by Alex Marwood
‘Christ,’ she says, and peers at the building site behind the pair of them. A man with four-day stubble sits high up on the seat of a JCB, looking down. Suddenly conscious of how her neat little sundress must look from above, she pulls her cardi tight over her bosom and glares back. ‘This isn’t it, is it? I thought he said it was finished.’
The driveway beyond the digger is a chaos of mud and scaffolding. Up a bank, she can see half a dozen men heaving paving slabs into place. A patio? Swimming-pool surround? Either way, it’s clearly not done. It looks like it might be for the pool. A pre-cast resin shell, twenty feet by ten, sky-blue and still cloaked in protective tape, leans against the devastated turf. She guesses that the crane that looms over the wall is there to lower it into place once the hole’s been dug. Everything’s smoke and mirrors, even the most expensive houses. Pull the wattle-and-daub off a palace wall and you’ll find that it’s all made of rubble. Behind the swarming workers, a man leans from a window and paints its metal frame in a garish tone of seaside blue. Seriously? Men with muddy boots still in the bedrooms? You’ve brought us to stay here? ‘What is he thinking?’ she asks.
‘Maybe the contractors have been fibbing,’ says Robert. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
They approach the two men. The builder glances over Sean’s shoulder and gives them an ‘I’ll be with you in a minute’ nod. Turns back to Sean.
‘I am sorry,’ he says, in perfect English whose lack of elisions betrays it as his second language. ‘We are only doing our work. Your own house was full of builders itself until yesterday, you must remember. We have taken longer than we thought, because your own builders were here until yesterday, I am sure you know that. And they were not – there was no co-operation. Until today they were blocking the drive and we could not get the digger in. So now we have to make up the time.’
He heaves a shrug that takes both arms in their entirety to complete. All this, it says, we could have shared. The famous Polish influx, she thinks. Bane of the British builder. Amazing how they’ve all forgotten the dosh they made on the Costas last decade. Europe should only work one way, the way most of our people see it.
‘So… how long?’ asks Sean. ‘I’ve got little kids, and guests coming any minute.’
Another expansive shrug. ‘Our contract says end of Saturday. But, you know… the sooner we carry on, the sooner we are done, hey?’
He nods over Sean’s shoulder at her little party. Jimmy and Linda have caught up now, the kids gathered around their knees and Joaquin inspecting the digger’s caterpillar tracks as though they’re made of real caterpillars. ‘I think maybe these people want to talk to you?’
Sean turns. He’s pink-faced and sweaty, the heat and the unaccustomed failure to get his point across raising his body temperature. ‘Oh,’ he says. Comes over and kisses the women, leaving damp patches on their cheeks, shakes the hands of the men. ‘Sorry about this. Good to see you.’
‘Builders behind?’ asks Robert. They’ve known each other for thirty years, shared a flat in Sheffield, barely bother with verbs and pronouns when communicating with each other.
‘Not mine, fortunately,’ says Sean. He turns back to the Polish builder, who has taken his hard hat off and is polishing the perspiration off its interior with a grubby handkerchief. He’s tall and wiry. They all are, as far as she can see. A far cry from the lardy backsides she’s got used to seeing over the years around British work sites. ‘So can you try to keep it down a bit?’
The shrug, again. ‘You are a builder yourself, I think? It is not much longer. I promise. These guys are all… gagging to get back to Krakow.’
‘There’s a guy turning up,’ says Sean. ‘Big car. Probably a Mercedes, I should think. Can you move the guys out of the way to let him in so he can park on our drive? And not damage it?’
‘Benz! Sure! We will treat it as though it is our own!’
‘Come up to the house. Simone, you’re sharing with Milly and India. I hope that’s okay?’
