Want to Know a Secret? (36 page)

He smiled, painfully. ‘You didn’t know how right you were going to be proved about it being the wrong time for us.’

She sighed in unhappy acknowledgement. ‘Apart from Valerie, Bryony needs family stability and so do your girls.’

He examined her hand, caressing the rough patch on her left forefinger with one square fingertip. ‘Do you think you’ll ever leave him?’

‘I don’t know. I’m trying to keep my marriage going in some form for Bryony and her unborn baby. I can’t see far past that, right now.’

‘I suppose you’re right to do that.’

‘I suppose I am.’ Despair tugged at her chest.

He sighed. ‘So I’d better go home and cope with stuff.’

‘Me, too.’

In the car park, they kissed cheeks by her car in an unexceptional manner.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Diane picked up her bag and car keys then tapped at Bryony’s door. ‘Come on then, if you want a lift into Peterborough.’

Bryony’s voice was muffled. ‘Two minutes.’

Downstairs, Gareth was already settled in his armchair, the newspaper and TV remote balanced on the arms, his crutches beside him and his legs on a stool. He frowned over his reading glasses as she passed through the sitting room. ‘Going out?’

‘Peterborough. Bryony’s coming, too.’

‘What are you going there for?’ His heavy brow shut down over his eyes.

Had she always reported her movements to him automatically?

He’d never seemed to feel a need to reciprocate, and somehow she hadn’t really expected it.

An appointment at the bank was scheduled and she had no intention of sharing that information with him, nor the update to the business plan that James had shown her how to draw up, to her an unnecessarily formal method of saying, ‘I need more money because I now have two fabulous outlets to supply and will have to buy another machine and somebody to use it.’ To cope with Unity’s Christmas orders, plus supplying The Monkee Box, she was going to need someone who could cut patterns and machine- and hand-sew as soon as possible and Gareth was bound to explode when he discovered there would be a strange person in the workroom – which he insisted on still referring to as the dining room – every day. Until that hurdle had to be leapt she intended to keep her business as just that – her business.

‘I’ve got a few things to do. I’ll be back this afternoon,’ she answered. ‘There’s plenty of soup in the cupboard for your lunch, or you could make a sandwich.’

‘I suppose I can manage,’ he said shortly, and pointed the TV remote at the set.

‘I’m sure you can.’

Bryony padded down the stairs. Her pregnancy showed itself as a soft segment of big naked tummy looming between her maternity jeans and a top the colour of blackberries. Diane wasn’t keen on the look. When she’d been pregnant the idea had been to cover up the bump and distract the eye with flamboyant collars, not display it for everyone to admire. But such observations only drew Bryony’s most exasperated, ‘Oh, Mum!’

‘See you this afternoon, Dad.’ Bryony dropped a kiss on her father’s cheek.

His forbidding expression melted into a smile for her. ‘Mind how you go, darling.’

‘Want anything from Peterborough?’ Bryony perched on the edge of a chair and slid her feet into gold-coloured trainers with dark turquoise laces, bending awkwardly.

Gareth’s smile broadened at her concern. ‘I could do with a new box of tissues –’

‘Kitchen cupboard,’ offered Diane.

‘– and a pen that works –’

‘Kitchen drawer.’

‘– and a sudoku book.’

‘I’ve never seen you do sudoku,’ commented Bryony, standing up.

‘Got to keep the little grey cells going.’

Diane looked at her watch and moved towards the door, heroically suppressing an unworthy remark that yes, he would need to find some activity to replace the deceit and duplicity with which he’d exercised his mind for so long.

In the car, as soon as Gareth was safely out of hearing, Bryony burst out, ‘
Well?
Was it really your stuff on sale in Covent Garden?’

Diane cast a glance behind her as she pulled away from the house, as if Gareth might be tuned into their conversation, somehow. ‘It was. But it’s all working out, because now I’m going to supply The Monkee Box myself!’

Bryony’s dark eyes sparkled. ‘That’s so
cool
. A Covent Garden shop wants to sell your stuff. How cool is that? That’s
so
cool.’

