Want to Know a Secret? (Choc Lit)

by Moorcroft, Sue

  From the car park, the dreaded rush hour looked every bit as ferocious as Diane had feared, but she tucked her car in bravely behind James’s Mercedes. She was getting less nervous about busy roads and her hands only sweated a little bit. And James was either considerate of her modest progress or he always drove like an old woman on a sunny Sunday.

  Harold lived in Castor, a village to the west of Peterborough shown on maps as Castor and Ailsworth, it being so difficult to see where Castor ended and Ailsworth began. Castor was beautifully kept, from the neat green umbrellas outside the pub to the village hall ornamented with Village of the Year awards. Harold’s home stood back from the road, an impressive thatched-roof house with fish-eye dormers over several sparkling bow windows, and a porch supported by massive oak posts twisted and split with the seasons. The garden was a small park of exemplary grass and architectural trees. James pulled up on the turning circle of gravel outside the front door and Diane crunched to a halt beside him.

  Harold, dressed casually – still a shirt and tie but an olive buttoned-up cardigan instead of a jacket, and leather carpet slippers – seemed delighted with his extra visitor. ‘Diane! Come in, come in.’ His white hair was thin and looked incredibly soft, like a baby’s. He ushered them into a sitting room with tapestry upholstery, a carved sideboard and oil paintings in gilded and decorated frames.

  As she sank into a vast high-backed sofa, Diane breathed in the scent of furniture wax with the slightest accents of age and dust, complemented by warm grass and rose petals from the windows open to the spacious front windows. The fragrance of childhood.

  Either the unbelievably comfortable sofa or the day’s confrontation made her feel almost as if she could go to sleep. The others discussed Valerie’s condition and treatment, but she just let the words drift past: plaster, pins, pelvis ... external fixation device.

  Presently, Harold disturbed her reverie. ‘James and Tamzin already have plans but would you stay and dine with me? Just a casserole – Mrs Munns usually makes twice what I eat and it will save you cooking.’

  Diane beamed, nestling still deeper into the cushions. ‘That would be lovely.’

  James offered Diane a business card, having added his private numbers to it in pen. Furness Durwent, Printed Circuits. Production Director – James North. Stiff white card with a discreet logo. ‘It makes sense if we swap contact details.’

  Digging out an old shopping list from her jacket pocket Diane wrote her home phone number on the back. ‘I haven’t a card.’

  ‘Mobile?’ he suggested.

  She flushed. ‘I haven’t got one of those, either.’

  He paused. ‘I think there’s a pay-and-talk one at home somewhere if you’d like to use it. It might be useful, whilst Gareth’s in hospital.’

  She smiled gratefully but – as usual – didn’t feel the need for his help. ‘Thanks, but I’ll be fine.’

  After James and Tamzin had gone, Harold made a fresh jug of coffee and Diane kicked off her shoes and curled her legs up on the sofa. ‘This house reminds me of my parents’ home. They liked the same type of furniture.’

  Harold added a spoonful of brown sugar crystals to her cup, fine porcelain with a tiny handle and the gilding worn off the rim with use. ‘I understand from Gareth that your parents were not cordial towards him.’

  She threw him a glance. She didn’t – couldn’t – discuss her parents with many people. With Gareth his antipathy always got in the way and with Freddy it was the money. ‘My parents gave me a lovely childhood full of holidays and activities and love. They sent Freddy and me to decent schools. The house was always full of people; there was a boat on the River Nene, summers in France, winter skiing in Switzerland. And always love. Lots and lots of love.’

  ‘Sounds idyllic.’ His emphasis on the first word made his comment a question.

  She nodded, stroking the delicacy of the old cup in her hands. ‘So long as I was a good daughter, it was. Mum was accommodating about friends staying or cheering me at hockey matches and swimming galas and running me to music lessons. She was content to be the person who made things possible for everybody else, while Dad ruled the roost.’

  The fragrant coffee took her attention and she paused to sip. She did like coffee. Much more expensive than the loose-leaf tea that she generally drank at home. She was so used to economy that she rarely yearned after luxuries she didn’t have but she had always envied people who could afford rich, dark coffee.

