This Secret We're Keeping

by Rebecca Done

  ‘It’s the teacher in you,’ she said with a smile, squeezing his hand to let him know it was okay.

  He looked down at her then and for a moment she thought he was welling up, but he turned away before she could be sure.

  They paused at Reception to return their key, Will gruffly muttering something about a change of plans while Jess feigned a sudden and unlikely fascination with the tourist information display.

  16

  There was something about trying to make a baby that seemed conversely akin to having an affair, Jess was realizing, in that it appeared to entail a similar amount of sneaking off to bed at strange times of the day and snatching one-off opportunities to shag each other stupid. Unfortunately, Jess had been slow to equate this curious new phase of her best friend’s marriage with remembering to call her before popping over – because to do so would have felt weirdly formal and bizarre, given that she and Anna had been wandering in and out of each other’s houses quite freely since childhood.

  So, unannounced as usual, she stopped by on Sunday evening with some leftover party bites from a client tasting. Of course, she was half expecting Anna to reject the food in favour of some sort of fertility smoothie made from royal jelly or similar, but what she hadn’t been predicting was a sweaty and breathless Anna to wrench open the front door wearing nothing but a gingham apron and a strange expression on her face that could equally have been profound impatience or the early stages of an orgasm.

  ‘Fuck! Sorry,’ Jess gasped in surprise, suddenly engulfed by disturbing images of Simon prowling naked around the kitchen in a chef’s hat, brandishing a spatula.

  Anna sort of gaped at her for a couple of seconds before pushing her hair back over her bare shoulder and resting one elbow on the door frame, which was possibly the worst impression of composure that Jess had ever seen. ‘Oh, hi, Jess. You okay?’

  Jess smiled. ‘Baking?’

  Anna dropped the pretence straight away and started laughing. ‘Oh, bloody hell. I only grabbed it to answer the door. It was the nearest thing! Lucky it was you, Jess.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jess said, covering her mouth to try and stifle a chuckle as Anna succeeded in projecting fluster and amusement all at once. ‘I just brought round some …’ She passed over the cool bag, packed with Anna’s usual favourites (miniature salmon puffs, pizzette, Parmesan crackers). ‘They’re just nibbles … Save them for later.’

  Anna looked pleased. ‘Thanks, Jess. Hey, we’ll only be a minute. Can you hang on?’

  Jess’s jaw slackened slightly. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Wait downstairs in the sports bar for me? Please?’ Anna begged. ‘I really want to catch up with you.’

  ‘Christ. Only if you promise not to wear that apron.’

  So Jess reluctantly but obediently headed downstairs to the sports bar, where she ordered a glass of overpriced Argentinian Malbec and sat down at a table overlooking the swimming area. It was only a token pool – the variety favoured by health clubs and hotels that was designed for bobbing about in rather than racking up any sort of mileage – but tonight it was mesmerizing, spot-lit and still with the water sparkling emerald over the green mosaic tiles.

  Also mesmerizing – though admittedly in a slightly less hypnotic sense – was the group of middle-aged women from the next table who looked as if they were at the tail end of the most depressing hen weekend in history. The atmosphere was so sombre that the occasion could easily have been mistaken for a funeral wake, were it not for the requisite reluctant smattering of pink sashes and feather-trimmed cowboy hats, and predictable rotation of pop music loosely related to having a good time playing over the sports bar sound system. At one point the group made a half-hearted attempt at some dance moves vaguely reminiscent of the conga, which culminated in one of the women knocking over a champagne bottle and being issued with a sharp slap from the flame-haired bride-to-be. Chaos threatened to descend, with the barman forced to step in and mediate before the hen party started to resemble an early-hours brawl on the pavement outside a provincial nightclub.

  A couple of friends whom Jess knew from catering college stopped by to chat then, a good opportunity to catch up over a glass of wine, until Anna eventually appeared and Jess’s friends headed back over to the bar. Embarrassingly, Anna had brought Simon with her, reminding Jess of the time she’d arrived at Anna’s London university digs to discover her wrestling half naked on the sofa with a boy from her course, after which Anna had insisted on them all sitting round the kitchen table together and sharing a can of tomato soup.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Anna fluttered, tottering over with a tray bearing a bottle of mineral water and two glasses. Jess wondered guiltily if she should quickly lean over and tip her red wine into an adjacent pot plant.

