Tell Me No Secrets

by Julie Corbin

  I glance over at Orla. She has a hand up to her face and seems to be as shocked as the rest of us.

  Mr Mason takes Shugs by the arm and brings him to the front. ‘We’ll see what the police have to say about this. The rest of you turn to page twenty-six and copy out the diagram of the Krebs Cycle.’ He casts an eye over each of us. ‘And don’t give Miss Carter any trouble.’

  He leaves with Shugs, who is all the way protesting his innocence, and the rest of us repack our bags and open our books. There’s a heavy silence in the room and then Faye says, ‘Miss Carter, what exactly happened to Peter?’

  ‘His throat was cut.’ She swallows. ‘There’s blood all over his white fur. Not a pretty sight.’

  There are quiet murmurs of ‘That’s terrible’ and ‘Poor Peter’ and then we get on with the lesson.

  As soon as it’s over and we’re on the way out of the door I grab Orla’s shoulder and swing her around to face me. ‘You didn’t kill Peter, did you?’

  ‘Me?’ Her eyes are the colour of volcanic glass, obsidian, like black marbles. ‘Of course not! For heaven’s sake, Grace! Save your imagination for English lessons.’ She jumps down two stairs at a time and then looks back up at me. ‘It was good he got caught though, wasn’t it?’

  14

  Once more I sleep fitfully. My dreams are full of Orla and Rose, photographs, water, lightning and the sickening feeling of regret. By the time I get up in the morning I feel no more rested than when I went to bed. And to make matters worse, although he doesn’t know the half of it and, of course, I can’t tell him, Paul is genuinely worried about the threat Orla poses to our family. When he comes back with a hired car for me to use while my broken window is being fixed, he tells me that he will cancel the fishing trip to Skye. I try to persuade him that we will all be fine but he is not prepared to leave us. So I promise him that we will join him and Ed at the cottage. I will drive up late afternoon when the girls have had their sailing lessons.

  I’m still mulling everything over: Why didn’t Orla seize the opportunity to tell Paul yesterday? Is she planning an elaborate showdown that will publicly disgrace and humiliate me? And I’ve yet to translate the newspaper clippings. Euan’s French is much better than mine and I decide to meet him later and ask him to help me.

  As I chivvy the girls to have breakfast, the post arrives; Paul has been accepted for his sabbatical. We leave for Australia in less than two months. I couldn’t be happier if we’d won the lottery. Melbourne. Paul breaks open a bottle of champagne and we combine it with orange juice then toast our good fortune. My own silent wish is that we will all grow to love it so much that we won’t come back.

  The girls go off for a day’s sailing with the youth club, Paul and Ed are packed and ready to set off to Skye and I’m desperate for some time alone to think. The three of us are having a late breakfast.

  ‘I’m sorry, Grace,’ Ed says. ‘My knife is not quite equal to this bacon.’

  ‘I have overcooked it, haven’t I?’ I put my own knife and fork together and take both our plates away. ‘More coffee?’

  ‘It’s not that bad, love.’ Paul drinks some water. ‘Just takes a bit of chewing.’

  He’s being generous. I can’t concentrate. Ed’s face is serious. He frowns across at Paul. ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘She’s not here right now, Dad. Busy, I expect.’

  Ed looks up at me. ‘You’re not my daughter. You’re not Alison.’

  ‘I’m Grace.’ He’s wearing a crew neck sweater and I pick some fluff off his collar and smooth it down. ‘I’m married to Paul, your son.’

  He laughs. ‘Not a bit of it. Aren’t you married to that young man I saw you kissing along Marketgate? It was the other day when I was on my way to bowls. You were standing by his gate.’

  Instantly it hits me that this memory is true and the air around me thickens. I try to take a breath. I can’t. It was on Monday, after we’d made love. I looked up and down the street but saw no one. Then we kissed. Ed must have been passing by. That’s why he hasn’t been speaking to me. If you don’t know, then I can’t tell you. He didn’t say anything then but now the memory has spilled out.

  I don’t look at Paul. I don’t need to. I can sense that he has straightened his back and is now perfectly still and waiting. I shake my head. ‘Couldn’t have been me, Ed,’ I say. ‘I’m married to Paul.’ I reach sideways to take Paul’s hand but he moves his away a split second before they meet.

