Sworn Secret (32 page)

His mother tried to take hold of her arm. ‘Come with me now, Kate.’ Then Kate shoved her so hard she stumbled backwards, tripping and falling on to the polished stone floor. Jon shuddered at the recollection.

‘You have been there for me on those occasions,’ said Kate. Her back was to him, her shoulders hung low. ‘But there have been times in the past year where I’ve never felt so alone; when my grief and missing her devours me and there’s nobody able to stop it. But I don’t blame you for that. I have behaved terribly, irrationally, lost control of myself and said awful things you don’t deserve. I can’t explain or excuse these moments, and I blame
nobody
but myself. If Stephen was right, if she took her own life, the only person I will blame is myself. I will be responsible for her death because I wasn’t a good enough mother, because I wasn’t the mother she needed when life got too much for her. You’ve been so strong for me and Lizzie, and I know you think you’ve shelved your own sadness, but you haven’t. How could you? Of course, I don’t think you love Anna any less or more than I do. Love is completely unquantifiable. All I know is that most of my days and nights I can’t see straight, or think straight. I’ve been a dreadful mother and a dreadful wife. And, oh my God, Jon, if this means I lose you or Lizzie then I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, but I can’t change it. I reacted the only way I could have. We can only look at ourselves, Jon. You need to stop trying to deal with me and deal with yourself.’

And then she walked out of the kitchen and left him at the table.

The phone rang soon after, and though he tried to ignore it, the thing kept on and on at him. He pulled himself to standing and answered.

‘Yes?’

‘Hello, it’s Marlena Sanders speaking. May I speak to Kate?’

‘She’s not here.’

‘Would you be able to give me her mobile telephone number?’

‘She hasn’t got it with her. I can see it on the kitchen table,’ he lied.

‘In that case, could you pass on a message?’ said Marlena Sanders.

‘Yes,’ said Jon. ‘I can pass on a message.’

‘Could you tell her there’s a collection going round at school for flowers for Mrs Howe, and that . . .’ Her voice fell into a stage whisper. ‘I also wanted to make sure she was feeling
OK
. . . you know, about Dr Howe?’

Jon put his finger on the receiver button to cut the call, and then slammed the phone against the table again and again and again as hard as he could.

Alone in the Dark

Haydn and Lizzie sat on his bed and held hands. Haydn smoked. Lizzie stroked her finger against his thumb. She was staring at the photo of herself as a fairy princess, A4-sized, breasts exposed, hair laced with flowers and ribbon. Haydn had pinned it next to Anna’s sketch, the one she’d drawn of the girl in the cage with folded wings and pleading eyes. The longer she stared, the more surreal the photograph became. It was as if she were staring at somebody else. The girl in the photo looked so grown-up and self-assured. She was beautiful, too. It didn’t look like her. If someone had showed it to her she would have said it was Anna. She couldn’t believe how much she resembled her sister. It was mad. All those years she thought they were chalk and cheese, and really they were quite alike.

Haydn sniffed loudly and jolted Lizzie from the photograph. She squeezed his hand.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked him.

He shrugged.

‘I can’t believe he did it,’ she said.

Haydn didn’t reply; he leant over and flicked the ash from his cigarette on to the floor.

‘And I don’t believe what they’re saying about him. Surely, if he had done something like that the police would arrest him. It must be made up.’

‘He killed himself, didn’t he?’

‘Maybe he was just really sad.’

‘I don’t care, anyway.’

‘I can’t imagine being so upset that I’d
ever
kill myself.’ She laid her head in Haydn’s lap and he ran his fingers through her hair. ‘You know,’ she whispered, ‘it’s the one thing that terrifies me about Anna, that she might have killed herself. I mean, can you imagine how desperate she must have been if she did do that?’ Lizzie closed her eyes against the pain she suddenly felt. ‘Why couldn’t she talk to me? I’m her sister.’

‘Anna didn’t kill herself.’

Lizzie sat up then and wiped away her tears. ‘We’ll never know, will we? I’ll always have that with me, in the back of my mind, that maybe she did.’

Haydn leant forward and stubbed his cigarette out on a textbook on his desk and they watched the thin plastic coating on the cover fizzle and melt. ‘I know she didn’t kill herself. I was there, remember?’ He sat back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling.

