The Darkest Secret

by Alex Marwood

  She turns to Linda, next to her on the back seat of the Clutterbucks’ people-carrier. Of course they have a people-carrier, though it’s a rare day when it carries more than two people. Nothing less than a Chelsea tractor for the great parliamentarian. She’s the weakest link of all, she thinks. She’s the one I need to keep on side, the one we all need to keep an eye on. Ruby and Fred are playing some toddler game on the other side of her that involves slapping each other’s hands and squealing, absorbed as only toddlers can be. Simone is in the front seat while Imogen drives, and Joaquin, Inigo and Tiggy are in a row, singing, badly, in the seat in front of them, and God help us if the police want to see how many seatbelts we’re using.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asks, quietly, though she doesn’t think any young ears are listening.

  In the daylight, Linda’s tan looks patchy. She’s one of those women who renew it every day, scrubbing off the old layer of skin with salt in the shower and leaving murky deposits for other people to clear up, but today she’s neither bathed nor slathered, and the line around her jaw looks a bit like a clown mask.

  ‘Awful,’ she says. ‘I feel awful.’

  Yes, I know. You’re more sensitive than the rest of us. All narcissists are. Only you can see the true horror, while the rest of us just swim in our murky soup of incomprehension.

  ‘We all do, Linda.’

  She imagines that somehow everyone will let her off because she’s special. She’s the one I need to work on. The rest of them understand how much trouble each of them, personally, is in. Linda’s such a goose she thinks the trouble is all about everybody else. I might have to get Sean to keep her on side, she thinks. I know he tires of them quickly, these women, but Linda might have to end up as a fixture for a bit. He might even have to come up with another wedding ring, what with spouses not having to testify and that. Just for a while. We can sort something out for the long run.

  ‘None of you seem to realise,’ says Linda, ‘how serious this is.’

  Again with the special. Maria is well used to handling narcissists. In her line of work they’re ten a penny. But you can make anyone do anything as long as you give them what they need. Imogen needs to be told how brilliant her husband is, how every sacrifice she makes is for the greater good. Simone likes to be told what to do. Jimmy just needs to know that his supplies won’t be cut off. Someone like Linda? Praise her specialness and threaten her status. Easy.

  She allows her eyes to well up. A skill she learned early in the day. Nothing flatters a narcissist more than receiving the empathy they never give. ‘You’re so right,’ she says. ‘You always get it when other people don’t, don’t you?’

  You really can’t overdo the flattery, with a narcissist. Linda’s shoulders expand with satisfaction. Maria puts a hand on her arm. Squeezes. ‘You’re so strong,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t feel strong right now.’

  ‘We all depend on your strength.’

  She leaves it a few beats, then, ‘Have you thought?’ she asks, ‘what you’d do with the kids?’

  Linda blinks. ‘Do with them?’

  ‘If you go to prison. Would your parents be able to take them on full-time? Only, they’re not young any more, are they? Do you think they’d cope?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ says Maria, ‘if this doesn’t work. If they find out. It won’t look good. You know how it’ll look, to other people?’

  Always remind a narcissist how other people will see them. It’s the thing they think about the most of all.

  Linda blenches. ‘But I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘They could,’ she presses on. ‘You understand that, don’t you? If someone’s indiscreet, if someone lets it out. Jimmy? Do you think he can keep his mouth shut?’

  ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ says Linda, and starts fiddling with her phone. ‘Christ, no.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘We’re all in this together, Linda,’ says Maria. ‘We can’t go and get Coco back now. We have to go all the way with this. A united front. Because no one will believe you weren’t involved. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, God. This is so unfair.’

