by Alex Marwood
I wait. They’re going to tell me something that will break my heart, I know that.
‘I think you must have guessed that what happened to Coco isn’t the same as the public story,’ says Robert.
I nod. Maria takes in a gulp of air and covers her face with her hands. ‘Oh, God. Oh, God, Mila. We didn’t mean any harm. We didn’t mean it to come out like this. You have to understand. Everything we did, we did with her best interests at heart. We had to protect her. She was so little.’
Protect her? Didn’t do a very good job of that, did you?
‘And it was stupid,’ says Robert. ‘A rash, panic decision, and we’ve all regretted it every day since, but once it was done it was too late to change.’
‘What?’ I cry. ‘Please! What? What are you telling me?’
Robert sits down beside his wife. I continue to stand; cling to the dominant position while they gaze up at me like supplicants seeking absolution. I stay over by the door, space between me and them, my exit route easily accessed if I need it. I no longer feel secure in this house, not that I ever really did. Even if you suspect that you’ve been lied to, confirming it still shakes your whole world.
‘Her whole life would have been ruined,’ says Maria, and another sob comes out with the words. ‘She didn’t know what she was doing. Claire would never have forgiven her. She could never have lived with it; it would have ruined her whole life.’
They can’t be talking about Coco. They’re talking like Fundies explaining why they burned their tainted daughter in her bed. ‘Who? Who are you talking about?’
She tosses her hair off her face and looks me direct in the eye. ‘Ruby! I’m talking about Ruby!’
I judder to a halt. ‘Ruby?’
‘It can’t… oh, God, Mila. It was the worst moment of my life. Worse than – than anything.’
The strength goes out of my legs. I sink on to one of the hard ebony thrones that sit either side of the door. ‘What happened?’
‘She didn’t mean to do it,’ says Robert. ‘God, of course she didn’t mean to do it. She was three. She won’t even have known what drowning was, really. She just thought – well, I can’t say what she thought. She was just little.’
‘They were sleeping in the downstairs room,’ says Maria. ‘It was boiling hot down there. We should have got a fan. All these things you think of after the event. If we’d got a fan, we should have checked the locks, why was the alarm not on? But I keep thinking: if they’d had a fan… I don’t know. I was boiling. I woke up at four in the morning and the house was silent and I couldn’t get back to sleep because it was just too hot. So I went downstairs, and I thought… I thought maybe if I had a swim and cooled down… it didn’t even occur to me to look in their room. The door was half open, I remember that. But I thought, you know, that Sean must have left it that way to give them some air. And that damn door lock. I don’t think any of us had realised it wasn’t working. The key turned fine, you see. So I think, you know… everyone just thought when they went through it all weekend that someone else must have been through before. I didn’t even think about it then. Just thought, oh God, someone must have forgotten to lock it, I must remember to do that when I come in.’
I stare at them both. They look broken. Robert seems to have shrunk inside his big-man suit, and Maria’s face is streaked with mascara and eyeliner despite her attempts to quietly mop it up. It’s a chilling sight: both of them naked before me, undone.
‘… and she was by the pool,’ she says. ‘Sitting on a sun-lounger, wrapped in a towel, and Coco… oh, God.’
She starts to sob again. I go cold. Then hot, then cold again. Oh, God. ‘What happened?’
‘You remember how much she loved the water?’ asks Robert. I nod. Having to shepherd her back from the sea that day in Poole Harbour, over and over; Coco always happy to just sit in the sand, but Ruby always wanting to go out there, to paddle just that bit deeper, wanting to wade, wanting to feel the little waves from the boats slosh up her chest, always in danger of taking herself out of her depth. I remember thinking that she was weeks off being able to swim. A water baby.
‘She only wanted to swim,’ says Maria. ‘She didn’t mean it. But Coco wouldn’t go in. So she pushed her. No ring, no waterwings; nothing to help her keep afloat. She didn’t even know what she’d done when I found them. She thought Coco had learned to swim under water, that she was at the bottom of the pool because… oh…’
Robert puts an arm round her.
