‘She made me swear never to tell you and now I’ve told you.’
Eleanor hoped that if she didn’t speak, the conversation might end; that if she waited long enough, she would turn around to find that Howard had gone; that maybe she had even imagined him ever being there. But when she turned round, Howard was still hunched in the doorway, watching her from under the hoods of his eyes.
‘She would have told me such a thing.’ Eleanor spoke stoutly. The kettle whistled and she took it off the heat, splashing water as she filled her mug. ‘She wouldn’t have told you and not me.’
Howard straightened himself, swaying. ‘She was afraid what you would think. She was always afraid of what you would think.’
‘I would have known.’ Eleanor shook her head, denying his words, though it felt curiously like a denial of her own. Inside, a terrible logic was forming. An obviousness. Like something that had always existed but never been acknowledged.
Howard lurched for the back of a kitchen chair and held on to it, positioning his legs wide for extra balance. ‘She said I had to know everything about her before we married,’ he went on in a tremulous voice. ‘She said, that’s what love was, knowing someone and allowing yourself to be known in return.’ The alcohol was still working on him, felling him. Gaps were starting to appear in the wrong places between his words, like he had forgotten how to speak.
‘When?’ Eleanor leant against the Aga, folding her arms.
‘It was just a few times, she said, in her teens,’ Howard mumbled wretchedly; ‘from when she was fourteen, I think. After she told me I wasn’t allowed to ask again. It was never full sex, she was clear about that. Just….’ he groaned softly, ‘…touching. She said she thought it was because he was deeply lonely. She said she had forgiven him. That I made her happy.’ He dropped his face into his hands. ‘I swore not to tell and now I have.’
‘And now you have.’ Eleanor felt no compassion for him now. She was too lost in her own shock. Everything was making dreadful sense, but a hopeless, retrospective guilt was swamping her too. She had thought she was wiser, cleverer, and yet she had been blind. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she instructed in a brittle voice. ‘Everything. Now.’
‘But I have—’
‘Now.’ She banged the kitchen table, making Howard jump and stagger and cling hopelessly to his chair. Eleanor carried on clutching herself, waiting for him to go on, seeing only Kat’s electric blue eyes glaring at their father, challenging him, taunting him, picking at him like a wound.
23
December 2013
Nick could feel his skin tightening under the early-afternoon sun. Given the number of melanomas he saw, his own relative lack of caution was inexcusable. Donna thought so too and was keen on reminding him of the fact. She used a cabinet’s worth of creams on her own skin, whether lying in the sun or not, different ones for different parts of her body, some promising rejuvenating benefits that Nick did his best not to remark on, since he knew the remarks would not be well received.
A week had passed since the wine-tasting lunch in Durbanville. It was the Saturday before Christmas and they were at a cove the Scammells had mentioned with affection several times, summoned there by a last-minute plea to help Mike celebrate his thirty-eighth birthday. The girls had been dispatched to the Waterfront Mall under the watchful eye of their neighbours’ Dutch au pair, with money for Christmas shopping and pizzas afterwards. The cove was on the Atlantic side of the cape, formed by two vast arms of rock reaching out from a stretch of coast too wild and too far north of Table Bay to be frequented by tourists. They could not have picked a better day; the sea was choppy thanks to a brisk breeze but glassy blue under the beam of a cloudless sky. The lines of breakers rolling onto the beach were only waist-high, regular and foam-topped, perfect for bodysurfing. After the swim, they were heading back towards town for an early dinner at Mike’s favourite restaurant, a seafood shack hidden among the docks beyond Milnerton.
Both the Scammells were already in the sea. Donna had settled herself in the lee of her windbreaker with her iPhone, her expression unreadable behind her big black winged sunglasses. She was wearing a new white sun hat with a long pink sash that streamed in the breeze like bunting.
Nick sat up and looked towards the water where their neighbours were signalling for them to join them. ‘You coming in?’
Donna kept her gaze on her phone screen. ‘You go. I’m barely warm enough as it is.’
