The House on Sunset Lake (22 page)

Chapter Thirty

Jim settled back into his seat and accepted a glass of wine from the air stewardess. On other occasions he might have noticed how attractive she was, the curve of her hips under the dark pencil skirt or the brightness of her smile, but he was too busy checking his phone. He found a short message from Jennifer wishing him a safe flight home and smiled to himself. Many a time he’d teased his secretaries for obsessing about phone calls and messages from lovers and romantic prospects, and now here he was doing the same.

Without the luxury of Simon’s private jet, he was travelling back to New York via Miami. He had made a call to Elan Models on the short layover and had managed to be connected to Celine Wood.

‘You bastard, you never called me,’ she’d laughed, before telling him he had missed his opportunity. Jim had apologised, then asked her if she could arrange for her new lover Richie Hawkins to come and play on Baruda. A short acoustic set would be fine. In return they could stay at the new Santai resort, RedReef, whenever they fancied, and she would be given one of the best suites at the Casa D’Or launch party. Celine replied that Richie would do anything she asked of him, and that a romantic Caribbean holiday might even hasten a proposal. Jim felt this was a win-win position for everyone.

The flight from Miami was a little over two hours. As he put his phone back in his bag in the overhead locker, he noticed the manuscript that Saul had given him the previous day. He wondered whether now wouldn’t be the perfect time to read it.

Jim had always avoided his father’s seminal novel. Back in his teens and twenties, he had been an enthusiastic reader, he remembered, thinking back to that slightly pretentious youth who loved art house cinema and Milan Kundera novels. But he had given Bryn Johnson’s
College
a wide berth when it had hit the top of the best-seller chart, knowing that it would be folly to read it.

He did not particularly want to be reminded of the place where
College
had been written: Savannah, in the boathouse opposite Casa D’Or.

But there was another reason too.

Back when it was first published, Jim had had ambitions of his own to write the great British novel. Although he’d let his rock star dreams die after Savannah, writing, he appreciated, was something that could be fitted in around his corporate, money-making career. But it was tough living in the shadow of a literary lion, and the reviews and prizes and honorary doctorates that followed
College
only backed up Jim’s fear that if he read his father’s much-lauded and obviously brilliant novel and compared it with his own scribblings, he would never write another word.

These days there were more mundane reasons why he had never opened the book. He barely had time to read the
FT
, let alone get stuck into a four-hundred-page novel, but now, as he looked restlessly out of the window, he knew he had run out of excuses.

He sat back and put a pillow behind his head. The manuscript wasn’t particularly easy to read. It was a long book, and the pile of pages was at least three inches thick. There were no acknowledgements or dedications. The type had faded, and there were white stripes of Tippex where his father had made mistakes. It was quite alien-looking, and strange to think that this was how people had worked only twenty years ago – an era that didn’t seem so distant when he considered it was his university days, a time he could remember with nostalgic clarity.

He already knew the broad strokes of the story. Set in Cambridge, it followed the inappropriate relationship between a fifty-something don, Peter Colt, who had just been passed over for a professorship, and a beautiful young student, Cecile. Even from the first few pages it was obvious that this was going to be a beautifully drawn character study. Jim was immediately gripped. It was a book about ego, about masculinity, about wrong choices. Colt was not a particularly sympathetic character; he was jealous of the friends who had successful careers in the City, vengeful against his university colleagues who he believed had gained unmerited promotion. But despite this, his father had made it easy to understand where the character’s anger and frustrations were coming from. They were an exaggerated and articulated form of many feelings experienced by men of a certain age.

It was easy to whip through the pages. It was the best type of literary novel – not weighed down by verbosity or pretension, yet smart and insightful with its observations about academic life.

It was literary legend that Bryn Johnson had written the book in less than three months, which made its quality even more impressive, and Jim grudgingly admitted that the inspiring surroundings of Savannah and the Lake House must have helped.

