The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  ‘Splendid,’ he says, ‘splendid. And how have you been?’

  She beams. ‘I’ve been fine. I read my book and watched some videos on YouTube.’ A pair of earbuds hangs around her neck and she twiddles one at him to illustrate how she managed to do so silently.

  ‘Haven’t you eaten?’

  ‘I grabbed a sandwich,’ she says, ‘but I didn’t want to leave them for too long, in case one of them woke up.’

  ‘Very conscientious. I’m sure it’s not necessary, though. Have any of them stirred at all?’

  ‘Not a peep.’

  He feels a rush of hail-fellow generosity. ‘Well, come out and have some fresh air with your cake,’ he tells her. ‘I was going to go and have a sit in the gazebo for a bit, if you’d like to join me?’

  Simone practically shivers with pleasure. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

  It’s lovely and peaceful out here. The sound of voices drifts to them from the kitchen, at much the same level as the background shush of the sea. It’s a perfect night, the land still warm from the day, the breeze low and gentle. Simone sits placidly beside him, doesn’t nag, doesn’t compete for his attention, emanates contentment as she sips her champagne. The cake is in a container with a plastic fork included and she pops it open, takes a taste, sighs with pleasure.

  ‘Good?’ he asks, and lights his cigar as she nods. Lays his spare arm along the sofa back and crosses one leg over the other. Despite his trying evening, Sean feels filled with bonhomie and the joy of life. If only, he thinks, all interactions with women could be this easy. Something happens to them as they mature. They can’t seem to stop themselves from turning bitter. If only they could stay sixteen forever – legal, unlike Simone, but still sweet and malleable and grateful for attention.

  ‘Would you like a taste?’

  ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘I ate my fill at dinner. You enjoy yourself.’

  Simone takes two more bites then pushes the container regretfully away. Sips her champagne and remarks on how nice it is.

  ‘Surely that’s not all you’re going to eat?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ says Simone, ‘but it’s very rich.’

  ‘You’re not worried about your figure, are you?’ he teases.

  ‘No, no,’ says Simone, but she looks embarrassed in the half-light. Perhaps she’s just trying to look un-greedy; perhaps it’s a real worry.

  ‘You’ve got a lovely figure,’ he says, gallantly. Drinks his whisky and adds, ‘I bet you’ve got a stack of boys trailing in your wake like ducklings.’

  Her hair drops across her face as she looks down at the table. ‘Not really,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, come,’ he teases. ‘Pretty girl like you?’

  She looks back up at him. ‘Boys my age are so immature,’ she says. ‘I prefer men.’

  The words hang between them on the night air. In the distance, Charlie Clutterbuck’s mature and fruity laugh clangs through the open door. In the pebbledashed semi over the fence, a window slams down pointedly. The fusty old queen who lives there has been complaining about noise pollution all summer, and his resentment clearly continues to burn. Well, good luck with that, thinks Sean. I don’t suppose the people who can afford the three mil to buy this place will be wanting to spend their summers tending their hydrangeas in brown cardigans.

  He checks his watch and realises that it’s midnight.

  ‘By gum,’ he says, ‘it’s my birthday!’

  ‘Oh!’ says Simone, and wriggles in her seat. ‘Oh, happy birthday!’ She raises her glass and they clink and drink.

  ‘And what a lovely way to go into it,’ he tells her. ‘Couldn’t have asked for better company.’

  ‘I hope you have a lovely year,’ she says. ‘I hope it’s the best year ever.’

  He heaves a grunting sigh. ‘Not much chance of that, I’m afraid.’ He’s quite drunk, he realises, and careless with his confidences. But then, because he is drunk, he realises that he doesn’t care. It’ll all come out in the wash soon anyway. What’s a fifteen-year-old going to do?

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed,’ he says, ‘but Claire and I aren’t getting on.’

  Simone tucks her hair behind her ear and goes back to her cake. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I couldn’t help noticing. She’s not very nice to you, is she?’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ he says, and sits up, pleased to have found a sympathetic ear. ‘Someone who believes me! You have no idea how difficult it is being a man. Everyone seems to want to blame us when things go wrong.’

