Sworn Secret (12 page)

‘I like that one too.’ Haydn reached for a guitar that was slotted between the bed and desk, sat back down on the bed and rested it on his knee. He looked just like a rock star. He began to play the tune she’d mentioned, very softly, slower than the original and not note-perfect, but mesmerizing. Lizzie was like a snake in a basket, hypnotized, spellbound. She thought of Anna up in this room, alone with him and his music, and wondered how often he used to play for her. If she’d been Anna she would have begged him to play to her every single day.

‘Do you miss her?’ she asked.

Haydn stopped playing, but didn’t look up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’ He plucked a string and let the note sound to nothing. ‘I think about her, though.’ He closed his eyes and his face screwed up as if he was being cut into.

‘I miss her,’ she said.

Lizzie’s voice echoed around the room, ringing in her ears, and she realized that even though she’d thought those words every day since Anna died, it was the first time she’d heard them aloud.

Thankfully, he began to play again, and this time he sang too. His voice was thinner than the other man’s, with less resonance, but to Lizzie it seemed as if the lyrics were Haydn’s own, his private thoughts for only her to know, and as the room filled up with Haydn’s music, for the second time so did Lizzie. For what happened next she could only blame the man who’d written Haydn’s song. He had clearly been a magician of some sort, and with his extraordinary powers he reached out long fingers that stretched through the decades and from beyond the grave to grab hold of her and drag her to the boy who played the heavenly tune on the edge of his bed. He made her kneel. It was he who put her hand on the strings to stop the music, and when the boy looked at her, he who made her lean in to kiss him, and, when the boy drew back in surprise, it was he who made her pull him in to kiss her again.

Eleven o’Clock Coffee

‘It’s after eleven. Would you like your cup of coffee?’

She hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen. She was absorbed with watching next-door’s cat asleep in the sun on the roof of their lean-to conservatory. It was a tabby mog, old and thin, with dusty fur that stuck up in all directions, but she thought it couldn’t look happier curled on the roof up in the warmth with nothing to disturb it.

Kate wondered then, before Jon came in, if maybe the cat was actually dead. It was so still. So peaceful. Maybe it had passed away in its sleep. Its family would be sad, of course. She heard them calling it to bed every night. Always an excited greeting when it trotted out of the shadows and scooted into their kitchen, a
hello poppet, caught any mousies tonight,
or something similar. But when they called that night he wouldn’t appear. The man might drive the streets, peering out of the car windows, desperate to return home with their pet, desperate to wipe the anxious look from his wife’s face. In bed they’d worry about telling the children. Then, the next day, or the day after that, one of them might spy him on the conservatory roof, curled up, cold and stiff, and after they’d buried it they’d cry for a day or two, and every now and then after that they’d feel sad, but other than those occasional times, life would carry on as normal.

Kate sighed; she hated how much she thought about death. She hated how even looking at a contented sleeping animal would spark morbid thoughts inside her. Black thoughts, from anything. She didn’t want to think like that but there was nothing she could do about it; she was an addict, morbidity her drug.

‘Kate?’ Jon said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

She turned away from the cat and looked at the clock. It was two minutes past eleven.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That would be nice.’

Two teas. One at seven. The next at nine thirty. Then, sometime in the hour between eleven and twelve – not a minute before eleven – she’d have her cup of coffee. Milk and half a sugar. White mug. Another tea at four thirty. A black decaff at six. The same at ten. This happened every day.

Before Anna died she frowned on routine. Routine was an affliction of the uptight. Kate was fluid and spontaneous, chaotic, with double-figure late marks in the school register. Kate booked holidays two days before they went, she ran out of milk, she conjured impromptu suppers for friends who only popped in to say hello.

‘Stay for supper.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course!’ Laughing as she cracked open a bottle of wine. ‘We’d love you to join us.’

‘But we only popped in to say hello.’

‘Well, now you’re staying for supper!’

But since Anna, she found routine helped; it was routine that got her through the onslaught of dark days and nights that threatened to stretch out for ever in front of her.

Jon put the mug on the table in front of her. He rubbed her shoulder. She leant against him and closed her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Jon,’ she whispered, wincing again at the memory of Rebecca in the playground.

