Sworn Secret

by Amanda Jennings

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on the warm feeling of the whisky in her tummy. She breathed in, aware again of the unmistakable smell of paint. She turned in her seat, the leather squeaking under her as she did. On the back seat of the car were tins and tins of house paint piled up on an old rug.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘And I thought you were an artist.’

  She held up her paint-smudged hands by way of an answer.

  He laughed. ‘Good to see you’ve not stopped.’

  ‘I’m not sure Jon would say the same.’

  ‘Are you guys having a tough time?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s hard.’ She sighed. ‘You know, we try, especially him, but then something gets in the way. I know it’s me. I put up these walls and he doesn’t know how to handle it. He hates it and I hate myself for doing it, but I feel I haven’t got anything left for him. To be honest, it’s a struggle just getting myself dressed in the morning.’ She paused. ‘But I still love him. Very much.’

  It was true; she loved him deeply. Jon was the constant in her life. Intelligent, loyal, kind and steady, passionate in a restrained and old-school English way. She loved the way he used to smile at her when she talked too much at parties, how he gazed at her when she danced. He used to say he wouldn’t change a hair on her head. He used to make her feel like she was the centre of the universe. Used to. Before Anna died. Everything was so different before then.

  ‘I feel sorry for him. I’m not myself any more. The woman he loves has vanished.’

  ‘The woman we all love is very much still here.’

  She opened her eyes and turned her head again. She smiled. ‘You never loved me, you lunatic.’

  He drank from the bottle. ‘We were great together.’

  ‘No, we weren’t.’

  ‘We were; you know it. We’d still be great together.’

  ‘You’re making it up,’ she said and took the bottle back. ‘We’d have ruined each other – emotionally and physically – in a matter of months.’

  ‘I should never have let you go.’

  ‘You didn’t let me go. I left you. For Jon.’

  ‘He’s a lucky man.’

  ‘No, Jon is the least lucky man I know.’

  ‘You’ll be OK, you know,’ said Dan. His voice and face had fallen serious, the bravado gone, in its place the concern of an old friend. ‘You and Jon will be fine.’

  ‘Thank you, Dan. But it will never really be OK. It’s whether he and I can find a way to live with that.’ She drank some more whisky. ‘Can we talk about something else?’

  Dan nodded, then hit his thighs gently with his hands. ‘So, no more chat . . . how about we misbehave a bit?’

  ‘What kind of misbehave?’

  He handed her the whisky, she took it and as she did he lifted himself up in his seat and reached into his back pocket. Then he faced away from her so she couldn’t see what he was doing. When he turned back he proffered a closed fist and lifted his eyebrows.

  ‘What?’

  He uncurled his fingers to reveal two pills, white and round, sitting in his palm like a pair of freshly laid eggs.

  ‘I take it that’s not Nurofen.’

  ‘Correctamundo.’

  She laughed under her breath. ‘Fuck, Dan, those days are over. I haven’t touched anything like that since I got pregnant with Anna.’

  ‘And so I am here to make sure your mind and body are never denied that way again.’ He picked up a pill between finger and thumb and held it up between them. ‘Think of this as a celebration of our youth. Remember the water balloons?’

  She knew exactly the night he was talking about, though admittedly most of it only vaguely. ‘Milton Keynes.’

  He nodded. ‘Us against the establishment!’

  ‘Those poor men,’ she smiled, remembering the dreadful cocktail of drink and drugs they’d taken before crouching below a window in a friend’s squat throwing condoms filled with water at tipsy suited men as they left their offices after a party. Dan joked that it was some poor wanker retiring after half a century chained to a desk, his skin the same grey as his hair, soul shrivelled like a walnut.

  Kate was suddenly hit by an explosive burst of laughter. She recalled the looks on their poor faces as they searched the street for their ambushers. Tears started to roll down her cheeks and her tummy muscles began to spasm. As she laughed she felt released, and so she laughed more. She hadn’t laughed, not properly, in a year, and though she knew it wouldn’t last she allowed herself to enjoy it.

  ‘They’d no . . . idea . . .’ It was hard to get the words out amid her hysterics. ‘Where . . . these bloody condoms were . . . coming from . . . and then one of them put his brolly up . . !’ She exploded again.

