Surprise Me

SEVENTEEN

Battersea Park is one of the reasons we like south-west London. It’s an amazing resource – huge and green and full of activities. It’s a fine evening as I reach the gates and people are out in force enjoying themselves. They’re strolling, cycling, rollerblading, riding recumbent bikes and hitting distant tennis balls. Everyone’s relaxed and smiling at each other. But not me. I’m desperate. I’m not smiling. I’m a woman on a mission.

I don’t know what’s propelling me – some marriage-in-crisis superpower maybe, that causes all your muscles to explode in strength? But somehow I’m speeding along, past all the joggers, tottering in my black high heels, panting and red-faced. My lungs are on fire and there’s a blister on my heel, but the more it hurts, the harder I run. I don’t know what I’m going to say when I see him. I’m not even sure I can string a sentence together – all I have is the odd random word landing in my brain as I run. Love. Forever. Please.

‘Argh!’ Suddenly, without warning, I feel a massive jolt, and crash to the ground, scraping my face painfully against the tarmac. ‘Ow! Ow!’ I manage to get to my feet, and see a little boy in a recumbent bike, who has clearly just bashed into me and doesn’t look remotely sorry.

‘Sorry!’ A woman is running over. ‘Josh, I’ve told you to be careful on that bike—’ She sees my face in dismay. ‘Oh dear. You’ve cut your forehead. You should see a medic. Do they have a first-aid place?’

‘It’s fine,’ I say hoarsely, and start running again. Now she mentions it, I can feel blood running down my face. But whatever. I’ll find a plaster later.

Climb On is a massive adventure playground for children, full of ropes, dangling ladders and dangerous, hideous, swaying bridges. As it comes into view, the very sight of it makes my stomach turn. Why on earth would you have a party here? What’s wrong with safe activities on the ground?

As I get near I can see Dan. He’s standing on a bridge, at the top of a tower, with a couple of other dads, all wearing safety helmets. But while the dads are joking about something, Dan seems oblivious to the party. He’s staring ahead, his face shadowed, his brow taut.

‘Dan!’ I yell, but the place is full of clamouring children and he doesn’t turn. ‘Dan! Dan!’ I scream so loud that my throat catches and still he doesn’t hear me. I have no choice. Dodging past the entrance barrier, and ignoring the cry of the attendant, I run at the structure, kick off my heels and start climbing up a monstrous set of rope steps that will lead me to the platform that Dan is on. I’m not even thinking about what I’m doing. I’m just getting to Dan in the only way possible.

And it’s only when I’m about ten feet off the ground that I realize what I’m doing. Oh God. No. I can’t … no.

My fingers freeze around the ropes. I start to breathe more quickly. I look down at the ground and think I might vomit. Dan is another twenty feet up. I need to keep climbing. But I can’t. But I have to.

‘Hey!’ An irate voice is calling me from the ground. ‘Who are you? Are you with the party? You need a helmet!’

Somehow I force myself up another step. And up. Tears have started to my eyes. Don’t look down. Don’t look. Another step. The rope steps keep wobbling perilously and suddenly a whimper escapes from me.

‘Sylvie? Sylvie?’ Dan’s voice hits my ears. ‘What the fuck …’

I raise my head to see him peering down at me incredulously.

‘We need a manager,’ someone is saying on the ground. ‘Gavin, you’re deputy manager. You climb up after her.’

‘I’m not climbing after her!’ an indignant voice replies. ‘We’re supposed to use the emergency ladder, anyway. Jamie, get out the emergency ladder.’

Every sinew of my body is begging me to stop. My head is spinning. But somehow I push on, step after step, higher and higher, ignoring the fact that I’m twenty feet off the ground. Twenty-five feet. That I don’t have any harness. Or any helmet. That if I fell … No. Stop. Don’t think about falling. Keep going.

I’m aware of the atmosphere becoming quieter. Everyone must be watching. Are the girls watching? My hands have started sweating. My breath is coming in fast, harsh little gasps.

