Secret Smile

by Nicci French

  'A book? What book would that be?' He waited and when I didn't answer said: 'Would the book be an excuse, perhaps? You just can't let go, can you?'

  For a moment, everything went misty.

  'Cut the crap,' I said. 'This is me. Nobody else is around. You know what I know about you. You know and I know you know and every hour of every day I think about what you did to Troy and Laura and Kerry, and if you think…'

  'Hush,' he said in a soothing voice. 'You need help. Rob thinks so too. He's very concerned about you. He says that in his opinion there's a word for what you've got. For your syndrome.'

  'Syndrome? Syndrome'? I just want to send you this fucking book.'

  'The book,' he said. 'Of course. The one whose name you can't remember.'

  'Give me your address and then piss off.'

  'I don't think so.' I could hear him smile.

  'Jesus,' I said, with a sob of rage. 'Listen…'

  But I was talking on a dead line. Brendan had put the phone down. I gazed at the receiver in my hand, then rammed it down on its holder.

  I climbed back into the tepid bath. I ran hot water and then, holding my nose, slid under the water. I listened to the booming of the pipes and the beating of my heart. I was so violently angry that I felt I would fly apart.

  I came up for air with a thought that made me leap from the bath and run naked and slippery back to the phone, crouching low as I passed the window so no one would see me. I dialled 1471 and waited until the automated voice told me the caller's number. I'd forgotten to have a pen ready so I held the digits in my head, chanting them as I scrambled in the drawers looking for pen and paper. I jotted them down on a stray playing card I found, then dialled 1471 again, just to check it.

  It was a 7852 number. Where was that? Somewhere in South London, maybe. It wasn't a code I rang often, that was for sure. I shuffled on all fours under the window, then went to my bedroom, yanking out the bath plug on my way. I dressed in baggy cotton trousers and a loose top and then started flicking through my address book, looking for those four digits, trying to find out which bit of London Brendan was in now. There had to be a better way of doing this. I found a telephone directory and ran my finger down the lines and lines of names looking for the area code. My eyes were starting to swim with the effort until I found it: Brackley. That was reasonably accessible.

  What now? I couldn't wander around Brackley looking for him. Maybe I should call the number and – well, and what? Talk to Brendan again? I couldn't do that; just the thought of it made me tremble. I poured myself a large glass of red wine and then turned on my laptop. Two minutes, a couple of search engines and I was looking at the name Crabtrees, a cafe in Brackley. I toasted my perseverance with a gulp of red wine that tasted rather vinegary. I looked at my watch: 7.35.

  Now that I knew it was a cafe, I did risk calling the number. It rang and rang and just when I was about to put the phone down, someone answered.

  'Yes?'

  'Is this Crabtrees?'

  'Yes. It's the payphone. You want someone?'

  'Oh – well, can you tell me the opening hours?'

  'What?'

  'The opening hours of the cafe.'

  'I dunno exactly; I've never been in here before. It's new and I thought I'd give it a go – eight till late, that's what it says on the board outside.'

  'OK, thanks.'

  'It's not a pub, though.'

  'No.'

  'You can't get drinks – it's all cappuccino and latte and those herbal teas that taste like straw.'

  'Thanks.'

  'And vegetarian meals. Organic this, that and the other.'

  'You've been very helpful

  'Alfalfa. I always thought it was cows that ate alfalfa.'

  I didn't stop to think. I poured the wine down the sink, picked up my denim jacket and left. No underground goes to Brackley, so I drove there, through the balmy evening. The sky was golden and even the dingy streets were softened in its glow.

  Crabtrees was in the upmarket bit, between a shop that sold candles and wind chimes and a shop that sold bread 'made just as the Romans used to make it'. I drove past it and then found a place to park a few minutes' walk away just in case Brendan was around.

  I walked slowly past the cafe, with the collar of my jacket turned up, feeling excruciatingly visible – an absurd and ham-fisted parody of a private eye. I imagined Brendan sitting by the window and seeing me shuffle by. I cast a few rapid glances through the glass, but didn't see him. Then I turned around and walked past once more. The cafe was practically empty and he didn't seem to be in there.

