Want to Know a Secret? (Choc Lit)

by Moorcroft, Sue

  Diane was well unusual, with a gaze to read your soul and an impressive ability to resist doing anything she didn’t wish to do. She certainly wasn’t suffering from any nervous, emotional or phobic difficulty so far as Tamzin could see. And Tamzin would know, because of Her Condition.

  So, either Diane had made a mega recovery ... or Uncle Gareth had been telling porkies.

  Mega recoveries were rare. So. Uncle Gareth hadn’t wanted them to meet his wife. That was totally pants.

  Natalia and Alice would be as mad as hell to have missed this skeleton rattling out of its closet tonight, and their father taking ages to catch on that the facts about Diane Jenner weren’t facts at all. But James had asked Tamzin’s sisters to stay at home. Valerie wasn’t in danger, Nat was working shifts and Ally was in the middle of accountancy exams. Tamzin, as usual, hadn’t been given an option; James had just said, ‘Come on, Tamz.’ Because of Her Condition he wouldn’t leave her home alone when anything bad happened – not that she’d wanted to be left at home. She’d wanted to see her mum. And now she had, so broken and bruised. Her dad would be watching her like a hawk for days, if not weeks.

  Nat and Ally were lucky; strong and confident and well-adjusted, with healthy lives full of healthy problems like annoying boyfriends, impossible bosses and killer hangovers. She loved Nat and Ally. She wished she was Nat or Ally.

  Depression was a bastard.

  She yawned. She hadn’t got up till lunchtime but she longed to retreat to her cool sheets. On bad nights she would only lie and stare at the ceiling, but still she loved the cocoon comfort of her bed. Bed. Her heart lurched to remember Valerie strung up like a fly in a web in that hospital bed. It was so crap that Valerie had been hurt. Really hurt. Tamzin felt a familiar hollowness in her chest. It would be ages before Mum was home. Could Tamzin hack undiluted James for so long? Her father got so stressed about her getting better it made her feel guilty that she couldn’t.

  Valerie placed less importance than James on things like washing and dressing. Possibly, she didn’t always notice whether Tamzin had. That was cool. Less pressure.

  Yet, the baby of the family, Tamzin’s childhood memories included perching proudly on her mother’s lap at parties in her Laura Ashley dresses and white knee socks while Nat and Ally, less malleable and less pretty, careered around with sashes untied and lace ripped. Valerie loved parties, having always been beautiful and vivacious so that men made idiots of themselves over her, which made her dead snappy with Dad, sometimes, because he refused to be made angry by them.

  Tamzin had a special connection to her mother – they closed their eyes to each other’s problems. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as the car purred through the dawn and wondered how her mother would take to Diane Jenner. Uncle Gareth had been a lovely new audience for Valerie’s toys, the big stone house, the Alloy Blue TVR Tuscan 2 Targa, the 4-wheel-drive Lexus, the flying.

  But Diane didn’t look the type to be easily impressed.

  ‘Where’s your place?’ James asked Diane, politely.

  Diane stirred and stretched in the dark grey light. ‘A couple of miles. Drop me by the village green, if you like. I can walk down the lane.’

  James glanced across at her. ‘At night?’

  ‘It’s getting light.’

  He made a performance of peering out. There was no colour yet in the fields or hedges and the streetlights were still alight as they neared the village. Tamzin could have told Diane that she was wasting her breath. James wouldn’t drop Diane anywhere but safely at her front door. ‘Just tell me where to find your house,’ he said.

  Shrugging, Diane sent him down a main road between brick houses topped with tile, turning left just before a huddle of new properties advertised as ‘executive residences’. Nowhere near as big as our house, Tamzin thought. Over a small bridge, they crossed a dyke where the water looked like weak tea without milk in the first of the sun’s rays and ran down a lane between a string of redbrick houses with hedges. The flatness of the surrounding fields was typical of the wide expanses of the Fens where most of the scenery was sky and the pylons marched like robots.

  The Mercedes rolled along quietly. James glanced at Diane. ‘Bit bloody lonely down here. Do you often walk it alone?’

  One of Diane’s shoulders lifted. ‘I have to get from A to B.’

  Tamzin couldn’t decide whether Diane was hostile or amused at James’s concern. Concern was kind of a habit, with him.

