It Started with a Secret: The feel-good novel of the year, from the bestselling author of MAYBE THIS TIME

by Jill Mansell

Ned was muttering ‘Pig’ under his breath.

  Seth reached for his hand, just in case he was about to rush up to someone and start saying it to their face. He gave Ned’s fingers a reassuring squeeze. ‘They don’t have any pigs here at the zoo. We’re seeing them tomorrow, remember? At the farm.’

  ‘I like pigs. What time tomorrow?’

  ‘Two o’clock. It’s on the list.’

  But Ned had stopped walking; he pulled his hand free, took the notebook out of his pocket and carefully wrote down the time to make completely sure he didn’t forget. As a well-built couple walked past, each enjoying an ice cream, he put away the notebook and said in a loud voice, ‘Pigs at two o’clock.’

  Forty minutes later, it was Stevie’s turn to be the centre of attention. Watching impassively as his younger brother threw himself to the ground and kicked over one of the chairs outside the café, Ned said, ‘Everyone’s looking at him.’

  Seth nodded; Ned wasn’t wrong. Stevie was having one of his dramatic out-of-the-blue meltdowns, yelling at the top of his voice and hammering his heels against the tarmac. Lainey was kneeling at his side, speaking gently to him and making sure he didn’t injure himself. As she smoothed Stevie’s hair back from his forehead, Seth marvelled at the instinctive way she dealt with him, and found himself slightly wishing he could know how that felt.

  The next moment, she raised her head, eyes narrowed. Turning and following the direction of her gaze, Seth saw a group of three young teenage girls mocking Stevie, laughing and mimicking his flailing arms.

  Grace had taken Bay to the disabled bathroom to change his nappy. Seth, still holding Ned’s arm, was in no position to intervene. Lainey was unable to respond either, though she clearly wanted to. Meanwhile, the teenagers were egging each other on, getting carried away.

  ‘Now, now, girls.’ A young lad wearing the bottle-green uniform of a zoo employee approached them. ‘If you had autism and were that upset about something, you wouldn’t want people making fun of you, would you? It doesn’t cost anything to be kind.’

  Shamefaced, the girls instantly stopped their messing around and sloped off. Seth guessed that a comment from a middle-aged employee wouldn’t have been nearly as effective at silencing them as a comment from a good-looking lad not much older than themselves.

  Still stroking Stevie’s forehead, Lainey said to the employee, ‘Thanks so much.’

  ‘S’alright. They’re just a bit immature.’ The boy had bright eyes and a beaming smile. Crouching down a few feet away from Stevie, so as not to scare him, he said, ‘Hey, d’you want to see my favourite animal in the whole world?’

  He waited patiently until Stevie ran out of screams and said, ‘What kind of animal?’

  ‘Baby giraffe. Honestly, mate, he’s amazing. Only born last week and he’s a right character, you should see him! Have you been over to our giraffe house yet?’

  Slowly Stevie shook his head.

  ‘Well d’you want to visit the giraffes? You’re gonna love them, I’m telling you. And the new baby one’s the absolute best.’

  Stevie sat up, got to his feet and nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘Great! Follow me, mate. I’ll show you where they are.’

  How old was this cheerful, skinny boy with effortless empathy? No more than eighteen, Seth estimated, but his easy manner and enthusiasm were a joy to behold. As they made their way across the grass in the direction of the giraffe house, Seth heard Lainey say to him, ‘If only there were more people like you.’

  ‘Hey, I’m just lucky.’ The boy shrugged off the compliment and grinned at her. ‘I’ve got the best job in the world.’

  Chapter 20

  And now, following another full day, it was almost midnight once more.

  Almost silent, too, Seth noted, apart from the occasional muffled cry of ‘Pig!’ filtering downstairs from Ned’s room.

  ‘Ah, wasn’t the zoo great? Look at this one.’ As he carried the tray of cheese and grapes through from the kitchen, he saw Lainey holding up her phone to show him one of the very many photos she’d taken.

  He put the tray down and sat beside her, breathing in the scent of her shampoo as he studied the photo. It was of Bay, Stevie and Ned all gazing up in wonder and delight as the baby giraffe’s mother curved her long neck and gazed down at them like a benign sunflower.