  ‘Tomorrow’s the start of my fertility window, so we had to … well, you know.’ Thankfully, Anna had swapped the apron and bare skin for skinny jeans and a polka-dot blouse. Her hair now carried a post-shag tousle, her lips and cheeks a satisfied warmth.

  Simon’s cheeks looked warm too, but his were the shade of red most commonly induced by choking fits or particularly vicious chilli masalas. He’d thrown on a chequered shirt and a pair of cords from what Anna witheringly referred to as his ‘food stain’ collection (corduroy in shades of plum, mustard and raspberry – tonight was raspberry). He had, however, failed to attend to his hair, which was sticking up at various conflicting angles like it had just done a couple of rounds in the kitchen’s industrial salad spinner.

  Greeting Jess with a nod, Simon pulled up a stool next to his wife. ‘Ah, fertility windows. More fun than you’d think.’ He said it like a slogan, smooth and sarcastic with a faux-American accent. Then he took up his glass of water and looked instantly depressed.

  Jess smiled, privately thinking it quite fortunate that Simon’s acerbic sense of humour was one of the reasons Anna had fallen in love with him in the first place.

  As Anna beamed at Simon in a way that suggested they would revisit his sarcasm later, Jess noticed she’d almost lost the apples to her cheeks. She was thinner than when Jess had last seen her, but oddly so – she looked strangely angular, as if she’d lost too much weight too quickly. (Then again, Jess thought, maybe it was just the sports bar downlighting. With its polished brass bar rails and stripped pine surfaces, the bar catered for the – mostly male – golfing crowd and the sort of guys who liked their pint to come with Sky Sports on a plasma screen. It wasn’t exactly a romantic dinner destination, so flattering lighting had never really been required.)

  ‘Is this a bit awkward?’ Jess enquired casually, taking a sip from the second glass of wine she’d ordered as she waited. It was delicious – round and smooth, with flavours of damson and warming spice. ‘We could have done this another time.’

  ‘Christ, no,’ Simon said, a gentle dig at his wife. ‘Nothing awkward about this whatsoever.’ Jess noticed that even as he spoke he was staring intently at her Malbec as if she’d conjured it out of a hat and he was trying to work out whether or not it was real.

  ‘Oh, come on, you two,’ Anna chided briskly. ‘We’re all adults.’

  Just as Jess was thinking she might offer Simon some wine, since he was clearly weighed down by abstention-related misery, it occurred to her that – lighting aside – Anna really was looking alarmingly thin.

  ‘Have you lost weight?’ Jess asked her, concerned that in the single week since they’d seen one another, it could possibly be this obvious.

  Anna glanced down at herself as if to check, realizing as she did so that her shirt was misbuttoned. She tutted and started again. ‘I think I’m just toning up from the yoga. It’s quite intensive.’ Now that Jess thought about it, Simon looked as though he’d lost weight from around his jawline too.

  ‘So how good are your yoga moves, Simon?’ Jess asked him, partly to see if she could break him out of the little staring contest he seemed to be having with her wine glass.

  ‘Well, Jess, you’ll be pleased to
know I’m now two centimetres closer to touching my toes.’ He held his hands up. ‘I know, I know. I’m a bendy genius. Although it has taken an inordinate amount of dedicated stretching.’ He fired a wry wink in Jess’s direction. ‘I’m knackered.’

  ‘You’re knackered because you’ve been working too hard,’ Anna said, missing the subtle sarcasm. ‘I keep telling you to take it easy.’

  ‘Well, someone’s got to stump up the cash for Rasleen’s extortionate hourly rate.’ By now Simon’s gaze had returned firmly to the Malbec.

  Anna tipped her head until it reached an angle that said pissed off. ‘Define extortionate.’

