One Secret Summer (37 page)

He nodded. ‘I’ll be there.’ He hesitated. ‘Thanks.’

She seemed to understand what he was saying. She gave him a small smile and continued on her way. He watched her for a moment
or two, then shoved his hands in his pockets and walked off in the opposite direction. Five p.m. Two hours to kill. Easy.
Or so he thought.

‘Oh, Niela.’ Jenny, the receptionist, looked up as she entered the building. ‘Some bloke was just here looking for you. He
didn’t leave a message. Josh Keeler, I think he said his name was.’

‘Thanks,’ Niela said quickly and hurried to the lift before Jenny could ask anything further. Her cheeks were burning, despite
the cold. She still couldn’t believe it. Josh. Here. In London. She punched the number to her floor and stood back, allowing
the lift to pull her stomach up behind her. She was trembling, she realised, as she got out and walked down the corridor to
the office where all the translators worked. She gave
Shaheeda and Ludmilla a quick wave and sat down behind her computer screen. Her stomach was in knots. She looked down at the
brochure she’d been working on before she’d popped out. ‘Some services and support are available to everyone, whilst others
depend on your income. Your case owner …’ She began to type the words in Arabic, her fingers flying over the keyboard as though
she were trying to bury her own thoughts in amongst the wash of official jargon. It was nearly three. Another couple of hours
to go. Josh. In London. What had he come for?

He was waiting when she entered the café, sitting alone in one of the booths by the window. He looked up as she came through
the doorway, and the same tense hesitation that had characterised their every encounter back in the desert was there in London,
amidst the noise and chatter of the café. He got up as she approached. His scarf was still wound tightly around his neck,
although he’d taken off his jacket. He was wearing a dark green polo-neck sweater and his hair was longer than she’d last
seen it. Amongst the other customers, whose skin had taken on the pale, lacklustre glow of winter, his dark, sun-ripened complexion
jumped out. She was struck anew by just how energetically alive he seemed, as if he’d been stopped in mid-flight, his whole
body attuned to some splendid physical activity that had only just ended. She had never met anyone with such a wonderfully
strong sense of his own body and its limitless possibilities. Just thinking about when she’d last seen it brought a dark,
bruised flush to her cheeks.

She stood in front of him, unsure whether to offer her hand or her cheek. He leaned forward; there was a second’s hesitation
and then she felt herself enveloped in the strangely familiar sense of his body. His arms were hard and muscled underneath
his sweater. She let her own drop, alarmed by the immediacy of her body’s reaction to him, as if the intervening three months
of silence simply hadn’t happened.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, his mouth very close to her ear. ‘I wasn’t sure you would.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ She put a hand up to her face as if she’d been burned.

He held her a little away from him. ‘Are you always like this?’ he asked, a faint smile playing around the corners of his
mouth.

‘Like what?’ She unwound her own scarf and pulled out the chair opposite.

‘I don’t know … so …
direct
? No, don’t answer that. Yes, you are.’

It was different to how it had been in Djibouti. There, she’d been the one who was unsure, who’d waited to take her cues from
him. She watched as he ran a hand through his hair, passing it over the faint stubble that showed up beneath the olive-toned
grain of his skin. It was hard not to remember the touch and feel of his hair underneath her fingers. She sat down abruptly,
unnerved. ‘So why did you come?’ she asked simply.

He slid into his own seat, his eyes still on her face. He placed his hands, palms facing downwards, on the wooden table before
her. ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally, shaking his head as if in disbelief at himself. ‘We finished the project ahead of time
… I had leave coming up … I … I just wanted to see you again.’

Niela looked at him. He seemed to be struggling with something, a deeper, somehow more difficult truth. She was struck again
by the horizon that was always present in him, the distance he maintained that both drew her in and yet pushed her away. He
seemed to be nursing something, a lost, buried secret, some emotion or experience he felt he couldn’t share. There was a darkness
in him that frightened her, and yet for all that, she understood it too. It was the same darkness that was in her, not as
the result of her nature, but because of her past. Once or twice he would let something slip, like now. Turning up in London
on the spur of the moment after months of silence was no accident, however offhand about it he tried to be. He wanted something,
needed
something, but he was unable to say what. His presence, she saw, was answer enough. At least for now. ‘Come,’ she said,
finishing her coffee and standing up. ‘Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.’

