Afterwife (9781101618868)

by Williams, Polly

  “Cecille!” Jenny sat bolt upright on the chair. “Cecille!”

  “Now do you see why we’re concerned, Jenny?” said Lydia quietly, eyeing her with renewed curiosity, as if her reaction had given something away.

  “He’ll get hurt,” said Liz knowingly, nibbling her way around a kettle chip. “Or Freddie will. Let’s face it, it’s unlikely to end prettily.”

  “We think someone needs to speak to Cecille,” said Tash firmly. “You—”

  “Ollie would go nuts if we interfered,” said Jenny quickly, remembering Cecille’s face that time when she was caught looking for the letters. Oh, the superiority of youth.

  “I told you. We can’t just wade in there, Tashie,” Liz agreed. “It’s none of our business.”

  Tash flicked her licorice hair crossly. “Makes me want to flipping hurl,” she said, summing up the general feeling in Jenny’s own digestive tract.

  “We’ve put so much effort into helping him through this. To see all our hard work fall away because of some little French minx!” Lydia’s eyes watered again. “It’s too much to bear.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say anything to Cecille,” said Jenny. “She’ll only tell Ollie anyway.”

  “Can you at least find out if it’s true, Jenny?” Tash said through a mouthful of chewed fingernails. “From Ollie, then?”

  “It may be a way of stopping the gossip,” added Suze.

  “Gossip?” Jenny’s sinking feeling sank some more. “Who else knows?”

  Liz laughed. “The school gate is a-blaze, Jenny. Clinton and Lewinsky had nothing on this story.”

  “Look, I think we at least need to let him know what the other parents are saying, before things…blow up,” Suze persisted. “I’d want to know. Wouldn’t you, Jenny?”

  “I could tell him,” began Lydia.

  “I think it would be best coming from Jenny,” interrupted Liz. “Jenny’s closest. Plus she’s got a sane, rational head on her shoulders. She’ll be able to keep the conversation as unemotive as possible.”

  “Thanks! And I wouldn’t?” said Lydia.

  “No,” said Liz, Tash and Suze in unison. “You wouldn’t!”

  Jenny pushed her nails into her palms. Get a grip, she told herself. Ollie is not yours. He is not Sophie’s. Sophie is dead. You are about to get married. Ollie is free! He can do what the hell he likes. He can marry an au pair if he pleases.

  “Jenny?” Suze asked, looking at her strangely over the neck of the wine bottle. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, Jenny.” Liz put an arm around her shoulder, just as horrifying unstoppable tears started to bubble up through her tear ducts. “Oh, Jenny, you’re really not okay, are you?”

  Thirty-six

  I watch her pad slowly out of my bedroom, naked but for Ollie’s big blue shirt. The dimple on her left buttock smiles at me. She has long tanned legs. Her lips are bee stung from kissing. Her skin is rashy on her neck, where his beard has been. So are her upper thighs. She walks past Freddie’s room, where Freddie, my poor darling Freddie, stirs in his bed. I hover a few feet from the carpet outside the bedroom door. I dance round her. She is oblivious.

  I did not see it happen. I chose not to. But I did see the warning signs, her twirling hair around her index finger while leaning across the table, the way she rearranged her top so it showed more cleavage. I saw how after every glass of wine—four and counting—she moved closer to him, found ways to casually touch him, a knock of knee against knee, feather fingertips on his arm. I witnessed the small wrap of white powder and the two thin lines racked out on her Chanel compact mirror.

  The kiss was hungry and urgent. Panting, grabbing at each other, they bundled up the stairs, heading for the privacy of the bedroom. Ollie had the presence of mind to wedge a chair against the door, presumably to stop Freddie from joining them. Cecille is out. That was the last thing I saw, that chair. I sucked myself through that keyhole pretty damn fast. And I waited, guarding Freddie’s room while they did it, wondering where he was touching her, if she felt different from me. Wondering if he was thinking of me at all, even a little bit, or if, as is more likely, he was lost in the sensual tangle of limbs and skin and that luscious glade of hair.

