The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  The room’s not the way I’d expected. Silent Witness and all those movies are big fat lies. It’s a normal hospital consulting room, two wide doors to let trolleys and fat people through, walls as plain and white as a chapel of rest, not a single distinguishing feature apart from the body on the trolley that sits in the centre of the floor. He’s covered in a sheet, which has been turned back to reveal his face before we entered. None of that your-dinner-is-served theatre you see on the TV. Just… my father, dead.

  For a moment I don’t recognise him. Death slackens the face, shows up the bones beneath. His jaw has travelled backwards with the help of gravity so he looks as though he has no teeth. But then I see that it’s him, five years older, hair a little longer as if to compensate for the fact that it’s further up the crown of his head, what looks like a little network of broken veins on the upper parts of his cheeks. I stare. And stare and stare. My mind is blank.

  ‘What did he die of?’ I ask.

  ‘We can’t say yet, I’m afraid,’ she says. ‘We’ll be doing the PM once you’ve identified him.’

  ‘Hazard a guess?’

  ‘Sorry. Can’t do that. Procedures and legal stuff. Can I ask you, is this the body of Sean George Jackson?’

  I nod. ‘Yes.’

  I feel a sudden lurch of sorrow somewhere deep inside. Ah, there you are, I think. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to come. Sean George Jackson. No longer here. I wonder what you were thinking, when you died? Did you know that this was it? Did you think of us, at all?

  ‘You can stay as long as you like,’ she says, kindly. ‘Some people find it helpful.’

  ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘No, I’m done. Thank you.’

  Chapter Seven

  2004 | Thursday | Sean

  He texts his ex-wife when he gets an opportunity to be by himself in the annexe under the pretext of checking that all is well. The inflatable mattresses are still in their boxes, all five of them; he’ll be having a word with the staff about ticking things off on lists when he gets back to the office. As he closes the door and cuts off the sound of the pneumatic drill they’re using at Seawings next door, he realises that he’s in relative quiet for the first time since he got out of the car. Another thing I’ll have to have a word about, he thinks. Once I’ve done this.

  ‘When did we agree I was having the girls this weekend?’

  The reply comes in in less than a minute. She’s clearly been waiting for him. Which means that she’s done this on purpose.

  ‘Do I really have to keep your diary for you still, Sean? This is the standard schedule.’

  He inhales sharply through his nose. Bloody women. It’s just typical of her to sabotage his plans like this. She’s bitter still, six years on, and she can’t resist just having the odd go when she gets the chance.

  ‘As the keeper of my diary you know perfectly well that this is my birthday weekend.’

  ‘Yes! The girls are really looking forward to celebrating with you!’

  ‘But I…’

  He stops, deletes, starts again. Must not give her any ammunition.

  ‘I’m delighted to see them, of course. But I thought we’d moved the weekend.’

  ‘No, we didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, we did.’

  ‘I’m sorry you don’t want your daughters interrupting your birthday, Sean. It’s a terrible inconvenience, having leftover children, I know. Sadly, the court thinks you should have access. If you didn’t want to step up and do your bit you shouldn’t have asked for it.’

  He gasps out loud. ‘I don’t – God, you bloody – ugh!’

  He shoves the phone back in his pocket. She’s done this on purpose, he knows she has. Heather is beyond anal about dates and times and places; always has been. Used to strike people off invite lists for being late more than once. The odds on her forgetting a date she made a big deal of every year for twelve years are so minuscule a bookie would refuse to offer them. He goes back to the kitchen to face the music.

  India and Milly are perched on chrome bar stools at the kitchen island, eating toast. They’re still wearing their bikinis, Milly’s a size too small, the breasts she seems to have suddenly sprouted in the month since he last saw her threatening to spill out into the butter. ‘Girls,’ he says, ‘can you get a bit more decent before the guests arrive?’

  They turn and gawp at him. ‘What are you saying?’ asks Milly. ‘That you’re hanging around with kiddy-fiddlers?’

