Before I Knew You Read online

  Sophie closed her eyes again and threw a one. The children erupted into explosive celebrations, toppling a full glass of orange juice across the Cluedo board. Merry mayhem ensued, all the merrier for the fact that – thanks to a power-cut – the game was being conducted by candlelight. Indeed, without the power-cut the game would never have been embarked upon, since Sophie would either have taken the girls home or allowed them to remain clustered round the television watching an old Batman DVD with William’s sons. And that unlikely scenario had only come into being because of the monsoon-like deluge – starting as Sophie pulled up outside the house – which had scuppered William’s grand, impromptu plan of a joint half-term outing to an amusement park. Younger children might have been induced to pull on wellies and Pac-a-macs and make a go of it, but their five had shaken their heads gravely and retreated, in tacit agreement, to the old green sofa. They would stay for twenty minutes, Sophie had conceded, after being shouted down at an initial suggestion of simply going home.

  The twenty had somehow stretched to thirty, then sixty, and then – with Alfie making chocolate brownies and Harry producing the DVD – the entire afternoon. The storm blew the power cable when the film was within minutes of its climactic end. The fun of candle-lighting ensued, after which William had reached for the Cluedo box and the two eldest, exchanging looks of horror, had escaped to the pub.

  Things going wrong turning out right, Sophie mused, holding the dripping board out of the way while four pairs of hands mopped at the spillage with squares of kitchen paper and tea-towels. Andrew’s decision to spend half-term in New York had upset the girls badly, even from the vantage-point of their being deeply upset already. While they claimed not to want to spend time with him anyway, their father’s voluntary absence over the holiday seemed to have laid bare for them the starkness of the choice he had made, the vastness of its geographical implications. After two straight days of separate, silent misery pulsing out from behind their closed bedroom doors, William’s suggestion of Thorpe Park on the phone that morning had arrived like a blessing. Persuading her daughters to see it that way had been the challenge.

  But she had done it. And here they were, happier, better, without even having gone near a rollercoaster. Their anger with Andrew would burn out, Sophie knew. She would do what she could to ensure that it did. She loved them too much to do anything else. In the meantime the world would continue to turn, taking them all with it, changing them. Maybe Andrew would marry Meredith and produce some more musical offspring. Or maybe the pair would implode in an egotistical frenzy, proving to be as mismatched by temperament as they were by age. She didn’t know. Best of all, she didn’t care.

  Sophie took the board to the sink, groping round the taps for a J-cloth. Behind her the children, still dabbing at dripping murder weapons and sodden pads of clue-notes, were continuing the debate about the game. Milly, perhaps on a spurt of delayed filial loyalty, was expressing doubts about the decision on Sophie’s six. George said a cocked dice always had to be replayed and they had been right to apply the same rule. Alfie kept pleading for them to forget the whole thing so they could start a new game.

  William squeezed a sponge into the sink. ‘What we did – that night – I want to do it again.’

  ‘Ssh. We were drunk and miserable and mad.’

  ‘I know. I want to do it again, not drunk, not miserable … maybe mad, though. The mad was good.’

  Sophie turned to him, widening her eyes in silent reprobation.

  ‘I want to make love to you until your eyes pop.’

  She looked away, stifling a squeak of indignation. ‘They did not pop …’

  ‘Yes, they did. It was fantastic.’

  ‘Ssh, William … It’s too much, too soon.’ Sophie glanced over her shoulder. ‘And the children …’

  ‘The children know anyway.’

  ‘No, they don’t,’ she hissed, disentangling herself from the sponge that William seemed to be using to rub at her hands rather than the Cluedo board. ‘There’s nothing to know anyway.’

  ‘Oh, yes, there is. And the children know it. Children always do, though they don’t let on. We’ll have to keep an eye on Milly and George,’ he murmured, managing to brush his lips over her ear as he reached across the sink, ‘or it might start to feel like incest.’

