Want to Know a Secret?

by Sue Moorcroft

Ignoring passers by, eyes fixed to his, she ran her hands slowly up the outside of his arms to his shoulders, then pulled herself up on tiptoe and touched her open lips to his mouth. With a shock of desire he put a hand in the small of her back, pressing her to him. She kissed him hard, urgently, her tongue hot and sweet and he pressed the hardness of his arousal against her warmth as he concentrated on the wonderful feeling of wanting to be inside this woman. Again.

  The kiss seemed endless. She was feeding from him and he forgot they were in the middle of a public park with children giggling and traffic grumbling nearby and focused only on her and this heart-thumping, scalp-prickling kiss.

  Until she dropped back down onto her heels, pushed herself out of his embrace and stepped back. Her eyes burned with pain. ‘I can’t do it,’ she whispered.

  His heart was still going like a train. ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t have an affair with you. I can’t do it to Valerie and Tamzin. In their different ways, they need you. You belong to them. And now that Bryony is home and pregnant I think she needs me and Gareth to be together for a while, too.’ She took another step back. ‘I could probably cope with the subterfuge and the guilt, but I can’t cope with hurting other people. Now’s not the time for us.’

  He took a step after her, disorientated by the sudden, brutal reversal in his fortunes. ‘Let’s discuss it –’

  She shook her head and tears slid from each eye. ‘If we talk I might not be able to stick to it. And I’ve got to.’ Then she whirled on the dusty path and ran away, her hair streaming out behind her like a scarf.

  As winded as if she’d kicked him in the balls, he dropped down on the unshorn grass and watched her go.

  Grit stuck between her toes and beneath the soles of her feet but she ran on. She ran until her lungs burned and her knees hurt. Tears curved around the apples of her cheeks and prickled down her neck. People with dogs and children tutted as they hauled their charges aside to let her skitter past, running from the hurt on James’s face.

  Finally, she stumbled to a halt, breath dragging at her throat, legs like string, miserable with the knowledge that she’d made a complete pig’s breakfast of things.

  She trudged towards the nearby Grafton Centre in search of a ladies’ room, glancing from habit at the corner house in Fair Street with the flood gauge on its wall that had held a ghoulish fascination for a younger Bryony. Through the sliding glass doors in the giant conservatory-like edifice that was the entrance to the Centre she made her way to Debenhams’ toilets where she washed her hands and face and brushed her hair, trying not to look her reflection in the eye, furious with herself. She’d hurt James. Oh, how she’d hurt James! The expression in his eyes had switched in a heartbeat from joy to pain. And she’d done that. She’d put that pain in his face.

  He probably wanted to throttle her – how could she have kissed him like that and then given him the push? Angel and devil in one instant.

  He must think she got off on hurting people.

  The room was empty so she filled a white oval basin with warm water and was hopping on one foot dunking her dusty toes, her dress hiked up to her thighs, when three silver-permed ladies entered, handbags swinging from their elbows.

  Ignoring their pause for disapproval, she soaped and rinsed the other foot and dried both feet with paper towels. After plaiting her hair from the nape of her neck she made herself look properly in the mirror. She looked OK. A bit pale, but she wouldn’t scare the horses.

  Christ’s Pieces, in contrast to Jesus Green, was a manicured, colourful array of marigolds and canna lilies. Diane paced sedately beneath the central avenue of trees, no longer the woman who galloped gritty paths like a bolting horse. She’d bravely driven right into Cambridge’s manic city centre this morning and, after innumerable slow tours, secured a space in nearby Lion Yard car park. Now she returned and dragged out her load of garments, working automatically through her plan, glad it wasn’t too much of a trek through the market place to Rose Crescent.

  Still, her arms were cracking by the time she reached the shop at the end of the crescent farthest from the market on the brick-built side, not the stone-built side. Nothing hung outside, not like Rowan’s shop; here at Unity’s the stock was safely contained behind windows. Shops in Rose Crescent catered to a discerning clientèle – even McDonalds looked slightly self-conscious with a Sunday-best timber frontage.

