The One Before the One (18 page)

‘I’m just gonna go, Alexis,’ says Clark, and I recognize the voice from the phone now, northern and rich, at odds with the gruff, hollow-eyed face. ‘These people are insane.’

I’ve retreated to behind the bedroom door now, which Martin is holding out for Clark with a dignified silence.

But then Clark stops; he’s putting on his hoodie. ‘I don’t know what the big fucking problem is. I mean, she’s seventeen, she can see who she wants, she’s my girlfriend for fuck’s sake. She’s not a little girl.’

I am suddenly overcome with anger and something like fear. I don’t like this man. I don’t like the feeling I’m getting from him.

‘Yes, she is,’ I say. ‘And she’s
my
sister, and this is
my
house, so go please.’

Clark looks at Lexi but she says nothing. There’s just the sound of her crying. Then he shakes his head, puts his bag over his chest and looks Martin square in the eyes as he brushes back past him.

‘You’ve always had a fucking problem with me, you have.’

‘And we all know why that is, don’t we?’ says Martin.

Then he walks downstairs and out of the house. I feel the blood drain from my face. So whilst I’ve been gallivanting off to Brighton with some bloke who’s not even my boyfriend, my sister has been doing God knows what with a man who, according to Martin, has a string of criminal convictions. It suddenly occurs to me: maybe she didn’t even want him to
come? Maybe that’s why she asked to come to Brighton, and I just
ignored
her? My eyes sting with tears of shame.

Lexi still hasn’t said a thing. She’s crouched on the bed, crying, head bowed.

‘Lexi, he’s bad news,’ says Martin, quietly. ‘You do
not
need a man like this in your life.’

‘God, I’m so fucking sick of you!’ She stands up now, grabbing the duvet to wrap around her, her dark eyes furious. ‘You are so up your own arse, aren’t you? You think you can just follow my sister around, telling
me
what to do, passing judgement on people you’ve never even met before. I wouldn’t fucking mind but you’re hardly the model boyfriend yourself, are you? Dumping my sister just months before her wedding? She still dresses up in the dress, you know! You shattered her dreams.’

Martin looks at me, with a look in his eyes I will never forget. My stomach rolls inside out.

‘Martin, listen, seriously, I just hadn’t got round to it, that’s all, I just
… shit!’

But he’s gone. I hear him run down the stairs two at a time then the front door slam.

‘Happy?’ I say to Lexi. Then it all unravels.

‘Oh, that is rich!’ Lexi’s voice is stone cold. ‘That’s a fucking joke, coming from you. I
know
about you and Toby, Caroline.’

‘What?’

She’s standing in the middle of her bedroom now.

‘Yes, you heard right. I know about your affair. I’ve known from the beginning. You remember that first time when I came home and I was drunk because I’d been out with Tristan?’

‘Yes,’ I say, and I’m crying too now.

‘Well, I saw the pants, Toby’s Tommy Hilfiger pants? And I saw you whip them away in the drawer. I couldn’t really
work it out, then, I just thought I was being stupid, that there must have been some other reason there was a pair of Tommy Hilfiger pants in the kitchen drawer. But then I saw Toby wearing them at the barbecue and, anyway, loads of things had started to fall into place. The book club that’s not a book club at all. The list you left out saying “join book club” – why would you write that if you were already in one? The way you look at him at work, touch him, email him constantly. I may not be as clever as you, but I’m not stupid.’

Oh but
I
am, I think. I am so, so stupid.

‘So, I’m having an affair with a married man, so what?’ What did it matter now, anyway?

‘So, what would your mother say?’ she screams.

‘It was good enough for yours!’ I scream back.

We stand there, both in floods of tears, and I think, how did the summer come to this? How did I fuck it up so completely?

‘Look, I don’t even care that much,’ screams Lexi. ‘I even protected you! When we went to the barbecue, I saw how pissed you got, how nervous you were but I felt sorry for you, Caroline, I hated to see you squirm. When you looked at that shelf of books, desperately trying to come up with one, I covered for you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I say, my mind racing back through that hideous afternoon, but it’s drowned in alcohol.

‘It was
me
who said
Fever Pitch,
I tried to save you.’

‘But I don’t, I don’t …’

‘No, you don’t remember, because you were drunk out of your brains, but it was me, and then it backfired, and I felt awful, more thick and stupid than I already fucking feel most of the time.’

