The Secrets Women Keep (38 page)

As she washed up the grill pan, tears ran unchecked over her cheeks. Brokenly humming ‘Abide With Me’ didn’t help. Earlier that afternoon, walking round Hampstead Heath had
taken her mind off Daniel for a welcome couple of hours. But alone again, her thoughts homed right back to him, and to Simon. She reached for the tissues by the toaster, just one of the boxes
she’d placed at strategic points around the house. She blew her nose, then dried the pan, wiping her hands on her jeans. Without thinking, she picked up one of the photos that she’d
recently dug out of an old album. These and memories were all she had left of Dan. But did either of them represent the truth? She had no way of knowing. Here, they had been caught laughing
together just after Eve and Terry’s Labrador puppy had taken a surprise bite out of seven-year-old Anna’s doughnut. She stared into Daniel’s eyes, trying to read into them
something that would explain what she now knew about him. But for all they shone with laughter, they remained unfathomable.

‘What was going on in your head?’ she whispered. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, and why aren’t you here to bloody well sort this all out? I don’t know what to think
any more.’

As she replaced the photo, the doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Through the spy hole she saw Anna, pushing her hair off her face. She’d obviously come straight from work
in her uniform of green polo shirt and mud-spattered jeans.

‘Have you been crying again?’ Anna asked, the moment they separated from their embrace. She peered at Rose’s face, clearly not going to be content until she got the truth.

‘I’m fine now you’re here.’ Rose waited till Anna had undone her muddy Doc Martens and left them by the door, then took her hand and pulled her into the living room.
‘Now, to what do I owe this honour?’

‘Nothing really.’ Anna threw herself down in the nearest chair. ‘Just wanted to see how you’re doing.’

Since she had told Anna about Simon and Daniel, her daughter had been more supportive of her than Rose would ever have expected. Over the weeks, Anna’s initial shock became outrage and
anger at her father’s betrayal of them. Eventually those feelings were being replaced by a genuine sadness for her father, sympathy for him having to live a lie. She and Jess had been brought
together by their concern for Rose and how she was faring. She had spent long evenings with Rose airing their feelings, going round in circles as they tried to make some sort of sense of what had
happened.

But this time Rose sensed that there was something else. Anna was so transparent. She was keeping something back, but Rose bet it wouldn’t be there for long. She could wait.

‘Tea?’ She stood by the fireplace, straightening the candles and propping up the single invitation that sat there, to Eve and Terry’s twenty-fifth. On second thoughts, she took
it and dropped it in the bin. In the mirror, she barely recognised her reflection – a weary-looking old woman stared back. She rubbed her cheeks to bring some colour to them.

‘Love one. I’ll get them.’ Anna jumped to her feet and left Rose fiddling while she went to make the tea. Returning silently in her socks, she put the tray down on that
day’s unopened newspaper, then came up behind her mother and hugged her tight. Their reflections gazed back at them, emphasising their similarities – the tip-tilted nose, the defined
bone structure, the boyishness – and their differences – Anna outdoorsy, tanned and healthy, Rose pale and tired.

‘Mum, we know what’s going on and we’re worried about you.’ Typically, she went straight to the point.

‘What? You and Jess?’ Rose was pleased to hear they had kept the peace. If the shared knowledge of Dan’s betrayal had caused a truce, then it was a small consolation that at
least something good had come from it.

‘Of course. I do still think she can be beyond difficult, but Dad and Simon . . .’ She let their names fill the silence. ‘Well, how could we not talk about that and about
you?’ She squeezed Rose and kissed her cheek.

‘And what did you conclude?’ Rose was on the verge of tears again. She tore a tissue from the nearby box and blew her nose.

Anna squeezed her again and passed her a second tissue. ‘Well, I’m afraid, that somehow we’ve all got to find a way of moving on. You can’t hide yourself away like this
for ever.’

Ah, the easy acceptance of youth. But Rose couldn’t help smiling. ‘Why don’t you say exactly what you mean, darling?’ She sat down and took her mug.
Keep Calm and
Drink Tea
, advised the caption.

‘OK, well perhaps that was a bit blunt. But you know what I mean.’ Anna leaned forward and scrutinised her face close-up.

‘You make it sound so easy.’ The hot tea burned the roof of Rose’s mouth. She returned the mug to the tray.

