Secret Keeping for Beginners

by Maggie Alderson

  ‘Bye, Imke,’ she said, leaning around Link’s broad shoulder, so she could see her. ‘It was good to meet you.’

  Not.

  Imke wiggled her fingers at her, smiling.

  ‘Text me,’ said Link, as Rachel hopped onto dry land. It had never seemed so appealing. ‘I’m here next weekend.’

  ‘Great,’ said Rachel.

  I won’t be.

  She got into the car and didn’t even bother to put her shoes on. She just wanted to get the hell out of there. Glancing in the rear-view mirror as she accelerated away, she caught a glimpse of them. Link’s back to her, clearly busy snogging Imke. Yuck.

  How odd. A man who had seemed the very embodiment of cool, carefree sexuality, now seemed almost sleazy. It was probably her problem. Imke was gorgeous, Rachel had nothing to do that night, maybe she should have stayed and had an adventure. What had made her suddenly go all prim?

  She’d been happy to practically shag Link in his shop before, but something about that ‘encounter’ on the boat had just seemed too contrived. They’d seemed so relaxed about it, Rachel couldn’t help feeling it was something they’d done many times before. Two sexual opportunists working as a pair. And they made her feel like some kind of sex accessory. The Rachel Rabbit.

  It made her laugh for a moment, the idea of being a human sex toy and then it hit her. How tawdry. Her carefree times with Link, one of the very few things that had given her any simple pleasure in life recently – apart from the company of her gorgeous girls, when they weren’t driving her bonkers – now seemed tacky and grim.

  So what did she have, as she drove back to her empty house, on this gorgeous Friday evening? The gardens of the pubs along the river were packed with people having fun, enjoying rowdy Friday-night drinks with friends. Or a romantic tryst with a lover. A companionable time with a long-term partner. What did she have? Half a bottle of leftover white wine in the fridge if she was lucky and whatever crap she could find on TV, now she’d had to cancel Sky and Netflix.

  As she sat at a red light, waiting to cross Kew Bridge, Rachel felt too desolate even to cry.

  Sunday, 6 July

  Cranbrook

  Joy was lying in bed in the library, drinking a cup of hot water with lemon and chatting to Hector, Archie and Finn, who were very excited about an end-of-term production of Cabaret the school was putting on.

  ‘It’s really full on, Granny,’ Archie was saying, his eyes wide. ‘Some of the girls aren’t wearing very much and the dances are quite, well, you know …’

  He stood up and imitated some splayed-leg, hip-thrusting moves. Finn guffawed.

  ‘I’m only playing a waiter,’ said Archie, pushing Hector onto the floor, so he could sit on the bed again, ‘but I go to all the rehearsals anyway.’

  ‘I’m helping with the lighting,’ said Finn, ‘and I go to all the rehearsals too.’

  The two of them collapsed into laughter, Hector joining in as he battled Archie to get back on the bed, although Joy could tell he didn’t really share his older brothers’ interests in such areas yet.

  Joy smiled at them, like three young bear cubs sitting on the end of her bed. How she adored spending these times with them and how deeply she felt for Tessa, knowing that the older two would be going back to school the next morning and wouldn’t be home again until Friday night.

  Never able to stay away from her boys for long when they were home, Tessa came in holding a clutch of envelopes.

  ‘Your forwarded post is here, Mum,’ she said. ‘And this is weird – you’ve got a letter for someone called “Elsie Ainsworth Lambton”. Who on earth is that? Did Dad have some kind of half-sister we don’t know about?’

  For a moment Joy was too appalled to answer, but then she recovered herself.

  ‘Oh, it was a lodger I had briefly,’ she said. ‘It was just a coincidence that she had the same surname as your father. It’s not an unusual name, I suppose. She was from the Northeast as well …’

  She trailed off. Never over-explain, that had been one of Robert’s techniques and she was glad that the boys’ play-fight had escalated, as it distracted their mother.

  ‘Hey, you guys,’ Tessa said, ‘stop fooling around. You’re going to hurt Granny carrying on like that, go and do some homework or something.’

