Chapter Eighteen

I find it surprisingly easy to hold it together for the long drive back. An icy calm has descended on me, an emotional permafrost that is protecting me from processing what’s just happened. I can’t yet feel Alice’s betrayal, or the catastrophe of what it might unleash for Charles, but I know the impact will hit full force very soon. I don’t wake her up when I get back, just climb into bed and long for sleep to scoop me up and cosset me. But it seems there really is no rest for the wicked. I start to go over and over what’s just happened, trying to understand what could’ve possessed Alice to confide in a crocodile. Have I really been such a bad, neglectful sister that she’s lost any sense of loyalty to me? Whichever way I cut the cake, I can’t imagine our relationship ever recovering that blind, devotional innocence that’s seen us through the worst of times.

Eventually I fall into an exhausted coma, broken shortly after by the jagged, insistent ring of my mobile. I scrabble around in the semi-darkness, the sky still an inky grey.

‘Lulu? We’ve got a fucking emergency on our hands.’ It’s Suzanne’s nasal twang greeting me, sounding way more panicked than I’ve ever heard her before. Oh God, oh God. Did Tarquin decide to treat Bea to a late-night phone call of the most devastating kind?

‘What’s happened?’

‘The costume van, Lulu, it’s gone up like a tinder box. The fire brigade had to douse it. I don’t think anything’s going to be salvageable.’

‘But we’re shooting the wedding next week!’

‘Do you think I don’t realize that?!’ She pauses, takes an audible puff on a fag. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I don’t mean to take it out on you. But even with a massive insurance claim, I don’t think we’re going to be covered. And we’ve got to shoot next week – Emily’s booked on a pilot that’s shooting in Canada directly after.’

I sit down on the edge of my bed, thinking of all the work we poured into those costumes. Zelda would’ve been so proud of what we achieved and now they’re nothing but smoky rags.

‘Do you have any idea what might’ve happened?’ asks Suzanne. ‘There was nothing obvious, but… an iron? A kettle? Could anyone have left anything on in there?’

I’m struck by a sudden flashback to Tarquin’s pinched little mouth dragging smugly on a cheroot as he cast me a contemptuous look.

‘I’m – I’m not sure,’ I say, unwilling to start a full-scale war before it’s strictly necessary. ‘Have you told Tarquin yet?’

‘His phone’s off. Hopefully he’ll surface in the next hour or so. How was your night on the tiles? Fruitful? Not that any of it really matters right now.’

‘I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll be in the car in fifteen minutes.’

‘Good. I think there’ll be accident investigators swarming around within the hour. And, Lulu – once the sun’s up we’ve got to rouse Zelda. I’ve let this situation slide long enough: we need her now.’

For once in my life, I’m in full agreement with her. I’ve done my very best, but now I need Zelda on so many counts. I need her to tell me how to magic up fifteen elaborate costumes and countless plainer ones in a mere week. I need her to tell me how to play it with Tarquin and whether there’s any way of using this to buy his silence (if it is indeed his fault). And most of all I need her to give me a hug and promise me that I’m not a terrible person, simply reaping the punishment I richly deserve.

Even if I wanted to wake up Alice, there’s no time. I have the world’s fastest shower, throw on some ratty jeans and – suddenly remember that my car’s at the unit base. The obvious thing to do is borrow Alice’s, but it seems completely wrong to behave normally when something so cataclysmic is yet to be acknowledged. Two more frantic texts from Suzanne decide me, but I can’t find her handbag anywhere. I tiptoe into her room, only to be greeted by the sight of Angry Richard’s angry arse hanging off the side of the bed. He opens his eyes blearily and scowls at me, nostrils flaring like a raging horse. ‘Go back to sleep,’ I whisper, hastily extracting her keys from her bag. Wednesday has so much to recommend it thus far.

