Seven For a Secret

by Judy Astley

  ‘Peace isn’t the kind of thing I associate with Tamsin,’ Tom said, making Heather laugh. She was watching a figure rowing from Margot’s dock up towards the island. All she could make out was that it was a man, not a teenager.

  ‘Late arrival,’ Tom said, indicating the rower, ‘unless it’s Russell going off to collect Tamsin.’

  Heather shivered. ‘It isn’t Russell,’ she said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The sharp smell of smoke and the night-rending blare of emergency sirens pulled Heather back to consciousness. Half-dozing, she realized acutely that she wasn’t just having a worried-parent dream about something selected randomly from the list of what’s most dreadful that can happen to children. It was way after three o’clock, and the party on the island had gone quiet hours ago. She’d done some lying awake, agonizing with Tom as to whether Suzy should really have been allowed to stay camping out with Tamsin as arranged, or be collected and made to come safely home. Her decision in favour of Suzy getting her own way had been, Heather admitted to herself, influenced by the fact that her mother continued to make her own disapproval so obvious as they left the pub the night before.

  ‘What time is Suzy to be home?’ Delia had asked.

  ‘You know she isn’t coming, she and Tamsin arranged this night out ages ago,’ Heather had explained, worrying if her mother’s memory was starting to give way.

  ‘But you can’t let her out there all night! It’s an All Night Party!’ Delia had gasped, as horrified as if Suzy was being specially equipped by Heather with a personal supply of illicit drugs.

  ‘It isn’t a party, or at least it won’t be as soon as they get bored and cold. Tam and Suzy are playing camps, that’s all. They’ve had it planned for weeks,’ Heather had replied, trying to bluff away her own misgivings and at the same time prove that she could bring up her own children with tolerance and leniency and still end up with reasonable, well-adjusted grown-ups at the end of it all. Though when did it all end, she wondered, still, at over forty, childishly trying to outface her mother and now cravenly using her own daughter as a weapon to do it with.

  Once the party sounds had died down, and Tom and Heather imagined that everyone else had gone safely home to sleep somewhere more comfortable, they’d concluded with relief that Suzy really would be safe enough, with Tamsin and in the company of Kate and Simon. Now Heather sat up fast enough to make her head whirl, sniffed the air and knew she’d been terribly, irresponsibly, wrong. Tom was already out of bed, leaning out of the window, seeing the smoke drifting along the river in the deep grey dawning light.

  ‘I can’t see flames,’ he told her, as if that would be any comfort. ‘And the smoke might just be the barbecue fire. The sirens could be a road accident or anything – that sort of thing always does seem worse in the middle of the night,’ he added, his anxious face belying his attempt to deny his fear, while at the same time he was hurling himself into his clothes. ‘I’ll whip a boat from the pub and go and check on them. Probably they’re asleep and I’ll scare them witless.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Heather said, reaching into a drawer for her jeans.

  ‘No, don’t,’ he said. ‘What about Delia?’

  ‘I’ll see if she’s awake. If she is I’ll tell her what’s happening, and if not I’ll leave a note in the kitchen. She was exhausted.’

  Heather ran alongside Tom to the pub, faster than she knew she could. Her head was full of dreaded ‘what ifs’, just as she knew Suzy’s must be. Suppose the boats had all caught fire and they were all trapped over there? She thought about fire, about how Uncle Edward’s body had, that afternoon, been cremated to pale ash as finely ground as powder. It was impossible not to picture that happening to Suzy and Kate, out there under the trees cut off from the shore. It wouldn’t have been far to swim if the river had been just a safe and placid lake, but there was a fierce current around the island, and it was treacherously close to the weir. The earliest dire warnings the girls could remember weren’t about the danger of strangers but the terrible unguessed hazards of the river. As they ran down the lane towards the water, a fire engine hurtled past, lights flashing. Heather flattened herself against the hedge to let it pass, gasping painfully and her throat burning with the unaccustomed effort of running.

  ‘Wasn’t wrong then,’ Tom gasped hoarsely beside her, starting to run again behind the fire engine.