Nick let his gaze remain on his wife for several moments. Somehow, the conversation wasn’t about warmth or swimming. It struck him with sudden force that very few of their conversations were ever really about what they seemed; the real dialogue was always unspoken, a subtext. Donna not swimming was unusual. She was excellent and hardy in the water, the legacy of a childhood spent beside pools and beaches, and more than up to bodysurfing on a hot breezy afternoon. And it would give her the chance to be near Mike.
Nick turned his gaze to the water edge, where their neighbour was now clowning around, putting his solid square body through collapsing handstands and cartwheels while the hapless Lindy clapped like a seal.
‘Okay.’ Nick got off his towel and stretched until his back clicked. He waved at Mike, wondering if it was the show the man was laying on for his wife that was deterring Donna’s entry into the water. Presumably the pair of them had swum together countless times, before and after making love, in their respective swimming pools, on snatched picnics by the sea. Nick let the images form, staring them out in his mind’s eye. He had been doing a lot of this in recent days, discovering that the more head-on he came at them, the less potent such images grew. There had been a sense of sadness too for a while, but that was utterly gone now. It wasn’t possible to mourn losing something already so well and truly lost.
‘Hey, Nick?’
‘Yeah?’
She had taken the hat off, placed the phone face-down on her stomach and was staring at him. There was something in her voice that sounded true for once. Maybe she knows I know, Nick thought suddenly. Maybe she is going to say something.
Instead, she said, ‘Just to be clear. If I wanted any work doing on my face, you would do it, wouldn’t you?’
Nick laughed. He couldn’t help it. Not because it was a ridiculous idea – though it was – Donna’s skin was drum-tight, over a face and body of such robust bone structure that it was clear she would remain a standout beauty of whichever decade she inhabited – but because of the crude indication that potentially she still regarded him as having certain uses. ‘You don’t need cosmetic surgery, Donna. But to answer your question, no I wouldn’t do it.’
‘Well, that’s just fucking great,’ she snapped, either not seeing or choosing to ignore the compliment veiled in his refusal. ‘What’s the good of being married to a guy who’s only prepared to make other women look better?’
‘It is not about that, as you well know. Of course I wouldn’t stop you having work done if you really thought you needed it. It is just that I couldn’t be the one to do it. It is about being a doctor versus being… a person. For me the two worlds are separate and need to stay that way. In addition to which, as you also know, it is not my favourite area of expertise. My day at the clinic is purely to pay bills.’ Nick tightened the waist string on his Bermudas. He had been losing weight recently, without trying. He was simply burning more energy, he could feel it. Getting through every day, every conversation, took effort. ‘And besides, you couldn’t look more beautiful than you already do,’ he added with some force. It was true after all. ‘Beauty is not your problem.’
Donna, who had picked up her phone, slowly lowered it again. ‘Oh yes? And what is my problem?’
There was the usual menace in her tone, but Nick could sense the new uncertainty in her too. Something had shifted between them and she couldn’t put her finger on it. He wondered sometimes if this was the main reason he hadn’t said anything yet about Mike. It wasn’t how he had planned to tackle things, but somehow the da
ys had been slipping by and still he had put a confrontation off. ‘I’m not sure, Donna. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure it out.’ He turned and strolled towards the sea, but then turned parallel to it, deciding to take a walk first. He kept his shoulders loose. He knew she was watching and he wanted her to think he was fine. In a way he was. Finer than he had been in years.
Eleanor raised herself onto her elbow and lifted up the thin curtain covering her bedroom window. Below her the muddy scrub separating her block of flats from the rail embankment bore testament to the dankness of the late December weather. The trains had kept her awake again, all night it felt like, shaking her back to consciousness every time she was on the verge of sleep. Like a form of torture.
It had to be late morning, but the day held no light to speak of. Eleanor tried to recall when she had last seen the sun. Two weeks ago? Three? She endeavoured to think forwards instead. Christmas was six days away. She pictured Howard and the children, the rituals they would all have to go through; the rituals they would expect her to go through. There had been a card that week, inviting her to join them; one line in Howard’s miniature cobweb writing.
Do please come for Christmas. Kat would have wanted it. We want it.