  ‘And this one.’ Lainey scrolled through a dozen or more unsuccessful attempts before finding one of Bay transfixed by the sight of an orang-utan effortlessly swinging from branch to branch in front of him. ‘I’m going to get the best ones printed out and send them to Grace as soon as we’re home.’ She pointed to Seth’s phone, lying face down on the coffee table next to the tray. ‘You haven’t shown me yours yet. Did you manage to get the penguins swimming over our heads in the underwater tunnel?’

  ‘They were too fast. But I managed a couple of good ones with Ned and the seals.’ Seth picked up his mobile and leaned back again, aware of Lainey’s arm brushing against his shoulder as she reached for a grape. Instantly he wanted it to happen again. Watching her today, observing the humour and patience with which she handled the boys, had done nothing to dampen his feelings for her. Which obviously wasn’t ideal, but was making this time away much more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise.

  So long as nothing happened, where was the harm?

  ‘Let me see.’ As he began scrolling through his own photos, Lainey leaned in to get a better view.

  ‘Oh, that’s brilliant.’ She pointed to a moment where he’d captured Grace and Ned laughing together at the antics of a family of meerkats. ‘They both look so happy!’ Then she clapped her hands at the sight of the next photo, of herself and Stevie pulling the ugliest faces they could manage. ‘And there’s us, looking terrifying. Ha, scary creatures.’

  Seth loved the fact that she’d gone for it, unselfconsciously making her face as contorted as possible; so many girls wouldn’t dream of allowing themselves to be captured in gurn mode. But all Lainey had cared about was making the moment fun for Stevie.

  Sliding his finger across the screen, he sent a kaleidoscope of pictures whizzing past at dizzying speed until it landed on one of Dawn from last week. She’d asked him to take a photo of her and had perched prettily on the arm of the bench in her tiny back garden, posing like a professional with her shoulders back and her head tilted at the optimum angle to show off her cheekbones and neat jawline. He’d taken the required photo, but it hadn’t met with her approval and she’d requested several more before deleting the less pleasing efforts and expertly setting about the remaining one with a variety of filters.

  ‘Gosh, look at Dawn. Isn’t she just stunning?’ Lainey’s hand instinctively lifted to smooth down her own tangled curls. ‘I bet she’s never had a bad hair day in her life.’

  ‘There’s more to life than having great hair.’ Seth felt the urge to tell her that the other evening he’d watched Dawn spend the best part of an hour painstakingly blow-drying her hair until every last inch of it was immaculate.

  ‘Oh, I know, there’s also having a face like a film star, and a flawless figure and fabulous clothes.’ Lainey showed him another photo on her phone. ‘See? There’s you and your perfect girlfriend . . . and here’s me and my idiot fake boyfriend!’

  He studied the photo of Kit, dressed in a Spider-Man costume and captured in mid leap as he launched himself from a diving board into an open-air swimming pool, whilst Lainey, wearing emerald-green face paint, a witch’s hat and a huge false nose, bobbed around in the water brandishing a broomstick.

  She laughed at the memory. ‘We had a fancy dress party at the chateau to celebrate Biddy’s birthday. See my face? That was Kit’s idea.’

  ‘Suits you,’ said Seth.

  ‘Except he promised me it would wash off and it didn’t. My face was pale green for a week.’ She expanded the photo so he could see her in greater detail. ‘How about those teeth too? Look at me, what a state!’

  Her lack of ego was what charmed him. �
�But you had a good time.’

  ‘Of course! And that’s Anton over there.’ Lainey indicated a lithe, dark-haired male wearing a chef’s apron and seemingly nothing else. ‘He went as the Naked Chef.’

  Seth nodded. ‘Who’s Anton?’

  ‘Oh, I forgot you didn’t know.’ She pulled a bleurgh face. ‘Anton worked at the chateau too; he was the one I was kind of seeing before we all lost our jobs. When he told me he was moving on down to Saint-Tropez, I thought we might go together. But that was more commitment than Anton wanted, so he headed off there on his own and I came back to the UK with Kit. God, that makes me sound like such a loser. I wish I hadn’t said it now. Anton was always a bit of a player, and he just wasn’t interested in settling down with one person. But that’s fair enough; he’s only twenty-six, plenty of time before he needs to think about—’

  As if on cue, the phone in Seth’s hand burst into life and Dawn’s name flashed up on the screen.

