Want to Know a Secret? (2 page)

‘Hell,’ muttered James. In four strides he was at the older man’s side. ‘I’ll get it, Harold.’ His big, deft hand extracted a bottle from the old man’s jacket pocket. In seconds a tablet was beneath Harold’s tongue and his collar and tie had been loosened. James had even found time to reassure the young woman twitching beside him. ‘He’ll be fine in a minute, Tamz, when he gets his breath.’

Relief, then uncertainty, flitted across her face. ‘I forgot about his medication, didn’t I?’

‘You did fine, you fetched me, you did the right thing.’ James smiled and his daughter smiled tremulously back.

James North turned the beam of his attention back to Diane. ‘Could you sit with Harold and Tamzin while I see if I can organise somewhere a bit quieter?’

Not waiting for an answer, he launched a charm offensive at the woman behind reception desk, his low voice warm and his smile persuasive. ‘My father-in-law’s not well, he has angina –’

Diane dropped into the empty chair beside Harold. ‘Any better?’

His large, old man’s nose was threaded with red veins, white hair lay neatly to one side and his eyes were kind. Already, the blue tinge was leaving his lips. ‘Getting that way.’ Hands slack and palms up in his lap, he nevertheless managed a trace of grim humour. ‘Shocks can do old codgers in. I shall have to point it out to my children.’

Diane was reminded of her father. Peter Wibberley hadn’t possessed much of the friendly dignity in this man but he, too, had spoken ‘nicely’ and automatically dressed in a jacket, shirt and tie whenever he left the house.

‘Pops will be much better soon.’ Tamzin’s bony hands moved restlessly. ‘The pills are well good.’

‘Good.’ Diane smiled. She’d first taken Tamzin for about sixteen, with her waiflike figure and James North as her sheepdog, but now she saw that Tamzin’s eyes were much older. Sadder. Reflecting the world in the grey of her eyes. She spoke like a princess who’d learnt the vernacular from the servants, inserting ‘well good’ clumsily. She would’ve been pretty if not such a scarecrow. ‘His colour’s improving already.’

‘Reassuring,’ Harold murmured.

Then James was back. ‘There’s a room we can use. They’ll let us through a security door.’

When Harold had gathered his energy, they herded along the corridor, James stationing himself at Harold’s elbow as well as resting a hand on the thin shoulders of his daughter as if to ensure that she didn’t get lost. He settled the older man in a room that was cramped but better than the busy, noisy area they’d just left. ‘Tamz, will you stay with Pops for a few minutes?’ His eyes settled purposefully on Diane. ‘We’ll organise hot drinks, shall we? We could all do with something.’

Fifteen paces outside the door he took her arm and shunted her firmly to the side of the corridor, letting two wheelchairs whisper past on fat, rubber tyres, stooping to bring his head closer to hers. ‘You coping OK?’

Diane breathed in the faint smell of new leather from his jacket. ‘Don’t worry about me. Although it would be helpful if you’d explain who everybody is and why I’m supposed to know them.’ She lifted her brows.

‘I was beginning to suspect that you hadn’t a clue.’ James rubbed his hand over his hair. When he spoke again he had rediscovered the patient tone that Diane was beginning to find seriously annoying. ‘It’s quite straightforward. Tamzin is my daughter. Valerie, who’s had the accident, is my wife; you’ve got that bit. And Harold is Valerie’s father. Of course, Harold is Gareth’s father, too, so Valerie is Gareth’s half-sister.’

Diane stared. She went cold. She went hot. She felt as if she’d been caught up in some freaky dream but the smell of the hospital and the pinching of her new shoes were quite undreamlike. ‘Gareth’s father?’

‘Yes.’

‘And sister.’

He puffed out a sigh. ‘Half-sister. Obviously.’

Diane groped for sense and reason. ‘But – ’

As if to make up for the sigh, James returned to being overly patient. ‘I think Gareth’s told you about Valerie and me and our three daughters? Natalia, Alice – and Tamzin.’ He nodded at the room they’d just left.

