Secret Smile

by Nicci French

  I was disconcerted for a while by that notion of Brendan being 'in the family' and I fell silent. I finished my beer and opened a second one, and then I started to feel more mellow about it all. I stood apart and looked at the family and looked at Brendan bustling around. I thought of this narrow strip of urban garden, one of dozens in the street, one of millions in London, and suddenly I was touched by the sight of Brendan going to so much effort, bustling between the barbecue – which had now been lit, quickly and efficiently by Bill – and my father and my mother. Every so often he would sidle up to Kerry and touch her or whisper something to her or give her a look, and she would light up.

  He helped my mother with sorting out the marinade for the chicken and salmon pieces. Somehow he went into the house and tracked Troy down to whichever hole he'd been hiding in. He chivvied him out and persuaded him to carry plates to the table, and the different salads that Troy and my mother had made that morning. It made me think about myself and I felt a little ashamed. I wondered if I had assumed that the Cotton family existed entirely for my benefit, like some sort of museum that I could drop into whenever I felt like it. And I could always rely on other people to maintain it. My parents were there to do things for me and to blame when things went wrong. Had I thought enough about doing things for them?

  By the time I was on to my third beer, I was feeling thoroughly forgiving of almost everybody in the world, and certainly everybody in this garden, though not necessarily in the most coherent way.

  There was Brendan, doing five things at once, working so hard; and there was my mother bustling in and out with plates and cutlery; my father fiddling around with the barbecue to stop it tipping over; Kerry in conversation with Judy; Troy playing some game with Bill's children, Sasha and Mitch. And I noticed something odd: they all seemed to be having a good time. Brendan brought me a plate of grilled chicken and salad, and I ate it eagerly. I needed something to soak up the beer. I was so hungry that I barely noticed the very slight oddity that he had served me first. I looked over at Kerry and she sensed my looking at her in that way people do, and she turned to me and smiled. I smiled back. We were being a happy family.

  CHAPTER 6

  I remember, when I was thirteen or fourteen, going with Bill to a house in Finsbury Park as his unpaid assistant. It was small, with poky rooms and brown furniture. We stood in the living room that had sheets over the floor, and he gave me a sledgehammer and told me to smash it through the internal wall, into the kitchen on the other side. He had to tell me twice because it seemed impossible to me that I could do this. The wall looked so solid, the room so unchangeably square and drab, and surely you couldn't just break through structures like that, so casually? But he nodded and stood back, so I heaved the hammer, which was almost too heavy for me to lift, behind my left shoulder and swung it as hard as I could into the centre of the wall, spinning with the weight of it, wrenching my arm. Plaster crumbled on to the floor and a crack appeared. I swung again and a hole opened in the surface, jagged and the size of my fist. Again and the hole widened. I could see the centre of the kitchen, a draining board and sink with dripping taps, and beyond that a fractured piece of the small garden, with a bay tree at the end of it. And I felt all at once tremendously excited – to be opening things up like this, new vistas with each swing of the hammer, light suddenly flooding into the dreary room. I think it was what first made me think that I'd like to do what Bill did, though when years later I tried to say that to him he patted me on the shoulder and said: 'We're just painters and decorators, Miranda.'

  Every so often at work I still had that feeling of euphoria – like a bubble of air in my chest, like a wind blowing through me. I got it, for instance, with the roof garden in Clapham, which somehow took the lid off the whole house. And when we once uncovered a fireplace that was so vast you could stand inside it and look straight up to see a penny-sized circle of sky at its top. Knocking walls down always fills me with fresh energy. And every so often I have the same elation in my personal life too. It goes along with transition and change, spring, falling in love, travelling to a new country, even that feeling of newness that comes after an illness.

