This Secret We're Keeping (21 page)

‘Er, like what, Jess?’ I asked her, casually scratching the back of my neck as if my heart wasn’t at that very moment attempting to abscond from my ribcage.

She shrugged. ‘School stuff. Friend stuff.’

I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Me stuff?’

Her expression faltered slightly. ‘No, of course not.’

Oh, thank fuck
.

‘I knew there had to be a way to make my mum change her mind about London.’

‘Okay,’ I said, reaching out and taking her hand, feeling instantly guilty that I hadn’t given her a bit more credit.

Fortunately, Jess didn’t seem to be too hung up on my apparent lack of faith in her. ‘So, I wrote in my diary that Anna’s mum was worried about me and Debbie. I said she was planning to ring social services and report my mum if we moved away – that she was going to tell them all about the drinking, and the tablets.’

I wasn’t too familiar with Anna Baxter myself. Hadley’s strange little system of staff hierarchies meant that top-set pupils very rarely mingled with bottom-set teachers, as if by doing so they might somehow contract stupidity. But I knew that Anna was Jess’s best friend, and that her mother was something of a substitute parent to her. It was for this reason that even the idea of the Baxter clan (there were sisters too, I’d heard) made me incredibly nervous. I guessed that as a surrogate mother Mrs Baxter would defend Jess like one of her own if ever she needed to.

Jess was leaning forward, her eyebrows lifted with hope. ‘It worked, Mr L. My mum panicked and called it off.’

I exhaled, steadily, unsure how to decide whether Jess’s
little ploy had been reckless or genius. ‘You’re really not going?’

‘Well, we are – but just for Christmas. My mum had a bit of a meltdown on the phone the other night, so my aunt said she’d talk to this guy she knows who runs an alcohol support group, see if he can come over while we’re down there.’ She slid me a tentative smile. ‘Which means you’re still going to be my teacher. I get to stay here, with you.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘I mean, I’m happy for you, Jess, but …’ I hesitated. I was overjoyed for myself, of course – but even so, I could appreciate there was a bigger picture to all of this. I had to play devil’s advocate – it was my duty as a semi-responsible adult, never mind a teacher. ‘I just hope it’s the right thing, staying here. For your mum, I mean. If your aunt can help her …’

Jess shook her head. ‘My aunt doesn’t actually want us. My mum’s just got nowhere else to go, that’s all.’

‘Are you sure?’

She shrugged gently, like she was all out of ways to convince me. ‘Yes. That’s what my aunt said to Debbie.’

I suddenly had the strange idea that maybe I could be the one to look after Jess, if nobody else was going to bother. I certainly felt confident I could do a better job of it than the various questionable role models who’d been making a complete hash of things to date.

‘So it’s good news,’ she confirmed, leaning forward like she thought we should celebrate with a kiss.

‘It’s definite?’ I asked her, holding her off for just a second more in order to clarify. ‘How do you know your mum won’t bring it up with Mrs Baxter?’

Jess shook her head, and for a moment I thought that
would be the extent of her answer. Then, possibly sensing my need for detail, she said, ‘They don’t speak. Plus my mum told my aunt she’d try and lie low for a bit.’

If lying low was addict-speak for pressing pause on the substance abuse, then I might have felt a bit more optimistic on Jess’s behalf – but instead I suspected it to have the far less cryptic meaning of being steadfastly horizontal while off one’s tits on prescription painkillers. Attempting to evade the attention of social services didn’t sound like a great long-term solution to me either, but if Jess was happy, then – for now – I resolved to be too. Maybe we could revisit it after Christmas, I told myself. Who knew – perhaps her mother would turn out to have an undiscovered talent for sticking doggedly to New Year’s resolutions, and we could boot her towards sobriety that way.

‘As long as you’re sure it’s the right thing,’ I told Jess firmly, ‘then that’s really great.’

She kissed me again then, her lips feeling colder than they had before. But just as I began to try and work some warmth back into them, she pulled away from me and reached inside her shoulder bag, the one she took with her everywhere she went. If there was one thing I had learned about this girl over the past few weeks, it was that she was super-organized. She always had a street map and a packet of condoms in there, a lighter and some tissues. It really wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d whipped out a kettle and a couple of teabags to mix us up a nice hot drink.

