavistock. Okehampton. That’s where we go. Sometimes I take her to the cottage in Brixham. When it’s not rented out.’ He had the sense to wince as he admitted this. ‘I picked her up that afternoon, and we went there. Brixham. But she had an early morning shift, so I brought her back to the moor and I stayed in her room. She has a room at Two Bridges cos she works there and it’s so remote.’ He sank more Williams and tonic and closed his eyes, rubbing his eyes with weary fingers, and then he looked at Tessa once more. ‘That’s why I’m not in the register. But that’s why I was there in the morning.’
Tessa was momentarily silenced by too many emotions. Hurt, grief, dismay. She’d loved Dan, she probably loved him now. Love didn’t disappear in a minute. They’d had a good relationship, until now. She’d thought they were happy; they were happy. They had a satisfying sex life. Or so she had presumed. And it was all lies.
‘Why her, Dan?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I want to know. Why her? A girl. A bargirl. That girl. She’s barely out of her teens. Is it the intellectual conversation?’
‘Please don’t do this.’
Tessa snorted. ‘Fuck you. Tell me. Why her? Just because she’s younger, got a nicer body than me, no kids, no stretchmarks, is it that? Am I getting too old for you?’
‘Please!’
‘Tell me.’
He shook his head. ‘Stop.’
Tessa raised an angry hand. She was close to slapping him. He looked at her, at the hand, the threat of violence; and she realized: it was the piercings, the tats, the black choker with that little ring.
‘Oh fuck, it’s kinky sex, isn’t it? You’re having rough sex with her, aren’t you? BDSM, all that. Bondage, whipping. You always wanted that from me, I never liked it enough. So you went elsewhere?’
This time he couldn’t even look her in the eye. She was clearly right.
Tessa pictured her husband, probably in their Brixham cottage, tying the girl up, locking handcuffs to the bed. The bed they had bought together.
Bastard.
Dan was still averting his eyes as he drank his gin. The kitchen suddenly felt too big. The whole house felt huge and hollow with sadness. All that money, yet all this sadness. What could they do now? What would happen to them all? Tessa felt the most intense weariness.
‘Go sleep somewhere else,’ she said. ‘Get out of here, sleep in the spare room. Don’t come near me.’
Her husband paused as if he had something more to say, but he obediently picked up his drink and meekly made his way out of the kitchen.
When she was sure he was gone, Tessa went to the cupboard under the sink, and pulled out a dustpan. Very carefully, she began to brush up the shattered glass. There was so much of it everywhere, glittering and lethal. Just one broken glass, making all these needles and shards; just one broken glass, and you could sever a thousand veins.
Saturday morning
They met in the kitchen. Dan had spent the night in the spare room. Tessa had spent the night barely sleeping, turning her pillow over and over, seeking the coolness of a solution; finding none.
Now they moved around each other, in the kitchen, like members of a different species mistakenly put in the same cage at the zoo. She made toast. He made coffee. It was 8.30 a.m. In an hour he would go off to collect the boys from their sleepover; as he did that, she would climb the stairs, to her study, her desk, her beloved window, to her work and books and normal life.
Except it was no longer normal. Everything had changed, even as everything looked precisely the same.
Tessa contemplated her husband as he plunged the cafetière. Could she ever forgive him? She had no idea, not yet. Did she believe him? Probably, maybe, possibly. Dan seemed sincere in his declaration of innocence regarding Kath. So it was just an affair. A pitiful little thing. But it was still infidelity. A year of horrible lies.
Tessa ate her miserable toast; Dan filled a coffee mug. Tessa wondered how many marriages ended in kitchens. Probably quite a lot. She thought of Dan in the cottage they’d bought in Brixham. Did he and his little slut cook together, in the kitchen? Of course they did. Perhaps he kissed her over the table. Perhaps he roughly fucked her on the table. Tied her to a bloody kitchen door, or whatever kinky people did.
She imagined them together. The man twice her age. The teenage bargirl with issues.
Bastard.