Now the platform is only a few feet away. Only a few more steps will do it. But suddenly a new tremor comes over me. My legs are shaking so hard that I feel the hugest wash of fear I have yet. I can’t control my limbs. I can’t do this. I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall, how can I not fall?

‘You’re nearly there.’ Dan’s voice is suddenly in my ears. Solid. Familiar. Something to cling to mentally. ‘You’re nearly there,’ he repeats. ‘You’re not going to fall. One more step. Hand on the platform. Nearly there, Sylvie, nearly there.’

And suddenly I’m there, and his strong hand is grasping mine and I’m collapsing on the wooden platform, and for a few moments I can’t move. At last I raise my head to see Dan staring at me, with such a scrubcious face that I want to laugh, except I can’t because tears are streaming down my face.

‘What the fuck?’ he demands, and grabs me so tightly, I gasp. ‘What the fuck? Sylvie, you could have … What were you doing?’ He stares at me, looking quite aghast. I suppose I am quite an apparition, what with the shorn hair and the blood dripping down my face. ‘Were you trying to surprise me? Or shock me? Or give me a heart attack? Is this real?’ He touches my cheek and as blood comes away on his fingers, he looks even more shocked. ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I wasn’t trying to surprise you,’ I manage, my breaths still short and fast. ‘That’s not what this is. I just … I just had to see you. Didn’t you get my messages?’

‘Messages?’ His hand goes automatically to his pocket. ‘No. My phone’s fucked. Sylvie … what is this? You can’t do heights.’ He looks at the ground, thirty feet below, then at me. ‘You can’t even do a stepladder.’

‘Well.’ I rub my bloody face. ‘Looks like I did them.’

‘But … your face. Your hair. What’s happened? Sylvie, what the hell—’ He suddenly turns ashen. ‘Have you been attacked?’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No. I cut my hair off myself. Dan, listen. I know. About …’ I have to get this through to him, urgently. ‘I know.’

‘You “know”?’ A familiar guarded expression comes across his face, as though ready to bat away my questions. And in that moment I realize just how much he’s been keeping from me. What a constant pressure it must have been. No wonder he’s fed up.

‘I know, OK? Believe me. I know.’

The other dads who were on the platform with Dan have tactfully headed off to the zip-wire platform, where all the children, including our two, are clustering with play leaders in branded T-shirts. We’re alone.

‘What do you know, exactly, Sylvie?’ says Dan cautiously. And his willingness to protect me, even now, makes my eyes hot. I stare back at him, thoughts swirling around my mind. What exactly do I know? Nothing, it feels like, most of the time.

‘I know that you’re not the man I thought you were.’ I gaze into his guarded blue eyes, trying to get beneath the surface. ‘You’re so, so much more than I ever realized.’ My throat is suddenly tight, but I press on. ‘I know what you’ve been doing, Dan. I know what all the secrets are. I know about my father. Joss Burton. The whole thing. I read the emails.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I know my father was a liar and a shit.’

Dan visibly flinches and stares at me incredulously. ‘What did you say?’

‘My father was a liar. And a shit.’

There’s silence as my words sit in the air. I’ve never seen Dan look so shoffed. I don’t think he can speak. But that’s OK, because I have more to say.

‘I’ve been living in a bubble.’ I swallow hard. ‘A climate-controlled, safe bubble. But now it’s burst. And the weather has blown in. And it’s … exhilarating.’

Dan nods slowly. ‘I can see. Your face. It’s different.’

‘Bad different?’

‘No. Real different. You look more real.’ He surveys me, as though trying to work it out. ‘Your eyes. Your expression. Your hair.’

I put up a hand and feel my bare neck. It still feels unfamiliar. Exposed. It feels like a new me.

‘Princess Sylvie is dead,’ I say abruptly, and there must be something about my tone, because Dan nods gravely, and says:

‘Agreed.’