Hers was a calm sort of practicality, a quality I knew would come in handy when she eventually became a chef. I could easily imagine her working in Brett’s little Puglian trattoria, serving up pasta with one hand, tossing pizza dough with the other and flinging Parmesan over
everything while her boss secreted profanities in Italian – all with a graceful smile on her face.

My mum would love this girl
, I thought to myself. And not for the first time, that realization made me really sad. It’s rare you find yourself doing something so illegal that you know your own mother wouldn’t hesitate to shop you if she found out.

‘I bought you a Christmas present,’ Jess said, handing me a wrapped packet that had the rough dimensions of a brick but about a tenth of the weight.

I felt a pang of regret. The previous Saturday, I had bought her a silver necklace from the first high-street jeweller I had stumbled across (the class of retailer least likely, I’d reasoned, to make me sweat with awkward questions about the lucky recipient so they could convince me their prices were at least partly based upon personal service). But afterwards, of course, I’d promptly lost my nerve, stashing the box away in its crappy plastic bag inside my kitchen drawer underneath the takeaway menu for the China Garden and the council reminder about Christmas and New Year bin collections.
What use is she going to have for jewellery? What’s she going to say when her mum or her nosy sister ask her where she got it? What if she doesn’t like it? She’s way too polite to say so, etc., etc.

I took the gift from her now, wishing I’d had the courage of my convictions and brought the necklace along. ‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘You didn’t have to get me anything.’

‘I wanted to,’ she said, and I believed her. Then she laughed softly. ‘Don’t get too excited, Mr L,’ she said. ‘You might hate it.’

I knew straight away that I could never hate anything Jess gave me. I pulled off the wrapping paper – two of Santa’s little helpers sharing a kiss under a bunch of mistletoe – and
opened the cardboard box inside, removing the bubble wrap from the object within.

It was a little copper sculpture of a long-haired figure, head thrown back, rocking out on an electric guitar. Roughly the size of an outstretched palm, it was cold, heavy and beautiful.

‘Jess …’ I said, turning the figure over in my hand, like I’d just been presented with some sort of award (for being the world’s biggest pervert, maybe) and was working out how best to thank those closest to me.

‘Do you like it?’ she whispered, squeezing my leg in anticipation. ‘He reminds me of you.’

I recalled what she had said to me about looking like a rock star. ‘I love it,’ I told her truthfully. ‘I’ve never loved anything more.’

‘Anna helped me choose it,’ she whispered.

My heart slithered into my shoes, lay down and refused to get up.

‘What?’ I breathed. Jess had sworn to me that she hadn’t told anyone about us. Perhaps naively, I’d believed her. ‘What do you mean, Jess? When did you tell Anna?’

Jess blinked at me. ‘I haven’t told Anna. I haven’t told anyone. I said it was for my uncle.’

I didn’t know whether Jess had an uncle or not, but I quickly discovered that I didn’t really care either way. Relief slapped me in the face as firmly as Mrs Baxter herself might have done, had she happened to pop her head round the door of the bird hide.

‘Shit, I’m sorry,’ I told her, wrapping my arms round her. ‘Panicked. Sorry.’

I knew this was probably the first time she’d ever bought a present for a boy (or man, if we were really splitting
hairs about it), and it was making my heart wilt slightly. I had bought her nothing – or, at least, nothing she knew about – yet she was still smiling excitedly, so pleased I’d liked my gift. She wasn’t the same as other girls, always expecting. I got the impression that in return I probably could have presented her with the slightly dubious copy of
Teaching Today
that had, for some reason, been lingering in the gents’ loos since the start of term, and she would have been ecstatic.

‘I, er … forgot yours,’ I told her – the half-hearted excuse of tossers everywhere. It was Christmas, for God’s sake. ‘I left it at home. I’m sorry.’

She frowned away my apology. ‘Don’t. I don’t care. I don’t want anything. I just want you. I’m not going to see you now for nearly two weeks.’ She leaned forward and started to kiss me.

I promised myself right there and then that, since she was staying in Norfolk, my actual present to Jess would be getting her on to that Venice trip in February. Much more meaningful than a crappy old necklace. If I had to pay for it myself on the sly, I would do it. I wanted her to see for real the world she probably dreamed of before she went to sleep each night.

Whenever she kissed me, it was like tipping kerosene over a naked flame: we were suddenly hands everywhere, pulling at clothing and ripping down zips, like vandals breaking into one another. I lost myself in her straight away, and let my little statue clatter to the floor.