  ‘It was you all right!’ Ed chuckles. ‘And if you’re not married to that young architect then you should be!’ He helps himself to more coffee. ‘Passionate embrace if ever I saw one.’ He looks down the table at Paul. ‘Took me back to the days when your mum and I were courting. She was the bonniest lassie for miles around. Sweet and bright as . . .’ He frowns. ‘Where is she anyway? Surely not shopping again?’

  Paul is still waiting. I feel his eyes on my face. I need time to dissemble but I don’t have it and my face flushes up red and guilty as the sin I have committed.

  Ed looks up. ‘Have I got it wrong? I’m so sorry.’ At last he seems to see us both and he looks from one of us to the other. ‘What have I been saying?’

  ‘Nothing, Dad.’ Paul stands up. His face has turned a greyish colour and his mouth is trembling. ‘Why don’t you start packing the car? The tackle’s in the front porch.’

  ‘Absolutely, yes, fishing rods, excellent!’

  He walks off whistling and Paul turns to me. ‘Grace?’

  I hope my face has calmed down. I am completely blindsided. I have spent the past week wondering how to break the news of my involvement in Rose’s death and instead I am faced by my other betrayal. I try to buy time. I pick up the plates. He stops my hand, holds both my wrists firmly.

  ‘Were you kissing Euan?’

  ‘No. Not like that! Of course not!’ I try to step backward but he doesn’t loosen his grip. ‘We were hugging,’ I admit. ‘Yes. Because I have a new commission and he was congratulating me.’

  ‘A new commission?’ His head drops to one side. ‘Since when? You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘A friend of Margie Campbell’s.’ I try to breathe but even to my own ears my breath sounds ragged and panicked. ‘She heard what I was doing for Margie and called me on my mobile.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ he fires quickly.

  ‘Elspeth Mullen. She lives outside Glasgow.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shrug. ‘It wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. There was the girls’ party and Rose’s day . . .’ I trail off. He doesn’t believe me. Ironically, it’s partly true: the commission part. But, in fact, I hadn’t told anyone, not even Euan, because I had more important things on my mind.

  Paul lets go of my wrists and folds his arms. ‘So if I was to ring Euan, he would know about this Elspeth Mullen and he would have the same story as you?’

  ‘I’d prefer that you believed me.’ My voice sounds weak. I can’t look at him. I’m digging myself in deeper and whatever I say will only make things worse. I feel sick and ashamed. I want to shout – This wasn’t supposed to happen! – to run into the corner and hide.

  ‘I’ve always tolerated—’ He stops, drums his fingers on the dining table, thinks. ‘Not tolerated, encouraged. I’ve always encouraged your friendship with Euan because I know how much you like each other but so help me God, Grace, if you are having an affair with him . . .’ He takes a breath and balls his fists. ‘If you are jeopardising our happy family life for—’

  ‘Paul, please!’ I know that in order to maintain the lie, I need to look offended. I need to work myself into a how-could-you-think-such-a-thing rage that will exonerate me. But I can’t. This is not a good moment to find out that when push comes to shove I can’t lie to my husband. I just can’t. I lift a hand to my chest. ‘Paul, you have to know that I love you.’

  ‘Would that be with all your heart?’ He is icy. ‘Or just part of it?’

 
‘I . . . I’m not—’

  ‘Is this why you wanted to keep Orla out of the house?’ His voice cracks. ‘Because she knew about you both?’

  ‘No! It’s not. Everything I said about Orla was true!’

  ‘So this is something else, is it?’ He is leaning over me and he is white with anger, his skin stretched over his cheekbones as if it’s about to tear. ‘Something else you can’t tell me?’

  ‘Please, Paul, let me—’

  ‘Stop there.’ He puts his hand up in front of him. ‘I think you’ve said enough.’ He turns away, walks through the door, slams it behind him.

  I open the door and follow him, trail in his wake like sewage from a freighter. ‘Paul, can we at least talk about this?’

  ‘You look to me like someone who’s still getting her story straight, Grace. I would have thought a few days would be just what you need.’

