Keep My Secrets

by Elena Wilkes

  ‘I’m just a bit knackered to be honest but it all looks fabulous.’

  ‘Here.’ He picks up the hidden spoon and dollops a whole pile of potato onto her plate. The sight of the glistening butter makes her feel queasy, but she distracts herself by picking up her wine glass and pretends to take a sip.

  He sits down opposite, loading his plate and then picks up the wine bottle and refills both glasses even though they don’t need filling.

  ‘This sauce is amazing, what’s in it?’ She licks her lips.

  ‘This and that… So, what did you think of your scarf?’ He begins to concentrate on his food, shovelling up a whole mound of potato and meat. ‘Is it what you wanted?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  She doesn’t let her face register what’s happening in her gut, pretending to wipe an imaginary spill from the table with her finger and then reaching again for her fork.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ He pauses, mid-chew.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘So why aren’t you eating?’

  ‘Alex…’ She goes to touch his hand, but he manages to drop his napkin at the same time and bends to retrieve it. She watches him, the way his hair flops across his forehead, that almost shy schoolboy expression she remembers as he pushes it back. So handsome. So lovely. She knows there’s a tornado coming. Their whole relationship – this whole house of cards is standing right in its path. She has to do something, say something – but then she notices the shake in his hand.

  He looks up at her expectantly. She can’t do it to him.

  ‘I wanted to say thank you for doing all this.’

  He swallows with a kind of gulp and puts down his fork.

  ‘Thank you for sticking around.’

  She makes a half smile. ‘Sticking around? Look, I’ve already sai—’

  ‘Look, I’m not stupid. I know things haven’t been easy. I know I’ve made things far worse between us. All my constant questioning of where you are and what you’re doing… going on and on – I’m pushing us apart, I know that. That’s what’s made me think about our future.’

  She steels herself. ‘Alex—’

  ‘No, seriously, listen—’

  ‘I am being serious.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re not listening. I want to talk to you about some ideas I’ve had. Amazing ideas.’ He attempts a smile but it looks more like a grimace. Whatever’s going on with him is making him agitated and intense. This doesn’t look like excitement. It looks like desperation. She suddenly realises how near the surface his anxiety really is. It scares her a little.

  He pauses and his shoulders jerk with tension.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m not explaining myself very well.’ He attempts a little laugh. ‘The thing is…’ He spreads his palms. ‘Just look at me, Frankie.’ He glances into his lap and then back up at her. ‘I’ve become an obsessive wreck. I do nothing all day, I see no one but the helpless and the vulnerable in one rundown community centre or another. We sit around on knackered chairs talking about how helpless and knackered we all are.’ He musters a grin. ‘I’ve gone from running a business to running us further and further into debt. I used to interview staff for management positions, now I’m going to Job Seekers and being interviewed by eighteen-year-olds with a couple of GCSEs in Media and Social Studies.’

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘Seriously, Frankie. Look at your life and look at mine. I’m going down the ladder, while you’re going up it.’ He shrugs. ‘Literally, if today is anything to go by.’

  They both manage a smile and she reaches over and touches his palm; it’s cool and dry. ‘I know this is just another way of putting yourself down. You have all this amazing ability, Alex, you just don’t believe in yourself. You were the one who changed my life, remember?’ She tries to sound upbeat and passionate. ‘Not the other way around.’

  But he only looks away.

  ‘Come on, there would be no “ladder”, as you put it, if it weren’t for you. We both know that. Whatever we’ve built we’ve built together – fifty-fifty, equal partners, yes?’

  But even as she says it, she knows it isn’t true. Yes, it was Alex who’d encouraged her to go back into school and sit her exams and yes, it had been Alex who coached her and got her through them. They weren’t fifty-fifty then. She’d been a tatty eighteen-year-old living a tatty chaotic life. He was a posh boy working in his father’s business. She’d looked up to him then, admired him even, but now he’d become someone else: a man she lives with and cares for – but the “caring” for him is taking over, the “living” is less partners and more like housemates.

