This Secret We're Keeping (6 page)

‘I can’t believe it’s lasted all this time.’

He cleared his throat before lowering his voice in confession. ‘Between you and me … I have been known to wax it.’

She broke into a smile. ‘That’s very diligent of you.’

‘Well, you know. It’s the only one I’ve got.’

Their eyes met with a mutual memory. She wanted to lean in and hug him again but resisted as a fleeting image of Natalie crossed her conscience.

‘So … does Natalie know you’re here?’

He nodded. ‘Actually, she asked me to come.’

Jess felt her heart sink a little.

‘She thought I should probably check you weren’t briefing
your legal team or something. And,’ he added, shifting slightly and digging into the pocket of his jeans, ‘she wanted me to give you this.’ He extracted his wallet and, from it, a wad of notes that he passed to her. Jess swallowed as their fingers brushed. ‘Just … think of it as compensation,’ he said, though she knew he could sense her doubt. ‘For you missing your slot yesterday, and everything.’

‘How did you know I had a slot?’

‘I picked up a flyer in the deli on Friday. And I just thought … maybe it would be a good chance to speak to you. With the aid of some crowd cover, obviously, in case it went horribly wrong.’

She watched him for a moment while she took this all in. ‘Honestly, you don’t need to do that,’ she said eventually, holding out the money.

‘Please keep it,’ he said with a shake of the head. ‘I’ll only have to launder it if you don’t.’

She relented with a smile; but as she set the notes aside, a thought occurred to her. ‘You’re not being charged with anything, are you?’ she asked him, suddenly fearful. ‘I told them it was my fault.’

‘I know. I called in at the police station yesterday. And no – they’re not charging me. Thanks mainly to you, obviously, for so evidently having never read the Highway Code.’ He released a breath. ‘Ah. It’s been an interesting twenty-four hours.’

By his side, Jess experienced her own small hiatus of quiet relief.

‘But look, never mind me.’ He turned to her. ‘What about you – are you okay? What happened at the hospital?’

Involuntarily, she shifted, her thigh muscle twinging painfully in protest. ‘I’m fine,’ she reassured him. ‘Soft tissue bruising and swelling. No lasting damage.’

Visibly relaxing, he nodded slowly. ‘Thank fuck for that.’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

His expression became thoughtful. ‘No, I mean, listen – at the end of the day, I think we should all just be grateful that you never decided to become a lollipop lady.’ He shot her a smile and ran a hand over his jaw. ‘Imagine the carnage.’

Jess covered her mouth with renewed mortification. ‘I’m so sorry. You must think I’m insane.’

He shrugged lightly, but his eyes were twinkling. ‘Just assumed you were bored, or something.’

She attempted to explain. ‘I’d been seeing you everywhere. Or I thought I had. In the end I managed to convince myself that I was imagining you. Until yesterday, obviously, and then …’

He laughed. ‘Oh, you definitely get points for the most creative way to ID someone.’

She laughed back. ‘Thanks. I think.’ A pause. ‘So I was right? It has been you these last few weeks? I wasn’t imagining it?’

He hesitated, meeting her eye with a smile. ‘You might have to bear with me on this. It involves an amount of stalking I’m not quite comfortable with.’

She smiled back, pretending to mull it over. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Okay, well …’ He rubbed his chin. ‘We got here a few weeks ago, and I’d been sort of working up the nerve to contact you. I wanted to say sorry, for everything that happened between us, but the moment never quite seemed right. Either I was with Natalie or you were with … someone else or you were out when I knocked. I thought about putting a note through your door, but I didn’t know your situation. And I really wanted to see you face-to-face, anyway.’

Her mind was racing, attempting to process all the facts. ‘So, you actually live here now – in Norfolk?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I mean, temporarily. Natalie’s always had this … fantasy of a second home by the sea. We came up here for a long weekend last summer, and she ended up having an unexpected love affair with the place. Anyway, after we got back she started looking for houses, found one she liked and put in an offer – all without telling me.’ He shook his head. ‘And she’s spent the past year trying to convince me it would be a fantastic idea to move here for a few months while we do it up, so … here we are. She’s taken some time off work to project-manage.’

Jess struggled to imagine a job so high-powered that sabbaticals for property development were factored into the remuneration package. ‘What does she do?’

