The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  She feels sick at the very thought. ‘This is first thing in the morning to me, Charlie. Thanks, but I’m not so far gone I need a brandy to get me up. Maybe you should wake Jimmy up if you want someone to drink with.’ She’s passed the point where she can bother to be civil to the man. That laugh on the pontoon was the final straw.

  ‘Well!’ he harrumphs. ‘Please yourself.’

  Maria starts to get to her feet. ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘a coffee to wake you up, perhaps?’

  She holds up a hand. ‘No, Maria. Thank you, but no. I don’t want tea, I don’t want coffee, I want a swim.’ She knows they’re trying to stall her. Wants to know what they’re trying to stop her seeing.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ says Charlie, ‘let the silly bitch go. It’s not like we owe her anything.’

  ‘Thank you, Charlie,’ she says. ‘Always good to get things out in the open.’

  ‘No, Claire —’ Maria begins.

  ‘Forget it,’ she says, and walks out into the beautiful morning. She has a good idea what she’s going to see when she gets to her destination, and her heart is pounding in her chest. Got to get it over with, she thinks. It’s not like I don’t know already, but if I catch him then he can’t pretend any more that it’s all my fault, tell me I’m mad while he lies and cheats and…

  They’re in the pool, humping on the steps in the shallow end. He’s screwing her from behind, her skinny bottom rising in and out of the water with the rhythm of his thrusts. Eugh, is her first thought. My children will be wanting to play in that water tomorrow. Claire is barefoot, so they don’t hear her approach. They’ve left the gate open so she makes no sound going through it. Stands by the sun-loungers and watches them for a minute before she speaks: Sean’s shaven head bobbing back and forth, back and forth, the woman’s buttocks smooth and brown without a single tan line. It’s not real sex, she thinks. It’s that performance sex he always liked: the sort that makes you wonder if he hasn’t got a video camera secreted somewhere so he can watch himself later.

  ‘You’re going to have to change the water in that pool,’ she says. ‘I don’t suppose anybody’s going to want to swim in it now.’

  He jumps like a pantomime villain, nearly loses his balance on the step and steadies himself by grabbing on to Linda’s backside with both hands. ‘Ow!’ she cries; she was making too much noise of her own to notice Claire speaking. She twists round to give Sean a piece of her mind, sees her lover’s wife and says, ‘Oh.’

  ‘Claire,’ says Sean.

  ‘What? Are you going to tell me it’s not what it looks like? What? You’re helping her find her contact lens? Giving her pipes a good cleaning?’

  ‘I —’ he says.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she says, and hears her voice rising. ‘You have nothing to say to me right now. I’ve caught you bang to rights and there is nothing you can say.’

  And she realises that there’s nothing he wants to say. He has no interest in making amends, in sorting things out, in trying to find a way to make her stay.

  ‘Fuck you, Sean,’ she says, and realises that she’s shouting. ‘And fuck you, skank. You want him? You can have him. Don’t think he’ll want your kids too, though. He doesn’t even want his own.’

  She wheels and walks back to the house. They stay there in the pool, still plugged together, for all she knows. I can’t go back in there, she thinks. It was bad enough when I knew that they knew. But now they know that I know, I can’t bear the shame. The humiliation. The mistress turned wife turned cuckold in my turn.

  But she has to go in, because she has nothing outside. She enters the room and feels all their eyes on her, raises her chin and looks straight ahead. ‘Claire —’ begins Maria, but she ignores the word. Walks past, gaze steady, her dignity strapped to her shoulders like armour. She mounts the stairs, one, two, three, four, five, the glass cold beneath her feet, the metal railing cold beneath her palm. I won’t show it, she thinks. They won’t see me cry. Not those people. Not ever.

  In her bedroom she grabs her handbag, checks it for phone and house keys. Takes the car key from his bedside table, snatches up a cardigan from the back of the chair. What do I need? I need their stuff. I need Ruby’s medicines and Coco’s teddy bear and some way to carry them, when they’re sleeping, when they’re heavy, and I have to get out of here, I can’t stay here, not with all these people, his cronies, his whore, looking at me and laughing. I can’t. I can’t do it. I have to get out. I have to go now. I can’t go back out there, where they are, and get the girls. I don’t want to look at them. I can’t.

