The Couple's Secret

by B P Walter

  ‘How is Jasper doing?’

  Louise turns round and beams at me, apparently thrilled to be asked about her son. I feel guilty for not bringing him up sooner.

  ‘He’s great. Really good. Loving his travels.’

  ‘Stephen misses him. He always looked up to Jasper as an older brother. Still does, I think.’

  Louise smiles. ‘I know. I hope Jasper keeps in touch. They still email, don’t they? Or whatever it is kids do these days.’

  I nod, though I’m only guessing. ‘Oh, I’m sure. I think they Facebook each other.’

  ‘Julianne …’ Louise says, then glances at the others, who have now moved on to discussing local council politics with more fervour than the weather. She turns back to me, pausing as if she’s choosing her words carefully. ‘Is there anything wrong?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. The word escapes me before I know what else to say. ‘I mean, no. I mean …’ I put a hand to my face, scared my eyes are starting to shine.

  ‘Julianne, what is it? Is it about Cameron and his magazine? Because if it is, I thought you were rather magnificent.’

  ‘Oh … well … thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever been described as magnificent before.’ I, too, glance at the others, but they’re still talking.

  ‘I hate that sort of thing as well,’ she says quietly.

  I nod and try to smile. I’m cross with myself that I’m struggling not to cry. Though I have been known to well up when confronted with a nice gift or a sad film, I’m usually good in a crisis. I can carry out what tasks need to be done, and then deal with any emotional fallout later. But this is different. I can neither deal with my situation, nor face the emotional consequences. I’m trapped in some kind of hellish purgatory, pretending to my friends that all is happy and fine and making up excuses for snapping at them.

  ‘I’m sorry, Louise, I just need to … send a text.’

  I need to focus on something that isn’t another person. Calm myself down so I can attempt to remain normal for the rest of the evening.

  ‘Oh, of course, no problem,’ Louise says, sounding a tad confused.

  I pull out my phone from my pocket and instantly lower the brightness level so as not to draw too much attention to myself. I tap on the WhatsApp icon and open up Stephen’s message thread. Typing quickly, I send a brief message explaining I’ve made up a story about him and Will breaking up and that, if he comes down, he needs to play along. I’m not expecting him to reply straight away, but the message comes up as read and the text by his name says he is typing.

  Why didn’t you just say I was unwell?

  I read his message with dismay. He’s right. Why the hell didn’t I just keep to the story about him having a bad cold? Why did I have to drag his relationship status into this? I type back a reply.

  You’re right, I’m sorry. Didn’t think. It’s OK if you stay upstairs. Just to warn you, Dad will probably come up to check on you at some point.

  I am tempted to add that it would be best not to mention anything to do with the files he’s found, but decide there isn’t any need. If he were going to talk to him, he would have gone to him straight away. But he came to me. And now we’re in this together and I’m struggling to find a way to cope with it.

  A new message arrives.

  I’m coming down.

  Christ, I think, glancing around, expecting him to appear instantly or apparate like a character from Harry Potter; but then I hear the sound of movement coming from upstairs.

  I stand up and announce to the room at large: ‘Stephen’s coming down.’ Conversation stops and faces turn to me. I’m acting weirdly again. James’s eyes meet mine and I can see he’s both embarrassed and getting more and more irritated.

  Again, Ally is quick to fill the silence. ‘Super! Glad he’s feeling okay to join us.’

  As if on cue, the sound of footsteps is heard from the corridor and then Stephen walks in, a little tentatively. Everyone looks at him in silence for a moment, then Ally jumps up and embraces him. ‘So sorry to hear you’ve broken up with Will. What a miserable thing to happen at Christmas. The same thing happened to Ernest in 1987. That Polish girl, Franciszka, left you high and dry at that carol service in Winchester, didn’t she? Christmas Eve and he was left standing there all alone. Humiliating, wasn’t it, Ernest? In fact I think you said you were going to kill yourself, and then you vanished and everyone worried you had; but in the end we found you in one of the back rooms of the cathedral drinking church wine.’

