Sensing the problem, Linda had offered to help out, and had started reading The Confessions of a Justified Sinner in her weekly BBC car before the Late Review. But, secretly, Belinda was thinking of dropping it altogether. They didn’t need the money, after all. And she had to admit that in the context of the high profile Linda had acquired for Belinda Johansson in the media, the doubles book was going to look rather dull and earnest when it appeared under her name – rather like the bathetic little tomes on Euclid that Lewis Carroll turned out, when everyone was expecting more Alice. Lumbered with The Dualists, Linda would have to do such a lot of explaining next time she was invited to Number 10. If the book simply evaporated, it might be better for everybody.
So, up in her converted loft (thankfully with en suite facilities) she just typed a lot about quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs, and tried not to ask herself three hundred times a day whether the quick brown fox was the alter ego of the lazy dog, or a totally separate entity with its own agenda. Bloody doubles. Why was everyone so obsessed with them? Even Jago Ripley, the man who admitted to the attention span of a zucchini, had got interested recently, apparently.
‘Hello?’
Belinda jumped with fright. An intruder on the landing!
‘It’s me. Viv.’
‘Oh fuck,’ cursed Belinda. She looked in panic around her attic room. Apart from jumping out of the window, there was no way out.
‘Belinda, can I come up?’
‘No, you can’t.’
Belinda regarded the trap-door with horror. From the telltale clanking sound, Viv was already ascending the ladder.
‘I’ve got to see you,’ came Viv’s voice. ‘I need to talk.’
‘Bugger off. Who let you in?’ Belinda’s heart was racing.
‘Please, Belinda. I’m coming up. This ladder’s terrifying. There’ll be an accident on this one day.’
Belinda realized there was nothing for it. As Viv’s head appeared through the trap door, Belinda picked up a carton of Mars bars and emptied it over her, simultaneously yelling, ‘Help!’
‘Belinda, you bitch, ouch!’ cried Viv, retreating.
She crawled to the window, flung it open and yelled ‘Help!’ again. Thank goodness, Linda was emerging from a taxi in the road below, with a half-dozen Harvey Nichols carrier-bags. She looked up and saw Belinda at the window. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Help!’ she yelled. ‘Linda, help! Come quickly! Viv got in!’
Linda shoved money at the driver and raced indoors, but was too late. Viv had taken fright at the bombardment of confectionery, run downstairs and escaped through the back door – presumably with the help of Mrs Holdsworth.
‘Are you all right?’ Linda called, as she tackled the loft-ladder. It clanged and swayed as she mounted it at top speed. ‘Belinda, I’m so sorry this happened. Viv must have gone mad.’
Belinda caught her breath. ‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I’m OK now you’re here.’
Linda took her podgy hand and patted it. ‘Of course you’re OK. You’re lovely. Everyone loves you.’
Belinda reached for a tissue in her velour tracksuit bottoms. ‘It was a shock, that’s all.’
‘Of course. How did you get on today with the book?’
‘All right, I suppose. It’s taken an interesting animal turn. Foxes and dogs.’ ‘That’s interesting.’
‘Mm. Julian Barnes phoned, I think. To say he liked the column.’
‘Well, there you are. He likes you.’
Belinda rolled over on her stomach. It was her most comfortable position, these days. ‘I’d love to read my “Up the Duff” column sometime,’ she said, gently. She knew it was an awkward subject.
‘I’d be so embarrassed, though. You’re the real writer, Belinda. I’m only pretending.’
‘Mm.’ Belinda picked at a lump of congealed tomato sauce on her T-shirt. ‘It was really scary just then, Linda. I suddenly saw what this looks like to Viv. Me upstairs on my own, you downstairs with Stefan, me getting so fat and slobby, and you having the baby. You telling me all the time that I’m lovely. If she didn’t understand this was all for my sake, she could so easily get the wrong idea. She’d think you were stealing my life, or something far-fetched like that!’
Linda smiled. ‘You’re not getting fat.’
‘I am, a bit. I had to have my wedding ring sawn off, didn’t I?’
