The Red House (34 page)

Dominic assumed that Angela had found the message, her distance, her muted distress, but they drifted into a doglegging conversation about a friend from college who lived in a squat in Finsbury Park, and the German student next door who was murdered, and the German club at school, and he realized that she hadn’t found the message, had she. Something else was wrong, the way she was running on autopilot, radio silence and the cockpit windows frosting over. He was off the hook. His vow of, what, three days ago? Getting Angela back on track, making the family work, being a proper father and husband. He wasn’t sure he had the energy now. He looked around the table. Richard and Louisa rebonded, Melissa absent in one way, Angela in another, some kind of sibling huddle at the far end, Benjy deep in his book. How rarely people were
together
. Gaps in the chain of Christmas lights. But Daisy and the kiss … Perhaps they had already done the right thing by not making a song and dance about it, all part of life’s rich pageant and so on. He tried and failed to catch her eye. A sudden stupid sadness, the worry that he had lost all of them, the urge to go and pick Benjy up and tell him how much he loved him. But you couldn’t do that, could you, in the middle of a meal, just go and hug someone and tell them that you loved them.

Where’s Melissa?
asked Richard.

Louisa angled herself so that no one could hear and said quietly,
I got a call from school
.

About?

Melissa and her friends bullied a girl who then tried to commit suicide
. Saying it to Richard made it sound worse, if that were possible.

The girl. Is she all right?

It seems so
.

What did they do to her?

Louisa stalled. They never talked about Melissa and sex. That delicate boundary.

You can tell me
.

She felt implicated by her own transgressions.

I’ll keep my distance. I promise
.

They took a photo of this girl, Michelle, at a party, having sex with some boy, then they sent it to everyone
.

Charlie Lessiter. Those boys who force-fed him laxatives.
Swallow, fatty, swallow!
Holding him in a headlock.
You’re worried they’ll expel her?

I worry that this is not just a phase
.

Children can be vicious
. He wanted to talk to Michelle, find out how serious it was. Because killing yourself was easy if you meant it. He wanted to be the doctor, wanted to be the lawyer. He didn’t like this blurry view from the outfield.

She thinks she can slip out of it like she always does. A bit of charm here, a few lies there
.

Perhaps I shouldn’t keep my distance
.

Meaning?

Perhaps I should talk to her
. The other man, the one who’d found her smoking in the woodshed forty-eight hours ago, he seemed like a stranger now.
I won’t wear hobnailed boots this time
.

Two sweet-corn chowders, a slightly disappointing goat-cheese tart, two Stilton ploughmans … Alex and Daisy were sitting on either side of Benjy, conspicuously looking after him, showing their parents how to be parents. Benjy was reading Guinness World Records.
Look, this man lifted 21.9 kilograms using his nipples
.

Benjy, seriously, why would I possibly want to look?

Alex observes his father. It seems both impossible and completely obvious. They didn’t love each other, did they, Mum and Dad, didn’t like each other half the time. A little flash of sympathy for Dad, then he thinks of the dirtiness, the lying, the disrespect. He wants to tell someone, but who? Daisy has enough on her plate. He could tell Richard perhaps, but there’s something unmanly about handing over the responsibility. He has to confront Dad. If he doesn’t then the knowledge is going to eat away at him, but every time he pictures this encounter his heart hammers and his palms sweat. Though it would resolve something, wouldn’t it, something that has haunted him since the night in Crouch End.

Guess the record for the most underpants worn at the same time
.

Benjy, just eat that potato
.

One hundred and thirty-seven
.

Benjy …

I’m a bit full actually
.

Of what?

Nothing
.

We had some ice cream
.

Daisy looks at Mum who seems a little better now, more awake, more focused, stringing actual sentences together with Dad. That echo of Gran. Made her blood run cold. Though when she thinks about it maybe Mum deserves a bit of suffering. All the shit she’s given her over the past year. Schadenfreude. Is that a dreadful thing to think? Well, if she’s leaving the church then thinking dreadful things without feeling guilty has to be one of the compensations.

Banana split, treacle pudding, cappuccino … Richard picks up the bill.

Daisy was waiting at the zebra crossing when she saw Melissa sitting on the stone wall across the road at the prearranged taxi rendezvous point. She body-swerved rapidly toward the Shop of Crap
and stood beside an aluminum dustbin full of brooms. No, wait. She was tired of feeling cowardly, feeling vulnerable. Fuck what Melissa thought, fuck what Mum and Dad thought. She turned and looked back across the road, Melissa still unaware of her presence. Spiteful and shallow. Like they always said about bullies.
Underneath they’re frightened
. Because she had her own bluebird tattoo now, didn’t she. And there were things she’d learnt in the church that remained true in spite of everything. Putting on the armor of Christ, kneeling in the street, that drunk woman spraying them with a can of lager. If you believed with all your heart then none of it mattered.
What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger
.

Gay
. What a wet fucking word it was.

She waited for a post office van to pull up, then walked over the road. Melissa seeing her now and something extraordinary happening. The glossy thoroughbred look, the slow-motion hair, it counted for nothing. It was this confidence, wasn’t it, the armor of Christ. Melissa was shrinking just as Daisy had shrunk in Melissa’s presence four days ago. Daisy sat down beside her.

What?
said Melissa, nervously.

Daisy closed her eyes. She could let this moment run forever.

