Secrets

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘Something cold, if you’ve got it,’ he said, sitting down and ploughing both his hands through his hair. He’d been just twenty-one when Ffion first introduced us, a couple of years younger than me. And though his hair had been a foot longer back then, the action was instantly, unmistakeably the same Tom. I went over to the fridge and pulled out a carton of juice. He watched me as I poured from it into two tumblers.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your divorce,’ he said. I put his glass down in front of him.

  I pulled out another chair and sat down opposite. ‘So was I.’

  ‘What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.’

  I smiled at him. ‘Not at all. Nothing dramatic. I leave all the dramas to Ffion.’

  I grinned as I said this, but his expression was sad. ‘So what did happen?’

  ‘We just grew apart, I guess. The usual story. But it feels like a long time ago now.’ I was conscious of a questioning look on his face. ‘It’s fine. I’m OK. Happy, even.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  I smiled. ‘It was the right thing to do.’

  He took a long swallow from his glass and returned it to the table half empty.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The right thing. Yes. Have you heard anything yet, by the way?’

  ‘No. I tried her mobile again. And the flat, of course. But no. God knows where she is.’ I waited, uncomfortable now about how to start the conversation that I’d been playing in my head all afternoon.

  ‘Wherever he is, no doubt,’ he said, picking up his glass again. He finished it, and looked grimly at me. ‘So,’ he said at last. ‘Where do I start?’

  ‘Wherever you like, Tom. It’s your bombshell.’

  ‘Well, there’s plenty I don’t know,’ he said. ‘When Ffion told me, Emily must have been eight or nine months old. That was the first I knew of it. Actually, that’s not completely true. I’d suspected she was seeing someone else long before she fell pregnant with Em. Back when she was doing PR for that firm in Swansea. You remember? Doing that relaunch package for the hospital?’ I nodded. They’d lived near Swansea then. That would have been about two years after they were married.

  Tom continued, ‘I didn’t ever confront her about it. And – I don’t know – I suppose I just hoped I was imagining it. Nothing much happened. Nothing concrete. I guess I just drew a line under it.’ He linked his hands on the table. ‘And once she was pregnant, I thought we were moving forward again. She seemed brighter. More positive. Less withdrawn.’

  Which wasn’t the way she’d seemed when she first told me about her pregnancy. Why would that be? There was so much I didn’t understand.

  ‘I knew nothing right through the pregnancy, of course, and long after the birth. I’m not even sure why she did tell me,’ he went on. Then he frowned. ‘She was still really ill at that time’.

  I mentally back-tracked. Ffion’s mental state had got much worse after the birth. She’d been admitted with severe post-natal depression and spent over two months in hospital. It had been a terrible time. ‘She was still an outpatient then, wasn’t she?’

  He nodded. ‘And still dosed up on drugs and seeing the psychologist. I remember the day, though. You know, I sometimes wonder if those counselling visits had something to do with it. She’d been having sessions every week, and I’d thought they seemed to be doing her good. She was getting her spark back a bit, you know?’ I did know. It had been like a light coming back on after a long period in the dark.

  I nodded. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘She was just sitting there when I got back from work one evening, and said “Tom, there’s something important I have to tell you” and that was that. She told me. It was surreal. She said she’d been seeing this guy for a long time, that she’d been going to leave me but that he’d been killed in a car accident, and that Emily was not mine but his. And that she pretended Em was mine because she simply hadn’t known what else to do.’

  I felt a sudden rush of sympathy for him. It must have been so awful. I almost wanted to hug him. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’ He gave me a wry grin. ‘Only more so. It was as if she was doing an audition for drama school. Heaven only knows how long she’d been rehearsing her lines. Anyway, then she broke down and said she couldn’t live the lie any longer. That she hoped I could forgive her and that we could still make things work.’

  ‘And you did.’

