by T. M. Logan
But Jake and Ethan still didn’t mind him tagging along while they went exploring the grounds of the vacation house. They had been everywhere, down to the games room, and the gym, out to the garage, the sauna, the woods, and the little gazebo. They were good at exploring. They had found a secret room under the pool with loads of pipes and barrels of stuff, and they had eaten grapes off the grape plants (even though Daniel said they shouldn’t) and then Ethan had almost caught a lizard but its tail had come off in his hand and it was disgusting but also funny. He ran around with it, waggling it in their faces like it was still alive. Daniel laughed along, but he didn’t really want the lizard tail to touch him.
Awe and fear. It was a dangerous combination.
The three of them were sprawled in the shade of a tall oak at the bottom of the vineyard. The sun was intense, a baking, nonstop heat that stuck the T-shirt to Daniel’s back and made his glasses slide down the bridge of his nose.
Jake leaned forward, his long fringe falling over his eyes. “Do you want to see something cool?”
“Yeah,” Daniel said automatically.
“Not here. Come on.”
The older boy stood up and led them deeper into the woods, Ethan following Jake and Daniel bringing up the rear.
When they had gone farther in and the view from the villa was fully obscured by trees, Jake reached into his back pocket.
“Hey, I got something for you.”
He held it out for Daniel to see. Bright yellow see-through plastic with a silver top, see-through liquid sloshing around inside the plastic. Daniel had never held one before but he knew what it was.
“It’s yours,” the older boy said. “I got a three pack from that cigarette shop in the village.”
He and his brother held identical lighters, in red and green.
“You got one for me?” Daniel smiled broadly.
“Do you want it?”
“Yeah,” he said. It would be so cool if they had one each, like they were equals, almost. Like he was fully one of the gang.
“You roll the metal thing to make a spark,” Jake said, “then push down with your thumb to make the flame come out.”
He demonstrated, sparking the lighter into a tall flame.
“You try.”
Daniel took it from him and instantly burned his thumb on the hot metal where the flame had come out.
“Ow!” He dropped the lighter with a clatter. Ethan snorted with laughter.
Jake picked it up and held it out to him.
“If you want it, to keep for good, all you have to do is pass the test.”
“What test?” Daniel said, sucking his singed thumb.
Jake studied him for a moment, his face blank. “We have an actual gang, me and Ethan.”
Daniel looked from one teenager to the other. “A gang with two people?”
“It’ll be three if you get in, if you want to be a proper full member.”
“So how do I get in?”
“You have to do the initiation.”
“The what?”
“Initiation,” Ethan said. “A test.” He put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “We’ve both done it already,” he said.
“What do I have to do?”
“Come on. We’ll show you.”
45
Daniel
The edge of the cliff was jagged and uneven, with some bits that stuck out and some that looked like they’d sort of crumbled away. In the middle of it, where the trees gave way to the clearing and the clearing gave way to the edge, there was a crescent-shaped gap in between two scraggly low-down trees, a semicircular space that looked as though it had just kind of sheared off and fallen into the gorge, maybe like a million years ago, Daniel thought.
The crescent-shaped gap was about five feet across—about as wide as Daniel was tall, he reckoned.
“Here,” Ethan said, standing right on the edge, in the gap between two spits of rock. “It’s just like doing long jump in PE.”
PE was Daniel’s least favorite class at school. He always got picked last for football and when they had to play tag rugby—ugh, he hated tag rugby—he made a point of running in the opposite direction to where the ball was. He was OK at running and jumping, though. Running and jumping he could do. Well, everyone could do them, really. They weren’t really sports, were they?
“Long jump?” he said, trying to stop his voice from going high.
He would never have jumped this gap on his own. Not in a million years. But he wasn’t on his own, he was with his friends, his crew, even if they were a lot taller and bigger and better at jumping than him.
“You have to jump from here,” Jake indicated his side of the gap, “over to there. We did a jump like this in Army Cadets. ’Cept it was wider.”
“Cool,” Daniel said, playing for time. “How old do you have to be for Cadets?”
“Dunno. Not in it anymore.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t like being shouted at and ordered about.”
“They kicked him out,” Ethan said with a smirk.
“No, they never!” Jake punched his brother on the arm. “It got boring, all the marching and that shit. There was hardly any shooting.”
Daniel checked over his shoulder in case a grown-up was there. He couldn’t help it. He always did, when someone swore.
“It’s easy,” Jake said. “I’ll show you.”
He took a short run-up and jumped across the gap, landing hard on the other side in a cloud of dust kicked up by his trainers.
Ethan followed suit, only just making it, sprawling to his knees when he hit the far side. He stood up quickly, brushing himself down and coming to stand next to his brother. They both stared at Daniel.
“Your turn,” Ethan said.
Daniel inched a bit closer to the edge and looked down into the gorge. Blue water sparkled in the stream at the bottom, sunlight glinting like diamonds in the sun.
