Want to Know a Secret? (18 page)

She giggled, taking her own phone back and putting it to her ear. ‘Hello!’

‘Now I can put you in my phone book.’ He showed her how to save the number and typed in
Diane
mobile
beside it.

She played for several minutes inputting phone numbers. ‘Home … Freddy, my brother … Rowan, the mean git who sells some of my garments at his shop … the hospital.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s be adventurous. How do I send a text?’

‘Not difficult.’ He bent his head next to hers. ‘Tap this icon, select me from your phone book, type the message, then press
send
.’ In a few moments, his phone vibrated against his leg and a little envelope flashed on the screen,
Diane mobile
showing in his inbox.

They laughed at the message, ‘
I have a mobile!
’

Then, under the cloak of darkness, he took her hand.

She stopped laughing and examined the way his fingers enveloped hers. All the hairs on his arms stood up. Something in her faraway expression brought back the way she’d looked down at him when he’d been inside her, the wonder, the lust, that volcano of pleasure that erupted for him. The way she’d kissed him when she’d come down after the explosion, the sweetest, deepest, most perfect kiss. He remembered how to move, how to touch her to drive her crazy.

Gently, he squeezed her fingers. Even that chaste contact felt good. ‘I wish I’d rung you when I should have. I wanted to see if we could make each other happy – but I was caught in the middle of Tamzin’s black cloud and I felt as if I’d contaminate you with it. I had no right to ask, anyway. I’m stuck here and could never give you the relationship you deserve. And I’m being a presumptuous prick in disregarding Gareth. But I want you to know how I feel. You don’t have to say anything, I just want you to know.’ His fingers tightened. ‘I feel good just being with you. I think about you all the time. And want you. Our couple of hours at Farcet Fen was an oasis of pleasure during a shitty time. Your husband doesn’t deserve you because he’s an arse. I don’t suppose I deserve you any more than he does – and I’m just as married as you are – but none of those things stop me wanting you.’

She sounded strained. ‘I took it as a one-night stand.’

His heart began a long slow slide south. ‘If that’s what you want, it will be. Our secret.’

Abruptly, she closed her fingers around his, suddenly breathless. ‘Let me think about it.’

A big meal, a long and emotional day, she was sleepy. She kept the car windows open and Lily Allen playing loudly on the stereo to keep her awake as she drove the hypnotically long, dark lanes.

Home. Her neighbours’ houses were bright with windows where hers was dark.

Across the kitchen, through the dining room, up the stairs; a one-minute shower and she cleaned her teeth and fell into bed. She wasn’t going to think about James and the words she’d been shocked to hear emerging from her mouth …
Let me think about it
. She was going to sleep.

The phone rang. She groaned.
Stop ringing
! It stopped. Thankfully, she drifted towards sleep.

The phone rang.

Swearing, she rolled out of bed and staggered down the stairs. ‘Hello?’

‘Mum! Guess what? I’m coming home!’

Diane blinked, trying to engage her brain. ‘Bryony, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’

Bryony’s laughter rocked around the earpiece, shrill and excited. ‘Dad rang me and we had a big heart to heart. He explained why he’s been so odd. Isn’t it cool about his father tracking him down? I’ve got a grandfather! Dad says he’s sweet. It’s so good that Dad finally told you. I saw him with a woman and I thought he was having an affair. It was so scary, even though he kept saying he wasn’t. But she was his sister. He’s
explained
. This is so good!’

‘You saw him?’ Diane repeated, blankly.

‘And it was horrible thinking that he was having an affair – I mean, what was I supposed to do? Tell you and betray him? Or be quiet and betray you? I felt such a cow. But Dad wants me to come home and, like, see him, so we can all be together again, the three of us. I’m taking indefinite unpaid leave. Dad says he’ll pay my fare. Isn’t that cool? I’m so glad that you and Dad are OK. I’ve been feeling so bad, thinking that he had a girlfriend. I felt so bad about you.’

‘Did you?’ said Diane, shaken by the enormity of Bryony having known. Even if she hadn’t known what she’d thought she’d known, she’d kept a huge secret. No wonder she’d been keen to get far, far away from home.