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ she says. ‘Dad and Maria have to deal with that all the time, with the papers. Dad says it’s the worst thing of all, because everyone believes women when they sell their stories, but if men do it they’re cads.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he says.

  ‘She shouldn’t talk to you the way she does,’ says Simone. ‘It’s not respectful.’

  ‘She wasn’t like that when I met her,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I think she’s mad.’

  Simone appears to consider this possibility. ‘I don’t know if I should say anything,’ she says. ‘She’s your wife.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Sean feels a momentary twinge of guilt. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have involved you.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ She rushes to reassure him. ‘It’s not like I’m going to say anything. And I – I started it. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not my business. It’s just…’

  He waits.

  ‘If I were your wife,’ she says, in a little voice that falters as it goes, ‘I would never talk to you the way she does. You’re so… and she doesn’t seem to appreciate it at all.’

  ‘I work like a dog,’ he tells her, ‘so she can have everything she wants, and she just seems to resent me.’

  ‘You work so hard,’ she echoes. Then, ‘Why don’t you split up?’

  Sean takes another hit of whisky, sucks his cigar. She watches him in silence. She’s so lovely, he thinks. So soft and gentle and kind. If I had my life over again…

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ he says. ‘A divorce… it’s a hard thing. You see how India and Milly are with me. Their mother’s poisoned them against me, because that’s what happens, with divorces. The mother gets the kids and the father gets frozen out. I couldn’t bear that, not a second time. The twins adore me right now. I’m not going to watch them turn sulky on me the way the girls have. If it weren’t for the twins, it would be different. If they’d not been born. But we’ve got them now, and we’re tied together for life because of it. Even if we did split up. It’s just not so easy, once you have kids. I could never let them go.’

  He feels smug in his own virtue. I am a good father, he tells himself. India and Milly might not see it, but I’m a good father.

  ‘Besides,’ he says, ‘what hope would there be for them, if they went with her? She’d ruin them. You’ve seen her. She’s as crazy as a cut snake.’

  A flash memory. Sitting on a bench on the Thames Embankment with Claire, saying the same thing about Heather. Is that it? he asks himself. Do all women just go mad after a while? All the ones in my life seem to. They adore me at first but after a while they just turn bitter. My wives, my girlfriends. It’s not fair. It’s obviously got something to do with my choice of women. Maria Gavila’s not like that, and Charlie Clutterbuck’s been married nineteen years and he’s a complete arse.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘it’s my birthday. Let’s not talk about that. We’re meant to be celebrating. Here.’ He picks up the plastic fork, spears a bit of cake on to it and holds it out towards her mouth. ‘Have some cake.’

  ‘I can’t!’ she protests, and he notices that her pupils are huge.

  ‘Of course you can,’ he says, and moves the morsel closer.

  Simone parts her pretty lips and allows herself to be fed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It comes on to rain at Yeovil. Thick, blustery West Country rain that brings a dark sky which won’t lighten now until morning. Two i
n the afternoon, and all the cars turn on their headlights. I hate January. Every mile or so, a gust picks the car up and slams it down again about a foot to the right. We stop talking. I need what’s left of my brain to get us there alive.

  An hour later and dusk takes over from storm clouds, and we’re creeping through narrow lanes where white fingerpost signs loom up and point in random directions. We come to a crossroads where all four fingers point to Barnstaple and the satnav tells us that we are in the middle of a field. Ruby stirs from her misery coma and peers through the window.

  ‘I remember this,’ she says. ‘You go right here.’

  I go right. The road narrows: a single track between hedged banks that rise up and cut off the last of the daylight. Huge trees knit naked branches together above us and form a ghostly winter tunnel. I can’t imagine Sean down here. I know it’s where he grew up, but his tastes always ran to white corniches and blazing sunlight; to sea that, as he said, you could swim in, and terrace restaurants where the whole passing population could see that you were drinking champagne. Every two hundred yards the bank breaks to give a passing place-cum-field entrance, but not a light shows in the darkness. No suburban creep out here. I guess he came back to big-face his childhood, to be the one who did well. Whether anyone who knew him then is still here to see it is anybody’s guess.