Dan broke the silence first. ‘Tessa. This is intolerable, I have to know. Do you believe me?’
She shrugged silently, trying to restrain her anger. She was simultaneously exhausted yet furious. She wished she’d put more marmalade on her toast. Yet she couldn’t be bothered to go to the cupboard and fetch the jar again. Overnight everything has become so tiring, so pointless, so wearyingly predictable: the rich, handsome husband fucking the kinky little bargirl. How disappointingly ordinary of Dan Kinnersley to be that pathetic man.
And he was trying again. ‘Please, Kath, I need to know. I have to know. I can understand if you hate me, I can understand if you want a divorce: I was seeing that girl, it’s all true, all that is true. What can I say? I did it, you’re right. But I can’t have you thinking I had anything to do with Kath’s accident.’
She looked at him wearily. ‘I don’t know.’
He sighed, frustrated. But Tessa wasn’t going to let him off so easily. She wasn’t going to let him off at all. This was all too serious. There was too much evidence against him that had yet to be explained.
She asked, outright, ‘What about Kath running away from you?’
‘We discussed this. I have no idea. I didn’t see her.’
‘Discuss it more.’
‘Look.’ He raised his hands in surrender, ‘What the fuck can I do? I don’t have footage, all I have is the truth—’
‘The truth?’
‘Yes. The truth. OK, I’ve been lying about the girl, yes, I’ve deceived you, go ahead and divorce me, I can’t blame you. I am sorry for what I did and I know sorry will never be enough – but what possible motive would I have for hurting my own sister?’
Tessa finished her toast, shook her head, and frowned. ‘There’s always been a bit of friction between the two of you.’
‘Because I got the house? Sure. But Kath got over it. I’ve tried to be generous ever since. And it was hardly my doing. It was Mum.’
‘Hmm.’
He pressed on. ‘Yes. Yes. We have our differences, me and Kath, but I love her, and I adore Lyla. Why would I hurt that family, Tessa? My own flesh and blood?’
‘I don’t know. But Kath claims she was running away from you. Why?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her!’
Tessa sat back. She examined her husband, the way she would look at a prisoner in Princetown. Applying psychology. It felt as if he was telling the truth about Kath. But there was something else here, something lurking.
‘What about Adam?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You dislike Adam. You always have. You hide it, you rub along, but we both know it, he knows it. Why? Why do you dislike him?’ He said nothing, so she pressed the issue.
‘You’ve disliked him from the off. As long as I can remember. Haven’t you?’
At last, he nodded. ‘Yes.’
It felt as if she was approaching the centre of the maze.
>
‘So, why? Enough bullshit. It’s time to explain. What is it with Adam? Why have you always irritated each other?’
He poured the last of the coffee as she went on.
‘Is it because he resents us, because of the house? Is it just that?’
Dan was mute. She leaned closer.
‘There’s something else, isn’t there? Tell me. Why did you get this house, Dan? Why did your mum favour you so much over Kath? Was it really because she was mad at the end, the cancer reaching her brain? Or is there something I don’t know?’
Dan gazed into his coffee mug, and sighed, fiercely, then looked at her. Eye to eye.
‘There is something. I’ve never mentioned it before because—’ He offered a long, regretful shake of his head. ‘Kath and Adam were so happy, it’s not my place, I’m her brother, I want them to be happy, and he’s a very good dad to Lyla.’
‘But?’
‘Tessa, wait. I’ve never told anyone this. For very good reasons.’
‘It’s something to do with Penny, isn’t it, with your mother, and her death?’
Dan looked at the ceiling, as if seeking the forgiveness of God; then he looked back at Tessa.
‘Remember it was Adam and I who went out to India, to get her ashes, so they could be scattered at Kitty Jay’s grave? The ashes they hadn’t already dumped in the damn Ganges. Kath was in too much of a state, so Adam and I flew out.’
‘Yes. And?’
‘Well, there’s stuff I never told you.’
‘Such as?’
‘She’d left letters for us, for Adam, for me. After her death.’
‘Not Kath?’
