Twenty years ago
‘Who is she?’ screamed her mother from downstairs. For the past twenty minutes, from the moment Rachel Miller had come home from swimming practice and been ordered to her room, she had been unable to hear the precise contents of her parents’ argument. She had closed her bedroom door intentionally, not wanting to pick out the abuse and accusations, but there was no mistaking that her father was now being confronted. ‘And don’t lie to me.’
Rachel had known this argument was coming. It was almost as if she had been able to feel it in the air, like a brewing storm.
It hadn’t always been like this. There was a family photo downstairs on the TV cabinet that said otherwise. Mum, Dad, Rachel and her big sister Diana, all crammed together on the sofa downstairs with big toothy smiles, arms wrapped around each other as if they would never be apart. You could almost hear the laughter and the cries of ‘Cheese!’ Or had that all been a lie too?
Somehow, somewhere down the line, it had all gone sour. The bickering over little things, stupid things. Resentments growing into arguments, rows growing into all-out war. There had been a particularly bad confrontation before Christmas; voices so full of hate and fury that Rachel had gone to her bedroom and prayed for i
t to stop.
And in some ways her prayers had been answered. The rows diminished, only to be replaced by a hostile silence, a constant tension in the house that was like the drip-drip of a tap, splashing one drop at a time until the bath finally overflowed.
Rachel reached over to her bedside table, scrabbling round in the drawer for her new compact disc player, her fingers stabbing at the buttons to switch the thing on and drown out the noise. She crept under her duvet, pulled her knees up to her chest and stuck her nose into her copy of Just Seventeen, which had been returned to her that day after a week of confiscation by Mr Stephenson when she had been caught reading it in double physics.
‘Rach?’ She jumped at the sensation of the headphone being pulled away from her ear and looked up to see her sister standing by the bed next to her. She hadn’t seen her since school and was relieved to see her.
Diana had the room next door – a bigger one than her own, with pink and white Laura Ashley wallpaper that was covered with pictures of Matt Dillon and Christian Slater – but they often bunked in each other’s rooms when their parents rowed.
‘I should have stayed out,’ said Diana quietly, pulling back the duvet and creeping in next to her sister.
‘Where have you been?’ asked Rachel, happy to be talking about anything else.
‘Paul’s.’
Paul? Rachel’s eyes widened – for the moment, everything happening downstairs was forgotten. Paul Jones? Diana had been at his house? Paul Jones was the king of Meersbrook Comprehensive, the resident heartthrob; dark eyes peering out from under a floppy fringe, captain of the football team. He even had a motorbike. Every girl in the school was a little bit in love with him, and Rachel – in secret, in her dreams – was a lot in love with him.
‘Is he . . . is Paul your boyfriend now?’
Diana shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘I’m just going with him.’
Rachel nodded, trying to appear casual, although her mouth was dry and her stomach felt hot. What did ‘going with’ someone mean exactly? She was pretty sure it was kissing. Proper kissing on the mouth with tongues, the thought of which still freaked her out a little bit. But she was going to be thirteen next week and she was curious to know for sure.
‘Is it easy?’
Diana smirked, one eyebrow raised.
‘Is what easy?’
‘Kissing.’
Diana laughed. She had a pretty laugh; everything about Diana was pretty, it was so annoying. But Rachel knew Di would never laugh at her, she was never unkind.
‘I’ve never really thought of kissing as easy or hard,’ she said. ‘But it’s fun.’ She caught sight of Rachel’s furrowed brow. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get the chance soon enough.’
She smiled, and Rachel felt a little of her jealousy ease. It wasn’t Diana’s fault that Paul Jones fancied her instead of Rachel, was it? If she was Paul, she would have probably picked Di too.
There was a loud crash. It sounded like the whole dinner service hitting the floor.
‘What are they rowing about anyway?’ whispered Diana, moving closer.
Rachel was always surprised at how small her sister’s voice was. People expected Diana to have a big personality, perhaps because of her beauty and her popularity with the cool crowd, but she was quiet, sensitive, sitting for hours with those stupid romantic books she liked to read.
‘I don’t know. Dad was already here when I got home.’
Who is she?
Rachel was not a stupid girl. She had picked up on the suggestion by her mother. Her father had found somebody else, somebody else to love. But she didn’t want to tell Diana that. Not tonight.