  I twist round the corner to peek into the bedroom. Ollie is lying there, spread-eagled on the white sheet, panting and naked, spent. There is something glistening on his cheek. He turns over and buries his head into the pillow. His tears make me feel better.

  “Ollie?” She is pushing open the bedroom door with her hand. “Are you alright?”

  He says nothing, head embedded in the pillow.

  She starts to look vulnerable and hurt. I feel for her now. “Shall I go?”

  He sits up, squints at her standing there in the puddle of hall light. “Sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  She reaches for her top, pulls it down over her head. “Forget about it.”

  “You are lovely. It’s just that I can’t…Sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing. I understand.” She doesn’t look like she understands. She looks rejected. Dressed, she hovers for a moment, waits for him to tell her to stay, and when he doesn’t she slings her slouchy beige handbag over her shoulder. “See you.”

  “I’m truly sorry.”

  Thirty-seven

  The sky was milky blue, the air swaying with midges and barbecue smoke. Through the gap in the fence at the bottom of the garden Jenny could see a slice of London in its filmy bowl, the Gherkin, the wheel, the buildings that somehow reminded her she was in London but, up here in Muswell Hill, elementally separate from it too. Her body had that pleasant sagging postswim feeling, which meant getting out of her deck chair anytime soon was inconceivable. Ollie was laid out on a towel on the grass beside her, skin darkening piratically in the sun beneath his beard, an old spliff stub in an ashtray next to him, a big bag of kettle chips open at his elbow. He had his eyes closed, which should have made things easier, but didn’t. Yes, she was failing spectacularly in her appointed role of romantic interrogator. How could she possibly ask him about Cecille when the ingénue was roaming the house in a denim miniskirt and slogan T-shirt reading The Answer’s Yes!

  Ollie opened one eye, looking at her dozily. “Still in love with the wedding dress?”

  “Yes, of course.” She picked up a peppery blade of grass and chewed it, omitting to tell him that every time she looked at the dress she burst into tears. It wasn’t the dress’s fault. It had done nothing but hang there and look beautiful.

  “Can I see you in it?” Freddie slung his wiry arms around her neck from behind, pinning her into her deck chair. She could smell the chlorine of swimming pool on his skin.

  “No one can see it.”

  Freddie’s arms loosened. “But Daddy saw it.”

  “Ah, but he came shopping with me.” And he’s my gay best friend, she informed herself privately.

  Freddie let go of her neck, picked up a small plastic bat and started hitting the orange swing ball hard around its pole. “Mummy used to take me shopping. She said I was the best shopper.” He whacked the ball really hard. “I don’t see why I can’t see the dress.”

  “It’s bad luck to show people your wedding dress before you get married, Freddie, that’s all,” said Ollie, yawning. The sun caught a shade of amber in his otherwise black beard. He really was absolutely gorgeous. Catching herself staring, she looked away quickly.

  Freddie threw the bat down on the grass. “Bad luck?”

  “Yeah, bad luck.”

  “Don’t show me the dress then!” Freddie looked panicked. “I don’t want you to have bad luck too.”

  “Oh, Freddie…”

  Ollie pulled him onto his knee, rested his chin on his shoulder. “Hey, hey. It’s not really bad luck, Fred, just an old wives’ tale.”

  “What’s an old wives’ tale?” he asked quietly.

  “Like a fairy story.”

  “Oh.” Freddie frowned, looking from Jenny to Ollie and back again, uncertain. “And fairy stories
don’t happen, do they?”

  “No, fairy stories don’t happen, Freddie,” said Ollie quietly, pushing his nose into Freddie’s neck.

  Jenny’s phone started to ring. Sam. She rummaged in her stripy blue “summer” bag—Soph would surely be impressed at this seasonal rotation—and flicked it to answer. “Guys, I’ve got to get back. Great swim, Freddie. I reckon you’ll be doing a whole length next week.” She’d ask him another time. Or not.

  “Thanks, Jen. Look, I’ll drive you back.” Ollie stood up and brushed grass seeds off his baggy cargo shorts, shoved his feet into pink Havaianas flip-flops. “Cecille’s here, somewhere.”

  She froze at the mention of Cecille’s name. Looking back at the house she caught a glimpse of her behind the glass French doors, a swish of hair over a bare shoulder.

