Want to Know a Secret? (39 page)

She stumbled to a halt.

Tamzin buried her head in her hands. ‘Daddy. How could you?’

Tentatively, James slid an arm around her thin shoulders, hating himself. Was aware, with another part of his mind, of Bryony and Diane speaking in low voices. Of Diane justifying, explaining.

Bryony staring at her mother as if she’d never seen her before.

With a cursory wipe of her eyes, Tamzin jerked away from James. ‘Right. Well. We have some news of our own. I don’t suppose there’s any point breaking it to you gently, now.’

Her reddened eyes were suddenly filled with purpose, and even defiance, as she looked from her father to Diane. ‘Jenneration has been offered the opportunity to play the venues in Hamburg. You know, like The Beatles did. George is taking a gap year so he can go.

‘And I’m going with him.’

‘You can’t.’ The automatic objection was out before James could stop it.

‘I
can
.’ Tamzin pulled away from him.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Diane was aware of Tamzin hurling her bombshell at James and of James turning to stone.

But most of her attention was on poor, bewildered Bryony. ‘Sweetie, I’m sorry you had to find out like this. Well, to be honest, I wasn’t even certain that there was anything to find out. We’ve tried to stay apart and mostly we’ve succeeded. But – !’

‘It just happened?’

Miserably, Diane nodded.

Bryony didn’t cry. Her pinched, wounded expression was worse than tears. She dropped her forehead in her hand and rubbed her back. Her tummy swelled a little every day but she wasn’t sailing through the final trimester in the golden glow that the books suggested she might. She felt in her pocket for her inhaler.

‘I’m sorry,’ Diane repeated, helplessly.

Bryony didn’t look at her as she took the two puffs that would give her a bit of space in her lungs. ‘I know. I think I know, Mum, honestly. Dad hasn’t always been the easiest and you’ve had to struggle with money the way you have and then find out that he’s been rolling in it for ages must be totally crappy. You were, like, totally loyal and he didn’t treat you right.’

‘But he’s still your dad?’ Diane suggested, gently.

Bryony’s lip trembled. ‘That’s right. And even though I had to put that jewellery in Uncle Freddy’s safe, in a way I still love him.’

‘Of course you do.’

‘And I still love you.’

Diane laughed shakily. ‘That’s a relief! Will you still come shopping with me, on your birthday? And have lunch?’

‘Yeah. ’Course.’

‘You know that I’ll be here for you, you and your baby, and Dad’s going to want to see you often.’

Bryony smiled, just, without disturbing the mesh of frown lines that corrugated her brow. ‘Don’t take this as a punishment or anything, Mum. But I think I’m going to go and live with Pops. For a bit, anyway. He’s so sad. He needs someone to look after him. When Dad left and he’d behaved so badly, I thought I’d better stay here, with you. But now I don’t want to feel as if I’m taking sides. He might even want me to stay after the baby because then he won’t be so lonely. Will you tell Dad? About James.’

‘I haven’t even thought about it. It might be better not to.’

Bryony brought her hand down onto the tabletop with a slap, eyes sparking with fury. ‘But if you don’t, you leave me in the same situation that he did – of choosing either to tell him or to keep it a secret from him!
It’s not my secret
.’

Diane blinked at her cross little elf and hastily reversed her decision. ‘OK, I’ll tell him.’ She tried to smile. ‘It’ll be something to look forward to.’

They spent another stilted hour together, the five of them. Diane moved around the kitchen with automatic hospitality, making drinks and putting biscuits on plates, for nobody to eat. Trying not to think how she’d been judged and found wanting by her daughter.

And James’s daughter. Tamzin’s eyes, wells of injury, avoided Diane’s.

Even George looked at her with a kind of wondering dismay.

When Tamzin and George left – with not even a peck on the cheek for Diane or James but they both hugged Bryony – Bryony took herself immediately to her grandfather’s house to propose to him that she become his housemate.

Diane and James ended up where they’d begun, staring at each other over the kitchen table.

‘Well, that was horrible.’ Her voice trembled as images of all those young accusing eyes rose in her mind.

James smoothed his hair. ‘I feel a worm. And I can’t believe what Tamzin’s going to do. To go to Hamburg with the band! There’s no job lined up, she’s just going to see what happens. She thinks she’s going to help manage the band because she’s got A-level German. Fucking hell, she can’t manage getting dressed, some days. She’s been depressed for two years, she doesn’t eat, she hurts herself –’

Diane cut in. ‘I think she’s coped with Valerie’s death brilliantly. She only seemed to lose it occasionally. The rest of the time she held herself together. You should give her credit.’