  His blue eyes bored into mine. ‘Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But, oh, no. Not then I didn’t. I didn’t have the first clue what to do. My first thought – my gut instinct – was that there was no way on earth I could forgive her. Not because I was shocked by the affair – as I told you, things hadn’t been brilliant – but because of Emily. Which meant my second thought was, how could I not forgive her? How could I let Emily go?’

  ‘I can’t imagine what it must have felt like. I mean, you –’

  He spread his hands in front of me. ‘I’d watched her being born. Taken care of her. Loved her. No matter how difficult I knew it would be, I was not going to lose my daughter.’ He looked straight at me. ‘And she is my daughter, Megan. It’s my name on the birth certificate. And there is no way on earth that anything, or anyone, is going to change that.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  TOM SEEMED IN NO hurry to leave, so I cooked us pasta while he opened the bottle of wine I’d tucked away in the fridge the previous evening. It felt strange to be sharing a meal with the man I’d disliked so much for such a big chunk of my life. Who I’d been so horrible to, when he didn’t deserve it.

  ‘I owe you one hell of an apology,’ I said, as we brought our plates to the table. All those rows. All the dreadful things I’d said to him. And meant.

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘No, you don’t, Megan. You didn’t know the truth, so I’m not surprised you hated me.’

  ‘But Ffion. I mean, she let me think you’d treated her so badly. You must feel bitter about that, surely?’

  He poured wine into our glasses. ‘I felt unhappy that you didn’t know the truth. That you thought so little of me. But bitter? No. Not that. This isn’t about villains and victims, Megan. I knew perfectly well what I was taking on when I said I’d stay. I knew she didn’t love me. And I’d be lying if I said I still felt anything for her by then. But I made the decision anyway. I guess I was –’ he grinned as he raised his glass to me, ‘– an idealist, if you like. I thought we could make it work for Emily’s sake. And a part of me – well, it sounds like a cliché, but it was true – a part of me felt I had a duty to stay. What would Ffion do? How would she cope on her own? She’d been sick for a very long time.’

  ‘Not sick,’ I said, feeling all at once furious with my sister in the face of Tom’s refusal to blame her. ‘She wasn’t sick, Tom. She was grieving for Jack! And feeling guilty. As she had every reason to!’

  He seemed to understand my anger.

  ‘I know what you’re saying,’ he said, smiling. ‘But you forget, I’ve had years to come to terms with things. Whatever the rights and wrongs, she did what she did because she thought it was the only thing to do. There’s no point going over it again now.’

  I stabbed at my pasta with my fork, feeling guilty myself. For seeing everything in black and white. For just accepting that it had all been Tom’s fault, when it hadn’t.

  I returned his smile. ‘You sound remarkably calm about it.’

  ‘I am. Now. I wasn’t always. I couldn’t keep it up any more than she could.’

  ‘Your affair —’

  ‘Was nothing. But I’m a normal human being.’ He gazed at me over the rim of his glass. ‘And there’s only so long you can go without some love and affection in your life. It was over before the ink was dry on the divorce papers.’

  ‘And now?’

  He put his wine down. ‘And now nothing. There have been a couple of relationships, but, well, I have a daughter, for one thing, and…well, let’s just say I’m not quite the idealist I once was
. A little more wary of getting involved again, perhaps. Once bitten, twice shy…’

  I nodded. ‘That strikes a chord,’ I said, feeling shy myself now under his gaze.

  ‘So that makes two of us,’ he said, picking his glass up again. ‘Let’s drink to that, shall we?’

  Despite my offer of a bed in Ben’s room for the night, Tom left a little after eleven. He’d only had a couple of glasses of wine, he reassured me, and plenty of coffee since, so I had no choice but to wave him off on the doorstep.

  His mood as he left had been serious. Now I knew the truth I felt much less anxious about Ffion, but Tom, on the other hand, felt much more so, because of Emily. Ffion rekindling old flames – even dead ones – was one thing, but the prospect of the man reclaiming Emily was another.

  ‘But does he even know he has a daughter?’ had been my first question on that point.

  ‘Well, he didn’t,’ said Tom. ‘At least, so Ffion said. But she could always tell him now!’

