The Secrets Between Us (29 page)

There was a creak behind me, on the landing, and I turned but it was nothing. I scolded myself for jumping.

Still, I whispered: ‘Genevieve?’

And then I gasped in horror as the two new telephones,
one upstairs on the landing, the other downstairs in the dining room, rang in unison – only it wasn’t the normal ringtone, it was a constant screeching peel like the sound somebody would make if they were in agony; an awful, desperate sound.

I put my hands over my ears and stumbled back against the door, and the latch clicked shut but the ringing seemed to increase in volume and I was engulfed by something powerful, much stronger than anything I’d felt before. It was like the heat that precedes nausea. I felt I was on the edge of falling. I experienced a horrendous dizziness, an awful influx of terror. I was spinning, I couldn’t breathe, there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to stop me.

I fell against the door. I grabbed on to the handle and tried to lift it but I had no strength in my muscles, no coordination between my fingers and my brain. The door seemed to be locked and beyond was the howl of the telephones. I thought I was dying; what I was going through had to be something massively traumatic, a heart attack or an aneurysm, something cataclysmic.

I slid down the door and curled against it, like a foetus, sobbing dry-eyed, remembering the picture of myself as the gold-digger-hole-digger, and all I could hear was the insidious screaming of the two phones and I thought: This is Genevieve! She’s here!

Some time passed, I don’t know how many minutes went by, but eventually the terror subsided. I opened my eyes. Sunlight filled the room. It was a child’s room, that was all. It was bright and cluttered and cosy. The hamster wheel rattled as it spun on its bracket. The little green ‘on’ light winked at me from the side of the discarded laptop. I picked it up and held it tight as I scrambled through the door and ran down the stairs, out of Avalon into the cold air beyond.

I went down to the lane, where there was a signal for my
mobile, and I called May as I walked along, putting as much distance as I could between myself and the house.

‘What is it?’ she said. ‘You sound terrible.’

‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘I’m OK. May, if I tell you something, will you promise not to worry or overreact?’

‘I promise.’

‘It’s just … I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’ve completely lost it, but I think …’

‘What?’

‘I think Genevieve’s haunting me.’

May laughed. I didn’t say anything and her laughter gradually subsided.

‘Don’t tell Neil,’ I begged. Already I was beginning to feel embarrassed and awkward.

‘What exactly has happened?’ May asked gently.

‘I don’t know. I just … oh, a couple of times now I’ve felt as if Genevieve was inside me … only for a few moments, but I’ve felt like I was feeling what she was feeling. As if she was trying to make me understand something … As if I was her.’

‘As if you were Genevieve …’

‘Yes! No! No, I don’t mean I think I am her, or anything like that, I just … I don’t know … and there’ve been words, a couple of times I’ve heard things in my head and I don’t know where they’re coming from. They’re in my mind but they didn’t come from my mind, do you understand?’

‘Not really, honey.’

‘You think I’m mad, don’t you? This sounds so stupid, doesn’t it? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not making any sense. Oh, May, I don’t know what to do! I’m so scared! I’m so tired of all this!’

‘Shh, shh,’ May said down the line. I wished I was with her. I wished I could put my head on her shoulder and let her stroke my back. ‘Listen, Sarah, will you listen to me? Find somewhere to sit down and breathe slowly and listen.’

I looked around, went over to the bus shelter, and perched on the bench.

‘Now listen,’ May said. ‘You are not losing your mind, you are not going mad and you are not being haunted. OK?’

‘Yes.’ I nodded and pressed the phone as close as I could to my ear. A car drove past from the village and I saw the woman in the passenger side stare at me intently.

‘You’re under a lot of stress,’ said May, ‘and you’re tired, and I think you’ve let yourself become a tiny bit obsessed with Genevieve.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve noticed and Neil’s noticed that you seem to talk about her all the time, and you’re obviously thinking about her a lot, and all that’s happening now is that your brain has got a bit overloaded and it’s finding a way to release the tension. Like a stress valve.’

I swallowed. ‘Yes, you’re right.’

I heard May exhale deeply at the other end of the line.

‘You’re going to tell me to come home, aren’t you?’ I asked.

‘You need to get away from there. You need a break. But right now, what you really need is rest.’

