The Secret Path

by Karen Swan

  ‘Twig? My Twiggle?’ He had never called her Twiggle before. It irritated her.

  ‘Go to bed, Alex.’ Her voice was flat and weary. She felt exhausted by all these balls she had to keep up in the air; today with her friends had been a case in point of why keeping secrets only led to confusion and pain.

  ‘Twiggy.’ His voice was plaintive, so unlike his usual commanding, self-possessed tones. She didn’t like him this drunk. It diminished him somehow, robbed him of all the strength and purpose she found so attractive. ‘Tomorrow, I promise. I absolutely promise.’

  ‘Night, Alex.’ She hung up on him, unconvinced. She’d heard that before.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Bugger, we’ve got no bread.’ Charlie stared disconsolately into the larder. ‘I swear we brought a loaf?’

  ‘We did,’ Liv said, from her spot sprawled on the worn armchair beside the royal-blue Aga. ‘But then we had munchies when we got in last night, remember?’

  Charlie had to concentrate very hard to remember. ‘Oh yeah.’ She looked back at the almost empty larder again. ‘Bugger.’ They had a tub of Philadelphia cheese, a jar of jam, some butter, a pack of sliced honey-roast ham and an aubergine. No one quite knew what meal had been planned around the aubergine – they were all hopeless cooks – but apparently nothing at all could be eaten without bread.

  They were significantly the worse for wear after last night; much to Tara’s dismay, the celebrations had continued long after the pub had thrown them out and, despite the fact she’d been secretly sober as a judge, she looked as convincingly battered and hungover as everyone else on only four hours’ sleep.

  ‘I’ll nip out and get some,’ she said, reaching for her jacket and grateful for the excuse to escape for a bit and have some fresh air. ‘We need more milk anyway.’

  ‘No, we’ve got milk. We’ve got four pints, in fact,’ Sophie said proudly, showing her the carton in the fridge door compartment.

  ‘Yes, but Hols likes full-fat,’ Tara shrugged, aware of Holly’s gaze coming to rest upon her. She was sitting slumped at the pine kitchen table, stretched out on one elbow, her head in her hand as she listlessly read the local businesses directory. It had a picture of a red squirrel on the front and an ad for oven cleaning on the back page.

  ‘And she couldn’t, this one time, have semi-skimmed?’ Charlie asked. She had a rabid dislike of anyone being ‘precious’.

  Holly pinned Charlie with a look. ‘Hey! In Yorkshire, tea is a serious business. Don’t mess with my tea.’

  Everyone was scratchy, irritable and exhausted, and the teasing tone was only half an octave away from being war.

  ‘Do you want the bread or not?’ Tara asked, checking that the car keys were still in her pocket. Her phone was – sixteen per cent battery left. She had left it downstairs accidentally last night and by the time she’d realized, the house was in darkness and Annie was already beginning to fall asleep (or rather, pass out) beside her.

  She could charge it in the car on the journey back later. Listlessly, without much hope, she checked for messages or missed calls, but there was nothing. Naturally. They would be on the second hole by now anyway. Her father always teed off at nine sharp.

  ‘Sure. And Nutella, if they’ve got any,’ Charlie said, too hungover to argue for once.

  ‘And the Sunday papers, please,’ Liv said, clasping her hands in a weak prayer position. ‘I need to see my horoscopes for the week.’

  Everyone simultaneously tutted. ‘And you call yourself a scientist!’ Charlie scoffed.

  ‘Annie calls herself a vegan but she eats halloumi!’

  ‘Only because I like the way it squeaks,’ Annie protested, as though that was a logical defence.

  Tara had to smile. Her friends might be a fractious, useless motley crew, but she supposed she loved them. ‘I’ll be back in ten, then – don’t murder each other before I get back. Bread, milk, Nutella, papers.’

  ‘And some chocolate Hobnobs!’ Liv called after her. ‘If they’ve got them.’

  ‘Chocolate Hobnobs,’ Tara nodded, slipping through the kitchen stable door into the garden.

  There was still a chill in the air, but the skies were clear and a tendril of mist draped over the shoulders of the hills like a scarf. The valley was a palette of hesitant greens, gentle greys and browns, sheep dotting the fields like cotton flowers. A distant river tumbled over rocks, bringing a chattering babble to the otherwise pervasive silence.

