The Girls (11 page)

She turned desperately to her mother, hoping she’d seen it too, but her mother was already on the path, waiting for her. ‘Come on, angel.’

She turned again. She saw Grace look into Leo’s eyes and smile.

She almost said something to her mother but she couldn’t find any words.

‘Coming,’ she said. ‘Coming.’

Dear Daddy,

I miss you so much. I’m lying in bed writing this to you and Grace is not here. She’s at their house, the sisters’. We just had dinner there and it was nice but I wished you were there so much. The you from before, when you used to put me and Grace on your knees and bump us up and down so our voices went all wobbly. Or when you’d open up that big brown coat you used to have and we’d both hide inside it and pretend we were camping inside daddy
. And I wish you were here now, lying on the floor like you used to do with your knees up and your hands clasped over your tummy, listening to me read to you. But the hardest thing about you not being there tonight was not even being able to TALK about you. I wanted to say, My daddy makes films! My daddy won awards! My daddy is six foot three! My daddy went to Oxford! My daddy can speak five languages! My daddy is really, really clever and really, really interesting! But I couldn’t say anything, I just had to sit there and watch everyone make a big fuss over
their
daddy, who’s not as great as he thinks he is but everyone acts like he’s just, oh, the greatest man out there.

And Grace was being all weird. You know, she wore loads of make-up and tight jeans and she was acting all cool like she didn’t want to be there even though it was HER who really wanted to go. And then the minute Leo started paying her some attention she was fine. I feel a bit strange about it all. I don’t know if Leo is a bad person or a good person, I just think Grace is desperate for a dad. She’s over there right now. It’s nearly ten thirty. Mum’s waiting up for her but I needed to come to bed and cry and write this letter to you. This letter that you’ll probably never read. Tyler’s mum came tonight, you know, the one whose sister died in the garden when she was fifteen, and I wanted so badly to ask her about what happened. But obviously I couldn’t.

When are you going to get better and come home?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ten

Adele appraised Leo over the top of her reading glasses. ‘What took you so long?’

He pulled off his T-shirt and draped it across the back of a chair.

‘I wasn’t long,’ he said.

‘Yes you were,’ said Adele. ‘You’ve been gone for twenty minutes. I even called you, but you left your phone behind.’

‘I just had a cigarette,’ he said. ‘On the terrace.’

‘I looked on the terrace. About five minutes ago.’

‘Look, I took Grace home. I chatted to her mum for a few minutes …’

‘Did you go in?’ This came out more inquisitorially than she’d meant it to.

‘No, I did not go in. We just chatted at the door.’

‘And then?’

‘I came back. I had a cigarette on the terrace. I took some things through to the kitchen. I went for a pee. I checked on the girls. I came into my bedroom to be verbally abused by my wife.’

Adele frowned at him and then smiled. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t understand where you could be. I looked everywhere.’

‘Well, clearly not, my dear.’

Adele gazed at Leo for a moment. She watched him unbutton the fly on his trousers, wriggle them down his hips, pull off his cotton boxer shorts, drop them in the linen basket. He was naked now, pulling clean pyjama bottoms from a drawer and talking about his father, how he was going to visit him in the morning and maybe one of the girls might like to come with him, it would make the old git happy, but Adele wasn’t really listening. She was reading and rereading a paragraph in Rhea’s memoir. The words were swimming about in front of her eyes; in part because she’d drunk an awful lot of wine tonight, but also because she didn’t quite believe what she was reading.

‘Leo,’ she said. ‘Is it possible that you used to go out with Cecelia and you never told me?’

He stopped, one leg in his pyjamas, one leg out. ‘What?’

