The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  ‘I had no idea about this. None whatsoever. Although when I look back now, I see clues everywhere. Of course she had talked about fresh starts. Of course she had threatened to do a bunk. Every time she caught me out she threatened to do a bunk. But she never left for more than a night, and if she did find someone to take her to bed, she’d be on the phone to me about it the moment she woke up the next morning. That was her way. She couldn’t do anything without being seen to do it. It was inconceivable that she should want a life in which she was denied a public persona. I now think that’s why I never considered it. It did not fit in with the Rebecca I knew.’

  Now the patronne was standing next to our table, wanting to know why Max had not touched his langoustines. Had the chef been deficient? Max assured her that to the contrary, the langoustines were wonderful. She called him a little cabbage and asked him how he could know if he hadn’t even touched them. He put his hand on his heart and promised to correct the injustice. He mustered up a smile, but when he looked at me to resume his story, all trace of it was gone.

  ‘You know Rebecca’s side of the story from The Marriage Hearse,’ he said. ‘Well, here’s mine. I was as arrogant and selfish as the heroine’s husband, possibly even more so. But not in any scheming way; simply because I didn’t know any better. I had never had to earn a privilege. Doors opened without my having to pause to think if I wanted to knock. At the same time my brother and I were more or less left to our own devices outside of school time. In a way you could say we were not brought up at all. I’m not trying to complain. We had a good and easy life. But we never learned how you were meant to behave if you were living with other people. We didn’t – and, I’m sure you will agree, still don’t – know how to be civil at the breakfast table, at lunch, at supper and what have you. If there aren’t six strangers at the table, you may have noticed, I don’t know what to say.

  ‘So I was as horrid as she made me out to be. On the other hand, what we set out to do was impossible in ways that are patently obvious. You can’t be a couple and also be fucking every attractive proposition who comes your way. You can’t reject your parents and your aunt and your uncle while living in their houses and getting them to publish your books. You can’t share your brain with your wife and then expect to have a mind of your own. If you ignore such contradictions, you become them. The destruction that occurs afterwards is too vast to qualify for that gruesome American platitude about learning from your mistakes.

  ‘I should tell you now what I know about those last days in St John the Baptist. The Marriage Hearse was not the item of contention people imagine it was. And while we’re on the subject, yes, I did cut that last chapter, but for the best possible motives. That last chapter was awful. Not only was it heavy-handed and didactic, it also ruined the impact of everything that preceded it. Had Rebecca been in residence, she would have come to the same decision that I did. Even when we weren’t getting along, she always came to me to find out which of her excesses needed trimming. One of the reasons why she always came across as being a risk-taker who never faltered is that I was always there to cut out the mistakes before they happened. I did only what I would have done under normal circumstances. The irony of all this is that The Marriage Hearse would never have had the impact it did, had I not done my usual editing job.’

  He paused. All around us, waiters were carrying empty plates back to the kitchen and returning with new carafes of wine. ‘All you all right?’ one said. Max nodded dismissively, and then took another deep breath.

  ‘Whatever Danny has told you, we had none of us read The Marriage Hearse by the Christmas she disappeared. If we weren’t getting along, it wasn’t the book that had done it. It was just the usual sex and drugs and rock and roll. Yes, I was fucking a stray Buddhist or two, but I was losing the war in a rather big way because Rebecca was carrying on quite openly with our friend Jack Scully. I don’t suppose I need to tell you that he is almost certainly William’s father, and possibly Hermione’s as well. Not that it concerns me as much as people might imagine. A father is as a father does. As I’ve said before, I have no great faith in my genetic attributes.’

  ‘You’ve said it so often, I’ve begun to not believe you,’ I said.

  He dropped his head into his hands. ‘Have I? I suppose you’re right.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ‘What’s ailing you, my little one?’

  It was the patronne again.

  ‘Nothing important.’ He smiled at her and picked up a langoustine.