He recoiled, eyes blank with disappointment. ‘So you think I’m exaggerating the way she’s been, do you? Like Valerie?’

She took his hand with both of hers, wrapping her fingers around his solid warmth, feeling the goodness in him through the pores of his skin. ‘I never thought you exaggerated the way she’s been. But it’s just possible that you aren’t quite grasping how she
is
. She’s improved, James. She’s improved out of all recognition just in the few months I’ve known her. And she might not sustain it, she might not hold it together in Hamburg without you, one day soon you might get a phone call crying, “Daddy, come and get me!” But you can’t expect her to live her life in case she can’t cope.’

Frustratedly, he shook his head. ‘I sometimes think that nobody but me sees her as she is.’

‘Maybe we don’t,’ she said, touching his cheek with one fingertip, smoothing the lines of sorrow. ‘Or maybe we do.’

He kissed her wrist. ‘When I met you I felt I was trudging around carrying huge burdens. One was Valerie and her drinking; the other was Tamzin’s depression. I was constantly under the pressure of thinking for them. Neither could be trusted to fill in a form or anything else essential but mundane. They had to be protected from themselves and their own actions and others had to be protected from them. And I dragged them along, minding but trying not to mind, knowing that it was my role to be the reliable one. It was my job to take the shit.

‘And now Valerie’s gone and Tamzin has pushed me away. I’ve got what I wanted.’

‘Have you?’ She stroked his knuckles with her thumb.

‘I’m beginning to think I haven’t! I feel bloody.’

‘Your girls will always need you. Maybe not so much and maybe not all the time, but they need you.’

He freed a hand and stroked her hair, gathering it like a skein in his hand and smoothing it back over her shoulder. Then his hand stilled. ‘What was Bryony saying about her dad leaving?’

Her heart gave a great wriggle. ‘It seems like a lifetime since he left, not just a day.’ Even in the present awful circumstances Diane couldn’t help beaming. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you! But you … Um, we –’ She blushed.

‘I meant to plod on but he did a couple of things that opened Bryony’s eyes and she asked me not to stay with him for her sake. And, James, I’m so liberated. I feel as if I could float up around the ceiling if I took a breath big enough. I’ve got this house and he’s got the cottage and that’s pretty much the end of the settlement, although it’ll have to be written up legally.’

His eyes, dark with shock, were fixed to hers. But then his slow smile began to break. ‘So we can be together? Perhaps not yet, not living together. But in a year, say, or two, so that it doesn’t hurt the girls too much. We can sell both houses and buy one that’s “ours”.’ He kissed her, tasting her. ‘I love you.’

Diane kissed him back. ‘I love you, too.’ Her hand tightened on the warmth of his and she made her voice persuasive. ‘But try to understand, James. I’m going to trade from here until I can afford other premises and I’m going to live off my own earnings, not yours. I’m going to make my own life. I don’t want to live in anyone’s shadow any more.’

He snatched his hand away as if she’d bitten him. Fumbling his way to his feet, he glowered down at her, his voice tight. ‘We’re not going to be together? When we’re finally free to? For fuck’s sake, you just said that you love me!’

She rose, stretching on tiptoes to kiss his lips, his cheeks, his jaw line, desperate to make him understand. ‘James, I want “us” so much I ache. I want us to love each other and make love to each other. But I’m never going to be dependent on a man again.’

He stared, understanding warring with disappointment in his face. Understanding won. His voice began to relax. ‘So you do see us going somewhere from here?’

She grinned. ‘Absolutely, I see us being together. As long as you want the real Diane, the one who has a business to run and might not always be able to put you first. The Diane who is looking forward to living alone for a while … and having a lover.’

He frowned. Slowly, the idea seemed to grow on him. ‘I certainly want the real you.’

Her voice dropped. ‘I could also see us taking up from where we left off.’

The tautness began to fade from his face and a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. ‘And where was that?’

Slowly, she eased her T-shirt up to where her bra, still undone, straggled above her breasts. ‘I think you’d got to just about here …’

His eyes fastened on her and his hands followed; hot, hungry. He murmured, ‘Even though we’ve just caused the most godawful scene and pissed off everybody we love best, all I can think about is that at least we don’t have to hide what we want.’

Diane sucked in her breath at his touch. ‘Mmm. And as we’re so thoroughly in disgrace I think we might as well act disgracefully.’

‘Fantastic,’ he breathed, sucking, nipping, licking, kissing. ‘But pack a bag because I don’t do backseats of cars in daylight. We’re finding a hotel.’

Slowly, she let her head fall back. ‘Yeah, well. We both have plenty of baggage.’

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