The Darkest Secret (31 page)

Two solemn policemen. Sturdy country policemen with their hats under their arms, standing on the elegant doorstep as I open up, with that I'm-not-impressed look on their faces.

‘Mrs Jackson?'

‘I'm her stepdaughter.'

‘Oh.' He looks at Ruby, who's lolloped along the corridor behind me, works out that if I'm a stepdaughter then she's certainly not a wife. ‘Is Mr Jackson available?'

How funny. You think somehow that everybody knows this sort of thing. ‘He's dead,' I say. ‘He died three weeks ago.'

A visible ripple of discombobulation. However unimpressed by their surroundings, the police still don't expect people in houses like this to live with disaster. ‘Oh,' he says. ‘My condolences.'

‘Thank you. Can I help you?' I ask. I don't know where anybody else is. I've been hiding in my room all morning, avoiding Simone. If I could I would have left. It's not as though she's not made it clear that it's what she'd like. But you don't. I've been a leaver all my life, a runner-away just like my father, and I have to see this out. At twenty-seven, I fear that I am finally becoming an adult.

‘Is Mrs Jackson available?'

‘We're getting ready for the funeral. I'm not sure where she is.'

‘Oh,' he says again. ‘Do you have any idea when she'll be home? We have a couple of questions we need to ask her.'

‘If I had any idea where she was, I'd probably have a better idea of when she'll be home. Is there anything I can help you with?'

Simone's voice rings out from the hall behind me. ‘It's okay, Milly. Thank you.'

I look round and see that Social Simone has returned with the daylight. When I left her in the dark last night, she looked like a ghost in a Japanese horror movie. Now she's made up and coiffed and dressed in one of those vaguely Moroccan draped-layer outfits that cost hundreds of pounds per piece on Sloane Street despite being made of viscose. Her hair is glossy and held up with a pair of chopsticks and her thin lips stand out against her pale skin in sophisticated scarlet.

She clicks along the corridor in sharp stiletto court shoes. She may be the same age as me, but she looks every inch the stepmother. ‘Come in, gentlemen,' she says, with an efficient smile. Not a trace of the despair that filled her face last night, or the desperation that characterised her public dealings at that horrible first-night dinner. My God, I think. She's an accomplished little actress, isn't she? I wonder which one of those faces is real? ‘How can I help you?'

He reels slightly, looks from stepmother to stepdaughter and back again, takes control of his manners. ‘Mrs Jackson?'

‘Yes.' She smiles again.

‘Detective Constable Rice. This is Constable Summers. Can we go somewhere a little more comfortable, Mrs Jackson? We could do with a word.'

‘But of course! Come through to the kitchen! I'm sorry. I should have offered you a cup of tea!'

‘No need. Thank you,' says the older of the two policemen, and we all trail her up the corridor.

Maria is at the kitchen table, buttering bread, Robert slicing tomatoes very very thinly with a giant chef's knife and scraping them into a pottery salad bowl. They see our visitors and jump to their feet. ‘Oh!' says Maria. ‘Sorry. I was making some sandwiches for lunch. Shall I get out of your way?'

‘Of course not, Maria,' says Simone, gaily. ‘I'm sure there's nothing you can't say in front of my stepmother, is there?'

‘I'm Mrs Jackson's father,' says Robert.

A little flicking of eyes. These wealthy types, it says. They must get so confused with all these stepmothers drifting about the place.

They lay their hats down on the table, neatly, side by side. ‘I'm afraid we need to ask you a few questions, Mrs Jackson,' says Older Cop. Constable Summers is gazing around him at the stainless steel appliances, the stacks of bone china. I wonder if he's going to ask to use the loo, the way they do on cop shows. He looks about nineteen, and has sticky-out ears, but they don't age so quickly outside London.

‘Fire ahead,' says Simone. ‘Tea.'

‘No, thank you. Just had one. Mrs Jackson, I'm sorry to say that there's been an incident down at Appledore. There's been a body found, caught in the mud in the estuary.'

‘Oh, God,' says Maria, and looks concerned. ‘How awful.'