  I went inside. It was brightly lit and smelled of coffee, vanilla, pastry, herbs. I ordered a pear juice (with a hint of ginger) and a flapjack and took them into a corner. What would I do if he walked in now? I should have brought a large newspaper to hide behind. I could cut a hole in it and stare out, or something. Even a book to bend over would be better than sitting here exposed. But it was warm and clean and aromatic, and for a moment I allowed myself to relax. I was tired to my bones, tired in the kind of way that sleep can't cure. I put my head in my hands and gazed through the lattice of my fingers at the street outside. People walked past, men and women with purposeful strides. No sign of Brendan.

  After half an hour of nibbling at the flapjack and sipping at the juice, I paid up and asked the young woman behind the counter what time they closed.

  'Nine,' she said. She had silky blonde hair twisted on to the top of her head, a scattering of clear freckles over the bridge of her nose and a lovely candid smile. She glanced at the watch on her delicate wrist: 'Just seven more minutes, I'm glad to say.'

  'And what time do you open in the morning?'

  'Eight o'clock.'

  'Thanks.'

  I knew it was ridiculous, but I was back at eight, with a newspaper. I ordered a milky coffee and a brioche and took up my seat again, wedged behind the coat stand so that if Brendan did come in he wouldn't see me. There were two middle-aged women behind the counter this time, and a man in the kitchen, behind the swing doors.

  I stayed an hour and a half, and had two more coffees, and then, shaky with caffeine and fatigue, went outside and sat in my van for a bit. I called Bill and said I wouldn't be at work for a couple of days, and then I left a message on Don's machine apologizing for not turning up to finish the job, but promising I'd be back soon. I didn't say when, because I didn't know when and I didn't want to think about the hopelessness of my task. London was a huge, swarming place in which you could hide and never be found. Brendan may have been passing by and would never return to the cafe again, and I was hiding in a corner, camped out behind a newspaper, waiting with a dry mouth and a pounding heart for something that wouldn't happen. Or he could be just across the road, at an upstairs window, looking down. Maybe he was coming along the street now and if I didn't hurry I'd miss him. Maybe this was what going mad was like, crouching in a cafe, hiding in my van, pacing the streets in an area of London miles from home.

  I went to the candle and wind-chime shop and took my time choosing and buying a glass bowl and some floating candles in the shape of water lilies, all the time peering out at the street. I went to the baker's and bought a wheel of brown sourdough bread that cost so much that at first I thought the decimal point was in the wrong place. I walked very slowly up the street and down again. I went into a bookshop and bought a book of walks in and around London. I poked about in a hardware shop until the glares of the man behind the counter drove me out. I bought a pad of ruled notepaper and a pen at a stationer's, and some toffees to suck during my vigil. I returned to Crabtrees once more, which was filling up now.

  As well as a couple of waiters, who looked like students, the young woman from last night was back. She was flustered with the lunchtime rush, but she nodded at me in recognition when I ordered white bean soup and a glass of sparkling water. I sat in my obscure corner and leafed through the book of walks. I ate very slowly, and when I'd finished got myself a cup of tea
. When the door opened I would bend down, as if tying my shoelace, then peer round the bottom of the table to see who was coming in. At just after two, I started trudging up and down the streets again, aimless and footsore and wretched with the impossibility of my task. I told myself I'd give it until closing time and then call it a day.

  At half past four, the young woman looked mildly surprised to see me again. I had a pot of tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake.

  At seven, I came back for vegetable lasagne and a green salad, but I just pushed it round my plate and left. I got the van and parked it near the cafe and huddled in the dying light, waiting for it to be closing time. I sat for a while, doing nothing, just staring out at the shapes of the buildings against the sky. I felt very far from home. Forlorn. On the spur of the moment, I rang Don again and when he answered, before I could change my mind, said:

  'That drink you mentioned, did you mean it?'

  'Yes,' he said without hesitation. 'When? Now?'

  'Not now. Tomorrow?'

