The Birthday Party (27 page)

‘I’d love to.’ Benedict’s voice was warm with enthusiasm. He put out his hand to hold hers. He squeezed it tight, just for
one moment.

Then he watched her walk away. It was as if the wine they had been drinking had been anti-freeze, and had de-frosted the ice
in his veins. Suddenly, after all these years, he could feel again. He picked up her napkin and breathed in her scent. His
heart skipped a beat, he felt his cock stir involuntarily. And he realised he had completely and utterly forgotten to bring
up the subject of Justine.

S
o when Justine told him, the night after Coco’s screening, that she wasn’t going to go to Berlin, Benedict cursed himself
yet again for taking his eye off the ball. He had been so wrapped up in the prospect of seeing Coco again that any other concerns
had paled into insignificance. The fact that Coco had agreed to go out for dinner with him the following weekend had overshadowed
everything. All he was thinking about was where to take her, how to behave – even what to wear, for heaven’s sake.

And now his daughter had as good as told him she was jacking in her career, without a satisfactory explanation. He felt rising
panic.

‘Is it a man?’ he asked her as she poured them both a nightcap in the living room.

‘No,’ she assured him, ‘it’s not a man. I just need to … get my head around some stuff. Figure out where I’m going in life.’

Benedict frowned. Justine had always known exactly where she was going: full steam ahead. She had been incandescent when he
had first refused her the Berlin gig. What the hell was going on? Was she trying to outmanoeuvre him? Did she have some wily
master plan? And if so, what? Surely he had given her what she wanted?

‘Dad.’ Justine was standing in front of him, holding out a glass of Courvoisier XO, the liquid glowing amber. ‘Tell me about
my mother.’

She couldn’t have shocked him more if she’d turned round
with a gun in her hand. Benedict took the glass and took a swig of the fiery liquid as Justine sat next to him, curling her
legs up underneath her.

‘I need to know,’ she told him. ‘I need to know about her.’

Benedict and Justine had never ever spoken about Jeanne Fox. There had seemed no need. Justine had been barely three when
her mother had died. Too young to have it explained. And after that, there had been no reason to bring the subject up. And
Justine had never asked. She had seemed happy to accept that it was just the two of them. That was how it always had been,
and still was. There were probably some shrinks who would say it was unhealthy, but they were full of shit. Benedict and Justine
were a team. They lived together, worked together, fought, argued, and enjoyed the fruits of their success. She admired him
and he adored her. And it wasn’t as if he had ever stood in the way of her having a relationship. She’d had boyfriends, whom
he had welcomed and entertained. He’d never scared any of them off. He didn’t need to. She bored of every one of them in the
end. They never lived up to him.

The only relic Justine had of Jeanne was her maiden name – Fox – which Benedict and Jeanne had agreed to add on to Amador
the day she was born. The name had a ring to it, and made Justine an individual in her own right. After all, they reasoned,
she was a product of both of them. That had been in the days when they still got on. Before … well, before.

Benedict always told himself that on the day Justine asked what had happened to her mother, he would be honest. That he would
tell her everything. He wouldn’t leave out a single detail. It wasn’t a pretty tale, and he knew he wouldn’t come out of it
well. He had to risk being judged by his daughter, but he owed her the truth.

Now that moment had arrived, he felt nervous. Even when faced with a fifty-foot wave in the middle of the Atlantic, or sitting
on a sixteen-hand horse with very different ideas about where they should be going, or trying to charm millions out of
an international bank, he hadn’t felt his stomach churn like this.

‘She was American,’ he began slowly. ‘You know that. She came over here one summer with a bunch of students. To ‘‘do’’ England.
Strat
ford
, Bucking
ham
Palace – you know the deal … We met, and that was kind of it. We had a strange, transatlantic romance for four years, then
she agreed to come and live in England. And marry me …’

It was the jealousy he hadn’t bargained for. It had never been there to start with – at first he had been proud of the fact
that she was magnetically attractive to men. Jeanne wasn’t strictly beautiful, but she had … something, something that drew
men to her, something immensely powerful that was hard to resist. Maybe it was the way everything she said sounded like a
tease, maybe it was the way she seemed to understand everything about whoever she was talking to, maybe it was as basic as
the dark eyebrows and the full mouth and the cleavage, but men flocked to her side.

