Secret Keeping for Beginners

by Maggie Alderson

  And not only did Natasha make far more money than Rachel, she was also very clever with it. With endorsement deals on all her magazine credits – ‘Make-up by Natasha Younger for OM Beauty’ – she was a businesswoman as well as a creative genius, with quite a property portfolio in New York.

  The crazy thing was Rachel knew she also had a good business brain, but it only seemed to kick in for other people. She’d never been able to understand how she could see so clearly the way to help her clients move their brands forward, but wasn’t able to apply this clarity to her own financial affairs.

  And it had all got a lot worse since she’d become a single mum. What would the girls’ father, Michael, say if he knew what a vulnerable position she was in? What if she lost the house? Or went bankrupt, which, looking at the figures she’d just typed in, was a genuine possibility. He’d probably swoop in for custody. He’d let enough hints drop about that already.

  Rachel suddenly found it hard to breathe. Her heart was pounding. Her mouth was dry. She felt faint. Was this what an anxiety attack felt like? She put her head between her knees and tried to take the slow breaths her mother prescribed for everything.

  Thinking of Joy gave her another idea. She stood up and found an old bottle of Rescue Remedy in the back of a drawer. She put a few drops in a glass of water and started to feel better even before taking the first sip, because she was doing something active about her situation, not just sitting wallowing in it, even if it was just sipping some nasty-tasting alcohol infusion.

  She leaned back against the kitchen counter and closed her eyes, feeling her pulse rate slow down. One thing she’d understood in this horrible lonely moment was that she desperately needed to talk to someone about her situation. Keeping her anxiety to herself like this was making it exponentially worse, she understood that, but that just took her back to where she’d started: who?

  She couldn’t tell any of her friends. It was too shame-making and she didn’t want to be the subject of gossip, especially as so many of them worked in aspects of the interiors world and she really didn’t want it to get around in that context. It had to be someone closer than that.

  Joy? She’d just tell her to become a vegetarian, sit in the dark and trust the abundant universe. Natasha? It would be too humiliating to admit her failure to her much more successful younger sister.

  Tessa? She was even less worldly than Joy. Tom? No. He and Tessa were clients now – a reminder of why she had been right to have misgivings about that family/business combination from the get-go, but it was too late now and she desperately needed that bonus, so she’d just have to deal with it.

  Michael? No freaking way. Simon? He’d probably give the best advice of any of them, but there was no way she could let him know what a terrible mess she’d made of her financial affairs. He’d never trust her at work again.

  She had to face it: she had no one. She felt tears pricking her eyes again, but then an idea struck her. Link. She could talk to Link about it. He didn’t know any of her friends or family, he had no connection to the world of interior design and he was a very good listener. It was one of the things she liked about spending time with him.

  And he must have some kind of financial nous, Rachel reasoned, because he owned his houseboat outright. He’d said something once about making a decision to accept compromises to own a place to live without being suffocated – that was the word he’d used – by a mortgage. It was spot on for how she felt looking at the figures on that spreadsheet. Suffocated. Smothered.

  She’d call him later in the morning and see when they could meet up, not for sex, but to talk. Perhaps she’d invite him over to the house for the first time. It might be time to take their relationship onto the next stage. That was quite an exciting idea.

  Noticing it was now 6.25 a.m., she switched on the kettle again. Time for another mug of tea she could drink sitting in bed with the girls, her very favourite part of the day.

  But before she could even pour the boiling water onto the teabag, the phone rang. It was Tessa telling her that Joy was in hospital with a badly broken hip and might need surgery.

  Tunbridge Wells, 6.40 a.m.

  All the way to the hospital Tessa had to fight back tears, which wasn’t very helpful while driving. The moment she’d had the call from the hospital she’d known it was all her fault. Karma for that terrible thing she’d done the day before. Asking Simon to call her! With Tom standing right next to them!

