Secret Smile (6 page)

The writer recommended the aspiring runner
to think of all the exercise they do in the course of their normal working
life. According to him, even getting up from your desk to go to the water
cooler counted for something. I did far more than that. I carried ladders and
planks around. I painted ceilings while holding myself at contorted angles. I
held cans of paint for minutes at a time. This was going to be a doddle. I set
my alarm clock half an hour earlier than usual, and the following morning I
ventured out in my new singlet, shorts and shoes. I rather wished I had bought
a mask as well. I walked for five minutes. No problem. I ran hard for about a
hundred yards and then the pain began, so I followed Jan's advice and stopped.
I walked for a few minutes more and then started to run again. The pain began
more quickly this time. My body had started to realize what was being done to
it. I slowed down to a walk again and headed for home. Jan said the important
thing in the early stages was to avoid causing sprains or pulled muscles by
excessively ambitious exercise. I got back to the flat having achieved that
without much difficulty.

'Hello? Miranda? I just wanted

I picked up the phone.

'Hi, Mum.'

'I didn't wake you, did I?'

'No. I was about to leave.'

'I just wanted to thank you for yesterday.
I was going to ring last night, but then Kerry and Brendan stayed so long... It
all went well, didn't it?'

'It was very nice.'

'Doesn't Kerry seem happy?'

'Yes.'

'Do you know what? I think it's a
miracle.'

'Mum...'

'A miracle,' she repeated. 'When I think
how,,,' I closed my eyes and the words slid into each other. I was going to be
good.

'Hi Miranda. It's me, Kerry. Miranda? Are
you there?' There was a silence, then a man's voice in the background, though I
couldn't catch what he said. Kerry giggled, then said, 'We just wanted to say
how are you, and it would be nice to meet up again sometime. What's that? ...
Oh, Brendan says hello from him too...' I pressed the button to erase the message.

I ran three times that week and I didn't
notice any discernible difference. My lungs still hurt as soon as I jogged more
than fifty paces; my legs still felt like lead and my heart a stone jolting
around inside my ribcage. On hills, people often walked briskly past me. But at
least I persevered, and I felt good about that.

On Friday evening, I went out to a party
given by my friends Jay and Pattie. I danced and drank beer and then wine, and
then some strange schnapps from Iceland that Pattie found at the back of her
cupboard when most of her guests had left and we were at the lovely stage of
the night, when you don't need to make an effort any more. A dozen or so of us
sat around in their dimly lit living room, which was strewn with beer cans and
fag ends and odd shoes, and sipped cautiously at the schnapps, which made my
eyes water. There was a man I'd met, his name was Nick. He sat cross-legged on
the floor in front of me, and after a bit he leaned against my knees, relaxing
his weight. I could feel the sweat on his back. I waited a few minutes and then
I put my hand on his hair, which was short and soft and brown, like an animal's
fur. He gave a little sigh and tipped his head back so 1 could see his
upside-down face. He was smiling faintly. I leaned forwards and kissed him
quickly on his smile.

When I left, he asked me if I'd like to
see him again.

'Yes,' I replied. 'OK.'

'I'll call you.'

'Do that.'

We looked at each other. Beginnings are so
very lovely, like smashing that first small hole in the wall and glimpsing a
world on the other side.

CHAPTER 7

Nick did call two days later. There seems
to be a strict code about when you call, the way there used to be a code about
on which date to kiss for the first time. If you call on the same day, you're
virtually a stalker. If you call the day after, you're maybe a bit desperate
because, as the first day is out of the question, the second day is really the
first day, so you're calling on the first day. If they're going to call at all,
people call on the third day. If you wait longer than the third day, you might
as well not call at all. The person will have either married or emigrated.
Personally I've never paid any attention to the code. Life is too short. If it
had been me, I would have called the moment I was home.

So Nick called and it was all pretty
simple. We arranged to meet the next evening at a bar in Camden Town. I was
five minutes early and he was a few minutes late. He was wearing faded jeans
and a checked shirt which hung loosely under his leather jacket. He was
unshaven and his eyes were very dark brown, almost black.

'You're a decorator,' he said. 'Pattie
told me. And I can see some paint in your hair.'

I rubbed my hair self-consciously.

'There's nothing I can do about it,' I
said. 'However much I check, there's always a spot somewhere round the back
I've missed. It falls off in the end.'

When I meet people, they become improbably
excited by the fact that I'm a woman doing the work I do. You'd think I was
defusing bombs. Still, it gives me something to talk about. And it's a bit like
being a doctor. I get asked for my advice. People ask me about how they should
do up their homes.

Then Nick asked me what I wanted to do
after.

'After what?' I said, pretending not to
understand.

'Well. I mean — do you want to always be a
decorator?'

'You mean, instead of getting a
profession?'

'I guess so,' he said uncomfortably.

'Yes,' I said simply. 'This is what I want
to do.'

'Sorry — that probably sounded really
patronizing.'

Yes, it did, so I just asked Nick what he
did. He told me that he worked for an advertising company. I asked if they'd
done anything I would have seen. Lots, he said. He said that they were the ones
who'd done the commercial with the fluffy talking pig. Unfortunately I hadn't
seen it. I asked what he was working on now, and he replied that they'd
recently won a huge account with an oil company and he was working on a report
in preparation for the campaign.

But it didn't matter. What mattered were
the things going on underneath the conversation, the things we weren't saying.
After what seemed like a short time I looked at my watch and was surprised we'd
been talking for over an hour.

