“I’m trying to do the right thing,” Andy had said. But he’d known that his wife was right.
Then she’d said, “The right thing is to put your own family first now and treat her like your friend, and let her work out how to cope on her own”—and she’d taken his hands—“and you can start working out how to manage without him as well. Don’t use helping Elizabeth to stop you from missing your friend. You can’t fix this, Andy. Don’t break other things trying.”
So they’d agreed that he would go around for an evening every couple of weeks, invite Elizabeth to their home now and then—“Not yet,” she’d said last time, “but I think I will, soon, thank you”—and drop in for a coffee sometimes in between. It seemed to be working.
Meanwhile, Patricia is doing what she always does: being busy, being helpful (in the ways she judges to be helpful). She can’t talk to Elizabeth about Michael, much—can’t even bear to hear her call him Mike, a version of his name that he’d rejected with everyone else—but she can feed her, and encourage her, and try to keep her interested. So that’s what she does.
The evening before Elizabeth goes back to work sees her, Mel, Andy, and Blake gathered in the garden. Mel is cooking chicken and salmon on the barbecue; Elizabeth has assembled a salad and bought a pavlova; Andy and Blake have brought the beer. Elizabeth had suggested this, wanting to mark the occasion. “Although it’s not an occasion, and it’s definitely not a celebration,” she’d said to them all. “It’s just a—” But she couldn’t find a word. “It’s a gathering,” said Blake, and Elizabeth had agreed that that would do. Patricia, who is at the WI this evening, has brought some bread and said not to worry about her not being there, she doesn’t really like food cooked outdoors anyway.
It’s not an uncheerful evening. Elizabeth is more present than she has been, and Michael is an occasional, gentle topic of conversation. Tonight it feels as though it’s Mel’s turn to be quiet. “My head’s in Spanish. I’m having to translate you all,” she explains, when Elizabeth puts her hand over hers and asks if she’s OK, as the others talk of nothing much.
When Blake gets up to go, Mel goes with him, picking up her cigarettes and clipping Pepper’s lead on. “You’re a hell of a good excuse, and that’s all,” she mutters as she takes him to the door. “Don’t go thinking I like you.”
“I assume,” Blake says, “you’re talking to the dog.”
She waits until they turn into the corner of Blake’s road before she tells him the short version of Patricia’s story. “Well,” he says, “that’s Throckton for you. They were probably visiting someone, and before you know it, Kate will be having triplets.”
“Yes,” Mel says, “but, Blake, if we didn’t know Michael, if all we knew was that she went into the water, he was there, close by, he went in after her, he died, and now it turns out that she’s pregnant, what would we think?”
“Mel, you can’t be saying…” Blake is standing very still. He’s looking over her shoulder. She can’t read him.
“I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying, if we hadn’t known Michael, what would we be thinking?”
• • •
Walking away from what he still thinks of as Elizabeth and Michael’s house, Andy remembers a time—the only time—when he and his friend were both at the scene of an accident. A cyclist had got caught in the wheels of a truck, just along the road from the office, and a horrified witness had come to find a doctor after calling an ambulance. Andy had been standing in reception at the time. He’d picked up the emergency kit and run.
In the event, there wasn’t a lot for him to do. The cyclist had possible spinal injuries and a crushed pelvis at the very least, but it didn’t look good. The guy would be lucky to walk again, let alone get on a bike. Andy cleared his airway, got a line in ready for the paramedics, and told Michael, who was standing on the pavement making sure that no one whose curiosity got the better of them would be able to have a look, that he’d never complain about doing a diabetic clinic again.
And then the man’s phone, on the road by the doctor’s knee, started to ring. “Gran” came up on the display, shaking Andy more than the blood and shattered bone and the sound of the truck driver sobbing.
He’d held the phone up to Michael, mute, horrified, thinking that the next time this Gran was likely to hear her grandson’s name would be attached to some very bad news. The cyclist was no longer a jigsaw of bone and blood, a game played against poor medical odds.
Michael had taken the phone from him and switched it off, then put it back in the cyclist’s bag.
“What you have to remember on days like this,” Michael had said, “is that everything works out, somehow, in the end.” Seeing the look Andy gave him, he’d added, “I’m not saying it happens for a purpose or a plan. I’m saying, even with the terrible things, it works out somehow, in the end. The river always gets to the sea.”
Mike,
Well, I did it. I put on my black skirt and my white shirt and mascara and tights and heels, and I went to work. I said, “Welcome to Throckton,” and I smiled and I chatted a little bit, and I was all right. Ian hovered for the morning, and Emily took me to lunch, which I’m sure wasn’t as casual an arrangement as it seemed, but I’m getting to be graceful when people try to help me, because God knows I’m not good at life without you, and I need all the help I can get.
It’s funny to see people arriving and exclaiming over how pretty this place is, something I’d forgotten. I just see the bits I don’t like: the sky too close, the streets too narrow, the people knowing exactly who I am and where I fit into the Great Scheme of Throckton. But today, walking home, I remembered how I felt during my first spring here, and I was happy. I remembered my amazement at how green everything is, all the time, not just during spring and autumn, like it is back home.