‘It looks as though the tide caught him. We don't know what he was doing on the sands, but there are patches of quicksand out there and you need to know what you're doing, especially in the dark. Tide was full around midnight last night. So I suppose he must have gone down there a few hours before then.'

‘Oh, God,' says Maria, and sits back down. ‘Poor man. What an awful way to go.'

Robert doesn't speak, but he lays his huge knife down in the sink. Runs his hands under the tap and dries them carefully on a tea-towel. I know where they're going with this. It's Jimmy who's been making crab food, it has to be.

He continues. ‘We found some identification on him, and it identified him as a Dr James Orizio?'

‘Oh, God,' says Maria again, and instantly starts to cry.

‘I take it you knew him, then?'

‘Yes,' she says. ‘He's been staying with us. Until yesterday. But I think you probably know that, or you wouldn't be here, would you?'

‘And you didn't miss him last night?'

‘No. He left yesterday morning. We didn't know where he'd gone. Oh, God. Oh, poor Jimmy. Oh, poor man.' She pushes her chair back, goes and grabs a piece of kitchen towel and blows her nose. Dabs carefully under her eyes and throws it in the bin. So that's the mourning Jimmy Orizio gets at the end of his life. Thirty seconds of tears from the kindest-hearted person he knew.

Simone shows no emotion at all. ‘We saw him in the afternoon,' offers Ruby. ‘My sister and I. Down in Appledore. We went into the Smuggler's Arms after our walk and he was in there. Drinking.'

‘Yes,' says DC Rice. ‘We'd gathered that already.'

‘My husband went to look for him in the evening,' says Maria.

The police turn to Robert. He clears his throat and speaks. ‘I couldn't find him,' he says. ‘We were worried when Milly and Ruby came back and said they'd seen him, so I went down and looked, but he was nowhere about. I thought I should try, you know?'

‘And what sort of time was this?'

‘Sevenish, eightish? I wasn't really paying attention. It was before supper, though.'

I try to remember when he came back. I can't. But of course I was up in my room for most of the evening, then out in the garden with the Medusa.

‘I looked for a while,' says Robert. ‘I checked all the pubs in Appledore, as far as I know. I thought perhaps he'd gone on to Bideford, but that's far too large to even start, really. I didn't see his car.'

‘He had a car?' DC Rice gets his notepad out and jots it down. ‘I don't suppose you know the numberplate, do you?'

We all shake our heads. ‘It's a Fiesta,' I say. ‘Old, sort of greeny-blue, bashed-in front wheel well.'

He jots again. ‘Right,' he says. ‘And were you alone when you conducted this search?'

Robert shakes his head. ‘No. I had another family friend with me. Charles Clutterbuck. The former member of parliament. He's staying at the Grand in Ilfracombe, if you want to verify.'

‘He was a drunk, you know,' says Simone. ‘Everyone was doing what they could, but in the end…'

‘Yes.' He looks at us all speculatively. Another one who knows, I think. They've looked him up on their computers and worked out the connection. ‘I'll make a note of that.'

‘He was an old friend of my son-in-law's,' says Maria. ‘He would be so upset.'

‘I'm sorry,' says DC Rice. ‘You could do without this, with all you're dealing with.'

‘Yes,' she says. ‘It's such a tragedy. Oh, poor Jimmy. I'm afraid we've all been half expecting to hear he was dead one day, but not like this. Oh, lord.'

‘So,' he says, ‘what time did he leave here?'

We all look at each other. ‘Mid-morning, I think it was?' I say. ‘Before lunch, anyway.'

‘Any particular reason?'

The question sounds innocuous, but I know it isn't, really. Maria blinks a couple of times, then speaks. ‘My fault, I'm afraid. I locked the wine cellar and he didn't like it.'

‘Terry at the Smuggler's says that he was saying some pretty nasty things about you all,' he says. ‘Sorry. I have to mention it.'

Maria looks at him. ‘DC Rice, have you had much experience with people with substance abuse issues? I would imagine you have. Presumably you come across them quite a lot in the course of your work?'

He gives her a wry little smile. ‘Once or twice.'