  A car comes up behind us in the dark. Something much bigger than us, with LED headlights that blaze like a thousand tiny suns. I flip my mirror to dim him, and he thunders closer. Sits hard on my tail and roars his engine. Ruby looks over her shoulder. ‘Oh, look,’ she says, ‘an arsehole.’

  ‘Yep,’ I reply. Try to focus on the road ahead, but those lights are illuminating our interior with a ghastly lunatic glow. It feels like being followed by a dragon. Despite myself I feel my speed creep up until I am as afraid of what might come up in front of us as I am of being rear-ended.

  Another signpost looms through the dark. Orford, it says. The rivers out here have single-syllable names, a sure sign of ancient habitation. These roads once ran along the tops of bleak grazing pastures, through otherwise impenetrable forest. It’s thousands of years that have made these banks, as the tracks sank deeper and deeper into the earth. Nobody built them up; they wore them away.

  ‘Here,’ says Ruby. ‘Turn right.’

  I touch my brakes and put on my blinker, and the car behind comes inches from ramming us. He stands on his horn. And yes, I know it’s a man driving. Who wouldn’t? God, these bloody people: they buy a big car and suddenly they own the road. He drops back and I turn. He turns with us.

  ‘Bugger,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe we should let him pass,’ says Ruby.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, and slow down to look for a passing spot. Again he surges up my backside, roars his engine. I put a hand up to shade my rear-view; the light is so dazzling I can barely see the road ahead.

  A break in the bank appears on the left and I pull in. The car veers round us and accelerates. I glimpse a woman in the passenger seat, rock-hard blonde hair, staring ahead as though we don’t exist. Then vicious red brake lights dazzle us as he reaches the next corner and they disappear. A Mercedes. Of course a Mercedes. They’re the worst drivers in the world, the Merc people. Well, maybe apart from the Audi scum.

  ‘Christ on a bike,’ I say.

  ‘Arsewipe,’ says Ruby. ‘I hope he gets a puncture.’

  Then, ‘I think it’s soon,’ she adds. ‘A few more corners, on the left. There’s a sign.’

  I’m feeling a little rattled. I trickle along at twenty miles an hour as I wait for my heartbeat to slow. Three more corners and the sign appears in the gloom. Discreet and yet not, face-on to the road in green and gold livery colours like one of those CHILDREN CROSSING signs they use to advertise prep schools.

  BLACKHEATH HOUSE

  PRIVATE

  There are high metal gates across the drive, the sort you usually see on footballers’ houses, and two cars pulled up in front of them. One is the Mercedes. From the other, two men in parkas are emerging to walk towards the driver.

  ‘Those are journalists,’ says Ruby. It’s not rocket science. No one wears a bulky coat with lots of pockets while sitting in a car unless they’re planning to get out in a hurry.

  There’s no one else around. The narrow grey lane turns a corner a hundred yards away in each direction, following the estate wall. The Mercedes driver opens his door and steps down on to the driveway. It’s Charlie Clutterbuck. I might have guessed. He makes a move towards the intercom, but the hacks are upon him. One carries a camera and the other wields a spiral-bound pad and some sort of recording device.

  ‘Hell,’ I say, ‘we’re going to be here forever. If there’s one thing that man loves, it’s the sound of his own voice.’

  Charlie glances in our direction, waves a hand at us. I wind my window down to listen. ‘… know you’ve only got your job to do…’ His voice, rich and stuffed as steak and kidney pudding, booms out over the darkening air.

  The passenger door opens and Imogen steps out. In my headlights, I can see that she has not so much aged, over the last decade, as set. The hair, which occasionally moved in the breeze on Sandbanks, looks as if it’s been encased in plastic, and the skin looks shiny and smooth. She wears a Chanel suit – I guess it might be a knock-off these days, now Charlie’s lost his parliamentary wage and the non-executive directorships that went along with it – and black patent shoes whose sensible heels can just about cope with the worn tarmac. Crosses the drive and slips her hand into her husband’s. They stand in the cars’ glare and pull solemn faces while the photographer tsk, tsk, tsks with his shutter.

