The Secrets Women Keep (12 page)

Daniel patted her side of the bed. ‘Come on. You must be as exhausted as I am. All this entertaining. But let’s sort this out.’

Throughout their years together, Rose had followed to the letter the one piece of parental advice given to her the night before their modest registry office wedding. ‘Never go to bed on an
argument if you want a happy marriage,’ her mother had advised from the hardly exemplary bedrock of her own. Well, thought Rose, not this time, Mum. This isn’t something that can be
mended that easily.

‘Sort it out?’ She heard her voice rising. ‘How can we sort this out?’

Daniel looked alarmed. This was not what he was expecting – or used to. He ran a hand through his curls, his brow furrowed. ‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘I read that text. I read it.’ No! That was not what she had meant to say. But too late.

‘What text? What are you talking about?’ But as his hand dropped from his head to the bed, she could see that he knew.

‘You know bloody well which one. The one I brought out to you at the pool yesterday. “Miss you. Love you. Come back soon.” ’ Her voice was a shrill imitation of another
woman’s. ‘That one.’

She took a breath, feeling her heart pounding in her chest, watching his face change, the light fade in his eyes. He seemed to deflate in front of her. But it was too late to take back her
words, however much she didn’t want to have this out now. She didn’t want another shadow cast over everyone’s holiday, over their marriage. If only the clocks would wind back to
the time before she’d picked up his phone in mistake for hers. But it was too late. The words were out.

Despite his tan, his face had paled. He sat alone in their bed, looking as if he’d been turned to stone. ‘You did?’ He spoke so softly that she could barely hear him.

‘By mistake,’ she justified herself. Perhaps this was all a misunderstanding after all. ‘I thought it was my phone.’

He gave a short rueful laugh. ‘I should have taken it with me.’ He swung his legs out of bed and picked up his glasses.

‘Where are you going?’ Rose watched, astonished, as he made towards the door. He took his dressing gown from the row of heart-shaped coat hooks. ‘You can’t just walk
out.’ She ran across the room, and grabbed a handful of his pyjama lapel. ‘We’ve got to talk.’ His reaction could mean only one thing: the realisation of her worst
fears.

‘I can’t right now. I’m sorry.’ He yanked the fabric out of her hands.

Changing tactics, she dodged behind him and stood with her back pressed against the door, one hand on the latch, refusing to let him by. ‘You can’t,’ she insisted. ‘Who
is she? Who is “S”?’ To her fury, she realised she was crying, the tears blurring her vision, though not enough to prevent her seeing him flinch at the mention of the letter.

‘Shh.’ He reached out a hand to her, tentative. ‘Please don’t cry.’

‘Don’t shh me.’ Her fist banged against the door to emphasise each word. ‘Just tell me. You owe me that.’

‘I can’t talk to you when you’re so upset.’

She had never seen Daniel look so old. Even through her tears, his face was drawn, the bags under his eyes looked fuller, his jaw less defined, the lines deeper. Despite his height, he seemed to
have shrunk to half the man he had been only minutes before.

‘I’m not upset,’ she insisted, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I’m angry. Really angry. I wasn’t going to say anything until the others had gone,
but now I have, and I wish I hadn’t. But I do want to know the truth. I want to know that it’s not too late.’

‘It’s complicated.’ His voice was level, but she didn’t recognise it. ‘But you must believe me, it doesn’t change what I feel about you.’

‘But it might change how I feel about you,’ she gulped, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘Rose, trust me, please.’ He removed her hand from the latch. ‘I’m going to sleep next door tonight. We will talk, but not now. Not with everyone here. Not when
you’re like this and it’s so late. I never meant to hurt you. You know I wouldn’t do that. I’m not proud of what’s happened, but I will make it up to you somehow. I
promise. It’s not what you think.’

‘What do you mean, it’s not what I think? What is it then? Daniel, you can’t . . .’ Stunned by his refusal to talk to her, she hesitated as he opened the door.

