The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone (7 page)

‘Okay!’ Kate threw her backpack into the boot and stowed herself noisily in the passenger seat. ‘What’s happening at the old homestead?’

The end of the world was happening.

I searched for a reply as we drew away from the station. ‘What’s happening? Well, we’re planting Grandad’s tree tomorrow.’

‘Mm, I know.’ She sounded gloomy. ‘Simon and the clothes horse will be putting in an appearance, I suppose?’

‘What’s wrong with Carmela? I rather like her.’

‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you, because you’re a man and she has a massive bust and a sexy Spanish accent that she exploits shamelessly. She hams it up, you know. Men can’t see past those things. She doesn’t patronise you. She doesn’t bombard you with advice on how to live your life.’

She yawned, stretching out her legs and complaining of a hangover. Kate is blessed with Eilish’s colouring—auburn hair, pale and given to freckles—and is as skinny as a rake. On this particular day she was wearing black lace-up boots, black tights and a black tunic over—I glanced sideways—a charcoal T-shirt, and had on heavy earrings of impressive ugliness. The garnet in the side of her nose was the only colourful glint. Her hair was cut short but asymmetrically, longer on one side than the other. It was as though my glorious daughter—who has regular features, blue eyes and a knockout smile—was trying to erase all the advantages nature has given her.

‘D’you miss Grandad Livingstone?’ she asked.

I thought about my father. ‘He’s been gone for a year,’ I said. ‘And he didn’t have much of a life for a long time before that. But, yes, I miss him. He was a good father. I didn’t deserve him.’

‘I’m sure you did.’

We’d turned into the network of lanes that crisscross our part of Oxfordshire. Our road curved around the foot of Yalton Hill, muddy and narrow between lush hedgerows. The rain had stopped. As I wound down my window, the countryside rushed in—opulent and humid, heavy with after-rain smells of earth and wet vegetation. I’d taken my father for a drive out that way exactly a year earlier, the day before he died. We’d stopped in the Yalton Hill car park and eaten cheese sandwiches with Branston pickle, and talked. We both seemed to know it was our last talk. I wanted him to know that I loved him. He wanted me to know that he was proud of me.

I lied, right up until the end. I let him be proud of me. It was my last gift to him.

‘Dad climbed a tree once,’ I said now. ‘To rescue me. It was the day of my fifth birthday party. I’d climbed up there, and I wouldn’t come down. He was afraid of heights but he got a ladder and he climbed right to the top of the tallest tree in our garden. That must have taken every bit of courage he had. I wish I’d said thanks.’

Kate reached out and took my hand. I squeezed her fingers as I drove.
When you know
, I thought in panic,
I’m going to lose you too
.

‘You said thanks in practical ways,’ she replied. ‘You did all that work on their house when he got ill. You put in the ramp. You took care of them.’

‘I was only able to do that because Dad taught me everything I know about joinery. He also taught me how to play cricket, how to shoot, how to plough in a straight line . . . above all, he showed me what it means to be a decent human being, even if I wasn’t able to be one myself.’

‘You
are
a decent human being! You’re the best!’

‘No.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her head turn to look at me. Of course she’d be surprised: I rarely revealed myself in any kind of depth. If people pressed me I always made some light remark before turning the conversation back to them. I knew this made me seem guarded, but it was a self-preservation thing. My secret was immense, and I’d been hiding it for half a century. I couldn’t take risks.

‘I’m sorry about you and Owen,’ I said.

She folded her arms. ‘God, he’s such a jerk.’

‘What exactly happened?’

She told me the long, sad tale, peppered with indignation and obscenities. I tried to listen properly, but Eilish’s misery kept crowding into my mind and blotting out everything else. I tuned in from time to time. I heard about the savage, unforgivable things Owen and Kate had said to one another, and more about how she’d wreaked vengeance on his shirt.

‘He made me promise not to tell anyone, but I’m going to anyway,’ she said. ‘He’s got a tattoo of a sailing ship on his arse.’

‘Stop right there! That’s
way
too much information!’

She giggled. ‘Mum wouldn’t be shocked. Granny certainly wouldn’t be shocked.’

‘Well, I am!’ I spluttered. I wasn’t at all. In fact, I was amused; but I knew what role I was expected to play. I was the straight man in our family.

‘I lived with the guy,’ said Kate. ‘It can’t be news to you that I’ve seen his butt.’

‘There are some things a father would
much
rather not think about.’

