‘You’re telling me you cheated on Conor?’
‘It was a mistake.’ Her voice was tiny, broken. She was standing a few feet away from him, staring at the ground; perhaps she felt it moving too.
‘Did he know?’ She shuffled her feet, turned away from him. Andrew leapt up, grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly round to face him. ‘Jen, did he know? Did he know when he died?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘no. I don’t think… No, he didn’t.’
‘You don’t think so, or he didn’t?’
‘Andrew, Jesus. What does it matter now?’
She started to cry. For a fraction of a second he felt the old impulse to go to her, to help her – this was Jen, his little sister, the girl he was supposed to protect. Just a fraction of a second and the urge was gone.
‘What does it matter? How can you ask me that? Fucking hell, all this time,’ he was shouting at her, ‘all this time, I’ve felt so sorry for you, knowing that your heart was broken, that you lost the love of your life, that you lost him because of me, and it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true! You don’t think that matters? It matters to me, Jen.’
He started to walk away from her, out of the woods; he could hear her crying behind him and it made him want to slap her. She ran after him, grabbed his hand, but he yanked it away from her.
‘I
was
heartbroken,’ she said. ‘Of course I bloody was. And I did love him, you know I did, don’t you dare suggest that I didn’t. Dan and I made a mistake, one stupid mistake, that was all it was. Do you not think that mistake cost me? Do you not think it just made everything worse?’ Andrew stopped at the treeline, looking out into the dazzling sunshine of a perfect August morning. She was standing close behind him, he could hear her breathing, quick and ragged. ‘I’m sorry, Andrew. I know it’s a horrible thing that I did, I know you must be disappointed in me.’
‘We have… all of us… behaved despicably, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘Not one of us is innocent.’
She let out a sharp breath, exasperated. ‘Of course we aren’t. Did you really think you could get to this stage in life and be innocent?’
He shook his head. ‘Maybe I thought we could be better than this.’
‘Oh, Andrew. Better than what? You’ve lived a good life, so has Nat. So has Dan, for that matter. Christ, the mistakes we made twenty years ago are just that, mistakes we made a long time ago. They’re not indelible stains, are they?’
He turned to face her, looked her directly in the eye. ‘You might think that I’m stupid, or naïve or something, but the truth is that I am disappointed. I am disappointed in you. In myself. I’m disappointed in all of us.’
Jen pushed her hands through her hair, she looked different, tired, ten years older.
‘Did
he
ever disappoint you, Andrew? Tell me, did Conor ever do anything you thought wasn’t good or honourable? Was he a saint? Because I think that somewhere along the line you canonised him. Did he always behave impeccably?’
‘No. No, of course not, but he didn’t betray you, Jen.’
She took his hand, squeezed it, and dropped it.
‘No, he didn’t, that’s true.’ Her head dropped, her chin almost to her chest. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t lived up to your standards, Andrew. But sometimes I wonder whether anyone could have.’ He started to object, but she stopped him. ‘I never asked you to be responsible for me. I think it’s time you stopped thinking of me as your little sister. I don’t need you to be my protector. And I don’t need you to judge me, either.’ She walked past him and out into the sunshine, turned back to look at him. ‘You know that’s why I left, don’t you? I couldn’t be around you all, feeling sorry for me, feeling I was deserving of sympathy, after what I’d done. My entire life since then has been defined by two things, by a mistake and by an accident. I believe that it’s time that changed, that I start doing the defining for myself.’ She walked off down the hill, flask in hand, long hair swinging down her back, and she was young again. He blinked the tears from his eyes and squinted a little, he might just as well have been looking at her twenty years ago.
He stayed in the forest for a long time, staring into the heart of the woods, into the darkness, hoping (ridiculously) that like Lilah had he might catch a glimpse of an old friend. It was cool in the shade, and if you sat still for long enough, other life started to make itself known, creatures scurrying in the undergrowth, birds calling overhead, insects pottering along across the leaves. It became meditative, mesmerising. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there – he wasn’t wearing a watch and he didn’t have his phone – but it seemed like a long time. He could feel his blood start to cool, some of the anger and guilt seeping away. He was left with the remnants, which felt something like sadness, unease. And a feeling of foolishness, too, that he’d been naïve, idealistic – worse, a hypocrite. He’d been looking at everyone through rose-tinted spectacles and he’d had them ripped off and now the world just looked grey.
