Untouchable Things Read online

  “I slept with him, you know.”

  She flinches. “I know.”

  He swills the brandy in his glass round and round, staring down at it. “Not just two years ago. In April. Just before he disappeared.”

  She blinks against the waves rolling in towards her. Why is he telling her this? Hasn’t she endured enough?

  “When he had that nightmare we – we’d been together.”

  She thinks back to the blush and the shifty look.

  He raises his eyes. “Did you sleep with him too?”

  She closes her eyes. “Once.” The same questions, What if I’d said no? Would he still be here?

  José sighs out a long breath – relief or pain, she can’t tell. “Was it recently?”

  They both colour at the question. “It was…” She stops, it’s hitting her now. “April.”

  The kitchen clock ticks louder and louder into the silence. Rebecca sits forward, hair flooding her face. She hears the clink of his glass on the coffee table and expects him to leave. Nothing happens. She raises her head and he’s looking at her, waiting to talk again.

  “After you left, Michael came over.”

  “Michael?” Surprise lifts her voice.

  “Anna invited him. I think she wanted to reach out in some way, maybe let him know he was right. She’s – I don’t know – quiet. I don’t know what that means.”

  Rebecca raises her eyebrows a fraction. “What did Michael say?”

  “Not much. Not even ‘I told you so’. But then some more stuff came out.”

  Something about his face gives it away. In a flash, a puff of smoke, she sees it all and laughs like a pantomime villain.

  “Don’t tell me – he was having an affair with Seth too. In fact everyone was, we all were.”

  He recoils from the pitch of her voice. “Not everyone. Seth made a pass at Michael three years ago. He says it didn’t go further than that. He looks awful Becs, really thin and pale.”

  Rebecca’s eyes are hard. She has no sympathy left, not for Michael, not for herself.

  “Catherine went a bit mad and ran off pretty much like you did.”

  So this is Seth’s legacy. This is what he has left them with. Rotting remains to pick over before turning teeth on each other. “She’s been sleeping with him too?” Her voice is dead and bears no relation to what’s going on inside her.

  José shrugs. “She didn’t say but from the state of her it wouldn’t be hard to believe. She’s in love with him, but we knew that already.”

  Rebecca looks at him and knows there’s more. She winces as she swallows. “Anna?”

  He drops his gaze. “You know Anna, she said it was a drunken snog that went a bit too far and they both realised it shouldn’t happen again. I believe her. She adores – adored – Seth but I think it’s more like a brother. Or maybe a father.”

  “Jesus Christ.” She looks across at his curved shoulders. “Aren’t you mad at her?”

  Two hands open. “Why should I be? What point is there in being mad at Anna or you or Michael or Catherine?”

  She twitches, bristling like a hound on a lead with the scent of blood. He meets her eyes, reads them. “It’s not me you should be angry with, Rebecca. Or Anna.”

  She is gripping her glass so hard the ends of her fingers blanch.

  “He messed us around, Becs. Michael’s right. He used us for idiots. I don’t know why, but he did.” For the first time there’s a growl in his voice. “He toyed with the lot of us, manipulated us, and we just sat around and let him.”

  No. She wants to shake José, shake him empty of these vicious words. She needs to think clearly but thoughts are rushing at her like rain in the wind. She hugs herself and rocks slowly, backwards and forwards. The sofa sags as José moves up next to her.

  “I didn’t come here to turn the knife, Becs.” Twist, she thinks. “I just thought you deserved the truth. Maybe we’ve all been sitting around thinking we’re the special one he’ll come back for.”

  She closes her eyes, an admission.

  “But the only person special to Seth is himself. I don’t believe he can love anyone.” His words move in on her, jostling and poking her and she needs him to stop so she can put things together for herself.

  “He…”

  “Please. Stop.” She is on her feet, facing him. “No more, not now. I just need time to get my head round it all.”

  He nods and his eyes are pools of molten chocolate. “I know. I’ll go now. I’m here if you need me.”

  After the door has clicked she goes to Shazia’s bedroom window and watches the leather jacket until it has disappeared.

