Skeletons (25 page)

At this point, someone should have suggested they call it a night and go to bed. Jen would have woken up in the morning horrified by her near miss (again, this was in danger of becoming a habit) and determined to stay
resolutely sober around her in-laws for ever more. Sadly, the voice of reason hadn’t shown up this evening – or, if he had, he’d brought a bottle – and so they still sat there, knocking back their wine, trying to hang on to the remnants of what had
been a nice evening.

‘Isn’t this a lovely area?’ Amelia said, to no one in particular. ‘I’m so glad we came.’

Jen squeezed her hand again. Tried to remind herself that she mustn’t give anything away in front of her.

‘I mean exactly that, actually, Jen. People of my generation took their vows more seriously, I think. Look at the divorce rates. You can’t argue with the fact that couples, these days, are far less likely to stay together than they
used to.’

‘Maybe it’s just become harder to keep secrets.’

‘What is up with you?’ Jason hissed. ‘Have I done something?’

‘No. Of course not. I’m just interested in Charles’s views on this, that’s all.’

‘You’re behaving very weirdly.’

She ignored him. Turned her gaze back to Charles. Waited.

‘Yes, I’m sure there is an element of that,’ he said, calmly. ‘Anyway, the important thing is that Amelia and I have been very lucky, and happy, and we’re blessed to have had the life we’ve had.’

He knocked back the last of his wine. Point made. Now let’s move on and talk about something else.

Jen breathed in. Breathed out. Fuck it, she wasn’t going to let him get away with that one. She felt as though she was watching a film. She could see herself on the verge of
blowing it all.
Couldn’t find a way to stop herself, even though she knew she should. It all felt as if it was happening to someone else.

And then she hit the detonate button.

The next day, she could hardly bear to think about it. It was one of those moments – if he hadn’t said what he’d said, if they had said goodnight as soon as they got back to the cottage, if they had been talking about anything else –
that changes the world. Watching it back in her mind, everything slowed down at this point, she could see the words edging out of her mouth. There would have been time to take them back, laugh it off, pretend everything was fine. Except that, of course, it was too late.

She’d laughed, she had actually laughed. He thought it was that easy. Throw out a few platitudes and wait for his adoring family to lap them up. Trusting, hanging on his every word, as they always had done. It was pitiful.

‘So your relationship has always been honest?’

Jason put a hand on her arm. She shook him off. She noticed Charles had gone a shade paler.

‘We really should go to bed.’ Jason stood up.

But, too late. The train hadn’t only left the station, it had already been derailed. There were casualties sprawled out beside the tracks. Jen stayed firmly rooted to the spot.

‘Jen, you’ve clearly had a bit too much to drink. We all have, probably. Jason’s right. We should go to bed.’ Charles stood up too, as if to set an example of how it should be done.

Jen noticed that Amelia had finally picked up on the
tension and was looking wide-eyed, a study in shock and innocent bewilderment – Bambi just after his mother had been killed – aware that something
was happening, but not sure what. For her adored mother-in-law’s sake, she should just shut up, leave it while she still could. Except that she couldn’t. There was something too satisfying in seeing Charles start to squirm.

‘Why don’t you answer my question?’

‘OK,’ Jason said. ‘Now we really are going to bed. You’re right, she’s just had too much to drink, Dad. She’ll apologize in the morning.’

Jen fumed. ‘Don’t speak on my behalf.’

‘I have no idea what’s going on here,’ Jason said.

Jen turned on him. ‘No, of course you don’t. Because you have no idea what kind of a man your father really is. And don’t you dare tell him I’ll apologize. Because I won’t. He’s the one who should be saying
sorry. Begging forgiveness, more like.’

The silence was tangible. There might as well have been tumbleweed blowing through the living room. Cowboys putting their drinks on the bar and turning round slowly, guns drawn. Jen knew, in that moment, that she had already gone too far, but she
also felt a sense of triumph. Take that.

Charles gently prised Amelia’s glass from her fingers, put it on the coffee table. ‘We’ve
all
had too much to drink. Let’s just go to bed.’

‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ Jason said angrily, still focused on Jen.

‘Why are you all arguing?’ Amelia said quietly. ‘What’s happened?’

Charles, Jen noticed, was looking cornered. He knows, she thought. He knows that I know. It felt thrilling. Shocking. Almost a relief.