‘So, you protected me?’

‘Yes!’

‘So, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I was scared you’d think I was meddling. Because you’re my big sister who I looked up to, because I love you, Caroline.
Hello.
I came here to sort
my
head out, but then saw how tits up your life was and I pitied you, and I didn’t want to accept it. You’ve always been so perfect, done your A levels and gone to university. Done everything all right, been the “clever” sister. Then I get here and see the truth and I just felt, God,
you’re
the one who needs
my
help!’

I stand there, sobbing. She was right. Spot on. My life was a mess, a total fuck up. I was deluded and stupid and incapable of even knowing what was good for me. Go and hug her, I think. Hug her and say sorry. Tell her you love her and that she’s right, you’re going to sort it out. But something stops me – pride? – I don’t know.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I say and I close her door.

When I get up the next morning – Monday morning – Lexi isn’t in her bed. She’s taken her bag and her coat and there’s no note. I call Toby. It’s only 7.10 a.m. and I know he won’t pick up, but the urge to speak to him is overwhelming.

He does pick up.

‘Hi, it’s me,’ I say.

‘Hello, you.’

By the traffic in the background, I know he’s already left for work.

‘Listen, I’m having a crisis …’

‘What sort of crisis? Don’t tell me you can’t make this meeting?’

Meeting. Shit. Pitch meeting with Robertsons. Biggest client after Schumacher. It’s all out of the window now.

‘Lexi’s gone missing. I’ve just got up and she’s not in her bed …’

‘Well she’s probably gone to the gym or for a walk. People are allowed to leave the house, you know.’

‘Yeah, but you don’t understand, she’s with Clark – the ex. At least, I thought it was her ex, or they’d fallen out or something, but he turned up in London. I came home last night to find them in bed together and then we had a massive
row and now …’ I’m gabbling; I can feel the threat of tears. ‘I don’t know what to do!’

‘Right, just a sec …’ he mumbles.

The line goes quiet then I hear him say, ‘Yes, with an extra shot please.’ He’s in fucking Starbucks ordering coffee!

‘Listen, it doesn’t matter!’ I snap.

‘Well, no, it does, obviously it does,’ he backtracks. I hear the emergence of traffic as he leaves the coffee shop. ‘It’s just, what are you going to do? Because, unfortunately, we’ve still got this pain in the arse meeting and if you’re not going to be coming – which is
fine –
then I need to call them, you know, now-ish …’

I don’t say anything. How could he be so heartless? So unbothered?

‘Look, I’ll have to go down into the tube now,’ he says. ‘But you just do what you have to do. I’ll take care of the meeting, okay?’

‘Shall I call you later to tell you if I find her?’ I ask, but I’m talking to nobody. He’s already hung up.

I stand there, clutching the phone. Who can I call now? Martin? Nope. Not any more. I’ve screwed that one up, good and proper. There’s only one other person in the world I can call. One more person who has any chance of being any help. But as I lift the receiver, I realize I’ve never called him in a crisis before, so I’m not sure how this is going to pan out.

‘Dad?’

‘Caro! How are you, honey? Are you? Oh … you’re not okay, are you?

And for the first time in my life, I realize I am crying down the phone to him.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’

‘It’s Lexi, she’s not here. She’s gone missing and it’s all my fault!’

‘Okay, try and calm down.’ There’s fear in my dad’s voice.
There’s never fear in my dad’s voice. ‘First of all, when did you last see her?’

‘Last night,’ I sob. ‘I got home to find she was with that tosser ex.’

That he was naked in her bed, I want to say, but think better of it.

‘We had a huge row and I kicked him out, then when I got up today she wasn’t here. Now she’s probably with him – God knows where – and he’s bad news, Dad. Really bad news.’

‘Hang on, hang on.’ Dad’s doing his tapping his forehead thing. ‘Who’s the tosser ex? Who do you mean?’

‘Clark! Clark Elder. He came to London – he came to find her. He’s trying to get back with her!’

‘Well, why didn’t you say that?’ says Dad, his voice light now. ‘That puts a totally different light on things. Clark’s a good guy, Caroline. A really good guy, and I should know because I employ him; he’s one of our best speakers.’

