The Secrets Women Keep (46 page)

Rose couldn’t help laughing at the image. ‘So you’ve given up looking over to the other side?’

‘Well, a girl has to look from time to time,’ Eve protested with a smile.

‘What’s so funny?’ Jess came from the stables holding Dylan’s hand. Adam was behind her, carrying Dani, showing her the flowers on the terrace, picking off a bit of
bougainvillea for her.

‘Nothing, darling. Come and sit down. We’ve got everything, I think. Simon’s got the bread.’

Exactly on cue, Simon arrived at the table with a loaf of olive bread in his hand. Rose pulled out one of the chairs. ‘Dylan, come and sit by me.’ The little boy ran over and tried
to clamber on to her knee until Rose swung him on to his seat.

Eve noted the forced jollity in Rose’s voice, and the imperceptible clenching of Jess’s jaw at the mention of Simon’s name. She hoped no one else noticed, least of all him. If
he did, he said nothing, just began to help everyone to food and drink, joining in the conversation but never dominating it. He was doing his best.

Anna and Rick didn’t appear until the rest of them were well into the meal. When they emerged from the house, holding hands, it was quite plain to everyone what had delayed them. Both were
fresh from the shower, both glowing with pleasure. Anna was wearing a skimpy black bikini, a sarong tied loosely around her waist, while Rick was in shorts, stripped to the waist. Eve heard Rose
gasp. His honed and toned body was a walking work of art. The coloured tattoos on his right arm spread to the top of his chest. Those on his left cut off halfway up his bicep. Running down his side
was a series of Chinese characters. Round his navel wound another dragon. They couldn’t see his back, but they could imagine. As they walked to the table, Eve’s eyes were on the studs
in his nipples. She heard Rose’s second intake of breath.

‘Anna!’ she whispered. ‘What have you done?’

Anna stood by the table, hands on hips. ‘Don’t you like it? I had it done months ago.’ Around her waist and past her pierced navel, where a pink stone twinkled in the sunlight,
twined a tattooed garland of coloured flowers and two dragonflies.

‘Why would you do that?’ asked Jess. ‘What’ll it look like when you’re ninety?’

Anna looked as if she was about to snap back when Eve realised it was up to her to smooth the waters. Rose seemed to have lost the power of speech, while the others at the table kept their heads
down as they ate.

Eve cleared her throat. ‘It’s rather beautiful. In its way.’ Everyone turned to look at her, surprised by her reaction. ‘Sit down, do,’ she said faintly.
‘Have some lunch.’ She noticed Rick’s steadying hand on Anna’s arm before they sat at the opposite end of the table to Jess.

Beside Simon.

Battle lines were drawn.

A
fter clearing the lunch things, everyone dispersed to amuse themselves at different ends of the house and garden, leaving Rose and Eve to take
their coffee alone on the terrace. Eve had given in to the heat and had abandoned her sundress for a swimsuit and a brilliantly patterned sarong. They lay in the two recliners in the shade of the
house, swaddled by the late afternoon heat, the air full of the buzz of insects and the shrill song of the cicadas. In the distance, the occasional shout and the sound of hammering signified that
the siesta was over and work had resumed on the villa along the valley.

‘That was awful.’ Rose looked at Eve as she spoke, anxious to see her reaction. She was disappointed. Eve was lying flat on her recliner, eyes shut, her face immobile. If she
didn’t know otherwise, Rose would have assumed she was asleep. ‘Lunch, I mean.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad.’ Eve spoke as if her mind was somewhere else altogether.

‘How can you say that? At least be honest. I know what you’re thinking. I shouldn’t have asked him.’ That she should have accepted Simon’s offer to make an early
exit was all she had thought about since Jess had made plain her dislike of him being there. Rose’s selfishness at wanting him to stay to support her was going to blight their long-awaited
holiday.

Eve’s eyes opened and she propped herself up on one elbow, half turned towards Rose. She pursed her lips before reaching for her coffee. ‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking that, but
since you said it . . .’ She left the sentence unfinished, her meaning plain.