‘Sshhh.’ He gripped her shoulder briefly.

‘What’s happened to me?’

He placed his own mug down and pulled a chair beside her. He laid a hand on hers.

‘Your daughter died.’

Kate took a sip of too-hot coffee and burnt the tip of her tongue. She sipped again.

‘I tried to go to the supermarket today,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t get out of the car. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I did to Rebecca and trying to work out how I became this awful person.’

Kate circled her finger around the rim of the mug. Jon didn’t say anything but she knew he was waiting for her to continue. He wouldn’t interrupt her. Jon believed talking was therapeutic. He was always telling her she needed to paint less and talk more.

‘I looked up,’ she went on, ‘and something caught my eye out of the windscreen. It was a key, just hanging there on one of those posts beside the walkway, on a red cord.’ She rubbed her face and took a steadying breath. ‘First, I wondered what it was for. A house or a bike, maybe. And then I thought of the poor person who had lost the key and couldn’t get into her house, especially if she had things for the freezer that were melting. But then it dawned on me that the key was meant for me, that I was supposed to find it – someone had put it there for me to find – and that it was a magic key to a different world, like a portal or something.’

She searched his face for signs of boredom or confusion. But he was staring right at her, his eyes soft, understanding.

‘I imagined,’ she said, as she fixed her eyes back on the cup of coffee in front of her, ‘that whoever had left it wanted me to get out of the car, take the key, find the lock and go into the other world. And while I was thinking this I saw the world.’ Her eyes filled with tears that misted her mug out of sight. ‘It was beautiful, really beautiful. It was like this one, only brighter and sharper and all the sounds were crisper and the smells sweeter and I felt at home. I closed my eyes and breathed it all in. And then I heard her voice, Jon. It was Anna. She was there. Alive.’ She looked at him, but his face was lowered. ‘I got out of the car.’ She breathed deeply. ‘And I took the key.’ She breathed again. ‘And then, oh my God,’ she groaned quietly, covering her face with her hands. ‘What’s wrong with me . . . then I looked for the lock.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Jon, touching her knee. ‘It’s fine that you did that.’

She began to shake her head. ‘No! It’s not fine. I searched for it for
over an hour
. Every nook and cranny in the brick walls, the tarmac, the recycling bins. Everywhere. I’m crazy, aren’t I? I must be.’ Kate remembered how the key had dug into her hands as she’d clutched it so tightly. The rising panic in her stomach as she realized she wasn’t going to find the lock. The desolation she felt as she collapsed against her car emotionally spent, exhausted. ‘I’m scared, Jon. I’m just so scared.’

Then she felt him. He leant forward, kissed each of her hands, so gently. He eased them back from her face and kissed each of her cheeks, then her lips. They stared at each other. His eyes told her he understood, about the key and the hidden lock and the parallel world where Anna played in the sunshine. He didn’t think she was mad. And he loved her.

She needed him suddenly, her body aching to be close to his. She pulled him towards her and kissed him. It felt so good to kiss him, his lips, his softness, the way their mouths fitted, the familiarity of him. Then she felt his lust fire with a sudden desperation. His hand went behind her head. His fingers buried into her hair. He stood her up. Pulled her into him. Pushed himself against her. She responded, kissed him back. His hand went under her shirt, fingers splayed across her chest and collarbone. He nuzzled his face into her neck and whispered words she couldn’t hear. She threw her head back, indulging the desire that coursed through her veins. It felt good, right and comfortable, to want her husband, the man she’d loved for twenty years.

‘Let’s go upstairs.’ His gravelly words shattered the spell and she remembered Anna with a thud that took her breath. The moment was gone like smoke in the wind. What kind of monster was she? How could she forget? Self-loathing and disgust erupted inside her. Suddenly and aggressively, she pushed him away. She felt faint and cold. Her hands shook.

‘No!’

She couldn’t look at him. He grabbed at her and dragged her back into his arms.

‘Kate,’ he moaned. ‘Please stay with me.’

‘Let go of me.’

He reached for her again, but she jumped backwards out of his way.

