After the Lie: A gripping novel about love, loss and family secrets (7 page)

‘The thing is, Sean, I know RS isn’t terribly important
per se
but everyone who takes it gets an A*, so it’s one in the bag. Better an A* in RS, than a B in Geography, don’t you think?’

Terri caught my eye and winked. ‘Mel, if they don’t want to do something like Philosophy at A level, it seems like a right old waste of time to learn all that gubbins about Buddhas and wotnot when they could actually be learning something useful, like where the hell Great Yarmouth is.’

Melanie looked nonplussed. ‘Why would you want to know where Great Yarmouth is?’

I had no doubt that if they did a post-mortem on Melanie, the part of her brain responsible for open-mindedness would look like a shred of desiccated coconut, upon which the pathologist would be able to make out the eerie etchings of Surrey, Harvey Nicks and skinny cappuccino.

Sean said, ‘Oi! All the best people come from Norfolk. Great Yarmouth was the scene of much flirting at the funfair in my youth.’

A huge roll of fear gripped me again, followed by a memory of Sean and I kissing on the waltzers in the rain, giddy with love and lust. I felt a movement under the table. Had Sean kicked me?

I wanted to shout, ‘It is not funny! Stay away from me!’ Instead, I smoothed my napkin down and stared at my plate. I didn’t dare look up, didn’t trust myself to speak. I just prayed Mark wasn’t listening to the conversation. The question, ‘Where are you from in Norfolk?’ could be the beginning of the end. It wouldn’t take long for Katya to work out that I grew up in the same village as Sean. My fragile existence was built on successive omissions. I could fall down the gaps at any time. I stuffed another forkful of beef bourguignon into my mouth, then found I couldn’t swallow.

When Katya got up to clear the table, I leapt up, grateful for any diversion. I carried the cheesecake back in and started serving. When I reached Mark, he put his hand on my waist and looked up at me. ‘All right, my love?’

He was slurring slightly. I hissed a quiet ‘I think you’ve had enough to drink.’

He frowned. ‘I’m enjoying myself.’

I had to let it go before I drew the attention of everyone at the table. I sat back down. Terri looked over at me. ‘Not having a pud? That’s how you stay so slim. I need to skip the sweet stuff. I lost loads of weight a few years ago but it’s slowly crept back on.’

‘How did you lose the weight?’

‘Gavin had an affair with a little tart of a croupier. Sad, deserted wife diet.’

I felt my eyes fling open in surprise. How bloody wonderful to be so relaxed about what people think that you could admit something so personal to someone you hardly knew. She hadn’t let her catastrophes define her. She’d owned up to them, bandied them about until they’d lost their power over her.

I smiled at her. ‘But he’s back now.’

She laughed. ‘Yeah. Maybe he needs to bugger off again, then I could lose two stone. I do keep a photo of me on the fridge as a reminder that I did manage it once.’

She leaned over to Sean, taking a huge swig of wine as she did so. ‘Here, me and Lydia had a brilliant idea for fundraising. We thought the mums could do a Calendar Girls sort of photo shoot, you know, naked, wrapped up in football nets and shit… What do you think?’

I almost heard the grating of Melanie’s buttocks as they ground together. ‘That’s entirely inappropriate, Terri. It would be a terrible example to the pupils. We can’t have mothers at the school making it look acceptable to bare all in public, however well-meaning. We don’t want all this “sexting” business coming to Eastington House. It’s up to us to impress on them that being naked is something you do in private, not something to photograph and circulate to all and sundry.’

Terri laughed. ‘Come on, Mel. Lighten up. It’s just a bit of fun. If my ageing knockers raise a bit of cash for the new clubhouse, well, bottoms up!’

I desperately didn’t want to side with Melanie but the mere suggestion made me queasy. Sean wasn’t going to take any more photos of me ever, clothed or otherwise. I forced a smile. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be something I’d join in with, Terri. I’m not brave enough for a start.’

Sean fidgeted beside me. I kept my back to him. If he dared to make a joke, the pretty little candle emitting its pomegranate scent might get shoved where you didn’t usually find fruit.

Mark slurred from his end of the table. ‘You’d look amazing. But I don’t think I want the blokes I have a beer with in the clubhouse staring at my wife naked. Even if it is for a good cause.’

All the women around the table oohed and aahed, with Terri clapping her hands and declaring, ‘Sweeeet!’

I pushed my plate away. The sick feeling that had dogged me since Sean had turned up in my life was back again.

