The Secrets Women Keep (3 page)

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mpatient for lunch to be over, Rose dipped in and out of the conversation, only responding to the remarks addressed to her then drifting off
again, wondering what would happen to their family gatherings if she and Daniel split up. She picked at her pasta and salad, nausea having taken away her appetite. The others tossed around
suggestions about what they might do over the following week like juggling balls, all of them possibilities but no one catching them: days of rest, country walks, visits to Arezzo, Cortona, San
Gimignano, Siena or Lucca and its Festival of Lights. Eventually the talk turned where it always did: towards their families.

Eve had already extolled the virtues and despaired of the vicissitudes of her own four children, Charlie, Tom, Luke and – at last, a girl – Millie. Charlie at least had a job,
whereas the twins, Tom and Luke, had sailed through school and university and emerged without a single idea of what they wanted to do in life. They depended on unpaid work experience, contacts they
hadn’t yet made and parental handouts. Millie was still at college doing a degree in media studies, whatever they were, and with as much clue about her future as her brothers had about
theirs. But she was having a good time, and that was what it was all about, wasn’t it?

The cotton kaftan that Eve was wearing, bought for Daniel on a Moroccan holiday, was far from cool – in any sense. Eve fanned herself with a frantic hand. ‘What about Jess and Anna?
What are they up to?’

‘Anna should be here soon,’ answered Daniel, glancing at his watch. ‘When’s her flight land, darling?’

‘Six thirtyish, I think,’ said Rose, picking up a knife to cut a sliver of taleggio, then changing her mind. She couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘She should be here for
supper.’ Anna’s presence would provide another welcome distraction. Her elder daughter could be relied on to assume the focus of any gathering, although often for the wrong reasons. She
could be funny, and full of ideas, like her father, but opinionated, difficult and self-centred were qualities she could assume with equal brilliance.

‘What’s she up to now?’ Eve reached across the table for the wine bottle and poured herself another glass. They all pretended not to notice the pointed way in which Terry
cleared his throat.

‘The café closed down about eighteen months ago and she’s been on a horticultural course ever since. Living in some sort of commune. At thirty!’ Rose closed her eyes for
a second. Her headache was getting worse. ‘I’d so hoped she’d be settled down with a proper job by now.’

‘Charlie mentioned that he’d seen her.’ Eve always talked about her eldest son with a dash of reverence, as if surprised that he could possibly be theirs. ‘Said she was
cooking up some scheme.’ She raised her glass to her lips, narrowing her eyes as she sipped.

Daniel groaned. ‘Now what? We’ve had the teaching, the stall, importing rugs, the café, tutoring . . .’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘She’s got the
sticking power of a used stamp. How’s Charlie’s teaching going?’

‘Oh, no worries there,’ Terry assured him quickly. ‘He loves Gresham Hall and they love him. Not what I was expecting him to do at all – rather hoped he’d follow in
my footsteps – but it’s going well.’ His paternal pride was expressed in a narrow smile that transformed his rather nondescript features, creasing his eyes into slits.

Rose understood exactly how proud her brother must be of his eldest son, her nephew. She wanted success for her own children too. There was at least some sort of security to be found there.
Though not always happiness, she reminded herself. Charlie had broken away from family expectation and pressure. Not for him the family hotel business, now run by Daniel, nor his father’s
sound accountancy profession. No, he wanted something of his own, and teaching seemed to be his thing. She had hoped once that Anna would go down that path too. After dropping out of her university
course, her elder daughter had embraced the teacher-training course that Rose had found for her with barely expressed gratitude. As soon as she’d completed it, with minimum accolades all
round, she had decided to run a market stall selling paste jewellery. Nothing that came close to a career as far as Daniel and Rose were concerned. Not, of course, that the stall lasted long. Just
as with everything else, Anna soon got bored.

‘And Jess?’ Eve’s question broke into Rose’s thoughts, but she was too slow to prevent Daniel replying.

‘Just great. Doing a wonderful job managing Trevarrick – well, deputy managing in fact, but it’s only a question of time. If only it weren’t for—’

‘Anyone for more fruit or cheese?’ interrupted Rose, fanning herself with a napkin, feeling sweat begin to prick at her forehead. She wondered how the girls would react when they
heard their parents were separating, then stopped herself. Perhaps the affair (if that was what it was) wasn’t as solid as the fragment of text implied.

