Secret Smile

CHAPTER 22

It was damp and weirdly warm. In less than four weeks it would be Christmas. Every high street in the city had its lights up, the Santa Claus, the swinging bells, the Disney characters. Shop windows glittered with tinsel and baubles. There were already Christmas trees outside the greengrocers' shops, leaning against the wall with their wide branches tied up with string. Some doors in the street where I lived had holly wreaths on them. The shelves in the supermarkets were loaded with crackers, mince pies, Advent calendars, boxes of dates, vast tins of chocolates, frozen turkeys, bottles of port and sherry, little baskets of bath salts and soaps, CDs of seasonal music, humorous books, crappy stocking fillers. The brass band played 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' outside Woolworth's. Women in thick coats rattled collection tins in the cold.

What would we do this Christmas? Would we put up a tree in my parents' half-demolished house or in my living room, where nine days ago Troy had killed himself? Would we sit round a table eating turkey with chestnut stuffing and sprouts and roast potatoes and pull crackers, put silly hats on our heads and take it in turn to read out the jokes? What would we do, what could we do, that wouldn't seem grotesque? How do you ever return to normal life, when something like this has happened?

Troy 's funeral wasn't crowded. He'd been a lonely boy and a solitary young man. His few friends at school had fallen away after he'd left, although a couple of them turned up with the deputy head and his old physics teacher. His tutor came too, and several family friends who'd known Troy since he was tiny. There was Bill and Judy and their kids, and my mother's sister Kath who'd come down from Sheffield with her family, and then there were the relatives my parents saw once or twice a year, and the ones they barely ever saw but exchanged Christmas cards with. A friend of Kerry's called Carol came; and Tony and Laura.

We were there of course: Mum and Dad, me and Kerry. And Brendan. Brendan looked more stricken than anyone, with his red eyes and a faint bruise on his forehead turning yellow. Even I had to admit that he'd been wonderful over the past week: inexhaustible, indispensable, solid. 'Wonderful' in quotation marks, though. There was more to Brendan than I'd seen before. I didn't understand it, whatever 'it' was, but he was good at it. Resourceful, energetic, committed to each moment, persuasive, cooperative, endlessly aware of other people's needs, feelings. He had a radar for what everyone around him needed just at that very instant.

He'd offered to make all the funeral arrangements himself, to take the burden off the family, but Mum had told him quietly that it helped her to be busy. He'd answered the phone, filled out forms, made pots of tea, gone shopping, shifted his and Kerry's stuff into my parents' house again, so I could move back in to my flat. They were moving to the house I'd found in just two days.

A week after the death, we talked about the wedding. Kerry wanted to postpone it, but my parents said that love was the only thing that would get us through. Brendan nodded at that and held Kerry's hand, stroking it and saying in a wise, reflective voice, 'Yes, yes, love will get us through,' his eyes shining. At any other time it would have driven me insane with irritation. I still knew it was irritating, but now there were layers of numbness between the irritation and me.

'Here you are, better than tea.'

Bill pushed a tumbler of whisky into my hand and stood beside me while I took a large, fiery mouthful. We had all come back to my parents' house and were standing in the draughty living room, drinking mugs of tea and not really knowing what to say to each other. What is there to say, at events like these?

'Thanks.'

'Are you all right?'

'Yeah.'

'Silly question. How could you be?'

'If he'd died in an accident, or of an illness or something, that would have been one thing…' I said. I didn't need to finish the sentence.

'Marcia's going to spend the rest of her life asking herself where she went wrong, what she did wrong.'

'Yes.'

'That's what suicide does. The fact is, she did all she could. You all did.'

'No. He shouldn't have killed himself.'

'Well, of course not.'

'I mean, I don't understand it. Mum keeps saying she thought he was getting better. And he was getting better, Bill.'

'You never know what's going on in someone's head.'

'I guess.'

I took another gulp.

'He was a troubled young man.'

'Yeah.'

I thought about Troy giggling, making stupid jokes, grinning up at me. I kept seeing his face when he was in his happy phases and energy seemed to shine out of him, making him beautiful.

Bill refilled my glass and took the whisky bottle across to Dad. I wandered out of the crowded living room, into the building site that used to be the kitchen, then through the hole in the wall where once there was a door and into the soggy garden. Ripped, splintered floorboards and pieces of the old kitchen units were heaped up against the fence. I leaned against an old bit of shelving. It was slightly misty, every outline just a bit blurred, but maybe that was the whisky.

After my conversation with Bill, I was in a state wide open for doubts to crash in. The autopsy had been straightforward. Suicide by hanging. I thought of the last conversation I'd had with Troy on the phone that morning, when he'd sounded tired but quite cheerful. I'd told him about finding the house for Brendan and Kerry, and we'd talked about our plans. I'd said how much I was looking forward to sharing the flat with him, and he'd said, a bit gruffly, that he was looking forward to it too. My stinging eyes filled with tears again, though I had believed I was all cried out. I heard Brendan asking me, the day before, what time I would be collecting my stuff from the flat, and me replying it would be about half-past six. I let myself remember pushing the door open at the appointed time and seeing Troy's body hanging there; his chalky face and sightless, open eyes; the chair upturned by his feet.

