One Secret Summer (45 page)

‘Sorry about that,’ he said after a while, so quietly she thought she might have misheard it.

‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ she said softly.

‘No, there is. I don’t know why I even bothered to go there.’

‘Why did you?’ She lifted the heavy coverlet and turned it over. The iron gave off a satisfying puff of steam.

He shrugged, his eyes on the television again. ‘I don’t know … I’d promised Diana I’d go round if I was here over Christmas.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me who she was?’

He was quiet for a moment. ‘It didn’t seem relevant, to be honest. I don’t know … back there in Djibouti, it seemed much simpler,
somehow. Just you and me.’

‘What happened between you, Josh? Between you and your brothers, I mean.’

He shrugged nonchalantly, but there was a great tension in his shoulders. ‘Childhood stuff. Long time ago.’

‘What sort of childhood stuff ?’

Again, it took him a while to answer. He was struggling with something, something he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud.
She could feel the energy of it like a new kind of heat in the room. She continued with the slow, unhurried lift and press
of her task, waiting for him to answer. Whatever was smouldering inside him would need to burn itself out, she saw, before
he
could bring himself to speak. She waited. And at last he began to talk.

He couldn’t say when he first knew. It seemed to him somehow that he’d always known. It wasn’t just that he looked different
– he
was
different. In every way, not just physically. Rafe and Aaron were like Harvey … simple, straightforward, uncomplicated. They
knew what they liked and why. There was nothing in either of them that hinted at the kind of slippery, dark territory he inhabited,
even back then. His dreams were full of mystery and secrecy, things he could only guess at but couldn’t explain. He would
wake in the morning exhausted from the effort of trying to understand what was being told to him in the silent dark hours
between Diana putting out the light last thing at night and waking in the morning to a world that was so utterly different
from the one he inhabited in his sleep that he sometimes had difficulty distinguishing between them – which was the dream
and which was real? Diana understood. She would be there in the morning, already dressed for chambers, that far-off place
where she worked and which took up almost every second of her waking time, but the slow, special smile she had just for him
made him realise that she understood. Not Harvey, not his brothers – only Diana.

‘Tell me about your dreams,’ she would say to him on a Sunday morning when the others were at rugby practice or out somewhere
in the garden, which was their second home. ‘Tell me about the one you had on Tuesday.’ That she remembered exactly which
day it was, which precise dream, sent a warm glow coursing through him. Diana understood everything. ‘How utterly marvellous,’
she would say, listening to him recount whatever it was that had come to him in the early hours of Tuesday morning. ‘Imagine
that. And all of that came out of that little head. What a wonderful imagination you have.’ She often caught hold of his head,
squeezing him to her and tousling the short, thick black curls which were like hers but not theirs. ‘Good Lord, where’d he
come from?’ people would often
ask when presented with the Keeler brothers all at once and for the first time. He hated hearing it and yet he loved it too.
It marked him out as different. Special, as Diana would always whisper to him.
You’re special because you’re mine
. The others felt it too. Or did he feel it because they showed it first? He didn’t know; couldn’t say. All he could say for
sure was that when it happened, there was no surprise involved. He’d looked at the scene unfolding in front of him and his
only thought had been,
Yes. This is how it is. This is how it’s always been. This is why.

‘Why what?’ Niela interrupted him softly. She was sitting opposite him, her knees drawn up against her chest.

They were in Mougins, his favourite place in the whole world. He was ten at the time. In those days, there was a wonderful
pattern to their summer holidays. Diana’s chambers always closed exactly to the day when they came home from school. Rafe
and Aaron were at boarding school; Josh was still at home. The following year he too would go to Eton, the draughty, forbidding
school that his brothers loved. He was dreading it. Not because he couldn’t hold his own – at ten he was already nearly as
tall as Aaron, who was four years older, and his lean, tough physique meant that he’d never been bullied at school, not once.
He was more than capable of looking after himself. It wasn’t the bullying that he was afraid of – it was being away from Diana.
That summer, his last before the dreaded lonely years of boarding school began, the four of them, Diana, Rafe, Aaron and himself,
had gone ahead to Mougins; Harvey was due to follow them in a couple of weeks.

