Never Tell (28 page)

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Of course not.’

I hung up quickly.

In truth, of course, I was immobilised by the onslaught of such unexpected feelings. Mostly I just despised myself for falling so quickly. I told myself it was just the glimpse of escape Danny had afforded me, the stupid thought that he would accompany me on some kind of adventure, the kind I used to have before marriage and my children. But it wasn’t. It was him. I had recognised some kindred spirit in this man. But I couldn’t have him. It was all right and yet so wrong.

And this – this was the punishment for my infidelity. This pain. The fact that I was lower than when I began.

I was not a good woman any more; I had left the moral high ground.

The day before the party, Liam and Star arrived to help us prepare. There appeared to be an uneasy truce between my husband and his partner. A tension stretched between them I hadn’t ever known before and that I didn’t yet understand. I was still fuming with Liam and I avoided being in the same room as him because I didn’t trust myself. In the evening Star’s friend Katya arrived – a trapeze artist who would perform tomorrow night.

After supper James and Liam ensconced themselves in the studio; Star and Katya were playing dress-up with the children, painting Alicia and Effie’s faces like beautiful gaudy butterflies, Freddie’s like a tiger.

I took my cup of tea and slipped off to the marquee that was to pose as a chill-out space; I sat amongst the crates of wineglasses we had hired, and I finally made the phone call that I’d thought about for days, my fingers clumsy on the mobile’s keys. My stomach churned as I waited for it to connect, but there was no answer. I suppose I hadn’t thought there would be.

I took a deep breath, and I left a message.

‘I just wanted to tell you what I thought of – of what you said. All things considered.’

There was a noise behind me. The delivery men must be arriving with the sofas and the star-cloth. I spoke faster and quieter. ‘I am used to being in dodgy situations, but no one has ever threatened my kids. I’ve done what you asked. I’ve kept away. But I just wanted to tell you that no one, no one has really ever managed to make me feel quite so, quite so—’

James pushed his way through the marquee flap. I hung up quickly.

‘Who was that?’ he asked.

‘No one,’ I said.

‘This no one?’ he said. He threw my notebook on the table in front of me. ‘This is real, isn’t it, Rose?’ His face was taut with anger. ‘It’s not bloody fiction, is it?’

It was inevitable, that was the terrifying thing right from the moment I first saw you, Danny, we locked eyes and we both knew, though how can you know, some would say, how can you know immediately like that. But we did, there was no explanation. We just did. We moved nearer and then further away in fear, but all the time we waited we were heading for this moment, like we were on some kind of fatal course. And the first time you touched me you put your hand on me and it was like a surge of electricity and neither of us said anything but all night I felt it. I would have stayed close, couldn’t bear to be separated until we had to be. Until we had to go home alone.

I looked up at James and I felt the world beneath my feet starting to tilt, sliding away until I felt like I was falling.

‘This is you, isn’t it? All this time you said your writing was work but it’s not. It’s been really happening, hasn’t it?’ His eyes were glazed and black, like he’d been drinking or snorting something. He’d lost all rationale; he was spitting with fury. ‘You fucking bitch.’

He slapped me so hard I fell backwards off my chair. I didn’t see it coming; I was too unprepared to save myself. I went crashing into a crate, trying to protect my face as I went.

And as I fell, it seemed like it was in slow motion. As I fell, all I could hear around me was the sound of breaking glass.

PART TWO

Chapter Nineteen

Remember tonight … for it is the beginning of always
.

Dante

I move through the room like a ghost. I
feel
like a ghost, though I know I must have shape and form because people seem to see me; they smile and greet me and I smile back. I keep moving onwards and I smile over and again, I pour the wine and our guests are laughing, kissing me, touching my bare arm. ‘Congratulations!’ someone says with enthusiasm, and I nearly say ‘For what?’ but I don’t. I don’t question it: I just thank them quietly instead.

I spot Alicia – she is there before me – and then almost as quickly she is gone. She flits in and out of the crowd in her green dress with all the ruffles: in the shop I thought it was too old for her but I caved in too fast. I keep finding that my resolve to fight has fled. Alicia is overexcited, a small wraith pulsing with the exhilaration in the air, so much her father’s daughter, her dark hair falling against her pale face. Her friend Holly follows faithfully behind, carrot-coloured plaits bouncing on her shoulders – and then there is Effie, trundling through, struggling to keep up with the older girls. Her solid little limbs so plump you could take a bite out of them, her tongue stuck between her teeth in concentration as she hunts for her big sister, her round cheeks pink with effort and excitement.

