‘You should make peace with Juliet,’ Kat tells me. ‘You’re fighting for the same side now. She knew something was up with Dickie. We talked about it; she told me he wasn’t himself before he died – and then, when his death was so sudden, it made her feel uneasy. Suspicious. But she didn’t know of what exactly – or whom. After Tom drowned, she got in touch to tell me everything. She wanted it all off her chest, in case she was next.’ She sighs. ‘Chesterfield damaged her too, you know.’
I think of Juliet before I left Chesterfield. Thin and strained, drained of all her powers. Despite myself, I feel sad for that Juliet. I want to go back and tell her it will be OK. That she will go on to be a successful television star with a perma-tan and more than a hundred thousand followers on Instagram, but I know, even as I have the thought, that all those things don’t matter, really. That the teenage version of Juliet is still inside her, hungry-eyed, needy, desperate to impress the boys at any cost. That that version of Juliet stays with her as much as my teenage self – with chewing gum in my hair, weeping in the bathroom – is with me. We don’t shed our former selves like snake skins. It doesn’t work like that.
I don’t commit to Kat one way or the other. We’ll see where we are after this trip, I decide. And then I put my phone on silent.
My promise to my mother propels me on – I didn’t look after my sister when I should have done. But I will find her now. During the journey, I check off, in my mind, all the places Ellie is not – not in France, not on Facebook, not in London delivering flowers. She is nowhere – nowhere she said she would be, nowhere anyone knows her. My thoughts hare ahead in the darkness, circling around on themselves, always back to the same place, but I can’t go there. I can’t accept it. Every time, I shy away.
It’s dark by the time the cab reaches Honeybourne. I ask him to drop me off at the end of the drive so I can approach on foot.
I don’t have a plan, I realise. I don’t know how to begin, so I begin by walking towards the house. More than anything, I want to see the children. I keep my hand in my coat pocket, close my fingers around the handle of the knife.
As I reach the house, the floodlights snap on.
Run away, Fran, says Ellie’s voice, clear as a bell. Get out of here. Run.
But my feet are glued to the ground.
The front door swings open and Fiona stands, beaming, in a rectangle of light, their Labrador hovering benignly at her heels.
‘Fran,’ she says warmly. ‘Come in – you’re just in time for a gin and tonic.’
59
I don’t know what I was expecting. Suspicion. Guardedness, perhaps. At the very least, surprise. But her warmth knocks me off balance. It’s the strangest thing. It’s as if she knew I was coming.
‘Where’s Charles?’ I ask, glancing around the hallway, noticing for the first time that all the framed prints are of birds you’d hunt – pheasants, partridges, a red grouse.
‘Upstairs in the games room,’ she says. ‘We’ll join him in a moment.’
She shuts the door behind us and pulls the bolt across.
I reach for the knife again, just to touch it, to check it’s there, but I follow her mutely to the kitchen. The longer she believes I don’t suspect anything, the better that is for me. There’s a Jo Malone candle burning on the kitchen table, a MacBook open on the counter, murmured voices coming from the Roberts radio on the windowsill.
‘What an unexpected surprise, Fran,’ Fiona calls over her shoulder. She heads for their corner fridge, as big as a spaceship. ‘Will you join us for a gin?’
‘I’d better not.’ I need to keep a clear head.
‘Go on. You’ll make us feel bad.’ She smiles at me winningly. ‘Slimline tonic?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I like full-fat.’
Fiona laughs throatily then. ‘Yes, of course.’
My eyes follow her as she makes our drinks, moving from the fridge to the chopping board. Fiona has never made me a gin and tonic before, so why would she say that? Yes, of course. Unless someone has told her. Someone I have gone for drinks with. Someone, it occurs to me now, I don’t really know at all.
There’s the clink of ice in the tumblers, her fingers curling around a knife as she slices the lime. ‘It’s the oddest thing, isn’t it?’ Fiona nods at the laptop on the counter. ‘About Ellie’s Facebook being faked.’
‘Yes.’ It’s warm in the kitchen. My face feels flushed and hot.
