After the Fall (36 page)

‘For Christ’s sake.’ Kit rammed his fist into his palm.

‘What did you expect? You pack me up and drag me halfway around the world as though I was a piano. What did you
expect
?’

‘Not this,’ I said.

When she saw that Kit was prowling, opening drawers and cupboards, she jumped to her feet. ‘Get out! You’re not my father. How dare you invade my privacy?’

Kit stood looking around, brows drawn. ‘What am I going to find, Sacha Norris?’

‘You bastard, Kit. There’s nothing in here. I’ve just had some filthy burglar going through my stuff, and now you . . . Put that down!’

Kit had hold of her backpack. He took one last look at his stepdaughter— who was making a wild lunge towards him—and shook the pack upside down. Clothes fell out: a t-shirt; a manky towel, wrapped around Sacha’s bikini; and finally a pair of socks rolled into a ball, which hit the floor with a hideous clunk.

We all looked down at those socks. Kit picked them up. As he unrolled them, something fell into the palm of his hand. It was the video camera I’d been given as a leaving present. My decadent toy, stolen in the burglary.

‘Jesus Christ.’ Kit stared in sickened fascination at the thing in his hand. His voice was ominously gentle. ‘It’s true. You had us burgled.’

Sacha crumpled onto the bed, her arms wrapped around her head. I felt as though she was a stranger.

‘No choice.’ Her breath was coming in fractured gasps. ‘I didn’t have any choice.’

Kit crossed the floor in one stride, took hold of an arm and pulled her half off the bed. It was as though he’d attacked a rag doll.

‘No choice?’ he spat, his face distorted with rage. ‘No
choice
? You little bitch. You told them when to come. Told them where to look. Maybe you even drew a helpful map. Did you have a good laugh about
Mary
bloody
Poppins
? What have Finn and Charlie ever done to you?’

I stepped closer. ‘Kit . . .’

‘They love you.’ Kit’s whole body seemed electrified with fury. He lifted a fist. ‘Those poor little bastards! They worship you. Was that their crime? Worshipping you?’

‘I needed to pay someone,’ she wailed. ‘I owed someone.’

‘Who did you owe?’ I asked.

‘Can’t tell you.’

‘Oh yes, you can.’ Kit pushed her away. ‘Who is this person you love so much that you will betray your family for them? Is it that slimeball Jani?’

‘We have to call the police,’ I said.

‘No!’ Sacha began to rock back and forth on the bed, her arms locked behind her head. ‘I’m so scared . . . They’ll come after me.’

Kit sighed. ‘Where’s Sibella’s portrait? I want it back.’

‘Shh! Did you hear that?’ Sacha looked terrified. ‘There’s someone on the balcony.’

I opened her door and looked out. The night was still. Not a sound, not a movement; not even the lights of a ship out in the bay. ‘Must have been a possum,’ I said, stepping back inside.

‘Oh, I wish it was.’ Sacha’s mouth stretched wide. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m in so much trouble.’ Her bare feet were stuck out in front of her, the toes splayed. I thought of a film I once saw about cholera victims, their dead feet laid out in rows.

‘You’ve got to talk to us,’ I said tiredly. ‘No more lies, Sacha. Please. I can’t take any more lies.’

Kit glanced at his watch. ‘Shit. We were supposed to collect the boys an hour ago.’

‘You go,’ I said.

He hesitated. ‘Will you be okay?’

‘Yes. I’ll talk to her. Don’t hurry back—we don’t want the boys upset.’

As he was leaving, a horrible thought struck me. ‘The Colberts! This is what killed their son. They mustn’t know, Kit. Nobody must know.’

Twenty-nine

What do you do when your daughter smuggles a snake into Eden? It isn’t in the manual.

I hoped I was dreaming, because this was a terrifying nightmare. I wasn’t reading a book about some naive and witless mother whose child had gone off the rails. This wasn’t Hollywood. This was me. Perhaps human beings need—for their very survival—a fundamental belief in their own invulnerability. It won’t be my family killed on the roads. It won’t be my husband in love with another woman. It will be someone else, and I’ll feel very sorry for them while secretly suspecting that they brought it on themselves. It
definitely
won’t be my child who takes drugs. That’s for other, more careless families.