‘Nope. Just me and Adam. I’m not sure Kath ever knew. I never told her, I doubt if Adam told her.’
Tessa tried to work this out. Failed. ‘What did they say? The letters?’
Her husband shrugged. ‘Well, I haven’t a fucking clue what was in his, he didn’t exactly spill the beans. But I will never forget what was in mine.’ Tessa felt her anxiety deepen.
‘A lot of it was mad. Most of it. Stuff about death and nirvana, Shiva and Kali. She was always pretty alternative, and by the end I think the cancer was in her mind, but—’ he sighed, awkwardly. ‘There was also one alarming, yet quite rational, passage where she said she could never trust Adam. She hated him, or feared him. I don’t know. And she started raving about evil and witchcraft, and that she wouldn’t let him live in her house. Ever.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t spell it out. It was implicit in what she said. And it was mad. But she clearly meant it. That’s why she fled to India.’
Tessa gazed at her husband. Eyes wide and clear, as if she could see through him, see through everything, finally.
‘Evil? Really? She really said that?’
‘That was definitely the implication. I can’t say for sure. But she clearly believed that there was something evil or bad about Adam, or something terrible had occurred, because of him.’
Tessa reeled with confusion. ‘You never thought to mention this?’
He raised a hand, defending himself. ‘Wait, wait. Wait and think, Tessa. Remember how loopy this sounds. Evil. Fire and bloody brimstone. Either way, this is why we got the house, the whole fucking job lot. She hated Adam, didn’t want him living here, didn’t want him to get any of it.’
‘But …’ Tessa was at a loss. And she wasn’t sure Dan was telling her everything. He had that look. He was toying with his coffee. There was something more. ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’
‘Like I said. Because my sister was so happy with Adam, and I was already unfairly favoured. Was it really my job to wade in? Was it right for me to fucking wade in and trash her relationship, and then her marriage, on the basis of my mum’s final ravings?’
Tessa mused. ‘Possibly not … But now it’s different. We have to do something, Dan. Because it’s all returning, it’s all happening again. Kath thinks she is bewitched, and she is seeing ghosts, and she’s losing her mind, and if Adam is at the root of it all …’ Tessa felt a fearful despair. They needed to intervene. But she had no idea how. The despair deepened. ‘Jesus. Think of it. And that poor little girl is in the middle of all this insanity! Up there on the moor.’
The Spaldings’ Farm
Monday evening
I am here. Amidst the glory of a clear winter evening on Dartmoor. The moon is a single silver claw above old Black Tor; the stars are like the tiny ends of a million shining filaments, blindly feeling their way towards the darkened earth. I can hear the call of a big white owl somewhere, hunting, and killing.
Usually I can be entranced for hours by beautiful Dartmoor nights like this, the clear cold winter nights of a million galaxies over Haytor, but after one brief glance at the godless sky, I am oblivious to it all.
Now I sit in the darkness of my car outside the Spaldings’ farmhouse.
I’m here to fetch Lyla. Emma agreed to collect and keep Lyla, after school, as I had extra National Park work to do from home, without distraction. It is beginning to pile up: normal life is reclaiming me, like a mire sucking me down, even as my life spins out of control.
But I am not ignoring the beauty of the freezing, cloudless Dartmoor heavens because of work, but because of the email I am reading, as I sit in my car.
It’s one of those Dartmoor moments when the mobile phone signal around Huckerby is stupidly bad for no apparent reason: so this email, sent ages ago, only just pinged on to my phone as I pulled up at the Spaldings’ big, handsome, foursquare, Georgian farmhouse.
The email is from Tessa. It’s marked Urgent. It explains why I saw Dan at Two Bridges. Why he was lying. He was having an affair, with the Two Bridges bargirl. He’s been doing it for a year. My own brother.
Yet there is more. And it is even more puzzling and disturbing; but enigmatic, too. It says:
Dan is worried about Adam. He thinks he knows things about your mother that he hasn’t told you. He got a letter from Penny, when they went to India, accusing Dan. Of something evil. And this might be linked with you at Burrator. Kath, I know this sounds strange but Dan certainly knows something. Please come and see me as soon as you can.