  After that lunch, I came home and I made two resolutions: I was going to clean up my flat and I was going to start running. That was all. But I wrote them both down on the back of an envelope, as if I would forget otherwise, and then I underlined each of them twice. I sat back in the chair. I'd drunk three cans of beer and eaten two pieces of marinated chicken, a slab of charred salmon, three slices of garlic bread and a bowl of ice cream. If I were being really virtuous, I could go for a run right now, before it got too dark. Or maybe it wasn't healthy to run on a full stomach. And anyway, I didn't want to jog along the high street in my grey tracksuit trousers that had lost the elastic at the waist.

  So I thought I'd start with the flat. I changed into some baggy trousers and a sleeveless T-shirt and put on some music. I rather like tidying my flat, which is on the first floor and very small – just my bedroom, the living room, with a table up against one wall, a galley kitchen with windows overlooking a patchwork of narrow gardens, and the bathroom. Clean surfaces, dishes all put away, a vacuumed carpet, washed floor, neat piles of paper on my desk, laundry in the basket, clothes back in the wardrobe, the gleaming bath, the pens in a mug on the mantelpiece, the smell of bleach, polish, lavatory cleaner, soap. My bare feet were gritty and my arms and forehead slick with sweat by the time I'd finished, and it was late. Afternoon had become dark evening and, now that I'd stopped racing around, I could feel the air had the slicing chill of a cloudless October night.

  Some of my friends don't like living alone. It's what they're doing until they no longer have to. But I do. I like the feeling I get when I close the door behind me and go upstairs and everything's quiet and waiting. I don't need anybody's permission to lie in a bath for two hours or go to bed at half past eight or listen to music late into the night, or pour myself a glass of wine and watch a trashy quiz show. I even like eating alone, though I'm not like Troy. I have a very limited and conservative repertoire. Sometimes I eat the same thing several nights a week – for a bit it was scrambled eggs on very buttery brown toast. Then it was Greek salad, which I've perfected: not just tomatoes and cucumber and feta cheese, but avocado, fennel and sun-dried tomatoes as well. And there were a few weeks when I would add a tin of octopus chunks to a bowl of tinned chickpeas. I went off that one quite quickly. When friends come round I either cook chicken breasts with garlic, rosemary and olive oil – you just have to put it in the oven and wait for half an hour – or we get a takeaway. Usually it's a takeaway.

  Maybe one of the reasons that Brendan had got on my nerves when we were going out was that he had so quickly made himself at home in my flat. As if it were his home too. But I told myself not to think of Brendan any more. Things were going to be different now.

  At a shop called Run Run Run in Camden High Street, I bought a rather lovely silky blue singlet, a pair of white shorts, black suede shoes and a book called Run for Your Life, It was written by a man called Jan who appeared on the back of the book wearing a headband, like a member of Duran Duran. Then I went to the off-licence and bought a bottle of white wine, cold from the fridge. Nothing that was so transparent could possibly contain a significant number of calories. And I bought a packet of expensive crisps that the packet said had been fried in an especially healthy kind of sunflower oil. I fastened the chain on the inside of my door and lay in the bath with a bowl of the crisps and a glass of the wine and read my running book. It was very comforting. The first chapter seemed to be aimed at people who were even less fit than I was. It suggested starting your running schedule with a brisk walk for ten minutes and then running very gently for a hundred yards, followed by another ten-minute walk. It said that the training runner should never get seriously out of breath. At the first sign of any kind of discomfort, just stop. The fatal thing was just to set off and go for a run. 'Better to start too slowly and build up,' said a
piece of text in italics, 'than start too quickly and give up.' That sounded fine to me. I flicked through a few pages. It looked like I could skip a few stages and still avoid breaking into a sweat.

  The writer recommended the aspiring runner to think of all the exercise they do in the course of their normal working life. According to him, even getting up from your desk to go to the water cooler counted for something. I did far more than that. I carried ladders and planks around. I painted ceilings while holding myself at contorted angles. I held cans of paint for minutes at a time. This was going to be a doddle. I set my alarm clock half an hour earlier than usual, and the following morning I ventured out in my new singlet, shorts and shoes. I rather wished I had bought a mask as well. I walked for five minutes. No problem. I ran hard for about a hundred yards and then the pain began, so I followed Jan's advice and stopped. I walked for a few minutes more and then started to run again. The pain began more quickly this time. My body had started to realize what was being done to it. I slowed down to a walk again and headed for home. Jan said the important thing in the early stages was to avoid causing sprains or pulled muscles by excessively ambitious exercise. I got back to the flat having achieved that without much difficulty.