  She fixed her eyes dreamily on the brick-and-stone hearth, the fire basket cloaked for the summer with a brass peacock-tail screen. ‘I had a strong-willed father.’ She smiled. ‘But I grew up strong-willed, too, and I began to fight him.’

  ‘One needs a bit of backbone.’

  She sighed. ‘It could all have been different. If Dad hadn’t taken one look at Gareth and ordered me to dump him. If he’d discussed his worries and explained where he saw trouble for us instead of wagging his finger in my face and roaring, “He isn’t our kind.”’

  ‘Indelicate,’ Harold agreed.

  ‘He should have given me a bit of time to discover the differences between me and Gareth –’ She ground to a halt, realising that she was all but confessing to her newly discovered father-in-law that her marriage had been a mistake. She cleared her throat. ‘I became incredibly stubborn. The more he raged against Gareth, the more I flouted him. It seemed right to follow my heart rather than do as I was told.’

  Harold’s lips twitched as he poured more coffee. ‘Yes, it’s a pity that my son’s not of sufficiently good family.’

  Diane let her head fall back as she laughed. It felt almost unfamiliar; she hadn’t seemed to have done much laughing since Bryony got on the plane to Brasilia. ‘Isn’t it ironic? I wish I could tell my father about you.’

  ‘I wish you could, too,’ sighed Harold. ‘It would be comfortable to be able to change the past.’

  The grandfather clock in the hall bonged, six resonant chimes. Diane waited for the last to fade before suggesting, diffidently, ‘Would you mind telling me where you’ve been for most of Gareth’s life? I have a lot of blanks to fill.’

  Harold’s face sank into deeper folds. He put down his empty cup and steepled his fingers. His voice was bleak. ‘I’m afraid it was all too common a story in those days. I was young and I got a girl in trouble. I’m not proud of it. Father owned a big shop with several departments and our family, we thought ourselves grand. We had cars and we even went abroad on holiday.’

  Abroad. Diane remembered going abroad, feisty France and dreaming Italy, the excitement of visiting a country with a different climate, foods, smells, sounds, language, culture and people. Since her marriage she hadn’t managed even a cheap break in Spain because Gareth liked a sturdy British holiday in July at a seaside holiday camp with his brothers and their families, so that if the weather wasn’t great there was always good company. The three brothers never seemed to tire of each other.

  Diane hadn’t ever suggested linking up with her own brother. Just imagine Freddy’s face if she’d suggested a fortnight in a static caravan site with a clubhouse and a crowded outdoor swimming pool! Freddy took his holidays in La Manga in a big villa with a spacious private pool surrounded by high walls.

  He had the money – as Gareth never ceased to remind her.

  Harold cleared his throat and applied his neat handkerchief to his watering eye. ‘Wendy worked in Father’s department store. Tight skirts were all the thing and she was so tall and willowy the fashion could’ve been designed for her.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Diane breathed. Even over a quarter of a century ago, when Diane had first known her, Wendy hadn’t been within four stone of ‘willowy’. Tall, granted, but with a body that was a series of pears and tyres, topped by a set of turned-down, worn-down features.

  Harold tipped his head against the back of the chair. ‘Stupidly, I got Wendy pregnant. I thought a great deal of her but still I took advantage, didn’t take proper responsibility. Pe
rhaps I thought that kind of dreary obligation was for other people. I was the boss’s son! I had an Alvis and a flat of my own, very nice. Going about with a girl like Wendy was not uncommon for a young man used to a bit of class privilege. Oh, yes, it survived the sixties, you know!’

  ‘Certainly do,’ Diane murmured, thinking of her father.

  ‘My friends referred to her as my bit of fluff and were perfectly pleasant to her, as long as I didn’t take her to the wrong places. I wasn’t expected … didn’t have to ...’ Angrily, he shook his head. ‘I didn’t have to treat her as I would a daughter of a family friend – with respect. And I didn’t introduce her at home.’

  Diane grappled silently with the image of gruff, forceful Wendy being Harold’s bit of fluff.

  ‘Anyway. When she told me she was having my baby I’m afraid I failed to offer to marry her. I arranged to buy a little place for her instead, where I could visit her and the child. Gareth.’ He laughed bitterly, a suggestion of colour coming to his face. ‘I didn’t even attempt to explain why. I simply thought of my parents’ shame if I were to “marry beneath me”.’

