by Rebecca Reid
Gina shook her head. Her eyes were shiny. Was she on the brink of tears? ‘You know it’s not normal.’
Poppy ran her hands through her hair, twisting it up into a knot on the top of her head. ‘Gee, I love you and I want you to be here, I want you to stay. I get it, this isn’t conventional but none of this is and actually … I’m OK with that. He should have told me but I’m not going to throw away my relationship over this.’
Gina put her head to one side, eyes wide with infuriating sympathy. ‘How can you love someone who’s done nothing but lie to you?’
Poppy could feel herself becoming frustrated again. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I get it,’ said Gina, her voice getting higher, ‘big house, loads of cash, never have to work a day in your life. I’d take it too. But, Poppy, he’s not a good guy. If something seems too good to be true, that’s because it is.’
Poppy took a slow breath, looking at the floor, and then, slowly getting to her feet, found Gina’s eyes. ‘Leave.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’m tired of this argument, and the way you treat Drew, and your total lack of respect for our relationship. I want you to leave.’ Her voice was perfectly calm.
‘You’re throwing me out?’
Poppy nodded.
‘In the middle of the night?’
Poppy didn’t respond.
‘You did learn from the best, didn’t you?’ Gina pulled her suitcase out from under the bed, flinging the lid open and started to throw clothes into it. ‘How very Mrs Henderson of you.’
Poppy slammed the door behind her.
CHAPTER 37
Drew was sitting up in bed. He noticed her tears. ‘Darling, what’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Is it true?’ she asked, trying to sound calm. ‘Did you pay Gina? Did you pay her to help you meet me?’
Drew nodded as if she’d asked if he’d finished the milk. ‘Yes, I asked her to introduce us.’
Why didn’t he seem more upset? Guiltier? He held his arms out towards her. ‘Come here.’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
Her anger choked her, her words fighting to get out, tangled. ‘You lied,’ she said, her voice high and loud. To his credit, he didn’t shush her or remind her that they had guests sleeping next door.
‘I suppose I did. Yes. A lie of omission.’
His total calm was making it impossible to vent. She wanted him to shout back, to lose his temper, to let her open her mouth and scream everything that was swirling in her head. But he was so resolutely unmoved by the situation. It made her tone and pitch seem ridiculous.
‘Why?’
‘Why did I lie?’
‘Why did you get her to help you?’
‘Oh, I see.’ He held his arms out to her again. She couldn’t bring herself to lie on his chest like he wanted her to, but he looked hurt enough at her rejection that she found herself sitting on the bed next to him, one foot under her body and the other on the floor. A nasty little voice was screaming at the back of her mind. Don’t fuck this up. Don’t lose him. Does it really matter what happened?
He ran a finger gently along her arm. ‘I’ve thought so many times about how I would tell you this.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t want it to sound strange.’
‘It is strange,’ she snapped. ‘It’s fucking stalking.’
‘I realize you could see it like that.’
‘So why did you do it?’
He sighed. ‘A while before I met you I went to a party at some friends of the Hendersons, and I saw you. You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life, and I wanted to talk to you. But you were the nanny. I didn’t want to be some sleazy older bloke hitting on you. So I didn’t introduce myself. And then after that I kept thinking about you, and any time I went on a date with someone else I’d think about you more. And then, one day, I realized if this were a business deal, I’d go out and get it. So why wouldn’t I go after you? So I looked for you. I found every other nanny at that party, but I couldn’t find you. And then I saw a picture of you on Gina’s Facebook.’
‘And, what, you told her you’d seen me once and wanted to sleep with me?’
‘I know how it sounds,’ he said. ‘I asked her if you were the redhead who was at the Waterworths’ party. She offered to introduce us. For a fee.’
Poppy turned to face him. ‘She asked for the money?’
Drew looked nonplussed in the half-light. ‘Yes. I thought she just told you what happened?’
‘She said you offered her money.’
