After the Lie: A gripping novel about love, loss and family secrets (9 page)

‘I don’t eat fish.’

Tomaso picked up the breadbasket and handed it to me. ‘Can’t have you wasting away. Please let me see if they’ve got any non-fish alternatives for you.’

‘No, I’m fine, honestly.’ I really was the dinner companion equivalent of a bag of salad a week past its sell-by date.

Janine spotted an opportunity to turn the conversation back to her. She butted in with a list of one hundred and one reasons to eat fish. ‘Salmon is brilliant for your complexion. Tomaso, I guarantee, if you eat it every day, you’ll have the skin of a twenty-five-year-old.’

Tomaso turned his bright eyes on her. ‘How do you know that I’m not twenty-five? I hope you’re not implying that I’m in my thirties?’

Janine laughed. ‘You’ve got one of those ageless faces. Hard to tell how old you are.’

I was surprised how much I wanted to know. I’d learnt to be disinterested in details about other people over the years. I didn’t want to encourage curiosity. I had enough trouble adjusting the facts for the people who mattered. I didn’t have the energy to weave a story for ones who didn’t.

Tomaso held his hands up in surrender. ‘I’m thirty-two.’

Janine giggled. ‘You’re just a youngster. I’m thirty-five.’

I didn’t volunteer anything. For me, thirty-two was when Jamie was five and I could still choose his friends for him.

‘Hey, Lydia, you’ve gone serious all of a sudden. Go on, you’re going to tell me that you’re really seventy-five, aren’t you?’

I grinned but didn’t respond. I pushed my chair slightly further back so Janine could focus her attention on Tomaso without breathing in my ear. It was just like being back at school on the edge of the swishy blonde girls group. I couldn’t fake belonging.

I wasn’t going to tell him anything.

I
sat
through the rest of dinner offering just enough comment and eye contact to appear polite. I kept looking at my watch, wondering what time the awards would finish, how long it would be before I could escape back to my bedroom.

We duly clapped the best start-up, best food business, best entrepreneur under thirty. Tomaso caught my eye and mimed dropping off to sleep. I suppressed a smile. Then the lights dimmed, a drum roll sounded and the compère announced the Surrey Business Star of the Year, as voted by customers.

‘Lydia Rushford, for her event planning business.’

The spotlight swung round and lit me up. Tomaso nudged me. ‘Go on. That’s you.’

I couldn’t stand up. I sat there blinking in the light as the applause died away. I was aware of the compère squinting out into the audience with a sense of impatience, as though someone had called out a raffle ticket number and no one was making any moves to claim the hamper.

Tomaso got up and pulled me to my feet. He propelled me to the edge of the stage, then shoved me gently up the stairs. The compère shook my hand, gave me a bottle of champagne and turned me to face the camera so the photographer could take our picture. I had to make a conscious effort not to look down. The caption would probably read ‘Lydia Rushford: Most Miserable Winner of Surrey Business Star of the Year’.

I bolted off the stage, relieved to see that Tomaso was waiting for me.

‘You like the limelight then?’

‘Love it.’ I handed him the champagne when we sat down.

He glanced at my wedding ring. ‘Don’t you want to take it home to drink with your husband?’

‘No, it’s your reward for escorting me. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known I’d won an award.’

‘Why? I’d bloody love to win something for my business. Shall I open this? You should be celebrating.’

‘Feel free. I’m just popping to the loo.’

I blundered into the Ladies and leant against the wall, feeling the coolness of the concrete against my back. The flushed and tousled reflection in the mirror didn’t look like me at all. Without the pressure of everyone staring and clapping, it began to sink in. I’d won. Lydia Rushford, prodigal daughter, had made a success of something. Mark would be so proud.

I phoned him to tell him my news but I sensed he wasn’t really listening. He sounded distracted and harassed. ‘Good. Well done.’

I heard the tap of the computer keyboard.

‘Are you working? Are the children there?’ I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice.

‘I’m just going through some figures. Without the McAllisters, they’d be pretty depressing.’

Piss off with the McAllisters.

‘Are the kids all right?’

‘I’ve been trying to help Izzy with her Shakespeare project. You don’t know where that book is that we had on the Globe, do you?’

‘Have you looked in the bookcase in the sitting room? Otherwise it might be in the attic.’ Mark’s ability to find anything that wasn’t waving a big neon hand was limited.

‘We’ll have a look. Met anyone interesting?’

‘Not yet, but it’s still early.’ I knew he wanted to know if I’d done some kitchen PR.

He sighed.

‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.

I heard him shoo Izzy out of the room. ‘I need to talk to you about Jamie.’

‘What about him?’ My mind was running down all the possible avenues of doom.

‘I’m worried about how much you obsess about what he’s doing. I know you still think of him as your little boy but he is sixteen. He should be allowed to have a girlfriend without you reading his private messages. Let go a bit. He’ll never tell us anything again if he realises we’re spying on him.’

