Lying in Wait(37)

Half an hour later, nobody else had arrived and our friend Amy began to look embarrassed and uncomfortable. We sat on the edge of the pond, trailing our bare feet in the water.

‘Where are they? Why didn’t they come? Didn’t they want to?’ said Diana.

Amy shook her head and bit her lip. She looked like she was about to cry. It was clear she knew something. Diana grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back. ‘What is it? Why aren’t they here? Is it because of Mummy?’ She whispered it menacingly into Amy’s face.

I didn’t understand what Diana meant.

‘It … it’s because of your mother being … a loose woman,’ Amy said.

‘That’s not our fault,’ said Diana.

‘What do you mean?’ We had stopped mentioning Mummy a long time ago.

Amy said that the other parents thought that we might be a bad influence, but that her father, Dr Malone, had said that it would be cruel to punish us for something our mother had done.

I realized now that it wasn’t Daddy who had forbidden us to go to other children’s parties. We hadn’t been invited to them. I remembered how our classmates were often distant with us, though Diana and I were always so thrown together that I did not notice it as much as I might have, had we not been twins. I was shocked. Diana looked at me as if I was stupid.

‘Stop crying, you idiot. You’ll probably do the same thing yourself when we’re grown up. Everyone says you’re just like her. You’re not like Daddy and I. You’re common. You’re the one they’re afraid of. Not me!’

‘I am not common.’

‘Yes you are, Daddy can’t even look at you. You’re the exact same.’

It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to push Diana back into the pond. I didn’t snap. I was perfectly calm. I simply didn’t want her to say those things. She was being so unfair. I heard a crack as she smacked her head under the water, and when she struggled to surface, I sat on her chest to stop her. Right in that moment, I wanted Diana to drown. I wanted Diana to drown because if she was dead, she could never say those things again. Amy’s nervous laughter turned to tears.

‘Please let her up, Lydia, please. She’ll drown!’

I didn’t care. Amy became hysterical and ran off to get my father, who had disappeared into the greenhouses with his guests, no doubt to show them his melon-growing experiment. I was saturated now, as Diana thrashed around in the water beneath me, and soon she stopped struggling and became still. She had learned her lesson.

‘That’s better,’ I said, as I stepped out of the pond and pulled her up by the arm, but Diana crashed back into the water when I let her go and I was confused. I had wished really hard for Diana to be dead in that moment, but I hadn’t really meant it. She was going to be furious with me, and I would be in trouble for ruining the party. Daddy would be livid about our ruined dresses, covered with frogspawn and moss.

I pulled her up again, by the shoulders this time, but she wouldn’t lift her head and then I saw the blood seeping down the back of her neck. Daddy and his friends and Amy were running across the lawn and they were all shouting at me. Aunt Hilary ran indoors to get Hannah to telephone for an ambulance, and Daddy had pulled Diana out and laid her on the lawn, but she still wasn’t moving. He clamped her mouth open, but it was full of pondweed and he pulled it out in one long string of mess and saliva. He turned her upside down and held her up by her feet with one hand. Her dress fell down and everyone could see her knickers and I was shocked. Daddy thumped her on the back with his free hand. Daddy was crying and so was Amy and Daddy’s friends, the Percys.

All the time I was thinking, ‘What is wrong with everyone? She’ll be fine.’ I waited for her to shout at me and complain to Daddy about how awful I was. I knew it would take her a very long time to forgive me this time. But she still wasn’t moving. Had I gone too far?

Everything changed. The upheaval was far greater than after Mummy went away. I never returned to school. That night, while everyone was at the hospital, Hannah packed a trunk for me. Aunt Hilary told me Daddy had instructed her to take me to her home in Wicklow. I wanted to wait for Daddy and Diana to come home, but Aunt Hilary would brook no argument. I didn’t want to go, but not even Hannah would look at me as Aunt Hilary carried me into the car while I kicked and screamed. I did not speak for a week. I desperately missed Diana and Daddy and couldn’t understand why I could not return home.

Aunt Hilary lived with a friend – a thin woman with bony fingers and long loose grey hair, Miss Eliot. She was a retired schoolteacher and agreed to give me daily lessons. Early in that first week, I determined to eavesdrop on their conversation. I lay on the landing with my nightgown drawn down over my feet and my ear to the floor. It was clear from what they said that Miss Eliot, unlike my Aunt Hilary, was at least prepared to give me a chance.

‘She’s just a child,’ said my tutor. ‘She has no idea what she has done, she’s too young to realize.’

‘There’s just something about her. How could she do it? I can’t wait for Robert to take her back. I can’t keep her for ever.’

‘He needs time, Hilary. First Michelle abandoning him and the girls, and now this? He has to keep her out of the way to contain another scandal. Nobody knows that the girls were fighting at the time. As long as everyone thinks Diana just tripped and fell in, it will be dismissed as a terrible domestic accident.’