‘You know, when we looked it up, the account wasn’t there.’
‘Is that right?’
If Fiona hears the edge in my voice, she doesn’t let on. ‘What do you think is going on?’ She pauses, still holding the knife as she looks over at me.
I swallow. ‘What do you think?’ I repeat back at her, looking down at the floor where Fiona’s slim feet are neatly pedicured, as usual. Her toenails a surprising shade of blue.
‘Perhaps someone hacked her account.’ She squeezes lime into our drinks. ‘Deleting everything. Or it could be …’ She hesitates.
‘Could be – what?’
‘I don’t know.’ She glances at me. ‘Perhaps it had something to do with Tom.’ She passes me my glass. ‘What he did to Ellie.’
‘What are you saying?’
Fiona gives me a meaningful look. ‘I think you know what I’m saying.’
‘That Ellie could have hurt him?’
Fiona shrugs. ‘It’s possible. And then gone into hiding. It’s what people are suggesting,’ she adds quietly. ‘On Facebook. Old Chesterfield alumni.’
‘Just gossip,’ I say.
She tilts her head sympathetically, neither agreeing, nor disagreeing.
‘We’ve all had thoughts like that, haven’t we? About revenge.’
‘Only thoughts,’ I repeat. ‘That’s very different from doing something like that.’
‘Maybe,’ Fiona says, maddeningly agreeable still.
‘She wouldn’t,’ I say. ‘Ellie wouldn’t. I know her better than anyone.’
There’s so much I don’t know, though.
Why do you have Ellie’s children? The question hums between us. I have to ask, but I don’t know how to begin.
‘Where are the twins?’ I say instead, slipping my hand into my coat pocket.
‘In bed,’ she says. ‘Hence the gin.’
I’m quiet for a second, as if I could hear the girls from here, but I can’t make anything out over the murmur of Radio 4, the hum of the fridge.
‘Let’s go up,’ says Fiona. ‘The fire’s lit – it’s nice and warm. But first, let me take your coat.’
‘It’s fine. I’m quite cold.’
‘I promise you – it’s very warm up there.’
Before I can stop her, Fiona is on me, tugging the coat off my shoulders. I try to resist, but it seems a good idea to keep things calm for now. She marches out to the hall to hang it up and then she’s back in the room tipping olives into a bowl. She places two glasses and the olives onto a tray.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘I think we’re ready.’
She begins to climb the staircase that sweeps up from the front hall. The Christmas tree is still up. It’s a giant – stretching between floors.
On the landing, perhaps hearing our footsteps, a child cries, ‘Mummy?’
My eyes dart to the closed door of the nursery. I have the strong urge to open it, to examine their faces closely. I’ve never had the chance before.
‘Just a minute, darling,’ Fiona calls back crisply.
Distracted, she picks up her pace and leads me past the master bedroom on our left and up to another cooler floor, with three closed doors on the landing, and then another flight of stairs. Behind her, I fish my phone out of my pocket and text Caroline, I’m here. Will ring you asap. As an afterthought, I tap on the voice memo app and press record, then shove my phone back in my pocket.
The last flight is the steepest. We must be climbing up into the turret. Fiona pushes the door open to a space like the billiards room in Cluedo. I
t’s dominated by a snooker table in the centre, with a crackling fire in a nook in the wall opposite, with two leather armchairs in front of it and a gilt mirror hanging above. There’s a drinks trolley tucked in the corner. To our right, Charles stands on the thin lip of a balcony, smoking a cigarette.
‘His man den,’ Fiona quips over her shoulder. ‘Look who I found outside,’ she exclaims. Her voice is bright and brittle.
‘Fran,’ Charles says, coming over and kissing me on the cheek. ‘What a surprise.’
He seems as unflustered by my arrival as Fiona.
‘She’s worried about Ellie,’ she tells him. ‘About what’s going on.’
‘Of course.’ He nods.
I glance from him to her. They’re so smooth, so calm, so unruffled. I think again: why do you have my sister’s children?