  He won’t meet her eye. He moves his hand away, picks up his wine glass and gestures at the room.

  ‘When you think about it, it was my family—’ She manages to disguise a sigh at the mention of them. ‘—It was my family who forced us into getting this place – Christ, what a dump it was! Do you remember?’ he chuckles.

  She does. She remembers being able to look around the upstairs bedroom while standing in the kitchen.

  ‘The hours and the nights we spent putting in that bloody floor.’ Alex grins. ‘The woodworm, the damp – hammering and sawing by poxy floodlight – you remember all that?’

  She nods and a sadness rushes over her. They were happy then.

  ‘Their hatred, their bloody awful behaviour, forced us all the way out here, and it made us work together, build something together. This house is us, Frankie. It’s our marriage. We’ve moulded it and shaped it and added bits and created it together over the years. We were happy then.’

  It’s as though he’s reading her mind. Living here was like stepping out of the real world. The tiny hamlet of Myndnor. Even the name sounded Middle-Earth. The hills sat in a brooding protective ring, the border Marches, separating one country from another: old self from new self, leaving it all behind. She gazes round at the latticed windows, the gorgeous stone floor that she’d lovingly scrubbed for hours on her hands and knees and restored to its pocked and pitted beauty.

  ‘So would you do it all again?’

  ‘I know you’re worried.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’ He closes his eyes and takes a long mouthful of wine.

  ‘We’ve been over and over this, Alex. None of this is important. I know we have this fabulous old rambling house, but it’s stones and mortar. I want us to get back to where we were. I want you to get back to the person you were. I want you to be happy.’

  ‘Then let’s sell it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s pack up and go somewhere and do it all again. Deep into Wales, maybe. Somewhere with proper land and outbuildings. Think of the kids you work with. You’ve always said the challenge for the sixteen to eighteen-year-olds is that no one will give them a chance – well, I will, Frankie. I’ll give them a roof over their head and some kind of future. I’ll do that – We can do that. We’ll talk to the local education authority and see if we can apply for grants to become a bona fide training provider. I’m qualified aren’t I? I’ll teach them skills: woodworking, carving, upholstery. It would be a massive change for both of us. But it would mean I can start again, properly. I could be my own person, and you could be involved in something real and meaningful, not just day after day of systems and paperwork procedures and dead-end dross.’

  The glass swings back, the wine sloshing dangerously.

  She opens her mouth but then changes her mind.

  ‘Go on. You were just about to tell me I’m wrong.’ He’s prickly, she can tell.

  ‘I don’t see my work like that.’ She keeps her voice small.

  ‘But that’s how I’ve heard you describe it Frankie – more than once, so why aren’t you excited?’

  ‘I was probably frustrated about something when I said it. I—’

  ‘You’re not even prepared to talk about my idea, are you? Why are you defending a job you know doesn’t give those kids a proper chance?’

  ‘I’m not defending it.’
/>
  ‘Yes, you are. You know you are. You’re defending a rubbish system.’

  She knows where this is going. The direction it always goes.

  ‘We’d free up so much capital by selling this place and then buying in Wales, you know that. It’s a no-brainer. It’d give you everything you say you’ve dreamt about doing – you can really change kids’ lives and we can have a proper life again.’

  She pauses. The pause is a mistake.

  ‘So it’s not about the kids?’

  ‘Of course it’s about the kids. It’s always about the kids.’

  ‘But it feels like something else is holding you there too.’

  She watches his eyes narrow a little. ‘Or should I be saying someone?’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Alex!’

  As soon as the words leave her lips, she instantly regrets it. His face blanches a little, and then his mouth hardens into a thin, hard line. He turns his face away.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve known it for a while now – I know what you really think of me. And do you know what? I don’t blame you. I feel exactly the same.’

  He lurches from aggression to victim in seconds. Drinking just makes it so much worse.

  ‘So, go on then, tell me, what’s our future then, eh? What does it look like? Give me a picture of how you see us living over the next five years, Frankie, and I’ll be able to see how I slot in.’

