The Three Loves of Sebastian Cooper, page 1
THE THREE LOVES OF SEBASTIAN COOPER
ZOË FOLBIGG
For my dad
CONTENTS
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part II
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Part III
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
More from Zoë Folbigg
About the Author
About Boldwood Books
PART I
1
JUNE 2019, NORTHILL, OXFORDSHIRE
Don’t look, don’t look…
Clair Cooper kept her eyeline down, towards the carpentry and carpet at the base of the pale stone plinth, framed by a mushroom-coloured curtain with a neat pelmet at the top: twee frills and folds in calming, muted shades that did nothing to reflect the character, the vibrancy, of the man approaching in the coffin on the shoulders of broken giants.
It reminded Clair of a nightmare she used to have when she was a child: a monster she mustn’t make eye contact with, or she’d die. The monster had broken into her home and was on the rampage, and Clair and her younger sisters had to hide behind a table. And not open their eyes. Clair would feel that compulsion to do it in her dream; daring to rise and see what the beast looked like, knowing that if she made eye contact, she would never wake up.
Don’t look, don’t look.
But she always woke, just in time, crying out for her parents and sisters in a raging hot sweat. This was a nightmare Clair couldn’t wake from, but she kept her gaze fixed firmly to the join of the plinth and the floor. She couldn’t die today, the kids would have no one.
He’s coming.
She stared into space, noticing the swirls in the stone at the base of the plinth, trying to filter out the sounds of the coffin’s approach; the howls of a wailing woman across the aisle; the gentle tones of Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’.
The casket creaked faintly against the sound of footsteps, music and cries. Clair had helped Seb’s parents choose a coffin made of bamboo lattice and rope. She’d never had the discussion with Seb before: ‘What sort of coffin do you want?’ Why would she? But she’d decided, along with his parents Martin and Tina, Penelope and Peter, that Seb wouldn’t have wanted anything stuffy or heavy. He wouldn’t want to leave a negative impact on the planet. So they’d chosen the greenest option the funeral director had. It sounded a bit flimsy now, with Seb approaching in it.
As Clair kept her eyes fixed down, limiting her window to the world, she pulled in her daughter, Millie, under her right arm, and kissed her long hair. Millie curled into her mother, trying to fold teenage limbs and tuck herself inside Clair’s armpit, but she was almost as tall as her mother. Under Clair’s left arm, her hand resting on his right leg, her son, Jasper, clutched his camera, scrolling through holiday photos on the screen of his digital SLR.
Clair had encouraged Jasper to look at the photos on the screens on the walls on either side of the pleated curtain – a tactful slideshow of an exuberant man with piercing blue eyes, a strong nose, and a broad, mischievous smile – to bring Jasper out of his bubble, help the reality sink in. But he didn’t like looking at his dad as a baby; his dad in a cowboy outfit; his dad’s graduation photo; his dad on his wedding day – even though he liked how happy his dad and his mum looked. Jasper couldn’t remember much about his parents being together.
He didn’t like the photos on the big screen because he didn’t recognise the man everyone else in the chapel was looking at, tilting their heads to one side as they clutched tissues. Jasper preferred to look down at his own camera roll. His dad: playful and cross-eyed as he sucked on a milkshake at the 11th Street Diner in Miami. His dad from behind, in shorts, a pale lilac T-shirt and Converse, outside The Carlyle as he walked towards its white deco façade. His dad, arm wrapped around Millie, both smiling at the camera as they stopped on the boardwalk to take a picture. It was the last photo Jasper had of his father. It was taken only four weeks ago.
Jasper, feeling the comfort of his mother’s hand on his leg, leaned into his grandma on his left and scrolled through the camera roll again. He, too, could hear the coffin approaching. He tried to ignore it. Tried to find another tiny detail in a photo he might have missed. Zooming in, zooming out. Checking every idiosyncrasy of his dad’s face. The wholehearted, infectious smile surrounded by sunlit stubble. His brown ruffled hair. The bright blue irises, encircled with black hoops that made his eyes look all the more brighter. His tanned nose and reliable shoulders Jasper wanted to hug and hide in.
No offence to Grandma Guilbert.
Jasper didn’t realise his dad was handsome until after he died. There was a lot of detail a nine-year-old noticed: the bony contours of a stygimoloch dinosaur’s skull; the lines and circles of an old computer motherboard; the options on the screen of a digital SLR. And there was a lot they didn’t.
