The Truth Club (43 page)

I feel like I have suddenly been thrown into the Truth Club.
Within hours, I have learned that April is my half-sister and that
DeeDee got pregnant by Joseph and that Diarmuid is talking to
Charlene – not just teaching her to drive and having sex with her,
but actually cooking her dinner and having long conversations. I’m almost scared to phone my parents in case they suddenly announce that I am, in fact, adopted.

I wish Erika and Fiona hadn’t flown home this morning. We all
got up early and sat in the jacuzzi for half an hour, and I told them about DeeDee. It made them both cry – which is not, I suppose, that surprising, since they’ve been close to tears ever since the jet landed. It made me cry too. We must be the only people on the planet who come to New York for a good sob.

Poor DeeDee. She was treated like an outcast. The thing is,
now that I’ve discovered why she left, I don’t think it’s advisable
to try to find her. She might march into Aggie’s bedroom and shout, ‘You old bitch!’ and rant and holler. I doubt very much
that she could forgive what happened – surely Aggie must know
that. But I’m fairly convinced that Aggie has now blanked many of the sadder details
from her memory. How could she have dismissed her sister’s version of events so easily? She talks about loving her now, but did she love her then? Did any of them understand her?

I sigh and fiddle with the sugar sachets. I’m so disappointed in
Aggie. I find it hard to accept that she was so callous. I liked
Joseph, too, but now he seems like a brute – and DeeDee’s parents
sound extraordinarily insensitive. I’ll never be able to think of
them in the same way again. In fact, the truth about what
happened to DeeDee is so horrible that I’m beginning to suspect
it is, perhaps, best forgotten. What’s the point of bringing it up
now? In the circumstances, it’s almost more comforting to think
that she just disappeared.

I never want to see any of them again.
That’s what she wrote.

I must respect that. It was silly of me to ring International
Directory Enquiries in the middle of last night to ask if they had
a number for a DeeDee Aldridge in Rio. They didn’t, of course. She will have changed her name. She wouldn’t have wanted to
keep any reminder of the family that spurned her. She’s probably
married. I hope life brought her lots of hats and marble cake – and, most of all, I hope it has brought her love.

I check my bag to make sure the diamond brooch is still in there. I wish April hadn’t made me promise not to tell Mum I know who her father is – her biological father. Dad is her father
too; of course he is. When he hears April is on the phone, his eyes l
ight up. I admire him even more than I used to. He must have a
big, forgiving heart.

I’m about to close my bag when I see the notebook. I take it
out and reach for the small, faded photo of DeeDee. That’s all we
have of her now. I wonder what she would have made of our big,
friendly house in the golden hills outside San Francisco. Maybe
April was conceived there. Dad was often away giving concerts,
and I came back from school late in the afternoons. I used to feel
it was a truthful house; it had huge windows, and in a weird, childish way I thought that meant we were open, too – transparent. But, of course, we weren’t. That’s where Mum learned
how to lie and I learned about love. I felt its presence, the
contours, the textures; the shy, wispy shapes of its absence. It
seemed to disappear and return like the tide, and I knew I would
never understand it. I wanted love to be ‘one dear perpetual
place’, like Yeats wrote in a poem. Only it wasn’t.

‘Sorry I’m late, there was a big queue in the supermarket… No,
it can’t have been my car. I was with Veronica. She’s just bought a hammock… Don’t worry about those strange calls. Our number
is almost the same as that Indonesian takeaway’s…’ So many lies.
And Mum was really good at it, too.

Like Diarmuid. ‘I was studying at home all evening… Charlene
and I are just friends… My mother really likes you, Sally.’

Like me. ‘I love you, Diarmuid. Yes, I want to marry you.’

How do people learn how to lie so expertly? Sometimes they
don’t even know they’re lying, because they are lying to themselves
too. I’m good at that. That’s my speciality.

I stare at DeeDee’s eyes. They look truthful. I’d say she would
have liked our California home, but only for a visit. She seems
more of a city girl. I can’t see her growing flowers, but I can see
her getting them in big, extravagant bunches from a florist. I’d say
she often didn’t even know who they were from, and that made her smile. She has that look about her – the look of a wounded c
hild and a thief, a spy and a black-and-white film star, all mixed
together. She has a sturdy glamour. Men would have liked to have
her beside them, arms linked, in the street. It’s not easy to be that
kind of woman, to be wanted for things other than yourself. But
DeeDee wouldn’t have known that, because she was restless; she
felt her answer was somewhere else, somewhere exotic, so she wouldn’t have noticed the little aches and sorrows. The little nudges. The habits and ordinary yearnings of her heart.

The evening sun is streaming through the window. I stare out
the window at the people striding by on the sidewalk. They want
to get to the next place – the next meeting, the next meal, the next
love affair, the next shop. Sometimes I wish I had been born in a
quieter century, but maybe there never was a quieter century.
Maybe people have always been like this. Maybe even cavemen
went haring out each morning with their clubs.

