Truly Madly Guilty (26 page)

chapter forty-five

‘Hope you feel better soon,’ said the police officer as Oliver stood at the front door to wave her and her partner off.

‘
Thank you
,’ said Oliver with maybe excessive gratitude, because the police officer flicked him a look as if she’d missed something. It was just that he was genuinely touched by her taking the time to comment upon his health. Did his gratitude seem suspicious? Guilty? He’d never been one of those people who felt guilty when they saw a police car drive by. His conscience was generally clear. Most people drove ten kilometres over the speed limit while he made a practice of driving five kilometres under.

The police had been there following up on Harry’s death. They were having trouble tracking down his next of kin. Oliver wished he could be more helpful. He admitted that his conversations with Harry had never crossed over into the personal. They’d chatted about the weather and the garden and that abandoned car in the street. He’d felt, rightly or wrongly, that Harry wouldn’t have appreciated personal questions.

The police wanted to confirm again when he had last seen Harry and he was able to give them an exact date: the day before the barbeque. He said that Harry had seemed in good health. He didn’t mention anything about Harry complaining about Vid’s dog. It didn’t seem relevant. He didn’t want to paint Harry in a bad light.

‘You seem very sure about that date,’ said the nice policewoman.

‘Well, yes,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s because the day after that there was … an incident. Next door.’

She raised her eyebrows and he gave her the details, briefly, because to his surprise he found he got strangely breathless as he talked about it. The policewoman made no comment. Perhaps she already knew. There was a police report on file, after all.

Of course, the police would see no connection, no cross-reference between Harry’s death and the barbeque, but as Oliver closed the door and went back into the kitchen to boil the jug to make himself a hot lemon and honey drink, he found himself thinking of those two minutes.

He estimated it had been about two minutes. Two minutes of self-pity. Two minutes that might have changed everything, because if he’d been out there, he would have seen what was going on. He reckoned there was a good chance he would have seen.

Come on now. That was a stretch. Melodramatic. Putting himself centre stage. ‘You’re not responsible for the whole world, Oliver,’ his mother had once said to him, in a moment of sobriety or drunkenness, it had always been hard to tell the difference.

Oliver switched on the electric kettle.

But it was not a stretch because what had happened at the barbeque had crashed like a meteorite through their lives, and if he hadn’t been so distracted, if life had continued in its normal, predictable way, surely he would have noticed much sooner that Harry hadn’t been around, and he might have banged on his door weeks earlier.

Harry would probably still be dead, but he wouldn’t have been dead for quite so unforgivably, tragically long.

Or he might even have saved him.

The kettle bubbled and hissed and Oliver remembered how he’d stood in that luxurious little bathroom at the back of the cabana, letting the hot water run and run pointlessly over his hands while he stared at his own sad stupid face.

chapter forty-six

The day of the barbeque

Oliver stood in the cabana bathroom washing his hands. It was a fancy, soft-lit, scented bathroom. The light fitting was an imitation chandelier, all glittery glimmer. If his mother were here at this barbeque and at the nasty stage of her inexorable progress towards inebriation she would whisper, ‘So tacky!’ loudly in Oliver’s ear, loud enough that he’d be terrified someone would overhear.

He let the water run needlessly over his hands. He was delaying the moment when he’d have to go back outside again. Frankly, he’d had enough. He liked everyone here well enough, it was just that socialising was a mental and physical effort that left him exhausted and drained, and it wasn’t a good sort of tiredness, like when the lactic acid built up in his muscles after a solid work-out.

He heard laughing outside. Vid’s big booming laugh. Oliver pasted a smile on his face in preparation, ready to share the joke. Ha ha. Good one. Whatever it was. He probably wouldn’t really find it funny.

Erika was drunk. He wanted to take Erika home and put her to bed like a child, and wait for the morning when she would be his beloved wife again. He’d never seen her slur her words before or look at him with glassy, unfocused eyes. It was nothing to get himself worked up about. She wasn’t falling over or dropping things or vomiting in the garden. It was just regular drunkenness. Some people did it every weekend. Clementine was a ‘little merry’ too, hectic spots of colour on each cheek, but he didn’t care what Clementine did.

When he was a kid it used to feel like his parents disappeared when they got drunk. As the levels of their glasses went down, he could sense them pulling away from him, as if they were together on the same boat, slowly pulling away from the shore where Oliver was left stranded, still himself, still boring, sensible Oliver, and he’d think, Please don’t go, stay here with me, because his real mother was funny and his real father was smart, but they always went. First his dad got stupid and his mum got giggly, and then his mum got nasty and his dad got angry, and so it went until there was no point staying and Oliver went to his room to watch movies. He’d had his own VCR in his bedroom. He’d had a privileged upbringing, had never wanted for anything.