  ‘I suppose that’s how things were, then.’

  ‘But I was arrogant. I didn’t think of Wendy’s feelings at all. And she, of course, was too smart to fool.’ He managed a small, painful smile. ‘She came along to see the cottage. I explained how I’d be responsible for her finances and she wouldn’t have to worry. “I’ll keep you,” I said. The next day, she didn’t turn up for work, nor the next, nor the next. When the personnel lady tried to trace her she found no forwarding address. I never saw Wendy again. Gareth has been very blunt –’ he coughed, ‘about the hard life she lived, subsequently.’

  For the first time in her life, Diane felt a flutter of sympathy for the abrasive, pugnacious woman who had been her mother-in-law; too late now, because Wendy’s cider-drinking, cigarette-smoking, lard-eating lifestyle had brought an end to her several years ago. She sighed. ‘Whatever pride made her turn her back on your cottage had certainly withered by the time I met her. Did you try and trace her?’

  Sadly, he shook his head. ‘I was angry. In those days, a man could pretty much wash his hands of a woman like Wendy. And that’s what I did. I let my child be brought up a bastard.’

  Diane objected, ‘But even if Wendy had accepted your offer to keep her, if you wouldn’t marry her then Gareth would still have been a bastard and still have to fight everybody at school who told him he was. Having a father who paid his mother’s rent wouldn’t legitimise him. He minded not having a father. It ate at him. Not knowing his father caused a gigantic chip on his shoulder, but I don’t know whether having a father who tidied him out of sight would have been any better. And then his stepfather cleared off, leaving Wendy with two more kids to bring up alone. He couldn’t even finish his apprenticeship because he had to bring in every penny he could for the family coffers.’

  Harold’s eyes shifted her way and she caught a glimpse of Gareth in the hardness of his stare. ‘Quite.’

  It was several moments before he spoke again. ‘Eventually, I married Eleanor, Valerie’s mother. I loved her in a quiet way and she was the right sort: nice family, decent education, properly brought up. But she never had half the strength of character of Wendy. And, I’m afraid, proved not to be an affectionate mother. Valerie always had to beg for her attention. I’m not sure I’ve done particularly well by either of my children.’ He turned to gaze out at the garden. ‘But I never forgot that I’d fathered another baby, although it might have looked as if I had. Then I began to suffer with angina and the doctor did a bit of straight talking about what might happen … well, I realised that I didn’t want to die without ever having met my son.’

  Having let the rush hour grind by whilst she enjoyed a delicious meal and a cosy chat with Harold, the journey home was easy.

  But, unlocking her kitchen door, Diane was struck by the difference between the silence of a nobody’s home just now but they’ll be along later empty house and a you live here alone empty house. It was like the difference between a daughter who was out hanging with her friends and a daughter who was half the world away.

  She wondered when Gareth would return to their modest brick-built semi. Or if he would. Stripping off her laced shirt and zippy jeans in the bedroom she glanced at the double bed, as neat as a cushion of moss with its green quilt, and tried to imagine sharing it again with Gareth, lying beside the warm, snuffling, fidgeting body that never seemed to find tranquillity, even in sleep.

  The next room was her sewing room, crammed and cramped. The overlocking sewing machine stood at one end; garments hung from the picture rail and wrapped about the tailor’s dummy she’d bought eighth hand, its plush covering long ago worn shiny and the original maroon turned to rusty streaks. Shelves were buried by pots of beads and sequins, fabric, interfacing, thread, zips, and clothes that were destined to be unpicked for their fabric or other treasures – sometime. An octagonal Victorian sewing box that her grandmother had passed to her when Grandma’s fingers had become too swollen to hold a needle, its mahogany as dark as treacle, stood on the floor beside a stack of glossy mags. Also passed on.

  Automatically, Diane began to make her way through the comfortable clutter, but the ringing of the phone made her shift suddenly into reverse and run downstairs to answer with a breathless, ‘Yes?’

  ‘If Tamzin keeps her appointment, let her order what she wants.’ James’s deep voice buzzed in Diane’s ear. ‘Tell her you’ve arranged it with me.’

