Secret Smile (25 page)

'It's funny,' she said. 'This is the first
time I've ever been to the funeral of anyone my own age.'

'Yes, Sian,' I said, just to show her that
I knew her name. 'It's strange.'

I didn't say anything about Troy. His death
seemed something too precious to be brought out and bandied around in
conversation as something interesting to talk about with someone I hardly knew
and would probably never meet again. Sian talked about Laura and how they
hadn't met for over a year and how she had heard about her marriage from mutual
friends. They had just got married at the register office without telling
anyone.

'She married someone I've never heard of,'
Sian said. 'It must have been so sudden.'

I didn't want to say anything, but I knew
that if I didn't it was an absolute certainty that someone would come up to us
and start talking about Brendan and me and it would make me look ridiculous
again.

'I knew him,' I said. 'It was pretty
sudden.'

'He must have been the one walking behind
the coffin.'

'That's right.'

'He was very good-looking,' said Sian. 'I
can see why she might have fallen for him.'

'I'll introduce you,' I said.

Sian looked embarrassed.

'I didn't mean...' she started and then
stopped. She seemed unable to say what it was she didn't mean.

The house was crowded. It was a big party,
though I couldn't see Tony anywhere, the one person I wanted to see and to hug.
There was a table with sandwiches, boiled eggs, dips, chopped vegetables,
crisps. There was tea, coffee, juice. I thought of Laura's mother
superintending the preparations. She wasn't invited to the wedding, but here
she was, just a few weeks later, organizing the funeral. I looked around for
someone I knew. I still saw no sign of Tony. I assumed he must have slipped
away after the ceremony. Laura's parents were leading a very old woman across
the living room into a corner and helping her into an armchair. I considered
offering my condolences and then thought how could I possibly without getting
myself lost in horrendous explanations, and then told myself I ought to talk to
them anyway. This argument with myself was still going on when I became aware
of someone's presence beside me. I looked around. The face I saw was so
unexpected that for a moment I had trouble placing him. It was the detective,
Rob Pryor.

'What on earth are you doing here?' I
asked.

He didn't answer, just handed me a cup of
tea.

'I'd sort of hoped for something
stronger,' I said.

'There isn't anything stronger.'

'All right.'

'I know what you're going to say,' he
said.

I took a gulp of tea. It was scaldingly
hot and it burned my mouth and almost everything else as I swallowed it.

'What am I going to say?'

'I thought you'd be here,' he said. 'I
thought it was important that I head you off.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'I've looked into this,' Rob said.
'Laura's death is terribly sad. But that's all.'

'Oh, for fuck's sake, Rob,' I said. 'Do
you mind if I call you Rob?'

'Go ahead,' he said.

'Come off it,' I said. 'Don't insult my
intelligence.'

'I know what you mean,' he said. 'I thought
of you as soon as I heard. I made calls. I talked to the investigating
officer.'

'Forget all that,' I said. 'Just think
about it. I come to you with my suspicions about Troy. You pooh-pooh them.
Fine. Then Brendan dumps my sister for my best friend and runs off with her. A
few months later she's dead. Do you see a pattern here?'

Rob sighed.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm not very
interested in patterns. Facts are stubborn things. Laura died by accident.'

'How many twenty-five-year-olds drown in
the bath?' I asked.

'She'd been at a party,' Rob said. 'She
was clearly intoxicated. She had some sort of altercation with Mr Block. She
left early. She returned to their flat alone. She ran herself a bath. She
slipped and struck her head while the bath was running. She drowned. The bath
overflowed and, at just before twenty past midnight, Thomas Croft, who lived in
the flat beneath, became aware of water coming through the ceiling, ran up,
found the front door of the flat unlocked and discovered Mrs Block dead in the
bath.'

I hated to hear him call Laura 'Mrs
Block'. It was another way that Brendan had got his clammy hands into
somebody's life. I looked around to make sure nobody could overhear us.

'That's exactly what he did when he and
Kerry were living in my flat.'

'What?'

'He deliberately let the bath overflow.
It's a message.'

'A message?'

'To me.'

Rob Pryor looked at me almost with an
expression of pity.

'Mrs Block's death was a message to
you'?'
he said. 'Are you insane?'

'It's easy to bang someone over the head,'
I said. 'Hold them under the water.'

'That's true,' said Rob.

'And it wasn't a dinner party, was it?' I
said. 'There must have been lots of people around. In the house. In the garden.
Were people keeping track of Brendan every minute?'

Rob gave an impatient frown.

'It's a twenty-minute walk from the party
at Seldon Avenue back to their flat. Maybe twenty-five. Anybody who left the
party to kill her would have been away for about an hour.'

'They could have caught a cab,' I said, a
bit feebly.

'I thought your theory depended on nobody
noticing,' said Rob. 'Your murderer calls a cab, it arrives at the party with
nobody noticing. And what? Did he ask the cabbie to wait while he went inside
and committed the murder?'

'He could have followed her back. Nobody
noticed she was gone.'

'Oh, I forgot,' said Rob, and at that very
moment I felt hands on my shoulders. I looked round and a face leaned into
mine, kissing me on both cheeks, hugging me too close. It was Brendan.

'Oh, Miranda, Miranda, Miranda,' he
murmured in my ear. 'What a terrible thing. It's so good of you to come. It
means a lot to me. It would have meant a lot to Laura.' He looked over at Rob
Pryor. 'Rob has been a good friend to me, ever since the business with Troy.'
He looked back at me. 'I'm sorry, Mirrie. I'm so sorry. I seem to bring bad
luck wherever I go.' I didn't reply. I couldn't. 'I needed to talk to you,
Mirrie.' He smiled at me, looking me in the eyes. I always felt he was just a
bit too close, his breath warm on my cheeks. 'You're the one who understands
me. Better than anyone else. There's something strange. Has Rob told you?' He
looked over at Rob, who shook his head. 'Almost at the moment when it — you
know, the thing with Laura, I can't bear to say it — do you know what I was
doing?'