  Maria says nothing; just leaves her words to sink in. Looks out of the window and starts ticking off the list again. Everything that’s been in contact with the child is on the boat. Even those bedsheets that have been through the washing machine, that dress Ruby was sick on, that might have got contaminated. It can go into the water before we get to Brighton. Even cadaver dogs can’t smell a corpse on something after it’s spent a few days in the sea. Robert’s going to pack up our family’s stuff so we can take off once we get back from Neptune’s Kingdom. Should I leave Linda down here? Can she stick to the plan? I have to trust her. We’re all going to have to trust each other. In a lot of ways they’re the easiest bunch I’ve ever worked with. The only person who’s going to be shedding genuine tears over that poor little girl is her mother.

  Neptune’s Kingdom is swarming, but Gina at the office has done her job and their VIP tickets are waiting at the front gate along with the press manager’s assistant and a photographer. The promise of a boy-band photoshoot in the spring, whoever the spring’s boy-band turns out to be, will open a lot of doors. The women, silent and tense in the car, leap into character as soon as they step from it: Imogen the veteran of a thousand of her husband’s pratfalls, Linda at last, it seems, grasping that her performance is important. Simone looks like a smug little cat, running with a child on each hand and hoisting them into the air the way the people who actually birthed them haven’t been able to do in a decade. Maria feels a swell of pride at how well she’s trained her. She’s our daughter in every way, she thinks. Thank God it was her who was here, not the Jackson girls. Imagine trying to persuade Milly that she should keep this a secret.

  She strolls forward to greet the PR, her best professional smile on her face. ‘This is so good of you,’ she says.

  ‘Not at all!’ says the PR, though she must be longing to get off home again and carry on with her barbecue or whatever it is you do to amuse yourself in Bournemouth on a bank holiday. ‘A pleasure!’

  She hands out their special gold wristbands. Puts them all on everyone’s left wrist until she comes to Ruby. ‘Ooh!’ she says. ‘You’ve already got one!’

  Maria laughs, gaily. ‘Yes! She’s got a twin who wears one on her right wrist. I gave them to them so we could tell them apart. Haven’t you, Coco?’

  Ruby waves her arm in the air. ‘I’m Coco!’ she shouts. She’s enjoying this game. More fun when Coco’s there, but still she’s delighted by how many people she’s managing to fool. She’s not reached an age where she’s realised that not everyone knows who her family are yet.

  ‘Well, welcome, Coco!’ says the PR, and slips the wristband on to her other wrist. ‘I hope you have a lovely day!’

  They pose for a quick round of photos and go in. Change into swimsuits, and the littlies – even Tiggy, who’s officially down to waterwings – get to pick out a new rubber ring each from the stall beside the wave pool. Tiggy picks out a pink pony with a streaming tail made of glitter. Fred and Inigo choose to wear Ninja Turtles. Ruby stares at the choice for a long time while the teenage shop assistant fiddles impatiently. She fingers a blue dolphin with eyes the size of saucers, then reluctantly selects a pink pony like Tiggy’s.

  ‘Are you sure, Coco?’ asks Maria, loudly, so the assistant can hear the name.

  ‘Yes,’ says Ruby. ‘Blue’s Ruby’s colour.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t suppose she’d mind. We could get one for her too, maybe? We should take her a present, for being under the weather.’

  Ruby brightens. ‘Yay!’ she cries, and snatches up her dolphin.

  ‘Okay, everybody,’ cries Maria, handing over her black card so the purchase is registered at the till, and treating the CCTV camera to her largest, brightest smile, ‘last one in the pool’s a jellyfish!’

  Robert
calls at three o’clock. Maria is exhausted. They’re all exhausted. Imogen fetched double espressos for all the women as they took it in turns to close their eyes on the concrete-bottomed sand-covered ‘beach’, and they’ve barely even scratched the surface of their exhaustion. Simone takes Joaquin and Tiggy off to the slides and Fred starts up a tantrum about not being allowed to go too. Linda, in her gold mesh bikini, grabs his arm so hard Maria is sure there will be fingertip bruises there later. ‘Shaddap!’ she yells into his four-year-old face. ‘I don’t want to hear it!’