  Down by the water, where the lights of the pub lit up the scene, Heather thought of old newsreels of the Dunkirk landings. The water seemed full of boats, shadowy, moving slowly and overloaded. Shamefaced, strangely passive teenagers were landing on the bank and clambering silently up the pontoon. A police launch carried a skulking bunch of boys who had jackets wrapped round their heads as if any moment they were ready to hide their faces from accusing television cameras.

  ‘Where’s Suzy and Kate?’ Tom muttered, then grabbed a boy from the gloom. ‘Simon? Where are the girls?’

  ‘Suzy’s coming, she’s got Tamsin and some others with her. Kate’s not here,’ he said, before being manhandled away by a police constable with more force than Heather thought, in the circumstances, was appropriate.

  ‘Did you see that?’ she whispered to Tom. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more gentle – these kids are in shock.’

  ‘Probably thinking they’re just a bunch of vandals,’ Tom replied. ‘I mean, look at the state of the poor island: not many round here are going to think they’re anything else, are they?’

  ‘Mum! What’re you doing here?’ Suzy yelled from her boat as she and Tamsin arrived at the pontoon. Heather, sick with anxiety about Kate, looked beyond Suzy to where the island’s rain-starved saplings and old dead wood were now crackling and blazing like a municipal bonfire night display. She prayed no-one was still left over there. The fire brigade were aiming jets of water that arced over the river and sizzled in the flames. Curious residents, hauled from their sleep by noise and nosiness, were beginning to gather in the pub garden and, seeing that everyone seemed to be safe, commented that it would be neighbourly to reopen the bar.

  Tom hugged Suzy so tightly, the girl started struggling to escape and breathe.

  ‘Where is Kate?’ Heather demanded. ‘I can’t see her. Simon says she’s not here.’ She couldn’t have drowned or been burned could she? A little, dreadful, rat of fear chewed persistently – though if the others could get away, Kate could too, surely.

  ‘Kate went off in a boat. Ages ago,’ Tamsin informed them as she passed by on her way to see why Simon was being shoved into a police car.

  ‘Oh didn’t she come home? I thought she would have,’ Suzy said, ‘Iain came in Russell’s boat to give her a lift. Don’t worry about her, she’s been gone hours.’

  ‘Who the hell is Iain?’ Tom asked suddenly.

  Suzy looked at him with astonishment, as if, Heather thought, she’d realized for the first time just how much of their everyday lives her father missed by being away so much. ‘He’s just that man who wrote the film that they’ve been doing at Margot’s. You know,’ Suzy said, as if she shouldn’t have to be telling him this. ‘At least, he wrote the book that the film’s of and—’

  ‘Never mind that now. What’s he got to do with Kate?’

  ‘He got her a part in the film, just a walk-on,’ Heather told him as they started walking back towards home loaded with Suzy’s tent, bag of equipment and Tamsin tramping along beside them looking quite enviably snug in her pea-green baby bird coat.

  Heather could feel Tom’s impatience for a deeper explanation and she wished there was something simple and placatory she could say. She wondered which aspect of ‘Who is Iain?’ he should be informed of first: that Iain was her ex-husband, a ‘friend’ of Kate, sworn enemy of Delia, partner in failed adultery. Foreboding that was worse than the moment when she’d woken up smelling the smoke was now taking over her mind. As soon as they got home, she knew Tom was going to demand to know where Kate was now. Heather knew with quite shattering, awful, certaint
y exactly where she was. No wonder there’d been something Iain had found impossible to tell her over dinner. She could picture all too painfully the pretty dovecote room and the brass bed containing her smoothly naked child nestled beside the well-worn body of Iain. For only the first time since she was Kate’s age herself, she could understand how sorrow could be described as stabbing, and as she walked along the path to her house, she rubbed at the area where her heart was, trying to ease the dread and the hurt.

  Margot was unaware that she was interrupting anything more than a late breakfast when, at a more civilized time that morning, she came bustling into Heather’s kitchen, full of the awfulness of what Simon had done. She didn’t notice the sleepless, worried faces of Heather and Tom, the array of used coffee cups lying around on every surface.

