The Red House (22 page)

My voice is an urgent staccato: ‘Your mother isn’t seeing a solicitor. She’s here. She’s having some tests done to see if she’s a good match for Fiona. They can take a part of her liver and share it. Fiona may survive, Dora.’ I offer this with a smile. It’s good news.

Dora recoils, as if I’ve hit her in the face. ‘Mum? She’s here?’

I nod. ‘She’s doing this for you, Dora.’ That’s a step too
far. There can be too much truth, the same as even water can kill if you push enough of it into somebody.

‘No! Where is she?’ Dora stands, swivelling her head, as if she can find her mother just by looking. ‘She can’t do this.’

‘It’s safe, Dora,’ I assure her, bailing away truth in buckets and throwing it over the side. ‘She’ll be fine.’
Probably
. All surgery has risks. Anaesthesia always has the chance of its target not waking up. You have only one liver; what if something goes wrong?

‘You only say that because you don’t care!’

I stand to match her, taller, louder: ‘I do care, and that’s why we’re leaving, now, just you and me.’

This time, among the turned heads and unblinking eyes, are three new faces: Chloe’s, Morgan Davies’, and DS Spencer’s, over steaming paper cups and a tray of plastic-wrapped sandwiches.

I pull Dora by the arm. My grip on her elbow squeezes her sleeve and pulls it up.

It’s a funny thing about revelation: Something in plain sight is easily missed, one of too many other obvious things; something in the exact same place, hidden and then revealed, is spotlighted somehow. The weather’s been too hot for long sleeves, but Dora had pulled a thin cotton cardigan over her shirt this morning, seeming to hide in it. The cuffs are meant to be folded over, but she had left them extended, creeping up to her knuckles. When I grabbed her arm, the sleeve was pulled up, and a bracelet popped out. It dangles on her wrist, dancing there, jolted.

Morgan Davies surges forward, Chloe and Spencer a step behind. She points. Rage has stretched her reach.

‘That’s my mother’s,’ she says.

She scrabbles at Dora’s arm, which makes Dora scream and push. Hospital security appears and Chloe holds them off with her warrant card while Spencer pitches himself between the two. Dora flings herself at her me, sobbing, while Spencer holds Morgan Davies back.

‘That’s my mother’s bracelet,’ Morgan claims. ‘I knew you were in on it. You’ve taken her jewellery.’

‘Fiona gave this to me,’ Dora says, quivering.

‘It’s not hers to give! It belonged to my mother. Where’s the rest of her jewellery? She kept it in a velvet bag in an embossed tin box. What have you done?’

‘I don’t have it! I don’t have anything!’

‘I asked Rowena for her garnet ring and earrings, and she wouldn’t give them to me. She wouldn’t even let me look at them. She chased me out. Do you understand that this bracelet is not yours? It’s not yours. She could keep it from me, all of it, but you don’t have that right.’

I feel Dora become heavy against me, and hold her up. ‘Mrs Davies, we’re going home. Here …’ I want to pull the bracelet off of Dora’s wrist, but my good hand is around her waist. All I can do is hold out Dora’s arm, which she limply allows, and Chloe pulls the bracelet off for her. Dora’s arm drops, and she howls into my chest.

‘Is this your mother’s bracelet, Mrs Davies?’ Chloe asks, in her official voice.

‘Yes. I told you.’ Morgan Davies snatches it, holding it against her palm with folded fingers.

Something snaps inside of Dora. ‘You think everything is my fault, because I’m a “bad influence”. Did you ever think that maybe Fiona’s a bad influence on me? She’s the
one who started all this, and she did it because of you. You refused to help her, or to help Rowena. They couldn’t go to you for anything, except for rules and decisions that had nothing to do with how they felt. She gave it’ – the bracelet – ‘to me, because we’re friends. That means that we listen to each other, even if we don’t always understand. You want it? Fine! Keep it. The friendship is still mine. I don’t need a stupid bracelet.’

‘Dora, come on,’ I say, my dead hand on her back.

Morgan Davies bellows, ‘Are you just going to let her go?’ People are staring. A security officer looms; Chloe waves to him to keep his distance. ‘My mother was murdered, and the accomplice was caught with stolen property. If you won’t do something about it, I’ll call 999 and get it done myself.’

