by Lucy Atkins
‘Right-oh.’ Al huffed to his feet next to her. He was red-faced, sweaty. ‘I suppose I’d better rally. It’s a buggering shame but it’s really not your fault, Liv.’ He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a kind pat. ‘No one blames you for this.’
Olivia could not answer him; she just nodded and tried to smile. She heard him move away, but she could not get up. She stared at the ripples on the surface of the swimming pool, herding little dead leaves, drowning wasps and whispery bugs towards the edges. She looked out across the valley to the hills beyond, the purple, scrubby hills, and above it the sky so clear and plain and vast and indifferent. A wisp of cloud drifted over the village and she wondered if Vivian was down there somewhere, watching everything unfold.
Olivia
Dieppe–Newhaven ferry
It was a tense and mostly silent drive up through France, with a dismal overnight stop in an Ibis where Jess wailed every time she caught sight of her reflection and nothing felt safe. None of them had the energy to pretend that the holiday was salvageable. They all just wanted to go home.
It was not until Olivia and David were on the ferry deck, with the children inside in the lounge staring at phones and iPads, that she could confront him about Chloe.
‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’
‘The two of you going off together. You confided in her about the money.’ She had to raise her voice above the hubbub of the ship’s engine, the battering wind.
‘What? No I didn’t.’
‘She told me you did!’
‘Wait – what – so you were talking to her about our finances?’ His expression darkened further. ‘I thought we’d agreed not to?’
‘Exactly!’
They stood in baffled accusation, the ferry vibrating through their bodies.
‘What’s going on with us?’ She gripped the railing, her hands and face smeared with sea spray. ‘I know something’s badly wrong between us and it’s not just the money – I want to know what’s going on.’
There was a long pause before David answered. It was the pause that gave him away. ‘What do you mean?’
The sea wind, the engine noise, the glutted oil smells all receded so that all that was left was the two of them, staring into one another’s eyes. She hugged herself. Suddenly she was very cold. ‘I saw Chloe push your hand away when you touched her shoulder last night.’ It sounded wispy and silly.
He looked away, rubbed his stubble, then took the railings in both hands with his elbows braced. The wind shook his sweatshirt sleeves. ‘Do you actually think something’s going on between me and Chloe? That’s just fucking ridiculous.’
‘Why? Why is it ridiculous? Chloe’s beautiful, clever, lovely.’
‘What do you want from me, Liv?’ He didn’t look at her. He sounded weary.
‘What do I want? The truth!’ Suddenly she wanted to grab him and scream into his face, slap him with both hands. ‘I just want you to tell me the truth!’
She saw his hands tighten, then he did look at her. His eyes were wide, a fat vein bulged on his temple. ‘You want the truth? OK! Fine. The truth is I’m fucking exhausted, Liv. This holiday has gone horribly wrong, the kids are upset, everyone’s shattered and you appear to have gone totally nutty. I don’t know why – overwork or possibly some kind of celebrity hubris – but I feel like we’re now operating from completely different planets.’
‘Celebrity hubris?’ She gaped at him. Then she almost laughed. And then the fury returned. ‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’
‘You know what it means! All your TV and radio stuff, all those fawning people, all the magazine photo shoots. You’re never here – you’re constantly on the phone to Joy or Carol or some sycophantic hack wanting to profile you. It’s all about you these days, everything’s about you. There’s no room for me at all – there’s no room for any of us.’
She felt as if he’d punched her.
‘That’s how it’s been for ages,’ he shrugged. ‘I feel completely irrelevant in your life. You’re so full of disdain for me now – you don’t even believe I’ll finish Trust. And now you’ve got this money thing to hold over me and you can feel even more superior. You can look down on me even more and despise me for fucking up while pretending to be so practical and reasonable, so untouchable.’
‘I actually can’t believe you’re saying all this.’
‘Really? I thought you wanted the truth.’
