Good Girls

  The divan bed would barely encase his long body, she reflected now, and the room itself was an apology of a space, more of a cupboard than a bedroom. Mrs Owens had long since decamped to retirement in the West country and the ironing pile, such as it was, lived in a plastic basket behind the door in the downstairs cloak room. Vincent managed the occasional shirt and Kat didn’t bother. The sheets on Nick’s bed, like all washed linen in the house, were dry and dimpled, having been bundled upstairs in the brutalised state in which they had emerged from the tumble dryer.

  Eleanor’s brain hummed. The jug mix had been fierce: gin, whisky, sherry. Her father, perhaps not surprisingly, wasn’t a big drinker, usually sticking – as he had that night – to beer. She had sipped her own forfeits for fear of choking, glad that her term at university meant she didn’t feel a complete fool. Kat, on the other hand, had swigged hers without much apparent effect. Her head was hard, she had boasted to both her and Nick, and her stomach like iron. At one stage, she had rolled onto her back to demonstrate the point, slapping the bare white flatness where her stomach met the waistband of her jeans.

  Eleanor pushed off the bedclothes and sat up. Nick was a few yards away, that was the overwhelming thing. She could feel her nipples harden in the cold, pushing against her T-shirt nightie. Thirty seconds, that was all it would take to get to the yellow room door. Possibly twenty. If she walked fast. Some things in life were about courage. About… Eleanor snapped her brain shut and spun herself upright, grabbing her dressing gown off her chair.

  Once in the corridor, she froze nonetheless, hugging herself, listening. Vincent’s three beers meant there was a better chance of him sleeping instead of pacing. Sometimes he snored. Eleanor strained her ears, hearing nothing above the usual creaks of the vicarage. She set off along the corridor, finding it sufficiently hard to walk straight for her to realise that she was still quite drunk.

  The brass handle of the yellow room door was cold under her fingers. She turned it slowly, making no sound. Inside, the first thing she noticed was the moon, a mother-of-pearl button in the middle of the windowpane. He hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains, which were flimsy anyway, scraps of yellow that Mrs Owens had strung up one afternoon, not worth bothering with. A silvery light illuminated the shape of Nick beneath the bedclothes. He was lying on his side, one arm up under the pillow, the other round what Eleanor at first took to be a bunch of bedding. It was only as she took a step closer that she saw it was her sister, tucked so closely against him that it was hard to tell them apart. Bare necks, bare shoulders, bare arms, threaded tight as twine.

  Eleanor backed away, groping behind her for the open door. There was no sensation within her other than the desire to leave. She had nearly made it into the passageway when Kat’s eyes sprang open. Her sister turned her head slowly, peering out at Eleanor from the nest of bedding. Then she smiled.

  Part III

  18

  2013 - Sussex

  Subject: Last Word

  From: [email protected]

  Date: 2/12/13

  To: [email protected]

  Dear Kat,

  Your silence, as ever, speaks volumes. You are sticking to your guns. You do not wish to correspond and have no desire to meet up, with or without Eleanor. (I wonder if you have even told her. I suspect you haven’t.)

  I sense such resolve in you now and cannot resist comparing it to what I remember about you from before. Not that you weren’t determined! Landing a job in the fashion world in London at barely sixteen takes some mettle! (You lied about your age, as I recall.) But, don’t be offended when I say you weren’t exactly the most focused person I had ever met. You were out to enjoy life, it seems to me, throwing yourself at whatever came along that looked like fun (me, briefly!). You come across as being so much stronger now, not to mention more contemplative. Dare I say that I prefer it? (Yes, I dare. You are not going to reply anyway. Hah!)

  Which brings me to the point of this email. I accept, at last, that you do not wish to see me. Not this year. Not in the New Year. Not ever. Not for old times’ sake or anything else. And I respect that, I really do. But I have also decided that this means I can finally abandon every last shred of trying to stick to your precious ‘rules’ and tell you something deeply personal and – I make no apologies for this – somewhat indulgent. It is something which you may take as proof, should you require it, that I really had laid our messy past to rest a long time ago.

