The Seed Collectors (53 page)

‘Have one of these. Just picked this evening.’ He gestures at a table full of pumpkins.

Bryony should pick one herself. It is more real, and will help deflect attention from the fact that she is home very late from a lunchtime drink. But actually what’s the difference between a pumpkin you picked yourself and one that someone else picked? She can always say she picked it anyway, and . . .

‘Thanks,’ she says. After she has paid for it she puts the pumpkin on the seat next to her, like the head of a lover in a horrible car-accident story. She puts her handbag on the floor.

She almost doesn’t recognise Clem’s car in the driveway when she gets home. Why would Clem be here? Of course. She has left Ollie.
She must have come to stay or something. Which is awkward, of course, but . . . She remembers the message she didn’t listen to before. Oh well, too late now. It probably just says what she knows already and . . . Should she say she saw Ollie? Yes. She had a drink with him and the others, and she got the impression that something was wrong, but she doesn’t know all the details and . . .

Fleur has made the phone call and now stands in the kitchen watching the garden fade into the soft darkness of a late summer evening. The little bottle of fluid still sits in the shoebox. Next to it is a seed pod, the one she inherited. Short cuts, short cuts, but . . . If this life hadn’t already gone so wrong, then . . . If it was OK to love your brother, then . . . If it was possible to meditate your way out of this, then . . . But she’s done that. And anyway, she’s made the phone call now. Breathe. Steady your hands, girl. Steady. Find something clean. Maybe one of those teacups that Charlie gave her. Yes. In goes the liquid and in goes the pod and . . .

All you can do is breathe, and wait.

Clem has still not looked directly at Bryony. It seems that Bryony pressed the wrong button when her phone rang in the hotel room. It seems that she cannot even work a fucking mobile phone. The room smells bitter with all the emotion that has not been allowed to escape. It’s a combination of dried tears, stale breath and children’s food plates that have not yet been cleared away. Bryony notes that, despite all the trauma, James has made cauliflower cheese from scratch for them and Holly has left most of hers because, well, who does like cauliflower cheese when they are twelve? It’s the colour and
consistency of pus. Holly and Ash are in the conservatory watching a DVD, which means that the adults are half whispering and sort of hissing at one another.

Clem was here when James rang Bryony before, when it became apparent that Bryony is not only an immoral alcoholic who BETRAYS EVERONE but cannot – just to repeat this point – even use a fucking mobile phone. In fact, James was ringing partly because Clem couldn’t get through. They were so worried . . . Quite why they all couldn’t have just left her alone when she was at her graduation drinks, or supposed to be . . . But that doesn’t seem to be the point any more.

‘Why in God’s name did you ask her to listen to it too?’

‘Because at first I didn’t know what I was hearing. I thought you were being attacked. I thought that’s why you had answered your phone but weren’t able to speak. Then Clem recognised Ollie’s voice and . . .’

‘Well, it must have quickly become quite obvious that, no, I didn’t mean to answer my phone. How long did you both listen?’

‘We are not at fault here,’ Clem says. ‘Don’t try to . . .’

‘What would you say if you were me? I’ve fucked up. I’m sorry. There isn’t really anything I can say. I know I can never undo this. I think I’ll just . . .’ Bryony turns to go upstairs. To go anywhere. To die? If she could die at this moment . . . But she mustn’t think like that.

‘You are not walking away from this,’ James says. ‘We really need to talk about what we do next. The kids. The house.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic.’

‘You just slept with her husband. Of course this is fucking dramatic.’

‘Mummy,’ calls Holly from the conservatory, ‘when will we be able to do the pumpkin?’

James wipes a tear from his eye.

‘I’ll take the kids to Fleur’s,’ says Clem. ‘You obviously need some time.’

‘Thank you,’ says James.

‘I’ll stay there too. Give you some space. Let me know later that you’re OK?’

‘Yes. Likewise?’

For God’s sake. How wonderful it must be to be such innocent, self-righteous victims who are THERE FOR EACH OTHER and who have probably hugged at least once already. What about Bryony? Who exactly is she going to let know that she is OK? Who will be there for her? Who will hug her? Ollie won’t care. Fleur will be annoyingly neutral. Perhaps Charlie . . . But he won’t really understand. Bryony cannot believe this. She needs a drink.

‘At least I didn’t fuck my own brother,’ she finds herself saying. ‘Which you could actually ask Fleur about when you see her. Remember when she and Charlie were together? And then suddenly weren’t? Well. I’m not the only one in this family who has gone to bed with the wrong person. Not by a long way.’