‘I hate it,’ said Diana. ‘I hate the shouting.’
‘I know,’ said Rachel quietly, putting her arm around her sister.
People often mistook Rachel for the older Miller sister. It wasn’t just her height and her big feet, which had finally come in so useful for swimming. Diana looked like a doll compared to her.
They could hear the noise of a door slamming shut. The two girls glanced at each other; they both knew it had been the sound of the front door.
‘He’s gone,’ said Rachel. It was out of her mouth before she had time to think about it.
‘Gone?’ said Diana, a note of panic creeping into her voice. ‘How do you know? What do you mean, gone?’
Diana scrambled out of the bed and ran to the window. Rachel didn’t need to hear the car engine gunning away to know he had left them. Sometimes she just knew things: knew what people were thinking, what they were going to do. She didn’t like it much, it made her feel like a storybook witch.
‘Rach, do something!’ screamed Diana, her eyes flooding with tears, her beautiful solemn face as white as a ghost.
Rachel puffed out a small breath, trying to convince herself that things would start getting better from now on – just the three of them.
‘We should see if Mum’s okay,’ she said finally.
She took her sister’s hand, knowing that she had to keep calm, keep strong, because she had a funny feeling that her mum and her sister weren’t going to.
‘Let’s go and see if we can help sweep up the pieces.’
1
‘So who’s up for climbing Everest?’
Diana Denver glanced around the table, not sure which of her guests had said it, which friend had thrown down the gauntlet. It could have been any of the men sitting at the neat round of twelve, even a couple of the women. Their friends were like that: accomplished, ambitious, competitive. It wasn’t money, it was the alpha mind-set: bigger, better, higher. Two weeks scaling the Himalayan giant was the equivalent of most people’s rock-climbing at Center Parcs.
‘Well I’m in,’ said Michael Reynolds, her husband Julian’s close friend. Diana knew Mike was winding them up – he was three stone overweight, not to mention a world-class bullshitter – but she was immediately concerned that it would only encourage Julian. Climbing a mountain was not what he – not what they – needed right now.
Michael leant forward in his chair. ‘No, I mean it,’ he said, his eyes sparkling. ‘Everyone thinks it’s so hard, but I’ve been reading up on it and it is actually quite doable. Just takes a bit of determination.’
Julian sipped his Armagnac, letting the amber liquid roll around his tongue before he finally spoke.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said, to Diana’s great relief. Her husband was an adventurer at heart. He had trekked across deserts, motorbiked across continents, but it was all done, as was everything in his life, with great consideration, planning and thought. ‘I just think it’s too busy these days.’
‘Too busy?’ laughed Michael, knocking back his own brandy. ‘It’s not the ski lifts at Verbier we’re talking about here, Jules.’
Michael’s wife Patty swatted him on the arm. ‘Well I think Julian’s right. So many people want to do it, they’re even running corporate trips up to Base Camp these days. It’s like the adventure equivalent of a Birkin – you have to put your name down years in advance and pay through the nose for the privilege.’
Everyone began to laugh as coffee cups were refilled by Diana’s fleet of caterers. The glorious smell of arabica beans mingled with the scent of honeysuckle and roses. Diana had been unconvinced about moving the party into the garden, but when numbers had necessitated five tables of twelve, outgrowing the available space in their dining room, there was nothing else for it.
‘Jules doesn’t need to go to the top of the world,’ added Bob Wilson, a fund manager, distinguished by his unconvincing hair weave. ‘You’re already there, aren’t you, Denver. Say, is it true the company’s buying Jura Motors?’
Julian gave a low, slow smile. As CEO of the Denver Group, one of Europe’s biggest and most valuable conglomerates, he was used to fending off rumour, speculation and shame
less mining for information from their investor friends. ‘Don’t believe everything you read, Bob. I think we’ve all learnt that the hard way.’
He reached over and took Diana’s hand, resting his fingers over hers on the table. She felt all eyes land on her, which made her feel a little uncomfortable.
‘Speaking of the Himalayas, I think it’s time to go and check out the vodka ice luge my wife has had sculpted. I’ve been promised it’s not in the shape of Michael’s penis,’ added Julian with a wink.