  She would normally have been nervous, but she just felt too bloody miserable to stress over a mere business meeting. She paused by a topiary box tree to remind herself that what she was doing was important, she couldn’t give in to the overwhelming urge to ring James and cry out that she hadn’t meant it. That they could make things work, somehow ... No. She couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t.

  She clanged in through the brass-framed glass door with a lump in her throat and an image of James’s stricken face hanging before her eyes.

  The shop was painted a colour that wasn’t lavender and wasn’t grey, but possibly both. The highly lacquered woodwork was blond and halogen spotlights angled towards chrome rails.

  Few items in the shop had a price ticket under three figures and the most important part of a garment on these rails was the label.

  What. Was. She. Doing. Here?

  Competing with Ghost and D&G? This was going to be the dreariest waste of time. Maybe she should just turn around and shuffle back to the safety of Peterborough. Rowan was a condescending little turd but it didn’t stop him taking her stuff.

  But then, her voice as steady as if she did this every day, she heard herself say, ‘Hi,’ to the woman looking up from some task behind the counter. ‘I’m Diane Jenner and I’ve an appointment to show my work to Unity.’

  The woman uncoiled slowly. The layers in her dark red hair flipped back from her face like the petals of a flower that topped her long, slender stem of a body. She looked old enough to have experience and young enough for confidence. ‘Oh yes, my mother said you’d be calling. I do like to sell some original garments.’ Encouraging, until she added, ‘But she should’ve told you that I’m fully stocked. I take it you’ve brought autumn? My autumn stock’s already on order. Soon I’ll be reducing summer.’

  ‘Autumn/winter,’ Diane responded, stretching a point. She hesitated. With such a heavy heart to drag around she wasn’t sure she had the strength to get her garments out just to pack them away again.

  But then Unity smiled. ‘It won’t hurt to look. I’ll tell Jasmine to come into the shop.’ She led the way into a back room, white and bright with fluorescent lights. Several chairs were scattered around a freestanding clothes rail near a compact kitchen area and, around an L, a sewing machine on a long table. ‘Alterations,’ she explained. ‘I have a lady come in.’ Unity detached Jasmine, a young, dreamy girl dressed entirely in pink, from her task of unpacking bead belts, to look after the shop.

  ‘Hang your stuff here.’ With one slender manicured hand, Unity swept a few clothes and empty hangers to one end of the rail. Then she turned to answer the telephone, giving Diane time to slide off polythene slips and shake out creases. Choosing a blouse, a skirt and a dress, she turned the hangars so that the garments faced the room.

  Unity was evidently getting impatient with her telephone caller. ‘So what’s happened to the jackets? Look, I must have jackets, they bring customers into the shop in autumn. Yes, the size eights are all very well for the window but I need other sizes. You know, for real people.’

  Diane sorted through for a jacket, dark red needle cord and denim, and pulled that out, too.

  Unity clicked the phone down, a pucker of irritation on her forehead. ‘OK, let’s see what you’ve got.’

  She looked without speaking for a minute then picked up the blouse, one made from panels and patches of white voile and cotton, frayed and unfinished as fashion demanded, fastening with white frogs down the front. She examined the back. The stitching. Then moved on to the skirt, dark grey glazed cotton with inset godets overlaid with dark green
lace, a wraparound that fastened with three ties, one at the waist and two at the hip. ‘You’d have to tie that realistically to stop it riding up,’ she commented.

  ‘Yes. Flattering for the snake-hipped rather than those built for comfort.’

  Unity put her head on one side. ‘It’s lovely for the sizes, say, up to 14, but I suppose you could do a waist-tie only version for the larger? Wraparounds are popular with the bigger women but you have to go for flowing rather than fitted.’

  ‘Of course.’ Despite her wretchedness, Diane’s heart suddenly began a tango.

  The dress was cinnamon-coloured slubbed linen with a fringed hem above the knee and a crossover bodice, pin-tucked above the breasts and beaded with gold. Unity glanced inside. ‘This says it’s a ten. Do you mind if I try it? Then I can see how your sizes come up.’

  Even as Diane said, ‘Please do,’ Unity pulled her top over her head and wriggled neatly out of velvet jeans, unselfconscious in bra and pants as she slid the dress from the hanger, undid the side zip and pulled the fabric over her head. Diane zipped it up for her as Unity fluffed out her hair, then slipped into her heeled mules and went to the wall mirror.