  What I want to say concerns the first night we spent together. I mean the VERY first.

  Do you remember that night? It was a long time ago after all…almost twenty years! I had come to take Eleanor out for lunch and we spotted you hitch-hiking, in a ballet dress! So we gave you a lift home and the pair of you persuaded me to stay for supper and games (with drink penalties!) and somehow I ended up agreeing to stay over. I was drunk, but I also remember being bewitched – literally – by you. You were still so young but seemed such a free spirit, and a beautiful one at that. Smitten would be the word! Sorry to be blunt, but that was the truth of it, as you know, since I was pretty soon telling you as much, ditching my girlfriend of six years and begging you to go out with me, which you eventually did, in a manner of speaking, albeit while somehow getting yourself to London, working all hours and generally squeezing me in between the hordes of other men queuing up to take you out!

  But to get back to that first encounter. You cast your spell over me, Kat, and I remember, even before anything happened between us, feeling bad for Eleanor because she and I had got close, and because she was so straightforward and trusting and didn’t have a clue. That night, not surprisingly given how much we drank, I pretty much passed out in that box of a spare room, only to wake and find you next to me. Your feet were icy. And your hands. You were shivering. I’ve never forgotten how you shook, as if you were afraid just as much as cold. I couldn’t believe my luck! All you wanted was to sleep with me, you said. Just to SLEEP. And that is what we did. By the time I woke properly in the morning, you were gone.

  And though rather more did happen between us, eventually, I was always aware that it was really only because I was so keen. (Bombarding you with phone-calls being my primary tactic, if memory serves. You caved in and I was too pleased to care how or why.) The point being, we never really were a ‘proper’ couple, Kat, because you never WANTED to be. I chased and sometimes you let me catch you. End of.

  So I have decided that, looking back – (Kierkegaard!!!) – that night of sleep was in many ways our best time together. You went on to break my heart, Kat – never being straight, keeping me dangling – I can’t tell you how desolate I used to feel getting that night bus from London to Oxford, the lurking conviction that you were glad to see the back of me – but that first night, for a few hours, something good happened. You were just a girl who needed to be held and I was there to do it. I have often thought how much better it would have been if I had left it there.

  Your husband Howard, from what little you have mentioned, is clearly the rock you were looking for. And from your emails, I can state with some authority that he is a lucky man. I hope Eleanor has found happiness with someone too. I always felt bad at the way she steered clear once you and I started going out. We had already settled on being just good friends, but I still knew she felt shut out and hurt. When you and I finally went our separate ways for good, I remember thinking it a shame that I had somehow lost you both.

  I wish you well, Kat. You were right about the dreams business, leaving them where they are. And about Kierkegaard! You have been right about so many things. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to get to know you a little better. But I promise, since you so clearly wish it, not to get in touch again.

  When you next see Eleanor, please give her my love.

  With great fondness,

  Nick x

  Eleanor printed off the email and then stood very still, forcing herself to read it again. Its contents felt like comeuppance. It had been stupid
even to print it out. It needed deleting, obviously. As she had all the others, covering her tracks. All the months and months of it. Letting Nick think she was Kat. Shame coursed through her, a burning rush that dried her mouth and made her skin damp. I’m glad you grew to like being a doctor. One line was all it had taken. One line and Nick had been hooked. And a part of Eleanor had been elated by that alone – the quickness of his response, his cleverness in finding a way round her silly obstacles, how hard he had then fought to keep the conversation going.

  Eleanor gripped the paper very tightly, but still it trembled. It was only an email, she reminded herself bitterly.

  Eleanor let her gaze roam round Kat’s study, messy with evidence of her faltering progress on the Trevor Downs manuscript: notes, half-started chapters. She had been chiselling away at the ghost-writing project all year, bringing it on her visits to her sister’s house, using it, like the emails with Nick, as a distraction from what was going on. The old actor’s ramblings remained in a state of mortifying chaos. Much like her life, Eleanor reflected darkly, as the hopes from January flashed across her mind: belief in the book commission, Kat’s recovery. It had all been a lie.

