This Secret We're Keeping (38 page)

Not knowing quite how to begin what she wanted to say, she looked down at her hands, gripping the cold stem of the champagne flute. ‘Look, Zak, all of this … the music and the champagne and –’

‘You don’t like it?’ he said with a smile, as if this was inconceivable.

‘Well,’ she said carefully, ‘it’s just that lately I’ve been thinking that –’

‘I want us to start again, baby,’ he said quickly, cutting her off. ‘I want you to come and live with me in London.
Vena vivir conmigo
.’

‘Zak.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘We’ve been through this.’

He leaned forward, setting his drink down on the table. The flames from the candelabra were reflected like fireflies against his glass and in his eyes. ‘Then let’s go through it again. I’m serious, Jess. I’m sick of you being here and me being there, all this to-ing and fro-ing.’

The to-ing and fro-ing didn’t just apply to their geographical locations, she thought. Was he forgetting their frequent bickering, their fundamental differences, their general inability to make it through a weekend without falling out in some way?

She looked away from him and out across the sea, taking another sip of champagne to buy herself some time, the bubbles gently rushing her bloodstream. The strength was running out of the sun and into the water, streaking it pink and orange like someone had swilled paintbrushes in it.

Zak misinterpreted her silence then in a way that only he could. ‘It doesn’t make sense for me to move to Norfolk, Jess. It never did.’

Jess concluded silently that he was definitely right about that.

‘Debbie told me she’s selling your house. So you’re going to have to find somewhere else to live anyway. This is the perfect opportunity to make a fresh start.’

Bloody Debbie
.

For the past few days, Jess had been attempting to put all her worries about the enforced relocation to the back of her mind, finding gin, Portishead and fashioning small effigies
of Debbie from tin foil before crushing them with her thumb to be quite soothing.

‘Look, my job is here,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve worked really hard to build up my client list. I couldn’t just move to London, even if I wanted to. And really, Zak, that’s the point, because the thing is –’

He smiled condescendingly, raising a hand. ‘Jess, don’t get me wrong, but this is Norfolk. A great weekend bolthole but hardly a booming economy.’

‘I
think
we’ve touched on this before, Zak, but generally it’s the weekend boltholes that obliterate local economies in the first place. Just a thought.’

He smiled serenely, completely unfazed, like he had in mind some complex fiscal theory to completely disprove her argument that she would never be able to grasp. ‘Look, you keep saying your work is what’s keeping you here.’ He shrugged, like it couldn’t be simpler. ‘Fine, you’ve got clients, but your profit margin’s an embarrassment, frankly. Move in with me, I’ll get you into NW3 and you’ll triple your turnover in the space of a week.’

‘Don’t talk in postcodes, Zak. Please. It means nothing to people outside of London and it’s really annoying.’ She took a brief swig from her glass and tried to calm down.

Why was he getting to her so much?
Why am I even having this argument?

‘Okay,’ he said, with a slow smile like her anger was somehow, inexplicably, charming him, ‘I’ll get you into the
best neighbourhood
in London and you’ll make a fucking fortune. Does
that
mean something?’

A long time ago, it might have done. She might once have been able to picture herself catering private parties for crowds of Magic Circle lawyers in houses with chandeliers for lampshades and five floors instead of two.
It might once have excited her to think about wiping clean all her bills, about waltzing into Starbucks for a
Venti
and not having to pay for it with a fistful of coppers, about spoiling her nieces with fabulous birthday presents. But so much had changed since then, and she knew now that Zak’s little postcode-based fantasy couldn’t have mattered to her less.

‘Well,’ she said, looking down at her champagne as Christian Scott’s trumpet called out to her in hot, breathy blasts from the living room, ‘I think you’re asking me for all the wrong reasons. You’re asking me because I’m about to be made homeless. And probably because you shared a long car journey with my sister two weeks ago and she put the idea into your head.’

‘Bullshit,’ he said straight away. ‘I’m asking you because I love you.
Estoy enamorado de ti
.’