  She walks back down the stairs again, poised and stately like a debutante entering a ball. They sit there, silent, and watch as she crosses the room once again. Linda has come indoors, and sits silently among them, for protection, she supposes. Of her husband there is no sign. Maria doesn’t try to speak, this time. No one tries to speak. They are all on his side. They’ve practically forgotten her already.

  Claire gives up on her children, goes down to the drive and opens the car. Gets in, starts to adjust the driving seat. The buttons are sticky, complicated; it takes her a couple of minutes to make it high enough, and close enough to the steering wheel, for her to be able to see out through the windscreen. Plenty of time for someone to come. Plenty of time, if he wants to, for him to beg her to stay.

  She backs slowly out of the drive. The road is empty. The first ferry isn’t until seven o’clock and no one on Sandbanks has anywhere to go, much, on a Sunday. She puts the car into gear and leaves. She doesn’t start to cry until she reaches the Southampton ring road.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘You’d better not be calling me to tell me you picked me out a watch.’

  ‘Oh. Did I wake you up?’

  ‘Revenge, I suppose,’ she says drily.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘But oh, God, Indy, I found something and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘What?’ she asks wearily. In our family I was always characterised as the dramatic one, and that’s always the way everyone responds when I say something that fits the stereotype. I feel ever so slightly triumphant. I’m not always the drama, bitch. Sometimes I get to bring the drama.

  ‘I found Coco’s bracelet.’

  ‘What?’

  Now she’s awake.

  ‘In among Sean’s things.’

  ‘What? Are you sure?’

  ‘No, I’m just saying it for effect. Of course I’m sure. It would be hard not to be. It’s got her name etched on the inside.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ she says. I give her a moment. It took more than a moment for me to trust my own voice when I found it, after all.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she says again, ‘that poor little girl.’

  ‘I don’t… what does it mean?’

  ‘Come on, Mills. We know what it means.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You know we do. It’s not like it’s turned up fallen down the back of a sofa. He’s kept it a secret. He must have seen it practically every day, if it’s in among stuff Simone just snatched up and threw into a box. There’s no way he wouldn’t have known he had it. Come on. If he’d found it later he would have said. He would have told someone. They had every amateur sleuth in Europe on the lookout for it. Don’t you remember that time when Claire got hauled in by the cops in Alicante because someone spotted Ruby and didn’t seem to notice who she was with? And that was years later. Literally years. He would have said something when he first found it. You know he would. But he didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, God, India. What do I do?’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  I look down at the bracelet on my wrist. I’m really wishing, now, that I hadn’t let her force it over my hand. Hadn’t let her turn it so quickly into a totem of our common blood. She’ll notice if I take it off. But someone else is bound to notice if I keep it on. I can wear as many long sleeves as I like, but they’ll roll up
at some point.

  ‘I think we shouldn’t do anything right now,’ she says. ‘We need to think. It’s a big old can of worms. And, just because it was in Dad’s stuff, it doesn’t mean Dad’s the only person involved.’

  ‘No. India?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you think this means he did… something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. Look, if I were arguing this in court right now, I’d say that all it showed was that he wasn’t telling the truth about one single thing. Not about everything, just about one thing.’

  ‘Yes, but if you were opposing counsel you’d be saying that it threw every statement he’d ever made into question.’

  ‘Well, haven’t you been reading your Grisham?’

  ‘You know perfectly well I only read the internet. You can learn all sorts of stuff off the telly, too. I could totally do the Heimlich manoeuvre, and I’ve never done a first aid course.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she says. ‘Look, what I’m saying is that we have to think. Really. He’s dead. We can’t cross-examine him now.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I know. But think what we’d be doing. Ruby’s done a lot of confirming that everyone’s been lying to her already over the last couple of days. Do you think it would make things better for her, finding out that the lie was even bigger?’