  Ernest looks pained, but smiles at everyone. ‘I was sixteen or seventeen. And her name was Francesca. My dearest sister has made her more Polish than she actually was.’

  Everyone laughs and I feel an overwhelming gratitude towards Ally. She’s always been able to do this; breathe life into a room like a scented candle. She drives me crazy, but right now I want to hug her.

  ‘Well, it must have been her surname I was thinking of,’ Ally says, not to be put off. ‘And of course, you’re talking to a woman who’s just divorced the world’s biggest twat. Everyone could see it except me.’

  I see James glance awkwardly away. We’d never liked Arthur and had been rather pleased when, out of the blue, Ally announced they were separating. Though he was never exactly nasty, Arthur had been the type of man who felt he needed to make his presence known. One of his biggest insecurities seemed to revolve around his wife refusing to take his name when they were married. ‘Why do I want to be owned by a man? Branded by him, my identity erased?’ Ally had said very openly when he’d made one dig too many about it at a previous dinner party. Whenever we went out to a restaurant with the two of them, we would have to sit there as he complained loudly to anyone who’d listen about the state of the country, the job market, the class system and the regrettable decline of the aristocracy. He was generally unfriendly and borderline cruel to anyone he considered outside his immediate social class – everyone from waiters and caterers, to my housekeeper and, on some occasions, me. Ally used to tell him off loudly whenever he became particularly horrid, leading to a number of very public blow-ups. The news of the divorce had made James and me sigh with relief.

  ‘Sit down, Stephen, dinner won’t be long,’ I say, not looking him in the eye. If I do, I might not be able to keep up this pretence for much longer. No matter what I say and do, I’m determined to make sure there are no more outbursts and no more opportunities for people to ask me what’s wrong.

  ‘Mum?’

  The word makes me jolt around quickly – way too quickly, and I jog Louise’s arm, sending drops of wine spilling onto the white carpet.

  ‘Oh God!’ she exclaims, putting her hand under the glass to catch the remaining drips sliding down its stem. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I say. ‘It’s fine, honestly, don’t worry about it. This carpet’s seen worse, I can tell you.’ It’s a lie and everyone knows it, staring down at the completely spotless cream pile which was only fitted a year previously.

  ‘I’ll get some kitchen roll,’ says James, glancing at Louise, still holding the dripping glass. As he exits the room, Ernest’s voice cuts through, loud and authoritative: ‘Doesn’t white wine work as some kind of remover if you spill red? Or is that a myth?’

  ‘A myth, I think,’ says Cameron quietly.

  Ally makes a sound of disbelief. ‘You just say that because you can’t bear the thought of wine being poured away.’

  In all the wine commotion I’ve forgotten what caused it in the first place. I glance over at Stephen, who is staring into the distance, his eyes glazed over.

  ‘What did you want me for, Stephen?’ I ask, and he comes to, as if from a dream, looking at me blankly.

  ‘You attracted my attention?’ I say, trying to keep my voice level.

  ‘It was nothing. We were talking about holidays. I was telling Ernest about the difficulty we had in Istanbul.’

  ‘Oh, that. Yeah, that was … that was scary.’

  ‘At least it was only a b
omb scare, or so I hear? Nothing actually … well …’

  ‘Went bang? No. Pretty scary, though, being caught up in something like that,’ I say, trying to cast my mind back a few months and remembering the blind panic I’d felt when I was separated from Stephen and James during an evacuation of the airport. ‘We really shouldn’t have gone at all.’

  Ernest nods. ‘James bully you all into it, did he?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. I wanted to go.’ I’ve always been vaguely aware of Ernest’s attempts to portray his best friend as a domineering husband and force to be reckoned with. The truth is, it was me that pushed to go to Turkey. I was the one who’d talked down the terrorism fears, said we’d be fine as long as we weren’t cheap about it. My love of travel had got us into difficulty in the past, but this was without doubt the most traumatic escapade we’d experienced. ‘It was my mistake. I’ll be more cautious next time.’