  ‘Paul, please!’ I reach for his arm but he is too quick for me and then Murphy gets between us and I lose a couple of seconds. When I reach Paul’s side of the car, he’s already revving the engine and he drives off. I go back inside. It’s not yet midday but I pour myself a whisky. I think. I think about my family, my mistakes, my guilty secrets. I am appalled by the mess I have made. I feel desperate. And then I do the only thing I can do. I ring Euan.

  ‘I’m about to go out on the water. You at work?’

  ‘Euan.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Ed saw you kissing me on Monday. When we were standing at the gate. He blurted it out at breakfast just now.’ I start to cry. ‘I’m in so much trouble and this is just the beginning.’ I pull a tissue from my pocket and blow my nose. ‘Paul’s furious with me and now they’ve gone to Skye.’

  I don’t say anything more and neither does Euan. It feels like minutes pass before he speaks. ‘What did Paul say?’

  ‘He didn’t say much. He was wounded, cold.’ I am whispering, too ashamed for even the walls to hear me. ‘He behaved with dignity. I feel like an absolute shit. He is the last person who deserves to be hurt.’

  ‘Christ.’ I hear voices in the background shouting Euan’s name. ‘Grace, I have to organise these kids. Come and meet me at the end of the day, will you?’

  ‘Yes. And I have to talk to you about Orla,’ I say, my free hand feeling for the newspaper clippings that are still in the pocket of my jeans. ‘A lot happened yesterday.’

  We say our goodbyes and I put down the phone, lean my head on the table next to it. Paul and I have been married for over twenty years and in all that time I have never wanted to be without him. I know I am duplicitous. I know that Euan and I should never have started our affair. Some would say that I want to have my cake and eat it. I would say that without Paul I have no place in the world. He is my family, my every day.

  And Euan? He anchors me to myself and to the moment. When he looks at me, he sees me as I am. Not the Grace who is a mother, a wife or a daughter but the Grace who is . . . just Grace. He takes me – loves me – as he finds me. No pretence necessary. Is he a luxury? It doesn’t feel that way. He feels essential to me, like my own arms and legs.

  But the affair is the lesser of the evils. Orla’s news on top of this will surely break Paul. I, of all people, know that he has never forgotten Rose. To find out that his own wife is not only unfaithful but was involved in his daughter’s death – I don’t know what that will do to him.

  September 1995

  When do things start to go wrong? I can’t answer that. Even afterwards I can’t pinpoint the exact moment. The first years of our marriage we live in Boston, the girls are born there, we are happy and we make a good life for ourselves. And then we come back to Scotland. It is not good for me. I feel tired. I suffer from one bout of flu after another. I lose my enthusiasm for drawing. The blank page defeats me. I start to feel Rose’s presence again. I see her in the shadows, sometimes an indistinct shape, more a feeling than a presence, but other times I see her clearly: her eyes, her smile, her wispy blonde hair. I start to watch out for her, to sense her in the room or on the pavement ahead of me. I know I’m being irrational. I know I need help but I have no one to confide in. I love Paul. He is kind and funny, easy-going, an excellent husband and father but I am never able to tell him about Rose and I come to accept that there is a part of me that I will have to keep hidden, no matter what. Slowly, insidiously, this realisation grows like brambles around clematis and I have no way of stopping it. I become watchful, afraid that I will be exposed for what I am: a fraud and a liar. We’ve been back in the village eight months, the girls are barely three and I am anorexic and withdrawn.

  And the more I watch, the more I see that I am not the only one who is keeping secrets. Paul isn’t a man prone to un explained absences. He is a family man, one hundred per cent. He looks forward to long weekends with the girls and me. On Saturdays, he takes the girls swimming, on Sundays we have family time, walking, visiting castles and parks or spending time with grandparents. But when we’re back living in Scotland, I realise that there are times when Paul doesn’t go straight to work. This realisation dawns on me over a period of months: a couple of times I call the university but he hasn’t arrived yet, even although he’s been gone an hour or more; sometimes when he returns home, the car’s wheels and sides are mud-splattered and yet there are no dirt roads between our house and his work. And it’s always on a Tuesday when he has a free lesson first thing. Clearly, he’s spending time elsewhere. As someone keeping my own secret, I feel no entitlement to pry but the mystery gnaws at me. Has he found someone else? Is he having an affair? Is he gambling? What?

