Athena jumped briefly before gathering herself, adopting the voice she reserved especially for her dead best friend’s husband.
‘See, I told you he’d be pleased to see us,’ she mouthed to Maria, straightening her dress as they waited for the lock to click open.
‘Can I get you both a drink?’ he asked smoothly, as he led them towards the house, which had changed in ways Maria couldn’t quite pinpoint since she had last been inside.
Maria shook her head to say she wasn’t thirsty and was relieved when she was instructed to go and find David by the pool.
The last words she heard before she turned were her mother’s desperately transparent plea. ‘Maria and I, we are … As you may know, Panos left us penniless. Until now, we survived but, well, I think I will have to sell the house … Unless I can find work …’
Maria spotted David seated at the edge of the water, the paleness of his skin highlighted by the red of his swimming trunks. He smiled when he looked up and saw her approaching. Only a year had passed since she had last seen him, but at eleven, he was suddenly much taller. Even with him sitting down she could see that. And there was something different about his manner, something cooler. It was as if this was a different boy to the one she had left crouched by his mother’s grave, the soil beside him still dented with the marks of the shovel.
‘Hey,’ she said, keen to show off her newly acquired American vernacular, perfected with a detailed study of a video of The Baby-Sitters Club which one of the girls at school had let her borrow.
‘Hi,’ David replied, his expression serious.
‘Can I sit?’
‘Sure.’
Pulling off her sandals, Maria lowered herself onto the side of the pool, noticing the chips in the sparkly pink nail polish on her toes, which were coated in dust from the path.
‘How long are you here for?’ Maria asked, struggling for things to say, wishing for a return to the way they used to be. What a stupid thing to think – nothing would ever be the same again.
‘Dunno, depends how long the building work takes.’
For a split second she felt overcome once more with the need to tell him, to confess exactly what she had seen. Your mama, she imagined herself saying. But the moment she pictured the man’s face she knew she couldn’t do it. What good would it do? How could she articulate the words, and let him be left with the same mental image she had been fending off ever since the night Artemis died? And what could he do? They were just children.
‘What building?’ she asked, looking away.
David shrugged. ‘My dad’s extending the house.’
‘Cool,’ she said, not trusting herself to say anything more, and hating herself for knowing that she didn’t dare.
* * *
The building work barely stopped once Clive and David were back in London. Athena was taken on as housekeeper, which seemed crazy to Maria given that the Witheralls barely spent two months of the year here and surely could have got away with just shutting the place up while they were gone.
On the days when Maria came up here to help her mother, she would watch the machinery clawing at the house Artemis had loved, the diggers and cranes like the wolves in one of the less comforting stories her father would read her when she was young, tearing apart their kill.
In the years after Artemis’ death, the house took on a new lease of life, as if it had sucked the beating heart from her body and used it to fuel its own gruesome metamorphosis.
Across the island, you could hear the delighted shrieks of the guests at the elaborate parties Clive held in the summer months when he and David arrived, with Clive’s ever-growing entourage. Parties attended by an international crowd who cruised in and out especially for the occasion, according to Athena who loved nothing more than to proudly regale her daughter with details of the outfits and the food on display, as though it was her own party she was describing.
On one such night, while Athena was at work, Maria was sitting on a chair in the yard area at the front of her house. She was reading a book when she heard a noise and looked up to see David, his eyes red with tears. He was thirteen and Maria was eleven, and he pulled a single cigarette from his pocket, lit it and coughed.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
David shrugged. ‘My godmother May gave it to me at the party.’
Maria nodded, not knowing what else to say.
‘Do you want to walk?’ David asked. ‘Your mum won’t be back for hours – the band has only just started and everyone’s getting wasted.’
‘Won’t your dad wonder where you are?’ she asked, following David onto the path which descended into darkness as they moved away from the house.
David snorted. ‘Trust me, he won’t notice. He’s got his business mates there, he’s busy.’
There was resentment in his voice and Maria wanted to comfort him so she took his hand, leading him through the paths she knew as well as the back of her hand. For a moment as their skin touched, there was a flash of memory, and she pictured herself following Artemis from a distance along the path towards her house, the sound of the wind whipping at the leaves.
‘I miss my mum,’ David said, as if reading her mind, and Maria stopped, the tempo of the cicadas seeming to slow down around them.
‘Me too. David, I have something I need to—’ But before she had time to confess, he leaned forward, so quickly that she didn’t know what was happening until she felt his kiss on her cheek.
Maria hadn’t slept, rolling the memory of the kiss over and over in her mind, her breath sitting high in her chest as she replayed the scene. When she heard her mother leave for work the following morning, she got up, spending the rest of the morning holding a Penelope Delta novel in front of her face in the shade of the tree. She tried to read but found herself unable to concentrate, her mind drifting back to the previous evening, to the sound of the insects as they moved along the mountain path, the faint smell of cigarette smoke that briefly enveloped her as David’s lips touched her cheek.