For once I was grateful for Gavin bowling in with his off-colour opinions and drawing the attention of the table. ‘You spoilsports. Oldest trick in the book, isn’t it? Woman gets her kit off, man shells out money. It’s worked for me and Tezza, anyway, hasn’t it, doll? I get what I want, she gets a new handbag.’

Terri flapped her napkin at him. ‘New shoes, you mean. I’ve just seen some new Louboutins I’ve taken a fancy to,’ she said, laughing as though he was a naughty schoolboy.

Before Melanie could rise up like a snake about to strike, Sean swirled his wine around his big balloon glass. ‘Well, girls, any time you want to strip off, I’m quite happy to oblige. Dirty job and all that.’

Suddenly, there was a big thud as Katya stood up with such force that her chair fell over backwards. ‘I don’t think you’ll be doing that, will you, Sean?’ She didn’t even try to make a joke of it. Just kicked the chair out of the way, snatched up some plates and clattered off into the kitchen. From the sound of metal crashing onto tiles, she must have been throwing the knives into the dishwasher cutlery basket – and missing.

Sean shrugged. ‘Oops. Don’t think that was my best idea ever.’

Everyone sat in an embarrassed silence. Terri pulled a ‘whoops’ face at me. I caught Mark’s eye and nodded to the door.

Mark dragged himself to his feet. ‘Sean, lovely evening, look forward to pinning down the details. Thanks very much.’ He shook Sean’s hand and swayed off to the hallway to find his coat. Sean leaned in to peck me on the cheek and murmured, ‘Think that answers how she’d react if I tell her about you, me and the Polaroid.’

I glanced around the room to see if anyone was listening but thankfully Gavin was hogging the airwaves with a story about strip poker. I made up for my lack of volume with the force of my hatred.

‘Don’t you bloody dare.’

I stomped away from him, into the kitchen where Katya was scraping leftovers into the bin. The bird pattern on the plates would be beakless by the time she’d finished.

Her distress tempered my anger. ‘I just wanted to say thank you for a lovely evening.’ I put my hand on her arm. She flung the knife down and turned towards me. I was ready to placate.

Her voice, when it came, was soft and weary. ‘Sorry. I’ve made a fool of myself. It’s complicated.’

‘It always is. You don’t need to explain. We’ve had a lovely time. Half of them won’t even have noticed, you were so generous with the wine,’ I said.

‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ She stepped forward to hug me. Her cheeks were burning hot. I steeled myself not to shrink away from her. Katya was so slight, she felt like a little sparrow clinging onto me with its wings. Her misery was palpable. Maybe Sean didn’t have the Midas touch I’d imagined all these years.

‘I wish I wasn’t like this,’ she said, as she released me.

‘I understand that.’

I really did.

A
fter the dinner party
, I avoided Katya and Sean as much as possible. Now I’d seen the intensity of Katya’s jealousy first-hand, as each day went past I became more hopeful that Sean wouldn’t race to tell her about us. I was becoming so good at pretending I’d never met Sean before that I was almost convinced by my own lie.

If I saw Katya at school, I did a quick U-turn or waved from a distance if she spotted me. But a couple of weeks later, we had a Surrey moment and bumped into each other over the blueberries in Marks & Spencers.

‘Hello there.’

‘Lydia. How are you?’

There was something in the flat monotone of her voice that made me look at her more closely. Her skin was blotchy. ‘Are you okay?’

She nodded, but big tears were running down her cheeks and blobbing onto the punnets.

I hovered awkwardly. The idea of crying in public, of having someone else witness such a lack of control was so hideous I wanted to throw a blanket over her and bundle her out of the shop. ‘Here. Give me your stuff and wait outside. Do you need anything else?’

She shook her head and disappeared. I watched her through the window as I queued for the till, her pale face pinched with unhappiness. Could Sean have told her? I tried to get my breathing back into a steady pattern. She hadn’t seemed hostile. Maybe she’d had a row with him. He was pretty fearsome when he was riled. He hadn’t lost many fights at school – his dad wouldn’t allow him to.

I carried the shopping outside. ‘Do you want to talk or do you want to go home and I’ll forget I ever saw you?’

‘God, I don’t know. I’d better go.’ Her face crumpled into the perfect Eton mess of misery.

‘I’m a good listener.’

Why hadn’t I just stuck my head in the rocket salad until she’d gone? But I couldn’t have left her weeping into the soft fruits. ‘Do you fancy walking the dog with me? We’ll head up to the hill. It’s usually so wild up there, everyone will think any tears are down to the wind.’

