After the Lie: A gripping novel about love, loss and family secrets (12 page)

D
espite a flurry
of texts all week from Tomaso, I’d restricted myself to a couple of non-flirtatious replies, weakening just once to put an ‘x’ at the bottom of one. But out of the guilt and deceit, one positive had emerged. I was slowly coming round to Sean’s point of view that telling the truth might be the way forward. If I’d owned up to a stranger and he hadn’t fallen on the floor, surely I could trust someone who’d loved me for a long time?

I didn’t know when I was going to tackle it, but the conviction that Mark must never know began to feel as outmoded as Polaroid cameras themselves. The more I thought about telling him, the more something loosened and lightened inside me. As we read the papers over breakfast on Sunday, I kept trialling different opening sentences in my mind.
I should have told you this a long time ago…
I’m going to tell you something that will shock you…

Mark was eating his poached eggs, oblivious to the rehearsals in my head. He suddenly looked up. ‘God, listen to this.’ He then read a story out of the newspaper about parents being all up in arms at a private school in the next town because it had come to light that the headmistress used to run a brothel in Holland.

‘How weird is that? There you are looking at this woman, thinking she’s dedicated her life to academia and she turns out to be someone who used to dance on the tables swinging her nipple tassels. I don’t know how people manage to rewrite history to such an extent that a Board of Governors actually employs them.’

I’d argued, intellectually at first, that people should be allowed a second chance. Mark shrugged. ‘I think it’s just dishonest not to disclose things in your past that would change people’s perception of you.’

My reasoned argument gave way to emotional rage. ‘I don’t think you have any idea what some people go through. Who are you to say that she should never be able to leave her past behind, just because she made a poor judgment once?’

Mark put his hand up to stop me. ‘Calm down. I didn’t say that. But it is disingenuous to think that you can spend five years of your life recruiting vulnerable young women to have paid sex, but not see it as relevant when interviewing for a job that involves responsibility for teenage girls.’ He laughed. ‘Anyway, when did you become such a liberal bleeding heart?’

I ignored him and carried on making toast. My secrets – first Sean, now Tomaso – were encroaching on my ability to interact with Mark, strangling normality like Japanese knotweed. At least I now knew his stance on revelations a few decades too late.

Mark sighed. More and more lately, he was just letting discussions die rather than risk me snapping his head off.

I tried to restore harmony. ‘Would you like some toast?’

‘No, I’d better get off.’

‘Where?’

‘I said I’d just pop into Sean’s to adjust the sink unit so that I can get on with installing the worktops tomorrow.’

‘So that leaves me with rugby and swimming then? You knew I needed this morning to finish working on the plans for that Italian wedding in a couple of weeks. And I’m not leaving Jamie on his own at rugby. Someone needs to be there in case he breaks his neck.’

As she’d been doing more and more lately whenever Mark and I argued, Izzy jumped in quickly. ‘Just drop me, Mum. I can get a lift back with Rhianna. It’s only training today.’

‘Can you work this afternoon when you get back? It’s just that Sean told me Katya’s getting a bit irritable living in a mess and I really need to keep them on side,’ Mark said.

‘God, that woman is a princess sometimes.’

Mark scooted out of the door without finishing his coffee. The old nice me felt a bit sorry for him. The nasty new me wanted to rampage through the house with a crowbar.

I dropped Izzy and drove Jamie to rugby. I spotted Sean taking photos on the other side of the pitch and chose a spot well away from him. I stood by myself, cringing every time the great bulldozers on the other team hurled Jamie to the ground. They all looked as though they’d been eating a kilo of steak for breakfast and lifting beer barrels with one arm instead of watching
Waterloo Road
and eating crisps.

At one point, I had to anchor my heels into the mud to stop myself running onto the pitch and slapping at the tangle of bodies to get off my son. Half of the time I couldn’t look. It seemed such a contradiction that I’d spent my life saying, ‘Eat your apple and cross at the zebra crossing,’ yet made no attempt to stop him doing something where it was highly likely he’d get injured. I tried to think of anything else I’d let him do that might lead to a broken neck, paralysis, certain bruising, mashed nose. Nope. Nothing sprang to mind. Then I saw the game stop and the first-aid man run on. Most of the other parents carried on sipping their lattes. One guy said, ‘That was a nasty tackle – the fly half, I think. I expect he’ll be coming off.’

