by Fiona Neill
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked. Izzy half turned her head and smiled inanely at Ali and Jake, trying to force herself to focus. She attempted to push herself up from the floor, using the boy’s knees as ballast, but she couldn’t get up. Ali grabbed the phone from the boy’s hand and dropped it into a half-drunk beer that sat beneath the lamp.
“Nice one,” said Jake approvingly.
Izzy turned round and squinted up at them. She tried to say something, but instead of words a stream of vomit came out of her mouth. The boy stood up and backed into the corner of the room, pulling up his trousers and muttering apologies about how it was all Izzy’s idea.
“She’s not in any fit state to make decisions,” said Ali angrily. “What should we do about the carpet?”
“They’ll get industrial cleaners in before her dad comes home.” Jake shrugged.
They got Izzy on her feet, and between them began the slow process of bringing her downstairs, step by step. It was like carrying a corpse. Her eyes were rolling into the back of her head, and Ali was relieved when she was sick again on the front doorstep, in part because it lessened the likelihood that she would need to be taken to hospital to have her stomach pumped but mostly because it reduced the risk of a vomiting incident inside the car.
“Poor Izzy,” said Ali, stroking her hair as Izzy slumped beside her in the front of the BMW. After a couple of false starts she managed to get the car into gear.
“Poor me,” said Jake from the back. “I’m meant to be revising.”
“It’s just one of those things,” said Ali, repeating a phrase her mother used.
“You’re so tolerant,” said Jake.
“I’m paid to be,” said Ali.
• • •
Malea was waiting by the front door. Ali and Jake paused in the hallway for a moment to catch their breath, balancing Izzy between them, an arm under each shoulder. Izzy was breathing too quickly. Her rib cage rose and fell so fast that Ali was worried she might hyperventilate. Her skin had a grayish hue. When she opened her eyes Ali could see her pupils were as big as marbles.
“We need to get her horizontal as quickly as possible to bring down her heart rate,” said Ali.
Suddenly Izzy slid out of Ali and Jake’s grip and lurched forward to knock the vase of flowers from the hall table. It smashed on the floor. Leicester came up from the kitchen and sat by the stairs, maintaining a grim and disapproving vigil over the proceedings.
“Shit,” said Ali as they pulled her upright again.
“Don’t worry. We’ll frame Leicester,” Jake consoled her. He kicked pieces of porcelain under the table while Malea got down on her hands and knees to retrieve handfuls of flowers. “Mum probably won’t even notice. The interior decorator chose the vase.”
“Do you think we could mend it?” asked Ali.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jake.
Malea touched Izzy’s face tenderly and muttered something in Filipino.
“What did you say, Malea?” panted Ali.
Malea repeated the word. It was something Ali had heard Hector and Alfie use.
“What nationality was the nanny who looked after the twins before me?” Ali asked.
“Filipina,” said Jake.
“And before that?”
“Also Filipina,” said Malea.
“Why are you asking about this now?” asked Jake impatiently.
Somehow between the three of them they managed to haul Izzy upstairs to her bedroom. Ali laid out towels from the bathroom on top of the duvet, and Malea went down to the basement to fetch a bucket.
“We need to get her to lie on her side,” Ali instructed Jake. “Then there’s less chance of her choking on her own vomit or swallowing her tongue.” Ali checked her pulse.
“Are you from the Saint John Ambulance service?” Jake joked.
Ali bathed Izzy’s face with a cool flannel and was heartened to see a little color return. Izzy opened her eyes for a moment, gave a small smile, and tried to say something. Her lips moved, but no words came out. Her makeup, a mess of mascara, sparkling green eye shadow, and eyeliner, had spread over her cheeks. She retched a couple of times. A thin pool of liquid, like a snail’s trail, slid down the side of her cheek. Ali gently wiped her face, and Izzy fell asleep again.
Ali got up to stretch her legs. She encouraged Jake to go back up to his room, but he insisted he wanted to make sure Izzy was fine before he went back to Lucy.
