‘Like the US Open?’ I ventured.
‘Exactly. When’s the next big one?’
So I told him.
I was so excited that I was going to travel the world and go to these matches that I so loved watching on television. I wrote down all the ones I could think of, and he promised he’d look into it.
Of course, I wasn’t stupid. I knew what he was doing. He was buying my silence. He went on about how blokes do things that women don’t understand, and I knew he was talking about the incident the night before.
He brought back two more different women during that stay. And I said nothing. And for the next year, me and my dad went on trips to the Australian Open and the US Open. He had bought my silence. And I took the money and ran.
When he went missing, I wondered if he’d run off with the next dumb blonde to cross his path. I couldn’t say anything to Mum because it was like Dad and I had a pact, a pact of silence. And I’ve continued it to this day.
I think back to last Sunday. Dylan. I so wanted to reach out and touch him, discover what he felt like. And in that moment I knew that if I did it, he wouldn’t flinch, but touch back. And I stopped myself. And once my clothes were almost dry, I made my excuses and left. But I was tempted. And I wanted to. And I have thought about it all week.
And in a bizarre way, I have enjoyed the thinking and ‘what if?’ of it all. As it makes me feel closer to my dad.
That doesn’t make it right. But it does make it more appealing.
Or maybe I’m the one having the nervous breakdown, not Mum. Imagining that a middle-aged heterosexual man might fancy me. Oh yes, and he’s my mother’s best friend’s husband. Not complicated at all.
Matt’s outside the hotel smoking a cigarette when I get back. We’re staying right by Seven Dials in Covent Garden. It’s eight o’clock and the place is buzzing. I hang back a bit and watch him from the other side of the roundabout. His beauty still, even now, manages to take my breath away. So why am I even thinking about Dylan so much? Matt has his phone out and is tapping away on it. I feel my phone pulse in my pocket. Bless him, he must be texting to see where I am. I smile to myself. I will text back and say there’s a guy over the road from you who fancies you. Something nice and romantic. That’s what we’re here for. A night of romance to rekindle the relationship.
I take my phone out. The text is not from him. It’s from Dylan. Oh God. I open it.
If it’s ever raining and you happen to be passing, do drop in again x
I stare at the screen. I bite my lip. I look across the road and see that Matt has gone inside. I quickly write back
LOL
and hit send. A second later, he replies.
Hope you’re happy kid, whatever or whoever you’re doing.
And unlike the pop star’s girlfriend, I quite like that he calls me kid. I write back,
Filth.
He replies,
Always.
I put the phone back in my pocket and cross the roundabout, dodging a black cab as I go.
Natalie
I wanted to meet Miriam Joseph somewhere public. My instinct was that it might get ugly, and therefore I wanted lots of people around me as witnesses or as deterrents if it was all getting too wayward. I’m not sure how I envisaged it getting ugly – she didn’t strike me as a particularly violent person – but I wasn’t taking any risks.
My choice of venue for us to meet, however, was not one of my best choices. I had wanted her somewhere where she couldn’t easily escape, where if I said something she didn’t like, she couldn’t do that really annoying thing of just running away.
Public. Hard to escape.
I told her to meet me in the cafe of Ikea.
‘The furniture store?’ she’d asked.
‘Yes,’ I’d said, with something approaching conviction.
‘On the motorway?’
‘That’s the one, yes.’
Clearly she thought this a ridiculous suggestion, but she was too intrigued to find out just who I was to disagree. Thus far she’d probably thought the balance of power had swung her way. She’d not pretended to be something she wasn’t, like me, so surely she should have called the shots? Now my out-of-the-way choice of meeting place suggested that maybe I was the one in the right and not her.
I get to Ikea early. I’ve not been for a few years, but I remember it being like a humongous maze, and that the cafe is the final bit you come to just as you think there is no escape and you will never see civilization again, that you will forever be in a halogen-lit universe of flat-pack furniture, line drawings of Audrey Hepburn and lamps that look like lollipops.
