Past Secrets (8 page)

Faye spent an hour on paperwork, then returned her emails, by which time her eyes were weary from staring at the screen. She fetched another coffee, shut her office door firmly, kicked off her shoes and lay down on the couch for a few minutes.

She was tired today. The reason still worried her.

Amber had woken her up at three the night before, talking loudly to herself in her sleep, saying, ‘No, I will not!’ firmly.

Faye had stood at her daughter’s door in case this middle-of-the-night conversation became a nightmare, but it didn’t. Amber muttered ‘no’

Amber had been prone to nightmares when she was a small child and Faye, who couldn’t bear to think of her darling lonely and frightened in her bed, would carry the pink-pyjama-clad little girl into her own room.

Having your baby sleep with you when you were a lonely, affection-starved single mother was probably against every bit of advice in the book, Faye knew. But she needed the comfort of her little daughter every bit as much as Amber needed her. The sweetness of that small body, energetic little limbs still padded with baby fat, gave Faye strength. No matter how tough life could be, she’d go on for Amber. Her daughter deserved the best and Faye would provide it, no matter what.

‘Mama,’ Amber would mutter in her lisping, babyish voice, and fall into a deeper sleep, taking up half the bed by lying sprawled sideways.

‘Mama, how did I get here?’ she’d say in wonder the next morning, delighted to wake up in her mother’s bed. And Faye would cuddle her tightly and they’d giggle and tickle each other, and the nightmare would never be mentioned.

Now, Amber didn’t have nightmares, just the odd restless night when she had a lot on her mind, like exams or last year’s school play where she was in charge of painting the scenery and used to sit up in bed murmuring about more Prussian blue paint for the sky.

She was probably suffering from the most awful exam stress, Faye decided, as she sipped her coffee. There were only weeks to go, after all.

If there was anything else worrying her daughter, she’d know, wouldn’t she?

Except that recently, she was beginning to think it was easier to understand total strangers searching for the perfect job than work out what was going on in her daughter’s mind.

One hundred and fifty miles away, Maggie Maguire didn’t know what impulse made her go home that afternoon instead of trekking off to the gym. Karma? Fate? Destiny twirling a lazy finger in the human world?

Unexpectedly getting off work early meant she could have had a rare meander around Galway’s shops before taking her normal Wednesday evening Pilates class. But some unknown force made Maggie walk past Extreme Fitness, bypass the lure of the bohemian boutiques, and go home to the apartment she shared with Grey. A modest third-floor flat, it was her pride and joy, especially since she’d gone ahead and painted the tiny cloakroom’s wall tiles a mesmerising Indian Ocean blue.

‘You can’t paint tiles,’ Grey had said, lounging against the door of the cloakroom, barefoot and jean-clad, as Maggie sat on the floor and read the instructions on the tin. Grey had the sort of shape that lent itself to lounging: long, long legs, a lean torso and an elegance that made women stare, admiring the swept-back leonine hair, strong, patrician face and intelligent eyes that were the same colour as his name.

‘You can. It says it right here.’ Maggie peered at the instructions, her nose scrunched up. Her auburn hair was held up with a big clip, but bits still straggled wispily round her freckled face. Maggie could have used cement as a hair product and red wisps would still have escaped to curl around her face.

Grey said he loved her hair: it was unruly, wild, beautiful and unpredictable. Like her.

After five years together, Maggie believed him, even though his last three girlfriends before her had been Park Avenue-type blondes with sleek hair, sleek clothes, push-up bras and shoe collections organised by Polaroid. Maggie’s shoe collection was organised by age: old cowboy boots at the back of the wardrobe, new ones at the front. Her clothes were rock chick rather than chic, faded Levi’s being her must-have garment. Being boyishly slim, she didn’t have enough boob to fit into a push-up bra. And nobody looking at her pale freckled face with the silvery cobalt-blue eyes that showed exactly what she was thinking could have imagined Maggie having even a grain of Park Avenue Princess hauteur.

Alas, she’d have loved to be such a creature: icily cool without a hair out of place, and could never see that her wild russet beauty and eyes that

belonged to an ancient Celtic warrior queen were far rarer and more precious than high-maintenance blonde glamour.

‘And this is the last bit of beige in the whole place. It’s got to go,’ she’d added, opening the tin of paint and breathing in, as if the salty tang of the sea would drift out, scenting the air with memories of a foreign beach.