Maria sees her daughter roll her eyes as Sean picks up Linda’s bag and leads the way between a pair of giant electronic gates, newly painted in shiny black, a plaque on each one that will presumably one day hold the initials of whoever buys the place. Russian money is starting to flood into Sandbanks, a suburb of Bournemouth which has mysteriously become Britain’s most expensive real estate, as it is into any bit of London within a limo’s drive of Harrods, and the Russians love a gold-highlighted monogram. I’ll bet there are gold-plated bath taps, too, thinks Maria. And rainforest showers. Looks as if they’re doing the same at Seawings. You couldn’t get people to buy these places forty years ago, when we were preparing for an Ice Age and the whole of Poole Harbour was going to be a glacier.
‘Oh, very Jackson Associates,’ mutters Robert under his breath.
‘I did the interior on this one, you know,’ says Linda, proudly.
‘I know,’ replies Maria. She’s beginning to guess who Sean’s Someone on the Horizon might be.
Chapter Ten
The Stepwitch.
I actually don’t recognise her voice. It’s been over a decade. And something has changed in it in that time. She sounds tentative, sure; nervous, even. But it’s not that. Her voice has dropped. It no longer has that shrieky edge that made you feel nagged the moment she opened her mouth.
‘Claire,’ I say. Think for a moment and add the appropriate pleasantry. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m – fine,’ she replies. ‘More to the point, how are you?’
My nose is blocked but I’m desperate not to do anything to clear it. I don’t want anyone to know I’ve been crying. I gave up crying over my father when I gave up contact with him, and I’m damned if I’m going to let anyone know that that has changed. Especially not Claire. I don’t remember crying over anything other than the normal childhood things before she came on to the scene.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I say carefully.
She pauses again. Then, ‘I’m so sorry about your father, Milly. It must have been a terrible shock.’
‘I’m sure you know we weren’t close,’ I say, and let all the accusations that go with that statement echo down the line.
She doesn’t take the bait. ‘No. But still. I’m sure there are… emotions involved.’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
She can’t just be calling me with condolences, can she? ‘How’s Ruby doing?’ I ask.
Another little silence. And then, ‘Not good, I’m afraid. She’s in bits.’
Oh. I have another weird little surge of emotion, and it takes me a moment before I identify it as jealousy. And then I’m disgusted with myself. I had no idea that I still had that in me: that I still think of Ruby and Coco as usurpers, as though I am the only one allowed feelings in the matter.
I think about my half-sister, this stranger devastated by our common bereavement. Fifteen years old. I don’t even know what she looks like now. Like little lost Coco, she is set in amber in my mind: three years old forever. I’ve honestly never thought about her growing up. Going through the horrors of adolescence, living with a loss so huge it’s hard to comprehend. She and Coco have been no more than bit-players in my own misery. Not people in their own right at all.
‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’
Claire sighs. ‘It’s not that surprising, I suppose. They hadn’t seen much of each other lately, but she did love him.’
Another twinge of self-pity. So did I, once. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘She doesn’t seem to be able to stop crying,’ says Claire. ‘She’s in her room right now. I’ve tried to talk to her. But I… I sort of don’t know what to say. It’s hard. We… your father and I… she knows there was no love lost between us, and…’
Not my problem. Not my problem. You drove a wedge between my parents and took him away, and suddenly he was saying my mother was mad and he’d never been happy, and you want me to sympathise because you couldn’t make it work? I’m not responsible for
the world you’ve created, Claire. I have enough difficulty staying above the surface in my own.
‘Claire —’ I begin.
‘No, look, I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear about this. But I have to ask you a favour and I know it’s a big ask, but I can’t go to his funeral. I just can’t. I can’t. I can’t.’
There’s an edge of hysteria to the last few words. Claire is panicking. She must have been thinking about this for hours before she worked up the guts to ring me, and now she’s started she’s desperate to get her request across before she loses her nerve. But I’m not going to make it easy for her. She never made it easy for me. She wants me to tell her that no one would expect her to, that I understand, but I’m not going to do that. Each time we went to stay with them, she was more sulky, more standoffish, sniping at Dad in a passive-aggressive way that made it very clear that we weren’t welcome, that there was no room for us. I know he was weak to go along with it, but I’ll never forget how she wanted to edit his life so none of the stuff that happened before he met her mattered.