‘But he’s not, Dad, not good. That’s where you’re wrong. He’s a well-known drug dealer and he’s been done for GBH and he’s been inside and he’s a conman, a total fraud.

‘Who told you this?’

‘Martin. He knows him from way back. There’s even rumours he was involved in more serious stuff.’

‘What sort of more serious stuff?’ says Dad, concerned now. He loved Martin, and he knows he speaks sense.

‘Just … not very nice stuff.’

There’s a long pause.

‘Right, stay there,’ says Dad. ‘I’m coming down. We’ll find her, okay?’

It’s a good job Dad does decide to come to London, because half an hour later, things take a turn for the worse. The rain is lashing down when the phone goes. It’s Lexi. She’s calling from a payphone and sounds utterly distraught.

‘Carolineyou’vegottocomequick.’

There’s so much snot and tears and the sound of the rain that I can’t make out a word she’s saying. ‘Lexi? Is that you?’

‘Yes, I’m at Brixton Police Station. Clark’s been arrested.’

‘
Arrested?
What for?’

‘Something terrible, Caroline, something really terrible.’ Dread fills my veins like tar.

So it turns out that whilst I was dead to the world, emotionally drained from my own little dramas, my sister was in a crack den in Brixton with a man on the run. She’s sitting, huddled in a coat in the police station reception area when I get there, and her skin looks almost translucent, she’s so pale under the harsh strip lights.

‘I really thought he loved me but I’m scared,’ she says when we’ve hugged and we’ve cried and I tell her that’s the closest to a heart attack I’ve ever been in my life.

‘It’s not your fault,’ I say, holding her. ‘It’s not your fault, okay?’

After I’d gone to bed, she’d gone out into the night. Clark had phoned and told her to meet him in a pub in Brixton. They’d gone to a house, a huge, wreck of a house, full of people who didn’t seem to know one another, and loud, banging music.

‘They were drinking,’ she says. ‘Lying about on beds and smoking this stuff. I told Clark I wanted to go home, but he started to get all agitated. He said he’d come all the way to fucking London, the least I could do was stay, but I hadn’t even
asked
him to come to London, I didn’t even
want
him to. Then they were weighing this stuff out. I was starting to get really scared then … he was doing some sort of deal, you know? There was banging on the door and the police barged in and they were like, “Are you Clark Elder?” Then
they put him in handcuffs and they did all that “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court”, and then they said they were arresting him for date rape!’

I put my arms around her and hold her tight as she cries and I feel a love I’ve never felt before, and it seems to be crushing my chest. Afterwards, I get us both a tea from the machine and she sits, sipping it, shakily. She stares at her hands, and then she says, ‘Caroline, can I tell you something? The thing is …’ When she looks up, her eyes are full of tears. ‘I think that’s what happened to me.’

Lexi has to give a statement before she goes, and I am left sitting on the red plastic bench, thinking, staring into my tea.

I am her big sister, her big sensible sister, and yet here I’ve been all summer, thinking I have demons to fight, when all the time she’s been fighting the biggest demon of all. I’ve failed, I realize that now. For the first time in my life, I’ve properly failed.

‘Dad!’

Lexi comes out of the meeting room and I’m still in a sort of trance when Dad barges in through the door, tanned within an inch of his life, his hair in need of a cut as always.

He holds out his arms to us.

‘Dad, you came! How come you came?’ squeals Lexi.

As I hug him, I am crying and beaming all at the same time.

We’re in KFC now, sharing a family bucket. It’s the first time in our lives we’ve had a ‘family’ meal, just us two and Dad. The rain’s stopped and a shaft of sunlight has broken across the white Formica table. Outside, on the street, you can hear the sound of tyres on tarmac.

‘Listen, I want to know what happened,’ says Dad to Lexi. ‘Tell me what happened.’

So Lexi goes through it all again, the squat, the drinking, the drug deals and police raid. It seems ridiculous, sitting here, sharing out baked beans. It’s too big a drama for such an everyday place.

Dad goes quiet and I look over at him to see there’s a tiny string of saliva hanging out of his mouth, that he’s sitting there crying. Lexi gets up and puts her arms around his neck.

‘Oh, Dad. Come on. Don’t cry, please. Not in here.’