  ‘A big order will take time. I don’t have a mini factory here – it’s just me.’

  ‘One item at a time will be fine. She’s obviously taken a fancy to your work – and to you, I think – so I want to make the most of it. She pretty much disappears into a black cloud if I try and get her into a shop so I don’t want her to be considering the money aspect.’

  Diane tried to remember what it was like not to consider money. ‘Perhaps now’s a good time to talk about cost, then.’ She pulled a face at her reflection in the window at the weediness of her voice. Negotiation wasn’t her big thing, but she didn’t want James to think that creating garments was something she did to occupy her hands whilst she watched EastEnders.

  ‘How about your standard customer commission charge, plus twenty-five per cent?’

  She paused, caught between curiosity and avarice. Curiosity won. ‘Why plus twenty-five per cent?’

  He laughed. She wasn’t certain she’d heard him laugh properly before. It was a deep, dry chuckle that prickled its way along her hairline to settle right at the base of her skull. And spread lower. And lower. ‘Because Tamzin might be a difficult client. And whatever you charge, I’ll bet it’s not enough. You’re no toughie.’ The laughter was still in his voice.

  She was stung by this truth. ‘Tough enough for you if I charge you double?’

  He was unmoved. ‘I’ll pay if you do. Charge me garment by garment or weekly or something. I’ll give you notice if I want to call a halt.’

  ‘Thank you, that will help with cash flow,’ she acknowledged smartly, in a way she imagined business people must speak. Maybe James’s niceness wasn’t a disguise for control freak tendencies, as she’d assumed. He actually wanted to be fair with her over money, and she was so damned used to people being unfair with her about it … But she must start thinking realistically about cash. Gareth might be rolling in filthy lucre but his windfall wasn’t in her hands, apart from what she’d lifted from his wallet. And she wasn’t certain she wanted that. To take it had been a kick. Spend it and she’d have to be grateful.

  ‘Cash flow must be a consideration, with Gareth in hospital.’ James must have read her mind. ‘I can let you have a deposit, if that helps. I don’t …’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t want you to have to struggle.’

  The words fell about her ears with a bang and crash like one of Bryony’s drum rolls. ‘Don’t you?’ she squeaked. Unexpectedly, her eyes filled up at the thought of a man not want
ing her to struggle. ‘Be careful or I might take advantage of you.’

  His laughter rolled down the line again. ‘Do try.’

  It wasn’t until the call was over that she realised why he found ‘taking advantage’ funny, and blushed. ‘Grow up, Diane,’ she scolded herself. ‘You’ve got to think about earning money. Earn money, earn money,’ she chanted. ‘Toughen up, think about profit.’

  Leafing through the spiral pad that served as her order book, she saw she had only to hem the prom dress for Maria Cuthbert’s daughter’s prom dress to complete the order; she could do that in the morning. Next on the list was an extravagantly beaded wedding suit for Trish Warboys, which required only buttons. Last time, Trish had said, airily, ‘Leave your invoice and I’ll get Jeremy to see to it.’ Jeremy had taken six weeks.

  ‘That’s not tough enough.’ Diane dialled the number on the top of Maria Cuthbert’s order, beginning all in one breath, ‘Hi, Maria the dress will be ready tomorrow. Shall I bring it round?’

  ‘Oh, brilliant –’

  And on the second breath, ‘I’ve got your deposit so could you have a cheque for the balance ready for me please? Thank you.’

  Maria squeaked like a startled chick. ‘Oh, gosh! It might have to wait until my husband gets paid again.’

  Diane slashed an angry question mark beside the order, though she forced herself to sound calm. ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘Oh, thank y –’

  ‘Just let me know when you can settle the account and that’s when I’ll deliver the dress.’ Dialling again, she gave Trish Warboys the same treatment, clattering the phone back into its cradle with relish. There. Business could be fun!

  Pity James hadn’t been there to witness her being a toughie.

  Chapter Seven

  James halted just inside Valerie’s room.

  The setting sun was giving its last blast through her window. Valerie, her decency preserved by only one white sheet, looked hot, irritable and desperately uncomfortable. He went to the blinds and turned the slats.