‘Are you all right? You look pale.’ Eve’s words seemed to come from a distance.

‘Fine. It’s probably just the heat.’ Rose waved a hand, dismissing any thought of illness. All she wanted to do was remove herself to lie down and think. Alone.

‘I thought you said it was cooler here than last week,’ Eve accused Daniel. ‘It’s like a bloody furnace.’ She picked up her BlackBerry, which had been lying silent
on the table, and began accessing her emails.

Terry glared across the table at his wife and coughed that cough again: short but disapproving. ‘Do you have to?’

‘What?’ she complained, scrolling down a list. ‘They’re not responsible for the weather, Terry. I’m not being rude about the house. You all know I love it here. I
just like to be able to breathe, that’s all.’ She held up her arms to both sides, as if the non-existent wind would blow into her armpits, then lifted her hair from the back of her
neck.

‘You know that’s not what I mean. Can’t you leave your BlackBerry alone while we’re on holiday? Or at least when we’re all together.’

‘You are silly, darling.’ Eve smiled a taut little smile, putting all the stress on the last word. ‘They don’t mind. They know I need to keep in touch. An agent’s
on duty twenty-four seven. And I’m expecting to hear from Rufus.’ Her attention returned to the phone.

Terry shook his head but said nothing. His mouth was drawn into a thin, irritated line.

To Rose’s relief, their spat had distracted Daniel from what he’d been about to say. She couldn’t bear another rant about Adam: unreconstructed hippie, ten years older than
Jess, with no career prospects, and on and on. Instead, he smiled, the genial host once again. ‘This
is
much cooler,’ he insisted. ‘You’ll just have to get up early
and sleep through the middle of the day.’

‘Too late for that now.’ Eve smiled. ‘It’s nearly four. Time for a bit of pool work, I’d say. I couldn’t eat another thing.’ Satisfied there was nothing
urgent demanding her attention back home, she stood up and began helping Rose clear the table.

‘Nor me.’ Terry got to his feet, flapping away an inquisitive wasp. ‘I’m taking my book into the shade somewhere.’

The others studiously but obviously avoided catching each other’s eye. Terry’s dedication to
The Global Effect of Micro-Economic Management Techniques
, a tome that had lain on
his chest while he snoozed, always apparently open at the same page, had been the family joke of last year.

‘Don’t say it,’ he warned, as Rose raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve brought a Harlan Coben with me this time.’

‘Only because I made you swap it for that economics textbook you’d laid out.’ Eve threw the words back over her shoulder at him. ‘He was livid,’ she whispered to
Rose.

‘I’m interested in the subject, OK? Nothing wrong in that.’ Having had the last word in his own defence, he left the table.

Rose gave a weak smile. They’d made Terry the butt of their family jokes for years. As his sister, she sometimes wondered whether she ought to be more protective of him, but he rose to the
bait so readily, and anyway, he usually sniffed out the funny side of things in the end. He was too easy to tease.

The two women crossed the terrace into the kitchen, the relative cool of the room a welcome contrast with outside.

‘I’ll make coffee.’ Still on autopilot, Rose picked up the stained espresso maker. ‘Dan won’t have any, though. Mustn’t pollute the temple that is his
body.’ She unscrewed the gadget and dropped the top half on to the worktop with a crash.

Eve looked up, unable to ignore either the irony or the noise. ‘What’s going on between you two? Something’s up, I can tell.’

‘Sorry to disappoint, Miss Marple.’ The words were almost lost under the noise of the water running into the sink before she filled the base.

As Rose ground the coffee beans, Eve held her hands under the tap, then splashed her face and her neck, soaking the top of the kaftan. She seemed oblivious. ‘Have it your way. But if you
do want to talk, you know you can trust me.’

‘I know. Thanks, I appreciate it.’ The coffee on the hob, Rose set about the washing up, Eve alongside her, crumpled tea towel in her hand. ‘But it’s nothing. Nothing I
want to talk about at the moment anyway.’ She banged a saucepan down on the draining board.

Eve looked at her quizzically but obviously thought better of saying anything.