  Clearly lacking the energy to come up with an answer that would satisfy an already prickly Anna, Simon chose not to reply. Instead, he leaned across the table and grabbed Jess’s wine glass, as if the klaxon had just sounded on some sort of speed-drinking contest. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Jess?’ Without giving her a chance to respond, he began to glug – and it soon became clear that he wasn’t going to stop. So he just kept drinking, and drinking, while Jess and Anna simply watched in astonished silence. In the space of about ten seconds, the entire contents of the glass were gone, at which point Simon set it back down on the table as casually as possible and breathlessly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Sorry, Jess,’ was the first thing he gasped after coming up for air. ‘But I really fucking needed that.’

  ‘Simon,’ Anna said, her voice pure acid. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I haven’t had a drink for two weeks, Anna.’

  ‘That’s Jess’s wine!’

  ‘I’ll get you another,’ he said to Jess, though she observed to her amusement that he didn’t sound in the least bit sorry. ‘Fuck me, that was good.’

  ‘Jesus, listen to yourself,’ Anna berated him furiously. ‘If I was pregnant I’d have to stop drinking for a whole nine months. I wouldn’t be able to just go around downing other people’s wine whenever I felt like it. If that was even socially acceptable in the first place. Which, in case you were wondering, it’s not.’

  ‘If you were pregnant there’d be a light at the end of this sodding tunnel,’ Simon snapped back at her, his capacity for self-preservation clearly now perilously reduced by the alcohol.

  ‘This. Sodding. Tunnel,’ Anna repeated slowly and deliberately, so they could all have a chance to reflect on her husband’s choice turn of phrase. ‘What an eloquent description of our future son or daughter.’ She blinked at him, which was her way of requesting an apology.

  Instinctively compelled to referee, and in the interests of fair-mindedness, Jess considered pointing out that, in fact, Anna had also been known to equate the conception process with tunnels, black holes and, occasionally, hell pits – usually between mouthfuls of Crunchie after getting her period.

  But Simon and Anna were obviously having so much sex that post-coital unity no longer really needed to come into things. ‘Fuck it,’ Simon said, standing up. ‘I’m getting a fillet steak and fat chips. Sorry, Jess,’ he said as he moved past her, squeezing her shoulder. ‘I’ll ask them to bring you another glass.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have ordered wine,’ Jess said guiltily as soon as Simon had steamed off down the length of the bar and banged through the double doors in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, please. He’s lying about not drinking. He drained a bottle out of the wine rack two days ago then filled it back up with flat cola. I check,’ Anna added sadly, clearly aware that these were not exactly ideal behaviour patterns.

  ‘We should have done this another day. Probably the last thing he wanted was to come down here and sit with me.’

  Anna shook her head in disagreement. ‘Rasleen’s been reminding me of the importance of keeping my life in balance. Seeing my friends, that sort of thing.’ Her face lifted into a smile. ‘I really wanted to catch up.’

  Jess felt slightly concerned that Anna seemed to think a reminder necessary, as if their friendship was no different to a car due for servicing or bikini line regrowth in need of a warm wax strip or two.

  ‘Rasleen really wants to meet you,’ Anna was suggesting now, as from somewhere over her shoulder the hen party let up a half-hearted cheer to the opening beats of ‘Love Shack’.

  ‘Me? Why?’ Jess asked, still reeling from Anna’s comment and now instantly suspicious.

  Anna looked surprised. ‘Because you’re my best friend. Like I said, Rasleen’s approach is very holistic. It’s not just about the yoga.’

  Jess wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t think so. What if we don’t get on?’

  Anna laughed. ‘Of course you’ll get on. Rasleen gets on with everybody.’

  Jess personally thought this could only be true if the accepted definition of getting on with everybody had recently been expanded to include not getting on with anybody.

  ‘Do you think …’ She rubbed at the over-polished table with her thumb, attempting to find a tactful way to phrase what she wanted to say, wary of being perceived as a negative energy or whatever label it was that Rasleen-slash-Linda assigned to anyone daring to express independence of thought. ‘Do you think Rasleen’s getting a little bit dogmatic? I mean, all this pressure she’s putting on you …’

  ‘I’m putting the pressure on myself, Jess. Look, there’s eight months to go until we’re eligible for IVF. And who knows how long the wait will be after that? Or if it’ll even work. And by then I’ll probably be too fucking old to be a mum anyway.’

