The Secrets Between Us (17 page)

‘Do you cook, Sarah?’ she asked as we ate our main course.

‘Yes.’

‘She’s very good,’ said Alexander.

‘And where did you train?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Where did you learn to cook?’ she asked, leaning forward encouragingly as if talking to someone who didn’t understand basic English.

‘She’s just naturally talented,’ said Alexander.

‘You must have gone to college,’ Phoebe persisted. ‘Or even university! I understand that people do degrees in just about anything these days. Even childcare!’ She looked around the table, but only Ted laughed.

‘Yes, I went to college,’ I said. I felt very small. I didn’t know what to do with my face.

‘You see, we’re still looking for some part-time help,’ Phoebe said. ‘We’ve got a girl from the village but she’s not really the right sort, and what with the horses taking up so much of my time …’ She looked expectantly at Alexander. He ignored her.

‘Cut to the chase, Phoebe,’ said Ted.

‘All right. Alexander, we were wondering if we could borrow Sarah every now and then?’

Alexander shook his head.

‘Sorry, Phoebe,’ he said. ‘Sarah’s not up for hire.’

He said it in a friendly way, but a decisive one.

‘Oh,’ said Phoebe. ‘Maybe just on an ad hoc basis when we’re desperate?’

‘No,’ said Alexander.

There was a slightly strained silence. I was taking very tiny mouthfuls of food. My fork scraped on the plate.

‘This is delicious,’ Ted said cheerily, raising his glass to Claudia. ‘Never mind skinny horsey girls like Phoebs and Gen. Give me a woman who can cook any day!’

Claudia smiled but suffered a little at the same time.

‘That’s what finishing school in Switzerland does for you,’ she said.

‘You went to finishing school?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Virginia and Daddy sent me there as soon as it became clear that brains weren’t my strong point.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I’ve never met anyone who’s been finished. I sometimes feel as if I’ve hardly been started!’

I thought it was quite funny, but nobody laughed. Alexander looked down at his plate. Phoebe inhaled deeply and slowly and Ted just went redder and drank more wine. I felt slightly hysterical. I’d been containing myself for too long.

‘You’ve gone all Lancashire on us, Sarah,’ Bill said.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It must be the wine.’ I picked up my glass and took another drink.

Claudia smiled at me. ‘If I’m the finished product, Daddy should have asked for his money back.’

I giggled, but Bill frowned. He reached across the table and squeezed Claudia’s wrist. ‘She’s always putting herself down,’ he told us. ‘Always she insists on this tiresome self-deprecation.’

Claudia turned her arm over to take his hand in hers. He gazed at her with a sincerity that I couldn’t watch; it felt voyeuristic. I looked down at my lap. How secure Claudia must feel, how safe in the cocoon of love woven by her husband, her daughters, her home. Did that make up for her terrible childhood, her suicidal mother and her damaged brother? Was that enough for her?

‘I can never quite believe that somebody as perfect as Claudia could agree to marry somebody as flawed as I am,’ Bill said quietly. ‘It’s a fact that constantly surprises and delights me.’

‘Stop it,’ said Claudia, but her pleasure shone through her embarrassment. She was twisting an emerald bracelet around her wide wrist.

‘Well said!’ Ted joined in. ‘Well done, Claudia!’

Alexander was staring at his plate. I knew him well enough to know he would not enjoy this display of affection, this talk of emotion.

‘Where did you two meet?’ I asked Claudia, to change the subject slightly and relax Alexander.

Phoebe and Ted exchanged glances.

‘Oh, sorry,’ I said brightly. ‘Shouldn’t I have asked that?’

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Claudia said. ‘We met just a few hundred yards from here, at Eleonora House. At one of Virginia’s infamous hunt balls. It’s where everyone in this neck of the woods meets their partners.’

I took another drink of wine. My glass seemed to be empty, and then full, almost at the same time, but I never noticed anyone filling it up.

‘Everyone gets terribly drunk and randy,’ Claudia continued.

‘Come on, Claude, it was a bit more romantic than that,’ said Bill. ‘There were stars and champagne and dancing and moonlight.’

Claudia smiled at the memory. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, there were.’

There was a moment’s pause while we all pictured the scene in our minds.

‘Virginia’s balls are legendary,’ Ted announced wistfully.