Eventually, he heard footsteps approaching and he became quite afraid, perhaps he was going to see the ghost after all. It was Nat, come to look for him.
‘I was starting to get worried,’ she said, easing herself down gently beside him. ‘Jen said I might find you up here. She didn’t say why.’ He couldn’t bring himself to explain it, he didn’t want to tell her. ‘You thinking about Lilah?’ she asked, slipping her arm through the crook of his, pulling his body a little closer to hers.
‘No, it’s not that.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I was thinking I should go back home with the girls on Monday.’
‘Oh.’
The plan had been to send them back to their grandparents for a week, then Andrew and Nat would join them the following week for the start of the school term. But he wasn’t sure he could stand it now, he wasn’t sure he could bear to be around Jen and Dan for another day, let alone another ten.
‘I’m not sure we should be sending them back on their own,’ he said, his eyes firmly ahead, not looking at his wife. ‘It’s been difficult for them, don’t you think? I know they’ve coped well, meeting everyone and dealing with the situation here, Lilah being so ill and everything, but I think it would be best if I went back with them, got them settled in at home before term starts.’
‘You’re probably right. We’ll go on Monday. I’ll explain to Lilah, she’ll understand. I can always come back on weekends to spend time with her.’
‘No,’ Andrew said, disentangling himself from her arm and getting to his feet. ‘That’s not what I meant. I mean I think
I
should go back with the girls. You stay on here. It’s best that way.’ He’d never been any good at lying to her, he may as well tell the truth. ‘I could do with some time by myself,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ The silence seemed to stretch out for days. ‘You mean, some time away from me.’ She looked up at him, big green eyes beseeching.
‘Yes,’ he said, and he saw her flinch, it felt like a knife in his chest. ‘I need some time away from you.’ He reached out his hand to pull her up, but she waved it away. He could see the pain in her face as she got to her feet. They walked back to the house in silence.
He took Lilah out to lunch the day before he left. They drove all the way to Digne-les-Bains, and sat on a sun-drenched terrace overlooking the Bléone River, eating oysters. Lilah drank three glasses of champagne and after lunch insisted that she felt like a walk, so they ambled along the road beside the river, she leaning heavily on his arm, pausing every ten paces or so to catch her breath. After a few hundred yards they came to a bench, where they sat down and watched a mother duck solicitously ushering her ducklings from the bank into the water.
Lilah rested her head on Andrew’s shoulder and slipped her bony little hand into his. Her skin felt dry and papery, like old parchment.
‘What’s going on, Drew?’ she asked him, and before he had time to reply, she went on: ‘Don’t say nothing, because I’m not stupid. Things are all wrong with Nat, they have been since you got here. And now you’re leaving early, without her? And don’t think I haven’t noticed the thing with Jen, either, the fact that every time she comes into the room, you walk out. And every time Dan comes into the room the muscle in your jaw tenses and your hands ball into fists. You’re pissed off with everyone. Everyone except me, which makes a nice change.’ She snuggled closer to him and closed her eyes. ‘But I don’t want you to leave like this, so angry. Tell me, please?’
He poured it out, all of it. His irrational anger over Dan buying the house, which now didn’t seem irrational at all, because he had been right about ulterior motives. The thing with Jen, which, he knew, was none of his business, but he couldn’t help but feel the betrayal as though it were his own, he couldn’t help but feel aggrieved, furious, on Conor’s behalf. And on his own, too, because he felt as though he’d been duped, as though somehow he’d spent all these years caring about a woman who didn’t even exist. Lilah opened her eyes wide and laughed at that.
‘You thought Jen was perfect, did you? Come on, Andrew.’
‘You knew?’
‘No. Christ, I didn’t know
that
. I knew that Dan was a little bit obsessed with her… He used to talk about her all the time – you probably don’t remember this, but after you and I split up, I went to stay with him for a while.’
‘I remember.’
‘Well, he was constantly banging on about her then, he talked about her all the time. It didn’t seem that weird, though, we were all worried about her then, and it was obvious that he’d always felt
something
for her. I didn’t think it was reciprocated though. I never thought she would… you know. I understand why you’re shocked, why you’re upset, I would never have thought that Jen would have strayed. But still. She did. She made a mistake.’