‘Well, then,' she says.

‘Sure,' he says.

‘My son-in-law spent a dizzying number of thousands of pounds putting Jimmy through rehab,' she says. ‘Several times. He was a good man. Loyal to his friends. But you know… sometimes… and alcoholics can be fantastically vicious when they're protecting their habits. I'm sure you know that, as well.'

‘I do,' says DC Rice.

A pause.

‘So…' says Maria, all businesslike. ‘Thank you for letting us know.'

‘The other thing,' he says. ‘Does he have a next of kin that you know of?'

And so it goes on. Tiggy and Inigo and Fred. More teenagers out in the hands of the world. ‘He has three children,' I say. ‘They live with their grandparents. Their mother died a few years ago, and, well… I don't think a custody hearing would have gone his way, you know?' I shrug. What can you say? The Jackson Associates are down to five. A pretty high attrition rate, even in people who lived as hard as they did.

 

The five of us walk them back to the front door, the Gavila charm switched on full-beam as they talk about the plans for the funeral, promise to contact them if we think of anything, discuss how they will be in touch with the Orizio children once their own travails are over. So sad, they all agree. Such a waste. I follow in their wake, admiring their grace, their composure, their wonderful teamwork. If only, I think as we stand in a row on the steps, Simone and Maria arm in arm as we wave the squad car off, if only my own family had had even a fifth of the unity the Gavilas have. Think how much easier life would have been: just simply, sweetly loving each other, the way they do.

Then the car disappears around the corner of the drive and Simone turns and slaps Maria full in the face.

Maria has something of an eidetic memory when it comes to lists. Once they're written, she can tick them off in her head as she goes along. She's left the original copy with the men, who lack this particular talent, but still, as she watches the suburbs of Bournemouth crawl past, she is ticking things off; seeing her handwriting in her mind's eye crossed through with black ballpoint pen. Bottles (oh, God, so many bottles) to the recycling, tick. Jimmy's medication bag on to the
Gin O'Clock
as he refuses to part with it, tick. Annexe cleaned, scrubbed, bleached, dried, polished, scattered with Simone and Joaquin's belongings as though they have been there all weekend, tick. The men are in charge of breaking the lock on the sliding doors into the kitchen, of ensuring that the hole in the fence is large enough to fit a man and not just a teenage girl, of scrubbing every surface, every piece of grouting, every corner, to make sure they're clear of residues; I'll tick them off when I see it's done. Clear internet history, tick. Oh, God, I must check what they've all been doing online and get them to clear theirs as well. You're only as strong as your weakest link, and there are so many links to worry about.

She turns to Linda, next to her on the back seat of the Clutterbucks' people-carrier. Of course they have a people-carrier, though it's a rare day when it carries more than two people. Nothing less than a Chelsea tractor for the great parliamentarian. She's the weakest link of all, she thinks. She's the one I need to keep on side, the one we all need to keep an eye on. Ruby and Fred are playing some toddler game on the other side of her that involves slapping each other's hands and squealing, absorbed as only toddlers can be. Simone is in the front seat while Imogen drives, and Joaquin, Inigo and Tiggy are in a row, singing, badly, in the seat in front of them, and God help us if the police want to see how many seatbelts we're using.

‘How are you doing?' she asks, quietly, though she doesn't think any young ears are listening.

In the daylight, Linda's tan looks patchy. She's one of those women who renew it every day, scrubbing off the old layer of skin with salt in the shower and leaving murky deposits for other people to clear up, but today she's neither bathed nor slathered, and the line around her jaw looks a bit like a clown mask.

‘Awful,' she says. ‘I feel awful.'

Yes, I know. You're more sensitive than the rest of us. All narcissists are. Only you can see the true horror, while the rest of us just swim in our murky soup of incomprehension.

‘We all do, Linda.'

She imagines that somehow everyone will let her off because she's special. She's the one I need to work on. The rest of them understand how much trouble each of them, personally, is in. Linda's such a goose she thinks the trouble is all about everybody else. I might have to get Sean to keep her on side, she thinks. I know he tires of them quickly, these women, but Linda might have to end up as a fixture for a bit. He might even have to come up with another wedding ring, what with spouses not having to testify and that. Just for a while. We can sort something out for the long run.

