by Jill Mansell
“Marcella’s been talking about it, has she? Well, I suppose she was bound to tell Estelle. Of course, she doesn’t approve,” said Jake. “That goes without saying. But Maddy’s over eighteen. You can’t stop her doing what she wants, even if you know she’s making a big mistake.”
They were starting to move now, heading down Main Street toward the war memorial, from where she could either turn left up Gypsy Lane or carry on around to the right with Jake.
“I have to say, I’m impressed,” Kate went on, to keep the momentum going. “Last week, all I did was mention his name and Marcella went completely ballistic. I thought her head was going to explode. Of course, maybe she’s had time to get used to the idea now.”
Next to her, Jake slowed, gave her an odd sideways look. Casually he said, “What did you say to Marcella?”
“Just that I thought I’d seen him driving past our house. It was completely innocent,” Kate insisted. “I had no idea that anything was going on between him and Maddy, I only wondered where he was living because I suppose I’d assumed he was still in London. Anyway, as soon as I mentioned Kerr’s name, Marcella went bananas.”
“Kerr?” Jake stopped dead in his tracks. He swung around, his green eyes boring into hers. “Kerr McKinnon?”
Confused, Kate stammered, “W-well, yes, but you already knew that. Oh God.” She felt the blood drain from her face in horror. “You didn’t know? But all that stuff about Marcella not being thrilled—”
“All Marcella knows is that Maddy’s seeing a married man,” Jake said soberly. “That’s what she isn’t thrilled about. If she found out it was Kerr McKinnon—well, heads would definitely explode. How do you know about this anyway?” He gave her a sharp look. “Who told you?”
Rather wishing she hadn’t raised the subject now, but at the same time experiencing a tiny flicker of schadenfreude, Kate said, “I saw them together.” Then, because nobody liked a Peeping Tom, she added hastily, “In his car.”
“But they were definitely together?”
“Oh yes. Absolutely.” The image of Maddy and Kerr cavorting seminude on the lawn was indelibly imprinted on her mind.
“Right.” Jake’s expression was grim.
Clearly he was intending to confront Maddy, and not in a supportive, brotherly way. Beginning to envisage the repercussions, Kate said, “Look, don’t involve me in this. I’m not exactly Maddy’s favorite person as it is.”
“Right now, she isn’t my favorite person either,” said Jake.
“I’m serious.” Kate clutched his arm. “I’ve just started working at the pub, this is important to me. Don’t tell Maddy it was me who told you,” she begged Jake. “Promise.”
He looked at her, then nodded. “OK, I promise. You did a good job in the pub today, by the way.”
“Thanks, I—”
“Sophie, get down from there,” Jake yelled, spotting his daughter making her wobbly way along the top of the bridge over the River Ash. “If you fall in, I’m not rescuing you. Look, I’ll see you around,” he told Kate distractedly, setting off up Ashcombe Road and leaving her standing by the memorial.
“Yes, fine. Bye.” Attempting to sound casual but actually feeling bereft and abandoned, Kate watched him go. Oh well, cricket was boring anyway.
She just hoped Jake wouldn’t forget his promise.
Chapter 23
As she pushed open the front door of Snow Cottage at ten o’clock that evening, Maddy realized that she’d at last discovered the true meaning of the expression dancing on air. She actually knew how it felt, and it was as addictive as any drug. Once you’d danced on air, how could you ever be satisfied with trudging on boring old ground again?
“Good time?” Jake glanced up from his computer screen.
“Not so bad.” Maddy beamed, flinging her car keys onto the dresser and suppressing the urge to do a little jig to show him just how deliriously happy she was. A little jig several inches above floor level, needless to say. David Blaine, watch out.
Stretching and leaning back on his chair, Jake raked his fingers through his disheveled blond hair. “His wife’s been here.”
“What?” Halfway to the kitchen to put the kettle on, Maddy turned. “Whose wife?”
“Your man’s, remember?” Jake prompted. “The married one you’ve been seeing? Big mistake.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Really. It’s always bad news when the wife finds out.”
