The Red House (8 page)

You want to talk about it?

No, I do not want to talk about it. Unsurprisingly
.

He picked two daisies and started making a chain.
I had a stepfather. I still have a stepfather
.

What the hell was he talking about?

He was a really nice guy, which only made me hate him more, of course
.

Yeh, well, thanks for the advice
. She took a packet of Silk Cut from her jacket pocket.

One going spare?

She’d meant to piss him off but things were going a bit off-piste. His cupped hand touched her hand. The scratch and pop of the lighter. Was he going to try and feel her up? She imagined hanging on to the story like a fat check she could spend whenever she wanted.

Ooh
. He blew a rubbish smoke ring.
Haven’t had one of these in a while
.

A sheep trotted past, bleating.

Actually, Richard’s all right. He kind of makes Mum happy, which is good
. But it was a lie. She hated him for the same reasons Dominic had hated his stepfather.

They finished their cigarettes. Then Dominic turned and stared at her. She wondered if he was going to put a hand on her breast.
Be nicer to Daisy, OK?

Which caught her totally on the hop.

You’ll look back and realize you’re not that different
.

She laughed.
We are
so
different
. He held her eye and didn’t laugh. She’d lost her bearings now. The fear was coming back. She got to her feet and threw her cigarette stub into the long grass.
I need to make a phone call
.

Don’t walk over a precipice
.

Was he being, like, metaphorical, or was there actually a precipice?

He watched her stumble up the hill. Town shoes. He imagined getting points for the way he’d handled the conversation. Six out of ten? He’d definitely got the better of her. Seven? The sheep bleated again. He felt a little nauseous. The cigarette, probably.

Benjy was doing a kind of boneless gymnastics on the leather armchair at the side of the shop.

Look at this encyclopedia
. Daisy heaved him aside and sat down.
It’s from 1938
.

His eyes were fixed on the Nintendo.

Back before computers, when they thought there might be people on Mars
.

He didn’t look up.
I want to find the Encyclopedia of Torturing Barbie
.

She turned the page.
And what is this thing
, she read,
which the savage coaxes into being by rubbing one stick against another, and the civilized man conjures in a moment by striking a match?
His breath wasn’t good. Had anyone made him brush his teeth this morning?

Louisa appeared suddenly.
Benjy … Daisy …
She had peeled herself away from Richard and set off in search of a sunny book-free location,
but there was something cozy about the two of them in the chair.
What have you got there?

Pictorial Knowledge, Volume 5
. Daisy handed it to her.

Woven brick-red cover, the title indented and beneath it an oil lamp radiating beams of wisdom. She glanced at the contents page. “How Steam and Petrol Work for Man.” “A Children’s Guide to Good Manners.” “Folding Model.” She was suddenly back in her grandparents’ house, chicken-wire window in the larder, walnut whips and buttered white bread with fish and chips, the stilts Granddad made her from an old doorframe.

Daisy shifted a little to get more comfortable. Louisa had sat herself on the arm of the chair, Daisy sandwiched between her and Benjy. Louisa’s leg was very close. Red cords tight around her thighs. The smell of cocoa butter.

Louisa turned a page. Arch, suspension, cantilever, girder. How strange that she should be reminded of them here, of all places, when they didn’t have a single book in the house. The fear of getting above yourself. She closed the book and ran her hand gently down the spine. You thought it was all gone, the house demolished, the furniture sold, photos eaten away by mildew and damp. Then you opened a tin of sardines with that little metal key.

He sat on the steps of the town clock, the bag from Richard Booth angled against his calf (
Stalingrad
by Antony Beevor,
The Odyssey
translated by John Hannah,
Fighting Fit: The Complete SAS Fitness Training Handbook
). There was a trailer containing two sheep, and three local teenagers standing round a scooter, smoking. The Sharne case was nagging at him again. Breathe in, two, three … Breathe out, two, three … One of the boys revved the scooter and his concentration broke. How restless the mind was. He should run, like Alex, clear it with activity instead of willpower. Breathe in … He noticed an attractive woman going into The Granary and heard that tiny sexual alarm sounding in his head. Oh, but it was Louisa. Then she was gone.
How disorienting to see her as other men saw her. He remembered meeting her ex-husband that first time, when Craig came round to fit a new pump in the boiler. Absurdly hairy, as if he was wearing a black mohair vest under his T-shirt.
Louisa tells me you’re a doctor
. A muscular handshake that went on for just a little too long.

Consultant. Neuroradiology
.

Eventually he came to understand that it was a kind of Kryptonite, the degrees, the books, the music, though he remembered Louisa shaking her head and laughing and saying,
He wanted it all the time
, and he was never quite able to shake that picture.

There wasn’t a precipice, just a huge hill from which you could see Russia probably. An old couple walked past dressed like Boy Scouts. Then her phone made contact with civilization and a string of texts pinged in, one from Dad in France followed by a stack of messages saying
ring me
and
got 2 talk 2 u
and
need to talk urgent
as if an actual war had broken out. She called Cally who didn’t even say hullo, just,
Michelle tried to kill herself
.

How?

Sleeping pills. She told her mum we were bullying her
.

Fucking cow
.

