The Unheard Read online

  I wanted to pick her up, grasp her by the shoulders, shake her and ask her what was happening. What had she done? What had she seen? What was happening in that restless brain?

  Instead, I bent down and kissed Poppy on the cheek and rearranged the duvet around her.

  ‘Go to sleep now. Sweet dreams,’ I said.

  I picked up the pieces of Milly and took them with me.

  ‘With you in a second,’ I called to Gina, trying to sound normal. I could hear her clattering around in the kitchen, the clink of glasses.

  I walked out of the flat door and the front entrance and thrust the rag doll’s severed limbs and head deep into the rubbish bin. I didn’t want them in the house.

  ELEVEN

  I peeled the cover off the plastic carton and tipped the olives into a little bowl. I pulled open a packet of crisps. Gina was making a Negroni, scowling in concentration as she tipped in the Campari, added slices of orange.

  ‘I warn you, I’ve already had one,’ she said. ‘Just a small one. But you were ages up there.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I know what it’s like. It’s my night off, though. No husband, no children, no chores. I’m going to get drunk and take an Uber home.’

  I tried to push away the image of the dismembered doll. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Gina about it: this evening we were going to drink Negronis, get a takeaway and pretend we were twenty-one again, childless, partner-less, heedless, young.

  We clinked our glasses together and took a sip; we both gave a small, almost identical groan of pleasure.

  ‘Do you remember when we were drunk that time and you insisted I cut your hair?’ said Gina.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I kept trying to get it even and it got shorter and shorter and you were sitting there so innocently. You had no idea what was going on. I was cutting away in a panic and all these thick locks of your beautiful hair were lying on the floor.’

  ‘Maybe you should cut my hair now.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Maybe I need a new look.’

  ‘I like your old look. So does Aidan.’

  ‘Starting over,’ I said.

  ‘I am never going to cut your hair again. You can start over without looking like a scarecrow.’

  ‘OK.’

  I took another sip. It was bitter and sweet and warmth spread through me.

  ‘We should do this more often,’ Gina said.

  I laughed. ‘That reminds me of Jason. We’d do something like go to see a film and while we were there he would say: we should go to see films more. And I’d say: we’re here, we’re doing it, just live in the moment. I sometimes felt that whatever we were doing, his mind was on something else. Planning ahead. Making calculations. He has a devious mind.’

  ‘Devious? That sounds a bit sinister.’

  ‘It’s more that I’m beginning to see him differently. The Jason I thought I knew and the Jason I see now don’t seem to belong to each other. Which one is the real Jason?’

  ‘Can’t he be both? Lots of Jasons. And you can’t be in relationship with all of them. There’s something intelligent I want to say about multiple selves, but the Negroni is stopping me. Which is a good thing.’

  Gina took another swig.

  ‘So you’re saying that we can never be fully known,’ I said. I felt suddenly forlorn.

  ‘Fully known? Christ, of course not. Do you want to be?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. Doesn’t Laurie fully know you?’

  Gina considered this.

  ‘He doesn’t know me the way you know me. And you don’t know me the way he knows me. And neither of you know me the way I know myself.’ Gina squinted comically. ‘And sometimes I think I don’t understand myself at all.’

  ‘Yes. I guess so. It’s scary, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘It strikes me,’ said Gina, ‘that when you and Jason first separated, you seemed to feel freed from something, as if you could start over, as you put it. Find out a different self, away from him. I know it was painful, it was also a bit scary, yes, but exciting. I almost felt a tiny bit jealous. Which is stupid of course, but I did.’

  ‘Really? And I was jealous of you and Laurie and how you always manage to be so friendly and nice to each other. And equal. The way he’s such a hands-on father. Still am a bit jealous, if I’m honest. Because now when I think about me and Jason, I find it hard to understand how I let our lives be so dictated by his wishes and his career.’

  Gina put her glass on the table with a click.

  ‘Good,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Good? What’s good?’

  ‘That you’re seeing that now.’

  ‘You mean, you’ve thought that too?’

  ‘Well, he’s a bit of an alpha male, isn’t he?’

  Coming from Gina, that wasn’t a term of praise. The Negroni was almost gone. I needed another.

  ‘You think I was, you know, too submissive?’

  ‘I think you do yourself down,’ she said. ‘Sometimes. You’re too considerate of what other people are feeling. You go to such an effort to see things from their point of view that you can almost erase yourself.’

  ‘Erase myself! That doesn’t sound healthy.’

  ‘But it was good as well. You gave it your best. You were amazingly tolerant.’

  ‘Tolerant? Is that what I was?’ I leaned forward. ‘Submissive and now tolerant. What was I tolerant of?’

  ‘You know. Jason being Jason.’

  ‘What does Jason being Jason mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Gina picked up her drink and took a swallow, so large that half the contents of the little glass disappeared. She looked at it in surprise, then pushed an olive into her mouth.

  ‘The main thing is, when it didn’t work out, I think the way you handled it was civilised and amazing really. You always put Poppy first, no matter what.’

  ‘I don’t think Poppy’s doing so well,’ I said. Suddenly I wanted to blurt everything out and be taken seriously. I wanted someone to see what was happening the way I saw it.

