The Truth Club Page 6

  ‘What? Was this after you found out about Becky?’

  ‘No, before it. I found a letter from her in the bedroom.’

  ‘I see. Oh, dear.’ Erika no longer sounds quite so reassuring. ‘How did you leave it, then?’

  ‘I told him he was one to talk.’ I almost spit the words into the phone.

  ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘Talk about not seeing other people. He kept checking up on me, but he was the one who was seeing someone else.’

  ‘For lunch,’ Erika points out. Even though I don’t think she particularly likes Diarmuid, she has a fair-minded streak that can, at times, be extremely annoying.

  ‘Anything can happen over lunch.’ My voice rises with emotion. ‘People can fall in love again over lunch. He’s always loved her – she’s the woman he wanted to marry, only she got engaged to someone in New Zealand, though she didn’t marry the guy in the end. His mother even has a photo of her in the sitting-room. She’s in a canoe.’

  ‘Calm down, Sally,’ Erika says. ‘He married you, didn’t he? Yes, put it over there. Where do I have to sign for it?’ I assume she is now talking to someone who has delivered something.

  ‘Erika?’ I say, after about thirty seconds. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sighs. ‘Sorry about that. As I was saying, you mustn’t jump to conclusions. Anyway, what if he does still sort of like this woman? It wouldn’t be all that bad, would it? I mean… to be absolutely honest, Sally, you don’t seem all that thrilled about being married to him.’

  ‘I need time to think about it!’ I exclaim indignantly. ‘That’s all. I haven’t been seeing other people. So I told him that maybe, given the circumstances, he should take the opportunity to have a little think about things too.’

  ‘I suppose that’s only fair,’ Erika says. She disappears to take another call.

  As I wait, I wish Erika realised that sometimes I want her to be unfair. I want her to take my side and call Diarmuid a stupid bollocks – even though he isn’t, of course. It would be so much easier if he were.

  ‘He said he didn’t need time to think about things,’ I gabble, when Erika gets back on the line. ‘But then he said he would if I insisted, because we need to make a decision about the house.’

  ‘The horse?’

  ‘The house. For God’s sake, Erika, why would we be making a decision about a horse? We don’t own one.’

  ‘You’re speaking so fast I can hardly keep up with you.’

  ‘I can’t stand it. He wouldn’t talk about Becky at all, apart from saying they were just friends. He doesn’t talk to me, not properly. There’s always been this distant look in his eyes – even on the day we married.’

  ‘It’s not gone yet.’

  ‘What… what’s not gone?’ I demand impatiently.

  ‘The post. Someone just asked me about it.’

  ‘So now this decision seems to be about whether to sell the house, when what I want to talk about is… is whether or not we love each other.’

  ‘Men aren’t very good at talking about emotions, are they?’ Erika sighs. ‘That’s why Alex is so special. He doesn’t mind talking about emotions.’

  I almost mention my worries about being pregnant, but I decide not to. I’m expecting my period soon, so I suppose it’s kind of unlikely – but I’d say Diarmuid’s sperm are a pretty determined bunch. ‘Thanks for talking to me, Erika,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry for interrupting you at work.’

  ‘I love being interrupted at work,’ Erika says. ‘Do you want to call round this evening?’

  ‘That would be lovely.’ I sigh. ‘But I’m meeting Fiona. We’re going for one of her hikes through the hills.’

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ Erika groans. ‘Is it going to be a ten-miler?’

  ‘No. She’s promised we’ll take it gently. She’s going to give birth soon, after all.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Erika says. ‘I hope she doesn’t do it halfway up a mountain.’

  The thought of being an untrained midwife on some craggy promontory briefly distracts me from my worries about Diarmuid. ‘Bye, Erika. Talk to you soon.’

  ‘Byeee, sweetie,’ Erika says. Before she hangs up I hear the unmistakable sound of her cramming a chocolate biscuit into her mouth. Sitting at a reception desk, any reception desk, makes Erika want to eat lots of biscuits. She’s got very good at tucking them into her cheek, like a hamster, when she has to answer the phone.

