A Secret Life

by Christobel Kent

  After Matteo had already told him, stop asking questions. Who was he, Teo? The guy I saw Holly with the night before she died?

  Now he opened the messaging app and peered at the little screen: the message had been delivered, had been read, two little blue ticks, but no answer from Matteo. And then as he was looking something happened. Something changed. Matteo’s profile picture disappeared. The little line of information on when he was last seen, gone. It gave him the weirdest feeling, like Frank had watched someone take him.

  It dawned on him: Matteo had blocked him. Or someone else had.

  The buzzer went and he jumped, nerves jangling, but by the time he got to the window the pavement was empty, someone else had let them in. He stood a long time in the hallway waiting for whoever it was with his heart beating too fast, but the lift went on up and he knew it was just someone had forgotten their keys. But the danger was still there.

  Mum was right. He had to go.

  Tim left early, whistling.

  Georgie hovered on the landing, distracting him with brushing imaginary dust from his shoulder, his hand resting on her backside, and he’d left the study open. Holding her breath as she listened to the car reverse, turn, rev loudly, recede – she went inside.

  She only wanted to be helpful. To be a supportive wife. That wasn’t quite the story in her own head, but it would be her excuse if he caught her. If he came back, if he parked on the corner, if he let himself in, quietly. She reprimanded herself: why would he? Why would he do that?

  The desk was clear, the filing cabinet was locked. There wasn’t even a laptop, but Tim didn’t do all his work on a laptop.

  Once, when they’d been watching the news, a piece had come on about a businessman who’d been convicted of fraud because the police had found evidence he thought he’d deleted, on his computer. Tim had laughed and said – and with hindsight he had been talking more or less to himself, he had even forgotten she was in the room with him – ‘Keep it on paper, mate. Paper you know how to destroy.’

  Lightly, still holding her breath or so it felt, Georgie ran her hand over the desk top, picked up the framed photograph: her and Tim with Tabs between them. His hand on Tabs’ shoulder. Tabs bright, bubbling with excitement. Georgie peered closer, at her own face: a blank. A blank of fear, call it apprehension, call it anxiety or nerves or— but it looked like fear. She remembered the photograph being taken, Tabs’ first term at school and Tim initially dismissive, irritable at the thought of being dragged into school then somehow taking it over. He had been rude to the photographer and she had been quietly resistant to his rudeness and that was where the fear came from.

  She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, and in a way the empty desk and the locked filing cabinets were an answer to the question she hadn’t known she was asking. What did her husband do, that he didn’t want her to see? He had never wanted her to work with him, he kept his study locked. He didn’t trust her. And then quite abruptly it flipped around in her head: You don’t trust him. That’s what this is about. You can’t trust him. She put out a hand to the filing cabinet, took a deep breath and tugged, and as she felt the resistance there was a sound from downstairs. A sudden, slithering rush of a sound and then a sharp rap, in that instant so shocking that she backed away, out through the door, almost tripping on the landing.

  The post. The post had come. She saw it on the mat, she heard the sound of the postman’s feet. Groping, Georgie picked up the wastepaper bin automatically and took it downstairs, picked up a bunch of catalogues from the mat. Gardening tools, cooking equipment, bedlinen. Tim liked nice linens, a neat kitchen. She dropped them all into the bin.

  Sue had offered straight away to have Tabs after school. Take her to the swings, give her her tea, whatever. Tara would love to take care of Tabs, always wanted a little sister. Cue an inquiring look. Georgie knew Sue only had one kid because her husband hadn’t wanted any more. ‘You’re an angel,’ she said, meaning it. Perhaps with too much warmth because Sue gave her a bit of a sharp look, then. The truth was she felt like she could vomit again at will, only there wasn’t anything left.

  Sue got up from behind the desk, taking off her glasses, peering. ‘Are you sure everything’s all right, hon?’ Georgie abruptly robbed of the power of speech, tears just asking to come. ‘At home, I mean?’

