The Secrets Women Keep

by Fanny Blake

  ‘But you haven’t even looked,’ she protested. ‘Sit down, let me get the coffee and I’ll show you.’ There must be a way of getting through to him.

  With extremely bad grace, he did as she asked, but she noticed that he didn’t even glance at the drawings. He steepled his hands in front of him and drummed the tips of his fingers against each other, staring at them as if there was nothing else in the room.

  She brought the coffee over and put it down on the table. ‘Biscuit?’

  He shook his head, fingers still moving.

  ‘Now,’ she said firmly, starting again. ‘What I wanted to show you is the way Jess and Simon – he’s the architect that Dan used for the Arthur – are planning to make over the old place. I think his ideas are remarkable and completely in keeping with Trevarrick. They’ve made me realise how much I still love it. We can’t let it go, and anyway,’ she reached for her brother’s hand, but he removed it to his lap, ‘I need something to do with myself now, and this would be something to focus on.’

  ‘You’ve got your teaching. You’ve got your painting.’ He wouldn’t look at her, but the muscles of his jaw were moving as he tried to control his temper. She recognised the signs.

  ‘Yes, but they’re not enough. I’m down to a couple of evenings and only two days a week at the college at the moment. The cutbacks mean I may have even less next term, and without Dan, I’ve got plenty of time on my hands.’ How to explain the empty hours of nothingness in which time hung so heavy? Her private teaching was sporadic and her own painting was failing to provide the consolation she was used to finding there. Instead, days passed without her achieving anything. Sometimes she went out walking. She could cover miles of pavement or park, losing track of time, barely noticing the route she took. Sometimes she sat at home, lost in thought as time drifted past without her registering. ‘At least let me show you,’ she appealed.

  He shook his head again, whistling out between his teeth. His silence invited her to start. As she got into her stride, she sensed him relax a little as he listened to what she had to say. He was reacting as she had, remembering how much they owed to the place. ‘So you see,’ she concluded, ‘I want this to go ahead. Partly for our sake, our family’s I mean, but for Daniel too. A kind of memorial, I suppose. Perhaps that sounds sentimental, but it’s something I want to do.’ That was one thing of which she was sure.

  Terry said nothing, then gave a long, despairing sigh as he raked his fingers back and forth through his hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I can see why you want to do this, but I can’t support you.’

  ‘But why not? It’ll make such an improvement.’ Frustrated by his pig-headedness, Rose crossed to the window, wondering how she could persuade him. She stared out into the garden, dismal under a Tupperware sky. A grey squirrel hung upside down on the bird feeder, helping itself, its scrawny tail flicking as it filched the nuts. She banged on the glass to frighten it away. The animal looked up, beady-eyed, alarmed, then jumped to the ground and bounded up the garden.

  ‘The truth is, I need my share of the money now.’ He made a noise as if he was in pain. ‘Or at least the promise of it.’

  ‘But why?’ Rose repeated, as she returned to the table.

  He swung round in his chair to face her. ‘I’m in trouble, Rose. Real trouble.’

  To her surprise, he reached out and grasped her wrist, so tight it hurt.

  ‘If I tell you, you’ve got to swear you won’t tell Eve. She mustn’t know.’

  She wrenched her arm out of his grip, rubbing the red mark on her skin. The last thing she wanted was to get caught up in her brother and sister-in-law’s quarrels, but she couldn’t remember seeing Terry like this for years; not since he was a boy desperately pleading with her to lie for him over how the pair of china wally dogs over the fireplace in the bar got broken. They weren’t valuable, but they had been handed down from their great-grandmother. Knowing how angry their father would be, she had hidden the football in the cloakroom and blamed the cat. Her childhood instinct to protect was re-emerging again, despite not wanting to keep another secret. Not telling him about Eve bumping into Will already felt like one betrayal too many. But he was her brother. She had to help him.

  ‘Of course I won’t if you don’t want me to. What’s happened?’

  ‘I’m in deep shit.’ He hung his head. If she didn’t know him better, she’d have thought he was about to cry. ‘I really am. I owe a lot of money.’