‘Management consultant,’ he said in a way that made Jess think he’d been forced to listen to one too many anecdotes about efficiency bottlenecks and profit margins. ‘So … anyway. That’s why I’m here. I thought maybe enough time had passed for me to be able to risk coming back to Norfolk for a few months, what with my false name and everything.’ He met her eye, then looked down.

She swallowed. ‘So … Natalie doesn’t know your real name?’

‘No,’ he said, speaking carefully as if he appreciated it might sound odd. ‘She knows me as Will. Will Greene.’

Jess nodded. ‘You changed it officially?’

He nodded back. ‘Before I met her. I needed to start again.’

‘I know the feeling.’ And she did – she knew it better than anyone. There had been many times over the past seventeen years when she’d been tempted to wipe clean her own identity and start afresh. ‘So would you rather I called you Will?’ She didn’t want to, of course: the man sitting next to her was Matthew Landley, and she couldn’t really imagine thinking of him as anyone else.

‘Well, why don’t you try it?’ His eyes were fixed on hers.

Jess hesitated for just a moment. ‘Hi, Will. Pleased to meet you.’

‘There you go,’ he said softly. ‘How does it feel?’

‘A bit strange. I liked Matthew.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ he said. His eyes had crinkled up at the corners but his smile was one of deep sadness.

‘Well, I’ll give it a go,’ she said.

‘I appreciate it.’

‘And you shaved your head,’ she said, motioning to where his hair had once been.

He touched it like he’d forgotten. ‘Oh, yeah. What do you think?’

‘I mean, you look different. But it really suits you.’ She smiled. ‘Though isn’t it normally the other way around? You grow a beard …’

‘Yeah, but that’s so obvious, isn’t it? Like wearing a false nose.’

‘Or sunglasses,’ she said, nodding at the pair he’d set down on her coffee table.

He laughed. ‘Never without them.’

‘Well, they’re nice ones. Clearly you didn’t find them in the false nose shop.’

‘No, although I do spend a lot of time in false nose shops. I’ve found them to offer an unrivalled browsing experience.’

By now their knees were touching, but neither of them made a move to draw away.

‘So, anyway – how have you been?’ he asked her. ‘Before yesterday, I mean.’

She exhaled. Where should she start? ‘Well, I run my own catering business.’ She caught his eye. ‘No restaurant yet, but …’

His eyes glistened with apparent admiration. ‘Wow. I’m so pleased for you, Jess.’

To anyone else, her career choice might have sounded pedestrian, but she knew that to Matthew – Will – it meant everything.

‘Is it going well?’

Jess nodded, trying not to think about the raft of bills that had landed on her doorstep only this morning. She’d been wondering more and more recently if self-employment was invariably the road to financial ruin – but, as yet, her love of the work had managed to make up for all the worry. ‘I mean, there’s a lot of competition, and I have overheads, but … yes. I really enjoy it.’

‘And …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’

There was the lightest of pauses, and she realized that he had probably seen her with Zak at some point. ‘Yes,’ she said, but then hesitated.

She tried to read his expression as he waited patiently for her to elaborate. Could she detect a shred of disappointment in his face?

Why could she think of nothing else to say?

‘What does he do?’ Will prompted her.

‘Oh, he’s a bit different to me. Actually, he’s very different to me. He’s an A & E doctor in London.’

‘Long commute.’

‘Oh, we don’t live together. I mean …’ She paused. ‘You know. He has a place in London. I’m here.’

‘No kids?’

She exhaled through her nose with what she realized too late might have sounded like derision. ‘No.’

He was waiting again, perhaps expecting more detail, but having none she felt able to offer him, instead she said, ‘So
what do you do now?’ She paused cautiously. ‘For a living, I mean.’

The question hung uncomfortably in the air as it left her mouth.

‘I homeschool Charlotte,’ he said, meeting her eye. ‘Not a huge fan of the British education system myself.’

Jess had expected, of course, that he would no longer be a school teacher, but somehow to hear it still felt unjust – shocking, even. ‘You were …
such
a good teacher.’

‘Well. I was good at the maths.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Thank you.’ After a beat, he appeared to swallow the thought away. ‘Okay – can I say something completely naff and crap?’

She nudged him with her knee. ‘Always.’

He laughed. ‘What?’

