‘Introduction.’ He underlined the word. ‘Just give them an overview of what you’re going to do. Business opportunity.’ He underlined that, too.
‘What’s that mean?’
He considered. ‘It’s what you plan to sell, and how.’
She groaned. ‘Same thing, different words, yes. What else?’
‘Your marketing and sales strategy.’
‘I’ve marketed it. I’ve sold it.’
‘Personnel?’
‘Me. Maybe Bryony. Even Tamzin, if she fancies it.’
He began to feel like laughing. ‘I don’t think you’re going to chase Jaeger out of the market, do you?’
She shook her head. There was a glimmer of a smile.
‘Premises?’
‘Home.’
‘Equipment?’
‘Only when I take on another machinist. But maybe I need a new table. Materials and money to live on are my priorities.’
‘Financial forecasts?’
She looked horrified. ‘Are you absolutely certain a bank will want a business plan?’
He kissed the tip of her nose and tucked the folded envelope into her hand. ‘Or you could just smile at the bank manager and he’ll lend you the money.’
She gazed at him reproachfully. ‘She’s a woman.’
‘Better write the business plan, then.’
They kissed for the last time before he walked her back in silence to her car. There was none of the heat and passion of the back-seat episode. He cradled her against him and explored her mouth as if committing it to memory. He kissed her throat and the palms of her hands. Then waited, impassive, while, her lap full of tissues, she reversed out of the parking space and drove home to Purtenon St. Paul.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tamzin had been going out with George for three weeks. Three blissful weeks of holding hands. Kissing. Laughing, talking. Eating fast food.
George had such a huge appetite and punctuated his days with, ‘I need a McDonald’s,’ or, ‘How long till I get a pizza?’ Tamzin was actually beginning to gain weight because she sat beside him and opened her mouth like an obedient little bird as he fed her titbits of pizza dough festooned with cheese or strips of spicy chicken, while he ate.
Besides Erica, Rob and Marty, George had loads of friends; it made her head spin how many. He fell over them at every pub, club and gig.
In the busier of these, Tamzin withdrew – and tonight was happy-cheapy night at Danny Boyes, so mega busy. As the place heaved and voices rose she grew sweaty and tense. To her surprise, George seemed to realise and, when holding her hand didn’t make her feel any better, just whispered, ‘Let’s go,’ in her ear and led her out into the night, out of the rafter-shaking racket.
‘Are you a panicker?’ He pulled her close to kiss her.
She snuggled into his arms, the evening air chilly after the cheerful fug inside. ‘Kind of. I’m sorry if I spoilt your night.’
‘So what is it? Crowds?’
She felt her hands become fists. ‘Not always. It’s certain kinds … Certain people. It sounds so stupid when I say it aloud.’
‘It can’t be stupid if it makes you feel so crazy bad.’ The street was quiet. He pulled her down beside him on a wall. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘You’ll think I’m babyish.’ She shivered.
He squeezed her tightly. ‘I’m on your side, Tamz.’
She leaned her forehead against his collarbone, squeezing shut her eyes as if it would be easier if she couldn’t see him, and took a deep breath. ‘You know that I dropped out of uni in my first year? I had problems with some people.’ She swallowed down her thudding heart. ‘They were known as the Coven, this group. They appointed themselves arbiters of popularity; decided who was in and who was out. They had this well cruel sense of humour. You were OK if they thought you were cool, and OK if they ignored you, but if they picked on you – they just made life hideous.’ Her voice was muffled.
He kissed her hair. ‘Girls can be bitches.’
Moisture leaked from her eyes and onto his T-shirt, anxiety rising in her throat. ‘The Coven weren’t girls. They were all clever and good-looking blokes – and hateful! Patrick and Lucas were the leaders. They’d select somebody and ridicule them constantly, for entertainment. The somebody was me.’
She hid her eyes against him. ‘It sounds so childish. But they condemned every aspect of my life, my clothes, music, car, accent, hair, skin, body. I began to smoke dope. I’d never smoked it before but some of the girls thought it would help me chill. It didn’t. I had a thing with Lucas and the Coven used it to spread lies about my supposed perversions. I smoked and smoked but I couldn’t chill. I couldn’t not care.’