  Only money. Thank God. She relaxed a little. ‘Is that so urgent? You’ll soon have another job and you’ll be able to pay it back. Do you want me to tide you over?’

  ‘I’m talking thousands of pounds. Thousands.’ He didn’t look up. His elbows were on the table, hands clasped round the back of his neck.

  ‘But how? What have you done?’ She felt real panic. Their parents had been cavalier about money and had died leaving nothing much more than the rundown hotel, but they had never, as far as she knew, run up any substantial debts. When they were in financial trouble, they didn’t try to keep up appearances, just let the place disintegrate around them. Rose, Terry and Daniel were left to borrow what was needed to transform it.

  ‘Gambling. I’ve got way out of my depth.’

  She only just heard him.

  ‘But you can’t have run up that much.’ He liked the occasional flutter on the horses. All right, perhaps a bit more than occasional. But not any more than the next man. ‘You’ve only been out of work a couple of months.’ Rose realised how Pollyanna-ish she was sounding.

  Terry shook his head. ‘It’s been going on for longer than that. Much longer. Years, in fact. Do you think I could have a drink?’

  Asking for a drink at this time of day meant it must be serious. Rose didn’t argue, just took a tumbler into the sitting room and poured him a large Scotch. When she returned to the kitchen, Terry hadn’t moved. She took ice cubes out of the freezer and added a couple out of habit, then filled a jug with tap water and put everything in front of him. At last he sat straight, added some water and took a sip. His expression told her there was much worse to come.

  ‘Why do you think I was fired?’ he asked quietly.

  Had she missed part of the conversation when she was out of the room? ‘You weren’t fired,’ she said slowly. ‘You were made redundant. That’s what you told us.’

  ‘No. That’s the story the partners agreed I could put out. Oh God, it’s such a mess.’ He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I couldn’t tell any of you. You see, I’d had to borrow some money from them, and Colin, the other senior partner, found out before I had time to pay it back.’

  ‘What do mean, he found out? What have you done?’ Rose tried to sound calm despite her trepidation.

  Terry held up a hand. ‘Shh. Let me finish. I, er . . . I didn’t ask them. I knew they’d want to know why I needed so much cash, so it seemed better to borrow and pay it back without them noticing. Except they did notice. Colin agreed that if I squared up immediately, before any damage was done, and then left the company, only Neville, our other partner, need know. They were very decent. The perks of a small company and an old friend. There was no redundancy.’

  ‘You mean you stole from them?’ But Terry would never steal unless absolutely desperate. If only Daniel were here. He would talk to him, see a way through this, maybe even trust him with a job. Who else would now?

  ‘Not exactly. And it wasn’t my fault,’ he hastened to reassure her. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Whose fault was it then?’

  ‘I’d had a bit of bad luck. Nothing that couldn’t be put right. If Colin hadn’t found out . . .’ He didn’t finish.

  Rose remembered him hunched in front of the TV in Italy, not shifting until the horse racing was over, keeping a tally of the cricket scores and the football results on his phone. Eve had often complained about his Saturday afternoons spent engrossed in TV sports programmes. But Rose had never taken any of it very seriously. Wasn’t that just what some men did?
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  ‘I’d maxed out my credit cards. Easily done.’ Breezily said, as if the most natural thing in the world. ‘I had to borrow the money just to pay them back and should have sorted it all out quickly without anyone knowing, but then I had a string of losses . . . A couple of them were dead certs, too. I don’t know what happened.’ He looked suddenly defeated. ‘You don’t want to know.’

  Rose exploded. ‘No, I don’t. You bloody idiot, Terry. You bloody, bloody idiot. Just tell me how much you owe.’

  ‘Over two hundred grand.’

  Rose felt the sum like a punch in the gut. She gasped.