I suddenly become aware of an extendable ladder being placed against the platform we’re on. A few moments later, a guy in his twenties appears, holding a helmet. As he sees my bloody face, he recoils, aghast.

‘Did that injury happen on our premises?’ He has a reedy voice and sounds freaked out. ‘Because you are not an authorized client, you have not undergone the health-and-safety briefing, you are not wearing approved headwear—’

‘It’s OK.’ I cut him off. ‘I didn’t injure myself on your premises.’

‘Well.’ He gives me a resentful look and holds out the helmet to me. ‘All clients must wear protective helmets at all times. All clients must register before using any apparatus and be fitted for a harness.’

‘Sorry,’ I say humbly. I take the helmet from him and put it on.

‘Please descend from the apparatus,’ the guy adds in such a disapproving voice that I feel an involuntary giggle building. ‘Forthwith.’

Forthwith? I glance at Dan and see that he’s hiding a smile, too.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’m going.’ I eye the extendable ladder and feel a wave of nausea. ‘In a minute.’

‘I can show you a gentler way down,’ Dan says to me. ‘Unless you felt like hurling yourself down the rope ladder, headfirst?’

‘Not today.’ I match his deadpan tone. ‘Another time.’

I follow Dan across a rickety ropy bridge to a lower platform. My legs are trembling violently in a kind of aftershock state. Every time I glance down I want to heave. But I smile brightly at Dan whenever he looks round and somehow I keep going and we make it. Vincit qui se vincit keeps running through my head. She conquers who conquers herself.

And then we descend an easier ladder and pretty soon we’re on the ground. And I am really, really glad. In fact, I slightly want to hug the ground in gratitude.

Not that I would ever admit this to anyone.

‘OK.’ Dan suddenly rounds on me. ‘Now we’re on the ground and you’re not going to fall off in fright, I’m going to say it again: what the fuck?’ His eyes are wide and I realize he’s genuinely freaked out. ‘What happened to your face, your hair …’ He’s counting off on his fingers. ‘How do you know about your dad? I leave you for two nights and all hell breaks loose.’

Two nights? It feels like an eternity.

‘I knew you were lying about going to Glasgow,’ I say, a familiar pain washing over me. ‘I thought you’d gone to … I thought you were leaving me. You said you needed space, you said you needed to escape …’

‘Oh God. Yes.’ Dan closes his eyes. ‘Yes, I didn’t mean that. I just …’ He pauses and I wait fearfully. ‘It was all becoming—’ He breaks off again, looking towards the sky.

I can’t finish his sentence in perfect, overlapping sync. Psychic Sylvie, who knew everything, has vanished. And now that the exhilaration of climbing up thirty feet has worn off, I can see us for what we are. A married couple from south-west London who have hit the buffers. Trying to sort it out. Finding our way. Not there yet.

‘I know it’s been an “ongoing nightmare”,’ I say at last. ‘Mary Holland told me.’

‘Oh, “nightmare” is probably too strong.’ Dan rubs his face, looking suddenly weary. ‘But it’s endless. I have your mother on at me every day. Emails from the lawyers, Joss Burton’s agent … This book is going to happen. And it’s going to be huge. She’s a big deal, Sylvie, and I’m not sure I can stop it this time.’

He looks so troubled, I should say something sympathetic, but my residual anger’s too great and I can’t help rounding on him in turn: ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’ Because it’s Dan who kept secrets, who drove wedges between us, who kept flicking to another page when I tried to read his whole story. ‘You should have told me right from the start. As soon as my father came to you, you should have said, “We need to tell Sylvie.” Then everything would have been different.’

I can’t help sounding accusing. I’ve developed a whole alternate universe in my head, where this is what happened, and somehow the situation made Dan and me stronger as a couple, instead of nearly splitting us up.