‘Effie.’ I shove the wine into someone’s hand – Xav’s I think. ‘Do you mind?’ I mutter absently, and he grins and says, ‘Mind? A Clos des Papes ‘07? Are you insane, darling?’ I release the bottle and quicken my step to catch up with my smaller daughter as her gaze darts from side to side, as she realises she’s finally lost the trail. My heart aches, and I reach her with a rush of something like relief, scooping her up, pressing Effie’s face into my neck, the smell of her always like being home. The short bunches she insisted on tickle my nose, her shiny blonde hair blending into mine, and for one moment, Effie relaxes in my grasp. She lets her weight go and rests there, small and sturdy in my arms, and for a second I feel safe. Not even safe, in fact, but actually – sane.

And then Effie starts to wriggle. She’s spotted Alicia and Holly now. They are rapt with concentration over by the ice sculpture of a couple subtly screwing that James had insisted on. ‘It’s art, Rosie,’ he’d said with a grin when I demurred. ‘The kids’ll think they’re hugging.’

‘I doubt it,’ I muttered, but I acquiesced, because after all it was his big night.

I watch Alicia and Holly now, wide-eyed as the MP Eddie Johnson flips his fingers behind Holly’s freckled ear and retrieves a shiny coin. I wonder why he is here – but then, I’d given up any control of the guest list, apart from Hadi Kattan. I’d told James I didn’t want him near the house – but Xav said he’d heard he’d returned to Iran anyway.

I’m reminded painfully of Effie’s presence as she kicks me in the ribs, struggling to get down.

‘Let
go
, Mummy,’ she demands at the exact moment the band strike up, a handsome group of swaggering twenty-somethings, darlings of NME, The Hothouse, about to become huge. To my relief Alicia flashes through the fishnets and stilettos, the ripped Levi’s and the Prada dresses. Star is in a dress so ripped and tiny it’s like a teabag, black leather bondage boots up to her thighs, and the pop star Domino McFadden’s even wearing wet-look PVC, of course she is, and I allow myself a wry smile. Once I might have worn it myself, but not tonight. Not any more. Instead, for J’s sake, I chose a demure Chloe dress, grey wool, so very grown-up. Just like me these days. I’ve lost a tiny bit of weight through misery, but I am still curvier than I used to be. I am new Rose. Undesirable, it seems. Not the old Rose – the Rose who for a time was shameless in bed, full of confidence. I am Rose who has three children, whose body is marked irreparably by motherhood, who has lost the defiant confidence that came after Dalziel, the confidence that came despite the implosion of Society X, that has finally dissipated for ever. I touch my bruised face, now covered by make-up.

Alicia is by the stage now, Holly in her wake like a small tug – and Star is about to dance. She waits for the music to reach the climax, swaying gracefully. Below her, at the foot of the stairs, a boy stands, almost a man, and he is quite beautiful, with white-blond hair and dark skin, and he reminds me of someone. He reminds me of Dalziel, I realise with a sharp pain, he reminds me of the friend I loved so much and lost.

‘Mum-
my
,’ Effie puffs, and I come back to the present and I lower her. She slides to the ground and I watch her small figure stomp through the adult legs until she reaches her sister’s side and slips her small hand into Alicia’s slightly bigger one. I look for the boy again, but he has his back to me now; he’s talking to a couple of young women in matching backless dresses, who look at him rather adoringly and keep laughing silly tinkly laughs.

‘Oh, Charlie,’ they keep saying, ‘you
are
funny.’

I think of myself aged eighteen and I shiver.

Instinctively I start to move towards the stairs. I want to check on Freddie; he’s had a temperature and is tucked up in bed. The band are playing ‘Suicide Blonde’ as I climb upwards, my feet sore in my Louboutins, and then the song is climaxing and I hear Liam’s voice, thanking everyone for coming, and I’m up on the first floor, looking down on them. How absurd, I think absently, to live in a house so old and grand there’s actually a minstrels’ gallery. I hear my name as Helen Kelsey comes out of the guest bathroom, blotting her scarlet lipstick on a tissue, her small prim mouth overpainted, her auburn bob coiffured to within an inch of its life. She starts when she sees me by the pillar.

‘God, Rose, you scared me.’

‘Sorry,’ I smile automatically. I wonder if she’s looking for my husband.

