The Secrets Women Keep

by Fanny Blake

  She looked around the office at the photos of her award-winning authors, of her children armed with body boards on a Cornish beach, of Terry at a local point-to-point, grinning after winning on a race. These were the people who cared about her and towards whom she had a huge responsibility, especially now that Terry was unemployed. A recent addition was the framed LP sleeve of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sticky Fingers’. Rose had asked Daniel’s closest friends to pick something that belonged to him as a memento. His extensive vinyl collection was irresistible, and Eve had chosen the album that she remembered him obsessing over at Edinburgh when everyone else’s tastes had moved on. She tossed the kitchen roll in the bin. Sod it! Where was the old Eve Rutherford who didn’t give a damn, and who never let anyone or anything get the better of her? What was she doing with her life?

  She took the other mug and went to the sink, where she poured the undrinkable coffee away, gripped by a new resolve. She would fight the gloom to show everyone, and most importantly herself, what she was still made of.

  Two hours later, a rug had been pulled over the coffee stain, the random paperwork sorted and put in May’s filing tray, and a bunch of yellow tulips stood on her desk. She still had a couple of hours before Rufus was due to arrive for lunch: plenty of time to open the post and get some admin out of the way. There might even be time for her to read more of that promising paranormal teen romance that had arrived unsolicited a couple of days ago. For the first time in ages, she felt braced and ready to go.

  As she settled to deal with her emails, the phone rang.

  ‘Mum!’ The sound of Millie’s voice always lifted Eve. Immediately a picture of her daughter flashed up in her mind: long, slim legs poured into skinny-fit jeans, ankle boots, cheap black leather bomber jacket, hands in fingerless mittens, a big scarf, and a tumble of unruly hair tied in a ponytail on top of her head.

  ‘Millie, my love. Where are you?’ She checked her watch. Eleven thirty. Most likely still in bed, surrounded by the contents of her wardrobe, that she was happier keeping within easy reach on the floor. Why her beloved daughter had turned out to be by far the untidiest of her four children she didn’t know. In fact, her attempts to drum the basic principles of housekeeping into all of them had met with abject and frustrating failure.

  ‘I’m dashing out to an exhibition with Flo, but I wanted to be sure that you’d paid that cheque into my account.’

  As she spoke, Eve pictured the cheque deliberately propped up on top of the key cupboard by the front door, where they wouldn’t forget it. ‘Sorry, darling, we completely forgot.’

  The despairing sigh that followed told Eve all she needed to know about what Millie thought of them. ‘I need it for my rent. I told you.’

  ‘It’s not too late,’ she protested. ‘I’ll call Dad and get him to do it this morning.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Eve breezily, not wanting their children ever to be worried about either of them. That was not their job. ‘This’ll give him something to do.’

  ‘That sounds a bit patronising.’

  ‘Did it? Wasn’t meant to be.’ She thought of Terry, still in his pyjamas and dressing gown when she’d left home, and showing no sign that he was thinking of changing out of them. She rammed her memory stick into the side of her keyboard with satisfying force.

  ‘Well,’ Millie sounded unsure, ‘if you’re positive.’

  ‘Of course I am. You get on and I’ll call him right now.’

  After they’d said their goodbyes, Eve dialled Terry while Millie was still in her mind. The phone rang for so long that, thinking he must have gone out, she was beginning to retract her predictions about the way he was spending his morning. Finally he answered. Her heart sank as she heard his sleep-heavy voice stumble over their number. She explained her reason for calling.

  ‘But I can’t.’ He sounded almost panicked by this simplest of requests.

  ‘How do you mean, you can’t? All you have to do is get dressed and bring the cheque into town. What else have you got on?’

  ‘Well, nothing. Not exactly, but . . .’

  She heard the whisper of turning newspaper pages. She didn’t need to be told. The sports section, no doubt. For heaven’s sake!

  ‘Terry, I don’t ask much of you.’ She spoke patiently, as if coaxing an intransigent horse into its box. ‘But I have a day of meetings and catching up ahead. It would mean a lot if you could just get off your backside and help me for once!’