  She unlocked the car and was clicking on her seatbelt when the passenger door opened and Holly slid into the seat beside her. She was still wearing her striped flannel PJs – her ‘old man pyjamas’, as Dev called them – with socks, Birkenstocks and a borrowed wax jacket thrown on top. It smelled like wet sheep, which was not helpful to either of them. Tara had felt her nausea increasing over the last few days, and Holly had been throwing up all morning.

  ‘. . . Hi!’ Tara said in surprise. She had begun to adapt to the idea that Holly was actively avoiding her.

  Holly glanced at her as she too clicked in her seatbelt. ‘Annie needs tampons.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ She didn’t reply that Holly could have just texted her that request – or indeed Annie herself. Was this an opportunity for the two of them to make up?

  They pulled out of the short cobbled drive and onto the lane. It was single-width with only occasional passing places and Tara sent a prayer to the travel gods that they wouldn’t meet any tractors coming in the opposite direction. The village was two and a quarter miles away, but it felt longer than that as they drove in silence. Tara wished she’d put the radio on first, just for some background noise.

  ‘So how are you feeling now?’ she ventured, glancing at Holly, who was looking out the side window, her jaw pushed sullenly forwards. She was pale, with dark bags under her eyes, her red corkscrew curls scraped back in a ponytail and secured with a green wire toggle that looked like it should be holding up staked sweet peas.

  ‘Rough.’ Even the word was a croak.

  ‘Yeah. What we’d give for a saline drip right now, huh?’

  Holly frowned at her. ‘You don’t need one. You were on the tonics all night.’

  ‘Well no, but I’m still feeling . . . meh.’ Her voice was quiet, the words small as though she didn’t dare to give them a solid shape; she felt a sense of shame, as though her pregnancy was something she was not allowed to acknowledge. Holly stared at her with an inscrutable expression. Tara kept her eyes on the road, her grip tightening on the wheel. ‘. . . Do you think anyone clocked that I was faking?’

  There was a pause. ‘No. They were all too busy getting hammered themselves. I don’t think it would cross their minds that anyone would willingly not drink themselves into oblivion at a twenty-first, much less that one of us might be pregnant.’

  ‘Yeah. It wasn’t much fun having to pretend like that.’

  ‘So then don’t. Just tell them.’ Holly gave a bored shrug, as though it was no big deal telling people she was dropping out of her studies, abandoning her high-flying career before it had even begun, becoming a mother by twenty-one. ‘Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be.’

  Tara felt stung by the words. Her situation was complicated and to suggest otherwise was facetious – but she bit back her indignation, not wanting to get into another argument. Holly on a hangover was the proverbial bear and sore head. ‘It’s too early,’ she mumbled instead. ‘I’m only nine weeks . . .’

  A red kite suddenly shot past the car, giving them both a fright, and Tara slammed on the brakes. ‘Oh holy shit!’ she cried, feeling her heart rate shoot up.

  Holly didn’t say anything, her silence somehow withering as Tara tried to collect her wits. She was jumpy and anxious. They drove along again, past the low mossy drystone walls.

  Holly shifted in her seat, and Tara noticed she still looked green around the gills. ‘So what’s Alex up to this weekend, anyway?’ she asked flatly.

  ‘Um, well . . . bonding with my fat
her, mainly.’

  ‘You what?’ She could seemingly only manage to hitch up one eyebrow in response.

  ‘Yeah. They’re playing golf together right now.’

  Tara glanced over as a silence stretched again and she saw her friend looking at her with an expression that suggested she’d sprouted a second head. ‘Alex? Alex is playing golf?’

  ‘With my father. Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘. . . Wentworth.’

  Holly spluttered with sudden laughter, the sound erupting from her like a volcanic eruption, surprising them both. Tara cracked a tiny smile.

  ‘Does he have the right clothes? I mean – the socks alone! Does Alex even have a matching set?’

  ‘Probably not . . . He’s never played before,’ Tara grinned. ‘Dad will have to get him kitted out.’

