Tell Me a Secret

by Jane Fallon

  ‘Well, then it must be true,’ I said. We were walking to West End Lane to have a coffee. ‘Just out of interest, how did they know it was a whole Lego castle? Did they reassemble it?’

  She huffed. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘And why did they only find out once they’d cut him open? Seems a bit drastic. Didn’t they ask him what he’d eaten? Or X-ray him before they stuck the knife in?’

  ‘Obviously they X-rayed him …’

  ‘So they didn’t just find it when they cut him open?’

  Dee stopped walking. Gave me a sideways look. ‘No … I don’t know …’

  I flung an arm round her, pulled her in for a hug. ‘I love you,’ I said, laughing.

  ‘Why do you never believe anything I tell you?’ she said, mock hurt.

  ‘Why do you always believe literally anything anyone tells you?’

  ‘That is so not true,’ she’d said. But it was. Still is.

  At home I have a quick shower, rustle together a basic tomatoey sauce that I can reheat later with pasta when Dee gets here – Gavin is away for work, as he often is (he’s a pharmaceutical rep) and we often eat together when she’s on her own. Then I settle on the sofa and call Ashley. She’ll probably be in the middle of cooking dinner. She and Ryan seem to have gone from hedonisitic, carousing students to settled homebodies the minute they graduated, which should probably be every mother’s dream especially now there’s a baby on the way, but it worries me a bit. Ashley was always so ambitious – she has dreamt of being a costume designer ever since I can remember – but lately she’s been full of talk about how her stopgap job at a large chain of pub/restaurants has a graduate scheme for would-be assistant managers. Which, again, should be a good thing. She’s being responsible. She’s doing the sensible thing. It just seems a shame to see her give up her dreams so easily.

  ‘I’m at work,’ she says when she answers. I can hear the bustle of the pub in the background.

  ‘Oh, OK. Just checking in. Everything all right?’

  ‘Great. Well, except we have a stag party booked in for twenty-five people tonight.’

  ‘How lovely,’ I say. ‘Hopefully they’ll move on somewhere else when they’ve eaten.’

  ‘Hopefully,’ she says, and I can tell she’s distracted. I’ve been to the pub and I can picture her there in the all-wood surroundings. People always remark on how much she looks like me – long wavy chestnut hair, brown eyes that I’ve always thought were one size too small (mine, not hers. Hers are perfect), heart-shaped faces. There’s almost no trace of her father in there. Like her body knew he was never going to be in the picture so why bother representing him? Like me she usually wears her hair off her face. But unlike me she has full dark eyebrows – mine have always been straggly and in need of filling in – and that’s him. That’s her father’s legacy.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ She’s been being sick in the mornings fairly regularly. Another thing she’s inherited from me.

  ‘Oh, you know, fat, hormonal, nauseous. So pretty much the same as before I was pregnant.’

  I laugh. ‘Are you eating?’

  ‘Oh my God, Mum, why do you always ask me that? Of course I’m eating. If I wasn’t I’d be dead.’

  ‘Eating enough, I mean. Or eating healthily. Both. Either.’

  ‘Yes, and sometimes. I need to go; we have customers.’

  ‘Ring me when you can,’ I say.

  ‘Will do. Love you,’ she says, and I know she’s already straight back in work mode.

  It’s not that Ashley’s father didn’t want anything to do with her. Well, it is, but it wasn’t her he rejected, it was an anonymous sexless baby. I tell myself that if he’d ever met her he would have fallen in love with her; it was impossible not to. And I let him off. Because he was so young. We barely knew each other. I didn’t want to – as they used to say at the time – ruin his life. Of course, I was young too but, somehow, that didn’t seem to be so important.