  ‘Well, maybe just a little less.’ He brightened for the briefest of moments before he went on. ‘But the real problem . . .’ he swallowed as he clasped his hands tightly together, ‘is that I’ve taken a mortgage on the house without Eve knowing. She thinks it’s all paid off. Well, it was. But I had to find the money somewhere if I was going to pay off the firm and then two of my Visa cards. I thought I was an expert at juggling debt. Turns out I’m not. Now I’m about to default on the bloody mortgage and I’ll be in worse shit than ever.’

  ‘And even if I find the money to help you, then what?’ She looked him straight in the eye, refusing to let him turn away. ‘I’m not agreeing to the sale of all three hotels as a package to Madison Gadding to fund your gambling habit. You need professional help.’

  Terry looked pained. ‘But a third of the profit from them is mine by rights. You can’t deny me that. Look, I didn’t mean to get into this mess, but once it started to go wrong . . . This is just a blip. Once I’ve sorted it out, I’ll be fine. I don’t need to see anyone. I don’t need help. I can stop this tomorrow once I’ve straightened everything out.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ she shouted. ‘Why not today? That’s the talk of an addict. Christ, Terry, can’t you hear yourself? Therapy’s for people smart enough to realise they need help.’ Furious, she wasn’t going to let him talk his way round her. ‘A blip? How can you say that? Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘How could I? I can’t talk to Eve and you’ve had so much on your plate. I would have asked Daniel. If he’d been here, perhaps I wouldn’t have got in this mess.’

  ‘You can’t blame him.’ Rose was outraged. Daniel would be as angry with him as she was, but he would do his best to be fair (as she was trying to be), and would stick to his guns (as she would too). ‘I’m not going to sort out your problems by selling Trevarrick. Just not.’ She ignored his despairing sigh. ‘There has to be another way.’

  Terry didn’t stay for much longer. Once they’d finished their coffee, there wasn’t much more to be said. His relief at having unburdened himself was obvious, although he was still determined not to confide in anyone else. ‘I’m on top of it, Rose,’ he insisted. ‘I just needed you to understand why I need the money urgently.’

  ‘I do. And I am going to think about the best way to help you. But there is one thing before I do anything,’ Rose concluded. ‘If you’re going to get yourself out of this, you must tell Eve.’

  Terry looked aghast. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I can’t do that. You don’t understand. I can’t tell her the house is under threat. She’ll kill me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame her, but you’ve got to be honest with each other,’ said Rose, reminded of how Daniel had ultimately let her down. But would she really have wanted to know the truth if he had lived? Sometimes she thought the answer was yes; at others, no. This was hardly the same thing, though. ‘However difficult it’s going to be, Eve would want to know. In fact, she deserves to know, and I’m sure she’ll be on your side. That’s one condition. And I want you to get proper help. If you do those two things, I’ll find a way to help you, with or without Madison Gadding.’

  He pursed his lips, weighing up what might happen if he refused. Then he inclined his head slightly. ‘I’ll think about it. I will. Although I really don’t want to involve her.’

  ‘I know you don’t,’ sympathised Rose. ‘But if you want my help . . .’

  Eve was feeding the chickens. Five of them had followed her up the garden, flapping round the corner of the potting shed, waddling out from under bushes, fluttering down from the low wall that divided off the vegetable garden, clucking behind her. Her rescue hens. Their evident enjoyment of their new freedom after a half-life as battery hens was a pleasure. When she reached the run, they dashed in, fussing round the dish as she tossed in the pellets, dropping the leftovers from last night’s supper on the ground. While they ate, their beaks tapping against the metal dish, she filled the drinker with water from the garden tap and put it in the centre of the run.

  Terry was out. His note only said he’d gone to London, but she was praying that a job interview might have taken him from home. He had been so difficult over the last few weeks that she was pleased to have the place to herself for once. She had tried to be sympathetic, by not coming home too late, by cooking what she knew he liked, not complaining about the wall-to-wall sport on TV, telling him about what was going on at the agency, and had tried talking to him about his situation. But nothing jolted him out of this awful lethargy. He wasn’t interested in what she had to say, or in talking. She imagined them living like this for the rest of their lives, and despaired.

  Just as she was checking for eggs in the nesting boxes, her hand rummaging in the straw, her phone rang. With an egg in one hand, she didn’t bother to check the caller identity, but she recognised Will’s voice immediately.

