This Secret We're Keeping (40 page)

He shook his head. ‘Okay, that’s just bullshit. For the purposes of nothing else but preserving your dignity, I am telling you that in this instance you can afford them, okay? In fact, I shall personally go out and purchase some lovely principles for you. Just … leave it with me. I’ll think of something, I promise.’

She swallowed, thinking maybe she’d try a different angle.

‘Will … have you ever felt … on the edge? Like you wanted to just … end it all?’

He frowned at her. ‘What?’

‘No! Not me. I just wondered if you’ve ever …’ She trailed off, hoping he might choose this moment to tell her about the overdose, and then she could tell him about Zak.

‘Are you thinking about your mum?’

‘What? No.’ She hardly ever allowed herself to think about her mother.

‘Is being here bringing back memories?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not like that.’

From somewhere in the trees behind them, the gentle call of a tawny owl drifted through the air.

‘I blame myself,’ he said quietly. ‘For what happened with your mum.’

Jess swallowed. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘You know what she was like.’

‘But the whole thing – it must have tipped her over the edge.’

He was right, she supposed, but it was hardly his fault. By the end, her mother had been so riddled with addictions and demons that she barely knew which way was up on the vodka bottle.

‘I think she wanted to go,’ she said, feeling an unexpected sting of emotion in her throat. ‘She was looking for reasons, Will. She was tired of …’

The tawny owl called out again, a pleading song in the stillness.

‘Of what?’

In the end, it had been simple, really. ‘Of living.’

Will looked down at his hands and frowned. ‘Why do you always want to make me feel better about everything, Jess?’

‘Would it help if I made you feel bad instead?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t help me, but it might help you. You should try it sometime.’

‘God, why?’ she said then, into the cool gloom of the darkness. ‘I love you.’

There was a long pause before he spoke again, and when he did, he picked through his words carefully, like he was weaving around broken glass with no shoes on. ‘We need to figure this whole thing out, don’t we?’

I need to tell you about Zak
.
Just let me find the right words.

But she couldn’t find a way to begin. ‘Any ideas?’ she ended up asking him weakly.

‘None. You?’

She shook her head. ‘Zero.’

‘Excellent. Well, that’s a good start, then.’

She offered him a smile and he took it, his eyes grateful. She was happy to enjoy the fantasy for a few minutes longer that they would somehow find a way to be together.

‘Maybe if I go away and think about it, and you go away and think about it,’ he suggested, ‘between us we might actually come up with something.’

There was a brief moment of contemplation, and then she remembered. ‘Oh, I got you a birthday present,’ she said, reaching into the pocket of her jacket and handing it to him.

He smiled. ‘Thanks, Jess, but I don’t think you’ll be able to top the last one you gave me,’ he said softly. And then he looked down at the gift-wrapped package and shook his head, like he was her teacher all over again and she’d just presented him with her latest attempt at trigonometry. ‘Hang on though. A CD. This could be good – your music collection’s got some gems.

She smiled back at him as he unwrapped it.

He laughed. ‘
The Best of UB40
. Thanks, Jess.’

‘Well, you didn’t seem overly familiar with their work, so …’

He reached up and gently brushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘And thanks for your birthday text, too.’

‘Oh. No problem.’

She’d wanted him to know she was thinking of him, and after hovering guiltily over the ‘send’ button for a while she’d eventually persuaded herself that a single text was harmless in the same way that alcoholics tell themselves half a pint at lunchtime never hurt anyone, when what they’re actually thinking is that they’d quite like to just crack on with a massive three-day bender.

In the end he’d responded only with
Thank you
and a solitary
x
, presumably (understandably) to be deleted from his sent box straight away. She could appreciate that blowing virtual kisses on his birthday to the girl he ran over might be tricky to explain.

‘Sorry if my reply was a bit – you know. Brief. I tend to mark my birthdays now by getting absolutely shit-faced.’ He half smiled. ‘Luckily Natalie thinks I’ve just got a pathological fear of middle age. Avoids getting me cards with any reference to scaling hills or counting candles. If she knew the real reason …’

Thinking sadly of Will’s fortieth, and how Zak had laughed about him being wheeled into A & E with half-digested paracetamol all over his face, Jess decided that she finally felt ready to say what she needed to say. And once she’d done that, perhaps she would carry on talking and finally make her confession, get it over with. Unearth the little grub of guilt that had been writhing like a maggot inside her since the day he ran her over.

