The Truth About You, Me and Us

by Kate Field

  ‘No, I’m staying.’ She needed the coffee, after drinking far more than usual following the conversation with Saskia. The echo of Saskia’s words in Joel’s question was an unfortunate coincidence that she decided to ignore.

  ‘Great. Where’s Megan tonight? I’m amazed she didn’t want to tag along.’

  Helen stared at Joel. One echo was a coincidence, two was proof. How could his smile still seem so attractive, his eyes so full of warmth?

  ‘We’re not tied together,’ she snapped, furious with herself as much as him. ‘Life doesn’t end when you have a child. I can still be free and spontaneous. I could stay out all night if I wanted.’

  Helen ordered a cappuccino and another vodka. Joel was giving her an amused smile.

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘Going to what?’

  ‘Stay out all night.’

  ‘No. I’m just making the point that I could.’

  ‘Right. That’s good to know. I’ll bear it in mind.’

  ‘I don’t mean with you.’

  ‘Ah. Is it important that I know you can stay out all night with people who aren’t me?’

  ‘Yes, if it stops you making assumptions that single mothers are all dullards who have to be in bed by nine o’clock.’

  ‘Dullards?’ Joel laughed, then as he realised that Helen was serious, he leaned towards her, his smile fading. ‘When have I ever said that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your date has been at pains to pass the message on. Perhaps it was pillow talk? Perhaps it was when you were making her laugh with tales of me not having had sex for years?’ Ignoring the coffee, Helen drank half the vodka in one long gulp. ‘That’s a shabby definition of friendship, Joel.’

  There was a hitch in her voice, and she stopped, feeling weary of it all. The irony was, that all she wanted was to go home, curl up in bed, and be exactly the sort of dull person she had tried to argue she was not.

  Joel grabbed her hand. Helen looked up into eyes which had turned from warm to hot. She had never seen him angry.

  ‘Come outside,’ he said. Tiny orange sparks seemed to flicker in his irises. ‘We can’t talk about this here.’

  ‘No. What’s the point?’

  ‘Do you want me to explain the point in front of all these people?’ He stood up, still holding her hand. ‘Come with me.’

  Helen let him lead her out of the restaurant, noticing Kirsty wink and give the thumbs up as she did. The few tables in the bar were full, but Joel found a quiet space near the door where they could stand and not be overheard.

  ‘Tell me what I’ve done,’ he demanded. ‘Tell me what the hell I’ve done to be called a shabby friend, when frankly I’m struggling to see what more I could have done to try to help you. What’s all that nonsense about being dull and going to bed at nine o’clock? What has Joan said?’

  ‘Joan? Joan hasn’t said anything.’

  ‘But you said she’d been passing on messages.’

  ‘Saskia, not Joan.’

  ‘Saskia?’ he repeated. The confusion in his face was genuine, Helen was convinced of it. In which case… What had she done now? She couldn’t look away. ‘She’s not my date. Auntie Joan invited me. I arrived at the same time as Saskia, that’s all.’ He frowned. ‘What has Saskia said to make you so worked up?’

  ‘It’s not important.’

  ‘Yes it is.’ He squeezed her hand, which for some reason he was still holding. ‘I don’t like secrets and I don’t want any between us. Tell me.’

  The sparks in his eyes had reduced to glowing embers.

  ‘Something about single mothers having no freedom or spontaneity, and that no men want to date them…’

  The words dissolved under Joel’s gaze.

  ‘You do know that’s nonsense, don’t you?’ Joel asked. His voice was soft and slid over Helen. His face was so close to hers that she could see every one of his long, silky eyelashes curling up towards his brows. ‘I would never say that, and certainly don’t think that. Haven’t you understood that by now? But why did it make you so upset to think that I had said it?’

  How could Helen answer that when she had no idea herself? There wasn’t a rational thought left in her head. There was nothing in her head except consciousness of Joel. As she hesitated, confused, wondering, she realised that his face was coming nearer. His eyes held hers. He was going to kiss her. And desire raged to life. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted it so badly that she felt she might burst out of her skin. She hadn’t wanted anything so much since… Her head jerked back. Since she had met Daniel. Daniel! Sense rushed back in, crushing the desire. How could she have forgotten him, even for a moment, when she had spent years clinging to his memory? Was she really ready to let those memories go?