  'Hello? Miranda? I just wanted

  I picked up the phone.

  'Hi, Mum.'

  'I didn't wake you, did I?'

  'No. I was about to leave.'

  'I just wanted to thank you for yesterday. I was going to ring last night, but then Kerry and Brendan stayed so long… It all went well, didn't it?'

  'It was very nice.'

  'Doesn't Kerry seem happy?'

  'Yes.'

  'Do you know what? I think it's a miracle.'

  'Mum…'

  'A miracle,' she repeated. 'When I think how,,,' I closed my eyes and the words slid into each other. I was going to be good.

  'Hi Miranda. It's me, Kerry. Miranda? Are you there?' There was a silence, then a man's voice in the background, though I couldn't catch what he said. Kerry giggled, then said, 'We just wanted to say how are you, and it would be nice to meet up again sometime. What's that?… Oh, Brendan says hello from him too…' I pressed the button to erase the message.

  I ran three times that week and I didn't notice any discernible difference. My lungs still hurt as soon as I jogged more than fifty paces; my legs still felt like lead and my heart a stone jolting around inside my ribcage. On hills, people often walked briskly past me. But at least I persevered, and I felt good about that.

  On Friday evening, I went out to a party given by my friends Jay and Pattie. I danced and drank beer and then wine, and then some strange schnapps from Iceland that Pattie found at the back of her cupboard when most of her guests had left and we were at the lovely stage of the night, when you don't need to make an effort any more. A dozen or so of us sat around in their dimly lit living room, which was strewn with beer cans and fag ends and odd shoes, and sipped cautiously at the schnapps, which made my eyes water. There was a man I'd met, his name was Nick. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, and after a bit he leaned against my knees, relaxing his weight. I could feel the sweat on his back. I waited a few minutes and then I put my hand on his hair, which was short and soft and brown, like an animal's fur. He gave a little sigh and tipped his head back so 1 could see his upside-down face. He was smiling faintly. I leaned forwards and kissed him quickly on his smile.

  When I left, he asked me if I'd like to see him again.

  'Yes,' I replied. 'OK.'

  'I'll call you.'

  'Do that.'

  We looked at each other. Beginnings are so very lovely, like smashing that first small hole in the wall and glimpsing a world on the other side.

  CHAPTER 7

  Nick did call two days later. There seems to be a strict code about when you call, the way there used to be a code about on which date to kiss for the first time. If you call on the same day, you're virtually a stalker. If you call the day after, you're maybe a bit desperate because, as the first day is out of the question, the second day is really the first day, so you're calling on the first day. If they're going to call at all, people call on the third day. If you wait longer than the third day, you might as well not call at all. The person will have either married or emigrated. Personally I've never paid any attention to the code. Life is too short. If it had been me, I would have called the moment I was home.

  So Nick called and it was all pretty simple. We arranged to meet the next evening at a bar in Camden Town. I was five minutes early and he was a few minutes late. He was wearing faded jeans and a checked shirt which hung loosely under his leather jacket. He was unshaven and his eyes were very dark brown, almost black.

  'You're a decorator,' he said. 'Pattie told me. And I can see some paint in your hair.'

  I rubbed my hair self-consciously.

  'There's nothing I can do about it,' I said. 'However much I check, there's always a spot somewhere round the back I've missed. It falls off in the end.'

  When I meet people, they become improbably excited by the fact that I'm a woman doing the work I do. You'd think I was defusing bombs. Still, it gives me something to talk about. And it's a bit like being a doctor. I get asked for my advice. People ask me about how they should do up their homes.