I’m glad I got here with plenty of time to spare, as it takes me nearly forty minutes to wind my way to the cafe. I only get lost three times, something of a record for this place, and I’m the recipient of several curious looks as I appear to be the only person not pushing a huge trolley loaded with yucca plants and cardboard. But eventually I am sitting in the cafe by the exit. The tables are shaped like flowers and around me hordes of families sit slurping brightly-coloured drinks or eating meatballs and spaghetti. I’d forgotten the cafe was by the exit – my abiding memory of previous visits was about the claustrophobia of the place – so I am annoyed with myself that I have given Miriam an escape route if my questioning gets too much for her. I check my watch. She’s eight minutes late.
To kill some time, I take an envelope from my bag. It’s addressed to me but I’ve not opened it, as it’s Barbara’s handwriting. You might think my mother-in-law had sent me a housewarming card, but even though I can feel through the lilac envelope that there is a card inside, I know it will be no Hallmark moment with a picture of an overloaded cartoon furniture van. I know this because I got a text yesterday.
Please ignore any cards coming from me. Sorry. Bar.
And another.
PS Hope you and kids well.
I slide my fingernail along one edge and pull out the card.
Generic impressionistic flowers in a vase. I flip it over and read:
Dear Slut
What gets me now is that you’ve sold his big house and with his money you’ve moved and are living the life of Riley. Oh yes. Don’t think I haven’t worked it out.
I saw a drama on ITV tonight and this bloke was poisoning his wife and then killed her in a car crash. And it brought it all back to me. Oh yes. Before he went missing he was always complaining about headaches. Well I’ve got your number Slut and I’m going to the police with this one. How did you get back from Beachy Head? Drive down there did you? I bet your shitting yourself now I’m onto you. Oh yes.
Danny was my pride and joy and to think you poisoned him and then killed him in the car. Words fail me. Oh yes.
I might come round to your new house and poison all your food and see how you like it Slut.
You have been warned.
Barbara. AKA Danny’s Mum. My pride and joy. There is a light that has gone out in the world, my Danny.
Even though it is easy for me to dismiss her as completely bonkers, my breathing has become shallow and cold. I return the card and envelope to my bag. How dare she! How dare she accuse me of that? Let her go to the police. Let’s see what they have to say for themselves. And hark at her coming over all Mother Teresa when actually she was the worst mother in the world. Why else would Danny end up in care? I try to calm myself, but she definitely knows which buttons to press with me.
Miriam eventually arrives thirteen minutes late, clutching an armful of impulse purchases that are the sole purpose of this store’s confusing layout. She places the ceramic owl, quilted cushion and wooden windchime on the floor next to the table, no apologies for keeping me waiting, and informs me she’s going to get a coffee. I’ve finished mine but she doesn’t offer me another. She eventually returns and sits. Her cheeks are slightly flushed and there is a rash around her neck. She might be trying to ooze calm and control, but underneath the icy exterior I’d say Miriam Joseph is bricking it. I wa
it for her to speak.
‘So. You’re not a journalist.’
I shake my head. ‘Why would a journalist be interested in you?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’ve a fair idea.’
‘Who am I then?’
Miriam sighs. ‘Please. Just . . .’
I bite in. ‘I’m Natalie Bioletti. And I want to know how you knew my husband.’
She nods. The rash looks angrier.
‘We just . . . knew each other. Did he tell you about me?’
She’s not touched her coffee.
‘How could he tell me about you? He’s been missing for five years.’
Again she nods. I wish she’d tell me something. She’s not telling me anything.
‘Unless you’ve seen him during that time?’
She shakes her head.
‘How did you find out about me?’
I go in my bag and pull out my phone. I find the recent email I’ve received from Daffyd. He has forwarded me the photo his pal took of the form where Miriam had signed for the suitcase.
