The Secrets We Keep

by Jonathan Harvey

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry to hear about that. Press might want to talk about that. Is that OK or is it off limits?’

  I just shrug. Coz the idea of anyone wanting to talk to me about anything right now is weird enough, NEVER MIND THE BLOODY PRESS.

  Bimbi doesn’t sound American any more.

  ‘Why is my brother coming? Is he going to take me home?’ I ask.

  ‘I think he’s going to rap your knuckles and give you a talking to,’ says Aba.

  ‘I had a pretty decent chat with your mum, Calista,’ Bimbi’s saying. ‘And you do need your knuckles rapping a bit; you were out of order. What you need to realize is in life, if you fuck up, there are consequences. Your brother coming here is one of those consequences. Whether he drags you back or lets you stay . . .’

  ‘He’s got no power over me.’

  She ignores this. ‘Whether he drags you back or lets you stay is ultimately down to how you behave when he gets here. Don’t you think?’

  I shrug. I don’t know. But rather than risk the wrath of WRONG ANSWER MISSY I reply, ‘Totes ’n’ stuff.’

  And Bimbi doesn’t know what to make of that.

  ‘I hope you stay, Calista. But that’s in your hands now. Don’t fuck us about and we won’t fuck you about. We’re all about making money. This is a business. And we could make some out of you, I reckon. Which means you can too. But rearrange the words: lap, Gods, you, up to . . .’

  Weirdo or what?

  And then with a flourish of the hand, like it’s an actual dance move, she dismisses us.

  It’s like we’ve been to see the Queen or something, coz Aba walks backwards out of the room doing these little bowy things, all the time saying stuff like, ‘Thank you, Bimbi. Much appreciated, Bimbi. Lick me out till I’m panting, Bimbi.’

  Or whatever.

  Either way it’s really annoying.

  And either way I just KNOW Owen will make me go home. Well, tough. He’ll have to phone the Feds or something. Coz I ain’t goin’ nowhere wid dat homo homey. *sucks teeth*

  I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Talking all ghetto and sucking my teeth. It really makes Aba laugh. Though she did say I better be careful who I do it in front of. Whatever that means. Like I can choose my audience at all times!

  The model flat is amazing. I mean, it’s not huge by any stretch of the imagination, and I have to remember that even though we live in a shithole now I have been spoilt living in big amazing houses in the past when Dad was around and he and Mum were coining it in. But this place is, I guess, what they call bijou. Which basically means it’s tiny but it’s in London, and anywhere in London is worth gazillions of pounds. It’s also really dark, but that’s coz it’s got three bedrooms and there’s two sets of bunk beds in each, so it’s a bit cramped, and some of the beds are in front of the windows, blocking the light out.

  Not all the bunks are being used at the mobo (I’m doing that too. I’ve started saying mobo instead of moment coz I think it makes me look really ethnic and cultured and street) and stuff. I’m sharing my room with a Brazilian girl called Sabine and this really amazing posh girl called Zaraah who’s staying here coz her parents are living in South Africa. I make up LOADS of words in front of them and they just think I’m really cool and quirky and like . . . that’s my thing. When actually I just started today, really, coz I’m worried I’m not one hundred per cent hip enough to be a model? Sabina is SO. PRETTY. Like, she has that Brazilian look? (The continent, not the fanny shave.) So her skin is all brown and shiny and her hair is all brown and shiny too, but OH MY GOD you should see her eyes. They are BEYOND.

  (Aba says this if she likes something. Everything is BEYOND.)

  Coz you’d expect them to be brown or black or dark anyway. But actually they are this piercing sky blue. It looks like she has contacts in but – OMG – she hasn’t. I know. BEYOND. And she has these perky little breasts that look like two rum babas on her chest. I don’t know this coz I’ve come over all lesbotic on myself, but actually she hangs around the flat in her skimpety-pimpety undies all the time and usually I’d find that gross and be shouting PUT IT AWAY LOVE but she is the sweetest little thing and just laughs at everything I say, even if I’m being serious.