She lay slightly apart from him, dozing fitfully. The yellow glow of the hands of her alarm clock showed 1.49 a.m. The traffic
outside had finally slowed to a halt; her tiny flat was just off the Goldhawk Road and the stream of trucks and lorries had
lasted well beyond midnight. He was so used to the calm silence of Islington that he’d forgotten what other parts of London
sounded like. His hand was buried in her hair; he stroked it gently, enjoying the weight and feel of it against his palm.
The bedside lamp gave off a soft yellow glow, illuminating her dark skin as if from within. His eyes travelled down the length
of her body. She slept with one leg thrown outside the cover, her arms curled tightly against her ribs. One full, rounded
breast lolled against the other; there was a slight sheen to her skin that made him want to trace the contours of her body
with his mouth, a saltiness on the tongue. He watched the gentle rise and fall of her stomach, admiring the smooth, clear
line of her body all the way down past the tight whorl of her navel to the lovely hollow made by the muscles of her thighs.
She was perfect, in almost every conceivable way. He pulled her towards him; now that he was here, with her, he found he just
couldn’t let her go.

MADDY

London, June 1997

It was exactly two weeks since the wedding. A fortnight. She corrected herself quickly, trying the word out on her tongue.
‘Fortnight’ wasn’t a word that Americans used. She heard Rafe on the phone sometimes – ‘Yes, it’s been a fortnight already.
I
can’t believe it.’ She wondered who he was talking to. Sometimes he told her – ‘Oh, that was so-and-so …’ He seemed to have
many friends. Or at least people who rang up and were keen to know who Maddy was. She didn’t know the difference. It wouldn’t
have made one, she thought to herself with a wry smile. She knew no one. No one knew her. They hadn’t had a honeymoon; Rafe
was too busy at work. They would take a proper holiday later on in the year, after the big reception they were planning, when
Martha and Sandy would come. He’d taken a couple of days off, which was all his team could afford. When he’d gone back to
work, Maddy lay in bed every morning, long after he’d left the house, listening to the distant hum of traffic on the Euston
Road, a few minutes away. She liked the area he lived in – Fitzrovia, he called it – a shabby-chic neighbourhood named after
a developer called Fitzroy, whose house still stood somewhere along the streets that ran on either side of the square. The
Post Office Tower loomed above them like a fat steel and glass finger – at night it was lit up in a dazzling array of colours.
Students, tourists, office workers and the odd local inhabitant all came to Fitzroy Square at lunchtime; from the tall windows
of the living room on the first floor, Maddy could see them, sitting in groups of two or three, tossing crusts to the pigeons
who’d learned to gather in their wake. Rafe’s flat covered the first and second floors of a handsome building on Cleveland
Street, a minute’s walk from the square. ‘It’s your flat too, darling.’ The words sailed straight over Maddy’s head. She couldn’t
comprehend it. The most expensive item she owned was the chocolate-brown leather coat she sometimes wore when she went for
a stroll in Regent’s Park. The flat was nice in an offhand, unlived-in sort of way. Diana’s touch was everywhere – from the
leather chesterfield sofa in the living room that was simply a smaller version of the one at the family home to the pale blue
flowered bed sheets and the white bathroom towels with a black linen stripe. There was even a print in the dining room that
she thought she recognised as a copy of the one in Diana’s living room.

She traced out a pattern on the quilt with her fingertips. It was only nine o’clock. The whole day was in front of her. Rafe
would be home late. A heavy caseload: two or three complicated operations that had been postponed until his return. She rolled
on to her back, thinking about what he might be doing at that very moment. He sometimes explained things to her – anterior
cervical discectomy; laminectomy; a stereotactic biopsy – a foreign language but one she was slowly getting used to. She loved
the way his hands carefully traced the arc of his movements during an operation – cut, incision, probe; there was a delicacy
and a lightness of touch that was at odds with someone so physically powerful.