‘None of you seem to realise,' says Linda, ‘how serious this is.'

Again with the special. Maria is well used to handling narcissists. In her line of work they're ten a penny. But you can make anyone do anything as long as you give them what they need. Imogen needs to be told how brilliant her husband is, how every sacrifice she makes is for the greater good. Simone likes to be told what to do. Jimmy just needs to know that his supplies won't be cut off. Someone like Linda? Praise her specialness and threaten her status. Easy.

She allows her eyes to well up. A skill she learned early in the day. Nothing flatters a narcissist more than receiving the empathy they never give. ‘You're so right,' she says. ‘You always get it when other people don't, don't you?'

You really can't overdo the flattery, with a narcissist. Linda's shoulders expand with satisfaction. Maria puts a hand on her arm. Squeezes. ‘You're so strong,' she says.

‘I don't feel strong right now.'

‘We all depend on your strength.'

She leaves it a few beats, then, ‘Have you thought?' she asks, ‘what you'd do with the kids?'

Linda blinks. ‘Do with them?'

‘If you go to prison. Would your parents be able to take them on full-time? Only, they're not young any more, are they? Do you think they'd cope?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well,' says Maria, ‘if this doesn't work. If they find out. It won't look good. You know how it'll look, to other people?'

Always remind a narcissist how other people will see them. It's the thing they think about the most of all.

Linda blenches. ‘But I didn't
do
anything.'

‘They could,' she presses on. ‘You understand that, don't you? If someone's indiscreet, if someone lets it out. Jimmy? Do you think he can keep his mouth shut?'

‘Oh, Jimmy,' says Linda, and starts fiddling with her phone. ‘Christ, no.'

‘And you?'

‘Why me?'

‘We're all in this together, Linda,' says Maria. ‘We can't go and get Coco back now. We have to go all the way with this. A united front. Because no one will believe you weren't involved. You know that, don't you?'

‘Oh, God. This is
so
unfair.'

Maria says nothing; just leaves her words to sink in. Looks out of the window and starts ticking off the list again. Everything that's been in contact with the child is on the boat. Even those bedsheets that have been through the washing machine, that dress Ruby was sick on, that might have got contaminated. It can go into the water before we get to Brighton. Even cadaver dogs can't smell a corpse on something after it's spent a few days in the sea. Robert's going to pack up our family's stuff so we can take off once we get back from Neptune's Kingdom. Should I leave Linda down here? Can she stick to the plan? I have to trust her. We're all going to have to trust each other. In a lot of ways they're the easiest bunch I've ever worked with. The only person who's going to be shedding genuine tears over that poor little girl is her mother.

 

Neptune's Kingdom is swarming, but Gina at the office has done her job and their VIP tickets are waiting at the front gate along with the press manager's assistant and a photographer. The promise of a boy-band photoshoot in the spring, whoever the spring's boy-band turns out to be, will open a lot of doors. The women, silent and tense in the car, leap into character as soon as they step from it: Imogen the veteran of a thousand of her husband's pratfalls, Linda at last, it seems, grasping that her performance is important. Simone looks like a smug little cat, running with a child on each hand and hoisting them into the air the way the people who actually birthed them haven't been able to do in a decade. Maria feels a swell of pride at how well she's trained her. She's our daughter in every way, she thinks. Thank God it was her who was here, not the Jackson girls. Imagine trying to persuade Milly that she should keep this a secret.

She strolls forward to greet the PR, her best professional smile on her face. ‘This is so good of you,' she says.

‘Not at all!' says the PR, though she must be longing to get off home again and carry on with her barbecue or whatever it is you do to amuse yourself in Bournemouth on a bank holiday. ‘A pleasure!'

She hands out their special gold wristbands. Puts them all on everyone's left wrist until she comes to Ruby. ‘Ooh!' she says. ‘You've already got one!'