  The three of them loped off and Tessa stood by the bed, having another look at the letter.

  ‘Funny, I don’t remember her,’ said Tessa, tapping it with her fingernail. ‘I’m sure I would have remembered another Lambton, especially an Elsie. What a terrible name that is.’

  ‘It was ages ago,’ said Joy, hating to lie to her daughter, ‘and she didn’t stay very long. I get odd bits of mail for all sorts of people who’ve rented the house, or lodged with me, over the years. You can just throw it in the recycling.’ Then she thought for a moment. ‘Or just give it to me with the other stuff, Tess, love. I better have a look.’

  To Joy’s great relief, Hector’s voice then came from the kitchen, yelling, ‘Mum! Finn is burning my book bag!’ and Tessa threw all the letters onto the bed and rushed off to see what was going on.

  With a creeping sense of foreboding, Joy picked up the envelope and was surprised to see this one wasn’t from the solicitors. There was a Red Cross logo on it. For a happy moment she thought it might have been a simple appeal for donations, but then she remembered the name they’d addressed it to. The dead name again.

  Suddenly she felt quite overwhelmed by ideas coming into her head that she really didn’t want to have in there. She took some deep breaths and said a few oms, trailing off into a random hummed tune when the thoughts threatened to get the better of her. But she made herself keep trying to shut them out.

  She couldn’t be distracted by things from the past when all her daughters needed her to be strong for them now. Tessa was just getting over that strange situation with Simon, which could have gone so catastrophically wrong for her. Natasha and Rachel had fallen out so horribly and Rachel had lost her wonderful au pair.

  Slumping back against her pillow, gazing out of the French windows at the end of the room into the green of the garden, the letter still in her hands, Joy realised it was Rachel she was most concerned about. She normally rang her mother regularly to see how she was getting on, but Joy hadn’t heard from her for days.

  She’d tried calling her that morning, but the home and mobile phones had both gone straight to message and she hadn’t rung back even though Joy had asked her to. That was so unlike Rachel. She was always glued to her phone and constantly checking it, to the point where Joy found it irritating when they were together. Something was clearly up and it was more worrying that it was Rachel, rather than either of her other girls, who seemed to be in distress.

  Her middle daughter was the feistiest of the three of them on the surface, but she didn’t have the support of a husband, as Tessa did, or the stellar career and income to go with it, that Natasha enjoyed. But she did have the responsibility of her children and a mortgage. It was a lot to carry. Her sisters should be looking out for Rachel, not making her life more difficult.

  Joy decided she would leave some more messages for her and if she didn’t call back by Monday afternoon, she would ring Simon and ask him if he knew what was going on with her.

  Feeling better for having made a plan about that, Joy felt more decisive about the upsetting letter. Moving carefully, so as not to jolt her hip, she got out of bed and took the letter over to the fireplace and, finding some matches on the mantelpiece, set light to it.

  But as she watched it going up in flames, with a great sense of satisfaction, she realised she’d have to find some reason to explain the odd smell of smoke to Tessa.

  Lies beget lies, she thought, secrets beget secrets.

  Monday, 7 July

  Manhattan, New York

  Natasha couldn’t remember when she’d been so happy. It was a bright summer morning in New York, and the oppressive humidity hadn’t set in yet, just glorious sunshine, bar
e arms and legs, everyone a little bit more cheerful than usual.

  She and Mattie had got back to Manhattan the afternoon before after spending a blissful Fourth of July long weekend together, just the two of them, out at Natasha’s beach house on Long Island. The simple joy of spending that time hanging out, going for swims, watching movies, drinking wine, cooking dinner and making love with someone she felt so at ease with, felt like it had made up for years of destructive relationships.

  They’d gone out early that morning to buy food to re-stock the apartment’s fridge and were walking back towards the West Village, Mattie swinging the basket of organic vegetables they’d just bought at the farmers’ market in Union Square.