  I didn’t understand at first that she just giggles all the time and it’s just shyness about not being able to speak the language properly and I was putting a framed photo of Dad on the bedside cabinet and she pointed and giggled and I was like,

  ‘Actually it’s not funny? Coz he like . . . went missing? Five years ago? He could actually be dead?’

  And she looked at the picture again and then just like PISSED HERSELF.

  So I got off the bed and slapped her round the face, which was when Zaraah came in and said, ‘Sabine doesn’t speak English, babes.’

  And I was like, ‘Oh God, hon. I’m sorry.’ And I opened my arms to Sabine and like went, ‘Hug, hon?’ (I’ve decided I’m going to call everyone hon now. It’s another of my things.)

  But Sabine ran into the bathroom and was crying really loudly.

  ‘Da . . . rama queen!’ Zaraah said under her breath. And I just realized in that moment. We’re going to be bezzy bezzy mates for forever and a day. Like, even if she made a lezzy bezzy pass at me I’d knock her back and be really forgiving about it. And if she stole my boyfriend off me I know we’d fall out for like, six weeks or something, but eventually we’d be pals again – hashtag, sisters before misters!

  Zaraah really rocks a red-haired look. She’s like one of those really ginger people that gets away with it? She catches me staring at her arm coz it is so pale it looks see-through and she goes, ‘Stop lezzing off on me hon!’ and we both REALLY laugh at that.

  But then she says red-haired people have one less layer of skin than other people.

  And that’s how I feel sometimes. And I tell her. And she nods and I just KNOW she can’t get over how deep and feelingy and emoshey I am. Like I understand things? Without really having to know them?

  She thinks I’m pretty fierce to have lied through my back teeth to get here. Although she has an annoying habit of saying Mum sounds ‘cute’ when I tell her about her. And even though in the photo by my bed you can see Owen in it and he’s about 14 or something, she still reckons he’s hot, so I call her a paedo and she REALLY laughs at that.

  She looks a bit confused when I explain he ‘totally takes it up the pipe’ and thinks I’m saying he’s on like crack or crystal meth or something so I explain what it means and she nods, then says, ‘In South Africa my Uncle Oscar was a gay. But he got shot. Dead. With a gun.’

  And I can’t tell whether she means he deserved it or whether it was sad and I don’t really know what to say so I just go, ‘Hashtag gay shooting. Wow.’

  And she nods. And then goes, ‘Do all Brazilian girls have naked punani?’

  And I tell her I don’t know. And then I tell her about Bimbi hitting the table and going

  ‘DUH DUUUUH – wrong answer Missy!’

  And we laugh so much I do actually pee myself a little bit. I tell Zaraah, which makes us laugh even more and . . .

  I hear a key in the front door, and then voices in the hall.

  Aba is here with Owen.

  Owen

  It is the most unnerving sight. I pictured many scenarios on the train down, but none of them included walking in on your kid sister and some other skinny teenager, both fuchsia of face and laughing hysterically to the point where it looks painful.

  ‘I had a little accident!’ she screams, and then runs into her bedroom.

  Aba prepares some Earl Grey in the smallest kitchen in the world – so small I want to call it a kitchenette, but I don’t know if that word exists outside of the 1950s – and I wait till Cally is ready to see me. The fact that I’ve come all this way and she is making me wait starts to make my blood boil. How dare she? How dare she do this to Mum? How dare she do this to herself? Thinking of no one but herself. I want to be angry with Aba, but apparently she phoned Aba a
nd pretended to be Mum, and I know how convincing she can be. Plus when I called in on Aba in L’Agence (HOW pretentious?) she was pretty up-front, and that hard-faced one Bambi, or whatever she’s called, held her hands up and said, ‘Take her home if you want. Completely up to you.’ Like she was washing her hands of her. Like she didn’t really care. Although Aba says that’s just her manner.

  What I find hard to grasp is what they actually see in Cally. I am not being unkind – well, maybe I am, I hate being kept waiting by anyone, never mind your own sister when she’s run away from home, but she is, let’s just say, unusual looking. As we walked from the agency to the flat I said to Aba,

  ‘Do you guys really think she could be a model?’

  And she didn’t even take a breath, ‘Totally. We meet girls all the time. But we only meet special girls about once a year. Calista’s this year’s girl.’