From downstairs, the unmistakable click of the latch on the study door echoed through the stillness of the house. Eve. She was the only one of them still up. Could she have overheard? Horrified
by the idea of their private argument being shared, Rose took a step back into the room, giving Daniel the opportunity to leave it. He turned, one finger on his lips, and tiptoed next door.

This couldn’t be happening. The shock of his walking away from her was as much of a blow as his betrayal. There was no question in her mind now that that was what this was. The temptation
to go after him was almost irresistible, but trying to make him talk when he didn’t want to would only make him dig in his heels. Having been overheard by Eve was humiliating enough. She
didn’t want to make matters worse by enraging him.

Sitting on their bed, she mopped her eyes with a corner of the sheet and blew her nose on a bit of old tissue she found under her pillow. Her head was spinning, making coherent thought
impossible. What had just happened between them? What had she missed? They only ever slept apart if one of them was ill. ‘It’s not what you think.’ What could that mean? As the
rain began to beat against the windows, she fell back, eyes wide open, staring at the old-fashioned ceiling fan, trying to make sense of things.

During what seemed one of the longest nights of her life, Rose lay alternately weeping into her pillow then trying to work out what Daniel could have meant, why he hadn’t held up his hands
and confessed. But ‘never apologise, never explain’ was one of his guiding rules in life. And until now, he had never needed to. She had always trusted him completely. In fact,
they’d even joked together after parties where women had flirted with him. In her eyes, he had been the perfect husband.

How could this have happened? She went through the previous months, looking for clues, but finding nothing. Dan’s behaviour hadn’t changed. He’d been busy, spent time in the
Arthur, the hotel he had just opened in Edinburgh, with occasional visits to Trevarrick when he wasn’t in his London office at the Canonford. When he’d spoken to her, at least twice a
day, there had been no hint that anything unusual had happened. If it had, she would have known. She would have heard a change in his voice. She knew him too well. They had been looking forward to
Italy together . . . as always. She imagined Daniel lying awake on the other side of the wall, and could only hope that he was as tormented as her, and that sleep wouldn’t come easy for him
either. He would have to talk to her the next day. She would make sure they found a moment.

E
ve was up early the next morning, planning her last day in the sun. An early-morning swim would banish the slight headache that hovered behind her
right eye. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she wrestled on her ‘comfy control’ swimsuit. ‘Eight pounds lighter in eight seconds’ boasted the ad. How
anyone got the damn thing on that quick was beyond her. With a final tug she got it over her bust and slipped her left arm through the one armhole.

Throwing open the doors of the stables, she stood there disappointed. Instead of the blue sky and the heat that they banked on at this time of year – goddammit – she was confronted
by a sky thick with grey cloud that obscured the sun completely. Drops of rain shimmered on the pale blue flowers of the plumbago that grew up by the doorway and on the scorching red geraniums in
the pots beside her. Broken twigs and windfalls from the fig tree were strewn across the path where puddles had gathered between the stones. She shivered in the breeze and pulled down the bottom of
the suit; despite its body-firming and controlling properties, it did little for her bum. She returned inside to cover-up.

Terry snuffled and turned in the bed when she tiptoed into the bedroom. To her huge relief, he had been sound asleep by the time she’d finally gone to bed, so they hadn’t had to
speak. She had stayed up, determined to change her flight home. Having succeeded, the adrenalin flooding her system meant she was wide awake, so she fired off a few emails to her most precious
clients, assuring them that any rumours about her impending retirement were no more than that. She had never been more in the saddle than she was now.

In the cold light of day, she was annoyed with herself for reacting so precipitously and taking too seriously what were probably only Chinese whispers. She began to wonder whether she had been
too hasty in changing her ticket. Belinda had probably got her wires crossed in that other-worldly way she had. But Terry had wound her up, making her overreact. Too late now.

As she took a change of clothes from the wardrobe, the metal hangers rattled, waking Terry, who rolled on to his back. His arm emerged from under the sheet, then fell across her side of the bed.
‘C’m ’ere.’

Eve stopped dead. What was he suggesting? Sex? In the morning? In his dreams.

