The Secrets Women Keep (24 page)

‘Can I call you?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she found herself saying. ‘Yes, do.’ She could still feel the beat of her heart, the relief of getting away. And yet in among all that, there was regret too. She
dismissed it abruptly. In the Ladies’, she stared at her reflection, smoothed her skirt, and straightened her jacket before putting on her coat. Her mind was racing. What had just happened?
Her life was complicated enough without adding Will into the mix. She calmed herself, knotted her scarf. He wouldn’t call. His question was just a knee-jerk way of concluding their encounter.
Of course he didn’t mean it.

She checked her BlackBerry. She had ten minutes in which to get to her appointment with the MD of Flying Mango Books, ten minutes in which to focus on what she wanted to achieve from the
meeting. That was what was important now. She readjusted the shoulder strap of her bag, tightened her grasp on the handle of her briefcase and made her way to the exit and out across the busy
junction, dodging taxis, towards the Strand.

T
he knife slipped, slicing into the fleshy tip of Rose’s finger. Her curse was drowned out by the voices of
The Pearl Fishers
crescendoing around her. Cradling her injured hand, she crossed to the tap and watched the blood run off into the rushing water. Wrapping a bit of kitchen towel around the cut, she went to the
cupboard, where she found an Elastoplast. She hadn’t much time. She was teaching her watercolour class at seven, and at Jess’s insistence, Simon Connelly was due at five thirty. An hour
should be more than enough for him to explain what he and Jess had dreamed up for Trevarrick.

She went back to slicing and quartering the cucumber, then put it in a bowl with sugar, salt and rice vinegar, hissing in pain as the vinegar seeped through the plaster into the cut. Then she
did the same thing again with half a red onion and another bowl. She found the precision demanded by chopping, slicing and dicing therapeutic. At first there had seemed little point in cooking for
one, but as the months went by, she had begun to enjoy the exercise. No longer having to cater for Daniel’s likes and dislikes, she was free to experiment as she pleased. Not having his
interference when she tried something new was in fact liberating, though she felt bad admitting that to herself. If he walked in this very minute, the first thing he would do would be to turn the
music off.

She hummed along as she slid the swordfish steak into the plastic bag to marinade in squeezed lime, olive oil, and seasoning. There. When she returned exhausted from her class, everything would
be ready. She liked to be on her mettle when she was teaching, even if these were enthusiastic adults who needed little more than encouragement, and food made her too sluggish.

At five thirty precisely, the doorbell rang. Simon was standing there, a bunch of white tulips in one hand, a briefcase in the other, and a drawings tube under his arm. She took the flowers,
thanking him, and showed him into the kitchen, where they could most easily look at his plans.

‘Tea? Or something stronger?’ she asked, lowering the volume so they could hear themselves speak over the overture to
Rigoletto
.

‘Tea would be perfect. Thanks.’ He hung his coat and scarf over the back of a chair while she set about making a pot of Earl Grey and pulled out a tin of shortbread. As she moved
around the kitchen, she was aware of him taking in his surroundings. He examined her paintings, considering each one as if they were classical works of art. Although she was used to friends and
family looking at them, the scrutiny of a stranger made her feel too exposed.

‘How are you?’ He had moved over to the bookshelves, and was studying the photos of her family.

Disconcerted by his close interest, she hesitated, watching as he bent closer to Dan’s business photo that she’d placed at the back with the one of them skiing. He stared at it
without speaking.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied, not wanting to elaborate on the bewildering difficulties of being alone. ‘It’s been hard, but the family’s been wonderful.’ She
immediately thought of Jess and Anna and how she must mend the bridges between them.

He came to the table, clearing his throat. ‘I like your paintings. They’re very evocative. Italy and Cornwall, I’m guessing.’ As she brought over the tea, he took the
papers from the tube and unrolled them, then rolled them in the opposite direction so they would lie flat.

‘Thanks. That’s right.’ As he took his cup and saucer, he smiled, glancing at her for the first time. She was struck by how washed-out he looked. His face was thinner than she
remembered, his skin grey with fatigue, shadows underlining red-rimmed eyes. She recognised in him a deep private sadness that echoed her own. Jess had mentioned the death of his father. Obviously
that was taking its toll.