She nodded.

‘Come on. I’ll drop you back for your car later.’

I drove home and raced in to fetch Mabel, leaving Katya in the car. I didn’t want her telling Sean anything about my house, my little sanctuary. Though why it should matter what he knew about my house when he was acquainted with my naked body was warped logic even for me.

Having seen the prospect of someone new to meet and greet, Mabel refused to get into the boot, parking her hairy hound’s backside on the drive and refusing to be dislodged. I didn’t have the energy for an ‘I am the mistress of this house and you will do what I say,’ in case she rolled over onto her back and writhed with canine laughter. I let her hop onto the back seat where she resolutely refused to sit down and kept sticking her snout around the headrest into Katya’s ear.

‘Sorry. She’ll settle down in a minute. Mabel!’

Mabel didn’t accept admonishments. She thought any telling off using her name was simply a louder way of showering her with affection. With that, she started to squeeze through onto the passenger seat, narrowly missing knocking the gear stick into reverse.

‘Mabel! For god’s sake.’

Even Katya laughed as Mabel ended up with her head in the footwell and her backside in Katya’s face. I tried to push her down when we stopped at traffic lights, imagining the explanation I would give to the police officer when I drove into someone else’s boot. ‘Sorry, but the dog doesn’t like to be left out and she wouldn’t sit in the boot, then I got distracted when she farted in my friend’s face.’

It probably wouldn’t stand up in court.

When we finally made it to the top of the hill, Mabel hopped out and danced around in a circle, barking and dropping her ball at Katya’s feet, then jumping up with muddy paws.

‘I’m so sorry about your trousers. I would be considered a particularly poor parent if Mabel was a child.’

Katya made all the right noises but she was probably wishing she’d tootled off into a dark corner to cry unhindered.

We walked across the South Downs, with Mabel careering about, sniffing discarded picnic remnants and gobbling up rabbit droppings like they were Maltesers.

‘Do you want to tell me what’s wrong? Or we can just enjoy the view if you like. That’s therapeutic in itself.’

‘There’s no mystery. It’s Sean.’

‘Oh.’ I didn’t know how to encourage – or discourage – any further revelations. I’d never developed the sort of friendships that relied on reciprocal confidences. Although in Katya’s case, I already knew so much about her and Sean via Mark that I could have breezed through
Mr & Mrs
if they ever decided to revive it. Luckily, Mabel took it upon herself to steal a squeaky ball from another dog. She was tazzing about over the hill, weaving about madly like a fly sprayed with Raid, then bounding off as soon as the golden retriever looked the slightest bit interested in regaining ownership.

‘Sugar. Sorry, Katya. Just a minute.’

The owner was gesticulating at me.

‘Just a minute, I’ll get it back.’ What I really meant was I’d fall in the mud as Mabel squealed past me and watch as she lay down in a puddle before flicking water all over an old lady who was sipping tea from a flask. Finally, I’d have to ask the other owner to grab her. Even then, the evil creature wouldn’t relinquish the ball and I had to prise it out of her mouth. The golden retriever owner looked at me pityingly. I would have to kill her if she said it.

‘Have you tried dog training classes?’

Fortunately, I didn’t have a machete with me. Though as I stood there with a great patch of cowpat on my coat, I could see where she was coming from.

I clipped Mabel onto a lead, which she promptly whirled round to bite, dancing backwards and trying to chew through it as I struggled to stay upright on the slippery mud.

On the upside, Katya had stopped crying and was trying to stifle her laughter. As Mabel succeeded in tugging the lead out of my hand, scooting off with it trailing behind her, I turned back to Katya. ‘Now, where were we before I decided to treat you to a display of animal and owner in perfect harmony?’

Katya had obviously decided that she had nothing to lose by being honest with a woman in a cow-shit coat. Within minutes, she’d told me she was always on the back foot with Sean, that she felt she was constantly fighting off other women, especially since he’d come into contact with a new audience at Eastington House.

‘He’s really attractive, to both men and women. It’s his manner as much as his looks. He’s so friendly. People warm to him, in a way they don’t warm to me.’

I frowned. ‘That’s not true. You make a great impression on people. You were so hospitable when we came over for dinner. At least you’re not up your own bottom like half the women round here.’

‘Anyone in mind?’

I could have sworn that Katya sucked her cheeks in and arched her eyebrows in a parody of Melanie but I didn’t dare make the comparison in case Katya and Mel were best friends.

