Chapter 20 Darcy

20 DARCY

NOW

She arrives at the restaurant early, while the staff are still lighting table candles and setting out the buffet dishes. Darcy is wearing a white cheesecloth maxi-dress, her hair pinned back, and she decided to add a red hibiscus just above her ear. Not one she picked, but one she found on the path on the way here, a fallen bloom. It seems fitting.

Fifteen minutes to six, the sun setting in a glorious blaze of apricot and bronze light splashed across a vivid blue sky, silhouetted figures by the tide taking photographs of it on their phones.

It’s the anniversary of the massacre tomorrow, the date rolling to the front of her mind. September is also the month of her wedding anniversary, and for the first time it fills her with sadness instead of pride.

She watches dinner guests begin to arrive and settle at the tables, wondering for a moment if their lives have ever been unhooked and sent into a tailspin like hers. Her presence here in this luminous place feels suddenly shameful and desperate. She has always known that living involves performance, but the role of dumped ex-wife isn’t one she ever wanted to play. Jacob was a sure bet, loyal, from a family of stalwarts. Until her dying day, Darcy will swear that it was the success of Jacob’s company—the company she helped him build—that made him vain, selfish, and, ultimately, unfaithful.

Even so, Darcy’s so-called new chapter feels increasingly like the dupe version of a clean slate. A grubby, cracked slate, with an acute loss of purpose.

With a frustrated sigh, she pulls out her phone and decides to call her sons. It’s Saturday afternoon back home, and she knows that Jacob has asked Marsha to babysit until six, despite it being the weekend. Jacob has a Big Week at work, but this is laughable— every week at work for Jacob has been big for the past sixteen years. He’s a born workaholic.

She calls Marsha and asks to speak to the boys.

“Here is Ben,” Marsha tells her, and Darcy’s heart pangs at the sound of her boys’ voices in the background, their happy squeals.

“Mummy! Mummy!” Ben says excitedly, his mouth far too close to the speaker.

“Hi, Benny Ben,” she says. “I miss you.”

“Mummy, can I ask you something?” Ben says.

“Of course.”

“Ed says if you poo in someone’s bum it’ll come out their mouth! Is that true?”

She pulls away from the phone in disgust. “What? No. Darling…?”

“Are you sure , Mummy?”

“Yes, I’m sure…. Ben? Hello?”

He’s gone. In the background she can hear him tell his brother, “I told you, it won’t come out their mouth!” A few moments later, Marsha comes on the phone again.

“Sorry about that,” Marsha says. “They’re busy playing.”

“What about Ed?” Darcy asks. “Or Charlie?”

She hears Marsha call through the house for Ed, then, when he doesn’t answer, Charlie.

“They’re playing with their water guns in the garden,” Marsha says. “Gorgeous day here. Are you having a lovely time?”

“We are, thank you.”

“I’ll have the boys call you, perhaps when they’ve settled down a little.”

“Great, thanks.”

She hangs up and swipes to her WhatsApp, finding Charlie’s number, suddenly full of longing for the days when the boys were small. When Charlie would hold her hand everywhere they walked and Ben and Ed would kiss each other. Adorable. Her WhatsApp messages to Charlie from a year ago contain heart emojis and silly GIFs. Lots of messages from her telling him to brush his teeth. Jacob never bothers to check when they stay at his. He’ll happily send the boys to school with odd socks and unironed shirts, earwax dribbling onto their collars. They probably exist on hot dogs and ice cream at his place, too, not a vegetable in sight. She makes a mental note to order children’s multivitamins, the good ones, and have them sent to Jacob’s address, with strict instructions for the boys to take them when they stay.

She texts a long WhatsApp message to Charlie.

Charlie darling! I hope you’re having a wonderful time. I miss you so. It’s beautiful here, you’d love the ocean and the little hermit crabs. I saw dolphins yesterday and thought of you. They were quite big and super fast! Perhaps when I come back we can plan a Mummy and Charlie date? We could go to the movies and then get a milkshake, how does that sound? Love you lots xxx

Tears prick her eyes, the boys’ voices in the background of the phone call echoing in her ears. They don’t miss her. No matter how hard she worked, no matter how much time she dedicated to caring for them, they have always looked up to their father. It’s how they’re wired.

It’s how she is wired, too. An invisible line connecting her to her father. Nothing he did or said created it, or affected it—it was just there.

