Secret Smile (36 page)

What am I saying to you? I was
going to send you a sort of checklist. Do you think he is telling the truth? Is
he caring for you or controlling you? Is he being secretive? Are there hints of
anger? Violence? Do you know what he's doing when he's not with you? How much
do you really know about him? Do you believe what he tells you?

But this is all rubbish. Forget
all I've said. You'll know.

You'll never hear from me again
and I wish you happiness and that you'll never want to contact me. I'm about to
leave my flat. I don't know where I'm going, yet. But if you ever want to contact
me, I'll put some numbers of various people at the bottom of this letter. One
of them should be able to put you in touch with me.

I'm afraid that I think you've
had bad luck. But I wish you good luck.

Miranda

Before I could change my mind I put the
letter in an envelope, addressed it to her care of Crabtrees and walked out and
posted it in the box on the corner.

It's a rule of life that the way to find
your missing sock is to throw away the sock that isn't missing. And if you want
to know why you shouldn't post a letter, you'll realize it the moment you post
it, the very second your thumb and finger release it. As I heard the letter to
Naomi clatter down on to the other letters inside the pillar box, I realized
there was another alternative I hadn't yet considered. With Brendan, there
generally was. I had thought that Naomi might throw the letter away unread or
keep it to herself. In either case I would hear nothing. She could give it to
the police or to Brendan, who would give it to the police. In either case, I
would receive a very unpleasant visit from a police officer in a day or two.

Now I thought of another possibility.
Naomi would give it to Brendan and he wouldn't pass it on to the police. He
would read the letter and he would realize that I was implacable and he would
tell Naomi that it wasn't worth bothering about and he would decide that
something would have to be done.

I stood by the postbox for forty-five
minutes until a red van pulled up and the postman emerged with a large grey
canvas sack. I told him that I'd posted a letter by mistake and that I'd like
to get it back. He unfastened a catch on the side of the pillar box and emptied
dozens and dozens of letters into his sack. Then he looked at me, as so many
people had looked at me, as if I were insane, and shook his head.

CHAPTER 39

'Hello! Miranda?'

His voice boomed up the stairwell, and
then I heard his footsteps, taking the steps two at a time. I applied one last
precise lick of gloss paint along the skirting board then laid my brush down on
the lid of the paint pot.

'The paint's still wet,' I said as he came
through the door, loosening his tie as he did so. 'Don't touch anything.' I
stood up and crossed the beautiful bare room.

'Except you,' he said. He put his hands on
my aching shoulders and kissed me and bit by bit all my stiffness eased away. I
thought: how is it possible to feel excited and safe all at the same time; to
know someone so well and yet feel there's so much more to know?

'Good day?' I asked.

'This is the best bit. I've got exactly
fifty minutes before I have to get back to work. I've bought us some sandwiches
from the deli.'

'Shall we have those in a bit?' I said and
took him by the hand. I led him up the next narrow flight of stairs, along bare
boards and fresh-painted walls, into the small attic room I was using as a
bedroom, where a mattress lay under the window and my clothes were stacked in
wooden boxes. I took off his jacket and tie and he unbuttoned my overalls and
we laughed at each other because here we were on an ordinary Wednesday
lunchtime, about to make love in an empty, echoey house. Light fell through the
blinds in bars across the room. I hung his suit on a hanger for him. He tossed
my paint-stained gear into a corner of the room.

'I'd like to stay here the rest of the
day,' I said a bit later, stretched out on the mattress while he lay propped up
beside me and stroked my hair.

'Roasted vegetables with mozzarella or
farmhouse Cheddar and pickle?'

'Half of each?'

'OK.'

'We can have them in the kitchen, then I
can show you what I've done since you were last here.'

I had tried to move out of London, to the
country. I really had. I'd burnt my bridges, leaving Bill, selling my flat in
record time, putting my stuff into storage. At the same time, I'd written to
all the people I knew in the trade and gone for informal talks and considered
all my options, just like you're meant to. I'd thought about relocating to
Wales and Lincolnshire and even, for a few days, Brittany, where apparently
lots of English people were desperate for a builder-cum-interior designer to
revamp their picturesque farmhouses. But, like Alice when she goes through the
looking glass and finds she has to go backwards in order to advance, the result
of all my labours was somehow the exact opposite of the one I'd intended. By
attempting to move out of the great churning wheel of the city, I'd somehow
ended up at its very hub.

I was now living in a tall, narrow house
just south of King's Cross, completely renovating it while the owner was in
America for nine months. When he'd offered me the job — an extravagant
modernist conversion of the kind I'd dreamed of, with free accommodation thrown
in — it had seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. I'd started at the
bottom and moved upwards — gutting the kitchen and turning it into a laboratory
for food preparation, building a minimalist conservatory into the garden,
opening out the living room, turning the smallest bedroom into an en suite
bathroom. Eight of the nine months had elapsed. Now only the attic room where I
slept was still to be plastered and decorated and opened to the skies.

'You've done a great job,' he said,
posting the last of his sandwich into his mouth and pulling on his jacket.

'It's all right, isn't it?'

'And now you're nearly finished.'

'Yes.'

'Miranda?'

'Yes.'

'After that

But then my mobile phone started bleeping
from the bedroom, so we said goodbye hastily, and I pounded up the stairs to
get it, while downstairs I heard the door slam shut. I caught up the vibrating
phone. If I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck, I could just see him from the
dormer window, walking briskly along the street. He'd forgotten his tie.