  A couple of Boden Catalogue women a few feet away give them a Mumsnet look. Linda spots it, snarls a ‘What?’ in their direction and they recoil. Christ, thinks Maria, it’s probably a good thing those kids spend so much time at Granny’s.

  ‘Mummy’s awfully tired, darling,’ she says smoothly to Fred, and smiles at the targets of Linda’s wrath, waggling her eyes in give-me-strength sympathy. ‘Why don’t you go and play with Coco? She’s over there. Looks like she’s going to play on the Sea Monster.’

  Fred trots away, more than happy to get away from the raging gorgon they call his mother. ‘Coco!’ he calls across the crowded beach. ‘Wait for me, Coco!’

  Maria finally gets to answer the phone. ‘Darling?’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine,’ she says, loudly, aware that the Boden mums are still watching them, still earwigging to see whether she remonstrates with Linda. ‘We’re having a wonderful time. How’s Ruby doing?’

  ‘Sean’s crying,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Oh, poor darling,’ she says. ‘But they get like that when they’re under the weather. Why don’t you give her a drink and send her to bed for a little while? Poor Linda’s got a terrible headache, too.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he says, understanding the code they worked out long ago for talking in front of strangers. ‘Are you going to be able to get her under control?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Once she has a swim and thinks about things she’ll feel better, I’m sure.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Well, let me know if I need to have a word, won’t you?’

  ‘Maybe later. Perhaps if Sean —’

  ‘Claire’s called a couple of times.’

  Oh, Christ.

  ‘I told her you were at the water park with the girls and she seemed to take that okay.’

  ‘Okay, darling,’ she says. ‘Well, we’ll just have to call her later. She wasn’t sounding like she was going to come back, was she?’

  ‘No. She sounded like she might be going to call a lawyer on Tuesday, frankly.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Maria. ‘I’m sure she’ll have bigger things to think about by then.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Maria’s hand flies to her face where the slap has landed and she stares at her stepdaughter the way someone stares who’s been petting a pussycat and has just been informed that it’s a cougar.

  Simone shows no sign of being disturbed by what she’s done. In fact, she’s smiling, that weird Mona Lisa smile I remember from way back. Dropping her head to look up at her stepmother through her hair, the way she does.

  ‘Simone,’ says Robert, and his voice is full of despair.

  ‘Shut up,’ says Simone. Her voice is calm, as though she’s handing out orders to the cleaner.

  Ruby lets out a breath beside me, and it’s only then that I realise that I have been holding my own. I exhale, breathe sharply in. Simone’s eyes swivel to take me in, but her face doesn’t move.

  ‘Don’t you ever, ever speak for me again,’ she says to Maria.

  Maria stands there holding her cheek, her mouth half open.

  ‘Simone.’ Robert’s voice comes out as a low moan.

  ‘This is my house,’ says Simone. ‘You have no jurisdiction here. I don’t need you to speak for me. I would appreciate it if you remembered your place.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Maria, humbly. ‘Simone, we were only trying to help.’

  Her voice turns scornful. ‘As if I need your help.’

  ‘Simone —’ Robert tries to begin but she snaps him silent with a raised hand. Have you ever seen a cobra about to strike? Something about her reminds me of that. Robert gulps and falls silent. He’s scared of her, I think. My God, this family is just wall-to-wall secrets. Was Dad scared of her?

  ‘I’ve never needed your help,’ she says. ‘You interfered and you interfered, but I never did. He was my husband, and this is my house. He was always going to be mine. I didn’t need you interfering, persuading yourselves that you somehow gave him to me when he was always going to be mine. I didn’t need you to do anything. Do you get it? You think you’re so… clever… but you’re not. You never controlled anything. It was all me. I did it all myself. You’re just… ’ – she curls her upper lip, as though she’s smelling drains – ‘you’re just bit players.’

  Ruby’s face is scrunched up with confusion, her eyes flicking from person to person. The drawing-room door opens and Joe emerges, sees us all standing in the porch like an early American action painting and freezes. Doesn’t say anything, just watches.