  ‘Oh, God. I’m lying to her already. Oh, God, India, this fucking family does nothing but secrets. I’m sick of it. It’s done so much damage.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ she says. ‘But this isn’t just about your life, is it?’

  ‘I know —’

  ‘You know what the Buddha says about lying?’

  ‘What the fuck do I care, India? I’m not in the market for a theology lesson right now.’

  ‘No, listen,’ she says. ‘He says that, while you must strive to tell the truth, you must first ask yourself: is it kind and is it helpful?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Who’s it going to help, Milly? Ruby? Claire? Coco?’

  ‘I —’

  ‘This won’t take anyone closer to knowing what happened, Milly. It’ll just reopen old wounds and rub poison into them.’

  God, she’s right.

  ‘But darling,’ I say, ‘there’s also doing the right thing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘But the right thing is more of a moveable feast than you’re thinking, right now.’

  I go downstairs, my head filled with thoughts, and find them driven away as I hit the hall. Simone sits on the bergère by the front door, rocking, Joe sitting beside her with a hand on her shoulder, while a shouting match plays out in the drawing room. A one-sided shouting match, for only Jimmy is shouting.

  ‘I’m serious, Robert! You don’t want to make an enemy of me!’

  ‘Oh, please.’ Robert sounds as I’ve never heard him before. The same modulated tones, but filled with contempt. It almost sounds as though he is actually laughing at Jimmy. ‘You can’t even remember what day it is.’

  ‘I’ve been your whipping boy for too long.’

  ‘Your troubles are entirely of your own creation, Jim. Nobody forced you to write dicky prescriptions.’

  ‘Didn’t mind taking a few yourself, though, did you?’

  ‘I think you’d find that hard to prove.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing,’ shouts Jimmy. ‘Nothing!’

  Maria’s voice. ‘You haven’t saved anything?’

  I raise my eyebrows at Joe. Simone doesn’t appear to have even registered my appearance. He gives me a look filled with conflicting messages. Help me: I don’t know what to do. Go away, go away, we don’t want you seeing this. I freeze. Stay, go: whatever I do, I do the wrong thing. I hover in the hall. Hard to just pretend it’s not happening and go about my day.

  Jimmy seems temporarily stumped by the question.

  ‘Sean understood,’ he says, after a pause, and he’s no longer shouting. ‘When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Bob Dylan.’

  ‘Shut up, Robert!’

  ‘Come on, Gavvers,’ says Jimmy. ‘It’s not like he’s not been keeping Clutters in electoral deposits all these years.’

  ‘That’s different,’ says Robert. ‘They were old friends.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Jimmy. ‘It’s loyalty that’s kept him shelling out all this time.’

  ‘Both of you, calm down,’ says Maria. ‘Jimmy, which bit of “the estate’s in probate” do you not understand? Simone can live off the money, but we can’t start handing out wodges of cash to random non-family without HMRC asking questions. You’re going to have to suck it up while Robert sorts the estate out. As it is there’s a big issue with all the “gifts” he’s handed out over the past seven years.’

  ‘And in the meantime?’

  ‘Cut back on pleasure spending?’ suggests Robert, and the contempt is right back there in his voice.

  ‘You’ve got plenty of money,’ says Jimmy, meaningfully. ‘I bet you’ve got a credit card or two, too. Just remember, Robert. You and Maria have as much to lose as anybody else.’

  ‘Not so much,’ says Robert.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I just have to say, Jimmy. Reputation management cuts both ways, you know.’

  ‘Didn’t notice you doing much to manage my reputation,’ says Jimmy.

  Robert heaves a heavy sigh. ‘Yes. Look, we’re good at what we do, but we can’t work miracles. But trust me: there are any number of times you could have popped back up in the public eye.’

  ‘Didn’t want me to, eh?’ says Jimmy, and there’s some meaning to it that I don’t understand.

  ‘Listen,’ says Robert, and suddenly the door closes in my face. A heavy, high-quality door that blocks sound as effectively as if it were made of lead.