He had lost his nerve as quickly as he’d found it, pulling away and sheepishly turning, parting ways with the briefest of goodbyes once they were back at her house. And for a moment Maria wondered if he could taste the betrayal on her skin.
When lunchtime came, Maria made herself bread and cheese, which she picked at before giving up and moving into the bathroom. Plaiting her hair into two braids on either side of her face, she paused in front of the mirror for a moment to study her own reflection. Some girls her age had started to look different, their bodies and faces developing in a way that made them hold themselves self-consciously. But Maria showed no signs of that. She was still skinny, childlike, and ordinarily she liked how it made her feel comparatively inconspicuous, invisible to boys her age.
As her eyes moved over her own features, her father’s dark complexion and almond-shaped eyes staring back at her, she imagined the kiss David had left on her cheek once more and pushed away any doubts. He had left because he was embarrassed. But she had had her first kiss, and it was with David. In that moment she felt nothing but contentment, the lines of her mouth lifting into a tentative smile.
Heat radiated from the newly planted trees that lined the entrance to the Witherall house once she finally worked up the courage to head over there later that day. She had been here thousands of times before, both with David and also in the winter months when he and Clive were back in London and Athena looked after the house, overseeing the maintenance of the pool and dusting the paintings that lined the halls. Yet today felt different, nerves gnawing at her tummy as she stepped inside the main gate.
Athena was making herself coffee in the kitchen when Maria approached. ‘I thought you were staying at home today?’
‘I was going to but …’ Maria scrabbled around for an excuse, though she’d never needed one before.
‘You came at the right time. I was about to strip down all the beds; you can help me,’ Athena rattled on with her usual fervour, obli
vious to her daughter’s peculiar mood. Maria looked confused. Athena had changed the bedding two days before – surely it didn’t need to be done again.
‘Clive was called back to London for a meeting, so they left this morning,’ she continued, and Maria felt the butterflies in her stomach turn to dust.
It was another year before she saw David again, the following summer: four years since Artemis’ death. Athena spent a week in the run-up to their return at the house, fluffing pillows and rewashing hand towels, a giddy excitement following her from room to room.
The day they arrived, Maria was playing in the main square, concealed in shadow as the car pulled past, Jorgos in the driving seat, Clive in the back, another man she didn’t recognise in the passenger seat of the car. A shiver swept over the back of Maria’s neck and she pulled herself instinctively further out of sight.
She stayed away for the first two weeks after that initial sighting. Clive was working flat out, according to Athena who loved the opportunity to make herself indispensable at the house, cooking and cleaning while Jorgos watched on, Clive holding meetings with colleagues who flew in from all corners of the globe and who would partake in his now infamous parties, any complaints from the island’s inhabitants quashed by the bouquets of flowers and crates of champagne he had shipped in to thank them for their tolerance, not to mention the large amounts of cash he sank at any number of the island’s restaurants and bars.
‘You wouldn’t believe the outfits, Maria, and the money! People from all over the world. Russia, Africa …’ Athena was flushed with excitement as she buzzed around their tiny kitchen, filling Maria in on every detail of Clive’s social schedule, reconfiguring every event to place herself at the centre.
‘He is so busy, I don’t know what he’d do without me. Every day, there are more meetings that need catering for, more meals, more beds to be dressed down.’
Maria knew her mother was exaggerating the importance of her role. She had seen Clive’s cohorts down at the port, prowling from restaurant to bar. It wasn’t that Maria was spying; the island was simply so small that you’d have to be actively looking away not to notice them, with their incongruous suits and watchful eyes.
Maria shuddered. Whatever her mother might say, the men surrounding Clive were more than capable of looking after their own interests without the help of Athena.
Despite her refusal to go to the house when her mother suggested she join them there, Maria was almost as desperate to see David as she was to avoid being brought face-to-face with Clive and his entourage, waiting with increasing impatience for him to seek her out. She made it easy, hanging around in the main square in the village with the girls from school, walking to the beach nearest his house at the bottom of the mountain. On one occasion she even took the circuitous route home via the path that led past the gates with their glass eyes monitoring every person who came and went. But David was nowhere to be found.
‘How’s David?’ Maria blurted to her mother over dinner one evening, out of pure frustration.
Athena paused in a way that was out of character, shaking her head as if considering something sad. ‘He’s been very quiet. You should go to see him, get him to go to the beach. I don’t understand why you won’t be a friend to him. He’s so pale, that boy. He needs sunlight. He misses his mother, I can see it in his eyes.’
Maria took a mouthful of bread, the food expanding in her mouth as she chewed, postponing answering long enough that Athena had inevitably steered the conversation back towards Clive.
The following night, Maria dreamt of Artemis. Waking in a cold sweat, she got straight out of bed, slipped on a pair of denim shorts and a vest top and hopped on the push-bike she’d been given for her twelfth birthday. Following the road down towards the cemetery, she closed her eyes for a moment, daring herself to be guided by the undulations of the path, a light early morning wind brushing soothingly against her cheeks, blowing away the memory of Artemis’ face the night of the storm.