  Then Nick asked me what I wanted to do after.

  'After what?' I said, pretending not to understand.

  'Well. I mean – do you want to always be a decorator?'

  'You mean, instead of getting a profession?'

  'I guess so,' he said uncomfortably.

  'Yes,' I said simply. 'This is what I want to do.'

  'Sorry – that probably sounded really patronizing.'

  Yes, it did, so I just asked Nick what he did. He told me that he worked for an advertising company. I asked if they'd done anything I would have seen. Lots, he said. He said that they were the ones who'd done the commercial with the fluffy talking pig. Unfortunately I hadn't seen it. I asked what he was working on now, and he replied that they'd recently won a huge account with an oil company and he was working on a report in preparation for the campaign.

  But it didn't matter. What mattered were the things going on underneath the conversation, the things we weren't saying. After what seemed like a short time I looked at my watch and was surprised we'd been talking for over an hour.

  'I've got to go,' I said. 'I'm having dinner with this old friend of mine. Laura,' I added, to make it clear that I wasn't off to meet a man who might be a boyfriend or an ex-boyfriend or someone I might be considering as a boyfriend.

  'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I hoped that we could have dinner. Or something. Not tonight, obviously. What about, I don't know, Thursday?'

  I had arranged to see Troy on Wednesday that week, so Thursday sounded fine. I walked out of the bar thinking, yes, I was sure, almost sure at least, that something was going to happen. I had another thought as well, almost a scary one: maybe this was the best bit. Probably for the next few days or weeks we would have the excitement of a new object in our lives, exploring it, finding out about it. We would ask each other questions, tell carefully edited stories from our earlier lives. We would be so nice to each other, so concerned and thoughtful and just endlessly curious. And then what? Either it would fade away or just end quickly, and we would lose touch and become a memory. Somehow it never subsided into pleasant friendship. There was no way back to that. Or we would become a couple, and even then we would have to subside into some sort of normality in which we got on with our jobs and had anniversaries and had joint opinions about things and we would complete each other's sentences. It could be good. People say so. But it could never have the sheer possibility of the beginning. I felt wistful and it seemed to suit the early evening. On one side of the road the cars and shopfronts and people walking home from work were painted in gold from the last of the sun. On the other side of the road they were lost in deep shadow.

  When I saw Laura, she knew straight away that something w
as up, which it wasn't, not really.

  'You don't need to say anything,' she said. 'I can tell just by looking at you.' I tried to tell her not to be ridiculous. It had only been a drink. I thought he seemed nice, but I couldn't tell yet.

  I was more convinced than I let on. Thursday was good as well. We ate at a place just around the corner from my flat and the evening went by almost without my noticing, until we were the only people left in the restaurant and the chef was out from the kitchen with a glass of wine chatting with us. Twenty minutes later we were in the doorway of my flat, kissing each other. I pulled back from him and smiled.

  'I'd like to ask you up,' I said.

  But…?'

  'Soon,' I said. 'Really soon. It was such a nice evening, I had a great time, I really like you. I'm just not…'

  'Sure?'

  'Ready. I'm sure, Nick.'

  'Can I see you tomorrow?'

  'Yes, of course…' Then I remembered. 'Fuck. Sorry. I've got to… You won't believe it, but I've got to go round to my parents. Things are a bit complicated with them. I'll tell you about it. But not now.'

  'What about the day after tomorrow?'

  'That would be so lovely.'

  I arrived at my parents' house feeling sulky. It had been bad enough, but then my mother had phoned me just before I left, asking if I could dress up. I pulled off my trousers and top and put on the blue velvet dress that I've had for so long its hemline's gone wavy.

  'You look lovely, dear,' said my mother, as she let me in.

  I growled something in response. At least she hadn't asked me how I was. My parents were also decidedly dressed up. Troy was there as well. He looked exactly the same as usual, in corduroy trousers and a faded green sweater which should have looked fine. Troy is a rather beautiful young man, or should be. But something was always just slightly off.