  Holly tipped her head back against the headrest, clearly amusing herself with a visual montage. ‘Ah God,’ she mumbled. ‘The thought of him hacking those greens in Fair Isle socks . . .’

  Tara felt her grip relax around the wheel as the tension between them slackened somewhat. Ambition hadn’t been their only bond; they shared a wicked sense of humour too. ‘What’s Dev up to?’

  Holly’s smile disappeared in a flash. Seemingly even Dev’s name was now off limits. ‘Why would I know?’

  ‘You didn’t ask him on Friday?’

  Holly shook her head. ‘Nope. His comings and goings are none of my business.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tara offered nothing more. There was no point. If her friend was going to be adamant that they were not a ‘thing’, that they merely slept together and what he did during daytime hours was none of her concern, what could she do? Seemingly nothing she could say was right.

  They passed the village sign, white-painted with a flowerbed of crocuses planted around it. Someone had left a Coke can on the top. Weathered stone cottages stood barely a hip-width’s pavement back from the road, fresh eggs – blue, brown and white – left in an honesty box on a deep windowsill. A noticeboard fluttered with pinned memos for babysitting services, the upcoming Spring Fayre, requests for lambing help, cars for sale . . . A decommissioned red phone box stood on a grass verge opposite the Snooty Fox pub where they had caroused last night, and the village store was housed in a pretty whitewashed building with wooden crates of fruit and vegetables stacked in tiers outside. But for the fact that the carrots looked stringy and there was some obscene graffiti inside the bus stop, it could have been a Richard Curtis film set. It felt like stepping back in time, to an age of innocence and decorum, and it certainly explained a lot about their friend Sophie. Were they all products of their upbringing, Tara wondered? Alex certainly was – free-spirited, irreverent, independent. Holly was grounded, loyal, plain-speaking and fiercely ambitious. In which case, how did hers manifest in her? Especially when she always went to such lengths to hide it?

  They parked and staggered out of the Mini, Holly hungover and Tara deeply nauseated.

  ‘Papers, bread, milk, Nutella and . . . what else?’ Tara asked, as she held open the door for Holly.

  ‘Tampons,’ Holly said flatly as an elderly man in a flat cap went to pass by them, a roll of Sunday papers fastened under his arm. Holly gave him a blank nod in greeting but he seemed flustered, whether by her comment or her clothes. ‘And chocolate Hobnobs.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  They looked around the store. It was tiny, no bigger than the sitting room in the Airbnb cottage. A woman in her mid-fifties was standing behind the counter labelling tins with a hand-held sticker device. She glanced over at them as they got their bearings.

  ‘Mornin’.’

  ‘Morning,’ Tara smiled more cheerily than she felt as she picked up a wire basket and turned down the aisle. Holly did the same.

  ‘So, they’re bonding, huh?’ Holly scanned the shelf of breads.

  Tara took a moment to process her meaning and pick up the threads of the conversation again. ‘Oh, yes. Ritual humiliation for Alex, to get into my father’s good books.’

  ‘Funny. He doesn’t strike me as the sort to care about what parents think.’

  Tara glanced at her as she reached for the Best of Both loaf. ‘Why’d you think that?’

  ‘Well, he told me one time – I think you were in the shower – he grew up smoking joints with his folks and calling them by their first names. Seems weird that he’s suddenly prepared to play golf, of all things, just so your dad’ll like him.’

  Did it? ‘Well, I guess when you’re getting married and joining a new family, these things matter more. He wants to start out on a strong footing; he’s paranoid about not wanting my parents to think he’s with me for the money. It’s important to him to do this properly.’

  ‘Do what properly?’

  ‘Ask my dad for my hand.’

  Holly looked surprised. ‘You mean your parents still don’t know? But I thought you were telling them at dinner the other night?’

  She winced. So had she. ‘That’s the purpose of this weekend – bonding with Dad, before he asks him.’

  Holly’s eyes narrowed. ‘While you’re here?’

  ‘Well, this was in the diary for ages. I couldn’t exactly duck out on Sophie, could I? And besides, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like he’d ask with me right there in the room anyway.’

  Holly looked shocked. ‘Why not? Because your future has to be decided between men in your absence? What are you – chattel?’

  ‘I decide my future, thanks very much. This is just . . . etiquette.’