Thing is, her mum went to see Avison, so now it’s official
.

Well, it wasn’t me who sent that picture to everyone
.

Don’t fucking dump me in it
, said Cally.
You took the photo
.

Stop blaming me, all right? We’ve got to sort this out
. Christ. Two weeks in a sleeping bag in a half-renovated French farmhouse with Dad didn’t seem such a bad idea now. She let it all sink in. Michelle being a slag as per usual. Michelle playing the victim as per usual. She should have seen this coming a long way back.
Who else did you send it to?

Not that many people
.

Just tell me, OK?

Jake, Donny, KC …

Fucking great
. They’d save it, wouldn’t they, so they could stab her in the back. All those idiotic little vendettas. If she was only there, in person, to grab the phones out of their stupid hands.

I didn’t think I’d be so upset when she died
. Angela took a final forkful of Tibetan roast. Benjy was sitting next to her reading a tattered secondhand encyclopedia. She brushed the crumbs from his hair.

Ghastly way to go
, said Richard. He’d arranged his cutlery at half-past six.
Your mind dying, your body left behind for other people to look after
.

Other people? Meaning
her
.

God forbid that I go like that
. He poured the last of his tea through the metal strainer. Over his shoulder a gaggle of nut-brown cyclists gathered at the counter, little black shoes clacking on the stone floor.
Give me a massive cardiac arrest
.

Hang on
, said Angela.
Hang on
. Why was she doing this?
I visited her every week for five years
.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say
. He could hear the resentment in her voice but was genuinely confused. Surely the gift of the holiday itself had removed any residual bad feelings.

I know you paid for her to be in Acorn House
, said Angela.
And maybe that was more important than anything else. I’m grateful, I am, but …
She was walking on cracked ice.
Every week for five years
. What good had it done, though? Her mother didn’t recognize her at the end.

I know
, said Richard, tonelessly.

And the person she really wanted was you
. She could see the disbelief in his face. He’d expected this to be easy, hadn’t he. Rebuilding the family now the troublesome parent had been removed. Bruises and broken bones. She felt a childish desire to make it as difficult as she could.
And you came, what? Five times? Six?
She knew the exact number but she wasn’t going to admit to having kept score.

Richard was drawing little shapes on the tabletop with his index
finger. She wondered if he was working out his reply on imaginary notepaper.

She’s dead, Angela. We can’t change anything now. Perhaps we should just leave it alone
.

Benjy turned a page, oblivious to their conversation. Angela glanced over.
The Romance of the Iron Road
. A picture of the Flying Scotsman.
I just wanted to hear you say thank you
. There. It was out.

He laughed. Quiet and wry, but actual laughter.

Richard …?
She felt as if she were talking to a child who had made some dreadful faux pas.

I was thirteen when she started drinking
.

And I was fourteen
.

But you left
.

What?
She really did have no idea what he was talking about.

When you moved in with Juliette
.

The idea was so crazy that she wondered for the first time if he had some less pleasant motive for bringing them on holiday.
I never left. I never moved in with Juliette
.

OK, maybe not moved in
. He hadn’t meant to bring this up. It was like contaminated earth, if you didn’t dig there was no problem.
But you spent most nights there
. He didn’t want to settle scores. He simply wanted things to be neatly folded and put to sleep.
For the best part of two years if I remember correctly
.

That’s simply not true
. The couple at the nearby table had paused to listen.

Perhaps if I’d been better at making friends I would have done the same thing
. He laughed again but more warmly this time.

That’s not the point
. They had to stop this right now or God alone knew where it would go. She sat back and deep-breathed.
Let’s call a truce
.

A truce?
said Richard.
Is this a war?

Maybe now is the time for cake
.

Without taking his eyes off the book, Benjy said,
Yes please. Can I have the chocolate one, please, with the white icing?

Motor lorries carry heavy goods long distances; motor vans deliver parcels at our doors. Motor charabancs transport tens of thousands of pleasure-seekers daily from place to place, and motor coaches make regular daily journeys between towns hundreds of miles apart. We no longer see the horse-drawn fire engine, with smoke belching from its funnel, dashing down the street
.

Ariel Gel Nimbus 11. Ridiculous names they gave these things. Richard loved the smell, though, plasticky and factory-clean. He laced the left shoe up and leant round to take the right from its tissued box. He felt bruised by the conversation with Angela, less by her feelings than by his failure to predict them. It had never occurred to him that she would feel embittered. His mother had hated him for looking after her, then hated him for leaving. Five years living with an alcoholic woman and no one had thanked him. If there was such a thing as the moral high ground it was surely he who occupied it. From the corner of his eye he saw, through the shop’s front window, a rat’s nest of black downpipes emerging from the upper story of the house opposite. He rotated his body a little farther toward the rear of the shop.

How much?

Seventy-nine pounds, ninety-nine pence
.

Reassuringly expensive
.

The assistant seemed oblivious to his irony. But you had to have the best. Save twenty pounds now and you regretted it later. He stood up and examined himself in the mirror.

How do they feel?
The young man was ginger and plump and ill-nourished with one of those increasingly popular asymmetrical fringes so that he was forced to lean his head to one side in order to see properly.