Chloe steps between them. ‘DS Spencer will take Dora to Parkside station for questioning,’ she offers. ‘Dora, you can make a statement about how you obtained the bracelet. All right?’ She turns towards Mrs Davies. ‘All right?’

‘She should be arrested,’ Fiona’s mother insists.

‘DS Spencer will conduct a thorough investigation and will do as his good judgement and the law require,’ Chloe assures us all.

She doesn’t meet my eyes. I step in front of her to make her look at me. ‘Morris,’ she says, and nothing more. She doesn’t have to. I understand; I just hate it. Chloe can’t let herself deal personally with an accusation against Dora. Spencer’s never worked with me, so he’s the right one for this job.

I offer to drive Dora to Parkside myself, but Spencer insists that she go in his car. I’m allowed to accompany her.
We each sit by a window, the middle seat empty between us.

From the front, Spencer recites, ‘You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

The car speeds down Hills Road. It’s a long, straight line from the hospital to Parker’s Piece, which has the police station at one of its corners. At every roundabout, the car has the chance to turn. At every roundabout, Spencer pushes onward.

‘Say nothing,’ I warn Dora.

I pull out my phone. I’m about to dial Gwen, but of course she’ll be unable to answer. The image of her in a solicitor’s office, mobile to hand, is as vivid in my mind as the truth of her inside an MRI tube, on an operating table, in a hospital bed.

This is what it must be like for Morgan Davies, I think. She’s wrong, but she doesn’t know it.
She didn’t witness any of it, so any lies she imagines are just as vivid as the truth would be. She’s certain she’s right. She’s going to push against Dora as hard as she can.

‘Call Mum,’ Dora says, without looking at me. She stares out her window.

I pocket my mobile. ‘Her phone’s off.’

‘I want her to meet us at the police station.’

‘She’ll call me when she can. She’ll come as soon as she’s able.’

‘I want her now!’ Dora demands. ‘She shouldn’t be doing this. I hate Fiona. This is all her fault. She should just go and die if dying is so important to her.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I do. I do mean it. I hate her for this.’

‘Fine. You hate her. You also care about her.’

Dora closes her eyes. ‘I hated the way she got clingy at school. I hated the way that she always got to be the depressed one, the sensitive one, the one to be tiptoed around. I hated that I had to stay friends with her even when I was frustrated with her, because we’d been friends since we were seven and unless we had a real fight I couldn’t just stop. I hated that going to Milton Keynes was such a big thing for her when I just wanted it to be a fun day, a day that wasn’t big at all. I hated that her mother ruined it, and made me feel bad about it. I’ve hated her for forever, for just as long as I’ve liked her, and needed her, and tried to reassure her. Everything that makes me feel special has always made her jealous, and so made me feel guilty instead of proud. She ruined it. And now she’s …’

Dora lets the tears out, to run all over her cheeks. ‘I’m a bad person,’ she says dully.

I don’t deny it. If I tried, she would counter with confession of all her pettiness, meanness, selfishness. She would try to prove me wrong. Instead, I say, ‘And, you’re a good person, too.’

Dora chokes on a sob. Our two hands meet in the middle seat and twist together.

The car bounces as it enters the car park round the back of the police station.

The ferry moves forward but not fast enough for me. I pace beside the rail. There’s room to do so because a misty rain has settled in, driving most passengers into the covered area where a queue for coffee and tea snakes slowly.

I feel acid climb my throat. Just the occasional waft of muffin smell blown towards me makes me lean over the side, lips pressed shut, nostrils flaring in a controlled exhale.

When I’m able to trust myself upright, I straighten, but remain near the side.

I’ve never seen a photo of my father before meeting the man today. There aren’t any photos of my babyhood, full stop. My mother had always explained it this way: that before my dad left he threw them away. That’s how awful he was. That’s how hateful. He put them out on collection day, just as the bin lorry rumbled towards the house, so that she didn’t even have the chance to throw herself into the rubbish bin and pick them out one by one, which she would have done, she swears.

Now I know that she’d never had photos of my babyhood, because my babyhood hadn’t been with her.

It had been with Imogen, my sister.

This time I can’t stop it. I lean, my cheeks balloon, then I let my lips pop. I cough it all out. I choke as I try to breathe in. I cough again.

