The Secrets Women Keep (21 page)

‘So why don’t we?’

She had missed nearly everything he’d said. ‘I’m sorry, why don’t we what?’

‘Christ, Evie.’ She had forgotten that flash of impatience that came to him so easily, and hearing it again reminded her of at least one reason why meeting him was a bad idea.
‘I don’t know what else to say. It was so good to see you yesterday. You haven’t changed.’

Not that corny old line! She expected better of him than that.

‘What do you say?’

She hesitated. She remembered his car crammed with his belongings, his sheepish expression as he explained where he was going, struggling for self-justification. Worse, she remembered the pain
and turmoil she’d suffered for months afterwards. But now that she’d met him again, all that harboured emotion seemed so long ago. She was curious. And she wanted to experience, just
one more time, the feeling she’d had when she was with him yesterday. He’d lifted her out of the doldrums, and made her feel alive again. What was a lunch after all? A couple of hours
of catching up, of having her morale boosted, and then they would run out of things to say to one another. That would be that.

He heard her indecision. ‘So can I take that as a yes? The Murano at one? Tuesday?’

Despite being tempted by an invitation to the latest ‘in’ restaurant in town, Eve was brought up sharp by Will’s assumption that she would fall in with his plans just as she
once used to. Those days were over. Her life was different now. She glanced at her diary. Unimpressively empty the following week.

‘I’m sorry, Will. It’s not a good idea. I’m tied up next week and I’ve no plans to come to London.’

He sighed. ‘Evie. Come on.’ She could hear that he was still a man used to getting his own way. But she could be strong-willed too.

‘No. I enjoyed seeing you yesterday, but we should leave it there.’ A fleeting feeling of something akin to regret, or even longing, coursed through her.

‘Well, if you change your mind, here’s my number.’ Obviously disappointed, but he wasn’t giving up.

She scribbled down the number, resisting the overpowering temptation to change her mind. As they ended the conversation, she glanced at her notepad. It was covered in her absent-minded doodles
– hearts and stars. Leaving the phone number intact, she ripped off the bottom part of the sheet, scrumpled it up and tossed it in the bin.

Distracted from her work, she crossed to the mirror and stared at herself. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright. She messed up her hair with both hands so it looked wind-blown, youthful –
sort of. Who was she kidding? She stood sideways and studied her profile. Shoulders back and down, stomach in. Not bad. More overweight than she’d like, but passable in a good light. She
looked exactly what she was: a middle-aged woman with a family and a demanding job who had been far too easily flattered. That was what they said about first love: it was the one you never forgot.
In this case with good reason, she reminded herself. She turned her memory from that time they went skinny-dipping on Gullane beach, then made love hidden in the dunes, and forced herself to
remember the way in which he’d left her.

Back at her desk, she took a couple of contracts that had arrived in the post and began to go through them, making herself concentrate. Half an hour before Rufus was due to arrive, she brought
out the copies of the rough illustrations for his latest book and laid them out on the meeting table so they could go through them before seeing the artist on Friday. She looked around the office
to make sure that it was the sort of place that you would expect from your agent. She pulled down the blue, white and yellow striped blinds so they were exactly level a little less than halfway
down the window. At precisely twelve forty-five, the bell rang.

Rufus pounded up the stairs two at a time. He was a man in a hurry with a mind that was always rushing ahead of itself, keeping everyone else on their toes. When she heard him reach the top, she
opened the door. Every time she saw him, she was still surprised by how little he ever changed. A Peter Pan of a man who had yet to take his responsibilities in life seriously. Eve was the one rock
in his life, as opposed to the tide of women and children he left trailing adoring or angry in his wake. His hair showed no signs of going grey or thinning, and stood out on end where he’d
last run his fingers through it. Wearing jeans, trainers and a loose jacket over a checked shirt, he was still slim and relatively unlined, with the energy of a much younger man.

She imagined a momentary reticence in his hug, but dismissed the idea. They had been friends for so long, she would know immediately if anything was troubling him. ‘Come in. I’ve got
something to show you.’ She gestured towards the illustrations.

Rufus looked awkward as his eyes darted around the room, refusing to meet hers. They finally settled on his shoes. ‘Actually, I’ve seen them.’