  Eleanor dropped her eyes to the printout in her hands, contemplating the sudden bleak notion that a long time ago she had placed her trust in the written word and all it had ever done was let her down.

  The shredder made its usual terrible sound, like a machine that was broken instead of one doing its job. Nick’s final, lucid, cruelly poignant missive went through very quickly. A loud whirring, it was over in seconds. Water back under its bloody bridge.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Howard. You startled me.’ Eleanor pressed an involuntary hand to her heart as she spun round. Her brother-in-law looked drawn, his thin face etched with deepening lines, his short mousy hair scuffed in the way that showed the new spreading baldness at the crown. His youth is being sucked out of him, Eleanor thought; Kat is going to take it with her to her grave.

  ‘Manage to get anything done?’ He glanced at the shredder, where a few small curls of Nick’s letter were still sticking out of the top.

  ‘Not really. Difficult to concentrate.’ She spoke quickly, brusquely, wanting only to divert Howard’s attention from the jaws of the machine and its last pitiful

  trailing evidence of her unforgivable duplicity. Her thoughts swung back to the May day on which it had all started seven months before. She had arrived at the house in a state of shock, summoned by Howard’s report of a sudden relapse in Kat’s condition. Expecting to be there an afternoon, she had stayed for a week.

  It turned out that her sister’s post-operative sprightliness had been an elaborate charade. The cancer was terminal and always had been. Kat had sworn him to secrecy, Howard had confessed miserably, coming to meet Eleanor in the drive, both about the diagnosis and the immediate, unwavering decision to undergo no further treatment beyond an initial operation.

  She had wanted to enjoy what she had left, Kat had snapped when Eleanor’s wretched gawping face betrayed her knowledge of this decision not to poison her already faltering system with pointless chemicals.

  ‘Could you be useful instead of cross,’ she had suggested archly, once Howard had beaten a tactful retreat. It was half-term and the children were out with Hannah at a theme park. Kat had been lying on the chaise longue in the conservatory, bundled between pillows and a duvet, thin as a twelve-year-old, the glorious silver-honey of her hair an assault against her pale skin. ‘Howard is floundering. He is going to need help, especially with family admin. He’s crap at that sort of stuff. The kids’ comings and goings, parents’ evenings and sports’ days and concerts and outings – with three schools, there is so much going on – forms to fill in, subs to pay… I’ve already got rather behind. Everything takes such energy…’ She had let the sentence hang, introducing a silence in which there was so much that Eleanor had wanted to say that she found she couldn’t speak at all. ‘In fact, perhaps you could go to my computer and take a look now,’ Kat had snapped, cutting off the moment like a slamming door, ‘print off anything that needs signing, ask me stuff you are not sure of.’

  Eleanor had stumbled along the hallway to Kat’s study to set about the task at once, grateful for any avenue to be helpful. The computer was open at her sister’s email account and Eleanor had ploughed through the relevant correspondence, quickly syphoning out what needed action: a couple of dates for a concert and a sports day, and two forms requiring parental signatures – one for ballet lessons for Evie and another about a trip to a castle for Luke. As she worked, she was aware of the shadow of the tailor’s dummy in the corner, still decked in the lilac it had been wearing in January. It took her back to the curious coercion by her sister that afternoon to help compose a reply to Nick Wharton. At the time, she had thought it was game-playing – Kat at her usual tricks. But sitting at the desk that cold May Friday, the new horrible knowledge of Kat’s real prognosis churning inside, it occurred to Eleanor that her sister could have been playing a more generous game: wresting her focus to Nick Wharton, making jibes about visiting their father – maybe Kat had simply been throwing up diversions from being asked too many awkward questions about the excision of the tumour that was already a ticking bomb.