  'Great.'

  He sounded genuinely pleased and the glow of that stayed with me after I'd said goodbye, a little bit of sunlight in the gloom.

  I must have dozed off because I woke with a start and found the light had faded and the crowds on the street had thinned, although there was still a pool of people outside the pub up the road. It was just before nine, and I was stiff and sore and thirsty. I turned the key in the ignition, switched on the headlights, put the gear into reverse, released the handbrake, glanced in the rear mirror, and froze.

  If I could see him in the mirror, could he see me? No, surely not. I was only a strip of face, two eyes. I turned off the ignition and the headlights and slid down low in the seat. In a few seconds, he was walking past the van. He was just a couple of feet away from me. I held my breath in the dark. He stopped at the door of Crabtrees, where the young woman was turning the 'Open' sign to 'Closed'. When she saw Brendan, her face lit up and she lifted a hand in greeting before opening the door to him. I sat up a bit straighter in the seat and watched as he took her in his arms and she leaned into him and he kissed her on her eyes and then her lips.

  She was very beautiful, Brendan's new girlfriend. And very young – not more than twenty-one or – two. She was besotted. I watched her as she pushed her hands into his thick hair and pulled his face towards her again. I closed my eyes and groaned out loud. Whatever Don had said, whatever my common sense told me, I couldn't leave it – not now I'd seen the freckles on her nose and her shining eyes.

  The woman collected her coat and shut the door. She waved goodbye at someone still inside and then she and Brendan walked arm in arm down the road, back the way he'd come. I waited until they were nearly out of sight, then got out of the van and followed them, praying he wouldn't turn round and see me skulking in the distance. They stopped outside a door between a bicycle shop and an all-night grocery and broke apart while the girl fumbled in her pocket for the key. Her flat, then, I thought. That made sense. Brendan was the cuckoo in other people's nests. She pushed the door open and they disappeared inside.

  The door swung shut and a few moments later a light in an upstairs window came on. For a second, I saw Brendan standing, illuminated. He closed the curtains.

  CHAPTER 36

  It wasn't exactly an orthodox first date: poking around in an abandoned church in Hackney that a few years ago had been turned into a reclamation centre. But maybe it was better this way – there's something awkwardly self-conscious about sitting face-to-face over a pub table, sipping cheap wine, asking polite questions, testing the waters. Instead, Don was at one end of the church, where the altar used to be, bending over an iron bath with sturdy legs, and I was down the aisle looking at stone gargoyles. There was no one else around, except the man who'd let us in, and he was in his office in the side chapel. Everything was bathed in coloured, dusty light, and when we spoke to each other our voices echoed.

  'Why have I never been in this place before?' he called out to me, gesturing around him at the stone slabs, the vast wooden cabinets, the porcelain sinks leaning against the walls, the boxes full of brass handles and brass padlocks.

  'Because you're not a builder.'

  'I want everything here. Look at these garden benches. Or this bird bath.'

  I grinned across at him, feeling suddenly dizzy with unfamiliar happiness; tremulous with relief.

  'You don't have a garden,' I said.

  'True. Do you have a garden?'

  'No.'

  'Oh well. Tell me what I should get, then.'

  'What about a pew.'

  'A pew?'

  'It would go perfectly in your room. Look here.' He walked down the aisle and stood beside me. But he didn't look at the old wooden pew with carved arms. He looked at me. I felt myself blushing. He put his hands on my shoulders. 'Has anyone ever told you you're gorgeous?'

  'Never in a church,' I said. My voice caught in my throat.

  And then he kissed me. We leaned against a wood-burning stove that cost £690 and I put my hands under his jacket and his shirt and felt his warm skin beneath my palms, the curve of his ribs. Then we sat down on the pew, and when I looked at him he was smiling at me.

  We had our drink after that, sitting in a pub garden in the warm evening, holding hands under the table, and then we went and had an Indian meal together. I didn't speak about Brendan all evening, not once. I was sick and weary of him worming his way into every thought, present even when he was far away, whispering softly and obscenely in my skull. So I pushed him away. I pushed Troy and Laura away too. I only let them back in my head after I dropped Don off at his flat and drove home. Though it wasn't really home any more – it was the place I lived, with the 'Sold' board outside and an air of neglect settling over its rooms.