  ‘Poppy’s great! All kids have their ups and downs.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Anyway, I always used to believe that there was no such thing as a good break-up. God, when I think of some of our friends. When I think of your parents: they were quite something when they were going through their divorce. You’ve been different, Tess.’

  ‘What about Jason? Has he been different too?’

  ‘It was easier for him.’

  ‘Why?’

  A little furrow appeared between Gina’s eyes.

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘But it seemed like it was. What with keeping the house. I never understood that. And his grand new job. And Emily.’

  ‘Emily came later.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Didn’t she?’

  ‘God, don’t ask me. I only know what you told me.’

  But she shifted in her seat and looked away from me. A thought snaked its way into my mind, sharp and poisonous. It made me feel physically sick, and at the same time it was so obvious that I almost laughed at myself for being such a fool. Had I always known and chosen not to know? Was I that woman, who turns a blind eye?

  ‘Can I ask you something about me and Jason? Was Jason unfaithful to me?’

  Gina put her glass down on the table. She looked deeply shocked and distressed.

  ‘What are you doing, Tess? Why are you asking things like that?’

  I suddenly felt entirely cold and steely and stonily sober. I looked at Gina full in the face, wanting to force her to continue.

  ‘You’re in a new part of your life now,’ she said a little desperately. ‘You’re doing wonderfully with Poppy. You’ve met a new man. You don’t want to damage any of that, do you?’

  ‘You’re my friend,’ I said. ‘I think maybe you’re my best friend. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you fucking tell me?’

  When Gin
a spoke, her voice was trembling. I thought she might even start crying. ‘Is this something you really want to do?’

  ‘It’s something I have to do.’

  Gina put her hand on my arm, but I pulled away.

  ‘Tess, listen. I had this friend and she found out that the husband of her friend was having an affair. She told her friend and it broke up the marriage and I always thought my friend did it as an act of aggression or something. She’d never liked the man and I think she thought they were better apart.’ She gave a sniff and took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. ‘Mistakes happen in marriages – in all marriages probably. You know some of the things I’ve been through with Laurie. But you survive them. Sometimes you’re better off not knowing. Christ, I agonised over it, but in the end I didn’t think I had the right to tell you and wreck things.’

  I felt a heat of rage that was almost physical and I wanted to shout at Gina or hit out at her. The sense of humiliation swept through me like a sickness. Jason had had an affair and other people had known, had probably talked about me, pitied me, felt sorry for me. I couldn’t bear it.

  ‘So you knew this important thing about me and you decided I was better off not knowing, did you? So you didn’t tell me. Who was she?’

  ‘Tess,’ said Gina in a pleading tone. ‘What’s the point? What are you going to do with this apart from torment yourself?’

  ‘It’s not what you think. Do I know her?’

  Gina took a deep breath. ‘Ellen Dempsey.’

  ‘Ellen? Ellen? Lorraine’s younger sister, Ellen? That one. The one who’s years younger than us? Like a child.’

  Gina nodded miserably.

  ‘How did you find out? When did you find out?’

  ‘A year and a half, no, more like two years ago.’ Gina wasn’t meeting my eye, but looking beyond me, out of the window. ‘Towards the end of the summer Ellen met me for a drink and it all spilled out. She felt terrible. I think she needed someone to confess to.’

  ‘She wanted to confess to my close friend?’

  ‘I know. It sounds weird. Honestly, Tess, the whole thing was a torment.’

  ‘I’m so sorry for your pain,’ I said nastily and saw the hurt on Gina’s face. Good. I wanted to hurt her.

  I worked it out. Poppy would have been about one year old, newly walking, starting to say words, and Jason had been having an affair. And Gina had known. So many times when the two of us were having conversations about relationships, about our personal lives, Gina must have been thinking: I know something about Tess that she doesn’t know about herself.

  ‘So when Poppy was just a baby, you knew. And when I went part-time while Jason sailed on upwards and became a head, you knew. And…’ I could hardly speak, I was so agitated. I pointed a wobbly finger at my friend. ‘When we were having counselling? I told you how it was going and you must have been aware that Jason hadn’t said anything about an affair, and there I was thinking we were both being honest with each other and trying our best to repair things or say goodbye properly. And you knew. You knew all that. And you didn’t tell me, when all these years we’ve had conversations about what it is to be a woman, a mother, stand on our own ground, keep our independence, have agency. Stupid bloody fucking agency. Who was I kidding? And Jason was having an affair. And you knew. And probably you’ve told Laurie.’

  Gina didn’t answer. Her face was slack.

  ‘Right. So he knew as well. And who else?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t tell anyone else, of course I didn’t. All I know is what I’ve said to you now.’ She finally looked directly at me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I know you’re angry with me. I’d be angry with me, if I was you.’

  I rubbed the side of my face. I was suddenly tired, almost violently tired.

  ‘I am angry. I’m so angry that I can hardly bring myself to look at you. But it’s not really you I’m angry with. It’s Jason. And me. I’m angry with myself for not seeing it. And humiliated. I feel such a stupid, stupid fool. Was it obvious? How could I not know? How could I be so blind?’

