A Daughter's Secret (22 page)

‘No,’ I say, my hand on the puffy arm of her winter parka. ‘We’re going out together.’ She tenses, her eyes staring straight ahead. I suddenly realize we’ve never had an argument; I don’t know what the ground rules are. ‘I’m sorry, Lys, I know I should’ve told you.’

‘No. No, you shouldn’t have told me, Mia. You should never have DONE it!’

‘It just happened,’ I say, aware how pathetic it sounds. ‘I . . . we love each other.’

He has said it, at least when we’ve been having sex. I hate that phrase, it sounds so clinical, but ‘fucking’ (his favourite) sounds brutal, and ‘making love’ is obviously ridiculous. Lysette looks at me, all kinds of emotions playing across her elfin face. I wish we could fast-forward past this moment to a time when all of this is tied up in a bow.

‘You really don’t know what he’s like, do you?’

‘Maybe
you
don’t know what he’s like.’ Her eyes widen. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean that like it sounded. It’s just – a boyfriend’s different from a brother.’

‘I love him more than you do,’ she says. ‘I’ve known him all my life. You’ve known him like, five minutes. When did you come up with your brilliant plan, his birthday party?’

I look at her, all my noble truth-telling extinguished.

‘Let’s go and get a coffee,’ I say, pulling at her rigid arm.

‘No! When? Tell me. How long have you been lying to me?’

I think about white washing it – it’s not like he’ll set her straight – but I can’t quite bear it.

‘On holiday.’

‘I took you to France! I’ve never invited anyone there before.’ Her face is white, her eyes flashing with a rage that I’ve never seen in her. ‘And that’s how you thank me?’

‘I loved it so much. It was the best week of my life.’

It’s completely the wrong thing to say. What I meant was that I loved all of it, not just the Jim part, that I could never thank her enough, but I’ve already lost her. She turns on her heel and pushes her way through the gaggle of people at the counter. I try and follow her but she won’t turn round.

‘I love you,’ I say, desperate. ‘
And
him. I just didn’t know how to tell you.’

For a second I hate him for not being here with me helping to explain, but men aren’t built that way. They don’t like dealing with difficult things and there’s no point making them. She’s nearly at the door now. As she pushes it open, she twists back towards me, her face white and pinched.

‘It’s your funeral, Mia.’

It sort of will be too. I’m glad I don’t know that yet.

Chapter Twelve

Red roses, their petals pillowy and full. It’s not a dozen – of course not, too ordinary – it’s twenty.

‘They’re gorgeous!’ says Brendan.

‘Mmm.’ I’ve got two missed calls from Marcus, no message. I know where this is going. ‘I can’t have them in my room. Can you keep them on reception, or will we look like a funeral parlour?’

‘You obviously haven’t been to a funeral for a while,’ says Brendan, bearing them off to the kitchen. ‘More like a knocking shop.’

I barely slept last night, my mind whirring, the boxed-up flat filled with unfamiliar shadows. I’ve got half an hour before my appointment with Gemma – I want to get this out of the way so my focus is absolute. I’m trying to stay inside my own instincts, not get lured down a path carved out by Patrick. I head for the little park, refuse to think about him, plonk myself down on the bench where you can see the swings. Marcus picks up on the second ring, his hello a sheepish one.

‘They’re “I’m sorry” kind of roses, aren’t they? I can smell it on them.’

‘Do they smell bad? I told Wendy to send you the best ones they had.’

‘Don’t change the subject. Is it Dubai?’

‘Chicago,’ he says, exhaling.

‘Chicago? So you’ll be away all week? We’re moving in together, Marcus! This was meant to be our first night—’

‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

‘How? By buying me stuff? This was – it was important. I don’t want to feel like I’m four hundredth on your to-do list.’

He pauses, the atmosphere changing in the silence.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have a choice. You know who I am, Mia. You can’t just pick the bits you like. You like feeling like Daddy’s home, but there’s a price. I can’t leave a multimillion-pound client hanging.’

‘“Daddy’s home?”’ I repeat, my voice soaring upwards. An old lady on the next bench turns her gimlet eye on me, and I gesture an apology, lowering my voice. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed you using my history against me every time you feel threatened. You don’t have the first idea how I feel about all of that. Not really.’

Or maybe he does, even if I don’t say it. Maybe some part of him senses that the past doesn’t feel far enough away any more.