‘You should call it a night,’ he said. ‘You’ve hurt Amelia’s feelings. I’m sure you’ll regret some of the things you’ve said in the morning, so it’s best if we just all go now and sleep on it,
before somebody says something they can’t take back.’

How dare he? The man who had been deceiving his wife for over twenty-five years was telling her she had gone too far. Not only that, but his speech was clearly a plea – a warning, even – to her not to blow his secret.

‘
I’ve
hurt Amelia’s feelings? No, really, did you just say that?’

Jason was still hovering by the door in the hope that he somehow might be able to spirit Jen away. ‘She’s just upset because she heard from her own father again for the first time in years …’

‘No, Jason.’

‘Just because you’re angry at your own parents, don’t take it out on Dad.’

Too late. The fuse was lit. Take cover.

‘OK, that’s it. I’m not going to let Charles manipulate you all into thinking he’s the perfect husband and father any more …’

‘Jennifer,’ Charles said, in a low voice.

She didn’t even look at him. Fuck him. She had a poison dart and she was damn well going to throw it.

‘… so maybe, as he seems to suddenly prize honesty so much, you should ask him to tell you about Cass and Iver Heath and … the fucking dog … and where he
used to go when
you thought he was staying away for work …’

She sat back. It was out there. She could never take it back. Try as she might to protest that she was just saying anything she could think up to wound Charles – that it had no basis, no foundation in truth – she knew that she had pulled back the
curtains just enough so that his family could see through to the other side. She could attempt to drag them shut again, but she knew it was too late.

And, in that instant, she knew she had made a terrible mistake. A mistake that would change everything.

Jason had moved out.

There had been no shouting, no fighting once they had got home. It was just that everything had shifted. He had started looking at her as if she was a person he barely knew, a hostile stranger. They hadn’t been able to find a way to
communicate that would get them through this. The paths they had always navigated so easily had become choked with weeds, debris piling up, blocking the way.

They had driven back from Oxford in deafening silence, after returning the keys to the cottage’s owner and fabricating a family medical emergency that meant they had to leave a day early.

‘I’ll still have to charge you the full rate,’ the woman had said, not even pausing to offer her sympathy first. So much for her being Charles Masterson’s biggest fan.

‘Fine. Whatever. I really don’t care,’ Jason had said and then got back into the car, slamming the door so hard the windows in a nearby house had shaken.

Jen had tried to talk to him a couple of times, tried to apologize, to explain her side of the story, but he wouldn’t have it, cutting her off and turning the radio up full blast.

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ he’d said, putting his foot down.

She had felt wretched. Tears falling silently down her cheeks as she watched the fields and then the houses rush by. They were home in a record-breaking fifty-five minutes.

She had hardly seen him since. Not after the first few days. There had been one afternoon when he’d turned up unexpectedly, and her heart had lurched when she’d seen him standing on the doorstep – he had rung the bell, even though he
still had his keys. But he’d made it clear that he’d only come to deal with the practicalities of what they should do with the house. (‘You can stay in it, I don’t care. I want the girls to have somewhere to call home still.’) Jen had cried and pleaded and,
eventually, begged, but Jason had been immovable. In his mind they had said all they needed to say.

There was no going back.

The immediate aftermath, the moments after impact, had been apocalyptic. Once the words had come out of her mouth, her concern had been for Amelia and Jason. It was as if in that split second she had sobered up, seen, for the first time that
evening, what really mattered. Jason had looked at her, confused, brain working overtime to try to fathom what she was saying.

‘What are you talking about? Who’s Cass?’

She had felt herself deflate. There was no victory here. ‘No … Jason … I’ve said enough. Forget it.’

‘What do you mean, forget it? You made some kind of insinuation about Dad, you can’t just pretend you didn’t. Dad?’ He had turned to look at his father.

Jen had followed his accusing look. Charles’s mask had slipped, a mixture of fear and anger clouding his face. Amelia was just sitting motionless in her chair, white-faced, unreadable.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Charles had spat. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

Jen had bristled, wanting to defend herself, but also knowing that the best thing that could happen at that moment would be for Jason and Amelia to think she had been bluffing, throwing something out there that had no facts to back it up.

Jason was having none of it, though. ‘What? She made up a random woman and implied that you were having an affair, or something? That is what you were implying, isn’t it, Jen?’

Jen had looked at the floor, waited for it to swallow her up, but it hadn’t obliged.

‘Mum. Do you know what this is about?’