‘I thought she’d do it for free, because she was your friend. She wanted cash. A thousand quid, to be specific. But she said you wouldn’t take well to a blind date, that I should make it look like an accident, like I bumped into you.’
‘She suggested it?’
He nodded. ‘Did she not just tell you that?’
‘No,’ Poppy said quietly, lying back down, relishing the cold of her pillow against her warm cheek. Gina had no shame. She could just imagine her purring down the phone to Drew, half-cut: ‘How much is this favour actually worth?’
‘No,’ Poppy went on. ‘She left that part out.’
Drew’s arm snaked around her torso, his body following the curve of hers.
‘I fired her,’ she said into the darkness.
Drew didn’t reply, but he shifted slightly, and she felt his heart quicken, his chest pressed against her back.
‘Fired her?’
‘Yes. I told her to get out.’
She felt his lips on her shoulder blade. ‘You did the right thing,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t happy for you. For us. She—’ He stopped.
‘She what?’
He sighed. ‘I don’t want to overstep.’
‘No, go on.’
‘It may be difficult for her, seeing you like this. You’re going places. You’re beautiful and clever and’ – he swallowed, sounding self-conscious – ‘I think we’re happy.’
‘We are.’
‘Well, she doesn’t have those things.’
‘I guess.’ It was odd to think that after years of standing slightly behind Gina while guys chatted her up and spoke across Poppy pretending she didn’t exist, Poppy was the one with the enviable life.
‘I didn’t want her to go,’ said Poppy. ‘I just got so angry. She was saying all this stuff about you …’
‘Like what?’
‘She said you were threatening. Intimidating.’ Poppy regretted it as soon as she’d said it.
He pulled her tighter into him. ‘Tonight? I would never have intended to be,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘But she had had a lot to drink. Maybe she saw it that way?’ He paused. ‘Have you ever found me aggressive?’
‘No,’ Poppy said, horrified. ‘Not at all. Never. Maybe it’s a good thing she’s leaving.’
Drew nodded. ‘Maybe. And it doesn’t mean that she’s going for ever, she’s still your friend. She’ll still come to stay with us. But working with friends – I did say I was worried about it.’
Poppy sniffed. ‘I know you did. I know. I just – we’ve been friends for ever. I love her.’
‘I know,’ said Drew. ‘I know you do. And I’m so sorry for my part in all of this. I should have been honest with you.’ He rocked Poppy gently, she didn’t know how long for, and eventually her eyelids began to drop. He was right. It would be OK. She and Gina would apologize to each other, agree that trying to work together was madness. Gina would admit that Drew was just as perfect as he seemed, that she had been jealous – not intimidated.
The next morning Poppy padded across the hall and up Gina’s little staircase. She was surprised that she wasn’t angrier at Gina for trying to make money from Drew. At Drew for paying, and for not volunteering that information. But Gina had been her lifeline for as long as she could remember. It was hard to imagine a life without her as her best friend.
The room was empty, as Poppy had sort of known it would be. Gina wasn’t the kind
of person who waited around for an apology. The bed was unmade, magazines and crumpled tissues filled the waste-paper bin, and on the desk was a piece of paper. She saw her own name in Gina’s round writing and turned it over.
‘When you realize I’m right, call me. G.’
Typical Gina. So self-assured, so completely convinced of her own righteousness. But this time she was wrong.
‘I gave your friend a lift to the station,’ said Mac when Poppy came down to the kitchen. He was the only one there, reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. ‘She seemed to have all of her things with her?’
‘Yes,’ said Poppy, taking a bottle of water from the fridge. ‘She got a call about another job, a last-minute one. Someone’s nanny dropped out just before a two-week trip to the Maldives.’ She was such a good liar these days. Six and a half years of practice made perfect, she supposed.