  He refuses to rise. Milly and her mouth. She likes to provoke and provoke, and always feigns amazement when someone eventually reacts. ‘I’m just saying that bikinis are for beaches and swimming pools,’ he says. ‘You need to cover up when you come into the house.’

  ‘Frankly,’ says Claire, coming into the room, ‘I don’t think those bikinis are fit for public display at all. We should get Milly a one-piece, really. There’s a bit of an abundance of flesh going on there these days.’

  Milly’s jaw drops open and her eyes fill with tears. Oh, God, the sensitivities of teenage girls. But really, if she doesn’t want people to comment on her weight, she should try eating less. Now he looks, he sees that there’s a roll of fat coming on to the small of her back. Sean doesn’t approve of women who don’t look after themselves. It’s the least they can do, frankly. Claire’s gone up a dress size herself since she had the twins, and he’s not happy about that, either. Milly will be a size fourteen soon if she doesn’t watch out, and then no one will ever look at her apart from the chubby-chasers.

  Milly bites into her toast and stares at them both like they’ve sprouted extra heads.

  ‘Maybe a bit less toast and a bit more exercise,’ he says. ‘That’ll probably do it.’

  ‘Yeah, fuck you,’ says Milly. ‘Maybe you could do with a hair transplant.’

  ‘And crowns,’ says India. She always backs her sister up when it comes down to it. It’s a horrible little nation of two they’ve got going there. He sometimes feels that they’ve formed a consortium against him. Oh, well. You can’t help it if your kids get bitter after a divorce. They’re so self-centred it would never occur to them that their parents have a right to happiness. ‘You can totally see those cigars on your teeth these days.’

  Claire purses her lips. You shouldn’t let them talk to you like that, the look says. They’re guests in my house.

  ‘Just do it,’ he says. ‘I’m requesting it, so I expect you to do it.’

  ‘That’s not really the meaning of requesting,’ says Milly.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Well, I’m telling you.’

  He sets the girls on to taking the mattresses up to the bedrooms and inflating them. Might as well make themselves useful. He can hear them padding about over his head, giggling and pulling things about. Outside, someone revs the engine of the digger at the building site next door. A crash, then a chorus of Polish expletives. I must find out how to get some Poles of my own, he thinks. I hear they cost a stack less than your average British brickie, and they don’t seem to be stopping for tea breaks every ten minutes. Hurrah for the Common Market. Country’s going to be full of Eastern Europeans before the decade’s up. Marvellous to have the outsourcing bringing itself to Mohammed rather than having to go and find it. It’s been irritating watching all those call-centre savings in action and not having the sort of company that could benefit from the cheaper labour available elsewhere in the world.

  ‘Well, this is nice,’ says Claire. ‘Where are they going to sleep? The maid’s room’s full of boxes. Not that anybody’s going to be getting much sleep with that lot crashing about outside.’

  ‘Weekend starts tomorrow,’ he says. ‘They’ll be in the pub by three o’clock. They’ll just have to share with Simone, out in the annexe.’

  ‘Lovely. Yes, that’ll work.’ Her voice drips sarcasm.

  ‘They’ll enjoy it. It’ll be like a sleepover.’

  ‘I doubt Simone will think so.’

  ‘Well, what
else am I meant to do?’ he snaps. ‘Any suggestions, given you know best about everything?’

  Claire gets the look again. ‘I’m just saying, Sean,’ she says, in that nasal voice he’s learned to dread. ‘I’m going to unpack. Perhaps you’d like to go and check on the twins, if that’s not too much to ask? Your other daughters?’

  She stalks away. He follows her like a smacked puppy and watches as she climbs the stairs. A brand-new staircase, sourced by Linda, the treads made of toughened glass, abraded at the edges to look as though they have been hewn whole from living crystal. Thirty thousand pounds’ worth of stairs that will have added a good hundred-k to the asking price. Even though he can’t see her face, her very backside radiates offence. How a pair of buttocks can look offended he doesn’t know, but there they are, right there, going up the stairs in high dudgeon. Sean flicks a finger at them and pulls a face.