Jess replaced the urge to speak with another sip of champagne. He had said it to her before, but never like this, facing her almost-sober across a table without the crutch of being able to disguise what he’d just said with sex or the final drink of a long bender. She stared at him and felt strangely crushed, disappointed, like he’d taken significant words and squeezed all the meaning out of them. Because she didn’t believe that he did love her, not really. Zak was a man who fell in love with concepts, with the idea of himself as the star of his own complicated TV drama. That was how he was able to detach himself so easily from the daily horrors he witnessed in the A & E department of a London hospital – because other people were simply the supporting cast, the cameos, the women-with-prams. He, Zak, was the star of the show, and if it suited the screenplay on this particular warm night in June to tell her he loved her, then fuck it – why the hell not?

Dusk was looming. The sea continued to gently move, expanding then collapsing like the motion of deep breathing as it began to fall asleep.

‘You know, your sister is of the opinion that you’re madly in love with me,’ Zak said then, which was his way of prompting Jess to confirm it. ‘She told me that.’

Jess blinked. ‘Zak, this is going to sound harsh, but Debbie has her own little agenda in life. Always has done. She’s probably imagining that if I move in with you, it’ll somehow make her richer by association.’

‘Financially?’

‘No, spiritually … yes, of course financially. Debbie is obsessed with money.’

A soft breeze picked up then, travelling in quick gasps across the balcony and making the skin on her arms tighten slightly.

‘We could have an amazing life together, you and me, Jess. If you want I could take a break from medicine. I’ve been thinking of doing that anyway. Christ – you wouldn’t even have to work, if you didn’t want to.’

It made her angry, almost, that after all this time, he still didn’t know her at all.
You’ve got me all wrong. That’s not what I want from life
.

‘And you’d bring Smudge, of course. He’d like the roof terrace, don’t you think?’

‘No, he could never live in a city,’ Jess mumbled. ‘He’s a border collie, not a shih-tzu.’

Zak frowned. ‘What’s the difference?’

She stared at him. ‘Did you just say, “What’s the difference”?’

‘Er, yeah. Let’s just say I feel about dogs the way you feel about high heels.’ He slugged back more champagne and met her eye. ‘I can take them or leave them.’

She swallowed and looked down. ‘Okay, Zak.’

‘Is that,
Okay, Zak, I’ll move in with you
?’

‘No,’ she said firmly, to avoid any further confusion.

He beamed as if she’d just said yes and leaned forward to top up her glass. ‘Oh, we can work on that, baby.’ He set the bottle back into the chiller and grinned, bizarrely convinced that he was making headway. ‘Hungry yet?’

It seemed mean-spirited to say no, but the thought of oysters and lobster was making her feel slightly queasy. Maybe because she’d been drinking on an empty stomach; maybe because it seemed a bit like the culinary equivalent to serving her up some scratchy red lingerie and expecting her to thank him for it.

‘The oysters are ready and I’ve got a chef on standby to cook up the lobster linguine.’

She stared at him. ‘You’re not serious. Here?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be serious? Thought you might enjoy being catered for, for a change.’

This was embarrassing. ‘Oh,’ she stuttered. ‘Who is it?’

‘Who – the chef?’

‘Yes. Is he local? Do I know him?’
Please say no. Please say no
.

‘No, he’s from London. Friend of an acquaintance. Paying him a small fucking fortune.’

Relief that he wasn’t a local competitor was swiftly replaced by a creeping sense of mortification. ‘Well, where is he?’

‘I told you, he’s on standby. He’s downstairs in the games room playing
Grand Theft Auto
.’

‘Wow.’ She’d been asked to do a few strange things during her private catering career – dress up as a Tudor queen, speak only in French using pre-determined phrases, cook fillet steak as a one-off for a pair of committed vegetarians who hadn’t touched meat in twelve years – but she’d never
before been locked away in someone’s third living room with a video game, waiting to be summoned.

‘I know.’ Zak picked up his phone. ‘Shall I call him, tell him to come up?’

‘Let’s have the oysters first,’ she suggested, hoping to delay the inevitable. She was quickly starting to realize that she should never have come, that by even agreeing to dinner with Zak tonight, she had given him the wrong impression.

‘Okay. Wait there.’ Zak put down his glass and disappeared.

Jess sat up, setting her feet back down on the floor and taking a long slug of champagne as she attempted to allow Christian Scott to drown out the noise in her mind.

‘So, I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ Zak said then, returning with a white china platter heaped with ice, lemons and oysters in shells. He moved the candelabra aside to make room for it. There was already a finger bowl ready and waiting, the red head of an open rose floating prettily on top of the water. He set the platter on the table and then sat back down. ‘I finally remembered how I know your friend Will Greene.’