‘But you know I’m right really, don’t you?’ Anna insisted, sitting opposite her. ‘What’s done’s done. We can’t bring Dad back. And even if he did
have a fling with Simon, what’s the betting that’s all it was? A stupid mid-life crisis moment that meant nothing. Plenty of middle-aged men have affairs to prove to themselves
they’ve still got it. So his was with a man? We’ve got to make ourselves believe it doesn’t matter. I know it’s impossibly hard, but we’ve got to try, otherwise
we’ll go under. Even St Jess is on her way to believing that. We’ve got to take our anger, put it in one circle of a figure eight, then cut the join and let it float away from
us.’

Rose gave a watery smile. That therapist again, no doubt.

‘And you’ve got to as well.’

‘But it does matter,’ Rose protested. The fact that Daniel had chosen a man instead of her mattered dreadfully, although she wasn’t exactly sure why. In some ways it should
have made it easier. ‘I can’t have been the wife he wanted, can I? Perhaps he could have been happy with someone else all along.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say
‘another man’.

‘Mum, come on.’ Anna’s no-nonsense approach was nothing if not bracing. ‘If he’d wanted that, he’d have left you a long time ago. Don’t think like that.
You’ll go mad. Try to remember him for what he was to us. A bloody difficult old bugger at times . . .’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Wrong word! But he was Dad. And how awful it
must have been for him not to be able to come clean with us. Don’t punish yourself. There’s no point.’

‘That’s so easy to say.’ Rose envied her daughter’s robust attitude to life, which had been so effectively fostered by those stints in therapy. If only she could muster
the same resilience. But perhaps with the girls’ support, and with Eve’s . . . who knew what superhuman effort she might be capable of? And what would Daniel want her to do? She thought
she knew the answer.

‘Have you heard from Simon?’

‘He wrote me a letter, you know.’ She could recite every miserable word by heart, but the same three stuck at the front of her mind –
he loved you
. For some reason, she
hadn’t thrown it away but kept it tucked into the incriminating
Rigoletto
libretto that she’d brought home and kept on the top shelf of the bookcase. ‘But not
since.’

‘Quite odd, his friendship with you,’ Anna observed, thoughtful. ‘But then I suppose you have got loads in common – apart from Dad, I mean.’ Her hand shot to her
mouth again. ‘God, sorry. I don’t seem to be able to say quite the right thing.’

She looked so appalled with herself that Rose had to sympathise. ‘But we do, or rather we did,’ she conceded. ‘I enjoyed his being around. He made me feel safe, not so alone.
Good timing, I guess.’

‘Jess misses him at Trevarrick. She says Roger’s nothing like as good – even though he must be referring back to Simon. Unless he’s removed himself from the job
completely.’

What was this? Surely they didn’t want her to let Jess reinstate him? That wasn’t going to happen. However much she loved Trevarrick and wanted the renovations to go ahead as
planned, she could never accept Simon’s presence there again. ‘Well, she’ll have to manage, I’m afraid.’

‘OK. Keep your wig on.’ Anna patted the air in a calming gesture. ‘I just thought I’d warn you. But I did come to talk to you about something else as well.’

‘I had a feeling.’ Rose hazarded a guess that they were about to change the subject back to Anna. Her daughter was obviously building herself up to saying something momentous. And
here it came.

‘I slept with Rick.’ Now Anna’s eyes were welling up, and Rose passed her a tissue. ‘I shouldn’t have.’

‘Oh Anna, why not?’ Touched that Anna wanted to confide in her, Rose couldn’t see a problem. Rick seemed a perfectly nice guy, and it was time Anna had someone in her life at
last. Then a thought struck her. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

‘Mum! For God’s sake. At the grand old age of thirty-one, I have got the hang of contraception. Nooo,’ she wailed, impatient with Rose for not catching on. ‘It’s
because we work together.’

‘So?’ Rose still didn’t understand. ‘Dad and I worked at Trevarrick together at the beginning. Why’s that a problem? We had some great times.’ She had
remembered as many of them as she could since his death.

‘That was different.’ Anna’s impatience showed. ‘You were married. Rick and I aren’t. If we fall out, how’s that going to affect the business? It could mean
disaster.’

Rose was mystified. ‘Why should you fall out? If you like each other . . .’

‘It was one night, that’s all.’ Anna spelled it out slowly for her. ‘And he’s got a girlfriend.’

‘Oh.’ Rose wasn’t sure what to say next.

‘We had a couple of drinks to celebrate finishing a big landscaping job. Liz was away, so I asked him back to the flat and, well . . . you know . . . Oh God. If only I could undo
everything.’