‘In 2008 you picked up a suitcase from left luggage at Piccadilly Station. That suitcase was my husband’s. There’s the proof.’
She looks at the image on my phone.
‘Bloody hell,’ she mutters.
She really needs to do something about that rash.
‘Were you having an affair with him? Please. Just tell me the truth. I can take it.’
She looks straight at me. I see fear in her eyes. And then she gives the tiniest of nods of the head.
I thought I’d be angrier. I thought I’d want to jump across the table and slap her. Give her a nice red welt on her face to match the red splotches on her neck.
Instead I feel an odd sensation of relief. I was right. I had all those negative instincts about who this woman might be and how she fitted into the picture of my life and, instead of me being proved to be a suspicious untrusting nosey parker, I am in fact just . . . well, what? Clever? This doesn’t feel like an exercise in vanity for me. Maybe it just makes me a good judge of character and situations.
‘Affair’s quite a grand term for it.’
‘Did you go to Ibiza with him?’
She looks surprised I might have known. She nods again.
‘That’s where we met. On holiday. He didn’t tell me he was married. When we got home I found out and . . . well, I dumped him. End of. Does that make it an affair? On his behalf, possibly. On mine? No.’
‘So why have you still got his sweets in the fridge?’
‘They’re my sweets.’ She’s sounding crotchety. I feel like giving her a word of advice. When you’re meeting your ex-lover’s wife, might be a good idea not to come across as a narky cow.
‘He had the same jar in my fridge. Our fridge.’
‘Maybe he copied me.’
That winds me. I always thought that sweet thing was his thing. Not something he’d picked up from someone else. How dare he! How dare he bring something of hers into our house! The idea makes me wince. But then I remember.
‘He always ate those sweets. From when I first met him.’
‘He doesn’t have the monopoly of keeping sweets in a fridge, you know.’
And she is forceful. Like a politician on Question Time who’s wanting an end to the discussion because they’re inherently right. I change tack.
‘So how long did it go on for?’
‘A matter of weeks. I don’t recall. It was nothing serious.’
‘My son was in Ibiza with him. You must’ve known he was married.’
‘He never had me back to his villa, sorry. I don’t make a habit of sleeping with married men, you know.’
I pull a face that shows I don’t really care. Not sure why I do that.
‘And you didn’t think to tell the police about this?’
‘When? Why?’
‘When he went missing. Presumably you knew he’d gone missing.’
‘Of course. It was all over the news. Natalie, I think you’re blowing this out of proportion.’
‘Oh, am I?’
‘He was a holiday romance who turned out to be a little shit. Sorry. But that’s how it was.’
Fair enough.
‘He lied to me. I found out. I dumped him. My heart wasn’t broken and it was ages before he went missing. I fail to see how me contacting the police would have helped him get found.’
OK, maybe she has a point.
‘All that would’ve done was hurt you and the kids at a time that was already painful enough for you as it was.’
OK, I believe her.
‘Sorry. I need to go to the loo. I was stuck in traffic on the way here and . . . I got lost a few times trying to find the cafe and . . .’
I shrug my shoulders, telling her to be my guest. She scrapes her chair back, then snakes her way through the flower tables to head to the ladies.
I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for her. She goes on holiday. She meets Danny on a night out, probably, has a one-night stand. Sees him a few times on the beach. Maybe dinner one night. Then sees him again back in Manchester and he comes clean. He’s married. She tells him to get out. A year later Danny goes missing. Odd for her, but nothing life-changing. Five years later Danny’s wife comes round pretending to be a cleaner called Josie. And then gives her a hard time. In a Swedish furniture store on the M62.
Maybe I was piling too much significance onto this woman. When maybe all this sorry episode demonstrates is that my husband was a player, on the playas, put it about a bit, and didn’t treat women especially well. Dirty old dog.
I do. I feel sorry for Miriam Joseph.
There’s still a question mark hanging over the jelly beans. But for now, I give her the benefit of the doubt.