She flicks to her photos, to the recent ones of the boys. A photo of the three of them, taken just this summer in the back garden. All shirtless, their arms around each other. Three versions of Jacob. Big, gap-toothed smiles, sun-pinked skin, floppy blond hair, and blue eyes. Not a trace of her dark hair and hazel eyes.

A text flashes up from Charlie, and she clicks on it eagerly.

LEAVE ME ALONE! I HATE YOU!!!

She stares at the message, not breathing. A voice in her head tells her that he’s only twelve, only a boy. His anger comes from her. Hot as a furnace, terrifying when allowed to simmer, no outlet, no escape valve.

But she has never been on the receiving end of it, until now. Her eyes brim with hot tears, but as a waiter approaches, she swipes them quickly away.

“Can I get you a drink, ma’am?”

“Uh, yes, please,” she says, plucking up the menu. “I’ll have a glass of red wine, thank you.”

She holds the smile in place as the waiter heads off to get her drink, though it falters when she spies Rob strutting through the restaurant in a striped shirt with short sleeves and a pair of chino shorts, his sunglasses still in place despite being indoors. Jade follows behind, in a pastel-pink fitted dress under a black kaftan. They sit three tables across from Darcy’s right, a tall artificial cypress tree serving to hide Jade. A mirrored wall panel ahead provides a reflection of them, and she watches as they sit for a moment without speaking. Jade is studying her phone while Rob watches the chefs in the buffet area, drumming his fingers on the table impatiently.

She thinks about Kate in the first-aid unit, nursing her head. Thank God it wasn’t any worse. They could have had a death on their hands. She shudders at the thought. Strange, too, that Rob was involved in that incident, after this morning’s episode in the gym. Did he plan it? she wonders. The timing is interesting. Everyone made a fuss about how Kate went into the no-swim zone. But surely someone in the group of kayakers must have spotted her before they collided? And it was Rob and Jade’s kayak that collided with her.

He’s bad news. She knew it the moment she first laid eyes on him.

She knows him.

She thinks of leopards moving through grass, head, neck, and spine rod-straight as they creep forward, eyes locked on their prey. It’s how she feels when she looks at Rob. Brimming with rage. Years of it, channeled now toward this man in a volcanic simmering. She knows men like Rob, what they can do, and what they can get away with.

Of course he recognized her, but she finds she doesn’t care as perhaps she should. In fact, her hunch was right—she wants him to recognize her. The tiger must surely relish the moment when its prey finally sees it, terror flashing brightly in its eyes. To be feared is to be powerful. Who would think that the wholesome mum with the sensible haircut and the wet wipes in her handbag would be a vessel of violence beneath all that chair-of-the-PTA charm?

She’ll pick her moment to tell Kate and Camilla. She has a plan in mind, a dark plan. She’s not sure if the other two will be up for it. But if it comes together, everything will be right again. Her purpose secured.

She wanted to ask Kate whether she had spoken to Jacob. Whether she had told him about Adrian Clifton. The thought of it sends a chill up her spine. If Jacob knows… what then?

“Evening,” Camilla says, shimmering in a turquoise dress covered with sequins, her black hair styled in tousled waves.

Darcy snaps out of her reverie, glancing up at Camilla with a smile. “You look stunning. Like a mermaid.”

“Really?” Camilla says, disappointed. “A mermaid? I was going for Monica Bellucci.”

Darcy doesn’t know who that is. “Well, you look very nice.”

“I’ll take that,” Camilla says.

Kate arrives and sits down next to Darcy. “Are you all right?” she asks, eyeing Darcy carefully.

“Fine,” Darcy says, stretching her mouth into a wide smile. “Absolutely fine.”

The waiter approaches then, carrying Darcy’s glass of wine on a silver tray. He sets it in front of her. “Oh, I’ll have one of those, too,” Camilla tells him.

Darcy feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. From the corner of her eye, she can see in the mirrored wall panel that Rob is staring right at her, his shoulders turned in her direction. She flicks her eyes up, pretending to be reaching across the table for the salt, and sees that he is actually looking past her. His expression is alarming—he looks angry, his mouth creased in a snarl. She tries to turn without drawing suspicion, but she guesses that Rob is too distracted by whoever is behind her to really pay any attention.