He met his own eyes in the mirror. Come on. Pull yourself together. Go back out.

Today was not meant to have been the day when Erika got drunk for the first time in their marriage. Today was the day when they were meant to have put their proposal to Clementine, and Oliver had hoped – he knew it was unrealistic – but he had really hoped that she might –

He heard Erika scream, ‘
Clementine!
’

He didn’t stop to turn off the tap.

chapter forty-seven

The day of the barbeque

The air rushed from Clementine’s lungs. Afterwards, everyone would say, ‘It happened so fast’, and it did happen fast, but at the same time it slowed down, every second a freeze-frame in unforgettable full colour, lit by golden fairy lights.

Clementine leaped to her feet so fast her chair fell over. What? Where? Who?

Her first thought was that one of the girls had hurt themselves. Very badly. Blood. There would be blood. She couldn’t stand blood. Maybe they’d need stitches. Or a broken bone sticking out of the skin. Teeth. Chipped teeth. Holly or Ruby? Probably Holly. The backyard spun around her in a whirl of colour. She couldn’t hear crying. Where was the crying? They both had such loud cries. Holly was enraged when she hurt herself. Ruby wanted to ensure she communicated the need for an urgent parental response.

She saw Holly first, standing in the gazebo with her little blue sequinned bag, perfectly fine, looking impassively at … what?

Erika running. She was looking at Erika running.

Erika was running towards the fountain. Vid’s ‘Trevi Fountain’. What was she
doing
? She looked like she was going to dive in.

Erika had lost her mind. She was having a nervous breakdown, some sort of psychotic episode. Clementine knew she wasn’t right tonight. She never got drunk and she’d been behaving so strangely. It was Clementine’s fault.

Erika leaped up and over the side of the fountain in one swift, athletic move. She was waist-deep in water. She slipped, almost fell, righted herself and waded towards the middle. What in the world was she doing? Clementine was mortified for her.

And now Oliver was running from the cabana towards the fountain to drag Erika away. To stop her embarrassing herself. He didn’t even stop when he reached the side of the fountain, he crashed straight over the side.

He and Erika waded, slipped and slid, from opposite sides of the fountain together, like two lovers in a movie rushing to embrace after a long absence.

But they didn’t embrace. They lifted Ruby’s tiny lifeless body high up between them.

chapter forty-eight

The day of the barbeque

Ruby’s head sagged sideways. Water streamed from her. Her little pink coat was heavy and sodden with water. Her arms dangled uselessly like a rag doll’s.

Clementine thought:
Cold. She’ll be so cold
.

Ruby hated the cold. Her teeth chattered like a wind-up toy when she got too cold. The water at swimming lessons was never warm enough for her, even in the middle of summer. ‘Cold, cold!’ she’d cry.

Clementine ran to snatch Ruby from Oliver, to snuggle her close to her chest and warm her up. She could already feel how her wet body would soak her clothes. She got to the side of the fountain and held out her hands, but Oliver ignored Clementine as he climbed out of the fountain with Ruby cradled in his arms.

‘Me,’ said Clementine stupidly. She meant: Give her to
me.

Oliver placed Ruby flat on her back on the hard, uncomfortable terracotta tiles next to the fountain.

‘Ruby!’ said Oliver loudly, as if Ruby were in trouble. He shook Ruby’s little shoulder. Much too roughly. ‘Ruby! Wake up, Ruby!’ He sounded angry. He never sounded angry.

Clementine fell hard on her knees on the tiles next to them. ‘Give her to me,’ she said desperately, but she couldn’t get close to her. Oliver and Erika were taking up the space.

Ruby’s skin was white. Her lips were violet. Her head lolled. Her eyes were open but stared straight ahead. Her teeth weren’t chattering. Oliver put one hand under Ruby’s neck and the other hand on her forehead and tipped back her head as if to stare at the sky. He put his thumb on her chin, pulled open her mouth and then he stuck in two fingers as if he were trying to fish something out.

‘Oliver, give her to me,’ demanded Clementine. She just needed to get her into her arms so she could fix her.

Oliver bent his head down close to Ruby’s face and turned his ear to her mouth, as if to listen to her whisper something. He looked at Erika and shook his head. A tiny shake that said:
No.
He unbuttoned the black toggles of her pink coat.

Understanding exploded through Clementine’s body at the same moment as the music stopped abruptly. There was a moment of complete, eerie silence in the backyard before Sam began to shout, as if he were in a violent argument with someone. ‘We need an ambulance!’ He ran back and forth, idiotically, dementedly, patting his pockets. ‘I can’t find my phone. Where’s my phone? My
phone
!’

Vid said calmly, ‘I’m calling an ambulance, Sam.’ He lifted his phone from his ear to prove it. ‘It’s ringing. It’s ringing right now.’