The waiter asks if I want another cappuccino – waiters are so
attentive here. I say yes, and I add that I want a chocolate
brownie. This is not a day to go without chocolate, or crisps. I must buy a stack of them to eat on the plane.

I glance at the headline of a newspaper someone has left on a nearby table: ‘Fake Fur – How to Make Your Dog Feel like a
Millionaire!’ I catch my reflection in the window. I appear to be
sipping cappuccino calmly. I even look quite smart: I’m wearing a
flatteringly tailored navy jacket and a thick turquoise shirt, and
there’s a chunky pop-art brooch shaped like a terrier on my lapel.
My sunglasses make me look mysterious
.

I don’t have to go home
–
that’s what I find myself thinking. I
could fly out to April in California. What’s there to go back to,
really? I don’t even feel the same way about Aggie, after what she
did. And, anyway, she has Fabrice now. Fabrice is going to visit
as often as she can. Aggie talks about her as if she’s known her all
her life. She says the angels brought them together.

I frown and bite into my brownie. I used to believe in angels.
Our house in California was crammed full of them. There came a
point when I really thought some of them should move into the attic; there were at least twenty of them in my bedroom, and it wasn’t all that big. At night, when Mum and Dad were arguing,
I knew the angels were watching over me. If I stared hard enough,
I saw a sort of golden glow above the curtain rail. Sometimes I thought I heard their wings banging off the ceiling, and I said,
‘Ouch!’ in sympathy. One of the great things about the angels was
that you could pour them a great big glass of Coke and they could
drink it all and leave the glass completely full. They were really low-maintenance
.

And then, one night, I stared really hard at the golden glow over the curtain rail and realised it wasn’t there. That’s when I knew I’d just made the angels up because my friend Astrid kept
going on about them and because I was scared Mum would leave
us. It was only the moonlight dancing through the gaps between
the curtains. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed that before;
probably because I just didn’t want to. That’s the thing about the
truth. Sometimes the lie is infinitely preferable.

I must ring Diarmuid, I decide suddenly. I must tell him we
can’t go on pretending any longer. Our marriage is no longer even
semi-detached; it appears to be over.

I pick up my mobile phone and am about to dial when it rings.

‘Hi, there!’ I’d recognise that voice anywhere. It’s Nathaniel. ‘Greta told me she sent you off to New York. How are things in
the Big Apple?’

I make circles in the air with my foot. ‘Oh, you know – very calm and quiet. It’s a great place to get away from it all. And I bought a really nice pair of socks.’

He laughs. He has a great laugh. ‘I’m almost tempted to ask
you to get my shirts back, but I don’t think you’d want to.’

‘
You’re right about that.’

‘You sound weird.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do. What’s happened?’

I don’t know how he does this. ‘I don’t know what you’re
talking about,’ I protest. ‘I’m having a cappuccino and a brownie
in a lovely café. I’m sitting on a sofa –’

‘Couch, Sally – you’re in New York.’

‘OK, I’m sitting on a couch, and the sun is shining. I’m wearing
sunglasses – I mean shades.’

‘Wow… a woman of mystery.’

‘I’m also learning how to make a dog feel like a millionaire.’

‘
What?’

‘It’s the headline on a newspaper.’

‘That figures.’

‘Look, Nathaniel, I’d better go,’ I say firmly. ‘I’ve got to buy some crisps and catch a plane.’

‘Get some for me too.’

I hesitate and look wistfully out the window. I don’t think
Nathaniel even guesses how much he means to me. He’s so chatty
and sociable; he’s probably like this with everyone.

‘I need to see you, Sally.’

I clutch the phone more tightly. Maybe he feels more for me than I thought.

‘Why?’ I ask quietly.

‘I need to talk to you about something.’

‘What?’

‘I need to talk to you about DeeDee.’ His voice sounds urgent,
excited. Like he knows a secret he wants to share.

Chapter
Thirty

I
t’s 3 p.m. and
I am curled under my duvet. I got back from New
York a week ago, and I’m allowing myself a siesta because of the general weirdness of my life. I’m thinking about the conversation I had with Nathaniel just before I left the Big Apple.

‘I’ve met someone who used to know DeeDee!’ he said
excitedly. ‘Her name is Fabrice. She was with Aggie when I visited
today.’

‘Actually…’ I frowned. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I felt I might as well tell the truth; there seemed to be a lot of it about lately. ‘Actually, I’ve heard about Fabrice already. Aggie told me.’

‘Oh, dear, I wanted to tell you first,’ he sighed. ‘This great-aunt
of yours has me kind of intrigued, Sally. I love mysteries.’ It’s
funny, but I found myself thinking that he was leaving something
out – that he had more information about DeeDee than he was
sharing with me. But I knew I must be imagining things. I’ve got
so used to people having secrets that I’m even suspicious of Nathaniel, the most honest, guileless man I’ve ever met.