In the beginning, they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other, but that early passion had given way to babies, years of broken nights, then the morning frenzy of getting
children off to school. Once the kids could look after themselves, the two of them had taken to sleeping as long as they could, then leaping out of bed in a rush, anxious about being late for work.
The pleasures of early-morning sex had vanished along with their youth. But wasn’t reviving the flagging libido what holidays were for? She took a step towards the bed, quite tempted for
once. As she moved, the constricting powers of her swimsuit reminded her of its presence. Its removal would take for ever, killing the moment completely. Suddenly self-conscious, she stopped in her
tracks. Instead, she bent over to add her flip-flops to the armful of clothes she was holding.

His eyes half opened and he lifted his head, then dropped it back on to the pillow. ‘What’re you doing?’ His voice was muzzy with sleep.

‘Going to the house to make some coffee. Want one?’ The moment, such as it was, had definitely passed.

‘Nah,’ he muttered, rolling back on to his side with a contented groan. ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’

For minute, read hour, she thought as she went to the bathroom to get dressed. But what matter? Switching on the light, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Trim in the swimsuit, true, but
just below her right shoulder blade was a blazing brace of mosquito bites. Immediately she spotted them, they began to itch. Cursing herself for not having unknotted the mosquito net over the bed
the previous night, she wrapped her left arm round her body in a vain attempt to scratch them. Bending her right arm up her back didn’t reach either, so she resorted to using her hairbrush.
As a result, the bites itched until she was frantic. She hid the resulting welts under a loose patterned cotton kameez and pulled on the linen trousers with an elasticated waistband (a design
detail that she’d once sworn she’d never wear but that now she wouldn’t be without).

When she put her head around the kitchen door, the house was quiet. But the coffee pot when she reached for it was hot. So someone else was up. Then she remembered the raised voices she’d
heard last night, the bangs as if someone was hitting something. Daniel and Rose. In however many years she’d known them, she’d never seen them argue. And this had sounded like a
ding-dong of an argument from what she’d been able to make out.

To her slight chagrin, she recalled how, when she’d heard voices, she had put her head out of the study door, then stood at the bottom of the stairs to find out what was wrong. She
justified her behaviour as born from concern not curiosity. The sound of their bedroom door opening had sent her scurrying back to the study without having made out a word. Had she heard two doors
shut after that? The idea of her dearest friends rowing, spending the night apart, made her profoundly uneasy. But her first instincts had been right. Something was very wrong indeed.

Just then Rose appeared. Her face was drawn, her eyes puffy. ‘Morning.’ She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Weather’s rotten, but the forecast says it’ll clear by
mid morning. Orange juice?’ She took several oranges from the hanging mesh baskets in the corner of the room, laid them on the counter and pulled the juicer out from the back.

‘Bad night?’ Eve asked tentatively.

‘No more than usual.’ Rose was clipped, uncommunicative.

‘Daniel up?’ She tried again.

‘Think so. He’s probably working.’

Right on cue, Daniel appeared at the door to the garden. ‘Just been out seeing what damage the storm’s done. Doesn’t look too bad. Few branches and a couple of tiles off the
garage roof.’

His last words were drowned out by the sudden noise of the juicer.

He sounded as if it was just another day, but he looked as if he was suffering from as sleepless a night as Rose. He was unshaven, with purple smudges of shadow under his eyes, shoulders tense
as if they were carrying the cares of the world. ‘Can I help?’ he offered.

Rose ignored him and carried on with what she was doing. Daniel made a face at Eve and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, and took over the corner of the kitchen where he
could make a fresh pot. Rose’s displeasure at his interference was unspoken but clear from the slight shake of her head and the brief irritated sigh.

It was too chilly to eat outside, so she was laying breakfast at the table at the end of the room. Not that the atmosphere indoors was much warmer. Cutlery and plates were being clattered and
banged into place. A cereal packet went flying, sending cornflakes crackling on to the floor. Eve dived behind the curtain dividing the utility room from the kitchen and emerged with a dustpan and
brush. As she knelt to her task, she wondered whether she should retire until hostilities were dropped.