Eleanor propped herself up on her elbows, shoving the curtain out of the way. A large piece of dirty plastic clung to the lower branches of a tree. It had been blowing round the garden for as long as she could remember, gusting into different positions, getting dirtier, tattier.
When the landline on her bedside table rang, she shuddered. She had thought getting back to London would make everything easier, but it hadn’t. It had made things the opposite of easier. She stared at the phone for ten rings and then slowly lifted the receiver to her ear.
‘Eleanor?’
Eleanor hesitated. ‘Megan?’
‘I just heard about Kat,’ blurted her old friend, ‘Billy heard – from a rugby mate who works with Howard in the city… Jesus, Eleanor, I am so sorry, I had no idea. Now I know why you’ve been silent for months and months – and I’ve been so busy – but I wish you had told me. You should have told me… but, oh God, how are you, darling girl? Are you coping?’
‘I… I’m not sure.’
‘Fucking cancer. Bowel, Billy said, is that right?’
‘Yup.’
‘But, of course, you probably don’t want to go into it all now… on the phone…’
‘No, I…’
‘I need to see you. Talk properly. I can’t get away this week but maybe could you come and visit us instead? Pack a bag this minute. Come for Christmas. Billy would love it too. Fresh Welsh air, dogs and cows, not to mention our three thugs who can be quite sweet when required, I promise you…’
Eleanor rubbed at a smear on the windowpane with her fingers, making it worse. She thought of Billy, his wide, wonky rugby player’s nose and deep-set eyes, blinking sheepishly at hers as she opened her flat door to him. Bumping into each other at the nightclub. London heaving in the Christmas party season. Her on one of her mad nights. Him on a stag do. The shared taxi. So many rotten decisions. Was it genes or bad luck that made a supposedly clever person so repetitively stupid?
‘Thanks, Megan, but there’s still a lot to… sort out… you know.’ She saw out of the corner of her eye that it was almost midday.
‘Oh, yes. There must be… of course… Oh, Eleanor, I am just so very sorry for your loss,’ Megan’s voice was cracking. ‘I never met Kat, but I know she…’ There was a silence, the chance to speak. And Eleanor would have filled it, if only she could have thought of a single thing she could say. ‘It will have to be in the New Year then,’ Megan went on firmly. ‘I’ll come to London, kick off the wellies, take you out to lunch. In fact, what about the nineteenth of January, as I have to be in town that day to talk to someone about cows. The nineteenth, Eleanor. Four weeks from now. Will that work for you?’ She spoke with great vehemence, as if she sensed the need to keep a grip on something more than the conversation.
‘The nineteenth,’ Eleanor echoed, already resolving to pull out. ‘That would be nice. Thanks.’
‘And you are doing okay, are you, apart from being sad?’
‘Yes,’ said Eleanor, a dim part of her thinking that losing her best friend, as well as her sister, was the least she deserved, given what she had done. She looked round her room, wondering what Megan, who these days ran a herd of prize-winning cattle as well as her family of three sons, would say if she could see her, still marooned on the grubby island of her bed in the middle of the day, surrounded by an ocean of dirty laundry, her phone and laptop cold, and nothing in the fridge but an out-of-date pot of humus. ‘I mean, at least with cancer you have a chance to say goodbye,’ she managed, snatching at the words Howard had used like a lifeline.
The moment Eleanor put the phone down it rang again. She picked it up automatically, thinking Megan had wanted to add something, but it was Trevor Downs.
‘Sweetie, you’re not answering your mobile, and you’re not here. Are you okay?’
‘Not there?’
‘Yes… er… we had an arrangement that you would come today at eleven. I know it’s a Saturday, but we have done that before…’ Trevor hesitated, acutely aware of the tragic business of the sister. He nearly hadn’t rung. ‘You are writing the story of my life, remember?’ he cajoled gently. ‘We once had a deadline of Christmas and have got rather behind. I live in Chiswick, and in the normal run of things you get on a train to come and see me…’
‘Oh God, Trevor, sorry. I… somehow… I forgot.’
‘Darling, don’t apologise. We can leave it.’