  By the time I found out I was pregnant I had finished uni and I was back at home wondering what to do with the rest of my life. I knew who the father was because he was the only person it could be. I’d split up with my last boyfriend six months before, I’d had one one-night stand since (I never was a partier) with a boy called Lawrence – Lol – who I’d met a couple of times at the Central Union club night. That had been three months before and I was three months pregnant, give or take. You go figure. I thought about trying to track him down as soon as I found out, but I had no number for him, not even an idea where he might be spending the summer. I thought I was probably doing him a favour, because what twenty-year-old boy wants to be saddled with a baby by a girl he’s met maybe five times in his life?

  I did go back one afternoon the following September – hugely pregnant by that point. I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing, and I thought, if I saw him, my gut would let me know. He was the year below me, so I knew he would still be studying, and I knew his subject – Anthropology. I wandered around the campus, my rounded belly bringing sideways glances from everyone I passed. I went back and forth between his department and the Union a couple of times, circled the library. On the second trip I finally spotted him heading towards one of the cafeterias with a group of friends. It was like seeing a vague acquaintance. Not that I ever thought I might have any kind of feelings for him, beyond he seemed like a nice bloke and a fun way to pass a night, but I couldn’t fathom telling this virtual stranger that he now had some responsibility for my unborn child. I didn’t want this random lad in my baby’s life, or in mine.

  Of course, my mum had lectured me about the practicalities. How hard it was going to be trying to get by as a single parent. How even if all that happened was that Lol (or Lol’s mum and dad more likely) offered some kind of ongoing small financial contribution it would make my life and the baby’s so much less of a struggle. It’s funny that neither of us ever really considered that he had a right to know. That by not telling him maybe I was depriving him.

  As I watched him messing about with his mates I knew that I couldn’t do it. Apart from the fact that I had no clue how to break it to someone I hardly knew that they were about to be the father of my child (Hi, Lol, remember me? … No, not Polly, Holly. We shagged once. About six months ago … Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, thanks. You? Good. Anyway …), it just felt too cruel to throw such a huge grenade into someone’s life out of nowhere. Why should two of us have our lives blown apart? Of course, if Ashley’s pregnancy had happened in the same way I would have been down there myself, lecturing the boy that it takes two people to make a baby, that if you’re old enough to father one you’re old enough to deal with the consequences, no squirming out of your responsibilities, sonny. But I was twenty-one, my hormones were haywire, my back ached and I just wanted to go home.

  So I turned away, wandered back the way I’d come. I felt at peace with my decision. Suddenly famished, I stopped at a café on the main road and bought a sandwich and a bottle of water for the journey home, faffing about between a cheese and onion bap and a chicken salad. In the end I bought both. I couldn’t really afford to but I decided it was a celebration. I was treating myself. I had done the right thing. Sort of. I had, at least, confronted the idea of telling him and made the conscious decision not to. I wasn’t burying my head in the sand.

  As I came out, stuffing them into my bag, I almost bumped into someone coming in. I muttered an apology, and so did he, and then I looked up and saw that it was him. Lol. I was so confused that I probably did a double take. He must have said goodbye to his friends and come back through the campus while I was fannying about with sandwich choices.

  ‘Oh. Hi,’ I said casually, intending to move on past without stopping.

  He gave me a flirty grin. I had a sudden flash of how sexy I’d found that look all those months ago. An evening spent in anticipation of what would come later. He was a good-looking boy. All angles and limbs and floppy hair, but comfortable with it.

  ‘A
ll right?’

  ‘Good, yeah,’ I said, angling round him to get to the door. As I edged past him I saw him clock it. My bump. He actually pointed at it.

  ‘Shit. Are you …?’

  I don’t think he had any thought that it might be anything to do with him. Not at that moment.

  ‘Yep,’ I said, looking anywhere but at him. ‘Six and a half months.’

  ‘Right. Wow … I mean …’

  I don’t know why I said it. Whether I was annoyed that he was being so obtuse – being let off the hook was a gift I could give him, not something he should assume for himself by being so dense as not to put the pieces together in the first place – or I suddenly felt I owed him the truth, I couldn’t say now. But I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘So it must have been early March …’

  I left it hanging there for him to pick up. It only took a moment and then I saw his face drain of colour.