  Well, that’ll be nice for them, I think, their photo in the paper again after all this time. I press the horn ever so gently and they jump at the beep, as though they had been unaware that there were people waiting behind them.

  ‘I recognise that man,’ Ruby says.

  ‘I should think you do. Charlie Clutterbuck. Former MP and professional bombast. D’you remember? He defected to the Nazis and lost his deposit. That gargoyle in the passenger seat is his wife, Imogen. I knew she looked familiar. I’ll go. Don’t worry. Stay put and keep the window up.’

  Imogen lets go of Charlie’s hand and presses the buzzer on the intercom while he booms about loyal friends and fifty years’ acquaintance and glares balefully towards us. The journalists look our way too then bend their heads together, conferring. Ask something of Charlie in lowered voices and he nods curtly, self-important to the last. The gate starts to slide open. The Clutterbucks return to their car and I put myself into gear to get into line behind them. ‘Bung that scarf up over your head,’ I tell my half-sister. We might just get through the welcoming committee unscathed.

  She slowly comes to life, plugs in the belt and drapes her scarf Meryl Streep-style over her head. The Merc drives forward and I creep along behind. The photographer lunges forward and fires off a few shots, but I suspect that most of them will be ruined by the reflection of the flash in the windows. The Merc passes through the gates and its tail-lights go on. He stops, dead, two feet into Blackheath.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘No no no no fuck.’ Lean on the horn to tell him to move on. No response. He’s deliberately blocked me. I slap the top of the steering wheel as I watch the gates slide closed. The brake lights go off and the Merc disappears into the darkness ahead.

  ‘Why did he do that?’ asks Ruby. ‘Why? Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because he’s a shit. Because he’s always been a shit,’ I say. And now he’s a desperate shit, and they are the worst of all.

  ‘Stay here,’ I say. ‘You’re fifteen, they can’t actually take your photo, but I’m not having them all over you.’

  Ruby is frozen with her hand on the door handle. She’s only just encountered this world where one is the centre of attention whether one likes it or not. Whatever her motives, Claire has done her job well and Ruby has no idea of her own notoriety. More people should understand what a gi
ft it is, growing up thinking you’re a nobody.

  I get out. The air is rich with the scent of damp soil and the banked-up verges are covered in moss. A clump of snowdrops bravely raises its heads in white and green among the tree-shadowed gloom. Dad’s been dead for long enough that he won’t have seen the leaf tips come up. Soon it will be crocus time. And I bet these woods are awash with bluebells in the spring. I feel another pang. I have no idea – will never know, now – if he cared at all for nature beyond how it could be harnessed to make his properties more saleable, but it feels weird to think that he will never see them again.

  The photographer raises his camera and starts shooting. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk goes the shutter. I walk steadily to the intercom, pretend that they’re not there.

  ‘Camilla?’ calls the journalist with the notebook. ‘I’m sorry about your dad, Camilla.’ Bloody psychopaths. All sympathy when they think it’ll get them something.

  I ignore them. Press the button on the intercom and wait, staring at it with a feigned fascination. ‘We were just wondering if there was any news? Funeral’s on Monday, right? How’s the family doing? How’s your stepmother? Is that Ruby in the car? How’s she doing? She must be heartbroken. Has she said anything?’

  The camera goes tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk again as I press the button once more. It’s a strange thing, how deep our training to smile goes whenever there’s a camera about. I have to concentrate with all my might to keep my face straight. It’s all I need, a picture of me grinning over my father’s coffin on the front of the Daily Snark.

  ‘Have you seen Claire? How’s she doing? Is she upset?’

  I cast him a baleful look. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk goes the camera. ‘You seem to be very keen on people being upset,’ I say. ‘What’s that all about?’

  Always answer questions with questions. Sean taught me that long ago. Sometimes passive aggression really is the best defence.

  He’s not abashed. ‘Just doing my job, Camilla,’ he says. ‘They stayed on good terms, didn’t they? That’s quite impressive, given all the stuff that happened. What do you think happened to Coco?’