  ‘Arrested! Charged! The police found stolen goods all over the village. They’ve had the cottage upside down! God knows what Russell will have to say about it. Though if he was around a bit more to take notice—’ She stopped and bit her lip, conscious that she might have touched a nerve with Tom. Tom, however, was looking blankly out of the window, staring down to the river as if expecting to see Cleopatra’s barge come floating along at any moment. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Heather reassured her, feeling as if she was conversing on an unreal, automatic level. ‘I am sorry about Simon. Are they sure he did it? I mean he’s not—’

  ‘“Not the sort”, you mean,’ Margot said with a short sardonic laugh. ‘No such thing as not the sort, I think. Anyway the good news is we heard from the school in the post this morning, and they’re willing to have him back, just like I said they would. Can’t afford to let good fee-payers out of their grasp. So he’s going back there in September, no question. If he stays around here there’ll just be more trouble, I can see it coming.’

  ‘What will happen to Shane and Darren, do you think?’ Heather asked.

  ‘Something custodial, the police think, this time.’ She smiled sadly. ‘They didn’t think Simon would get more than a caution. It’s being middle class, you see, isn’t it? When our kids are a problem we just pack them off to boarding school and let someone else sort them out. A quite socially acceptable equivalent of putting them into Care.’ A flurry of noise came from the hallway and Margot turned to see what was happening. ‘Good grief, you’re looking pleased with yourself!’ she said to Kate, who appeared in the kitchen doorway, radiant as an angel.

  Heather felt furious – how dare the girl come swanning in like that, looking as if she was walking six inches above the ground? The very air around her was practically alight in post-sexual glow. The pain in her chest, the awful knifing of sexual jealousy, started up again and she lunged forward and slapped Kate’s face with all the angry, irrational strength she could gather.

  Tom grabbed her arm before she could inflict more damage – the urge to keep slapping, to pull all that golden hair and watch her howl with pain was horrendously powerful.

  ‘Er, I’ll be off now. See you later,’ Margot said, backing out of the door and tactfully bolting for home.

  ‘What was that for?’ Kate screamed at her mother.

  ‘What do you think it was for?’

  ‘Heather, for heaven’s sake calm down, let Kate tell us herself why she thinks it was all right to stay out all night.’

  ‘God, Tom, stop being so reasonable.’

  ‘You knew I wouldn’t be home. I was going to stay out with Suzy!’ Kate wailed, rubbing her face.

  ‘But you didn’t, did you? I know where you went, and who with!’

  ‘Heather, don’t you think it would be more helpful if we just sat down and discussed this sensibly?’ Tom was saying, pulling her gently into a chair and removing her to a safe distance from Kate.

  ‘Sensibly? No. No I don’t,’ Heather said, glaring at him.

  ‘Look, let’s not over-react,’ he said. ‘What’s she done? She’s stayed out all night with a man. OK, not one’s first choice, having your daughter sleep with someone about as old as her own father, who happens to be one of her mother’s ex-boyfriends. It’s bizarre, probably something deeply Freudian, but it’ll pass,’ he said to Heather, stroking her hair.

  ‘No it won’t. I’m going away with him,’ Kate stated sullenly, staring intently at Heather. ‘He’s asked me to go to Bermuda, and I’ve come home to pack.’

  Delia waited outside the kitchen door, listening to Kate make her announcement. They’re lucky, she thought, at least their daughter is telling them before she goes, rather than phoning them two days later. ‘Well doesn’t history have a strange way of repeating itself?’ she announced to Heather as she walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Does it?’ Tom asked, perplexed.

  ‘Kate, you can’t possibly go. What about A-levels?’ Heather argued, falling back rather feebly on education as a reason for staying.

  ‘School! You never thought about school!’ Delia commented as she filled the kettle.

  Heather looked at her mother, watching her calmly going through the motions of preparing herself some breakfast while coming out with remarks she must have been saving up for twenty-five years. It was turning into a truth session – family therapy without a counsellor to do the safe refereeing.

  ‘Am I missing something here? What exactly are we talking about?’ Tom said. ‘Isn’t this supposed to be about Kate and this mysterious Iain character?’

  Kate stood fidgeting, waiting for them all to get back to discussing her. Her grandmother, she assumed, was going dotty, referring back to the past the way old people do, remembering more, probably, about what happened thirty years ago than she did about the previous week. Iain wouldn’t get like that, she just knew. He would be permanently not old.

  ‘You can’t go with him. He’s too old, you’re too young – he’s . . . he’s evil,’ Heather said with a shudder, trying not to cry.