They’d bought the apartment two years ago and the previous owners had been keen on beige, beige and more beige. It was like living in a can of mushroom soup, said Maggie, who’d grown up in a quirky house on Summer Street where her bedroom had been sky blue with stars on the midnight-blue ceiling. Dad had been going through his planetarium phase and the stars had been in their correct places too. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor would not be the wrong way round when Dennis Maguire was in charge.

The cloakroom in the Galway apartment was the last room Maggie had painstakingly redecorated. Now it was all cheery blues and whites, like a small beachside restaurant from their last holiday, a glorious, special-offer week in the Seychelles. Holidays had been off the agenda for the past few months as they were broke but Maggie had an almost physical longing for the feeling of sweltering sun toasting her skin while her toes wriggled in sand.

We need a break, she thought as she stepped out of the lift on to their floor. Sun, sand and no conversations with irritated students when they’d discovered that the very book they needed for that night’s rush-job essay on Greco-Roman funerary practices wasn’t in its place.

Grey was a politics lecturer and Maggie was one of six librarians in the vast, modern Coolidge College library, a job she loved because it allowed her mind to wander over many varied subjects from medicine to literature. The downside was that pre-exams the stress levels of the students went up and people who’d spent six months working on the formula for the perfect Long Island Iced Tea to fuel a party suddenly required actual research materials for their courses. And Maggie was the one they got mad at when the research material in question was booked out by someone else.

‘But, like, I need it today,’ a radiantly pretty brunette girl had said only that morning, slim fingers raking through her hair, which irritatingly made her look even better. What hair product did she use? Maggie wondered briefly but didn’t ask.

Instead, she said, ‘I’m really sorry but I can’t help you. We’ve only two copies and they’re both booked out every day for the next week. You’ve got to make arrangements in advance with some textbooks.’

‘Well, thank you very much,’ snapped the girl sarcastically. ‘You’ve been a great help, I must say.’ And she marched off in high dudgeon.

‘You can’t win ‘em all,’ commiserated her colleague Shona. ‘Still, she’s not like the back of

a bus, so she can always sleep with her prof if the going gets tough.’

‘Shona! That’s so sexist. I thought you were reading The Female Eunuch?

‘I did and it’s marvellous, but I’m on to the new Jackie Collins now. I know Germaine Greer wouldn’t approve, but I’d have slept with my prof if it’d have improved my degree,’ countered Shona wistfully. ‘He was sex on legs, so it wouldn’t have been a hardship.’ Shona’s degree had been in European Literature. ‘When he talked about the Heart of Darkness that was in all of us, I swear, I felt a shiver run right down my spine into my knickers.’

Shona was, in fact, happily married but she was an irrepressible flirt and batted her eyelashes at every passing cute guy, despite many weary conversations with the head librarian about appropriate behaviour in the workplace. ‘Just because I’ve eaten doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu,’ was her motto.

Fortunately her husband Paul, whom she adored and would never cheat on, was merely amused by all this.

‘Professors don’t have sex with students, except in the fevered imaginations of people like you,’ Maggie retorted. ‘Besides, she’s in third-year history. Have you seen Prof Wolfowitz? Brilliant, yes. Beddable, no. He is totally bald except for that one eyebrow. Every time I see him, I want to pluck a few of the middle hairs out and give him two eyebrows instead of one.’

‘Maggie, Maggie,’ sighed Shona. ‘The eyebrow is immaterial. Sleeping your way to success has precisely nothing to do with how good-looking the powerful person is. You may wear scuffed cowboy boots and a tough attitude, but you’re Haven’t-a-Clue Barbie at heart. You don’t have a calculating bone in your body apart from the one hot Dr Grey Stanley puts there, of course.’ Shona laughed like a drain at her own joke.

Maggie groaned. She was used to Shona by now. They’d become fast friends from the moment they’d met on Maggie’s first day in the library, where she discovered that her new friend’s second degree subject was indubitably Teasing: Honours Module. Now Maggie leaned over and swatted Shona on the arm with her ruler. ‘Brat.’

‘Haven’t-a-Clue Barbie.’