What does that mean?
It’s unusual for Tessa to be ambiguous. She is normally straight, and to the point. And this letter from Mum? It is so conveniently timed. My doubts rise. So my brother claims he was having an affair, which explains his presence at the Two Bridges. Is this really true, or is he disguising his own, deeper guilt? I wonder if I can even trust Tessa. They are, after all, both enjoying my mother’s inheritance.
Why did he get the house from Mum?
The image of my mother returns to me. And Lyla, hissing in her den.
You you you you you.
My mind is a chaos of voices and horrors: one of those medieval paintings of Hell, with demons in the corner, pitchforking the sinners. The self-murderers.
I have to focus on the here, the now, the life of today. My motherhood. Duties. So I silence the voices – the shrieks of the suicides, the sound of my lunacy, suspicions, and guilt – by clicking shut my smartphone, and putting it in my pocket. Then I step out of the car into the stinging, fir-scented cold. A bracing east wind is scouring the sky; it will be shuddering the gorse at Blackaller Quarry, and rattling the slates back at Huckerby.
Tightening the scarf around my neck, I sprint to the front door and ring the bell. A few moments later it swings open, revealing warmth and light and roast cooking smells, and a smiling Emma Spalding, with Lyla in her school uniform at her side. Emma’s customary smile barely conceals her ongoing concern. There’s always a hidden frown of anxiety when Emma looks at me these days.
‘Here you go, Kath, she’s had her supper.’
‘Thanks so much. Work’s beginning to pile up.’
‘Quite a night,’ says Emma as she leans out and stares up into the frigid, windy darkness, as Lyla runs out and hugs me. ‘Beautiful night for stars, but must be
minus ten on the tors.’
‘Thank you, yes, thank you. Come on Lyla-berry, let’s get you home.’
Emma closes the door on both of us, as Lyla races to the car, clutching her school bag and Jungle Book lunchbox.
The drive home is brief and noisy, the wind slapping the car. I have to actively fight the weather with my steering wheel, as if I am at the tiller of a ship in a swell. At one corner the road veers past a swathe of open, moonlit moorland. I can see those ruined barns in the frosted distance. I can, with a squint, make out the row of gorse where I came across Harry Redway, whom I mistook for Adam.
Harry Redway. Could he be significant?
A shiver trills inside me. A need to question my daughter. Slightly too fast, I pull into Huckerby’s muddy yard. I know that as soon as I open the door Lyla will run inside and hug Felix and Randal, and run upstairs to lose herself in books and games and daydreams, and fall swiftly sleep. She looks tired. Everyone looks tired. Winter drags on, and on.
Wearing us out.
In a fortnight, down near Salcombe and the coast, there will be daffodils in the hedgerows; up here winter could last another two months.
I have to ask my daughter about this. But she asks first.
‘Why are we still here, Mummy, why aren’t we going inside?’
Turning from my seat, I regard my girl. Her blue eyes stare back at me. In the darkness. In the car. Who was that man in the car, staring at me? In my memory? Adam? Dan? Harry? Why did Harry look so furtive?
‘Mummy, are you all right?’
I fight the warring voices in my mind, but it is hard now; they are deafening.
‘Mummy?’
I stare.
‘Mummy?’
I am thinking. Dark hair. In a car.
‘Mummy?’
‘Yes, Lyla, darling. Thinking of Daddy, and things. I have to ask you again.’
Lyla clutches her Jungle Book lunchbox closer. Like a defensive shield. A talisman to ward me off. I know she sees herself in Mowgli, and why not? She is a kind of Mowgli of the moors.
I almost close my eyes, ashamed of what I am doing; yet I do it anyway. ‘Lyla, are you really seeing someone I know, out on the moors? And if you are, are you sure it is Daddy? Or someone else? Could it be someone else? How about Daddy’s cousin, Harry?’
Just Before I Died Page 19