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered, and ran back to the restaurant to collect her bag and coat, desperate to get home.

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘I feel like I’ve slipped back in time,’ Adam said, laughing, as Helen crept through the door, shoes in her hand. ‘Seeing you tiptoe home barefoot, steaming drunk. Please tell me this time you haven’t left behind a posse of heartbroken men… Oh no,’ he said, sitting up as he saw the faintest twitch of a reaction in her face, ‘you haven’t, have you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Helen flopped down on the sofa, still in her coat, not even looking at what detritus she might be sitting on. An image of Joel, hurt, confused, apologetic, rolled like a wave into her mind, and back out again, leaving shells of guilt behind. He had asked her to stay; he had offered to leave; he had volunteered to accompany her home in the taxi, in place of Kirsty. ‘I’m off men, you know that.’

  ‘But you have that unmistakable air of Helen-in-lust about you. Come on, big brother is listening. Who is it?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Still?’ Adam leaned forward. ‘It has been five years, Helen. If you hadn’t so categorically renounced the Catholic faith, I’d swear you’ve become a nun. I know what Daniel did was terrible, but I had hoped that as you’d invited him for Christmas, you’d managed to forgive him and move on… Oh crap. Don’t tell me. The Helen-in-lust air is for him, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. ‘Stop prying. Do something useful and make me a coffee.’

  She heard him get up and move about in the kitchen. The kettle boiled and the spoon clinked against the side of the mugs: the sound of companionship, of not being alone. Somebody making a drink for her; why did it mean so much? Because it was so rare. The simplest things were the ones she missed the most.

  She opened her eyes when the aroma of coffee assaulted her nostrils. She reached out to take it, but Adam whisked it away.

  ‘No coffee unless you promise to tell me what’s going on. I’ve had thirty years’ practice of knowing when you’re keeping a secret… Oh hell, what have I said now? Are you crying? You don’t cry.’ He stepped away awkwardly, dumped the mugs on the mantelpiece, and thrust a box of tissues at Helen. She grabbed a handful and wiped her face. He was right. She never cried in front of him. He was seven years older than her, and she had adored him from birth. From as early as she could remember, she had craved his attention, wanted him to be proud of her, to see her as cool not the soppy baby sister. No wonder he was scratching his head in bewilderment.

  ‘Helen?’ he asked, sitting down on the edge of the sofa. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

  That made her cry even more, although she did manage to shake her head. Adam leapt up and passed a mug of coffee to her.

  ‘This is about Daniel, isn’t it?’ he said, the moment Helen’s crying subsided to a volume where he could be heard over it. ‘Tell me what he’s done. It had better not be too bad. It’s going to be hard enough to be civil to him over Christmas as it is.’

  ‘He hasn’t done anything.’

  ‘Come on, Helen, that’s what you said last time, even though the evidence of what he had done was visible to us all. Stop defending him. Has he upset Megan? She seems happy.
She could hardly tell me enough about her precious daddy. Let’s hope she never hears that he abandoned her before she was even born.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘When he left you, he abandoned her, it’s all the same thing.’

  ‘He didn’t leave me.’

  ‘Why are you still propping him up on that pedestal? He never deserved it. Remember what he did, Helen.’

  ‘He did nothing.’ Helen looked at her brother. She adored him, as much as she ever had. The idea of losing his good opinion paralysed her with horror; telling him the truth was almost as difficult as telling Daniel. But she had to do it. She couldn’t let him treat Daniel like this over Christmas; she couldn’t let Megan pick up on any bad feeling towards him. So she forced her mouth to open and the words to trickle out. ‘Daniel went to Hong Kong expecting me to follow him. I chose not to go. And I never told him I was pregnant.’