She follows his eyeline to her left. At the row of silver buffet dishes, Antoni is standing, his hand on a woman’s back. It’s Jade.

Oh God , Darcy thinks, quickly registering Rob’s reaction to this.

When she turns back, Antoni has removed his hand, his conversation with Jade apparently over. But then he seems to recall something else, something of vital importance, and he leans in once more, laughing, bending close to whisper something in her ear, his arm drifting across her shoulder.

Rob erupts out of his chair, storming toward Jade and Antoni. Jade sees, her eyes like saucers, fear laid naked on her face, but Antoni is caught up in whatever he is telling her, still amused and gesticulating with a free hand before turning back to the buffet. Oh shit , Darcy thinks, clocking the look on both Camilla’s and Kate’s faces as they track Rob striding through the tables, his face purple with fury and his fists clenched at his sides.

A waiter carrying a tray full of drinks spots Rob and tries to intervene.

“Sir?” he says, panicked. “Sir?” He holds up a hand to stop Rob from barging into the buffet, but Rob sweeps the waiter out of his way and the man falls, drinks and tray landing on the tiles with a loud crash, a slash of red wine flinging across a woman’s dress.

“Jesus Christ,” Kate whispers, rising up out of her seat to observe the skirmish.

“He’s going to kill him, I think,” Darcy says.

Camilla holds her phone up high to film it, gleeful. “Ten quid says he drowns him in the veggie curry.”

Rob towers over Jade, who has her hands pressed to his chest, mouthing words of appeasement and apology. Two other waiters step forward to assuage him, but he pushes them aside and strides down the buffet section, where Antoni is chatting to the chef at the pancake stand. The atmosphere in the restaurant is charged with anticipation and unease, the other diners watching through the glass partition as Antoni turns around to find Rob in his face.

“You want to fuck my wife, is that it?” Rob yells, grabbing fistfuls of Antoni’s shirt and dragging him close. Behind Rob, Jade is nailed to the spot, hands cupped to her mouth.

Darcy watches silently as Antoni attempts to pry Rob’s hands off his clothing, reasoning with him. Rob lets go and pushes him away with disgust, and Darcy’s mind flips forward—she waits, breathless and expectant, for Rob to slug Antoni. His right arm is rotating back, his fist bunched. Antoni looks so slight compared to him, old and easily crushed.

She sees the waiters react to this climax, three of them risking another plea with Rob to return to his table. One puts a hand on his arm, the right one that’s twitching for a powerful blow, and he explodes.

“Get off me!” he yells, shoving the waiter away. The waiter is a young man, but tall and muscular. He staggers backward, sending a pot of red sauce spewing over his shirt like blood.

A murmur spills out from the tables as Rob turns on his heel, sweeping a box of cutlery to the floor. The ring of metal against tile is brittle and sharp in Darcy’s ears. She watches, riveted, as he storms through the restaurant to the exit. Jade follows quickly, hunched and ashen-faced.

The restaurant holds its breath for a few seconds beyond Rob’s exit before bursting into chatter.

“What the fuck was that?” Camilla says, breaking the silence at their table.

“I honestly thought he was going to kill him,” Darcy says.

“We should go after her,” Kate says, scanning through the window to catch sight of Jade.

“Absolute pond scum,” Camilla says with a sneer, putting her phone away. “Shameful. Making a scene in a place like this.”

Darcy watches as a fresh group of resort staff clamor around Antoni. The young, brawny waiter whom Rob shoved into the red sauce is attempting to wipe the sticky residue from his uniform with a tea towel, with little success. Another has fetched a bottle of wine for Antoni’s table, an ostensible attempt to make amends, while two members of staff in different uniforms—from the management team, Darcy reckons—corral him with apologies. Antoni smiles and brushes off the fuss, pausing at tables to chat with the diners who want to check on him.

Kate pulls out her phone and begins to text.

“Are you messaging Jade?” Darcy asks.

“Yes,” Kate says, without looking up. “I’ll ask if I can catch up with her later. See if she’s all right.”

“Later might be too late,” Darcy says.

“Do you think we should go after her? Knock on the door of the villa?”

“I say leave them be,” Camilla says. “Rob’s so volatile that it’s likely to make things worse if we intervene.”

Darcy watches her, then Kate, who appears to be torn between racing after Jade and staying put.

You need to tell them , she tells herself. Now more than ever.