Page 21 of Happily Ever After
He shrugged. ‘I thought you’d seen me, on the day you arrived. I had to come up withsomething.Then, when you caught me that night, well, I thought a good ghost story might keep you from wandering around.’
‘So Templewood isn’t hauntedatall?’ I asked, thinking of the footsteps in the attic.
‘Not as far as I am aware, why?’
‘No reason.’ I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about those eldritch sounds that made me unwilling to lie awake for long, those rhythmic creaking boards that spoke ofsomething that moved.‘Just wondered.’
Idly, he walked up to the first wardrobe. It was huge, oak, and looked like something that might play host to snowy lands and gas lamps, but when he opened the door it was crammed full of evening dresses.
‘I know that Mother has been half-hoping that you and I might… she’d like to see another generation, know that the place is in safe hands, all that.’ Hugo gave me a shame-faced grin. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Oh, Hugo,’ I said helplessly.
‘And, I mean, I’m not gay and I don’t want to transition. Not at all. Quite the reverse. But I know this’ – he waved a hand at the frocks – ‘isn’t for everyone.’ He opened the next wardrobe. It was similarly filled to the brim with expensive-looking dresses. ‘Mother must never know.’
‘So, all those noises I’ve heard in here at night? That I thought was rats or ghosts?’
He dropped his eyes to the toes of his shoes. ‘I only dress at night,’ he said. ‘Can’t run the risk of Mother catching me. She goes to bed at nine with an Ativan and she’s out for the count until seven.’ Now he looked up at me. ‘It’s truly not a sexual thing, it might be better if it were. Can you forgive me, Andi?’
‘Forgive you for what? Liking dresses? That’s not really something that needs forgiving, is it?’
He gave a huge sigh. ‘Thank you. And no, not just for that. For being here, for letting Mother keep up her fantasies that you and I… that I’m just here to provide another generation. As I said, once Mother has… gone, I’ll be selling the estate. She wants to keep it, for Oswald’s memory, but I don’thaveany memory of Oswald. He died sixteen years before I was even born.’
I inwardly cursed all my reading. Whilst the Brontës, Dickens, Hardy et al had given me a grounding in life of sorts, they really hadn’t covered cross-dressing in anything like the detail that I could have done with.
Hugo looked so… so abject. As though his life was sitting around his knees in ruins and his every hope had died. I knew how that felt. I’d gone from a hope of marrying the heir to this estate, or at least a man with the money to travel in the kind of style you didn’t see very often when you lived in a bus, to knowing that I didn’t want my future to be a husband who looked better in clothes than I did. But the alternatives – the bus or my sister – could I compromise? I had no problem with anyone who decided they wanted to be someone else in whatever form that took; hadn’t I reinvented myself to a certain extent just to be here? And Hugo said it wasn’t sexual; he liked to wear women’s clothes, that was all.CouldI be with someone who liked dresses? It was only clothes.
‘Show me,’ I said, and his entire face brightened.
‘Really? You’re interested?’
Not really, I wanted to say. But if talking to someone about his preferences made him feel better, then why not?
‘Just show me.’
I’d never seen Hugo so animated before. This was obviously the first time he’d ever had chance to share his interest with someone, and it was rather sweet to watch him pull each dress down from its hanger, take off the wrapping and talk about its history, the fabric, the hang and fit. The clothes were all expensive, designer and had history.
‘Andthisone’ – he unzipped a dress bag to release a blue silk dress – ‘I got from an auction. It used to belong to Elizabeth Taylor.’ He stroked the flowing folds of the skirt. ‘It wears so beautifully, although I don’t often put it on; it’s not really my size.’
‘Oh, Hugo,’ I said again, softly.
‘When I saw you in the library with that curtain on your head, for one second I thought it was some kind of judgement on me.’ He gabbled the words out really quickly. ‘I’d told you all those ghost stories to try to keep you hiding in your room at night, and then I thought that maybe there reallywasaghost and it was coming to get me for making up that rubbish.’ He passed another hand over the beautiful silk. ‘But really it was just my conscience. Keeping secrets isn’t easy. And my brother…’ He stopped, his face twisting.
‘I hate my sister,’ I blurted out. ‘That’s my secret. No, that’s not fair, I don’thateher. I wish I was more like her. She put her foot down with our parents.’ I remembered Jude again, aged about seven, stamping and hands on hips, telling our mother that it was ridiculous that she didn’t go to school, brandishing that copy of the Enid Blyton boarding school book that she’d been reading. She’d stuck to her guns and got Dad to invest some of his large savings in her education at a very good boarding school in the Cotswolds. ‘She’s pretty and she’s assertive and she gets what she wants. And what she wanted was a normal life.’
‘Well, you’re… not unattractive.’ Hugo put the dress back into the wardrobe again. ‘And I’m sure there’s a life out there somewhere for you.’
‘That’s not enough.’
His baffled frown told me that he didn’t get it. But why would he? Good looking, even as the second son of the estate, his future would be assured, by his batty mother.
‘My parents always told me that I could have the life I wanted. Whatever I wanted to do, to be, I could do it, it didn’t matter that I had no experience, no qualifications, no “special talents”.’
‘And that’s an admirable sentiment.’ Hugo tidied up some shoe boxes, piling them back onto the floor of the third wardrobe.
‘It is. But it’s a lie. Look, I was raised in a bus. We moved all the time, never settled anywhere. I got all my education from reading, books were my only constant. And the books lied to me too. They said that all I had to do was to know what I wanted, and go for it.’ I stopped. The words were falling out of me in painful lumps, backed by all the emotion that I’d recently come to understand. But this was a man who liked to wear dresses. If anyone could come close to knowing how I felt at finding out that life wasn’t as easy as everyone made out, it would be him.
‘In what way isn’t it true?’