  ‘You said I could call. Bad time?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ She wiped the shit off her finger on to the chicken wire. Not finding another egg, she shut the lid of the box. Squeezing herself through, then hoicking the mesh gate past its sticking point, she checked the latch was secure. She didn’t want to make it easy for the marauding local foxes. She retreated briefly to the warmth of the kitchen. The hens could wait to go into their nesting box until they’d finished talking.

  ‘I’m hoping you’ll have lunch with me,’ he said. ‘Call it unfinished business.’

  Eve took in the kitchen, the pine table where nothing had been put away. The day’s papers were spread across it, the jam pots had been left without their lids, the butter was lined with deep gashes where one of the cats had helped itself. The sink was piled high with dirty plates and a pan in which Terry had obviously made scrambled eggs. Damp tea towels were strewn over the worktop, interspersed with mugs of half-drunk tea and coffee, teaspoons laden with cold squeezed-out tea bags. He might at least tidy up after himself. That wasn’t asking too much, was it?

  Leaning against the bar of the Aga, Eve concentrated on Will and what he was saying.

  ‘I’m off to Borneo. Been commissioned to do some photography on vanishing wildlife and the impact of the palm oil plantations. I thought we might get together before I go. Are you coming up to town at all?’

  The pile of ironing sitting on the side seemed to be even higher than when she last looked. The fridge was emptier. The shoes by the back door were dirtier. But this wasn’t entirely Terry’s fault, she reminded herself. Usually they rubbed along together, sharing the chores. But the redundancy had knocked him for six, and she had been totally preoccupied with the agency.

  ‘Say something, at least,’ Will implored. ‘Anything.’

  She imagined the intimacy of a neatly laid restaurant table, the anticipation of good food, the company of someone who wasn’t suffering from one of Terry’s lugubrious moods, who wanted to be with her. But she knew that agreeing was quite wrong.

  ‘I am,’ she said, her heart wildly contradicting her head. ‘I’ll be up on Wednesday for a morning meeting.’

  After settling on a restaurant, they hung up and Eve went back to shut up the chickens, her mind still on Will.

  If she saw him, what harm? She tried to ignore the flutter that told her she was flirting with danger. All she was doing was agreeing to a lunch for old times’ sake. Life was too short to hold a grudge for ever. They’d air their past, catch up a
little more, then say goodbye. Her heart contracted a fraction. By the time she saw Rose, the lunch would be over and they would laugh about it together. Will would be out of the country and she wouldn’t see him again. Terry would have a job, his mood would lift as his purpose was redefined and life would get back to normal. The years had changed them all. Nothing was what it once had been. A meeting with Will was hardly likely to be the seismic shift that she understood Rose feared. But to be on the safe side, perhaps she wouldn’t tell her. Not yet, at least. And she certainly wasn’t going to confess a thing to Terry.

  May

  20

  The sand was left corrugated by the receding tide, pockets of water gleaming among the ridges and runnels. As Rose walked towards the sea, each footprint was quickly sucked away. She was back in Cornwall at last, and happy. The ghosts she had feared had kept their distance. She felt as at home as always. On either side of her the beach stretched away to the distant rocks, the tidemark a dark line on the flank of the cliff behind them. Children were racing after balls, carrying buckets, spades and shrimping nets, or flying neon-coloured kites with patient parents. Out to sea, a couple of hardy windsurfers tore back and forth. Behind her, families sat huddled by the cliffs or the beach wall, sheltered by garish plastic windbreaks, picking the sand out of their picnics. Everything was much the same as it had always been.

  In the distance, a stick-like figure hopped awkwardly over the breaking waves, arms stiff at her sides, shoulders hunched. Anna. Rose clutched her daughter’s discarded clothes and towel to her, feeling the wind’s chill. The suggestion of swimming had been greeted with horror by the rest of the family at breakfast, but Anna was adamant. ‘It’ll be fun. Sun’s shining. For old times’ sake. Come on.’