Maddy was beginning to wonder if she’d stepped into a parallel universe. This was like falling asleep during one film on TV and waking up in the middle of another. Bemused, she said, “What did she look like?”
“Funny, I’d have thought you’d’ve been a bit more shocked,” Jake said idly. “Horrified, even. Almost as if you can’t believe what you’re hearing because you know for a fact that this chap of yours doesn’t have a wife.”
“OK, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m off to bed.” Something dodgy was going on here. Loftily refusing to join in, Maddy did an about-face and headed for the stairs.
“Oh no you don’t.” Jake’s hand shot out, his fingers curling around her wrist as she attempted to slip past him. “And keep your voice down, because Sophie’s asleep.”
“I’m not shouting.”
“We haven’t started yet.”
Maddy went hot and cold all over. Surely he couldn’t know. They’d been so careful. But what other explanation could there be for the look in Jake’s eyes? And why was she even bothering to wonder, when she was clearly about to find out?
“Go on then, let’s get it over with.” Defiantly she wrenched her wrist free and turned to face him.
“Kerr McKinnon,” said Jake coldly. “Are you out of your mind?”
Oh God.
“Who told you?” Maddy demanded.
“Never mind that.”
“Who?”
“I’m not telling you.” Firmly, Jake shook his head. “I gave my word I wouldn’t and don’t change the subject. Have you considered Marcella for one moment? Can you even comprehend what this would do to her?”
“She isn’t going to find out,” said Maddy, feeling sick. “Because you aren’t going to tell her.”
“I found out, though, didn’t I? I bloody wish I hadn’t, but I did. Because secrets don’t stay secrets around here.” Jake took a gulp of cold coffee and grimaced. “You’re going to have to finish with him. You know that, don’t you?”
In the space of five minutes, Maddy discovered, one of the most idyllic days of her life was turning into one of the very worst. And she knew who she had to thank for it too. Nuala, unable to work, had spent the afternoon in the Angel knocking back drink after drink. From there, she had headed on down to watch the cricket. Keen to get the lowdown on Maddy’s married man, Jake had paid her a bit of flirtatious attention, and, in turn, Nuala, her tongue by this time thoroughly loosened, would have tipsily confided in him. It was all so obvious, so predictable. Nuala had always been a blabbermouth.
“Where are you going?” demanded Jake.
In the split second before the front door slammed, Maddy shouted, “To sort something out.”
* * *
Nuala was upstairs in the living room wrestling with her long-sleeved T-shirt when she heard footsteps on the landing. With her top pulled half inside out over her head and her bra on show, all she could do was call out in a high-pitched voice, “Who’s that?” and pray it wasn’t an after-hours gas man come to read the meter.
“Me.”
Maddy. Well, that was good news. “Perfect timing,” Nuala said happily. “I’m completely stuck. Can you give me a hand getting this off? Oh, and I can’t undo my bra either.”
“How could you?”
Blindly, Nuala turned in the direction of Maddy’s voice. “What are you on about? I can’t, can I? That’s why I’m asking you to do it for m
e.”
But the expected help didn’t materialize. Instead, she heard Maddy say coldly, “You just couldn’t keep quiet, could you? I asked you not to tell anyone, but you couldn’t resist it.”
Trapped within the confines of her T-shirt, Nuala’s face burned with indignation. “What are you talking about?”
“I really thought I could trust you,” Maddy retaliated furiously, “which just goes to show how stupid I am. You told Jake about Kerr and now, thanks to you, everything’s ruined.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t tell Jake! Oh, for God’s sake.” With her good arm, Nuala managed at last to wrench the T-shirt back down over her head. “Did he tell you I did?”
“You and Juliet are the only ones who know. Juliet would never breathe a word.”
This was true—Juliet made sphinxes look garrulous. Appalled, Nuala recalled lying on the grass all but ignoring the cricket, far more interested in chatting away to Jake. Let’s face it: she’d had a fair few drinks this afternoon—oh God, had she somehow managed to give the game away without even realizing it?
