The Secrets We Keep

by Jonathan Harvey

  And I think, Oh my God what world have I entered here?

  And, Oh my God this is so EXCITING.

  Resisting the urge to tweet OMG just caught some like PENSIONER doing gak in the bogs #modelling, I head back upstairs to see if Aba’s come and met us yet.

  Owen

  Who was it said that if you go snooping, you’re bound to find something bad?

  I really wish I’d not done it now. But then I wasn’t snooping, not really. But I did find something bad. I try not to let it pervade my thoughts. I try to focus on the brainstorming session I’m in with Minty and Gerard.

  ‘Whaddabout . . .’ says Minty, ‘“Some people are gay, geddoverit?”’

  I stare at her blankly. The pashmina she has slung round her shoulders is an identical hue to the walls of the meeting room. It’s like her head is floating in mid-air.

  ‘Well, we can’t have that,’ tuts Gerard.

  ‘No?’

  I say nothing. If only Mum hadn’t left her reading glasses in the car. And if only I hadn’t tried said glasses on. And then looked at his phone to see how big the apps looked with them on.

  ‘No. That was the logo Stonewall used a few years back.’

  Or did I put the glasses on as an excuse to look at his apps? I’m not sure.

  Minty shakes her head. I have no idea why she thinks she can disagree. ‘That was Get Over It. This is Geddoverit. They’re pronounced differently.’

  ‘But they’re the same.’

  ‘Tell that to an art director.’

  We are meant to be coming up with some gimmicky sayings to put on the website to up our profile. Something catchy to grab a few headlines in the pink press. Usually my heart would be in it. Up until yesterday, I was almost gung-ho about it. Today I feel completely disconnected from my two colleagues, the website, and the task in hand.

  ‘OK, you clearly don’t like that,’ Minty says.

  Minty, real name Araminta, thinks it will really put us on the map. She has a background in PR.

  ‘It’s derivative.’

  She used to do the PR for Hepatitis B.

  ‘It’s an homage. Anyway, I have another. How about . . . “Is that chair really so gay?” with a picture of a chair.’

  She quickly draws a chair on her pad, and shows us.

  ‘Obviously it’ll look better than that,’ she says quickly.

  Gerard stares at her, flummoxed.

  I’ve never been sure whether she promoted Hepatitis B – ‘Get this, it’s a great disease to have!’ – or whether she promoted health advice for it. I hope it was the latter.

  ‘Only I was on this, like, train the other day. And these kids got on? And there was this seat? And it had, like, stains on it? And the kids were like “OMG I can’t sit there, that chair’s so gay?”’

  Gerard is looking at me. Dragging my head back into the meeting, I shake it.

  ‘A euphemistic chair doesn’t really do it for me.’

  ‘Ah, but is the chair a euphemism? Is it? I don’t think so.’ Minty is sounding wound up now.

  I stand up. It’s pretty dramatic. They both look surprised.

  ‘I need some air. I’m taking an early lunch.’

  ‘You do look a bit peaky,’ Minty says, full of faux concern, hoping against hope I’m telling the truth and not running as fast as my legs will carry me away from the two most ridiculous ideas in the history of brainstorming. I see Gerard looking punitively at me and I know what he’s thinking. Thanks for leaving me on my own with this loopy bitch.

  But he will never say it. And nor will I. Not here, anyway, at work, as it is a sentence which has the power to offend both fifty per cent of the population (women) and anyone who has ever suffered from problems with mental health.

  In that moment I hate how politically correct my life has become, and I head for the door.

  ‘Don’t forget you’ve got that face-to-face with the Metro at two-thirty,’ Minty calls after me.

  ‘I won’t,’ I call back. I had forgotten, actually, so it’s a good job she’s reminded me. More publicity for the website, masquerading as a human-interest piece about ‘what it’s like five years after your dad goes missing’. I’m dreading it.

  I meet Sonia at the Christmas markets and we eat hot dogs as we trudge round the stalls feigning a veneer of caring about Christmas. Sonia’s one of my oldest friends. I tell her everything. Ish. If anyone knows where the bodies are buried, it’s her.

  ‘Matt’s got Grindr on his phone,’ I say.