‘Then talk to him,’ Rose suggested warily. ‘Tell him you want to go back to the way things were. That you don’t want it to affect the business.’

Anna curled herself up in the chair. ‘But I like him, Mum. I don’t really want to go backwards. And if I talk to him, then he might agree. That’s what I’m frightened
of.’ She punched the arm of the chair with a fist. ‘I really don’t know the best thing to do.’

‘Then do nothing,’ advised Rose, wishing she could provide a solution, but falling back on that tried-and-tested course of action. ‘Do nothing until you do know, and perhaps by
then he’ll know too.’

Anna didn’t stay for long. All her life she had hopped from one thing to the next with the speed of a demented butterfly. Voicing the problem had been enough for her. That, and checking in
on Rose. Then it was time to go home for a bath and whatever the evening held in store.

‘I hope you’re going to like this.’ Terry stirred the ingredients of a casserole on the hob with a metal spoon.

Eve just stopped herself in time from suggesting he use a wooden one that wouldn’t mark the dish. At least he was cooking. Far better than the ready-meal she would have brought home in a
last-minute rush.

‘Sure I will. Smells heavenly.’ But her attention was more fully on the editorial notes that she was making for an author. They had a meeting the following morning, and she wanted to
be completely ready with her advice. That, after all, was what would be expected of her. Some authors required more of her input than others, and Erica Johnson was particularly demanding. Not that
Eve minded. She loved the editorial involvement, helping shape the work, ready to sell.

‘Have you nearly finished that?’ He sounded impatient. A repeated bone of contention was that she liked to work at the kitchen table when they had a perfectly good desk in the living
room. But the desk was too small. She liked to be able to spread her work out. Terry thought work shouldn’t encroach on the kitchen.

‘One more chapter.’ She wished he wouldn’t complain. They both knew how important her work was to their financial future at the moment. ‘Then I’m done.’

There was the pop of a cork, then Terry was standing beside her. ‘Glass of wine for the worker. A cheeky little Verdicchio. You’ll like it.’ He touched her shoulder, his thumb
briefly on the back of her neck, before returning to the cooking.

Just as she took a sip, her BlackBerry rang. Terry tutted as she took the call, but she couldn’t ignore it despite his accusing stare. Fortunately it wasn’t a client needing
reassurance, but Anna. After the initial pleasantries, she came to the point.

‘I’ve been round to Mum’s and I’m really worried about her. Jess is too. She’s obviously not eating much and looks like a ghost.’

Eve had worried that Rose was coping badly. The fact that she hadn’t returned Eve’s last couple of calls was a bad sign. She let Anna go on.

‘When I got there, she’d been crying again. Nothing we do seems to work. I tried to talk to her about Dad. But it’s soooo difficult. I’m doing my best to support her by
trying to show I can handle it, but inside I still feel so muddled. One minute I’m furious with him, the next I feel sorry for him. I mean, how awful for him not to be able to be true to
himself. Jess is the same. And then I tried to take Mum’s mind off the whole thing by asking her for some advice, but it was hopeless. Auntie Eve! You’re her best friend. Couldn’t
you go and see her? I know she’d love that.’

Eve prevaricated. She wasn’t sure she could leave Terry on his own. Not that she wanted to take the role of prison warder, but there seemed no alternative at the moment, however much she
longed to get away to London.

When she hung up, Terry was ladling up the fish curry. Something had prevented her from telling him about Simon and Daniel. She didn’t want him to change his view of Daniel, a man for whom
he’d always had such admiration. He wouldn’t understand. But she knew Rose would insist on his knowing sooner or later, once the rest of their lives had been sorted out. She relayed the
conversation without going into unnecessary detail. ‘Do you think we should go and stay with her for a few days?’

He pulled out his chair and sat opposite her, leaving on the Domestic Goddess apron that Millie had given him for Christmas. ‘We could. But why don’t you go without me? I’ll
just be in the way.’ He stalled her objection. ‘I’ll be all right here on my own. Promise.’

Was this a clever plan to give himself space to gamble again? He wouldn’t, would he? Not after being so determined to find a counsellor and a local Gamblers Anonymous. Since his
confession, he’d been dead set on proving to her that he meant what he said. He could get the better of his addiction. Hating herself for distrusting him, she put a forkful of curry into her
mouth. Immediately she reached for her glass of water.