This Secret We're Keeping (7 page)

Will laughed. ‘What? How come?’

‘Because he wouldn’t sit or do anything I asked him to! I actually took him to the vet’s and asked them to test his hearing.’ She smiled and covered her face with her free hand, embarrassed at the memory. ‘They thought it was hilarious.’

He looked at her for a couple of seconds before reaching up and peeling her fingers from her face. ‘It is. But that’s what makes you so lovely.’ She swallowed and for a moment he held her gaze; then he seemed to check himself. ‘Sorry. I should go.’ He let her hands drop gently and stood up. Smudge looked up at Will, tail wagging, clearly convinced that some sort of outdoor-based activity was about to begin.

‘Can I say something weird and annoying?’ Will said, pausing by the front door.

‘Is it to do with not telling anyone?’

He smiled grimly. ‘Oh God. Was I always this predictable?’

‘Well, back in the mists of time –’

He held up a hand. ‘Don’t answer that. I don’t need to be reminded of how much I’ve aged.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, gesturing towards the iPod, ‘I’m right there with you now.’

He started laughing then. ‘Remember that time you thought Morrissey was Neil Morrissey out of
Men Behaving Badly
?’

She smiled. ‘No.’

‘Oh, come on. Don’t be embarrassed.’ And as he spoke he took her into a hug again, this one tighter and much sadder than the last because they both knew it was the one before they would have to say goodbye. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured eventually, reluctantly pulling away. ‘Highly inappropriate. You see, nothing changes.’

‘I think after everything that’s happened, we’ve probably earned ourselves a hug at least. Don’t feel too guilty.’

‘Yeah, you’re right.’

She looked up at him. ‘So, maybe we could go for a drink or … ?’

He allowed his eyes to rest against hers for a couple of seconds. ‘You know how I said before I was feeling a bit head-fucked?’

She nodded.

‘Sort of doesn’t really cover it now.’

‘Well, if it helps – me too.’

He took a moment to gather himself. ‘Right. I need to go home and try to remember how to cook fish fingers, chips and beans for my seven-year-old.’

And then, without warning, there it was: that familiar little glimmer of grief and shame. She swallowed it quickly, before it could snag in her throat and take hold. ‘Of course,’ she managed with a weak smile.

‘Well,’ he said, looking down at her again, and now he
really appeared to be fighting off tears, ‘it’s been great to see you again, Jess.’

Then he walked through the door and down the front path, away from the cottage and out of her life once more.

Tuesday
morning, and Jess was returning from a dog walk at the beach with a friend.

They parted ways at the gate to the car park, whereupon Jess hesitated momentarily before cutting right along the line of trees whispering gently against the subtle morning breeze.

Breathing in the heady and familiar scent of the surrounding greenery transported her back seventeen-and-a-half years: breath freezing, teeth chattering, watching for headlights, stomach turning over and over in excitement.

It took her twenty minutes or so to reach the bird hide. She had forgotten how far it was and her bad leg was slowing her down, so by the time she got there a faint film of sweat clung to her skin. Looping Smudge’s lead over a fence post, she paused to steady herself, took a breath and reached for the door. Her anticipation was so intense that she almost collided with someone coming out, a grey-haired man in a green birder’s waistcoat. He looked her up and down. ‘Few redshank. Couple of lapwing,’ he grunted.

‘Thanks,’ she murmured.

Once inside, ensconced there in the gloom, she was alone. That garden shed smell was so familiar and took her so keenly back that she felt tears spring to her eyes.

She reached out and lifted a shutter, fastening it at the top, and took a breath as she surveyed the grazing marsh in front of her. She ran her hand along the bench she was sitting on, fingering the grain of the wood. Through the sharp slice of daylight in the darkness came the faint call of birds
from the marsh as they bobbed their way across the sun-baked ground. The air was warm.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to her that made her heart pound. She got to her feet and stood on tiptoe, extending an arm and groping around in the rafters above her head. To her delight, her fingers soon closed around something hard, wedged into the space at the rafters’ footing where the roof joined the wall. With some effort, she hauled herself up on to the bench to get a better grip on the object, tugging to loosen it.

Eventually it sprang free, though the force of her pull nearly sent her spiralling backwards. Her leg pounding, she grabbed on to a rafter to steady herself before looking down to inspect her prize, sitting comfortably against the thick white scar transecting her palm.

It was an ordinary torch of black plastic that had remained hidden up there in the rafters for nearly eighteen years.

She half smiled and flicked the switch, but the battery had long since died.

Her phone rang as she reached the car.

‘Jessica? It’s Natalie – Natalie White.’

A brief pause followed, and for a moment Jess thought Natalie might qualify her opener by saying,
You know – Natalie from the car accident?
Her inflection was smooth like butter, the sort of tone she probably used to introduce herself before going in for the kill over unpaid invoices. Jess felt her stomach contract with something halfway between fight and flight as she braced herself to be strongly warned against enlisting legal expertise, and most specifically the sort that did a good line in fake cricked neck claims.