  ‘Since when?’ This is what I like about Sonia. Nothing shocks her. Someone else would have shrieked an OMG and been bewildered by this. She puts her level-headedness down to managing a boutique hotel. She says if you can deal with demanding guests and staff day in, day out, nothing fazes you. I couldn’t do her job, that’s for sure.

  ‘He says it’s just been the last few days.’

  ‘He knows you know?’

  I nod.

  ‘So. He’s getting a bit of extramarital? God, the dirty dog. How do you feel about this?’

  ‘Well, he says he’s just got it to chat to mates.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe. What would you think?’

  ‘It’s hard to compare like for like,’ she says eventually. ‘I don’t think there is an app for Josh to find local women for a quick shag.’

  ‘No, there is,’ I correct her. ‘There’s Tinder.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I better check his BlackBerry when I get in.’

  ‘He showed me the messages he’s been sending. It was all banter. And on his profile picture thingy it said he was partnered and he was on there for networking.’

  ‘Networking?’ She sounds incredulous.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s go in here. I’m perishing. And I need the loo.’

  We head into the theatre, the Royal Exchange. I’ve not been in for years and had forgotten what an incredible feat of architecture it is. The vast Victorian hall with the Eighties spaceship of a theatre landed in the middle of it. Sonia rushes off to the toilet and I grab us a coffee and a table. I play with my phone. I tag myself and Sonia at the theatre on Facebook. And I know why I’m doing it. I’m doing it so that Matt will see it and be surprised. See, Matt? You’re not the only one who does stuff you might not expect. Like go to the theatre in the middle of the day. OK, so it’s not up there with sleeping with strange men behind your husband’s back, but still. It’s as impulsive as I get. When Sonia returns from the toilet it turns out the hall is a completely inappropriate environment for a confidential tête-à-tête between friends of the ‘I’ve just found out my husband is using a quick-shag app on his phone’ variety, as every word we say echoes around the cavernous space. We lower our voices when an usherette casts us daggers as she prepares to work the day’s matinee performance.

  ‘So it’s possible he is just using it for chatting with guys,’ she says, noticing on her phone that her lunch hour is quickly coming to an end.

  ‘But why can’t he just pick up the phone and chat to his mates?’

  ‘Maybe he’s bored.’

  That stings. It’s what I’ve already sensed, what I’ve already felt. Is this phone thing just a manifestation of that? He’s bored with me. Why else would he want to chat with other gay men? It’s not like Grindr is the best place for swapping ideas and political manifestos. Admittedly the ‘banter’ he was having in the chats he showed me was pretty mundane. In fact, if he’d been bored before signing up to Grindr, I can’t see why he wasn’t suicidal by now, such was the banality of the chats, but each to their own, I guess.

  But I can’t help but think, What didn’t he show me?

  ‘You two need to do more things together, other than just sitting in every night watching telly and getting wrecked.’

  ‘I don’t get wrecked.’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘We’re going on the demo against Humphrey Sanderbach next week.’

 
I can tell she’s trying not to roll her eyes. A political sojourn is clearly not her idea of fun.

  ‘How Eighties.’ She smiles, tightly. ‘Are you going to write a protest song about AZT as well?’

  ‘You have been reading your history books!’

  Sonia’s brother is much older than her, and the campest thing to ever walk this planet. As a result, Sonia is sometimes better informed on all things lavender than me.

  ‘What was his picture like?’ She changes tack suddenly.

  ‘Matt’s?’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Oh, just a head shot. The one from his Facebook.’

  Sonia nods. ‘So he didn’t have his bits out.’ She says this as if it’s consolation, proof that nothing is going on. ‘Well,’ she continues, ‘it’s as I always say: if you go snooping, you’ll definitely find something. The fact that you’re suspicious in the first place says it all.’

  Ah. So it was her who said it.

  ‘Then you mean I’ve only got myself to blame?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I didn’t download the fucking app on his phone.’

  The usherette narrows her eyes, and looks ready to give me a kung-fu kick.

  ‘So why did you go snooping?’

  ‘I didn’t. I swear.’

  She looks like she doesn’t believe me.

  ‘Mum left her reading glasses in my car. I tried them on to see what they did to my eyes.’