  I turn into a tree-lined, middle-class suburban street and head towards my parents’ home. It has the tidiest exterior of all the houses, because my parents have made convenience a priority: the lawn at the front has been replaced by concrete, and the round flowerbed is liberally scattered with fetching brown, white and pale-orange stones – there are a few plants as well, but the stones are the main feature and naturally do not require watering. Near the front door there is a small and rather polite evergreen tree, which will never, apparently, grow too tall or require much pruning or fertiliser.

  ‘Hi, Sally!’ Mum calls out as I open the door – I still have my own key. She has a phone stuck to her ear, which is not unusual. ‘I’ve just made some coffee.’ She gestures towards the kitchen. My mother has become a coffee drinker in recent years; she grinds it herself and has a number of special blends in white ceramic jars. She is a small, trim woman prone to darting, eager movements. When she was younger she was pretty in an unexceptional, standard sort of way; now she is what Diarmuid calls ‘handsome’ and I call ‘well maintained’. Her hair colour, for example, varies regularly because she likes to ‘experiment with highlights’, and she is permanently tanned due to some very expensive cream that also protects her skin from ultraviolet rays.

  I wander towards the kitchen, which is very tidy and extremely fitted – there are, for example, no stray jars of honey hanging around attracting ants, as there are in my kitchen. What I find is Aunt Marie guiltily helping herself to a chocolate chip cookie. My parents are rather like Fiona in that they regularly acquire seductive foodstuffs and then get guests to eat them. Without the guests, a packet of high-grade chocolate chip cookies could last them a whole month.

  ‘Oh, hello, dear,’ Marie says, trying to eat the biscuit as fast as possible. She claims to be on an almost constant diet. ‘How nice to see you.’

  I say that it’s nice to see her too, even though I wish she wasn’t here. I want to go up to the attic and look for the music box Aggie gave to me and April. She bought it in Switzerland, when she and Joseph were on holiday. I don’t know why it’s suddenly become so important to me, but I don’t like the idea that I may never see it again.

  ‘What mug would you like?’ Marie is opening one of the tidy cabinets. This is something we agree on: we both believe that coffee or tea tastes better if it’s in a mug that has a pleasing colour and shape.

  ‘I think they’re pretty much all the same, aren’t they?’ All of my parents’ mugs are blue. They don’t want to be bothered with choosing between different colours and patterns.

  ‘Oh, no. I got them this nice orange one,’ Marie says.

  It is indeed a very nice, bright tangerine colour, and there are small golden stars around the rim. It isn’t the type of mug I would have expected Marie to buy – which is just another reminder that people are rarely quite the way you think they are. They have secrets, hidden parts: things that even they themselves sometimes don’t know are there.

  ‘That would be lovely.’ I smile. ‘It’s a very nice mug.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t find the honey,’ Marie says, as she places a steaming mug of tea before me. ‘You like honey in your tea, don’t you?’ She pours in some milk – just the right amount. I smile at her gratefully.

  Marie is a curious mixture of things I admire and things I deeply dislike. She is plump and has a bossy side, which retreats and advances or sometimes just hangs around waiting. Because of this, you never know which particular Marie you are dealing with. On some days, you can see she is doing her very best
to listen and only give advice if she is asked for it. This, however, is not in her true nature.

  Her true nature, when unleashed, says, ‘So, dear, how are things between you and Diarmuid?’

  I know I should expect this, but it is always a surprise, because no one else in the family asks me about Diarmuid. I think they just don’t know what to say.

  ‘Oh, grand,’ I say grimly. ‘We’re in frequent communication.’

  ‘But I just don’t understand it, dear. Why aren’t you living in the same house? What happened?’ She is cradling her blue mug. ‘Did he hit you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I shudder.

  ‘Or have an affair?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Was he a secret gambler? Or…’ She lowers her voice and looks around furtively. ‘Or did he have some… dreadful sexual deviances?’

  I shake my head. Marie is like a terrier when she wants to find a reason. In Marie’s world, women do not just leave their husbands on a whim – especially not women like me. I’ve always been the responsible one. April was the one who stole lipstick and jeans and records from shops, as a teenager; she was the one who came home drunk and argued about wanting to have a tattoo. I was the good girl. I still want to be the good girl – only I’m not any more. I can see it in people’s eyes.