I arrive to find Suzanne pacing around the smoking caravan, smoking. I consider pointing out the irony, but I’m too depressed. Its walls are completely caved in and the roof has collapsed. It makes it easy to see the wrecked costumes, wet and pathetic, scattered around the interior by the jets of water. I stifle a sob at the sight of the carnage: could Tarquin really have been stupid enough to cause this devastation?

Apparently he’s on his way in, but Suzanne says he was evasive about his ETA.

‘What the hell happened?’ she asks me.

‘I’ve got no idea,’ I lie, taking in the destruction. ‘But I’m gathering the troops. We’ll get straight on with working out Plan B.’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure you and Gareth’ll have the perfect solution!’ she snaps. ‘The minute we find Zelda she’s going to need to come in for an emergency meeting. I need the organ grinder as of now.’

I beat a hasty retreat to our office, where Gareth’s frantically counting the remaining costumes.

‘Thank God you’re here,’ I tell him, barrelling into his arms. We give each other a long hug, each of us pole-axed by what’s happened.

‘Still not a peep from Zelda?’ he asks.

‘No. I’ve left three messages. I’ve been racking my brains as to what we should do and the only thing I can think of is Tim Le Grande.’

‘He’ll never help us!’

‘He won’t help us, no, but maybe he’ll help Zelda considering how far up shit creek we’ve got lodged. She was his assistant on Casablanca after all.’

‘It wasn’t Casa–’

‘Oh, you know what I mean.’

‘Look, Lulu, I’m really worried it was my laptop cable. I went online just before wrap last night and –’

‘Trust me, Gareth, it wasn’t down to you surfing the net for Muscle Marys.’

‘How do you know?’ he says, white and stressed.

‘I don’t know, but I think… Oh God, make one of those disgusting packet hot chocolates and I’ll tell you everything.’

And I do. I tell him absolutely everything from beginning to end, staring out of the window and down at my hands, unable to make eye contact. When I eventually run out of steam, he moves behind me, enveloping me in a hug.

‘Jeez, Louise. Literally.’

‘Do you think I’m a horrible, terrible person?’

‘No, darling, not at all. You’re not the one that’s married. You’re not the one betraying the person who loves them most. And you’re certainly not the one to blame.’

‘He’s not a bad person, honestly he isn’t.’

‘Maybe not, though frankly it’s debatable. However, he most certainly is a weak one.’

I start rambling on in his defence, trying to explain the complexity of it all, until Gareth puts a hand up to silence me.

‘Darling, with respect, it’s not the time. We’ve got more pressing fish to fry, namely Tarquin and Tim.’

Is it wrong of me not to tell Suzanne about Tarquin’s fag-laden presence in the caravan? I think not. The greater good has surely got to be ensuring that the affair is kept under wraps at any costs: it’s not like knowing how it happened will make the costumes spring back to life. Gareth and I construct a text which I send to Tarquin:

I’m fairly confident he’ll have the same suspicions as me, but he’ll know that I’m keeping schtum, at least for now. Hopefully, hopefully, he’ll think he owes me one.

Text sent, Gareth and I tally up all the fabric we’ve got left and try to work out how many of the simpler dresses it’ll stretch to. Alice calls me twice, but I press cancel both times. Emily’s going to be a whole other problem to deal with, but I cannot split myself in two (despite my rather successful attempt in the womb).

We summon the entire team, who are all as gutted as we are. I try my very best to gee them up, promising that we’ll come up with a solution to the wedding party outfits if they get all hands to the pump on making up the background frocks. I feel way less confident than I sound, but they seem to buy it. I suddenly wonder if Zelda was bullshitting just as hard all those times she assured Gareth and me that she didn’t give a fig about having gone thousands of pounds over budget. Realizing it’s been an hour since my last attempt, I ring her again. It’s Michael who picks up.

‘Michael, it’s Lulu. I’m sorry to be such a stalker, it’s just that I desperately need Zelda. It’s a total, total emergency or else I wouldn’t be hounding her.’

‘I’m afraid she can’t speak to you.’