‘But you can’t be talking about Gareth
Jenner
,’ she interrupted. ‘He hasn’t got a father.’ She knew this as certainly as she knew where the sun rose – unless someone had been messing with the celestial mechanics. Perhaps that was it! A shift in the universe might explain Gareth’s presence in a helicopter and how, when she knew so well that his family consisted only of a mother (deceased) and two brothers living in Peterborough, he’d somehow acquired a father and a sister. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

There had to be an explanation. Her suspicions had hovered earlier around the idea that Gareth was having an affair with this Valerie North but now that seemed comparatively tame.

Was she drunk? Was James drunk? Had somebody slipped him something? His slate grey eyes with their huge black pupils were fixed on hers with unnervingly hypnotic effect. ‘Do you think there could have been two Gareth Jenners admitted tonight?’

A corner of James’s mouth curled. ‘I understand from my brother-in-law, Gareth Jenner, that his wife’s called Diane Jenner. And, somehow, I can’t see there being two of you, too.’

‘No,’ she agreed, baffled. Someone
must’ve
been messing with the celestial mechanics, then. It was the only explanation.

Back in the little room furnished with squashy turquoise chairs, James removed the lid from a polystyrene cup of tea for his father-in-law. ‘How are you, now?’

Harold, pale but no longer chalky, grinned, unconvincingly. ‘Right as ninepence.’

James touched Diane’s arm, the heat of his fingers making her jump. ‘The introductions are a bit late but this is Harold Myers, Gareth’s father. And my daughter, Tamzin.’

Diane offered her hand and found it enfolded between both of Harold’s. In contrast to James’s, his fingers were chill and clammy.

‘I’m so pleased to meet you – at long last!’

She returned his smile, searching his face for some echo of Gareth to support the preposterous idea that he could, indeed, be Gareth’s father. To her, Gareth had always resembled his mother, the same hard mouth and rock-set jaw. But now she could see that Harold was smiling at her with familiar eyes; warmer, on Harold, but exactly the same combination of hazel and green.
‘Gareth’s father,’ she marvelled softly.
But Gareth doesn’t have a father
.
Gareth carries his illegitimacy like a chip on his shoulder as big as a boat.
Growing up in an era when illegitimacy was a positive scandal, he’d suffered for his mother’s haphazard fortunes with a defiance matched only by his determination not to blame her.

Harold squeezed Diane’s hand. ‘Thank God that Gareth isn’t in any danger. Broken bones heal. We’ll get him and Valerie moved to the new Ackerman Hospital as soon as possible.’ He took out a clean handkerchief, ironed neatly into a square, to dab at the corner of his eye.

Ackerman was a private hospital. Gareth didn’t have a private hospital income. He barely had a new-pyjamas-for-hospital income. Diane opened her mouth, flicked her gaze around the surrounding faces then closed her mouth without speaking. Tamzin, hair hanging like straw, looked as if she’d already been in bed when news of the accident came. Harold was obviously bone tired, and James had the air that this was just one more day when the cares of the world had descended upon his shoulders. They had enough to worry about without Diane blurting out, ‘But we can’t afford a private hospital!’ No doubt there would come a point when she could explain to the staff, discreetly, why Gareth would remain in the arms of the NHS.

‘The helicopter must have come down with a bang,’ Harold observed. ‘Valerie was always telling me how safe it was. How do you think it could have happened, James?’

James shrugged. ‘Mechanical failure? Cross wind? That’s the Civil Aviation Authority’s province. There will be an enquiry, I expect.’ His voice was even but, again, Diane caught the glitter of anger in his eyes.

‘Do you really
think Mum’s going to be all right?’ Tamzin sniffed. ‘I mean, she’s not going to ...?’

James threw an arm around her. ‘Tamz, she’ll heal. We’ll just have to be patient for a few months.’

‘What on earth were they doing in a helicopter, anyway?’ asked Diane, idly. The police hadn’t been able to provide any information beyond the preposterous fact that Gareth had been the passenger in a two-seater Robinson R22 helicopter that had crashed on take-off at Medes Flying Club. If they drove the country route to visit Gareth’s brother, Melvyn, she and Gareth passed the flying club, on the edge of Peterborough, without ever entertaining the notion of turning in under the matt black iron archway, past security. That was for other people, people in a salary bracket that Jenners only dreamed of.