  Not really fair, but with one final shove the horse bolted up the ramp.

  ‘All right. I’ll do it this afternoon.’ But he made no effort to hide his reluctance.

  ‘Why not this morning?’ And she made no effort to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  ‘Eve! I’ve said I’ll do it. Now leave me alone.’

  She took the phone from her ear and stared at it. He’d hung up! Furious, she pressed redial, but this time her call went unanswered. Short of going home and having it out with him face to face, there was nothing more she could do. She banged the phone down on her desk. Immediately it rang. She considered not answering, then cautioned herself. She had a business to run, and if this wasn’t Terry apologising – which it bloody well should be – she needed to take the call. She couldn’t afford to lose any more of her clients. In fact they were in for a spot of timely love-bombing, did they but know it. She checked the number. Not one she knew. But she recognised the voice immediately.

  ‘It was so good to see you again yesterday, Evie. I wondered whether you’d meet me for lunch. There’s so much we didn’t talk about.’

  ‘There is?’ She had an urgent desire to make this difficult for him. Who the hell did he think he was, exiting then re-entering her life at will? She managed a grim little smile at the pun. The fact was, she didn’t want to see him again. Yesterday had been an aberration, and she had more important things to attend to right now.

  ‘Please, Evie.’

  She felt herself give a little.

  ‘I’d like to see you again.’

  As Will carried on speaking, Eve’s gaze travelled to Rose’s Tuscan watercolour hanging on the wall over the mantelpiece. If only they could all be whisked back there, to when Daniel was alive. In four short months, how much everything had changed. If he hadn’t died, she wouldn’t have this potential problem with the agency; Rose’s girls wouldn’t be arguing; Dan would be shoring up Terry in the way he needed; and as a result, she and Terry might not be at each other’s throats at every opportunity. And of course, Will wouldn’t have reappeared.

  ‘So why don’t we?’

  She had missed nearly everything he’d said. ‘I’m sorry, why don’t we what?’

  ‘Christ, Evie.’ She had forgotten that flash of impatience that came to him so easily, and hearing it again reminded her of at least one reason why meeting him was a bad idea. ‘I don’t know what else to say. It was so good to see you yesterday. You haven’t changed.’

  Not that corny old line! She expected better of him than that.

  ‘What do you say?’

  She hesitated. She remembered his car crammed with his belongings, his sheepish expression as he explained where he was going, struggling for self-justification. Worse, she remembered the pain and turmoil she’d suffered for months afterwards. But now that she’d met him again, all that harboured emotion seemed so long ago. She was curious. And she wanted to experience, just one more time, the feeling she’d had when she was with him yesterday. He’d lifted her out of the doldrums, and made her feel alive again. What was a lunch after all? A couple of hours of catching up, of having her morale boosted, and then they would run out of things to say to one another. That would be that.

  He heard her indecision. ‘So can I take that as a yes? The Murano at one? Tuesday?’

  Despite being tempted by an invitation to the latest ‘in’ restaurant in town, Eve was brought up sharp by Will’s assumption that she would fall in with his plans just as she once used to.
Those days were over. Her life was different now. She glanced at her diary. Unimpressively empty the following week.

  ‘I’m sorry, Will. It’s not a good idea. I’m tied up next week and I’ve no plans to come to London.’

  He sighed. ‘Evie. Come on.’ She could hear that he was still a man used to getting his own way. But she could be strong-willed too.

  ‘No. I enjoyed seeing you yesterday, but we should leave it there.’ A fleeting feeling of something akin to regret, or even longing, coursed through her.

  ‘Well, if you change your mind, here’s my number.’ Obviously disappointed, but he wasn’t giving up.

  She scribbled down the number, resisting the overpowering temptation to change her mind. As they ended the conversation, she glanced at her notepad. It was covered in her absent-minded doodles – hearts and stars. Leaving the phone number intact, she ripped off the bottom part of the sheet, scrumpled it up and tossed it in the bin.