But as she started to speak, so did he, and he hadn’t
seemed to hear her. ‘I should get going. There’s only so long you can legitimately claim to have spent in Tesco at this time of night.’

She nodded, but inside she had shrunk slightly. ‘Especially with lichen on your T-shirt,’ she pointed out.

He twisted round, pulling the fabric to reveal where it had rubbed bright green against his shoulder.

‘Not sure how I’m going to explain that one. There isn’t too much randomly exposed lichen in my local Tesco.’ He turned to her. ‘Hey, I have an idea.’

She waited.

‘Something nice we can do for Peggy. She deserves it after all these years.’

So between them they carried Peggy out, hulking her across the damp grass and towards the line of poplars, with the idea that at least she would be able to enjoy the grand vista of the sweeping lawn and hall as opposed to the arse end of a laurel bush.

But as they approached the halfway point, they heard voices, and then footsteps – both of which sounded as if they were mid-sprint – followed by the jolting beam of a torch light. They set down the bench and turned to see two portly security guards streaking surprisingly rapidly towards them.

‘Bollocks,’ Will breathed. ‘Run.’

So they did, abandoning Peggy where she was. It wasn’t a bad spot – halfway across the lawn at the edge of the main driveway. At least she’d have a bit more social interaction.

Will was quick, and Jess fitter than she’d thought. It must have been all her hikes across the salt marsh with Smudge, who himself was something of a fast mover. They were leaving the security men for dust.

‘Go, go, go!’ Will shouted at her as soon as it became clear they would outrun them. He started laughing then, which set her off too, and she began to lose ground; but it didn’t matter, because they were approaching the low wall of the boundary.

Will scrambled over it first, and then, breathing hard, turned round and extended his hand, bright green from where it had been gripping the bench. ‘Come on, Daley Thompson.’

She laughed and grabbed it. He hauled her over in one quick movement and, landing safely, she glanced back over her shoulder, her heart hammering, breathing hard. ‘Shit, they’re still coming.’ She bent down briefly to let her diaphragm recover from the unscheduled sprint, resting her hands on her knees.

Will swiftly flicked the lock to the car. ‘Well, this is probably the most excitement they’ve had all year.’

Afterwards, as he was dropping her back off at the cottage, Jess turned to him and said, ‘Will, I really need to tell you something.’

He frowned. ‘What’s up?’

A long silence.

Just tell him. Tell him now
.

She’d been mentally collating all the words she would need, attempting to assemble them into some sort of order, but just as she finally started to speak, Will’s phone began to buzz.

Fuck it
.

He glanced at the screen. ‘I’ll call her back.’

Okay, enough now
.
Just come out with it. Time’s running out.

‘Will, I really have to tell you something. I’ve been trying to tell you all night and I keep fucking it up …’

He looked concerned. ‘What’s wrong?’

The phone cut off. Jess took a breath to speak – and then it started to buzz again.

‘Sorry,’ he said, frowning. ‘I should probably get that. Natalie’s not normally one for repeat ringing. If she can’t get hold of me the first time round she usually just likes to cut my bollocks off after the fact.’ He tapped the screen. ‘Hello?’

From where she was sitting, Jess could hear Natalie’s voice erupting from the phone, frantic, gabbling, like a cassette tape on fast-forward.

‘I’ve been in Tesco,’ Will said, in answer to something. His voice sounded hollow, fearful. ‘My phone was in the car.’

More gabbling. More. More.

Jess watched Will as he listened, his face tightening up with disbelief.

‘Okay, where are you?’

Gabble. Gabble.

Suddenly: ‘Okay, Natalie, I get it! JUST TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE!’

A last eruption of noise, and then silence. Will tapped the phone and turned straight away to Jess, but he was looking almost through her.

‘Charlotte’s eaten peanut. It’s serious. I need to go.’