‘Tell them she’s not breathing,’ said Erika. She and Oliver were moving themselves into position side by side next to Ruby. ‘It’s important they know she’s not breathing.’

‘What’s wrong with Ruby?’ said Holly. She came and stood next to Clementine and plucked at her sleeve. Clementine tried to answer, but her chest was so tightly constricted she couldn’t speak.

‘Does she want Whisk?’ said Holly. ‘Here’s Whisk. Mummy, quickly, give Ruby Whisk. That will make her feel better.’

Clementine took Whisk. She curled her fingers around the cold wires.

‘Come here with me, Holly.’ Tiffany took Holly by the hand and pulled her back.

Oliver said to Erika, ‘Fifteen and two, right?’ His face was dead white. There were droplets of water on his glasses like rain and beads of water sliding down his face like sweat. His eyes were fixed on Erika, as if they were the only two people there.

‘Yes. Fifteen and two,’ said Erika. She pushed her wet hair out of her eyes.

Oliver laced his fingers, locked his elbows and put his big hands over Ruby’s chest.

‘Oh God,’ said Sam. He clutched his hands behind the back of his neck and dropped his head as if he were protecting himself from a blow, and walked around in circles. ‘Oh dear God.’

Oliver began to rock back and forth, counting out loud as he rhythmically compressed Ruby’s chest. ‘One and two and three and four and five.’

‘Oliver is hurting Ruby!’ wailed Holly.

‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘He’s not hurting her. He’s helping her. He and Erika are doing exactly the right thing. They’re helping her.’ Her voice trembled.

‘Twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and one and two.’

On the count of fifteen Erika pinched Ruby’s nose and bent her face towards Ruby’s, her mouth open, as if to kiss her like a lover, in a move so sensual and intimate, so terrifying and wrong, so familiar and shocking. This is what you do. Everyone knew this is what you did to save a life, but you didn’t see it happen, not in real life, not in someone’s backyard, not with your
own
child, who had just moments before been running about trying to catch the lights.

Nothing happened.

Erika breathed once more into Ruby’s mouth, while Oliver continued to rock and chant: ‘One and two and three and four and five.’

Clementine felt herself rocking in time with him, muttering over and over: pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.

So this is how it happens, a part of her thought as she rocked and begged. This is what it feels like. You don’t change. There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedies happen. It happens just like this. You don’t become someone else. You’re still exactly the same. Everything around you still smells and looks and feels exactly the same. She could still taste Vid’s dessert. She could still smell the roast meat from the barbeque. She could hear the dog yapping endlessly and she could feel a thin line of blood trickling down her shin from where her knees had smacked hard against the pavers.

‘Oh, dear God, please,
God
,’ Sam moaned, and he sounded so weak and desperate, and he didn’t believe in God, he was an atheist, and his horror was her horror but she didn’t want to know about it, and Clementine thought savagely, Shut up, Sam, just shut up.

She could hear Vid saying, ‘We have a very little girl here who is not breathing. Do you understand me? She is not breathing. We need you right now. Please send an ambulance
right now
.’ Clementine felt an immense animosity towards him for saying that, as if he was saying something awful about Ruby, as if by saying she wasn’t breathing he was making it so. ‘We must be at the top of your list, we must be top priority, if we need to pay extra that is no problem, we will pay anything.’

Did he honestly think he could
pay
for a faster ambulance? That rich people could arrange for a VIP ambulance service?

‘And nine and ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen.’

Erika bent her head once more.

Sam crouched down next to Clementine and took her hand. She grabbed on to it as if he could pull her back to before, as if he could pull her back to just minutes earlier.

Hadn’t that only just happened? Just then? Just that moment before this moment? Surely she’d only looked away for a minute. It couldn’t have been more than a minute.

‘The ambulance is on its way,’ said Vid. ‘I’ll go and wait on the street so they know where to go.’

‘We’ll come too,’ said Tiffany. ‘You come and help us look out for the ambulance, Holly.’

Holly went, without resisting, without looking back, her hand trustingly held in Tiffany’s as if they were going to see another pet.

Of course a minute was enough.

Never take your eyes off them. Never look away. It happens so fast. It happens without a sound. All those stories in the news. All those parents. All those mistakes she’d read about. Backyard drownings. Unfenced pools. Children unsupervised in the bath. Children with stupid, foolish, neglectful parents. Children who died surrounded by so-called responsible adults. And each time she would pretend to be non-judgemental
but really, deep down she was thinking,
Not me. That could never really happen to me.

Erika lifted her head from her second breath and her eyes met Clementine’s with a look of unutterable despair. Tiny beads of water clung to her eyelashes. Her lips, the lips that had been pressed against Ruby’s, were chapped.

Oliver’s voice didn’t change. ‘One and two and three and four and five.’