  They pulled up outside one of the redbrick semi-detached houses and Diane opened the car door. ‘Sorry to have put you to so much trouble at the end of a long night.’

  Tamzin climbed out, too, intending to move into the front seat. The first streak of pink had appeared overhead and she hunched her shoulders against a chill morning breeze.

  ‘I’ll see you in,’ said James.

  Diane halted, her long plait settling over one shoulder. ‘See me in?’ She examined the thirty yards between the car and her house. The corners of her mouth twitched. ‘Oh. OK. Um, thanks.’

  Tamzin grinned as her father, scowling at being humoured so obviously, trailed Diane up the concrete path to what probably used to be a council house. The front garden was long and the shrubs they brushed past were silvery with dew and spider webs. Something squelched under Tamzin’s shoe. ‘Gross,’ she muttered.

  Diane led them to a side door that opened into the kitchen. In the light of a bulb shaded by taut white cotton, they all blinked. ‘As you can see,’ observed Diane, gravely, ‘quite safe. It’s very good of you to worry, of course.’

  ‘Right.’ James turned for the door.

  But Tamzin couldn’t stop gazing at her surroundings. This kitchen was out of a museum! White Formica worktop, chipped and scarred, white tiles, greying grout, a freestanding electric cooker crouched on quarry tiles, more Formica on the units on the wall. It would have been straight out of the 1970s, except for the fresh pink emulsion with a stencilled grapevine arcing above the washing machine.

  Well old! And tiny compared to their house, with the gables of six bedrooms studding the red-tiled roof and four cars parked in the garage at the end of the drive.

  Her mouth was quicker to react than her sluggish brain. ‘Whoa! Does Uncle Gareth live here?’

  Diane halted, that disconcerting gaze homing in on Tamzin in a way that made Tamzin want to suck the words back out of the air. Seconds passed in silence. Without removing her gaze, Diane reached down thick, yellow mugs from behind a glass sliding door of a wall cupboard. Her voice had taken on a note of steel. ‘I can’t let you go without something to keep you awake on the drive home.’ She filled the kettle, plugged it in, and scraped out two kitchen chairs. ‘Please – sit.’

  ‘We ought to get going.’ James turned for the door.

  ‘A cup of tea first,’ Diane contradicted firmly. ‘And a chat. That would be ... helpful. Please.’

  Tamzin watched her father hesitate, pinned by blue eyes. There was something about Diane, something good and valiant. And difficult to resist. Tamzin suspected that if Diane didn’t get what she wanted now, she’d lie in wait for them at the hospital. She sighed aloud and dropped into a chair. Slowly, her father joined her, frowning like a goblin.

  Diane made tea in a pot, with tea leaves and a strainer.

  Then she folded her arms on the kitchen table, pushing aside a bundle of blue fabric, a tattered blue pincushion and a pot of sequins. ‘Why are you so astonished that we live in this house, Tamzin?’ She glanced around the kitchen. ‘It’s modest but it’s a perfectly respectable house, bought and paid for.’

  Picking up the yellow mug, although the tea was hot, Tamzin protested, feebly. ‘I’m not astonished.’

  Diane’s voice softened as she poured her own tea, brewed Guinness-dark. ‘Tamzin, I’ve had a bad day.’

  ‘Tamzin’s very tired,’ James cut in, in his in charge voice.

  Diane twinkled at Tamzin. ‘Are you too tired to answer, Tamz?’

  Tamzin si
ghed and dropped her gaze to Diane’s top. It reminded her of a clear sea on a summer day, the glitter of the sun on embroidered waves suggested by a spangling of golden beads and – now she looked more closely – fleets of tiny silver buckles. Cool.

  She ventured. ‘I suppose I thought Uncle Gareth would live somewhere different.’

  ‘Different? Bigger, smaller, prettier, uglier, upmarket, downmarket?’

  ‘Upmarket,’ Tamzin selected miserably, unwillingly, aware that she was toiling deeper into hideous poo and wishing James had been content to drop Diane at her gate.

  ‘Upmarket.’ Diane mused. Her hair caught the light as she nodded. Tamzin fixed her gaze on it. Such a strange colour; properly pale blonde. Moonlight. Star shine. Pearl. Unexpectedly beautiful. ‘Why would you expect Gareth to own a house that was “upmarket”?’

  James tried again with the authoritative voice. ‘This isn’t our business.’

