Summer Secrets
Page 29
“I thought you said there was a moment when you thought he might have been. In the kitchen. Making popcorn.”
“I thought that at the time, but two hours later he had his tongue down Julia’s throat, so, no. I don’t think it was a moment. I think it was my overactive imagination working overtime.”
“What if you’re wrong?” my mum says simply. “What if he still loves you? Then how would you feel?”
“But he doesn’t,” I groan. “If he did, he would have said something. Oh God. It’s just so awful. I can’t believe he knows.”
“It might not be so awful,” she says. “It might all turn out to be for the best.”
Thirty-six
Jason is now avoiding me. Which is a huge relief. I don’t need to skulk around the flat or suddenly find a reason to go out if he’s dropping Annie at home, because he’s clearly feeling as humiliated as I am, not to mention quite possibly appalled, and is staying as far away as possible.
While I try to get on with my life.
Like an awful flashback, the scene from the meeting, the things I said, the knowledge that Jason heard them, come back to haunt me on a regular basis. Usually when I’m lying in bed at night, and I often throw the pillow on top of my head and groan in horror.
But as the weeks have gone by, it has got a little easier. Not seeing him has helped.
I speak to Maureen, my sponsor, every day, go to my meetings, write my articles, look after Annie, and as the pieces of the puzzle of my regular old boring life have fallen into the same place they were before we left for Nantucket, so the pain has eased.
It is beginning to feel like a bad, but distant, dream.
I even bit the bullet and signed up for Match.com. I didn’t want to do it, but Sam threatened to divorce me if I didn’t, so even though I haven’t met anyone yet, I have spent quite a few evenings winking away and having some … interesting chats.
I don’t know that I feel quite ready to actually go out on a date yet.
Until I meet Matthew, who has blue eyes, and likes windsurfing, and go-karting, and good wine, and basically we have absolutely nothing in common, except his messages are very quick, and clever, and when he asks if he can call me, I say yes, and his voice is warm and lovely, and when he asks if I’d like to meet for a drink, I say no.
Two or three weeks go by, during which we talk every night. This isn’t real, though, I tell myself. Anyone can be anyone they choose during a phone conversation. This means nothing. Who can predict chemistry?
Sam phoned yesterday to see if I would be interested in writing a piece on middle-aged online dating. Great. Everything I write these days has to be prefaced with the word “middle-aged,” which doesn’t exactly make this middle-aged single woman feel particularly good about herself.
“Get over it,” said Sam. “It happens to the best of us.”
Tonight, I have finally agreed to meet Matthew for a drink. We’re going to the Queens in Primrose Hill, and because this is my first date in years, and even though I’m almost certain he’s going to be awful in real life—did I mention we have nothing in common?—I have still put an inordinate amount of time into getting ready today.
I went to the hairdresser this morning and had a few highlights put in. A few more highlights, to be correct. And I got a spray tan, because even though technically it’s autumn, it’s entirely possible that I just went to somewhere like Marbella for the weekend, and I do look so much better with a tan.
Doesn’t everyone look so much better with a tan?
I have lost some weight, which isn’t a bad thing. Not that I was unhappy, particularly, but I am always convinced that if I were ten pounds lighter then everything in my life would be perfect, and lo and behold, when I went to try on the skirt I was thinking of wearing for the date tonight, it was swimming on me.
Instead I go for the really-much-too-small-for-me skinny stretch jeans that are very dark, and very tight, and possibly, at this point, at least two rather than three sizes too small for me. It takes me about ten minutes to inch them up my legs. They’re so tight I have to wear a very loose sweater with them to hide the muffin top, and I already know that within about an hour and a half I will have such bad gas I may have to cut the evening short, but for that hour and a half, I will look absolutely fantastic.
As long as I don’t sit down.
Much.
I am nervous. I have just finished putting some makeup on, not too much, it is only the Queens pub, after all, when my phone rings, and it is Sam.
“Change of plan,” he says.
“What plan?”