  ‘What else do we need for this veggie feast you’re making me tonight?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘The best olive oil you can buy in Manhattan,’ said Mattie.

  Natasha turned to smile at her. To remind herself she was really there, by her side, and to check she still pleased her eye as much as she had the last time she’d looked at her, about ten seconds before. She did.

  It was fascinating to Natasha that although she spent her days staring at the faces of the women who were officially the most beautiful in the world, she had never come across anyone she found as gorgeous as Mattie.

  She was a good-looking woman by any standards, but it was the little flaws – the small horizontal crease that appeared above her top lip when she smiled, the scar on her cheek, her slightly heavy thighs – which made Natasha feel giddy. That and remembering how they’d spent the long hot night before. She felt a little flutter at the memory.

  Without thinking she reached out to find Mattie’s hand, squeezed it and didn’t let go. It just felt right. Walking along side by side, not touching, just wasn’t possible when you were as loved-up as she felt.

  Mattie smiled at her and squeezed Natasha’s hand back.

  ‘So where shall we get the oil?’ said Mattie.

  ‘The best place would be Eataly,’ said Natasha. ‘It’s in the other direction, up on Fifth, quite a few blocks from here, but it’s so glorious out in this sunshine, I’d like a longer walk – and it’s an amazing shop, I’d love to show it to you. We can always get a cab home.’

  ‘Let’s go then,’ said Mattie.

  They turned round, crossed back over 14th Street and headed up Fifth Avenue, not talking, just happy being together, the connection between them buzzing through their joined hands.

  Natasha wondered if Mattie could imagine what a big deal it was for her to do that. She’d never risked a public display of affection with any of her lovers before. And it hadn’t always been her choice.

  An image of her last girlfriend popped into her head and she relished all over again the relief that she could think of Anya now, without what had felt like a spear of pain being thrust through her. Mattie had freed her from that agony.

  She hadn’t told Mattie that Anya had texted her a couple of days before, saying she wanted to see her. ‘I need you …’ it had said, and Natasha knew exactly the effect those words would have had on her if she hadn’t met Mattie. She would have immediately arranged to see her, setting off yet again the toxic cycle that had tortured her for the past two years.

  A few weeks of fevered phone calls, secret meetings, passionate trysts, then Anya telling her she could never see her again, warning her never to call, email or text her. Then just when Natasha was starting to feel she was getting over her, Anya would get back in touch. I need you. That was what she always said and Natasha could never resist her, then it would all begin again.

  The soul-destroying dance of an affair with a married woman.

  But this time Natasha felt no urge to respond. She’d deleted the text and the contact, then blocked her number. Over. Done. Never going back there, not when there was something so wonderful happening in her life now. Instead Natasha thought about the special present she had hidden in her underwear drawer. The ring the same as the one she always wore.

  Lost in these happy thoughts, Natasha didn’t see Blythe until they were halfway across the intersection, with the entrance to Eataly on the other side. She was coming out of the shop, juggling carrier bags and just as Natasha saw her, she looked up, straight at her.

  Natasha immediately dropped Mattie’s hand. Blythe had definitely spotted her – but had she noticed they were holding hands? Natasha smiled and waved at her.

  ‘Mattie,’ she said quickly and quietly, ‘it’s one of the people from OM. I’ll introduce you, but I’ve told you the score.’

  ‘I get it,’ said Mattie, and Natasha wasn’t sure if there was a slight edge in her voice or not, but at that particular moment she couldn’t worry about it.

  ‘Blythe, hi,’ said Natasha, when they were next to her, channelling all the gushing insincerity of her industry as they air-kissed.

  ‘Hey, Tashie,’ said Blythe, ‘great to see you. Are you buying food too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Natasha, ‘and I wanted to show Eataly to my friend Mattie here, she’s over from London. Mattie, this is Blythe, who I’m working with on the range.’

  Blythe and Mattie shook hands, grinning and ‘hiing’ enthusiastically at each other, in a way which made Natasha very happy because it showed the woman she loved understood exactly how these work relationships had to be conducted.