‘I thought you guys were going to split up, I couldn’t bear it. It was horrible.’

After a moment, Diane heard herself say, ‘I can see how it was for you.’ That was Parent’s Disease again – sympathising with your child even when the same set of circumstances were so much worse for you. But she shoved the hurt to one side. Bryony was coming home.
Bryony was coming home
!

And she was thrilled that Diane and Gareth weren’t going to split up.

Oh.

Chapter Fourteen

The wind thrashed her ponytail as she locked the car in the car park near Peterborough Cathedral. Diane wasn’t going to see Gareth today. She’d sent him a text message, feeling, as she laboriously worked through the
txt talk
guide helpfully supplied with her phone, that she was finally in the twenty-first century.

Will nt b able 2 visit u 2day, have 2 c Rowan. C u l8r.

No kisses, no
Love Diane
. She felt neither kissy nor lovey. Every fresh revelation forced her old feelings for her husband through the mincer. And now he’d manoeuvred to bring Bryony home, which – obviously – was wonderful, because, ever since Bryony left for the steamy heat of Brazil, Diane had carried an ache around that was both hollow and heavy. But she was under no illusions that he’d done it to ease Diane’s aches. Or even his own, although he missed Bryony, too.

No, he’d done it to make it more difficult for Diane to leave him.

And he wouldn’t want Diane to leave him in case she took half of his stash with her.

Bryony, a forgiving little soul, had been moved by her dad’s crocodile tears and intrigued by acquiring a grandfather and assorted other relatives. But it wasn’t quite the same for Diane.

She set out for Rowan’s shop in Rivergate Arcade, crossing at the lights into that segment of Bridge Street with a hundred other people.

Rowan Chater bought her garments for his idiosyncratic little shop, on what seemed a whimsical basis and with an air of doing her a kindness. She detested his condescension but income was income, so she’d put together a small collection of five pairs of decorated canvas trousers and ten colourful tops for the coming autumn season.

In the shop, Rowan, perched on a wooden stool behind the counter, was talking to an over made-up woman with a small child. ‘Oh, hullo,’ he drawled unenthusiastically, when he noticed Diane.

‘Hi.’ She gave what she hoped was a confident smile, hating having to hover with the heavy garments while he took his time nattering.

When woman and child finally left, Rowan gave a tiny sigh. Short stubble defined his jaw and head; he had seal-like eyes and a misleadingly sweet smile that he rarely bestowed upon Diane. His effete speech reminded her a little of Bryony, the way he emphasised at least one word in a sentence and used a final upward intonation as if statements were questions. ‘Shall I have a look?’ he suggested with the air of doing his good deed for the day.

Silently, slowly, he turned over each item. Diane ran her eyes over the racks, the torso mannequins, the garments hanging sideways with broomsticks through the sleeves.

None of her work, boasting the little label in the neck with
DRJ
embroidered in turquoise on a bright yellow ground, was currently displayed in the shop. She tried a bit of casual self-promotion. ‘The last batch all sold, did it?’

He turned another garment. ‘In the end.’

She subsided. She didn’t want to ferret for details only to find that he’d had to slash the price to get her stuff off his hands.

‘Mm,’ he conceded. ‘Good colour choices, anyway.’ He always seemed to have to cast about for some detail to praise. He folded back the final garment – a bronze linen tunic embroidered with a goldfish, bubbles rising in the form of clear washers. Sighed. Raised his eyebrows. Tapped his fingertips on the counter.

Diane held her breath.

‘Yes, OK,’ he agreed, eventually. ‘I can usually put a “Hand made” label on them and make them go. Send me an invoice.’ He wrote a figure on the back of a brown paper bag. He always did that, as if it might invoke bad luck to speak money aloud. It was exactly the same price per garment as the last lot. And several prior to that.

Diane bit down on her disappointment and the urge to point out the 70% mark up he put on the garments. The important thing was that Rowan was already writing a cheque.

‘Overheads are escalating,’ he mentioned, conversationally.