They drove down from London in the Volvo estate with Buster in the back, yapping excitedly all the way. The ferry crossing
was magical. It was windy and the clouds were giant, shape-shifting puffs of white chasing each other across the sky. He stood
on the upper deck gazing mesmerised at the creamy white foam thrown up behind them by the ferry’s engines as they ploughed
through the dark green sea, marking out their progress. At Calais, Diana took them to a café, where they all
had
café au lait
and paper-thin croissants stuffed with almond paste and chocolate.

They stopped overnight in Lyon at the small
pension
they always stayed at – the owner and his wife, M. and Mme Santos, made the usual exclamations at how much they’d grown,
how their French had improved, how wonderful Diana looked … where was M’sieur Keeler? Ah, working. Such an important job,
saving lives. Rafe looked particularly pleased when they said that. He wanted to be a surgeon, just like Dad. Aaron wanted
to be a lawyer, just like
Maman
. And you? Mme Santos looked at Josh indulgently. He felt the tips of his ears reddening as he answered. He wanted to be a
cook. No, a chef. A cook was a lady. The roar of laughter sent the pigeons scattering in fright. A chef! ‘Darling, whatever
do you mean?’ Diana’s hand was on the back of his neck, affectionately stroking the soft curls that fell over his collar when
his hair had grown too long. ‘A chef ?’ Rafe and Aaron threw him sidelong looks of such smug satisfaction that he was taken
aback. What was wrong with wanting to be a chef ? Mme Santos was a chef, wasn’t she? He
liked
cooking. ‘Of course you do, darling,’ Diana murmured, silencing the other two with a look. ‘Of course you do.’

‘Tosser,’ Aaron murmured under his breath so that no one would hear it. ‘Stupid, silly tosser.’ It was his favourite insult
that year.

The farmhouse was just as he remembered. The big oak tree was in full and splendid bloom; the oleanders, roses and hyacinths
that Diana had painstakingly transplanted from London were out in colourful force. They pulled up as the shadows were already
beginning to lengthen and the sun was slipping out of the sky. He rushed ahead with Buster to open the gate. There was a car
in the driveway. He stopped in confusion, turning his head to look enquiringly at Diana. ‘There’s someone here, Mum,’ he shouted.
‘Someone’s here.’

‘It’s all right, darling, I know. It’s only Uncle Rufus.’

Josh looked uncertainly ahead. His uncle Rufus – his dad’s
only brother – was strange. It had been a few years since he’d seen him. He dropped in and out of their lives at random. Sometimes
he’d be around in London for a few weeks; there’d be a dinner at the house and some presents … he’d be there in the morning
for breakfast and lunch and then he would disappear, sometimes for a couple of years. In between there’d be no word, not even
a postcard from all those exotic places he went to … South America, Asia, Japan, Africa. He couldn’t say exactly what it was
that Uncle Rufus did … something with the word ‘development’ in it, but he had no idea what that really meant. He came back
to the house in Islington with stories of meetings with presidents and con-men, being shot at in places with unpronounceable
names and narrow escapes that always seemed to involve guns and being smuggled in the boot of a car. Josh didn’t know why
he didn’t like him. It wasn’t that the stories were implausible – no, one look at Uncle Rufus and you could see that it was
all true. He was tall, like Dad, but much more powerfully built … thick dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, a curved, Romanesque
nose (he’d had to ask Diana what that meant) and a deep, booming laugh. He was nothing like Harvey, in the same way Josh was
nothing like Aaron or Rafe. But Diana seemed to like him. She was different when he was around; livelier, somehow, less guarded
and less reserved. He didn’t like her like that. He preferred the quieter Diana whose attention wasn’t claimed by the man
who, however temporarily, seemed to him to have usurped his father’s place.

‘Uncle Rufus is staying for a few days,’ Diana said to him out of the window as she manoeuvred the car into the driveway.
‘Just until Dad gets here.’

Josh stood in the doorway of the farmhouse, curiously unwilling to go in. There was music playing in the background – deep,
flowing music that washed over the whole house, stealing around the doors and windows, entering every room. He didn’t like
it. Dad never played music so loudly.

‘You’re here!’ Uncle Rufus emerged from the living room at the end of the long corridor and stood there, his hands in his
pockets as he surveyed them coming through the doorway. ‘At last. Thought you’d never arrive.’

‘Sorry, sorry …’ Diana came through into the hallway struggling to hold on to Buster and a large suitcase at the same time.
‘We left a bit late this morning. When did you get in?’

