This Secret We're Keeping (31 page)

She sat up quickly, her heart pounding.

‘Night swimming,’ he continued. ‘Reminds me of … what’s that song, again?’

‘ “Nightswimming”,’ she supplied weakly.

‘Yes! That’s the one. Couldn’t remember what it was called.’ Behind his voice she could just about make out the sound of lapping water. ‘UB40.’

‘R.E.M,’ she corrected him softly.

‘Yes! R.E.M.’ He paused. ‘What did I say?.’

‘Will,’ she whispered, ‘where are you?’

‘Well, I started off near you, as it happens. Not there any more though. Bastard longshore drift.’

‘I’m coming to get you,’ was all she said, hanging up.

She took Smudge with her – she had never headed out across the marsh after dark without him. Thankfully, the moon was almost daylight-bright, so there was no need for a torch. She didn’t want to be out there waving one about anyway, inviting some kindly old soul to spot the beam from their conservatory and call the police.

The tide was on the push, so they didn’t have long. An hour at most, she calculated. And tonight, it would be huge – the whole salt marsh would flood, as well as the creeks.

As soon as she was far enough away from the little line of houses that backed on to the sea lavender, she began to shout his name, suddenly terrified that he might have come out here to do something stupid. She dialled his mobile, over and over, but each time it just rang out.

The creeks were already filling up. She used the footbridge to cross the deepest of them, but she had to walk thigh-high through the rest, holding her phone aloft to keep it dry and forcing her mind to reject any memories of the last time she’d waded into a creek to drag someone out of it.

Despite the warm night air and tranquil sky, the early summer seawater was still the approximate temperature of the plunge pool at Beelings, and she gasped for breath, inhaling the scent of salt and mud as her chest constricted against the cold, her heart pounding with fear and adrenaline. Smudge kept close to her the whole way, delighted to be bounding over familiar territory by moonlight with the opportunity for a quick dip into the bargain.

To guard against getting stuck Jess tried to move quickly, but her shoes were drenched and heavy now; and though the final remnants of pain from her thigh injury had all but disappeared, the effort of moving forward at even the most slug-like of paces was starting to make her legs ache.

By the time she heard him shout out her name in reply, she was soaked in saltwater and covered with sticky black creek clay, her wet clothes clinging unforgivingly to every contour of her body. Still, she felt grateful that she’d had the foresight to slip on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, rather than try to wade out here in jeans and a fleece.

Teeth chattering now, she rehearsed her speech.
This is how people die out here, Will.
They get stuck in the mud in the bottom of the creeks, and then the tide comes in, and they can’t escape. And then they drown
.
Especially if they get pissed first.

For the last few hundred feet she allowed Smudge to lead her to him. She could see his black outline, an eerie silhouette: he’d made it over the dunes and was wading about in the water’s edge, the silver light of the moon glancing sharply off the water as it rippled. The sea where they were was only calf-deep but the tide was rising, and the wind had picked up.

‘Will!’

He turned to face her as she waded out towards him, Smudge cantering ahead of her and kicking up inordinate amounts of spray, like a horse on a wind-whipped Irish beach.

She was so relieved to finally reach him that she forgot her anger and extended her hand, willing him to grab it and follow her back to dry land. ‘Will, the tide’s coming in. The creeks are already full. Come on, we have to go.’

He didn’t move, and for a few moments they just stood there in the water, staring at one another. Smudge had come to a patient halt between them, as if his being chest-high in the sea at one a.m. was perfectly normal. He was even trying to wag his tail but the water was weighing it down.

‘Not quite as warm as I thought it would be,’ Will said eventually, his voice jerking slightly with the cold as he spoke. Jess noticed that a deep purple bruise the colour and size of a small aubergine had spread across the left side of his face from where Zak’s fist had met his jaw.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she whispered.

He appeared to think about this for a moment. ‘Does
wanting to feel alive rather than dead-behind-the-eyes make any sense to you?’

It did, but she wasn’t about to indulge him now. ‘Well, if that’s what you’re looking for then you should sign up for a bungee jump, or rob a bank, or mow down some more people in your car or something, not come all the way out here on a high tide.’

He smiled, fished in the back pocket of his jeans and extracted a hip flask, holding it out to her. ‘Jess. You look like you could use some spiced rum.’