‘I should have told you?’ Dan stares at me incredulously, almost angrily. ‘Sylvie, do you have any idea … Your father would have killed me, for a start. The whole thing was a total secret from everybody. Even your mother didn’t want to know. All we were trying to do, round the clock, was contain it. Shut it down. Your father was after a knighthood, for God’s sake. He was adamant that no one could know about this scandal, least of all his daughter. And he really meant it. Can you imagine what kind of rage he was in?’

There’s a pause – then silently I nod. I can still remember the white-hot fury that would come into Daddy’s eyes. Not with me, never with his princess, but with others. And the idea of Daddy caged in by possible scandal … Yes, I can imagine.

‘And then, just when we were in the middle of it all … he had the crash. He was gone.’ Dan stops abruptly and I can see the remembered shock pass through him. ‘And there was no way I could have told you then.’

‘Yes you could,’ I say robustly. ‘That was the perfect time.’

‘Sylvie, you couldn’t cope as it was!’ Dan erupts furiously. ‘Do you remember what that time was like? Do you realize how worried I was? You were a bloody mess! If I’d come along and said, “Hey, guess what, you know your adored dad? The one you’ve gone into extreme grief over? Well, apparently he preyed on a sixteen-year-girl, or maybe he didn’t.”’ Dan rubs his face, hard. ‘I mean, Jesus. You were in meltdown, your mum was on another planet, what was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to do?’

He appeals to me directly, his face twisted up, as tentery as I’ve ever known it, and I can see years of strain in him. I can see all the decisions he’s been wrestling with. All alone.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, chastened. ‘I know. You did what you thought was best. And I realize it was out of love for me. But Dan … you were too protective.’

I can see Dan smarting at my words. All this time, he’s thought he was doing the right thing; the gallant thing; the best possible thing. It’s hard to hear that it wasn’t.

‘Perhaps,’ he allows after a pause.

‘You were,’ I insist. ‘And we need to stop talking about my “episode”. We need to accept that grief happens. Shit happens; life happens. And glossing over it or trying to say it’s an illness isn’t the way to go. Better to acknowledge it. Cope with it. Clear it up together.’

I have a sudden image of Dan and me working together with brooms, side by side, hot and sweaty and determined. It’s not the most romantic, Hallmark image of marriage … but it’s what I want us to be.

I can see Dan digesting what I’m saying – or at least trying to. It’ll probably take a while.

‘Fair enough,’ he says at last. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ Then his face changes; becomes a little more tense. ‘Have you seen what she wrote?’

‘Skimmed it,’ I say, looking at the ground.

The big question is sitting there in the air between us. I know he’s never going to broach it, so I have to. I take a breath, gearing myself up, preparing myself for his answer, whatever it is. ‘Do you think it’s true?’

At once his face closes up again, like a clam. ‘Don’t know,’ he says distantly. ‘It’s his word against hers. It’s a long time ago. Probably not worth speculating.’

‘But you’ve read everything she wrote.’ I peer at his face, trying to read it. ‘What do you think?’

Dan looks even more tortured. ‘I don’t like talking about this with you. It’s …’

‘Sordid,’ I say flatly. ‘It’s not what my family was supposed to be about. We were supposed to be the gilded, perfect ones, right?’

Dan winces, but doesn’t contradict me. God, he’s had a fucked-up view of my family. Ridiculous brunches with Mummy. Endless viewings of Daddy on that DVD, all golden and handsome. And all the while, scrabbling around with lawyers to keep our dirty washing out of sight.

‘I’m going to read all the files,’ I say. ‘Everything she’s written, everything she’s said. Every word.’

Dan looks appalled. ‘That’s not a good idea—’

‘I’m going to.’ I cut him off. ‘I have to know. Don’t worry, I won’t flip out. You know she was “Lynn”?’ I add, hunching my arms round my body. ‘My parents lied to me.’

‘I know.’ Dan grimaces. ‘That was the worst bit of all. Hearing you talk about your imaginary friend, and knowing …’ He shakes his head. ‘That was messed up.’