  Distracted from her work, she crossed to the mirror and stared at herself. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright. She messed up her hair with both hands so it looked wind-blown, youthful – sort of. Who was she kidding? She stood sideways and studied her profile. Shoulders back and down, stomach in. Not bad. More overweight than she’d like, but passable in a good light. She looked exactly what she was: a middle-aged woman with a family and a demanding job who had been far too easily flattered. That was what they said about first love: it was the one you never forgot. In this case with good reason, she reminded herself. She turned her memory from that time they went skinny-dipping on Gullane beach, then made love hidden in the dunes, and forced herself to remember the way in which he’d left her.

  Back at her desk, she took a couple of contracts that had arrived in the post and began to go through them, making herself concentrate. Half an hour before Rufus was due to arrive, she brought out the copies of the rough illustrations for his latest book and laid them out on the meeting table so they could go through them before seeing the artist on Friday. She looked around the office to make sure that it was the sort of place that you would expect from your agent. She pulled down the blue, white and yellow striped blinds so they were exactly level a little less than halfway down the window. At precisely twelve forty-five, the bell rang.

  Rufus pounded up the stairs two at a time. He was a man in a hurry with a mind that was always rushing ahead of itself, keeping everyone else on their toes. When she heard him reach the top, she opened the door. Every time she saw him, she was still surprised by how little he ever changed. A Peter Pan of a man who had yet to take his responsibilities in life seriously. Eve was the one rock in his life, as opposed to the tide of women and children he left trailing adoring or angry in his wake. His hair showed no signs of going grey or thinning, and stood out on end where he’d last run his fingers through it. Wearing jeans, trainers and a loose jacket over a checked shirt, he was still slim and relatively unlined, with the energy of a much younger man.

  She imagined a momentary reticence in his hug, but dismissed the idea. They had been friends for so long, she would know immediately if anything was troubling him. ‘Come in. I’ve got something to show you.’ She gestured towards the illustrations.

  Rufus looked awkward as his eyes darted around the room, refusing to meet hers. They finally settled on his shoes. ‘Actually, I’ve seen them.’

  ‘But I’ve only had them since Tuesday,’ she protested, surprised. ‘I couldn’t show you before because of Dan’s memorial yesterday. Did you go to Marie’s?’ Marie, the illustrator, had worked on all the books in his Animal Planet series, so it wouldn’t have been unusual for Rufus to visit her, although unusual of him not to mention it.

  ‘No. Errm.’ He cleared his throat. ‘In fact Amy showed them to me. Marie sent copies to her too.’

  ‘To Amy?’ She was barely keeping up with this conversation.

  ‘Yes.’ He studied the nails on his left hand, moving his thumb along his fingertips before looking up. Even then he was unable to meet her shocked stare. ‘Look, Eve. We need to talk.’

  Not Rufus. Not the one client who had been with her since the beginning. They had been through so much together. Amy couldn’t have succeeded in turning him along with the others. Could she?

  Eve had an awful feeling that her day had just taken a U-turn for the worse.

  16

  Rose sat at the table with her untouched breakfast – a bowl of porridge and a pot of tea – with one hand on the condolences book. It had been Jess’s idea to have one at both church and hotel to make sure everyone present had the chance to contribute. She sighed. The poor child was doing all she could to alleviate her guilt over Dan’s death. No amount of reassurance was enough to make her believe that their argument wasn’t a major contributing factor. Rose opened the book at the photo of them all, another of her favourites, bringing with it memories of those happy family holidays when the girls were small. Dan was standing, tall and windblown, by a stone cairn in Scotland. His laughter was directed at Rose, the photographer, while toddler Jess sat on his shoulders, arms around his head, with an eager Anna looking up at him, holding his hand. Rose ran a finger over the picture as she remembered. Then she turned the page.

