Want to Know a Secret? (Choc Lit)

by Moorcroft, Sue

  He laughed shortly. ‘It was over before she realised she was pregnant, unfortunately.’

  ‘What does Diane think about it? Is she pleased?’

  He realised, belatedly, that he hadn’t enquired. ‘I think she’s concerned for Bryony, and that Bryony makes the decision that’s right for her.’ He was on pretty solid ground with that, Diane would be putting Bryony first; she had for all of Bryony’s life.

  They performed the routine comparison of recovery rates, then Gareth said, ‘Can I ask you something, between you, me and the bedpost? Haven’t you got a close buddy who’s a lawyer? Would she come over and see me for an hour one morning? I need some information on something.’

  A pause. Then, instead of agreeing instantly, Valerie said, ‘I don’t like being brought into your nefarious schemes.’

  ‘Who said it’s a nefarious scheme?’

  She laughed. ‘Why don’t you ask your wife to arrange it, then?’ A longer pause. ‘No, I don’t think I’m going to do it, Gareth. You’ve been perfectly bloody to your wife and I don’t want to be any part of it. You’ll have to pull this one off on your own.’

  Dumbfounded, he hung up. She’d said no! His sister. Hadn’t she read the unwritten rule that siblings said yes? She’d been brought up as an only child, and it showed. Melvyn or Ivan wouldn’t have said no. Ever.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘This is so weird.’

  ‘You don’t have to do it today if you don’t want to. You’ve had an emotional few days; be kind to yourself.’

  ‘I want to do it. It’s just weird. I can’t believe that I’ve had all these relatives all my life, and I’m twenty, and you have to introduce me to them.’

  A dozen paces out of the lift stood a leather chair pushed up against the wall of the corridor. Bryony sank down in it. ‘My legs are wobbly.’

  Diane fetched a waxed paper cone of cold water from the dispenser for her. ‘Why not leave it for today, sweetie? It’s been a trying day, seeing Dr Cooke and then the midwife.’

  Immediately, Bryony climbed back to her feet. ‘No, I want to do it; I’m dead curious. We can see Dad later.’

  There was no ‘we’ about it. Diane intended Bryony to see her father alone today. Bryony and Gareth needed time together – and Diane and Gareth needed time apart.

  At Valerie’s door, Diane knocked and stuck her head into the room. Tamzin and James were seated at the far side of Valerie’s bed. Tamzin beamed delightedly to see her; James smiled with his eyes. Diane smiled back, but addressed Valerie. ‘Is it a good time to bring Bryony in?’

  Valerie brightened. ‘Oh yes, let me meet my niece!’

  Bryony was already squeezing past but paused as her eyes fell on her aunt. ‘Oh. My. God. You and Dad are a real pair – you look as if you’ve been run over by a truck. Oh, hello.’

  ‘Hello,’ replied Tamzin, briefly, as she scooted around the bed to hug Diane.

  Diane gave her a big hug back. ‘You’re looking good.’ Even though Tamzin wore a white top – it looked new – she had some colour in her face. Her hair had been brushed, too, the top pulled back into a red scrunchie and the rest rippling down her back.

  ‘I feel amazing.’

  Valerie, too, was looking better than when Diane last saw her. Her hair was glossy and she had less of a preoccupied and anxious air.

  Diane broke away from Tamzin. ‘Valerie, this is Bryony.’

  Valerie smiled. ‘You’re like your father, Bryony. But prettier.’

  When Bryony beamed, Diane suddenly saw a flash of resemblance to Valerie, too. There was something about the mouth and the way Bryony held herself. It was unsettling.

  ‘And this is James, Bryony.’ Diane had known that James would be there from a text conversation conducted late last night as she snuggled under her duvet. All day she’d looked forward to the meeting with tingling warmth, catching herself smiling at the thought of being near him. And she’d thought herself prepared to see him with his wife and daughter – but found herself trying to remember how to act normally around him. Disconcerted, she flashed a panicky glance at Valerie and found those hazel eyes regarding her almost with affection.

  Guilt lurched through her like the first downwards drop on a roller coaster.

  In cold blood, she was planning to have an affair with this woman’s husband.