Her enquiry seemed to rouse James’s annoyingly patient tone again. ‘Valerie got her private pilot’s licence for helicopters last year. She often takes Gareth up on his days off.’

‘On his
what
?’ Diane spluttered her coffee all down her chin.

Silence. Wariness crept into James’s dark eyes. ‘Is there anyone you want me to phone? To be with you?’

Diane was an old hand at not allowing subject changes as a question-avoidance tactic. Even blessed with what her mother used to term a ‘silvery’ voice, she wasn’t easily talked down. ‘What do you mean by “Gareth’s days off”?’

James shrugged. ‘Since Gareth took semi-retirement, he only works Tuesday to Thursday, right?’

Diane stared. ‘Tuesday to Thursday,’ she repeated, faintly, wondering how this could be when Gareth’s working week apparently also encompassed Monday, Friday and most Saturdays. Even the occasional Sunday. ‘So, Gareth’s taken semi-retirement, discovered his long-lost family and spends his spare time whizzing around in helicopters?’

A grin flashed across James’s face, filling his eyes with suppressed laughter. ‘It doesn’t normally sound quite so ludicrous – but, yes.’

She refrained from retorting that ludicrous was exactly what it was, because she so desperately needed to understand what the hell was going on. ‘And you know who I am, yet you’ve never met me?’

Smile fading, James acknowledged, ‘No. Owing to health issues.’

‘Whose?’

‘Yours!’

She made her eyes big and puzzled, a trick that could make even the bank manager responsive. ‘Oh dear, am I ill? What on earth can be the matter with me?’

James exchanged a look with Harold.

She pounced. ‘You don’t know!’

‘Of course I know! Gareth explained – that you have a nervous complaint, compounded by agoraphobia.’

‘Why didn’t he bring you to our house to meet me?’

Harold smiled a weary and gently perplexed smile. ‘But you don’t like meeting new people, Diane, do you?’

Diane studied first Harold’s helpful smile, then James’s puzzled frown. They meant it. They genuinely believed what they said. Her heart began to beat hard. She fought to keep her voice steady, the voice of a sane, rational person that everyone would believe in. ‘Have I behaved tonight like an agoraphobic with a fear of meeting people?’

James watched her. Eventually, he admitted, ‘I suppose not.’

Breathlessly, almost as if she didn’t know if her input were welcome, Tamzin added, ‘We all
wanted
to meet you. We wished we could.’

‘Meeting would have made everything clearer,’ Diane agreed, before picking up her now cold coffee and withdrawing into meditative silence.

PC Stone left the hospital, having gathered information for his report and satisfied himself that no one was about to die.

The corridors began to quieten.

James tried to relax, but the chair wasn’t made to loll in. He felt stiff and bristly. As first Harold and then Tamzin fell silent, he was able to watch Diane Jenner out of the corner of his eye. Her expressions, flitting across her face like a slide show, told him that her thoughts weren’t sweet. It had been an education, meeting her. Mindful of everything he’d been told about her precarious health, he’d made a huge effort to cater to her fragility – although the last thing he needed was an extra person to treat like china – and she’d reacted with the kind of outraged disbelief that she might reserve for an amiable drunk with a turd in each hand.

She made him want to laugh. And she made him want to throttle her when she gave him that politely scornful stare and demolished every statement he made.

A reassuring doctor brought news, first that Gareth had gone down to theatre to have pins in his wrist and fingers, a plate in his leg and an external fixation device – whatever that was – screwed into his pelvis, then of Valerie’s multiple leg injuries, a similar pelvic device and a collapsed lung. James received the news stoically. ‘On the whole, it’s slightly better than I expected. Gareth and Valerie have been lucky. Helicopters aren’t designed to bounce.’

‘Neither Gareth nor Valerie will be on a ward for some time,’ the white-coated doctor added. ‘You might be better going home for some sleep.’

‘I’ll stay,’ Diane returned, instantly, as if preprogrammed to rebut any idea she didn’t originate.

James looked at Harold, who looked as if he could sleep for a year. ‘I’ll take you home.’