I feel like I should be doing something too, but suddenly I’m fifteen again, Dad’s crying and I’ve no idea what to do, I’m frozen to my chair.

‘I’ll be okay in a minute.’ Dad sniffs, patting Lexi’s arm. ‘But I want to say something and I want you both to hear me out, okay? I’ve failed you. I’ve been a crap dad, and there’s absolutely no excuse.’

‘Dad, you have not,’ says Lexi. I sip on my Coke.

‘I have, hun, you don’t need to humour me, just let me finish, okay?’

He gives a big sigh, then when he starts to talk, decades of stuff pour out of him, stuff I’ve never heard before, and I listen intently. He never wanted kids, not really, and when I was born, he felt completely out of his depth.

‘We brought you home and you cried for three weeks,’ he says. ‘Every time I picked you up, you cried even more. Your mum said I was doing it wrong, so I just gave up. I loved you to pieces, Caro, but I always felt inadequate, like I could never quite live up to your expectations.’

I am dumbstruck. Did I really have such high standards that I made my own dad feel inadequate?

He and Mum were already having huge problems by then, he continues; she wanted a husband he felt he could never be, and now he felt he was a father that didn’t make the grade, either.

‘I was desperately unhappy. Then, when I met your mum,
Lexi, everything fell into place. When she fell pregnant with you, I was over the moon. This was my chance to be a good father. But I screwed it up again, don’t you see?’

‘What?’ says Lex. ‘No, you didn’t screw it up!’

‘I did. Just in a different way. I was so bloody happy, so blind with love for my new life, that I was self-absorbed. And I forgot to be a father again.’

Lexi frowns; she can’t take this in. I think about how forgiving she is and I feel a rush of love.

‘I wanted you to like me, Lex. I was so desperate to be your friend, but I realize that’s the biggest disservice you can do to a kid.’

‘But you’ve been a great dad. You
have
been my friend.’

‘Your friend, maybe. But your father? I don’t know about that,’ says Dad, picking at his fries. ‘I was Hippy Dad, letting you see men twice your age, believing I was being liberal when you were crying out for barriers. I didn’t ask the right questions when you were upset, because I was scared of the truth, and now look what’s happened. Your mum and I always said you could do anything, but what, exactly? We didn’t guide you.’

‘Two Family Buckets and a Regular Fries!’ someone shouts in the kitchen and, for a second, the intensity of the conversation is lost.

Then, Lexi says, ‘But I dropped out of sixth form, Dad. I disappointed you. I didn’t make you proud, not like Caroline.’

I look sheepishly into my drink – if he knew, if only he knew …

‘Oh, you have made me proud,’ he says. ‘Very proud indeed.’

Lexi goes outside to call her mum, so it’s just Dad and I sitting there. I don’t know what to say, and yet, I feel I have thirty-two years worth of stuff to say.

Dad makes it easy.

‘You must be so bloody angry with me,’ he says.

I shrug and stare at my drink. I’m worried if I start talking I might cry and never be able to stop. But this is an opportunity I might never get again, so I say:

‘I just missed you, Dad.’ And he reaches out and puts his hand on mine. ‘I felt like I’d lost you when you left Mum and us and
then
when you had Lexi …’

‘I know, sweetheart,’ he says. A tear rolls down his face.

‘You remember the first time I met her? The first weekend I came to stay with you after she was born? I
hated
her,’ I say, and as the words leave my mouth, it feels like a mountain of cement that’s been sitting on my chest for seventeen years has just been lifted. ‘I loved her like I had never loved anything in my life and hated her all at the same time.’

‘And now?’

‘Oh, God, now, now, I’d die for her,’ I say.

Dad nods his head and smiles like he knew this all along.

‘Well, I love her too, but she’s not you, Caroline, and she never will be. Shall I tell you a secret? There’s nothing like your first-born. You can love another child, of course you can, and I love Chris, too, but you never experience the sheer wonder of meeting your first-born.’ He looks at me from under his quick, grey eyes. ‘And you will always be a wonder to me, even if I have been useless at showing it, do you know that? I’m so proud of you, Caro. So proud of the woman and the sister you’ve become.’

I watch as Lexi comes back through the front doors of KFC, bringing with her the welcome smell of fresh rain, and for the first time in my life, I feel like a proper sister. I feel pretty proud of me, too.