‘No! I don’t mean … you’re always naff and crap.’ She smiled. ‘I just meant, you can say anything you like. Of course.’

He looked down at his hands. ‘You’re exactly how I imagined you to be, all these years later.’ He winced. ‘There you go.’

‘That’s not crap,’ she reassured him.

He made a face. ‘Naff?’

She smiled. ‘That depends. How did you imagine me to be?’

‘Oh, it gets naffer. We should stop there.’ He shook his head and looked across at her then as if she fascinated him, the same way he used to all those years ago. ‘This is crazy. I thought I was going to come round here and quite possibly make everything ten times worse, and then I see you and it’s …’ He paused. ‘Just how it always was.’

She smiled. ‘Well, that’s a good thing.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ he mumbled.

A short silence fell between them, like something decompressing.

‘Jess,’ he said then, his voice low. ‘I wanted to say as well … I heard about your mum. I’m really sorry.’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t be. I mean, it feels like a long time ago now.’

A couple of moments passed. ‘Really? I bet it doesn’t.’

Glancing down into her lap, she said nothing. He was right, of course. It was just a line she trotted out, little more than a pleasantry, like discussing a milestone birthday or the worsening dementia of a distant relative.

Matthew shook his head, as if he was trying to dislodge any ancient memories that may have been lurking there. ‘Sorry. Change of subject?’

Jess nodded quickly and, with some effort, got to her feet. ‘So now that you’re here …’

‘… like you’ve been expecting me.’

She crossed the room. ‘Well, you know.’ She leaned over and flicked the wheel on her iPod, parked in its dock above the inglenook. ‘You’ll never guess what’s on my playlist.’

‘Hang on. Let me think. Enya? Kenny Rogers? Richard Marx?’

She caught his eye and smiled. ‘Yep, all of those – but also this. Trust me, you’ll like it.’ She pressed ‘play’. The sound of Morrissey filled the room.

Will snorted. ‘Holy shit, Jess. I can’t believe forcing The Smiths on you actually worked. Although you are aware that you’re starting to show your age?’

‘You’ve got ten years on me.’

He looked at her for a moment like he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. ‘Yeah,’ he said eventually, his voice slightly heavier. ‘Funny, isn’t it, how no one would bat an eyelid about that now.’

A slow, sorry pause descended.

‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked him gently. ‘Sorry. I’m normally a much more competent host, but … you threw me off a bit.’

He hesitated. ‘I would love to, Jess, but –’ Reluctantly, he checked his watch. ‘I should probably get going.’

Jess tried to arrange her face in a way she hoped would hide the hard thump of disappointment she felt. Not in a million years when she woke up this morning would she have predicted this scenario: being face-to-face with Matthew Landley in her living room, getting to know him all over again. She didn’t want it to end.

‘You finally got your tattoos,’ she said as he stood up.

He looked down at his arms. ‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Let’s see.’ Stepping forward, Jess had to make a conscious effort to concentrate on the artwork, given that Will had tanned skin and muscles not dissimilar to a
Men’s Health
cover shot. His left arm bore the image of an elaborate, ancient tree with an inscription inked across its branches; around the other was wrapped an intricate labyrinth in an Aztec design.

‘What does it say?’ she asked, gesturing to the lettering around the tree on his left arm. She couldn’t quite make it out.

He glanced down and paused.

‘
It can’t be night for ever
.’

She swallowed, surprised by how suddenly the tears rose in her eyes. She blinked them back. ‘That’s lovely,’ she managed, but then, without warning, her bad leg gave way, taking her sharply back down on to the sofa.

Will squatted in front of her and gripped both her hands with his. ‘Jess …’ For a few seconds it almost looked as if he might cry too.

Smudge chose this moment to stuff his head between their linked arms so that just his face was showing, his wet nose quivering and tail wagging optimistically. Will started laughing and dropped Jess’s left hand to fondle Smudge’s head. The other held on to her. ‘He’s lovely.’

‘He’s a rescue. I think he had a bad start. Mind you, I think I’m pretty lucky. Most collies have a screw loose somewhere or other, but Smudge is near-enough perfect.’ She smiled. ‘Although …’ She started laughing.

His eyes crinkled at the edges again, his face angled up towards hers. ‘What?’ he smiled.

She took a breath. ‘When I first got him, I thought he was deaf.’