The great rush of fury I felt at his words made me tighten my grip on the phone in case I hurled it to the ground.

‘It’s not about letting go. I have a fundamental problem with him hanging around with that conniving little monkey, trying to get him round to her house when she knows the bloody McAllisters are going to be out.’

‘What
is
your problem with them?’ The anger in Mark’s voice surprised me. ‘All I can see is two perfectly decent, hard-working people with a daughter that our son happens to have taken a shine to. Plus they are making a significant contribution to our finances.’

I couldn’t help myself. ‘Oh yes, let’s not forget Sean McAllister’s great big wallet buying his way into our lives.’

Mark went silent. Then he spoke gently. ‘Lyddie. Don’t be like this. If I earn a bit more money, you won’t have to work so hard.’

‘I don’t care about working hard. I don’t want to be a little housewife, sitting at home, waiting for her husband to bring home the bacon. I love my job. I just don’t want to see you arse-licking round the McAllisters, all ‘yes sir, no sir’, thinking the sun shines out of their backsides when their little slapper of a daughter is leading our son astray.’

Mark cut me short. ‘I’ve got to help Izzy. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I stared at my mobile. That was the second time he’d put the phone down on me in one day.

The brief spark of pride I’d felt about my award was snuffed out. Sean McAllister was like a poisonous gas seeping through my life, contaminating every last thing that was precious to me, however hard I tried to plug the gaps.

I headed back towards my table, irrationally furious that Mark was making judgments about me based on only a fraction of the facts. The music had started. Tomaso and Janine were on the floor, dancing to
Brown Eyed Girl
. Janine was all taut stomach and fluid moves. Tomaso had that confident air of someone who’d captained the A-team. And he could dance. As soon as Tomaso saw me, he beckoned me over. I waved him away.

‘Don’t tell me. You don’t like dancing either.’

There was something in the way he said it that made me want to surpass his expectations of me. ‘I’ll dance to the next one.’ I prayed it wouldn’t be something like
Come On Eileen
.

I sat back down, relieved that all the others were on the dance floor. Tomaso had commandeered some champagne flutes. I filled one of them, did a silent cheers to myself and took a gulp as
The Way You Look Tonight
came on and Tomaso arrived at the table.

‘I can’t dance to that. Too slow.’

‘You promised.’

I was someone who watched handbags and drinks, not someone who got close enough to non-husband men to smell their aftershave. But Tomaso wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘Jesus, Lydia, you’re not going to make me walk back across the dance floor, turned down by the most famous person in the room? The shame of it.’

Tomaso looked spectacularly unconcerned but I took his hand anyway. His skin was soft, much softer than Mark’s, which was calloused and dry from working on wood all day.

He pulled me towards him. Close enough that I could feel the warmth emanating from his chest. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d danced with a man. Probably with Mark on our wedding day. My arms were rigid on Tomaso’s waist.

He leaned forward. ‘You don’t have to do the robot stance. It’s just a dance, you can relax.’

I looked over at Janine, who was swaying away to the music, chatting and giggling with the only other guy under forty on our table. I bet Tomaso was wishing he’d asked her instead. Slow dancing was such an intimate thing to do, so un-British. We spent all that time respecting personal space, saying sorry if we accidentally touched someone’s hand, then deliberately put ourselves in a position where we could smell each other’s breath. I hoped I wasn’t fogging out a big cloud of garlic.

Tomaso was leaning back slightly, watching me and smiling. ‘You’re a funny woman. I’d be standing on the table, shouting about my business and getting my face splashed all over the place if I’d won the award.’

‘That’s not really my style.’

‘What is your style?’

I longed to be witty, but pedestrian won the day. ‘I haven’t got a style. I don’t like being the centre of attention.’

‘Why not?’

Just briefly, for one mad second, I considered telling him.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘When we’ve finished dancing, you can tell me.’

There was something so cheeky about him, I didn’t do my usual haughty silence. ‘I might just do that.’

Tomaso looked like a bloke who wouldn’t worry about unseemly behaviour captured in a brown-tinged photo thirty years ago. When he was a toddler. Jesus. He probably wasn’t even out of nappies when I was busy exploring Sean McAllister. Still, he’d have been part of the Facebook generation in his twenties. He’d probably posted his own pictures of himself, drunk, kissing girls, smoking weed, even. Did people in their thirties call it weed anymore? I wondered if he had a wife or a girlfriend. He didn’t have a ring.

He took my hands off his waist, pulled me in closer and spoke into my ear. ‘You smell lovely.’

I froze. This wasn’t a normal, friendly woman-man conversation. Even my gnat-sized men-on-the-prowl antennae were beginning to quiver. I didn’t answer. I waited for my flight mechanism to kick in but it seemed to have flapped off already.

‘Thanks.’