My gaze darts around the room to see if it can offer some kind of clue. Did Ellie ever come here? Ever catch a flash of her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace? All I can see is my own pale face staring back. What was I hoping? That a glimpse of her might have endured?
‘I’m just going to check on the girls,’ Fiona says.
It’s the first time Charles and I have been alone since we lay on his bed together, but so much has changed since then. I stare at his face as if I’ll be able to discern some trace of his deception, but he looks just the same. He could always act – he never needed my stupid Henry IV tutorial – he always knew how. He stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray and closes the balcony door.
‘You look worried.’ He gestures at one of the chairs in front of the fire. ‘What’s up?’
I perch on the edge of the armchair, cradling my drink. I don’t know how to begin. For just a second, I hope that Charles will be able to explain everything away and life can go back to normal. It’s a wild hope, like a flare in the sky.
‘Where do you think Ellie is?’ I ask him.
He stares at me unblinkingly. ‘In France, I would guess.’
‘But her account is a fake. Her photos are from libraries – or stolen from elsewhere. Even her friends aren’t real.’
He looks at me gently. ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.’
I think of Ellie. Her small hand in mine as a child; reading her stories; helping her with forms when she was older. She was the only person who ever looked up to me. The only person, once Mother was gone, who tried to protect me. Even the money she made had kept me in our home, allowed me to go on as normal.
‘Ellie loved me,’ I say, gazing at the fire. ‘She wouldn’t want me to be worried like this. That’s why I find it difficult …’
‘Of course it is,’ he says soothingly.
But he’s misunderstood my meaning. I don’t mean difficult in general. I mean it’s hard to believe Ellie would have done this to me. ‘I don’t even know what Rose looks like,’ I push on.
My heart speeds up a little, but I keep my face as placid as I can. It’s time to be brave. It’s time to stick up for my sister, to protect her as I always should have done at school. I glance at the balcony, remembering how Dickie and Tom fell to their deaths. I know this might not be safe for me but I need to ask anyway.
Holding the glass tightly in my hands, I picture it shattered into sharp shards. That wouldn’t be so hard to do. If it came to it. If I needed to protect myself.
‘Charles,’ I say, ‘why do you have my sister’s children?’
60
His face doesn’t change. He’s clever like that. But the words hang between us – you can almost see them. We are quiet for so long that I begin to doubt myself: to wonder if I’d asked the question at all.
Fiona bustles back in. ‘If you ever think the art of conversation has died,’ she says chirpily, ‘you should try and put a pair of two-year-olds to bed.’ She looks from one of us to the other.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Charles says to me as if we’re still alone.
I don’t break his gaze. I’m not scared any more. ‘I think you do.’
‘What’s going on?’ asks Fiona, stopping in her tracks, leaning, for a moment, against the snooker table.
Charles doesn’t say anything. I can tell he’s being purposefully cautious. Slow to react.
‘Could one of you please tell me,’ snaps Fiona.
Her silky voice has gone. I’m glad. It’s a relief. No more pretending. It’s just that now the creeping sense of dread is impossible to ignore.
‘I asked why you had Ellie’s children,’ I say.
Fiona picks up one of the snooker balls from the table and holds it in her hand.
Charles is silent, waiting for her lead.
‘What an extraordinary thing to say, Fran,’ Fiona begins. ‘I can’t imagine why …’
‘I know they’re Ellie’s.’ I glance from her to Charles and back again. Saying the words makes me feel powerful. ‘I found an old scan. I know now that she was having twins.’
Fiona exhales. She gives me a sympathetic look. ‘She may have lost one. There are lots of reasons …’
‘Look,’ I say, cutting her off again, getting to my feet, so I can level with her, eye to eye, ‘please don’t do this. I know they’re Ellie’s.’ I take a breath. ‘And I bet Dickie knew too.’
I think of Caroline again. I wonder if she is still planning to travel here tonight, and, if so, how far she is behind me. It occurs to me now that they must have told her about my presence the night Dickie died. How well they hid it when I came here last. How well they’ve hidden everything.