‘I felt guilty about Lynn my whole childhood. I felt ashamed and confused and stupid.’ My jaw grows tight at the memory. ‘And I will never forgive him for that, never.’ I speak the words viciously and look up to see Dan regarding me anxiously.

‘Sylvie, don’t go overboard. Don’t go too far the other way. I know this is all shocking. But he was still your dad, remember? You loved him, remember?’

I prod my feelings. My feelings about Daddy. I wait for the familiar torrent of grief and love and fury that he’s been taken from us. But there’s nothing. It’s as though the flow has been cut off at the mains.

‘Maybe I did.’ I watch a guy on rollerblades in the park trying to go backwards. ‘Maybe I will one day again. That’s all I can say, for now.’ I shoot him a sidelong look. ‘I never understood what went wrong with you and Daddy. Now I get it.’

Dan gives me a wry smile. ‘I thought I concealed my feelings perfectly.’

‘Not so much.’ I return his smile, but inside, I’m rewinding over the years, back to when Dan discovered all this; got dragged into a side street of our family map that he was never expecting. ‘It must have been awful for you.’

‘It wasn’t great,’ says Dan, his eyes distant. ‘I idolized your dad too, you know, in my own way. He was such a hero. So when these allegations came along, at first I was shocked. I wanted to defend him. I was glad to defend him. I actually thought it would be a way for us to become closer. Until …’ He gives a humourless laugh. ‘Well. Let’s just say … we didn’t.’

I nod bleakly. ‘I’ve read his emails to you. I know.’

‘He didn’t like that I’d seen beneath the glossy veneer,’ says Dan slowly. ‘He couldn’t really stand it.’

The sound of shrieking heralds the children, who are being ushered off the apparatus and into a room decorated with balloons. As they pass by, both Tessa and Anna gasp at the sight of us, as though it’s been several days since we saw each other.

‘Mummy, you got a hurt!’ says Tessa.

‘Just a tiny one!’ I call back. ‘I’ll get a plaster and it will all get better.’

‘Look, that’s my daddy! He’s there!’ Anna points at Dan, and all the children turn to gawp at us as though we’re celebrities, despite the fact that they see us pretty much every day at school, and all the other parents are here, too.

‘Should we go in with them?’ I say to Dan, my parental radar tweaking. ‘Are we supposed to be at the tea?’

‘No. They’ll be fine.’

We wave as they file into the party room – I can just about hear Tessa boasting, ‘My mummy always climbs up ladders’ – and then look at each other, as though we’re starting again.

I feel like another layer has been stripped off. The guarded look has gone from Dan’s eyes. As he meets my gaze, there’s a new honesty in them. With every revelation I understand Dan better; I learn more about him; I want to learn more about him. John’s voice runs through my head: Love is finding one person infinitely fascinating.

He’s my man. My Dan. The sun in my solar system. And I know he used to be eclipsed at times by a bigger, showier sun, and maybe that was always our problem. But now I can’t think how I ever compared Daddy to Dan, even in the privacy of my own brain, and found Dan lesser. Dan is my sun. Dan wins on every, every, every count …

‘Sylvie?’ Dan interrupts my thoughts and I realize that tears are streaming down my face.

‘Sorry,’ I gulp, brushing at my cheeks. ‘Just thinking about … You know. Us.’

‘Oh, us.’ His eyes lock on to mine and again, there’s that new truth to his gaze: an acknowledgement. It’s a different connection. We’re different. Both of us.

‘So what now?’ I venture at last.

‘Sixty-eight years, minus, what, a few weeks?’ says Dan at last, in unreadable tones. ‘It’s still a long time.’

I nod. ‘I know.’

‘Bloody long time. I mean, Jeez.’

‘Yup.’

Dan’s silent for a moment and I almost can’t breathe. Then he looks up and there’s something in his eyes which makes my heart twitch and tangle up in knots.

‘I’m up for it if you are.’

‘I am.’ I nod again, barely able to speak. ‘I am. I’m up for it.’