We went for a bike ride in the early evening
and had coffee, sitting on the pavement outside even though it was getting
chilly. We'd been together nearly one year now, all the seasons. He'd seen me
through the anniversaries — Troy's death, Christmas, Laura's death. He'd met my
beaten-down, bewildered parents; met Kerry and her fiancé; met my friends. He'd
let me wake him up at three in the morning to talk about the things I tried not
to talk about in the day. He'd trailed round builders' yards with me, trying to
take an interest in grains of wood, or held ladders while paint dripped on to
his hair. I looked at him as he biked beside me, and he felt my gaze, glanced
up, swerved. My heart contracted like a fist.

At his flat, he made supper for us —
smoked mackerel and salad with a bottle of white wine — while I sat on the
church pew he'd bought at the reclamation centre and watched him. When he sat
down he took a small bite, but then pushed his plate away.

'Um — what I was saying this afternoon

'Yes?'

'About your plans, you know. Well, I was
thinking — you could move in with me.'

I started to speak, but he held up a hand.

'Hang on. I'm saying this all wrong. I
don't mean, you could move in with me. Well, I do of course, but that's not
what I'm really saying. And when I say, I was thinking you could move in — as
if it had just occurred to me — well, it's what I'm thinking about all the
time.'

'You're confusing me.'

'I'm nervous, that's why.' He took a
breath and then said: 'I very much want you to come and live with me.' He
twisted the wine glass round by its stem. 'I want you to marry me, Miranda.'

Happiness bubbled up in me like an
underground stream finding the surface. Unlooked-for, undeserved happiness that
had come into my parched life when I met him.

'I want to have children with you...' he
continued.

'Don,' I said.

'I want to grow old with you. Only you.
Nobody but you. There.'

'Oh,' I said.

'I've never said anything like this
before.' He gave a grimace and rubbed his eyes. 'Now you're supposed to reply,
I think.'

'Listen, Don,' I said.

'Just tell me.'

I leaned towards him and put my hands on
either side of his lovely, clever, kind face; kissed him on the eyelids and
then on the lips. 'I love you too,' I said. 'I love you very, very, very much.
Only you.'

'That's good,' he said. 'Isn't it?'

'Can you wait a bit?'

'Wait?'

'Yes.' I held his gaze.

'Well, of course I can wait — but does
that mean you're not sure? About me, I mean?'

'No. It doesn't mean that at all.'

'Why?'

'I am sure about what I feel,' I said. 'I
used to wonder how you knew when it was the real thing. Not any more.'

'So why?'

'It's complicated,' I said evasively.

'Are you scared?'

'Do you mean of commitment or something?'

'Not exactly. But after everything you
have been through, maybe you feel it's wrong to be happy.'

'It's not that.'

'Or maybe you feel you're not safe, and
therefore anyone who's with you isn't safe either. We've talked about that —
about how you felt you were the carrier. Is that it? Everyone you love dies.'

'You're the psychologist,' I said.

'Because I don't mind,' he said.
'Everything's a risk. You just have to choose the risk you want to take. I
chose a long time ago. Now you have to as well.'

I put my hands over his, turned his palms
upwards, kissed them both. 'I have chosen,' I said.

'You're crying,' he said. 'Into your
food.'

'Sorry.'

'Of course I'll bloody wait.'

I've met a man. Don. I wish you
could meet him as well. I think you'd like him. I know he'd like you. It feels —
oh, I don't know, odd, unsettling, not right, to he in love with someone again.
I never thought it would happen, not after everything. I thought all of that
was over. And sometimes — well, a lot, really — I get this sudden rush of panic
that it's wrong. Wrong to be happy, I mean, when you're not here and Laura's
gone and Mum and Dad are wrecked and so many people have suffered and I feel
that it was because of me. It was me who spread the terrible contagion. I can
see that sardonic expression on your face when I say that, but nevertheless
it's true. I'll always miss you, Troy. Every minute of every day of every week
of every year that's left. So how is it possible that I can allow myself to be
happy? Maybe it isn't. We'll see.

CHAPTER 40

My eyes were closed, hard, my breath
coming in gasps. My heart was beating so fast that my body seemed to hum with
it. I was sweating. I could hardly feel the pain. I knew it was there. On my
face, around my jaw. I could taste blood, warm, metallic. Around my neck, the
scraping. My ribs, sore, bruised. My eyes still closed, afraid of what was in
store. I felt the sounds of someone approaching, the vibration of footsteps on
the stairs. The touch, when it came, was gentle on my face and cheeks, but it
still made me flinch. I didn't open my eyes. I murmured something.

'Jesus, Miranda!' said the voice. 'I heard
glass breaking... What the fuck? Miranda?'

I opened my eyes. The light hurt them.
Don. Don's lovely face looking down at me, close, distressed. He ran over to
the window. I spoke in a murmur, but Don couldn't make it out. He leaned close
to my face.

'Said he was going to kill me,' I said in
little more than a whisper.

'Who?'

'Hurt me,' I said. 'He hurt me.'

His expression darkened. 'Was it him?
Brendan?'

'Said he'd come for me.'

'What's he done to you?'

I felt him gently touching my face,
stroking my hair, unfastening my shirt, assessing the damage.

'You're bleeding.'

I just groaned. He was looking around.

'There's blood on the... What the fuck did
that bastard do to you? I'm calling the police. And an ambulance.'