“It’s a long way down, isn’t it?”
“Kill you for sure, a drop like that,” Ethan said.
“Are you chicken?”
“No.”
“You are, you’re a chicken-man,” Ethan said, adding suddenly a cruel smile, “Chicken-man Dan!”
He began to make buck-buck-buck chicken noises, flapping his arms at his sides. Jake looked on, frowning.
“Shut up, Ethan. He doesn’t have to do it if he doesn’t want to.”
But his younger brother ignored him.
“Chicken-man Dan! Chicken-man Dan!” Ethan capered in circles, arms flapping. “Buck-buck-buck!”
Daniel felt the heat rising to his cheeks. Suddenly he needed a wee, really badly. It was like the worst bits of school all rolled into one, PE and bullies and high-up things and always getting picked last for the football team.
He might have been scared, but he wasn’t a chicken. He wasn’t.
He would show them.
“I’m not chicken.”
Ethan stopped flapping his arms, his smile turning cold.
“I think you are, little man.”
“Not!”
“Prove it then.”
Daniel stepped back six paces and took a couple deep breaths.
He wasn’t a chicken.
He ran toward the gap, fists pumping, feet slapping the dusty earth, eyes fixed on the far side—
And jumped.
46
The three of us ordered coffees and found a table in a shady part of the village square. The only other customers were a couple whiskery old men, sitting on a wooden bench with their walking sticks propped beside them. The French tricolor hung listlessly from the town hall next to the restaurant, no breeze at all to stir it in the early afternoon heat.
“I have a confession to make,” I said.
Rowan and Jennifer both looked up from their drinks.
“That sounds a bit dramatic,” Rowan said.
“Is everything all right?” Jennifer said.
I shook my head.
“What’s up, honey?” Jennifer said, her voice soft with concern. “What’s happened?”
I watched as an elderly lady in a stretched black dress emerged from the little church across the square, walking stick in her hand. Very slowly, she began to make her way toward the café.
“It’s a confession with an apology thrown in.”
Quickly, without going into too much detail, I told them what had been happening over the last five days, my suspicions about Sean—suspicions that had hardened into the cold, hard knowledge that he was having an affair. How I had suspected first Rowan, then Jennifer, of being the other woman. And how confirmation had arrived yesterday that I had been wrong on both counts.
“That ring,” Rowan said. “I found it in the gym. I didn’t know it belonged to Sean—I thought it might have been a previous guest, so I just picked it up and put it in my drawer for safekeeping. Was going to ask everyone but it slipped my mind.”
“I know,” I said. “And apologies for thinking bad thoughts about you both. I’m really sorry. I just haven’t been able to see the wood for the trees. And the worst thing is, I bloody talked to Izzy about this earlier in the week and she assured me that Sean would never go behind my back. Which of course is exactly what you would say if you were the other woman. I was so stupid.”
They greeted my revelation with a moment of silence.
“This is mad, I can’t believe it,” Rowan said eventually, shaking her head. “I thought you’d been a bit weird these last few days. Couldn’t put my finger on what it was. You poor thing.”
“Me too,” Jennifer said. “I sensed something wasn’t right, was going to ask you. It must have been terrible for you, having to find out like that.”
Rowan stirred her coffee.
“How certain are you? How sure?”
“Pretty certain. He’s denied it point-blank but I know he’s hiding something. I just don’t know what to do next.”
“Do you want us to talk to her?” Jennifer said, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair. “The two of us?”
And say what? Tell her to back off, find her own man? Why would that have any effect?
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Not yet. She told me the other day that she was seeing someone, but she didn’t want to tell us yet because he’s still married. He’s in the process of getting a divorce, apparently, but she didn’t think we’d approve.”
“What’s his name?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Or we could talk to Sean,” Rowan said.
“No. Not that. I’ve tried already, anyway.”
“Maybe he’ll come to his senses. Give him a little bit of time.”
I shook my head. “It’s too late for that. I’ll go mad if I don’t do something; I just don’t want to make the wrong call.” I looked pointedly at Rowan. “Not again.”
She gave me a little nod of understanding; she knew who I was referring to.
“But that was different,” she said softly. “With Henry.”
“Was it?”
Henry, Rowan’s first husband. My mind drifted back to a time when the shoe had been on the other foot, the part I had played in the end of her first marriage. Would I have wanted to know, too, if I had been in her shoes?
The question brought me up short. I was in her shoes. It was my turn now.
I stirred my coffee slowly.
Ten years ago—almost to the day—Rowan and I had sat drinking coffee in the sitting room of my small end-of-terrace house in north London. The Sunday roast finished, dishes washed, Sean and Henry dispatched to the park with Lucy wobbling along on the new bike she’d received for her sixth birthday, shiny pink streamers trailing from the handgrips. Talking about school catchment areas and nurseries, Rowan announcing that she had come off the pill and was taking folic acid instead. And I had hesitated, and changed my mind, changed it again, put down my coffee and come out with seven words that would end up changing the course of her life.