‘Fantastic party, darling,’ she purrs, but I sense her fighting to keep the malevolence from her tone. ‘This wallpaper’s new, isn’t it?’ She waves a manicured hand at the golden caged birds on the wall.

‘Yes,’ I agree.

‘It’s Nina Campbell, isn’t it?’

‘I think so.’ I shrug. ‘I’m always a bit rubbish on names.’

‘Who did you use this time then?’ Her face is rigid with unspoken emotion.

‘Oh, some new mate of J’s.’ I lean over the parapet and look down at the many coloured heads below me, the cigarette smoke forming wreaths in the air.

‘Who, though? I’d love the name.’

‘I think he was – he’s called Gilbert.’

‘Not Gilbert Donaldson? Did Madonna’s place apparently? Oh God, I’d just die!’

‘Oh well, you know what J’s like,’ though I doubt very much she does. I remember his words about her crush. ‘Always got some new celebrity friend in tow.’

I look down for my jolly husband. Last time I saw him he was in the middle of an anecdote about a very famous rock star and his predilection for being spanked with hairbrushes, and everyone was roaring appreciatively. Now he has vanished too. Helen’s gaze stings me.

‘God, Rose,’ she says, and she can’t hide the envy this time. ‘You really
do
have it all, don’t you?’

‘I’m very lucky,’ I intone politely. ‘I know I am.’

As I move off I think I hear a sigh – more than a sigh, a moan. Someone is in the blue bedroom. I hear the bed creak and a murmured ‘Oh
fuck,’
the vowel sound drawn out languorously in pleasure, followed by a more violent sound. The crack of the antique headboard against the wall, I guess, and I sigh myself. At least the kids are oblivious and out of earshot, I think as I glance down to see the girls still hand in hand waving at their uncle Liam on the stage, waiting for the magic they’ve been promised.

And I creep down the gallery, away from the couple presumably entwined, away from Helen Kelsey’s false smiles, and down the thickly carpeted corridor, because I have a craving to see my son; I imagine him asleep in the bed, his fists curled above his head, his sleep-soaked face utterly peaceful in this madness.

I sit on the window-seat in his room and I realise with a crashing certainty that the only person I want to see right now, apart from my kids, is never going to be here, and I feel such sorrow; such anger with myself for having chosen so badly. I fooled myself I could do sex without emotion: I was horribly wrong. I am riven with desire and I can’t seem to fight it. I bite back the tears. I waited so long for him and yet I chose so badly; he only made me feel worse. And everything is falling apart and I can finally see my life for what it is: the fact that in Paris eight years ago, I mistook my shared guilt with James for our destiny.

Freddie murmurs in his sleep as I hear the drum-roll begin downstairs, and when I come out again, as if on cue, I hear my name as James cries it from the stage where he has just replaced

Liam. I lean over the balcony and James looks mussed and sweaty and larger than life in his slightly overtight T-shirt. In this light it looks like he has glitter on his face.

‘So, people,’ (I groan inwardly. I do wish he wouldn’t say ‘people’), ‘you all know I couldn’t have done any of it without my rock.’

I cringe inside.

‘My mate, my lifelong companion.’ Outside, I force a smile.

‘My beautiful wife, mother of my three pride and joys – I know you’ll excuse my poor English – Rosie has ever since our student days, eh, petal?’ Everyone laughs indulgently. I wish he’d hurry up. My face is as rigid now as Helen’s Botoxed one as the glasses are all extended towards me, and I search the crowd for one single upturned face that I recognise. For one I actually like. My eyes settle on Jen, standing beside Xav, and she winks. I feel so flat, I cannot return the smile properly, although I do try.

‘To my petal. My Rose!’

‘To Rose,’ they parrot, and then, thank God, James is on to the next thank you, his partner, Liam, and I exhale, pushing down the feeling, thinking, oh God when will this ever end? Then the lights go down and a thousand fairy lights flicker across the room, and for a split second there is silence, and then a whoosh of air.

I feel my hair flutter against my cheek as the girl in silver spangles sweeps above everybody’s heads. There is a collective gasp as she gracefully arcs above them, one foot extended in its sparkly shoe, the other leg tucked neatly behind her, and then she is standing on her trapeze, her peroxide hair short as a boy’s, her face pale and her mouth red, her eyes huge and dark, dusted all over with some kind of shimmering powder as she spins and arches elegantly above the room. The band begin to play again, a sad kind of rocky ballad, and slowly the crowd get used to her being there and begin to drink and talk again, although many are transfixed.