‘No, I…’
‘Though it would be splendid if you came,’ Trevor pushed on, because they were badly in need of the session. ‘I’ll rustle up some lunch. Just get here as soon as you can.’ Trevor put down his phone with a compassionate sigh. His ghostwriter had been hard to like at the beginning, such an Amazon of a girl, bullying with her tape recorder and her timelines. The illness of the younger sister had softened her. Progress on the book of his life had faltered accordingly, but it had seemed impossibly churlish to mind. With the loss of his own dear Larry still so raw two years on, his heart had gone out to her.
Trevor set about making a duck salad, propping his recipe book against the fruit bowl and flicking the radio to Classic FM. They were playing Mahler’s second. It was near the end, when the mezzo soprano took off. Resurrection and redemption galloping in on white chargers. Trevor started on a bottle of Prosecco and sang along in the falsetto that he reserved for times of absolute privacy, breaking off as a title for his memoirs popped into his head. For My Sins. Sincere. Faintly saucy. Yes, it had distinct possibilities.
He sang on, happier. He would run it past Eleanor. Grief might have caused the poor girl to lose a bit of focus, but he still trusted her literary judgement. Indeed, given the calibre of her background – the first-class Oxford degree and the well-reviewed book written on behalf of some eminent Russian academic – the cheapness of her fee had seemed astonishing. It was because the book on Igor Strovsky hadn’t sold, his agent Julian had explained at the time, adding the unnecessary but compelling detail that Eleanor and the Russian had also been lovers, until the man bolted back to his wife and his homeland.
She was on his doorstep within the hour, her face gaunt, her long frizzy hair as black and wild as a thunderstorm. ‘Trevor. What can I say.’ She plucked at the frayed strap of the bulging canvas satchel in which she kept her notes and laptop.
‘Say you’ll have a glass,’ Trevor said briskly, ushering her inside. ‘I’ve got a bottle on the go. Not proper fizz but it’s cold and dry and packs just the punch one needs on such a dingy day. Roll on Christmas.’ He flung his arms up in theatrical despair as he led her through into his recently completed glass-domed conservatory, inwardly bracing himself for a barrage of compliments, since Eleanor had borne witness to some of the disruption the work had caused. But Eleanor dropped wearily onto his new scarlet s
ofa without a word, dumping her workbag at her feet.
Trevor trotted back to the kitchen to fetch another glass of Prosecco and pressed it into her hands. He had been saving a funny story to tell her about a fan cornering him in the supermarket, but noticing how stiff and low she seemed, he sat down next to her instead. ‘My dear, you look really carved up. I was a bully to make you come. Forget my silly book. Let’s just have a nice lunch.’
Eleanor took a sip of her drink. The bubbles felt like needles, stabbing her throat, pleasantly sharp, something to push against as she swallowed. Something to push against. It was what Kat had said.
Trevor started to say something else but she cut across him, blurting, ‘I can’t go on, Trevor. With your book. With anything. I can’t do it.’
‘There now. Goodness me.’ Trevor hid his dismay, patting her knee. ‘My dear girl, you are in the eye of the storm. The grief will – it does – get better.’ He withdrew his hand, guiltily aware that he was rather enjoying offering comfort.
Eleanor sank backwards, staring at the ceiling, her glass lodged precariously between her thighs. ‘There have been terrible things… unforgiveable things…’ She chewed at her beautiful mouth.
Trevor hesitated, curiosity vying with compassion. ‘Unforgivable is a strong word, sweetie.’
‘I impersonated my sister,’ she snarled, flinging herself round to face him, her dark eyes glassy with self-disgust. ‘My sick, now dead sister. Is that unforgivable enough for you?’
Trevor picked a speck of red sofa fluff off his trouser leg. ‘I think unhappiness can make one do all sorts of things,’ he said carefully, his mind filling with all the nights he had worn Larry’s clothes, standing in front of the mirror, weeping. ‘You can’t rush these things, sweetness. And of course you are probably angry with her, for dying. A lot of grief is simply a sort of rage.’
Good Girls Page 21