The Judas Scar (7 page)

Harmony pushed the recollection away and looked back at her husband. ‘Will,’ she tried again. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘I’m fine. I wasn’t expecting to see him, that’s all.’

‘Talk to me. Please?’

‘There’s nothing much to say. I knew the guy at school. We lost touch. It was a surprise to see him.’

‘It looked like more than that to me.’

They drove in silence for a while and then Harmony heard him take a deep breath. ‘It’s thrown me,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’d sort of blanked him out of my head, and seeing him like that was … ’ he paused, hesitating, searching for the right words, ‘like seeing a ghost.’ His words rang around them like the echo of a church bell. His brow furrowed and his mouth twitched, as if he was trying to decode his thoughts.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey. The car was hot, the early evening sunshine warming the air inside until it was too stuffy to bear. She opened her window and leant her head against the door so the stream of cool air ran over her face. Her mind drifted to Luke, the way he’d looked at her during lunch, that peculiar directness she found so fascinating. She heard his voice, steady and calm, asking her to leave Emma’s party with him. What would have happened if she’d said yes? She closed her eyes and saw herself take his hand. She followed him down the corridor. Into the hallway, past the butler and out of the house. She saw herself climbing into his car. Heard the sound of the car door closing. Saw his hand reach over to rest on her thigh. Harmony opened her eyes and shifted herself in her seat, then glanced at Will, who stared intently at the road ahead.

When they got back to the flat Harmony went to her small study and grabbed a pen and her reading glasses and the pile of papers from her desk. In the living room she sat down on the sofa and put on her glasses.

‘I’ll put the kettle on, would you like a cup of tea?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, keeping her eyes on the notes on her lap.

‘Hey,’ said Will gently. ‘Don’t be like that.’ He sat on the sofa beside her and took her hand. ‘Don’t be cross.’

‘I’m not cross,’ she said, putting her work on the coffee table and looking at him. ‘I just wish you’d talk to me about this, that’s all. I’ve never heard you mention Luke before.’

‘Look, I’m not keeping it from you for any reason. It’s just not important.’ He tucked some of her hair behind her ear and then pulled her into him. ‘I’ve told you before, those years at school, none of it matters now. I’ve put it behind me.’

‘Put what behind you? What happened?’

He didn’t answer immediately. She could tell he was thinking about telling her, weighing it up, but then he shook his head. ‘I really don’t want to talk about it. Stuff happened. Stuff that’s too hard to talk about. It’s best forgotten. And I’m over it. Really, I am.’

‘But today—’

‘It was a surprise,’ he said, interrupting her. ‘Christ, you know better than anyone how little time I spend thinking about school. Seeing Luke like that threw me. Last time I saw him he was a kid. I was expecting a nice lunch in the sun with Emma and Ian and then this blast from the past showed up.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I probably need to work on my acting skills a bit. Perfect the art of hiding shock. That’s the second time in a week I’ve failed with that.’

She shook her head and made a face at him.

‘I’m going to grab a beer,’ he said. ‘You want anything?’

‘No, thanks.’

As he left the living room she leant back against the arm of the sofa, turning her head to breathe in its smell; safe and familiar, it wrapped around her like a warm blanket. She and Will had got it in the sales on the Tottenham Court Road the weekend they moved in together. It was the first piece of furniture they’d bought, and as they left the shop he’d squeezed her hand and whispered, ‘This is it, Harmony. Our start. It all begins here.’

The sofa was delivered two weeks later, and sat in the middle of their living room in their first flat in Vauxhall in front of an upturned packing box that for five months they used as a coffee table. They sat on it all evening, drinking wine and eating Chinese. Later they made love on it, their wine glasses and empty takeaway cartons discarded on the floor beside them, the ancient television, as deep as it was wide, flickering silently in the corner of the darkened room.

Harmony worked for the next few hours. When the words began to swim, her eyes heavy with tiredness, she put the papers down and stood up. She gasped a little at the stiff pain in her lower back and cursed herself for not working at her desk. She saw her mother wagging a finger at her, telling her off for working slouched on the sofa or propped up in bed:
Sofas for sitting, beds for sleeping, desks for working.