She rumpled my hair. I could see in the mirror that she’d left a tuft sticking up.

‘I do love you, Dad.’

My briefcase was lying on the back seat, immediately behind where she was sitting. My mind flicked unhappily through its contents: dictaphone, laptop, files, periodicals. The farewell notes I’d written and not yet destroyed, just in case they might still come in handy. Gold fountain pen. Flash drive. A couple of squash balls. The Christmas-tree angel Nico made out of toilet rolls and tinsel at nursery school and gave to me as a very special gift.

It wasn’t those things that made me burn with shame.

There was a small zip at one end of the lining. You wouldn’t even know it was there unless you looked very carefully. Anyone discovering this secret pocket might be puzzled when they saw what was inside: blusher, mascara and a plum-coloured lipstick.

Seven

Eilish

My mother-in-law arrived on cue the following morning. I hurried to meet her, just as she climbed out of her new car. It looked like a giant ladybird.

‘Hybrid,’ she announced, in her smoke-roughened voice. ‘Top notch for fuel economy.’

‘Marvellous! Welcome, Meg. And you’ve brought this heavenly weather with you!’

I was struggling to keep up appearances. All through that terrible night, my brain had been spinning Luke’s secret around and around. It chanted that he’d never loved me; it whispered that I’d known all along, and had been complicit in my own deception. My eyes felt as though they’d been scrubbed with sand. From time to time the tears would rush into them, but I’d managed to control myself so far, and intended to keep it that way. I still hoped this thing would disappear, if I ignored it. Like a pimple. Or a headache.

Meg glanced towards the house. ‘Luke not at home?’

Even hearing his name brought on a wave of panic. ‘He’s gone to collect Wendy from the station. Come on in . . . That must be Robert’s tree on your passenger seat? Let’s get the poor hot thing into the shade and give it a drink.’

The sapling was about a metre high, its roots wrapped in a sack. I lifted it out and led the way inside, nipping into the cloakroom to stand the tree in a bucket of water.

‘We’ll leave it there for now,’ I said, emerging.

Meg had sat down on the antique settle in the lobby. I joined her, laying my hands on the cool wood of its seat. I like Meg. We don’t have a lot in common, but we respect one another. She’s never indulged in the one-upmanship her role traditionally involves.

‘Funny,’ I said. ‘Seems like only a week ago pairs of tiny red wellies lived under this settle.’

She was squinting at me. ‘Look at you! Pale and pasty, and downright wobbly. What’s up?’

‘I’m absolutely fine. Just got a bit of a cold.’

Her lips pursed. ‘Hmm. Change of life?’

‘Possibly.’ I tried to smile, and almost cried. ‘Quite possibly.’

Bless her, she patted my arm. ‘If you’ll take my advice, love, you’ll accept every hormone they offer you. And eat lots of soya. Japanese women don’t suffer like we do.’

Meg had just celebrated her eightieth birthday, but you’d never know it. You’d never guess she’d been widowed a year before, either. She was wearing cream trousers, a fuchsia shirt and lipstick to match. Diamantés shimmered in her ears. Her figure was tidy, her hair a shade of grey that could almost be blonde. She skipped around an eighteen-hole golf course three times a week, rain or shine, pulling her clubs behind her.

‘Now,’ she said, rubbing her hands as she got up and led the way into the kitchen. Lunch was ready, the table laid. ‘What can I do?’

‘Nothing. Kate’s been helping me. Just have a drink.’

I was opening a bottle of wine when Kate’s face appeared over the gallery rail. ‘Granny!’ she yelled, her footsteps clanging on the metal staircase. ‘Thank God!’

‘This is a lovely welcome,’ said Meg, as a human whirlwind shot off the last step and enveloped her. ‘Nearly knocked me down, you hoodlum. Let’s have a look at you—ah, Kate, love!
Why all this morbid black? It doesn’t suit you. And take that thing out of your nose, it makes me feel queasy.’

‘And what’s this?’ Kate plucked at her grandmother’s shirt. ‘Shocking pink! On a woman of your age! A dowager should dress more seemly and sober.’

Two days earlier, I would have laughed to see the generations sparring so amiably. But now their pleasure in one another intensified my sense of nightmare. These two women had no idea of the horrible truth; no idea at all. The father of one, the son of the other . . . How would they bear it?