  Diane crossed her fingers. And then her ankles. She ought to be doing something more constructive, telling Unity that it could’ve been made for her, it flattered her, that her svelte figure and endless legs did wonders for the dress and she ought to have been a model. But Unity didn’t need Diane to say any of those things. The mirror had already said it.

  ‘Wow, it even gives me a bust,’ exclaimed Unity. ‘I love it.’

  By the time Unity had looked at every garment, trying on a blouse and a skirt along the way, Diane was beginning to dare to get a good feeling.

  ‘I think we’ve earned a break.’ At last, Unity moved towards the kitchen area. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ said Diane, frankly. ‘Strong with no sugar, please.’

  Obligingly, Unity gave her the cup with the tea bag still floating in it, and they sat down at the table. Unity was drinking a pale brew, camomile or lemon or something equally healthy.

  ‘This is all autumn stuff and I’ll have no room on my racks for it,’ she said, waving her hand at the clothes spaced along the length of the rail.

  Diane’s heart began a long, slow swallow-dive to the pit of her guts.

  For an instant, hot tears pricked under her eyelids. She’d become sure that Unity would take something, even if were only the dress for her own wardrobe. She’d even planned to make a gift of it as a sweetener. Misery rushed in to swamp her and she dipped her face to her tea mug so that Unity wouldn’t see.

  ‘But it’s so good, and so well-made, so original, that I want to have it anyway, if we can come to terms.’

  Miraculously, Diane’s eyes cleared and her head shot up. ‘What? All of it? Um, I mean, yes, let’s talk.’

  ‘Ideally I want at least one of everything in sizes 8 to 18 but I’ll settle for 10 to 16 if it’s too short notice. And if you can give me two of 10, 12 and 14 in the jacket, I’ll snatch your arm off. And can you get some new sew-in labels made? DRJ is nothingy; how do you feel about Diane Jenner Original? I want to sell them top end so we need to push the individuality angle.’ She grabbed a pad and pen and began a series of calculations. Then she turned the pad to face Diane. ‘Look, this is what I’m in the market for paying. I think these figures are reasonable and I’m going to devote a bit of shop space to you. I’ll need delivery, latest, absolute latest, by mid-September. Are you selling your stuff through any other local shops?’

  Diane’s lips had gone stiff with shock, but she managed, ‘Rowan’s in Peterborough.’

  ‘Can you stop?’

  ‘Yes. The relationship isn’t satisfactory, that’s why I’m approaching you.’

  Unity frowned. ‘I don’t want anyone else local selling you, ideally. They might undercut me. I’ll give you another ten pounds on each garment if you don’t sell to anyone else in a 50-mile radius of this shop.’

  Slowly Diane nodded. She sipped some of her tea, the teabags bobbing against her lips. ‘What about customer commissions?’

  Unity shrugged. ‘Yes, OK, small, direct-to-customer commissions are the exception. I take a full-page ad in the local paper at the beginning of each season, so we’ll launch Diane Jenner Originals in the autumn one. Will it be OK to have a pic of you and like a news flash about how well you’re doing and how lucky we are to be able to buy your original garments locally?’

  ‘I … I expect so.’ This was beginning to seem like a dream.

  ‘Are you going to be able to handle the order?’

  Diane gathered herself. ‘Yes. These are only garments, there’s no hand embroidery and not much beading – that’s what takes the time when I’m doing customer commissions. And I’ll use help for the basic stuff, you know – cutting out, tacking in interfacing, sewing on buttons. My daughter’s just come home from Brazil, she might want to help.’

  Unity’s eyes were gleaming. ‘Embroidery? In a few weeks we’ll have to start talking about Christmas, and embroidery, beading and lace will be snapped up. Do you produce drawings?’

  Diane thought of her children’s sketch book full of line drawings, a bit wonky sometimes. ‘Not what you’d call drawings. Not like on a commercial pattern.’

  ‘Can we have an ideas meeting, in that case? Say at the end of August?’

