White Bodies(83)

The buzzer is answered by a man with a familiar American accent—like Felix’s, but slightly looser, a more conciliatory tone.

“Lucas? What are you doing here?”

He buzzes me in, and I heave my bag along a narrow terra-cotta path overhung with heavy foliage that only partly masks the pool, a blue flash over to my left, one level down, and at the end of the path Lucas waits in the doorway of the house, leaning on the frame with one arm, seeming weirdly nonchalant. He’s wearing a pink linen shirt, and for a second I think I recognize it as Felix’s, worn as Felix never would, ostentatiously unbuttoned, not tucked in.

“I want to say hello, sister-by-marriage,” he says. “But are you my former sister-by-marriage now?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I don’t care either, and I drop my bag on the floor. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs. She’s getting ready, beautifying, for a movie premiere—it’s later this evening. She said to send you up but not straightaway because she’s in the shower, so come on through and let’s give you a drink of something. You must be shattered. What would you like, Callie? A cup of tea, or a lime soda, or a glass of wine?—all we have is sparkling; Tilda likes it.”

I notice all we have—we, like he’s living here. And Tilda likes it, like he knows her habits. I take the sparkling wine, an attempt to settle my nerves, and we sit side by side on a low squarish sofa, while I look around, assessing Tilda’s new home. It’s darker than Curzon Street, dark tiles on the floor, wooden kitchen cabinets, trees and shrubs advancing on the French doors. Would Felix have liked it? I think not. It’s not exactly jumbled, but the lines aren’t clean, and there are cushions, and curtains with swags, paintings on the walls of hills and sunsets. Not as crazy as Mum’s, but not a million miles away either.

“Were you here when it happened?” I may as well come to the point.

From his attitude on the sofa, I can see that he doesn’t register the tension in me. He thinks I’m merely curious. “Yes. I’ve been staying for a few weeks—I have a job here. Another house.”

“Congratulations.”

“So, yes, I was here. She seemed like a nice girl. A bit intense and moody maybe, and quiet. But basically nice.”

I think that nice is the worst possible word for her. “So what happened exactly? I mean, I only know that she died in the pool. Tilda emailed me, about the fuss in the press and so on; but I don’t know any details.”

“Oh—okay. Well, she pitched up here wanting to stay, and I don’t think that Tilda had been expecting her; after all, they didn’t know each other well. They’d been students at drama school, as I understand it, but that was a long time ago. Charlotte seemed to think that she and Tilda had some special bond, and that Tilda would be delighted to have her as a houseguest; Tilda didn’t have the heart to turn her away—and Charlotte just settled in. She made herself useful, I guess, going down to the supermarket each morning, buying food, making our meals. And she’d work out which movies we’d watch in the evenings. She reckoned she could make it here as an actress—like thousands of young women before her, of course—but she didn’t seem to realize that she and Tilda are leagues apart. Tilda has something special about her. Charlotte didn’t.”

I’m noticing the differences between Lucas and Felix. He’s put his feet up on the coffee table and is drinking his wine too fast. And there’s something about the way in which he talks about Tilda, an element of admiration in his voice, and of supplication, that makes me realize that she has him under her control, and I pity him.

“So, that night . . . ,” he says, “Charlotte and Tilda were down at the pool. Charlotte, I remember, was wearing a long dress of Tilda’s, a gold-colored silky thing—it had a split seam, and Tilda said she didn’t want it anymore, that Charlotte could keep it. They’d been drinking, Charlotte had taken some coke, and they were swimming. It’s a famously lethal combination, of course. And they’d swum in their clothes, which, at the time, they’d thought was an amusing thing to do. Kinda crazy, in a good way. I was here, up at the house, making dinner for once. Anyways, Tilda came up from the pool, drenched, dripping wet skirt, making footprints on the tiles; she went upstairs for a shower, came down again, and was surprised that Charlotte hadn’t appeared. We called her from the terrace, but she didn’t come; so we walked down to the pool together, Tilda and I, and there she was, floating facedown, her black hair radiating outwards, the dress tangled up around her legs. I kinda went into emergency mode, jumping into the pool, and together we pulled her out.”

We sit silently, and I put my feet up on the coffee table, next to Lucas’s. I can hear my sister upstairs, the snap of a closing door, the scrape of a chair, and I say, “Do you blame Tilda?”

It’s a while before he answers, “No, not at all. Why would I?”

Then she calls out, “Come up, Callie!” in a voice that is too light, too fresh. So I leave Lucas on the sofa and ascend the stairs, to find Tilda waiting for me, standing at the door of a bedroom, bathed in a pinkish glow that is coming from an open door behind her, a door to a balcony. She’s wearing a thin white cotton robe over her naked body, and her feet are bare. Her long fair hair is freshly dried and glimmers at its edges, as do tiny specks of dust in the air. Her expression is sweet, a sort of tender bemusement.