Turning into Purtenon St. Paul’s main street, making sure that she got out ahead of an oncoming tractor to avoid following it at 15mph for miles, Diane laughed. ‘I admit I hadn’t seen it in quite that light. I’ve been focusing on how some shit’s been buying stuff off me cheap and selling it on heavily marked up.’

Bryony’s brows shot up. ‘Oh, yeah. So, are you going to speak to Rowan?’

Diane accelerated away from the village. ‘He’s going to be my first call this morning.’

The brown eyes shone again. ‘Can I come? I haven’t seen you in a strop for ages.’

‘If you think me in a strop is particularly entertaining.’

Bryony giggled. ‘I love to watch you giving someone shit.’

‘Problem is that it doesn’t seem as if he’s done anything illegal. I didn’t sell him the stuff with any provisos.’

‘You could give him shit, anyway. He’s totally out of order.’

They found Rowan’s shop busy, Yummy Mummies flexing their credit cards now that the children had returned to school for the autumn term and shopping, once again, had become an indulgence rather than a hideous endurance test.

Rowan’s glance lit on Diane over the head of a customer in a floor-length, pale-grey, knitted cardigan that matched the colour of today’s sky. His hair was cut so close, it was like suede. ‘I’m busy, can you come back in an hour?’ His dismissive tone would have been perfect for the hired help.

‘No.’ Diane began to flip through the rails for her own stuff.

Rowan made his way over. ‘I don’t have time to look at your things right now.’

‘I haven’t brought you anything to look at.’ She carried on scraping the hangers methodically along the top rail.

He threw her a baffled look and turned back to the lady in the long cardigan, now at the till with aubergine capri pants in one hand and credit card in the other.

Diane worked through the wall rails and then the floor-standing ones while Bryony settled herself in the chair for customers.

When the shop was still full but Rowan was no longer actively serving, Diane opened her green corduroy shoulder bag and pulled out the dress that Natalia had bought in The Monkee Box. ‘Look,’ she said to Rowan.

Rowan’s eyes flicked to hers. He shrugged. ‘What?’

‘A garment that I sold to you.’ She made sure that her voice was audible all over the little shop. She waved the cuff under his nose, the one with a price ticket from The Monkee Box for £209. ‘Look!’ she repeated. ‘It was on sale in Covent Garden Market.’

He hesitated, eyes narrowing. Then he smiled and tried to take her elbow. ‘Come through for a chat.’

‘No, thanks.’ She folded the dress and returned it to her bag. ‘How have garments I’ve sold to you ended up being sold elsewhere at an enormous mark-up?’ Every prospective shopper had paused to listen by now. ‘You’ve paid me peanuts for years. You pretended that you had difficulty selling my stuff and I ought to be jolly grateful for what I got. Yet you’ve been selling it on to The Monkee Box
and pocketing a big profit.’

A couple of shoppers drew in breath. One tutted.

Diane held up her hand. ‘And don’t pretend that you haven’t, because I’ve had a frank chat with Amelia from The Monkee Box, and she’s been kind enough to share the figures with me.’

Rowan’s face turned a dull puce. ‘I don’t have to be spoken to like this in my own shop.’

‘I don’t know how you’re going to avoid it.’ Slowly, Diane smiled. ‘I’m telling the truth and you can’t lay hands upon me because all these nice people are witnesses. You could ring the police, I suppose.’ She folded her arms. ‘Why don’t you? You ring the police and I’ll ring a reporter, and we’ll see how it looks in the paper.’ Her smile grew into a grin. ‘Or you could ring Amelia – but I think you’ll find that you’re blacklisted as a supplier so far as she’s concerned. From now on, when Diane Jenner Originals appear in her shop, Diane Jenner will be making the profit out of it. Not some talentless third party tosser.’ With a defiant flick of her plait, she spun on her heel.

‘Like your husband?’

Diane halted in mid-stride. Turned slowly back. ‘What?’

‘Like your husband.’ Rowan’s lips twisted.

