Secrets (38 page)

He's not asleep, the bugger, he's not asleep at all.

The knowledge of his hardness, tantalizingly masked by the sheet, itself aroused her and the mood of her touch changed instinctively. She shifted position so that she could bring her face around, close to his, and she homed in on his lips, first with the softest sweep of her cheek, then her lips, her tongue. And suddenly he was responding and the trance her touch had instilled was replaced by a wide-awake urgency to look and taste and feel. They rolled and thrashed about, gluing together any parts of their bodies that could fit. Fingers were interwoven, legs plaited together like rope, mouths fused, torsos melded, eyes bored into one another; voices echoed the same lustful rasp.

He pulled her on top of him, her sex a tantalizing inch or so beyond the reach of his cock.

‘Don't close your eyes, Tess. Don't take them off me.’

As she eased herself down on him, the pleasure was so exquisite that her body felt as though it was about to liquefy, as if it was beginning to melt into his.

‘Don't close your eyes, Tess.’

His hands coaxed her upright, held her steady at the waist. She watched him, as his eyes alternated between travelling all over her body and fixing on her eyes.

‘Move with me,’ he whispered.

As hard and as hot as he felt, so she felt wet and soft. Sitting astride him, matching his bucks and thrusts, her eyes played a charged relay with his. The intensity was unlike anything Tess had imagined or Joe had experienced. Her mouth was so moist it felt as if it was mimicking her sex; he slipped his finger into her mouth and it might as well have been his cock, so titillating was the feeling. When he took his hand back to her waist, a thin thread of saliva seeped out from her lips like a liquid kiss. The perfect baseness of it, the feeling of it reaching his chest, released a torrent of lust in Joe that saw his hands leap for Tess's breasts and she in turn clasped her own hands over his. Abandoned to the imminence of orgasm, they were helpless not to close their eyes. But only for a moment. Hearing Tess's voice gasp as she was about to come, hearing the sound of himself moaning, Joe opened his eyes.

He'd never come with his eyes open. Previously, the sensation had carried a selfish intensity, a lack of concern for the actuality to focus inwardly on his own gratification, more often than not fleshed out by some private fantasy. Now he wanted to give, to feel her come and to watch her, to sense her pull himself out of himself: spunk, love, voice, feeling.

He soaked in the sight of her as she soaked up the sensation of him.

‘Open your eyes, Tess. Let me look at you.’

In the small hours, Tess awoke. She was lying on her back and Joe was lying on his side very close. His arm was across her stomach, his breath whispered over her shoulder, warming her skin on his exhale, chilling it on the inhale. She lay there and waited for sleep to return but something was preventing it. It had been such a full day. Days with Joe were usually replete with colour and detail anyway, but today's had had an added dimension. All that honesty. Being able to vanquish the fear that her life would tumble down if she revealed the foundation of her troubles. And, with Joe's support, finding the confidence to gather her dignity and confide what she had assumed she would have to hide.

Now, in the stillness and the silence, she thought about secrets. How choosing not to share information needn't be classified as a secret per se – but to actively keep from a loved one certain facts that define you, no matter how bad you perceive them to be, undermines the core of that love. Tess's level of debt and the way it had been accrued wasn't so much a secret as a huge humiliation she'd kept private. But when she'd revealed the unglossed details to Joe, he hadn't told her off nor had he run off. He'd listened and empathized and suggested practical solutions and best of all she believed him. He'd stayed close, in fact he'd moved in closer. And now, they were closer still.

It was big, for her to tell, for him to hear, for them as a couple to share. But it had brought an increased sense of closeness and though it was still a very real problem, it wasn't as terrifying to her any more. But now she was aware that she was lying there unable to sleep because there was something else she hadn't told him, something he'd never find under her mattress or in a drawer or in the boot of her car. She could keep it hidden – but now she no longer wanted to. If you keep the truth hidden, you show only the lie.

Joe was deeply asleep, the pattern of his breathing told her so. He was so tired. After they'd made love, he'd said, that'll send me to sleep with a smile on my face. And he'd promptly done just that. She looked at him now. Would he mind? Would he mind being woken? Would he mind what she was going to tell him? She wondered whether she'd mind – if it were Joe waking her to confide something that defined him?

‘Joe?’ His face registered nothing. ‘Joe?’ Nothing. ‘Joe!’ A stir. ‘Joe?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Might you wake up a while? I wanted to talk. There's something I want you to know.’

His eyes opened and he lay there blinking as if unsure whether he'd just heard her through his sleep or whether he'd been dreaming.

‘Yes?’

‘Joe?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes?’

‘I wanted to tell you something. A secret. Another one. Something I want you to know.’

She turned towards him and rolled in close.

‘There's some stuff you just don't want other people to know because you know you can't change it. But you know you can't obliterate it either so you keep it secret, determined that no one will ever be party to it.’ She paused. ‘Are you awake now?’

‘Yes, I am. Go on.’

‘Like my – money problems.’

‘Yes – but you needn't shoulder all that alone any more. We'll find a way.’