Blinking rapidly, I handed Kate the bottle. ‘Could you just—’ My voice petered out. ‘Sorry, sorry, something stuck in my throat. Um, could you look after Granny? Grab some olives out of the fridge.’ Those wretched tears kept coming. I spun around, shot out of the kitchen and headed for the cloakroom. ‘I’ll only be a minute . . . Sorry, upset stomach, just got to nip—’

I fled into my sanctuary.

Kate

The cloakroom door slammed and was locked. Kate and her grandmother looked at one another, their eyebrows raised.

‘What on earth?’ whispered Meg.

Kate picked up the bottle and glasses, jerking her chin towards the open doors. ‘Come outside. She might be able to hear us in here.’

They made camp under the honeysuckle.

‘That girl’s in quite a stew,’ said Meg.

‘The pair of ’em!’ Kate was sloshing out two glasses of wine. ‘She won’t even look at him. He slept in the study last night, made some stupid excuse about both of them having a cold, and he must think I was born yesterday, because (a) I haven’t heard so much as a sneeze, and (b) I can never, ever remember them sleeping apart. Never. Not even when she had meningitis that time. They just don’t do it.’

‘Heck.’

‘D’you think one of them is screwing around?’

Meg chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘Can’t imagine that, can you?’

Kate thought about it. Her father was in good shape. He wasn’t especially tall, maybe five-nine or -ten, but he had great posture and there wasn’t a hint of a beer gut or jowls. He had lots of hair, and he wore it a bit longer than those other stuffed shirts at his work did. Even the streaks of silver suited him. If he added a beret he’d look like a French artist, with his dark brown eyes. Kate wished she’d inherited the Livingstone eyes.

‘Dad’s still an attractive man,’ she said.

‘True. He’s got the looks, all right, but he’s never been a womaniser. He’s a one-woman man, and that woman has always been your mum. Anyway, he’s too bloody honest. He couldn’t manage all the fibbing.’

‘Mum couldn’t, either.’

‘Nope.’ Meg chewed her cheek again. ‘She’s got everything to lose. She loves this house, she loves her job, and I’m quite certain she loves your dad. She’s planning her anniversary knees-up and the big Italy trip next year. Why would she throw all that away?’

They lifted their glasses in unison. We must look like a comedy duo, thought Kate: a skinny, hungover student in Doc Martens and an eighty-year-old widow in a jaunty blouse and salon-set hairdo. The two of them had always been as thick as thieves.

Meg’s father had been a miner in County Durham. She left the north at the age of eighteen, when she married Robert Livingstone and made a career out of being a farmer’s wife. Kate had always thought this was a crime—her granny was a bright woman, could have done anything with her life.

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said fervently. ‘It’s been fucking awful since I arrived.’

‘Tut-tut. Language.’

‘
Jolly
awful. I’ve felt like screaming. All that frozen civility, and both of them behaving as though they were going to burst into tears. Now I know how kids of broken homes feel.’

Meg was digging around in her handbag. ‘Doesn’t sound good. Mind you, in years and years stuck together, you’re bound to have some tiffs. Maybe she wanted a dog, and he didn’t. Maybe she turned down a promotion and he thought she should have taken it. Could be any number of things.’ She pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Want one?’

‘No, thanks. I don’t smoke tobacco, I only smoke hooch. I’ve told you this about a million times.’

‘Rude not to offer.’

‘I can’t believe you’re still poisoning yourself, at your age.’

Meg flicked a lighter, inhaled that first lungful of nicotine. ‘I can’t believe you’re still nagging me about it, at my age. Anyway, I’ve cut down. Four a day.’

‘Did you and Grandad have many fights?’

‘Our fair share.’

Kate leaned back, resting her head against the wall. ‘So . . . what do we do, Granny? I can’t take much more. All this tension gives me a sense of doom. Should we have it out with them?’

‘No,’ said Meg, and blew out a plume of smoke. ‘No, I wouldn’t confront them. Leave them be. The one time Robert and I were in real trouble, our marriage was saved by good old-fashioned sweeping under the carpet. We were both hopping mad but neither of us was honest enough to come out and say so. After a couple of days, we forgot we weren’t talking. The day after that, we had a laugh about something—I’ve forgotten what—and that was that.’

‘What was it all about?’

‘I didn’t want more children. Robert did. He’d set his heart on having a boy. I said it wasn’t him that had to carry it for nine months. Gail hadn’t been an easy pregnancy, and Wendy almost killed me.’