“I-I’m sure I didn’t,” Nuala faltered, but it was too late. Maddy had seen the worried look in her eyes.
“You mean you didn’t do it on purpose; it just slipped out,” she hissed. “Well, thanks a lot. I won’t forget this in a hurry. I won’t be telling you anything in future that I don’t want broadcast all over town. In fact, I probably won’t be telling you anything at all.”
* * *
Kate was serving large gins to a tweedy weekend couple when Maddy stomped back out through the bar without so much as a glance in her direction. Ten minutes later, as she was fetching fresh supplies of peanuts from the storeroom, she heard a voice plaintively calling her name from halfway up the stairs.
“What is it?” Popping her head around the corner, Kate saw Nuala looking pale and subdued.
“Um, sorry, is Dexter busy?”
“He’s shouting at the washer-upper. Want me to fetch him for you?”
“Oh hell. No, it’s not urgent. I just, well, I can’t get out of my T-shirt.”
Plonking the packs of dry- and honey-roasted peanuts back down on the shelf, Kate checked over her shoulder that no one was waiting to be served.
“Here, I’ll give you a hand.” As she reached the top of the stairs, she saw that Nuala had been crying. “Hey, are you OK?”
“Fine.” Nuala nodded falteringly, then shook her head as she reached the sanctuary of the living room. “Sorry, it just seems so pathetic, not being able to take off your own clothes. All I want to do is go to bed—oh bugger, and now I need another tissue…”
Grabbing the box of Kleenex on the coffee table, Kate freed one just in time for Nuala to catch the tears dripping from her reddened nose.
“Come on, what’s really wrong?”
“Oh God, this is going to sound so stupid,” Nuala blurted out, “and I know you and Maddy don’t get on, but she’s my best friend. The thing is, she told me something in confidence the other day and now she’s mad with me because she thinks I told someone else.”
Kate felt sick. So that was why Maddy had come storming over here.
“And…did you?”
Standing patiently, like a child being undressed by its mother, Nuala waited for Kate to free first her good arm, then her head, before carefully unrolling the T-shirt down over her immobile shoulder. Finally she shook her head.
“I can’t remember doing it. I wouldn’t hurt Maddy for the world, but there’s no other way it could have gotten out. It must have been me. I keep racking my brain,” Nuala went on in desperation, “but I honestly can’t remember it. God, it’s like having that thingy disease, you know, that whatchamacallit…”
“Alzheimer’s.”
“You see? You see?” Nuala wailed. “That could be what’s wrong with me! Either that or I’m going completely mad.” This was the moment to come out and say it, to set the record straight and put poor Nuala out of her abject misery.
This was the moment…
OK, one, two, three. Here it comes. Here it comes…
“I’m sure you didn’t do it,” said Kate, realizing that these weren’t quite the words she’d had in mind. Deeply ashamed of her lack of moral fiber but not ashamed enough to blurt out the truth, she went on, “It’ll be OK. Now, d’you need a hand with this bra?”
Nodding, Nuala turned her back. Kate unclipped the bra and helped Nuala into her nightgown. Still racked with guilt—why couldn’t she say it, why?—she jumped as they both heard Dexter bellowing, “Hey, new girl, where are you?”
The next moment he appeared in the doorway.
“What’s going on up here then?” demanded Dexter. “Hot lesbian sex?”
“Yes,” said Kate. “Too bad it’s all over now. You missed it.”
“Has it occurred to you that I’m trying to run a pub here? I’ve just called last orders and there are punters queuing three deep at the bar, so why don’t you get your…self down there and start serving?”
He’d corrected himself, Kate realized. Having been about to tell her to get her fat backside downstairs, he’d actually bothered to modify his language.
“Fine,” she told Dexter. “Keep your hair on.” With a sweet smile she added, “What’s left of it.”
Chapter 24
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” wailed Maddy the next morning. “I just want to kill myself. I can’t believe I said all those horrible things. Of course you didn’t tell Jake about me and Kerr.”