  She has settled the twins on a white combed-sheepskin rug in front of the shiny gas firebowl that sits proudly in the open chimney breast. They’ve knocked the rooms together to create a large open-plan space from two poky ones, but left the fireplace as a focal feature. A spend of ten thousand pounds that will reap another hundred and fifty thousand when the house goes on the market on Thursday. Sean is no longer able to think of houses as places. To him they’re bank statements, expenses sheets, 3-D illustrations of investment-to-profit ratios.

  He’s killing several birds with one stone this weekend: saving a few thou on a rental property and testing out the house’s impact value on a tame audience. It’s the first time he’s used Linda Innes for her design skills, and he suspects it won’t be the last. His building team are standing by to make speedy adjustments if anyone notices something they really, really hate, but to his well-trained eye it looks as though every choice she’s made has been perfect for the market. She’s even picked out the perfect yuppie dream furniture from the warehouse without any guidance at all: the white leather cubic sofas, the fluffy rugs, the coffee table with the glass top and the display boxes beneath, where she’s placed souvenirs from seasides thousands of miles from this one: a giant conch, a dried-out rainbow starfish, a lump of coral the size of an ostrich egg. The firebowl is polished copper, the cupboard doors have no handles, the floor is quarry tiles of Aberdonian granite. In a dark and useless corner, a giant Ali Baba pot filled with Brobdingnagian bamboo feathers. Not a place to fall over in, but perfect for impressing your sales director.

  The children, however, are not impressed. In fact, they’re making a start on redecorating. They’ve begun with the rug and a set of crayons. Ignoring the A3 sketch-pad that sits on the floor beside them, they sit face to face in their OshKosh pinafores, colouring each strand in by holding it up and pulling a crayon along its surface.

  Oh, God. Sean squats down and asks them what they’re doing. They look up and beam. ‘Claire?’ he shouts. Then, louder, ‘Claire? Who gave the twins a box of crayons?’

  That’s another three hundred, right there.

  Chapter Eight

  The papers love it. They are all over it. It’s like being fifteen again, ducking and wincing as my family is laid bare once more, except now nobody’s sending me to the shops to buy hard copies. Now we have the internet, and Facebook is recommending that I read all about it in the Mail Online.

  I sit in bed with the laptop and wonder what time counts as too early for a drink. I slept until ten, but then the phone started ringing and it’s not stopped long enough to let me get back to sleep. The web is abuzz with my father’s demise. People are tagging my friends to URLs as though they don’t know that I can see what they’re saying. Victoria, is this your friend’s father? OMG, Toby, he was handcuffed to a bed at the Dorchester how embarrassing is that LOL! I always thought there was something dodgy about him, Sophie. What do you think really happened to that kid?

  Eventually I succumb and click through. Might as well see what the Mail has to say. Let’s face it: no one’s going to be more vitriolic, or dwell with greater pleasure on the detail. Might as well get the worst out of the way.

  It would be an inside feature if it were in an actual paper. In this connected world it’s a click-through from the Sidebar of Shame.

  LONELY DEATH OF SANDBANKS MILLIONAIRE

  Dorchester chambermaids find body of tragic Coco’s dad in mysterious circumstances

  Sean Jackson, 62, father of missing toddler Coco Jackson, was found dead on Sunday morning in Mayfair’s swanky Dorchester hotel. Jackson, in London on business from his palatial home on the north Devon coast, had failed to check out at the given time and, after attempts to rouse him had failed, hotel staff let themselves in with a room key and discovered his body.

  ‘He was handcuffed to the bed,’ said a source, ‘and had clearly been dead for some hours.’

  A source. Some chambermaid or security bloke or person who hangs about behind the reception desk pretending not to notice you but taking copious notes. Hotels are leakier than brothels. The wages they pay, you can hardly blame them for supplementing them via the newsdesks. I read on.

  According to the family’s solicitor Robert Gavila, husband of celebrity publicist Maria Gavila, property developer Jackson had been in London since Thursday night, attending planning meetings and tying up legal documentation related to a conversion he was planning on Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. ‘We are all devastated,’ he said. ‘I have known Sean all my adult life. We grew up together in business and have always been close. His loss is a terrible shock. Our thoughts are with his family.’