  Sophie blushed, glad of the dark. She pushed away from the sink but William managed to keep hold of her hand for a moment longer, kissing the tips of her fingers, in spite of them dripping with juice and dirty sink water.

  The pleasure of his touch slid up Sophie’s arm and into her heart, where it stayed throughout the next, more riotous, game (interrupted this time, rather to everyone’s dismay, by the lights coming on), and for the rest of the evening, through the return of the pub-goers, the pizza-ordering, the final throes of the DVD and Susan phoning to change plans and report on her latest, encouraging, appointment with her oncologist. Even during the eventual innocent cheek-pecks of farewell on the doorstep it was still there, so intensely that Sophie took the precaution of pinning her eyes to William’s shirt lapels rather than his face. Too much too soon, as she had told him. It was important to be sensible.

  But could the girls possibly know? She stole glances at her daughters’ closed expressions once they were all in the car. It certainly felt very silent, but then it was bound to – being just the three of them again, after the riot of the afternoon. Milly had commandeered the front seat, while all she could see of Olivia was a slice of her profile in the rear-view mirror, staring studiously into the dark. Good silence then, Sophie decided, trying to think about the danger of flitting foxes rather than the graze of William’s cheek stubble on her lips.

  ‘Weird about the cat,’ said Milly, after a while.

  ‘Totally,’ agreed her sister.

  Sophie swerved slightly, in spite of there being no sign of a fox, flitting or otherwise. They knew. Oh, God, they knew.

  ‘I mean, like, spooky weird.’

  ‘Is William going to have it?’

  Sophie cleared her throat. ‘It’s not been decided. He says he’s offered, but there’s a possibility it might go to the mother, in Florida. I’m just glad the wretched animal was okay after all.’

  ‘It would be funny, though, wouldn’t it,’ chirruped Milly, ‘if it did come over here? I mean, you always said you were afraid it might have run away because it didn’t like you. So if it lived over here with William you could find out once and for all, couldn’t you … when … if you visited to see if it liked you?’

  ‘But not for six months,’ Olivia interjected, by way of a rescue, ‘because of quarantine, remember?’

  Sophie drove as steadily as she could. Six months sounded good to her. Even if things went well with William, she knew she would always rather dread the cat.

  23

  Diane was ready long before her car and driver arrived. She hovered by the condo’s glass entrance doors, checking and rechecking the contents of her bag and making small-talk with the concierge. Outside the heat shimmered, a layer of fine muslin laid upon the day. The previous year she had hired a vehicle and driven herself, but she had been younger then, braver. Miami felt far away now, at the end of a long path of frightening hurdles – busy traffic circles, divided highways, overpasses, thundering eighteen-wheelers – and the woman capable of negotiating such obstacles was long gone.

  ‘You say a happy birthday to that brother of yours from me, you hear?’ commanded the concierge, holding open the door for her when the car drew up at last. ‘Here, let me get that,’ he added, seeing the weight of the bag, which instead of her usual purse was a large dark blue leather shoulder grip Beth had purchased for her many years before.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got it, Sidney, thank you.’ Diane kept both arms curled protectively round the bag and stepped out into the heat. She barely left the condo, these days. Because of Dido she had had to move to one that cost more but wasn’t quite as nice. Bienvenida, thankfully, had moved with her. The girl came three
times a week now and performed more chores, including keeping the cat tray clean and going to the mall to run errands.

  The car was smooth and air-conditioned to an icy cool. Diane watched the world slide by, thinking of the gruelling, surreal effort of the last big trip she had made, five months before, to New York, to organize the cremation and blessing of her daughter’s remains. She had been relieved at the turn-out: colleagues from Beth’s work days, local friends, Nancy and Carter – and William, bless him, stiff and dignified in his long dark coat, his eyes burning coals. Throughout the ordeal the dear man hadn’t left her side. He had been particularly good with his erstwhile neighbours too, whose repeated apologies for not having been around when the fire happened had quickly begun to ring hollow when it transpired that the pair had been in Hollywood securing a deal for some film-script Carter had written. Smug delight beamed from their every pore. Jennifer Aniston was in the running, they said, along with Jack Nicholson – old guy meets not-so-old girl – and it was to be a sizzling Lolita-style tale for the middle-aged. They had put their house in the hands of a realtor on the back of it and were moving to the west coast.