'Of course I don't,' I said.

'You do,' he said. 'I was talking to you.'

Dearest Troy,

There's this memory that keeps
coming back to me. When you were about nine you insisted on waking me up at
four in the morning to listen to the dawn chorus. I staggered blearily out into
the garden in my dressing gown even though it was freezing cold and the grass
was soaking wet. I thought I'd just stay out there for a few minutes to humour
you and then race back to my warm bed. But you were all dressed up in jeans and
Wellington boots and a big jacket, and you had Dad's binoculars hanging round
your neck. We stood at the end of the garden in the dawn and all of a sudden —
as if a switch had been thrown — the birds started to sing. A great wall of
sound all round us. I looked at your face and it was so incredibly joyful that
I forgot to feel cold. You showed me the birds in the branches and then I could
match the sounds with the open beaks and pulsing throats. We stayed out there
for ages and then we went into the kitchen and I made us hot chocolate and
scrambled eggs. You said, with your mouth full: 'I wish it could be like this
all the time.'

Of course you can't read this,
but I'm writing to you anyway because you're the only person I really want to
talk to. I talk to you all the time. I'm terrified that one day I'll find that
I've stopped talking to you, because that will mean you're dead.

CHAPTER 28

'I don't really know why I'm here,' I
said.

The woman opposite me didn't answer, just
looked at me until I glanced away, down at my hands screwed together in my lap;
at the low table between us where a box of tissues stood ready. Out of the
window I could see daffodils in the sunshine. The yellow colour looked garish
and excessive. I felt blank and dull and stiffly self-conscious. At least I
wasn't lying on a couch.

'Where should I begin?'

At least she didn't say, 'Begin at the
beginning.' Katherine Dowling must have been in her late forties or early
fifties; her lined, handsome face was without make-up; she had steady brown
eyes, strong cheekbones, a firm jaw. Her hair was flecked with grey and she
wore quiet clothes — a skirt down past her knees, old and wrinkled suede boots,
a baggy, soft-grey cardigan. She was focused on me, or trying to see into me,
and I didn't know if I liked it. I shifted in my chair, unfolded my hands,
scratched my cheek, gave a polite, irrelevant cough. I glanced at my watch —
Troy's watch — on my wrist. I had forty-three minutes left.

'Tell me what brought you here.'

'I've got no one else to talk to,' I said
and noticed the unsteadiness in my voice. I welcomed it — I wanted grief to
overwhelm me, to pour uncontrollably out of me, the way it did sometimes at
night when I would wake in the small hours and feel my pillow was wet with
weeping. 'The people I want to talk to are gone.'

'Gone?'

'Dead.' I felt my throat begin to ache and
my sinuses thicken. 'My little brother and my best friend.' I made myself say
their names aloud. 'Troy and Laura. He killed himself, or that's what everyone
says, though I think, I think — well, never mind that ... I found him, in my
flat. He hanged himself. He was just a boy, really. He still hadn't stopped
growing. If I close my eyes I can see his face. Except sometimes when I try to
remember him, I can't. Laura died just a few weeks ago. She died in her bath.
She was drunk and she knocked her head and drowned. Isn't that a stupid way to die?
She was only my age. The last time I saw her we didn't speak. I keep thinking
if I'd said something to her, if I'd done things differently, this wouldn't
have happened. I know that probably sounds stupid to you, but it's what keeps
coming back to me.'

Katherine Dowling leaned towards me very
slightly in her chair. A lock of hair fell forwards and she pushed it behind
her ear without taking her eyes off me.

'I can't believe that I'll never be with
them again,' I said. I took the first tissue out of the box. 'Of course I know
I won't, but I can't believe it. I can't,' I repeated hopelessly. 'It seems
impossible.'

I took another tissue and wiped my eyes.

'Bereavement,' began Katherine Dowling,
'is something that everyone experiences in...'

'This is his watch,' I said, holding up my
wrist. 'He left it by my bed and now I wear it and every time I look at it I
think, this is the time he doesn't have any more. All those seconds and minutes
and hours, ticking away. I always thought we'd grow old together. I thought I
could help him. I should have helped him, my lovely little brother.'

I was weeping in earnest now and my voice
was coming out in hiccups.

'Sorry,' I said. 'Sorry, but it seems so
unfair.'

'Unfair on you?'

'No.
No!
I'm not dead, am I? I'm
one of the lucky ones. Unfair on them, I mean.'

I talked and my words came out in a jumble
of memories and feelings, everything mixed up together. Troy, Brendan, Laura,
Kerry, my parents, Nick; a body dangling from a beam, phone calls in the night,
words whispered into my ear like poison trickling into me, weddings called off,
funerals, first his and then hers... Every so often I stopped and cried into
the damp wodge of tissues I clutched in my hand. My cheeks stung; my nose was
snotty and my eyes were sore.

'I'm like Typhoid Mary,' I said at one
point. 'I'm like one of those Spanish soldiers bringing plagues to the American
Indians, poisoning their world. I'm like

'What do you mean, Miranda?' Katherine
Dowling's calm voice broke into my tirade.

'I'm the carrier,' I cried out, blotting
my face. 'Don't you see? They were all right, more or less. I brought him into
my world, and that's my problem and I had to deal with that. But it was their
world as well and he's infected them, destroyed them, wrecked their lives. I'm
all right. Look. Here I am, sitting with a therapist, working out ways to feel
better about everything. You see, that's the problem.'

'Listen,' she said. 'Listen to me now,
Miranda.'