His father’s particular skill was his creation of characters; people who jumped off the page – whose charms you wanted to identify with, whose flaws made you look into your own dark corners. At the heart of the book was the theme of obsession and the transference of Colt’s volatile emotions to the beautiful Cecile, the daughter of one of his colleagues who had won undeserved promotion. Colt had started off wanting to impress the young woman, who was considered an intelligent scholar, attempting to point-score and show off, but their relationship had eventually become sexual.

Although he was tired, and could do with a nap after the drama of Baruda, Jim pushed on with one more chapter.

Peter and Cecile were spending their first night together. They had already kissed, and he had taken her to a cottage out of town, ostensibly to talk about Molière but really to consummate their relationship. Jim felt a twinge of embarrassment reading the powerful sexual imagery in his father’s words, and glanced around the aeroplane cabin to make sure he wasn’t being observed. The scene was certainly quite graphic for a mainstream novel, as the literary couple progressed from kissing over the French texts to soixante-neuf on the floor. Now they were lying post-coital in front of the fire.

Peter kissed her shoulder, noting the red blush where his teeth had grazed her, moving down into the small of her back, stopping only when he reached the diamond-shaped mole at the base of her spine. ‘This is mine,’ he murmured, his lips pressing into her pale skin. ‘This jewel is mine.’

Jim tried to swallow but couldn’t. He blinked, read the lines again, his heart dropping like an untethered lift. A diamond-shaped mole at the base of her spine. It couldn’t be, could it? It had to be a coincidence.
Had
to be.

An announcement came over the tannoy for passengers to fasten their seat belts in preparation for landing. Jim put the manuscript back into his bag and sat down, desperate to get back to New York.

He was up and moving the moment the seat-belt sign clicked off, running along the air bridge, straight through immigration. He stopped at the first bookshop in the arrivals hall and crossed to the ‘J’ section on the fiction stands. There it was: Bryn Johnson,
College
, a staff pick labelled ‘A classic of late-twentieth-century sexual politics, a must-read for any woman who wants to understand men, or any man who wants to understand himself.’ It had a fresh-looking red and black cover, presumably to attract a new audience.

Jim flipped to the chapter he wanted, his eyes wide as he scanned the text. Peter and Cecile go to the cottage, Peter turns on the charm, seducing the young Cecile. There was no mention of a diamond-shaped mole.

He reminded himself that the manuscript he had read on the plane was a first draft. Jim himself had never written a first draft of a novel, never got that far, but he could remember what it was like to write. He thought suddenly about his first girlfriend, Samantha Archer, a breakup that had affected him much more than it should have – almost derailed him from his English A level, in fact – when Samantha had delivered the fatal blow that she wanted to go out with one of his best mates at school, Peter Jackson.

Despite his laid-back nature, Jim was as vulnerable as the next person and had spent the entire summer listening to Smiths songs, writing poetry and letters to Samantha that had never been sent. It was a summer of wasted introspection, but the one thing he remembered about all those written words was their honesty. They were a transference of thoughts and feelings directly on to the page, unfiltered and raw.

But somewhere between the first draft of
College
and the finished product, the diamond-shaped mole had been taken out.

If it had stayed in the published novel, Jim might have been able to convince himself that it was pure fantasy or wish fulfilment, but now? Its wilful removal was like a confession. A confession of what his father had done with Jennifer.

Chapter Thirty-One

His parents were renting a brownstone on the Upper West Side. For all of Bryn’s fantasies about being close to the heartland of sixties beatniks, his desire to be near Columbia University was even stronger. Jim had only been here a handful of times before; Bryn and Elizabeth had adopted the Manhattan standard of socialising away from home, although the house was the sort of thing someone who had grown up in the fifties would want from New York: elegance, poor air con and the sense that Dorothy Parker might pop in at any moment.

He paused before he rang the bell, all the words that he had carefully crafted in his head on the way over here suddenly forgotten.

Bryn answered the door, and Jim had to resist the urge to swing at him. Keep calm, he told himself as his father, looking surprised, asked him to come in.

‘I didn’t think anyone just popped in any more,’ he said as Jim followed him through to the kitchen.

‘Where’s Mum?’ asked Jim. He didn’t want any confrontation to be in front of her.

