“I would say that actually none of that is obvious. I would say that you knew that Harvey wasn’t Daisy’s dad and that you know who Daisy’s dad is and, Jessamine, if you want me here, in your life, if you want me looking after everything, taking care of Daisy, taking care of your mother, taking care of the dog, this house, all of this, if you want me to stay, Jessamine, I need you to be honest with me. I need you tell me who Daisy’s dad really is. OK?”
There’s a strange smile twitching at the edges of Jessamine’s mouth. I’ve seen that smile before, many times. I catch my breath. Will I end up with wine in my face? A black eye? Or an emotional meltdown involving wrists and knives?
“You are such a fucking moron, Stuart. You are literally the stupidest man I’ve ever met. You would believe anything anyone told you, wouldn’t you? Mr. Nice Guy? Mr. Oh I’m So Fucking Lovely, And So Fucking Patient. But actually, you’re just a stupid, stupid moron.”
I sigh loudly and pick at the label on my beer bottle. “Ah, Jessamine,” I say, “Jessamine, Jessamine. You know, I do not have to be here. I’m here because I choose to be here. Every morning, I wake up in that stinking bed up there, next to you and your filthy dirty body, and I can smell your hair, you know, the stench of it. I have to hold it all back down and get out of bed as quick as I can so I can breathe properly. I look after this house for you; I buy you food, with my money; I cook you food; I am single-handedly keeping that daughter of yours sane and in one piece. Then for my efforts I get to watch you drink yourself into putridity every single day, watch you alienate your daughter, humiliate your mother, blame everyone for everything, and yet here I am. Still here. And I make that choice every morning, Jess. Every single morning, because I care about you. And that is what makes me stupid, Jess. That choice. That’s what makes me a moron. The fact that I choose to stay. Here. With you. When you do not deserve me. And, in fact, you do not deserve anything. Not Daisy, not this house, not that dog, none of it. So don’t fucking push me, Jess, because I will go. I will fucking go. And I will take your daughter and your dog with me. I fucking swear it.”
I stare at her. Her eyes gleam with a demon delight, but still she doesn’t yell, still she doesn’t move. Her fingers caress the narrow stem of her wineglass, but she doesn’t lift it and throw it. She just stares, and smiles. “I don’t know who Daisy’s dad is, OK? I have no idea. As far as I’m concerned, Harvey is her dad. And if he isn’t her dad, then who cares? It doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant.”
I nod, amazed by her civilized response.
“But,” she says, leaning across the table toward me, her eyes flashing as she speaks, “if you ever tell Daisy about this, I will kill you in your fucking sleep, Stuart. OK? I will fucking end you.”
chapter forty-six
While Jessamine is still sleeping the next morning, and after Daisy has left for school, I knock gently on the door of Annie’s study and offer her a cup of coffee.
“Yes, please, Stuart. Thank you.” She doesn’t look up from her laptop to say this. I am absolutely Annie’s butler.
When I bring the coffee in to her a few minutes later, and put it down next to her, straightening the cup on the saucer so that the handle faces the right way, I say, “Annie. Do you have a minute?”
I see her shoulders freeze slightly under the soft fabric of her smart blouse. I imagine her to be fixing her face, so that when she turns to look at me, I will not be able to see her impatience or her distaste.
“Of course,” she says, smiling blandly at me. “What can I do for you?”
“Is it OK if I take a seat?” I catch my breath as I ask, knowing how far out of Annie’s range of comfortable interactions I am suggesting we go. I have never spent longer than thirty seconds in her study before. Her existence in this tiny, claustrophobic room, with its worn velvety furniture, piles of paperwork, shelves of clutter, untended potted plants, and ancient paperbacks, is a mystery to me; while the tap-tapping of her keyboard is, she tells me, correspondence with an old friend who moved abroad, andthe rustle of papers is, she tells me, her attempt to sort out Allen’s affairs, which he left, it appears, in something of a mess, it sometimes feels as if she is trapped in this room, forced to undertake pointless activities just to have a reason to stay in here. It feels, I sometimes think, as if she is guarding something. I wonder, maybe, if this is the room where Allen died, but I know better than to ask.
She blinks and nods and I sit down on the small velvet armchair in the corner of the room.
“I wanted to ask you about Daisy,” I begin. “It’s been brought to my attention that the man Jessamine told me was Daisy’s father is not her father, and Jessamine tells me she has no idea who her father actually is. And so, I guess, I was just wondering if you had any theories? Any ideas?”
Annie’s eyes grow wide. Her fingers go to the chain around her neck, and she says, “Oh my goodness, no! I have no idea! No idea about anything like that! That is Jessamine’s business and nothing whatsoever to do with me. Nothing.”
“No, of course not, and I hate to ask, I hate to pry, but it’s Daisy I’m worried about. I mean, she already feels abandoned by the man she thought was her dad and she’ll be a teenager soon. She’s so grown up for her age and she’s asking questions. And Jessamine, well, you know, it’s hard to know how to handle her; she’s difficult. So I thought maybe that you… as Daisy’s grandmother… you might be able to provide some kind of answers, some kind of support? Daisy’s such a wonderful girl. She deserves to know. She deserves to have some answers.”
I can hear the ominous clunk of the old-fashioned clock on the mantelpiece as it ticks through the next ten seconds of my life. Annie nods, almost in rhythm with it, and I wait, my breath held, to see what she will say, this woman with whom I have lived for two years yet know no better than I did the first time I met her. Where her daughter is emotionally incontinent, Annie is entirely constipated, trapped in some long-gone moment when she was the trophy wife to a man who put her on a pedestal; when she was the queen of this dark house; when she was young and beautifuland felt in control of everything. She has not, I suspect, evolved one iota since the day her husband died.
I watch her fingers work at the pendant on her necklace and then she says, “Stuart, I simply do not know. My daughter is as much a mystery to me as she is to you. And as for Daisy…” I swear I see a slight shudder run across the surface of her flesh. “I hate to say this, Stuart, really I do, but quite frankly I have more important things to worry about than that child. I really do.”
And then she turns her back on me and very delicately picks up her teacup with a perfectly manicured thumb and index finger.
I sigh and am about to leave the room when I realize that I can’t go without saying what I really need to say.
“You know, Annie,” I begin, “this family, this house, you, your daughter, it’s all totally fucked. You’re living in a dumpster fire. You do know that, right?”
She stiffens but doesn’t turn.
“You do know that, right?” I say again.
I watch Annie place the cup carefully back on its saucer.
Her hand is shaking very slightly.
chapter forty-seven
CLAIRE
I’m lying on a bed. The mother is in here with me, sitting on the side of the bed. She says, “Drink some water. You had a funny turn.”