  Valerie – her husband’s half-sister and Tamzin’s mother. If she were to go through with it, it would always be this way. There would be one relationship with James in public and another when they were alone. Echoes of Gareth and Stella. Had they felt like this? Guilty and remorseful? Or had they hugged their secrets and giggled over them when they were alone?

  To hide the sudden trembling of her hands, she pushed the chair set out for her back from the bed, and from James, so that Bryony could sit close to Valerie.

  Tamzin, luckily, was uncharacteristically streaming with chatter about her sisters’ envy of her new clothes and all Diane had to do was listen and nod and smile, screamingly conscious of James’s hands, resting loosely, still and calm, on his jeans-clad thighs. The same hands that tomorrow would be holding hers in the streets of Cambridge. Perhaps sliding beneath her clothes in the privacy of a car in a secluded spot … Pleasure and self-reproach butted heads and she felt sick.

  As Valerie talked a wide-eyed Bryony through the helicopter crash and the complexity of lift offs – without actually mentioning the role of alcohol in what went wrong – Diane felt the truth of what she was contemplating like spicules of ice in her stomach.

  There were so many people who could be affected. Valerie, Tamzin, Natalia and Alice. And, most of all, her own Bryony, sitting beside Valerie’s white hospital bed and getting to know her family. Family that first Gareth had kept from her and now Diane was going to risk alienating.

  People with whom Bryony and the tiny life she cradled inside shared blood.

  Clammy horror climbed up on her shoulders.

  She’d been thinking that she was only betraying Gareth. But that wasn’t true at all. She rose jerkily. The conversation halted. ‘Excuse me,’ she mumbled.

  Outdoors, she blinked in the sunlight, as confused as if she’d just arrived by Tardis. She felt like hell. Like such an evil bitch that she didn’t want to be with herself. She crossed the car park and climbed a bank, skirted a big bed of red roses and dropped to the grass between it and a Leylandii windbreak. Rolling onto her back she slung her arm over her eyes, pressing with her forearm until her eyeballs ached, trying not to see a mental image of Bryony and a baby, both dark-eyed and cherubic and in need of a happy home.

  Then Tamzin’s face floated in front of her. A face that had suddenly remembered how to look cheerful, lit from inside by first love. And Valerie, plastered and pinned, and with plenty to cope with. Not really in any condition to fight for her husband.

  The thought made her feel sick.

  The thought of being without James made her feel worse.

  It had taken a long time but it was as if she’d been drunk on joy ... and here came the hangover.

  Her phone rang but she didn’t even take it out of her pocket. She just lay with her face turned towards the sky, utterly miserable to realise how taking what you wanted could mash the hearts of other people.

  Finally, she trailed back in through the automatic doors. The carpet, the hospital smell, the smiles of the nurses, the low key buzz of the place – all drearily familiar. She trudged up the stairs to the first floor and knocked gently on Valerie’s door.

  Valerie lay alone, staring out of the window, a magazine face down beside her.

  Diane halted. Somehow she’d expected Bryony and Tamzin and James.

  Valerie turned, forehead puckered with concern. ‘Are you OK? You’ve been gone almost an hour, the others wanted to send out a search party. Bryony’s gone to visit her father and Tamzin and James have left. I think James wanted to hang on and be Sir Lancelot but Tamzin’s made arrangements to meet this new young man, so she hauled him out.�
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  ‘George,’ Diane supplied, automatically.

  ‘He’s a relative of Gareth’s, isn’t he? If you’re not in a dreadful hurry, why don’t you sit down and tell me about him? According to Tamzin he’s a god.’ She reached over and pressed a button on her panel. ‘You look as if you could do with a coffee. Are you all right? Shall we get a nurse to fetch Bryony?’

  ‘I’m fine. I did feel strange but it’s passing.’ Awkwardly, Diane sank down onto the chair while somebody brought in coffee and a few biscuits on a little blue plate. She waited silently while the nurse put Valerie at a more comfortable angle to drink and joked gently about whether the coffee was strong enough to melt tar, the way Valerie liked it.