When I left, walking back through town, I think I saw Kate Micklethwaite.
I shouldn’t be jealous of that girl. I shouldn’t. She nearly died, she’s traumatized, and she’s fucked up her superbright amazing future. I should feel sorry for her.
Or I should be like Patricia, who is angry. She’s muttering about how, when she was a girl, if you got into trouble then you at least had the grace to keep a low profile, rather than “flaunting your shame.” (There seem to be as many ways not to say pregnant as there are not to say dead.) Mel asked her what Kate had been doing. Surely it was a bit chilly to be wandering around Throckton in a bikini? But apparently she’d been to the library to borrow a book about pregnancy. Mel said, “I wouldn’t call that flaunting; I’d call it making the best of a bad job.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the two of them. Mostly I ignore them, or intervene if it’s getting out of hand.
But now I’m jealous of Kate Micklethwaite, who seems to have gotten, accidentally, I presume, what we wanted so badly. She got the baby. And she got the last touch of your life.
In a funny way I’m glad we tried, and failed, to have a baby, because those four years of trying made me understand that life isn’t fair. And I’m glad I knew that before you died, because if I hadn’t, I can’t imagine how much worse these days would be.
I love you. I do.
E xxx
Then
Elizabeth only once thought she was pregnant. It was not long before they went to the fertility clinic. Her body was fraught with hope. She was fit and healthy, making of herself the best possible nest, and at the same time anxious and aching for a baby. She’d given up on trying to note things in her diary and now kept a spreadsheet to track everything she thought might be important: sex, menstrual cycle, exercise, alcohol, working hours, unusual events.
She had always had regular periods, with less than forty-eight hours’ variation month to month. Later, she would describe her cycle to the nurse who took their details at the clinic, and when it was all written down, the nurse would look at Elizabeth and say “perfect” with a
big smile and no irony. And Elizabeth had laughed, because surely a perfect menstrual cycle would have made a baby. A perfect baby. “That’s the spirit,” the nurse had said.
But there was one Wednesday morning, the second summer that they were trying, when Elizabeth got up and ready for work and was putting tampons in her handbag and feeling a bit sad at the sight of them, when she realized that there had been no pain, and there was no blood, and there should have been by now. Mike was at work; they had an agreement that he would be in the house when she did pregnancy tests. (“You don’t need to be in the room,” she’d said. “I’ll have enough of accompanied trips to the bathroom when I’m home with a toddler.”) She had gone to work and every spare second she had was checking herself over for anything, any sign at all.
At first, Elizabeth was scanning for cramp, the feeling of heaviness, of bleeding, but then, by lunchtime, she was looking for nausea, tiredness, or a feeling of knowing, so that later, she could say to Mike, “I just knew.” She calculated dates, worked out that she would have an early April baby, and thought what a perfect time of year it would be to be born, to be new parents.
She saw the three of them in the garden under the apple blossom, and they were as clear as if she were looking at a photograph. Elizabeth herself would be rounded and smiling, the baby on her lap as pretty as a picture—she had seemed to be a daughter—with her father’s eyes and her mother’s hair, and Mike, proud and protective, standing over them. Their family, happy and complete at last.
She was bursting to get home and do a test, but it was a day when she was staying until six, so she had thought, well, she would just practice waiting, because she would have until April to wait. Mike would come off shift at four, and so he would have walked Pepper, thought about dinner, and be in the perfect mood for finding out that he was going to be a father.
Then, as Elizabeth was walking home, heart twittering and soul contented, thinking about how she would tell Mike the news, but being fairly certain that she wouldn’t need to say a word, because she could feel herself glowing, she felt the cramp tear at her.
When she got home, on the edge of tears, it was to find a message from Mike to say that he’d gone for a run. They tended not to run together so often, these days. (There had been an argument when Mike had suggested that they should both enter the London Marathon next year. “Is that because you’ve given up on the idea of us ever having a baby?” she’d asked, and he’d said, “No, it’s my way of trying to enjoy the life that we have. Do you remember it, Elizabeth? It used to be enough for you.”)
Elizabeth had lain in the bathwater until it was lukewarm. When Mike came in, he was whistling, but he stopped when he closed the door behind him, and she had thought, Have you stopped because this home has become a house that you can’t relax in?
So when she came downstairs, and she saw the look on her husband’s face, half hoping, half ready with the sympathy, she had just said, not this time, sweetheart, and left it at that. Life went on. The cycle had kept on cycling their hopes away.
When she lay awake at night, Elizabeth would think about that day and remind herself that nothing had been lost. She hadn’t been pregnant. Her period had been late, that was all. But she had felt bereft.
She could have woken Mike and told him. She knew she didn’t have to lie there, feeling the way that she did. But she knew that if she told him, he would be upset for her, and it would be more pressure for next time.
Instead, she thought about what they were doing to themselves, about how in not being completely honest she was keeping a secret, for the first time, from this man she loved more than anyone. It didn’t feel right. But then, all the books said that having difficulty conceiving wasn’t good for a relationship.