We were at it so hard and for so long that night in the bird hide that by the time we finally emerged, warm enough to be virtually giving off steam in the night air, the battery in the torch had completely died. We left it there, up in the
rafters – there would be a next time now, after all – and made our way back along the beach path in the dark, both laughing, both relieved, both naive.

Even at that point, her move to London already a distant memory, I think we both thought it would be for ever.

Jess
stretched out in the back garden with Smudge, her feet partly hidden in a luscious carpet of grass. Together they were soaking up the blooming, delicate heat of Norfolk in early summer. It was somewhere approaching nine a.m., Radio 4 was playing on her father’s battered old Roberts and she had a strong black coffee in hand with a plate of home-made churros by her side. Smudge, it turned out, was a big fan of churros – though his personal definition of appreciation was allowing them to briefly graze his oesophagus as he wolfed them down whole.

She was always pleased, especially at this time of year, that she allowed her garden to grow wild. Bees buzzed busily through the clover that was dappled confetti-like across the unshorn grass. The borders were resplendent with foxgloves, geraniums and catmint, glorious shocks of pinks and purples against a rich jungle of green. Climbing roses with bursting, creamy blooms snaked carelessly across the flint and brickwork of the garden walls. The pigeons were cooing sweetly in the crab-apple tree, politicians were receiving their daily dose of provocation on Radio 4 and, for a few brief moments, Jess felt truly content. Then she remembered Will, and her happiness sagged slightly.

She’d received a text from him on Tuesday that simply said,
Really sorry will call asap
; and another yesterday –
Crazy week really sorry Jess
– but other than that they had not communicated. Now she was in limbo once again, not knowing if he’d forgotten their plans for today, wondering whether to
pop over there or call him, unsure exactly when Natalie was due back from Birmingham.

Natalie. Charlotte. In the glare of bright Friday-morning sunshine, it was much harder to unravel that little knot of guilt from her mind, especially without Will to distract her.

Not to mention Zak. He had driven up from London on Tuesday afternoon to surprise her, but she’d been in Norwich until late, catering an event for a digital design agency. The theme of the evening had been Mexican – something to do with expanding into emerging markets – so Jess had provided the bite-sized burritos and twice-baked quesadillas while the hosts supplied the mariachi music and tequila slammers.

On arriving back at the cottage, she had discovered Zak on her sofa with Smudge at his feet. Waiting for her on the coffee table was an elaborate bouquet of flowers and a box of luxury chocolates, but the bigger gesture – the shining symbol of his atonement – came in the form of a small turquoise box in the palm of his hand.

He was contrite, sorry he’d broken her things, begging her once again to move into his mews house in Belsize Park, as convinced as she was not that sharing square footage was the answer to all their problems. And then he urged her to open the little Tiffany box, which she found to contain a classic heart pendant in sterling silver, the same one she’d commented on several months ago when he’d paused outside the window on Sloane Street and pressed her to tell him what kind of jewellery she liked.

In the end she let him stay for two nights, and on the second they had hot, drunken sex after spending the evening at Carafe, because she finally failed miserably to resist that way he had of charming her.

As soon as he set off back to London the following
morning, Jess took Smudge out with her across the salt marsh. Timing their passage against the tide, together they crossed the two deep channels that marked the access point to the fringe of pinewoods overlooking Wells. It was an isolated spot, risky to reach and, as such, somewhere that virtually guaranteed solitude, their only company perhaps the occasional intrepid birder on the lookout for rarities blown off-course from far out at sea.

Having climbed to the highest point of the woods, Jess located a patch of shade and Smudge proceeded to skip about chasing insects. She could see the coloured beach huts of Wells from where she sat, bright splashes of paint against the canvas of pine trees, day-trippers peppering the strip of hot yellow sand that sloped into the sea. She’d been hoping the view would prove calming, a way to help clear her head – but in the end she was unable to get past one recurring, repetitive thought that kept spinning through her mind like vertigo:
I don’t know what to do
.
I don’t know what to do.

She reached down now and absent-mindedly fondled Smudge’s ears, tilting her face up to the sky and half-heartedly trying to follow a segment on the radio about fiscal stability in the eurozone, which given how frequently the presenter was interrupting all three studio guests was proving to be an intellectual challenge in itself. So much so that she didn’t even register the sound of a car door slamming from somewhere near the front of the cottage.