Jen hadn’t been able to fathom Amelia’s reaction. Maybe she had just gone into shock, refusing to compute what she was being told.

‘I think Jen’s just had a few too many glasses of wine,’ she had said calmly. ‘I think you’re both right, and we should all go to bed.’

Charles had jumped on that, as if it was the most meaningful thing ever said. ‘Yes, come on. Things will all seem different in the morning.’

‘No!’ Jason had raised his voice. ‘There’s something going on here.’ He’d suddenly sat back down, as if it had just sunk in that something really serious had happened.

‘And you said Dad wasn’t really staying away for work when he said he was. What was all that about? Care to elaborate, either of you?’

He’d looked back and forth between the two of them. Jen was determined not to be the one to hammer the final nail into the coffin. Charles was looking like a man facing a firing squad. Jen had stayed silent. Charles had run a hand over his
eyes.

Jason had swung round to Amelia. ‘Mum, why aren’t you saying anything? Don’t you want to know what’s going on?’

Jen had been wondering that too. Why was Amelia being so passive? If that was me, I would be beating my husband around the head, screaming at him to admit to whatever it was he had to admit to, she thought. Although shouting had never been
Amelia’s style.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Charles had suddenly said. He had crumpled, like a Chinese lantern just before the flames consumed it. ‘I’m so sorry, both of you. I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to forgive
me.’

He’d told them then, leaving out only the part about still being in contact with Cass’s mother. Jason had listened in silence. At one point, he had reached out his hand and taken Amelia’s. She’d let him, no more animated
than she’d been before. When Charles ran out of steam and stood waiting for a reaction, braced for anything that might come his way, Jason had stood up, looked straight at his father and said, ‘You disgust me.’

Jen had stood to follow him as he walked out, but he’d turned back and hissed at her. ‘I don’t even know
what to say to you. You knew all this, and you didn’t tell me?’

‘I didn’t know what to do …’ She’d known that the best thing would be to leave him. He needed time to take in what he’d just learned, but she’d wanted him to reassure her that everything between them was
OK, that they would get through this together.

‘At least do me the courtesy of sleeping down here,’ he’d said as he moved towards the door. Then he’d stopped, remembering his mother. ‘Mum, are you going to be OK? I can drive you back to London, if you don’t
want to stay here.’

‘I’ll be fine, sweetheart,’ Amelia had said quietly. ‘And you’ve had far too much to drink to drive.’ She looked suddenly much older than her years, fragile and vulnerable.

Jen had felt her heart was going to break as she looked at her mother-in-law sitting there, pale and in shock. What had she done?

‘Jason …’ Charles had said pleadingly, but Jason had gone. ‘Amelia, love, we need to talk. Privately.’

He’d turned to glare at Jen.

‘I hope you’re happy.’

‘I –’ she had started to say, but he’d stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

She had been left with Amelia, and no idea what to say to her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she’d muttered as she got up to go – she didn’t know where, she just knew she couldn’t stay in this room any longer. ‘I didn’t mean for it to come out this
way. You know I never would have wanted to cause you any pain.’

Amelia had sat there, staring ahead of her. ‘I knew. I’ve always known.’

Jen had thought she’d misheard. ‘You …?’

‘Yes.’

Amelia had stood up and walked over to the door. For a split second, Jen had thought – hoped – that her mother-in-law was going to embrace her. But Amelia had walked straight past her and opened the door.

‘Amelia?’ she had said, but her mother-in-law kept on walking.

Jen had spent the night shivering and crying on the sofa. She had barely slept until the early hours, when the wine and exhaustion caught up with her. She’d woken to hear the sound of a car pulling away and had rushed to the window,
relieved to find it was only her in-laws. She had no idea what had passed between them in the night, but she was still reeling from Amelia’s revelation that Cass’s existence wasn’t news to her.

She had crept up the stairs and crawled into bed beside Jason, savouring the warm closeness of his body before he awoke and, she knew, she would have a lot of explaining to do. She tried to convince herself that he would get over it. Maybe not as
far as his father was concerned, but she had to be hopeful that she could make him realize the position she had been put in, the agony she had gone through over whether or not to tell him, the reasons for her silence.

She had snaked her arm around him and he’d grunted softly in acknowledgement. She’d allowed herself to believe that everything was going to be all right. Then Jason’s body had
stiffened.

‘Shit.’ He’d moved out of her embrace and sat up. ‘Shit.’

