The Girls (20 page)

Nineteen

Clare felt a flutter of anxiety as she approached the Howeses’ terrace later that afternoon. There seemed to be an awful lot of people clustered around the table.

‘Clare! Pip! You’re here! Excellent.’ Leo got to his feet and pulled chairs out for them. ‘Clare,’ he said, ‘this is my sister-in-law, Zoe.’ He gestured at an attractive dark-haired woman who was unmistakably Adele’s sister. ‘And this is John, Zoe’s husband.’ A nice-looking man with a blond beard and thick-framed glasses stood up to shake her hand. ‘And these little cuties are my niece and nephew, George and Darcy. Everyone, this is Clare, our neighbour from across the way. And this is Pip, her daughter.’

‘One of my daughters,’ she replied. ‘I’m not quite sure where the other one is.’

‘I saw her just a few minutes ago,’ said Leo. ‘With the gang.’

Clare exhaled. ‘Oh. Good. What are they up to?’

‘No idea,’ he replied breezily. ‘Hanging out. Talking crap.
Stuff
.’ He waved a bottle of wine and said, ‘Red? Or white? Or, in fact, Pimm’s? Is there any Pimm’s left?’ He swept his gaze across the table. ‘No, we must have drunk it all. Sorry about that.’

Leo poured her out a glass of white wine and passed Pip a beaker of cordial. ‘Where’s Adele?’ she asked, feeling slightly out of place without the mother figure here to bind them together.

‘Just putting away the face-painting stall. She left the girls to run it for an hour and apparently the stall got hijacked by a bunch of younger children who completely trashed it.’ He laughed, rubbing his hand across his stomach. ‘Apparently there is a small naked boy running about out there painted head to toe in sludge brown. Apart from around his private parts. He’s supposed to be a poo.’

‘Leo,’ Gordon called from the French doors. ‘Pass me a foldy chair, will you? I’m going to stake my place for the jazz.’

Leo rolled his eyes good-naturedly. ‘I’ll do it, Dad. You stay here.’ He pulled a stripy retro deckchair from a small wooden shed and smiled conspiratorially at the others.

‘No,’ said Gordon, ‘not much in the mood for socialising. Think I’ll just take a walk.’ He nodded towards the stripy chair. ‘Put me front row centre.’

Clare watched Gordon leaving. Huge pile of a man. His movements so forced and peculiar. The dyed brown hair. The violently patterned shirt. She watched him stand for a moment in the heart of the garden, turning his big head this way and that, looking both lost and imperious. Like a deposed king, she thought.

‘Pip,’ she said quietly in her daughter’s ear. ‘Do me a favour, will you? Can you have a look for Grace for me? Just find out where she is? You don’t need to say anything to her.’

Pip sighed. ‘OK, then.’

‘How old is she?’ asked Adele’s sister, watching Pip’s retreating figure.

‘Twelve,’ said Clare. ‘Just.’

‘Gosh, she’s very tall.’

‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘Her dad is six foot three.’

‘Wow. And you’re so tiny!’

Clare regarded her wine glass. She had drunk half already. There was going to be a lot of small talk ahead. She would need more than her usual small glass to get through it.

Pip returned a moment later and slid back on to her chair, her hand reaching automatically for the crisps in front of her.

‘Well?’ Clare asked quietly. ‘Did you see her?’

Pip nodded and put a crisp in her mouth. ‘What’s she doing?’

‘I don’t know. She’s with Dylan and Tyler and they’re all just kind of talking.’

Clare peered curiously at Pip, who appeared to be processing crisps down her throat as a form of distraction rather than for pleasure.

‘Are they all OK?’

Pip nodded and took another crisp. Clare put her hand out to Pip’s to stop the process. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘Do I need to go over?’

‘
No
,’ Pip snapped under her breath. ‘Don’t go over. They’re fine. Just leave them.’

Clare looked at her in surprise. She saw Leo staring at her meaningfully.

‘Everything OK?’

She nodded, then picked up her freshly filled glass and knocked back a third in two gulps.