“Who’s Lucy?” asked Ali. “Does she qualify as revision?”
“My girlfriend.” Jake smiled.
Ali drifted over to Izzy’s desk and unthinkingly pressed the computer mouse to see what the time was. A picture of an emaciated girl popped up on the screen. Her cheekbones were so sunken that it looked as though someone had drawn two black lines across her face. Her hip bones and ribs jutted out through her skin. “In control,” read a caption at the bottom of the photo. Ali checked the name of the website: “Ana and her friends.” She looked at Izzy’s history and noted that the last three sites she had visited were all pro-anorexia websites. She read the messages in the chat room and in particular one to Izzy from a girl in Manchester suggesting that she sprinkle pepper over her food and sniff cat litter to curb her appetite. It was three o’clock in the morning, and in less than four hours the twins would come and wake her up.
“Her eyes are open again,” Jake called over to Ali as she switched off the computer.
“Then she’s definitely conscious,” said Ali.
“Do you want to share a cigarette? It’s my last one. There’s a little balcony where we can sit outside Izzy’s window.”
“I’m not sure that’s appropriate,” said Ali.
“It’s more appropriate than anything else that’s happened tonight,” said Jake, opening the window. “Everyone in this house has secrets. Apart from the twins. You’ll settle in quicker if you develop a few of your own.”
Ali climbed out. The balcony was long and thin, designed for pots, not people. She sat down beside him and tucked her thighs to her chest, grateful for their warmth. A security guard from the private company that patrolled the street shone a flashlight up at the window, and Jake waved to reassure him. He took a couple of drags from the cigarette and then passed it to Ali. She took a deep drag and felt her shoulders finally relax.
“What a fucking evening,” said Jake, taking back the cigarette from her hand. Their fingers brushed against one another. “And I’ve got an essay to finish tomorrow.”
“You mean today.” Ali pointed out the time. Jake grimaced.
“What’s it about?” she asked.
“It’s a comparison between King Lear and A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley,” said Jake. “Any ideas?”
This is a breakthrough, thought Ali, as he passed back the cigarette.
“Both are about patriarchal rule and the relationship between fathers and daughters,” said Ali. “Larry is Lear, and Ginny is Goneril. Both fathers have so much power they’re driven to insanity; both youngest daughters rebel and end up with nothing. The big difference is that Lear thinks he’s a changed man, whereas Larry Cook is just the same. It’s basically Lear told from a female point of view.”
“Very good,” Jake said. He stubbed out the cigarette in the gutter.
“Did you like the book?” asked Ali, who didn’t want to let the conversation drift.
“I can relate to some of the themes,” said Jake cautiously.
“Go on,” said Ali.
Jake paused for a moment. “The tension between living life for yourself and fulfilling other peoples’ expectations, mainly.” He looked startled at this disclosure.
“I can relate to that one, too,” said Ali.
There was a noise in the bedroom as Malea came in with a bucket. They climbed back
in through the window. Malea gave Ali a long, impassive stare.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” asked Jake, as Ali gently opened Izzy’s eyelids to check her pupils. Ali nodded but didn’t allow herself to think about Jo. Instead she took the bucket from Malea.
“What do you think I should say?” Ali asked Malea.
“Say nothing,” Malea said, putting a finger to her lips.
8
Ali slept fitfully. At four-thirty on Monday morning, as the first light shimmered through the gap in the curtains, she finally gave in to insomnia. A couple of months earlier she might have got up to look out of her bedroom window to admire the garden five floors below, but she was already bored with the view. The neat rows of dead alliums imprisoned in the box parterre at the center, the carefully weeded beds where nothing was left to chance, and the flawless, vivid lawn all created an image of clinical containment. Whenever she saw Leicester squat to spill the remains of his organic diet on the lawn, a shudder of pleasure crept up her spine. It was the kind of garden that made you want to sow wheat seeds that would grow tall among the grass, to read something like “Shit happens.”