Jen had waited, unsure what she should say or do.

‘Tell me everything you know. I don’t want any more lies or cover-ups.’

So she had, leaving nothing out, including the frantic calls from Cass when her mother was in the hospital, and the fact that Charles was still very much a part of their lives.

‘What should I have done?’

‘Told me. Told me as soon as you found out. God, you must have thought I was fucking stupid.’

‘No. I didn’t want any of you to get hurt. But then Cass just kept pushing and … I don’t know …’

‘So my whole fucking life has been a fraud,’ Jason had said. ‘I can’t take this in. I can’t … oh God, poor Mum.’

‘I think they’ve gone back to London,’ Jen had said gently. ‘I heard the car.’

‘This is going to devastate her. That bastard.’

She had been relieved that, at least, it seemed Jason could see Charles was the only real villain there.

She’d decided not to mention Amelia’s comment the night before. She had stuck her nose in enough. Instead, she’d reached out and stroked his shoulder.

He’d flinched, as if he had just remembered she was there. ‘How could you have kept it from me? The fact that my father is a cheating bastard and that I have another sister. That, in fact, I’ve had another sister for more than
half my life and never known it.’

‘I’m sorry –’ she had started to say again, but he was on a roll.

‘You know what, it’s not the idea that you didn’t tell me that’s so bad. It’s the way you finally let it out. The vindictiveness, the pleasure you had at throwing that information into my dad’s face. And in
front of Mum.’

She knew he was right on that point. She had no defence. ‘I should never have –’

‘What was it? Were you so jealous of my family? Your own is so fucked up that you couldn’t bear for mine to be happy?’

‘No, Jason! God … no. It’s not my fault that I stumbled across the truth. It’s not my fault that your family turned out not to be so happy, after all.’

‘Does Poppy know?’

‘Of course not. I couldn’t tell any of you. How could I?’

‘Jesus Christ, this’ll kill Jess. You know what a daddy’s girl she is.’

‘That’s why I couldn’t say anything.’

‘Until now. Until you just announced it in front of Mum. If this is hurtful for me, then I can’t imagine how she must be feeling. To find out that you have no idea who you’re married to. That everything you thought was important
is a fiction.’

‘I think you need to talk to her.’

He wasn’t listening. ‘I’ve never seen that side of you. It was so … ugly. So spiteful. You’ve broken up my family, Jen.’

‘No, that’s not fair. I’m really sorry for the way I handled it, but it’s Charles who has broken up your family.
Don’t shoot the messenger.’ She heard Sean’s
voice as she said this. Shook her head, as if that would dislodge the image.

‘How can you be so flippant? This is … Jesus. I have to get back up to London, I have to worry about my mother first. Everything else can wait. Pack the stuff up.’

‘Let’s not leave it like this. Please, Jason. You have to understand I didn’t mean to be hurtful. I just … he pushed all my buttons, everything had got too much. I had so much pressure on me. And I’d had too much
to drink …’

He was already on his feet, getting dressed. ‘Be ready to go in twenty minutes.’

He hadn’t moved out right away. They had tried to work their way through it, for a couple of days, her tiptoeing around him as if he was more likely to forgive her if he didn’t notice she was there – but the resentful silences were
suffocating. And he simply couldn’t get over the fact that, if it hadn’t been for Jen, none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t have fallen out so badly with his father that they were no longer on speaking terms (this she didn’t believe; she knew their
relationship was damaged for ever by what he had discovered, but the way he had discovered it was irrelevant – or, rather, it would become so eventually, she hoped). She’d tried to make him understand that, even though she had handled it with as much subtlety as a bull who went
straight from his spree in a china shop to a glass factory making priceless chandeliers, what she had done in reality was to expose the truth. She hadn’t created it. She
hadn’t sent Charles out with instructions to father children by
other women.

Jason was having none of it, though. Whenever she tried to talk to him about it, he simply shut her down.

She’d waited for the implosion to come in Charles and Amelia’s marriage. She’d just assumed that Amelia would kick him out. She couldn’t imagine her being able to come to terms with his years of deception, whatever she had
said. Who could? Obviously, she no longer had a direct line to her in-laws, but, whenever she asked Jason, he said that his father was still living there. Not that he would go to the house unless he had the reassurance that Charles was out. He wanted nothing to do with him, he said. He had
seemed as bemused by his mother’s lack of action as Jen was.