  I could follow him. He drops the girls at nursery and then continues on to work. I could drive behind him, far enough away not to be recognised but close enough to see where he’s going. That feels deceitful, like spying, so I make up my mind to ask him outright. I try to find a time to bring it into the conver sation. Impossible before the girls are in bed and then, when they are in bed and we’re sitting in the living room reading or watching television, the question sounds too large in my head, so bald, so intrusive that it dies before it is spoken. Would the words sound less accusing if said under the cover of darkness? I try it. When we’re in bed ourselves, I make an attempt to whisper a question to him but either my voice is too quiet or he is already asleep. A moment of closeness, I think, that is the perfect time and so after we’ve made love, when the mood is tranquil and our bodies soften into each other, I try to say it. Where do you go, Paul? Where? But again I can’t because it feels . . . dangerous. Me? Asking Paul to share his secret? How can I? Where might it lead?

  So I sit on my curiosity for months, feel it grow into anxiety and then decide that I will settle it. I will follow him. Tuesday comes around, I tuck the girls’ vests in, pull up their knickers and tights, button blouses and pinafores, force arms into jackets and feet into boots, wedge hats on heads, kiss them both, kiss Paul and wave them goodbye as usual. Then I start my car and follow him. I see him deliver the girls to their teacher, letting go of first one hand and then another, standing on the pavement, watching them run inside. When he’s in his car again, I move back into the traffic and shadow him up to the main road but instead of turning right to the university, he turns left.

  We travel away from the sea, into the countryside. We drive for five miles and when he turns into an unmade road, my heart shrinks against my ribcage. I drop my speed, hang back, park in a space fifty yards behind him then follow him, on foot, along the path that leads directly to the pond. Unlike all those years ago, it’s no longer a case of fighting through brambles and over clumps of heather because the path is well trodden. I meet a couple of dog walkers and a lone jogger but by the time I get to the water, only Paul is ahead of me. I stop a discreet distance away, my body concealed by the trunk of a pine tree. Paul is sitting on a rock, the very rock I sat on myself before I noticed the jacket in the water, the jacket that was Rose. In all these years I have never been back here. Some things have changed: the trees are higher and plants grow where they
didn’t before, but mostly it’s exactly as it was and I feel like my life is bending back on itself, like a gymnast falling backward to catch hold of her feet.

  I feel sick, ashamed, unworthy. I want to turn and run but I am held in awe of my husband. He is completely still. He is looking across to the far end of the pond where a stream trickles in, the flow of water barely interrupting the glassy, benign surface. Above the trees’ reach, the sky is turquoise blue and what clouds there are, are wispy and spiral in the breeze as flimsy as dandelion clocks. Blackbirds call to one another, their tune high and clear, a late summer melody. Nowhere is there any suggestion that a child died here.

  Paul pulls a book from his jacket pocket and starts to read aloud. I can’t hear the words but his tone is tender and humorous. Now, suddenly, it seems obvious. All those months of wondering where he was going. My suspicion is shameful. Of course, he would choose to visit the site of his child’s last moments. Of course, he would come here to sit and remember. How could I ever have imagined that he was over this?

  I have a sudden horror of being seen and I retrace my steps as quickly as I can. I drive home and spend the day gainfully employed: housework, cooking, reading to and playing with the girls.

  When Paul comes home from work he is as he always is and so am I. Nothing is said. When I wake at three in the morning, as I do most nights, I get up and go downstairs. I take the book from his jacket pocket. It’s a hardbacked exercise book with two hundred pages or more. I open the first page. Paul’s unfussy hand has written a title: Letters to Rose. I flick through the pages. The book is almost completely full. He has written her a letter most weeks since her death. I read no further, close it and put it back where I found it.

  Rose is his secret just as she is mine.

  15

  Paul and Ed have been gone for almost four hours. Since the phone call with Euan I’ve sat in the same place thinking about what I’ve done and what will happen now. My insides are doing somersaults with worry and shame and the fear of impending catastrophe. Paul’s face when he left, stiff with pain and disappointment, is at the forefront of my mind. And what of the rest? Orla, unhinged and determined, is going to reveal the secrets of that fateful evening at Guide camp. What of my marriage then? Could I even go to prison? How will the girls be affected? How can they love a mother who cheats on their father? Worse still, how can they love a mother who is careless enough to push their half-sister to her death?