  Next time. With dismay, I realise that next time is already planned out. We’re going on a Scandinavian cruise in April. Just the two of us. The thought of being trapped with just him on a cold sea mortifies me right now. Thinking about any future with James beyond this evening makes my stomach contract. It’s as if a black sheet has been draped over the days, months, years stretching ahead. They haven’t been deleted. They’re just marked as unknown territory. A no-man’s land of years spent in the company of a man who, when I think about it, I perhaps don’t know at all.

  Something brushes past my leg and I look down, straight into James’s eyes. He’s arrived at my side without me knowing and is bending down to pat a square of kitchen roll on the carpet. I expect him to be annoyed with me, but his voice is kind. ‘All right, dearest?’ It’s a gentle reminder of all the years that have gone before. All the warm, comfortable, blissful years. I’ve had it so easy. I only realise this now, when contemplating an uncertain future. How I’ve drifted through married life. How I gave up my job in publishing when Stephen was born and was very happy to fill my days with shopping, reading, doing up whatever house we were in at the time, going out to lunch, volunteering for charities, all the while not realising how I had, potentially, just handed over the keys of my life to this man. What would I do if it all fell apart? What would be, when it all came down to it, the point of my existence? A mother, of course, and a good one at that. But would that be it? Would it be enough?

  A touch on my leg. He’s still looking at me. ‘Fine,’ I say, quickly, not meeting his eyes. ‘That won’t do anything, though.’ I nod at the kitchen roll. ‘I’ll get Cassie to have a look at it tomorrow morning.’

  ‘That will be a fun Christmas Eve for her.’ He sighs, getting up and walking back over to his seat.

  As if the mention of her name has conjured her, Cassie appears at the door of the living room and raises her eyebrows and smiles, her way of saying it’s time for everyone to be seated.

  ‘Dinner’s ready, everyone,’ I say, getting up. I glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. 7.40. In previous years, the Kelmans have normally left around 11.30. Ally, on the other hand, is a bit harder to get rid of and usually announces she’s staying to help clear up. Hopefully she’ll be keen to get her new, sexist boyfriend back home this year. At the most, it looks as if I have between three and four hours to get through. And in the back of my head I can almost sense an uncomfortable weight, pulling me down, and my hand travels unconsciously to my pocket where the thin little USB drive sits, waiting.

  Chapter 18

  Holly

  Oxford, 1991

  My dad occasionally said to me when I was young that you can’t go through life without spilling a bit of milk. This stuck in my mind. Not because of its intended effect, to reassure me that people make mistakes and things don’t go to plan. But rather because it introduced me to the threat of milk spilling. At that point in my life, when he first started saying it to me – I was probably around six or seven – I had never spilt any milk. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. It was probably because the adults had always poured milk out for me. And through the years that followed, I was scared that one day it would spill.

  I don’t remember when it was that the white, translucent liquid actually splashed onto the ground, but I remember with soul-tearing pain when it happened metaphorically, in real life. When the time came for me to go from outsider to victim and the stumbling block that would come to define not just my time at university but my entire life, the analogy about the spilt milk became important to me once again. First, it showed me I had been right to fear. Right to be wary of impending disaster, in whatever form it might take. Right to know it would finally happen. Right about the fact that the milk and the glass could never be put back together again. Second, it encapsulated my overriding sense of emotion surrounding what happened on the 19 February 1991. Guilt. I felt guilty. I blamed myself, just as one does when one is carrying the glass from the countertop to the table and it slips from your grasp somewhere during that short journey.

  I had become quite comfortable in my silence when Ally and I were back in her room and starting to demolish the chocolate we’d bought. She spoke, as always, giving a running commentary throughout the naff American film we were watching about why she didn’t believe detectives would act this way in real life and how, if she had directed the movie, she would have made sure the women in it didn’t have faces like broken car bonnets. I nodded on occasion, but mostly kept quiet.