‘Everyone was on their best behaviour. Which is a good thing.’ Rose hastily pre-empted Eve’s next comment. ‘But it was all so bloody awkward. I could kill the girls. They
might at least make more of an effort.’ She pictured Simon, who had tried so hard to behave normally, an impossible ask given Jess’s brisk, noncommittal answers to his increasingly
self-conscious questions. His face, open and willing at the start, had gradually closed down as he was shut out of the conversation. Anna and Rick had been no help at all. They were entirely
wrapped up in one another. If the rest of the table had gone up in smoke they wouldn’t have paid any attention. ‘Did you notice how quiet he was?’

‘Not really. But you know what Jess is like.’ Eve lay back down again with a sigh of contentment. ‘It’s bound to be awkward to begin with. She’ll get used to him
being here.’

‘Thank God for the kids, at least they provided plenty of distraction.’ Rose had no idea when Dylan had developed such a violent dislike of tomatoes. While he spat the offending
fruit all over the table, little Dani had been content with whatever was given to her. She sat in her baby chair beaming, gnawing at pieces of cucumber and cheese clasped in her chubby fists.

‘I’m quite envious,’ said Eve wistfully. ‘You’re such a hands-on granny. That’s the trouble with having boys. When their girlfriends have babies,
they’ll all gravitate home to their mothers, not to me.’

‘How do you know that?’ protested Rose. ‘They’ll love you. Anyway, what about Millie?’

Eve turned her head, shading her eyes with her hand. ‘She’s a boyfriend-free zone at the moment, still hanging out in a great gang of mates. They hunt in packs these days. No sign of
any boyfriend action at all.’ She paused. ‘At least, she’s not telling me about it. Bit like Anna used to be.’

‘Having longed for her to have a boyfriend, now I almost wish she hadn’t.’ But Rose didn’t mean it really; she just wished they’d tone it down a bit. The rest of
them didn’t need to be repeatedly reminded of the excitements that might have vanished from their own longer-term relationships. In fact, she was delighted and relieved that Anna had found
someone who had got her measure and could deal with it. Then she remembered. ‘And those tattoos! How could she ruin her body like that? She’ll regret it when she’s older, and the
skin’s gone.’ She angled her own arm upwards and studied the loosening flesh with distaste, pushing at it with a finger.

‘They’re only young. Live and let live, that’s what I say.’ Eve rolled on to her back again to lie beached, knees bent, eyes shut, her chest rising and falling as she
took several long, contented breaths.

Rose was all of a sudden rocked with longing for Daniel. Every time she thought she had adjusted to his loss, the intensity of these rare but overwhelming waves of emotion took her by surprise.
She wanted nothing more than for him to be here with her on the terrace, discussing their two daughters in the way they used to. Nobody knew Jess and Anna in the way they did, or shared the
feelings that they had for them. How could they? Their frustrations with them would be forever underpinned by a bedrock of shared parental love. She sat up abruptly, blinking the tears away.
‘I can’t sit here any more. Have you finished your coffee?’

Eve groaned. ‘Mmm. Why?’ She wiggled herself into the recliner as if she was bedding herself in for the duration. She straightened one leg and rotated her ankle.

‘I thought we might go for a walk.’ Rose was already on her feet, collecting together the coffee cups, absolutely certain of what she needed to do.

‘Now? Are you crazy? It’s way too hot.’ Alert to the change in Rose’s voice, Eve opened one eye to see what she was doing, then shut it again.

‘It’s cooler than it was,’ Rose insisted. ‘Besides, I think it’s time to go back there.’

‘Where? You’ve lost me.’ This time Eve raised her head and looked at Rose, obviously puzzled.

‘I want to go back to where Dan died. I haven’t been able to so far, but I need to go now. Will you come with me?’

Eve sat up immediately, swinging her legs round. ‘Of course I will. If you’re sure that’s what you want to do. But don’t you want to go with the girls?’

‘I don’t want to force them into going there until they’re ready. They’ll ask when they are.’ The girls were already dealing with being back at Casa Rosa in their
very different ways. Anna was apparently oblivious to the undercurrents, while Jess was being reminded of too much. ‘I could have gone with Simon. I know he wants to see where Dan died, but I
can’t share that with him. Not yet. I need to be by myself, but I need someone with me. Does that make any sense?’ She stared in the direction from which Anna had come running on that
terrible September day. She could almost see her coming towards her again.