  ‘No fucking way.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said. And now I was annoyed. ‘There wasn’t anyone else around that time. No one anywhere near.’

  He looked around as if he was hoping a film crew might jump out and save him by telling him I was really Sacha Baron Cohen in disguise.

  ‘You can’t prove it’s mine,’ he said, all trace of the flirty smile gone. He wasn’t being aggressive. He looked as if the bottom had just dropped out of his world. Much like my face when I found out I was pregnant, I imagine.

  ‘Well, I think you’ll find I could once it’s born if I wanted to …’ I said coldly.

  ‘Why didn’t you get rid of it?’ he said, sounding desperate. It was a question I didn’t really know the answer to myself, if I was being honest. I said the only thing that made sense to me.

  ‘Because I didn’t want to.’

  ‘Your decision,’ he said. ‘You should have told me then. Let me have a say.’

  ‘How?’ I said. ‘What’s my surname? Where do I live?’

  He looked at me, the penny dropping. We barely knew each other. How would I have found him over the summer?

  ‘Is it too late now?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Lol,’ I said, as if I were talking to a child. ‘It’s too late now. Six and a half months is too late. Even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.’

  ‘This is fucking mental,’ he said.

  ‘Listen.’ I wanted this conversation to be over. I wanted to get out of there. ‘I haven’t come here to demand you get involved. I came to see if I thought I should let you know … just in case … and for the record I’d decided I shouldn’t. I was on my way home …’

  I expected him to say something like ‘What, you were just never going to tell me?’ but actually he looked at me with such hope in his eyes it was palpable. He might be about to get away with it after all.

  ‘I don’t want anything from you,’ I said, swinging my bag over my shoulder. I wondered if I should ask his surname, just in case one day my baby’s life was completely fucked up by the fact they didn’t have any clue how to trace their father, but I knew if I asked him he’d panic that I was going to put him on the birth certificate, or that in thirty years’ time a stranger would knock on his door shouting ‘Daddy!’, and I figured on balance it wasn’t worth it. He’d probably make up a fake one. If my child had a burning passion to find their dad in years to come it would be easy enough to check the records of who was studying Anthropology, graduating in 1996. How many Lawrences could there be? I’d help them.

  I pushed my way out through the door without saying goodbye. I wondered if he might call me back, ask more questions. But he didn’t.

  When I think about him now I think about how young we both were, about how I’d had months to get used to the idea. I wonder if I should at least have forced my details on to him in case he ever had a change of heart. It’s hard to judge him. We were kids. We both handled it badly.

  My mum – who must have been shocked and disappointed beyond belief although she never showed it – offered to help me bring the baby up. Her first – and only – grandchild. But I knew if I stayed at home I’d end up there for ever. Working in the dry cleaner’s where she worked too, if I was lucky. So I moved back to London, into a shared house with three of my ex-uni friends who didn’t seem too freaked out by the prospect of having a baby about the place. When Ashley arrived I stayed at home and cooked and cleaned for them all in lieu of rent, like a nineteeth-century housekeeper. I found part-time work reading scripts for a couple of local theatres, which was terribly paid but it was cash in hand and I could fit the hours in whenever I got a chance. I watched my flatmates all step on to the first rungs of their chosen ladders and, even though I was envious of the fact they were making progress in their careers, I never once regretted my decision.

  Dee arrives bearing gifts. That is, a bottle of wine and a French stick because the last time I made pasta for us both I didn’t have any bread in and she’s never let me forget it. It’s actually snowing when I open the door to her.

  ‘You’re not going to walk home in this?’ I say as soon as I see her.

  ‘I’ve only just got here.’ She gives me a hug.

  ‘I’ll call you a cab when you leave.’

  ‘No cabs are going to be coming up here tonight. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Jesus. Well, don’t stay too late. Or you could sleep in Ashley’s room.’ I follow her through to the kitchen. Watch as she unswathes. Then I hang her coat, scarf, hat and two jumpers over various radiators.

  ‘I can’t really. I need clothes.’