I snorted. I couldn’t help myself.

‘Sorry,’ I choked, as Alexander passed me his napkin. Everything, all the tension I’d been holding in, was struggling to get out. I was well aware of the others trying to ignore me but I felt as if I were about to explode with nervous energy.

Claudia took her hand out of Bill’s and stood and began stacking the plates.

‘We’re a bit of a romcom cliché,’ Bill said, heroically trying to divert attention from me. ‘Falling in love at a hunt ball when neither of us is interested in blood sports.’

‘Not as much of a cliché as us,’ I chimed in. ‘We’re a holiday romance!’

There was an immediate silence, and everyone paused, as if we were in a film. Claudia stopped rattling the cutlery and Bill froze with a wine bottle half-poised over her glass. Ted slowly went a deeper shade of puce.

I laughed brightly. ‘I mean, that’s what everyone thinks!’ I said. ‘Only of course it’s not true. Our relationship is strictly professional, isn’t it, Alex? Just because we met while we were on holiday people assume we had a fling, but we didn’t, we talked and obviously we got on well together and …’

‘Sarah, shut up,’ Alexander said under his breath.

‘Pass me your plate, Sarah,’ Claudia said.

I passed my plate.

There was another silence. It seemed to last for ever.

I saw Phoebe raise one eyebrow at Ted in a knowing way. I pulled my skirt down and fixed my eyes on the picture on my place mat.

‘Let me give you a hand, Claudia,’ Phoebe said in a voice as sticky as treacle.

‘Me too,’ Ted said. He obviously couldn’t bear to sit at the same table as me a moment longer. I screwed my napkin in
my hand as the two of them made a big performance of helping Claudia.

‘How’s work?’ Bill asked Alexander.

‘Good, thank you.’

‘Still putting in all the hours God sends?’

Alexander nodded. Bill took off his glasses and scratched an eyebrow.

‘You must have made enough to pay the old man back by now, surely?’

‘Bill, please!’ Claudia interrupted. ‘Let’s not talk about business at the dinner table.’

‘Sorry,’ Bill said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Is there anything I can do, Claudia?’ I asked.

‘No, thank you,’ she said in a cold, hard voice. ‘You’ve done more than enough already.’

I said very little for the rest of the evening.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE NEXT DAY
I woke with a migraine and a head full of regret. I didn’t know how much damage had been done by my comment. I valued Claudia’s friendship. Now, the truth – or a strong suspicion of the truth – would be between us, and I felt, as I had before, that it would be wrong not to be entirely honest with her. I asked Alexander what I should do, but he refused to talk about it. He closed himself off from me. I would have preferred it if he’d shouted at me – brought his feelings out into the open and dispersed his anger – but I didn’t have the courage to initiate an argument.

Phoebe, I suspected, would have promised Claudia not to breathe a word about what I’d said but would tell everyone she knew. The news would be all over the village by now, galloping through the horse-riding sorority like wildfire.

I was desperate for reassurance so I went to see Betsy. I had not told her everything about our relationship, but she knew most of the story and, like everyone else in the village, she was well aware of the domestic politics of the Churchill family. Her mother went up to Eleonora House twice a week to collect and drop off the Churchills’ ironing.

We sat in the kitchen of her chilly council house and
dunked no-frills ginger biscuits into mugs of milky coffee. I told her exactly what had happened and she rolled her eyes.

‘Well, honestly,’ she said. ‘It’s Alexander’s fault, making you keep secrets like that. What does he expect? If you’d been honest about everything right from the start, people would’ve been used to the situation by now.’

I explained about Alexander knowing his relationship with Genevieve was over ages before she left, but that other people wouldn’t see it like that. They’d think, like Virginia, that it was obscene to begin a love affair so soon after she was gone.

Betsy didn’t see it that way. ‘It’s just covering up one set of lies with another,’ she said. ‘What’s the point? The truth always comes out. Always, sure as God made little green apples. The more you try to push it down, the stronger it tries to bob up.’

Betsy leaned over to the baby, who was sitting in her high chair, and wiped her nose with the cuff of her shirt. The baby turned her round, red face away and squirmed.

‘Do you think I should call Claudia and apologize?’ I asked.

Betsy pulled a face. ‘I should wait for her to come to you,’ she said.

‘What if she doesn’t?’