‘For fuck’s sake, Mia, it’s an expression. Don’t be so literal. Is this what it’s going to be like? My job’s demanding enough without you giving me all manner of shit for doing it.’

‘What, so you think it’s a complete coincidence that you’re having to fly to the other side of the planet the day, the actual day, we’re moving in? You’re an architect, not James fucking Bond.’

‘Oh yeah, do please overanalyse me some more, Dr Freud. Do you think I’m stuck in the anal phase?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I do.’

And then I hang up, turning the phone off for extra protection. I look at its dead, blank screen as it shakes in my unsteady palm. I’ve got somewhere to be.

Gemma’s early. She’s got big white leather headphones on, the kind of noise-defying ones that cost a fortune and make you look like a rapper in waiting, and she’s nodding her head to whatever’s pumping through them. She looks up at me slowly, unpeeling the headphones and dropping them around her neck.

‘Come on through,’ I say, keeping my voice light. ‘Let’s get started.’

As she gets closer I start to hear the music that rises up out of the pillowy surface. I expected something tinny and bassy, but it’s more old-fashioned – familiar, but too indistinct to name. I’m straining to identify it, my skin prickling. There are times right now where I really feel like I’m losing it.

Gemma sits down, pulling the iPad out of her bag, the cable attached.

‘Sorry,’ she says, turning the music off and unlooping the headphones. She’s humming as she does it, her eyes darting around.

‘What kind of music do you like, Mia?’ she asks. ‘I bet you’re into really cheesy stuff.’

‘What, like power ballads? It’s true I do a mean
Total Eclipse Of The Heart
at karaoke. What are you humming, Gemma?’

‘Was I humming?’ she says, her face deliberately neutral.

‘I thought you were humming. Don’t worry.’ I force the creeping anxiety downwards. ‘What’s been happening this week?’

I’m determined to simply let the conversation unfold, no agenda, see where it takes us.

‘School. Home. School again. What’s been happening to
you
, Mia?’

‘We’re not going to talk about me today. What’s your favourite subject at school? What do you like most about it? Or what’s the one you hate the least if that’s too icky?’

Gemma’s gazing out of the window like she might not even deign to answer. She turns to me.

‘I like drama,’ she says, ‘and before you start, it’s not because I like pretending to be someone else. Or escaping into another world.’ She’s sharp: that passive-aggression hides a brain far more perceptive than her so-so grades give her credit for. ‘I like making the sets. I did anyway, till I got washed up in Shitsville Academy.’

‘I didn’t know that about you.’

‘Yeah, like I made this forest for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. I dyed this fake-fur coat green to make these mad leaves and the birds were made out of Mum’s coat hangers.’

‘Was the coat hers too?’

‘She didn’t even notice! It was manky, anyway. Dad got her a real one for Christmas.’

I look at her, thinking it through.

‘So you
did
escape into another world. Or at least you brought things – well, stole things – from your world and transformed them into something for a made-up world.’

Gemma rolls her eyes extravagantly.

‘Don’t you ever get bored?’

‘Of what?’

‘Coming up with your made-up theories. It’s like when people
analyse their dreams
,’ she says, making angry quotation marks. ‘How can anyone know what a dream means? It’s just boring.’

‘I do get bored,’ I say, smiling at her. It’s true: Isobel and Ben who still come every single Monday and whinge endlessly about who takes the bin out and how to get the magic back into their sex life (Ben, a clue, stop wearing shapeless brown cords like you’re a 1940s Oxford don) bore me stupid. If only they’d believe me when I tell them it’s time for them to work it out for themselves. ‘But our sessions never bore me.’

Gemma looks at me, alert.

‘Don’t lie.’

‘Nope, never been bored. Sometimes I’ve been frustrated or impatient, but I’ve never been bored. You’re officially the only one round here who is.’

It’s only for a minute, but she positively glows. Then she shifts away from me down the sofa, reaching back into her bag for the machine she can’t bear to be parted from.

‘You seem to love that thing. It’s like it’s your familiar.’

‘Um, hello, Harry Potter, you’re the one who keeps going on about it.’

She’s fiddling with it now, fingers running across the screen so it springs to life. My breath feels tight in my chest, my eyes tracking the screen.

‘So was it a present for something specific? Hasn’t been your birthday, has it?’

