A Hidden Life (19 page)

‘No problem, darling. I've been reading the letters on your desk. Oh, God, Matt, I'm joking! I wouldn't, honestly. All your secrets are safe with me.'

‘Ellie, you don't change. Are you ready to eat? I've reserved the table for one o'clock.'

‘Let's go then,' said Ellie, leading the way out of the room.

They walked down the road in the spring sunshine.

‘Lovely weather,' Matt said and Ellie made a sound between a laugh and a snort.

‘Oh, come on, Matt,' she said. ‘Do say we're not going to talk about the weather.'

‘I was just remarking on what a nice day it was.' Matt knew he sounded huffy and didn't care. Why did Ellie think
she
could decide what was and wasn't to be spoken about? This attitude was something she shared with Constance. It was only one of many things they saw eye to eye about. His mother used to do it all the time: tell him that some topic he'd initiated was boring or stupid or just nothing to do with her.

‘Oh, Matt darling,' she'd say, ‘don't let's talk about that …' or, ‘Please, Matt, not …' and then you could insert about a thousand topics in which she had no interest whatsoever. These included him, his wife, his daughter, his work, politics, sport, movies, TV. What on earth
did
we talk about? he wondered. He knew the answer: they'd talked about her, about Constance. And about Rosemary, his grandmother. Relations between the two women were strained, to say the least.

La Belle Hélène was a small and pleasant restaurant which tried to look like a provincial French bistro and almost succeeded. The tablecloths were gingham; there was a straw basket on each table overflowing with chunks of good French bread. The house red was more than drinkable and the unpretentious menu appealed to Matt. He couldn't bear food which needed three lines of purple prose to describe it and particularly hated the term ‘enrobed' which menu writers used when talking about thick sauces. Phyl had never eaten here, as far as he knew, which was part of the reason he'd chosen it today. He could never get her to understand why anyone would choose to eat out when there was perfectly good food at home. Restaurants in other towns was one thing, but a place just down the road from where she lived struck Phyl as silly.

As soon as they'd sat down, Matt noticed that Mrs Blandford and a friend of hers whose name escaped him – Mrs Whitsomething … Whitford, wife of a local councillor – were at a table on the other side of the room. He turned quickly to the menu, but not before Mrs B had caught his eye and given him a flirtatious wave. He waved back, and smiled broadly, as if to say
I'm not doing anything underhand or hole in corner. All perfectly respectable.

‘Who're you waving at?' Ellie wanted to know.

‘A silly old trout called Mrs Blandford who knows me from the time her husband left her. I handled the sale of her house after the divorce. Years ago.'

‘Mmm,' Ellie said, who was already bored by the subject and considering what to order. Matt was relieved when the waiter arrived and they could turn their attention to the food. He wondered whether Mrs B knew Phyl and decided she probably did. Many people knew her from the vet's and he could just imagine a pack of Pekinese dogs snapping at the rather thick Blandford ankles. He decided to put all thought of the ladies in the corner and what they might be saying to one another about him and Ellie totally out of his mind. Phyl knew he was having this lunch. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He poured a glass of white wine for Ellie and one for himself and said, ‘I've been thinking about the family lately. You met Grandmother Rosemary, didn't you?'

‘God, yes,' Ellie said. ‘John's mother. Scary woman.'

‘Was she?'

‘Mmm, she was a control freak, I thought. Quiet and demure-looking on the surface but steely underneath. I was never fooled by the twin-set and pearls façade. I wouldn't have crossed her in a hurry. She made your dad what he was, didn't she?'

The waiter arrived with their food, and as he served the vegetables, and the potatoes, Matt thought about Ellie's remarks. He said, ‘What do you mean, made him what he was …?'

‘She never let him forget,' Ellie said calmly, ‘that he was second-best. She wanted a girl.'

‘How d'you know that? Is it true? My father never said anything to me.'

‘I know because she told me.'

Matt stared at her with a forkful of mashed potato halfway to his mouth. ‘D'you mean to say my grandmother told you this and didn't tell me? Why, for goodness' sake?'