  No wonder she’d been so upset to find out she was pregnant. Did she think he might leave her?

  ‘And what about him? What was his situation?’

  ‘A wife, two children.’

  Were they still with him? And, more to the point, why did Ffion think he was dead if he wasn’t?

  ‘What do we do now?’ I’d said as we’d parted.

  He surprised me by bending to place a kiss on my cheek. ‘Houston,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT HAD ALL FELT very dramatic on Monday night. But that was after three glasses of wine and a rather unsettling encounter with a man I was having to get to know all over again. Now it was Tuesday morning and raining, and the events all felt unreal. So the man my sister had had an affair with wasn’t dead after all. There would be an explanation for it. And my little sister was thirty-seven, not thirteen. I understood the gravity of the situation for Tom, regarding Emily. But there did seem something wrong about interfering in the business of a grown woman, however much she had wanted my help in the past.

  But Tom’s anxiety was catching. However sane Ffion might be these days, she was still a volatile and impulsive person. If this man had the power to make her run to him after twelve long years, he might have the power to make her decide to tell him he had a daughter. And to persuade her to tell Emily too.

  And I wasn’t ruling out the possibility that she might then want to abandon her present life and simply try to pick up with him where she’d left off.

  Tom called me a little after ten, from work, to ask if I’d heard anything. I had tried Ffion’s mobile again, but only once, and reluctantly. This was Tom and Ffion’s business now.

  Yet hearing the stress in Tom’s voice tugged at something in me.

  ‘The number you’ve got,’ he said. ‘What area code was it?’

  I went to fetch it and read it out to him. He knew it straight away.

  ‘Swansea,’ he said. That’s a Swansea number. So that figures. If only we had a name.’

  ‘Or the last two digits,’ I said. ‘There must be dozens of possibilities.’

  ‘A hundred,’ he said grimly.

  ‘So what is there to do? Even if we trawled through all of them we might be none the wiser. And suppose we did manage to track him down, what purpose would it serve? It’s Ffion we need to talk to – it’s Ffion you need to talk to, Tom,’ I said gently. ‘I’m not sure it’s up to me. I’m sure she’ll get in touch when she’s ready.’ I was aware of his silence at the other end of the phone.

  Then he sighed. ‘I know. But you will let me know if you hear from her, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ I reassured him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘And thanks so much for last night, as well.’

  ‘No thanks needed,’ I told him. ‘It was only a bowl of pasta.’

  He laughed out loud. Then his voice became serious. ‘Megan, I meant for your company.’

  I put down the phone, feeling oddly frustrated. Something was stirring at the corner of my mind, but I couldn’t figure out what. Swansea. It was something to do with Swansea. I was sure that it would come to me when it was good and ready. So, I launched myself into my notes on Romeo and Juliet instead.

  But not for very long, because the phone started ringing. It wasn’t Ffion, or Tom. It was a Mrs Pearson, whose name meant nothing to me, but who explained that she lived in the flat next to Ffion.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said, rather snootlily, ‘but it’s really not on.’ She’d been given my number by Ffion, she told me, in case of emergencies. And this was one. She had to go out of town to look after an elderly relative. It was some seconds before I managed to work out why this should matter. Was there a leak perhaps?

  ‘ W h a t ’s the problem, exactly?’ I asked politely.

  ‘Well, the dog, of course, lovely! I can’t just leave him, can I? And to be honest, it’s really not right anyway. I mean, it’s all right for the odd night. We’ve been walking him three times a day and feeding him too, but a dog that size shouldn’t be shut up in a flat day after day. It’s not right.’

  I agreed that it wasn’t. Then I remembered Ffion mentioning the name Pearson, and the fact that her neighbour occasionally looked after Tigger when she was away overnight. ‘Oh, dear,’ I said. ‘I had no idea. I assumed she’d taken him with her when she went.’