‘Listen.’ She pushed her reading glasses back up her nose and began:

It is the hottest day of the summer and there is more flesh on view in the garden than grass. The Howes boys are all topless, flaunting their skinny boy bodies with their griddle chests and hairless stomachs; they tuck their hands down their waistbands and swagger about; they smoke behind trees and listen to loud music on their oversized stereos as though they are fresh from the Bronx. But they are fooling nobody apart perhaps from the Rednough girls, tiny blonde things with backcombed hair and hoop earrings who have been hanging about like lost puppies all summer, hoping for some fuss. The younger one, Cecelia, has in recent days been seen wearing a heavy gold chain that apparently belongs to Leo. And earlier today I watched her climb into his lap and hang herself around his neck and he did not seem surprised. And now they are walking together, hand in hand across the lawn, and she looks like the puppy that got the bone and he looks like he’s wondering which girl he’ll go for next.

She lowered her glasses and stared up at her husband, questioningly.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Ha!’

‘What do you mean you’d forgotten about it? How could you forget going out with someone who you’re still friends with?’

‘Oh, God I mean, it wasn’t really
going out
. It was kid stuff.’

‘But she wrote this in 1992. You were eighteen! And she was only thirteen!’

‘Well, actually I was still only seventeen.’

‘Only just, Leo!’

‘Del. Nothing happened between us. I just sort of let her hang about with me. She was cute.’

Adele’s heart hammered in her chest. She’d been expecting Leo to say that Rhea was mistaken: that there’d been nothing going on between him and Cecelia all those years ago. She already knew about his fling with Phoebe that summer, she knew that his younger brother had been going out with her and that at some point, after a row with Patrick, Phoebe had made a beeline for Leo. She knew they’d done some clandestine things in the dark of night. She knew that Leo and Patrick had fallen out about it for a long time after, especially in the wake of Phoebe’s death. She’d always found the whole scenario quite bizarre, something far from her own youthful experiences. But Phoebe had been fifteen. Only a few months short of the age of consent. She’d already slept with Patrick, and she hadn’t, apparently, been a virgin when she slept with him. It was wrong, certainly, for an eighteen-year-old to sleep with his little brother’s girlfriend, but it wasn’t
weird
.

‘We didn’t
do
anything. We just cuddled and stuff.’

‘
Cuddled?
’

‘Yes. And kissed.’

‘You kissed a thirteen-year-old?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘But that would be like an eighteen-year-old kissing Fern. Do you not see how weird that is?’

Leo shrugged and pulled on a T-shirt. ‘Never really thought about it. It was summer. I was young. She was pretty.’

‘Did anyone know?’ she asked. ‘Did anyone know about the two of you?’

‘There was no two of us. It was a week, maybe less, a bit of hand-holding, a snog or two. There was no “us”.’

‘She was wearing your chain!’

‘Oh, my God.’ He groaned. ‘She asked. I think she’d watched too many American high-school movies. So I said yes.’

‘Who else knew about this? Apart from Rhea?’

Leo pulled back the duvet on his side of the futon and lay down. ‘My brothers. Obviously. Phoebe. That’s about it. It really wasn’t that interesting.’

‘Did your parents know?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Her parents?’

‘Jeez, Del! Can we drop this now?’

But Adele was suddenly filled with adrenaline. ‘What did she do when you broke it off?’

‘Cece?’

‘Yes! Cece! Was she upset?’

‘I guess. For about five minutes. And then her sister died, so, you know …’

Adele had met Leo when he was twenty-two. Hard to believe that a mere four years earlier he had been snogging a thirteen-year-old girl. She rolled on to her side, so she wouldn’t have to look at him. ‘It’s made me feel all discombobulated,’ she said.

Leo groaned. ‘Oh, come on. You’re not going to sulk about something that happened over twenty years ago, are you?’

Adele breathed out. She put the manuscript on the floor by the bed. She couldn’t process any of this right now. For a few moments she and Leo lay silently side by side. She listened to the sound of blood pulsing through her eardrums. She felt the warmth of Leo’s skin. She heard cars slowing at the speed bump outside the flat, then quickening again. She heard the dishwasher in the kitchen click and rumble as it neared the end of its cycle. She saw her husband kissing Cecelia.

‘You OK?’ said Leo, reaching to touch her arm.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Good.’