Mike,
Your mother looks terrible. Drained and tired and obsessed with Kate Micklethwaite and her baby. Yesterday, she came in—it was raining—and before she’d even taken her coat off, she’d started talking about what she’d have done with Kate. How at the first sign of trouble she’d have kept her busy, put her in charge of the ironing, including the sheets. “People iron sheets?” Mel mouthed at me before she made her apologies and bolted.
It would have been volunteer work or helping with a church group, a part-time job in the library. Kate wouldn’t have been allowed to “moon about” after she decided she wasn’t going abroad, if Patricia had had anything to do with it. (I started to feel sorry for the poor girl at this point.) How she’d have taken her shopping on the weekends, and invited her friends around, and made sure every second of her time was accounted for.
Under your mother’s hand, Kate would have spent a lot of time with people who loved her, and when she went to bed at night she would have been tired out, and have had no time or thought for mischief.
And then, she said, and then, within a month, I’d have turned her around, and she’d be a normal, well-behaved girl with a bright future ahead of her, and I might be proud that Michael had saved her, and understand it a bit more.
It was just as well that Mel had ducked out as soon as this all started, because your mother was in tears and I know she hates to cry in front of—well, of anyone at all. I sat her down and I said, “Patricia, we might not like what’s going on here. It’s hard. But I think of it as Mike saving two people. I didn’t want him to die, but there are going to be two people walking around Throckton, Kate and her baby, for a very long time, for longer than you and me, probably, because of what Mike did that night. It’s cold comfort, but it’s something.”
She was quiet for a minute while she dried her tears. So I told her that I’d baked a cake, and she looked so proud. God knows what she would have been like if we’d had our baby. She declared it “a bit dry but not a bad effort” and then said she’d write down the recipe for her fruit cake that you liked.
I said I’d like that and we’ll call it “Michael’s fruit cake,” even though you’re not here to eat it.
She told me how she’s always thought of her steak and kidney pie as John’s pie because he liked it so much.
And then we were both crying. I was having a better day until then, feeling a little bit like me.
Mel came down and put the kettle on. This is a long road.
E xxx
Now
Kate feels like a lion cub in one of the nature documentaries that she and her father used to watch. There are times when she seems to have gotten cornered by something with big horns, and she can’t see her way out of it, and then the mother lion appears, all claws and teeth, and the predator is gone, running for the hills.
Her mother seems to have developed a sixth sense for trouble, so that every time Rufus appears, his eyes cold, and starts talking about Oxford and the future and hard decisions now being the best in the long run, Richenda will come in and say something like, “Rufus. We had a long talk about this and we agreed that Kate has made her decision and we’d say no more about it.”
At the library, when Mike’s mother had been at the desk, horrible staring and pursed-up face, Richenda had appeared at her shoulder and said kindly, “Mrs. Gray, I hope that you’re well. I know things must be very difficult,” and ushered Kate away before there was time for a response.
When they had gone to see the midwife, and she had asked about the baby’s father, and Kate could barely trust herself to speak, Richenda had said firmly, “The father isn’t involved,” and that had been the end of that conversation.
Afterward, Richenda had said, quietly, “When you are ready to talk about the father, Kate, I’m ready to listen. Until then, I’m not going to badger you about it. I trust that you have your reasons.”
Kate had nodded, and just for a moment she’d been ready to tell her mother the whole of it. But then, she’d remembered her promise.
• • •
Blake finds himself at the Micklethwaites’ house. He hasn’t called in advance; he was just w
alking past and thought he’d drop in on the off chance. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, the conversation he’d had with Mel the other night refusing to leave him. He pushes the gate open, winces at the squeak as he does every time.
“Infuriating, isn’t it,” Richenda calls from where she’s kneeling by a flower bed. “I’ve asked Rufus to deal with it a thousand times, and so I can’t do it myself now. It’s a sort of garden argument. Neither of us will give in.”
She gets to her feet, pushes her hair out of her face. Blake notices that she’s barefoot, her toenails painted pale purple. “I didn’t know you were coming today. Have I forgotten?” She makes a gesture—a twist of her palm, a drop of her shoulder—that says, The way things are at the moment, I could forget anything, so please forgive me if I have.
“No, no,” Blake says. “I was just passing, and, well, I thought I’d see how you are doing.”
“You’ve heard then?”
“I’ve heard.”
She smiles, and moves toward the house, speaking over her shoulder to him.
“I can’t believe how calm I am. I had no idea, of course, although looking back, it’s obvious…” They are in the kitchen now, Blake leaning close to hear her over the sound of the water filling the kettle. “But there you are. I think it’s because I was there for the scan. It makes it real. My mother used to say, a baby brings its own love, and, well…”
It’s as though now Richenda has started talking, she can’t stop. She blurts it all out: due date, Rufus’s fury, Kate’s calmness, the planned decorating, how much easier it is when you know what sex the baby is, the university place released, the way that four months isn’t anywhere near as long as you think it is. And, as she does so, a waterfall of words, she recognizes that she hasn’t had a true conversation with anyone. Kate she protects, with her words as well as her actions, her watching. Rufus she bickers with, over the father and the future and the fact that he can’t accept what’s happening to them.
The Secrets We Keep Page 13