‘Mine, too.’ Perhaps she could find an outlet where the proprietor didn’t make her feel as if she ought to be so damned bloody grateful all the time. Cambridge, maybe? There was money, there.

To cheer herself up she found a coffee shop and ordered a cappuccino. It came in a glass cup with not enough sprinkles but she settled at a table near the window to savour it as she watched the people milling along Bridge Street.

An imperious series of beeps from her pocket almost made her drop the cup. She plucked out her phone.
James mobile
. After a bit of fumbling, she opened the text.
Tamzin @ NatÕs. Need dinner companion 2nite. How u fixed?

Thoughtfully, she laid the phone on the table and returned to her coffee, staring out at mothers with buggies, lads in jeans that swung like satchels from skinny backsides. The planters that decorated the street were filled with the kind of geraniums you’re supposed to call pelargoniums, as jolly and scarlet as Bryony’s favourite nail varnish.

The phone beeped again. Diane wondered if she’d ever be the nonchalant phone user that everyone else above the age of six seemed to be.
I promise 2 behave. Strictly no pouncing. Will pick u up@8.
She grinned and ordered another cappuccino. She always considered herself a strong woman but she discovered herself quite powerless to resist the idea of dinner with James, with his dark grey eyes and lightning smiles.

When Tamzin’s phone rang, the next morning,
Dad
showed on the screen. Tamzin rolled herself a little more tightly in the covers of Nat’s spare bed before she answered.

James sounded as if he’d been up for hours. Which he probably had. ‘I can drive you to Diane’s today, as it’s Saturday.’

Unfairly, she snapped, ‘Oh,
Dad
, I can drive myself. It’s a good day. You can’t be in control all the time.’ And she pressed ‘end call’ on her phone.

Then she felt mean. She wasn’t fair to him. She knew that. On bad days she wanted him to be the man with the answers even while she resented him for having them. But, on good days, she’d shoo him away.

Still, half-an-hour later, she was parking beside the hedge outside Diane’s redbrick house. She knew, now, to knock on the side door. It seemed better manners to go to the front door but it was swollen shut and if you rattled the pitted brass knocker Diane had to come out of the side door and find you, or shout directions through the letterbox.

‘Great to see you, Tamzin.’ Diane beamed as she opened the door. She glanced over Tamzin’s shoulder.

Tamzin giggled and gestured to the empty space behind her. ‘Look! No Dad.’

Diane’s eyes returned to Tamzin and she smiled. ‘So I see. It’s great you could make it. Let’s take some tea up to the workroom with us and we can start decorating your jeans.’

Tamzin whisked a bag from behind her back and flourished a pair of soft grey Levis. ‘I’m all ready.’

‘Wonderful – and don’t you look good, today? Your hair looks great with that pretty dress.’

Diane’s approval puffed Tamzin up. The blue cotton dress was one Alice had bought in an optimistic moment. The ruching that had given her an elephantine bum suited Tamzin’s snakey hips.

‘Oh. My. God.’ Tamzin paused on the threshold to Diane’s workroom. It was more of an Aladdin’s Cave than even on her last visit. ‘Diane, I want bling-bling buttons like those.’ She pointed at six bright, glass-encrusted buttons knotted together with wool and hooked over a nail in the wooden shelves that could have been the store of a giant magpie. Folded fabric, funny felty white stuff, braid in twenty colours, sequins, buttons, beads, buckles … It was a treasure trove.

‘You have those, if you want. Don’t think they’re right for either of the tops I’ve fitted you for, though. Maybe something darker?’ Diane looked at Tamzin with her head on one side. ‘Dusky red? That would suit you. Do you like zips? Or, I know!’ Diane seized a pad and scrabbled for a pencil. ‘How about, instead of a normal seam we have a run of clear circlets up the outside of the sleeve? They’ll go well with the buttons.’ She sketched rapidly, then turned the pad to Tamzin.

‘Oh, yay, that’ll look so cool!’ Tamzin paused. She checked her sleeves were rolled down. ‘You’ll see my arms between the circlets –’