‘I love you, Kate. Please, come here.’ He moved to kiss her again, but again she stepped back. She straightened her jumper. Ran her hands over her hair and breathed slowly to calm her heart that raced with the remnants of her lust. He didn’t move, shoulders hunched, hands hanging loose at his sides. Her heart spasmed. She wanted to take him in her arms. She wanted to hold his head against her chest, reassure him, show him, somehow, how much she loved him.

‘How can I?’ she whispered.

He was silent.

‘How can I do that?’

‘You’re allowed to love me. You’re allowed to make love to me,’ he said. ‘We’re allowed to feel some happiness.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not allowed to be happy again. How can I be?’

Everything has changed,
she thought,
why don’t you understand that?
But his body, his sadness, the defeat in his shoulders, told her he never would. He wanted to pretend nothing was different, as if Anna was upstairs listening to music or reading a magazine, or chatting to a friend on her phone. Her guilt and sorrow hardened into anger.

‘Don’t look at me like that!’

He opened his mouth, but then shook his head and closed it again.

‘What!’ she said. ‘Speak, for God’s sake. Tell me you understand what I’m saying!’

‘You’re letting her death kill our family,’ he said then. His words stung and tears spiked. ‘It’s suffocating us.’

‘And you’d like to carry on as normal?’

‘No. No, that’s not what I want.’ He sat down at the table and stared at the wall. ‘I know our lives will never be normal again, whatever the hell normal is.’ His voice was flat. ‘I just wish you wanted to fight for us. I need you. Lizzie needs you; she needs her mother. I need my wife. We’re desperate without you.’

She stared at him. Hating him, not for voicing such a hideous truth, but for expecting anything else of her; when Anna died she took her mother’s soul, and the empty shell standing beside him was all that was left.

‘I’m sorry if that’s how you feel, but this is the best I’ve got. Most of the time I want to curl up and die, but I don’t, and that’s
only
because of Lizzie and you. But life won’t be the same. It can’t be.’ She stared at him, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t. She clenched her fists and walked away from him. She paused at the kitchen door.

‘Please don’t touch me like that again.’

Untouched Croissants

‘Thank you for coming to meet me,’ Jon said, standing as Rachel approached.

She took off her jacket and sat at the table without meeting his eyes. ‘If you mention dropping the charges against Kate I’m afraid I’ll have to leave.’

He was taken aback by the harshness of her clearly rehearsed words that was so unlike the Rachel he knew. ‘That wasn’t my intention,’ he said.

‘So what was?’ she asked. ‘It must have something to do with what’s going on.’

Sitting opposite her, it was hard for him to remember the precise reason he had for wanting to meet up. In part it was to make him feel like he was actually doing something. Kate wasn’t talking to him. Since they’d received the letter informing them of Rebecca’s decision to press charges she’d completely withdrawn, painting a lot, mostly waiting until he was in bed before emerging from her studio. He listened to her creeping in, holding her breath as she slipped under the covers beside him, keeping herself as close to her edge of the bed as she could. Perhaps he wasn’t being honest with Rachel when he said it wasn’t his intention to mention the charges. He had certainly hoped to influence her by getting together, hoping to remind her how close she and Kate had been, hoping nostalgia might help prompt Rachel to question whether twelve stony strangers sitting in uninformed judgement on Kate was really what she wanted. His own memories of their friendship were acid sharp. All those evenings he arrived home, tired and stressed, to open the door on their glorious laughing. Then hushed giggling as they realized they’d let time slip. He’d poke his head into the kitchen and they’d both look shamefaced, barefoot on kitchen chairs with glasses of sov blonk in their hands. Rachel would make an apologetic excuse, while Kate got up, kissed him and opened the fridge to grab him a beer. Then he’d settle down and join them, listening quietly to their gossipy patter.

A waitress appeared and asked if Rachel was ready to order.

‘I’d like a cup of tea, no milk, and a croissant, please.’

‘That sounds good,’ Jon said. ‘I’ll have a croissant, too.’

‘Another coffee?’

Jon shook his head and the waitress thrust their scrawled order under the pepper mill.