  William. Her ex-son-in-law. On coming face to face, Diane had been momentarily afraid. Beth’s insane, tragic, final email to her had screamed in her head: Hal must suffer for what he did … all those years, with you standing by … why, Mom, why? But the truth sets you free so I will tell William. William will know and he will understand. It was one of the few pinpricks of light in an otherwise very dark time that Beth had clearly done no such thing; that, in spite of the heroic efforts at resuscitation by Darien’s volunteer firemen, her daughter had taken her pitiful ravings to the grave. An email to Sophie Chapman was all William knew of the final dreadful hours: Beth had been planning to come to London by way of some sort of birthday surprise, he had explained to his mother-in-law, offering a look of such simple, regretful sadness, that Diane had envied him.

  Her own feelings, alas, could never be so straightforward – not now, with that demented nonsensical screech of a final message branded into her memory. Discovered the day after the phone call from Stamford Hospital, when she was still so dazed – sleepless, in the thick of grieving – Diane had deleted it after just one reading. Indeed, she would have unread the entire miserable three lines if she possibly could, erased them for ever from the faltering hard disk of her seventy-three-year-old brain. As it was, she had stabbed repeatedly at the delete button, her fingers sliding in her tears, her heart leaping with wild jealousy for the bereaved military mothers she had watched on the TV a few hours and an eternity before, treasuring final sentiments that parents had every right to hear from their offspring – that they were loved, that they had done their best.

  Yet even with the hateful message eradicated, the computer had felt tainted. So much so that, on her return from the north, Diane had stowed it at the back of a cupboard and upgraded to a much smaller, lighter machine – a laptop – that could be battery-charged and carried from room to room. She had taken to watching DVDs on it at all hours of the day and night, picking favourites from a job-lot of golden oldies that Bien-venida, with astonishing insight, had picked out for her from the Netflicks summer sale. Digitally – magically – washed through with colour, the films’ innocent stories and familiar protagonists, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, had become for Diane the best, most comforting friends, ready always to distract her from the darkness that so often now seemed to be lurking beyond the screen.

  Hal was in his room, slumped in a wheelchair, a camel blanket covering his knees. He was dozing, chin on chest, adding an extra crease to the now permanent roll of flesh around his neck. Once thickset and muscular, the persistence of ill-health in recent years had turned him into a bulging bag of a man, shaped more by the furniture that housed him rather than the structure of his own skeleton.

  ‘You came.’

  ‘Happy birthday.’ Diane placed a kiss on top of his head and eased the gift she had brought out of the blue leather grip, making sure she didn’t disturb the urn of ashes she had wedged alongside. She had taken the precaution of sealing the urn’s lid with tape – four thick white strips – but even so, the bottom of the bag felt worryingly gritty, as if some of Beth’s dust had seeped out. Cremation had been a tough choice: burning someone who had died in a fire – it didn’t seem right. But then common sense had won out: it was the only way of having a ceremony in Beth’s chosen home state – near her friends – while at the same time allowing Diane to take the remains with her to Florida, for eventual burial or safe-keeping as she chose.

  Hal pawed weakly at his parcel. He looked terrible, even given Diane’s mental preparation to expect the worst, factoring in the toll of the knee operations and the increasingly dark, monosyllabic answers he had been giving her over the phone. His hands trembled and his nails were too chewed to get any leverage under the sticky tape. Eventually Diane reached into his lap and pulled up an edge of the tape herself to get the process rolling. Like a useless kid, she decided, sitting back to watch, swallowing irritation at the thought – never far from her mind – that this selfsame irksome, short-tempered and increasingly self-pitying creature had paid for every day of earthly comforts she had ever known. The cheques had started soon after she had asked him to move out, small at first but then increasing steadily as his business investments took off.