  ‘At last!’ she said. She beamed at him, at me, and then at him again. ‘Your little friend is very sweet.’

  He thanked her. Another customer caught her eye and she left. He turned back to me, looking more stricken than ever. ‘No, it’s true,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I wasn’t happy about the way Jack and Rebecca threw their relationship in my face, but I probably would have gone on putting up with it. But I drew the line when they started using in front of the children. That’s why I left early, why I had to get them away. That’s why I wasn’t there when Rebecca disappeared.’

  ‘But neither was Jack,’ I said.

  He bowed his head. ‘No, the only people there, besides the Buddhists, of course, were my father, who is not much help now, as we’ve established beyond the shadow of a doubt, unfortunately, and Bea.’

  I told him what Bea had said to me over coffee at the Dome. ‘I misunderstood it at the time,’ I said. ‘But after what you’ve told me, what she probably meant is that she helped Rebecca escape. Or possibly even forced her out. She was the one who identified the body, wasn’t she?’

  Max’s face darkened. ‘Yes.’

  He looked around us at the serious men and women who were cutting into huge slabs of meat. He closed his eyes and sighed. ‘I can’t understand,’ he said. ‘I can’t understand why she would do such a thing and then hide it from me.’

  ‘Obviously she wanted you to think Rebecca was dead.’

  ‘But didn’t she realise how vulnerable that would leave us? She must have known.’

  ‘There’s another thing you should know,’ I said. ‘Jack Scully turned up at the house yesterday, with Danny. They wanted to take me back to London with them. They told me I was in danger. I hadn’t realised they were in touch with each other, let alone friends. It makes me feel so terrible telling you this, because I ought to have worked it out myself, I ought to have taken care. Now that you’ve told me the truth, I can’t bear to think what I said, what I tried to say, at the party …’

  Max knocked back a glass of wine, then put both of his hands on the table and stared at them. ‘He’s after the children. That’s his master plan, it must be. Or rather, that must be her master plan. First he ruins my reputation in court – even if I win, it will stick. Then he proves that he’s the biological father. Then presumably he and Rebecca get the children and go off into the sunset.’ He clenched his fists, unclenched them and stared at his palms, then looked up at me as if he himself was having trouble believing what he was saying. ‘She won’t be happy until I’m left with nothing.’

  ‘You still love her, don’t you?’

  He took my hand. ‘Yes,’ he said. I tried to take my hand away, but he wouldn’t let go. ‘Please don’t take that the wrong way. But you must try and understand what it’s like to be haunted by a living woman. Imagine how I felt when I read that first review you wrote of Tamara Nestor Graham and saw quoted in it sentences in the book that I myself had written. At first I thought it must have been some sort of posthumous trick. But then, when I had locked myself in her study and read the book itself, I was forced to accept that this was something only Rebecca could have written, and that the newest tempest in the New York publishing teacup was none other than she. Do you see how this unnerved me? Do you understand now why I reached for the bottle? And then, imagine how I felt when, binge over, I opened my own review section to find that lead article by you attacking Tamara Nestor Graham and all women who suited themselves instead of
caring for their children. I read that and I knew there was no turning back. After a provocation on that scale, I knew there was no chance she’d leave us be. I knew it was just a matter of time before she would throw the whole deceit in my face.’

  He sighed again and lowered his head. ‘Although even that is probably too optimistic. She was probably always planning to throw it in my face. She set out to make a new life for herself to prove to me and the world that she could do it alone. Without my inspiration or advice, and without my infamous family’s notorious strings. And also to prove, by the by, that I couldn’t. Only Rebecca could have pulled it off and, having pulled it off, then set out to do one better. To trample over my poor attempt at a second chance. Blacken my name for ever. And take away the children.’

  ‘Even if Jack wins the suit,’ I said, ‘Jack would have a very hard time getting custody.’