She thought of all the times he had travelled this year, leaving her holding the fort, trying to keep it all going; times she’d stood alone at parents’ evenings and ballet shows and primary school pantos or had been forced to leave meetings early to go to Dom’s school and deal with the latest crisis. All the lists she’d written for Marta, the meals she’d planned at 2 a.m., juggling and struggling to do it all while David was abroad again, giving his talks, pretending to research his non-existent book, the subject of which was rapidly becoming farcical.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he growled. ‘I’m just telling you how I feel.’
‘I don’t despise you but you’re right, I’m angry, of course I am. How could I not be angry? I’m either going to have to sell the Farmhouse or spend months learning to dance on TV, messing up my academic career and becoming an object of ridicule to pay off your debts. And as for being away – you’re the one who’s never here! You’re away literally all the time, so much that Dom now won’t even speak to you. You’ve opted out of that too – you’ve done nothing to tackle it, not really. You just leave everything to me. My God, I see more of bloody Marta, who I don’t even like, than I do of you—’
‘Don’t be so fucking melodramatic!’ He sounded vicious. He’d never spoken to her this way before. It was the first time she’d ever heard that nasty edge in his voice. She felt as if she didn’t know him.
And then Jess appeared, pale-faced and shorn, asking for euros, and Paul came out onto the deck after her and lurched over to them on his long legs, saying that he was starving and could he get chips, and then David asked where Dominic was but neither of them knew – and then they were back to being parents again, wrangling their three opinionated offspring, keeping the family moving on. The moment had passed. Neither of them wanted it back.
As they drove back up the M23, she thought about David and Chloe. When she had introduced them, seventeen years ago in a pub, she’d felt a little insecure about the two of them meeting. They were the obviously beautiful ones: magnetic, attractive to others, flirtatious. In those days, Olivia wore her hair in an unflattering short cut and she hadn’t learned to dress as well as she did now. She was nervy, too, far less confident or sure of herself. David and Chloe seemed to recognize each other’s alpha status, and although they weren’t exactly wary, they were definitely polite and even a little formal. She remembered feeling surprised, and quite touched, that they were both so determined not to give her any reason to feel threatened. David had always maintained that Chloe was not his type and that she, Olivia, was his perfect woman. And over the years they’d relaxed with each other. They had little in common, really, and while they were fond and genial, there’d never been anything intense between them. Until now.
But they couldn’t be sleeping with each other. It made no sense. David was right, it was a ridiculous thought. It was impossible. They weren’t attracted to each other, she felt sure of it. But of course, her instinct might be wrong. Or they might be excellent liars.
Still, she was less sure, now, about what she’d seen pass between them as they walked into the house in France. Everything had been so heightened and unstable at that moment. Perhaps it was nothing – just a moment of kindness rebuffed.
It was Vivian who’d planted this poisonous seed. There was no reason even to believe that Vivian had seen them parked in the viewing point. Vivian was demonstrably capable of audacious lies. She had been in a fragile state when she said it, having just discovered the truth about Bertie. There was no reason to believe a word
that came out of Vivian’s mouth.
The whole episode in the French cafe had left her feeling both furious and guilty. She knew she’d mistreated Vivian by lying about Bertie, but the impulse behind the lie had been honourable, she’d been trying to do the right thing. The accident was grisly and upsetting but it was still an accident. To lie about it was wrong, but she’d wanted to protect Vivian from the pain of knowing.
She was going to have to resolve this. She couldn’t just hurtle towards publication with everything between them feeling so disordered and threatening. She had to straighten things out with Vivian before the book launch. There was no avoiding it: she was going to have to go to Sussex.
Vivian
Ileford Manor
I do not want this image in my head of Bertie down the well, she was right about that. It is torture to have that inside me. It will not go away as I lie in bed, waiting for my visitor to come, which she does without fail each night, pressing her weight on my chest, leaning over and staring at me with hollow eyes and breath that stinks of rotting fish, dripping on me as she reaches her hands to cover my nose and mouth. Nor can I rid myself of the image of Bertie when I get up each morning, shaken, limp downstairs and move through the kitchen making slices of toast and a cup of tea, planning another empty day; nor does it leave me as I go about my business cleaning, fixing, taking care of paperwork, or as I sit in the library, day after day, writing it all down, trying to make sense of what she did, and trying to decide what I should do next.