  Scene 21

  Catherine hasn’t been to work for three days. Maybe she will get used to the feeling of something brewing in her belly, giving off strange vapours that rise up to her throat and fill her mouth with metallic flavours. Maybe she will stop being afraid of stepping outside onto streets where the elbows of strangers are internal injuries waiting to happen – not to her body but the other body, the Russian doll tucked away inside her. Maybe she will lose the feeling that something supernatural was at work that night in Seth’s flat. She felt him, absorbed him and now she is pregnant. It’s as if Charles was a conduit, summoned out of the empty night by her longing for Seth. As something was taken away, something else has been given. The new life inside her is bound up with Seth, almost as if it is his baby.

  Now her aching belly has something to fill it, something that will kick and suck from her and make demands. She runs her hand over it, willing the thing inside to grow and be strong. A week ago, she had even considered the unthinkable, found a telephone number. But she has forgiven him now. For everything. He is troubled, confused, and he needs her more than ever. Now she takes folic acid capsules, drinks peppermint tea and feels a part of him growing inside her.

  A flash of Charles’ face, lop-sided and crinkled with kindness. She’s barely seen him since Clive Rothbury’s funeral. He leaves her messages and yesterday a card arrived, a Turner print he thought she’d like. So thoughtful, so dependable. Perfect father material. But he’s all mixed up with the sweat and dampness of that bed, stripped of his crew-neck sweaters, adorned with soft clumps of carrot-tinged hair.

  She stands up quickly, too quickly, and steadies herself against a chair. It’s Seth’s face she sees now, sparkling with school boy mischief. She stretches her hand to cup his cheek but her fingers curl and drop to her side as they always do.

  “Please come back. Please.” Her soul is a windswept wasteland, her body a tree bowed and broken. She closes her eyes and feels the terror of the void hurtling towards her, a black hole where even fantasy cannot survive. The sounds from her mouth are pre-verbal now, her baby’s sounds, and she rocks on her heels.

  It reminds her, and her hand moves to grip her belly. She breathes, her belly breathes with her. He is still here. He has given her this. His last, and best, gift.

  Part 2 - Scene 22

  Rebecca feels clumsy and out of practice, stumbling on loose paving stones, squinting at street names, dizzy with the constant flow of human traffic. If she could step back from herself for just a second she might find it amusing, but that would risk losing concentration and getting under someone’s feet. Instead she finds herself propelled along by currents of energy, not fully in charge of her own legs. It’s a good seven months since she’s been in London and, half an hour after arriving, there’s a tingling at the ends of her fingers and a tightness around her ribcage. Stressed already. She isn’t late this morning and she doesn’t have to rush, but she still finds it hard to persuade her heart to revert to normal rhythm. Maybe this is the normal rhythm for London. Fast rock instead of the easy ballad she’s been getting used to.

  She decides to leave the pedestrian motorway at the next junction, Kensington Gardens. From here she can saunter down towards South Kensington along sunlit side streets and gleaming ivory walls. She’s aiming for a posh coffee somewhere in Knightsbridge. No real reason
– just because she can. She’s flush again and has a week off before the London rehearsals start.

  The Crucible has been ‘a triumph’ (The Times). It’s collected such good reviews around the country that it’s coming to the West End. In two weeks’ time she’ll make her West End debut as Abigail. Three years ago that would have seemed impossible. She quickens her stride, making ground on a mac-clad young woman in front of her. She deserves this. She’s been through shit but she’s survived it, thrown every bit of herself into her career. And she’s even made some new friends along the way.

  She’s not forgotten her old friends, of course. For a while she wanted to, tried her hardest to. Shaz forwarded on a letter Anna wrote to her after she went on tour – apologising, hoping she could forgive them. She didn’t reply. She needed a clean break. But she’s found herself softening as the months go by. At some level she knows that the person to blame is Seth, pulling the wool over all their eyes. So she’s agreed to meet Anna and José for lunch in Soho.