Adele was back. She’d said she was filthy and needed a shower and had appeared on the terrace five minutes ago all fresh and pretty in a floral dress and a black shawl, wearing red lipstick and earrings that glittered. The air was still golden and filling up now with the sounds of the jazz band warming up: stray squawks of saxophone, sonorous vibrations of double bass, hoots of trumpet. High-pitched feedback from the sound system.
Testing testing.
The crowds of people in the garden had moved across to the spot just outside the next-door house. They arranged themselves afresh on their blankets, opened new bottles of wine, adjusted their sunglasses to the lowering golden sun. Zoe and John had taken their two small children out and sat now with a child on each of their laps just outside Leo and Adele’s back gate.

‘You not going to watch?’ Adele asked her.

Clare shook her head. ‘Not really a fan of jazz,’ she said.

Adele laughed. ‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘I like music with proper tunes.’

Leo had gone indoors to start getting the food ready for the barbecue. Adele and Pip were sitting side by side, drawing.

They’re really good with kids
.

She remembered one of her girls saying that to her a while ago.

Clare sighed and collected her wine glass from the windowsill, taking it through with her to the kitchen.

Leo was slicing open film-topped packets of sausages and chicken pieces, arranging them on to a huge platter. He looked up at her and smiled.

‘Came in for some water,’ she said. ‘Think I need to sober up a bit.’

He grimaced at her and laughed. ‘Why on earth would you need to sober up? It’s Saturday! It’s summer! It’s a party!’

‘I know, I know. But I’m a single parent. Sole responsibility and all that. It’s not good …’

‘Oh, come on now. Your girls are virtually adults. I think you can afford to let your hair down from time to time. Not that you have much hair to let down.’

Clare smiled anxiously and put her hand up to her boyish crop. She thought of Adele’s lustrous mahogany mane, imagined her pulling out that elastic band at the end of the day, it falling in waves over her bare shoulders, down her olivey back.

He looked at her curiously, as though he’d been watching her thoughts. Then he poured her a glass of water and passed it to her. ‘What you need’, he said, turning back to his pile of meat, ‘is something to eat. You will stay, won’t you? I have, as ever, royally over-catered.’

Clare nodded. Then she looked behind her and said, in an urgent whisper, ‘He’s been again.’

Leo glanced up at her. ‘Chris?’

‘Yes. This afternoon. Another carrier bag. Gifts for Grace.’ She shivered at the memory of her mother standing in the hallway with the bag in her hand saying, ‘Clare. I found this on your doorstep.’

She’d lied to her mother. Said it was from a schoolfriend of Grace’s, that her mum had promised she’d drop it off. Then she’d put it on the table in front of her, violently resisting the urge to open it until her mother had left.

A gigantic make-up kit in a smart metal-cased box. Expensive shampoo and conditioner:
For the Coolest Curls Around
. A book by a famous (according to the bio) beauty vlogger. A tasteful card, the numbers 1 and 3 decorated with glitter and paper lace, a fifty-pound note slipped inside.

Darling Grace,

The day you were born was the happiest day of my life. It is hard to believe that today you are a teenager and even harder to believe that I can’t be there to celebrate with you. But I hope you understand why that is. And I hope one day I can be a part of your amazing, beautiful, extraordinary life once more.

I love you and am thinking about you today and every day,

Lots of love,

Your Daddy

How did he know, she wondered, that the big, almost chubby, fresh-faced girl he’d last seen when she was twelve and a bit was now a leggy, Amazonian thirteen-year-old in skimpy shorts and full make-up? How did he know that everything had changed?

‘Did you see him?’ Leo asked now.

‘No. I mean, assuming it even
was
him. It could be he sent Roxy.’

‘And was it OK?’ he said, washing his hands at the sink. ‘The gift?’

‘It was more than OK,’ she said. ‘It was perfect. She’ll love it.’

‘And a card?’

‘Yes. A beautiful card. Full of beautiful sentiments.’ She sighed.

Leo pulled a bag of courgettes out of the vegetable drawer in the fridge and looked at Clare thoughtfully. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘he’s handling this really well. Do you think it’s possible he might be better?’

Clare frowned. ‘Better?’

‘Yes. You know. Not ill any more?’

‘Well, obviously he’s not ill any more. They wouldn’t have discharged him if he was still ill. It’s not about whether or not he’s ill. It’s about the way I feel about what happened. And I am not over it. I mean,
totally
not over it. He broke something inside me the night he did what he did, something that I’m not sure can ever be fixed.’

‘Your trust?’