I was hysterical, I told myself. Mad. I so badly wanted Troy not to have killed himself, so badly wanted not to have to blame my parents and myself for his death, so wanted not to have to imagine the despair that had led him to that moment that I was inventing gothic fantasies instead.

A few drops of rain fell on me. I drained my whisky and went back through the kitchen and into the living room. I hung back by the door, unwilling to talk about Troy and not wanting to talk about anything else. Kerry was standing with her arm through my father's. Her mascara had smudged and there were red blotches on her neck. Across the room, Brendan was on his own. Our eyes met. He looked away and his face crumpled. I suddenly felt that he was staging this just for me, a private drama. Tears coursed down his face, into his neck; he stuffed a fist into his mouth and doubled up as if he were muffling a great howl.

It was Laura who went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. She just stood there like that while his bulky body shook. After a while he stood up straighter, and she took away her hand. I saw them talking. At one point they both looked over to me.

I turned away and went upstairs to find my mother, who had disappeared from the gathering. She was sitting in Troy 's old room – Kerry and Brendan's room now, I supposed, for their bags were by the door. She was sitting on his bed, plucking at the sheets with her fingers and staring ahead into nothing. She looked tired. Her face was full of lines and pouches that I hadn't seen before. Even her hair was lacklustre. I went and crouched beside her and put a hand on her knee. She looked up and gave me a small nod of acknowledgement.

'I thought I'd leave them to it,' she said.

'It's fine.'

'I don't know what to do with myself, really. Nowhere seems the right place to be.'

'I know what you mean.'

'Miranda?'

'Yes.'

'He was getting better. He was.'

'I know.'

I crouched there for a little longer, then went back to the thinning crowd and to the whisky bottle.

Laura took me home because I'd drunk far too much whisky to drive myself. She steered me upstairs to my flat and took off my coat, then sat me on the sofa and pulled off my shoes. 'There,' she said. 'Now: tea or coffee?'

'Shame to let the drink wear off' I said. 'Whisky?'

'I'll make coffee,' she said firmly. 'And I'll run you a bath.'

'That's nice of you. You don't need to. I'll be fine.'

'It's nothing.'

She filled the kettle with water and plugged it in.

'We were going to share this flat,' I said.

'I know. Do you want something to eat?'

'I've got a horrible taste in my mouth,' I said. 'What did Brendan say, then?'

'Say?' She looked confused.

'You were talking with him. After he'd done his great weeping act.'

'That's not fair, Miranda.'

'You don't think so?'

'He's heartbroken but doesn't think he can show it in front of all of you. He has to be strong for the family.'

'That's what he said?'

'Yes.'

'Oh well, who cares?'

'He does,' she said. 'I know what you feel about him, but he cares a lot. After all, you're the only family he's got. He thought of Troy as his little brother.'

'You too,' I said, infinitely tired.

'What?'

'He's got you on his side too.'

'It's not a question of sides.'

'That's what he says too, but he's lying. He's on one side and I'm on the other. Now more than ever. You can't be on both sides at once, you know. And you can't be some fucking United Nations mediator. You have to choose.' There was a pause. 'You've crossed over, haven't you?' I could feel my speech thicken. My head was aching with the whisky and the wretchedness.

'Miranda, you're my best friend. Don't say things like that.'

'Sorry,' I said. But I couldn't let it go: 'You liked him, didn't you?'

'I felt sorry for him.'

She poured boiling water over the coffee grounds and stirred vigorously. I stood up and fetched the whisky bottle from the shelf.

'Look at that,' I said. 'How've I drunk all of that since the day before yesterday?'

I was almost proud of myself. It was an achievement, of a kind. I sloshed a generous measure into a dirty wine glass, closed my eyes and took a gulp.

'You'll feel lousy tomorrow,' said Laura.

'One way or another,' I said.

'Do you want me to stay the night?'

'No. You've been lovely.'

'Are you going to work tomorrow?'

'Obviously. It's a working day.'

'I'll ring you in the evening, then.'

'You don't need to.'

'No, but I will'

'What would I do without you?'

I finished off the bottle. If I shut my eyes, the room tipped sickeningly, so I kept them squinted open though the lights were hurting my head. I padded into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. Which had been Troy 's bed for a bit. Although I'd changed the sheets, some of his things were still there – his watch on the bedside table, his jacket hanging from the hook on the door, his books scattered around the place. I fancied I could still smell him. I picked up a book he'd been reading about bread-making and held it against my chest.

'Oh dear,' I said out loud. My tongue was thick in my mouth. 'Oh dear, Troy. What shall I do now?'

Later, about two in the morning, I staggered out of bed and was sick, leaning over the toilet bowl and retching until there was nothing left in my stomach to vomit. My eyes stung and my throat hurt and my head throbbed, but I felt a bit better. I drank three beakers of water and went back to bed. I couldn't get to sleep at once. Thoughts swarmed in my head. I heard Troy 's voice, his last words: 'See you later, then.' He wouldn't see me, but I'd see him. All the time.