She choked on a sob. ‘I got terrible downers. And as the coming down got worse and worse, I smoked more and more.’
‘Cannabis would only fuck you up more, you poor little sod.’ He rocked her in his arms. ‘Those shitty bastards. I’d like to rip their fucking heads off.’
The ice of his anger somehow began to make her feel better. ‘Dad came and got me. He wanted to bring in the police, lawyers, make them pay, shave their heads, put them in the stocks. But I just wanted to go home and curl up and forget it.’
George’s arms tightened around her. ‘You can forget it now.’
Being in love with George made Tamzin something she’d pretty much forgotten how to be. Happy.
George was wicked, George was amazing, and every time Tamzin thought about him the space between her shoulder blades prickled and the pit of her stomach felt hot.
So it was a small blow a couple of days later to find him full of what, to him, was good news. ‘Bryony’s going to meet us at the pub, tonight. Be amazin’, we’ve hardly seen her since she came back.’
Tamzin smiled as her heart sank.
It had never really struck her that a lot of George’s friends would have been Bryony’s friends, too, even though first Diane and then George had told her that they’d been buddies all their lives. If she’d thought of Bryony at all it had been as safely out of the way in Purtenon, with Diane, or perhaps visiting Uncle Gareth in hospital.
She hadn’t envisioned her borrowing her parents’ Peugeot and bursting right into the middle of Tamzin’s good time. But there she was, hurling herself at Erica and Marty for joyous, wet-eyed hugs. ‘Oh, oh, it’s so good to see you! This is so cool.’ And then George, an especially long, meaningful hug. ‘I’ve missed you, Gorgeous.’
George laughed. ‘Yeah, so much you’d forget to email me for weeks ’n weeks.’
Bryony pouted. ‘I didn’t have my own computer, I had to wait to get to a cyber café and there were none near to where I worked. Hello.’ She sat down with a brief smile and nod to Tamzin. George reclaimed his seat and even gave Tamzin back his hand to hold but his eyes and ears were Bryony’s for the next hour as she poured out her life since she’d left Peterborough. ‘The school, the school needed so much doing to it and the children, the children were so beautiful but so poor. We talk about underprivilege here but it’s nothing, nothing like there.’
Rob, across the table from Tamzin, was the only one to look unimpressed. He even yawned a couple of times. Tamzin, who found yawns contagious, had to struggle to suppress her own, causing Rob to wink conspiratorially at her.
Tamzin liked Rob. There was no bullshit about him, he was just a nice guy who usually had too many zits to shave and the face fuzz didn’t show because his bedhead hair hung all over his face anyway.
Rob began to tell Tamzin about his college course and the part-time job he’d just started at a care home and how, on his first day, he’d somehow managed to kick an elderly man’s stick out of his hand. ‘Luckily I caught him before he hit the deck.’
She grinned. ‘I bet the old ladies love you.’
‘Yeah, as it happens. I put new batteries in their hearing aids for them.’ He nodded towards Bryony and dropped his voice. ‘Bet she wants to come back to the band.’
Tamzi
n’s lip dropped in dismay. ‘Can she? You’re the drummer, now.’
Rob shrugged, drawing a sad face on the table in spilt beer. ‘Suppose. But bands are democratic. If the others say they want her instead of me, then I’ll, like, have to go. She and Georgie started the band. She’s one of the Jenners of Jenneration.’
‘But she left.’
‘Like that’s going to change anything.’
‘Oh. Right.’ They turned to look at Bryony burbling at the end of the table, looking like a busty imp with her dark eyes and curly hair and curious low-waist jeans with braces that Diane had apparently already been let loose on, judging by the tawny embroidery and silver oval beads.
But it wasn’t long before the burbling had died down to a sputter, and Bryony’s eyes were filling up. Tamzin felt a spear of jealousy to see her put her forehead against George’s shoulder, much as Tamzin had done the day before. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she confessed.
‘No!’ everybody breathed.