Will appeared at the living room door. ‘I’m going to go to bed,’

he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m shattered. I’ll get a drink and then follow you.’

Harmony filled a glass of water and as she drank it she checked Will had locked the back door. She peered through the glazed panel in the door at the garden which was bathed in the last of the fading light. They should have done some work in the garden this weekend; they’d neglected it and it was looking untidy. The garden was the reason they’d stayed in the flat, which was too small for them really, with just the one bedroom, the box room she used as a study, and a living room they squeezed a dining table into. The garden was beautiful, though, large by London standards, about forty feet by thirty, with a magical feel. It had grey stone walls that were covered in dark unruly ivy and an area of aged paving, some of the slabs cracked with moss growing between. There were two overgrown flower beds that ran along each of the walls, and at the end of the garden was a stone bench with carved legs, gradually being suffocated by weeds. It was a hidden gem in the slice of urban grey between Baron’s Court and West Kensington tube stations. When Harmony found out she was pregnant she knew they would have to move. She’d had to persuade Will, which had been hard, but she explained that they needed somewhere more suitable for a family, somewhere with a proper bedroom for the baby and a utility room, maybe a playroom too. Her resolve to sell it had weakened when she showed the valuing estate agent the garden.

‘Oh, this is very special,’ he’d said, purring with excitement.

‘Yes. Lots of potential here. It’ll fly off our books.’

But when the baby died there was no reason to move, no need to justify the expense – the conveyancing fees alone were enough to make their eyes water – but rather than feel relieved that she could stay in her home, she found herself trapped, resentful of the flat that was now inextricably linked to her miscarriage, symbolic of her childless life.

Will was reading in bed. She went to shut the curtains.

‘Can you leave them open?’ he asked, closing his book and laying it on the bedside table. She hesitated, her hand resting on the edge of the curtain. She didn’t like sleeping with them open; she felt exposed, worried about people being able to see in.

She let her hand drop from the curtain and climbed into bed beside him. He reached out and turned his bedside light off.

She curled up close to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ she asked him. ‘Everybody around the table today could tell there was something wrong, you know. Did you and Luke fall out at school? Was he the reason you didn’t enjoy it there?’

‘No, we didn’t fall out, we were great friends. I met him towards the end of the first term when we were thirteen. He left though, was expelled actually, and I didn’t hear from him again.’

‘Why was he expelled?’

Will turned his head to look out of the window into the moonlit darkness. ‘I don’t know why.’ His voice was edged with sadness. ‘He shouldn’t have been.’

‘Was it dreadful there?’

‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment or two. ‘Not all of it. But some of it was awful.’

She kissed his chest. ‘I can’t believe your parents sent you away.’ She was unable to keep the blame out of her voice. ‘I don’t know how people do it. I mean, what age were you? Eight? It’s barbaric. Why have children if you’re going to send them away?’

‘Mum didn’t want me to go, though I remember her saying something about it being good to get away from her apron strings,’ he said. ‘It was my father. He thought it was the right thing to do. He saw it as some sort of rite of passage, spouted all that nonsense about boarding school turning boys into men.’ He paused briefly. ‘I suppose it was what people did back then.’

‘Not the people I knew,’ she said. She thought of her father-in-law, his holier-than-thou attitude to life, his favouring of etiquette over emotion, the malice in his voice when he talked about immigrants, the way he buttoned his coat before leaving for church and tutted at Harmony as she sat at the breakfast table reading the Sunday papers, his sneering and sniping at Will, his inability to show any signs of affection towards his only child.

Will once told her he only saw his parents on the last Sunday of each month during term time. They’d drive to a pub on the A131, order three portions of scampi and chips, then he and his father would eat their food as his mother chattered mindlessly to fill the stony silence. It was from the odd anecdote such as this that Harmony began to understand Will’s loathing of his school. They’d driven past the place once, years earlier, after a wedding in Newmarket. Harmony was studying the map as Will drove.

‘I thought Clacton-on-Sea was up north,’ she said, vaguely. ‘My geography really is shocking.’

