Flora slows for a difficult corner then picks up speed again, shifting into fourth for the straight run along to the final crossroads. But, she tells herself, it’s the person who wakes up in the recovery room, whom she’ll see tomorrow morning on the ward, that she’s made a difference to. She has done what she can to help him beat the odds. She thinks again of the hours of concentration and the expertise of her team: five hours multiplied by five, six, seven people. It’s more than going through the motions, surgery. It’s always more than that; always a battle fought to the last ditch. This afternoon they halted two hours in, wondering whether to abandon the resection, but they were right to go on. There are always the cases that turn out better than you dare expect, she tells herself, as well as those who do worse.
The village is quiet this evening, but the lights are on in the house, and a cheerful glow filters through the curtains as she turns into the drive. Flora thinks of Henry and the girls inside, cooking supper or watching television or finishing homework.
But in the moment between turning off the engine and opening the car door, the complications of home creep back into her mind: an almost tangible shift from comforting allegory to untidy reality. She recalls last night’s row, left hanging this morning, and her earnest assurance to the children that she’d be home early tonight. It’s her birthday, she remembers. They promised her a cake. She glances at the clock on the dashboard – it’s almost nine. Will Kitty still be up? Will Lou be sulking by now?
There’s no one around when she opens the door, just a hushed murmur of voices which she takes for the television. But in a moment Lou rushes down the stairs and throws herself against her chest.
‘Mummy! You’re back!’
Lou is twelve, and not much given to throwing herself at her mother anymore. Holding her tight for a moment, Flora can feel her small heart thudding.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ she says. ‘I really meant not to be, today of all days.’
‘It’s OK,’ Lou says. ‘We’ve got . . .’ She draws away now a little awkwardly, as though she’s not sure how she found herself plastered against her mother. ‘Daddy’s in the kitchen,’ she says. ‘I was on look-out.’
Flora catches a note of something – warning? – in Lou’s voice. Her eyes sweep round the hall, halting for a moment on the portrait of her husband that hangs at the bottom of the stairs: a handsome boy of nineteen, drawn by his friend Nicholas Comyn during a tour of Italy, smiling at the world in the assurance of a warm reception.
‘Is Kitty still up?’ she asks – but before Lou can answer, Henry appears from the kitchen, carrying a bottle of champagne and some glasses on a tray. Henry resplendent in silk shirt and cravat, every inch the elegant host, the eminent critic, the reassuring Radio Three voice-over.
‘Darling,’ he says, ‘Happy Birthday. Has Lou . . .?’
He leans forward to kiss her, swinging the tray to the side so he can get close enough to reach her lips. Last night’s row hovers between them, less easy to dodge than the tray. Flora can smell wine on his breath, and can detect it, too, in the flush across his cheekbones. The soft skin there is a reliable barometer for excess consumption of several kinds.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says. ‘Unavoidably detained at the operating table.’
‘You’re here now,’ he says. ‘Let me pour you a drink.’
Flora’s eyes are caught now by another picture, another Comyn, of Kitty and Lou on the beach last summer. Something about it lights a fuse inside her: the image of happy family life. The same image she almost allowed herself to believe in a few minutes ago. She’s been fobbed off too often with a glass of wine, she tells herself. She glances towards Lou, but Lou has vanished again. She’s become an expert at vanishing, Flora thinks, with a flash of pain.
‘Wait,’ she says, as Henry moves towards the sitting room door. ‘We need to talk.’
Henry halts, but he doesn’t turn to face her. ‘Not now,’ he says, his voice almost jovial.
‘Why not?’ Anger has flared more quickly than usual, provoked by the way Henry’s dress and demeanour speak of an evening of celebration, and by her guilt about Lou. By the too-familiar chain of complication and compromise. The last vestiges of surgical adrenaline urge her on. ‘It’s always “not now” ,’ she says. ‘Perhaps this is the moment, Henry. We can’t simply –’ She raises a fist, half-clenched – not as a threat, not exactly, but as evidence of her strength of feeling, her seriousness of intent.
And then the sitting room door bursts open. The murmur of voices swells suddenly and Kitty flies towards her, pink tutu fluttering, full of the wildness of a not-quite-three-year-old allowed to stay up beyond her bedtime.
‘We’ve got a party for you!’ she shouts.
The room behind her is full of people, looking nervously, smilingly, in Flora’s direction. The smell of festivity is unmistakable: wine and perfume and the pepperiness of hot breath billow out into the hall.
Caught in the dismay of an ill-timed surprise, Flora can’t muster the appropriate response. Memories of her mother’s parties swim into her mind, and she feels suddenly very tired. Henry looks at her, raises an eyebrow infinitesimally, and then he goes on into the sitting room, and there is nothing for it but to follow him.
‘What a nice surprise,’ Flora says.
The guests – mainly from the village: not many of them friends, to be honest – are clearly embarrassed by the anticlimax, after keeping quiet for so long. They glance at Flora as though they know they should be pleased that their hostess is here at last, but are not sure they are. Why on earth has Henry invited them? To create a party, she thinks. A diversion. Because it would be hard to muster a houseful of people, otherwise, with whom they could go through the motions. Goddammit: and it’s she who looks ungracious now. Heartless, even. Well, she’ll show them. She scoops Kitty up and swings her round, kissing her hot little face.
‘My darling,’ she says, ‘how beautiful you look.’
‘You haven’t got your party clothes on,’ says Kitty. ‘Have you been in the hospital all the time?’
‘All the time.’ Flora settles Kitty on her hip and turns away from Henry, who is coming towards her with a glass of champagne. ‘All this long time. Now, Kitty, come and help me say hello to everyone.’
OUT NOW IN PAPERBACK AND EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Zaffre Publishing
This ebook edition published in 2017 by
ZAFFRE PUBLISHING
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Copyright © Rachel Crowther, 2017
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Rachel Crowther to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–785–76213–0
Paperback ISBN: 978–1–785–76212–3
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Zaffre Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre, a Bonnier Publishing company
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Every Secret Thing Page 34