‘Because you weren't interested, I suppose. And I was. I – I drew her out. I asked the right questions. She was bitter, Matt. A bitter woman, because she couldn't have children of her own. That poisoned her, I think, and turned her into who she became.'

‘What did she actually say? I mean,
really
 – not things you deduced or inferred from what she did …'

‘You never stop being a lawyer, do you, Matt? Well, she told me that when she went into the prison camp, she wanted to die. She'd just found out her husband had been killed in some hideous battle or other. This on top of years and years of trying for a baby and not succeeding. It was the last straw. They'd been very much in love, she told me, and finding another husband was the last thing on her mind. But she had to take care of John. He was her friend's son, after all. Don't you think you'd have done something similar?'

‘No, I don't think I would have,' Matt said. ‘I'd have tried to find the mother's relations. Or something. I'd have made an effort.'

‘But this was wartime. People were dying and disappearing all over the place. It must have been a nightmare keeping track of paperwork. She persuaded the authorities that John was
her
son.'

Matt thought about this for a moment. ‘Why didn't my father say anything? He was old enough to remember exactly what happened to his real mother, wasn't he?'

Ellie put her knife and fork down tidily on the plate. ‘He didn't say anything because he was terrified. Rosemary told him that if he said one word about her not being his real mother, they – whoever they were – would take him away and put him in an orphanage. And by the time they got to England and she'd remarried and she and Frederick Barrington had adopted John and he'd gone off to school (which he hated, by the way) he'd almost persuaded himself that he
was
Rosemary's birth child. It was easier that way, I suppose.'

Matt looked down at his plate. He finished what was left on it silently, trying to analyze his feelings. Part of him was interested in what Ellie was saying about his father. Why had she not mentioned it before? Perhaps she assumed he'd known all along, and didn't take into account his father's habitual silence and Constance's lack of interest in anything that concerned her husband. Another part of him (and he felt ashamed admitting this to himself) was growing more and more irritated that this lunch had turned out to be more serious than the flirtatious and pleasant occasion he'd imagined. A voice in his head said
did you truly expect her to initiate anything – anything romantic – at lunch? At La Belle Hélène, of all places? If so, you're a bloody fool. She's probably not interested. She's probably only after free legal advice of some kind.

‘You're not saying anything,' Ellie chided him.

‘Sorry. I was thinking. I didn't mean the whole meal to be devoted to my family history.'

‘Then,' Ellie smiled at him, ‘let's talk about something jollier.'

‘Jollier? You haven't come to ask advice? Or talk about the will?'

‘No, whatever gave you that idea? I just fancied the idea of seeing you. Justin's saying nothing and Nessa's stopped moaning quite as much. What about Lou?'

‘She's not said anything lately. I'm the one who's still angry. The money, the property – either of those would have made such a difference to her situation.'

‘How are you liking life with a baby?'

‘It's bloody hard work,' Matt said, and at once felt disloyal. He added, ‘Though of course, we love having Poppy. She's a sweetie, really.'

‘But your nights are interrupted and Phyl smells of baby vomit.'

‘You don't mince your words, do you, Ellie? No, it's fine, really.'

‘You always were,' Ellie said, putting her hand gently over his and gazing into his eyes, ‘a useless liar. You're hating it and wishing it was over and Lou would take her kid back. You can't fool me.'

Matt felt himself blushing. ‘You're a witch, Ellie. You see right through me. I can't help it. I adore Poppy, but I think I'm a bit old for babies, that's all. But Phyl's happy. She loves it. Thrives on it.'

He felt her fingers caressing the skin of his wrist. ‘I think,' she whispered, ‘that you might deserve a bit of a treat.'

‘What are you suggesting, Ellie?'

‘Nothing, really. Just the occasional lunch. We might do a movie or a play up in town?'

‘And what would I tell Phyl?'

‘You'd work something out.'