‘You’ll miss her,’ said Mac. It wasn’t a question. There wasn’t anything to say in response. Poppy made a non-committal noise and started to hunt for the bacon. There was no way Dilly was going to annex the Aga and do breakfast this morning.
‘It might be nice for you and Drew to have some privacy though, I suppose,’ Mac added from behind his newspaper. Without seeing his face, it was hard to read what he was really saying.
‘Yes,’ she replied tentatively.
‘He’s a good man.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m not sure Gina was so sure.’
Poppy missed her bottom lip with the water bottle and a dribble of water trickled down her neck into her cleavage. ‘What?’
Mac put the newspaper down. Poppy wished he had kept it where it was. It was easier to talk to him when he wasn’t looking straight at her. ‘He’s a complicated bloke.’
‘I know.’
‘I know you know. Six months or six years, you’re still his wife. I know Dilly has given you a hard time this weekend. She likes to think she knows best. But she’s not married to him. You are.’
Poppy smiled. ‘You couldn’t have told her that?’
‘You think I didn’t?’
There was a bead of condensation running down the bottle of water. Having really cold water constantly available was one of her favourite silly luxuries about life with Drew. It felt indulgent.
‘If you’ll let me, I’d like to give you some advice.’ He paused, clearly waiting for an invitation.
‘OK,’ said Poppy. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it. It seemed everyone had come here and trampled over the delicate, recently planted seeds of their relationship, saying and doing things which knocked their fragile equilibrium off balance.
‘This “deal” you made, this thing about keeping your pasts in the past …’
‘I know it sounds mad—’
Mac lifted his hand and to her own surprise, Poppy fell silent. ‘Ask him. About the past. He deserves a partner who knows everything about him and still wants to stick around. You both do. He’s not the judgemental type, you know. And I don’t think you are, either.’
As a child Poppy had often worried that certain people – priests, teachers, her mother – could see inside her mind. For a moment that ancient fear came flooding back. Did Mac know? It was the first time that weekend she had seen his creased face in anything other than a laugh or a smile. His eyes, the same auburn colour as his corkscrew curls, weren’t smiling any more. Not unkind, but hungry. As if this really mattered to him. Mac dropped his gaze back down to his mug of tea. ‘Lecture over.’
‘What lecture?’ asked Emma, coming into the kitchen with Ralph.
‘I was just telling Poppy here that those plastic water bottles are all ending up on the bottom of the ocean, choking sea turtles and circumcising dolphins.’ He smiled. ‘And she was very politely pretending to listen.’
‘I was listening!’ she replied, adding a laugh. She clearly wasn’t the only one who was proficient in dishonesty. Did Mac lie like that often? Perhaps he had someone else, someone who wasn’t Dilly. She’d be plump, Poppy decided. Nicely so. Someone he’d met through a work event, younger and sweet with big eyes and big hips and big breasts. ‘Can I get anyone tea or coffee? I was just going to make a cafetière, but I can’t find it in any of the cupboards. Gina must have put it somewhere.’ She realized, too late, what she had said.
‘Where is Gina?’ asked Dilly, who had come down to breakfast at just the wrong time.
‘She’s gone back to London,’ said Poppy, dropping to her knees to search another cupboard.
‘Already?’
‘I took her to the station while you were all sleeping off your hangovers,’ Mac said. ‘She’s got another job starting tomorrow. Maldives trip, wasn’t it?’
Poppy got up. She’d found the cafetière wedged at the back, behind a stack of little bowls. ‘Yep. All right for some.’
Everyone laughed. She caught Mac’s eye and sent him a silent ‘thank you’. He was, however much she hated to admit it, right. Drew deserved to be with someone who knew everything about him, even the things that hurt.
Asking him about his past, she reasoned, didn’t mean that she had to tell him anything about hers.