He reached behind him to turn on the bedside lights and turn off the overhead light. Then he picked up his Kindle and began to read.

Adele lay wakefully, watching shadows move across the walls.

Clare lay wakefully, watching shadows move across the walls. Leo had brought Grace home half an hour ago. The girls had all had a wonderful time, he’d said. Fern had taught Grace some basic chords. Willow had made some fudge. They’d had quite a bit. He hoped she didn’t mind. A little bit of sugar’s fine from time to time, isn’t it?

He’d stood at her back door in the glare of a security light, his face soft and animated, his body relaxed and springy. He was a ball of energy. Like a teenager. She couldn’t help but feel good around him.

She’d wanted to ask him in, but wasn’t sure if that was a strange thing to do. So instead they’d continued their conversation at the back door until the security light had gone off and they were in sudden darkness and he’d said, ‘Well, better get back. Adele will be wondering where I got to.’

She’d locked the door behind him. Drawn the curtains. But his energy had remained, like soft embers in a grate. She’d held it within her, wrapped her own arms around her body to preserve it. It had been a pleasant evening. She felt better about the choices Grace was making, having spent some time with her ‘alternative family’. Adele was wonderful: warm and vibrant and grounded. Her children were unusual and unconventional. Their flat was lovely. The informal style of the evening had been natural and unforced. But it was Leo who had made the evening for her.

She heard Grace in the en-suite bathroom, brushing her teeth. She appeared a moment later, scrubbed and fresh. All the make-up was gone. Her hair was tied up into a neat bun. She was wearing loose pink pyjamas. She looked at Clare and for a moment Clare couldn’t predict in which direction her mood was blowing. But then Grace smiled and climbed on to Clare’s bed, curled herself up next to her, tucked her face into Clare’s shoulder, minty breath and young scalp. She hooked one leg over Clare’s body and nestled even closer. Clare grasped the arm that Grace had flung across her chest and kissed the crown of her head.

‘Did you have a good time?’

Grace nodded.

‘So did I.’

‘Good,’ said Grace.

‘Not sure what to make of Tyler and her mum, though.’

She felt Grace’s head move up and down in the crook of her neck. ‘They’re strange.’

‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘They are. Edgy.’

‘I know.’

‘Like they’re hiding something.’

‘Exactly.’

They lay in silence for a moment or two. Then Grace stretched herself away from Clare and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. ‘Night, Mumsy.’ She rolled herself off the bed and stood in the doorway.

‘Night, baby.’

‘Thank you for coming tonight.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Clare, thinking once more of Leo’s dark eyes, his slow smile, his easy manner. ‘My pleasure.’

Eleven

Chris had been released from the psychiatric hospital two weeks ago. The discharge meeting had unanimously decided that he was fit to face the world again and discharged him into the care of an unnamed person. Clare had asked who it was but the hospital told her that Chris had requested that she not be told. She’d spoken to people from their past, the small handful of friends they’d had back in the days when things were normal, but none of them had heard anything from Chris. She’d spoken to his mother in Switzerland, who said she had had a call from him and wired him a large sum of money but that he had not told her where he was staying or with whom.

Over the days Clare had pictured him in a variety of scenarios: homeless under a bridge; hiding in the flat across the road, watching their every move through a crack in the curtains that twitched occasionally when she walked past it. She pictured him on a ferry, trying to get to his mum and brother in Switzerland. Or living in the basement under the house in Willoughby Road, still staking out alien rats. Sometimes she even pictured him normal, sitting sad and alone in a rented room in a house somewhere, trying to remember who he was and where he belonged. She scanned the small news stories in the papers with opening lines like: ‘A 42-year-old man has been arrested after a …’ Or, ‘Police are looking for a man in his forties in connection with …’ All those funny little reports about people behaving strangely were suddenly thrown into relief. Her husband was out there. He might be mad. He might be sane. He might be ill. He might be well. He could, in theory, be doing absolutely anything. But as the days went by and the ether yielded no information whatsoever about his whereabouts, Clare had become more and more certain that he was dead.