Sworn Secret (31 page)

Kate squared her shoulders and stood taller. ‘I don’t want to speak to you.’

Angela’s eyes narrowed. ‘I hate you. I hate you for giving birth to that little slut. She
ruined
my life. That whore took everything.’

Kate looked over her shoulder, hoping to see Jon coming down the stairs. Surely he wouldn’t be long? But she could still hear the sound of the shower. She lifted an arm made of jelly, with fingers shaking, and tried to push Angela back off the doorstep.

‘I clawed my way out of the gutter,’ Angela whispered. ‘Worked tirelessly, put up with so much
rubbish
, did everything I could to make something of my life. Now look at me. The pathetic widow of a vile paedophile.’

Kate looked at Angela, wondering if she’d heard her properly.

‘That’s right,’ she spat. ‘That shit decided to throw himself off your daughter’s roof last night.’ Angela laughed bitterly. ‘The very same roof. Funny, isn’t it? Who’d have thought he would do that? He crept out in the middle of the night and jumped. Just like your whore of a daughter did.’

Kate grabbed at the door frame to hold herself upright. ‘Anna didn’t jump.’

Angela needled her eyes into Kate as rivers of rain streamed down her cheeks and nose.

‘Oh, didn’t she?’ Her voice had flattened and fallen quiet.

‘No. And I don’t think she fell either.’ Kate’s voice trembled. ‘I think she was pushed.’

‘
Pushed
?’ Angela looked genuinely shocked. ‘What do you mean? What are you trying to say?’

‘I think Anna was pushed off that roof by Stephen.’

Angela stared at her. Then her face broke into a derisive smirk and she gave a snort of bitter laughter. ‘You really are pathetic, Kate. You just can’t believe it, can you? That she might have jumped because she had secrets she couldn’t handle. Stupid little girl. Or that she fell because she was drunk, just another out-of-control teenager, too much vodka, foot slipped, and . . . whoops . . . down she went. You hear about her and my idiot husband and you grab at the first crazy straw you can. Anything to make it easier to believe.’ She blinked slowly. ‘Well, I don’t have that luxury with Stephen. Stephen didn’t fall by accident. He wasn’t pushed. He took his own life. He went up on the roof of that gymnasium, tied the end of a rope around his neck, the other to a ventilation pipe and then he jumped, feeble coward that he was. Snapped his neck. Gone.’ Angela flicked her fingers. ‘Poof! No goodbyes. Not even a note.’

Kate’s head flipped again and again. She tried to blank her mind. Scrub out the images that Angela’s ranting threw up. Anna falling. Stephen hanging with his neck broken.

‘And I’m left to deal with the mess. He looks guilty now, doesn’t he? A child abuser. A man who has sex with seven-year-olds.’ Angela stepped backwards, and at last released Kate from her hammering stare. ‘We both know that’s not true. We know what that little whore did. That bitch was no more a child than you or I. She left the house looking so respectable, didn’t she? Not with her shirt unbuttoned, breasts spilling out, skirt hitched up until it barely covered that pert teenage bottom of hers. You didn’t know that’s how she pranced around school, did you? Did she have the make-up on at breakfast? Or did she stop on the pavement outside school, get her compact out and slap it on like plaster? A couple of baby wipes before she got home, and there you are, filthy whore gone, innocent child returned.’

Kate was shaking now. Her head pounded. Angela was blurring in her vision. The rain seemed heavier than ever.

‘And you? Standing up and telling him and the rest of them that he was as good as muck on your shoe? You knew, didn’t you? You knew he loved her. He told you. I know he did. He told me he wanted you to know that he loved her. I told him he was a fool to think it would make any difference, but he said it would. He said that if you knew that he loved her it would change your minds. But he was wrong. He was wrong to think that his stupid, blind love legitimized anything. All it’s done is destroy my life. We tried so hard to move on, and now he’s killed himself and by doing that he’s tattooed the word
paedophile
to his sorry soul. We’ll be all over the papers, the television, reviled throughout the country. His name is muck.’ Angela took another step backwards. ‘You rest assured that Jezebel of yours is sashaying through Hell just waiting for you to join her.’ Then she turned and walked away, struggling to keep straight, drunk with devastation.