It didn’t bother him at first, but once they were married Benedict wanted to murder every last one of them. It was the source
of much tension between the couple. Jeanne was incensed that he suspected her of leading men on, and refused not to speak
to them. She enjoyed men’s company. It didn’t mean she was going to be unfaithful. Benedict could never conquer that fear.

It grew and grew. Hot, white and destructive, uncontrollable. If she spoke to a waiter, his hands gripped the side of the
table until the conversation was finished. If she chatted to another man at a party, it was all he could do not to drag him
outside by the tie. He phoned her six, ten, twelve times a day to check what she was doing. He knew it was going to destroy
them. He tried to be rational. When they were together, alone, they were so happy. There were no threats. But there were rafts
of time when they weren’t together, when she was left to
her own devices. He worked long hours, and during those long hours the jealousy gnawed away at him.

He was constantly looking for clues. He never found any proof, but then he knew she would be clever. He tortured himself,
thinking of all the people she could have come into contact with during the day. All the opportunities she might have had
for a liaison. Or liaisons – why should she stop at one? His questions, his traps, grew more feverish, and she grew more resentful.

‘Why is it so hard for you to believe I’m faithful? Do you really think so little of me? Or think I think so little of you?’

Eventually, his mistrust wore her down so much that she began to drink more and more. By the time he got home at night, she
had already started on the wine, to inure herself to his line of questioning. He saw only one possible reason for that: she
was guilty. She was having an affair. She protested her innocence, then gave him an ultimatum. Back off, or she would leave.
He was appalled. He begged forgiveness. In the end, she had to give in to him.

She was pregnant.

The year Justine was born was their happiest. Benedict could relax, because while Jeanne was pregnant she was out of bounds
to other men. And the first six months after the baby was born were bliss. Jeanne was so involved in being a mother she scarcely
left the house. Eventually, however, she emerged from the post natal fuddle and ventured out into the world. His paranoia
re-emerged. He was aware that motherhood had made her even more attractive – riper, more rounded, womanly. She drove him crazy
with desire, so she must have the same effect on every other red-blooded male she came into contact with.

She wanted to have a thirtieth birthday party. Benedict was reluctant. It was his worst scenario, her being the hostess, skipping
from guest to guest. How could he reasonably prevent her from circulating? He tried everything to dissuade her
from the idea, but she was adamant, even refusing the offer of a week in Bora Bora as an alternative.

‘We haven’t had a party since Justine was born,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve got my figure back. I want to be me again. I want to
let my hair down.’

In the run-up to the party things were tense between them. He couldn’t help it. He kept reading signs into what she was doing.
When she showed him the emerald silk dress she had chosen, he couldn’t help feeling she had picked it with someone else in
mind. Repeatedly he told himself he was being irrational, that he would lose her if he didn’t get a grip on his emotions.
He promised himself he wouldn’t let it spoil the party. She was right – she deserved to have fun. She was doing such a wonderful
job of bringing up their daughter. He was immensely proud of them. If he didn’t get a grip, he would lose them both. This
was a sobering thought indeed, and Benedict resolved to relax. If she spoke to another man, so what? It was his bed she would
climb into at the end of the night.

He knew the moment he set eyes on them talking. The man was leaning casually up against the wall, looking at her sleepily,
his hand curled around his glass. There was a familiarity between them that didn’t just come from having had a few cocktails.
And as Jeanne walked away, he watched the man watching her, proprietorial lust in his eyes.

He could scarcely wait until the last guest was gone before he hurled accusations at her. She hurled back denials.

