The Red House (27 page)

I part grass to read the gravestone:
William James Barbour, Much Loved Son.

I suppose I should feel something, but nothing comes. It’s sad to see any child’s tombstone, of course I feel that, but nothing personal rises up in me.

Imogen wheels up close to read the stones on either side. They have the same year of death as William’s. His parents. They were all three killed by Imogen’s father in the accident in which he and Imogen’s mother also died.

‘How did you know?’ she asks me.

I gesture towards a low wall separating the cemetery from a pub’s beer garden. I sit on it, and she backs up next to me, wobbling on the lumpy terrain. We face the wilderness trying to grow up around the graves. Everything is wet. A quick, heavy rain last night took the heat away. We shiver in our too-light clothes.

‘When my mother realised who you were, she tried to break us up. It was when we Skyped about the engagement
and talked about Cambridge that enough clues came together to set her off. She came to London and tried to convince me that you were crazy. She told me awful things about your family. I’m sorry, Im.’

‘I feel like I’ve woken up,’ Imogen says. ‘I still love my parents, both of them, but I love them like real people now, not like perfect-parent dolls.’

‘What she told me is all true. The police have confirmed it. He was drunk the night of the accident. He was the cause. Both Sebastian and the boy in the other car were hurt, both Sebastian and the boy from the other car were taken away by ambulance. One of them died.’

‘Not you,’ says Imogen, squeezing my hand.

‘No, not me. Sebastian died. But in the chaos after the accident, and with all four parents dead, the hospital mixed them up. Us. Mixed us up.’

Imogen can’t take her eyes off the grave.

I say, ‘Sebastian died a long time ago. I’m sorry.’

‘And you’re really William James Barbour,’ Imogen completes for me.

I nod, then look up at the sky, squinting. I thought it would take more work to convince her. It had taken days to convince myself, even after all the information had clicked for me. ‘I know this theory sounds mad, but …’ I lift my shoulders then let them drop. ‘Im, I was ready to walk away. I picked apart our flat, teasing out
me
from
you
. Once I’d heard from John Hutter that I was adopted and the name I came with, I knew that leaving was the only right thing to do. That the DNA says that we’re not physically related, that didn’t matter. You and Sebastian were sister and brother, profoundly so, no matter what
your –
our
– physical bodies have to say about it. I tried to stay with you in my mind, I really did. I just couldn’t go there any more, not once I’d been told. I need you to know that, so that you don’t think that this is some crazy story I’ve made up just to trick you into being with me. Im, if I didn’t believe that this is true with my whole heart, I couldn’t be with you. I was ready to walk away,’ I repeat. ‘The DNA mismatch, though … I couldn’t make sense of it. All of the possibilities were, well, impossible. Not an affair, not a hospital mistake, not an adoption. You were in the house when Seb was born. You match your other brothers. If we didn’t match, was I really Seb, who you spent your childhood with? I couldn’t be, could I? It’s just not possible. That’s what started me looking for another answer. This explains it all.’
Even the memories.

Sebastian and William had been similar ages. They’d both lived around Cambridge. William’s father had been a fellow at Christ’s College, physically near enough to Jesus College that it’s likely that William had cut through Jesus’ courtyards or visited people there. Anyone might have told both children about the horse sculpture at Jesus being modelled after the horses at San Marco in Venice. Any parent would take their children to see the plaster cast of Hercules at the Classical Archaeology museum. ‘It explains everything,’ I finish.

There are other Barbour graves nearby, reminders of aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. Some of them are here, but surely not all. Surely some Barbours are still alive. Some of them would have come to the hospital to receive the body. If it were Sebastian who was mistakenly given to them, they would have recognised that, wouldn’t
they? I imagine a badly burnt body, or a family rift that had lasted the duration of his –
my
– young life and kept his extended relations from knowing him. I mean,
me
. It’s the only way I can think of to make it all work.

I watch Imogen. She has to notice the other graves, and be thinking of small William’s family. I beg her in my mind to accept the possibility I’ve so carefully crafted.
Don’t ask to find them
, I silently plead.
Don’t ask for any more DNA
. This scenario may be unlikely, but it’s possible.
Isn’t that enough?