Kate was still standing at the front door when Jon came down the stairs. She tried to speak but found she couldn’t; it was as if her lips had been sewn shut.

‘Bloody rain,’ he said, peering over her shoulder. ‘Traffic will be up the kibosh.’

Kate turned and walked past him without a word. She went to their bedroom, closed the door behind her, sat on the bed and shook uncontrollably.

The Rope Jury

Jon stared at the screen in front of him.

Signs, Symptoms and Stages.

The stages seemed simple enough: early-stage, mid-stage and late-stage. Mild, moderate, severe, each stage progressively and significantly worse than the last. He read on, and as he did, his anxiety grew. He was hoping his concerns would be assuaged. He was hoping there would be a paragraph, highlighted or boxed, that would reassure him. Or maybe make mention of a rare, untested herb that users described as a miracle. But there was nothing remotely reassuring in the article, or indeed in anything else he had read.

Jon allowed himself another wary glance at the last paragraphs, at the late-stage symptoms, at what was to come: the seizures, total bowel incontinence, panic attacks, aggression. The words began to swim on the screen. He stared hard, trying to focus through the blur, trying to make out the individual letters.

The phone rang on his desk and made him jump. He looked at the caller ID. It was home. He grabbed at the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Are you busy?’

He clicked the browser closed. ‘No.’

‘Oh, Jon . . .’

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

She didn’t say anything, and he could hear she was breathing heavily. ‘Kate, sweetheart, what’s happened?’

‘He killed himself.’

‘What? Who?’

‘Stephen. Stephen killed himself.’

Jon cast his eyes around the office: open-plan, contemporary, levelling, so good for team morale, bloody awful for conversations best kept private. ‘How do you know?’ he said quietly. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Lizzie was sent home from school.’

‘Oh my God,’ Jon breathed.

‘He jumped off the roof.’

Jon didn’t say anything.

‘The caretaker found him. Lizzie said the place is in chaos.’ Kate began to cry. ‘This is all such shit.’

‘I’m coming home.’

Jon rested his head against the window of the black cab. The driver was talking to him, but Jon wasn’t listening. He was trying to make sense of all the different things he was feeling. There was pity, satisfaction, relief, shock, even regret, and the overall mix gave a peculiar sensation; horrifying, but also sickly exhilarating.

He found Kate sitting on the floor in the kitchen.

Her eyes were puffed and red. The sleeves of her black woollen cardigan – far too hot for the weather – were pulled low over her hands and she clutched a disintegrating piece of loo roll. She looked up and began to cry again and held her arms out towards him. He sat beside her and took her hand.

‘This is my fault,’ she whispered.

‘Of course it isn’t.’

Kate bit back tears and nodded. ‘It is, Jon. It’s my fault.’

‘How can it be your fault?
He
killed himself. He clearly felt guilty for what he’d done. It was his own turmoil, nothing you or I did. He couldn’t live with his actions. You did nothing.’

‘There was a meeting yesterday. About him being suspended. I stood up in front of everyone and spoke.’

Jon stayed quiet.

‘I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t keep away.’ She shook her head. ‘It was hearing him try and deny it when he’d just been here and admitted it. So I stood up and told him he was accountable for his actions.’

‘Did you mention Anna?’ said Jon.

‘I didn’t say anything that would directly link her to him. I just said the truth would get out and he would have to face it. And then this morning, when you were in the shower, Angela came here and told me about Stephen.’

‘Angela?’

Kate nodded and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Kate shrugged and pushed her sleeve against her eyes to blot the tears. ‘I was in such a state. She said terrible things about Anna.’ She rested her forehead on top of her knees.

‘What things?’ he asked.

Kate was quiet for a bit, then lifted her head and looked at him, trying to smile through her tears. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said quietly.

Jon put his arm around her and pulled her in for a hug.

‘And there’s another thing,’ she whispered. ‘The graffiti.’

‘What about it?’

She hesitated. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘It was me who graffitied his house.’

John pulled back in surprise. ‘But you were with Dan that night.’

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘We did it together.’

Jon wrinkled his brow with confusion.

‘You and Dan?’