  She’s laughing. She’s laughing because it sounds so farfetched.

  ‘And you accidentally picked Matt’s phone up, entered his passcode and opened one of his apps. I believe you, Owen Bioletti. Thousands, however, would smell a porky.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I say, defeated.

  ‘I have to go. Sorry. My time’s not as flexible as yours.’

  I nod, sigh, and get up to hug her. She smells reassuringly as she always does, of Citron Citron by Miller Harris. In fact, I probably bought it for her. And it’s nice to know she wears it even when she doesn’t realize she’s going to be meeting me for an emergency date.

  ‘How’s work?’ I say as an afterthought, in an ‘oh God we talked about me and not about you’ kind of way, and she dismisses the question with a shake of her fingerless-mittened hand.

  ‘Another time,’ she says. ‘New chef. Massive cunt.’

  ‘Literally? Or . . .’

  ‘Is, not has. See you, Sweet Cheeks.’

  ‘See you, Sugar Tits.’

  And off she goes. She gathers her poncho around her, bracing herself for the zero temperatures outside. I wouldn’t be surprised if it snowed. She stops, turns to look at me and calls back, ‘Talk to him.’

  It’s what she always says. It’s what I always know needs doing. I nod to tell her that I will. I turn to grab my coffee and trudge back to the office, something I’m not looking forward to, when I hear a man calling my name. He says it twice before I turn round to locate the face.

  It’s Dylan. And I’m immediately embarrassed. I saw him only a few days ago at Mum’s neighbour’s housewarming jaunt. Something happened. It wasn’t a biggie in the great scheme of things, but I wish it hadn’t. I’m quite a private person, which is a bit of a juxtaposition with that interview I’m doing later, but he’d had a few drinks and was being a bit indiscreet about his and Lucy’s sex life. TMI when it’s your parents’ friends. But then, he’d asked me about my and Matt’s sex life. Well, actually, what he’d said was, ‘I bet you two are at it like rabbits.’ And I’d found myself offloading. I’d not even had a drink and yet I stood there and told him things I’d not even told Sonia. He was really sweet and nodded and touched my arm and made all the right sympathetic noises before saying, ‘I’m sure it’s just a glitch.’ And now here he is, stood in front of me, looking quite funky for his forty-two years in a baggy parka. Matt used to joke that he was a DILF, but I’ve never really seen it myself. He bounds over, drags me to him for a bear hug and then loudly, ebulliently slaps my back and is full of rather-too-raucous-for-the-theatre bonhomie, asking how I am, what I’m doing here, etc. etc. He was passing and popped in for some greetings cards and he asks if I’ve time for a drink. I explain I have to get back for an interview, and he says he’ll walk part of the way with me as he’s heading back to the university where he teaches.

  I wonder how my life would have turned out had I gone to university. After Dad went I lost interest in school and bummed around for a few years doing dead-end jobs, just to prove to my mum that I didn’t need academia to get me by. Looking back, I think I was running away from Mum, because although I knew she needed my support, I was discovering my sexuality and I didn’t want her to. It would probably sound disingenuous to some, but although Mum had always had gay friends and colleagues – as had Dad – I still harboured the suspicion that she would rather her own son wasn’t. I was partying a bit too much, drinking a bit too much; thankfully I never got into drugs or anything too wild, but what Mum saw as a reaction to Dad going missing was actually me running away from telling her the truth. She could tell something was up, and I was convinced she had twigged – and when she told me we had to sit down and have a serious talk, I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to say it for myself, that she had worked it out and would offer up the simple statement, ‘I know you’re gay.’

  We sat in the kitchen, a brew each. She even put KitKats on a saucer. So this was the recipe for the perfect coming-out tea party, was it?

  But instead she said, ‘Is there something you’re not telling me about your dad?’

  She thought that my running around going a bit crazy and coming in at all hours was because I knew some things about Dad’s departure and wasn’t telling her. That I knew where he was, and was finding the secret hard to keep. When I told her not to be so ridiculous she looked offended. And when I eventually said, ‘The thing I’m not telling you is . . . I’m gay,’ she actually burst out laughing. Probably with relief.