As the whimpers became more breathless and the wave of cries rolled forward through the crematorium, Clair turned left, then right, to kiss each child’s head, then returned her gaze defiantly down. She felt her sisters behind her squeeze a shoulder each; recognised the quiet cry and coughs of her mother and father next to them.
Don’t look, don’t look.
In her small window to the world, Clair saw smart shoes edge into sight, doing an awkward dance as the six men who filled them did their best to not drop the casket. It was the most important job of their lives.
Don’t drop him.
The feet shuffled, arched, bent, until the bamboo casket, shaped like a sarcophagus and topped with white roses, snapdragons and stocks, was placed on the stone plinth, and the footsteps retreated.
Six ashen pallbearers, relieved that that part was over, grateful that a woman in the congregation’s cries were taking the focus off them. Still shocked that the life of their most vibrant of comrades had been extinguished.
Clair looked at the anguished dance of a variation of black shoes: Jake’s were obviously the Burberry brogues; Uncle Roger’s were definitely the shabbiest. Seb’s dad, Martin, his shoes must have been the most polished: slightly creased along the toe but shiny as a new penny. Anyway, Clair could tell which shoes were Martin’s from the way they turned in. Even his feet looked sad.
Don’t look, don’t look… you might die.
Did they put shoes on his body?
Don’t look, don’t look.
Which suit did they use?
Don’t look, don’t look.
Did Penelope put his wedding ring on him or did she keep it for the kids?
Cries rose as Chris Martin sang about skin and bones.
I hope she didn’t have any say in what Seb’s wearing.
Clair felt a silent roar of protectiveness and pulled Millie and Jasper in closer still, as they huddled, shell-shocked and heartbroken.
Jasper finally looked up, away from his camera, and saw the sarcophagus.
‘No!’ he whispered, a stealthy cry slipping out involuntarily as he looked at the casket.
Eight rows back, Jasper’s best friend Arthur shook with his own silent cries, hoping his shared grief would take some of the pain away for his friend.
Millie looked at the coffin fleetingly. The lure of knowing her dad was there, maybe she could see him one last time, made her eyes dart for just a second. The burst of flowers she had chosen with Clair looked beautiful, and Millie started to shake.
‘It’s OK, darling,’ Clair
Why did I let you go?
‘Please be seated,’ said the sympathetic vicar with a greying bob, although Clair and the kids hadn’t been able to get out of their chairs.
As the murmuration of mourners lowered onto their seats, Clair glanced back over her shoulder, at a sea of people who had stuck to traditional black, even though they had said to come in anything; colour was what Seb would have wanted. The family, friends, colleagues and cousins who had got there early enough to get a seat; the acquaintances and school parents Seb had befriended over the years, standing at the back, stunned. People were bursting out of the doors of the crematorium beyond a portico, clutching their orders of service and shaking with stifled tears.
Clair’s fiancé, Dave, leaned forward from his seat next to Clair’s youngest sister, squeezing her shoulder and letting her know he was here for her too. She gave a short smile to let him know she appreciated it as she leaned forward to glance across the aisle, still avoiding looking at the casket.
Don’t look, don’t look.
On the other side of the aisle Clair saw Uncle Roger and Aunty Dora, sitting next to Seb’s father, Martin – a man who had inspired and disappointed Seb in such immense ways – who, pallbearing duty done, lowered into his seat next to his wife and their daughter.
Clair leaned forward a little more, to see if that most anguished of cries, the one that was ensuring it was the loudest, was coming from Seb’s half-sister, but she could only see Jake, tall, and imposing, at the end of the line. Seb’s best friend and he of the Burberry brogues, repositioning himself in his seat next to his wife, Christine. Jake gave Clair a gentle, heartbroken nod and Clair gave an even smaller one.
And then Clair saw her. A few rows behind Seb’s dad. Cheekbones hollow, eyes empty. The woman her husband had left her for.
Clair looked back quickly, to her safe spot, the join of the plinth and the floor, as she waited for Reverend Jane’s eulogy to begin. She thought about a boy no one could take away from her – the cheeky boy in biology, almost flirting with the flustered teacher with those eyes; the opportunistic boy sliding his arm around her neck in the dark of the cinema; a vinyl record tucked inside his bomber jacket, waiting to give it to her when the lights came up.