It has been a month since she told me in that French cafe. The facts of his death have lodged themselves unhealthily in my mind. Bertie’s last day has become an obsessional and self-perpetuating thought pattern, but I cannot stop it. The more I think about it the more Olivia’s lies assault me – and then the more I think about it. And so on. To the point of insanity.
It was a very cold, grey March day. I had been to Hounslow to see Mrs Sparrow, one of Annabel’s many great-nieces, who claimed to have a photograph. She would not put it in the post as it was too precious and she was leaving the country the next day to visit her son in Australia for three months. It was then or never.
Mrs Sparrow, a sharp-faced and not pleasant woman in her seventies, sat me in her overheated flat, gave me custard creams and shoved a silver frame under my nose. It was a black and white picture of a young First World War soldier in shirtsleeves and braces, arms folded. I recognized him.
‘Yes. That’s Francis Webb, Annabel’s nephew.’ I probably sounded impatient. ‘But you said you had a photograph of Annabel?’
She straightened her cream blouse by tugging on the bottom hem. ‘This is the only photograph I have, but I do have important information about Annabel.’
‘You brought me here for information?’
‘It’s good. Annabel had a baby.’
‘A baby? Yes! Yes, we know she did. It was stillborn in 1898 – she gave birth to it a few months after the death of Lord Burley.’ I was fuming – I’d left Bertie, weak and sick, with Olivia, for this.
‘He wasn’t stillborn. This is that baby. Francis was Annabel’s son. She didn’t want him. She gave him to her sister, Florence, in Suffolk.’
‘She did not!’
‘She did. Florence had no children of her own, so they passed him off as hers. Annabel went off to medical school and never bothered to see either of them again, even when Florence was widowed and destitute. I don’t know what Professor Sweetman’s book says, but my great-aunt was a hard, selfish woman; everyone hated her. Florence died in poverty, from grief probably, just a few months after Francis was killed at the Somme. Annabel didn’t even go to her sister’s funeral.’
‘Do you have documentation for all this?’
‘How could I have documentation? It was over a century ago! It’s oral history – passed down through my family. Annabel Burley was a foul woman.’
‘Annabel Burley was selfless and heroic. She was one of Britain’s first women surgeons, part of the Endell Street Military Hospital – a hospital run by Suffragettes – in the First World War. She worked with Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray, she saved hundreds of lives—’
‘Well, she also left her sister and child in poverty.’
I was on my way back from Hounslow to the Farmhouse to collect Bertie, Mrs Sparrow’s revelations churning in my mind, when my mobile phone rang. I pulled into a lay-by and picked it up. It was Olivia. She said she was at Ileford.
‘At Ileford! What are you doing there?’
‘I’m waiting for you. Where are you now?’ Her voice had none of its usual low assertiveness; it was tremulous, high-pitched and almost childlike. I now understand why, but at the time I thought she was just confused about arrangements, or perhaps chilly.
‘I’m only five minutes away from the Farmhouse,’ I shouted. ‘We agreed that I’d come there to pick Bertie up.’ I cannot stand it when people switch plans at the last minute – I was on time, everything was as we’d arranged. She was not supposed to go to Ileford. Now I would have to turn around and drive all the way back through darkening roads. I didn’t know what she was playing at, changing the plan at the last minute, taking Bertie there without me, but I suspected she was snooping. Poor Bertie. He would be so confused. I was tired after the drive back from Hounslow. I’d been worrying about Bertie all day.
‘Did we say the Farmhouse?’ Her voice wavered.
Liar.
‘Yes, we did!’
‘Sorry. But, look, I’m here now. It’s probably easiest for me to wait for you here.’
As I drove down the straight driveway I saw the familiar turrets and high chimneystacks jutting into the lifeless sky and marvelled, not for the first time, at the ugliness of its neo-Gothic architecture. I noticed a dark blob squatting beneath the pointed stone arch of the front door and realized that it was Olivia.