‘And we couldn’t,’ he says. ‘We just couldn’t. Your father was destroyed. And we thought, you know… the blame. Not just her, but him. They would probably have prosecuted him, even though none of it was… meant. And we looked at Ruby, and we thought, oh, poor kid, poor, poor little kid, she’s so small. Imagine carrying that burden with you for the rest of your life. The child who killed her sister. And Claire. How was she going to live, knowing what had happened? Living with the daughter who’d killed her other daughter? You’ve seen her. She’s fragile enough as it is…’
‘It was a stupid thing to do,’ says Maria. ‘But we were in a mess. Everyone crying, and all these thoughts – the other kids, how we could explain. And Ruby. She was just sitting there, all smiles, thinking she’d been clever. She wanted to go back into the pool. When her dad came down. And he couldn’t even look at her.’
‘So you…’
I remember them. Stupid little puppy creatures, still half formed. Oh, God, poor little Coco. I have dreams, sometimes, in which I’m drowning. The breath, that last breath, getting bigger and hotter in my lungs as it fights to burst out, the struggle towards the surface. Would it be less bad, if you didn’t know what it was? If you didn’t really understand about death?
I realise that tears are pouring down my face. I think about Ruby, crying upstairs, enough of a burden as it is at being the surviving one. I can’t do this. I can’t tell her this.
‘It was all such a rush,’ says Robert. ‘None of us was thinking straight.’
‘You’re saying you… disposed of the body?’ The words sound vile. Like a police report read out on the news. Something gangsters do, or rapists, or men who don’t want the expense and inconvenience of a divorce. Not us. Not people like us.
They both go silent. Both thinking about the things they’ve done, how it must look to the world.
‘Yes,’ says Robert, eventually.
I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know how they did it, what they’ve done. I think back to them all, that weekend: those glossy, handsome, confident people, so sure of their place in the world, so certain that their money and status had armoured them against everything.
‘It was stupid,’ says Maria. ‘I know you think it was stupid. But we had to make a decision before the other children woke up. I think that was partly it. Just the thought of the other kids, all those little children, waking up to discover what death was. I know. We were half out of our minds and we did what we thought was best. We didn’t want that poor little girl to have to grow up like that.’
I’m still in shock. Distant, somehow, from my thoughts. ‘And you thought that this was… better?’ I say, slowly.
‘I suppose we did at the time,’ says Robert. ‘And then, once it was done, and the whole hunt snowballed and everyone was looking for her and the whole world was watching, it was too late to back out. What could we possibly say that would have ended without all of us in prison and Ruby labelled a killer forever, in front of the whole world?’
I shake my head. Crazy. It’s crazy. ‘But she didn’t mean to…’
‘I know. I know. I told you, we weren’t thinking straight. And it would have been the same, for Claire. Every time she looked at her, that’s what she’d have seen, and what sort of way is that to grow up?’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say again. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
I can feel them both watching me, waiting. ‘So Simone knows?’
‘Simone was there.’
‘And did you… did she help?’
Maria’s eyes fill with tears again. ‘Mila, we all helped. Once it had happened, once the whole thing had started, we all helped.’
‘And no one tried to argue against it? Not one of you?’
‘I know it’s hard to believe,’ says Robert, ‘but you weren’t there. And you know, when you’re in a group, you just…’
‘Whose idea was it?’
‘Your father’s,’ they say, together, with a single voice.
‘He was devastated,’ says Robert. ‘But all he could think about was what it would do to Ruby.’
‘And to you,’ says Maria. ‘You were so young. He loved you all so much.’
Me?
I think. What has it done to me? Is it worse, now that I know the truth? Now that I know Ruby as an almost-adult, now I feel responsible for her, now I’ve come to like her? Now she’s no longer an amorphous blob that represents my grievances, but a whole human being who weeps for other people and tells jokes to get through? Can I destroy everything she knows about herself, just for the sake of revealing the truth? Everything that Claire knows? If there’s one thing I do know, it’s that, despite their problems, those two love each other, demonstrate it, are at ease with it in a way that no one on my side of the family has ever managed. Can I really destroy that?