  Dan was laughing too. Slapping his legs, eyes creased up, one hand over his mouth. ‘And you . . . you . . . chucked one and it bounced off the umbrella and hit the man next to him . . .’

  ‘. . . God, those poor people . . .’

  ‘And . . . then . . . you made me promise we’d never be like them!’

  His words smothered her laughter like a cloche. She dried the tears from the corners of her eyes and then eyed the pill, as gentle snorts of recovery followed in the wake of her laughing. ‘So,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing too much. It’ll soften the edges, that’s all.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Honestly, it’s nothing. You can probably buy it over the counter. It’ll just make you feel,’ he paused, ‘less bogged down.’

  Then she felt something rebellious stir inside her, something that had been dormant a very long time, something she’d quashed when she’d married her lovely husband and moved into a lovely house near a lovely school with a lovely headmaster. What had she been thinking? She should have stayed in Milton Keynes, throwing condoms at the suits.

  Without another thought she filled her mouth with whisky, snatched the pill and swallowed it down. Nerves fluttered inside her and she felt a shiver of anxiety. There’s nothing you can do about it now, she told herself; just ride it out. She closed her eyes and lay back against the headrest.

  ‘You know,’ she murmured after a while. ‘I should get back indoors; Jon will be worried.’

  ‘Jon was born worried.’

  She felt the drug creep into her blood and flow through her veins, and began to feel nauseous, as if she were seasick. She imagined herself on a ship, rising up and down with the waves, her stomach pitching and listing. She was standing right on the edge, holding on to the railings, with the wind and sea spray hitting her face. There were gulls wheeling and calling above her. She looked down into the green-grey water, the ocean floor hundreds of metres below, peaceful and sandy and very quiet. She wondered what it might feel like to dive into the water and keep on swimming until she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, then in one easy movement, she would open her mouth and breathe the salty water into her lungs. Then she saw Anna next to her. Her chestnut hair floating around her head like a mermaid, her mouth opened, eyes vacant and staring, dead eyes. Kate reached a hand out to her, hoping she would grab hold. But as she did Stephen’s face appeared behind her. His fingers crept over her daughter’s shoulders and she saw them dig in. He grinned, his mouth twisted into an evil grimace. Then he pulled Anna away from her. Kate tried to swim after them, but she just couldn’t move fast enough and they faded into the watery shadows.

  ‘Kate? Are you OK,’ said Dan’s voice from somewhere outside her head.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him.

  ‘I hate that man more than I’ve ever hated anyone.’

  Dan nodded. ‘I can imagine.’

  She sighed deeply and turned away from him. ‘Christ, I’ve got to get to bed,’ she said, rubbing her face with her hands in an attempt to sober herself.

  ‘He shouldn’t get away with it.’ Dan didn’t move. He took another swig from the bottle.

  ‘Well, he will,’ she snapped. ‘
We’ve been to the police. They said they’d look into it. When they talk to him, he’ll deny it. There’ll be nothing they can do. So he will get away with it. We’re fucked, Dan. He gets to sail through the rest of his life and me and Jon are fucked!’ She gave a frustrated growl.

  Dan picked up the bottle of whisky and saw it was empty. He threw it into the back of the car and then reached across her and opened the glove box. He rummaged around, throwing papers and maps in the foot well, and came out with a battered hip flask, then unscrewed the lid with his teeth and spat it on the floor. He put the flask to his mouth, then handed it to Kate. She shook her head.

  ‘The police are a load of crap.’ He paused. ‘I think we should do something a bit more old-fashioned.’

  She put her elbow against the car window and leant on her hand. Her head swam, and for a second or two she thought she might throw up.

  He reached over the back seat and with a grunt pulled up one of the five-litre paint tins. He held it up. ‘Paint.’

  She looked at him blankly.

  ‘Come on, Kiki, I thought you were an artist. Where’s your imagination?’

  Coco Mademoiselle

  Jon watched the car the entire time it was parked outside the house. His eyes didn’t move from it; his nose was so close to the window that a circle of mist grew and shrank as he breathed.