Once again, Dominic was deputed to sit up front and converse with the taxi driver. Young white guy in his twenties, polyester tracksuit top, tiny diamond earring, driving a little too fast, but not fast enough for Dominic to complain.

Five days and the landscape was fading already. The gash of gold and the green distance. How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again. The sparrow hawk on the telegraph pole. It was picturesque, then it wasn’t picturesque, then it was background.

Daisy stared through the window trying to discern a future that wasn’t clear yet. These were not her people, this was not her family.

The mobile was sitting right there in Mum’s bag. Melissa wanted
to just grab it, have an all-out bitch fight, but Daisy would have loved that.

Louisa was remembering those family holidays in Tenby. Auntie Jean’s boardinghouse, though she wasn’t technically an aunt, of course. Deck chairs and slot machines, sharing a double bed with her brothers, the day Dougie smashed a crab with a rock and the time it took to die. There was an island out in the bay. She can’t remember the name now. There was a monastery on it and there were boat trips, but they never took one. It came back to her in dreams sometimes. Of course Richard should meet Carl and Dougie. Why had she been so frightened of this?

Outside the damp green world sliding by. Ash and poplar. Cord moss and hart’s-tongue fern.

Angela had offered Alex the front seat on the way back so that she could sit quietly with Benjy in the back without being quizzed by Richard who was giving Alex a brief lecture on CT scanning. Iodine, barium, how the Beatles helped because EMI used their profits to make the prototype.

What’s this?
asked Benjy, dipping his hand into the green plastic bag that was squished between him and Mum.

Oh
, said Angela,
it’s something I bought
.

Alex looked round and saw that Benjy was holding a Victorian doll, stained lacy dress, blank china face, too broken to be an antique, too weird to be a toy.

Who’s it for?
said Benjy.

For me
, said Angela.
For someone
.

Benjy slipped it carefully back into the bag, half believing that it might hiss and bite him if he treated it roughly.
Can you put it on your side?
He lifted the bag gingerly by the ends of his fingers.
I don’t like it
.

What’s that?
Richard glancing into the rearview mirror, now that they had exited the narrow chicane of high hedges. Alex caught his eye
and gave the faintest shake of his head, meaning
Don’t ask
, because he, too, knew now that something was wrong.

Louisa turned to him as he came into the bedroom.
What do you think?

He scanned her top to toe. Hair? Clothes?
The earrings
. Metal sunflowers, bronze and silver.
They make you look younger
.

How much younger? Thirty is good. Sixteen is not
.

Ten. Ten years younger. I like them
. He swiveled and lay down with his head on the pillow.
Sorry about this
.

About what?

Family holiday. Not quite as restful as I had planned
.

This is restful
. She lay down next to him.

They stared at the ceiling, a king and queen on a tomb. The smell of cocoa butter. He liked Benjy, he liked Daisy, he liked Alex but he didn’t like Dominic. Something weak about him, insubstantial. And his own sister …? They had the same parents, they had lived in the same house for sixteen years but he had no idea who she really was.

Hey
.

What?

You’re off duty
. She checked her watch.
One hour
. She rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand.

The spill of blond hair, hips curved and creaturely. Desire coming back as strong as ever, that switchback of feelings. Wanting, not wanting. Anxiety, content. How fluid and unpredictable the mind was.

Wait
. She put her finger to her lips, got to her feet and locked the door.

Are you sure this is a good idea?

I think it’s an excellent idea
. She lay down beside him again.

What if someone hears us?

You can apologize publicly over supper
.

He lifted her blouse and put his hand on that little bulge of warm flesh above her waistband.
I’m afraid I can’t be too gymnastic in my present state
.

Gymnastic? What were you planning?

What happened?
Mum looked as if she had been standing in an inch of foamy water for the last thirty minutes. The same vacant expression she’d had all day.

I think there must be a leak somewhere
.

Warm damp air, that flooded-cellar smell. Alex splashed across the floor and turned the machine off. Wet clothing slumped and leveled in the glass porthole. At home she’d be shouting and swearing.
Go and get yourself a cup of tea and I’ll sort this out, OK?

Thank you, Alex
. She walked off into the kitchen, the damp slap of her shoes receding.

Christ
. He squatted and ran his hand round the front hatch. Dry. Something at the back, then, or underneath. He heaved on the big white box, rocking it gently from side to side so that it boomed and scraped out of its recess. He peered into the dark between the side panel and the plastered wall. Darkness, two disconnected pipe ends, a broken circlip lying in the suds.

My God
. Dad was standing in the doorway, like a bloody lemon as usual, letting someone else get their hands dirty.
Washing machine broken?

No. It’s on fire
. He wanted to go over and punch his father. But the china doll … Did Mum know? Was that why she was acting so strangely? She seemed so fragile. He shouldn’t do anything to upset her. He reached into the recess and picked up the circlip. Tendrils of black slime, the little metal ridges sheared smooth where it had come free. He stood up.
You find a mop and clean this place up. I’m going out to the shed
.

The little fold where the curve of her bottom met the top of her thighs. He ran his hand down her back. The most adult activity, yet it made you feel like a child again, at home with your own nakedness, touching another person, skin to skin.

Something hovering that he could almost touch, some secret
which had eluded him for a long time. But the warmth of her body under his hand, the quiet of this room, distant voices in the garden. He let it drift away.