She pushed aside the quilt impatiently and slid her legs out of bed. She had to get up. She walked to the windows and pulled
back the curtains. She had a whole day in front of her. She ought to fill it with something useful. Give it some shape, some
purpose. She couldn’t lie around in the flat for ever. She had to find something to do. It was logical, she supposed, to start
with what she knew. The theatre. She ought to find out what was going on, what was showing, who was playing … the usual stuff.
Get a feel for the place, the players, the performers. Find an agent. Put herself forward. She stood in front of the bathroom
mirror, mouthing the words to herself. She’d said something along those lines to Harvey at Sunday lunch. ‘I might try and
find an agent,’ she’d said, hoping she didn’t sound too full of herself. As usual, it was Diana who’d answered.

‘Whatever for?’

Maddy blushed. ‘If … if I want to find work,’ she stammered.

‘Work?’ Diana’s tone made it sound as if that possibility were simply too remote to even be worth considering.

Maddy found herself agreeing. ‘Oh, I know it’s kinda unlikely … I mean, you have so many fine actors here … such a great tradition
of theatre … with Shakespeare and everything … I don’t think I’d stand a chance … but you never know …’ She was speaking too
fast, and saying too much but
she couldn’t help herself. There was something about Diana that brought out the child in her, desperately seeking to please.
Rafe had stepped in that time to save her. Remembering it brought the heat back into her cheeks. She had to find a way to
deal with his mother. Nothing she did was right. Even the damn photograph. She blushed further. She’d been standing by the
console in the living room, wondering what to do with her hands. Her eye had fallen on a silver-framed picture standing to
one side. She’d picked it up, of course. A group of teenagers, huddled in the spray of a waterfall, sunlight catching the
drops and pooling around their feet. She recognised Diana immediately. She was laughing, her face turned towards the camera.
She was holding on to a young man; dark-haired and deeply tanned. ‘Who’s that?’ Maddy asked, frowning. He looked strangely
familiar.

‘Who?’ Rafe came up to her.

‘Him.’ She pointed with her finger.

‘Oh, that’s Uncle Rufus.’

Maddy stared at the photograph. Yes, it was … a much younger, much darker version. He reminded her a little of Josh, she thought
to herself suddenly. Even though she’d only seen him once, there was a resemblance there. It was hardly surprising; Josh was
Rufus’s nephew after all.

‘What’re you two looking at?’ It was Diana. She came to stand beside them, fingers curled protectively around her wine glass.

‘Just these old photographs. That’s the one of all of you in Crete, isn’t it?’

‘Oh,
that
one.’

‘You look so young,’ Maddy ventured shyly.

‘Mmm. It was the summer I was seventeen. Our parents shared a villa there every summer.’ She nodded in Harvey’s direction.

Maddy was surprised. ‘You’ve known Harvey since you were seventeen?’

‘I’ve known him all my life.’ Diana gave a small laugh. ‘We
were neighbours. They moved in when I was four. The boy next door.’

‘That’s … that’s so
romantic
,’ Maddy said, blushing as she said it.

‘Is it?’ Diana murmured. Her eyes lingered on Maddy for a second.

‘It’s funny. Your brother, Josh … he looks more like your Uncle Rufus than your father,’ Maddy said, looking at Rafe. Diana’s
hand went out; she took hold of the frame and put it firmly back in its place. She’d offended her; that much was clear. Her
mouth had tightened into a thin line. Maddy looked at her, momentarily confused. What had she said? Diana turned away from
the console. From the stiffness of her posture and the way she held on to Rafe’s arm, quickly pulling him away, it was clear
that the conversation was over. Maddy remained where she was, standing uncertainly by the door. She’d done it again – put
her foot in it, said something she shouldn’t have, spoken out of turn. She grimaced; that old, nervous feeling in the pit
of her stomach was back. It seemed to follow every encounter with Diana but she’d no idea why.

She straightened the bed sheets, pulling the cover nice and tight and plumping the feather pillows up. She picked up their
discarded clothing, setting the room to rights. It didn’t take long. She’d come over from the States with all her possessions
in two giant suitcases, pretty much the same way she’d come to New York. She’d given everything else away. A few pans, some
plates, a chair or two … nothing that she couldn’t replace. It was a strange feeling – in less than a day she’d uprooted herself,
boarded a plane and was gone, just like that. There would be no trace of her in New York, just as there was little trace of
her on the farm. In that way, she supposed, she was more like her father than she’d ever imagined. There one day, gone the
next. Almost as if she’d never been. Aside from a weekly call to her mother, and two to Sandy, there was no one left behind
who would miss her, or even notice that she was gone.