She was hunched inside a floppy black jumper, hugging her knees. When she saw my Fiat she leaped to her feet and hurried down the stairs onto the gravel. She clutched herself and hopped from foot to foot. I looked past her. I couldn’t see Bertie. I hoped she hadn’t left him in the car. I’d specifically told her never to leave him in the car.
I got out and walked round to her. The air was grimly cold and she was chalk-skinned, trembling, her dark hair snaggled and the tip of her nose the colour of grazed flesh. Her eyes were puffy and pink-rimmed. She looked as if she had been crying. I knew immediately that something was very wrong.
She held out her arms, wanting to embrace me, but I stiffened and did not let her. I do not like being touched at the best of times and certainly not at a moment of such deep uncertainty.
I assumed that she was saying he had got himself lost on a walk. He did sometimes pursue rabbits – I’d warned her about that and she’d promised to keep him on the leash. My first reaction was that I should never have left him with her and definitely not when he was poorly. I should never have gone to Hounslow without him. I should have kept him at home, with me, recuperating by the library fire, where he belonged.
I looked around. The light was fading, bony trees swayed. The rooks clung to their branches like fat black ticks. ‘Where were you when you lost him? Where?’
‘I … just … round the back. In the back courtyard. Bertie, he just … Vivian … He was …’
Perhaps she would have confessed then, but I moved off before she could finish her sentence. I heard her boots crunching on the gravel, following me round the side of the house.
‘Bertie!’ I bellowed. ‘Bertie, come!’ I stood by the scullery door. The sky was ashy. He wouldn’t stay in the woods in the dark. He was very afraid of the woods at night.
‘He might be in the woodshed,’ I said, almost to myself. ‘There’s a feral cat in there, he’s obsessed with it.’
As we passed the well she began to apologize. ‘I just didn’t see him,’ she said. ‘You know what he’s like, Vivian, he’s just so fast. He just … He just went – like that.’ She clicked her fingers.
/> I wrenched open the door to the woodshed. ‘Bertie!’ I whistled. ‘Bertie, come! Come on, Bertie. Bertie! Come here, you fool.’
I heard a rustle; my heart leaped as I prepared to fold him in my arms, scold him, feel his licks on my chin and cheeks, but as I clambered over the logs I saw two amber pricks of light glowing in the furthest corner.
‘Shoo!’ I lunged. ‘Shoo, you vile bastard!’ The cat peeled back her lips to show her needle fangs, gave a guttural hiss and then I heard mewling, high, thin, tremulous. I grabbed a broom.
‘Oh God!’ Olivia cried out behind me. ‘Don’t hurt her, Vivian. Don’t! Look – poor thing – look, she has kittens.’
Beneath the cat’s scrawny ribs was a tangle of bodies, oversized maggots.
I knew then that Bertie was not in the shed. If he’d been in the shed he’d have had them, feral mother or no.
I tossed the broom aside and came out again. A meagre crescent moon hung above the bare wych elms; shabby clouds trailed over the sky. ‘Bertie!’ I bellowed. ‘Bertie! Come!’ My voice bounced off the flint walls.
Olivia followed, mute, as one by one I tore open the outhouse doors, calling for him, peering behind defunct garden machinery, beneath splintery packing crates and wicker baskets and broken chairs, clambering over galvanized tubs and slabs of plywood, sodden piles of books, a draughtsman’s table, soft tubes of wallpaper. He could be stuck, I thought, he could have got himself wedged or crushed in here, pursuing a rat.
Liar.
All that time, she knew and yet she let me search for him. She allowed me hope.
My panic swelled. He would come to me if he could, he would hear my voice. Something was stopping him from responding. He must be hurt.
‘Why did you bring him here?’ I remember shouting at Olivia. Her head whipped back as if I had struck her.
We were standing by the well.
‘He was feeling better. I thought he’d be happier here, you know, he was missing you, whining and things, he wanted to come in the car. He … I thought …’