  ‘Blythe is the director of marketing for OM and Mattie’s a make-up artist too,’ said Natasha, intensely grateful for the great cover story that gave her.

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Blythe with megawatt enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes, I’m a big fan of your new radiant BB creams,’ said Mattie, ‘they’ve just come out in the UK. The texture is flawless.’

  Natasha had to restrain herself from hugging her. That really wouldn’t have helped.

  ‘Oh, that’s so great,’ said Blythe, ‘I’m so happy you like those, they’ve been really strong for us. I’ll have to give Natasha some of our new products for you to take back to London, when she comes into the office later. We’ve used the same technology in a blush, it’s really amazing.’

  ‘That would be great,’ said Mattie. ‘I love being first with a new cult product.’

  ‘So, I’ll see you later at the office, Natasha, for our meeting,’ said Blythe.

  ‘Yeah, great,’ said Natasha. ‘I’m so excited about seeing the samples, I can’t wait.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing,’ said Blythe, in a dramatic stage whisper, her large blue eyes open very wide, ‘but I think you will be pleased … very pleased.’

  ‘Sounds great. See you later, then,’ said Natasha.

  ‘Sure,’ said Blythe. ‘Nice to meet you, Mattie.’

  ‘And you,’ said Mattie.

  Blythe turned and headed down the street and Natasha practically ran into Eataly. She leaned back against the wall next to the door and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calm her pulse.

  Mattie laughed. ‘Are you having a panic attack?’ she asked.

  ‘Slightly,’ said Natasha, opening her eyes again and scanning the shop, in case there were any more of her key business associates in there. ‘Do you think she saw us? You know, holding hands …’

  Mattie shrugged. ‘I don’t know, because I didn’t notice her when you did. She was just one of a million people on a New York sidewalk.’

  ‘I don’t think she did,’ said Natasha, frowning as she struggled to picture the exact expression on Blythe’s face when she’d first seen her. She’d been very normal when they’d chatted, but when you were used to conducting business exchanges at such a level of fake excitement, it was hard to tell.

  ‘How do you think she was with you?’ she asked Mattie. ‘Did she look at you funny?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mattie. ‘I’ve never met her before, she just seemed like a typical beauty-company bimbo to me. So where’s the olive oil in here, then?’

  Natasha felt a flash of irritation. Blythe might be particularly gushy, but she certainly wasn’t a bimbo. You didn’t get to be market
ing director at a company like OM unless you were very smart, and Blythe worked very closely with the big boss, Ava Capel. She’d already made a huge contribution to the development of the brand and Natasha didn’t like her being talked about like that.

  ‘Sorry, Mattie,’ she said, ‘but I have a meeting with Blythe and some of the other top people at OM this afternoon … They’re going to show me the proposed packaging for the first time.’

  ‘All right,’ said Mattie, holding her hands up in surrender, ‘I understand how important all that is to you and it is a humungously big deal, I get it, but can we please move on? She seemed very happy to see you, she was nice to me, but we’ve got no way of knowing if she saw the grotesque horror of two women holding hands or not. She didn’t look as though she needed trauma counselling, is that enough?’

  ‘OK,’ said Natasha, sighing. She was still smarting from Mattie’s casual attitude to what had just happened. She didn’t seem to understand how damaging it could be for her, which was quite hurtful, but still, she didn’t want to spoil their time together. It had been such a magical morning up to that point.

  ‘Right,’ she said, standing up straight and making herself smile. ‘Let’s go and find us some amazing oil.’

  Then she leaned in close to Mattie’s ear and whispered: ‘And when we get home, I might just rub it all over you …’

  Mattie giggled and they headed further into the shop.

  Sydney Street, 12.30 p.m.

  Simon was surprised to hear from his PA that there was a Joy Younger on the phone for him. He was pleased at the prospect of talking to her, but slightly alarmed that she might be calling to continue the Tessa conversation. That was something he really couldn’t talk about in the office. In fact he didn’t want to talk about it to anyone, ever again. Case closed.