Secret Keeping for Beginners

by Maggie Alderson

‘I can see now why you didn’t like hearing Natasha crowing about her success,’ said Joy, wishing her youngest daughter could learn to be a little more sensitive about all that. Maybe she’d lived in New York too long.

  ‘I don’t resent Natasha her success,’ said Rachel, sitting up straight and turning to look at Joy. ‘I really don’t. I’m happy for her, I’m proud of her, but it does make me feel like a failure, because I’ve got myself into the situation I’m in. It was me who overspent, I can’t blame anyone else, but that was why I was so upset about what she did with Branko. It meant that on top of all my anxiety about money, I suddenly had childcare to worry about as well and the brilliant thing about the arrangement I had with him, was that it gave him what he needed and hardly cost me anything. Natasha didn’t give any of that a moment’s thought.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Joy. ‘She acted very thoughtlessly.’

  ‘I’m thrilled for Branko though,’ said Rachel, tears now beginning to well up. ‘I really am. I would never have expected him to give up an opportunity like that. It was just the way Natasha didn’t involve me in any of it, just went ahead and did it, as though I didn’t matter, that was so hurtful, and then specifically telling him not to tell me …’

  Joy looked at Rachel closely.

  ‘Did she really do that?’

  ‘That’s what Branko told me,’ said Rachel. ‘He’d wanted to talk to me about it, but Natasha asked him not to.’

  ‘Well, that was high-handed of her,’ said Joy. ‘I can see why you were so upset. Did she try to contact you, to explain?’

  ‘She came to the office,’ said Rachel, ‘but I just wasn’t ready to talk to her then, it was too soon, so I sent her away and I’ve ignored her emails and texts and things ever since. With everything that’s going on with the money – I’ve had bailiffs ringing up, Mum, I had to give them my engagement ring on Tuesday, or they were going to come to the house and take things – I just couldn’t be dealing with that as well.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ said Joy, pulling Rachel’s hand into her lap and patting it. ‘When we have more than one problem the whole thing can bundle together and take on its own momentum, getting bigger and bigger like a snowball running down a mountain. The thing to do is to break it all down again, into separate bits and then try to approach them one at a time.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Rachel. ‘And I think I am ready to talk to Natasha now, because I’ve made a decision what I’ve got to do about the money.’

  ‘Really?’ said Joy. ‘And what is that?’

  ‘I’m going to sell my house,’ said Rachel. ‘It came into my head while I was hugging that tree.’

  ‘That’s a big step,’ said Joy. ‘Where would you live?’

  ‘The house has more than doubled in value since Michael and I bought it nine years ago. I can sell it, pay off the cards with the equity, and still buy a flat, possibly even without a mortgage. We don’t need a big house and if I’m not wasting my energy worrying about debt, I can put all of it into work and make my own financial security.’

  ‘I think you’re very brave,’ said Joy. ‘It will be hard, but it does sound like it would get you out of a very difficult spot. Will you be able to keep the girls in the same school?’

  Rachel thought for a moment.

  ‘I don’t know about any of that yet,’ she said, ‘I only just decided – well, my new tree friend decided for me. I will if I can, but if they do have to move it won’t kill them. We changed school and country and didn’t even go to school for one year …’

  Joy shook her head, sighing.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling.’

  ‘No, it’s fine, Mum. It made me stronger, braver, not scared to go to new places and do new things. It made me who I am.’

  Joy squeezed Rachel’s hand, grateful for the absolution from something she sometimes still felt guilty about.

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else I’m going to do,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m going to Skype Natasha tonight.’

  Rachel decided to try Natasha just before dinner. It would be early afternoon in New York and on a Saturday there was a chance she might be chilling out at home, or at her beach house. She sat on the bed in her room at Tessa’s house, the iPad propped up on her knees and was pleased when Natasha responded immediately.

  But then Rachel was so surprised at how her sister looked, she flinched.

  ‘Tash?’ she asked, squinting at the mess looking back at her.