  “Freddie, you want to watch Deadly 60 with Cecille while I drive Jenny back?”

  Freddie’s bottom lip pouted. “I want to watch Deadly 60 with Jenny.”

  “Really, Ollie, you don’t need to drive me back.”

  “I want to drive you home.” He flicked his aviator shades down over his eyes, making him look instantly rock star. “I want to talk to you.”

  Ollie leaned forward over the steering wheel, resting on it, as they sat stationary in the street. “Are you going to tell me why you’re acting so weird?”

  Jenny stared determinedly out the window at the splashes of sun on the vivid green trees that lined the avenue. “I’m not acting weird.”

  “You won’t look at me.”

  Jenny turned to make a point of looking at him. “I’m just tired from the swimming.” She smiled. “And I’m looking at you now.”

  He raised a black, devilish eyebrow. “You forget that I actually know you quite well now. It’s been the surprise ace of being widowed.”

  “Okay.” She felt the heat rise on her cheeks. She was going to have to do this. Deep breath. “Ollie…”

  His eyes danced with amusement. “Yes, my darling Jenny.”

  “I feel so embarrassed saying this and I’m not sure I even should be saying it so please don’t be cross with me.…”

  He frowned, took his sunglasses off. “Ominous.”

  “There’s been, er, gossip.” God, this was awful. Why the hell had they appointed her to be the one to interrogate him? Lydia should have done it.

  He laughed. “Gossip?”

  “At the school gates. About you and…”

  “Fuck.” He turned the key in the ignition, stepped too hard on the gas. He wasn’t laughing now. For a moment no one spoke. “Tash is the soul of discretion then.”

  “I don’t think it was her that said anything.”

  “So who else is going to spill the beans?” He slammed the horn hard at a white van. “As far as I was aware it was only me and Tash in the bedroom, or has Suze got a lens trained on the house?”

  Tash? Tash? In his bedroom! Had she misheard him? Was Tash the woman Ollie had been talking about in the pub? Not Cecille. Tash! Oh, God. She covered her mouth with her hand, feeling like she was about to hurl out the window.

  They drove along in awkward silence. This was it, she decided. This was the end of their long, unexpected dark journey that had started when Sophie died. Yes, she’d been a channel for his grief. A conduit to Sophie, to the past. Now he didn’t need her. And this was good. Her work was done. He pulled up on her Camden street. She put her hand on the car door handle, unable to look at him as her eyes were prickling with tears. “So is it serious?”

  “What do you think?”

  “No idea.” She suddenly wished she had long dark hair like Tash. Or Sophie. Or Dominique. That she wasn’t mousy with green highlights. That she didn’t have thighs that rubbed together. That she wasn’t a woman whose signature color was navy.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Jenny.”

  Thank God he didn’t.

  “But it just happened. Cecille was staying at a friend’s. Tash turned up with a bit of coke.”

  She snorted. “Helpful.”

  “In a funny way it was, Jenny. Just getting off my head.” He stopped, frowning, his dark eyes melting into that faraway blackness that lately was making her heart flip in her chest like a fish on a deck. “I’m dreading seeing her at the school gates. Shit, Jenny. Does everyone know?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows about Tash.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The conversation was beginning to take on a surreal edge. “The rumors were about Cecille, actually.”

  Ollie slapped his forehead with the back of his palm and laughed. “Do you mean that you didn’t know about Tash?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Can you keep a secret?” He put a hand on her knee, looked up at her boyishly, appealingly. She wanted to slap the grin off his face. “Please?”

  “Of course. Look, I’ve got to go, Ollie.”

  “Do you hate me now?”

  “A little bit.”

  His eyes darkened. “I haven’t forgotten Sophie, Jenny.”

  Jenny bit down on her lip very hard to stop herself from crying. She couldn’t look at him. She hated him. How could he? How?

  “It wasn’t perfect. You seem to think me and Soph were completely perfect. Everyone thinks that. It doesn’t help.” He pulled at his beard, his features strained to the point of contortion. “Maybe this is my way of reminding myself that we weren’t. Then I don’t have to feel like I’ve lost absolutely everything that will ever be good in my life.”