‘I know, but you were drunk. You weren’t near her. What if she just decided to do it? It might have looked like an accident to you, but wasn’t. She was on that wall, and then it came to her.’

‘Look, Lizzie, I’m not going to keep on saying it. But I
know
she didn’t jump.’ He turned his head and looked straight into her eyes. ‘She didn’t kill herself. OK?’

Lizzie felt unnerved by the intensity in his face. She knew she wasn’t helping him deal with what he was trying to deal with. How stupid of her to talk about Anna right then. ‘I am sorry about your dad,’ she said.

Haydn broke his stare from hers. ‘Yeah,’ he said, kicking at the floor. ‘Shit happens. But it’s fine; I hated him anyway.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It’s true. He didn’t care about anybody but himself, not me, not mum, just himself.’

Lizzie didn’t know what to say. She knew that Haydn and Dr Howe hadn’t got on – Haydn had mentioned it enough times – but the venom in Haydn’s words was shocking, especially given that Dr Howe had just jumped off a roof with a rope around his neck.

‘At least he did it at school and not in the house,’ Haydn said.

Lizzie shuddered. ‘Can you imagine having to live here if he had?’

‘Fine if he hung himself, but what if he’d used a gun and blown his brains out?’

‘Oh, Haydn, don’t!’

‘Fucking blood and brains everywhere. That’s fucked up, man. How someone does that.’

‘What do you think will happen now?’ she asked, keen to move their conversation away from the suicide.

‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I suppose they’ll get a new headmaster.’

‘I mean to you.’

He shrugged and reached for his cigarette papers. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘So do you want to do anything today?’

Haydn didn’t answer immediately. ‘No, I’m going to stay here, but we could still go to the cinema tomorrow. I reckon I’ll need to get out of the house by then.’

Lizzie rested her chin on top of his knee. ‘I really am sorry, you know, and it will get easier. Not for your mum, well, not if she’s like mine, but you’ll be OK.’

He rested his chin on his other knee so their cheeks were pressed together. ‘I love you,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘I love you too.’

Her phone rang then. It was home. Lizzie didn’t answer it.

‘I should probably get back. That’s Mum. She’ll be getting stressed and I can’t cope with any hassle today, not after this.’

She kissed him on the forehead. ‘Text me later?’

He nodded.

Lizzie closed Haydn’s door as quietly as she could and checked up and down the corridor. She didn’t want to run into Mrs Howe; she had no idea what she would say to her. She trod the stairs carefully, toe to heel, in case there was a squeaky one. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, she exhaled silently and crept towards the front door.

‘Elizabeth?’ Mrs Howe’s voice came from the living room.

Lizzie froze; she didn’t know what to do. She wanted to run for it, maybe pretend she hadn’t heard anything, but on the other hand, Mrs Howe’s husband had just died and she should really say something to her. Lizzie tried to gather some comforting words together, tried to recall some of the best things people had said to her when Anna died, but she couldn’t think of a single sentence.

The living room was dark; the drawn curtains had to be lined with blackout lining or something like it because the only light that came through was a thin strip where they hadn’t quite pulled together. Mrs Howe sat in an armchair in the corner of the room with the white chink falling across her chest and over her lap like a chalk line.

‘I’m very sorry about Dr Howe,’ Lizzie said, her voice quivering a little.

There was silence. Lizzie squinted into the darkness. Mrs Howe sat very still. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair. Her face, painted featureless by the shadows, stared straight towards her. The atmosphere was eerie, a touch sinister, and set Lizzie’s heart racing. She wished Haydn was with her. She took a step backwards in the direction of the hallway, hoping perhaps Mrs Howe hadn’t noticed her come into the room, but then the woman leant forward and her face came into the light enough for Lizzie to see her. Her eyes blinked slowly as if she hadn’t slept for months. She looked drawn. Her skin was awful; even in the dim light Lizzie could see it was patched red with spots that had broken out around her mouth and nose. If Mrs Howe were
her
mother she would run her a bath and offer to make the supper. Lizzie made a mental note to suggest it to Haydn as he might not think of it himself, being a boy, and her dad always said the little things made a big difference, even if it wasn’t always acknowledged.

