Forget Me Not (20 page)

‘It’s cruel of you, to talk about Vivien that way,’ I say. ‘She’s no longer a threat to you, Cleo. Perhaps you can let go of a little of your bitterness. Out of respect for me, if nothing else.’

‘I don’t think of myself as bitter,’ she says. ‘I try to be honest. You always wanted to see Vivien in a certain light. Because you’re a good person. But there were things about her you didn’t want to see. I don’t blame you, you’re her mother. I don’t know what it feels like, to have a child. But you’re right, maybe I should keep my mouth shut. It’s only – I don’t want you to be taken advantage of.’

Cleo is playing games. She is the manipulative one. The one with a wall full of incriminating photographs. I’m furious that Ben would leave Lexi alone with her. But then he doesn’t have all the facts. About either of us.

I stay close to Lexi, unsure what to do. I sense I need to be cautious, so as not to upset Cleo.

‘When will Ben be home?’ I say, in an attempt to change the subject.

‘I’ve no idea. I can stay as long as he needs me to.’

‘I don’t want to wake Lexi,’ I say. ‘Why don’t we talk downstairs?’

Slowly, I stand up. Lexi murmurs and turns onto her back, but her eyes stay closed. ‘I could do with a cup of tea,’ I say.

Cleo leaves the window and begins to walk towards the doorway, but then she stops, at Lexi’s bedside. She kisses her fingertips and places them against Lexi’s forehead.

I swallow. I stay very still. I pretend not to mind and I quash the urge to grab hold of her and drag her away from my granddaughter. To my relief, she follows me out of the bedroom. I close the door behind us.

I head to the staircase, but Cleo stops dead in the middle of the landing. Under the recessed ceiling lights, I notice the black eyeliner, drawn in a sweeping line along her eyelids. The same way Vivien used to wear her eye make-up. And her hair – I don’t remember Cleo’s hair ever being this dark. Her natural colour is a soft brown. For the first time, it’s not tied back or covered, and I can see she’s dyed it almost black and had it cut so it hangs straight to her shoulders. It looks just like Vivien’s, in the photograph in the living room. Her lips are painted a delicate pink.

‘Cleo, let’s go down to the kitchen,’ I say again.

She doesn’t answer me. When I look into her damaged eyes, and at her sad imitation of my daughter’s beauty, I wonder what Cleo is capable of doing to get what she wants.

All I want is to put as much distance between her and my granddaughter as possible. As quickly as I can. I glance at Lexi’s room, at the closed door, and now I worry that if she wakes up I won’t hear her calling out.

‘I talked to a detective working on Vivien’s case today,’ I say, ‘and she told me about the assault charges laid against you.’

Cleo takes a few slow steps forwards. She leans against the banister and looks over the side. I follow her gaze, I can see all the way down the curved staircase to the chequered tiles on the ground floor.

‘Cleo, do you understand that when Ben finds out, he won’t want you anywhere near his daughter? And he will find out. They’re going to tell him.’

She’s staring down at that black-and-white floor. I have the horrible vision of her throwing herself over this railing, of a second death in this house.

But she does not throw herself down. She laughs.

I’m stunned by her reaction and I wonder if she’s completely out of her mind. But she turns to look at me and when she speaks, she sounds quite sane.

‘Ben knows,’ she says. ‘He’s always known.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true. Ben was the one who hired the lawyer who managed to get the charges dropped. I was going through a difficult time,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t myself.’

‘What do you mean, a difficult time?’

‘When I left Ben, it wasn’t easy to find somewhere to live. I looked at so many places, but London is so expensive, and student accommodation was impossible to come by in the middle of term. In the end, I managed to find a place not too far away from Cinnamon Wharf, sharing with an elderly lady, Mrs Beezley, a school music teacher. And her cat. I got the room because she was only prepared to let it to a single female. She didn’t want any men around.’

‘Was she the woman you assaulted? An elderly music teacher?’

She nods. ‘It wasn’t about her. I had a breakdown of sorts, you could say. The shock of the change was the hard part, thinking my life was going to be one way, and then finding out it was going to be something else entirely. I went from living in a flat I loved, with my soulmate, to being completely alone in a strange bedroom with just enough space for a single bed and a falling-apart MDF wardrobe. I didn’t make it back to any of my classes. I failed the year.’