Parking Sacha in front of the sitting-room fire, I staggered into the kitchen and grabbed the hot chocolate. It seemed an absurdly homely and jolly thing to be doing, but it gave me time to think. As I slid a saucepan of milk across the hob, my eye fell on the phone.

Just dialling his number made me feel closer to my father. It was early morning in Bedfordshire, but he’d be up. The telephone would be calling out to him now, in that softly coloured kitchen. I saw him with the cat on his knee, stretching out his hand to answer me. I had never needed him more than I did at that moment.

Click. Dad’s resonant greeting. ‘Hello there. This is Hereward Norris.’

Dad, please be in. I don’t know what to do.

‘I’m sorry. You’ve missed me this time, but leave me a message and I promise to call you back.’

I stood mute as the seconds passed. Milk rose mutinously in a white froth, seething over the edge of the saucepan. Then I quietly replaced the receiver. How could I confess catastrophe to a tape recorder?

Tama answered at the second ring. I think he was waiting.

‘You were right,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Kit’s furious.’

‘Yes.’ A moment’s quiet. ‘If I can ever help, Martha . . . you know where to find me.’

Sacha sat hunched on the end of the sofa, a blanket over her shoulders like a pantomime crone, worrying at her arm.

‘Feeling better?’ I asked, setting down our mugs. ‘Start at the beginning.’

Scrabble, scratch. ‘You won’t listen you won’t listen.’ She spoke too fast, no pauses at all, blinking rapidly. ‘You’ll shout at me.’

‘I promise I won’t shout. Are you on something right now?’

‘What? Oh . . . yes. Coming down actually, crashing, I really needed another burn when you found me in the hut and right now I’m starting to feel pretty shit. It’s going to get worse, oh God oh God a
lot
worse, it’s really going to hurt.’ She stared into her mug, shivering. A minute passed.

I shook her by the shoulder. ‘Sacha!’

‘Sorry.’ Tears slid from the corners of her eyes. ‘I was so lonely.’

Guilt was banging on my door, leading a lynch mob complete with pitchforks and flaming torches. Guilt is female, and she always has the moral high ground in a peculiarly irritating way. Like my mother, come to think of it. The best way to fight her off is by a volley of defensive mortar, which is what I fired now. ‘Don’t try to shift the blame. This is all your own doing.’

The next moment she’d slowed down, right down, like a train with the brakes on. ‘We got here, nice place and all that, tennis court, river, all lovely for the twins and you and Kit. But so far away . . . I got this ache inside me and it wouldn’t stop.’

‘I had that ache, too. You were homesick.’

‘I kept thinking how if I found my real father he’d send for me. I imagined flying back to England and this tall, kind man called Simon waiting at the airport, and both of us crying with joy. I just kept obsessing. I couldn’t sleep sometimes because this picture was going around in my head.’ Sacha looked as though she’d lived a thousand years and hated every second of it.

See?
Mum’s voice was accusing.
You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

‘I tried to be jolly, tried to fit in. I made friends with Tabby and the cool crowd.’

‘I know you tried.’

‘The Ivan thing, it was just too much. Somebody else was making him happy. He didn’t need me, Lydia didn’t, even you didn’t. I was kind of . . . unnecessary. I ran out of the library and I was having a meltdown at the bottom of the playing field. Bianka found me there. She looked after me.’

‘You mean
Bianka
got you onto this stuff?’

‘No! I mean she listened, understood, made me feel I wasn’t an alien. Mind you, she did . . .’

‘Did what?’

‘She gave me a spliff.’

I was about to explode when I remembered two things: first, that I had promised not to shout; and second, that it was at precisely Sacha’s age that I first tried the same thing.