  Holly gave a snort of derision as they stopped in front of the biscuits. ‘It’s just bullshit, is what it is.’

  Tara gave a small smile at her friend’s feminist indignation. ‘I don’t disagree. Still, my father will like being asked. I just want Alex to get a damned move on with it.’

  ‘And there I was thinking you’d be onto the bridesmaid flowers by now,’ Holly sighed with trace sarcasm, reaching for a packet of Hobnobs. ‘And how did he take the news he’s gonna be a dad himself?’

  Tara hesitated. ‘He still doesn’t know.’ She saw Holly’s eyes widen further. ‘But before you freak out, there’s no great conspiracy, it’s just a timing thing. Once he gets asking my father for my hand out of the way, then I’ll tell him, them and fricking everyone.’ She rolled her eyes, not wanting to meet Holly’s gaze. She knew the look she’d find there.

  ‘So I’m the only person who knows?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The only one in the world?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Holly was quiet for a moment. ‘God, the power I wield.’

  Tara laughed. ‘Huh?’

  ‘I could totally blackmail you right now. One million pounds to keep your secret.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’d probably pay it too.’

  Tara just shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t do much for our friendship. And you’d definitely be off the godmothers list.’

  Holly’s mouth opened in surprise and then closed again. She looked quickly away. ‘. . . Are you frightened?’ Her tone had changed.

  Tara frowned. ‘About the birth?’

  ‘Giving up your entire life?’

  There was a pause. ‘I told you. I don’t see it that way.’

  ‘No.’ Holly was quiet for a moment. ‘Well, I guess that’s what they mean about the rich being different from the rest of us.’

  Tara frowned, not sure what to say to that. She didn’t want to get into another argument about it, not when they’d just thawed the ice. ‘Hols—’

  But Holly was already moving off, her back turned. ‘You do you. I’ll get the tampons. See you out at the car.’

  They drove back towards the cottage at twice the speed of the journey out, the shopping in a brown paper bag on Holly’s lap. But Tara’s gaze kept falling to the other bag between her friend’s ankles – it contained a box of tampons and, beside it, a pregnancy test. At the mere sight of it, Tara felt her hackles rise. Was that what this journey had been about? Holly was going to
bully her into providing proof that this was actually happening? Tara’s anger was immediate. She didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, not even her best friend.

  She had switched the radio on with the ignition and turned up the volume, determinedly drowning out the possibility of further conversation – but the words hovered unsaid regardless, creating a tension they could both feel. The cottage was in sight when Holly angled towards her. ‘. . . Twig, I need to ask you something.’ Her voice was uncharacteristically stiff. Nervous, even. She knew what she was about to ask was outrageous, unacceptable . . .

  Tara straightened up, glancing at her with a hard look and feeling her indignation swell. ‘Oh yeah?’ she said, her fingers tapping on the steering wheel to the song playing on the radio. She was not taking that pregnancy test, and she couldn’t believe Holly would even ask her.

  ‘. . . Do you trust him?’

  Tara frowned. It wasn’t the question she’d been expecting. ‘What?’

  ‘Is that why you still haven’t told him about the baby? You don’t trust him?’

  ‘Hols, we’ve talked about this before. I’ve told you I do. Why would you even ask me that?’

  There was a hesitation. ‘Because of something Annie said.’

  ‘Annie?’ Tara spluttered, as the memories of yesterday’s awkward hilltop encounter flew back into her mind. ‘She knows nothing about Alex, so don’t even think about listening to anything she’s got to say. She’s only met him a few times.’

  ‘Actually, it was something James said to her.’

  Tara frowned. ‘James MacLennan?’

  ‘Yes.’ Holly looked pained. ‘Apparently he . . . Look, this is really hard to say . . . but apparently he told her that Alex is using you, that he’s cheating—’

  ‘Stop.’ Her voice was flinty but Tara felt like the breath had been knocked out of her.

  ‘She’s had been worrying all weekend about whether or not to tell you.’

  Just Annie? Or all of them? Was that what the conversation yesterday on the hill had really been about – bringing up the suggestion that Alex might cheat on her under the guise of Liv’s bad luck with men and Annie’s great wisdom about them?