  The ghosts came back, but that night I didn't feel quite so wretched because I was doing something, at last. I had a task, a purpose, a goal. I had a man who thought I was gorgeous: that always helps to blunt the edge of loneliness.

  I was at Crabtrees at eight the next morning, but she wasn't there. Instead, one of the men I'd seen two days previously was behind the counter, serving up double espressos, hot chocolates, camomile teas. I perched on a tall stool, ordered a coffee and a cinnamon bun, and then asked if the young woman who'd served me before was coming in soon because I might have left a scarf behind, and maybe she'd picked it up.

  'Naomi? No.'

  'When will she be in next?'

  'I dunno. She only comes in a couple of days a week as a general rule. She's a medical student in real life. She didn't say anything about a scarf, though. Do you want me to have a look out back?'

  'Don't worry. I'll come back later,' I said.

  I joined the rush-hour queue at the bus stop a few yards down the road from the door I'd seen Naomi and Brendan enter. The curtains in the upstairs room were still drawn. I stood there for fifteen minutes, shifting from foot to foot and watching the buses arrive and go. Eventually the curtains in the flat were opened, though I didn't see by whom. If I waited long enough, one of them had to come out. If it was Brendan, I'd knock at the door and hope she was there. If it was Naomi, I'd catch up with her and talk. If it was both of them together – well, I'd think about that when it happened.

  In the event, it was Brendan who emerged. He was wearing baggy black trousers and a grey woollen jacket and carried a silver rucksack over one shoulder. I pressed myself against the bus stop, among the crowd, worried that he might be coming my way. He passed by on the other side of the road, walking with a jaunty step and whistling to himself.

  I waited until he was out of sight and then crossed the road and went up to the door. I ran an anxious hand through my hair, took a deep breath, and rang the bell. She took a bit of time answering and I was beginning to think that she had left earlier than Brendan, but then I heard feet coming down the stairs. When she opened the door, she was wearing a white towelling robe and her hair was bundled up in a towel. She looked even younger than before.


  'Hello?' she said, peering through the gap. 'Can I…?' Then recognition and puzzlement came into her face. 'But aren't you the woman in Crabtrees?' she asked.

  'Yes. Sorry to intrude like this. I'd really like to have a word with you.'

  'I don't understand. What are you doing here? How did you know where I lived, anyway?'

  'Can I come in? Then I could explain. Just a few minutes.'

  'Who are you?'

  'If I could just…'

  'Tell me your name.'

  'Miranda,' I said. I saw her eyes widen and inwardly cursed. 'You may have heard of me.'

  'Oh yes, I've heard of you all right,' she said in a hostile tone. 'Now I think you'd better go.'

  She started to push the door shut, but I put my hand against it.

  'Please. Just a few words,' I said. 'It's important. I wouldn't be here if it weren't important.'

  She hesitated, biting her top lip as she stared at me.

  'I won't be long,' I said. 'But there's something I have to tell you. Please.'

  At last she shrugged and stood back to let me pass.

  'Though I can't for the life of me think of anything you could tell me that I'd want to know.'

  I followed her up the stairs and into the tiny living room. There was a splaying bunch of bluebells in a jam jar on the table, and medical textbooks. A man's leather jacket was slung over the chair. She turned to face me, hands on her hips, and didn't ask me to sit down.

  'I don't know what you've heard about me,' I began.

  'I know that you used to go out with Ben,' she said, and I blinked at her. He was 'Ben' now, was he? 'And I know you couldn't let go when he ended it; that you made his life a misery for a while.'

  'What about Laura?' I demanded. 'Did he tell you about her?'

  'Of course. Laura was his wife and she died and his heart was broken.' I saw tears start up in her candid grey eyes. 'He's told me everything. Poor Ben.'

  'And Troy? He's told you about Troy, has he?' I asked harshly.