I’m still at the top of the staircase, my hand on the smooth banister. Cleo shows no sign of budging. I suspect she wants to stay up here, near Lexi.

‘You wanted to know why Ben let me live in that flat all these years,’ she says, ‘and why he doesn’t ask me to pay rent or to buy him out?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t tell you the whole truth before,’ she goes on. ‘About why he feels so guilty. But I don’t want there to be anything hidden between us. You’re like family to me, Rose.’

‘I’m listening,’ I say. ‘But please, keep your voice down. I don’t want to wake Lexi.’

Cleo leaves the railing and comes right up close, so her face is inches from mine. I’m at the edge of the stairs which suddenly seem rather steep. I don’t move a muscle. I can feel my entire body heating up again, I’m sweating. But I don’t move.

‘I was pregnant when Vivien took Ben away from me,’ Cleo says. She says this so softly. I can see the extent of the pain in her eyes.

‘Let’s go downstairs,’ I say. ‘We can sit down together and talk properly. I know how important this is. Please.’

I’m not sure she’s heard me. She stays frozen in front of me, imprisoned in her own past. My legs feel shaky, as though I might fall. I could pass out, from the heat in this place.

‘Because I want you to know everything,’ she says, ‘I should also tell you that I fell pregnant on purpose. You see, when I realized that Ben still wanted Vivien, I was really scared. So I stopped taking the pill, because that was the only weapon I had. For once, I wanted something Vivien didn’t have. I wanted Ben; I wanted to tie him to me for ever. For once, I wanted to win.’

She begins pulling at her hairline with restless fingertips.

‘What happened?’ I say.

‘I only found out I was pregnant a few weeks after I’d left Cinnamon Wharf,’ she says. ‘By that stage, I was barely leaving my room. I’d stopped getting dressed, stopped going to college. I kept my door closed, so Mrs Beezley couldn’t see inside. I had a kettle in there and I’d fill it from the bathroom tap and make tea in my room, so I didn’t have to make conversation with her in the kitchen. I remember lying on my back for hours and hours, rubbing my hand across my belly, trying to feel Ben’s baby.’

Cleo stops. She looks at me with such intensity, seeking some sort of affirmation, begging me to understand her or to pardon her, I can’t tell. I’m unsure what to say or do, but increasingly certain that Cleo is volatile, and that the potent mix of emotions inside her is ready to ignite.

Though, of course, I am hardly one to judge.

‘Did you tell Ben?’

‘I waited one month,’ Cleo says. ‘Exactly four weeks. I was hoping that Ben or Vivien would contact me. But they didn’t. Not once, not a single phone call. I lay in bed watching my phone and willing it to ring. I wanted them to come and find me and ask me to go back, but neither of them did. And I understood then that it suited them for me to disappear. When I started to feel nauseous in the mornings, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to make a decision. So I dragged myself up and I went back to our old building. I went to see the caretaker and I asked him about Ben. He told me they were still there, still living together in our apartment.’

Cleo is staring past me, towards the ground floor. I don’t feel as though she’s really present, or having a conversation with me. She’s somewhere else, in some distant terrible place.

‘I finally accepted that Ben was relieved I was gone. I understood he was never going to leave Vivien. It was as though I came back to my senses and I knew that, rationally, I couldn’t go through with the pregnancy. I was in a state, I had no money, I knew I’d never cope on my own with a baby. It had all been a pathetic fantasy. I’d had a terrible mother and I knew I would be a terrible mother. I was still sane enough to know I had to pull myself together and leave Ben and Vivien behind and live my own life. So I went to a clinic and I filled in the forms and I swallowed the pills they gave me.’

Her eyes soften with tears. I should reach out to her. But I can’t bring myself to touch her.

‘There was a moment,’ she says, ‘when I still felt hopeful. I thought I could pull myself together and I could still have a career and a life. I kept telling myself it was only temporary, the feeling that I’d lost everything and that I was no one.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

Ben and Vivien had been cruel, to someone who was vulnerable. They betrayed her. I force myself to reach out and put my arms around her, as I know I should. She puts her arms around me. Her jumper is soft against my cheek. A pale-pink cashmere. Something Vivien would choose.