“I didn’t? Really? Oh, thank God for that!” Clutching her chest with relief, Nuala sank sideways against the door frame. Last night she had slept terribly, racked by dreams of herself clambering onto the pub roof, calling the entire village to attention and announcing through a megaphone that Maddy was bonking Kerr McKinnon, but that…shhh…nobody must breathe a word because it was TOP SECRET.
After that, being woken by the doorbell at seven thirty had come as a welcome reprieve.
“What can I tell you?” Maddy’s hair was looking distinctly bird’s-nesty, as if she hadn’t slept well either. “I’m so ashamed.”
Since she hadn’t been too ashamed last night, Nuala said, “What changed your mind?”
“Jake, of course. He’d gone to bed by the time I got back. Deliberately, so I couldn’t interrogate him. Then this morning I told him what I’d said to you and he went, ‘Oh, it wasn’t Nuala.’ Just like that, the bastard, as if I’d been trying to guess the mystery ingredient in a casserole. So I said, ‘Oh fuck,’ and of course that was the moment Sophie came into the kitchen and said, ‘That’s a very rude word. Mrs. Masters says only stupid people say “fuck.”’ Which was, of course, the very reason I was saying it,” Maddy concluded, “because I had been stupid.” Looking anguished, she added, “I’m sorry. Really and truly. Will you still be my friend?”
“Go on then.” Nuala was just glad it was all over, dizzy with relief that she hadn’t let slip the secret to Jake when, in all honesty, she could have so easily. “You’ll have to help me get dressed, though—ow!” She winced as Maddy threw her arms around her like an overenthusiastic bridesmaid catching a bouquet.
“Sorry, sorry!”
“So who did tell Jake?” Nuala was bursting to hear.
“I don’t know! He won’t say! What am I going to do?”
“Finish with Kerr?” Nuala ventured.
Maddy’s face crumpled. “I don’t think I can.”
“OK, so you have to tell Marcella.”
With a shudder Maddy said, “I definitely can’t do that.”
“Only one other thing for it, then. Find out who told Jake and hire a professional assassin.”
“Excellent. Much the best way. And afterward,” Maddy said hopefully, “they could assassinate Jake.”
* * *
Monday night was darts night at t
he Fallen Angel. It was also discovery night for Maddy. Every time she looked over at Kate working behind the bar, Kate hurriedly looked elsewhere. The real giveaway, however, was the expression on her face. With a jolt like accidentally sitting on an electric fence, Maddy knew that the person who had told Jake was Kate.
“You’re wrong. It can’t be.” Nuala, her eye by this time a dramatic explosion of magenta, inky-blue, and yellow, was going for the sympathy vote tonight, perched on a high bar stool with her white denim skirt riding up to reveal tanned thighs. Reveling in the attention she’d been getting from the visiting team, her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright. Now, though, she shook her head. “Kate was with me last night. She knew why I was so upset. She would have said something if it had been her.”
Maddy doubted it. She still hadn’t the faintest idea how anyone, let alone Kate Taylor-Trent, could have found out about herself and Kerr, but somehow it had happened.
The bad news was that she had planned on speaking to the instigator privately to explain how vital it was that Marcella shouldn’t find out and generally appeal to their better nature. Well, what a waste of time that would be, seeing as Kate Taylor-Trent didn’t have one.
“Let me get you a drink,” one of the visiting team offered Nuala. “Who blacked your eye then? Jealous boyfriend?”
Dimpling, Nuala said, “I tripped and fell down the stairs. And thanks, I’d love a white wine spritzer.”
Dexter, serving behind the bar, glanced at Nuala’s legs. “Fasten the buttons on that skirt,” he said curtly. “You look like an old tart.”
“That’s a coincidence,” Kate chimed in. “You sound like an old fart.”
Nuala spluttered with laughter. Even Dexter, initially taken aback, managed to crack a smile.
“See?” Nuala whispered to Maddy. “She’s all right really. Not as bad as you think.”
Seriously? Was Nuala right? Maddy looked across the bar at the girl who had belittled her for so many years. For a split second, their eyes met and Maddy wondered if, just this once, Kate might acknowledge her with a brief smile.