She sighed deeply. ‘We were drunk. I took a pill. It seemed like a good idea.’ She groaned.

Jon was suddenly bombarded with his own recollections of that night. Watching the clock on its relentless march as he waited for Kate, walking to think through his feelings of loss, convinced of her infidelity, crushed by it. His stomach caved in.

‘I thought you were having sex with him.’

Kate looked confused. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘I saw you go off with him. You were gone for hours.’

‘How long do you think it takes to get so drunk you can’t think, then graffiti a house without getting caught?’

‘I didn’t know you were vandalizing a house. I thought you were sleeping with my brother.’

‘Jesus, Jon! What a fucking idiotic thing to think. I can’t even do it with you. Why the hell would I do it with Dan?’

Jon could think of a thousand reasons why she would sleep with Dan and not him.

‘You know what?’ She stood up. He could see her anger and frustration boiling over the edges. ‘Stephen Howe has just killed himself. I have no idea how I’m feeling about it. All I know is that sitting here listening to your pathetic jealousy of Dan for the umpteenth time is the last thing I need. I mean, come on, Jon? As if our family needs an affair thrown into the mix? How could you even think—’ She was cut short by the tears she was trying to fight back. She pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘How could you think I would do that?’

‘You got into his car.’

‘So? That doesn’t mean I’m having sex with him.’

‘I saw you smile.’

‘You saw me
smile
? Have you any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Dan always makes me bloody smile! You think just because I smile at him I’m going to jump into bed with him?’ She shook her head with total incredulity.

‘I don’t know . . . you just seem so distant from me.’

‘Well, that has a lot to do with the heap of shit that I’ve had land on me. Believe me, I’ve got more than enough on my bloody mind than bloody sex. I would have thought you did, too.’

‘Why do you do that?’ he asked.

‘Why do I do what, for God’s sake?’

‘Say things like that. Insinuate I don’t love Anna like you do, that I’m not suffering like you are. You seem to think that me wanting to be close to you, to make love to you, is wrong. But I need that, Kate. I need your love. I need you there for me. I try to be there for you whatever you do. At the memorial. The funeral. God, I watched you throw my mother to the floor at my daughter’s funeral, and what do I do? I make excuses for you. Remind people what you’re going through. You think you’re the only one in pain? You’ve no idea. And all this time, through all this bastard sadness, I’ve been terrified of losing you. But you were already gone, weren’t you? The night Anna died, you left us.’

He stopped talking, out of breath with the effort of allowing so much out of him. They never mentioned the funeral. It was like it never happened. It should have been a day to remember Anna, to lay her to rest, to honour the short time they’d had with her, but all he had were livid memories of Kate’s crimson rage, a demon that thrust its way through the haze of tranquillizers the doctors had pushed, a demon that continued to thrive, unconcerned with the passage of time that everybody said would weaken it.

The morning of the funeral she hadn’t said a word, not to anyone, not even Lizzie. She was glazed over, on autopilot. She brushed her hair, got dressed, pinned the silk flower she’d bought especially to her tailored jacket, her face fixed and grim. She sat on the pew next to him and stared straight at Anna’s coffin, at the flowers, the sealed letter written by Lizzie propped between them. The church was full of friends and family and strangers, all of them moved to tears by the tragedy. His mother made her way to the front of the church. She adjusted the height of the microphone. Opened her book. She lifted her head and began to read the words she had chosen. She read beautifully. Her voice was soft and gentle, sad, and sang out joyful; her love for Anna beamed through every word.

And then Kate screamed.

She sat there, next to him, and screamed. At first he had no idea what the dreadful noise was. Then he realized people were staring at Kate. Then he tried to calm her; he put his arms around her, but she scratched his face, pushed him away. Then Jon’s mother was at their side. She tried to soothe her. Jon, the vicar, Lizzie, they all tried. His mother took Kate’s arm and attempted to lead her out of the church, changing the tone of her voice from gentle to firm, then stern.

‘Kate, control yourself. This is a
funeral
. We are in a
church
. The people here have come to pay their respects to Anna. Please get a grip on yourself.’

But Kate continued to scream, tearing at her hair, gouging her skin with her nails and leaving red grazes all over her face.