‘Yes.’

‘What time do you have to pick Jamie up?’

‘Quarter past three.’

‘So there’s time for a couple of hours in bed. I want you to go back to Avalon, make yourself a warm milky drink and a hot-water bottle, and sleep. Or if you can’t sleep, lie quietly and think about … think about kittens.’

‘Kittens?’ In spite of everything, I laughed.

‘They’re the least stressful thing I could think of,’ May explained.

I did as she said. I went back to Avalon and I realized May was right. It wasn’t haunted, it wasn’t hostile or sinister, it
was an old house, that was all. Still, I disconnected the phones before I took myself and my hot-water bottle up to bed, and when I was there, I snuggled right down and I held on to the spare pillow as if it were a life jacket and I was drowning.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

OVER THE NEXT
couple of days packages of clothes arrived through the post for me. The postman, who had always been pleasant to me, asked each day what was in the parcel and I’d tell him and he’d raise his eyebrows.

‘You all right, my love?’ he asked. ‘You’re looking a bit peaky.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘Looks like you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a while.’

‘Oh, you know.’ I laughed. ‘It’s worrying about what to wear.’

Dave rolled his eyes.

‘You’d look good in a plastic bag,’ he said kindly. ‘Well, you would if you looked after yourself a bit better.’

I thanked him and took the parcel, and closed the door.

I had another visitor. The local doctor. I had never met him before, but he turned up one morning unannounced and said he had been passing by and wanted to introduce himself.

I made coffee and I also made a huge effort to be normal and charming and not to let him see how exhausted I felt.

‘My sister called you, didn’t she?’ I asked as we sat in the living room, him nibbling a gingernut and my mouth aching with smiling.

He nodded. ‘She asked me to look in on you.’

‘She’s such a worrier,’ I said. ‘Really, I am absolutely fine. I’ve never felt better.’

‘I am surprised you didn’t register with the surgery when you came here,’ the doctor said. He made it into a question with his tone.

‘I haven’t needed to. I haven’t been ill.’

‘Hmm.’ He put the last part of the biscuit into his mouth and dabbed his lips with a handkerchief that had been ferociously ironed. ‘Your sister told me you’ve had a couple of funny turns recently.’

‘I was overtired.’

‘All right.’ He took a notepad out of his briefcase and flicked through the pages until he arrived at where he wanted to be. He scanned through some handwritten notes. ‘She told me you thought you were Genevieve.’ He looked at me then, straight at me. I felt myself blush.

‘She misunderstood,’ I said.

‘What did she misunderstand?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember exactly what I said. I was so tired, I was in a bit of a state, that’s all.’

The doctor nodded, but said nothing.

‘All this speculation about Genevieve, all this worry, it got to me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything to May.’

There was another silence. This time I was determined not to fill it. It went on so long that the atmosphere between us became uncomfortable. I was hugely relieved when the doorbell rang and I had an excuse to leave the room.

It was a man with a parcel.

‘Delivery for Mrs Churchill-Westwood,’ he said. ‘Is that you?’

I smiled and took the package. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

THE TROUBLE WAS
, none of the clothes were right. One of the black dresses was too tight; it made me look pornographic. The other was deeply unflattering; I felt bulky, frumpy and too old in it. The trouser suit was gorgeous and, although I decided to keep it, Claudia said trousers just wouldn’t do for a party at Eleonora House, I would have to wear a dress.

By now it was Friday. There was still time to catch the bus into Bristol, but my plans were scuppered when I received a call from Karen asking me to go and fetch Jamie from school because he’d been sick. I found him, pale and hot, swinging his legs on an orange plastic chair outside the secretary’s office. He was wearing his coat and held a plastic bowl on his lap. His eyes were watery and red-rimmed. My heart melted.

‘Look at you,’ I said, forgetting about myself and leaning down to kiss his forehead. His skin burned my lips. ‘Oh, Jamie, what’s the matter?’

‘I feel bad, Sarah,’ he whispered. I took the bowl from him and he fell into my arms. I could feel his hot breath beneath my ear. He smelled over-sweet, of infection and temperature.