They had exchanged telephone numbers in the aftermath of the accident, though not face-to-face. The food fair’s
stewards, having been issued with bumper packs of craft beers in lieu of sterling for their time, had found themselves able to agree at lightning speed that Jess was unequivocally at fault and Natalie not a woman to be crossed. For the purposes of the accident book, they had dithered temporarily at the end of their shift to ensure that party details were swapped, after which they had all legged it out of the first aid tent and back across the grass to their cars, roaring off in convoy down the driveway without so much as handing in their tabards or swerving to avoid no-waiting cones.

So Jess had received a folded piece of paper headed
Will Greene
, which she’d propped up next to her bedside lamp. Only last night, unable to sleep, she’d struck a soft line through his name in pencil and written
Matthew Landley
instead.

Finally, squinting against the sunlight, she found her voice. ‘Natalie, hello. How are you?’

Natalie sounded as if she was forcing a smile down the phone. ‘Wanting to see how
you
are, of course.’

Jess flushed momentarily with guilt as she considered replying with the truth:
Thinking non-stop about your boyfriend
. But she opted to go with a slightly less confrontational response by offering Natalie an update on her wounded thigh tissue instead.

Natalie, however – clearly a woman for whom rhetorical questions were a mark of social competence – simply rattled on across the top of her. ‘We’re having a bit of a party on Saturday. Nothing fancy, just a get-together so we can meet some other people in the village. Convince them we’re not ghastly second homeowners.’ She spoke airily, without a trace of irony. ‘Anyway, we’re looking for a caterer.’

Jess wondered perhaps if Natalie had forgotten the car accident after all. There followed an expectant pause, during
which Jess felt sure she could discern the impatient tapping of fingernails on the other end of the line.

Natalie finally made an intake of breath that was verging on brusque, as if she was rarely expected to qualify her demands. ‘I’ve been asking around, and you come highly recommended. Your friend Philippe assures me there’s no one better. Short notice, I know, but would you be up to it?’

Jess hesitated. She had a christening already planned for Sunday, and had earmarked Saturday for prepping. But it seemed ungracious to decline off the back of glowing recommendations – and, right now, she needed all the work she could get. ‘What time?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Seven? You’d be doing us a huge favour. With all this building work to coordinate I simply don’t have the time to be messing around with canapés.’

Forced to assume that Will’s input to this decision had either been declined or overruled, Jess knew that either scenario made accepting unwise. But her desperation to see him again was too strong for logic to prevail. ‘Yes, okay,’ she said impulsively, making a quick mental timetable of how she’d fit it all in.

She realized the offer was probably just a hasty appendage to the money Natalie had already persuaded Will to give her – another way to try and soften the blow of a bumper to the leg. In negotiations of a difficult nature, Jess suspected that Natalie was always firmly in the driving seat.

‘Wonderful. I’ll text you some ideas. Right, must dash – Charlotte’s late for horse riding. And where’s her father been for the past half an hour? Standing in the power shower singing at the top of his lungs like he’s sodding Pavarotti!’

Lucky you
, Jess couldn’t help thinking – not that she had a
particular weakness for operatic tenors. But the pang of envy she felt was quickly replaced by the reassuring thought that she was, at least, going to see Will again.

‘Don’t
do it, Jess.’

Jess and Anna were in Anna’s flat above Beelings, the four-star hotel she owned with her husband, Simon. Jess had been slightly thrown on her arrival to find the living room aglow with candles and whale song reverberating off the walls, with Anna’s ancient fish tank restocked and repositioned in front of the dormant fireplace. There was incense burning and someone had even popped back to the 1990s to dust off a Lava Lamp. The room now resembled the sort of shop that peddled crystals, tarot cards and cotton skirts embroidered with mirrors – all Anna needed was to swap her cashmere pyjamas for a kaftan and she probably could have started inviting guests to pop up for impromptu palm readings before their à la carte.

But Anna, appearing conversely studious and determined in Buddy Holly glasses with her hair scraped back into a practical topknot, had justified this bizarre home décor refresh by claiming it was all for the benefit of her fallopian tubes. Jess suspected this to mean she was experiencing mild internal hysteria about the fact that, as they spoke, a fertilized egg was quite possibly embarking on the slow and perilous journey towards her womb, where it would then be required to find a suitable toehold before clinging doggedly to the cliff face of her uterus for the next nine months.

Anna had donated her sofa to the cause of Jess’s bad leg, which was now elevated at forty-five degrees by an armrest
and several cushions. The arrangement kept making her dress slip up along her angled thigh, inducing sympathetic flinching from Anna every time the injury became exposed. By now it was so swollen and black, it could have passed for gangrenous.