I was adopted at age three. My name had been Sebastian. She never told me. She somehow changed my first name without leaving an obvious record, probably when we switched together to her maiden name after her husband left. It might have been easy; she’d worked for the county clerk. It had been the early days of the transition from paper to digital records. She was clever, always has been. A bureaucracy savant.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask out loud, grateful for the engine sounds overwhelming my voice. It’s as if she’s in my head. Her answer is plain to me:
Because of this. I wanted to spare you this.

I shake my head. She could have spared me everything, if only I’d known from the start. I could have been reunited with a sister in Spain, instead of becoming paired with a lover. Now both options are dead. Imogen and I can’t be together, not in any way. It’s too shameful. I don’t know how to tell her. I’ll have to ensure that she’s near trusted friends when I do, friends who’ll be able to touch her and embrace her in a way I can never, ever do again, not even to say goodbye.

If she needs telling.

I hate the thought and wave my hand in front of my face to bat it away. She couldn’t, knowingly, have done this. My father had confirmed that he hadn’t got as far as telling her.

Except that she did know, she’d known for a year. The DNA test will have told her.

I run my fingers through my wild hair. I must look a mess. The rain has stopped and passengers are joining me on deck to watch the ferry dock. The sun is still morning-low but already the air is too warm. I feel pressed down by it.

Was Imogen going to tell me?
I wonder.
That day when she waited for me at rehearsal, after she’d got the DNA test results. Did she come to tell me one kind of good news, and at the last minute just let me believe another kind instead?

It’s time to go below, get into my car. I’m not sure I’m fit to drive. I should have taken the train, like she had when she came here just …
Was it really only two weeks ago?
There’s all the difference in the world between riding and driving, between rest and responsibility. She’s been doing everything she can to make herself a victim, buffeted. I’m left with the decisions and actions.

If she wants to leave it to me, fine. I’ll make a decision. I mentally calculate the route back to our London flat.

I drive off the ferry, slowly, too slowly, stuck behind too long a queue. I itch to pound the car horn. Flexing, unflexing my fingers. As soon as the road widens, I pass, then continue to accelerate.

If Imogen knows, which she must,
I think.
If she knows, and my mother knew, did they know each other knew? Did they lie to me together, or separately?

I drive straight over a roundabout, without looking. If another car had been coming I could have been killed.
Or killed someone else, like Imogen’s father did.

I’m panting. It’s too Byzantine. I’m not an heir or a star.
I’m no-one’s fulcrum. Why would these two women care so much to keep being my mother and my wife that they’ll go to such lengths to cover who I really am? Then I realise that it’s got nothing to do with me now, with the adult me. It’s who I was as a baby that matters. I was, in a way, to each of them, their baby.

I pull over and tug on the hand brake. I flick on the hazard lights.

If Imogen knows, I see how she might have been driven to invent Patrick Bell, to create a Sebastian ‘out there’, a potentially real Sebastian to continue to pretend to hope for and talk about, apart from me.

But why did Imogen go to see my father then? He could only expose it. Why not leave him be?

It’s this one ill-fitting detail, this one doubt, that calms me enough to get to London at a safe pace, hovering just over the speed limit. I can imagine all these things, but I can’t know, not for sure, until I’ve confronted her.

There’s a parking spot right in front of our building, and I pull in. This serendipity should bode well, but instead I feel paranoid, wondering who may have just pulled away. Empty parking in London doesn’t last long.
Could Imogen be out of hospital? Has she beaten me to it, and emptied our flat of her things before I get this chance to empty it of mine?
There’s no chance that I’ll stay a night here ever again, even if she moves out. Not in our bed, anyway. I’ll sleep on the sofa if I have to, while I get a new place, a new start. I have to move. Anywhere. Teach English in some other country, like a teenager on a gap year?
No, no teaching.

Something. Work at a shop. Sell computers or clothes.
Compose music at night. I’ve been working on a new setting of a hymn for St Catharine’s, but of course that chance is gone now.

I plod heavily up to our second floor home. I rattle the keys in my hand, fanning them out across my palm, and pluck the right one up.

The key turns, but the door resists. I push harder. A stack beyond gives, and the door pushes over it, shoving envelopes and curling magazines. I’m reminded of the stuffed barn in Highfields Caldecote. The temptation of a cleansing fire here flares in my mind and then suffocates.