  ‘I—’ she blinked, feeling a sweat on her forehead. ‘Yes, oh, it’s just—’ Sue didn’t move, just frowned at her, uneasily kind. She wouldn’t be sympathetic if she knew – or would she? The messages on her phone. Dragging her daughter up to town, dragging her dad out and in the back of her mind was the possibility she might glimpse a man she knew nothing about. ‘I don’t know why you’d think—’ She started again, trying for a wan smile. ‘It’s just something I ate.’

  Maybe she’d heard something. The girl in the supermarket yesterday could have guessed – what? Something. Enough to start whispers. And the flowers, the florist gossiping about her flying out of the car to interrogate her on where they’d come from.

  The school was noisy with Monday morning, filing into the assembly hall. Soon they’d begin to sing. ‘You know what this place is like,’ said Sue, smiling a little but still watchful. Georgie didn’t know, not really. She thought of a rumour, a cluster of rumours going round the village, like wildfire. Until they got to Tim.

  After last night, the thought petrified her. The smile she forced out for Sue felt like a grimace. ‘Just need a bit of a lie down,’ she said. And went, turned for the door, one foot behind the other. Behind her she could tell Sue hadn’t sat down again. Wondering.

  Walking away through the cold bright playground Georgie tried to calm the panic. A latecoming mother with flying hair and a child on each hand gave her a quick glance she didn’t dare return.

  Someone had sent her flowers. So what? Nothing had happened yesterday in the supermarket, just her talking animatedly on the phone. What had she actually said? You can’t phone me. I can’t talk to you. Nothing happened. She had said that.

  He had made a sound at that, hadn’t he? A kind of laugh. Conspiratorial. As if – That can be your story, if it makes you feel better.

  In traffic alongside a row of fast-food joints near the station – chicken, kebabs, ribs, her stomach churning – Georgie remembered something. She’d forgotten to take the lasagne out of the freezer for supper: All right. All right. She indicated, turned. Back against the morning traffic that was ebbing now, lights, a stretch of green that was the forest, insinuating itself between the arterial roads, the church.

  No one was walking under the trees this morning, Monday morning. The woodland canopy was motionless, quiet, motes of something in the slanting light. Afterwards the forest would always be there, the backdrop to the picture she was about to be shown, and everything holding its breath.

  She turned into the close.

  A little bright car was parked outside the neighbouring house: as she let herself in it snagged on her thoughts. She knew that car.

  There was someone there. There was someone inside the house.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She heard the sound from upstairs as she pushed the door open, that soft sound, and knew what it was in the same moment. And knowing what it was, everything around her shifted, it felt as though things really moved sideways, the kitchen door frame, as she stood in the hallway in the sparkling light, seeing herself in the metal-framed mirror as if she was someone else, her mouth half open, her keys in her hand.

  Georgie had been in an earthquake once, in Italy, only a little one, but that was what it was like. The corner of the room shifting.

  Uuuhhhh. His voice, low.

  Georgie stopped, there on the mat in the hall. She opened her mouth, but what was she going to say? Who’s there? She knew who was there, because she’d seen her car at the kerb, seen it but it hadn’t sunk in, no more than the vaguest, mildest question. That looks like Lydia’s car.

  Lydia oh Lydia, now, have you met Lydia?, where did that
come from? She was standing there in her own hall and listening to her husband fucking his secretary upstairs and that was going round in her head. She could hear the name on Tim’s lips, too often, it seemed to her now, too casual. An old-fashioned name for a twenty-five-year-old. Lydia was shiny and polished for a girl her age, though, heels and stockings and everything. Girl. Girl.

  Outside her car waited on the kerb. Tabs at school, she should be on the train to London. She should be at work. That’s what they thought, Tim and Lydia, how often—

  They were still at it. She could hear him now, groaning, a sound she recognised as if from a long way off and the hair on her head stood on end, literally. She hadn’t known that really happened but then Georgie had led a fairly sheltered life. Lucky Georgie.