  ‘That’s a get out.’ Diane stretched absently, putting her hands behind her head and making her shoulder bones crack, the fabric of the loose satiny top tightening against her body.

  Tamzin was horrified to catch James all too obviously blinking his gaze back up to Diane’s face.

  Diane dropping her arms. Suddenly.

  And James blushing as hot and red as a chilli.

  Oh gross! Tamzin felt the sting of mortified tears. Her father had looked with that lips-parted expression men reserve for breasts – and let Diane catch him. And they were looking at each other and then not looking, glances flitting around the room like birds with no perches, before their gazes tangled once more.

  ‘Because of the money,’ Tamzin blurted, to deflect attention from James’s cringeworthy behaviour.

  Diane’s gaze flicked back to Tamzin. ‘Money?’

  ‘Pops gave him money.’ Tamzin’s voice shook.

  Diane’s body flexed and quivered as if silently absorbing a blow. Her eyes grew enormous. ‘Gareth would never accept charity. He wouldn’t claim low-income benefit, even, when our daughter was younger.’

  Decisively, James jumped to his feet. ‘Then obviously we’re mistaken.’

  Diane continued speaking to Tamzin, as if they were old friends, her eyes intent, yet vulnerable. ‘Do you know how much?’

  Tamzin hesitated. ‘I don’t know a figure.’

  ‘Roughly? Please?’

  Anxious tears were building and building. And if she cried, Diane would feel sorry for her, might slide her arms around her and stroke her hair. She might like Diane to stroke her hair. But she wouldn’t like Diane to feel sorry for her. She swallowed hard. ‘Quite a bit, I think. Plus the cottage.’

  Diane flinched. Dawn was bursting through the kitchen window now, lighting up Diane’s hair pink-apricot. Her skin was soft and clear, the lines fine at the corners of her eyes. Valerie’s grooves were deeper, but then Valerie wasn’t exactly a health freak and the puckers around her lips told of all the cigarettes she’d smoked, no matter how much stuff she had injected. Diane’s face was young but her hands were old; rough and red and work-worn where Valerie’s were soft and manicured –

  ‘What cottage?’ Diane’s voice was a whisper.

  James answered this time, his voice deep and gentle. ‘On the outskirts of Whittlesey.’ He hesitated. ‘Harold’s owned it for years. Apparently he once bought it for Gareth’s mother.’

  Diane’s eyes emptied. There was a long silence. Slowly, she touched Tamzin’s hand. ‘Thanks. I won’t keep you if you want to get off to bed now.’ A tear welled and skittered down her cheek. She batted it away with the back of her hand, lurching to her feet and turning blindly.

  Tamzin scraped back her chair, seeing a danger with sudden appalling clarity. ‘Careful!’

  But James was already there, snatching at Diane before her hand made contact with the chrome kettle. As if it was one shock too many, Diane piped out a sound between a laugh and a sob. And, without either of them seeming to do more than sway, James’s comforting arms were around Diane and Diane’s head was on his shoulder, and James was pushing her plait out of the way so that he could pat her back, murmuring that he was sorry that she’d had so many bolts from the blue and Diane hiccupping that it was hardly his fault.

  Tamzin returned slowly to her chair. Her father was well weird, the way he seemed to be able to care for just about everybody in the world.

  Chapter Three

  Diane dialled carefully, preparing for that little pain at hearing Bryony’s voice, so real, clear, dear and familiar, when she was actually so heartbreakingly far away.

  But Bryony had to be told about Gareth before she disappeared off to work at the orphanage.

  She gripped the handset. A succession of clicks. The ringing tone. It rang for a long time but it was six in the morning in Brasilia, although ten a.m. in Purtenon St. Paul. One of the girls Bryony shared with answered eventually with a cross, ‘Yeah?’ Six girls lived in the same house, although so far as the landlord knew there were only four.

  ‘Can you get Bryony for me, please? This is her mum.’

  ‘Jussa minute.’

  Usually, Diane would wait out such delays tense with frustration that her frugal five minutes was ticking away.

  But today she was unconcerned at racking up the phone bill. Gareth could afford it.

