Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (read book txt) 📗

She had silenced him. I imagined her flushed cheeks, her fox-coloured hair spread out over the pillow. A pool of rusty red.

Perhaps Daniel hadn’t detected it then, what lay behind the grinning faces, the elaborate overtures. The extravagantly prepared food, the carefully laid table, the noisy, parentally sanctioned fuck. I think he probably would have done, if he’d known to look for it. They did their best, of course. But it is, in the end, not an easy thing to hide. The unmistakable stench of desperation. The cringing eagerness of the salesmen of damaged goods, for whom they’d finally found an interested buyer.

HELEN

Daniel and I have stopped talking about Rachel’s presence. In fact, with her being around all the time, listening to our every conversation, we seem to have fallen out of the habit of talking altogether. In the morning, we move around from drawers to toaster to kettle, politely moving out of each other’s way, like lodgers in a shared kitchen, while she sits at the table, slathering cream cheese onto bagels and slurping coffee. At night, we brush our teeth in silence. Daniel has started putting in earplugs before he is even in bed. He doesn’t say goodnight.

I can’t face the thought of telling him about my suspicions, about the note I found and what it might mean. He is cross enough with me about Rachel being here without me making it worse by telling him she is a thief, not to mention a potential homewrecker. I still can’t make up my mind on the latter. Sometimes, I decide it’s just too ridiculous to imagine anything could be going on between Rory and Rachel. But other times, the more I think about it, the more the pieces seem to fit. After all, hadn’t Rachel more or less admitted to an affair with a married man, who wasn’t interested in the baby? It would explain her determination to be friends with me. Her strange interest in Serena, asking whether Rory was happy about Serena’s pregnancy. Why else would she ask something so odd about someone she’d never even met?

Then there was Rachel’s excitement at being asked to Rory’s birthday meal. And Rory’s reaction. As soon as he’d seen her, he’d dropped all that glass. The look on his face, as if he’d seen a ghost. Could it have been the sudden apparition of his lover, standing right next to his wife at his own birthday dinner, that threw him off balance?

And then, to add to all that, there was Lisa. She’d seemed so sure she had seen Rachel before. It’s not as if she’d any reason to lie. And why else would Lisa have seen Rachel, if not at Rory’s office? That could, I thought queasily, have been where they had their secret assignations.

The thought of them together, at Haverstock – conducting some secret affair in the offices of the company Daddy built from nothing, while Serena sits clueless and pregnant at home and Daniel slaves away trying to save the company – makes my stomach sick with fury. How could Rory do something like that? He’d never have done this if Mummy were still here. It’s like he’s forgotten about her, now. It’s like he doesn’t think he needs to be good any more.

With the thought of the two of them at Haverstock comes another, awful prospect. Maybe Daniel isn’t in the dark after all. Maybe he knows about it, too. Could that be why he is so weird around Rachel, so unhappy that she is here? Has he been covering for Rory? Are Serena and I the only ones in the dark? Then, of course, there’s the most horrifying thought of all. Rachel’s baby. If they have been having an affair, could the baby be Rory’s? A child of my own flesh and blood?

Since Rory’s birthday dinner, I’ve been back in Rachel’s room time after time, looking for the things I found there. The laptop, the photograph of the four of us at Cambridge, the note I found at Serena’s. I know she has taken those things. I know they are there, somewhere. But I can’t find them. Last night – while she was splashing around in our new bathtub, yet again – I took another look, but there was nothing but clothes in her suitcase. In desperation, I looked in her handbag, found her wallet. No notes, no photograph. Just the usual stack of fifties – where on earth is she getting all this cash? – and a battered old provisional driver’s licence that expired years ago. RACHEL WELLS.

What I still can’t work out is what Rachel wants. If she wants Rory, wants to force him to choose, why doesn’t she just come out with it? Or perhaps he has ended it already – but she refuses to accept it? Perhaps this is her twisted way of getting close to him. But why? Is she tormenting him, punishing him for choosing Serena? Or is there more to it?

And then there are the marks on her neck. They are almost gone now, faded to little clouds of yellowish grey. Barely noticeable. How did she get them? Who wants to hurt her? And above all, why is she still living in our house, sitting and eating breakfast with us, coming out with her weird, jarring small talk? What does she want from us?

I am desperate to talk to Daniel about it, properly. Daniel always knows the right thing to do. We used to talk about things like this, solve problems together. We used to feel like a team. I can’t bear this distance that seems to be opening up between us since she’s been staying.

But I know what he’ll say. He’s always so logical. He’ll say I’m reading too much into things. That I’m imagining it, making things up. He will want proof, or he won’t believe me. And a part of me doesn’t even want to know what is really going on. I just