Put the phone away, Jess. There’s nothing new to see. Don’t do it to yourself.
But it was too easy. All that information, all those photographs, just waiting for her to look at them. It wasn’t really stalking. It wasn’t as if she were checking the social media account of an ex-boyfriend. But Facebook hadn’t been invented when Iain had walked out on her a fortnight before Mia’s first birthday, failing to give any explanation other than that he just couldn’t handle the relationship any more. Google-searching your own sister was different. Jess was only finding out the facts of Lily’s life that she’d already know if she ever let her mum talk about her. She knew it wasn’t rational, knew that hunting for information about someone you’d refused to see for years didn’t make sense. She knew that whatever she found would only burrow beneath her ribs and tap out a rhythm of envy for the rest of the day. But still she couldn’t stop herself. She had a compulsion to know, even though the knowing would hurt her.
Jess clicked on a link that Google informed her she’d last visited five days ago: a magazine article with the headline ‘Having It All’. As the piece opened, she stared, unblinking, at the lead photograph.
Lily, Daniel, Phoebe: the three of them sitting on a pale grey sofa against a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, multi-coloured spines providing wallpaper to a scene that spoke of confidence, culture, prosperity. It was the kind of room Jess might have chosen as the location for a drama series about an affluent metropolitan family. Except this wasn’t a TV set. This was Lily’s perfect home. Lily’s perfect life.
And in the centre of the photograph sat Jess’s sister, looking a decade younger than her forty-three years, with her neat dark chignon, cap-sleeve fitted dress and minimalist make-up, as though she were a model in the pages of a fashion magazine.
Jess skim-read the article, text she was so familiar with she could have recited it verbatim, searching for something – anything – she might have missed before.
Lily Goldsmith has had what many regard to be a meteoric rise. Winning her first international award at the age of just twenty-three, she is now one of the most revered marketing professionals on either side of the Atlantic. She is, to many in the industry, a symbol of the penetrability of the glass ceiling.
Jess exhaled loudly, watched her warm breath condense in the cold air around her.
Married to millionaire entertainment lawyer Daniel Goldsmith, Lily has managed to achieve what so many women aspire to but few successfully accomplish: a happy work-life balance. The couple share their Holland Park home with their teenage daughter, Phoebe, currently a sixth-form pupil at an exclusive all-girls school in west London.
‘If I knew the secret of success, I’d bottle it and sell it,’ Lily laughs. ‘What I do know is that I’ve worked incredibly hard and I’ve always set myself very clear goals. Sometimes the landscape changes and you can’t always predict where you’ll be in five years’ time, but knowing where you’d like to be gives you a much better chance of getting there, I think. And I’ve been incredibly lucky in having amazing support at home. I imagine it’s nigh-on impossible doing a job like mine if your family aren’t 100 per cent behind you.’
Jess studied the face of the brother-in-law she’d never met. He was exactly how she imagined a hot-shot entertainment lawyer to be: arrogantly handsome, oozing the kind of self-confidence that only extreme wealth and constant admiration could bring. Phoebe was pretty in the haughty, disinterested way that screamed of teenage entitlement, and there was something familiar about her that made Jess swipe through the other photographs, her finger jabbing at the right-hand arrow, propelling her through images she’d seen dozens of times before: the ebony grand piano gleaming in sunlight that streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows; the kitchen with its white bespoke units, shiny butler sink, white painted floorboards and wall of glass leading onto a manicured garden beyond; Lily’s study, empty but for a stark metal desk, a MacBook and a mobile phone. All so neat, all so clean and bright, as though Lily had whitewashed her past with a spotless designer home.
Jess thought about her own house in comparison: the tattered brown sofa she’d bought second-hand sixteen years ago and had never been able to replace. The cheap melamine kitchen cupboards sporting wonky hinges and peeling edges, their multiple chips like battle scars. The small round table that just about accommodated three people as long as you breathed in when someone wanted to pass behind you. The mortgage payments she feared, every month, she might not be able to meet.
She tried to imagine what her sister’s life must be like: a carousel of dinner parties, drinks receptions, awards ceremonies, celebrity encounters. A diary filled months in advance with Saturday night plans, Sunday brunches, exotic holidays and, no doubt, an endless supply of friends to suit every occasion. Jess couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone out on a Friday or Saturday night, couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anyone round for dinner other than her mum. There always seemed to be more pressing things clamouring for her attention: washing and ironing, sourcing the next freelance job, preparing her accounts, helping Mia with her homework.
As Jess stared at the photograph of Lily sitting at her desk – the face so familiar yet so unknown – she was aware of her breath becoming shallow, of something lodging in her throat. She found herself thinking back to the day, almost three decades ago, when they had seen one another at their dad’s grave on the first anniversary of his death. Jess had sneaked out of school in her lunch hour only to find Lily already kneeling by his headstone, crocodile tears streaking her cheeks. Jess had screamed at Lily that day, words she had forgotten the moment they’d erupted from her lips. She had been so filled with fury and bile that it hadn’t been the words themselves that had mattered but the violence with which she’d delivered them. Now all she remembered about that grey September day was the feeling of ferocious certainty that Lily didn’t deserve to be there. After what Lily had done, she had forfeited the right to weep at their father’s grave.
‘Jess! If you’ve fixed that socket, can you come back down? I want to check on something for Monday’s shoot.’
Jess stole one last glance at her sister’s face, wondering how Lily managed to sail through life as though she had nothing to hide, nothing to feel guilty for, wondering whether her sister had managed to convince herself of her innocence or whether she was content living with the knowledge of the damage she had done.
A scene flashed into Jess’s head, flickering in her mind like an old Super-8 film: standing outside the spare bedroom, looking into Lily’s eyes and knowing what must have taken place behind that door, yet being too weak – too afraid, too overwhelmed – to raise the alarm.
‘Jess! Can you come back down?’
Jess blinked away the image of Lily with her hands clasped around the door handle, breathed against the persistent memory of all that had happened later that day and all that had come after. Swallowing against the regret and the grief catching in her throat, she switched off her phone and traipsed back down the stairs.
Chapter 3
Lily
Laughter pealed from the far end of the table and Lily wondered what joke she’d missed. She passed the prosecco bottle to Pippa without filling her glass and sipped her mineral water, glancing at her phone for the second time in as many minutes, wondering how soon she might be able to escape.