CHAPTER 38
Everyone was gone by mid-morning. That was the unofficial rule of a weekend guest, to be gone before eleven o’clock on Sunday. Poppy had read that online. She deleted her search history afterwards, as if it were hardcore porn she’d been bingeing on beneath the covers at night, rather than top tips for hosting. She and Drew had stood on the front steps of the house and waved everyone off, listening to the crunch of gravel and watching their neat four-by-fours disappear up the lane into the greenness of the countryside. Then they had retreated to the kitchen. The house felt emptier than it had before everyone had arrived.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Drew from the doorway of the kitchen.
‘Yeah. Fine,’ she replied, looking down at her hands in the washing-up bowl.
‘You look sad. Is it Gina?’
Poppy gave a little nod, not trusting herself to speak. Gina. Mac. Everything else. It was too much to wrestle into a sentence. ‘I’m fine, really,’ she tried. ‘I just want to get the kitchen cleaned up.’ Even as she said it she was aware of how weak it sounded. The kitchen was pretty much spotless. Dilly had insisted on loading and running the dishwasher because, in her own words, ‘Poppy must be exhausted, she’s not used to entertaining.’ So there was nothing to do. If Gina were here then the three of them would have sat outside and drunk beers with wedges of lime in them because they’d had so much wine already that weekend. Gina would make outrageous comments about all of the guests and even Drew wouldn’t have been able to help finding them funny.
‘I just feel bad,’ Poppy said, a little sob cracking through the sentence. Drew came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and peeling the washing-up gloves from her hands. ‘She doesn’t have anywhere to go; there’s no space for her at home. But I’m angry with her too. She didn’t know you before she offered to help you. You could have been anyone – she could have been selling me to a complete psycho.’
His arms were too tight around her torso. She pushed them away, trying to seem casual.
‘Come and sit down.’ He steered her to the window seat and guided her head into his chest. But the tears she had been holding back all morning wouldn’t come.
‘You will sort it out eventually, you know.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice little against his chest. ‘She’s so fucking stubborn.’
‘She just needs time to adjust, that’s all.’
She nodded. ‘I suppose. I just miss her.’
‘Is there anyone else you might want to see? Different friends? From university, perhaps? You could come up to London with me tomorrow to see them?’
Poppy sighed. How was she supposed to explain? There was no explanation, even if she could allow herself to lie to him, which would make the words ‘I only have one friend’ sound reasonable. She wasn’t that type of
person. She’d had friends. Proper, real friends. People she’d shared a house with and got ready before nights out with and shared secrets and uncharitable comments about mutual friends with. She just didn’t have them any more.
After she’d left the Walkers she’d lived in fear that she would find herself in the papers. So she’d closed her social media accounts. All of them. Hoping that they’d be gone before one of her friends’ faces ended up on the front page, slightly blurred next to her own face. She got messages. Calls and texts. One morning she walked calmly to the boardwalk and threw her phone into the churning water.
The girls emailed her eventually, when their texts went unanswered. All along, Poppy had craved their support, but when it came, she couldn’t take it. It was like the feeling of being so hungry you no longer wanted food.
The more distance she put between them and her, the lonelier she felt. And the loneliness, the pain of waking up each morning with no one to turn to and nowhere to go, made her guilt a little bit less sharp. It made her feel worse, which made her feel better.
‘No,’ said Poppy, pulling her focus back to the kitchen table. ‘It’s OK. Everyone’s working anyway. And I’ve got so much to do to get ready for the photo shoot; Emma said they might even come this week. It’s fine.’
‘You’re sure you won’t come with me?’ Drew offered. ‘You could go to a gallery or get a massage or something and then I could meet you for lunch?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s fine, darling. Really. I’m going to spend tomorrow cleaning up from the weekend, and go and buy flowers to go in each room, for the pictures.’
‘All right,’ he said, slowly getting to his feet. ‘If you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
BEFORE
For the first couple of days, Caroline didn’t worry. Jim had always been a sulker. It was classic of him to act out, to put their disappearing act higher on the list of wrongdoings than kissing their twenty-one-year-old nanny.