It was the same with her bedroom. Everything was new: the electric kettle, the wide-screen TV, and the small fridge that mysteriously replenished itself with apples and milk. Not for the first time, she felt a sense of claustrophobia. Bryony had explained that this embarrassment of new gadgetry was to give Ali privacy. But they had slowly mutated from symbols of freedom to oppression. They weren’t to keep others out at awkward times of day after the twins went to bed: they were to keep her in.
Ali had brought a couple of pictures with her from her student digs to hang on the wall. One was a poster from a Francis Bacon retrospective at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. The other was a photograph of her with some friends from university on the beach at Cromer. Both now sat at the back of the big wardrobe that dominated one wall of her bedroom.
She was reluctant to hammer picture hooks into the new wallpaper, and it was embarrassing to put up a Francis Bacon poster in a house where an original hung over the fireplace in the drawing room. To impress Bryony with her interest in child development, Ali had put all the books that she had bought for her on a bookshelf that ran along the opposite wall just above a desk. Beside these was a single carefully chosen photo of Ali with her family, taken on the beach in Cromer.
“People don’t like nannies with fucked-up families,” Rosa had warned her before the interview, without mentioning Jo by name.
Jo was twelve and she was ten. They had identical haircuts, short brown bobs with long fringes, cut at the local hairdresser. Jo was pulling at Ali’s hand pointing at the camera. Ali smiled as she stared at the photo from her bed. She had idolized her sister back then, and Jo had basked in the adulation. Everyone used to comment on how well they got on together. Their roles were clear: Jo was the responsible older child and Ali her adoring younger sister.
Her father had his arm around her mother, pulling her toward him. He was wearing swimming trunks, and his chest was muscular and tanned. Her mother looked glowing and carefree. The bad times were still two years away. It spoke of a happy uncomplicated childhood before the narrative of family life was hijacked.
The subject of why Jo had slipped off the edge of the family map was much debated in the ensuing crisis. There was a neighbor she hung out with when she was fourteen who smoked dope and took magic mushrooms. Since he was now a hygienist at the dentist’s, while Jo was in India on another “voyage of self-discovery,” he could no longer legitimately be blamed; still, Ali’s mother got angry with her father for allowing him to clean his teeth once a year. A couple of dealers had moved into a house behind the train station in the early nineties, but Jo had already moved to a squat in Norwich, so the chronology didn’t fit. Then there was Ali, who was much the brightest pupil the school had seen in years and would have easily made it to Cambridge, had she not messed up her A-levels. Over the years it had become clear to Ali that she was the problem. Drug addiction was a self-esteem issue, the family therapist had explained. Ali’s success highlighted Jo’s failings. No one said anything, but it was obvious to Ali that if she disappeared for a while then Jo might feel better about herself.
• • •
Ali’s quarters were swiftly dubbed “the eyrie,” even though, strictly speaking, they weren’t at the top of the house but on the fifth floor overlooking the back garden, and Jake’s bedroom was directly above her. Foy had come up with the description, and everyone had laughed, partly to indulge him, because everyone knew he was having trouble with his business, but mostly because it skirted the more embarrassing fact that Ali’s bedroom was where the servants quarters used to be.
Knowing it would impress them, Ali had waited until Nick and Bryony were in the kitchen one morning to explain that in Hamlet, Rosencrantz talks about an eyrie of children, and since she was at the heart of the network of rooms used by the younger Skinner children, Foy was more accurate than he realized. Bryony had laughed with approval at the literary reference and had thrown a “Told you so” glance at Nick.
“More songbird than eagle,” Ali said, as she now lay on the bed, promising herself that she would leave when she had managed to pay off her debts and saved a further £5,000 to cover the rest of her university course. If she was cautious she could be free within a year.
She wondered whether Jake was upstairs. They shared the same chimney flue, and Ali had discovered that if she sat close to the fireplace she could hear strands of conversation and music from the room above. She was going to point this out to Jake, but as the weeks slipped by and her questions about his plans or whereabouts were resolutely rebuffed, Ali decided it provided a useful means of monitoring what he was up to. The other night she could clearly smell cigarette smoke. Once he cried out in his sleep.