  She’d felt the fullness of Simon’s cock against her and she’d liked it. She’d had to consciously stop herself pushing her hips towards it. And she couldn’t kid herself, she had deliberately pressed her breasts onto him.

  What kind of a treacherous whore had she turned into? All those years of happy faithful marriage, she’d never so much as looked at another man, but bumping into a random one-night stand from beyond the mists of time seemed to have thrown all that out.

  Now with those two deadly little words, she was risking everything for someone she’d hardly known twenty-five years ago, and the kind of person he seemed to be now – all London slickness, bespoke suits and big cigars – wasn’t her style at all. He was the worst kind of urban smoothie, she was a country mouse, they had nothing in common. She couldn’t imagine what he’d thought of her second-hand dress and scruffy basket.

  And yet … in those quiet moments when they’d reconnected, none of that mattered. It seemed to strip them both back to the people they’d been when they were young. The connection was profoundly sexual, but somehow there was also an otherworldly innocence about it.

  Tessa groaned, dropping her head momentarily down onto the steering wheel as she waited for the traffic to move forward at the big roundabout leading into Tunbridge Wells.

  Whatever it was – some kind of late onset sex hormone surge? – it was putting everything she valued most in her life at risk and it had to stop.

  She might not like the way Tom revelled in his fame, but she still deeply loved the man he really was. It was just a phase, this celebrity nonsense and, now she thought of it, he was probably having his own mid-life crisis. The male menopause.

  It must have been strange for Tom when Finn had grown taller than him and started bringing girls home. Although he’d never said anything other than a few wry comments, that must have messed with his head a bit. No wonder he got off on the adulation of total strangers.

  Which was hardly a terrible crime compared to what she’d done. She’d kissed another man, fully, knowingly, on the lips, nothing social about it. She’d pressed herself against him and enjoyed feeling his body in return and she’d talked to him about the connection between them. She’d pictured his face so vividly when Tom was trying to make love to her. She’d asked him to call her. It was infidelity in everything but the act.

  And worst of all, the thing which had kept her awake for most of the previous night, was the fear that Simon might actually take her at her word and ring her. Because she didn’t know what she might do if he did. After what had happened outside the restaurant, she didn’t trust herself any more.

  Tessa put her head down on the steering wheel again, pulling it up sharply when the person in the car behind her beeped their horn to let her know the traffic was moving.

  A wake-up call is just what I need, she thought, accelerating off with a jerk and waving her hand up in front of her rear-view mirror in apology.

  When Tessa arrived at the A&E department, Joy was just being wheeled back from X-ray.

  ‘Mum!’ she said, rushing over to the trolley and grabbing her hand. ‘Whatever happened?’

  ‘Your mum has had a nasty fall,’ said the nurse who was helping the porter manoeuvre the trolley into a curtained bay. ‘We’re just waiting for the consultant to have a look at the X-rays and then we’ll know if they’re going to operate.’

  Tessa could hardly take it in. Seeing her strong and vital mother, who still did her yoga stretches and sun salutes religiously every morning, looking so small and vulnerabl
e in a wretched hospital gown, was a horrible shock.

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ Joy was saying, grasping her hand. ‘I couldn’t sleep and I went downstairs to make some camomile tea and I missed a step in the dark and landed rather hard on the tiles.’

  Tessa still couldn’t speak. Operate?

  ‘How did you get here?’ she finally managed to croak. She felt as though she needed to put the weird jigsaw of the situation together, piece by piece.

  ‘I was very lucky, because I could reach the phone cable to pull it down to the floor and then I called 999 for an ambulance.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me first?’ asked Tessa, realising it was slightly irrational, as she said it. Lack of sleep, shock and guilt were all swirling around together and making her feel quite dizzy.

  Joy squeezed her hand.

  ‘I’ll be all right, Tessa, my love,’ she said. She waited for a moment, then, as the nurse and porter left the bay, she pulled Tessa closer. ‘You didn’t happen to bring any arnica with you, did you?’ she asked quietly.