‘Didn’t do a lot for me though,’ continued Sacha. ‘Just made me feel shit. We met up with a crowd at that fireworks party—remember? Jani, some cousins and—dunno who. We were all on top of the woodpile. Bianka and these other guys were passing their spliff and having this weird conversation, laughing about the most random things.’ Sacha looked bewildered at the memory. ‘I didn’t see what was funny but they were just about wetting themselves. I was an outsider again. I just wanted to crawl away and hide in a hole. Which was when these people started talking to me.’

‘Who?’

The shutters came down. ‘Just people.’

‘Jani?’

‘We went and sat in a car.’

So. While I’d thought she was sipping fruit punch at a wholesome party in the country, my daughter was huddled in a shadowy car with complete strangers.

‘That was stupid,’ I said. ‘Anything could have happened.’

‘Anything
did
happen. There was this glass pipe. They were passing it around. I hadn’t a clue what it was, probably just some kind of cannabis, but they said I’d love it. I thought I’d give it a go. What did I have to lose? So I—’

‘I’ve warned you a zillion times,’ I moaned.

‘And where were you while I was sitting in that freakin’ car? You knew nothing about my life. You were too busy being everyone’s ray of sunshine. I thought, what the hell. And when the pipe came to me, I tried it.’ Incongruously, her mouth curled up into a glorious smile: the old Sacha smile, wide and brilliant. ‘My life turned to gold . . . like my head was full of fireworks and music. A brand-new world was just beginning. I could do anything I wanted. Anything.’

‘The elixir of happiness,’ I said quietly, and she nodded, twitching and blinking. Just talking about the stuff seemed to disturb her.

‘Oh, yes! Spot on. The elixir of happiness. Maybe it was all worth it, just for that moment. I don’t think most people ever in their lives get to feel such fantastic . . . what’s the word?’

‘Euphoria.’

‘
Euphoria.
It was a million times better than anything I’d ever felt before. Think of something that gives you a buzz . . . driving fast with the music on, or . . . I dunno, riding a horse. Anyway, imagine that and then times it by a million, all tinged with sunlight. I had so much energy and power . . . I was a fantastic dancer, I was beautiful and popular . . . I felt like a film star and a superhero all rolled into one.’

She’d danced all night under the lanterns, on a farm by the Tukituki River. I’d been so happy for her. Now I saw a different scene: Sacha in a shadowy car, her lovely face wreathed in a noxious vapour, like the addict on the video; Sacha’s mind, clouded and distorted; and Sacha’s body . . . I couldn’t bear it.

‘Did you . . .’ I hesitated. ‘In the car. With this unnamed person. Or people. Did, um, anything else happen?’

‘D’you really want to know?’

‘In the old days, there were no secrets between us.’

‘Old days.’ She looked away. ‘I tried it again next time I was offered. And the next. And the next. It was wonderful! One time this guy picked up my mobile and put his number in my contacts. He said I only had to send a text and he’d fix me up with some. I didn’t have to wait for a party or whatever. I said, “That’s too much, I’ll never do that,” and he said, “Oh yes, you will.” And he was right, I did. He meets me outside school.’

‘I’d like to strangle him with piano wire,’ I said fiercely.

‘Why? He’s just like me.’

‘Of course he isn’t!’

‘You don’t get it.’ Words began pouring out of her again. ‘He needs the money, same as I do. It’s a bit like pyramid selling. He’s not Mr Big, he’s way down the pyramid. D’you see? You know, I thought I was in control of it for a while. I could stay up all night and do my homework. It made me so brainy, it was like a miracle. I could lose masses of weight, didn’t even
want
to eat, and get the body I’d always wanted—just freaking awesome! I could stay awake—and I mean
wide
awake. I was like . . .
ping!
’ She opened her eyes too wide. ‘Remember all those nights I said I was going to stay over at Tabby’s, or Bianka’s? Well, most of the time I never even saw them. Actually, I dumped Tabby ages ago. She’s so frigging perfect, she’d have told her parents.’

I clutched at my forehead. ‘So where
were
you? This is awful, Sacha.’

‘Different places. Flats in town.’

‘But who were you with?’ Sacha in a dingy room, among the dregs of humanity. Sacha’s mouth around a glass tube.