  Had she been at the memorial? S? That thought had tormented Rose since her conversation with Eve after the theatre. If she had, would she have signed the book? She looked at the writing on the first page – a warm memory illustrated with a smiley sun from Benny, an old friend from the days when they’d spent six months after Edinburgh crewing together on a luxury yacht in the Caribbean. As she slowly turned the pages, the tributes came from every part of Dan’s life. But was one of them from her? Occasionally a Sophie, a Suzanne, a Sarah – but these were all women whom Rose knew, admittedly some less well than others. She couldn’t imagine Daniel having an affair with any of them. But perhaps that was the point. Even the most evil people didn’t present themselves to the world with a tail and horns. More often than not they resembled the man or woman next door. Appearances were irrelevant. He might have fallen for any of these women. And any of them might have fallen for him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jess came into the room with Dylan fixed to her hip, his attention on a small wooden train engine in his hand. Rose was relieved to see her daughter looking much more relaxed today. Over her nightie, she was wearing a baggy jumper that disguised her shape.

  ‘Just looking through this.’ Rose pushed the book across the table towards her. ‘Such a lovely thing to have.’

  Jess looked relieved. ‘I’m glad. I thought having all those memories of Dad might help.’ She went to the corner of the counter and took a small carton from a stash of baby food. Emptying the milk into a bottle that she handed to Dylan, she then sat opposite Rose with him on her knee.

  ‘It feels so peculiar now the memorial’s over. So final.’ She sniffed and dug around in her sleeve for a tissue.

  ‘Oh Jess, don’t.’ Rose got up to hug them both. Dylan reached up to try to remove her reading glasses. She took them off and slipped them in her pocket before kissing his forehead. ‘Dad wouldn’t want you to be like this.’

  Jess blew her nose. ‘I know. But I still feel it was my fault. If only we hadn’t had that stupid argument.’

  ‘Darling, you mustn’t. The post-mortem said it could have happened any time. I believe that and so must you.’

  ‘I know, I know, but all the same . . . I should have let it go. I’d already made the point by agreeing that Adam would stay behind. I shouldn’t have insisted on talking to him. He was so angry.’ She let Dylan slide gradually to the floor, where he sank on to all fours and started pushing the train, his teeth clamped on the teat of the bottle so it swung from his mouth.

  ‘There was a lot of other stuff preoccupying him too. That’s life, Jess. We mustn’t keep going over it. It was nobody’s fault.’

  ‘It all seemed so important. I had to make my point. And now I’ll never be able to straighten things out with him. It’s too late.
’ She poured herself some tea, looking utterly miserable. ‘Were there really other things worrying him?’

  Rose knew what she needed to hear. ‘He always had a lot on his plate. That’s how he liked life. You know as well as I do that you’d have made it up within moments of your arriving. He loved you.’ She was relieved that Jess seemed to take some comfort from that without needing to know what else was preoccupying him. ‘Look, why don’t you get dressed while I do an egg and soldiers for Dylan, and then we can go to the park.’

  When breakfast and the endless rigmarole of getting one small child and three adults ready for a winter walk was complete, they set off. At the playground, Dylan was impatient to be out of the buggy, pulling at the straps while Jess was still unclipping him. He made an uneven beeline for the swings, with Adam and Jess in his wake.

  Rose chose a bench with a view of her grandson, who was shouting and giggling as his parents manhandled him into a toddler’s swing. As they began to push him between them, his screams of delight grew louder, mingling in her memory with those of Anna, a few years older, always wanting to go higher, struggling to stand, knees bent and straightening to push herself higher still. Then her attention would be snagged by something going on elsewhere in the park, and she’d slow the swing and jump . . . Rose’s heart would be in her mouth as her daughter sailed through the air, landed safely and ran off. Only once was she clipped on the back of the head by the swing and needed stitches. Jess, on the other hand, would wait to be lifted. Once there, she would sit sedately on the swing, a stolid child, her hands tight on the chains, eyes shining but lips tight shut, content not to fly too high.

  Memories.

  ‘Are you all right, Rose?’ Adam settled on the seat beside her as Jess took Dylan over to the baby slides. The little boy reached up to hold his mother’s hand.