  ‘I’m sorry, Simone,’ says Maria again. ‘We’ve only ever wanted to look after you. Your father —’

  ‘Shut up, shut up!’

  Ruby, still kiddish, trying to be grown-up, puts her head on the block. ‘Are you okay, Simone?’

  Simone whips round, bares her fangs in my sister’s face. ‘What are you even doing here? You don’t deserve to be here.’

  Ruby recoils, goes pink. ‘I – sorry – I…’

  ‘Christ,’ says Simone. ‘Stupid little girl. He didn’t want you. He couldn’t even stand to be in a room with you. You don’t even deserve to be alive.’

  Ruby gasps. Turns on the heel of her Doc Marten workboot and runs off up the hall.

  ‘Jesus!’ I say. I start off after her, but Simone shoots a hand out, grabs my wrist. She’s surprisingly strong; jerks me back so I feel my shoulder give. Digs bony fingers in around the bracelet.

  ‘I’ll go,’ says Joe, and jogs towards the stairs as Ruby runs up them. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Oh, my little sister. I want to chase her up there, throw myself on her, smother her with love, tell her lies about how it will all be okay. What sort of person says something like that? Was she always this vicious?

  And then it’s my turn. The smile is back. She looks – God, she looks pleased with herself, as though she has some fantastic trump card that she’s ready to play.

  She plays it. Pushes back my sleeve and holds out my wrist so Robert and Maria can see. ‘I see you’ve found it, then,’ she says, and treats me to a smile of such cold sweetness that I can’t suppress a shiver. ‘Daddy, Maria – did you see that Milly’s found Coco’s bracelet? Why do you think she hasn’t said anything to anybody? What do you think that means?’

  Silence. I have a horrible, disturbing feeling that all three of them are as old as time, that I’m being watched by dragons, that calculations are being made and odds weighed up. The house and grounds suddenly feel terribly far away from anywhere else. I feel myself sway.

  Then Maria bursts into tears. Puts a hand on the door jamb as if to support herself and turns her face to the sky. ‘Oh, God, Simone,’ she sobs, ‘how could you? How could you?’

  Simone laughs, a nasty, triumphant laugh, and walks off. Her footsteps click their way up her cold and lifeless corridor, but no one moves to follow.

  ‘Darling,’ says Robert, and goes to comfort his wife. He touches her on the shoulder, then enfolds her in an embrace. That’s what I should be doing, for Ruby. And I find myself overwhelmed by a sense of loss because there’s no one to do it for me, never has been, because I never learned how to hand out such comfort myself. Their daughter might be a crazy fuckup, but the Gavilas themselves are strong and united. And I envy and admire that in equal measure.

  And I’m torn. I want to go and do the right thing by my little sister, to learn how to do the caring thing properly. But I’m
so close, now, to finding out what Robert and Maria know. And it’s clear that they do know more than something. A lock of hair drops loose from Maria’s elegant chignon and covers her flaming cheek. Robert gently tidies it away behind her ear with the back of his knuckles. Such a tender gesture. They look into each other’s eyes and he nods. Just twice; slowly and regretfully. Then they both turn to me and he speaks.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘We’ve not been honest with you.’

  I follow them into the drawing room and he closes the door behind him. ‘Come and sit down, Milly,’ he says.

  ‘Mila,’ I say, some feeble attempt to take some modicum of control back into my hands.

  Maria perches on the edge of a sofa, takes the clip from her hair and puts it down on the coffee table. Shakes the hair loose, a waterfall of shiny chestnut. ‘Mila,’ she says. Her voice is soft and low and carries the burden of the ages. ‘Yes, I’m sorry. We’ve not been listening to you, have we? I’m not surprised you want to be a different person. God knows we all do. There’s not a person among us who wouldn’t go back to the beginning of that weekend and do it all differently.’