He let out a burst of laughter that made me giggle as well. It had to be the champagne.

‘What’s the opposite of an open book?’ He cocked his head on one side, his eyes crinkling up with amusement. ‘A closed secret?’

Something in the word ‘secret’ sparked the essence of a memory. Sean. Sean kissing my neck, telling me the photo of us naked would be his ‘delicious secret’.

I forced my brain away from that image. I didn’t want the song to finish, though the thought that Mark wouldn’t like me dancing with Tomaso was making me acutely aware of where our bodies were touching. Or maybe he wouldn’t care? I’d never seen him jealous. I’d never given him cause to be. As the last notes petered out, Tomaso took my hand and led me to the table. Janine caught up with us. ‘Got the champagne open?’

I poured her a glass. She was much nearer Tomaso’s age. She lifted the glass to us both. ‘Here’s to success!’

‘So, Janine, what beauty treatments do you have for men? You know us Italians like a bit of pampering,’ Tomaso said.

She giggled. ‘Everything, really. Facials, massages, waxing.’

Tomaso laughed. ‘Waxing? No thank you. What do you wax?’

Janine leaned forward and patted Tomaso on the knee. ‘Backs and toes are pretty popular. And of course, back, sack and crack. But I don’t have to do many of those, thank god.’

Tomaso shuddered theatrically. ‘That must be a bit embarrassing.’

‘For that particular treatment, I only take men recommended to me by their wives or girlfriends. I don’t accept men who just wander in off the street.’

‘So if I came in, you’d chase me away with a broom?’

Janine didn’t look like she’d even wave a feather duster. More like produce an industrial-strength magnet and suck his belt off. She’d managed not to look at me once during the whole exchange, none of that polite glancing over to include the person supplying the champagne in the conversation. Two could play at that. I filled my glass right to the brim, topped up Tomaso’s, then feigned shock that there was only the tiniest dribble left for her.

I took a huge swig to disguise the fact that I had deliberately left her out. Tomaso offered to buy her a drink. I immediately felt petty and silly. ‘Let me go to the bar. What would you like, Janine?’

She got up. ‘I’ll go, I need the loo anyway.’

She tottered off in her fabulous heels. I tucked my feet, clad in sensible sandals, under the chair. Tomaso leaned forward. ‘Are you staying at the hotel?’

‘Yes, I’ll make a move soon.’

‘Don’t do that. Stay for another half an hour.’

I was sure Janine, at least, considered me a big gooseberry, the dullard in the way of her destiny.

‘No, I’m going to get off. Nice to meet you.’ I stuck out my hand.

As I stood up, the champagne made me sway and I clutched at his hand for support. Thank god for Granny Grimble shoes.

‘You okay? Let me walk you to the lift.’

Tomaso walked close to me. Even though I wasn’t looking at him, I could feel his masculinity, right there, solid. The blond hair combined with his dark skin was unusual and people turned to look at him. He introduced me to everyone, making progress across the room slow. My eyes were feeling heavy. My brain seemed to be one step behind my mouth.

In the foyer, the cool air hit me. By the lift, he asked, ‘Have you got your key?’

‘Somewhere.’ I opened my handbag. I scrabbled under the camera, Izzy’s hairbrush, Jamie’s rugby mouthguard, my diary. In my haste, I managed to dislodge the pile of promotional leaflets Mark had given me, which scattered all over the floor.

Tomaso bent down to pick them up. He looked up at me. ‘You should have given these out when I was introducing you to people.’

‘I know, I’m hopeless at all this publicity stuff.’

He stood up. Close. Far too close. ‘I’ll give you some lessons.’

I felt a rush of heat. Tomaso took my arm. ‘Where’s that key?’

I handed it to him. The lift doors opened. We got in. I leaned against the back wall. ‘Floor three.’ My voice sounded little. I knew Tomaso would be studying me with amusement as I fixed my eyes into the top corner, as though checking for spiders. A dull ring announced the third floor. I put my hand out for my key. He dangled it out of my reach. When the lift doors opened, one of the organisers was standing there, formal in his bow tie and dinner jacket. Even though my only crime was being in a lift with another guest, I still muttered a good evening and hurried up the corridor. Tomaso was striding behind me. When I reached my room, he wiggled the key in front of me. ‘So, are you going to let me in for a brief publicity lesson, my little closed book?’

‘No. I’m sure you’ve had quite enough of my company for one day.’ I tried to sound assertive. Inviting strange men into my hotel room would definitely fall into the category of ‘things wives should not do’. But then my whole life was a catalogue of things I shouldn’t do – or rather, shouldn’t have done. I’d just pretend to be that rebellious woman for a moment longer. I’d flirt with a reinvented me, with an imagined past of discarded stilettos, barefoot in a ball dress, laughing in the rain, kissing under archways, a touch Parisian in attitude, a fraction mysterious, carefree as to where the night, or indeed life, might take me.