When Fleur looks at Charlie this time she allows herself to feel it, just for a second, and it is like sinking into a hot bath after being trapped in an icy cave for years.

‘Charlie,’ she says, and she almost does not have to say anything else. Could they speak to one another without words? Probably. But that’s for later.

‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Something big. Well, potentially.’

‘Go on.’

‘OK. The Prophet. He says that he’s my father.’

‘What?’

‘The Prophet says that he, not Augustus, is my father.’

‘How . . . ?’

‘My mother certainly slept with a lot of people. The Prophet thinks
that he might have met her years before he came here to live, and . . .’

Fleur watches as Charlie’s mind slips into the same hot bath and immediately softens. She watches as the warm water washes away the guilt and yearning of the last twenty years. She sees him imagining them together, he and Fleur, walking up a bright green hill wearing soft woollen scarves, with Holly as well, perhaps. She sees him imagine her touch. The very tips of her fingers. To actually be allowed to . . .

But wait. In that case why is he basically still looking in a mirror, and . . .

‘Is that true?’

‘Honestly?’

The bath is going cold. There is no hill. ‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘Then . . .’

‘He was just trying to be kind.’

Charlie sighs. Rolls his eyes. ‘So we are still related?’

‘Yes. Sorry. But . . .’

‘Fuck, Fleur. Why are you doing this to me?’

‘Because – wait, sit down – I think you still feel what I feel.’

‘Which is what?’

Breathe in. Breathe out. ‘Love.’ Breathe out some more. ‘Desire.’

‘But we can’t . . . We haven’t been able to . . .’

‘The Prophet made me see that we can. When he told me he was my father, I felt exactly the same things that you just felt. All these years of suffocating my true feelings. Of never even bothering to end things with Pi because I just couldn’t face having to go out there and find someone who wasn’t you. But then I realised. The Prophet may as well be my father. It doesn’t actually matter who is anyone’s father. I’m not planning to have any children. Are you planning to have any more?’

‘You know about Holly.’

‘I know about Holly.’

They both pause. Breathe in. Breathe out. Wait for the universe to run its hand through its hair and smooth down its skirts.

‘Anyway, no, I’m not planning to have any more.’ Unless . . . God, that whole business with Izzy was even more stupid, now he thinks about it. Is she on the Pill? He didn’t even ask. All he knew was that he didn’t want to do things like that any more. Even as he was fucking her he was regretting it. And she was saying maybe they shouldn’t be doing this, but not really meaning it. And she was also saying ‘What about Nicola?’ And Charlie realised that this was the game, this was the thing, that these two were competing over him as if he were the last size-eight dress in the sale, and that Izzy only wanted him because Nicola had him, but she only got Nicola to have him because she wanted him, but she couldn’t want him unless he had been endorsed by someone else, and not unless there was competition involved and . . . And she was pulling him towards her, deeper into her, as if he were a flower and she an insect desperate for his cheap, sugary nectar. And he’d had enough. He had really . . .

‘Well, then,’ says Fleur. ‘We’re not eighteen any more. Surely . . .’

‘So what are you saying?’ Charlie asks.

‘I just think that reality is not all it’s cracked up to be. Rules, what people think, how people think things should be. Who cares if we’re brother and sister? Or, well, half brother and sister.’

‘The law?’

‘But we’re not legally related. Augustus’s name is not on my birth certificate.’

‘OK . . .’

‘I mean, someone would actually have to do a blood test. But there’d be no reason for them to. And anyway, no one knows. So . . .’

Charlie breathes deeply. ‘You’re actually right,’ he says. ‘It’s so obvious when you say it like that.’

‘I mean, I don’t even think I feel weird about it at all any more.’

‘No. I’m pretty sure I don’t either.’

‘I did, once.’

‘You already knew, in the summer house, when we . . .’

‘Yes.’ Fleur looks down at the floor. ‘I was ashamed of that for ages. But I’m not any more. I just think that on my deathbed I want to remember love and passion and being wildly wrong, not being nice and careful and doing the right thing. I don’t even know whose rules we’re obeying anyway.’

Charlie walks over and touches her hand. He raises it to his lips and kisses it. One finger, and then another finger, and then . . .

The doorbell. Even Fleur’s doorbell is beautiful. It is a real little brass bell that tinkles in the hallway. It tinkles again now.

‘Whoever that is has great timing,’ he says.

It’s Clem, with Holly and Ash. She is carrying a pumpkin. And there is a new, strange look in her eyes that both Charlie and Fleur immediately realise is, among other things, knowledge of them, of who and what they are, of what they did once and now can never do again.

‘I’ll put the kettle on. I think you probably need a coffee.’