‘Why won’t you leave him bloody alone? He doesn’t love you like he loved her. You know that, don’t you?’ Mrs Howe’s growled words were barely audible, and Lizzie prayed she hadn’t heard her correctly.

‘Did you hear me?’ said Mrs Howe. Her lips twisted into a nasty snarl.

‘I think . . . I should get home . . .’ Lizzie said. She took a small step backwards.

‘Yes, you should run along, back to that bitch mother of yours,’ said Mrs Howe. ‘You know you’re not welcome here, Elizabeth. I want you to know that. I don’t want you in my house, and I don’t want you anywhere near my son again.’

Lizzie turned and ran for the front door and the freedom that lay beyond it. She fumbled with the lock. She finally managed to open the door and was hit by a flood of sunshine that made her blink with fleeting blindness. She knew death made people act in a peculiar way. She’d seen it with her mum. Her mum had hit Rebecca, for goodness’ sake! Mrs Howe hadn’t meant to sound so bloodcurdling; it was the grief and shock oozing out of her body. But even though she knew this, as she walked away from the house, towards the pavement and the safe bustle of the street, her body trembled so much she felt light-headed. It was one thing with her own mother, but something else to be with a relative stranger, her deputy head, no less, who was flipping out like that.

‘You know what I think?’ shouted Mrs Howe’s voice from behind her. Lizzie jumped and turned. Mrs Howe was on the doorstep. ‘I think that if he’d fallen for you in the first place, instead of that stupid slut, maybe everything would still be OK.’

Lizzie stared at Mrs Howe, who was smiling like she didn’t have a care in the world, in front of her house with the smudgy shadows of the scary graffiti that somebody had unsuccessfully tried to remove.

‘I’m really sorry about Dr Howe,’ Lizzie said, before spinning on her heel and running down the street as fast as she could.

The Second Forbid

‘Where have you been?’ Kate asked Lizzie when she came in.

Kate had been desperate with worry. Jon left the house soon after their row. She had heard the front door slam from upstairs. She was in their bedroom, hoping he might come up to talk to her. She wanted to tell him things she hadn’t managed to in the kitchen. She wanted to tell him that she’d decided to repair herself, and that she wasn’t going to paint Anna any more, that she was going to cook, and smile more, that she’d made up with Rachel, and for the first time in this wretched black void it felt like there might actually be a spot of light to follow. Maybe it was all too late? She could see how unhappy she was making him. She knew how difficult it was for him to feel so helpless. He’d loved looking after her and the kids; he relished it, and he’d been good at it. He always used to say that without his three girls to love and look after, there’d be nothing.

She went back downstairs. The clock in the kitchen read past two. She wasn’t due a cup of tea until four thirty.

‘No,’ she said aloud. ‘No more routine.’ She flicked the kettle on to boil and opened the cupboard to get a mug. She chose one that Lizzie had painted at the ceramics café in Twickenham. It had splodgy purple flowers all over it, the petals made by her tiny fatless eight-year-old fingers. As she looked at it, it dawned on her that she hadn’t seen Lizzie since that morning, when she burst into Kate’s bedroom, red-eyed and shocked to the core, having been sent home from school because of Dr Howe. Kate was still reeling from the news herself, so she’d sat blank and empty as Lizzie cried and shook her head and eventually got angry and confused at Kate’s apparent lack of empathy.

That was nearly five hours ago. She checked the house, including Anna’s room, but there was no sign of her. Then she tried her mobile. It rang, but there was no answer. She tried Jon’s, but it was switched off. So she made herself a cup of tea and waited at the kitchen table, not sure where she would look for her.

It was nearing three o’clock when she heard the key in the lock. She jumped up from the table, relief surging through her as Lizzie’s face appeared at the door. Lizzie didn’t say anything, but walked straight up to her and fell into her arms, hugging her tightly, out of breath and hot from running.

‘I phoned you,’ Kate said.

Lizzie didn’t let go of her.

‘You know, we’ve spoken about this. You’ve got a mobile so I can get hold of you. I was worried.’

Lizzie nodded and stepped back from her; she was still catching her breath, shaking and sucking on her bottom lip, which was something she’d done if she was worried ever since she was tiny.

‘What’s the matter?’ Kate asked.

‘Nothing.’

Kate hesitated. ‘Is it because of Dr Howe?’