  It was Natasha, but not in a state Rachel had ever seen her in before. Her eyes were oddly bulging and red. Her mouth looked as though she’d been slapped, the lips all loose and puffy. Her hair was standing on end.

  ‘Is that you, Tash?’

  ‘Who is this?’ said a voice, which sounded like Natasha’s but an oddly strangulated version.

  ‘It’s your sister, Rachel,’ she said tentatively.

  ‘Rachel?’ said Natasha, and started sobbing. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to mess things up for you with Branko, I was so wrong …’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Rachel, ‘I was upset with you, but I’m over it. I mean, it was difficult, but anyway – I’m over it. That’s why I’m Skyping you, but what the hell is going on with you, Tashie?’

  Natasha’s face disappeared. All Rachel could see was the top of her head, resting on her arms, and she could hear crying that was more like wailing.

  ‘Tash!’ said Rachel. ‘Talk to me, what’s happened?’

  Natasha lifted up a face like a gargoyle, her cheeks sodden with tears. She was shaking her head.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you can tell me,’ said Rachel. ‘Has somebody hurt you?’

  Rachel was starting to feel really afraid. Had she been attacked? Natasha didn’t answer, she was crying in that terrible way again.

  ‘Do you need to call the police?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘No,’ said Natasha, looking at Rachel properly for the first time, although her eyes didn’t seem to be quite in focus. She shook her head. ‘No. I did this to myself.’

  I did it to myself by living a lie my whole adult life and building my whole precious career on it. So now I’ve lost the one person in the world who I feel totally myself with. Who loves me for who I really am. And who I could have spent the rest of my life with. Except now she’s gone back to London and told me I’m a traitor to her, to myself and to my sexuality and she doesn’t want me to contact her ever again. And I’ve thrown all that away because I didn’t have the courage to be truthful about who I am.

  She slumped back down onto the table and started crying again. The pain felt physical. She didn’t know where to put it, where to be in her own body. Everything hurt.

  ‘Look,’ said Rachel, ‘if I lived in New York, I would be coming over to your place right now – but I can’t do that, so is there anyone there you can call? I don’t think you should be on your own like this.’

  Natasha looked up again.

  ‘No,’ she said, her expression darkening. ‘There’s no one I can call. I’m all alone on this one.’

  ‘But you’re not,’ said Rachel, thinking how much better she’d felt since she finally rung Joy and even more so since their conversation this afternoon in the orchard. ‘You’re never alone, Natasha. You have us. All of us. Family. Now stay on the line, do NOT go anywhere – I’m going to get Mum.’

  Natasha started to speak, a phrase which started with the word ‘No …’ but Rachel cut her off.

  ‘No, Natasha, you stay online,’ she said, pointing her forefinger at the screen. ‘I’m serious. If you’re not still there when I get down to Mum, I will call the NYPD myself. OK?’

  She jumped up from the bed, the iPad in her hand and ran down the stairs.

  ‘Mum!’ she called out. ‘Where are you?’

  She heard Joy’s voice from the library and ran in there to find her lying on the bed with Muffin on her knee, reading a story to Daisy and Ariadne.

  ‘I’m sorry
, girls,’ said Rachel, bursting in, ‘but I need to talk to Granny. Please can you go and find Auntie Tessa for me and ask her to come here as quickly as possible? It’s very important. I think she’s over in the salvage yard …’

  After a moment’s reluctance and then a gentle request from their grandmother to do as their mother asked, the girls ran out of the French windows in the direction of the yard. Rachel put the iPad against her stomach and spoke quietly to Joy.

  ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I’ve got Natasha on here and she’s in a terrible state. I can’t get her to tell me what’s wrong.’

  She climbed onto the bed next to Joy and handed her the iPad. Natasha’s face wasn’t visible any more, but they could see her chest and shoulders in a singlet. As they watched, Natasha’s hand came down and landed on the tabletop, next to the computer, holding a glass. Then they saw her fill the glass from a bottle of vodka in her other hand and lift it up out of sight again.

  Rachel and Joy looked at each other. Natasha hardly ever drank and now she seemed to be drinking neat vodka, at home on her own, on a Saturday afternoon.