  He waited.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’

  He waited some more, until the ringing stopped.

  ‘Naughty,’ Lainey chided, helping herself to another grape.

  ‘It’s late. I’ll say I was asleep.’

  ‘Why don’t you want to speak to her?’ She was looking at him with concern.

  His phone chimed as a text came through: You can’t be asleep yet, it’s too early. Why aren’t you picking up?

  Seth angled the screen to show Lainey. ‘Now I’m definitely not answering.’

  ‘I thought it was all going so well for you two. You seem perfectly matched.’

  How much was it fair to tell her? More than anything, Seth longed to kiss Lainey, wanted to know how that would feel. But that couldn’t happen, which left talking to her as the next best thing. He sat back against the sofa cushions. ‘We’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks. But right from the word go it felt as if it was all happening too fast.’

  ‘Oh.’ She nodded in sympathy, tucking her bare feet beneath her and shifting sideways in order to be able to see him more easily without straining her neck.

  ‘You know how you just said about Anton only being twenty-six, so of course he wasn’t ready to settle down yet? Well, with Dawn it’s kind of the opposite.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Lainey looked intrigued. ‘How old is she then? I’d have said thirty-one, thirty-two.’

  ‘So would I.’ Seth paused, wondering if he should be sharing this. Then again, why not? ‘She told me she was thirty-four.’

  ‘Well, she’s looking fantastic for her age.’

  It was as if Lainey was on Dawn’s side. Which was admirably loyal of her, but . . .

  ‘Then she dropped her purse on Thursday evening and a couple of cards slid out. One of them was her driver’s licence. It landed under the coffee table and I fished it out for her. I wasn’t looking for her date of birth, but it kind of jumped out at me.’ Drily he added, ‘That was when I discovered she’s actually thirty-seven.’

  Lainey’s eyes widened. ‘Wow, she really looks fantastic for her age.’

  ‘Yes.’ But she’d lied to him, which was never great news.

  ‘Does she use super-expensive moisturiser? I always wondered if it actually makes a difference.’

  ‘The bottles do look expensive, yes.’

  ‘So.’ She paused, reaching across for yet another grape. ‘How d’you feel about that?’

  ‘The hundreds of pounds she spends on moisturiser? Sorry.’ Seth smiled, because Lainey was cutting to the chase; she knew perfectly well why the fact that Dawn was thirty-seven made a difference. He was able to sympathise with Dawn’s situation, but she hadn’t been honest with him, and it had been for her own purposes. The last thing he wanted was to be hustled into a relationship he wasn’t ready for, simply because her biological clock was clanging away. ‘Let’s say it explains a lot.’

  ‘And does she know you know?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He recalled the moment Dawn had snatched the driver’s licence from him, her cheeks colouring at the realisation that it was already too late. ‘She told me the reason she’d fibbed about her age was because of the Chinese zodiac. Apparently she didn’t want her sign to be the year of the pig.’

  ‘Right.’ Lainey nodded, understanding now that Ned’s cries drifting down the stairs were what had prompted the story. ‘But she shaved off three years, not just one.’

  ‘The next two were rat and ox; apparently she didn’t fancy being those either.’ They both knew the excuse was as flimsy as tissue paper and that the real reason was because, for super-organised Dawn, time was running out.

  ‘She’d have had to come clean sooner or later,’ said Lainey.

  ‘I know.’ Probably later.

  ‘When you said it explains a lot, in what way?’

  Was it wrong to be discussing his and Dawn’s relationship with someone else, particularly when the someone else was Lainey? But Seth knew he could trust her not to gossip. Furthermore, deep down he was already pretty sure he knew what he needed to do.

  ‘You know what Dawn’s like.’ He shrugged. ‘She’s upfront and super-confident. Knows her own mind and never has any doubts.’

  ‘Sounds like you.’ Lainey looked amused. ‘That’s why I thought you were so good together.’