‘Michael, please…’

‘Lulu, she’s very close to the end. She was admitted to hospital last night. Right now it’s doubtful she’ll even make it to the end of the day.’

‘What do you mean? What do you mean?!’ My voice has transformed itself into a banshee’s wail while my legs are buckling beneath me.

‘We knew it was coming.’

‘But I didn’t!’ I sob. ‘I didn’t know it was coming.’ I suddenly realize in a blinding flash how evasive Zelda was, if only I’d chosen to notice. ‘I’m on the home straight,’ was what she said. I just didn’t think to check what she considered to be her ultimate destination.

Gareth takes the phone from me, keeping his arm around my shoulders as he has a calm, measured conversation with Michael. How can they be so stoic? I want to smash things and scream and shout. Her poor, poor boys – how little they know of what’s to come. They probably think the worst has arrived, but it’s not the hour of death with all the attendant fuss and huddling together that hurts the most. It’s later, when the two chairs in front of the teacher at parents’ evening cruelly mock your loss, or when your first proper partner needs to be evaluated by the grown-up who knows you best. I hope to God their depleted little family will be able to stitch itself together and cover over some of those gaps. But nothing and no one will ever make up for the fact that Zelda won’t be there any more.

Gareth cuts the call and encircles my hands in his. ‘Michael says we can go and say goodbye, although she’s lost consciousness. Or would you rather not?’

There’s no question for me – I have to say goodbye in whatever way I can. If only I’d known the last time that it was our final meeting. But when I think back to the time we had – the elephants and zebras and scones – I can’t imagine a nicer day. Of course I can’t: she stage-managed it perfectly. I wish I’d had the chance to tell her how much she meant to me, but I think it was stitched into every second of that afternoon.

When we arrive at the hospital, I can barely remember how we got there. Michael’s pacing the corridor and I worry all we’re doing is creating more chaos in what is a very private drama. I try to say that to him, but he assures me that she’d want me to say goodbye. Gareth decides to stay outside, so I go in alone. She looks so small in the bed, dwarfed by all the equipment that’s boxing her in. I don’t have a long, florid speech for her. Instead I simply take her hand and tell her goodbye and that I love her. I ask the nurse if there’s any chance she can hear and she gives a non-committal smile which allows me to hope against hope that she does. I sit by her side, my forehead planted on her hand, thinking of all the times I shared with her. How harsh she could be, particularly when I was naive and stupid and green, and how precious it made her approval when it finally arrived. I silently promise her I’ll be worthy of that approval, then leave the room, unable to look back. I cross paths with Michael, who gives my arm a brief squeeze, clearly using every ounce of his strength to stay in control.

I don’t have his mettle. I go to the loos and sob and sob, too distressed to make sense of any of it. Michael’s told me that Gareth’s borne the boys off for some food and I eventually follow them down to the canteen. They’re stuffing French fries in their mouths and trying to pretend they’re OK, but their red eyes and pale faces tell another story. I try to judge how best to help them. Eleven and thirteen, they’re in that phase of early adolescence where showing weakness is an anathema (a condition exacerbated by their boarding-school education). I could choose to respect the fortress, but I know that it’ll ultimately do them more harm than good. No man is an island, and especially when they’re under this kind of attack.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ I tell them. ‘There’s absolutely nothing I can say that will take any of this away, but I want to try and help in any pathetic, ridiculous way that I can. I lost my mum when I was way too young to deserve it, and if you want to talk about it, or cry about it, or shout about it, I will be around. It’s so fucking unfair and you must be enraged!’

Jerry’s frozen, tight face breaks a little at this. ‘You said the F word!’ he says, delighted.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t say it all the time!’ I reply. ‘You’re eleven, it’s not like you’re a baby.’

‘Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck,’ he shouts, triggering a few horrified looks from other diners.

‘It’s s-o-o-o shit!’ joins in Dominic.