  ‘Natasha?’ said Joy.

  Natasha tilted the screen of her laptop forward so they could see her face again. Joy let out a shocked gasp when she saw her. Her hand went out and touched the screen of the iPad.

  ‘What’s happened, my love?’ she asked.

  Natasha closed her eyes, tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them off on her forearm, then opened her eyes, blinking as tears continued to roll out.

  ‘Tell us what’s wrong, Tashie,’ said Rachel. ‘Did someone hurt you?’

  It was still the only thing she could think of that could have put her normally strong sister in this state.

  ‘Me,’ said Natasha, lifting the glass to her mouth and nearly draining it, then bringing it down hard on the tabletop. ‘I hurt me.’

  Joy and Rachel looked at each other again. Rachel hunched her shoulders and shook her head. She had no idea.

  ‘Tell me what’s happened, Natasha,’ said Joy.

  The Natasha-like person on the screen raked her hand through her hair, so it stood up even more and laughed bitterly.

  ‘I’ve destroyed my own life,’ she said, her voice slurring.

  ‘Natasha,’ said Joy, in a quiet, firm voice, ‘I want you take the rest of that vodka and pour it down the sink. I don’t want you to drink any more. Whatever’s going on, it won’t help.’

  Natasha looked back at her and said nothing. Then they saw her pick up the bottle. Her arm went down again and there was a thud. It seemed she’d just dropped it onto the floor.

  ‘OK?’ she said. ‘Vodka gone.’

  Then she picked up the glass again and tipped it into her mouth, to drain the very last dregs from it.

  Joy closed her eyes and took a breath. Rachel put her hand on her arm, seeing she was near tears and was very relieved when she saw Tessa coming in from the garden.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

  ‘Natasha’s in a bad way,’ said Rachel, pulling a face and gesturing with her hand for Tessa to come quickly over to the bed.

  Tessa climbed up and peered at the screen.

  ‘Tashie?’ she said ‘Is that you?’

  Natasha hid her face in her hands.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Tessa.

  Natasha lifted up her head and looked out at them and Rachel glanced at the mini screen to check that all three of them would be visible to her.

  ‘We’re all here for you, Tashie,’ said Rachel, trying not to let the panic she was feeling show in her voice. Her sister was in a terrible state, drunk, at home, alone. ‘Can you please tell us what’s going on? What do you mean you’ve destroyed your own life? Has something bad happened with work?’

  Natasha – or this strange new creature who looked like Natasha – snorted contemptuously.

  ‘Something like that,’ she said, ‘or not. Depending how you look at it …’

  Joy suddenly moved closer to the screen, as if something had just occurred to her.

  ‘Natasha, my darling,’ she said, ‘is this something to do with a man?’

  Natasha looked at her blankly for a moment and then she started laughing. It was an ugly sound. Not a laugh of humour, it was all bitterness.

  ‘Come on, Tash,’ said Rachel. ‘Help us out a bit here, we only want to help you. You know we’re on your side …’

  ‘The thing is, Mum,’ said Natasha, sounding a little bit more like herself at last. She closed her eyes for a moment, then breathed out and opened them again, looking at them all directly. ‘It’s not a man. It was never a man. Well, once or twice to try it, but I’m not into men. I like women. I’m a lesbian. I have sex with women. That’s the problem.’

  Joy, Rachel and Tessa sat and took in what she’d said. Rachel felt as though she could hear each of their brains working as they processed her statement and a lot of things fell into place. It all made perfect sense. Of course Natasha was gay. She couldn’t believe they hadn’t all worked it out years ago.

  ‘It’s not a problem for me, darling,’ said Joy, sounding completely calm. ‘I’m just sorry I’ve never picked up on it before, or you didn’t think you could tell me. I hope you haven’t suffered worrying about telling me – us?’

  She turned to look at Rachel and Tessa. They were both looking surprised and smiling at the same time. Happy a mystery about their sister had been explained. Feeling stupid for not figuring it out themselves.