She was worried he was going to drift off to sleep so as she stroked his shoulder, she give him little nudges.

‘I know – and I can't tell you how much safer I now feel. But Joe, you see there are secrets and there are
secrets
– don't you think? I kept my debt secret from you without having any reason to actually
lie
– I just hid it. But I wanted to tell you another secret – one I
have
hidden from you behind a lie.’

‘You've
lied
to me?’ He couldn't think what about.

‘Yes. But if there are secrets and secrets – then perhaps there are lies and
lies
. Some stuff we lie about because the real facts are so brutal. I've grown to feel that I tell lies better than most people tell the truth.’

‘What are you talking about, Tess, what have you done?’ He was wide awake now, but gentle: tucking her hair behind her ear soothingly, rhythmically, as he puzzled her words.

‘I haven't done anything – apart from not tell you the truth about something I've kept secret from everyone in my life. Everyone. So far, I've spun the same story to you too. But now I want to undo it – maybe not for them just yet, maybe never, but for you certainly I do.’

‘What's this all about, Tess?’

‘It's about Em.’

‘What about Emmeline?’

‘About her father.’

‘What about her father?’ Joe was a whirl of thoughts but he couldn't get a handle on any.

‘It's untrue – what I told you, about him.’

‘How so?’

In the scant moonlight of muted silver highlights in the bedroom, he could detect a crestfallen look to Tess's face, a heavy silence about her.

‘What is it, Tess? Is he not – you know – her real father?’

‘Oh, he's her real father all right,’ Tess said. ‘It's just much of the stuff I've told you about him that isn't real.’

When one awaits the truth from an untruth, the thought of what that might be is often remote from what transpires. For this reason, Joe didn't bother himself too much with thoughts of Em's father being a homicidal axe-wielding drug-addled maniac. He just kept his eyes trained on Tess, encouraging her to forego the lengthy silences and bring to light what was currently in the dark.

‘He's a sod, really.’

Her voice was so hollow it filled Joe and he wasn't sure how to respond – he sensed not to use ‘why’ just yet.

‘I rather remember you describing him as a gorgeous, useless, beautiful, crazy dreamer,’ he said.

‘He's none of those things. Well, physically he is very beautiful. On the outside.’

Joe waited a moment again. ‘What did he do, Tess?’

‘I knew him for six weeks – that's true. The bit about him singing me those crap songs is true too. He seduced me – well, actually I was desperate to sleep with him because he was such a renowned free spirit and my ego goaded me to attempt to be the one who could inspire him to settle down. How ridiculously clichéd was that? Thinking back though, he groomed my ego in the first place – not just by singing for me, but by saying stuff like, “Jeez, Tess, a girl like you could get a guy like me to change his ways.” That's quite intoxicating, really, for a girl like me – who hadn't been lucky in love. A girl whose father left and there was nothing she or her mum could do to have him change
his
ways.’

She paused.

‘And?’

‘Well, Dick and I had this crazy few weeks of music and candlelit crappy flats with mattresses on the floor and batik hangings on the walls. And he kept on with the lyrical bullshit – which at the time seemed to me the most sublime poetry I'd ever heard, of course.’

‘And then?’

‘Then I found out I was pregnant.’

‘It was his?’

‘Oh, Joe – of course it was his. I may be hopeless but I'm not like
that
.’

‘Sorry, pet – I didn't mean it that way. I'm just trying to guess, that's all.’

‘When I told him I was pregnant –’ She paused and her shudder was visible. She took two long, measured breaths.

‘The thing is – about secrets and lies, Joe – that this is a memory I've banished behind a reasonable lie for so long that I haven't had to confront the truth. I tucked it away – though I couldn't diminish the hurt.’ Joe touched her cheek gently with the back of his hand. ‘Dick's response was not what I was expecting. His face didn't even drop – let alone register a single emotion. The first thing he said was, “You're joking,” and the second thing he said was, “Get rid of it.” It wasn't a question. Or a suggestion.’

Although she had paused again, Joe was so shocked he couldn't catch up with his thoughts to grab a couple and form them into something worthwhile or comforting to say. He searched for her hand under the covers, found it in a clench and gently unfurled it.

‘He was vile,’ Tess continued. ‘He said if I kept
it
, not to expect any support on any level from him. Kids, he said, weren't part of his game plan. He asked me who the hell I thought I was, dumping this on him. He called me a sly bitch, too. He told me to get out of his face. He said, “Do what you want, honey, but I'm out of here.” Anyway, the long and the short of it is I haven't had any contact since. None at all. So there you have it, the unexpurgated truth – there's nothing more to tell. All the rest was lies – all of it. His free spirit, his world tour, his penniless but cosmic heart. I fabricated it all so I could keep the hideous truth secret.’

‘Jesus, Tess,’ Joe held her tightly against him. ‘Did you not tell me he already had a child?’

‘When I met him, he said he did. But I don't even know if that's true or whether it was the sort of kind-to-animals-and-kids line a guy might spin to get a daffy girl like me into bed.’