  What was she going to do now? The lasagne had to be taken out of the freezer or there’d be no dinner and Tim – for a mad second she thought, I could text Tim from the train and tell him to do it. While he’s here.

  Tabs was always starving when she got home from school and the microwave was on the blink – they were still going. She squeaked, Lydia did, who knew.

  Inside Georgie something churned, like a tornado, a rope twisting tight. She walked the four, five steps into the kitchen, opened the freezer, took out the lasagne and put it on the side.

  The car park was very full. The taxi behind her peeled off to drop its passenger at the front of the station and she slowed, moving up and down the rows of cars. A little yellow one appeared and for a fraction of a second Georgie’s impulse was to smash into it, but she drove on, her head turning to look at it as she passed.

  At the ticket machine in the station car park, although she’d done this before a hundred times, the instructions refused to make sense and she had to stoop, peering at them. A man in a suit gave her a funny look as he walked past and Georgie realised she was crying.

  The machine clicked and the paper ticket was extruded behind its little Perspex shield. Other women, Georgie supposed, would have gone up there, would have taken the stairs two at a time to catch them at it, would have stood in the doorway and screamed. In her head, she was screaming at him. In her head it all unravelled from that moment, dismantle the house down to the foundations, brick by brick, pick up Tabs’ ragged teddy from the rubble, her nightlight, Mum’s mirror. Leave all the rest, the clothes, the gadgets, the limestone floors, the kitchen. Leave it behind, pick Tabs up and run.

  Leave the flowers in the vase. Turning at the edges this morning, their water brown in the sunshine.

  But that would never work. He wouldn’t let that happen. Tim wouldn’t let her leave. And Tabs: she saw in that instant, his property, like the car she drove and the food she bought, he’d never let her have Tabs.

  The station was busy, a blur of people: she had to queue for her ticket. The train wasn’t due for ten minutes but Georgie saw a seat on the platform.

  Sitting forward, elbows on her knees, her face between her hands, she felt sick to her fingernails, to the roots of her hair, every cell of her body. She needed a plan.

  Or not. She needed overwhelmingly to think of something else or she might throw up right there, in the cold sunlight on the platform, on the shoes of a man in a suit, on the concrete next to a woman with a baby in a sling. A metallic announcement came over the loudspeakers: she registered that it concerned her train. Nine minutes delay. Georgie sat back, got out her phone. She was here for a reason, she would get the train, go to London, see the police.

  Then come home again. The lasagne would still be sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for her to put it in the oven. With clumsy fingers she dialled. Cat.

  Too late, she remembered it was Cat’s chemo today. She could hear hushed voices in the background, a mechanical hum. ‘It’s all right,’ said Cat, dry and weary. One of the voices identified itself as Harry’s, low and grumbling. ‘It’s done. I’m at the sitting around phase, waiting to be allowed to go. And you don’t – apparently the effects don’t kick in straight away, not for thirty-six hours. I could have gone to the police station myself.’

  ‘No,’ said Georgie and with the word, things around her shifted, the poison in her ebbed. ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘Just tell them,’ and then the voice broke off, muffled, she was talking to someone, and when she spoke to Georgie again it was obvious she’d moved away from the voices. ‘All right. They let me go out into the corridor, Harry’s talking to the nurse, I don’t want him to – he worries.’

  ‘What do I tell them?’ said Georgie.

  ‘That she was a romantic. She wasn’t a prostitute, or an escort or whatever they want to call it. She had a proper job. Tell them she always fell for the wrong people but she was holding out for love.’

  They wouldn’t be interested in that, not second-hand, not from Georgie. They’d want hard facts. Something about the sound, still ringing in her ears, of Tim and Lydia in the bedroom had clarified something, in Georgie’s head. Romance: what was that? It was nothing. It was worthless. But she let Cat go on.

  ‘What wrong people?’ she said. They’d want names.

  ‘She never said his name,’ Cat faltered, clinging to the romance. ‘She just told me – it was all going to come good. She said a man she’d been in love with a long, long time was going to look after her. Marriage, children, everything.’ Cat, who never cried, sounded like she would cry.