  Inside the wrapping paper, under layers of white tissue, were a blue crew-neck jumper and black sweatpants, both picked out by Bienvenida (following a briefing from her employer) at the best of the men’s clothing stores in their local plaza.

  ‘One for smart and one for casual,’ Diane pointed out, feeling the need to make up for her brother’s mumbled thanks. She folded up the gift wrap and then shook out the pants as if seeing them for the first time, which wasn’t far from the truth. ‘I thought these would be useful when you’re doing all that rehab –’

  ‘There is no rehab. I’ve stopped going. There’s no fucking point. I’m nearly at the end of the road, Diane.’

  ‘Hal, really –’

  ‘There’s a padre here and we’ve been doing a lot of talking.’

  There was a knock on the door and a young woman in a crisp white uniform asked if they would like any refreshments. ‘I’ve brought Hal’s favourite cookies,’ trilled Diane, returning the trousers to Hal’s lap and plucking a small white paper parcel from her voluminous bag. ‘So, yes, dear, I guess we’d like some tea. Hal, would you like tea?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Just me then, please, dear.’

  After the door closed, Diane walked over to the window, crossing her arms and squeezing herself to rein in the anger. Telling her how sick he was all the time … how self-centred could the man get? Not showing gratitude, not offering one iota of acknowledgement at the monumental effort she had made getting herself over there – a three-hour round trip – putting on a bright, brave, birthday face when all she really wanted was the numbing solace of bourbon and her own bed.

  So his knees hurt, did they? Well, poor baby. Diane focused on the landscaped garden through the window. Spread outside Hal’s room was a large, rich green lawn, studded with attractive pebbled walkways and benches for rest-stops. Beyond that lay a huge oval lake, fringed with bulrushes and sporting a cute wooden latticed bridge over its narrowest point. Underneath, alligators cruised – timid ones, according to the people who ran the care home, and yet during the walks she and Hal had had over the years (how many was it? Three? Four? Five?), glimpses of the reptiles surfacing like floating planks or slithering into the water from the undergrowth had never failed to make her blood run cold.

  ‘My time, Diane … it’s running out,’ Hal croaked behind her. ‘My heart, it races so, I can’t think straight half the time.’

  Diane turned slowly, summoning patience. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Hal, but when I spoke to the doctor just now, he said –’

  ‘Nothing. He knows nothing
. How can any human know truly how another feels?’ He slammed his palm against his chest, with the passion of a soldier saluting his country. ‘Only the Lord knows that.’

  The gifts had slipped off his lap onto the floor. Diane slowly bent to pick them up, aware of the resistance in her own increasingly frail and faltering body. Hal might be five years older than her, but she was full of mysterious pains, too, these days, perhaps not so far off the end of the road herself. Yet her brother had been the one constant in her life, looking out for her. She had to stick by him. The medical ailments had started viciously, relentlessly, the moment he had finally given up work. Before the knees it had been hips. Before that, thyroid problems, a hernia and cataracts.

  ‘How are you anyways?’ he asked dully.

  Diane cleared her throat. ‘You’ve always been so good to me, Hal, and I want you to know how much I appreciate –’

  ‘I asked how you were, woman.’

  Diane folded the sweater and pants and laid them neatly on the end of his bed. ‘I’m bearing up, thank you, Hal. I have the cat, which is some comfort … but I already told you about that …’

  ‘Yeah, and I thought you hated the darn thing.’

  ‘Oh, I never minded Dido.’ Diane laughed a little wildly. ‘Although I have to confess, she is clawing the place to shreds, which does make me wonder whether I shouldn’t have accepted that kind vet’s offer of re-homing in the Darien area. Or William – he said he would have her,’ she continued, gabbling now, glad of having alighted upon a subject on which she had so much to say. ‘The girl who cleans for me keeps suggesting we get the claws removed – they can do that, you know – and I would in a trice if only I couldn’t help remembering that Beth –’ Diane caught her breath as the grief, like nausea, washed through her.