‘So you’ve been helping Jess with plans for Trevarrick.’ She came round the table to stand beside him to look at the drawings.

‘Yes, well, both of them. Daniel took me down there to see the place last August.’

‘I’d no idea he was thinking of renovating.’ Nor did she remember his mentioning taking anyone to see the hotel, but perhaps it had been forgotten in the flurry of their
getting ready to go to Italy. Everything surrounding that holiday had blurred and distorted in her mind.

‘I don’t know that he was really. I’d seen the photos of Trevarrick in the brochure and suggested a couple of improvements he might consider. He invited me to have a
look.’

‘Jess never said.’ She was used to Dan taking off on short business trips if one of the hotels needed him, but was still surprised not to remember this one.

He must have noticed her puzzlement and tried to reassure her. ‘I was only there for a few hours. We threw some ideas around together but no decisions were made. Jess only contacted me a
few weeks ago about possibly taking things on a stage.’ He moved the drawings so she could see them more easily. ‘Look. She’s asked me to take you through them.’

Nonetheless, Rose disliked the idea that she had been excluded from these talks. Jess had said nothing, probably thinking the time was all wrong, but both she and Daniel knew perfectly well how
attached Rose was to her childhood home. Although she hadn’t been directly involved in the business since they’d moved away to London, fifteen-odd years ago, she still cared deeply
about what happened to the place.

‘I hadn’t appreciated that you’d gone quite so far,’ she said, trying to translate the lines and measurements in front of her into a recognisable building, at the same
time feeling as if the ground had been swept from under her feet.

‘These are only rough. Nothing’s been decided yet.’

‘I realise that,’ she said, rather more sharply than she’d intended. ‘You’ll need my go-ahead now Daniel’s not here to give his.’

He raised his head from the drawings, leaving his finger on the point he was about to explain. ‘Please don’t be upset. I only came here because Jess asked me to. I think she meant
all this as a surprise. A good one.’

‘I’m sorry. That was very rude of me.’ She put her hands on the table and leaned on them. ‘But I’m afraid you’ll have to explain what it all means.’

They stood so close their arms were almost touching. Next to hers, his hands on the plans were long-fingered, nails cut straight across. With a pang, she realised that his lemony aftershave
reminded her of Daniel. She moved away from him. As he talked, fleshing out the description that Jess had given her in the café, providing the detail that made it real, excitement stirred in
Rose’s gut.

‘To give you the best idea, I’ve brought this 3D image.’ He opened his laptop to call up a stylised version of the back of the hotel she knew so well, but transformed. Under a
clear sky stretched a blue pool, cabin-style changing rooms along one side, full-length glass doors completing an extension to the dining room. Retracted sideways, they brought the outside in, or
vice versa, Rose was never sure which. Instead of the dark cosiness of before, the room was light and bright. On its right, the snug had been enlarged and given a glass roof and similar glass
doors. On its left, the old bar remained untouched. Looking towards the sea, two palm trees were the only things that interrupted the otherwise all-too-familiar view down to the cliffs, across the
wide sandy beach and along to the next headland.

‘It looks like the South of France.’

‘Pity I can’t guarantee the sun.’ He laughed.

‘That’s a disappointment.’ As she laughed too, some of the awkwardness between them dissipated.

While she considered the drawings, letting Simon explain the finer detail, she couldn’t stop the memories. As children, she and Terry had roamed that coastline, flying kites on the beach,
hiding on the steep gorse-lined coast path, exploring the smugglers’ caves despite their parents’ warnings, taking out the family Wayfarer. They had raced down the hotel corridors,
stolen food from the kitchen when the cook’s back was turned, and been babysat by an array of young waitresses and barmen while their parents held court in the hotel bar or went out for the
evening. These images were overlaid by those belonging to her and Daniel: long sunny summer walks, escaping her parents, who by then rarely left the building; nights in cold bedrooms, threadbare
sheets and towels, the empty dining room and bar, the smell of damp, the sound of arguing, the few loyal guests. But how Daniel had loved the embarrassing shambles of her family life, compared to
the rigorous Catholic confines of his own. He’d fallen in love with the countryside, the clifftop setting of Trevarrick and the long cliff path walks, branching off through deep woodland,
hidden coves and river estuaries. His real affection for the place was what made him hurl himself headlong into the business of restoring and recreating the hotel after her parents’
deaths.