  Her stomach gripes but she decides to put it down to lack of breakfast. A coffee stop soon would be welcome. She turns off the main road, immediately relaxing and breathing into the slower pace, the beauty. She smiles and feels like a local now, confident under the serene smiles of towering Georgian terraces, finding her London legs. She sniffs the sunshine and smiles.

  A couple of things of note since she got back. Firstly, Mornington Crescent station has finally re-opened, halving her walk to the Tube. Secondly, she’s had an email from Jake. She barely ever checks her account but a flicker of curiosity yesterday prompted her to borrow Shaz’s machine. She didn’t even realise he knew her address. It seems that’s not all he knows; he mentioned that he might pop along to see her in The Crucible. Since when has he become a theatre follower? She’s puzzled but touched. He writes as he talks and she realises she’s missed him too. He says he’s been doing okay, was working as some sort of PA for a while for a lucrative client but knocked it on the head because of moral scruples. Imagine that eh Becs? Then he asked how she was, said he knew she’d been in a bad way and left a phone number, saying she could call him at any time – the last three words underlined. Again, she’s touched and a little puzzled by his protectiveness.

  This leads her to the third thing. She’d changed phones when she left London and left the old one behind. It was time to upgrade but it carried the added benefit of forcing her to cut loose. She hadn’t given her new number to anyone connected with Seth or the group. It turned out to be a huge relief, not having to check her phone all the time or jump when she saw an unknown missed call.

  But back in town she couldn’t resist turning on the old phone. At least twenty texts came through, most from Anna and José, one from Charles, and one even from Catherine, wishing her luck with the tour. There was a single voicemail message. Rebecca jolted when she heard the low, clipped voice of Lucilla Hargreaves and had to strain to hear the words. Don’t try to find Seth. Leave him alone. It’s for your own good. Even after repeating the message three times she wasn’t sure if it was a warning or a threat. She shivers again now, pulls her jacket around her and tries to put it out of her head. It’s all pretty irrelevant now. Seth is gone and she’s finally accepted it.

  She assumes no one has heard from him. The trail stopped after his mother was convicted of murder. It seems she hired a hitman to kidnap her husband and tie him up in a basement. A few days later he was stabbed to death and his eyes removed. One of her hairs was found at the scene. All the papers were mad for it. They dragged in the mistress, the woman from the graveyard, a plain-looking widow sitting on a fortune.

  But mostly they just focused on the sex. Lurid allegations and rumours were reported daily, most of them claiming that Julia Rothbury slept with her husband’s business contacts to seal deals, some reporting that he liked to watch. Lucilla Hargreaves, looking even taller and greyer in the courtroom artist impressions, testified that on many occasions Mr Rothbury brought back clients to stay overnight, which seemed to create tension between husband and wife. It made you wonder what kind of mess Seth had been brought up in. As far as she could tell, his name hadn’t come up at all throughout the whole proceedings. At one point she was desperate to sit in on the trial, binge on revelations about his family, try to understand who he was. Then self-preservation reappeared like an errant genie. She knew she needed to let him go. Such a self-help book expression, as if he were a butterfly between her hands, as if she had caught him rather than the other way round. A more accurate term for what she needed was exorcism.

  She thinks of The Crucible, of people who believed they could be possessed by spirits. This was something different, more like an addiction. Human heroin. They should call their group Sethoholics Anonymous; God knows how many fellow sufferers would crawl out of the woodwork.

  People like us, Rebecca. People who wring every last drop from life.

  She starts as if he’s whispered it in her ear. A slow, cold tremor makes its way up her back and into her hair. She can’t help turning round. Only a middle-aged man behind her, tutting slightly as he has to swerve past her. This was always the danger of coming back. He is getting into her head already.

  The sun ducks behind a cloud and the ivory walls around her darken abruptly as if someone has turned out the lights. No. The fear, the ache, the yearning, she can’t let it happen. Away, in cheap rentals all over the country, locked into gruelling schedules that gave her little time to herself, she could survive. She did more than survive, in fact. Perhaps she has something to thank him for there. The deep vaults of her suffering have improved her art, given her new fathoms to draw on. It’s a time-honoured equation, after all.