  Marie is still waiting for some sort of reply, so I say, ‘It’s complicated. It’s not that I’m avoiding your question; it’s just that… well, it’s all very complicated.’

  ‘But why is it complicated?’ Marie leans forward. ‘None of us understand it.’

  I think guiltily of my relatives in their finery outside the church. The wedding was on a sunny day. Erika and Fiona were bridesmaids, and Erika ran like an Olympic sprinter when I threw my bouquet. She didn’t catch it. It was caught by a cousin whose name I keep forgetting; what I do remember about her is that she has a post-graduate degree in business studies and, at Marie’s last family gathering, informed me that she planned to work in personnel. I assume she’ll tell me all about it at the next gathering in September. And I may have to tell her that I am separated and pregnant and that my crisp addiction has returned. My crisp addiction always resurfaces at Marie’s parties; I grab whole handfuls of them and stuff them into my mouth. Sometimes I wish these cousins weren’t quite so well adjusted. If only one of them could become a lesbian, or start a degree and then leave it because of an unsuitable man…

  Pregnant. The impact of the possibility suddenly hits me. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad if I was. It would supply some sort of answer – give my life the direction it so clearly needs. I suppose it is possible to get pregnant even if you’re expecting your period – which should, by rights, have already started. I place my hand gently on my stomach. All that bingeing at Fiona’s has given it a noticeable bulge.

  Marie is staring at me. There was a time when I thought I had to answer her questions, but now I know there are some questions you can’t answer. She is getting frustrated; there is annoyance in the way she sweeps some bread-crumbs from the table. She’s probably under orders from the family to prise these details out of me. I know I am a frequent topic of conversation; I have even learned that Uncle Bob, Marie’s husband, refers to me as ‘the Bolting Bride’.

  Marie’s cloyingly sweet body-spray is wafting towards me. Some of her determination must be drifting in the air too, because I take a deep breath and say, ‘Marie, sorry to bring this up again, but why does no one want to talk about Great-Aunt DeeDee?’

  She just sits there, motionless. ‘We don’t talk about her, Sally,’ she says in a steely voice. ‘I thought I’d made that clear.’

  ‘But why?’ I lean forward, like Marie did herself. ‘I just don’t understand it.’

  Marie’s bright little eyes get the distant look that Diarmuid has perfected. She starts to fiddle with the zip on her yellow tracksuit, pulling it up and down distractedly.

  ‘ Why?’

  ‘Oh, stop asking me that.’ Her voice is hollow, and her face has that slightly melting look about it that happens when someone just might cry.

  ‘OK. I’m sorry.’ I pat her hand. ‘It’s just that Aggie says she wants to see her. She virtually begged me to find her.’

  ‘That poor woman! She doesn’t know what she’s saying any more. Her memory must have almost gone.’

  ‘No, it hasn’t,’ I say. ‘She remembers lots of things. She even remembers…’ I’m about to say that Aggie remembers my mother’s affair in California, but this is another thing we are not supposed to mention.

  Marie stands up abruptly and goes to wash her mug, running it brusquely under the tap. ‘Look, Sally, if Aggie was herself she wouldn’t want to see DeeDee ever again. She only wants to see her now because she’s forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten what?’ I’m almost jumping up and down on my chair with curiosity.

  ‘That DeeDee broke her heart.’ Marie grabs a tea towel and starts to dry the mug roughly. ‘So please don’t ask me any more about that woman. It’s just too painful.’ She appears to be addressing a geranium on the windowsill. Then she turns round sharply, as though expecting me to remonstrate. ‘That’s all I’m going to say on the matter.’

  At that moment Mum comes into the kitchen. ‘Hi, dear!’ she beams. ‘Sorry I was so long. The tennis club is having a charity dance and we were discussing the prizes for the raffle.’ She bends to kiss me on the cheek. ‘Will you stay for dinner?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I say, ‘only I’m going hillwalking with Fiona.’ I am buzzing with questions about DeeDee, but I realise that it will be impossible to lure Marie back onto the subject.