‘Yes! My trust! My faith that whatever happened, however ill he became, he would never ever do anything to hurt his family. And I know that wasn’t him that night. I know it was an imbalance of chemicals. But, you know, we’re all just a cocktail of chemicals when it comes down to it. There’s not much else to us, so maybe that was the real him? And maybe this one’ – she pointed across the garden towards her flat – ‘the one sending the thoughtful gifts to his daughter on her thirteenth birthday, the one taking medicine every day, is the fake? And if that’s the case, then did I marry a monster?’

She’d begun to cry towards the end of this outburst. It was the wine. It was the emotion of the day. It was him. He crossed the kitchen and came towards her with his arms outstretched. He took her into his arms and she put her face against his T-shirt. She could hear the beating of his heart. She could smell the warmth of his skin. She could feel the depth of his soul. And she wanted, more than anything, to kiss him. And she knew, more than anything, that she must not. That he was married to a good woman. That she was a disaster.

He pulled back from her and for a terrible, remarkable moment she thought he would, that he was going to kiss her, and she tried to decide what she would do and she really didn’t know, because she’d had two huge glasses of wine and she was a mess and he was so good and so handsome and she felt hot blood fill her head and sheer panic course through her and then suddenly he was walking away from her, back to his courgettes, and she felt limp and broken.

‘No,’ he said coolly, picking up a courgette and slicing it into rounds, as if nothing had just happened. ‘You didn’t marry a monster. Of course you didn’t. And of course your trust feels broken and maybe that will never mend. But the really important thing here is the girls.’

She nodded, fervently, as though the girls had been the only thing on her mind all along.

‘Maybe it’s time to think about letting them see him. Or at least, to give them the option?’

She nodded again. She would agree with anything he said, just so long as he kept talking to her in that steady, calming voice, just so long as she had his attention.

‘Obviously in a highly regulated environment. You could do it here, if you’d like. Or maybe talk to Cece. I mean, you know she’s a social worker? She’ll probably know about those sorts of things.’

‘Is she coming?’ she asked, her hand covering the blotches on her throat. ‘Tonight?’

‘Oh.’ He looked up at her and smiled. ‘I doubt it. She has an aversion to nice people. She’d much rather hang about with low life and scum.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. She collects them. I think she thinks it makes her
real
. I think she thinks hanging out with people like us is some kind of bourgeois joke. Tries to avoid it in case some of our niceness rubs off on her and she ends up remembering that she’s middle class too …
heaven forbid
.’ He smiled wryly. ‘So, no. She avoids the garden party like the plague and she certainly won’t want to come and sit and eat organic meat and vegetable kebabs with us. You won’t be seeing Cece tonight, that’s for sure.’

As he talked she noticed the blade of his knife catching the light as he hacked at another courgette and the bony, pointed mounds of his knuckles tight and white-skinned. She saw a muscle flicker in his cheek and she felt suddenly as though she should not be here.

‘Thank you,’ she said, putting her empty water glass down on the kitchen table. ‘Thank you for listening to my woes. And thank you for the water and thank you for the hug.’

He snapped back into his normal shape, his eyes bright once more, his grasp on the knife looser. ‘Any time, Clare. Any time.’

She went back to the terrace where Pip and Adele were still busy drawing and she poured herself another glass of wine.

Twenty

The terrace was rammed; all the teenagers were here, sitting cross-legged on floor cushions, ketchup-smeared paper plates balanced on their laps. Leo stood at his monstrous American-style gas barbecue turning over the next batch of chicken pieces, filling the air with the aroma of burning herbs and spices. Adele passed Gordon a paper napkin. His jowls were slick with chicken grease and there were clots of mayonnaise in the creases of his mouth. She mimed wiping his face and he rolled his eyes at her but did as he was told.

Beyond the terrace the garden was emptying out. The jazz band had finished their set and the PA system was being dismantled. Voices echoed from the communal garden gate as people corralled their children, called out goodbyes to friends. The garden was being reclaimed for its residents. Small children appeared in their pyjamas, some with teated bottles of warm milk, some with freshly shampooed hair.

It had been a great party. The weather had been gorgeous. And here, on their own terrace, the party still continued. An extraordinary amount of alcohol had been consumed by all the grown-ups and the conversation around the table now was loud and bombastic – probably, Adele suspected, horribly annoying to the more sober people trying to get on with their evenings in the open-windowed flats above.