‘OK, let’s go outside and have a swearathon,’ I tell them. Gareth raises an eyebrow. ‘Take it from me, they need it,’ I tell him, hustling him and the boys away from the grey canteen. And they do. No one tells you how angry grief makes you, how much you want to rage at the sky and demand that some ethereal force pays you back for the terrible price it has exacted. Instead you’re expected to be miserable in a contained, almost charming fashion – a way that allows people to feel sympathetic, not scared. And you try, you really do – but the rage lingers on, searching for a target. I’m suddenly reminded of how Alice began extorting things from other children, forcing them to hand over Penguins from their lunchboxes like a pint-sized Don Corleone. Eventually she was found out and put into a term’s worth of detention; tea and sympathy was sadly lacking despite our loss. The tragic irony was that Mum would never have allowed it had she been there to intervene. I didn’t do anything so outlandish, although I always waited outside the window while she sat out her detention, keeping my beady eye on her from my vantage point on the climbing frame. Perhaps I didn’t need to act out, because she’d done it for the both of us.

We find a scrubby little park nearby and I explain the rules. You can swear as loudly as you like and use the very worst words you know. No one will blame you, no one will judge you, and after ten minutes we’ll stop and never mention what was said. I have to demonstrate, of course, but once the boys have unleashed themselves there’s no stopping them. Their use of the phrase ‘knob juice’ is so imaginative that even Gareth is shocked, although the tide of expletives coming from him is equally outrageous. All our frustration and distress comes pouring out until we’re laughing hysterically, pushing each other to come up with even more ridiculous profanities. That’s another thing no one tells you about death. That every emotion – good or bad – is blown up and magnified, rendered more vivid than you could possibly imagine. We’re temporarily shaken out of the ridiculous mass delusion that we’re immortal, forced to realize that one day the world will carry on without us in it. Perhaps there’s something weirdly galvanizing and exhilarating about knowing in your very bones that life is short.

Eventually my alarm goes off and we all deflate, back to the reality that it’s probably Zelda’s last day on earth. We take the boys back upstairs, where Michael’s having a cup of vile vending machine coffee outside the room. The boys sit either side of him, leaning in towards him like faithful gun dogs. They’re all mustering up the strength to go back inside and see the version of Zelda that lies in the bed. It’s her, of course, but also not. A big part of her has already left the building.

‘Would you like us to stay?’ I ask him. ‘Whatever you want. I don’t want to intrude, but if it would help? We could take the boys for supper…’

‘No, you go,’ he says, trying to force his reluctant mouth into a smile. ‘But thank you, I’m really glad you came. I know she would be too. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to say goodbye, it was just that she didn’t want to say it like this.’

Tears roll down my cheeks as I give him a hug. I tell him what I told his sons, that I want to help in any way I can. ‘Any arrangements, just anything,’ I add, trying to make the offer meaningful, then feel terrible that I’ve alluded to the funeral when she’s not even gone. We hug the boys and then finally leave, although my legs feel like they’re wading through quicksand as we retreat down the corridor. It seems so wrong, so disloyal, to abandon her, but I know that we must leave them to their last moments of intimacy.

Neither of us have eaten anything all day and we kid ourselves that we want to find food, when what we really want to find is booze. I know it’s wrong to search for comfort at the bottom of a bottle, but trust me, sometimes nothing else will do. We find a dark, underground bar off the Edgware Road, largely populated by Middle Eastern men and bemused American tourists. We start with a neat whisky, chinking our glasses to Zelda and throwing back the burning liquid in a single gulp. Then we order a bottle of wine and a strange selection of snacks, which we pick at half-heartedly while we talk about her. I’m so angry with myself for not realizing: I keep going over all the conversations we had again and again, berating myself for my self-absorption.

‘Darling, I know it sounds trite, but it wouldn’t have made any real difference,’ counters Gareth. ‘It’s like the fire – knowing what caused it won’t bring our costumes back. Every time you’d seen her it would’ve been all about her dying. It was probably a blessed relief that she could prattle on about long-lost shags or her and Michael’s courtship without everything being blanketed in gloomy portentousness.’