I walk in, kicking our accumulated post before me. It had always seemed a boon to me that our post is distributed to our actual door by our nosy landlord, except now with it piled up in my way. I shut and bolt the door behind me.

I scan the contents of the flat, trying to distinguish between ‘mine’ and ‘hers’. Too much of what I see is just ‘ours’. She’s touched everything.

I decide: she can have the furniture and kitchenware. I want just my clothes, my books, my papers and shaver. I fill several boxes and a suitcase. Once they’re in the car, I won’t have to come back. I can send for the piano later. I can go to Cambridge, say what needs to be said, listen, and drive away from it all. I carry my things to the door.

The post is still sprawled. I scoop it up, then sort, looking for company names. If I grab a copy of each bank and credit card statement, and the electric and water bills, I’ll be set for changing accounts. I riffle through: BT, Barclays, HMRC, Laboratory Services …

That envelope’s a large one, and heavy. It falls, bounces on one of its corners, then smacks flat down in the centre
of the hall rug. That rug’s elaborate edge surrounds a plain, beige rectangle, framing the envelope as if for display. The company name has been stamped in ink in the top left corner. In the centre is my own handwriting, addressing it to myself.

I don’t want it, but I can’t leave it here. I’ll throw it away, but not here, elsewhere, to ensure that it’s never found. Like my father, supposedly disposing of my baby photos just as the rubbish lorry pulls up.
He never did that,
I remind myself.
She had no photos. She only told you that to explain their absence away.

I stop myself. Maybe this is exactly what Imogen did. Maybe the envelope came, and she decided that it didn’t matter. She decided that she loved me, and wanted things the way that they already were.

I’d loved things the way they’d been, too. I’d wanted her so desperately that I might have done the same …

But not now. We know better now that we can’t run.

I rip it open, tugging hard against the glue-and-spit holding it together. The papers jump. Shiny, colourful forms and advertising scatter. Lastly, two pages – a cover letter, and a white sheet with a table on it – slice a Z through the air and come to rest.

I snatch them up and my eyes attack the numbers first, as if I know what I’m supposed to look for.

I shake my head. Clearly, I’ve misunderstood how such matches are defined. I scan the paragraph above the table, looking for explanation or instructions.

I lower myself onto the chest Imogen had bought for our wellies and gloves and hats. I scan the data again, then the summary in the cover letter: ‘No relationship.’ I let both
pages flutter down around my feet and lean forward, face down, ears between my knees. It doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t matter.

I know what’s true. My father told me: I’m Sebastian, orphaned at age three, adopted by a fervent mother and an indifferent then abandoning father. Whatever added up to
this
– here I kick at the pages, smearing them around – it doesn’t change that. Whether the DNA is explained by … what? Adultery, or newborn adoption, or a baby mix-up? I’m still the boy Imogen grew up with. I’m the brother she loved as a brother. The DNA doesn’t make that go away.

I collect the pages, hands shaking. I realise that I’ve forgotten my old cricket gear, in the hall cupboard.
No, leave it.
And my tennis racquet in this chest.
No, not now.

Suitcase and boxes outside the door. Keys in hand. I get out.
God, the sun is bright.
It’s only just gone half-three. I can barely believe it’s the same day. Everything’s changed.

It takes six trips to get everything settled into the car.

I lay the envelope on the passenger seat.
It doesn’t matter,
I tell myself.
It doesn’t matter.

Of course that’s true; the ‘
no match
’ DNA doesn’t change who I now know I am. It doesn’t change that we can’t be together. There’s a story there, something weird, but nothing that changes the outcome.

It also does matter: the news changes one important thing. It means that when Imogen read our original DNA results, which correctly reassured her of no biological relationship, she proceeded in good faith. She didn’t know then.

Maybe, maybe, she doesn’t know even now.

Someone who saw me pack up the car is waiting for the space. I pull out.

I look in the rear-view mirror to check the colour of the car.
Not green.
But I’d wondered, for a moment.

If Imogen doesn’t know, if she didn’t make up Patrick Bell in some desperate, guilty compensation, then someone else did, and Imogen may be in genuine danger.

I take the turning too fast. I press my foot down. I lunge the car onto the motorway.