Secrets (2 page)

Chapter One

There was something about the way the small red hatchback slunk onto the gravel of the drive, coming to a shuddering standstill as if it was giving up, as if it was about to conk out, that reminded Joe of an animal in need of a rest; some poorly-kept packhorse exhausted from an arduous day's work. He watched through the window of his study, on the ground floor, through the tangle of honeysuckle branches which clambered around that side of the house and provided useful camouflage at moments like this. Nothing happened for quite some time; whoever was in the car was staying put. Eventually, the car door opened and Joe watched as a woman climbed out. She stared and stared at the house while still clinging to the open door as if it was a shield. She ducked back in and Joe was prepared for her to drive away, for this woman not to be the Tess of the bizarre phone call last night. She looked nothing like the people who had house-sat for him in the past. But now she was out of the car again, walking around to the other side of it, opening the door, leaning in, apparently rummaging around.

And then, when she reappeared, Joe thought, oh, for fuck's sake.

But by now, she was walking slowly towards the front door.

He considered disappearing elsewhere in the house, feigning not to be at home. But even from this distance and through the network of honeysuckle, her look of awe placated him. Suddenly he wasn't staring at his worst nightmare, but at a scene straight from Thomas Hardy. From his vantage point, he watched as she stood timidly on the weathered slab of doorstep like a peasant girl braving the estate of the wealthy squire. Joe hastened to open the door before she rang the bell, fearing the old mellow clang would all but finish her off.

‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Are you Tess?’

Still he couldn't be absolutely sure. Over the phone she'd sounded older, somehow bigger and physically rather more nondescript. If this was Tess, he hadn't accounted for strikingly amber eyes darting from behind a privacy screen of an overgrown fringe. Despite the droop of mousy brown hair, he could see that her features were fine, her skin porcelain pale. Her lips were pursed, as if to imply something on the verge of being either said or swallowed. She was not tall and her slimness diminished her further, yet she stood square and defensive. Joe wondered why she would drench her frame with a drab hooded sweatshirt which fell to mid-thigh length, emblazoned with a college crest that made good design whether or not the establishment existed. He saw that her jeans were old but too scruffy to be acceptably vintage and her trainers were scuffed, with laces that were inexcusably dirty. He thought about first impressions, and why she would choose to turn up looking like this. Previous house-sitters arrived very spruce and professional. But then he glanced at himself and thought he'd better change the subject.

‘Well, Tess, I'm Joe.’

From his brusque manner on the phone, she had him down as a suit-and-tie dour businessman. At any rate, she'd envisaged him much older, sterner. She hadn't considered his wardrobe to contain jeans and a well-worn grey woollen turtleneck. Nor that he'd answer the door shoeless, in socks of the same yarn as his jumper and similarly bobbled. Least of all did she expect quite a handsome face, even if it did need a shave. Good hair, she noted, for someone in his – say, late forties? Thick, short, salt-and-pepper. Dark eyes. Dark brows. Arms folded nonchalantly.

But her arms were obviously too full to shake his hand so he hadn't offered it. Instead, they nodded at each other. She looked up at him through her fringe and he tried not to look down on her with an expression that was too patronizing. But then he regarded the reality staring him in the face – and once again his dominant thought was, oh, for fuck's sake.

‘You never said anything about a child,’ he said.

He watched her freeze, shift the infant higher on her hip, suck in her bottom lip and knit her brow. Oh Christ, she's not going to cry, is she? But her eyes darkened as a scorch of indignation crossed her cheeks.

‘And
you
never said anything about a dog,’ she retorted.

Wolf had been standing casually at Joe's side. Tess glanced at him with distaste, noting that his coat appeared to be fashioned from the same material as Joe's jumper and socks. Or was it vice versa.

‘I could be allergic.’

‘And are you?’

‘No. But that's not the point.’

‘Maybe I'm allergic to children.’

‘No one's allergic to children.’

‘Do you not like dogs?’

‘That's not the point either.’

‘Wolf is a soppy old thing.’

‘Does he come with the job, then?’

‘Yes. Sometimes I take him with me. Not if I'm abroad, obviously.’

‘Does he like children, though?’

‘He prefers Pedigree Chum.’

Tess looked at Joe. It was a bad joke but the timing was perfect. She clamped down on a smile, wanting to cling onto the upper hand and invent a moral high ground despite knowing that actually, she was in the wrong. Because she hadn't, on purpose, told him about her eighteen-month old daughter, had she? Whereas he simply hadn't thought to mention his enormous dog.

‘Shall I come in?’ she asked more jauntily, because she was suddenly aware of the threshold still between them and feared the job offer might be rescinded.

Joe looked at her; wondered again how old she was. Thirty? Or possibly late twenties and just tired?

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘come on in.’ He turned and walked into his house.

Nice doggy
, he could hear her saying in a voice that was for the baby's benefit and not Wolf's,
nice doggy
. He heard the infant attempt to emulate her mother's words. It was a very odd sound to hear in the house. Joe had been the last baby here. And that was forty-five years ago.

