I tried my best to make conversation with them both, but my efforts floundered. I didn’t really know anything about music, or curing fish, or the architecture of British churches, and Mathilde looked blank whenever I said anything about my pregnancy. I kept glancing around for someone I could safely introduce them to, but was unable to identify a single suitable candidate. Daniel and Charlie were busy with the fireworks, and there was no sign of Katie yet. Instead, the house was filling up with strange, edgy people I didn’t recognise, none of whom seemed remotely interested in speaking to us, or in trying Mathilde’s home-made gravadlax, which lay barely touched on the sideboard.
Within an hour of their arrival, I could tell by their faces that Arthur and Mathilde were mentally plotting their escape. I cringed as guest after guest barged past us, forcing Arthur to wheel round out of the way and Mathilde to pin herself up against the larder cupboard door. By now, the noise from the garden was making it increasingly difficult to hold a conversation. Arthur’s eyes darted nervously over my shoulder every time there was a smash of glass, a snap from the bonfire, a burst of explicit rap music. When Mathilde was knocked against the kitchen sideboard by a bloke in a purple dress and trainers carrying a huge speaker – ‘She’s only just had her hip done,’ a stunned Arthur muttered – I could see that all was lost.
Soon after that, the two of them were politely making their excuses. They were terribly tired – too old for parties these days, they said, with rueful smiles, hurriedly pulling on their scarves and gloves. They kept repeating what a lovely time they’d had, thanking me so profusely for inviting them that it made me want to cry. I helped them with their coats, apologising over and over about the sideboard incident, telling them how lovely it would be to catch up with them both again, though in what context, after this, I couldn’t really imagine. As I closed the door after them, Arthur carrying the barely touched gravadlax plate, Mathilde wobbling as she reached for the railings, I dreaded the thought of what they’d be saying on the way home.
It is not long after their departure that I start to feel odd. I head out to the garden, hoping some fresh air might help. The lawn is already littered with decaying pears, cigarette butts, spent fireworks in fairground colours, cans bent double. I close my eyes. There is a smell of gunpowder and rot. I can’t understand why the fire is producing quite so much black smoke.
My eyelids feel heavy, like I’m using all my strength to keep them open. After a while, I can’t even seem to see things properly – it’s as if I’m looking at everything through tinted glass. I wonder if it is the smoke from the fire affecting me – I keep rubbing my eyes on my jumper sleeve.
I go back inside, thinking my eyes might feel better. But it seems to be almost as foggy in here. Perhaps people are smoking indoors. Despite my begging, Charlie has brought two towering black speakers, plugged them in where Mummy’s floor lamp was. As I pass, bending to dab at a wine-splattered wall with damp kitchen roll, a shaven-headed guy at the decks looks up at me, one headphone on and one off, like I’ve seen Charlie doing. He just nods, then closes his eyes again.
Bass vibrates through the house, shaking the glasses in the cabinet. In the gaps between, the dehumidifier clicks and hums. Charlie dances into the room, eyes half closed, nodding to the music.
‘Who on earth are all these people?’ I hiss at Charlie.
He shrugs. ‘Mates.’
‘You could have come and spoken to Mathilde and Arthur.’
‘Who?’
I roll my eyes. ‘Our neighbours,’ I snap. ‘The ones who have lived here forever, who were friends with Daddy, who used to always throw your football back for you.’
He stares at me blankly.
‘They asked after you. It felt rude.’
Charlie still looks puzzled. ‘Sorry, I didn’t even know they were here.’
I rub my forehead. My head is throbbing. Charlie smiles, tries to catch my eye. ‘Honestly, don’t look so worried, Helen. Everything’s fine.’ I squint at him suspiciously. He’d better not be up to his old tricks again. I note that, as usual, he is looking faintly unwashed and in need of a haircut. I turn away. Sometimes it hurts even to look at Charlie. His face is all Mummy – her wide smile, her light brown eyes.
‘How’s Ruby?’
‘She’s fine. At her mum’s.’
‘Is Katie here yet?’