Anna was sitting cross-legged in front of the fish tank, its silver light bestowing her with a sort of watery halo. She had cracked open a bottle of sparkling grape juice, which they were sharing now along with some tart tangerines and a difference of opinion.

‘It’s work,’ Jess was insisting, wincing through a mouthful of too-sharp citrus flesh. ‘I’m hardly in a position to turn it down at the moment. And it’s an opportunity to make contacts.’ Smaller jobs like private parties and the occasional house-warming kept her ticking over in late autumn and the first few months of every year, when work for larger events tended to dry up.

‘Er, you turned down catering for that crazy lady with seven dogs,’ Anna pointed out.

‘There’s a clue in there somewhere.’

‘I thought you had a christening Sunday.’

‘Well, this is Saturday. I can do both.’

‘Putting yourself out for Mr Landley already, I see,’ Anna remarked with a smile, though the tone of her rebuke wasn’t entirely jovial.

‘It’s just a good opportunity,’ Jess reiterated.

‘Don’t you think it’ll be a bit weird though? You know – being at his house with his wife and daughter, surrounded by people?’ Anna scratched her nose and popped a tangerine segment into her mouth, wide-eyed as if to pretend she wasn’t asking leading questions.

‘Actually, they’re not married.’

Anna appeared to consider this for a moment or two.
‘Well,’ she said eventually, ‘they have a daughter. So they’re as good as. And what about Zak – have you told him?’

‘No. As far as Zak’s concerned, this is just another catering job.’ Jess slid Anna a meaningful glance. ‘As far as
you’re
concerned, this is just another catering job.’

‘And you? Let me guess – just another catering job?’

‘Yep,’ Jess said quickly, ignoring the urge to hesitate.

Anna’s face disagreed, but she let it go. ‘So Matthew really is back then? For good?’

Jess shook her head. ‘Just for a few months. They bought a holiday home down the road. They’re doing it up.’

Anna smiled then like she had some positivity to impart, and began attempting to steer Jess’s thoughts firmly away from Will by enthusing about Zak. ‘For what it’s worth, I think Zak is perfect for you, Jess. I know he has his faults, but who doesn’t? He’s devoted to you, and he likes all the same things you do. He’s committed. What more could you want?’

Admittedly Anna had always been fond of Zak – but Jess couldn’t help wondering if this gushing endorsement would have been
quite
so urgently delivered had Matthew not made his recent reappearance. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’ she asked her, though she suspected she knew what the answer would be.

‘I thought you might need reminding. Ahead of – oh, I don’t know – Saturday night.’

Jess looked down at her hands. ‘Seriously. It’s not a date, Anna, it’s business.’

Anna narrowed her eyes like she was trying really hard to pick out a path through Jess’s impenetrable bullshit, before suddenly brightening. ‘Ooh, speaking of dates. Tell me all about Burnham Manor,’ she said excitedly, presumably to flag Zak’s appreciation of fine food as another of his many plus points. ‘I’m jealous.’

‘It was … nice,’ Jess conceded. ‘We had a nice time. Very posh, but … it gave me lots of ideas.’

‘Got any soppy photos for me?’

‘They don’t like it when you whip your phone out in places like that. They think you’re doing food porn.’

‘It’s so perfect for an anniversary,’ Anna murmured dreamily.

Jess nodded. ‘They wrote “Happy Anniversary” on our dessert plates in coulis.’

Anna made a melting face. ‘Romantic. So when’s he next over?’

‘Sunday,’ Jess replied through a mouthful of tangerine. ‘We’re going to dinner with his parents at the White Horse.’

‘Which one?’

‘Brancaster.’

‘And when he asks what you got up to the night before, you’re going to say … ?’

‘
Catering
,’ Jess insisted firmly. Matthew Landley was one subject she and Anna were never going to agree on, but that was nothing new: they’d been arguing about him for nearly eighteen years. ‘Let’s talk about you,’ she suggested instead, taking another sip of grape juice and imagining it was Prosecco, which was made slightly easier by the fact that Anna had decanted it into champagne flutes.

Anna gave a short sigh. ‘Well, let’s just say if one more person advises me to “let fate take its course”, I shall be striking them over the head very forcefully with this bottle.’

Jess smiled. ‘You, let fate take its course? Who are these people?’ Telling Anna to stop worrying was like telling a camel to stop stockpiling fluid. Some things were just down to DNA.

‘Do you remember Claire Bartlett, from school?’ Anna
asked Jess, absent-mindedly constructing a mini-Jenga tower on her knee with the tangerine peel. ‘I bumped into her by the pool yesterday.’

Jess attempted to recall. ‘I think so. Was she a goth?’

‘Ha! Not any more. She was doing Aqua Zumba in full make-up and a Boden tankini. Anyway, she couldn’t wait to tell me she’s had triplets.’