  ‘I can lend you something.’ We’re not far off from each other in size.

  She looks at me. ‘Holly, I love you, but I’m not wearing your knickers.’

  I throw the pasta into boiling water, heat the sauce through while Dee randomly starts poking through my kitchen cupboards.

  ‘You’ll have to designate them storage space,’ she says, pulling out the spiralizer I’ve used, maybe, twice in the three years I’ve had it. I take it from her.

  ‘I know. I’ll get round to it. I want that, though; put it back.’ She rolls her eyes but does as I ask.

  ‘You’re in denial,’ she says. I know she’s joking, but I also know she’s right.

  I fill her in on the latest at work. ‘Do you think I’m being paranoid?’ I say when I get to the bit about Glen thinking my idea was Roz’s. ‘I mean, why would he say that?’

  Dee tops up our wine glasses while I dish up the food. Smokey hops up on to one of the chairs next to us and neither of us bothers to shoo him away.

  ‘Well …’ She looks off into space as if she’s considering. ‘It could have been a genuine misunderstanding, I suppose. Bit of a coincidence, though.’

  ‘Maybe she mentioned my story to him once and he just forgot that she said it was mine?’

  I wait for her to say ‘Of course’ but she doesn’t. ‘Is that what you think happened?’

  ‘You don’t …’ I tail off. I’m not sure I want to even give my theory a fair hearing. That I’m ready to believe it might be true. Sod it. ‘You don’t think – given we now know that she wanted the job – that she quizzed me about my idea so she could put it on her application form?’

  I sit back and watch Dee’s reaction. Of course she buys it. She’s Dee. She loves a conspiracy theory.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she says. She flicks her fringe out of her eyes. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t.’ I try to remember Roz’s and my conversations about which storyline I should put forward on my application. I clearly remember her saying the Morgan strand was too risky.

  ‘The audience don’t want the characters to develop too much, you know that.’ We’d been walking through Acton near the studios, after picking up a sandwich. I can even remember what she was wearing – her bright green coat and orange tights. She looked like Orville’s tall skinny sister. ‘They think they want to watch new stories, but actually they just want a variant of the same thing over and over again. They love Morgan because she’s Little Miss
Perfect. They know where they stand with her.’

  ‘She’s so dull though.’

  She’d sidestepped a kid on a scooter. ‘I know that and you know that but the Great British Public don’t care.’

  I wasn’t sure. I’d had a couple of conversations with Glen about pushing the boundaries and moving the show onwards rather than stagnating. But Roz was so sure of her own opinion it made me nervous. In the end I’d come down on the side of better to be a bit safe than very sorry.

  I push my food around my plate. ‘Oh God,’ is all I can come up with.

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ Dee says with relish.

  8

  Which explains why I’m hanging back at work waiting for everyone to leave the next day. Actually most people have made the break early because a heavy snowstorm is predicted and so we all have to behave as if the second Ice Age has arrived, and we need to stock up on water and ready meals for the coming decade. Only Emma, always conscientious, and Juliet, who only lives round the corner and so has no fear of cancelled public transport, remain. (I remember how scathing Roz and I were when we found out she had moved close to the studios. As if she’d decided she was in it for life. No ambition beyond working on Churchill Road. Fucking saddo, Roz had said, laughing.)

  Today has not been a good day. When I got back from a long script meeting with one of the writers – which we decided to hold in the café as it was close to lunchtime and we were both famished – there was a pink Post-it on my desk that said ‘Could I speak to you this afternoon? Patricia’. Patricia is one of our original cast members. She plays the matriarch of one of the estate’s biggest families and is formidable both on and off screen. Having trained at RADA (unlike anyone else in the cast) she believes herself to be a cut above the rest, and that none of us have any idea how to properly make a good drama. She regularly likes to present herself in the script department and give the most senior person she can find the benefit of her accumulated wisdom. Before, she used to hunt out Marcus. Now, word must have got through that I’m her new target. I’ll be honest, she intimidates the shit out of me.