  Tessa smiled, nodding conspiratorially and feeling better, back on more familiar ground with her mother. ‘I always have some in my bag,’ she said.

  She poked around in her basket and after finding the small glass vial of homeopathic tablets rolling around in the bottom, she handed it to her mother.

  Joy tipped one tiny pill onto her palm, put it in her mouth, and then handed the container back to Tessa.

  ‘Remind me to take another one in fifteen minutes,’ she said, ‘and then twice more after that. If they do decide to operate on me, I’ll need you to pop over to the homeopathic pharmacy to get a more powerful formulation for when I come round.’

  Tessa nodded, perfectly understanding everything Joy was saying. She and her sisters had been raised on homeopathic and herbal medicines. The hospital felt like an alien planet to Tessa and she couldn’t wait to get her mother out of there.

  7.07 a.m. US Eastern Time Zone (12.07 p.m. GMT), West Village, New York

  Natasha was heading back to her apartment after a particularly punishing Bikram yoga session when her phone beeped. Waiting on the corner for the lights to change, jogging on the spot, she pulled it out of her pocket and was surprised to see the text was from Rachel.

  Her eyes grew big as she read: ‘Mum has had an accident, broken hip. In surgery now. Please Skype me. I’m at office.’

  The minute she got home Natasha rushed to her laptop and Skyped Rachel. Her face appeared immediately, looking pinched and tired.

  ‘Hey, Tashie,’ she said, ‘great you could get back to me so quickly.’

  ‘What the hell’s happened?’ asked Natasha, a break in her voice she hadn’t realised would be there.

  ‘She had a fall, going down to the kitchen at night.’

  ‘With no bloody lights on,’ Natasha interjected.

  ‘Right,’ said Rachel. ‘She tripped going down the steps, landed hard on the tiled floor and she’s broken her hip.’

  ‘You said she’s having surgery,’ said Natasha, stricken at the idea of her mother lying in a hospital bed with antibiotic drips going into her.

  ‘They say they’ve got to pin it or it won’t heal correctly and she’ll have problems walking,’ said Rachel, looking as distressed as Natasha felt. ‘Tessa’s at the hospital. She’s going to call me as soon as Mum comes out and then I’ll call you. Will you be on your mobile?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Natasha, although she knew she’d have to turn it off during an important meeting that morning, possibly the most important work meeting she’d ever have. She couldn’t cancel it, not even for this, but she’d check her phone the moment she came out. No need to go into that with Rachel. It would just sound worse than it really was.

  ‘Are they going to give her antibiotics and crap like that?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, you know about those terrible hospital infections,’ said Rachel. ‘They’re bound to. Tessa is taking in her remedies and we’re just going to try and fend all that off as best we can. The main thing is to get her out of there as quickly as possible, so we can look after her ourselves.’

  ‘Where will she go?’

  ‘Tessa’s. She’s putting a bed in that room she calls the library. I’ve arranged a sleepover for the girls tonight, so I can go straight down and see Mum after work, but I’ll have to come back after. I’d really like to stay down there to be on the spot, but Branko’s taken some time off and Michael can’t have the girls this week or next.’

  Natasha hoped the sharp pang of guilt she felt didn’t show on her face. She knew exactly where Branko was. In Paris. Doing appointments with Chanel, Dior, Lanvin …

  Ever since she’d contacted her friends at Storm model agency asking them to see him and they’d signed him on the spot, there’d been a lot of interest in him. He’d told her he wasn’t going to hand his notice in to Rachel until he was sure the modelling was going to take off for him, but from the feedback Natasha was already getting she knew it would. She’d heard just the day before that Karl Lagerfeld was seriously considering him to open the Chanel couture show in a couple of weeks.

  Natasha knew she seriously needed to explain all that to Rachel. Why the hell she’d interfered in – and wrecked – the excellent set-up her hard-pressed sister had with the manny her daughters adored … but this was not the time.