  Eleanor had been roused from such musings by the arrival of a fresh email in Kat’s inbox. And there it was. Nick’s reply-to-a-reply, four months tardy and thoroughly dismissive, wishing Kat well for the rest of her life. The irony had been stark. But so had Eleanor’s reflex of delight at the coincidence; the realisation that, out of all the million minutes in which Nick could have chosen to write back, he should have done so when she was logged in and looking on Kat’s behalf. And it was because of that that Eleanor had fired back the comment about being glad Nick had grown to like being a doctor. She was glad. Let him assume it’s from Kat, she had thought, not pausing to imagine any harm as she sent the message on its way. It had felt nothing more than a one-off chance to flash a detail of once treasured knowledge; something she would tell Kat about just as soon as the right moment presented itself.

  Except, of course, she hadn’t told Kat, and it had proved anything but one-off, because Nick had replied at once and so had she. And on it had gone, twelve weeks of the most enjoyable correspondence Eleanor had known since Igor, except with far more playfulness and empathy than her Russian lover had ever managed, and resulting in a growing desire to open up in precisely the way she kept insisting to Nick was out of bounds. Indeed, as the days ground on and Kat grew sicker, their correspondence had begun to feel almost like consolation. Something – the only thing – to look forward to between the stop-start efforts at writing Trevor’s life story and ever longer spells at her sister’s bedside. Guilt grew, a black flower in her heart, but Eleanor had ignored it for as long as she could, telling herself that emails were only emails and that the opinions she expressed to Nick were always her own. Never once had she even signed Kat’s name.

  Eleanor turned her back on the shredder and leant against the desk, facing her brother-in-law. She had done the right thing in the end, she reminded herself. Even if it had taken until July. Nick’s playful request to describe herself had been the clincher. She had been alone in her flat that day, feeling so low, so powerless. She knew he meant to cheer her up, but all she could think of was deceitful lying cow. It had been like waking up from a wonderful dream, waking up to shame.

  Nick hadn’t made it easy, of course, finding reasons to write again, including the suggestion – of all things – that he meet with both her and Kat for a drink. Eleanor had had to laugh at that. A sharper reminder of why their communications had had to end would have been hard to conceive.

  Eleanor folded her arms. Howard was still standing in the doorway, lost in one of his trances of sadness.

  He nodded again in the direction of the scattered leaves of the Trevor manuscript. ‘I like it that you work in here when you stay.’

  Eleanor grimaced. ‘It is not exactly worki
ng, to be honest. But I suppose an old actor’s memoirs is never going to be Tolstoy, is it?’ She endeavoured to smile, fighting down the unhappy reflection that the commission might perhaps have become some sort of literary masterpiece in the hands of a different, better writer; the kind of writer who would never have posed as a sister in emails to old flames, let alone a seriously ill sister, now locked in a losing battle with metastasising tumours. ‘All Trevor has to offer is theatre gossip,’ she said feebly, ‘has-been theatre gossip from a has-been.’

  Howard nodded, as if he sympathised with Eleanor’s literary endeavours, when they both knew his mind was still in the big spare room upstairs where he had spent the two hours since his return from London. He had wanted to take time off work, but Kat had insisted against it. He needed his working life, she liked to point out crisply, both to keep him sane now and for later on. Being moved into the spare room had been another commandment. So Howard could sleep uninterrupted, she said. Though, from what Eleanor could make out, he spent most nights alongside her anyway. She often glimpsed him through the crack in the door in the early morning, sprawling in the armchair beside Kat’s bed, his eyes closed, glasses hanging off his fingers, phone, iPad and charger wires strewn round his feet.

  ‘She seems better today, don’t you think?’ Howard’s voice was stern, as if daring Eleanor to disagree. ‘Sort of calmer. And her face is a good colour. We had quite a chat. And she didn’t do so much of that… you know… that twitching she does… when she’s fighting the pain instead of taking more relief… Christ, why does she have to do that? I mean what the fuck is the point of that? All she’s got to do is squeeze the fucking button.’ He turned swiftly and dropped his forehead with a brutal thud against the door jamb, ramming his hands into his trouser pockets. He was still in his suit, his spotty city tie loosened and askew, his top two shirt buttons undone. ‘Sorry. Long day.’ He straightened and faced her slowly, breathing in and out, rolling his shoulders. ‘Hannah’s got the kids settled, thank god. Thank god for Hannah.’