Maria laughs, gaily. ‘Yes! She's got a twin who wears one on her right wrist. I gave them to them so we could tell them apart. Haven't you, Coco?'

Ruby waves her arm in the air. ‘I'm
Coco
!' she shouts. She's enjoying this game. More fun when Coco's there, but still she's delighted by how many people she's managing to fool. She's not reached an age where she's realised that not everyone knows who her family are yet.

‘Well, welcome, Coco!' says the PR, and slips the wristband on to her other wrist. ‘I hope you have a lovely day!'

 

They pose for a quick round of photos and go in. Change into swimsuits, and the littlies – even Tiggy, who's officially down to waterwings – get to pick out a new rubber ring each from the stall beside the wave pool. Tiggy picks out a pink pony with a streaming tail made of glitter. Fred and Inigo choose to wear Ninja Turtles. Ruby stares at the choice for a long time while the teenage shop assistant fiddles impatiently. She fingers a blue dolphin with eyes the size of saucers, then reluctantly selects a pink pony like Tiggy's.

‘Are you sure, Coco?' asks Maria, loudly, so the assistant can hear the name.

‘Yes,' says Ruby. ‘Blue's Ruby's colour.'

‘Oh, I don't suppose she'd mind. We could get one for her too, maybe? We should take her a present, for being under the weather.'

Ruby brightens. ‘Yay!' she cries, and snatches up her dolphin.

‘Okay, everybody,' cries Maria, handing over her black card so the purchase is registered at the till, and treating the CCTV camera to her largest, brightest smile, ‘last one in the pool's a jellyfish!'

 

Robert calls at three o'clock. Maria is exhausted. They're all exhausted. Imogen fetched double espressos for all the women as they took it in turns to close their eyes on the concrete-bottomed sand-covered ‘beach', and they've barely even scratched the surface of their exhaustion. Simone takes Joaquin and Tiggy off to the slides and Fred starts up a tantrum about not being allowed to go too. Linda, in her gold mesh bikini, grabs his arm so hard Maria is sure there will be fingertip bruises there later. ‘Shaddap!' she yells into his four-year-old face. ‘I don't want to hear it!'

A couple of Boden Catalogue women a few feet away give them a Mumsnet look. Linda spots it, snarls a ‘What?' in their direction and they recoil. Christ, thinks Maria, it's probably a good thing those kids spend so much time at Granny's.

‘Mummy's awfully tired, darling,' she says smoothly to Fred, and smiles at the targets of Linda's wrath, waggling her eyes in give-me-strength sympathy. ‘Why don't you go and play with Coco? She's over there. Looks like she's going to play on the Sea Monster.'

Fred trots away, more than happy to get away from the raging gorgon they call his mother. ‘Coco!' he calls across the crowded beach. ‘Wait for me, Coco!'

Maria finally gets to answer the phone. ‘Darling?'

‘How's it going?'

‘Fine,' she says, loudly, aware that the Boden mums are still watching them, still earwigging to see whether she remonstrates with Linda. ‘We're having a wonderful time. How's Ruby doing?'

‘Sean's crying,' he says. ‘I don't know what to do.'

‘Oh, poor darling,' she says. ‘But they get like that when they're under the weather. Why don't you give her a drink and send her to bed for a little while? Poor Linda's got a terrible headache, too.'

‘Oh, shit,' he says, understanding the code they worked out long ago for talking in front of strangers. ‘Are you going to be able to get her under control?'

‘Yes,' she says. ‘Once she has a swim and thinks about things she'll feel better, I'm sure.'

‘Okay,' he says. ‘Well, let me know if I need to have a word, won't you?'

‘Maybe later. Perhaps if Sean —'

‘Claire's called a couple of times.'

Oh, Christ.

‘I told her you were at the water park with the girls and she seemed to take that okay.'

‘Okay, darling,' she says. ‘Well, we'll just have to call her later. She wasn't sounding like she was going to come back, was she?'

‘No. She sounded like she might be going to call a lawyer on Tuesday, frankly.'

‘Oh,' says Maria. ‘I'm sure she'll have bigger things to think about by then.'