Listening to Simon, Rose warmed to him, and was reminded again of Daniel, of his love for the place, of how hard he had worked on the original renovations, sometimes coming to bed after a
fourteen-hour day. Nothing deflected his passion. Working together, they had achieved his vision, while Terry oversaw the costs and kept well clear of any of the physical involvement, agreeing that
they should be equal partners given the amount of work Daniel was putting in. As they’d laboured, so Rose had grown to love the place again. In the months since Daniel’s death,
she’d forgotten just how much. And now she was being presented with an opportunity to take Trevarrick on to another level.

As Simon talked, she realised that selling the place was out of the question. Whatever the pressure put on her by Terry and Anna, she couldn’t. More than that, being involved in the
refurbishment, even at arm’s length, would give her a project, something to occupy her mind. Perhaps that was why Jess had been so keen for her to see the plans. Not just so that she would
have a home and a job, but in order to share something with her mother. How clever of Dan to have found an architect so sympathetic to the project, and how much cleverer of Jess to have thought to
contact him again. The initial awkwardness between them had quickly vanished. Simon had a natural ease that she liked, a sense of humour too. He listened to her ideas and suggested compromises they
might all accept without giving the impression of being either offended or patronising.

‘
If
, and it’s a big if,’ she said, imagining the objections that would be raised by Anna and Terry. ‘
If
we were to go ahead, what sort of timescale are you
thinking of?’

He rubbed his nose with a finger, thoughtful. ‘Depends how much you want to upset the summer business. Normally this sort of renovation would be carried out in early spring or autumn, but
we could probably get the dining room extension and snug completed by the end of June if I can get the right builders.’

‘That quickly?’ Rose hadn’t imagined the whole thing taking off quite so fast.

‘Well, as I say, you could wait until the season’s over. It’s up to you.’ He hesitated. ‘Of course, Daniel would have had the whole thing under way by
now.’

She glanced at him, surprised by his sudden insensitivity. After his concern at the memorial, she had the impression that he was a more thoughtful man than that. In the background, the orchestra
played on.

‘No doubt,’ she agreed crisply. ‘But the situation’s more complicated now. I have to consult with the rest of the family.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’ A blush crept upwards over his face, making him look like a schoolboy who’d been caught flouting the rules. Flustered,
he began rolling up the drawings.

‘I know you didn’t. Look,’ she said, feeling sorry for him. He was only expressing his enthusiasm for the project. She could hardly blame him for that. ‘I love the
designs. You, Dan and Jess have obviously thought through every aspect of this between you. But I can’t give you the go-ahead just like that. I wish I could.’

As he stretched an elastic band over the paper roll, it snapped and flew across the room. Neither of them went to retrieve it. ‘I completely understand. Whenever you’re ready.’
Simon was focused on rerolling the paper.

‘Can you leave those with me? I’d like to think it all over.’

‘Of course.’ He handed her the roll with a smile. ‘If you need me to answer any questions, just call. I could come by and pick them up. In fact, I wonder whether . . .’
He stopped, as the blush began to return to his cheeks. ‘No, sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it.’

‘Forget what?’ She wanted Simon to leave, but not before he finished his sentence.

He shrugged on his coat and knotted his scarf, screwing up his face as if he wished he hadn’t spoken.

‘Please,’ she entreated, more curious than ever.

‘I’ve a couple of tickets to the Royal Opera House on Tuesday. Good ones,’ he said, looking uncomfortable as he put on one glove then took it off again. ‘A long-standing
date that’s been broken. I wondered . . .’ He shook his head, his complexion fiery with embarrassment.