Charlie shrugs again, as if I’ve mentioned some passing acquaintance rather than his girlfriend. ‘Haven’t seen her,’ he says. ‘What about your new mate? Rachel? Is she here?’
‘I don’t know where she is,’ I say. ‘She went out for cigarettes this afternoon. She’s been ages.’ I narrow my eyes. ‘Why? What do you want with her?’
‘Nothing,’ Charlie says distractedly. He plucks a joint from behind his ear. ‘I just wondered. How about Rory, is he coming? And Serena?’ He taps his pockets for a lighter.
‘Charlie, you can’t smoke in here!’ I snap. ‘Tell your friends they can’t smoke in here.’
‘Relax, Helen!’ He laughs, putting the joint back. ‘I was just getting it ready!’
‘I don’t know if Rory and Serena are coming,’ I say crossly. ‘Rory has better taste in parties than you. Whatever his other faults might be.’
‘What does that mean? I didn’t think Rory and Serena had any faults, according to you.’
I shake my head, pawing at my eyes again. ‘Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. Go and annoy someone else. I need to clean this wall. The one your friends have ruined.’
Charlie is barely listening. He puts his arm around me, kisses me drunkenly on the temple. His stubble is scratchy.
‘Look at you, sis! A thousand months pregnant and you’re hosting a cool party! People are having a good time!’
I wriggle free, push him away. Tell him to buzz off.
Later, as I bend to collect more beer cans from my herb garden, I feel a gathering sense of heaviness in my limbs, so much so that I doubt for a moment whether I’ll be able to haul myself up again. I’m tired. So tired. Too tired to protest. Too tired to make my stand. I decide I will just go with it. Let Charlie and Daniel have this one silly night, before the baby comes. Things will be different after that.
At least tonight I won’t have to think too much about Rachel. I haven’t seen her since this afternoon, actually. Maybe she’s done one of her disappearing acts.
I put my hand to my temple; it feels as if my head might be about to explode. Even if she does turn up, I tell myself, it’ll hardly make a difference. She’ll find someone else to talk to, one of Charlie’s strange friends, probably. I’ll just stay out of her way. For once, she’ll be the least of my worries.
I am wrong about that, as it turns out.
KATIE
I take another sip of Helen’s mulled wine, exhale deeply. Charlie and Rachel are talking by the bookcase, away from everyone else. She seems all right now, I think, slightly bitterly. Her neck seems to have cleared up. Just a few little blotches of yellowy green, almost nothing.
Rachel is holding a glass in one hand and a straw in the other, swirling the ice cubes around coquettishly. She is wearing a blue velvet dress, sort of old-fashioned, and shoes that tie in bows at the backs of her ankles. As she and Charlie talk, she tilts her head to one side. The music is loud, and she says something into his ear, leaning close so that her lips graze the edges of his skin. I hear him laugh his real laugh. And then as he brings his hand to his mouth, I swear he just brushes against the side of her body, his fingers against her waist. Maybe. Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe not.
He does this, Charlie. He does something to women. He could be talking to you about anything – the weather, the wine, the carpet. It’s the way he looks at you when he does it. Makes you feel as if the rest of the world is spinning, and he is the only fixed point. I should know. He has been doing it to me since we were both at school. But he shouldn’t do it. Not to this strange, pregnant girl, I think. He shouldn’t.
The more I hear about Rachel, the
odder it all sounds. Apparently, she is still living here with Helen and Daniel. When I asked Helen about it, she seemed defensive. She said something about her being vulnerable. Someone hurting her, or something like that. That she needed a safe place to stay. ‘Anyway, it’s not for long. She’s promised she’s leaving, in the next couple of weeks.’ I wanted to ask more about the marks on her neck, but Helen’s expression stopped me delving further.
My wine is disappearing faster than it should be. It’s sweet and spicy; the taste of Christmas. I think Helen is pleased someone is drinking it. I wonder if she realises that some of the other people here are indulging in less wholesome substances. I am not sure Charlie has kept his promise about not inviting too many people.