  And so it starts yet again. She listens, knowing the argument as intimately as if she’s the one reciting it: a downward spiral that never goes anywhere. Soon he will move onto why they haven’t talked about having children of their own. She’s thirty-three. How much longer does she plan to leave it? Or does she plan to leave it forever? It is the subject they can never discuss.

  She knows why.

  But he doesn’t.

  Christ.

  Her phone suddenly bursts into life, shrilling loudly on the counter-top where she left it. He stops talking as her eyes flit across. His own wince with rage and go dull.

  ‘Go on then. Answer it. I know you want to.’ He turns away, back to his food, banging his glass on the table and hunching his shoulders against her.

  ‘Alex—’

  ‘No. Go on.’

  She wavers for a moment, thinking it might be about Keeley, before reaching to pick it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ah. Frankie.’ It’s Diane.

  She bites her lip, hard.

  ‘I suspect you know what I’m going to say.’

  She sighs. Now of all times. This is all she needs.

  ‘You know I’ve always backed you up. I’ve always taken your side and argued your case. You know that, don’t you?’

  She knows the word ‘but’ is coming.

  ‘But on this occasion, I’m afraid you’ve crossed the line.’

  ‘I know.’

  She looks across at Alex.

  ‘It’s out of my hands.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He’s sitting staring at the wall.

  ‘My boss’s boss wants a conversation.’

  Frankie can’t imagine who the boss’s boss might be. Someone ministerial? She really is done for.

  ‘Just as a head’s up, you’re probably going to get a written warning this time.’

  ‘Right.’ She feels her cheeks burn with humiliation.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Go on, what?’

  ‘Prepare me. Give me the worst of it. I’ll have to hear it twenty times over from my boss, so I might as well get it from the horse’s mouth first. Do I need to sit down?’

  ‘Err… Probably.’ Frankie squirms a little and clears her throat. She looks across at Alex. He’s chewing, staring at the far wall. She knows by the set of his neck this is it for the night.

  ‘Frankie?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Sorry…’

  ‘You told Declan to unlock the storage container and get the ladder.’

  Frankie cringes at the memory. Diane is right, it was utterly, utterly reckless.

  ‘And then what?’ Diane sighs.

  ‘I went up it.’

  ‘I gathered that.’

  ‘Onto the ridge tiles.’

  Frankie hears Diane’s sudden sharp intake of breath. ‘And?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Frankie bites her lip even harder.

  ‘I didn’t catch that.’

  ‘I told her I’d jump off the roof with her.’

  ‘You encouraged a vulnerable teenager to jump off a roof, Frankie. Have I got that right?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What does “sort of” mean?’

  ‘I said “you jump, and I jump too.”’

  ‘Dear Lord, Frankie.’

  Frankie finds her lip is sore where she’s chewed it so hard. Thing is, she knew she understood Keeley. She’d glanced up at that poor frightened kid, feeling the last rung of the ladder skid a little against the guttering as she levered up onto the tiles. She hoped her face wasn’t betraying the sudden terror as her knee slithered sideways. There was Keeley’s scowling face glaring down. She’d almost smiled: in all that glowering aggression, she saw her own teenage self: ‘people hurt you,’ the expression said. That was the lesson they had both learned really well.

  ‘Are you seriously off your nut?’ Keeley’s scowl burst into shocked incredulity. ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re off your fucking head?’

  Another gust of wind had whipped across the roofline. She did have a very valid point. ‘You lay a finger on me and I’ll do you for assault, you mad cow! My brief will get you the sack.’ But her eyes were darting uneasily. She licked her lips.

  Frankie didn’t answer. She jacked one knee under her and carefully began to crab-crouch her way towards the ridge tiles.

  ‘You mad bitch!… You can’t do this!…’ Keeley huffed and puffed, but Frankie kept on going before she finally reached the roof edge and hauled herself up. She looked into Keeley’s outraged face, studying her for a few seconds. ‘You know, I think you’re right.’

  Keeley looked back, her mouth opening and closing.