‘Get thee behind me, woman,' he laughed, but his heart was pounding and he felt for the first time in a long time the excitement that came with the contemplation of a deliciously forbidden possibility. It could happen. Ellie was willing to sleep with him, he knew, but he wasn't – he couldn't! What would it do to Phyl if she found out?
She needn't find out. No one need ever know.
He couldn't do it. He wasn't cut out to be an adulterer. As Ellie said, he was a rotten liar. He sighed and said, ‘Though I wouldn't rule out another lunch.'

‘Soon,' Ellie said. ‘Can it be soon? It's such a treat to see you, Matt. Sometimes I wonder why I ever left you.'

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Mrs Blandford and Mrs Whitford were no longer at their table. When had they left? He'd been too preoccupied to notice. Would that become part of the anecdote the two ladies would spread around town?
My dear, he was so absorbed in this woman that he didn't even look up when we passed their table.

Ellie signalled the waiter and asked for the dessert menu. The tables were small at this restaurant. He was aware that her knees were almost touching his under the hanging whiteness of the tablecloth. He could put a hand on her knee. She was wearing a shortish skirt … he could move his fingers gently under the hem and … He shook his head to clear it of the knowledge that Ellie always wore
stockings and not tights. He closed his eyes briefly, remembering, so vividly remembering, how soft the white skin was at the top of her thighs …

‘Are you having a pudding?' Ellie's voice brought him back to the real world, where he was a respectable lawyer married to another woman, having a perfectly decent lunch with someone he was supposed to have got over two decades ago.

‘No … no, thanks. Just a strong black coffee, that's all.'

He hoped devoutly that the caffeine would knock some sense into him. He felt inflamed, feverish, and found himself trying to answer two completely contradictory questions. The first was
where can I get Ellie on her own and how soon?
and the second,
how do I run away from this ghastly temptation and avoid wrecking my life with Phyl?
There was no way he knew to reconcile these conflicting desires but he was certain of one thing: whatever Ellie wanted from him and was willing to give him, it wasn't any kind of permanent relationship. I don't care, he thought. I want her. I wish – I wish I could take her back to the office, to the comfortable chair she was sitting in an hour ago. I'd push her skirt up above her knees and …

‘Your coffee, sir,' said the waiter.

We apologize for the delay, which has been caused by a signal failure …

The tinny voice burbled on for a while, explaining, and saying sorry in every tinny way it knew, but the bottom line was a delay. Damn and blast and bloody hell, Lou thought, staring out of the window at a bank of more than usual boringness. Just grass, and those purple flowering plants she didn't know the name of but which weren't buddleia and which grew in profusion by every railway line in the country, or so it seemed. She took out her mobile and phoned Haywards Heath to tell them she was going to be late.

‘It's okay,' said her mother. ‘Just phone when you're nearly here and Poppy and I will come and fetch you in the car.'

Poppy. She'd only been away from home for a couple of weeks but even so, when it got to this stage, when she was actually on her way to see her daughter, she could hardly wait. I'm going to tell Mum, she told herself. I'm going to tell her that I'm taking Poppy back as soon as I've finished this screenplay. Lou had come to the conclusion that in spite of the convenience of solitude; in spite of the fact that she could do exactly what she wanted when she wanted; in spite of the hours and hours of work she'd managed to put in while Poppy wasn't there, she wanted her back. She wanted her there in the next room. Her voice. Her silly words, her cries, her smell, and the smile that she produced every day when Lou went in to pick her up out of her cot: shining, pure, totally loving – and all for her. The little arms stretched out, the pink and white striped fleecy bag that she slept in twisted up around her feet, hobbling her – I miss all that,
Lou acknowledged. And I'm jealous of Mum and worried that if I leave Poppy there, she'll get to love Mum better than she loves me. It's not enough that she loves me. Lou recognized that these feelings were stupid and petty but still, it was true. She needed Poppy to love her best.
I love you all there is –
that's what her own mother used to say to her when she was a child and Lou had always remembered it. Now Phyl was saying it to Poppy. Do I mind that? Am I jealous of my own daughter? That is beyond stupid. It's ridiculous. I'm going to stop thinking such nonsense right now.