‘Do you know what? I wish I was fucking him. Because I’m being punished enough for it. I might as well.’

She left the room. Benedict lay back on the bed, exhausted. It was too late to call her back and apologise. He knew he should.
He had behaved disgracefully, but it was only because he loved her so much. Maybe he should see a shrink. Other husbands didn’t
seem to have this overwhelming possessive-ness. He pulled the covers over his head and sought refuge in sleep, hating himself
for his temper. He would make it up
to her tomorrow, he thought drowsily. They would go somewhere lovely for lunch with the baby. He thought of his little family
with a warm glow as he drifted off into unconsciousness.

At this point in the story, Benedict halted. It was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. He wasn’t leaving any detail
out. Justine had the right to know everything. He wanted her to know exactly how guilty he had been for everything that had
followed. He could have given her the sanitised version, but what was the point?

She was staring at him, sitting upright, her arms clasped around her knees. She knew it wasn’t going to be a happy ending.

‘Go on,’ she whispered.

He took a final slug of brandy. He wasn’t going to whitewash himself, but he wasn’t going to whitewash Jeanne either. The
truth had been festering inside him for years, and he was ready to be judged. He had been judging himself for long enough,
after all.

Someone came to wake him at half past five that morning. He couldn’t remember who. A member of staff, a policeman, a paramedic
– he had no idea. No recall. Jeanne had been found floating face down in the swimming pool, still in her green dress. There
was a glass by a chair on the side of the pool smeared with her lipstick, next to her discarded shoes.

The post mortem showed that she had died with an excessive level of alcohol in her body. And that she had had sex several
hours before she drowned.

Benedict looked at his daughter as he revealed the last piece of the puzzle. The piece that he could have held back, if he
had wanted to, but it was the piece of information that redeemed him.

Jeanne and Benedict had not made love for three weeks.

It had been a double-edged sword, that piece of information. It made him realise that his fears hadn’t been irrational, but
the fact that his suspicions weren’t unfounded, that she had been unfaithful, were hardly a consolation. And now he would
never know if her drowning had simply been a terrible accident, or if she had tried to take her life because she was embroiled
in a passionate but unrequited love affair, or if indeed he had driven her to seek solace in someone else’s arms because of
his paranoia. He never found out who the man at the party had been.

His way of dealing with it was to wipe Jeanne out of his life. He excised all trace of her. He changed all of his staff. He
no longer mixed with the same friends. He paid someone very well to keep as much of the detail out of the press as possible.
Even now, he paid someone a retainer to comb the Internet on a regular basis, erasing any mention of her, so that even if
Justine chose to do some digging, she would never find anything.

Benedict finished his story, and waited for his daughter’s judgement. If his confession meant losing her, then so be it. It
was all he deserved.

For several moments, Justine didn’t speak. She looked around her, bewildered, as if someone was going to come forward and
tell her what to think. Then she turned to face Benedict, and he saw the tears glittering in her eyes.

‘Oh Dad,’ she said softly. ‘That’s so sad …’

And she reached out and held his face in her hands, and stroked his cheeks with her thumbs, and he realised she was wiping
away his tears, tears that had remained unshed for all this time.

‘It was an accident,’ she told him. ‘A terrible, tragic accident. There was no one to blame.’

There was everyone to blame. Him. Jeanne. They were all culpable. He’d been over it often enough in his head.

And then she pulled him into her arms as he wept, all the
grief and regret and sorrow pouring out of him at long last. And along with those emotions was an overwhelming sense of relief,
that at last he had confessed, and that she wasn’t going to punish him, his beautiful daughter. She understood.

Of course she understood.

She understood completely. The only thing he was guilty of was loving too much, with a passion that had engulfed him and driven
him to near madness.

By asking Benedict about her mother, she had hoped to find a clue about the new person she had become. She had assumed that
what she was going through was courtesy of characteristics she had inherited from Jeanne. Now she realised that she was replicating
her father – the man she had thought so strong, so self-sufficient.