‘You’re lovely. You were too thin before, that’s the truth of it.’
Belinda glanced around for a mirror but then remembered Linda had kept them all downstairs, for fear of accidents.
‘Mother never thought I was lovely. She said I’d let myself go.’
‘That’s a silly expression.’
‘She wasn’t right, was she?’ Belinda sniffed.
‘Never. Maggie sends her regards, by the way.’
‘Does she ask after me?’
Linda hesitated. ‘Well, not always. But I tell her anyway. She’s on the mend, I think.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘I think she’s going to be happy, at last.’
‘That’s nice.’
After Mother died, something happened to Linda. She stopped being an enigma. On that ghastly March night, after the police had been and gone, keeping them up for hours with questions, she let down her guard. At precisely the same time as Stefan told Jago all about his dual identity in Malmö, Linda finally sat down and talked about herself, prompted by Belinda.
‘All those things you told the police,’ Belinda said. ‘I didn’t know any of it. I felt so stupid that I knew so little about you. You never said your real name was Janice. Or that you grew up in Crawley. That sort of thing changes everything.’
‘Does it? I don’t see that. I’m Janice from Crawley, not the last of the Romanovs.’
‘No, but tell me. Please. When did you change your name?’
‘When I came back from France, when I was thirteen.’
Linda got up and opened the oven. She was baking the salmon, compelled by sheer force of habit.
‘Go on,’ said Belinda.
‘I never talk about this.’
‘Just this once.’
‘You promise not to laugh?’
‘Of course.’
‘You see – look, it’s not a big deal. Don’t expect much.’
‘OK.’
‘Well, when I was thirteen, I went on an exchange visit for a month to Grenoble.’
‘Yes?’
‘I know, lots of people do it. This was a direct swap, though, which we later discovered is quite unusual. I had a great time in Grenoble, although I was homesick. A month is a long time to a thirteen-year-old. The trouble was that, when I got back, something quite upsetting happened. I turned up at the house in Crawley and – well, my parents barred the front door and told me they preferred to keep the French girl.’
‘What?’
‘I know. I was devastated. I just stood there with my suitcase. I’d brought them souvenirs! Mont Blanc in a snowstorm, that kind of thing. Individual chocolates with alpine flowers on. I was looking forward to showing off my French. But they said they’d thought about it quite hard and decided the French girl was more interesting than me, and that she fitted in better. They had all had a lovely time without me.
‘I didn’t realize they were joking, you see. Especially since they’d piled my stuff in the front garden. Guitar, recorder, teddy bears, jewellery box. Mum said afterwards that my face was a real picture! All the neighbours had come out to watch. The French girl said, “Au revoir, Janice,” and they shut the door.’
‘Linda, that’s dreadful. How could they be so cruel?’
‘The French girl had talked them into it – apparently she’d persuaded other families before, and told them it was always hilarious when the kid got home. But it wasn’t hilarious this time, because I burst into tears and ran off. I took it so seriously. Well, after she’d gone, and my stuff was back in the house, my parents told me they were really disappointed in me for no
t seeing the funny side, for not trusting them. “We are shocked and hurt, Janice,” Daddy said. He had gone all white around the mouth. He was furious. “You let us down very, very badly.”
‘So that’s the story. Obviously, in the end, I felt so guilty about hurting them that I ran away.’
Belinda was appalled. Her own mother had undermined her gently, over decades, like a lone termite gnawing her foundations. Linda’s parents, by contrast, had gaily picked her up by the heels and dropped her down a lift shaft. ‘But you didn’t hurt them,’ she said. ‘Think about it, Linda. They hurt you. They should have apologized to you, not blamed you.’
‘You don’t have to take my side, Belinda. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I take theirs. I know what I did was wicked. I doubted their love. I thought love could be switched off, you see.’
‘Can’t it?’
‘No.’ Linda sounded quite fierce. ‘Anyway, you asked me why I changed my name and left Crawley, and that’s it. That’s all. Now you know.’