I think back to that Handel finale, those charged voices, and Imogen coming into the back of the rehearsal room with ‘good news’ in her eyes, her face alight, happy. I hadn’t known for sure which would make her look like that: the DNA results giving her back her baby brother, or giving her permission to love me. I don’t know which she wants more, even now.

Imogen wheels forward. She zigzags to get alongside the grave, and looks up at the chestnut branches hanging over it. ‘Sebastian and I loved playing with the conkers that fell from the trees at Jesus College while the boys sang. He’ll be happy here.’

I let my breath out. My mouth can’t stop moving, alternating between smiles and a round ‘oh!’ of happiness. We’ve chosen it together. We’re going to leave Sebastian here, buried.

I nod to Maxwell. He pushes my chair to follow the path out of the cemetery.

‘We should tell the chaplain that we won’t be booking the wedding,’ I say. ‘I mean, not here. Not in Cambridge.’

‘We could get married in Spain,’ Maxwell muses. The wheels of the chair spin and spin along the winding path.

‘I think we should check out of our rooms today,’ I say. ‘Leave Cambridge. I don’t want to be here any more.’

‘We’ll go straight there,’ Maxwell agrees.

I grab a wheel, to stop.

‘Do you know if the Inspector’s all right?’ I ask, turning to face him behind me. Only now, with my own misery relieved, am I suddenly conscious of the effects of recent events on others. Guilt and worry strangle my voice. ‘Was she there when you went to see your mother?’ I had been afraid for the Inspector in the car park, when she had taken the cuff to the face, and for her baby, when she’d taken that fall. But selfless dread had flashed for only a moment,
before the bigger thing had overwhelmed me.

‘I dealt with the ginger sergeant. The Inspector’s fine, but she’s been put on leave for bed rest. Pregnancy is serious. I’ll admit, the idea of it scares me, Imogen.’

‘But the baby will be fine?’

‘According to him, yes.’

I let relief wash over me. They’re miracles, babies, and women are, too: it’s a miracle the way our bodies expand and harden to protect life growing inside.

Touching the Inspector’s firm belly, I’d realised in an instant the power of a pregnant woman’s body. I’d in an instant understood two memories in an entirely different light:

My mother, always so affectionate, had suddenly turned cold partway through her pregnancy with Sebastian. No more hugs. No more lap. I’d hungered for her body, but had been cut off. My father had tried to explain how pregnancy can be uncomfortable, and even hurt. I didn’t want to hurt my mother, so gave her the margin she wanted.

But there was a day I couldn’t resist. She had been napping on the sofa. Her belly rose and fell with deep breathing. She didn’t look in pain. I had reached out, and touched the soft lump where I knew my sibling was curled. The early scan had said it would be a girl, but the doctor had made us promise not to count on it. So I had been careful to not assume that I was going to have a sister.

The belly had felt pillow-soft. I had rubbed, hoping to find a kick or a nudge. Then my mother had moaned in her sleep, and I ran outside, to pretend I hadn’t even been in the room. I didn’t want Mum to be angry.

That was the first memory. The second one happened a few weeks later. This was when I followed my father to the Red House, and the long-haired woman distracted me with hair combing and radio. And a ball. I always remembered that ball.

Touching the Inspector’s belly, I remembered, I knew, that it had never been a ball at all. The woman on the steps of the White House had been pregnant, hugely pregnant, and she’d let me touch her. The belly had felt hard, like a basketball, and nothing like my mother’s soft hill.

The woman had said why she was so big. ‘I’ve got two in there,’ she’d confided. ‘I’ll call them Lucky and Luke,’ she’d joked, after the comic book cowboy.

In the car park, remembering this, I’d screamed, because I’d felt like I was rolling down a hill that had no bottom.

Joseph Llewellyn was scared.

Isobel hadn’t been sleeping well. Her due date was near, and she was up at strange hours some nights. It’s because of this night-wandering that he’d learnt the truth.

Unlike Imogen, who’d felt her soft front, Joseph had seen the strap around her waist, visible in silhouette, in the light coming through her thin nightdress as she paced in front of the windows on a bright, full-mooned night.

She’d seen him watching her, but had smiled, not realising what he could see. She’d rubbed her stuffed belly in slow circles. She’d mouthed one word to him: ‘Soon.’