‘Want to go?’ Will said, casting her a glance.

‘To Clacton-on-Sea?’

He grinned and nodded.

‘But it’s in the opposite direction.’

‘So? Come on, let’s go. We can book into a crappy B & B with a grumpy landlady. Walk on the beach and eat greasy fish and chips.’

‘What about work?’

‘We’ll call in sick.’

She hesitated but then nodded. ‘Go on, then, let’s. It’d be lovely to be by the sea.’

They’d been talking and laughing, thrilled by their decision, but then Will fell quiet. He pulled over and stopped the car, his knuckles white as he gripped the wheel.

‘What’s wrong?’ Harmony asked.

‘Farringdon Hall.’

‘What?’

‘My old school,’ he said. ‘Back there. We just passed it.’ Harmony turned to look and saw a long red brick wall, too high to see anything behind it. ‘Can I see it?’ she asked then. ‘Will you show me?’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I’d like to see if it’s anything like I imagine. It’ll help me picture you then.’

‘I can guarantee that place won’t give you any picture of me.’

‘Please?’

For a moment he didn’t move, then suddenly, in one quick movement, he threw the car into gear and reversed at speed back past the entrance where two aged stone lions sat bored on brick piers either side. They turned up the driveway, long and straight and lined by tall, evenly spaced trees like the bars of a prison, and drove towards the huge, gothic manor.

‘It’s deserted,’ she whispered. A shiver passed through her as she looked up at the windows that punctured the brick like dead, glazed eyes.

‘School holidays.’

They pulled up in front of the pillared entrance and Will turned the engine off. ‘This is where my father handed me over to that cock of a headmaster,’ Will said grimly. ‘I can still remember his fingers digging into my shoulders and him saying to Drysdale, “Well, all I can say is he’s a little bugger. Do what you must.” You should have seen the bastard’s eyes light up. Parental permission to make my life misery.’ He drew a laboured breath and exhaled heavily. ‘Come on, it’s a fucking shithole. Let’s get out of here.’

That was the last time he’d talked about school.

‘You know,’ Harmony whispered, turning her head on the pillow to look at him, the moonlight from the window bathing his face. ‘If you’d been my child I’d have kept you with me as long as I possibly could. I’d never have sent you away.’

‘You mustn’t worry about me. It wasn’t great but I’m fine. It was just school. Children adapt to everything and we all found our ways to cope. It’s in the past now and that’s where it belongs.’

C H A P T E R    S I X

Will couldn’t sleep. He lay still as Harmony mumbled quietly beside him, every now and then letting out a torrent of mutterings. This was something she did – talking in her sleep – yelling out as if in surprise then murmuring unintelligibly, her head moving back and forth emphatically, arguing perhaps in her dreams before she finally settled. He listened to the noises outside the flat, the occasional car, a police siren not far away, the faint footsteps and muffled talking of a group of people as they passed the living room window. His mind whirred; he was never going to get to sleep. He eased himself out of bed, careful not to wake Harmony, lifted his clothes off the chair in the corner of the room and crept out of the bedroom. He dressed in the hallway, then took his keys off the hook by the door and slipped outside.

Night-rambling, he called it. Walking at night. It was a habit that started when he was about ten or eleven, when one night, unable to sleep for worrying about going back to school, he called for his mother. She’d sat on the edge of his bed, patted his hand, and told him to count sheep. His heart sank as she left the room, closing the door behind her so that he was plunged back into darkness; he suspected counting sheep would do little to ease his fear. He was right. By the time he’d counted a flock of four hundred he was no more sleepy than when he began. It was then, on a whim, that he climbed out of bed, let himself quietly out of the house, and set off on his very first night-ramble. In the years that followed he often found himself creeping downstairs, holding his breath as he stepped over the creakiest floorboards, pausing every now and then to listen for the telltale sounds of adults on the prowl. Back then these night-time treks would set his pulse racing, send adrenalin pumping into his blood, push his worries into the background. As he got older the night-rambles became calmer, those first deep breaths of fresh night air like Valium, his tensions easing with each step he took.