The evening of Viv’s unexpected visit, Stefan came home as usual at six thirty. Three months had passed since Malmö, and a lot of things had changed. As he came through the door this evening, for example, he did not carry a book of English idioms, determined to incorporate ‘How green was my valley’ or ‘Go and chew bricks’ into the conversation. He carried the poems of Tomas Tranströmer, Sweden’s ‘buzzard poet’, a book with a discouraging monochrome snowscape on the front. For reasons connected with the demise of the real Stefan, he had gone terribly Swedish all of a sudden.
At weekends, for example, he haunted IKEA in Croydon, correcting people’s pronunciation, explaining the effect of the little bubble on top of the vowel. Twice security men had asked him to leave the building, because they thought he was warning people not to buy the kitchen cupboards. He watched Bergman films on video with masking-tape covering the subtitles, and read biographies of Strindberg, for fun. He hummed Abba’s ‘Chiquitita’ as he walked down the road to the bus and wore his moose-hat at unlikely hours of the day and night.
‘But you’re not Swedish,’ Linda hissed to him tonight, as he selected for the umpteenth time the CD of Swedish football songs, Mama, Take Me Home to Malmö.
‘I need to do this,’ he said. ‘You understand. You do love me, Linda?’
‘I do love you, George. Yes.’
It was inevitable that Linda and Stefan should make a bond, when Linda knew his secret. True, Jago now knew some of his story, but only to Linda could he confess his feelings. Jago’s idea of sympathy was to push the back of your neck so hard that you almost dislocated your head. Belinda’s now total absence upstairs threw him increasingly into the company of Linda, too – especially at the literary festivals and the New Labour media parties. And it didn’t help his relationship with his wife that, shortly after Stefan’s return from Malmö, Belinda had overheard them talking about Ingrid, and jumped to the unflattering conclusion that the subject of their discussion was her.
‘It’s her selfishness that was always so hideous,’ he said.
(‘Hideous!’ gasped Belinda.)
‘Yes,’ agreed Linda. ‘It’s hard for anyone to be happy around selfish people.’
‘She always refused to make little Stefans – that’s the point.’
(‘He wanted little Stefans,’ she yelped.)
Belinda had wept bitterly when she heard this, but nowadays comforted herself by eating a Mars bar in a suggestive manner. Looking around at the life Linda had given her, the life she’d desired so badly, she felt a familiar pang of loss and confusion. Because although she might have said she wanted lots of peace and quiet, and may even (oh God) have wanted her mother to disappear, when exactly had she told anybody that she didn’t want sex any more?
She stroked her own enlarged breasts, absently, and tweaked her nipples. More than ever she desired Stefan; her body ached for sex, grieved for it. But by becoming physically gross and affecting tracksuits, and by moving upstairs after the death of Mother, and moreover by being hideously selfish and refusing to have little Stefans, she’d somehow removed herself from the carnal world. It would be obscene to caress Stefan now; to lick him all over, as she formerly did. Such a gorgeous man would need to be tranquillized first. However much it hurt her, it made sense for Stefan to partner Linda. He wanted babies, suddenly. In fact, he was broody. Linda was young, fit, sexually desirable, talented, and keen. Belinda had to face it: she herself was none of these things.
Meanwhile Stefan felt wounded and rejected by Belinda, who had moved upstairs just when he needed her most urgently. Returning from Sweden on the plane after the basement ordeal, all he could think of was how furiously he would fuck Belinda, the first chance he got. He pictured himself, naked in the moose-hat, driving himself into her on the hall floor, again and again, sucking her breasts and clutching her wrists until both of them exploded. But instead he’d got home and found a big empty bed, and a wife in the attic who said, ‘No, don’t, I’m too yicky,’ whenever he tried to touch her.
‘You are not yicky, Belinda,’ he assured her. ‘I don’t marry yicky women.’
‘I am. I’m so selfish and yicky.’
‘All right. Let’s say you are. But I don’t mind if you are yicky.’
‘You should.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’
‘Then why can’t I have you?’