‘Gone down to the venue. I gather the chocolate truffles haven’t arrived. I have no idea what we need truffles for at a party at my age. Half the guests are going to be diabetic.’

Bryn got two glasses from the cupboard and put them next to a bottle of wine on the counter. ‘I’ve opened a nice claret to get me in the mood. Do you want to help me get rid of it before your mother comes back?’

‘It’s fine,’ said Jim, holding up a hand.

Bryn poured two glasses anyway and passed him one.

‘Apparently there’s a couple of hundred people coming tonight, which I think is fairly impressive seeing as we’ve only been in the city two minutes. I’ve invited a few people from the faculty. Salman’s coming, I think.’

‘I saw Saul yesterday,’ said Jim finally.

‘How is he? You know he’s not coming tonight?’ Bryn added with a note of indignation.

‘He’s about to move into a home. He wanted me to give you this.’ Jim reached into his bag and placed the envelope on the bar. His father eyed it suspiciously.

‘What is it?’

‘The first draft of
College
.’

A smile played on Bryn’s face.

‘Still got that? Sentimental bugger.’ He reached out and touched it with one finger, as if worried it might disintegrate. ‘What’s he given it back for? To display at the party?’

‘I need to ask you something,’ said Jim.

He didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to edge nearer the truth.

‘Who was the inspiration for Cecile?’

Bryn shrugged slightly, taking a mouthful of his wine.

‘What’s this about? You sound like a reviewer for the
TLS
.’

‘And if I was, what would you say?’

Bryn topped up his glass.

‘The same thing that I did tell a writer from the
TLS
. That she was a glorious figment of my bourbon-soaked imagination.’

‘She has a diamond-shaped mole at the base of her spine.’

Bryn frowned. ‘A mole? Who?’

‘Cecile. In the first draft she had a mole at the base of her spine. She doesn’t in the version that got published.’

‘Mole? What mole? I can’t remember something I wrote in a first draft twenty-odd years ago.’

‘Jennifer Wyatt was your inspiration for Cecile, wasn’t she?’

‘Who’s Jennifer Wyatt?’ said Bryn, drinking more wine.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t remember,’ Jim said, his voice hardening.

‘The girl from Savannah?’ Bryn said finally.

‘You do remember. Jennifer Wyatt has a mole on the base of her spine,’ said Jim, feeling his anxiety heighten.

‘Well, good for Jennifer Wyatt. I assume you’ve been in contact during your stay in America. Close contact, it appears.’

‘Jennifer was your inspiration for Cecile, wasn’t she? I didn’t notice it at first, but when you have one part of the puzzle, the comparison becomes obvious.’

‘What puzzle?’ Bryn said with irritation.

‘Just admit it.’

His father’s cheeks were beginning to colour. Jim wasn’t sure whether it was from the claret, from shame or from anger.

‘I can’t remember who inspired every character in every story I’ve written. Maybe there’s a writer in you yet, son. Your imagination seems to have gone into overdrive.’

‘Bullshit!’ snapped Jim. ‘You write about a beautiful young girl with a mole exactly the same as the girl who was living in the house next door – that’s supposed to be coincidence? Tell me, Dad!’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I need to know.’

‘What?’ growled Bryn, turning his familiar aggression on his son.

‘Jennifer was your inspiration for Cecile. And you knew she had a mole in an intimate place. Tell me how you knew that.’

‘What are you saying, James? You want to know if I screwed her?’

‘Just admit it!’ roared Jim.

They both fell silent for a moment. The pressure in the room seemed to pop like a balloon that had been blown too full.

‘Sure, I screwed her,’ Bryn said, leaning back against the countertop and folding his arms in front of him. ‘Is that what you needed to know?’

Jim blinked, feeling all the rage drain from him. Only moments ago he had wanted to strike his father; now he felt like he himself had been punched in the gut. He perched on a stool, his hands falling limp in his lap.

‘Jim . . .’ said Bryn. ‘God, son. I didn’t know how strongly you felt for the girl. I thought you were just friends, that’s what you told me and your mother a dozen times.’