‘So I…’ she continues. ‘I don’t know what to do, Milly. I’m sorry to ask, I really am, but she’s desperate to go…’
‘You want me to take Ruby to the funeral?’
Another pause. She hasn’t realised that she hasn’t asked. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I just don’t know who else to ask. And you are her sister.’
‘Half-sister,’ I say, coldly.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But she doesn’t have anyone else now.’ And Coco hovers between us, daring us to mention her name.
I don’t answer. My brain is buzzing.
‘Do you know when it is yet?’ she asks. ‘We’re out of the loop a bit.’
‘Not yet. The coroner has to release the body.’
‘So not till after the inquest?’
‘No, it’ll be before then if they find a medical cause. But I think he has to be buried, not burned, so they can dig him up again if they need to. But that’s okay. He always wanted a big flashy gravestone near his mother’s in the village he grew up in. No revenge like success, eh?’
Claire gulps at the bald facts and the way I tell them. I don’t add that they won’t be able to embalm him either. Little Ruby won’t be having any final bonding sessions with the open coffin.
‘Will you think about it?’ she asks.
‘I hadn’t decided whether to go myself,’ I say, reluctantly.
‘Oh,’ she says, and I hear her throat fill with tears. ‘That’s sad, Milly. I’m sorry. I thought maybe you’d… I don’t know. None of his kids at his funeral? I can… I don’t know. Maybe I could bring her down to Devon and ask someone to pick her up? I just. I can’t. I really can’t.’
She sounds so different from the woman I knew. There doesn’t seem to be any anger left, just fear.
‘I’ll think about it, Claire,’ I say. ‘I can’t say more than that.’
She sucks in a heavy breath, steadies her crying. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you. I just don’t know what to do, that’s all. She’s been crying and crying and I’m afraid she’ll never…’
She trails off.
‘I’ll let you know when it is.’
‘Thank you. Do you have my number?’
‘Yes, it’s on my phone now.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘I always forget about that.’
I hang up before she can go on. Sit under the duvet and let my eyes wander over my bedroom. I’ve not given it a lot of love since I moved in. I didn’t even bother to cover over the old owners’ paintwork, just moved Granny’s hand-me-downs in against the walls and bunged her pictures up with nails. Apart from my clothes, there’s very little in this place that came here through my own choices. Perhaps that’s why I spend so much time on my wardrobe, why I cherish my tattoos, why I like to stand out each time I pass through the front door. Even the pots and pans in the kitchen are Granny’s. India was on her way across the Pacific by that point and didn’t want the cargo, and Mum was in her fifties and had adult versions of most of the things you need in a house, so I was basically able to take my pick. It’s a bit like living in a furnished apartment. A nice one, where the kitchenware is Le Creuset, but still a furnished apartment, like the ready-for-sale houses we grew up in. Only, I’ve covered every surface with books and unread mail and discarded food wrappers, as if I’m trying to disguise it. How odd that I’ve never noticed that before.
My tears have passed. As is often the way with bouts of emotion, I feel tired but also weirdly calm. And almost unable to fathom that such strong feelings can ever have existed, or ever could again.
I think about Ruby. I’m not so far from fifteen that I don’t remember what it felt like, that horrible, confusing time suspended between childhood and adulthood, longing for and terrified by independence in equal measure. The world was a scary, exciting place, back then, and home was a place we longed to leave. Mum struggling to find her post-marital personality, Dad spawning offspring at what felt like a repellent rate in one so old, and boys sprouting extra pairs of hands. We didn’t fit in anywhere much, never having had the sort of home you brought people back to. And when I was fifteen the Coco thing happened and we went from anonymous misery to total, public isolation.