‘Because I love you too much to let you have sex with someone who’s so yicky.’
‘You feel guilty and confused because your mother died,’ Stefan said.
‘Yes,’ said Belinda. ‘Yes, I mean no. I mean yes.’
For a few weeks, the frustration experienced by both of them was intense. Belinda felt horny all day, every day, but tried to ignore it. This must be what it’s like to be Michael Douglas, she thought. She wrote erotic poetry to Stefan; she crept downstairs when he was at college, and sniffed his clothes in the laundry bag. But in the end there was nothing for it but to speak to Linda, and beg her to help.
‘But I can’t make Stefan love me,’ said Linda, embarrassed. ‘It doesn’t work like that. It’s not like taking your place on the Today programme. He knows I’m not you.’
‘He likes you, though, doesn’t he? Tell me what you talk about downstairs all the time. You’re always laughing.’
‘Oh,’ Linda blushed. ‘He tells me about Sweden. This and that.’
‘Haven’t you ever wanted to touch him?’
‘Belinda!’
‘He’s so lovely. And he’s a flirt. He must have flirted with you.’
Linda closed her eyes and thought about the times they had danced together. ‘A bit.’
‘You see? If you didn’t fancy him, I wouldn’t ask you. But you do. He’s so lovely. Tell me what you really feel about Stefan, Linda.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘I love him.’
‘Oh.’ Belinda bit a lip and said, ‘I knew it. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.’
The two women looked at each other like Thelma and Louise before going over the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Belinda knew what she was doing. She was letting herself go, totally. Linda would love Stefan, and make him happy. It was better to see him with Linda than lose him. The thought of Stefan making love to anyone else was torture. But the absence of Stefan would kill her.
‘Stefan is a wonderful lover,’ she told Linda, now. ‘And you know he fancies you.’
‘He doesn’t.’
‘Did he give you a nickname?’
‘I can’t believe we’re talking like this. I don’t like it. He’s your husband. I would never hurt you. Nor would he. We’re on your side.’
‘Did he give you a nickname, though?’
‘Yes.’ Linda grimaced. ‘I can’t tell you what it is.’
‘I know.’
That evening, Belinda heard such unmistakable moans and cries from the kitchen that she gave up trying to read Nabokov’s Desp
air, and just listened. The woman who abhorred a vacuum had finally identified the last gap in Belinda’s life and filled it. Whether it was remotely similar to doing the Today programme, Belinda never inquired. As for Stefan, as he swarmed over Linda, he felt an intense mixture of guilt and relief, revulsion and desire – in fact, he felt more authentically Scandinavian than ever before. It was both agony and ecstasy to make love to the desirable, sympathetic cleaning lady. When she told him she loved him, he wept like beans.
Afterwards, as they ate their steamed sea bass with ginger mayonnaise and kept kissing and touching each other without speaking, it occurred to Stefan that Linda was better than Belinda at everything; absolutely everything. He only hoped, for pity’s sake, Belinda never knew how much.
Naturally, Stefan couldn’t face Belinda after sleeping with the cleaning lady. He was grateful for her removal to the attic. Linda had moved into the bedroom; they made love discreetly, but all the time, and he thought about her constantly. The relief of being with someone who knew him as himself – and loved him for himself – was overwhelming. He suddenly wished he had friends and family for Linda to meet. He wished he could take her to Sweden. He phoned her six times a day, on her mobile, and made her laugh. He ambushed her in the shower, and wore her underpants on his head. Everywhere they went, people noticed their physical addiction to each other; jointly, Linda and Stefan gave off so much heat that the background wobbled. It was a thrill to touch her hand. Stefan was happier than he had ever been.
No wonder that he tried to banish Belinda from his mind. The only way to cope was to tell himself she had died. At Mother’s funeral (which Belinda and Linda attended under obscuring veils, like something from a Victorian novel) Stefan buried a number of people, including his wife. He buried Stefan and Ingrid as well as Mother, and he shovelled like mad to put six feet of earth over Belinda.