‘But I’ve only had them since Tuesday,’ she protested, surprised. ‘I couldn’t show you before because of Dan’s memorial yesterday. Did you go to
Marie’s?’ Marie, the illustrator, had worked on all the books in his Animal Planet series, so it wouldn’t have been unusual for Rufus to visit her, although unusual of him not to
mention it.

‘No. Errm.’ He cleared his throat. ‘In fact Amy showed them to me. Marie sent copies to her too.’

‘To Amy?’ She was barely keeping up with this conversation.

‘Yes.’ He studied the nails on his left hand, moving his thumb along his fingertips before looking up. Even then he was unable to meet her shocked stare. ‘Look, Eve. We need to
talk.’

Not Rufus. Not the one client who had been with her since the beginning. They had been through so much together. Amy couldn’t have succeeded in turning him along with the others. Could
she?

Eve had an awful feeling that her day had just taken a U-turn for the worse.

R
ose sat at the table with her untouched breakfast – a bowl of porridge and a pot of tea – with one hand on the condolences book. It
had been Jess’s idea to have one at both church and hotel to make sure everyone present had the chance to contribute. She sighed. The poor child was doing all she could to alleviate her guilt
over Dan’s death. No amount of reassurance was enough to make her believe that their argument wasn’t a major contributing factor. Rose opened the book at the photo of them all, another
of her favourites, bringing with it memories of those happy family holidays when the girls were small. Dan was standing, tall and windblown, by a stone cairn in Scotland. His laughter was directed
at Rose, the photographer, while toddler Jess sat on his shoulders, arms around his head, with an eager Anna looking up at him, holding his hand. Rose ran a finger over the picture as she
remembered. Then she turned the page.

Had
she
been at the memorial? S? That thought had tormented Rose since her conversation with Eve after the theatre. If she had, would she have signed the book? She looked at the writing
on the first page – a warm memory illustrated with a smiley sun from Benny, an old friend from the days when they’d spent six months after Edinburgh crewing together on a luxury yacht
in the Caribbean. As she slowly turned the pages, the tributes came from every part of Dan’s life. But was one of them from
her
? Occasionally a Sophie, a Suzanne, a Sarah – but
these were all women whom Rose knew, admittedly some less well than others. She couldn’t imagine Daniel having an affair with any of them. But perhaps that was the point. Even the most evil
people didn’t present themselves to the world with a tail and horns. More often than not they resembled the man or woman next door. Appearances were irrelevant. He might have fallen for any
of these women. And any of them might have fallen for him.

‘What are you doing?’ Jess came into the room with Dylan fixed to her hip, his attention on a small wooden train engine in his hand. Rose was relieved to see her daughter looking
much more relaxed today. Over her nightie, she was wearing a baggy jumper that disguised her shape.

‘Just looking through this.’ Rose pushed the book across the table towards her. ‘Such a lovely thing to have.’

Jess looked relieved. ‘I’m glad. I thought having all those memories of Dad might help.’ She went to the corner of the counter and took a small carton from a stash of baby
food. Emptying the milk into a bottle that she handed to Dylan, she then sat opposite Rose with him on her knee.

‘It feels so peculiar now the memorial’s over. So final.’ She sniffed and dug around in her sleeve for a tissue.

‘Oh Jess, don’t.’ Rose got up to hug them both. Dylan reached up to try to remove her reading glasses. She took them off and slipped them in her pocket before kissing his
forehead. ‘Dad wouldn’t want you to be like this.’

Jess blew her nose. ‘I know. But I still feel it was my fault. If only we hadn’t had that stupid argument.’

‘Darling, you mustn’t. The post-mortem said it could have happened any time. I believe that and so must you.’

‘I know, I know, but all the same . . . I should have let it go. I’d already made the point by agreeing that Adam would stay behind. I shouldn’t have insisted on talking to
him. He was so angry.’ She let Dylan slide gradually to the floor, where he sank on to all fours and started pushing the train, his teeth clamped on the teat of the bottle so it swung from
his mouth.