  Max shook his head again. ‘I’ve never seen Rebecca not get what she wanted when she put her mind to it. Even if he didn’t get custody, she would still have managed to tell the world I’m not their father. Not to mention the children themselves.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear,’ he said. ‘I’ve been neglecting my food.’ He picked up another langoustine and smiled at me in a way I now knew was anything but carefree. ‘This child we’re about to have – this one is mine, isn’t it?’ Before I could answer, he put his hands up. ‘I’m sorry. I do trust you. That’s why I’m taking the risk of telling you the truth. You’re the only one I trust right now. I don’t know who else to talk to.’

  ‘Haven’t you confided in Crawley?’

  ‘Oh, I think he’s guessed all right. But I don’t want to incriminate him. It wouldn’t be fair. As for the others, I don’t know how much they know. I’m quite certain Danny has actually heard from Rebecca. In fact, when we announced our plans to marry, you may remember, she was even kind enough to tell us. Don’t you remember her night visitor? The one from the other side? If it hadn’t been for Bea, we might even have listened. No, it’s Bea I’m most concerned about.’

  ‘Have you confronted her?’

  ‘Yes, of course I have,’ he said with an agitated wave. ‘It was obvious to me from the start that I could avoid this awful trial altogether if we could prove that the body in the grave was not Rebecca. But …’ A wave of pain came over his face. ‘You may not want to know this part.’

  ‘I would say I need to know it.’

  ‘I didn’t confront her directly, you see. I didn’t want to show her all my cards. So I simply asked, had she made a truly positive identification of the body? And she said, in that offhand drawl of hers, that it was best not to think about exhuming the body, because if we did, I might find myself involved in not a libel case but a murder trial. Because, you see, the real reason I left the island when I did – oh, I don’t know why I ever tried to avoid this one, I ought to have told you right off. You see, it wasn’t a handful of stray Buddhists I was carrying on with, as I said. It was one woman. I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember her name, I probably never knew her name, in fact. But the fact is, I woke up on my last morning on St John the Baptist, presumably having spent the night with her, although I haven’t a clue what we did … What happened was that I woke up next to this woman, whoever she was—’

  He cracked a langoustine. ‘And I turned her over, and found that she was dead.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  His hands were shaking so badly now that he could no longer eat. ‘She had choked on her vomit. I have no idea if I played a part in it or not. I ought to have just stayed there and sweated it out, but there were so many drugs around, I was afraid we’d all be thrown into prison. It was Bea who talked me into taking the children and getting out of there as fast as we could, and leaving it to her to handle things discreetly. Which she later told me she did. It was quite a good story, in fact. Lots of nice details about how the Buddhist monks reacted when she told them about the girl’s death. And the girl’s family, how vulgar they were, even what they were wearing when they flew out to claim the body. I suppose she made it all up. What I can’t understand is why she bothered.

  ‘I’ve been staring at the wall for the past five months, trying to understand, running through the few memories I have of those days. But it’s been one cul-de-sac after another. It’s been back to the way things were when Rebecca was still with us. I’m so confused. I’m confused about her and I’m confused about you. And what makes me so angry is that this is precisely how she wants me to feel. It’s as if she had my brain in her hands. It’s as if she were eating it like an apple. I wake up in the morning and I ask myself, What game is she going to play with me today? Is today the day she has chosen to use her final weapon? And if so, what weapon? How? Where? Via whom? I have no way of defending myself. No means of escape. My only recourse has been to do whatever I can do to earn myself a few hours of oblivion.

  ‘I’m determined not to lie to you. In any event, I can’t imagine you haven’t worked it out. I haven’t covered my tracks so very well and you know what I’m like. But when I’ve taken whatever woman it happens to be that night back to my cousin’s flat, it hasn’t been you I’ve been trying to forget. It’s been Rebecca. Does that mean I’m married to her as much as I ever was? I’m afraid this is not a question to which I can provide an answer. I don’t know if it’s fair to involve you any longer, seeing as I don’t know the answer. And it’s not just that – there are legal ramifications. If Rebecca is alive, I really am still married to her. And you and I are not married. Our child is – will be – illegitimate. And then there’s the question of her estate. Without her estate, Beckfield Press will be no longer – and will probably virtually belong to her. The web becomes more and more tangled. Can you possibly want to continue living under this curse?’