  ‘How did you know where I was?’ Kate suddenly asked, sitting opposite Heather at the kitchen table. ‘How did you know? Who told you?’

  ‘Because she went there herself. Didn’t you? With him.’ Delia had a look of self-satisfied foreknowledge, as if she’d long ago put two and two together and should now be congratulated on announcing that it made four.

  ‘Be quiet, Mother. This is my business,’ Heather said coldly. ‘Yes, I went to the Manoir the other night. With Iain. For dinner.’ She looked at Tom, ‘Just dinner,’ she repeated. They were all looking at her, waiting.

  ‘I knew,’ Delia chipped in. ‘I could tell. You had that look, like you used to get back then. And you still haven’t told Tom have you?’ she said to Heather, as if Tom, being just a husband, could hardly be counted as being in the room.

  ‘Back when? Told him what?’ Kate demanded.

  ‘When I was your age. When we, when I went out with Iain. Look, you can’t go off with him, you just can’t.’ Heather got up and started bustling around, loading cups into the dishwasher and trying to dissipate the nervous energy that was collecting in her. She could feel tears welling. They were all looking at her, waiting now; all of them, not just Delia, knew there was some old truth to be told. Tom should have known years ago. He could hardly complain now, he being an absolute master at expecting the past, even if that constituted a brief last-week flingette, to be the past. If she told them, she decided, Kate wouldn’t, couldn’t go. She leaned against the dresser feeling trapped and flattened, feeling their expectancy squashing hard against her.

  ‘He wasn’t just a boyfriend. Iain and I were married for a little while when I was only sixteen and silly, like you,’ she began. Upstairs, Suzy broke their silence with her new Blur CD. The thought of Simon in police custody flashed through Heather’s mind. If Kate had been caught stealing instead of this – what a small, easy thing it would have seemed by comparison. She took another breath and told them the rest as flatly as if she was reading from a script, talking about someone else. ‘We went up to Scotland and I lived in Iain’s castle with just him and a murderous
old nanny. I got pregnant and Iain didn’t want the baby. He wanted the nanny to abort it with a knitting needle. I refused, so he decided everything had been a ridiculous mistake and took me to the station and put me on a train to London. He liked little girls as toys, not as wives, not when they reminded him that deep down they were women. Doesn’t look like he’s changed. I didn’t see him again till Margot’s party, when you jumped in the pool,’ she told them. ‘So you see, Kate, now you know the truth, you can’t possibly go off anywhere with him.’

  There was a small, tense silence, then Kate, rubbing the painful side of her face, said simply, ‘Yes I can.’

  Heather sat alone by the river watching the magpies terrorizing the songbirds, and thought about her dead baby. One for sorrow, two for mirth, she thought about the older, more sinister version of the rhyme, which said, seven for a babe that’s buried in the earth. She’d never known if it was a boy or a girl; it had been treated as a growth, clots, something distasteful to be wrapped up and disposed of like bits of cancer or amputated limbs. ‘There’s no place in here for girls like you!’ the staff-nurse had hissed coldly when Heather had woken in the night, shivering with fever and pain. The way they’d handled her, she might as well have had the knitting needle treatment.

  She thought about the journey from Scotland, about the hot and itchy plush red seats of the train, and how she’d realized that she wasn’t sweating, but bleeding, browny-red into the browny-red material. She’d felt paralysed by fear and shame. Blood from there was blood to be hidden, menstrual blood that was to be disguised with pads so thin, tampons so discreet. She remembered the pink-and-white quasi-medical adverts for the products, Dr Whites, Lillets – all, back then, so coy and so hinting that a period was only one step away from a sexually transmitted disease. Women went about in fear of anything showing – the bulge of a pad, a shadow of a stain on a pale skirt. A friend’s mother had whispered that she shouldn’t wash her hair at such a time, the blood would go to her head and the clear implication was that this sinister stuff was dangerous enough to do damage. On the train she’d borne, silent with the terror of embarrassment, excruciating waves of pain till just before King’s Cross she’d passed out and had to be taken from the train by ambulance. Semi-conscious, she’d simply been relieved that she hadn’t had to get up and walk and expose the dreadful trailing blood, humiliated, like girls at school who started to bleed out on the games field.