‘I’ll be one second. Just let me get my shoes.’ Eve hoisted herself to her feet and disappeared inside, leaving Rose to pace anxiously around the terrace until she remembered
the coffee cups and took them inside. As she washed them up, knowing that one second in Eve’s world meant at least five minutes, Simon and Adam walked in.

‘We’re going into town. That OK with you?’ Simon was looking more relaxed again. He’d put on a loose shirt over his shorts and flip-flops, and his smile had returned.

‘We’re going to get some wood to mend the roof of the shelter by the pool,’ added Adam, his shambolic holiday T-shirt and shorts such a contrast with Simon’s careful
appearance. ‘There’s not much point putting everything away if they’re just going to get rained on in the winter.’

‘Yes, but you don’t have to do that now, do you?’ asked Rose, surprised that Adam was offering to do precisely the sort of work he’d refused to do for Daniel.

‘No time like the present.’ He was decisive, mind made up. ‘Jess has got the kids. She suggested I did it and Simon’s offered to help. We’ll only be half an hour or
so.’

Simon’s relief at being accepted by one of the party was palpable. His laid-back appearance hadn’t deceived Rose, and she was glad Adam was sensitive enough to have picked up on it.
‘Well, that’s fantastic then. Thanks. Eve and I are going for a walk. We’ll see you when you get back.’

By the time they’d left the kitchen and she’d lined up the cups on the draining board, Eve was waiting for her on the terrace, having exchanged the sarong for a loose lilac shirt
dress, a wide-brimmed straw hat and plimsolls.

‘However many outfits have you brought? That’s the third one in almost as many hours.’ Rose smiled, looking down at the shorts she had worn almost every day.

‘One for every occasion.’ Eve was undaunted by criticism of her carefully considered wardrobe. ‘Let’s go. If you’re sure you want to do this.’

‘I’m sure.’ It was as if something was drawing Rose back down that track to where they had found Dan. The time had come.

Just as they reached the edge of the garden, she stopped. ‘One minute.’ She ran quickly back up the stones of the path to where she’d left her secateurs that morning. She
picked them up and walked over to the flower bed, where she clipped off a stem from a white rose bush. She and Dan had chosen the plant together, one among several they had driven down here one
long-ago spring. They had left the girls at a school sports camp to be brought by Eve and Terry with their cousins a week later, while they had driven leisurely through France, stopping for a
couple of nights on the way. Their old banger was weighted down by a rocking chair and a couple of rugs on the roof rack, while the back seat and the boot were laden with plants, pictures and
general stuff they thought they might need. They had stayed in small local
auberges
, neither of the names of which she could remember now. But she remembered the fun they’d had,
drinking local wine from the barrel, eating omelettes and
truites bleus
, strolling arm in arm through narrow medieval streets, collapsing on to lumpy sagging mattresses where they lay curled
around each other. How they had worried that the plants might not survive the trip, but survive they had, and this mass of scented white flowers was a constant reminder of that brief but magical
interlude.

She carried the flower to where Eve was waiting. ‘Winchester Cathedral, Dan’s favourite rose,’ she explained, touching the mass of white petals before holding it up for Eve to
smell its honey-sweet fragrance.

The walk seemed to take an age. Nothing like the panicked race from the house that they had made the last time. They exchanged one or two observations about the blaze of poppies along the
roadside, the other wild flowers, or the unrecognised cry of a bird, but both of them felt the weighty significance of what they were doing. As they rounded the final corner before the spot where
Dan fell, Rose felt unaccountably nervous. She slowed her pace, feeling her heart thumping against her ribs, grateful that Eve had the sensitivity to hang back. She looked around her. There was
nothing to indicate the tragedy that had happened here, that had altered the course of all their lives. But what had she expected? That the grass on the verge would still be flattened where Daniel
had fallen, leaving the imprint of his body there for ever? That the stones on the track would still be stained with her blood where she had scraped her knee as she knelt to hold him? By her foot a
couple of large black beetles trundled across the track. There was no natural memorial here for Dan. The world went on without him, unmoved by his death.

She knelt where she’d knelt before. Or was it where she’d knelt? She couldn’t remember exactly. There was nothing to signal the precise spot. As she bowed her head, she could
feel the stones pressing sharply into her knees again. She leaned forward and laid the rose on the side of the road where nothing could run it over, as close as she could remember to where
they’d found Dan’s body. She was dimly aware of Eve’s sniffs in the background.