Fly half. Jamie was a fly half. Or scrum half? I didn’t bloody get rugby. It looked like middle-class mud wrestling to me. I walked along the pitch, telling myself it could be any of the boys. Then I saw Jamie sitting propped up on a bag of rugby balls, blood pouring down his face. I ran over, but he put up his hand.

‘I’m fine, Mum,’ he said, in a voice that meant ‘Go away’. The first-aider was searching through his bag. I assumed it was to find something to clean up Jamie but he produced some disposable plastic gloves, which were stuck together and required a lot of rubbing and blowing before the first-aider, who was not the one bleeding to death, could force his hands into them. Jamie, in the meantime, looked as though he’d have a severe haemoglobin deficit before health and safety had been satisfied.

One of the dads stepped in. ‘Come on, let’s get this boy something to mop up with.’

The first-aider put his hand up. ‘Yes, sir, if you’ll just be patient, I need to fill in a form.’

I couldn’t bear it. Social death or no social death, Kleenex were coming out of my bag. As the rain mixed with all the mucus and blood, Jamie looked like something out of the video games he was not allowed to play. I was all ready with my ‘You’ve done really well but we need to get you home now,’ when the first-aider pronounced Jamie okay to carry on after a quick dab with a wet wipe.

I stepped forward to argue but he’d already disappeared back into the fray. I didn’t care whether they won or lost, only that the whistle went while his head was still on the right way round.

After another twenty minutes of clock-watching, my ordeal ended for another week and I walked over to meet Jamie. Eleanor flew past me. Completely disregarding the mud that covered Jamie from top to toe, she threw one arm around his neck, slipped her other hand onto his stomach under his sodden rugby shirt and shouted over to Sean to take a picture. I imagined leaping in front of them, blocking the photo like a bodyguard at a rock concert, but instead I snapped at Jamie to hurry up. He pulled a face that suggested I shouldn’t be allowed out on my own.

‘I’m going to have a shower. See if you can get me a bacon butty at the clubhouse,’ he said, over his shoulder.

Eleanor walked off with him, clinging to his arm.

It shocked me that I was capable of hating a fifteen-year-old girl. Even the way she shook out her long mane and laughed as though Jamie was the funniest person she’d ever met in her life annoyed me. Everything about her was designed to suck the attention out of the rest of the room and deposit it, glittering and spangly, in a little aura around her.

Sean strode over. ‘Glad I’ve seen you. Just wanted to let you know that Mum was down last week and Katya was grilling her about my past girlfriends. She’s become so much worse since we moved back to England. It’s like she knows something is not right but can’t put her finger on it. She’s fixated on it, thinks there’s some big mystery there, some love of my life I’m not telling her about.’

If I didn’t know him better, I would have sworn he looked a bit shy.

I pulled up my collar against the wind. ‘I hope you’re not blaming me for egging her on. I do everything I can to encourage her to concentrate on the present, believe you me.’

‘When Mum told her to enjoy her life now and stop worrying about the past, she turned really nasty and started shouting about people keeping secrets from her. It will be so much worse if she does find out later on. I do wonder whether we should just come clean.’

Rain was seeping down my neck and mingling with the chill that engulfed my entire body at his words. Mark’s distaste for the brothel woman, his tone of disbelief, reverberated in my mind. ‘No! You can’t do that. Please don’t tell her anything. I’ll talk to her, try and make her see that she has nothing to worry about.’

Sean ran his hand through his hair, scattering raindrops. ‘I’m not sure how long I can cope with repeating the same things over and over again. It’s like being stuck in Groundhog Day.’

‘Welcome to my world, Sean. I’ve had thirty bloody years of having to think before I speak. And not just to Mark, to everyone. I can’t even talk about where I grew up in case people put two and two together. So excuse me if I’m not falling on the floor with sympathy.’

I remembered, just, to bring my voice down to a level that wouldn’t have other parents crowding around to gawk at the sideshow. I was stuck between a hiss and a restrained roar.

Sean put his hand up. ‘Whoa. I’m sorry. I thought we were on the same side now, friends even. Just trying to do our best in pretty shitty circumstances.’

I turned to face him, hands on hips. ‘Sean.
I
will never be your friend. Your behaviour changed
my
whole
life
. You’re just having to deal with a few uncomfortable questions.’ I paused. ‘And by the way, I don’t want your bloody daughter hanging round my son.’

