Greenwich Park(25)

‘I’m doing all this, silly!’ she cries, chuckling and waving me away. ‘I told you. My treat. You sit down, relax.’ She turns back to the board, starts hacking at the cheeses. Clack, clack.



I lower myself down on a stool. I realise I have been holding my breath; I let the air out of my lungs, slowly, so she doesn’t notice.

‘Is Daniel into football, then?’

The comment throws me. What is she talking about now?

‘What do you mean?’

‘The radio,’ she says. ‘It was on 5 Live.’

‘Oh, right. Yes, he is.’

‘Which team?’

‘Newcastle United.’

‘He from up there, is he?’

‘Um. No. His parents are. Do you want a cheese knife for that?’

‘No, this is fine.’

Clack. Clack.

‘Rachel – are you all right?’ I say eventually. ‘You seem a bit … you said you’d had a bad day?’

‘It’s fine,’ she says, with a manic shake of the head. She turns back to the board and begins to pile up sticky slices of ham and pastrami, which she pulls from cellophane packs. Doesn’t she know we can’t eat that?

‘Just, you know. Men,’ she mutters.

My curiosity returns, like an itch I can’t scratch.

‘Did you decide to tell him, in the end? The father?’

Rachel doesn’t seem to hear. Having carved up an entire wheel of Brie, she now appears to be moving on to another.

‘Rachel,’ I tell her, ‘that’ll be loads. I’m actually not all that hungry.’

‘Oh, really?’ She drops the knife. It clatters down onto the marble block. She turns to me, rubbing her eye. ‘You know what? Let’s forget it. Let’s forget the whole thing,’ she says. She shoves the block away from her, so that it slams into the wall with a bang. ‘It was a stupid idea.’

‘Oh no, no,’ I say, alarmed by her rapid mood change. ‘Not at all. It was a lovely idea. Let’s take it out to the end of the garden, shall we? Away from where the builders are. We can, um … graze.’

Rachel eyes me suspiciously.

‘Really, Rachel. It’s fine.’ I glance at the knife, hear the sound of my own breathing in my ears.

‘OK.’ She smiles. ‘Great! I’ll make you a tea though. You always like a cup of tea.’

‘Oh. Yes,’ I say. ‘Lovely. Thanks.’

Rachel flicks the kettle on, flings the cupboard above it open and pulls out two mugs. Dives into another cupboard for tea bags, sugar. She knows where everything is. She hands me a mug then shovels three heaped teaspoons of sugar into her own.

‘I’m just going to use your other bathroom,’ she says, heading for the stairs. ‘Then we can tuck in.’ She has left the tea bags in hot wet puddles on the worktop. A pale circle of spilled milk. A dusting of sugar.

I perch on a stool and listen to Rachel’s footfalls on the stairs, the flush, the sound of the tap. She doesn’t return. Then I hear a scraping noise, the creak of floorboards far at the top of the house. What is she doing? Surely she’s not trying the floorboards again? For a mad moment, I think about the note, tucked in the back of the book on my bedside. Why would you suspect she would go and poke around up there? I ask myself. Because it’s exactly the sort of thing you would do, a voice in my head answers.



The thought of Rory’s note has been turning over and over in my mind all week, like a leaf in the wind. Each night, when Daniel is asleep, I flick my bedside light on, and slip it out of the drawer. I hold it between my fingers, examine it again.

Darling RRH

Wear to show me

For Ever More

W

I can’t make sense of it. To show me what?

Darling RRH

I suppose it is wrong of me, to feel so involved. But if Rory is up to something, if he is having some sort of affair with this W, whoever she is, then I can’t help but feel he is violating something that involves me too – the four of us, Daniel and me, Rory and Serena. The only family I’ve got left, unless you count Charlie, but he’s hopeless. My mind leaps ahead, imagines it all coming out, the horror of our family falling apart. Of separation, even divorce. That would spoil everything between Serena and me – all the things I’ve planned. The maternity leave coffees, walks with our babies, yoga classes. All gone. She won’t want to see me now, will she? Not after my brother betrayed her. The thought makes me feel sick, as if there’s a guillotine hanging over us all, and only I can see it.

‘Been looking at your photos. You look banging in this one. Was this at your wedding?’



Rachel is back, standing by the kitchen dresser, holding a photograph in a silver frame.

‘That’s right,’ I say carefully. ‘It’s me and my two bridesmaids. That’s Katie on the left, who you met.’ I hesitate. ‘And the other one is Serena.’

It’s not the greatest picture of me, really. I’d insisted on wearing Mummy’s wedding dress, on doing it in Marylebone Town Hall, like Mummy and Daddy had all those years ago. I thought it would be nice, a sense of tradition. In truth, the whole thing had been so drab. I don’t know what I’d been thinking.

The reception had been in the Chelsea Physic Garden. I’d imagined buzzing bees, the smell of grass, candelabras of magnolia in bloom. But we ended up taking most of the pictures inside, because of the rain. People kept saying the rain didn’t matter, but it did, of course it did. All the aunties had their husbands’ jackets over their dresses, their shoulders hunched forward, their fascinators wilting in the wet. Not many people had stayed until the end.