  It must have looked strange to her, her usually sporty son necking vodka and stumbling round the house at two in the morning, bumping into things, breaking things. But I guess I was discovering my identity and readjusting. Throughout my childhood, my dream had been to be a tennis pro. When I messed up the tournament in Eastbourne I had to do a big reality check and realize that maybe that life wasn’t for me. It was a staggering feeling, thinking you’re on the scrap-heap at fourteen years of age. Maybe I just did everything too young.

  Or maybe messing up that tournament wasn’t completely my fault.

  And maybe I did know more about Dad than I’d ever let on.

  Oh God.

  And then. Something weird happens. It’s like I’ve conjured her up by thinking about Dad and that night and . . .

  I see, all of a sudden, my nan walking along on the other side of the street. I’ve not seen her for almost a year. It was my birthday. I opened her card. Twenty pounds fell out. But the message read:

  I’m ashamed of you you great dirty faggot. Oh yes. Stop coming round my house and being all airy fairy and limping your fucking wrists you dirty cock sucker. Oh yes. Fucking Dale Winton features. Your father would be ashamed. Amazed you could even lift a tennis racket with them wrists. Oh yes.

  My nan has a bit of a drink problem. I’d put up with quite a bit over the years. Most of the time she could be quite sweet. But this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  I got straight in my car and drove over to her place. She lives in a little twee street of old cottages. You’d never know what bile lay behind the latticed windows and olde-worlde doors. As I pulled up outside I saw a woman coming out, not Nan, with a shocking pink streak in her hair. Not Nan’s age, no idea who she was. I went and banged on the door. No reply. I shouted up at the woman who’d just left, who by now was nearing the end of the street,

  ‘Oi! Pinky Head! Is she in?!’

  Pinky Head – I know, SO childish – looked back, looked alarmed to see me, then hurried on her way. I banged on the door again. Inside I heard a noise. S
he was in.

  I banged a few more times, then shouted through the letter box.

  ‘It’s me! The cock sucker! I just wanted to say . . .’

  And now I put her twenty pounds through the letter box.

  ‘Keep your fucking money, you evil old bitch!’

  And then I slammed the letter box. And I got in my car. And I’ve not seen her since.

  Till now. But just as quickly as I see her, she disappears. She’s gone. Like I’ve spirited her away.

  I realize that I have been walking alongside Dylan for most of five minutes, saying absolutely nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Being so silent.’

  ‘I can do silence,’ he says nonchalantly. ‘Anyway, you’ve probably got a lot on your mind.’

  I look at him and he smiles sadly. ‘By the way, I’ve not said anything to your mum about . . . what you told me. Not mentioned it to Lucy. What happens between us stays between us.’

  I am relieved. But it’s odd. I’ve known this man for years and suddenly there is something approaching intimacy between us. As the sunlight hits his face I notice freckles I’ve not registered before. If we lived in London he’d be what’s known as a Shoreditch hipster. The neatly trimmed beard, oversized glasses, Jesus-long hair tied up in a small ball on top of his head. Skinny jeans, oversized parka – that’s got to be pretend fur on the collar, he’s too left-wing to wear real – and a battered old satchel slung round his shoulders. His eyes sparkle. Maybe they look bigger because his glasses magnify them.

  ‘A few secrets never did anyone any harm,’ he adds with a wink. He holds eye contact for a bit longer than he should and it makes me tingle. I have a physical reaction to a look. I swallow. I feel a tingling in my groin. I catch my breath. We stand staring at each other. It feels like madness. This is my mum’s friend’s husband. He is a heterosexual man. He is twice my age. There can be nothing between us.

  And yet suddenly it feels like there is.

  I must be imagining this. But why is he looking at me like that? I make a fumbled excuse about having to rush back, and having to turn right here and he’s so cool in the face of my nerves that I know I must be imagining things, I must be. I am just confused because of what I’ve found out about Matt and I’m looking at my friend here and rewriting the truth. As I rush back to the office I think, it’s OK. I hardly ever see him. I can forget that second ever happened. Well, maybe it was longer than a second. But I have shown myself up and read something into a look that clearly wasn’t there. But it’s OK, as I won’t see him again for ages and then it will be forgotten. By me. Over. Kaput.