As I look at Charlie and Rachel, I think about years ago, when Charlie and I broke up the first time, and he introduced us all to Maja. I’d been the one to end things between us, so I’d no right to be hurt. But he’d moved on so quickly. And then there was Maja, and everyone loved her, her wide, mischievous smile, her Swedish drinking games, her mad midsummer parties. I had to smile, pretend to go along with it. And then, after what seemed like hardly any time at all, she was pregnant – a happy accident, they’d said – and I realised too late that I’d made a mistake.
It feels like a long time ago now, all that stuff. I take another deep drink of the wine. Maybe I’m stupid, thinking we can try again now, after all this time, that things can go back to the way they were, before all that. Maybe I need to grow up, find an ordinary man, like Daniel. A house, a baby. Somehow, though, the thought makes me feel slightly depressed.
I don’t notice the two drunk girls dancing behind me until it’s too late, and they are careering into me. My remaining mulled wine is splattered across the rug on the floor. Fuck. They apologise and disappear. I blush, hoping Charlie and Rachel haven’t seen me. I’m too drunk, I think, already. I decide to leave them to it. They are only talking, for God’s sake. I need to go somewhere else. I need to pull myself together.
The bathroom upstairs is locked. I can hear someone inside. I wait, and finally the door opens. It’s Serena. So they are here. I take in her manicured nails, long, buttery, Hollywood hair, her perfect half-moon stomach. She is clutching one of those jewelled bags that looks too small to put anything in.
‘Hello, Katie.’
‘Hi,’ I slur. ‘How’s it all going?’ I motion clumsily to her belly, and she gives me a tight smile.
‘Fine thanks,’ she says. She swishes past, her long silk dress trailing behind. ‘See you later.’
I shut the door behind me. The bass is still reverberating through the floor. I can see Rachel’s gold sequinned skirt peeping out of the laundry basket, her green trainers in a pile in the corner, along with a pair of dirty checked pyjamas. On the sink is a crumbling black eyeshadow, a tube of lipstick, postbox red, a colour Helen would never wear. Three toothbrushes lean uneasily against each other in a glass.
I decide to head out to the garden, have a cigarette. Calm my nerves. I’ll watch the fireworks, I think. And keep away from Rachel.
HELEN
The rug was one of Mummy’s, which she’d brought back from her travels in Greece, rolled up on her rucksack. And now it is probably ruined. The stain is red wine, something from Daddy’s collection, no doubt. As I scrub at the stain, bits of the scourer are coming off in a dark green rash, fibres from the rug itself starting to disintegrate. I am making it worse.
Then suddenly there are other particles swimming in front of my eyes, too – little black-and-white twists in my vision, a scattering of red and yellow spots. I remember these. I have had these before, when I was taking the medication. When I wasn’t well, after the babies.
I feel hot tears at the back of my eyes. I want the rug to be like it was. I want the rug to be clean. I think of Mummy, when she was young, her hair cut short, tanned shoulders, before she met Daddy, heaving this rug onto ferries and buses, people telling her she was mad. She’d loved it. Wanted to put it in her home. There were pictures of me on it, when I was a baby. And now I’ve let someone spoil it.
When I stand, the dots and twists come again, swimming in front of my eyes like a hallucinogenic screensaver. And then they fade away, and then I see her. Rachel, standing with Charlie, whispering something in his ear. And she is wearing Mummy’s blue velvet dress. The one she had looked so beautiful in. The one she’d bought from the hippy stall in the market with me, all those years ago.
I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I stagger upstairs to the bathroom, slump down on the floor. My arms feel like dead weights. What is happening to me? I think I’m going to either cry or be sick. What is Rachel doing? Why is she wearing Mummy’s dress? What else has she stolen? A laptop? A photograph? A dress? My brother? Who is this person I’ve invited into our house?
When the nausea passes, I lie down on my side, one cheek against the cool tiled floor of the bathroom. I lie for a while, until my heart slows down. The smell of bonfire smoke, the thump of music, the noise of chatter floats in through the open window. My stomach settles into a hard knot of anger. I have stood this long enough. I am going to ask her what the hell is going on.