‘Do you think that’s why she didn’t tell me?’

‘Yes and no. I’m sure she couldn’t bear you to be plonked back in it all. Maybe she felt guilty. She wasn’t…’ He pauses, choked. ‘I mean, she isn’t terribly good at sentiment. Easier to just get on with it, live in the moment.’

‘But I wasn’t sharing that moment. She was protecting me, lying to me.’

‘Because that’s what she thought you needed. And perhaps because that’s what she needed. And if you can’t ask for what you need when you’re dying, when can you ask?’

Feeling myself in danger of falling back down the rabbit hole, I order another whisky chaser for us both, after which we are most definitely drunk. We force the conversation in less intense directions – the ghastliness of Tarquin, Charles’s sexual character – things that make us laugh harder than they really deserve to the point where we’re nearly falling off our bar stools.

‘Take it from me, Lulu, Charles is a dead loss. Anyone who can say “making love” with a straight face deserves to be taken out and shot. You’d be much better with that brutish policeman.’

‘What, Ali?’ I slur, like I know whole battalions of policemen (do they come in battalions or should it be squads?). ‘Fat hope. I mean, fat chance. He’s been had by Jenna.’

‘Had in the biblical sense?’

‘I assume so, yes,’ I say, feeling intensely miffed. ‘Oh, good for them!’

‘No, not good for them, Lulu. He had masculinity and integrity, which is a rare combination.’

‘Since when did you have such a yearning for a man with integrity?’

‘I don’t yearn for it for me, but I yearn for it for you! If you handed control of your love life over to me I guarantee you’d experience a dramatic uplift.’

‘Pah!’ is my considered and thoughtful response as I pour the final trickle of wine into our over-exercised glasses. We stay another few minutes, till the bell for last orders starts to sound like the ‘clanging chimes of doom’ (to quote Midge Ure). I’ve been compulsively checking my phone for any word from the hospital, but there’s nothing. We decide we’ll have to try and treat tomorrow like as normal a working day as we can manage. Zelda would want us to find a way to solve this crisis, and right now all the adrenaline and the whisky coursing through our bodies is making us feel like we can. We’re her disciples, we’re her successors. It’s only when I collapse into the back of a cab that the deep sadness of it all punches me in the face.

I hope to God that Alice is in bed, but the living-room light is blazing out, curtains flung open, as I approach the house. Alice is watching MTV, arms folded in moody concentration. I try to slip up the stairs with a muttered greeting, but there’s no way she’s going to let me get away with that.

‘Don’t walk away from me, Lulu! I’ve called you, like, five times, and you haven’t even bothered to so much as text me.’

‘What can I say? It’s been a tough day.’ I know I sound sarky and trite, but I’m too angry to ask her for the comfort I so desperately need.

‘I can’t believe you’re being this pathetic about me and Richard. How dare you guilt trip me about it after everything that’s happened?’

I spin round, a surge of rage shooting through me.

‘You’re accusing me of guilt tripping you? All I’ve done is try to protect you. You’ve been so fucking judgemental about me and Charles that you somehow thought it gave you the right to tell Emily. Oh, my terrible, slutty sister, you won’t believe what she’s done. I wouldn’t expect my worst enemy to betray me like that, let alone my twin!’ I’m boiling over now, all the fury and upset combining into one volcanic eruption.

Alice’s hand is over her mouth, stricken.

‘I really didn’t mean to tell her…’

‘Oh, well that’s all right then. What, you just tripped and your mouth fell open?’

‘I thought she knew! She told me she knew… And then I felt terrible that I’d talked to her about it, but she wheedled it out of me.’

I can just imagine Emily employing her scant acting talent in an elaborate con trick. And I suppose she sort of did know. Looking back, I can see she’s been subtly fishing for weeks, slyly observant of those telltales that we’ve unwittingly displayed.