Rose trusted Eve not to leak a secret outside the family, but . . . to keep it from Terry? Would she? Eve and Terry’s marriage had always been a mystery to Rose. She had been delighted
when Eve accepted Terry’s proposal. Eve had been her closest friend since Edinburgh days, when she and Daniel had studied at the university and Rose was at the art school. At the same time,
she’d worried that Eve was still on the rebound from her marriage to Will: a marriage that had only lasted a couple of years since their hasty wedding that first summer after they’d
left university. On the face of it, Eve and Terry seemed to have so little in common. Eve was expansive, outrageous, fun. With the best will in the world, none of those adjectives could be applied
to her brother. Yet despite Rose’s doubts, Eve and Terry had stuck together over the years, presumably happy with one another despite their habitual public bickering. She had never been able
to fathom the mechanics of her brother’s relationships. He wasn’t an intimate talker or sharer, never had been. Eve must find that frustrating. Or perhaps when they were together he
became a completely different person and the two of them did hold those conversations that made so many marriages. Rose would never know.

She and Daniel told each other everything. Always had. Always. Or so she’d thought. S: the letter hissed through her thoughts, winding round the Sarahs, the Susans, the Samantha and Sally
they knew, but never wrapping itself round any of them for long.

What would this mean for their marriage? Everything she thought she knew, on which her life had been dependent, had been thrown into doubt. If Daniel had kept this woman secret, what other
secrets did he have? How much had he said that he didn’t really mean? She stopped the questions there. If she confided in Eve, there was no guarantee Terry wouldn’t get to hear, and he,
soul of indiscretion and insensitivity that he could occasionally be, was perfectly capable of blurting out something to Daniel without thinking.

‘OK. Let’s not talk about you.’ Eve put the dried pan in its place, and adopted a tone that invited gossip. ‘Anna told Charlie that there’s been an almighty row
between Jess and Daniel. True or false?’

Rose tutted. Family and secrets – the two words didn’t compute in
this
family. One or other of them was always succumbing to the temptation of showing off whatever nugget of
knowledge they had that the others didn’t. Not that she was blameless either. She had never been allowed to forget the time she’d let slip at a family dinner that Eve was pregnant with
twins. How hurt her brother had been that he wasn’t the first to know. Reasonably so, Rose admitted, not for the first time.

If Eve suspected something, then it was Rose’s duty to do a bit of damage limitation before her sister-in-law’s vivid imagination and love of pot-stirring made the situation worse
than it already was.

‘It’s Adam, isn’t it?’ Eve had abandoned the drying up and was perched on the edge of the table. Her face was redder than ever and circles of sweat decorated the
underarms of the kaftan. ‘You don’t have to pretend. Daniel’s never made any secret of his feelings. He nearly said something at lunch. Just because Adam’s not the sort of
husband that he would like for Jess. Why should he be the same age as her or have a conventional “career”?’ She air-punctuated the word. ‘After all, people have earned their
living doing carpentry or woodturning or whatever he likes to call it for much longer than they have doing hotel management. And it’s not as if Jess hasn’t got a decent job.
What’s the big deal?’

Rose welcomed the chance to talk about something else. ‘It’s all so stupid. Bloody men and their pride. Dan asked if Adam would do some joinery work, odd-jobbing at Trevarrick. He
thought Adam needed the work, and proposed to pay him at the going rate, of course. He was trying to help,’ she protested on his behalf. ‘In return Adam called him patronising and
turned the offer down, explaining why being a woodturner was quite different.’

‘Doesn’t he need the work?’ Eve picked at one of her nails where the canteloupe-coloured varnish had started to flake. ‘Dammit! I knew this manicure wouldn’t
last.’

‘I would have thought so. But he’s proud and doesn’t want favours, least of all from Jess’s dad.’

Eve pulled out the chair beside her and patted the green-striped cushion. Rose removed the coffee from the hob, took out a couple of red and orange espresso cups and saucers and sat down with a
sigh.

‘You shouldn’t do that. You sound about a hundred years old.’ Eve took the coffee and began to pour the thick black liquid into the cups.

‘I
feel
about a hundred years old.’ Rose leaned back, feeling her body start to relax at last. ‘Families! Who’d have ’em?’ She straightened up and took
a sip. ‘Christ, that’s strong.’ She replaced the cup in the saucer. ‘Sorry. The trouble is, it doesn’t matter what Adam does. One, Dan doesn’t like him,
doesn’t think he’s good enough for Jess – God knows why – and two, he thinks Adam ought to be out there supporting Jess and Dylan, not the other way round. On the other
hand, Adam knows what he wants from life. He won’t be told what to do by anyone – least of all his father-in-law.’