‘There was a lot of other stuff preoccupying him too. That’s life, Jess. We mustn’t keep going over it. It was nobody’s fault.’

‘It all seemed so important. I had to make my point. And now I’ll never be able to straighten things out with him. It’s too late.’ She poured herself some tea, looking
utterly miserable. ‘Were there really other things worrying him?’

Rose knew what she needed to hear. ‘He always had a lot on his plate. That’s how he liked life. You know as well as I do that you’d have made it up within moments of your
arriving. He loved you.’ She was relieved that Jess seemed to take some comfort from that without needing to know what else was preoccupying him. ‘Look, why don’t you get dressed
while I do an egg and soldiers for Dylan, and then we can go to the park.’

When breakfast and the endless rigmarole of getting one small child and three adults ready for a winter walk was complete, they set off. At the playground, Dylan was impatient to be out of the
buggy, pulling at the straps while Jess was still unclipping him. He made an uneven beeline for the swings, with Adam and Jess in his wake.

Rose chose a bench with a view of her grandson, who was shouting and giggling as his parents manhandled him into a toddler’s swing. As they began to push him between them, his screams of
delight grew louder, mingling in her memory with those of Anna, a few years older, always wanting to go higher, struggling to stand, knees bent and straightening to push herself higher still. Then
her attention would be snagged by something going on elsewhere in the park, and she’d slow the swing and jump . . . Rose’s heart would be in her mouth as her daughter sailed through the
air, landed safely and ran off. Only once was she clipped on the back of the head by the swing and needed stitches. Jess, on the other hand, would wait to be lifted. Once there, she would sit
sedately on the swing, a stolid child, her hands tight on the chains, eyes shining but lips tight shut, content not to fly too high.

Memories.

‘Are you all right, Rose?’ Adam settled on the seat beside her as Jess took Dylan over to the baby slides. The little boy reached up to hold his mother’s hand.

‘I was miles away,’ she admitted. ‘ Remembering when the girls were tiny.’

‘Hard to imagine.’ He frowned as he took a packet of wine gums from the pocket of his overcoat and offered her one. She shook her head. He took out a green and a yellow gum, removed
a black one, popped it into his mouth and put the first two back in the wrapper. ‘Have they always got on so badly?’ His eyes were concerned.

She tucked in her scarf and wrapped her arms round herself against the cold. ‘Not as bad as this. I don’t know what’s going on between them at the moment, but I guess
it’s to do with the hotels and whether or not I decide to sell them. But it’s so soon.’

Adam gazed down at his clasped hands, tapping his thumbs together.

Rose didn’t ask him how much he knew. She had long ago learned the truth of ‘nature abhors a vacuum’. If she said nothing, he would almost certainly be drawn to fill the
silence between them. And sure enough, after a minute or two . . .

‘Anna’s being completely unreasonable about the business,’ he said. ‘She’s not seeing this from anyone’s point of view but her own.’

‘Why? What’s been going on?’ She would expect him to take Jess’s side, although this was not a conversation the two of them should be having.

‘They both overstepped the mark.’ He stroked his beard, unable to look her in the eye. ‘Jess really regrets what she said.’

‘Which was what?’ At that moment, she could see Jess sitting at the top of the slide, arms around Dylan, who was trapped in the V of her legs. As they took off, he raised his arms in
the air and shrieked with excitement.

‘Something about Anna being selfish, single and a terrible daughter. In a nutshell.’ He looked embarrassed at having said as much.

‘Oh God.’ Rose scuffed at the stones under her feet. Being charged with those qualities would really hurt Anna. She would recognise the grains of truth in there.

She felt Adam’s hand on her arm.

‘I know this might not be the best moment . . .’ He hesitated.

‘Go on,’ she said. Despite feeling that he’d already said more than enough, she knew that what he said often made sense.

But before he had a chance to say any more, a small girl tripped over in front of them, her hands and knees taking the brunt of the fall. After a second’s silence, she let out a
high-pitched shriek. Adam was on his feet immediately, picking her up, comforting, looking around for her mother. A woman was running from the other side of the sandpit, a baby under her arm, a
wooden scooter in her free hand, calling her name. ‘Ellie! It’s all right. I’m coming.’