She’s left her purse on her tray. It’s small and fat, new, shiny. I want to look in it. I’m not sure why. I am convinced suddenly that she is more significant than she is letting on. That she was seeing Danny for years. And years. Forever. And still is. What if she is lying to me? What if there is something of Danny’s in the purse? And I had the chance to see it? And I didn’t grab it because she had lulled me into a false sense of security by making me feel sorry for her?
Maybe the key to the underground chamber is in the purse.
I grab it and click it open, furtively looking round the cafe to make sure she’s not on her way back. Inside there’s thirty-five pounds in cash, several cards, a National Trust card – get her! – and then I see a small photo. It should have been the first thing I saw as I opened it, but instead I was fiddling around at the back. In the front of the purse there’s a plastic window and she has a photo in there of a young girl. And I recognize her. It’s Tiffany Keith.
I snap the purse shut and return it to the tray, convinced that someone on the next table will shout out, WHY WERE YOU LOOKING IN THE OTHER LADY’S PURSE? WE WILL TELL HER WHEN SHE COMES BACK FROM SPENDING A PENNY!
But they’re all too busy with their meatballs to care.
Why would Miriam Joseph have a photograph of Tiffany Keith in her purse? The girl who died from taking the dodgy ecstasy tablet? And why would she have a photo that looks like it’s been cut from the pages of a magazine, not a real photo at all?
She told me she had those clippings because she was researching something. What, she got so into the research she needs to keep a photo of the dead girl with her at all times?
But I know I can’t ask her about it or she’ll know I’ve been snooping.
Is it so bad to snoop?
Is it worse than passing yourself off as someone’s cleaner?
I see her returning from the toilet. And I know that I’m too polite to ask her.
‘Oh well,’ I say as she sits back down, ‘I guess this means you’re looking for a new cleaner.’
She gives me a tight smile. I make my excuses and leave. And regret choosing a place so out-of-the-way for our tête-à-tête.
I was n
ever unfaithful to Danny. Working in the club world, I wasn’t short of offers, mostly fuelled by lager or chemicals, but I wasn’t interested. Why would I be? I had the perfect guy already.
Or at least I thought he was perfect. But now it would appear that he went copping off in Ibiza. And if he did it with Miriam, did he do it with anyone else? If Miriam had been more up for it, could they have ended up having a full-blown affair? Or was he more of a one-night stand kind of a guy? Or was this just a moment of madness? Too much fun in the sun? I tried to think back to that period. How had he been when he came back from the island? How were we getting on? But try as I might, I just can’t remember.
He told me he was damaged goods. He told me life had fucked him up and I was his safety harness. That he’d never hurt me the way life had hurt him. Tosh?
I start thinking about Gripper/Laurence, and how odd it is that he’s reappeared in my life now, when I’m discovering this about Danny. Gripper was mates with one of the DJs at Milk, Slim Jim. For ages I thought Gripper was gay. Not because he was particularly camp or fey or banged on about fancying fellas; it was just that he was like Slim’s shadow, and I assumed he hero-worshipped him. He was very good-looking, and it was this that caught my assumptions out when I idly said to Lucy one night, ‘Why are the best-looking ones always gay?’ and indicated Gripper as a case in point. Lucy laughed and pointed out the error of my ways. Gripper was evidently heterosexual and not long out of a long-term relationship with a woman from Finland. The Finn had finished with him, and Gripper’s little heart was broken. A few weeks later, Gripper asked if he could have a word. I grabbed us both a drink and took him into the back office. He seemed edgy, nervous, and I asked him what was wrong. I thought he was going to talk about the recent split with the Finnish girl, but instead he very quietly said, ‘I think I’m in love with you. And I don’t know what to do.’
I was shocked. The thumping bass from the dance floor hammered at the walls. My heart pounded in my chest. What was I meant to say to that? It felt pointless asking him to repeat it. We both left the words hanging in the air.
The Secrets We Keep Page 13