  ‘That explains your butch haircut then,’ said Rachel, hoping a joke might relax Natasha. ‘And the girls will be thrilled to have a gay auntie … there’s a girl at their school with two dads they’re really jealous of.’

  She looked back at the screen hoping to see normal Natasha back, now she’d finally told them what must have been eating her alive for years.

  ‘Don’t tell them,’ said Natasha, harshly. ‘Don’t tell anyone. I’ve told you, but only because I could see you were about to call the cops. I’m not coming out, I’m just telling you, so you’ll leave me alone.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Rachel.

  ‘Why do you want us to leave you alone?’ asked Tessa. ‘You know that’s never going to happen.’

  Joy sat up and brought the screen closer to her face.

  ‘Natasha, my precious darling,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with you, but something’s very wrong. You can’t come out to your family and then expect to go back into some kind of closet for the rest of the world. If something is keeping you from being open about your sexuality, there’s something very wrong with your life. You need to come home and tell us about it, so we can help you fix it.’

  Rachel and Tessa leaned in to see how Natasha reacted. As they watched, the hardness dropped away from her face. It was like watching dark storm clouds being blown away by a strong wind.

  ‘Come over there?’ she said. ‘To England? London …’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Joy, Rachel and Tessa in unison.

  Natasha put both hands behind her neck and tilted her head from side to side, like an athlete limbering up. Then she sat up straight and looked out at them with something more like her normal expression. She pulled some tissues out of a box on the table and blew her nose loudly.

  ‘You know, I think that’s exactly what I need to do,’ said Natasha.

  ‘Great,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Come and stay here with us,’ said Tessa.

  Natasha nodded, smiling faintly. ‘I will. Thank you. I’m going to book a ticket right now.’

  ‘Tash,’ said Rachel, leaning over to look at the screen more closely again, ‘should you have some coffee, sober up a bit before you do anything?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Natasha. ‘I only had a few shots. I thought it would help, but it was horrible actually.’

  Rachel smiled. ‘That’s good, although I am glad you only tried binge drinking with the lowest carb form of liquor. I’m glad you
didn’t let your standards slip …’

  Natasha smiled and then looked down for a moment, before meeting Rachel’s eyes again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rachel,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry I wrecked things for you. I’ve made a big mess of just about everything recently.’

  ‘We’ve done all that,’ said Rachel, ‘forget it. It was a bore, but you’re too important to me to keep holding on to that hurt. Like I said before, that’s why I Skyped you, to tell you that.’

  As she spoke, Tessa and Joy exchanged happy glances about what they were witnessing.

  ‘Thanks, Rachel,’ said Natasha, ‘that means everything to me.’

  ‘Now,’ said Rachel, ‘if you really are sober enough and the drunk thing was just a pose …’

  She paused to see what effect that jibe had. Natasha raised both her middle fingers at her, but she was smiling as she did it. Excellent.

  ‘Get onto buying that air ticket so you can come and tell us what the hell is going on with you.’

  ‘I will,’ said Natasha. ‘Thank you, my beautiful family. I’m going to do it right after we hang up.’

  ‘Just let us know when you’re arriving,’ said Tessa. ‘I’ll meet you at the airport.’

  ‘With me,’ said Joy. ‘We’ll look after you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Natasha, still looking sad, but not completely destroyed any more. ‘I know you’ll look after me and I love you all. I’ll be back in touch later.’

  ‘One more thing, before you go,’ said Rachel. ‘I just want to confirm – you really don’t want us to tell the kids, or anyone, what you just told us?’

  Natasha put her hands up by her mouth, looking thoughtful.

  ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘You can tell them. I’ve decided. I’m out. I’m going to tell the whole world.’

  Joy, Rachel and Tessa cheered.

  ‘We’ll get the champers on ice,’ said Rachel. ‘And I’ll download some k.d. lang …’

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Natasha, but she was smiling.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Tessa interjected. ‘If you’re really ready to get this thing rolling there’s someone right here you can tell now.’

  Natasha licked her lips nervously.