  He had been halfway to sleep when the telephone had rung. He loathed phone calls in the night. Just as Kate did. They discussed it once, and unearthed equal feelings of dread at even the thought of a phone call after ten o’clock. So when it rang, he jumped out of bed and ran straight to Lizzie’s room, his heart thumping, but she was there, safe and awake, reading in bed.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, sitting up on one elbow.

  He nodded. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ she said. ‘I’m reading. Who was that on the phone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe Granny?’

  ‘Could be.’ He hoped it wasn’t. If it was, it could only be fateful. ‘Don’t read too long,’ he said. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Just finishing the chapter.’

  ‘Sleep well, darling,’ he said, and closed her door.

  He leant over the banister and listened. He couldn’t hear her on the telephone, only the sound of a running tap.

  ‘Who was that?’ he called.

  She appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘On the telephone?’

  ‘It was a wrong number,’ she said. ‘Kids mucking around.’

  He could always tell when she was lying. He went back to bed and lay still, holding the duvet up to his chin, waiting for her to come to bed.

  But then there was the noise of a car pulling up outside their house. So he went to the window and saw his parents’ vintage red Mercedes, the dent in its front wing reflecting the moonlight, and standing in front of the car, at the end of their path was Kate. His stomach seized.

  The window of the car wound down and in the orange hue of the streetlamps he clearly saw Dan. His brother got out of the car and stood grinning at her with that absurd trilby skating off the back of his head and a bottle in his hand. He thrust the bottle towards her. Jon knew he should bang on the window to let them know he could see them, so they’d stop, so Dan would get back in the car and Kate would come back inside. But he didn’t. He just watched, bound and shackled by invisible chains, an impotent spectator. He watched his brother open the car door for her. He watched her shake her head indulgently as he flourished a bow to guide her into his lair. A wolf and a lamb. He saw her smile.

  And then he watched her walk away from him into the arms of his brother.

  Was he surprised? Of course not. As he watched, a feeling of inevitability took hold, an admission that what was happening was predetermined. Even on their wedding day, as he slid the thin gold band on to her finger, he’d half expected her to stop the ceremony and skip over to Dan and take his hand instead. Perhaps it was this expectation that stopped him haring down the stairs and pulling her back to him.

  She and Dan had sat in the parked car for what seemed like hours. He couldn’t see through the windows; it was as if they’d drawn curtains. Jon’s head turned upside down as he imagined them kissing and laughing, tearing at each other’s clothes like lusty teenagers, struggling desperately for sex, banging their heads on the car, teeth and noses colliding, laughing more as they tried to get comfortable. He tried to stop his mind playing games. He tried to tell himself they were just talking, that it was totally innocent, that Kate and Dan were old friends and nothing more.

  He grew numb, cold outside and in; his bones ached. How long had he been standing at the window? One hour or two? Maybe more. When the car engine fired he startled. He rested his forehead against the glass and waited for her to emerge. But she didn’t. The car sped off, no headlights, gears grinding, Kate inside. He watched the empty street for a few minutes, and then turned away from the window and pushed the pile of his neatly folded clothes off the chair and sat. He dropped his head into his hands.

  ‘For God’s sake pull yourself together,’ he said out loud. ‘It’s no bloody wonder she went to him.’

  He made himself stand and walk to the bathroom, where he doused his face with water from the tap. Then he went back and picked his clothes off the floor and dressed. He needed some air. His head was thick.

  Outside was warm and still; it was a beautiful night. The street was empty, apart from a boy across the road smoking a cigarette and next-door’s cat, which sat on their wall licking its paw. Jon turned left, the opposite direction to that which Dan had driven. He didn’t want to find them. He breathed deeply, enjoying the fresh air as it displaced the stale stuff from their bedroom, and as he walked he felt better, less passive. He’d walked the night Anna was born for similar reasons, to feel less useless, to gather himself. It was unbearably stressful watching Kate in labour. She appeared to be in so much pain, struggling with every relentless contraction. After a while she slipped into a trance-like state with beads of sweat sitting on her brow like tiny see-through pearls. Their midwife was a rotund Irish woman with blonde hair tied back in a scruffy ponytail and laughter lines dug deep into her face. He’d taken her aside and asked how long the baby would be.