  “Oh, Ol.” He was breaking her heart now. “I understand that. But you don’t need to do this.”

  “She was bored, Jenny. Sophie was bored.”

  Jenny looked down. She thought of the hidden stash of letters and once again wondered what they were and where they were. If they held the key to this.

  “She wanted another baby,” he said quietly, his voice breaking.

  “Yeah, I know. I found her maternity stuff in the chest of drawers.”

  “I think maybe she blamed me for that. You know, on a subconscious level.”

  “She didn’t. She really didn’t.”

  “You know the worst thing, Jenny?” It felt like the world had shrunk down to just them, just them sitting in the car. “That it felt good. The coke. The sex. It made me feel alive.”

  Jenny closed her eyes. She didn’t want to hear this. Yet she needed to hear this. She needed to come to her senses and cement the dissolving boundaries.

  “And I don’t know how it can be possible to miss someone so much, ache for them every minute of every fucking day, and yet still find pleasure in someone else. My brain can’t compute it.”

  “Where was Cecille when…this happened?”

  “Out.”

  “Right.” It was then she realized she had her hands over her ears like a child.

  “You’re judging me.”

  “I’m not judging you.”

  “It’s just sex, Jenny.”

  “You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Ollie. You really don’t.”

  “I feel like I do.”

  “Well, you don’t.” She put one foot on the pavement and stepped up and into the bright sunlight, which no longer felt warm and bucolic but dehydrating and dirty.

  “It was soul-searchingly shit afterwards. For the record.”

  “I don’t keep a record.”

  “Jenny…” He wouldn’t let her go. He wanted something. She couldn’t give it. He reached out to her. His skin sizzled on hers. “You okay? I’m concerned about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  “Tired, you know.”

  “Wedding stuff?”

  “Think so,” she replied tersely.

  “Jenny, it’ll be fine. Totally fine. Everyone is gunning for you two.”

  She kissed and inhaled him. “Stay out of trouble.”

  It was only as she stood on the sunny pavement, watching the silver bullet of his car recede into the distance, that she re
alized that Ollie hadn’t actually denied any involvement with Cecille.

  Thirty-eight

  Whoa! Is there something I don’t know here? If I thought Jenny was looking doolally before, she is looking positively deranged today, wild-eyed, foot pressed hard on the gas, shooting north like a boy racer. She spins down Fortis Green, then does a loud screechy turn into one of the avenues, making me bounce like a ball in the back. I expect her to stop outside number thirty-three—what has Ollie done?—but, no, she’s turning right! She’s screeching to a halt outside Tash’s house. Ooh, this could be interesting.

  “Hey, this is a lovely surprise,” says Tash, answering the door, looking puzzled. She smells of roses—Jo Malone perfume—and is naked beneath a long, gray cashmere dressing gown that has no visible moth holes. There is not one pube on her entire body. She is as smooth as an egg. I wonder if he liked that.

  Jenny storms right past her. Half Jenny, half juggernaut, she’s heavy-load vehicle intent on destruction. I’m scared, and I’m the ghost.

  “Excuse me,” says Tash, half joking, stepping back.

  “I know about Ollie, Tash,” Jenny hisses, releasing the demolition ball. “I know.”

  It’s like she’s speaking for me here. Hey, this is great.

  “Look, Jenny,” stutters Tash, cheeks flaming. “It’s…it was just one night. I don’t know how it happened.”

  “Bollocks!” Jenny grips the back of a chair, like she is about to pick it up and throw it across the room. Tash looks worried. It’s a Hans Wegner.

  Tash’s exposed tanned décolletage rises and falls more quickly now. You can almost hear her brain whirring, trying to think of a way out. But there’s no way to turn. Jenny has her by the vajazzles. “Cocaine! What the fuck were you thinking?”

  “You’re not going to tell the others, are you?”

  Jenny is not moved. She turns away from Tash, like she can’t bear to look at her anymore, stares out the window at next door’s mossy green drainpipe, hot air tusking from her nostrils. “I might do.”

  “Please, Jenny.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Woo! Go, Jenny!