He thought of the bustling Mrs Dunn from the agency, and her doughy forearms. In comparison, this Tess was a slip of a thing. The flagstones would surely defeat her. The flag-stones were not baby friendly. The flagstones alone could be a deal breaker, to say nothing of the draughts. The rickety banister. The occasional whiff of gas that no one had been able to find or fix. The water that sometimes ran brown. The pipes that bickered loudly. The mutant spiders. Wolf. The wasps that returned to the eaves each summer and fell about the house drunk, drowsy and aggressive each autumn. And then Joe thought how Mrs Dunn would not have tolerated any of this and he looked over his shoulder at Tess standing there in his entrance hall, all wide-eyed in inappropriate teenage clothing. Her baby: wild curls, rosebud mouth and beautifully, perfectly, appropriately dressed. And Joe thought that there was something about Tess's poise and the fact that she'd taken the job without it being offered and had made the long journey in that old red jalopy at a moment's notice, that suggested to him she was here to stay. That it would take more than wasps and a Wolf and water that runs brown to see her off.

‘Tea? Coffee?’

‘Tea, please,’ said Tess.

‘And the – what's your daughter's name?’

‘Em.’

‘Full stop? Or, as
in
–?’

‘As in Emmeline.’ She saw Joe raise an eyebrow. ‘You were thinking Emma or Emily like most people. She's named after my grandmother.’

‘And was Granny known as Em?’ It came out wrong, Joe could hear it. It implied no lady of that generation would tolerate such a diminutive of the name. ‘I just meant – it's unusual. It's pretty. Shame to shorten it.’

‘Well, you can call her Emmeline,’ Tess said a little tartly. ‘I like to call her Em Full Stop.’

‘OK, I will,’ he said. ‘Emmeline, what would you like to drink?’

‘She's eighteen months old.’

‘Don't they drink at that age?’

Tess paused. It was like the Pedigree Chum remark and she was unsettled to feel simultaneously annoyed yet amused.

‘Emmeline,’ he said very slowly, ‘what would you—’

‘It's OK, I have –’ and Tess contorted herself to keep the child on her hip while she delved around the large holdall dragging on her shoulder. ‘Somewhere in here –’ Finally, she retrieved a colourful beaker with a spout. ‘She's fine.’

Joe looked from mother to daughter. Silently, he agreed with Tess. Emmeline was fine. The house might be fine too, with the two of them. Certainly, the set-up wasn't what he'd had in mind, what he'd had before, but if Tess agreed to Wolf, then he'd agree to Emmeline.

‘Doggy.’

The adults swung their attention to the child.

Clever Em, he heard Tess whisper and there was pure joy in her voice.

The tea was good.

‘Builder's tea,’ Joe said. ‘We don't do gnat's pee in this house.’

They sat opposite each other, with more than just the expanse of a particularly large farmhouse table between them. On it was a veritable mountain range too, complete with landslides and crevasses fashioned from books and mail and newspapers and documents and something scrunched up that appeared to have foodstuff on it. Tess eyed it all.

‘What exactly does a house-sitter
do
?’ she asked. ‘Am I to tidy and clean then?’

Joe tapped the side of his mug thoughtfully and Tess sensed he wasn't thinking of an answer, he was thinking of the best way to make it known. ‘Well, it's not really a defined role like house
keeping
. For me, I need someone here for times when I'm gone – and I'm away for work a lot for varying periods of time. In the past, I've had people stay for a few weeks – and that hasn't really worked. That's why I want someone who can stay long-term. I don't want you buggering off after a month. You need to really learn the ways of this house. If lights aren't switched on, they soon enough don't come on at all when you need them to. If rooms are left untended, a staleness hangs in the air that is troublesome to clear. The water, especially, needs to run. The freezer tends to frost up. The sofas go hard and lumpy if they're not sat on. At this time of year, some of the doors can warp and can't shut or others can't be opened. So, unlike some house-sitting jobs you may have done, I don't designate quarters for you. And so – yes, a little light cleaning is part of the deal. And you're OK about the pay?’

It struck her that he presumed she'd house-sat before – whereas she'd always assumed house-sitting was more a brief opportunity than a profession. A stopgap. But he said that this position was potentially long-term. She hadn't thought of that. Perhaps she should have packed more. And then she thought she might make quite a good house-sitter. She thought how there might be muck and mess in her life but she'd always kept her surroundings tidy and clean. She thought back to the flat at Bounds Green that she'd left just that morning and as she did, she felt a plug of lead plummet straight through her, buckling her a little and causing a blear to glaze her eyes. Landlord, nasty man, breaking and entering. Finding her gone. Chucking her stuff out with the rubbish in disgust, even though she'd left her TV set behind in the vague hope it might go some way towards the outstanding rent. Perhaps he'd called the police.

‘Excuse me, are you OK?’

Tess looked up from having been miles away, 250 miles south, and she was momentarily surprised to see Joe and not Landlord, nasty man, sitting there. She nodded and kissed Em, over and over. She gave Wolf an energetic rub, discovering that his coat was far softer on the hand that it was on the eye.

‘I'm just tired – it was a long haul to make my way here.’

‘Well, here you are – and I have work to crack on with so how about the guided tour?’ And, as Joe led the way out of the kitchen, into the utility room, through to the boot store before retracing the route back to the expansive entrance hall, he thought to himself that there was something gently peculiar about all of this, something oddly compelling. However, his prevailing feeling was that it was OK for Tess and the child to be here, for the knackered red hatchback to take up a little patch of the sweeping driveway alongside his Land Rover. For a baby's voice to enliven the stillness of the old house, adding variety to Wolf's low woofs and whines. For a woman's touch to dissuade the dust. For Wolf to have company. And, on the occasions he himself was to be home, for Joe to have company too.