And among the gasps of surprise and murmurs sympathy, Tamzin couldn’t help but meet Rob’s eye. He grinned and mimed a drum roll on the tabletop.
At the end of the evening, Tamzin and George saw Bryony to her car. It was dark because some of the streetlights were out; even the moon seemed to be having a bad cloud day. George held Tamzin’s hand, although both Bryony and George were so quiet that Tamzin began to wonder whether they wished she wasn’t there. But Bryony drove straight off and George watched the tail lights disappear. Tamzin had brought her own car, feeling really cool and brave to have brought it all the way into the city. Climbing into the passenger seat, George flung himself back with a sigh.
‘What do you think of that, then?’
‘Bryony’s news?’ she asked, cautiously.
‘Yeah.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s pregnant by some guy she has almost no chance of getting any cash or help out of. Pregnant. I can’t believe it. What the fuck was she thinking? Doesn’t she carry condoms? And the way she announced it, as if she expected us all to rally round.’
‘People get pregnant all the time. Contraception fails – ’
‘’Specially if you don’t use it.’
Ignobly, Tamzin felt a burst of happiness. All evening she’d dreaded discovering that George’s affection for Bryony was more than cousinly, but it seemed that George was more irritated than enthralled.
‘You have to be careful,’ he insisted. ‘You just have to be careful. I’m always careful. Aren’t you?’
Tamzin nodded. ‘I used to be on the pill but I haven’t … there hasn’t been anyone. Since uni.’
Slowly, George turned towards her. ‘You haven’t since uni?’
In the darkness, the air felt as if somebody had charged it with static electricity. ‘I told you about having a bad time,’ she whispered.
George didn’t move but still somehow seemed to get closer. ‘Has your doctor or therapist told you not to?’
A nervous giggle. ‘Of course not.’
He laughed, too; low, husky. ‘That’s a good start, then.’ He slid his arms around her. Very softly, gently, he kissed her. ‘Did you hate sex?’ he whispered, his mouth touching hers.
‘No.’ Her heart broke into a canter.
‘Did you like it?’ His hand stroked her back, and she shivered.
‘Sometimes,’ she croaked.
He laughed again. ‘I’d like it with you. Do you think you might like it with me?’
She shivered. ‘I might.’
He nuzzled her neck and let his hand glide down her back to her hip. ‘I think you would. I think it would be amazin’. You don’t have to. But I really want to, Tamz.’
She felt giddy and panicky all at once. ‘I haven’t got anything.’
‘I have. I’m always careful. It’s all right if you don’t want to – but I totally want you to want to.’
She giggled again as he kissed her ear, her heart soaring at the heady experience of being the object of desire. ‘I think I want to.’
They drove out to a place near one of the lakes, a place George knew – there was no way it was going to work out in Tamzin’s little hatchback with somebody George’s height. By the time they were lying on the bumpy grass together, she was shivering.
George crushed her in his arms as if he was doing his damnedest to become part of her. ‘You can change your mind, Tamz, if you don’t want to do it.’
‘I think I want to but … you know. What happened before.’
‘Pretend it’s the first time,’ he whispered. ‘It’s something amazin’ and new, just for us.’
He was gentle and slow, his fingertips fluttering over her like butterflies, sealing her and him into a world of dewy grass and twilight where her skin tingled and her body melted. ‘It’s the first time. Just the first time.’
‘The first time,’ she agreed. Fears slithered away, taking all those hurtful old images with them. This was the first time. And it was amazing.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It nearly killed Diane to admit it to herself as she stood on Freddy’s doorstep on a storm-darkened Sunday afternoon. But her father had been right about Gareth.
For years she’d genuinely thought that he’d put up with her parents’ awfulness for her. It wasn’t until she refused the money from her father’s estate that it became plain that all those years of exemplary behaviour had been no more than an investment. Gareth had possessed a fine perception of which side his bread was likely to be buttered. All he had to do was wait it out and half of Diane’s parents’ money would surely come.
She remembered his face, black with fury, when she’d refused Freddy’s offer to share the inheritance. ‘You’re entitled! It’s your right.’ Whereas, it was clear to her now, he’d meant he was entitled and it was his right.