  Or perhaps it’s what Michael said, that Seth was feeding off her like a parasite and now he’s gone she can unleash her full creative potential. She shakes her head, fed up with the same thought loops and looks at the road ahead. She doesn’t recognise the street and can’t cut through as she expected. It’s only ten o’clock and she’s worn out. Hungry. Tense. Suddenly the whole return to London doesn’t seem like such a good idea. She could have stayed with her parents, got up late, eaten her mother’s lentil shepherd’s pie. Instead she’s lost in a deserted, white-walled maze.

  She needs to cut her losses, retrace her steps to Kensington Palace Road and then make her way down Gloucester Road, fight her way past the tourists, the coach parties of children heading for the National History Museum.

  At the T-junction back into the fray she stops for a second to watch the step, stride, scuttle passing in front of her. The weather has divided people. Some are hopeful, coatless, ducking their heads against unpredictable gusts that frisk them like pickpockets. Others are still in scarves and hats. Rebecca’s somewhere in the middle: linen trousers and mules, a pale brown jacket she wears about three times a year but can never throw away because it’s the only thing she has for days like this. By next week the jacket will be too heavy and will go away until September. She stops for a second, puts a hand to her throat and tries to breathe. What should she do now?

  * * * * *

  Three hours later Rebecca is back in the London stride, swinging customised carrier bags in a Ginger Rogers sort of way. It would make a good nickname for her. How could she have forgotten that shopping is always the answer to any question in London? She peeks again at the tan leather trousers and funky body warmer all wrapped up in embossed tissue paper. Wrong season but that’s why she could afford them.

  She has the feeling she’s turning a few heads. She feels light as she walks. Ready to meet Anna and José, ready to deal with her demons. A different person from the brittle wreck they saw last time. She can handle this.

  She sees them at once, at the usual table in the corner. For a second she feels like the new girl again, like at her first lunch with them all that time ago, snaking her way past feet, bags, knees, chairs. But then their faces light up and they’re on their feet and she is hugged hard for the first time in too long. The smell of them is
a hug in itself: José’s lightly spiced aftershave, the hint of sweat and garlic at Anna’s throat. José and Anna. Anna and José. Much is silently said in those hugs. Wine is poured, drunk in gulps. Minutes pass while all they do is grin at each other, saying So! and Wow! and You look great! Whatever she expected, it isn’t this. She wants to laugh and cry at the same time.

  They both look a little different. José has colour back in his cheeks and newly conditioned biceps bulge out from the sleeves of his tight green T-shirt. Rebecca notices both men and women checking him out. Anna has grown her hair longer, and she looks softer for it, a bit 1940s.

  She tells them about her time on the road, warming to her theme, rediscovering familiar ways of interacting, grinning at the sparring between Anna and José. She tells them about the people she’s met, exaggerating character quirks when her audience howls with laughter, glowing when they say how well she’s doing. Everything is exorcised in the telling: the shitty hair-covered bathrooms, the drunken director with a wandering right hand, the first night panics, the last night snogs (only two but it was good to know she still had it.) How had she coped without this? For the first time she isn’t looking for Seth to appear. It’s enough to be just the three of them.

  Better than enough. She has hardened herself to them in the past year, demonising them in their absence – her absence, Seth’s absence – and she sees she was wrong. Maybe she needed to, maybe everything and everyone got tarnished by Seth. But her barriers have crumbled into dust at the sight of these friends, these dear friends, and there’s something surrounding them, winking in the sunshine, a glimmering prism reflecting between them. Love, she thinks and she squeezes it back into their hands.

  During the second bottle there’s a gratifying flow of gossip, mainly from Anna. No one has had contact with Jake and it’s safe to conclude that he was only interested in Seth’s money – although Anna does appear to accept that his crimes might go no further than that. Rebecca doesn’t mention the email. It’s too soon to wade into tricky waters. And Anna has moved onto Michael, recounting that she’d tried to get in touch with him in connection with work; a client who wanted to fund something for the community in North East London. When he didn’t return her calls she phoned the school and discovered he’d left a few months previously.