It was only when Smudge jumped to his feet and sent her coffee cup flying that Jess sat up and turned round, squinting into the sun. Will was standing by her back door, sunglasses on.

‘Hey,’ he said, and then squatted down to greet Smudge, who was whimpering with excitement. ‘Hello, you.’

She swivelled round to face him properly, her heart
thudding, awash with relief that he had not forgotten her. She was suddenly very conscious that she was still in her nightwear of a flimsy vest top and tiny shorts, and that most of her right thigh was covered by a creeping bruise in a shade of yellow that looked almost radioactive. ‘Hi,’ she said.

She watched his Adam’s apple bob gently as he swallowed and took her in.

This was no good. Her nipples were hardening.

‘Wait there,’ she said. ‘I’ll be two minutes.’

Inside the house she pulled on a dressing gown, applied deodorant and ran a comb through her hair, before grabbing an extra coffee cup and heading back outside.

Will was sitting on the edge of the back step with an upturned Smudge, obligingly rubbing his belly as he basked in a pool of sunshine. ‘How’s your leg?’ he asked her as she came towards him, his eyebrows knitted together in concern.

She smiled. ‘It’s okay. The bruising’s actually fading, if you can believe it.’

Her cafetière was still half full on the patio. She filled both cups and handed one to him. ‘Is this …?’ he said, looking up at her.

Though the pattern was now faded by seventeen years of dishwashing to an unattractive outline of shadows in pastel, the word
Venezia
was still clear around its circumference. She nodded. ‘It’s my favourite, actually. Has a very comfortable grip.’

He laughed. ‘Well, that’s good to know, Jess. I’m glad it’s come in useful.’

They shared a smile and she sat down next to him. Two electric-blue dragonflies zipped past their noses, in search of water and somewhere to bake in the sun.

‘God, this is great,’ he said, inhaling the sight and scent of
her ramshackle little garden. ‘You’re actually growing things. Bucking the national trend for widespread stunting.’

She smiled. ‘Well, I like bees too much.’ She reached for the plate of churros and was about to offer him one when she realized firstly that it was empty and secondly that Smudge was licking sugar crystals from his nose. She started laughing. ‘I would offer you breakfast, but I think Smudge has just eaten it.’

‘That’s okay,’ he said with a smile, ‘I have plans for breakfast.’

She felt a twinge of disappointment.

‘Sorry that I’m such a cliché, by the way,’ he said then, taking a sip of coffee and nudging her shoulder gently with his.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Not calling you. This week’s been a bit crazy.’

‘Oh.’ She nudged him back. ‘It’s no problem, honestly. Is Charlotte okay?’

‘She’s fine, but the bed-wetting’s been a bit of a thing recently. I think it’s to do with being in a new house.’ He looked across at her. ‘Sorry about all that the other night.’

‘God, don’t be,’ she said, shaking her head, though she wasn’t quite sure which bit of the night he was apologizing for.

From somewhere down the road, a lawnmower purred into action.

‘So … do you have any plans for breakfast?’ he asked her.

She smiled into her coffee.

‘If you still fancy doing something, Charlotte goes to Helen every Friday,’ he said. ‘The childminder. I have the day free.’

From the Roberts, the heated discussion was fast becoming both a blazing row and radio gold. The studio guests
were out of control, bellowing en masse into each other’s microphones. From the crab-apple tree the pigeons began to coo more excitedly too, as if they also had deep-rooted concerns about the macroeconomics at the heart of this debate.

Will was watching her, amused. ‘Do I get the feeling you’re not loving the idea?’

‘No! I absolutely do love it. Sorry – hang on.’ She leaned over, snapped off the radio and beamed at him. ‘I’m all yours.’

He met her eye with a wry smile at exactly the same time as she very nearly blushed. ‘Do I skip the obvious joke?’

She laughed and plucked the head from a nearby daisy. ‘Yes please.’

The sound of dogs barking drifted over the wall from the direction of the salt marsh. Smudge flicked an ear disdainfully, but it wasn’t enough to make him move from his hot little patch of grass.

‘So, Jessica. I have a one-time offer for you.’

She smiled. ‘Wow.’

‘Well, hang on. You don’t know what it is yet.’

‘Too late. You’ve talked it up. Go.’

Feigning apprehension, he blew out his cheeks. ‘Okay. Fancy a day trip to Norwich?’ He waggled his eyebrows. ‘My car has air con.’