Jim looked at him. ‘So that made it OK? It made her fair game for you?’

He closed his eyes and felt his head swim. When he opened them again, his father actually looked contrite.

‘Look, I’m not proud of myself, but she made herself available to me, and I took advantage of that.’

‘So it was all Jennifer . . .’

‘She’d come to the Lake House, looking for you if I remember. I was in the boathouse, she came in, we started chatting about something or other. Wasn’t she doing some documentary? And, well, one thing led to another.’

Jim shook his head with fury.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he hissed under his breath.

‘What don’t you believe, Jim? That a twenty-something woman actually found me attractive?’

Of course he could believe that. His mother’s constant vaguely anxious expression was the result of living for fifty years with a man that all other women were attracted to. And he couldn’t deny he’d been jealous of the way he had seen Jennifer look at his father. The way she hung on his every word. It was easy to be seduced by Bryn Johnson. Very easy.

‘I’m not particularly proud of myself for cheating on my wife, your mother, but the girl flattered me.’

‘You like that, don’t you?’

‘How do you think it felt for
me
that summer, Jim? One minute I’m king of the world, the next minute I’m the man who was. I liked to think I was in glorious exile in Savannah, but I was no fool. I saw the panic, the pity in Saul’s eyes when he sent us to the Lake House.’ He took a deep breath, a frown line appearing between his brows.

‘Why you?’ asked Jim, the question echoing over and over in his head.

Bryn looked ashamed. ‘Because I was just a bit older, wiser and more famous than the boy next door.’

‘I was in love with her.’

‘I didn’t know that. You have to believe that much. I was a middle-aged man who liked the attention and wanted an ego boost. Don’t pretend it hasn’t happened to you: someone young and beautiful presents themselves on a plate and you take it.’

Of course it had happened to Jim before. The gorgeous junior PR executives, the interior design assistants. Hell, he remembered the first time he’d had sex with Melissa; she’d been a lawyer at the firm he’d been doing some work with.

‘Jennifer Wyatt is a beautiful woman,’ continued Bryn, ‘but she was brought up in a certain way . . . brought up to believe that she could use her beauty and charm to manipulate men, to get things from them, money, position, pleasure—’

‘She’s not like that,’ Jim said.

‘Isn’t she? Then why did she choose Connor over you? Why is she sleeping with you, the successful, dynamic you, when she is, I assume, still married? That girl is trouble, Jim,’ Bryn said intensely. ‘She always has been. She’s a prick tease. Look at how she led you up the garden path for weeks. Look what she did with me – that wasn’t just about my connections or my status, it was a fuck-you to her mother—’

‘What do you mean?’

Bryn looked hot and uncomfortable. He wiped his mouth and sank down on a kitchen chair. Jim could see sweat beading at his temples.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. Probably had a bit too much to drink,’ he said, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘I started at lunchtime . . .’

‘Do you want a glass of water?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Jim asked as his father seemed to sway.

‘Actually, I feel a bit strange.’

‘Should I call a doctor?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Bryn said, looking up. His face had now completely drained of colour.

‘Dad, it’s not fine.’

‘I feel sick.’

‘I’m calling an ambulance.’

As Jim pulled out his mobile, Bryn lurched forward and fell to the floor with a crash, the chair landing on top of him.

Jim crouched down and rolled him over gently. His father’s face was ashen, and there was blood dripping down his chin from a cut on his lip. Ceramic floors were not a soft landing.

He grabbed his phone and started stabbing buttons.

‘Mum, it’s Jim. Get home now.’

‘I’m just on my way. I’m in a taxi—’

‘It’s Dad,’ he said, cutting her short. ‘He’s collapsed. I think it’s a heart attack. I’m calling an ambulance.’

He cut her off and dialled 911 immediately.

Bryn’s breathing was so shallow it was barely there. Jim was not familiar with this part of town. He had no idea where the nearest ambulance had to come from. A siren screamed somewhere in the distance. Jennifer, Casa D’Or flashed in his mind, but then it was gone, his attention focused on his father as he willed him to stay alive.