  ‘But she’s so sort of . . . weird-looking.’

  ‘Photographers want girls who look like pencils. And with slightly goofy teeth. Like this.’

  And she stuck her teeth out. And looked ridiculous.

  Admittedly Cally does have good hair. Great hair, in fact. She has always taken great care with her locks. When we were growing up, I was the cherubic blonde child with brown eyes and a permanent tan as I was always outside, and passers-by and strangers would often comment about how cute I was (I wish I had the same effect now!) and then they’d look at Cally and feel they had to say something, so she didn’t feel left out. And they’d always say, ‘And you . . . you have such long hair.’

  Of course, I have no intention of taking Cally home. She has made her point, and the tantrums Mum would have to deal with if we forced her to come back now would not be worth it. But I’m not going to let her know that. I can’t take her home anyway. I’ve brought Matt down with me, and we’re going to attempt a romantic weekend break in the Big Smoke. Mum is all over the place about this. I’ve not seen her cry so much in years. Real, guttural sobs when I went round, and lots of, ‘It’s all such a mess. I don’t know what to do. I’m so stupid,’ etc. At first I thought she was overreacting, but then Matt pointed out that finding out she’d gone was probably like finding out Dad had gone. Maybe. But at least Cally left a note and explained what she had done. After we’d decided that it was best if I went to London to talk to Cally, Mum said the most odd thing. As she showed me out she said,

  ‘Do you think I need to write down a cleaning schedule?’

  I thought about it a while, and asked for clarification.

  She shook her head and said, ‘I’m being daft.’

  And I left.

  Matt says she might be having a nervous breakdown and I should watch out for warning signs. I’m not so sure.

  I remember Mum opening every drawer in the house, stripping every bed, practically pulling the curtains down in the days after Dad disappeared. Just in case he’d left a note and it had mysteriously vanished. It was like she didn’t mind that he’d gone. As long as he told her.

  I suppose I have to grant Cally that. She didn’t keep Mum in the dark.

  I’ve drunk half my cup of tea by the time Cally’s ready for me. She calls, rather grandly, from her room.

  ‘I’m ready for you, Owen!’ and I head in.

  She is sitting on the bottom bunk of a set of beds and has changed into a thin dressing gown, which is clearly an indicator that she is intending on staying the night. I move and sit next to her.

  ‘I’m sorry I lied,’ she says in a tiny voice. ‘I know it’s a mess.’

  On her bedside table she has a framed photo. Only small. I’ve not seen it for years. It is like a jolt of electricity through my body, and I jump and pick it up.

  It’s a photo of me and Dad when we came to London, just the two of us, and went to Wimbledon. I’ve not seen it for so long. It’s a bright sunny day and I’m squinting at the camera. In this picture Dad really looks like I do now. I’d never realized just how similar we looked. Though of course he’s a lot darker than me.

  ‘I know I should have one of Mum, but I just really like that one of him.’

  I swallow. I feel my eyes go hot and tears pricking them. Embarrassingly, a tear plops onto the glass.

  ‘Do you miss him?’ she says.

  I look at her. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I thought it was just me.’

  I shake my head, unable to speak.

  ‘I’ve got to do this, Owen.’

  I don’t remember her speaking to me like this in years. Instead of the ranty shouty service as usual, she is calm.

  ‘It’s too good an opportunity. I might never get it again.’

  I find myself nodding.

  ‘Life’s all about opening yourself up to new opportunities,’ she says. And I immediately think of Dylan.

  I don’t want to think about Dylan. And his study. Nothing happened, but everything happened. The world changed as I sat there talking to him and I felt him really looking at me. I felt excitement and fear course through my veins, and it was hard not to become a gibbering wreck.

  But I don’t want to think about him. I can’t afford to think about him. I’ve spent too long this past week idly fantasizing about him. And me. And . . .

  ‘Don’t you think?’ Cally interrupts my train of thought. A train that could so easily derail me.