  She waited, holding her breath, for the truth to filter into Adam’s mind, to stain his features and colour the look in his eyes when they fell on her. But his reaction wasn’t what she expected.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said, and sank into the chair. ‘Thank God it was that way round.’

  Helen didn’t understand. Where was the hatred, the blame, the disapproval?

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ she asked, when Adam leant his head back against the chair, eyes closed, and didn’t speak. ‘I didn’t tell Daniel about the baby. He wasn’t aware that Megan existed until a few months ago.’

  ‘And how is he with her? Does he want her?’

  ‘All the time,’ Helen replied, puzzled by the odd question and the even odder way her brother was taking this news. ‘He can’t see her often enough. What did you expect?’ It was a rhetorical question, but Helen saw a flicker of consciousness pass briefly over Adam’s face. What was that about? ‘Adam? What’s going on? I thought you’d be outraged at what I did to Daniel. Most people are.’

  ‘You should have told him. You don’t need me to point that out. But his feelings aren’t my concern. I’ve spent years worrying about you, and how you would ever trust a man again after his betrayal. And as for Megan – what might it have done to her to find out that her father rejected her? So on balance I’m not outraged, I’m relieved.’

  ‘But I’ve kept them apart for Megan’s whole life.’ Helen had to keep on prodding the wound. There was something wrong here: Adam’s reaction was too simple. ‘Megan could have grown up in a family, with two parents, like you and Jane.’ And there it was – a flash of denial, expressed only by Adam’s face in a series of rapid blinks. ‘Adam? What aren’t you telling me?’

  He waited, studying her, and she could almost hear the clunk of the weights falling on each side of the scales, as in his mind he balanced the arguments, deliberating whether to say more. At last he sighed, and lifted his arms in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘Remember when you came to stay with us, to say goodbye before Daniel left for Hong Kong? We were supposed to go out for a meal, but Sam was sick so we cancelled?’

  ‘Yes.’ Helen must have been in the early weeks of pregnancy then, but hadn’t known it. She had felt nauseous on and off after that weekend, and they had laughingly blamed Sam. ‘The curse of having children,’ Helen remembered Daniel saying. How right he had been. ‘I stayed at home with Jane and you went to the pub with Dan. What of it? Did something happen in the pub?’

  ‘No. It was something he said.’ Adam paused and drank some coffee. ‘He was annoyed we’d had to cancel the restaurant, as it had received a good review in The Times. He said no offence to our boys, but as far as he could see, children had a knack of ruining adults’ lives. He smiled as he said it,’ Adam added, ever the fair man, but it was evident the smile hadn’t convinced him. ‘He told me that he wouldn’t trade what I had with Jane for what the two of you were going to have in Hong Kong. He wanted a last few years of fun, and you were the perfect person to share that with.’

  ‘You see! He loved me,’ Helen interrupted, clutching at these words in the hope that the rest would fall away.

  ‘I never doubted it. But he loved it the way it was. The two of you,’ he repeated, with pointed emphasis. ‘He was amazed that you’d made so little fuss about staying at home with Jane, because you would choose a night out over domesticity every time. He said…’ Adam paused and looked at Helen, but she only nodded, encouraging him to carry on. ‘He said that you’d joked about having children together in the future, but that unless they could be ordered from a glossy magazine and came with a team of nannies, you would never manage. You might be a perfect girlfriend, but he pitied any man who ended up having children with you. I’m sorry, Helen.’

  ‘What are you trying to say, Adam?’ But she hardly needed to hear his reply. She knew what he was about to say. Perhaps she had always known.

  Adam looked at her, sympathy bleaching the deep blue of his eyes.

  ‘I don’t think there could ever have been a different outcome, Helen, from the moment you found you were pregnant. He wasn’t ready for a baby, and he didn’t want one with you. If you’d told him, he would have left you anyway.’

  ***

  Adam drove the van to Church Farm the next day, and helped Helen carry the boxes to her shop in the Hay Barn. Helen hadn’t been for a couple of weeks, and she couldn’t believe the change when she walked in. The shops had been fitted out and looked ready for occupation. The sign she had designed was in place above hers: the name Crazy Little Things picked out in colourful stitched letters against a warm red background. She stood with her hand on the door, savouring the anticipation of going in and claiming this place as her own.