  ‘Only because they won’t put any scotch in it,’ Valerie added under her breath as the nurse rustled out. ‘So, is this George character the wonder that Tamzin insists?’

  Diane forced a smile. ‘George isn’t perfect but he’s no more likely to play Tamzin up than any lad of nineteen – and a lot less likely than some.’

  ‘I suppose James has already given the poor lad the third degree. She’ll never grow up if he has his way. She needs to get out and about; she shouldn’t really have been allowed to flunk out of university.’

  ‘But her depression …?’ began Diane, doubtfully.

  ‘Oh no, has James been filling you up with that?’ Valerie closed her eyes and groaned theatrically, so, hopefully, missing Diane’s horrified blush at the mention of James filling her up. ‘Young girls get the blues, it’s nature. Periods, boys, hormones – all part of the agonising process of being a teenager. Isn’t Bryony the same?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Lucky you. Pain in the derrière.’ She switched subjects before Diane could protest that clinical depression was a million miles away from teenage moodiness. ‘My dear brother tells me you’re going to be a grandma. Congratulations! What a scream to be a granny in your forties. Gareth was a bit shell-shocked but I think he was pleased. Are you? Takes a bit of getting used to, I expect, but new babies are so delicious. Tamzin was a perfect poppet.’ And then, with hardly a pause for breath she added, ‘I’ve enjoyed chatting, I hope you’ll come again. And could you bring me in a little bottle of voddy next time? Do you think you could? I get terribly peed off without even a glass of red to liven up meal times.’ She laughed, lightly, as if to show how unimportant the subject was.

  Carefully, Diane replaced her coffee cup in its saucer and pushed it onto the little side table. ‘Sorry,’ she said, awkwardly.

  Valerie looked knowing. ‘Because James will make a fuss?’

  ‘Um … because I’m not happy doing it.’

  Valerie turned to pull open the little door to her locker. ‘I’ll give you the money, of course, I’m not asking for an early Christmas prezzie.’ Deftly, she extracted a £20 note from a dark-red leather purse and tried to push it into Diane’s hand. ‘That’s lovely, thanks such a lot.’

  Shaking, Diane put the note back down beside Valerie’s cup. ‘Sorry,’ she repeated, weakly.

  Valerie’s colour rose and her eyes glittered but her tone remained friendly and polite. ‘Don’t worry. Doesn’t matter.’

  Diane found Bryony waiting at the car. Her sweet little face was white and shuttered and she sat in silence as Diane drove.

  ‘Dad offered me money for a car,’ she burst out, finally, as Diane steered through the lanes towards the safety of Purtenon St. Paul. ‘He said that I’d need it if I wanted to live at home for a while with the baby.’

  Diane pulled her thoughts away from James. The heat in his eyes, tonight. ‘You will feel isolated without a car. I should know; I’ve done it for long enough.’

  Bryony turned to stare out of the window at the garden-like fields. When she spoke again her voice was small. ‘I must be more like you than I realised, Mum. I told him to stuff his money. He hid it from us until it was forced out in the open, didn’t he?’

  Diane concentrated on slowing the car enough to get through a speed camera – just around the slight bend after a long, inviting straight – without sullying her virgin licence.

  ‘Didn’t he?’ repeated Bryony.

  Diane sighed. ‘Yes. But he says that he had his reasons.’

  Bryony snorted. ‘I can afford a banger with what I’ve got in the bank. I’d rather have that. If I let him buy me a car, every time I get into it I’ll remember he doesn’t really want me to have it.’

  Diane sighed inside for her daughter and her hurt, pinched, little face. It was a strange thing for her to have to cope with, fatherly deceit on a grand scale. ‘You know, don’t you, that what he did was aimed at me and not at you?’

  ‘Does it make any difference?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Diane answered, slowly, ‘but I think so. Your father loves you very much, whatever his faults are. His love for you is beyond question.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bryony ironically. ‘It’s a neat theory that his crappy behaviour was all about you and old grudges but your motivation was good. He kept his shitty money to himself for selfish bastard reasons. And Granddad did almost exactly the same thing: he didn’t leave you any money so that automatically cut me out, too!’