  I turn back to the others. ‘Are you okay, Simone?’

  She stops rocking and sits bolt upright. ‘Good morning!’ she says. ‘How are you today?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m marvellous,’ she says. ‘Just marvellous.’

  She shrugs Joe’s hand off her shoulder and stands up. ‘Lunch!’ she says. ‘I’ve just got some charcuterie and some nice bread, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Yes, whatever,’ I say. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘And soup. I must make some soup. Everybody likes soup. Those Brussels sprouts. And a pack of chestnuts. I’ll make soup.’

  I start to follow her down the corridor anyway, and she wheels on me. Her head darts forward like an attacking cobra. ‘I said no! Don’t any of you people listen?’

  I recoil. ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘You’re just like your father, you know. You don’t listen to anyone.’

  Ooh, that’s a low blow. I watch her stalk away towards the kitchen. Feel angry and diminished.

  ‘You mustn’t mind her,’ says Joe. ‘She’s in a state.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I say, grimly.

  ‘People take bereavement differently,’ he says. ‘We’re doing our best.’

  ‘Why’s she so angry, though?’

  Joe grimaces. ‘Look, Mila,’ he says, ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but wouldn’t you be? She’s all over the papers, and not in a good way. He couldn’t have chosen a more humiliating way to go if he’d tried, could he?’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ I whine, and even as I say it I hear how I must sound. I look back at him and blush. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Joe. That was pathetic. I’m ashamed of myself.’

  His eyebrows flick up and he grins. ‘Not so much like your father after all,’ he says.

  ‘What are they fighting about?’

  ‘Um – Jimmy wants money. He seems to think he deserves it.’

  ‘Ugh. Always a vulture when there’s a funeral.’

  ‘Seems like your dad’s been keeping him ever since he got out of the jug,’ he says. ‘I don’t suppose Simone’s g
oing to stand for any more of that.’

  ‘Why on earth? Why?’

  He shrugs. ‘Guilt?’

  ‘Why would he feel guilty?’

  ‘I don’t know. It does sound like his life unravelled rather after Linda left him.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ I say. ‘He was all over the place long before then. I’m not surprised she left him in the slightest. I mean, seriously: have you ever heard him speak without slurring?’

  The door slams open and Jimmy plunges through it, sees us, glares and storms towards the staircase. Robert follows. ‘Jimmy, come on! This is just…’

  He sees the two of us standing there and pipes down. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just wondering if we should be helping with lunch,’ says Joe. He’s fast on his feet, for a nineteen-year-old. I may not be my father’s daughter, but he’s sure as hell his mother’s son. ‘Where’s Jimmy going?’

  Robert rubs the back of his shaven skull. ‘I’m very much hoping he’s going to sulk in his room,’ he says. Maria emerges behind him, composed as ever, but the pupils of her eyes have almost obliterated her irises.

  A door bangs on the first floor and Jimmy reappears at the top of the stairs. He’s pulled on the leather trench coat I remember him wearing in the 1990s, and carries a battered duffel bag. He’s not shaved in days, and his sallow cheeks are thick with grey-black bristles. ‘Oh, now, come on, Jimmy,’ says Robert.

  Jimmy ignores him. Throws the bag on to one shoulder and tramps down the stairs.

  Robert stands and waits as he approaches and begins to pass. ‘Jimmy, come on. It’s the funeral tomorrow, for God’s sake. Just stay. This is barking.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ says Jimmy. ‘I’ll be at the funeral, for sure.’

  ‘Well, why not just stay, then?’

  ‘I’m not staying where I’m not wanted.’ He sounds like a huffy matron in an Ealing comedy. When I was younger, I thought that growing up meant that you, you know, grew up. Even watching all the adults in my life throwing whoosh-dadas right in front of my face didn’t change my mind. But Joe seems like the most in-control person here at the moment. Jimmy is like a sulky twelve-year-old who’s had his football taken away, and Robert and Maria a pair of frazzled teachers, exasperated and ineffectual.