The wind was arriving now in punchy, biting gusts, like it had blown straight in from Scandinavia and wasn’t about to give either of them a break. Shivering, she ignored the flask. ‘Will, it’s dangerous out here. The tide’s massive tonight. Please come back with me.’ She held out her hand again.

‘I thought you and I could have a bit of a flirt with danger,’ he said, like he hadn’t even heard her, flipping the top from the flask and taking a slug. ‘You know – how we used to in the old days.’

‘If we get caught out here together,’ she said, ‘Natalie will find out, Will. Is that what you want?’ The water was now at her knees. Somewhere over to their right, Smudge had wisely retreated back towards the sand dunes.

A couple of moments passed, during which he regarded her with scepticism, like he was really pissed on a night out and she was trying to talk him down from solo karaoke.

‘I’m not sure it’s going to end well between me and your boyfriend, by the way,’ he said then. ‘In terms of me not having to punch him in the face again, I mean.’

If there was one thing Jess was certain of, it was that Zak no longer felt very much like her boyfriend.

‘Where is he now?’ Will asked her.

‘He’s gone home.’

‘Home where?’

‘Belsize Park.’

Will gave this some thought. ‘Well, that’s close enough to Chiswick to really piss me off,’ he concluded eventually.

‘You’ve got several boroughs of London between you. I doubt you’ll run into one another.’

‘Lucky for him,’ he muttered darkly.

‘Is your face okay?’

‘My what?’

She motioned to her chin. ‘Your face. Where he hit you.’

‘Oh.’ He waggled his jaw a couple of times. ‘Well, that’s the thing about spiced rum, Jess – it tends to knock out most of your vital pain receptors. If you drink enough of it.’

‘What did Natalie say?’

‘Oh, I told her I collided with a hanging basket. You know, one of those wrought-iron ones that don’t really yield when you walk into them with your face.’ He shook his head.

‘Did she believe you?’

‘Well, yeah, but it backfired. Had to smuggle her out past the bins before she slapped the barman with a lawsuit.’ He grimaced and took another swig from the hip flask. ‘Can I tell you a secret?’

‘That depends. Can you tell me while we’re walking?’

He paused for a moment. ‘Yeah, okay.’

They began to wade back towards the sand dunes, Jess’s legs now numb from the cold, though she could still feel the drag of the tide, pushing, pushing against her calves. She kept one eye fixed on the twinkling cottage lights
peppering the horizon and the other on the white flash of Smudge’s tail as he bounded along ahead of them, guiding them home.

‘So?’ she prompted, sensing Will’s train of thought had drifted. He was walking a few paces behind her. She turned and waited, to let him catch up. ‘What’s your secret?’

‘Natalie wants to start trying again.’ Pause. ‘For a baby,’ he clarified as he arrived at her shoulder, in case Jess wasn’t familiar with the universal code for fucking-to-order.

She stared across at him, feeling her stomach shrivel in the manner of a slug being doused liberally with rock salt. ‘Oh,’ she managed eventually. ‘Well, congratulations.’

‘No, Jess – don’t … don’t
congratulate
me. That’s not what I meant.’

She turned away, unable to bear the image of Will and Natalie in Chiswick cradling a pink-faced little newborn, surrounded by flowers and gift-shop balloons and stupid oversized cards. The tide swelled dangerously against her calves once again and she started to wade off.

He began to shout after her then. ‘It should have been us, Jess!’ His voice was tight, catching against the cold. ‘It should have been us, with the marriage and the baby and the perfect fucking life!’

She felt her grief rise forcefully in her throat like vomit – a regret so intense it made her feel dizzy – and it took all her effort to contain it, to prevent it erupting messily from her mouth.

‘Is that what you and Natalie have?’ She turned round and began to shout back at him, her voice a fierce gust to join the storm of coastal wind. ‘The perfect life?’

‘Of course not! Why the fuck do you think I’m out here off my face in the middle of the night? I’m not drunk on
domestic bliss, Jess!’ He sounded almost angry. ‘I miss you every single day for the sake of a few fucking months back then!’

She felt the tears come instantly, devastated afresh by the idea that just another birthday might have made all the difference. She forced herself to turn away from him and start walking again, or at least attempting to. It was only down to chance that they hadn’t both snapped an ankle by now on the uneven underwater terrain.