To force the memories from her mind, Diane admired the green sweeps of Freddy’s lawn, the elegant might of the monkey puzzle tree and the banks of lilies on the shady side of the garden. And she thought of James.
She seemed to be thinking of James every waking moment.
His smiling eyes, the hot sex in the back of his Merc, the way he’d accepted her decision to end things before they began with huge regret but no word of recrimination. It was astonishing how empty she felt without him. Which just went to show – you could miss something you’d never had. Or only had once in the back of –
She twitched her thoughts away at the sound of the front door opening. Her brother blinked at her through his glasses. ‘Diane!’
‘Hello, Freds.’
Freddy grasped her hands and kissed each of her cheeks. ‘It’s been too long since I saw you.’
Diane found she actually had to swallow a lump in her throat at the pleasure in her brother’s eyes, always magnified by his glasses. She wished suddenly that she hadn’t allowed Gareth’s animosity to make it difficult for her to visit her brother.
He showed her to the conservatory that wrapped around the back of the house. One of the doors to the garden was open. ‘This is my favourite spot. I can sit here in all weathers and never get wet.’ He halted suddenly. ‘Anyway, what’s it to be? Cup of tea?’
‘Bring the pot.’ She chose a thickly padded cane chair and kicked off her shoes to settle back and watch the purple sky become lower and darker until smudgy clouds dropped the first raindrops as big as pennies on the yellow York stone of the patio. Faster. Harder. Noisier. Until the rain was pelting the windows. Freddy reappeared. ‘I hoped we’d have a storm – that’s why I was in here.’ He wound up the roof blinds so they could watch the water washing summer leaves from the glass as shrubs thrashed in the blustery wind. From outside came the rotting smell that came with rain after a long dry spell.
Admiring thunder crash and lightning flash, Diane propped her feet on the coffee table. ‘Do you think you should shut the door?’
Freddie poured the tea. ‘I’ll mop up before Sîan comes home.’
Lightning hung among the clouds as the next roll of thunder shook the sky.
The rain redoubled, began to hiss. Diane tipped her head to watch it sluicing down the roof.
A puddle began to spread across the terracotta tiling towards them. Gleefully, Freddy lifted his feet to join Diane’s on the coffee table. He had to raise his voice to be heard as the rain lashed. ‘This is exhilarating.’
Diane laughed. ‘I suppose it is. It’s a while since we had an adventure together.’
‘The last one was when you pushed me out of the tree house – ’
‘You fell!’
‘Only because I jumped at you and you moved. I broke my arm and my fingers came up exactly like sausages.’
‘And what about being nearly cut off by the tide at Wells? Do you remember how Dad bellowed?’
‘Missing our lift home after a party in a barn.’
‘Getting drunk on whisky.’
‘Getting drunk on all kinds of things.’
‘You thinking you’d got Miranda Thingy pregnant.’
Freddy choked on his tea, spattering dark drops down his polo shirt, eyes watering behind his glasses. ‘I didn’t know you knew about that. I still come out in a cold sweat when I remember. I used to pray that either she’d get her period or I’d get knocked over by a bus before Dad found out. Luckily it was the former. She finished with me in relief.’
‘I would’ve tried to talk to him for you.’
‘You were always a good sister.’ He pushed back the dark, slightly old-fashioned wing of hair that fell over his eyes. ‘I wish you’d taken your half of the money.’
She sipped her tea. Not bad, but could’ve been stronger. The thunder’s bark moved further away and the rain dropped a note. The puddle on the floor had crept under the coffee table. ‘When I married Gareth I knew I was letting myself in for a lifetime without frills. But I also knew that there were more important things than money.’ She sighed. ‘But I am here kind of on the trail of filthy lucre. Have you still got that jewellery for Bryony? She’s twenty-one in September and I’d like her to have it.’
Freddy turned his head slightly, eyebrows lifting. ‘Of course I still have it. It’s in the safe. I’m glad you’re taking it.’
Want to Know a Secret? (Choc Lit) Page 21