‘That’s exactly what she said.’
‘And she’s right. Drew, my darling, you know how I love you but you do set impossibly high standards…’
‘That’s what she said too,’ Andrew replied. ‘But frankly, I don’t think it’s actually an “impossibly high standard”–’ he found himself making bunny ears with his fingers – ‘to ask someone not to cheat on their boyfriend with one of his close friends.’
Lilah looked up at him with a lazy smile, raised an eyebrow.
‘That was different, Lilah.’
‘Really? Was it better or worse?’
‘There were circumstances.’
‘Drew. There are always circumstances. And even when there aren’t circumstances, haven’t you ever made a really stupid mistake?’
‘You know very well I have.’
‘Well then. I have, too, as you well know. I’ve made hundreds. Thousands, possibly. So really, is it so terrible, what she did? Think about it, if it hadn’t been for what went after, losing him like that, we might all have seen things in a rather different light, mightn’t we? And, of course, Jen didn’t know, did she, what was coming? Just try and imagine, will you, how much worse it is for her.’
He looked down at her, her wispy blonde hair and her tiny, angled features. ‘When did you get so wise and rational?’ he asked.
‘Impending doom,’ she said with a smile, ‘gives one perspective.’ She was shivering a little; he took off his jacket and laid it over her.
‘You want to get going?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t. I want to sit here with you, in the sun, until we’ve got this all sorted out. Actually, I’d quite happily sit here, in the sun, forever, if that were an option.’
He felt tears pricking the backs of his eyes. Blinking them back, he pulled her closer still, he kissed the top of her head.
‘The important thing about all that, Andrew, the really important thing, is that Conor never knew.’
‘She wasn’t sure about that…’
‘But we’d have known if he’d known, wouldn’t we? He would have kicked the shit out of Dan, for starters. And he would have told you. Don’t you remember,’ she asked, opening her eyes again, looking up at him, ‘the day of the crash, we were at the pub, and they were kissing in the car park, I yelled at Jen to hurry up? Remember that? They wouldn’t have been like that, he wouldn’t have kissed her like that…’ She was right, of course she was. He didn’t know. He couldn’t have known. ‘So, you’re disappointed and angry with her, but he isn’t. He died thinking she loved him just the way she always had. And even if she didn’t – and we don’t know whether she did or not – but even if she didn’t, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is what he knew.’
‘So,’ he said, leaning back on the bench, tilting his face up to the sun, ‘it doesn’t matter what you do, it only matters if you get caught? That’s what you’re saying?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
She was joking, but there was a logic to what she said, a peculiarly Lilah-ish sort of logic. All that mattered was that Conor didn’t end this life feeling that he had lost her.
‘In any case,’ Lilah said, her voice starting to slow a little, a touch of slur on her s’s, ‘all this is a sideshow. You’ll sort things out with Jen and Dan, and even if you don’t, it won’t be the end of the world. But whatever it is with Nat, that’s real. That’s what matters.’
They sat there for a while longer, until she fell asleep. Andrew picked her up and carried her to the car; she didn’t wake until the moment Zac lifted her up at the end of the journey.
It was Zac who came down to fetch Andrew later that night.
‘She’s asking for you,’ he said.
Her room was dark, illuminated only by a sliver of moonlight coming through the window. Lilah lay propped up on her pillows, blankets and throws piled on top of her.
‘Don’t turn on the light,’ she whispered as he entered the room, ‘my head hurts.’
‘Lilah,’ he said softly, ‘we can talk in the morning, before I go.’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, no. I might not wake up.’
‘Lilah…’
‘I don’t mean I’m going to die, you idiot. I just mean that sometimes it takes me ages to get going in the morning, and you have to leave early, and I don’t want to leave things as they are. I want you to tell me what you plan to do about Natalie.’
His head dropped. ‘I don’t know. Something is broken… I, we, broke something. Her and I, I mean, not you and I. We broke something and I don’t know… I don’t know if I have the strength to fix it. I feel like all my fight is gone. Just like that. I used to hold things together, you know? I’m not sure I can any longer.’