‘Jess!’ Within seconds she felt him catch her up, his arm finding her waist as he spun her gently back round to face him. He dipped his head to hers, his voice becoming an apology. ‘I’m sorry. I’m saying all the wrong things, I know that. The last thing I want to do is chase you away.’ His gaze fell momentarily to the hip flask in his hand, and he stared at it with exasperation, like he’d somehow been expecting the rum to make everything better, not worse.

‘I feel the same as you do,’ she confessed, her voice thick with tears as her flash of frustration began to subside. ‘It’s how I’ve felt for the last seventeen years.’ She swallowed, struggling for a second to speak. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me about the baby.’

His mouth flipped open slightly, like he was lost for a way to explain it. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just … Natalie’s not very discreet, you know? She talks to people, all the time – in the deli, the post office … Our builder’s only just had his third, and she’s been grilling the poor guy all week on age-gap siblings.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve just been feeling paranoid, Jess, that you might bump into her or overhear something, and get completely the wrong impression. But look – don’t say “the baby”, like it’s already in existence. It’s not like that. It’s not going to happen like that.’

She met his eye, attempting to swallow away the lump in her throat as she did so, but said nothing more.

They waded a few steps further until, finally, their feet found the edge of the sand dunes. Jess was surprised to notice as they emerged from the water that Will was wearing his cowboy boots. ‘You’ve trashed them,’ she observed sadly, looking down at his feet.

‘Nah,’ he said, though as he followed her gaze, he looked equally sad. ‘They’ll buff up.’

‘So, what do you want?’ she asked him, shivering as they ascended the bank that marked the edge of the salt marsh. Damp marram grass brushed their calves. ‘Do you want another baby?’

‘Not since I ran you over,’ he said softly, and then paused. ‘Is possibly the weirdest sentence ever spoken in history.’

She shook her head. ‘No, the weirdest sentence ever spoken in history is,
I can’t remember the difference between R.E.M and UB40
.’

He laughed. ‘I think you could be right.’

They were silent for a few moments, though Jess’s teeth kept threatening to break into a metronomic chatter.

She sensed the need for a change of subject. ‘Have you made any plans for your birthday?’ It was just over a week away, the ninth of June.

‘Personally? No plans. Hate birthdays. But Natalie …’ He glanced at her and hesitated.

‘It’s okay,’ she said gently. ‘You can say it.’

‘Sorry,’ he said resignedly. ‘I was only going to say … birthdays tend to be more about Charlotte now. I let her get excited on my behalf.’

Jess smiled faintly, remembering what he’d told her
about villages in Burkina Faso. ‘Well, maybe you’ll get a nice goat.’

He took her hand again then before pulling her gently to a halt so they were facing one another. ‘That reminds me, Jess.’

‘Of what?’

He looked hesitant. ‘At the risk of making an ever bigger twat of myself … I got you something.’

A goat?

‘I figure the risk’s quite small,’ he qualified. ‘I’ve already gone quite far.’

She nodded. ‘Yep, tonight you’ve really excelled yourself.’

He ventured a smile. ‘Well … this might help. Are you ready?’

Despite herself, she smiled back faintly and shrugged. Her teeth had started to chatter again. ‘As I’ll ever be.’

Suddenly brighter, he stuck his hand into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Close your eyes,’ he whispered. ‘Open your hand. All that jazz.’

‘What?’ she laughed, but she did it anyway. She felt him plant something light in the centre of her palm, and when she opened her eyes, she saw it was a small grey jewellery box. It looked a little battered, and was soaked through. ‘What’s this?’

‘You’ll find out if you open it.’

So she did. Resting on the gathered silk inside was a silver necklace with a single tiny pearl at its centre. Slightly tarnished, it looked old, like it belonged to somebody else.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered, and then looked up at him, waiting for an explanation. ‘I mean, is there some sort of back story, or …?’

He exhaled stiffly, like he was building up to make a revelation, taking a few squelching paces in the opposite direction before turning back round to face her. ‘Okay, I’ll say it quickly. I bought you that necklace for Christmas, Jess, 1993. I was going to give it to you that night in the bird hide, but I bottled it. Thought you might think I was being a cheesy twat.’