'I've got to go,' I said. 'I'm having
dinner with this old friend of mine. Laura,' I added, to make it clear that I
wasn't off to meet a man who might be a boyfriend or an ex-boyfriend or someone
I might be considering as a boyfriend.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I hoped that we
could have dinner. Or something. Not tonight, obviously. What about, I don't
know, Thursday?'

I had arranged to see Troy on Wednesday
that week, so Thursday sounded fine. I walked out of the bar thinking, yes, I
was sure, almost sure at least, that something was going to happen. I had
another thought as well, almost a scary one: maybe this was the best bit.
Probably for the next few days or weeks we would have the excitement of a new
object in our lives, exploring it, finding out about it. We would ask each
other questions, tell carefully edited stories from our earlier lives. We would
be so nice to each other, so concerned and thoughtful and just endlessly
curious. And then what? Either it would fade away or just end quickly, and we
would lose touch and become a memory. Somehow it never subsided into pleasant
friendship. There was no way back to that. Or we would become a couple, and
even then we would have to subside into some sort of normality in which we got
on with our jobs and had anniversaries and had joint opinions about things and
we would complete each other's sentences. It could be good. People say so. But
it could never have the sheer possibility of the beginning. I felt wistful and
it seemed to suit the early evening. On one side of the road the cars and
shopfronts and people walking home from work were painted in gold from the last
of the sun. On the other side of the road they were lost in deep shadow.

When I saw Laura, she knew straight away
that something was up, which it wasn't, not really.

'You don't need to say anything,' she
said. 'I can tell just by looking at you.' I tried to tell her not to be
ridiculous. It had only been a drink. I thought he seemed nice, but I couldn't
tell yet.

I was more convinced than I let on.
Thursday was good as well. We ate at a place just around the corner from my
flat and the evening went by almost without my noticing, until we were the only
people left in the restaurant and the chef was out from the kitchen with a
glass of wine chatting with us. Twenty minutes later we were in the doorway of
my flat, kissing each other. I pulled back from him and smiled.

'I'd like to ask you up,' I said.

But...?'

'Soon,' I said. 'Really soon. It was such
a nice evening, I had a great time, I really like you. I'm just not...'

'Sure?'

'Ready. I'm sure, Nick.'

'Can I see you tomorrow?'

'Yes, of course...' Then I remembered.
'Fuck. Sorry. I've got to... You won't believe it, but I've got to go round to
my parents. Things are a bit complicated with them. I'll tell you about it. But
not now.'

'What about the day after tomorrow?'

'That would be so lovely.'

I arrived at my parents' house feeling
sulky. It had been bad enough, but then my mother had phoned me just before I
left, asking if I could dress up. I pulled off my trousers and top and put on
the blue velvet dress that I've had for so long its hemline's gone wavy.

'You look lovely, dear,' said my mother,
as she let me in.

I growled something in response. At least
she hadn't asked me how I was. My parents were also decidedly dressed up. Troy
was there as well. He looked exactly the same as usual, in corduroy trousers
and a faded green sweater which should have looked fine. Troy is a rather
beautiful young man, or should be. But something was always just slightly off.

'It's good to see you, Miranda,' said my
father. 'We're seeing a lot of each other, aren't we?'

'So where are the lovebirds?' I asked.

'Miranda,' said my mother in a tone of
rebuke.

'I didn't mean anything by that,' I said.

'They should be here any...' my mother
said and before she could finish the sentence, the door rang and she smiled at
me. 'Why don't you go?' she said to me, pushing me towards the door.

I opened the door and there were Brendan
and Kerry on the doorstep, entangled, laughing, in love. They gave me another
of their group hugs as they spilled into the house. When I saw them in the
light of the living room, they looked startlingly smart. Kerry was wearing a
purple satin dress I'd never seen before. It clung to her hips and breasts.
When she looked at Brendan, it was with a sort of dazed carnal pleasure. They
looked like a couple who had been in bed together about eight seconds earlier.
Brendan was wearing an expensive-looking shiny suit and a large colourful tie
decorated with some sort of cartoon character I couldn't recognize. He was
carrying a shopping bag that clinked. He removed from it two bottles of
champagne, glistening with droplets of water. He placed them on the table.
There were already six tall glasses there. He picked up one of the glasses and
lightly tapped it with his finger so that it rang like a little bell.

'Without further ado,' he said, 'I'm so
glad you're all here. Kerry and I wanted you to be the first to know.' I felt a
lurch in my stomach. 'Yesterday, I took Kerry out to dinner. And I regret to
say that I caused a certain sensation just before the dessert course. I knelt
down beside her and asked if she would marry me. And I am very glad to report
that she said yes.'

Kerry smiled shyly and held up her hand to
reveal a ring. I looked at my mother. Tears were spilling from her eyes. She
moved towards them with both arms outstretched and, after they'd hugged, I
stepped forwards as well.

'Kerry,' I said, 'I'm so happy for you.'

'Hang on, hang on,' said Brendan. 'That
can wait. I just wanted to say one more thing. I spent most of my life moving
from foster parent to foster parent. I was a lonely little boy, and I didn't
know what it was like to belong to a family, to be loved and welcomed and accepted
for what you were.' As he spoke, two huge tears welled up in his eyes and
rolled symmetrically down his cheeks. He didn't wipe them away. 'When I first
came here,' he continued, 'when I met you, Derek and Marcia, I felt I had come
home. I felt at home. What more can I say? Thank you. And now I've brought some
champagne so that you can toast our happiness.'