  ‘I’m sure I can fit that in.’ Diane could scarcely believe it was her speaking.

  ‘I think this is going to work,’ Unity mused. ‘Lots of my ladies will go for a fresh, exclusive but local designer.’

  Diane let out a strangled laugh. ‘Let’s hope so.’

  Unity helped her gather up and re-cover the garments before seeing her to the door of the shop. ‘Where did you do your training, by the way?’

  Diane grinned. ‘Which? The A-level needlework or the evening class in pattern-cutting?’

  It was peculiar to be in a haze of happiness and a nightmare of misery at the same time.

  Diane tracked back to the car in the afternoon breeze on wobbly legs, not knowing whether to sing or weep. Nobody would know, if she cried, that she was crying for James and the big emptiness that the joy of Unity’s contract had not filled up.

  At the car park she was only half-surprised to find him leaning on her car boot. Glowering.

  ‘I’ve spent hours looking for your Peugeot,’ he said, sourly. He took her key and opened the boot then took the clothes, lying them as flat as possible without having to be told. His forehead was a frown and his slate eyes didn’t smile at all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, unhappily. ‘I told you really badly, didn’t I?’

  ‘Brutally. I still need to talk to you, even if it’s to work out how we’re not going to have an affair, rather than how we are.’

  She sighed and followed him to a pub. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a pub in the afternoon. But she ordered a glass of wine when he asked for a bottle of beer and they sat at a small round table on an inadequately padded bench as far from the few other patrons as possible.

  ‘What if I were to leave Valerie?’ he demanded.

  She gazed at the grim resolve in his eyes and wanted to slide comforting arms around his firm body. Instead, she said, gently, ‘But you don’t think that’s the right thing to do, do you? Tamzin’s doing better but she’s so terribly brittle. She wouldn’t cope. James, think how we’d feel if she crashed back into depression and began on her arms. Or worse. You might not feel guilty about Valerie but you would about Tamzin.’

  ‘I don’t feel guilty about Valerie.’ But he didn’t disagree about Tamzin. His glance flickered over her face. ‘So you’re going to stay with your lying, deceitful husband and I’ve got to stay with a wife who doesn’t much like me? And do without each other?’

  Under the table she took his hand and felt his electricity cross to her body. His flesh was warm and smooth and strong. ‘I think that that is exact
ly what we have to do. At least for now. Until Bryony and Tamzin can stand on their own feet.’

  ‘But we could make each other happy.’

  ‘And all the people we love unhappy,’ she whispered.

  There didn’t seem to be much more to say. She blew her nose a couple of times and told him glumly all the marvellous, wonderful news about the Unity’s contract and he turned his stormy eyes to her and told her, grimly, how pleased he was.

  ‘You’ll need some capital,’ he pointed out.

  She sighed. She’d shoved that aside to think of later. ‘I will, especially if I’m going to pay somebody to help me with the basics, and that’s before I start thinking about materials or what I’m going to live on. Maybe I’ll go to the bank.’

  ‘You don’t want to use Gareth’s money?’

  She was shaking her head before the sentence had ended.

  ‘I can lend you what you need. Say £5,000, so that you don’t have to worry until you get your first big cheque.’

  She burst into tears. ‘I couldn’t do that but you’re so kind,’ she sobbed.

  ‘I don’t feel kind,’ he snapped. ‘I feel like shaking you.’

  He watched her until he couldn’t stand to see her shoulders trembling any more. ‘I suppose that if you’re going to a bank you’ll need a business plan,’ he said, eventually, to distract her.

  ‘Yes,’ she sniffed, emerging from her tissues, ‘but I don’t know what one is.’ Her eyes were pink.

  ‘They’re quite easy. Especially for such a small venture. You can find templates on the Internet.’

  ‘If you have a computer,’ she agreed, dolefully. ‘Maybe the bank has a form.’

  ‘I could give you a few headings and you could just fill it in.’

  Her eyes swivelled to him hopefully, and she blew her nose. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ he sighed. He wished he could stop being the guy who wore the white hat but when she looked at him as if he’d just solved all her problems … He searched through his pockets and came out with a folded envelope. Diane found a pen with a broken end, in her bag.