And Dad. To blame, all my adulthood, for everything. Keeping a secret that must have ripped him apart every day. In my head I’ve been calling him a psychopath, a narcissist, a borderline, and all that is turned on its head. The emotionless affect, the obsession with work, the constant search for control, the huge wheezing laugh that always somehow seemed that little bit empty… they’re all different now, open to interpretation. Everything about the man is different, now I look at him through the prism of his despair.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say, once more.
‘You must do what you think is right,’ says Maria. ‘I’m so sorry that Simone has put this burden on you. If you can find it in your heart to forgive her… she’s not thinking straight, Mila. She’s so unwell.’
‘I should find her,’ says Robert.
She lays a hand on his forearm, strokes it with a thumb. Gazes at him with adoration. More people who love each other, whose lives I could destroy.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I should go and find Ruby. I understand that Simone’s not well, but Ruby’s dreadfully upset.’
I don’t know what to do. I really don’t know what to do.
Chapter Forty-Four
2004 | Sunday | Sean
The Gavilas leave at half-past five. They had always been scheduled to leave this afternoon, and, despite being a couple of hours later than they’d intended they still hope to cover the seventy-five miles to Brighton before nightfall. The Gin O’Clock can easily manage thirty knots once they’re past Cowes, and though the nights are shortening they’ll still have dusk until well into the evening. The rest of the party breathe a sigh of relief as they trundle their cases off up the road to the harbour. Joaquin is undoubtedly the weakest link in the plan. Boys don’t notice much the way girls do, it’s true, but even he would have been likely to clock eventually that there was only one twin.
Public performance has drained the women of the last of their strength. The kids’ supper is a silent affair of ham sandwiches and the remains of the watered-down orange juice, a handful of grapes each. The fridge is almost bare, but no one has much appetite anyway. Ruby is back to being Ruby, and Coco is in bed already. It’s very easy to fool children. They ask questions all the time, but they’re really not interested in the world beyond themselves, are generally content with the simplest answers and a diversionary tactic. A bit like a lot of millionaires, he thinks.
‘So,’ says Imogen, as the last crust is torn off a quarter-sandwich and shoved to the side of the plate. ‘You know what? As it’s the last night of the holidays and you’ve all been in the pool all afternoon, I think we can miss bathtime tonight.’
A wail goes up. No bathtime means early bed; that much they have all taken in. And, though they’re dropping on their feet, no child wants the day to end. Imogen waves her hand in the air. Sean is impressed by how composed she has been today, how efficient, once she understood what was needed. She has, he supposes, been running political gatherings, helping her husband pursue agendas, for nearly twenty years, and the single-mindedness shows. ‘How about,’ she says, ‘we all line up on the sofas and I’ll read us a story? How about that?’
‘What story?’ asks Tiggy, suspiciously.
Imogen holds up a book and they all eye it. Of the six of them, only Tiggy can read, and their skills haven’t got much further than cats sitting on mats. No geniuses among them, thinks Sean, and thank God for that. My Coco was no genius, either. She would never have grown up to save the world, or lead it.
He feels a lurch and waits for it to pass. Already Coco is moving into the past, a tragedy that has happened. His powers of recovery have always been little short of miraculous, and he likes that about himself. Other people weep and wail for weeks, months, years, but Sean has always had his eyes on the future. It will be difficult, the next few months, he thinks, but I will get through. And Claire: Claire doesn’t even know what’s about to hit her. She still thinks that the worst that’s happened in her world is losing her husband.
‘Simone left it for you,’ says Imogen, and holds up the dramatic cartoon cover for them all to see. ‘Look! It’s the new Harry Potter!’
There’s an outbreak of oohs. Not one of them can have actually experienced Harry Potter, he thinks. It’s a crowd delusion, this. They all want him because they see the older children going mad for him. They’ll be bored stupid listening to something so much too old for them, but they will never, ever admit it until someone else does. ‘And we can have hot chocolate,’ says Imogen. ‘How about that?’