“The plan where you’re writing about middle-aged online dating. It’s been done to death anyway. I want you to write another piece for us.”
“Fine. I hadn’t written much anyway. What’s the piece?”
“I want you to write about people who get divorced, who still love each other, then get back together.”
I say nothing.
“Hello?” says Sam. “Are you there?”
“O-kay,” I say, because we had a night out a couple of weeks ago, and I told him about what happened, and it does seem a little … insensitive, to ask me of all people to write this particular piece given what is going on in my life right now.
“In fact, I’d like to get a bit more specific, if that’s okay. I want you to write a piece about a woman who only gets sober once her marriage is over, and then realizes how much she threw away when she was drinking, and once her husband realizes she actually is a different person, she has changed for the better, he realizes that she’s always been the only person he has ever wanted to be with, and they go out for dinner, to Odette’s, at eight o’clock tonight, and then they live happily ever after. Do you think you could do that for me? By the end of the week?”
There is a very long silence. “What?” I say eventually, because I really don’t know what else to say. “What the fuck?” I follow up with, which wouldn’t be very professional with any other editor, but it is only Sam, after all. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I am deeply confused.
I can hear the smile in his voice. “Jason called me. He is desperate. He has no idea how to talk to you, and he still loves you, so this is what you’re doing. You’re going to put on your nicest clothes and get your arse to Odette’s at eight o’clock this evening, where your former and hopefully soon-to-be-again husband will meet you, and the two of you can finally figure this thing out. Okay?”
“No!” I say. “I have a date tonight.”
“A date?” He is both aghast and intrigued. “Who with?”
“With bloody Matthew who I met on Match.com thanks to the original article I was writing for you.”
“So cancel it.”
“I can’t! I feel really bad.”
“Please tell me you’re joking. The love of your life and I have conspired to bring you back together tonight, and you would rather meet a lanky, balding, boring guy called Matthew who you don’t know?”
“How do you know he’s lanky, balding, and boring?”
“I don’t. It’s a guess. But whatever he is, he’s not Jason. You love Jason. And Jason loves you. That’s about as happy an ending as anyone could wish for. Go, and enjoy. And write the piece.”
“I don’t know what to say.” I don’t. I am in shock.
“Nothing needed to say. That’s what friends are for. And by the way, this is exactly what should happen. It’s clear to everyone who knows you that the two of you are supposed to be together. I’m just relieved that Jason finally decided to do something about it.”
“Wait! Do you really want me to write this as a piece?”
“No. It’s not very us. But it’s very Daily Mail. Why don’t you offer it to them?”
My mind is still racing. “Sam, one more question. When you say he still loves me, are you sure you don’t mean as a friend? Because I’m the mother of his child, so he’ll always love me, or do you mean—”
He interrupts me. “I wouldn’t
have gone to all this trouble if it was anything other than the real deal. Go. And phone me tomorrow morning. I expect every single detail.”
I put down the phone and squeal as I dance my way up the corridor, my heart threatening to burst out of my body with joy. I pause by the full-length mirror outside Annie’s room, and I look at my reflection. I look into my eyes and see how full my life is, how happy, and calm, and present I am. How I am a good mother, a good friend. A good person. And I have never felt that about myself before. I look into my eyes and I see how far I’ve come.
And smile as I think of how far I have to go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JANE GREEN is the author of seventeen bestselling novels. Originally from London, she now lives in Westport, Connecticut, with her husband, children, and a menagerie of animals. Visit her at her Web site, at www.janegreen.com, or join her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/authorjanegreen. Or sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY JANE GREEN
Saving Grace
Tempting Fate
Family Pictures
Another Piece of My Heart
Promises to Keep
The Beach House
Dune Road
Second Chance
Swapping Lives
The Other Woman
To Have and to Hold
Babyville
Bookends
Mr. Maybe
Jemima J
Straight Talking
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
About the Author
Also by Jane Green
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
SUMMER SECRETS. Copyright © 2015 by Jane Green. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover photograph by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-04734-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-4774-3 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466847743
First Edition: June 2015