‘The thing is, if he didn’t want to be with you, I don’t think he would be. He’s quite strong-minded.’

Katya flicked a glance towards me.

‘From what I’ve seen of him, anyway.’

She nodded. ‘He is. He won’t tell me anything he doesn’t want me to know. I can’t have an honest conversation with him about the past. He always says that he doesn’t remember or that he can’t see the point in talking about it. It drives me mad. Makes me feel as though there was someone he really loved, whom he can’t have for some reason, so he’s making do with me.’

‘But you’ve been with him for – what, twenty-three years, did you say? He’s not going to have had many serious relationships before then, is he? Only silly teenage crushes.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve always felt that he was keeping something from me, but lately, he’s even touchier about the past. I keep thinking back to what his mother said when I first met him. “You be careful with my Sean. He loves deeply. I don’t want him getting his heart broken again.” Then Sean’s father came in and told her she was soft in the head and that Sean was a chip off the old block and knew how to keep a woman toeing the line. But why would she say “again”, unless he’d had some great big love affair?’

I could imagine Sean’s mum adjusting the scarf that held back her long curly hair. I pictured her rinsing blackberries foraged from the hedgerows before beginning the laborious process that led to the jars of jam I hadn’t dared take home. My mother would have gone nuts if she knew I’d been with a boy instead of in the library.

Inexplicably, I felt a surge of jealousy that Katya had also enjoyed Margie’s kindness. She’d always been so welcoming. She never scowled at me and said things like ‘Why do you always wear black?’ Or made me feel that there was a right or wrong answer to questions such as ‘Are you interested in going to university?’ or ‘Do you think you’d like to live in London?’, delivered in her soft Norfolk lilt.

I’d grown to trust her. I asked her things I couldn’t ask my own mum. She never made me feel ashamed of being me. It still hurt that she hadn’t stopped Sean’s dad from pressing charges. I’d bumped into her in the Co-op shortly after Dad was arrested. She’d called me pet and said she was sorry. I’d shaken her off and marched out of the supermarket, leaving my basket in the middle of the aisle.

I pulled myself back to the present. ‘I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. Everyone has little love affairs before they settle down but once you’ve had kids together, that’s such a big deal, it wipes out everything that’s gone before.’

‘I suppose so.’ Katya sounded unconvinced. ‘He’s definitely cagier about everything since we moved to Surrey. Do you feel you know everything about Mark?’

I ignored the fact that Mabel was dive-bombing crows off the edge of the hill. While I searched for a suitable answer, I realised I’d never dug into Mark’s past on the grounds that I didn’t want him microscoping into mine. ‘I think so, but who knows? If he’s hanging onto some little secrets from before he met me, I can’t really see the harm in it.’

It was a good job we were walking on a big hill with open skies. Otherwise I might have suffocated under my hypocrisy.

Katya stopped to flick a clod of earth off her shoe. ‘When I look at you and Mark, I can see how secure you both are. You tell him off for drinking too much. I heard him get cross with you for saying Jamie is a troublemaker, but there’s no big drama about it. You don’t start wondering if he’d rather be married to someone else. Whereas the second Sean makes a joke about other women, or questions anything I do with Eleanor, I immediately start imagining that he’s either having an affair or he wishes he’d never married me.’

‘How could he wish he’d never married you? You’re gorgeous. The trouble is, he’s not the sort of man you can pin down, is he? No one is ever going to tell him what to do. A combination of having a mother who adores you and a father who dominates you, I suppose.’

Katya swung round to look at me.

I managed not to clap my hand over my mouth. For the first time ever, I was grateful to Mabel for barking after a kite. My gratitude petered out as I saw her snatch a packet of sausage rolls out of the kite man’s bag. Thankfully, his eyes were fixed skywards and Katya and I squelched back over the mud without bothering to enlighten him about his pork-free future.

We’d just reached the car when Katya looked at me over the roof. ‘When I get home, I’ll start tying myself in knots wondering how you knew what his parents were like. Total paranoia.’

I bent down to take Mabel’s harness off. I gave myself a second to think. My voice came out high and tight. ‘He was talking about his parents at your dinner party. I think you were fetching the pudding.’

‘Was he really? He hardly ever mentions his dad. He died when Eleanor was young. There always seemed to be so much tension between them but I didn’t really understand why. Just another little mystery surrounding my husband.’

I made a show of struggling to get Mabel into the boot, even though for once in her contrary life, she hopped in without a bribe.