‘It’s no bloody excuse, Alice, this is a complete disaster! She’s told Tarquin.’

‘Are you sure? She promised she’d keep her mouth shut.’

‘Oh, she promised, did she? How naive are you, Alice? That girl’s got the morals of an alley cat. She’ll use anything she can to give herself a leg up.’

‘It’ll blow over, I know it will,’ she says, a certain breeziness in her tone that’s like a red rag to a bull. I know it’s just because she’s so desperate for it to be true, but why does she have to tie everything up with a neat little bow – palatable, safe and controlled? Nothing and no one is allowed to challenge Alice’s world view. Sometimes it feels like we’re living in an Enid Blyton book, the way she whitewashes the inconvenient truths.

‘IT WON’T!’ I shout, aware that this is about much more than me and Charles, but unable to pull back. ‘It won’t be OK, nothing will. Thanks to you, the whole fucking thing’s going to be public knowledge.’

‘Thanks to me?’ she snaps back savagely. This is classic Alice: when she can’t make good she goes on the attack. ‘Excuse me, Lulu, but I’m not the one who decided to take up with a married man the moment his wife’s back was turned. I’m not the one who lied about it, time after time. If you wanna talk about being a good twin then let’s start with you barefacedly lying to me for weeks!’

‘There’s your answer!’ I scream back. ‘Of course I didn’t tell you because you’re too bloody simplistic about everything to have had the remotest understanding. You just would’ve lectured me, and told me off, and acted like we were still eight years old. You’re not the boss, however much you might act like it.’

‘Oh, excuse me for not condoning your sordid little escapade. You’re kidding yourself it’s love, but it’s just the oldest cliché in the book. You’ve got a fucking cheek calling me simple after what you’ve let him get away with.’

‘Yeah, like Richard’s some kind of saint! He’s an angry bully who’s dumped you once and won’t waste any time doing it again.’

An expression of pure fury crosses Alice’s features, a look that tells me I should do everything in my power to defuse this horrific, eviscerating conflict. This goes way too deep for both of us and we need to slam on the brakes before we crash. But having seen Zelda lying on her deathbed, I’m in some kind of peculiar parallel universe. Today nothing feels sacred, not even my most precious relationship.

‘Oh, Lulu, do you care?’ she asks, a horrible sarcastic smirk twisting her features. ‘Do you really? How very touching. Because the only person you seem to have been remotely interested in these last few weeks is yourself. I don’t know who you are any more, you certainly don’t feel like my twin.’

I feel cut to the quick, completely floored. We’ve never said that to each other, never ever. ‘How can you say that to me?’ I wail. ‘If you knew, if you knew what today’s been like…’

‘What, did Charles cut you dead in the coffee queue?’ she sneers. Alice gets this hardness sometimes, this need to put me in my place by pretending to be invincible. It cuts me off at the knees, turns me to mush.

‘No, no. Zelda’s dying, she might even have gone by now.’ Great racking sobs consume me as I think of her in that room. ‘She’s in hospital, all hooked up to machines…’

She edges towards me, puts a tentative hand on my arm.

‘Are you sure it’s as bad as you think?’

And it’s that statement which makes me completely lose the plot.

‘Yes, Alice, it is as bad as I think. Death is pretty much final – I’m not sure even you could manage to whitewash that away. But, oh no, hang on, you’ve managed to team up with Dad and sweep Mum under the carpet like she never existed, so maybe you could.’

‘Fucking hell, Lulu, Zelda’s not our mum! She’s not even related to you. The amount of times she’s made your life hell…’

And with a brilliant piece of sleight of hand, she manages to totally belittle my relationship with Zelda and completely sidestep how I feel about her colluding with Dad. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so betrayed, so despairing. Maybe it’s not just her who feels like she’s lost a twin. Before I know it, I’m throwing as much as I can into a holdall and running out on to the street to hail a cab. Alice screams after me, holds on to my arm, but I won’t so much as look at her. As far as I’m concerned, I’m on my own.