Diane’s lips went numb. ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

His face shone with spite. ‘He walked past one day and recognised the stuff I was loading into the van. It took just thirty quid for him to keep his mouth shut. Thirty measly quid for every batch.’

The blood in her cheeks boiled. Her ears sang. Diane heard a couple of customers murmuring. Sympathy! She despised it. She clawed her tattering dignity around her. ‘I don’t know why you expect me to be surprised. He’s as big a shit as you are.’

Outside she put her arms around Bryony, who was white, even her lips, and guided her out of the arcade over to a black-painted bench where the fresh air might revive her. ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry you heard that.’

Tipping her head to rest it on her mother’s shoulder, Bryony sighed. ‘I’m a big girl, Mum, I can handle it – like you. I just feel a bit … wobbly.’

Diane debated her next move. She didn’t want to leave Bryony here, the bench was cold metal and the breeze had enough edge to chill a body through. She needed somewhere warmer if she were to even consider leaving her alone for an hour while she put her business plan before Ms Rhianne Andrews, at the bank.

It’s never far to a café when you’re in a city centre and in five minutes Diane had Bryony drinking hot tea.

Bryony was still shivering. ‘It can’t be right, can it, what Rowan said? Dad wouldn’t?’

Diane hesitated. ‘I don’t know. I hope not.’

A chalky Bryony fell silent. Even after two cups of tea, she was shaky.

Diane rang the bank and rescheduled her appointment with Ms Rhianne Andrews for the end of the week. She tried not to sigh, remembering that she’d meant to use the excuse of reporting on how the business plan had been received to ring James that night. To hear his voice. To check that he was coping.

‘Shall I take you home?’ she asked gently.

Bryony blinked. ‘I don’t know. Dad will be there –’

‘But Dad will be downstairs until I help him to bed, later. I think you could do with a few hours chill time, snug in your own room. Buy a magazine on the way back to the car and you can put your feet up.’

Compared to the cheery, chatty journey into the city earlier, the journey home was a wet weekend. The parkways were busy and Diane knew from experience that it was easy to want to leave one and inexplicably find herself still on it. She concentrated on the traffic and left Bryony to stare silently at the scenery.

Until they reached the quiet of the Fen lanes, the land stretching flat on either side of the road. Then Bryony burst out, ‘Are you staying with Dad for me?’

In her surprise, Diane almost let the car run into a ditch. For safety’s sake she pulled over, half on a humped grass verge. ‘That came a bit out of the blue!’

‘Sorry.’ Bryony paused to feel around for her inhaler and use it on a big in-breath. She paused before letting the breath out again and gave a little cough. ‘It’s dawning on me exactly how crappy Dad’s been to you. And I bet I don’t know the half of it. Because people’s relationships are private and mostly others don’t see the real picture? Sometimes people inside the relationship don’t. Like I thought my relationship with Inacio was so cool and that he always came to my area because he didn’t want me crossing the city at night. But it wasn’t cool, it was crappy, because he was actually going home to his wife.’

She coughed again and paused over another puff of her inhaler. ‘And I don’t want anything to do with Inacio, because he lied and lied and lied. And I just thought … well, Dad’s lied and lied to you and you’re still with him. So I wondered if there was a reason. And then I wondered if the reason was me
.
But I suppose I shouldn’t have asked because it’s your relationship, yours and Dad’s.’ Bryony rubbed her eyes, like a child. ‘I still love Dad.’

‘I know.’

Diane stroked Bryony’s cheek, unsure of what she could say to make this less hard on her daughter. Because she was staying with Gareth for Bryony’s sake – but she didn’t think it was necessarily the best thing for Bryony to hear.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Troubled that she’d somehow let her daughter end up in the middle of things despite all intentions to the contrary, Diane didn’t immediately notice anything missing when they trailed silently into the house.

It was Bryony, dragging her bag as if even that little weight was too much, who said, ‘Where’s Dad?’

His chair in the sitting room was empty, his crutches gone. They looked in the workroom and checked the downstairs loo. Both empty. Slowly, they moved towards the stairs. Diane took the lead. For a reason she didn’t examine too closely, she trod as quietly as she could.