‘Slapper.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ Shona said, pretending to preen. She was impossible to shock. ‘Shona O’Slapper, I like that. Now, can you swap shifts with me? I know you’re on till six tonight, but I’ll do it and you can go early if you’ll do tomorrow afternoon for me? You could spend another hour honing your body in Extreme Fatness,’ she wheedled. Shona had accompanied Maggie to the gym once and hated it, hence the new name.

‘Are you and Paul going out?’ inquired Maggie.

‘I’m providing a shoulder to cry on,’ Shona informed her. ‘Ross has broken up with Johann.’ Ross was a hairdresser who lived in the apartment

below Shona and Paul, providing the perfect opportunity for Shona’s fag-haggery and giving Paula chance to watch football on the television while she and Ross sat in the apartment below, rewatching old Will & Grace episodes and bitching happily.

‘He’s inconsolable, even though he whined all the time they were going out about how insensitive Johann was and how he didn’t like Nureyev.’ Nureyev was Ross’s beloved pet, a lop-eared rabbit, who was spoiled beyond belief and had his own Vuitton bunny carrier as well as a purple velvet collar with his name spelled out in diamante. He lived in luxury in Ross’s Philippe Starck-style kitchen and was house-trained to use a cat litter box. ‘Nobody’s ever truly gorgeous until they dump you, right? We’re partying to get him over it.’ ‘On a Wednesday?’

‘Woe’s day, sweetie, as the ancient Danes would say. It’s apt.’

‘Who’s looking after Nureyev?’

‘We’re going to leave the Discovery channel on

for him. He loves all those shows about meerkats.’

Maggie was still laughing at the idea of the

rabbit sulkily glued to the television when she got

to her own front door and pulled out her keys.

The mortice lock was undone. Grey must have

got home early, she thought with a smile. That was

good, they could have a blissfully long evening

together. Good call, Maguire, she thought as she let

herself in. Sometimes a girl’s gotta know when to miss stretching on a mat so she can stretch on a bed. And for all of his intellectual cool, Grey knew some pelvic contortions the Pilates teacher had never taught. It was funny though, Grey was supposed to be at a meeting perhaps it had been cancelled?

‘Shouldn’t be too late, honey,’ Grey had said on the phone earlier. ‘You’ve got your class tonight so I’ll pick up That food on the way home.’ Grey believed in sharing cooking duties, although he preferred takeout to actual slaving and stirring with wooden spoons.

Inside the apartment, Maggie heard muted noises coming from the apartment’s lone bedroom. Grey must be watching the TV, she thought, and, shedding her possessions as she went, handbag on to the floor, jacket on the couch, she crossed the small living room, went down the hall and pushed their bedroom door open.

The door was still swinging open when Maggie stopped on the threshold, frozen.

Grey was on the bed, naked and lying underneath a woman, also naked.

The woman’s hair hung like a silken curtain, erotically half covering a lingerie-model body with a hand-span waist and high, perfect C-cup breasts. Three mouths opened in surprise. Maggie twisted her head sideways to try to get the scene to make sense. It was like a clever illustration in a psychoanalyst’s office, a bizarre, mind-bending scene designed to make you question everything you knew: what’s wrong with this picture?

Well, Doctor, that’s our bed with our duvet tangled up on the floor, and my side table pretty much the way I left it this morning with a book open on it. And there’s the photo of me and Grey outside the cathedral in Barcelona, but in the bed, there’s this strange blonde girl with an unbelievable body arched over my boyfriend who has -well, had an erection. And there really is no other explanation for this apart from the obvious.

‘Maggie, I’m so sorry, I never meant you to see, I wouldn’t hurt you for anything,’ Grey said urgently, wriggling out from under the blonde girl so fast that she squealed.

Maggie didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. She just stared in disbelief.

Politicians were supposed to be excellent at wriggling out of embarrassing situations. Perhaps Grey taught that, too, along with analysis of world power structures and globalisation.

Bile rose in Maggie’s throat and she turned without a word and ran to the tiny cloakroom she’d decorated with such pride. Student. That girl had to be one of Grey’s students. Someone who’d possibly stood in the college library and looked calculatingly at Maggie sitting at the research desk, pleased to realise that her rival was older. Perhaps wondering what Grey saw in thirty-year-old Maggie with her tangle of wild hair when he could have a twenty-one-year-old with a silken mane like a hair commercial, and a va-va-voom figure with the peach-bloom skin of youth.