Fiona folds her arms. She catches Charles’s eye. Something unspoken passes between them.
‘Ellie was our surrogate,’ says Charles.
‘So, it was a legal agreement?’ I rest a hand on the back of the armchair to steady myself. ‘There was paperwork? A parental order?’
‘Not exactly.’ Fiona shakes her head. ‘It’s a delicate matter.’
‘Delicate,’ I repeat.
‘It was a gentleman’s agreement between old school friends.’ Fiona lets out a long sigh. ‘It’s complicated. Surrogacy agreements aren’t enforceable by law. There’s so much hoop-jumping,’ she says bitterly. ‘You can’t pay the surrogate or, at least, not officially – just cover their expenses – and the money you spend is subject to scrutiny. After all that, they can walk away with your baby in the end anyway. They hold all the power. It made sense to ask a friend.’
I stay quiet, waiting for her to say more.
‘We tried for years,’ Fiona says wearily. ‘Since not long after we got together – we knew it might be difficult. Then we did IVF, like everyone does. It cost a lot but we could afford it. Charles was in the City back then. We tried so many times. I hadn’t realised quite how dreadful it would be – injecting yourself, the nausea, mood swings from the hormones. It put our marriage under such pressure. It was my fault, you see, that we couldn’t. We knew that.’ She laughs darkly. ‘But Charles stood by me, didn’t you?’
She looks over at him; he’s standing now, his expression tender. He loves her, I realise. He always did.
‘Eventually, after nine years, we decided to give up, started to talk about adoption – but that process is so long. Arduous. All the phases. The forms and the counselling and the waiting. And what do you get at the end? Somebody else’s problem child,’ she sighs. ‘We wanted one of our own. Someone fresh. Untainted. And if it couldn’t be both of ours, at least it could be his. Then, not long after we’d made that decision, he bumped into Ellie. The timing was perfect.’
‘It was Ellie’s idea,’ Charles says softly. ‘I ran into her in a bar in South Kensington. I was there with some colleagues. We’d had a few drinks. Ellie was working there and we got chatting at the end of her shift. Fi and I had been trying for years by then, and I told Ellie all about it, how stuck we were. And she offered. She said she was healthy and fit – and that she could do with the money.’
The dealer’s words come back to me: Money. That’s all it takes for most people to do most thing
s. My sister holding my hand as I wept about the mortgage. Passing over the envelope on Christmas Day, waiting for my reaction. I was right to be worried about where that money came from.
‘Where is Ellie now?’ I ask.
Another silence; another look between them. I hold on to the back of the chair, staring at the marks and runnels on the leather. I run my finger along them and wonder again how well Ellie knew this room. If she ever came close to telling me about any of this. My thoughts are circling again around the thing I don’t want to face.
‘She’s travelling,’ Charles says. ‘Like she always wanted to.’ He smiles at me sadly. ‘You know she wasn’t happy – that she wanted to get away.’
‘I need to see her. How can I get hold of her?’
‘Look, Fran,’ he says, taking a gulp of his drink, ‘we’re not in touch with her ourselves. She gave birth to the twins and then she left. That was it.’
It still doesn’t add up, though. All those fake photos – the effort someone went to in order to mislead.
‘I need to see her,’ I say again.
He tries to catch Fiona’s eye. ‘I might have an email address somewhere.’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No more technology. No more smoke and mirrors. I need to see her. I need to hug her. To talk to her. Where is she, Fiona?’
Fiona has gone very quiet. She walks to the balcony and opens the door. A breeze whips in, lifting her hair, making her pull her cardigan around her. She picks up the packet of cigarettes Charles left in the ashtray and lights one.
‘Do you want one?’ she asks.
I shake my head.
‘I don’t usually,’ she says. ‘But …’ She takes a drag and exhales. ‘You shouldn’t have come tonight, Fran. You should have just left us alone.’
I realise, now that Fiona is close to telling me, I don’t want to know. The brief moment of power I experienced is replaced by something desperate.
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