She spotted David from the path as soon as she jumped off the saddle, on the other side of the graveyard, his hair falling in front of his face, casting a shadow across the tightly held line of his mouth. Withdrawing slightly so that he wouldn’t see her, she watched him pressing the tip of a stick into a hard knoll of dirt, seeing how much pressure it would take before it snapped.
At fourteen, he had filled out since the previous year. Something about his appearance shocked her. It wasn’t just his size, but his whole being seemed to radiate an energy he couldn’t contain.
For the first time when she looked at him, she saw a glimpse of his mother – the woman who had treated her like one of her own. The one Maria had betrayed … Turning, suddenly unable to look at him and not tell him everything, she turned, pedalling furiously back towards the house, her heart thumping in her chest.
* * *
She hadn’t intended to seek him out later that night, but an intuition – a nervous fluttering, like a bird lodged somewhere in her chest – made her go looking. Or perhaps she had been subconsciously preparing to tell him what she knew about Artemis’ death. Perhaps in that moment, she was finally brave enough to do the right thing. The top of the mountain was black as she approached, the squeal of the brake on her push-bike the only sound as it slowed to a halt.
The gate was wedged open, as if preparing for visitors, and yet she knew Clive wasn’t home. She had seen his car at the port a while earlier, and then spotted him with the same man she had seen in the passenger seat of the car the day he arrived, and a woman, seated at a restaurant overlooking the water. There was a casualness to their performance that appalled her: Clive, Jorgos and the rest of them, laughing and drinking on the island where Artemis had died, as if they hadn’t a care in the world; as if it wasn’t their fault. She stood for a while watching as Clive ingratiated himself with his crowd, just as he had with her mother, and the rest of the villagers whose affection had been bought with a donation towards a new library – another fact Athena had fed her daughter with such pride.
‘He’s so giving, a real philanthropist,’ Athena had beamed, and Maria couldn’t be sure whether the sense of pride derived from being one of the recipients of Clive’s generosity or the fact that she had been party to these insights about his character.
Maria breathed deeply before taking a step towards the partially opened gate which gave way to a pristine gravel drive.
This part of the mountain felt like its own separate universe and Maria suddenly felt exposed as she made her way down the path, imagining the eyes of the CCTV cameras following her every step. She could see a light was shining deep inside one of the extended parts of the house, as she moved closer.
‘David?’ She called his name, hesitating for a moment before turning the handle of the back door. There was no answer though she sensed movement somewhere in the far end of the house.
Quickening her pace, she moved through the hallway to the stairs, calling out his name until she heard a reply. Following the voice, she pushed a door open tentatively and saw that it was a study. She had never been in this room before, in all the time she’d spent in the house while Athena worked, and there was a look on David’s face that she didn’t recognise either.
He was sitting on a swivel chair. When she stared more closely, she saw that he had been crying; from the overextended movement of his limbs and the way his vowels curled on his tongue as he said her name, she could see that he was drunk or high or something else that she was too inexperienced to be able to clearly label.
And then she saw the gun.
* * *
Running from the house, she felt their words chasing her, her own voice sounding childlike compared to his.
‘Maria … You know I’ve always loved you, don’t you?’ His eyes had been almost unrecognisable.
‘What are you doing, David? For God’s sake, put it down! Are you crazy?’
‘They said my mum was crazy, do you know that?’
Years later, she woul
d replay this moment in her mind on loop: the moment at which she should have intervened, her opportunity to come clean, to clear the cloud of shame that hung over Artemis’ name … But then she pictured their faces, and the scene lost its clarity, and once more she told herself she couldn’t be sure what she had seen.
Again, she fixed her attention on David. Tears were rolling down his face but his jaw was clenched, his mouth hardly moving as he spoke. ‘Why would you hang yourself, though? I don’t mean why would you kill yourself, I mean why hang yourself, specifically?’
‘Please, you’re scaring me.’ She was so scared, how could she not be? There were so many reasons to be frightened.
It was as if he couldn’t hear her. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking. If it were me I’d use a gun.’
He held it up, the barrel dipping slightly in the uncertainty of his grip.
‘Please, David.’
The words poured from him, hot and volcanic. ‘Do you know how many times I’ve seen him cry over his wife? Over how her body was swinging from the bannisters outside my bedroom. Why did she have to do it there?’ He pointed towards the landing. ‘Do you think she wanted me to find her? Do you think she hated me?’
It was only when she felt the tears rolling down her cheeks that she realised she was crying, too.
Maria didn’t stop to collect her bike as she ran from the house, leaving David alone, letting him down for the second time in their short lives. Her feet hardly touched the ground as she ran back into the pitch-black night, away from him, away from the memory of the barrel held against his temple. She felt like she was trapped within the walls of a strange dream, coming to only when a car’s headlights swept across the road, catching her in their beam, the glare of the metal on the Mercedes emblem causing her to squint.
The Second Woman Page 23