She shrugged. ‘Then don’t take it personally. Blood is thicker than water and all that.’

‘Do you think she’ll tell Virginia?’

‘I don’t know,’ Betsy said. ‘You’ve gone and put her in a very awkward position. She won’t want to be keeping things from Virginia, not with the situation with Genevieve being how it is. And if Phoebe’s going round spreading the news, it won’t be long before it gets back to her anyway.’

I groaned. ‘Oh lord,’ I said, ‘could it be any worse?’

‘Yes,’ Betsy said cheerfully. ‘It could. And it probably will be.’

*

It was immediately apparent that Claudia wanted to sever her friendship with me. She sent a message via Jamie to cancel a trip we had arranged to take the children to the cinema and she didn’t call in to Avalon any more. I called her several times, but each time was connected to her answerphone.

I didn’t leave a message. How could I explain in a few seconds all that I needed to say? I couldn’t bear the thought of Claudia being hurt because of me. At the very least I wanted to explain why I had lied. Also, I missed her.

One morning, one of those glorious mid-October mornings when the autumn hangs on by its fingertips and anything still seems possible, I collected two basketfuls of the best of the apples from the huge old mistletoe-laden tree in the front garden, and I walked up the hill, all the way up the lane past the old quarry, to Claudia and Bill’s house. My shoulders and arms were aching by the time I reached the Barn. The dogs heard me before I reached the gates and came running from the back garden to greet me, barking madly through the wrought iron, their paws skittering on the paving. Claudia could not pretend she was not in. She opened the gates remotely and then came to meet me at the door, drying her hands on a tea towel. I held out the baskets.

‘Tell me to go away if you want,’ I said. ‘The apples are for you, anyway.’

Claudia pulled at the neckline of her shirt. Blue ran around me in circles, still barking. She waved her hand at him to make him sit and he ignored her, bouncing up at me. Through the mayhem I said: ‘I have to tell you how sorry I am. It’s the least I can do.’

Claudia didn’t say anything. Her eyes seemed redder and more watery than the last few times I’d seen her. She looked older.

‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘Take the apples. You told me you liked to make apple sauce at this time of year.’

‘Genny and I always spent a day at it,’ Claudia said. ‘It was one of our traditions. Come in.’

She stepped aside and I went into the house past her, through the hall and living room, into the huge, beautiful kitchen. I put the baskets down on the slate-tiled floor.

‘Alex said I shouldn’t say anything,’ I said. ‘He said whatever I said would make things worse.’

Claudia shook her head. ‘My sister is missing. Whatever you and Alexander get up to is not going to make the situation any worse than it already is,’ she said. ‘What I find difficult is that you deceived me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I thought you were my ally, Sarah. I don’t have many people to talk to round here, but I thought I could rely on you.’

I felt my eyes grow hot. I looked into her dear face and wanted to weep and beg her forgiveness, but I remembered her rule about being dignified.

‘I only meant to protect you,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

Even to me, the words sounded hollow; too little too late.

Claudia shook her head. ‘I don’t want to know anything,’ she said.

‘Then what can I do …’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘You can’t do anything. You only get one chance at being trusted, Sarah. You should know that as well as anyone. It’s a fragile thing and when it’s gone, it’s gone.’

It was true. We stood together in silence for a few moments. I felt terribly ashamed.

Then Claudia said: ‘Well, you’re here and you’ve brought a ridiculous amount of apples. You’re going to have to give me a hand.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

It was a pleasant afternoon. As time went by, so we both
relaxed. The apples floated in the sink and I peeled with a sharp knife while Claudia stood at the stove stirring the cut pieces of white apple flesh in two large pans with water and sugar. I put the cores and the damaged flesh into a colander to go back out to the compost bin and, covertly, I glanced at Claudia. Her round shoulders were hunched over the steaming pan. She was stirring the apple sauce with a wooden spoon, and then transferring it with a metal ladle into sterile jars fresh from the oven. I could hear the gentle popping of the hot, sweetened juice. The kitchen smelled of cooking sugar. Claudia had a tea towel over her shoulder.

‘This is nice, isn’t it, Gen?’ she said distractedly. ‘Just you and me.’

Her voice was softer than normal, full of affection.

I did not want to spoil the moment for her, so I said nothing at all.