  ‘Yes, he had been staying here since Thursday,’ said a source in the hotel. ‘He was a charming man, friendly to all the staff, and quite a regular here, even though we think he kept a flat somewhere in Knightsbridge. I guess he didn’t want the trouble of catering for himself and his associates when his wife wasn’t with him. He had guests to dinner in our restaurant on Thursday and Friday nights, and ordered room service on Saturday as he said he was making an early start back to Devon the next day. He ordered chateaubriand and two bottles of Dom Perignon champagne. I don’t know if he had a guest, but chateaubriand is usually a dish for two people.’

  Jackson leaves behind a wife and an infant daughter. He remarried for the fourth time in 2011, after the death of his third wife, Linda. Friends from cabinet ministers to retail billionaires describe him as ‘inspiring’, ‘larger than life’, ‘a man of boundless energy’, ‘charming’, ‘a huge loss’. He lived big, spent money like water, was open-handed to his friends, lending houses, dispensing loans, jetting entire parties off to foreign locales, and was a generous donor to Conservative Party coffers.

  To the public at large, though, he is best known for the tragedy that overtook his second marriage in 2004, when his three-year-old daughter Coco disappeared from the family’s newly renovated holiday home in the Millionaires’ Row at the Sandbanks Peninsula, Bournemouth. The family were there celebrating Jackson’s 50th birthday, when Coco vanished from the ground-floor bedroom she was sharing with her twin sister, Ruby, in the middle of the night. A hole was discovered in the fence that separated the property from the road outside, and the latch on a sliding window leading to the house’s main reception room was found to be broken. None of the many people in the house admitted to hearing a thing in the night, and Ruby slept through the entire incident. Not a trace has been seen of Coco again.

  Ruby. Oh, God. She must be – what? Fourteen? Fifteen? Same age I was when Coco disappeared. I’ve not thought about her at all. I can’t believe I’ve not thought about her.

  I get up and go to put the kettle on. Realise there’s no milk and make a gin and tonic instead. I don’t care. I don’t care what anybody says, not that there’s anyone to say it. I’m not leaving the house today. I have to think. About Dad, about what to do now. I make some toast to soak it up with. Spread it with peanut butter and get back into bed. My flat feels small, today. Small and safe.

  The case quickly became a national event. Jackson’s then wife, Coco’s mother Clair
e, a former secretary, harnessed a newly discovered talent for publicity to galvanise the Find Coco campaign, appealing repeatedly for members of the public to search for her missing daughter. With its mix of glamorous wealth and celebrity house-guests – present at the house that weekend, as well as the Gavilas, were Shadow Health Minister Charles Clutterbuck and a Harley Street doctor with links to many household names of showbiz – the story became one of the biggest of its era. Maria Gavila, a well-known broker of tabloid tales, started an email chain letter among her rich seam of contacts that quickly proliferated and is thought to be the first ever to have reached over a billion people worldwide. Repeated television appeals, email chains and poster campaigns meant that pretty Coco briefly became one of the best-known faces on the planet.

  Public sympathy quickly ebbed away, however, as stories of Claire Jackson’s behaviour around the time when her daughter vanished leaked out. It transpired that she had dumped the twins on her husband and house-guests when she returned early to London, and had been seen spending lavishly in designer shops while her daughters awaited her return uncared-for. Former employees and neighbours and former friends described her variously as ‘a harpy’, ‘unstable’ and ‘a terrible, selfish mother’.

  The Jackson marriage did not survive the tragedy. The Jacksons divorced in 2006, and soon after Sean married his ‘dear friend’ Linda Innes, who had also been part of the ill-fated weekend party. Innes had been working as a designer for Jackson’s construction company, and continued to decorate the interiors of his developments. ‘She comforted me, which was more than my wife was able to do,’ he said at the time. ‘I hope that this will be the beginning of a new era of happiness for me.’