My tea has gone lukewarm. I drain it and get up to make another. God, what a family. There will be a large turnout at Dad’s funeral when it happens, I have no doubt of that. He’s a rich man, and rich men are powerful, and people like rich men because, although trickle-down doesn’t work as a society-wide principle, it sure as hell does work if you can get yourself next to the people with the money. He was a charming man, one who married four women and could probably have had half a dozen more if he’d had the time. His parties were the best parties, with the best champagne and the highest-quality canapés, and the funeral will have more of the same, and people will go a long way, and say a lot of nice things, for a sniff of vintage Bolly and some truffled foie gras.
Will they even notice that his family aren’t there? That, of the four wives and five children, there’s only the last one and the toddler who can’t get away? Does it matter? We weren’t the important thing about Sean Jackson’s life. He barely even paused for breath after his third daughter vanished, before he was diving into another marriage, another set of condos on the seafront in Dubai, chewing on fat Havana cigars and slapping the shoulders of smiling politicians. Of course there will be people at his funeral. And I can’t leave Ruby to brave it by herself. Standing all alone in that sea of social mourners. I can’t do it.
Chapter Eleven
Myocardial infarction. I’ve always found it a comical-sounding phrase for something so serious, but then my British ear is trained to hear the breaking of wind at a thousand paces, and the fact that it’s the cause of my father’s death doesn’t cancel out the Pavlovian smirk. I read it several times after I got the email from Maria, and the actual meaning didn’t sink in until the fourth or fifth. Myocardial infarction. I need to just refer to it as a heart attack. It’s the only way to make it real.
I scan the email each time I stop for queues and lights and mini-roundabouts on the dreary haul through Croydon towards the M23 and Claire’s ‘run-down smallholding’. If Maria’s sent me the details she’ll probably have sent them to Claire as well, but I need to have it all straight in my head, in case I end up being the one who has to explain it all to Ruby. The best part of five days, we’ll be together, and it’s not all going to be small talk.
They live in Sussex. On the edge of the Downs, outside one of those villages that have remained cute by dint of belonging in its entirety to an aristocratic estate. I’m impressed by its beauty as I pass through: front gardens neat even in winter, not a wheelie-bin or a caravan to be seen. The shop, with its cute little multi-paned window that makes it look like a Thomas Kincaid painting in a Kentucky trailer park, sells pesto and ‘locally sourced produce’. You can tell what
the tenants are like.
I buy a goat’s cheese and tomato tartlet and eat it sitting on the war memorial; I never feel well enough for breakfast and I’m starving now, unsure what will be coming my way for the rest of the day. Goat’s cheese and tomato tartlet. Whatever happened to Cornish pasties? At least they haven’t gone the whole hog and called it a tartelette, I suppose.
I get the print-out of the email out once more as I sit on the steps, smooth it out on my knee and read as I eat. I wonder idly if the polite woman who showed me through to the viewing room is the same person who sawed open my father’s breastbone and pulled off the top of his skull. Probably. No one’s got the budget to keep a show-pathologist around for the visitors. Maria’s cut the name off, has just said that they’re satisfied that the cause of death was the heart attack, that it was so huge that even if whoever was with him had called an ambulance it would have made no difference, and that this is enough to release the body for burial.
The inquest will be later. They don’t need the body around for it. But the handcuffs, and the poppers on the bedside table, and the traces of cocaine in the blood… it’s pretty obvious what happened. I wonder what the woman – I’m pretty sure, at least, that it will have been a woman – felt like, backing off as he writhed on those Egyptian cotton sheets, if she even paused to think about unlocking him before she fled. What a way to go. What a horrible, lonely way to die.
A man approaches slowly up the main street. From the holes at the elbows of his Tattersall check Viyella shirt and the fact that his trousers seem to be held up with string, I guess that this is the proprietor of the great house at the bottom of the drive. He confirms it when he opens his mouth and a tumble of vowels barely held together by consonants falls out.