Jess’s heart did a small somersault as Zak leaned forward and plucked an oyster from the ice. A couple of cubes rolled off as he did so, skidding from the edge of the table and shattering messily on the decking. He ignored them, lifted the shell to his lips and sucked, before flinging it down with a clatter on his plate.

‘Well, go on,’ he said, turning his attention to her. ‘Dig in.’

Jess hesitated. The name Steve Robbins was making panicked laps of her mind like a startled bird. Could Zak have come across him? Had Mr Robbins somehow managed to track Matthew down?

‘Go on,’ Zak urged her, more sharply this time. The expression on his face had darkened slightly.

Reluctantly, she lifted one of the shells from the platter and sucked the oyster from it, allowing it to slip down her gullet without so much as tasting it, though she did feel its icy sliminess. She mashed her lips together before chasing it down with champagne.

‘Good girl,’ Zak murmured, pressing her leg with his foot beneath the table. ‘Now, what were we saying? Oh yes, Mr Greene. Our man of mystery with the quick fists.’

Jess moved her leg away. Zak leaned back in his chair and smiled, like it pleased him to make her uncomfortable. ‘God, baby, you look all flushed and nervous. Stop fidgeting.’

The dusk had almost enveloped them, the water now strangely still. She looked away from him, out across the sea, and attempted to ignore the heat of his stare. ‘Don’t call me that, Zak,’ she whispered.

He gave a short, dismissive laugh, swallowed another oyster and flung the shell down on to his plate. ‘So, this Will character. You know, it was bugging me, Jess. I
knew
him, but I couldn’t say where from. Something about his face was just so … familiar.’

Jess braced herself.

‘And then the other day, I had this patient …’ Zak took a swig of champagne and smacked his lips together. ‘He’d tried to kill himself, actually. Chased down a few packets of paracetamol with five years’ worth of vodka in the space of five minutes.’

Jess didn’t interrupt him to ask if the poor guy had made it. She half suspected the story would turn out to be figurative anyway.

‘
Apparently
, his wife had caught him with a load of questionable images on his laptop.’

Jess felt her entire body tighten, like he’d trapped her in a vice and was slowly inching it shut.

‘Most of the pictures were of children,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘She’d called the police.’

‘What’s your point, Zak?’ Jess asked, her voice small. She felt suddenly cold, like his story had brought with it an easterly wind.

‘Well, it jogged a memory.’ He picked up his napkin and dabbed at his mouth. ‘Involving that idiot Will Greene. Isn’t that fascinating?’

She said nothing.

‘Three years ago, when I was working at a different hospital, I treated an attempted suicide. Very similar. Pills. Vodka. Last-minute change of heart. Waste of everyone’s time.’ He sipped his champagne and regarded her steadily. ‘Anyway, I had a colleague check the records. Monday, ninth of June, 2008. Guess what his name was?’

Jess felt the colour slowly sink from her face. It would have been Will’s fortieth birthday.

Zak’s stare gradually hardened. ‘His name was Will Greene.’

She swallowed and looked down into her glass. It briefly occurred to her that she had never once shared champagne with Zak when it felt like a celebration of anything – and tonight was beginning to feel increasingly like a last supper. ‘You’re not supposed to do that, Zak,’ she managed to say eventually, though even as she spoke, she wasn’t sure her voice was loud enough to be heard.

‘He’d stuck in my mind, you see, because the nurses said that while he was coming round he kept saying this girl’s name, over and over. Wouldn’t shut up about her apparently. Anyway, eventually one of them asked who this bloody girl
was that he kept gabbling about. Do you want to know what he said?’

Jess shook her head. She felt as if she might self-combust at any moment.

‘He said it was a girl he’d sexually assaulted, a
child
, and he kept saying he couldn’t live with it any more.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘He’s done time, Jess. Your friend’s a convicted sex offender.’

For a moment, she forgot to breathe.

‘The fucking idiot couldn’t remember he’d said anything when he woke up the next morning. But everyone else did.’ He leaned forward, his eyes brimming with malice. ‘So there you go. This guy I keep seeing you with is a
convicted
paedophile
.’ He drove his index finger on to the table for emphasis, just in case his words weren’t enough. ‘Admitted it himself. How do you feel about that?’