  ‘I hate it when you go all silent and moody.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Please don’t make me go home.’ She sounds scared. I know that feeling. I shake my head. The idea that I could make her do anything is almost amusing, but the fact that she thinks I might is touching. I see her for what she is, a scared, vulnerable girl who’s suddenly found something exciting to cast some daylight into her usually darkened room. She, too, may as well be squinting into the light.

  ‘On one condition,’ I say.

  She nods.

  ‘No more lies.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I promise.’

  ‘And I think you owe Mum an apology.’

  She nods.

  No more lies.

  I look back to the photograph. So many memories come flooding back.

  As I walk back to the hotel to see Matt, I indulge myself in the memories. I try so hard, usually, to blot them out, but tonight I allow myself to dip my toe in them. Eventually I am swimming.

  I think back to a time before our trip to Wimbledon. Me and Dad had gone to Ibiza together. I was thirteen. Milk were doing some nights out there, as they did every summer, but Mum and Cally hadn’t come because it was the summer Cally broke her arm. We had a brilliant time: I had tennis coaching every morning with the guy who ran the tennis club in the hills near the old town, and then I’d have lunch on the beach with Dad and whoever he was hanging out with at that time. There was a pop star who’d been in a boy band who’d come most days as he hero-worshipped Dad, and I used to sit and drool over him. He was my first proper crush. He had this skinny girlfriend who I could tell all the men fancied. I found her a bit of a dick, if I’m honest, as she didn’t have much to say for herself and referred to me as ‘the kid’. ‘Isn’t the kid cute?’ she’d say, and ‘Another Diet Coke for the kid.’ Looking back I was probably just jealous that she got to spend so much time with the pop star when I didn’t, never mind share a bed with him. And I was jealous at all the attention he lavished on her, whereas I just got a cursory nod from him. But that was OK. It was better than nothing. And sometimes, a cursory nod can go a very long way. Dad would go for a lie down later on in the afternoon and I would sit in the villa watching acres of television till he got up. Rosaria the housekeeper would come by to cook dinner, then he would head out to work, and I’d go back to watching telly. Rosaria would stay over and then clean in the morning before having time with her family during the day.

  Usually I wouldn’t hear Dad getting back from work, but sometimes he’d bring a posse back and they’d party in the living room till lunchtime.

  One night I woke when I heard someone diving into the
swimming pool. I looked at my digital clock radio. It was five-twenty. I listened out. The house was silent but for the sound of Rosaria’s snoring in the next room, but there were giggling noises coming from outside. Maybe Dad was having a party. I tried to get back to sleep.

  Then the noises seemed to change. It sounded like someone was crying, or in pain. They were whimpering. I put my light on, pulled back the curtain, and saw Dad on top of the pop star’s girlfriend on one of the sun loungers. Her legs were up over his shoulders and he was fucking her. She had her eyes shut, and his were screwed up too, so neither of them had seen that they were illuminated now by an oblong chunk of light coming from my bedroom. Looking back now, his body was very like mine. Big fat arse, Mum used to say. Although Nan used to say, ‘Never trust a man with a fat bum. They’re all liars.’

  I was bewildered at first. You never expect to see your dad having sex. And you never expect to see him having sex with someone who isn’t your mum.

  The pop star’s girlfriend opened her eyes as Dad climaxed.

  ‘Pull it out of me! Pull it out of me!’ she screamed. And then she screamed again when she saw me looking out of the window.

  I ducked down. Heard a few more grunts and then silence.

  I lay on my bed, curtains open, light still on, knowing that Dad must know that I’d seen.

  But then my bewilderment turned to anger. How could he do that to Mum? And how could he do that to my lovely pop star? After a bit I heard someone dive into the pool. I heard a gate going, and then a car driving off. Five or so minutes later, I heard Dad come in.

  I thought he was going to come in and tell me off. For some reason I thought I was in the wrong for seeing him. But he didn’t. Eventually I heard his bedroom door shutting.

  I switched my light off.

  The next morning over breakfast, I could barely look at him. He said he’d been thinking. He felt he didn’t spoil me enough. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘I know how much you’re into your tennis so I’m gonna look into taking you to some tournaments. Lads’ time together, you and me, weekends away. Nice food. See the sights. Go to the tournaments.’