  ‘Do you plan to open that door, or are you making handprints for artistic effect?’ Adam asked, coming up behind her. ‘I didn’t realise a box of cotton could be so heavy. Couldn’t you have taken one of the shops near the entrance?’

  ‘You must have the books.’ Helen opened the door. ‘The shops near the entrance are all full. And none of them look like this.’ She waved her arms round. ‘Look at those beams.’ She gazed upwards at the oak beams that ran across the top of her shop and over to the other side of the barn. She loved those beams, and the arched barn door, and the window letting light spill in over the empty area at the end where she would soon be holding lessons and hosting sewing groups. She had loved St Andrew’s, too, but that was in the past: it had been exactly what she needed at the time, but now she was ready for a new start and a new challenge.

  ‘This is excellent, Helen,’ Adam said, putting down the box and walking round. ‘I think this place will suit you better than St Andrew’s. It should certainly be busier. You’ve done well to find it.’

  Helen at once thought of Joel and how ungrateful she had been when he had first told them about Church Farm. It was hardly surprising he had been cross when she accused him of being a shabby friend. Without him, she wouldn’t be here and wouldn’t have a new shop to look forward to. And as it felt as if her entire relationship with Daniel, past and present, had disintegrated overnight, she needed the focus of her business to keep her going.

  ‘Do you hope there’s a prospect of me paying back your loan now I’m here?’ Helen asked.

  ‘It was a gift, not a loan, you know that,’ Adam replied. ‘And you also know that Mum and Dad would be more than happy…’

  ‘No,’ Helen interrupted. ‘I won’t take any kind of help from them, not after…’ She stopped. It was still too upsetting to talk about, even to Adam.

  ‘Shall we go for more boxes?’

  They were only on their third return journey to the Hay Barn when Joel walked out of the office building in front of them. Adam carried on, oblivious. Helen stopped, wracked with awkwardness, and wondering how to react after what had happened – and almost happened – last night. But when Joel saw her, the smile that rose on his face was the normal, full-dimpled Joel smile.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, stepping forward and taking the box from her arms. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were
here? I could have been helping.’ He set off towards the Hay Barn.

  ‘My brother’s here to lend a hand,’ Helen said, walking by his side. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  ‘I was already disturbed wondering whether you were going to come,’ he admitted. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not planning to pounce on you again. I didn’t exactly plan it last night, either. I can’t seem to help myself. But hey, I like you. I shouldn’t have to apologise for that, should I?’

  He tossed his cheeky grin to Helen, and she caught it and laughed. It was the first time she’d managed as much as a smile since her conversation with Adam the previous night. Adam heard her as they entered the Hay Barn, and looked up with obvious curiosity.

  ‘Joel, this is my brother, Adam,’ Helen said. ‘Adam, this is Joel. He…’

  ‘I know who he is,’ Adam interrupted, coming forward and shaking Joel’s hand. ‘He runs Church Farm, is going to be your new neighbour, has a cat, and escorted you to Alex’s wedding. I have heard the name once or twice.’

  Had he? Helen thought she’d barely mentioned Joel to Adam. Obviously he had cropped up in conversation more than she realised. Adam was giving her an infuriating big brother look, which she chose to ignore. Joel was watching the two of them, amusement twitching at his lips. She couldn’t look at those lips without remembering. How had a few hours so completely shaken her world?

  ‘Shall we go for the rest of the boxes?’ she asked, desperate to avoid any more embarrassing revelations. The last thing she wanted was for Adam to start repeating whatever it was she might have said about Joel.

  ‘Joel and I can bring them,’ Adam replied. ‘You stay here. Someone should keep an eye on the stock.’

  Annoyingly, that made sense, and Helen watched as they wandered off together. Every time they returned with more boxes, they were either deep in conversation or laughing. She busied herself with unpacking, determined to ignore them and whatever it was they found so amusing. Was it her? When she thought of some of the mortifying things Adam could reveal…