‘No!’ she says, lighting up again. ‘But my dad gives amazing presents when it is. Way better than this, Mia.’

Are we walking into the woods now, the path finally emerging in front of us?

‘Like what? Give me the rundown from last year.’

‘Thirteen: he said it was a big one. He threw me this lush party at this hotel in the country where film stars go when they want some R and R.’

‘Wow. Is that what you wanted – rest and relaxation? Were you very stressed?’

‘No! I took loads of the girls in my class, and we went in the jacuzzi and had facials and stuff.’

What must the bill have been like? If Christopher really is corrupt, would he really want to be seen to be splashing his cash so ostentatiously? I’m trying to imagine how it was: I don’t get the feeling Gemma has many friends. Or at least, not unless he buys them for her.

‘Did your mum come along?’

‘Yeah, for a bit. We had this big dinner, and Dad let us have champagne and then he got in trouble for it.’

Poor Annie, constantly relegated to a no fun footnote.

‘Dad, not Mum? Had she gone by then?’

Gemma nods briefly, her fingers slipping back towards the screen. Was it a cover, an elaborate way to score a dirty weekend with his mistress? There’d have been so many easier ways – unless he wanted to rub Annie’s nose in it, make Gemma complicit.

‘The year before he got me a pony, but I wasn’t good at riding so we had to sell it.’

‘Tell me more about the party. Why didn’t your mum stay for dinner?’

‘She didn’t like my present.’

‘Was there a present as well as the party?’

‘Not that present.’ We sit there, the silence a pressure cooker – this is too important to draw back from. ‘Stephen’s present,’ she adds eventually.

‘So Stephen – Stephen who your dad works with – got you a birthday present?’

‘Yes!’ she says, snapping at me. ‘It was a Marc Jacobs handbag, Marc by Marc Jacobs actually.’ I glance at that tatty rucksack – any fool would know that designer bling is something that’s not yet on Gemma’s wish list. ‘But Mum didn’t think he should’ve come and given it to me.’

‘So Stephen Wright came to your birthday party?’

‘Yeah, I told you that! To give me my present.’ Tread carefully. ‘Mum was really angry. She says Dad works all the time. But Dad just wanted some grown-up company from someone who doesn’t chew his ear off.’ She’s flushed red, her voice high, like she’s right there in the midst of it. If Christopher knew what kind of man Stephen was, why would he let him pollute his beloved daughter’s birthday party? No wonder Annie lost it.

‘I’m a bit sad that your birthday party got spoiled by your parents having a row.’

Gemma shrugs, face set.

‘Dad let me have champagne. He said Mum would get over it, and that we could stay up as late as we wanted now she wasn’t there, swinging her keys.’

‘Swinging her keys?’

‘He says she’s like a prison guard. And Stephen stayed for dinner, even though it was just a load of us girls. It was the best fun.’

I sit there for a second, letting it percolate.

‘Do you understand why your mum was angry? Maybe she was trying to protect you – make sure that everything about your birthday was for you, and not about your dad’s work.’

‘You’re doing it again! You’re so sneaky. I tell you something, and you twist it and TWIST it till you can make out my dad’s done something evil. That’s the evil thing, not him.’

‘I’m not trying to twist what you’re saying, I’m just reflecting back to you what I’m hearing. I’m wondering if you thought about it from your mum’s point of view.’

‘Oh and I know you talked to her, by the way. Sneaking around behind my back. Telling tales.’

Her eyes dart back down to the iPad, like it’s the other patient. She couldn’t be recording this, could she? I can’t go on like this – I can’t work properly when every move I make is blighted by my own paranoia.

‘I wasn’t telling tales, Gemma. I didn’t tell her anything secret that you’ve told me.’

‘You said you might not see me any more. You said you’d had enough of me.’

‘It’s true we discussed how long you should come for, but I certainly didn’t say I’d had enough of you. And if you’re not sick of me, we’re just going to carry on for now.’

‘Maybe I am. Maybe I am sick of you.’

‘You don’t have to come and see me, Gemma. I want to help you, but if these sessions don’t feel supportive . . .’ Her eyes are darting around the room, her face pale and pinched. Something’s making her deeply agitated. What if Patrick’s right? What if I sit here being gentle and non-confrontational and middle class and she walks out of the room and gets herself killed? ‘I can tell you’re really angry today. If your anger was going to be a prop, if you were going to make it into something, what would it be?’