The spare room is on the other side of the landing. I push the door open, my eyes still swimming slightly. And then I notice something. Something that wasn’t there before, or it was, and I didn’t see it. A slight unevenness in the tilt of her bed. Is it just the mess of the sheets, making it look that way? I climb down onto all fours, check the legs of the bed. And that’s when I see it, under one of the legs. One of the floorboards is sticking up, as if there is something pushing up from underneath.
I shut the door behind me against the noise of the party. But I can still hear the bass, like the thump of a heartbeat. The room is hot. I get back down on my hands and knees. I wasn’t imagining it. There is a floorboard out of place. It looks as if it has been cut out, pushed up, like a jigsaw piece.
It takes all the strength I have to push the bed to the side. I try pulling up the board, and sure enough, it comes away in my hands. A swirl of sawdust flies upward, and I see what lies underneath.
The objects are set out neatly, between two dusty joists. The laptop is there, with its cable wrapped around it. And the envelope, the one I’d seen in her suitcase, the W neatly printed on the front. There are fifty-pound notes – loads of them, flat, perfect and as neat and unreal as monopoly money, stuffed into a polythene sandwich bag that looks as if it came from the roll in my kitchen.
I push the notes to one side. There is more underneath. A pile of newspaper cuttings, some new, some yellowed and curled with age, held together with a hair grip. I pull them out and lay them in front of me. The old ones are on the top. They are from a decade ago – when we were at university. When I look closer, I see they are dated 2008, the year we left Cambridge. And then I realise they are about Cambridge. About the case Katie was talking about. About what happened to that girl, the summer we left.
Then, I see more things. The photograph I found, of us after the college play. The one that had been stuck back together. And underneath that, more paper. What looks like a printout of some flight documents and boarding passes, stapled together, folded in half so I can’t quite see the details. As I reach for them, I see a passport. But as I do, I become aware of footsteps on the stairs, of someone getting closer.
My hands trembling, I abandon the flight details and pick up the passport, open up to the back page.
The name is HELEN MARY THORPE. The date of birth is 9 May 1986. The place of birth is London. The passport number is mine. It’s my passport. It must be.
But on the left-hand side, where my face should be, there is only a blank space. My face has been cut away.
The hinge of the door creaks. I spin around, my entire body shaking now.
It is her.
KATIE
Outside someone offers me a cigarette. I take it. I don’t really smoke. The fact I want one is a sure sign I’ve drunk too much. I
thank them, and stumble down to the bottom of the garden. I feel like being on my own for a bit.
As I sit and smoke, I look back at the bonfire, the big, beautiful lit-up house. I have always loved Helen’s house, its red brickwork, its tall, wooden-shuttered windows, the pretty gables in the gently sloping roof. It is at its most beautiful now, in the autumn when the wisteria turns yellow and the brambles at the end of the garden are heavy with unpicked fruit. It’s silly, but I suppose I like to think of it as my childhood home, too.
I close my eyes, inhale the smell of wet leaves, bonfire smoke. I remember how the Guy Fawkes Night parties here used to be, when Helen’s parents, Richard and Anna, were alive. Rory, Helen, Charlie and I would be sent to Greenwich Park to find kindling, looking for the driest sticks, stuffing them into our backpacks. When we got back, we’d present our collections for Richard to inspect. He would decide who was the winner. He’d usually say it was me. I think he and Anna felt a bit sorry for me after my mum and dad split up. I think they knew I preferred their house to my cramped two-up, two-down house at the cheaper end of the street.
Before the parties, Richard would let us put nails in fence posts for the Catherine wheels, dig holes in the cold, wet earth for the rockets. He let us do everything. We would make lanterns out of washed-out jam jars and brown string, put tea lights in them, light them ourselves with matches and climb the ladder to hang them in the pear tree. Helen and I would write our names with lit sparklers, trying to get from the first letter to the last before the ribbon of white light was swallowed up in darkness. Rory would throw firecrackers at us from up in his tree house. Charlie told him to stop it, but Rory just laughed. He only did it because Helen shrieked so much. We told her that, but she didn’t listen.
Greenwich Park Page 15