‘OK, then.’

‘OK.’

Dan hesitates, then lifts his hand and gently touches my fingertips, and my skin starts fizzing in a way I really wasn’t expecting. What’s happened to my nerve endings? To me? Everything feels brand new. Unpredictable. Dan starts nibbling my fingers, his eyes never leaving mine, and I stare back, transfixed, wanting more. Wanting to get a room. Wanting to rediscover this man that I love.

‘Sylvie? Dan? Are you coming in for tea?’ A cheery voice hails us and we both jerk round in shock to see the birthday girl’s mother, a woman called Gill, waving at us from the door of the party room. ‘We’ve got nibbles for parents, Prosecco …’

‘Maybe in a minute!’ calls back Dan politely. ‘By which I mean, “Can’t you see we’re busy?”’ he adds in a voice that only I can hear.

‘Don’t be like that,’ I say reprovingly. ‘She’s offering Prosecco.’

‘I don’t want Prosecco, I want you. Now.’ His eyes are running over me with a greed I haven’t seen in years; an urgency that makes me shiver. He grips me by the hips and he’s breathing hard and I think he would have me right here, right now. But we’re in Battersea Park, at a children’s party. Sometimes I think Dan forgets these things.

‘We’ve got another sixty-seven years and some,’ I remind him. ‘We’ll find another moment.’

‘I don’t want another moment.’ He buries his face in my neck.

‘Dan!’ I bat at him. ‘We’ll get arrested.’

‘Fine.’ He rolls his eyes comically. ‘Fine. Let’s go and drink our Prosecco. You could wash your face, too,’ he adds as we start slowly walking up the balloon-decorated path. ‘Not that “blood-stained zombie” isn’t a good look.’

‘Or else I could scare the children,’ I suggest. ‘I could be the slasher zombie clown.’

‘I like it.’ He nods, and reaches a hand to ruffle the nape of my neck. ‘I like this, too. I like it a lot.’

‘Good.’

‘A lot.’ He can’t seem to remove his hand from my shorn neck and his voice has descended to a kind of dark growl, and I suddenly think: Oh my God, was Dan a short-hair guy all the time and I never even knew?

‘The girls hate it, of course,’ I tell him.

‘Of course they do.’ Dan looks amused. ‘And Mrs Kendrick?’

‘Hates it too. Oh, that’s the other thing,’ I add, ‘I’m thinking of leaving my job.’

Dan stops dead and stares at me incredulously.

‘OK,’ he says at last. ‘Where is my wife and what have you done with her?’

‘Why?’ I meet his gaze head-on; challengingly. ‘Do you want her back?’ I have another sudden image of the princess-haired, bubble-Sylvie that I was. She already feels a lifetime ago.

‘No,’ says Dan without missing a beat. ‘You can keep her. This is the version I like.’

‘Me too.’ He still can’t keep his hands off my bare nape and I don’t want him to stop. My whole neck is tingling. My whole me is tingling. I should have cut my hair off years ago.

We’ve reached the party building by now. I can hear the shrieks of children and the chatter of parents and all the conversations that will swallow us up as soon as we enter. Dan pauses on the doorstep, his fingers resting on the back of my neck and I can see a deeply concentrating, scrubcious look pass over his face.

‘It’s not easy, is it?’ he says heavily, as though coming to some almighty conclusion. ‘Marriage. Love. It’s not easy.’

As he says it, Tilda’s words come back to me, and they’ve never seemed so true.

‘If love is easy …’ I hesitate. ‘You’re not doing it right.’

Dan looks down at me silently, and even though I’m not psychic Sylvie any more, I can see emotions jumbling through his eyes. Old anger. Tenderness. Love.

‘Well then, we must be fucking masters.’ He suddenly pulls me to him and kisses me hard, almost fiercely, like a statement of intent. A vow, almost. Then, at last, he releases me. ‘Come on. Let’s get that Prosecco.’