  ‘Only the Lord God himself knows the answer to that one,’ she said in her thick Gaelic drawl.

  ‘Do I have time for a breath of air?’

  ‘She’s only four centimetres. We’ve a while yet.’

  He went back to Kate and kissed her damp cheek. ‘I need the loo; I’ll be two minutes,’ he said. ‘You’re doing so well.’

  She smiled weakly and closed her eyes.

  He had walked down to the corner of the street and back, reminding himself that women all over the world did this every second of every day, and most in considerably less safe environments than Queen Charlotte’s in west London. But it was only a few hours later, when Anna slid on to the table, her piercing healthy cry prompting Kate to call out with joy and relief, that his nagging fear left him alone.

  Jon stopped walking and tipped his head back to look at the stars. He wondered which one was Anna. He saw a tiny bright one low in the sky to his left, and imagined her sitting on its edge waving at him. Her hair was loose and she was wearing a pair of clean white pyjamas and some pink fluffy slippers. He looked away from the star and saw how close he was to the bus stop with broken glass that he and Rachel had sat at after she bought him the milk. He owed her fifty-two pence; he mustn’t forget to give it to her. He thought of her then, asleep, close by, with her kind words and soft smile, and a warmth passed through him. He looked up the road towards her house and, as if dragged by a siren, he began to walk.

  When he reached the front door he rested his palms flat against it, and wished, like Kate, that Rachel had locked it and hidden the key that night, perhaps just enough of an obstacle to keep Anna alive. He thought about knocking, about waking Rachel; maybe they could chat and d
rink hot milk. Then he thought of the kiss in the air. Had he made that up? Did he want to kiss her? He closed his eyes and thought about kissing her, and thinking about it made him want to be at home because he didn’t want to kiss Rachel; he wanted to kiss his wife. He turned away from the door and walked home in a daze, not seeing anything, not hearing anything, not even thinking any more.

  He slipped into the house as quietly as possible. When he got up to their room he saw Kate asleep in their bed. His knees gave way and he grabbed at the doorframe. He walked to the bed and knelt beside her. She was sleeping heavily with gentle snores, and a pungent veil of alcohol clung to the air around her. Her head was half on, half off the pillow, an arm hung over the edge of the bed and her legs were sprawled beneath the duvet that was tied around her like an unravelled shroud. She looked so peaceful it tore Jon’s heart in two. He reached out and stroked the hair out of her eyes. She didn’t move a muscle. He breathed the air she breathed out, sweet and sickly with Dan’s whisky. He stared at her mouth, which was open a fraction. The thought of his brother kissing it cut him up. He leant forward and touched his lips to hers. She murmured something. Her head moved restlessly on the pillow then she turned away from him. He stood, pausing for a moment, wondering if he should wake her, wondering if they could talk things better. But maybe it had passed that point now.

  He walked out of their room and down the corridor. He stopped at Lizzie’s door and opened it quietly. She was fast asleep. He heard her grinding her teeth. She’d never been a quiet sleeper. Anna had slept in their room for her first eight months, first in a Moses basket and then in an antique cradle his mother had given them. Kate would reach through the bars in the middle of the night and stroke her open palm as she lay, quiet as a mouse, sleeping as babies do with their hands thrown up in surrender. A year or so later they had tried the same with Lizzie, but the constant sniffles and snuffles, grunts and moans had meant she was banished after only a few weeks by a teary, exhausted Kate.

  Jon stepped back and closed Lizzie’s door as quietly as possible. Then he moved on to Anna’s room. He reached for the handle and opened the door. He stood on the threshold like a nervous child and looked into the room. It was so peaceful. Kate had drawn the curtains for the night and Anna’s cuddly toys waited patiently for her at the foot of the bed. Gertie the porcelain doll was perched as always on the bookshelf next to a selection of Anna’s favourite books – Little Women, Black Beauty and a handful of trashy teenage novels with too much sex and weak moral messages about bullying and fitting in. He took a breath and stepped on to her carpet and then he walked over to the dressing table. He remembered her asking him for it.