  A waiter appeared at Jess’s shoulder then and set down a fresh glass of Malbec to replace the one Simon had necked. ‘With the compliments of Mr Beeling,’ he declared smoothly and serenely, like he was brokering an international peace deal.

  Clearly unimpressed by her husband’s attempt at making amends, Anna switched on the kind of forced smile she normally reserved for difficult guests, like last week’s group of birdwatchers who had angled their telescopes at the hot tub then tried to claim they were looking past it to the treeline. ‘Thanks, Sam.’

  ‘Mr Beeling only ordered one glass.’ He frowned, seemingly thrown by Simon’s lack of foresight. ‘Can I bring you anything else?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘Fine with the water, thanks, Sam.’

  ‘So, how was your nephew’s head wetting?’ Jess asked Anna as Sam scurried back to the bar. She took a sip from the wine, savouring the comforting warmth of it inside her belly.

  ‘Great, how was Matthew Landley? I take it he’s not downstairs in the car park waiting for you tonight?’

  Jess tilted her head. ‘I’m serious, Anna. Tell me all about it. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there. How’s your mum?’

  ‘Missing you,’ Anna relented. ‘The whole thing was a bit OTT. There were speeches. And people kept passing me their babies to hold. I think they were hoping I might catch the right hormones or something. Oh, and my mum’s organizing a family get-together in Spain, in August. She wants you there, Jess. She told me to tell you – you don’t have a choice.’

  Jess smiled. She missed Christine too. ‘At the villa?’ she asked, trying not to be distracted by the sight of the hen party moving off, a big gaggle of pink feathers, VPLs and moulting glitter. She couldn’t help wondering where they were heading to next and if she should perhaps text Philippe at Carafe to warn him.

  Anna nodded. ‘Yep, it’ll be at the villa. You can think about it if you like. Let me know.’

  Jess had fond memories of childhood holidays with Anna’s family, happy times when even Anna’s infuriating younger sisters had seemed bearable. ‘Okay.’

  ‘You could bring Zak.’

  ‘Ha.’

  ‘I’m actually serious. Bring him.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re quite in the market for family holidays just yet,’ Jess said with a frown as she traced an absent-minded circle of the brass number thirteen screwed on to their table.

  Anna frowned. ‘Why not? Has something happened?’

  Jess chewed on the inside
of her lip.

  Anna took a deep breath, as if she was preparing to jump off a very high diving board. ‘Are you about to say something that’s going to really upset me?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like, you slept with Matthew.’

  Jess remained silent. Anna emitted a long, low groan of frustration, provoking a display of minor alarm from the two golfers at the next table.

  ‘Please don’t give me a hard time, Anna,’ Jess mumbled, trying to simultaneously take a fortifying swig of wine and smile reassurance at the golfers.

  ‘I’m your best friend, Jess. If you’re doing something stupid, it’s my job to give you a hard time.’

  ‘It only happened once. It’s not … ongoing.’

  Clutching at her mineral water like she thought it might be able to offer some form of psychological support (Jess doubted it), Anna spoke with incredulity, like the only possible explanation could be that this would all turn out to be an honest mistake – that Jess had somehow, in the wrong light perhaps, managed to confuse Matthew with Zak. ‘But he has a wife and child.’

  ‘She’s not his wife,’ Jess said, before she could help herself.

  ‘This isn’t like you,’ Anna said, setting down her glass and grabbing Jess’s hand, forehead all corrugated with concern. ‘You don’t do stuff like this. You’re not this person.’

  Jess remained silent, wondering for a moment if she should perhaps explain to Anna that Natalie had tricked Will into having Charlotte, that it hadn’t even been his choice to become a father. This detail of his biography felt important to Jess – insofar as it showed, perhaps, that he and Natalie were together for reasons other than love. But every sentence she tried to form in her head made it sound as if Will had been arrested for drink-driving and Jess was attempting to plead peer pressure in his defence.

  ‘So have you finished things with Zak?’ Anna asked her.