‘Stop it, Will. I don’t think I can cope.’

They faced one another over brunch in a cafe at the foot of Elm Hill, which offered good views of the snaking cobblestoned street beyond the window. The sun was angling through the glass, gently baking their bare arms; and from the radio behind the counter floated the melodious strains of acoustic guitar. The scent of Italian coffee billowed.

‘So when did you shave your head?’ she asked him, scooping up a forkful of pillow-soft, pan-fried root vegetable hash.

The cafe was packed – mothers and toddlers, couples taking the day off work, writers on laptops enjoying an early lunch. Jess was grateful that the gentle burble of chatter was enough to drown out their own private conversation.

Finishing his scrambled eggs, Will wiped his mouth with a napkin before picking up his coffee. ‘The day I left the farm. Needed a disguise. I told you, false noses are so 1992.’

She smiled. ‘How did it feel?’

‘Not that great at the time, actually. Katy did it for me.’ He winced at the memory. ‘Managed to make me feel like a convict all over again.’ He nodded at her. ‘You kept your hair short. Not quite as short as mine, thankfully.’

‘Do you like it?’ she asked, putting a hand up self-consciously to touch it.

‘Yeah, I do,’ he said, like that much should have been obvious, and then set down his cup. ‘It’s funny, I spent a lot of time looking in the mirror after I moved to London, trying to decide whether anybody would recognize me if I stepped outside.’

‘And did they?’

‘Nope. Or if they did, they didn’t care. London’s a pretty good place to be anonymous.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I did actually think about going to Italy, after I got out. But I was still on licence, and the farm was the best place for me to hide. Then I moved to London, and I was broke, so going abroad wasn’t really an option. And after that … I met Natalie, who had no idea who I was, and for the first time in five years I could pretend to be a normal fucking person. I loved it. I felt like a kid at Christmas.’

Jess speared a cube of sweet potato with her fork as she
worked up the nerve to broach the most delicate subject of all. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ she said carefully, ‘but I’m kind of surprised that you had a baby.’

He raised one eyebrow but said nothing, waiting.

‘I just mean that babies are … complicated.’ She swallowed, struggling for a moment to get the words out. ‘I wouldn’t have expected you to opt for extra complication at that point in your life. Or maybe ever. You know – after everything that happened.’

‘Well,’ he said, equally carefully, ‘I didn’t exactly opt for it.’ And then he pushed his knife and fork together on his empty plate, sat back in his seat and waited for his words to make an impression.

They did.

‘Oh,’ was all she could manage at first. She set down her fork and took a long slug of coffee while she attempted to process what he’d just said. ‘So, it wasn’t planned?’

‘Well, Natalie was on the pill when we met. Or so she told me. Anyway, I was a bit of a mug about it – I knew she got all gooey around children but I never really paid much attention to what that meant in the context of me
not
wanting them – and the next thing I knew …’

‘Ouch.’

‘Yeah, it was a bit.’ He frowned at the memory. ‘So then I had to decide, am I going to be a complete wanker and leave her or am I going to be a nice guy and stay?’

‘So you opted for nice guy.’

‘Well, of sorts. Natalie made it easy on me, really. I was living in her flat, she was climbing the ladder at work, determined to be the breadwinner …’ He took a sip of coffee. ‘But, yeah. If you can call it that, I suppose I opted to be a nice guy. Or nice-ish. We argued a lot.’

‘What about?’ she asked quietly.

‘Um, lots of things. She couldn’t understand why I felt so weird about us having kids, for one.’

Jess waited, sensing he wanted to elaborate.

‘I don’t know, Jess,’ he said eventually. ‘I guess I always just imagined … having children with you. It seemed to me like that was the natural order of things.’ He glanced at her. ‘Natalie was three months’ pregnant when I came back to find you that second time. That’s why I bottled it on your doorstep. I just – I couldn’t bring myself to tell you I’d got a girl pregnant. Stupid, I know.’

His words struck Jess right in the gut, a series of little punches, and it took her a couple of moments to regain her composure. ‘You did the right thing,’ she managed eventually, feeling him watching her. ‘With Natalie.’

There was a short pause. ‘Well, I did the proper thing. Pulled myself together. Learned to cook. Cut back on booze. Decorated a room for Charlotte. Carried on doing my odd jobs for old dears.’ A short pause. ‘Tried to become responsible, I suppose.’