Jess was propped up in bed with a bowl on her lap and Smudge snoozing soundly on her arm, the tip of his nose a comforting damp warmth against her skin. After Will had dropped her off she’d felt the urgent need for comfort food, so at midnight had found herself in the kitchen whipping up a black cherry clafoutis, a sweet sort of toad-in-the-hole – clouds of pillowy yellow batter and liberal scatterings of fat
violet cherries, which she’d finished off with a plentiful dousing of vanilla bean custard. Outside, it had begun to rain, gentle patters on the windowpane that along with the sugar from her pudding had finally lulled her into a state of half-dazed calm.

By one a.m. she had heard nothing, but all she could do was wait for him to contact her. It was too risky to call him – there was no way of knowing what had happened since he’d dropped her off. She felt consumed by guilt: while they’d been messing about dragging Peggy across the lawn at Hadley Hall, Will’s seven-year-old had been – potentially – close to death.

So she called Anna, aware that disturbing her friend’s ovaries mid-sleep was not a decision to be taken lightly, but too desperate for reassurance to resist.

Anna picked up after only two rings, and Jess knew immediately that something wasn’t right. ‘Anna? Are you okay?’

‘I’m … I started my period.’ It was clear she was crying from the lurch of her voice as she forced out the words.

Staring straight ahead at the rain-spattered glass of her windowpane, Jess wondered what she could possibly say that would even come close to touching what Anna was going through.

‘I was two days late and I thought … I thought …’

‘Oh, Anna,’ Jess whispered, her eyes filling up as she pictured her friend’s excitement, the bated breath, the barely daring to move for fear of shattering the future she longed for – followed by the abrupt arrival of the heart-wrenching moment she’d been dreading and the subsequent plunge into bitter, raging despair.

‘I’m actually starting to think … that this is never going to happen for us.’

‘No, Anna,’ Jess said straight away, ‘you know you’ve still got lots of options –’

‘Don’t, Jess,’ Anna snapped. ‘Don’t talk to me about test tubes, or adoption, or Simon fucking some other girl so that she can do the job I’m supposed to do, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Jess said quickly. ‘Okay, I won’t, I promise.’

There was a long silence, both girls breathing hard as they tried to contain their emotions.

‘So, come on,’ Anna relented eventually. ‘You don’t normally ring me this late unless Philippe’s called a lock-in.’

Jess couldn’t face filling her in on Zak’s ultimatum and having to fend off a raft of practical suggestions, all of which would undoubtedly involve Will high-tailing it back to London and Zak conveniently transpiring to be less of an arsehole than everybody had first thought. So instead she told her about Charlotte. To her credit, Anna listened without digging at Will, and together they ran through various scenarios – Charlotte okay, Charlotte brain-damaged, Charlotte dead. And then they decided between them that Charlotte had to be okay, mainly because Natalie carried an adrenaline pen everywhere with her in the manner of a disaffected youth with a flick knife.

‘Jess. Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘What happens when Matthew and Natalie finish doing up that house?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, do you seriously think he’s going to leave her and stay here with you? You really believe he’s going to stand back and watch as she just … takes his daughter back to London?’

Instead of replying, Jess took another mouthful of clafoutis, ashamed that she still found it easier to focus on wanting
Will for herself – as she’d been able to all those years ago – than dwell on the fact that there were other people now who wanted him too.

Against her arm, Smudge shifted sleepily and let out a long, satisfied sigh.

‘Come on, Jess,’ Anna coaxed. ‘I mean, even you know the chances of that happening are – well, they’re more or less zero.’

‘I just … I don’t think he really loves Natalie,’ she said then, almost desperately. ‘And I do think he loves me.’

‘Do you?’ Anna said pointedly, openly sceptical in the manner of Debbie attending a church wedding.

‘Well,’ Jess said, popping a small balloon of batter with the edge of her spoon and watching it deflate, ‘he said, “We need to figure this whole thing out.” ’

‘Oh, well in that case, it’s completely irrefutable.’

‘I really want you to stop hating him. He’s a nice guy, Anna.’

‘Yeah, real stand-up. He’s proved that time and time again.’

‘We’ve all got our faults,’ Jess murmured, staring down at her final irregular wedge of clafoutis, half submerged by a custard snowdrift.