I pull away from her. There’s something uneasy in her touch, something about Cleo, an invisible force that makes me wary of her and makes me want to keep my distance. I feel a combination of pity and unease. The dyed-black hair, the drawn-on brows, the thick eyeliner. All of this disturbs me. I see the wall of photographs. Cleo has lived in a fantasy world all these years, and as much as I pity her, I fear her too.

I wonder how far gone Ben is in his grief, that he would let this woman anywhere near his child. I wonder whom it is Ben sees when he lets Cleo into his home. Whether he really sees her at all, or whether, with the help of his Bell’s Special Reserve, he conjures up the ghost of his dead wife.

Cleo has fallen silent and I think her confession might have come to an end. She steps back, away from the top of the stairs, and I feel the tension in my shoulders and my chest ease up a little.

But then she heads for the other set of stairs. She begins to climb, up towards the main suite. And I have no choice but to follow her, because I can’t let her out of my sight.

Cleo walks past Vivien’s portrait, without looking at her, and she enters the passageway that leads to Vivien and Ben’s bedroom. She passes the dressing room and then she pushes open the bathroom door. This door does not creak, it opens smoothly, silently. Cleo steps onto the grey marble tiles and stands with her back to me.

I hold my breath. I do not move.

I know I’m imagining things and this is not rational. But still, I feel it, a sudden drop in temperature, as though the cold outside cannot be kept at bay, as though the marble floor has turned to ice. I’m freezing cold.

‘After I took the pills they gave me,’ Cleo says, ‘I went back to my dark bedroom and I locked myself in. I thought it would all be over with quickly. But I started to feel sick, and then I couldn’t stop shaking. I had these terrible cramps. And there was blood. So much blood.’

I don’t know what I was expecting to see inside this bathroom, but everything is spotless. Scrubbed clean. The marble floor, the tiled walls, the sides of the stone bath.

Cleo walks over to the basin. She looks at herself in the mirror, and then reaches up to straighten the black strands of hair that frame her face.

‘The bleeding wouldn’t stop,’ she says. ‘Mrs Beezley was home so I couldn’t use the bathroom. I tried to stay under the covers and go to sleep. I just wanted it to be over with. I wanted to die along with my baby.’

Her voice catches in her throat and tears run down her cheeks, leaving behind black rivers of mascara.

I close my eyes because I am dizzy. Vivien lies on the grey tiles, on her side.

‘Cleo, I can’t be in here—’

‘There was blood everywhere.’ Cleo carries on, as if I haven’t spoken. Her tears mingle with mascara and drip down onto her jumper. ‘I saw blood smeared all over the walls. I could feel my blood soaking through the mattress, overflowing, slipping between the floorboards. I thought there must be a bright-red stain on the ceiling of the flat below.’

I lean against the door frame for support. I have nothing to say to her, nothing that can ease her pain.

‘I thought I was going to bleed to death,’ Cleo says. She picks up a towel from the towel rail. She stares at her desolate face in the mirror. ‘And I wasn’t sorry. I wanted to die. For so many years afterwards, I wished I had. But Mrs Beezley called her son over and he forced the door open. They told me later that she was trying to help me, but I went for her. She said I tried to strangle her. I don’t remember any of it.’

Cleo sobs. She holds Vivien’s white towel to her face to muffle the sound.

When the waves of grief subside, she drops the black-stained towel to the floor, turns on the cold tap and splashes water onto her face. She pats her skin dry, using another of Vivien’s monogrammed towels, leaving behind more stains.

‘So here I am,’ she says. ‘I’m alive.’

She turns to look at me.

‘This is such a horrible place to die,’ she says. Her black-ringed eyes are dull. They no longer glisten with tears. ‘So hard. And so brutal. So many sharp edges.’

Cleo’s heavy footsteps are right behind me as I rush down the stairs to the first floor. She is still talking but I’m no longer listening.

I stop, in front of Lexi’s closed door, and open it a crack, wincing as it squeaks. I lean in. She is still asleep, the room is peaceful. Behind me, Cleo’s breath is ragged. I close the door, carefully, and I turn to face her.

She is determined to tell her story. Every last, sordid detail. Her speech is fast and pressured.

‘I landed up in an acute psychiatric ward for a few days,’ Cleo says. ‘And finally, Ben came to see me. I told him, about his baby. I told him I wouldn’t have done it if he’d just contacted me. Just once. I wanted to hurt him. Do you understand?’