‘Last night.’ Uncle Rufus made no move to help her, Josh noticed. His dad would never have let Diana struggle with a suitcase.

‘Here, Mum … give me that.’ He took the case from her and threw his uncle what he hoped was a suitably murderous look. Uncle
Rufus affected not to notice. Josh took the case – it wasn’t
that
heavy – and marched upstairs with it. His earlier good mood was completely soured. It wasn’t even the first day of their
holiday and it was already ruined.

It was on their third night that it happened. They’d all gone into the living room after supper, each preoccupied in their
own way – Aaron and Rafe were playing a card game; Diana was reading a thick stack of files; Uncle Rufus was listening to
the stereo with his headphones on and Josh was lying on his stomach, his eyes closed, going over the events of the day – eating,
swimming, more eating, more swimming – thinking of how he would tell his friends at school what he’d done during the holiday.
Uncle Rufus suddenly stood up, took off the earphones and announced that it was time to play a game. Hide and seek. Aaron
and Rafe jumped up enthusiastically; it was exactly the sort of rowdy game they loved to play. Diana looked up, an expression
of indulgent cheerfulness on her face. ‘A game? Oh, Rufus … really? You
really
want to? You’re as bad as these three.’ Josh didn’t like that. He didn’t want to play; he was nothing like Uncle Rufus or
the other two.

‘Come on, then … who’s going to be the catcher?’ Uncle Rufus shouted cheerfully. ‘You, Rafe? You’re the oldest. Count to a
hundred and then come and find us. Come on, everyone. Let’s scram!’

Josh found himself being swept along in the rush to get out of
the living room. Even Diana had joined in enthusiastically. Rafe stood in the corner, his face turned away from them as he
counted slowly and loudly. ‘Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight …’ Aaron had opened the front door as soundlessly as he
could and slipped out. Ahead of him, going up the stairs, Josh could see Diana and Uncle Rufus. He waited for a second, his
hand on the banister, trying to think of the one place in the house where Rafe would never look. Ah, he had it. He grinned,
in spite of himself. If he was lucky, he could hide out there all evening, away from the others and their stupid, silly games.
Maybe even until morning.

He ran up the second flight of stairs, wriggled easily into the space at the end of the corridor and then up the short flight
of wooden stairs to the attic. It ran the entire length of the farmhouse and had always been a junkyard storage room for all
the things they’d inherited from Diana’s parents’ farmhouse just down the road when her father died. Diana didn’t want anything
that had been left to her. Josh thought he could vaguely remember the removals people one year lugging huge, ugly pieces of
furniture up into the roof, where they’d stayed ever since, buried out of sight.

He moved through the dark, his feet remembering the loose floorboards, his hands judging the distance between objects with
ease. It had been a year since he’d been in the attic space but he knew every square inch. Outside he could hear the trees
in motion; a light wind had blown up since that afternoon, setting the garden in gentle movement, trees whispering to one
another and the birds chattering in reply. He found the spot where the mattress had been slung and lay down, cracks of light
appearing as his face was laid close to the ground and his eyes and ears attuned themselves properly to the dark. He could
hear someone moving about in the room below – through the floorboards he could see that it was Diana. He was directly above
the spare bedroom at the end of the corridor. She opened the door and the movement sent the curtains blowing. The crack of
light widened; he put his face closer to the ground and peered
downwards. There was a figure standing in the doorway, lit from behind. It was Uncle Rufus. Across the room the curtain rose
and fell like a veil. Diana was standing by the window, looking out into the inky darkness of the garden. Uncle Rufus closed
the door behind him and turned the key, locking it. Josh felt a sudden tightness in his chest, as if he knew what was about
to happen next. In a way, he did. He’d dreamed it, he realised, many times. He heard his mother sigh, a soft, tense little
sound that rose up from her throat. He wanted desperately not to look, but he couldn’t turn away. Uncle Rufus came up behind
her. The tips of his fingers came to rest on her face. His own skin tingled uncomfortably as he watched the next moves in
an act that he knew he shouldn’t be witnessing. He lay there, his face close to the floorboards, with the curtains lifting
and falling in time to the lifting and falling of Uncle Rufus’s back, on top of his mother, squashing the breath out of her.
Only the sounds coming from them both didn’t suggest an ending of life – rather the opposite. A beginning. Something new.
Something that shouldn’t have been seen, especially not by him.