This morning there was silence. The only noise she could hear was a stray wisteria branch scratching against the window. She forced herself to lie in bed completely still. Outside in the garden she could hear Leicester barking. In a few minutes, Malea would appear with a small bag and scoop up his early-morning offering. Bryony was insistent it should be dealt with swiftly and efficiently because not only did it burn the grass, it offended Leicester’s sensibilities. Urine was even more acidic, and a watering can with a dog-shaped mouth stood permanently by the back door to dilute his pee. What about Malea’s sensibilities? Ali wondered. Clearing up crap on an empty stomach was not the best way to start a new day. But she said nothing, in case her criticism was misinterpreted as an offer to help. Leicester growled menacingly every time he saw her, and to Foy’s delight she had already lost another pair of shoes to one of his dirty protests.
• • •
Nick and Bryony should have returned from Idaho late Sunday evening, and Ali was still unsure what to tell them about Izzy. She ran through the options again: full disclosure, partial disclosure, or silence, which was more complicated than it might seem because it involved both Jake’s and Malea’s complicity. She tried not to be influenced by Izzy. Ali had spent almost an hour with her in the afternoon. Izzy had pleaded with her not to say anything, as big, silent mascara-stained tears meandered down her cheeks.
“I promise I’ve never taken drugs or got so drunk before,” she had said when Ali brought toast and orange juice to her room, urging her to eat.
“What about the boy?” Ali had asked, puzzled that Izzy would assume she would be more worried about the drugs and alcohol than the possibility Izzy had lost her virginity on Ali’s watch. Or perhaps this was how Izzy always behaved at parties? Either way, Ali needed to know because she was pretty sure that Izzy wasn’t using contraception. How easy would it be to get the morning-after pill on a Sunday afternoon in London? The Skinners didn’t use the NHS, and Ali couldn’t possibly call their Harley Street GP. She was somewhat reassured by the fact that they had found Izzy ful
ly clothed, but she was assuming that she had only just gone into the bedroom. Perhaps she had already been there for hours and oral sex was dessert rather than an hors d’oeuvre?
“Did you have sex with him?”
Izzy had looked shocked.
“I’m not that kind of girl, Ali,” she had said as she nibbled the edge of the piece of toast.
“Can you remember?”
“It’s all a bit hazy, but I’m sure nothing like that happened.”
“If we hadn’t come in at that moment, you would have been the kind of girl who allowed herself to be filmed giving her boyfriend a blowjob. People might have felt sorry for you for getting into that situation, but they would have judged you all the same.”
“I didn’t know he was filming me. I thought he liked me. For a couple of hours I stopped feeling fat and ugly.”
Izzy had put down the plate of toast, leaned toward Ali, and rested her head on her shoulder and sobbed. They were real tears, Ali had decided, not the tears of a fourteen-year-old girl trying to negotiate her silence.
“Imagine how let-down your parents would feel if they knew about this.”
“But they won’t know, because you won’t tell them.”
• • •
On the desk beside Ali sat a telephone and her BlackBerry. She would have liked to consult someone. To phone a friend. However, it had slowly dawned on her over the past couple of months that although the Skinners weren’t celebrities in the conventional sense, they were newsworthy, and Rosa’s discretion wasn’t guaranteed. There had been a profile of Nick in the Financial Times; there were photos of them attending a fund-raising dinner at the Tate in the Evening Standard magazine; and Bryony had recently turned down another offer from a magazine to write a diary of her typical week and be photographed wearing Marc Jacobs.
Besides, it was too early for e-mails, and the phone was a red herring. Ali had discovered it was an internal phone when she tried to call her parents on the night she moved in and found herself instead talking to Jake. The architects had put in a planning application to build an elevator, but it had been turned down, so an internal phone system was installed to save people the bother of walking up and down stairs. Jake’s number was 012. Ali’s was 013, he had politely explained. There was a laminated list stuck in the top drawer of the bedside table.