  ‘You don’t mind if the boys join us, do you?’ Although it was technically a question, she said it as if my not minding were a foregone conclusion. I gaped at her, the memory of our discussion earlier in the afternoon rushing back with a nauseating jerk. She wouldn’t bring it up, would she? Ally, however, didn’t even avert her eyes from the television screen, just continued to watch as the central character, a cop, tried to break down the door of his ex-wife’s apartment, claiming he was going to ‘sort her out’ if she didn’t stop seeing ‘that asshole’ from her work.

  ‘I didn’t know they were … when did you ask them?’

  ‘Oh, before I invited you back,’ she said casually. ‘And Julianne might join, too.’

  Again, the casual tone. No eye contact. It was as if all our conversations about the boys, about Julianne, about what I had seen, had disappeared into thin air; erased from her memory. Perhaps she thought it would embarrass me further to mention them. But surely this was worse – inviting me back here and then having them turn up?

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’d better get going anyway. I have an essay to do.’

  ‘Please, Holly, stay.’ She said this with an exaggerated look of horror, as if I’d told her I was off to commit a murder.

  ‘No, really, I need to …’

  The noise of the door bursting open cut me off. Ernest had kicked it violently, causing it to knock into the wall. ‘Ho, ho, ho. Santa’s here and bearing gifts,’ he said in a low, booming voice, sounding more like his eccentric sister than his normal cool self.

  ‘It’s no longer fucking Christmas,’ she said in response, then leapt up to take from him the multiple bottles of wine he was carrying. James and Julianne were behind him, the former trying to get past him as he blocked the entrance. Once inside, they both settled themselves next to me on the bed, with Ernest on the chair.

  ‘Hi, how’s it going?’ Julianne beamed at me, and I tried not to think about the last time I’d seen those lips at work.

  ‘Going … er … going good,’ I replied lamely, giving her a small smile.

  ‘Glad you’re joining us. It feels like months since we’ve seen you!’

  I noticed she was using we as if she and the rest of them were now a whole unit. I would have liked to remind her I’d known her boyfriend before her – even if only for a matter of weeks – but felt that would take things into the realms of playground bitchiness. And it was a little too early in the evening for that.

  ‘Peter’s coming,’ said James. He seemed to say this to the room as a whole and I realised he hadn’t made eye contact wi
th me once since he’d arrived, or indeed at any point since the time in the cabin at Rupert’s party.

  ‘Christ, I better bloody hope so. He’s so flaky.’ Ally gave a hollow laugh as she went around decanting some of the wine into plastic cups – the type you’d see at a children’s birthday party. ‘Would you care for some, Holly?’

  My mind started spinning back, worries floating to the surface. My period still hadn’t come. I could tell by the way I felt when I woke up each day that something wasn’t right. But I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t think about it. ‘Fine … I mean, sorry … yes, please.’

  ‘Ah!’ Ally said loudly as she handed me one of the cups. ‘I can hear someone coming. Peter’s here!’

  Peter had indeed arrived and everyone set about greeting him like a returning war veteran. I was fairly confident I was even flakier than Peter when it came to not turning up for engagements, and I only got a small smile from him as he shuffled in, looking mildly embarrassed.

  ‘Come on, Holly, sit on the floor with me.’ Ally’s orders occasionally got up my nose a bit, but in this instance I was rather pleased to have an excuse to move away from The Loving Couple of James and Julianne and sit on the pillows on the floor with her. As the hour passed, I found myself growing more relaxed, helped along by the wine, and even surprised myself by laughing at some of Julianne’s jokes about British/American differences and how we all sounded like aristocrats to her. ‘Hate to tell you this, dearest, but the Kelmans sort of are,’ James said, raising his eyebrows. Ally shook her head, as if mildly repulsed. ‘Only distantly, and even then it’s tenuous.’

  At approaching eleven o’clock, a couple of hours after the others had joined us, Ally got up and reached for one of the now-empty wine bottles. ‘Let’s play spin the bottle.’