  ‘I’ll come over as soon as possible,’ said Natasha. ‘I’ll try to leave tonight.’

  ‘That would be great,’ said Rachel. ‘Obviously I’ll help as much as I can when she comes out, but I’m really pressured at work right now and with the girls …’

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ said Natasha, still feeling awful about the childcare thing, but not able to stop herself thinking that she was possibly a little more pressured with her work.

  She looked at the time on the laptop clock. There was just a little over an hour until she had to be at that meeting, which might change her life – and in a way which would enable her to help their mum out more, too. A lot more.

  She needed to get going fast, looking amazing, and a glance in the nearest mirror reminded her it would take some work. Her face was as red as a baboon’s bottom.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Rachie,’ she said. ‘I should see you tomorrow, I’ll text you when I know about flights – and let me know as soon as you hear about Mum.’

  Jumping under the shower Natasha did a quick mental review of her work commitments. It was just coming into the madly busy time of year when people were rushing to get things finished before everyone disappeared out of New York for the summer, so going home would mean missing out on some seriously great editorial, but what could she do? Her mum was more important. No question.

  But she also had some more of these crucial meetings the following week, which she really couldn’t miss. So she’d zip over to see Joy now, come back to New York for the meetings, then head back to London again as soon as she possibly could for a longer stay, which would be more useful really as she’d be out of hospital then and Tessa would need the support.

  And as she stepped on the scales for her daily weigh-in another idea occurred to Natasha, which made the prospect of a longer visit to the UK even more appealing. When she went over to help out with Joy, she could see Mattie again.

  Sydney Street, 12.10 pm

  Simon was staring at his computer screen, the email inbox crammed with the usual cluster of last-minute staff holiday requests for Wimbledon week, and wondering whether he should just put all the names into a hat.

  It was the same every year and he did his best to be fair, although he knew there’d only be a sudden spate of ‘tummy upsets’ among those who didn’t get official leave anyway.

  Realising he was chewing his fingernails, he pulled his hand out of his mouth and slapped it hard with his other one. He couldn’t start doing that again. He picked up a biro that was lying on the desk and chewed on that instead.

  After a sleepless night, he’d done a hard session at the gym with a
punching bag which had helped clear his head for a little while, but now he was in the office, all too aware of Rachel sitting upstairs, the anxiety had got hold of him again.

  How the hell was he going to get over his weak moment with Tessa after that wretched boozy lunch? He never usually drank during the working day and this was a good reminder why not. He would never have agreed to call her if he hadn’t been roasted on Veuve Clicquot – and he was sure she wouldn’t have asked him to.

  But while he could blame those silly indiscretions on the booze, it just went to show that no matter how much he and Tessa might want to deny it, they were still deeply attracted to each other and he couldn’t just let the situation drift, as he might have with someone else, in the hope it would just peter out and go away, because he was going to have to speak to her and see her about the Hunter Gatherer business.

  And even if he did delegate as much of the business side as possible to Rachel, there was still the inconvenient issue that she – the person who was also fast becoming his most valued employee – was Tessa’s sister. Not even taking his feelings for Rachel into consideration.

  He felt like yodelling with frustrated confusion.

  Every way he looked at it, he was trapped and blocked. He had to tell Tessa he couldn’t talk to her or see her for anything other than business, but how, even in simple logistic terms, was he ever going to have that conversation with her? He couldn’t put it in an email, or a text.

  He’d heard too many horror stories from foolish friends having affairs, being caught out through ill-timed use of those conduits. He and Tessa weren’t having an affair, but something like that could make them look as though they were.

  He didn’t even feel comfortable at the prospect of phoning the house, in case Tom answered, or her mobile in case he was with her when she did. Tapping the biro frenetically against his front teeth, he realised he was also bouncing his knee up and down at high speed. All he needed was a cymbal under his arm and he could be a one-man band.