  ‘You didn’t know because you trusted him and that’s how we have to live,’ said Gina. There were tears in her eyes and her lovely face was wretched. ‘I wish I’d told you. But honestly, I didn’t know what to do, and then when you and Jason separated, I thought it was too late to tell you because it was over and you seemed sorted out about it.’

  ‘But it’s not over.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not over. It’s there, some horrible ugly stain that’s spreading and spreading. Something’s going on.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  I thought of Poppy, lying just above us in her bed; I thought of the mutilated rag doll; I thought of the violent drawing and the swearing and the night terrors. I was gripped by something I had no control over.

  ‘Never mind. Does she work?’ I asked.

  ‘Ellen?’ Gina screwed her face up in concentration. ‘Something in education.’

  ‘A teacher?’

  ‘No. Some kind of educational organisation.’

  ‘Which one?’

  TWELVE

  The man at the front desk started rummaging through the papers in front of him.

  ‘She’s not expecting me,’ I said.

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘My name is Tess Moreau. If she says she’s busy, you can tell her it’s about Jason Hallam. It’s important and I’m not going away until I’ve seen her.’

  My own voice sounded unfamiliar to me – clear, sharp and commanding. He raised his bushy eyebrows and picked up the phone.

  I barely had time to sit down before the lift door opened and a woman came out and walked quickly over to me. I stood up and we looked at each other for a few seconds, unsmiling. At least she wasn’t going to pretend.

  ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ I said.

  ‘We can go to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It’s a bit quieter there.’

  We walked side by side, crossed the busy road and then passed through a narrow passage that opened up into a lush green space, trees rustling with new leaves and tulips blazing in the beds. I allowed myself to look at her properly. Ellen Dempsey had short hair and narrow dark almond-shaped eyes. She had a piercing in her eyebrow and one in her nose, and a rather beautiful tattoo, like a vine or a branch, running up her left arm. She was wearing a black leather skirt and wedged trainers. I took all this in, understanding what I had already known: she was young, so very young. Much younger than me; a whole different generation. It occurred to me that she was about the same age as my youngest half-sister, Polly. I’d been twelve when Polly was born and had always thought of her as a baby. Was this Jason’s type? Ellen didn’t look like Emily, who was also young, of course: she was slimmer, more angular, fiercer-looking.

  After we had entered the gate into what was almost a little park, Ellen turned and faced me, wrapping her arms protectively round her body. Her lips were twitching slightly and she kept biting them.

  ‘I’m not with him anymore,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s married to someone else.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  I waited. Ellen took a deep breath.

  ‘He sent me a text saying that he was getting married.’ She swallowed and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her sweater like a small child. ‘I thought I was going to go mad. I tried to get in touch with him just so that he could explain what had happened and he said that if I went on pestering him, he would get a lawyer involved. Like I was stalking him or something. I just wanted him to explain.’

  ‘That’s what you get for sleeping with married men.’

  ‘He wasn’t married,’ she said, then screwed up her small face. ‘Sorry, that’s a crap thing to say. I know that doesn’t matter. He had you, he had a child.’

  ‘That’s right. He had me. He had a child. Why did you do it?’

  Ellen met my gaze; she had a punkis
h, slightly confrontational air.

  ‘Have you asked Jason that question?’

  I nodded. She was right: Ellen hadn’t betrayed me. Jason had. I’d always disliked the way women blame the other woman, because it is less painful that way. It lets them avoid looking at what really mattered, what had really been done to them.

  ‘Not yet. I will, though.’

  She grimaced and it was as if all the breath was going out of her.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to sound like that. It’s just…’ She shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘I didn’t even want to have a relationship, certainly not one with an older man who was already with someone else and had a child. I’d come out of a bad break-up and I wasn’t in a good place. We just talked at a party.’ She looked away and added, almost too softly for me to hear: ‘You were there, actually, a few feet away on the other side of the room, laughing with a group of people, so it was a bit weird. He rang me up the next day.’

  I tried to keep my face expressionless, but I felt a sharp pain, as if I’d been punched. She could have been describing the way Jason and I had first met, all those years ago when I was a young fool, vulnerable and ready for heartbreak.

  ‘He was pretty persistent,’ Ellen continued. ‘I guess I was flattered. It wasn’t even meant to be a date. You probably don’t want to hear this.’

  ‘I’m trying to join up the dots, make sense of my past.’

  Ellen nodded. She got that.

  ‘He was so in love with me, or at least he made me feel that he was. He made me feel like I was the most gorgeous woman in the world. He said he wanted to be with me, but it was difficult with everything. I thought—’ Then she stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought you maybe knew about it all. At the time, I mean. He kind of suggested you had separate lives and you’d be OK with it.’

  I squinted at Ellen through the glare of the sun and said nothing.

  ‘So you really didn’t know?’

  ‘I really didn’t. When did it start?’

  ‘What a fuck-up.’

  ‘When did it start?’

  ‘About two years ago. Early summer. At first he made all the running and then, somehow, I fell in love with him. After a few months it seemed to get harder to see each other, but I didn’t read the signals. I was such an idiot. In the end he sent me that text.’