‘What’s a Boden tankini?’ Jess wondered, bemused.

‘Never mind. The point is, Claire said having the triplets was all down to yoga. She’d been trying to get pregnant for two years, then she started the yoga, and –’

‘Three came along at once?’

‘Yes! Apparently it’s all about opening and toning the pelvis, reducing stress and providing inner balance for a calm and detached mind. And cleansing the system, obviously. Hence the fruit and …’ She cast a slightly resentful glance the grape juice bottle. ‘Anyway, Claire put us in touch with her yoga teacher. She’s a fertility guru, and she’s only in Thornham, so we popped round last night for a chat.’

‘What’s she like?’ Jess asked, trying to pretend that she didn’t feel a niggle of suspicion towards anyone without a medical qualification declaring themselves to be a world authority on the inner mechanics of somebody else’s reproductive system.

Anna made a little grimace that fell somewhere between excitement and trepidation. ‘Quite strict, actually. She gave us a list of rules.’

‘Rules?’

Anna nodded. ‘Yep. Like – we can’t drink any alcohol at all, and we have to eat properly and take the yoga really seriously. And Simon’s got to do it all with me. She even made us sign a disclaimer.’

‘What’s she disclaiming?’ Jess asked, suddenly envisaging
an ill-tempered female Buddha being fanned by servants with palm leaves as she beckoned desperate couples over one at a time to be assessed then slapped round the jowls with a yogic rule book.

‘Liability for us failing to get pregnant if we don’t follow the regime?’ Anna suggested with a shrug, like such a thing would be perfectly reasonable. ‘She is
amazing
, Jess. Even if she wasn’t already a fertility goddess, she has a body to
die
for.’

‘So have you,’ Jess pointed out. Anna was long-limbed and elegant, like a ballerina.

‘You should see Rasleen,’ Anna said meaningfully.

Jess shaved a few stone off her imaginary Buddha. ‘Is she Indian?’

Anna shook her head and frowned. ‘No, she’s from Clacton. Her real name’s Linda.’

Jess suppressed a smile. ‘Oh.’

‘I don’t know, Jess. I’ve got to do
something
,’ Anna said desperately. ‘I can’t wait another eight months before they add us to the list for IVF. And Simon’s already drawn the line at going private.’

Jess was personally of the opinion that Anna was already doing all she could. As she saw it, the monthly stress and expectation of trying for a baby was enough to drive anyone to stick their head in a vat of cut-price Merlot and stay there – yet Anna refused to allow herself any slack, punishing herself by agonizing over whether she’d ruined everything with that takeaway last Tuesday or the lager she’d indulged in two Saturdays ago.

‘You spend your whole life assuming that having babies is as simple as just having sex,’ Anna said wistfully, finally demolishing her little peel high-rise with a thumb. ‘God – just imagine if I’d got pregnant when we first started trying,
like most people do. We’d have an actual
baby
by now. A son or a daughter. Or twins.’

Jess caught her eye and they regarded one another for a few seconds. ‘Yeah,’ Jess whispered. ‘Imagine that.’

Anna looked away, and a silence fell between them as they allowed themselves to be briefly submerged in the howls and clicks of North Pacific whale song.

‘Simon thinks Rasleen’s too expensive,’ Anna said eventually. ‘He keeps telling me I’m “bound” to fall pregnant, just because my stupid sisters are all super-fertile. He says I’m being too control-freakish about everything.’

Though Anna’s two youngest sisters (she had three) were definitely not stupid, no one could deny that they were super-fertile – and to make matters worse, they’d both ended up having twins. Anna loved her nieces and nephews, but the sudden proliferation of young babies in the Baxter family meant that get-togethers and celebratory occasions were slowly turning into breeding grounds for unspoken resentments and frustration.

‘Do
you
think I’m a control freak?’ Anna asked Jess. Surrounded by the empty champagne flutes, an abundance of tangerine peel and a glow from the fish tank that could easily have passed as festive, Anna suddenly had an air of the Boxing Day blues about her.

‘Yes,’ Jess said firmly, ‘but that’s because you’re a Baxter female. Control-freakery runs in your blood.’ This was true, and (she’d recently discovered) the sole reason behind Anna’s father’s new shed, which he cryptically referred to as a ‘garden room’ and made routinely available for use by any male as an emergency bolthole during Baxter family gatherings.

‘Sorry I made you drink grape juice,’ Anna said eventually with a rueful smile.

‘No problem. Sorry I made you drink all that wine and champagne on Saturday. Don’t tell Linda.’

Anna lifted an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I think we can lay the blame for that one firmly at Matthew Landley’s door.’

There followed a pause that seemed oddly heavy.

‘Jess?’

‘Mmm?’

‘About Matthew. I know you’ll end up going to his stupid party. Be careful, won’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

Several seconds passed before Anna said quietly, ‘You know what I mean.’