I think Henry might be playing around.
I had heard it on very good authority that he was cheating on Rowan and had grappled with that knowledge for weeks as I tried to decide whether to tell her. Trying to work out what to do for the best, to do what was right—however hard that might be. Rowan, oblivious, talking about trying for their first child. What was I supposed to do with the information that I had? Stay quiet while everyone talked about it behind her back? Let her find out for herself? Watch her being taken for a ride by the man she’d married? Sean had counseled caution, but in the end I went against his advice and told Rowan what I’d heard. Told her, in good faith, the stories that were doing the rounds about Henry.
Stories that turned out to be untrue. Malicious lies, circulated by an old flame with an agenda of her own, someone I’d never even met.
But malicious or not, the effect had been catastrophic. When Rowan confronted him with her explosive accusation, their marriage had unraveled in spectacular fashion.
They separated three months later.
“I wanted to say sorry again, Rowan,” I said. “For what happened with Henry, the way it happened. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
“Nonsense. You did what you thought was right at the time.”
“I should have known, should have found out before I told you.”
She leaned forward, put a hand on my arm. “It was up to me what I did with that information, and up to him how he reacted. It wasn’t your fault, you were just the messenger. Anyway, it was probably for the best.”
“How’s that?”
“Henry didn’t actually want children, not really. So if I was still with him today, I wouldn’t have Odette.”
“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.”
“You’re worried about history repeating itself, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Terrified.”
I had been wrong before. I couldn’t afford to be wrong again.
47
The house was eerily quiet when we returned from the village. Sean, Russ, and Izzy had taken the girls to a craft market in the nearby village of Murviel-lès-Béziers, while Alistair had volunteered to stay behind at the villa and look after the boys. But there was no sign of them when we got back. I checked the garden and the pool area, the gazebo and the games room. All deserted.
Eventually, I found Daniel alone in his bedroom. He was on his bed, lying with his back to me as I came in.
“Daniel?”
“Hi,” he said, without turning around.
“What have you been up to? You OK?”
“Hmm.”
I went around to the bed and sat down. “Wow, looks like you’ve nearly finished your book, we’ll have to—”
I stopped, putting a hand to my mouth. There were cuts and grazes up his forearms, dirt and blood on his knees and shins. More dirt caked under his fingernails and on the front of his shorts. A smear of blood on his chin, his eyes red from crying. His favorite Harry Potter T-shirt was ripped at the neckline and under the arm was a long tear that went almost to his waist.
He looked as if he had been in a fight.
“What on earth happened to you, Daniel? Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
“You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward. How did you get these cuts?”
“Fell down.”
“Where?”
“Outside.”
“Oh dear, you really are in a bit of a state. Sit up a minute and let me get a proper look at you.”
He did as he was told and I gave him a quick check to see if anything was sprained or broken.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you sorted out.”
I took him into our bathroom and washed some of the dirt off with a washcloth, cleaning his cuts and scratches and dabbing on antiseptic with my fingertips. His T-shirt was beyond saving.
He s
tood, blank faced and silent, while I worked.
“Are you going to tell me how you got these cuts?”
“Told you,” he said, eyes downcast. “Fell over.”
“Were you with Jake and Ethan?”
He hesitated. Then, “They made me promise not to tell.”
“Who?”
His voice so quiet it was almost inaudible, he said, “The boys.”
“And where are they now?”
“Dunno.”
“Aren’t you all friends?”
“They said I couldn’t play with them anymore, and they went off somewhere.”
“They left you here on your own?”
He nodded miserably, the sharp tang of antiseptic cream making him wrinkle his nose.
I sat him down on the edge of the bathtub.
“What happened, Daniel?”
“When I fell down I was a bit upset, so Ethan got cross and then he said him and Jake were going out somewhere and I thought they meant they were just going outside, like hide-and-seek or something, so I went out to look for them in the garden but I couldn’t find them. I looked for ages but I couldn’t find them and I thought maybe they’d gone out in one of the cars. Their mum’s rental car was gone. I looked everywhere.” His voice dropped. “But I couldn’t find anyone.”
“What about Alistair?”
“Didn’t know where he was.”
My worry turned to anger.
“You couldn’t find him either?”
“No. I ran around everywhere but it was like everyone had just left without me and I was all on my own and everyone had forgotten about me.”
“Alistair was supposed to be here, looking after you.”
He gave a little nod but still wouldn’t look at me.
“I thought…” He trailed off, his voice growing quieter still.
“What did you think, darling?”
“I thought everyone had gone home without me. Back to England. Just left me here on my own in the vacation house and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Like what happens to Kevin in Home Alone, but kind of the other way around.”
I smiled and shook my head. Home Alone was one of his favorite films.
“You silly sausage! We’d never leave you all alone. I would never leave you.”