  ‘Hillwalking!’ Mum exclaims. ‘Good for you. There’s nothing like getting out into that fresh country air.’

  As I listen to Mum and Marie having a mild argument about the therapeutic benefits of gardening, I wonder how DeeDee broke Aggie’s heart. Was it because she disappeared without a trace… or was it something else? And surely they should be more worried about what happened to her? The fact that they aren’t implies that they know more than they are letting on about where she may have gone. I also wonder whether not talking about DeeDee has made it easier for the family to avoid other uncomfortable subjects.

  If I’m pregnant, they’ll probably avoid talking about that, too. Instead they’ll buy me things – baby clothes, special skin cream for stretch marks, attractive blouses that are somehow supposed to make me feel I have not lost my womanly allure. They won’t want to know what I’m feeling. And when I try to tell Aggie about it all, she’ll say, ‘Oh, look, there’s another floating sheep!’

  I help myself to another calorie-loaded cookie. I ask Marie if she wants one, and she says, ‘Oh, no, dear,’ as though she has never touched a cookie in her life.

  ‘Do you mind if I have a quick look in the attic?’ I say.

  ‘Go ahead. What are you looking for?’ Mum enquires.

  ‘That music box, the one Aggie gave me and April. I think Aggie would like to see it again.’

  ‘Heaven knows where it’s got to.’ Mum sighs. ‘I don’t think it’s in the attic, but have a look if you want.’

  I go upstairs and negotiate the narrow, rickety ladder that leads to the attic. It’s fastened to the ceiling and you have to pull it down. The dust makes me sneeze. I push open the old, unpainted door and fumble around for the light switch.

  I look around, expecting to find boxes and sentimental objects my parents aren’t quite sure what to do with; only they aren’t there. The attic is almost empty, apart from a jumble of sports equipment – badminton racquets, croquet hoops, a riding hat. There is also an old lagging jacket my father keeps planning to put on the hot-water cylinder. There are no old teddy bears, none of the stuff one should find in a place like this. I remember now: my parents did a major clear-out when they moved to this house three years ago. It’s as though, in some way, they’ve been trying to erase the past.

  A large beach ball catches my eye, and I smile. At least I re
cognise that. Dad and April and I used to kick it around on the beach while Mum read books about lone sea voyages. She claimed to find them ‘restful’. She devoured books about travel when we were younger. She loved nothing better than finding out how someone had spent a year with the Bedouins or met jungle tribes who had remained free from the trappings of modern life. I spot one of those books: it’s about a woman anthropologist who studied the ‘native ways’ of the Aborigines. I pick it up and blow the dust off the jacket.

  When I open it, I find a small red notebook cradled in the centre. The paper is frayed and old, and the big, bold writing is in faded blue ink. I open it. ‘Marble Cake,’ I read. It must be one of Aggie’s recipe books. I skim through it and see the ingredients for Vietnamese Chicken, and Sweet Potato Casserole with Lentils. Aggie must have been more adventurous in her cuisine when she was younger. I tuck it into the pocket of my jeans. Maybe I should read it out to her; maybe it will help her remember who she was – who she is. She’s drifting away from us, and I must find ways to call her back. If only I could find the music box.

  I start to hunt. Under a big crocheted blanket I find the hummingbird feeder we had up in the big eucalyptus tree in our garden in California, and an old Sierra Club calendar full of pictures of American nature at its most photogenic. My mother has also kept a pair of very old leather sandals. She always used to wear bright-red nail varnish on her toes back then, and long, full cotton skirts.

  It’s not here. I realise this after half an hour. The music box has gone. I take a deep breath and prepare to go downstairs. Then my mobile phone rings. I take it from my pocket. It’s probably Fiona reminding me to wear good thick boots for our hike.

  ‘Sally?’ It’s Diarmuid. He sounds as if he’s been drinking. ‘Sally, are you there?’

  ‘Yes.’ I stare at a cobweb.

  ‘I won’t see Becky again if you don’t want me to. We’re just friends, but if you don’t want me to see her again I won’t.’

  I look at the hummingbird feeder. Hummingbirds fly huge distances every year on their annual migrations. They looked so beautiful in the garden, iridescent and small and full of life.