I carried him piggyback all the way home, telling him stories about the dinosaurs who lived in the quarry. Back at
Avalon, I made him a bed on the settee, and left him with a cup of chicken soup and the television remote whilst I went upstairs to try the dresses on again. Neither was right.

I ran downstairs to check, but Jamie had fallen asleep. I pulled the duvet from him to let his skin cool, then I had a bath, dried my hair in front of the mirror and fastened it into a French plait. I put on my best underwear and a silky slip and then I made up my face, more subtly than usual. I used the palest pink lipstick, a touch of green eye-shadow and a hint of black mascara. Then I picked up Genevieve’s emerald dress, the one that had been hidden in my bag, and I slipped it over my head.

I’d forgotten how beautiful the dress was. The fabric was exquisite, it changed in the light: one moment the colour was almost turquoise, the next it was midnight blue. And it moved with my body, it floated with me; it was so light, so easy to wear, it was absolutely perfect. I stood on tiptoe to make myself taller, and the effect was even better.

My heart was pounding with excitement. I had never worn a dress like this before – I could never have afforded anything like it – and even though Genevieve was so much smaller than me, it fitted beautifully. On her, the hem would have fallen mid-calf. On me, it just skimmed my knees. I reached under the bed for my shoes, slipped them on, and stood tall in the dress. It felt just right. I felt perfect.

I was so engrossed in my reflection I never heard the sound of the Land Rover tyres crushing the gravel as it came up the drive. I didn’t hear Alexander come up the stairs.

The door to my bedroom was open. I didn’t see him come in. I was leaning over the bed, searching for some silver earrings in my bag. Alex came up behind and put his hand on my shoulder, and he must have said: ‘Sarah …’ but what I heard was: ‘Genny …’

And I turned and for a second I saw sadness in his eyes, and then the sadness dissolved into a kind of horror. I
reached up my arms to hold him but he pushed me away so hard that I stumbled and had to hold on to the top of the chest to stop myself from falling.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I was just trying on the dress.’

‘Genevieve told me she’d got rid of it.’

‘It was in a bag of rubbish. It can’t have meant anything to her. And it’s hardly been worn.’

‘It was worn once.’

I felt hurt and humiliated and betrayed.

He had told me on numerous occasions that he had not loved Genevieve for a long time. Yet here we were again: Alexander angry with me for trespassing on his wife’s territory.

‘I don’t mean to upset you, Alex, but if she only wore it once,’ I said hesitantly, ‘does it matter so much that I tried it on?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Sarah!’

He let out his breath. His fists were clenched and he was trembling. I took a small step backwards.

‘That’s the dress Genevieve wore when we married,’ he said.

‘It’s not a wedding dress.’

‘No. It’s a maternity dress.’

‘Oh.’

Alexander turned away. He unwound his fists, swept aside the cosmetics, hair pins and other clutter on the top of the chest of drawers, put both hands flat on its surface and dropped his head between his shoulders.

‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I thought …’

‘You’re obsessed with her,’ Alexander said. ‘You can’t leave her alone, can you? You can’t just let her be.’

‘It’s not me!’ I cried. ‘It’s you! You’re the one who can’t stop talking about her – all the time it’s Genevieve this and Genevieve that and …’

‘No,’ Alexander said. ‘I’m just trying to get on with my life. Of course Gen’s name is going to come up in conversation now and then. It’s no big deal to me,
you’re
the one who thinks it’s so relevant.’

‘Why did you print out her picture a million times then?’

He looked confused.

‘I saw the pictures you’d printed out in your office. Hundreds of them. Like you couldn’t stop looking at her, you couldn’t get enough of her, you—’

‘I didn’t print those pictures out.’

‘Nobody else goes in your office.’

Alexander shook his head. ‘Gen did them. She was designing some T-shirts for somebody … Her eventing sponsors … They were introducing a line of clothes. She needed close-ups of her face.’

‘Oh …’ I dropped my hands to my side.

‘I didn’t want to throw them away …’

‘No.’

The fabric of the dress, which had, just a few moments before, seemed so beautiful and light, now felt constricting and tight. I glanced down at myself in utter dismay, and the colour, even the colour was no longer lovely, it was a muddy green, like the slime in old water; everything was wrong, it was awful and wrong.