  ‘Except it just felt from the beginning as if she’d pressed the fast-forward button; as if she had her checklist and I ticked all the boxes, so we didn’t need to take things slowly. It was like a done deal; we’d found each other and that was that. Even when Richard made jokes about my short attention span, she just said everything was going to be different now; all those years of playing the field had just been practice runs, but since meeting her I didn’t need to bother with that sort of thing any more.’

  ‘That is confident.’ Carefully Lainey said, ‘And was there any mention of having children?’

  ‘Not directly.’ But then Dawn was far too smart for that, wasn’t she? ‘Just the occasional jokey comment about it happening at some stage in the future. Except that was when I still thought she was thirty-four.’

  ‘So you think time’s running out and she’s chosen you for the job. Sorry, that sounds awful. I feel bad saying it . . .’

  Seth nodded. ‘But yes, that’s exactly what I think.’

  ‘She can’t force you to have children with her. Not if you don’t want it to happen.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Are you worried that she’s going to try and talk you into it?’

  ‘I’m just wondering if it’s right to carry on. Because it feels as if she has a lot more invested in this relationship than I do. Maybe I should call it a day.’

  Lainey started as the phone gave another ting. ‘Oh God, it’s like she’s listening to us!’

  Seth didn’t move. ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to answer it.’

  ‘How can you not even look, though?’

  ‘Easily.’ He inclined his head. ‘You can if you like.’

  Lainey turned the phone over, visibly flinched and put it back down.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It says: “Are you shagging Lainey?”’

  Oh. Seth pulled a face. ‘Sorry about that. I’ll have a word with her. Dawn has trust issues.’

  ‘But she’s so confident! How can she be confident and insecure?’

  ‘As soon as we get back, I’m going to tell her it’s over. It hasn’t worked out.’

  Lainey said, ‘That means she’ll really think something happened.’

  And Seth discovered that the flippant response on the tip of his tongue was refusing to come out. In that moment, he looked at Lainey and realised that her words were truer than she could ever know, because something had happened over the course of the last two days, something that was extraordinary and wonderful, confusing and agonising.

  It wasn’t an emotion he’d ever experienced before, but he thought he might be in love.

  Which was crazy, because was it really possible to fall in lov
e with someone when you’d never even held their hand, touched their face or kissed them?

  These thoughts had crossed his mind before, of course, but all of a sudden the emotions were coming together, coalescing and intensifying inside his chest, becoming weighty and more real.

  The hairs on the back of his neck were standing to attention; it was one of those moments he knew would remain with him for the rest of his life. Here they were in this dusty, cluttered, dimly lit room, and here he was experiencing a revelation: from her quick wit, empathy and kindness to the way her eyes danced and her head tilted back when she laughed, he quite simply adored every single thing about the girl sitting next to him on this blue corduroy sofa.

  Oh God. Now what?

  Chapter 21

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Lainey.

  Did she? He raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s an awkward situation. I mean, really awkward.’ She reached for the cheese knife and helped herself to a slice of softened Cambozola.

  Seth’s mouth was dry; he had no idea what could be about to happen.

  ‘You’re going to have to tell her.’ She popped the melting cheese into her own mouth, savoured the taste and did a little swoon. ‘God, this stuff is heaven. No, look, poor Dawn, you have to make sure she completely understands. Because if I thought she was still thinking it, I’d just die.’

  Half of Seth was hearing what she was saying; the other half was imagining what Lainey might have been about to say when she’d told him she knew what he was thinking. Except that hadn’t happened and nor could it happen, no matter how much he wanted it to.

  ‘I’ll make sure she understands. Don’t worry.’

  ‘And when you break up with her, do it nicely. Be sensitive. She’s going to be so upset.’

  ‘I thought I’d do it by text.’ Seth kept a straight face as Lainey’s mouth dropped open in dismay. ‘That was a joke, by the way.’

  Miraculously on cue, they heard Ned, upstairs in his bedroom, chanting ‘Pig pig pig’ to himself.

  ‘And that’s for trying to be funny.’ Smiling, Lainey shook her head at him. ‘Poor Dawn, you have to be kind to her. Being dumped is always horrible, and it’s probably her first time.’