2
CLAIR
October 1994, Guernsey
‘“Baby I Love Your Way”? Cool!’
Seb’s khaki bomber jacket offset his late summer tan as they came out of the Beau Séjour Leisure Centre, which doubled up as a cinema and a theatre. They had just watched The Lion King – a compromise after Seb had wanted to see Speed and Clair Four Weddings and a Funeral. But The Lion King was the only film showing today and they were relieved they both fancied it. Clair had sobbed into Seb’s arm as Simba scrambled around for his father, embarrassed she might have left some snot on his shoulder; but he stroked her long ponytail, and wondered whether now might be the time to lean in for a kiss.
No, he thought. Too opportunistic.
Even for a fifteen-year-old boy with raging hormones, Seb was good at reading a room.
I’ll have a much better chance when I give her the record.
As they came out of the ‘Beausie’ and walked the cobblestones of the compact capital towards St Peter Port’s yachts, motor boats, clippers and ferries on the picturesque harbour, eyes adjusting to the daylight, Seb straightened the vinyl he’d squirrelled away inside his jacket in the cinema – the twelve-inch record had been jabbing at his ribs for two hours – before they stopped on the water’s edge so he could give it to Clair. The cover was slightly crumpled in all four corners, so he smoothed it out as he presented it to her proudly.
‘What’s it for though?’ Clair asked in surprise. Her tone came across as curt, even when she was mush inside. It was why people always thought she was more serious than she was.
‘It’s for you.’ Seb grinned.
‘That’s very sweet of you!’
Clair didn’t tell Seb that her dad, Adrian’s record player was broken – years of abuse at the hands of Clair and her sisters, Elizabeth and Rachel, playing the Annie soundtrack over and over while doing a routine to ‘You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile’; or divvying up the roles on the Grease soundtrack (Clair was always Frenchie; Elizabeth was Rizzo on account of having dark hair and Rachel was Sandy on account of being blonde – three sisters with three different hair colours).
Seb didn’t need to know any of that, and it didn’t matter. This record was the first love token Clair had ever received and she was going to put it up on her wall like artwork, not play it. She looked at Seb and sighed. She was desperate for him to kiss her, and she rose a little on the balls of her feet. The autumn sky was already darkening – St Peter Port’s tall narrow buildings in shades of white, cream, peach and pink were dulled by the looming grey sky. But that didn’t matter either. In Clair’s heart, a sunbeam broke through and was illuminating just the two of them, in a bubble by the lapping water against the harbour walls.
Clair had warm brown eyes and mid-brown hair that was golden at the tips for all the outdoors activities she and her sisters spent the summer doing: surfing, canoeing, sailing, lacrosse. Winters too. Her cheeks were always flushed pink in summer; red in winter, and her small waist, full bottom and strong legs gave her a sporty, wholesome quality in her jeans, long-sleeved tops and gilets. She’d ditched her comfy walking shoes today though in favour of Elizabeth’s brown ankle boots, fleece lined to keep her feet warm. Clair always had cold feet.
Her eyes were pretty but not heart-stopping; her cheeks were flushed but not defined; her mouth was full but not jaw-dropping. Everything about Clair was neatly proportioned and symmetrical: giving her a kindness and neutrality that made her a confidante to everyone. Any prettier and the Mean Girls would have seen her as a threat; any more wholesome and the nerds would have thought she was one of their own. Clair Armitage’s warm eyes and clipped tones made her a friendly and no-nonsense ally to everyone.
And boys fancied her. Not the way they fancied Kayleen Hartley (big tits) or Megan Bell (insanely flirty). But in an under-the-radar way. Sebastian Cooper, who Clair sat next to in French, biology, and was on the mixed lacrosse team with, seemed to fancy her. She hadn’t realised it until Seb asked her one day in French if she wanted to go to ‘un surprise party’ – he joked, in his best French accent – at his house, and suddenly his cocky smile and cheeky eyes went all serious.
Seb lived in the Forest region of Guernsey, on the south of the island, in a modern glass-box house facing France. His dad, Martin, designed the home in the early eighties, but spent much of his time away from it; travelling with work as an architect, or on the mainland, in the Oxford office he had started with his best friend, Roger, the Curtis of Curtis + Cooper.