  Which, now I thought about it, was unlikely. I waited then, hoping Mrs Pearson might shed light on where Ffion was. But she just pointed out that it would have been better if Ffion had put him in the kennels. Then she asked if I would be able to come up and sort him out. I agreed that I would, and, with my head still full of Shakespeare, I set off to Cardiff to take charge of the dog.

  Mrs Pearson had already left when I got to Ffion’s, but had left a note on the kitchen table to tell me she’d fed and walked the dog. I’d already decided I’d take Tigger home with me. If I had the dog it would ensure Ffion would have to get in touch sometime.

  The flat was just as it had been when I’d left on Sunday, except for the neat row of dog food cans all rinsed out and standing on the worktop. I went into the study in the hope that there might be another message on the answer phone. But the light was an unblinking red dot on the machine.

  I went into Ffion’s bedroom.

  ‘It’s clear whose bed you’ve been sleeping on,’ I scolded Tigger. I crossed the room to straighten the covers. Her dressing gown was lying at the end of the bed, similarly covered with hairs. Tigger’s tail was thumping against my leg. He was clearly pleased at my unexpected arrival.

  ‘Look at this!’ I said, shaking it out. ‘Don’t get any ideas about making camp in my bedroom, OK?’ And that was when it hit me. The dressing gown. I looked at it again. Of course! The dressing gown I was holding in my hands right now. That was the Swansea connection! I spread it on the bed. Old and threadbare as it was, it was still a very thick, very heavy, very expensive hotel dressing gown. I’d seen the crest on the breast pocket many times before. It read Mariner’s Wharf Hotel, Swansea, embroidered in royal blue thread.

  Long shots are not generally to be relied upon, but I knew my sister well. All at once I also knew that the chance of this shot hitting the target was actually very good indeed.

  With Tigger click-clacking happily behind me, I strode back to the hallway and picked up the phone.

  It took only a minute to confirm that Ffion was staying there, and only thirty seconds more to find out she wasn’t in her room. So I left her a message, a short, rather curt one, telling her about her deserted dog. It would, I felt confident, ensure that she would ring me back.

  That done, I pondered. Should I ring Tom and tell him? I wondered what exactly the hotel arrangements were. Was the man, Jack, staying there too? One thing was obvious. It explained why Ffion, who was these days so well-groomed, had such an attachment to a moth-eaten dressing gown that was more than ten years old.

  I gathered up Tigger’s bowl and bla
nket and thought some more. Perhaps I should wait before ringing Tom, until I’d spoken to Ffion at least. Though, herding the dog into the back of my car, it came to me grimly that the keeping of so many secrets hadn’t helped anybody up to now.

  It wasn’t something I had to tussle with for long, however. I’d just got free of most of the late afternoon traffic and was heading out towards the motorw a y, when my mobile phone rang. I pulled off the dual carriageway into a side road.

  But it was half a minute before I came to a halt and pulled the mobile from my handbag, and the ringing had stopped. I scrolled through the menu to find the missed calls. There was one word. Ffion. So she’d called me at last.

  Relieved and irritated in equal measure, I pressed the button to return the call. It was answered straight away. But it wasn’t Ffion’s voice that was speaking.

  ‘Is that Megan?’ asked a female voice I didn’t recognise. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you but we weren’t sure who to call, and –’

  ‘Who is this?’ I asked her, the hairs on my neck prickling.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m calling from the Mariner’s Wharf Hotel. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MY MAIN THOUGHT, AS I headed down the motorway, was how very cross I was. It was one thing for my sister to go rushing off and causing everyone worry, quite another to get herself in such a state that she ended up in hospital. The girl on the phone had been helpful, but all she could tell me was that they’d found Ffion at the foot of the first floor stairs, passed out. They’d called an ambulance, and having found both her phone and my earlier message, had decided to call me. They suggested I head straight to the hospital.

  I knew my anger was mostly anxiety, but I also knew a part of me really was angry with her. The leaden, lump-in-the-throat feeling was so familiar. Would there ever be a time when I wouldn’t worry about my little sister? Would there ever be a time when I’d be allowed to let go?