Another ooh. Hot chocolate in high summer: they’ve never heard of such a thing. ‘Go on,’ says Imogen. ‘Everybody go and get into your jammies, and by the time you’ve done that the chocolate will be ready. Biggies look after littlies, yes? Take care on the stairs!’
‘Do we get our vitamins tonight?’ asks Inigo Orizio.
‘No,’ says Linda. She’s barely spoken since they came in, moving mechanically from sink to fridge to dishwasher to island to table, her eyes puffy and her expression grim. But she’s got past her protests of the small hours; seems to have taken in that it’s too late now, and she has no alternative but to go along. ‘You’re all better now. You don’t need them. Just a little one for Ruby, because she was sick last night, but the rest of you are all sorted. Go on. Off you go. You stay here, Ruby. I’ll go and get your pyjamas. We don’t want to wake Coco up. First one back gets an extra marshmallow!’
The children run off, Ruby left sitting at the table.
‘Imogen, do we have to?’ Sean asks.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘We need her to sleep. I’m sorry.’
‘But can’t we…’
‘Christ,’ says Jimmy from the couch where he has been sitting staring silently into the dead fireplace. ‘It’s a herbal one. Not the same thing. You think I’m completely stupid?’
Sean doesn’t answer. You said the dosage was safe, he thinks. Last night you were laughing at Claire for being unsure. But he’s become strangely passive, this evening, as though the leadership has been sucked out of him. The pill is on Maria’s list, so it must be taken.
‘I’ll need you to clear off there, Jimmy,’ says Imogen. ‘Make room for the littlies.’
Jimmy’s head turns, and his face seems to follow seconds later. He has aged overnight, his skin grey and the flesh drooping. Sean could swear that the amount of grey in that slovenly stubble has increased. ‘Where should I go?’
Imogen shakes her head wearily. ‘I don’t really care,’ she says. ‘I think Charlie’s down in the gazebo. Why don’t you go and sit there? In fact, all you men should clear out, really. Let us get them settled.’
&n
bsp; Jimmy levers himself off the sofa and sways a little. He’s even moving like an old man, thinks Sean. Did he not even keep a few of those drugs back for himself when he handed the case over to the Gavilas? He looks as if he has lumbago. He follows him out through the doors, into the early evening. Another beautiful night to come. The sky is almost entirely clear, just a couple of pinky wisps of cloud high up above their heads. Like yesterday, he thinks, only so not. This time yesterday we were halfway down the second bottle of fizz and a great night of pleasure stretched out in front of us. This time yesterday I was going up to see what Claire was going to inflict on us by way of clothing. This time yesterday, I was the king of the world.
His phone rings. He glances down at the display and sees that it’s his wife. I can’t, he thinks. I know Maria said I should, but this much I cannot do. She’ll hear my voice and she’ll know that something’s wrong. And tomorrow she won’t believe me. He sends the call away. She’s rung six times today already. To pick a fight, or speak to the girls. Should have taken them with you, he thinks. If you’d taken them with you, this would never have happened. He’s already wiped from his mind the fact that by the time Claire left, Coco was most likely already beyond saving. The human mind is miraculous in its defence of the ego.
Charlie sits on a sofa in the gazebo and stares into the air, much the same way Jimmy was doing in the kitchen. He looks up as they approach, and it’s obvious from his expression that their arrival is unwelcome. All day, in moments of inaction, they have been avoiding each other: taking up positions where the others aren’t, each filling his head with reasons why they, personally, are not responsible.
Sean and Jimmy sit down, each on his own separate sofa. On a normal day, Sean would be reaching into his pocket for his cigars, setting about the warming and the snipping and the ritual lighting. But this evening he feels desire for nothing. I’m dead inside, he thinks. Not even pleasure will help me. He sits, and drums his fingers on the armrest. Looks at the glass table top, freshly washed and wiped and polished. There’s no sign at all, he thinks, that anything happened here. No sign of the fun we had.