  Georgie tried to imagine Holly with a baby and the thought tightened her throat, too, because it would never happen. She could believe she’d wanted it, suddenly. Holly resting her chin on her knees in the bathroom, watching Georgie with her cat’s eyes.

  ‘You think that was true. Not just – like her putting on a front?’

  ‘Well,’ said Cat, and her sigh was long and weary. ‘It wasn’t true, was it? Whoever he was, he didn’t look after her.’

  There was a silence. ‘Look,’ said Cat, her voice low and tired. ‘Just send them to me. Tell them to talk to me.’

  ‘No,’ said Georgie again. ‘I’ll tell them as much as I can.’ Then Harry was there, talking insistently, and Cat had to go.

  There was movement on the platform: the train was limping in, slow, a blur of faces. Georgie stood, thinking of Holly, of the man who had been going to make it all all right for her. Where was that man now? What was he thinking?

  There were men all around her on the platform, in suits, in jeans, in velvet-collared coats, carrying computer bags, backpacks, briefcases. She’d spent a long time thinking men were like Dad, gentle, uncomplicated, loving. Wanting to fix and repair, to protect and build. She’d thought Tim was like that. She stood back, waiting for them to climb on.

  Tabs didn’t have a dad like that. Tabs had a dad who was shagging his secretary.

  The sounds still hummed in her head. Tim grunting. A moan, the squeaking. The whispering, as she stood stock still in the hallway: conspiratorial. She was suddenly sure they had been talking about her. Stupid Georgie, dopey Georgie.

  Georgie who had secrets of her own, though.

  She stepped forward to climb in, not even bothering to look for a seat, she’d stand. Someone was behind her. A couple of guys.

  A woman with a toddler in reins and a buggy was blocking the entrance, bending to fold it while a bald man looked down at her with irritation. Patiently Georgie held back: whoever was behind her was patient too.

  Maybe the friend had told her, the ponytailed girl in the supermarket. And Lydia hadn’t been shocked, Lydia had been delighted. Maybe Lydia had run straight to Tim. Behind her was a small sound, a breath, not impatient, not yet. Had that sparked something between them, Lydia consoling him, perhaps Lydia had had her eye on him for a while – but no. This had been going on a long time.

  The toddler looked up at Georgie, candid, blue-eyed, while her mother struggled. ‘Can—’ Georgie leaned forward but the woman just shook her head and wouldn’t make eye contact, jaw set.

  This weekend conference – Georgie was fairly sure there had been no conference.
He’d been with Lydia.

  Then she remembered last night, Tim in the kitchen pressing her against the counter. Tim leaning over to take hold of her in bed – and at the memory a sweat broke, nausea flooded her mouth. Something was going on. Something weird was going on.

  And then the woman straightened and the buggy was out of the way and she was looking for a seat, the toddler’s reins wound tight round her hand. Georgie moved forward and the men who’d been behind her did too, they came around beside her, matching her step on to the train, separating. Seeing their feet move in unison she lifted her head and saw the one to her left – a teenager in a baseball cap, a line of spots along his chin – move into the carriage a little way. She turned to lean against the division of the compartment and she was looking into the other man’s face.

  There was a high-pitched beep as the doors closed but she hardly heard it, standing with her handbag clutched against her as if he was a thief. It was him. It was Mark.

  He didn’t seem to notice: he put a hand up and touched her cheek and she knew they were all looking, the bald man leaning against the opposite door peering over an iPad, the woman with the toddler clutched on her knee staring down the aisle in derision.

  She knew then that it had been him she saw, standing in the hazy green light on the edge of the forest with a backpack on. Watching her. Following her.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said softly.

  A brewery truck outside on the pavement was unloading noisily. Soon Frank was going to have to go down to the club and start all over again. Another evening.

  Eddie’s not a pimp. Eddie’d pimped his own wife, hadn’t he, unless it had been her idea to show him her tits in their kitchen. Had she said, I can handle Frank. Stop Frank asking questions about customers?