  ‘You really are. I think you’ve got the whole situation sewn up. I get the sack and then you can go back to sitting in one care home or another, doing what you’ve been doing for the last seven years: kicking off, smashing up, barricading yourself in bedrooms, overdosing, assaulting staff, cutting your wrists, and screaming the place down—’

  ‘Like you’d know!’

  ‘Well, actually I do.’ Frankie put her head on one side. A blast of rain buffeted her and she gripped on tighter. ‘I’ve been right where you are now. I mean, not this exact roof, you understand, but one very much like it. The only difference was, no one came up to sit with me. No one ever said: “whatever happens, I’m with you.” If they had, things might’ve turned out very differently.’ She paused. ‘So I’m giving you something that I didn’t have. I know you feel terrified and lost and you think no one is listening, but actually, I am. There’s the difference, Keeley. What I’m saying to you is: you are not alone. You hear that? You are not alone, because I’m with you.’

  Keeley could only stare at her.

  ‘So you’ve got a couple of choices.’ Frankie jacked her knees under her into a crouch. She wobbled a little in a gust of wind and took a quick glance at the ground. ‘Are you going or are you staying?’

  Keeley’s mouth was slightly open. ‘What d’you mean going? Going where?’

  ‘Off the edge.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Sorry, I thought that was what you wanted? You’re right. What have I got to go back down for? No job? Humiliation? A whole raft of charges? You’re absolutely right.’

  Keeley looked at her in horror, her cheeks quivering. Frankie instantly made her move. Quickly placing her feet under her she took her first few steps as smoothly and as gracefully as a gymnast doing floor exercises. Only she wasn’t on a floor, she was making her way along a four-inch tile, thirty feet off the ground, before calmly reaching around the chimney stack and grabbin
g the hand of the shocked teenager. Keeley reeled sideways teetering for a moment, but Frankie only held on tighter.

  ‘Let me go!’ she screamed.

  Panting, Frankie regained her footing as the blare of a loudhailer from a police van down below bellowed through the air.

  ‘You ready?’ Frankie looked at the stunned girl. ‘We’re doing this, then? You and me? Let’s do it. One… Two… All you have to do is say “three” and we’re there. Come on Keeley! One… Two…’

  Frankie pauses as she recounts the tale. There’s a silence on the end of the line for a moment.

  ‘I know it comes over as a little unorthodox, but what I was trying to do was—’

  ‘I know what you were trying to do. You’ve just told me.’ Diane cuts across sharply. ‘But it’s not like you’re some rookie, is it Frankie? You know how this looks to the powers that be.’

  Maybe Alex is right. Maybe she isn’t in the right job.

  ‘I’ve now got to defend your actions… If I can.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Di.’

  ‘Oh please!’ Diane guffaws. ‘You’re not sorry at all!’

  ‘I am. I should have thought.’

  ‘You did think. You made a very clear decision. Own it.’

  Frankie screws up her eyes but says nothing, Diane is so right.

  ‘You were offered this job specifically because you’re not just another pale middle-class male in a suit. Which is why…’ Diane halts, ‘… and I shall deny this part of the conversation if you repeat it… Which is why I think what you did this afternoon was extraordinary. Bloody stupid, utterly reckless, but extraordinary. Keeley believed you. You made her believe that you really cared—’

  Frankie opens her eyes, feeling the tears suddenly prick. ‘I do really care.’

  ‘And the consequences are that Keeley Grainger, the spitting and screaming and swearing Keeley Grainger, sat herself down in Declan’s office only an hour ago and said she was sorry.’

  ‘She did?’ Frankie blinks the tears away.

  Di chuckles. ‘Well, not exactly in those words, but near enough. Maybe it won’t last, maybe she’ll revert to her old behaviour, but all I can say is, tonight she is a changed girl and that can only be down to you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Frankie can’t think of anything else to say. She glances back at Alex, aware that his back is a brick wall of unhappiness. She can see the side of his face, his jaw working steadily but she can tell there’s no pleasure in it. Diane is still talking about the possibility of a disciplinary hearing, of paperwork, of interviews and questions that have to be asked, but she’s hardly hearing any of it right now.