It was madness. She must have miscarried, months before. She’d stopped seeing her doctor. She’d moved into the guest bed, claiming insomnia. She’d stopped touching him and the children, or letting them touch her …

He’d gone to work, robotically, the next day. Afterwards, he offered Rowena one of their usual lifts. He didn’t want to go straight home. Rowena was never fully a person to him, not the way that Isobel was, and the act was mechanical and stress-relieving.

That’s when that woman, the squatter, burst into their peace. That’s when the screaming and the blood pushed him half-dressed into the night to get to a phone. He charged out, ran from the Red House clutching his clothes, shoving arms and legs into random holes, hoping to end up dressed at the end. He aimed for his house, which he could see was blessedly dark. She must be asleep. He was already making a plan: Use the phone in the kitchen. Close the door. Don’t wake Isobel.

His affairs had nothing to do with her, but she wouldn’t be able to understand that. If she woke, she’d demand where his car is, where the rest of his clothes are, why he smells of sex. Or she wouldn’t ask; she would answer the questions herself. That would be worse.

He fumbled the key in their door, begging it not to squeak. He pulled up on the knob to take pressure off the noisy hinges. He froze in the doorway. She was right in front of him, stretched out on the sofa.

She used to do this when he first started working late shifts. She tried to wait up for him, and wanted him to wake her if she didn’t make it. He used to bend to kiss her, and she’d wrap her arms around his neck. They’d have sex on the sofa or the floor. This was when the twins were still babies, in cots, unable to wander out of their rooms at night. It was a long time ago.

He held himself back from her now, and wondered
what she’d been waiting up for. He hadn’t been allowed to touch her for months. Did she want to argue or accuse? Did she know something? Or, was she ready to confess her own lies? In that position, without a blanket, without her conscious presentation, her belly was obviously false.

He had to close the door; rain blowing in from outside might wake her. He pushed the door to, and the latch clicked loudly. He froze again, steeling himself for her to turn her head, to open her eyes.

She didn’t move. He watched her. He couldn’t see her breathing.

He crumpled to his knees beside her. In his panic, he almost touched her hand.

‘Almost’ was enough. Her eyes fluttered open. ‘Hi,’ she said, smiling, and her hand moved to the bump, rubbing it, making circles. She wasn’t really awake, just half there, automatic.

‘Hi,’ he said. Her eyes fell shut. She’d remember the moment like a dream. He wanted it to be a good dream.

He forced his hands to fall to his sides.

He hadn’t been allowed to touch her in months, not even to stroke her hair or cheek. She would spring back, even slap his hand away. He knew now that it was to keep her secret, to keep a safe circle around her lying body, not a rejection of him.

He wondered if she missed him like he missed her. The nurses he fucked, they were nothing to him. They never had been. They were just bodies. She was his love.

He watched her, so close that his breath wafted her hair. Every breath of hers, every involuntary shift, was a relief
contrasted with the horror of what he had feared when he saw her so still.

Her due date was approaching. She’d become more brittle, shouting at the children and crying when she thought he couldn’t hear. People would start asking questions. He didn’t know what she would do if this went on much longer, and she had to face that a cushion doesn’t get born. She might do something drastic, he worried. She might run away from them. She might run away from this world. Just now, when her breath had been hidden from his view, that had seemed not just possible, but the obvious end. It hadn’t surprised him. It had terrified him.

He had to make sure that that didn’t happen.

He backed up, slipped outside. He returned to the barn, but didn’t enter it. He squatted down with his back to the red wall. He listened.

He waited for the sounds inside to slow down. It was like waiting for popcorn to finish popping: the riotous rat-a-tat inside the pan will eventually decrease to occasional, singular bangs. That’s how you know it’s finished. That’s what happened with the squatter’s cries.

He re-entered the barn.

‘The ambulance is on its way,’ he lied, kneeling beside Rowena to help deliver what he saw was a second baby. It was smaller, and appeared to have died in utero, probably what prompted the early labour. Rowena was hysterical. Blood kept coming.

Joseph remained clear-headed. He wasn’t fazed by blood. He took charge, tending to the living baby. He hissed at Rowena to get water and light.

She scurried, obeying. The squatter had stopped
struggling. Her eyes were open, and she breathed, but she wasn’t making noise any more. Rowena had placed the dead baby on her chest. Tears skidded down the mother’s cheeks.

Joseph was unmoved.

He only needed one.