For the second time in five minutes, someone looked at me as though a straitjacket might come in handy.

I snatched up my bag, marched towards the clubhouse and yelled up the stairs for Jamie.

He came thundering down, trainers in one hand, rugby kit hanging out of his bag.

‘All right, take it easy. What’s the big hurry?’

‘I need to get home and cook lunch. You need to get some ice on your nose.’

‘Jesus, Mum, my face is fine, just a bit of a nosebleed. Why are you making such a drama out of a roast chicken? I’ll just get a bacon butty here.’

‘No. We are going to sit down in a civilised manner and have Sunday lunch as a family.’

‘I don’t want Sunday lunch. I’m going down the park with the others. I’ll walk home.’ He stabbed at something on his phone, my glare wasted on the top of his head.

I was aware of Melanie walking past, with Victor asking if he could get tickets to the new opera if he did his piano practice. Piano practice! I couldn’t even get Jamie to sit at a lunch table with me. Melanie gave me one of those wan little smiles, parenting code for ‘See what happens if you’re not strict enough when they’re little.’

Eleanor came sashaying down the stairs, completely ignoring me. She put a proprietorial hand on Jamie’s shoulder. ‘Are you coming to the park, then? We’re stopping at Domino’s Pizza on the way.’

Jamie nodded. ‘Yep. Just taking my bag out to the car. Wait for me.’ He looked at me in a way that was both defiant and beseeching.

I’d never understood women who bellowed at their kids in public. I’d always thought it was a resounding lack of self-control but now I could see the appeal of pulling the ripcord. Jamie marched off towards the car park and I followed, not knowing where to direct my anger – at Sean, or at Jamie for being taken in by a pair of big boobs and a wiggly walk.

Jamie threw his muddy kit in the boot. ‘Mum. Don’t be all angry. I just want to have a bit of fun with my mates.’

‘With that girl, you mean. You’d better not be getting up to no good with her.’

‘Chill out. You always think the worst of me. None of my friends’ parents are as strict as you. You’ve no idea what it’s like to be sixteen.’

He slammed the boot and stormed off.

Mark was home when I got back. I sailed in, regaling him with the blood bath, Jamie’s rudeness, my dislike for Eleanor. If he’d have said something like, ‘Poor you’ and given me a hug, I would have probably got the sweetcorn out of the freezer and busied myself with a cheese sauce. As it was, he went for the ‘Do you think you’re overreacting?’ approach, which made the bread knife look increasingly less like a tool for slicing the walnut loaf.

I stuck the chicken in the oven and grabbed Mabel, who looked delighted that discord had led to the second walk of the day. As I was pulling on my walking boots to go out, ranting about the bloody McAllisters, Mark stood there like someone who was watching a Pinter play and couldn’t make head or tail of it. It took all of my restraint not to elbow him out of the way.

I drove up to the hill. Something about the view soothed me. All those little ant people running around. I squinted down towards the park. Jamie was somewhere down there, hopefully not behind a tree exploring Eleanor’s bra. I wouldn’t accept that relationship. But how could Mark possibly understand the strength of my feelings? He must feel as though he was navigating life with a road atlas that had the vital pages 24-27 missing. If Sean spilled the beans to Katya, Mark would get the pages connecting Norfolk to Surrey back again. But where would that leave us?

I sat down on a bench overlooking the South Downs, wondering whether life would ever go back to normal. As normal as it got for me, anyway. Mabel ran around hoovering up sandwich crumbs. She spotted a model aeroplane dodging and diving in the sky and took off to chase up and down below it. I hoped the owner would be sensible enough not to bring it in to land.

This ball of discontent lodged in my chest was becoming familiar. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to get up in the morning with nothing more pressing than booking a wedding breakfast for twenty with ‘an exceptional view’ over Florence.

I strode on. I was just feeling calmer, the weak sun warming my face, when I heard a shout. Mabel was careering across the hill with a huge pink plane in her mouth. It was too big for her and the wings were taking it in turns to bash down into the mud as she bounded away from the owner. His feet were sliding all over the place. I jumped up and started whistling Mabel, who glanced in my direction, then did a ‘talk to the tail’. The owner looked as though he might burst into tears, but decided that screaming at me would be far more effective.