  Diane let out a gurgle that could’ve been either laughter or a sob. ‘I’m sorry, Bryony. My bad relations with other people have rather deprived you, haven’t they?’

  ‘None of it was your fault.’

  ‘Neither Granddad nor Dad would agree with you there.’ Diane drove on in silence, powerless to do anything but let Bryony glower out of the window in peace.

  Presently, Bryony shifted in her seat. ‘I’m getting too fat for these trousers. Mum, if I buy some maternity jeans, will you make them really cool for me?’

  ‘Of course I will.’ On impulse, she slowed the car. Here was something she could do to make her daughter feel better. ‘We can go shopping now, if you want?’

  Bryony brightened, though protesting half-heartedly. ‘But we’re nearly home.’

  Diane began an eleven-point turn in a widish bit of lane. ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll buy you some jeans and then we’ll have pizza in town. What do you say?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan. That’s cool, Mum, thank you.’ After a few minutes she added politely, ‘Of course, you’ve got all those clothes to make for Tamzin.’

  ‘But I can squeeze you in, sweetie.’

  They were almost into Peterborough again when Bryony sighed. ‘Do you think Tamzin and George are serious?’

  Diane followed the signs to the city centre. ‘I think they’re very new and exciting to one another at the moment.’ She indicated to change lane. ‘Have you told him that you’re pregnant?’

  ‘I haven’t had the opportunity.’ The hurt note was back in her voice.

  Diane drove into the car park and found a space and ferreted out her change purse for the Pay and Display machine. ‘It hasn’t been an easy homecoming for you, has it? Perhaps you ought to ring round your old friends tomorrow – Stephanie and Katie and everyone. Pick up the threads of your life.’

  Bryony nodded unenthusiastically. ‘What about George? Do you think it’ll be all right to ring him – you know, with Tamzin?’

  ‘He’s still your cousin, Bryony. He’s been your best friend since he was old enough to crawl about after you, so I don’t see why that should change.’ And then, because she knew her daughter’s faults as well as her wonderful strengths, ‘It’s not as if you’re immature enough to play any of those silly power games with Tamzin, is it? Vying for George’s attention and making her feel the interloper. Tamzin is your cousin, too. She’s very fragile and I think she’d be hugely relieved if you were friendly towards her.’

  Bryony sighed again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  James was to meet Diane at Jesus Green, between Jesus College and the River Cam. He was supposed to be working from home but he’d diverted his calls to Lawrence and was playing hooky.

  He was early enough to have a mooch around the pathways,
enjoying the pleasantly shaggy Jesus Green, his heart doing flick flacks each time he thought about Diane.

  She hadn’t coped well with being in the same room as him and Valerie; her sudden exit from Valerie’s hospital room could only have been guilt-driven. However tough a cookie she wanted him to believe she was, she had her marshmallow moments. He’d wanted to go after her, wanted to wait until she returned. Neither had been possible. He wasn’t precisely certain of affair etiquette but the number one rule had to be not to exhibit undue public concern for the other party.

  Now he’d probably have to persuade her that even though an affair might engender emotional situations she hadn’t anticipated, it was possible and it was worth it.

  He’d planned the day with care. A walk, here, on Jesus Green, where nobody was likely to know them and they could talk and laugh without being overheard. Then a meal in a quiet little place. He would be warm but not hot. She’d been spooked and needed reassurance that a relationship with him wasn’t going to be scary and full of stress.

  They would plan meetings. He was good at meetings.

  They would be super careful.

  They would manage. She would relax and he could tell her about the arrangements he’d already made.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, from behind him.

  He swung round, heart leaping to see her standing there with the sun streaming all over her. ‘You’re early! I thought we were meeting at the entrance at noon?’

  She smiled, her blue eyes and palomino hair shining in the sunlight. She was as beautiful as summer in a dress made of a collection of blue fabrics. She wore denim sandals and he felt unexpectedly turned on at the sight of her toes and slender, arched feet, reminding him of that evening in the back of his car when he’d been fascinated by her toes. He’d never been a foot man, till then.

  ‘The drive didn’t take as long as I’d thought, so I was killing time. I saw you by chance.’

  He stepped closer, pulling her to him. ‘More time together.’