  The answer, of course, was that I did. More than I had ever wanted anything. He had, without realising it, told me the thing I most needed to hear. How different the mirror in the hotel room looked, now that I knew Rebecca was evil! If Rebecca was evil, then I was good. I was not just good, I was indispensable. I was the only one he could trust to tell the truth. He had put himself at my mercy. He had put me first. That was all I had ever asked from him or from anyone. And so of course I was willing to live under any curse. So long as he needed me. So long as I was the only one he had asked to save him. It was because he hoped that I could save him that he loved me. It was by saving him that I would save myself.

  All the better, then, that I had been here before.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Max’s hands were shaking when I handed him his coffee in the hotel room the next morning. It was this news about Bea, he said. It had kept him awake all night. ‘I rang her finally, not long before you woke up. I tried to give her a chance to open up, but she became quite hysterical and hung up on me. How many angles is she playing? What is it that she doesn’t want me to know?’

  I told him not to worry, that we would speak to the solicitor as soon as we got back to London. We would work out a way of getting the story out of her. ‘If you’re innocent, no one is going to be able to pin anything on you. Not if I have anything to do with it.’ Suddenly no challenge was too large for me. I felt as refreshed as if I’d been asleep for a week. It was as if I had a new body. To my surprise I could walk at my normal rate again without losing breath. I had my stamina back. After packing our bags, I didn’t have to lie down for half an hour. I didn’t need to wait for someone else to take the lead. I was the one to pay the bill, to hail the cab, to tell the driver to take us back to Charles de Gaulle, to guide Max to the bar in duty-free and get him the drink that stopped his hands shaking. I was the one to take his hand when he said, ‘I should really give up this stuff altogether,’ and say (I try now to imagine the condescending benevolence in my voice), ‘You’re probably right, but you have enough on your plate already.’

  We went straight from Heathrow to the Ritz, where Max’s father had taken a suite. W
e had been planning to spend the afternoon at the National Gallery, but Max ran out of energy. I forced him to eat the sandwiches I had had room service bring up for us, and then I turned down the bed in the second bedroom and, to give him peace and quiet, I took Max’s father out for a walk in his wheelchair.

  He fell asleep before we even reached Green Park. When he woke up again, we were back in the hotel lobby and I was having tea. The chandeliers were blazing. There was a man at the grand piano playing a waltz. At the table behind us, there was an anxiously obsequious young man speaking in rapid-fire Greek to a stiff and overdressed elderly couple, who stared at him with tired incomprehension. At the table to our right were three ladies from Houston who were dressed from head to toe in grey and were trying to figure out why they had lost the zest for shopping. In front of us was a slight, blond boy who had already paid his bill. Now the maître d’ was bringing him his cape and top hat.

  Max’s father gasped. ‘What year is it?’ he asked, but to no one in particular. He turned to me and cried, ‘Sally! At last! But what a cruel thing you are! How many years you’ve made me wait!’

  Sally, I found out from Max later, was his childhood sweetheart. He could not be convinced that I was not she, so it seemed easier to play along with the delusion. But Bea was visibly offended when she heard him call me Sally outside the court the next morning.

  ‘And when did this start?’ she wanted to know. When I told her, she flicked her hair and said, ‘Hopeless. The man is beyond repair.’ She grabbed the wheelchair from me as if it were stolen property. ‘I’m afraid this is where the rest of us say goodbye to you. Do you think you have it in you to find the public gallery?’

  Max wanted to find me a proper place, but I said no, the public gallery was fine for now. It would be easier, I said, if I could keep a low profile.