  Bryony’s arrival on the other end of the line was surprisingly quick, her voice high with alarm. ‘Mum? It’s so early! Are you all right?’ Her young, over-emphatic voice rushed from the phone.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ For a second, Diane couldn’t find any further words. Her instinct was always to protect Bryony, not to be the one to cause her pain. She hugged herself, longing to hold her daughter. ‘I’m fine – I’m afraid it’s Dad. He’s not in any danger but he was in a crash –’

  A gasp. ‘Oh my God! How bad –?’

  ‘He’s very bashed up but the important thing is that he’ll heal. But he’s broken his right arm and fingers, both legs and his pelvis.’

  She dealt patiently with three minutes of, ‘Oh, my God,’ and, ‘So can’t believe it!’ before Bryony’s common sense began to function, ‘Should I come home?’

  Diane was ready with a firm reply. ‘No, don’t come haring back, he’s quite out of it at the moment and you’d just be wasting your opportunity in Brazil.’

  Bryony sounded relieved. ‘Because I will, of course … but it would take ages to get the dosh together to come back.’

  ‘That’s why I don’t think you should do anything hasty.’ Dad could pay.

  ‘Keep me in touch, then. I wish you had a computer, Mum. I could get you fixed up with Skype and we could talk for, like, nearly nothing. Tell Dad …’ She paused. ‘Tell him I’m thinking of him.’

  ‘Of course I will.’ It wasn’t until she put the phone down that she realised Bryony hadn’t said, ‘Give Dad my love.’ She sighed, standing alone in the tiny, white-painted hallway, the cold striking up from the chipped tiles and chilling her feet. Bryony and Gareth not getting on well in the months before Bryony went away had troubled Diane, but Gareth and Bryony had each shrugged off her anxious enquiries.

  She wiped her eyes. She hadn’t broken the news about Gareth’s secret family – Bryony’s family, too. She was still wrestling with that.

  James North returned in the early afternoon driving Gareth’s silver Peugeot with Tamzin following in a dark grey Lexus. Pausing in her task of gazing glumly at her white, crumpled, sleep-deprived reflection in the tiny mirror on the wall, through the kitchen window Diane watched them arrive. ‘Damn.’ An abortive attempt at daytime napping had left her head thick and throbbing with the horrible realisation that her life was emptying fast, her marriage even faster and her husband was a phoney.

  And now she had to face the man she’d wept all over last night and his waif-like daughter.

  She watched James stride up the garden path, Tamzin dawdling behind. She opened the door and James dangled the keys that normally lived in Gareth’s pocket. ‘I’ve brought your ca
r back – thought you’d need it for hospital visiting.’

  ‘Thank you, I’d begun to wonder where it was. Where had he left it?’

  ‘At the flying club. The keys were retrieved from the ’copter wreckage, so the police gave them to me.’

  ‘Right.’ Diane smiled at Tamzin to avoid the sympathy in James’s eyes. Tamzin was so slender that her head seemed too heavy for her neck. Even her freckles looked too big. Somewhere in her chest, Diane felt compassion stir. ‘How’s your grandfather today?’

  A small smile. ‘Better after some sleep. How about Uncle Gareth?’

  It seemed strange for this fluttery girl that Diane had met only yesterday to refer to Gareth as ‘uncle’. ‘He’ll mend. And your mum?’

  ‘The same.’ Tamzin didn’t move from just inside the door. ‘The collapsed lung’s scary because she smokes way too much. But the doctors say there’s nothing to stop her recovering.’ She was quiet but not timid. Both smile and eyes were reminiscent of her father, except for her personal elements of trouble and need.

  In the new reality that Diane had been tossed into last night, Tamzin was her niece by marriage. Gareth’s other niece and nephews were a part of Diane’s life, normal, boisterous, sometimes sullen, sometimes marvellous, teenagers or children. The offspring of his brothers. The cousins of her child. She was a part of their family and they were a part of hers, she knew their birthdays and whether they were taking exams this year. Tamzin was related to her in exactly the same degree as they were, as Ivan’s son, George – Gorgeous George as Bryony called him – who’d arrived at the house last week to show off that he was allowed to drive his mother’s car. A visit he’d cut short abruptly as he rediscovered how much he missed Bryony.

  James was quiet – probably frozen with horror, seeing her in the daylight with her piggy cried-out eyes and a robe that had been a cheap buy ten years ago from a market stall. She’d never got around to making a replacement for the thin, shiny garment that had once been a pretty forest green but was muddy now with years of washing.