Our Little Secret (3 page)

Dad suddenly clocks what I’m wearing. ‘Going somewhere?’ he asks.

I catch Tiff’s eye in the mirror. She’s kept all my confidences before. Even about Mr Walters. I know she’ll keep the interview a secret and not throw anyone into an unnecessary panic, but in her eyes I see something I’ve never seen before. An acceptance. A sudden realization that I’m serious. And, with it, a willingness to let me go. I was quite mistaken; she wants this to happen for me just as much as I do.

‘No,’ I tell Dad, but as my eyes stay locked with Tiff’s, I know that I will try my hardest to get this job. And that I’m going to do it, for me.

5

‘This way, please, Miss—’

‘Henshaw,’ I remind the woman, as she walks surprisingly fast down a long corridor. She’s carrying a clipboard and I look at her sturdy calves beneath American-tan tights, as I set off behind her. She’s wearing those small blocky-heeled shoes with a gold square on the front that have never suited anyone in the history of the world.

She came to the reception area just now, where I’d been waiting nervously for half an hour, and introduced herself, but I didn’t catch her name. It sounded German. Gunter, or something. Gunther? Did she notice that my hand was trembling when she shook it? She has a strange accent. Not English, but not American, either. European of some kind, for sure. Most likely she’s German, I guess.

She’s not what I expected. She’s a po-faced, uptight-looking middle-aged woman, with grey-streaked mousy hair scraped back in a bun. She looks like she’s never farted. Let alone laughed about it.

I tug self-consciously at the hem of my skirt. Tiff was right. I should have worn tights. My legs feel too exposed. Like I’m underdressed. I certainly am, compared to old Gunter. She’s wearing a tan-and-cream dogtooth tweed suit, which looks at once prim and expensive.

My high heels sink into the thick carpet as I trot after her, but I can’t help being mesmerized by glimpses of the view I get from the glass panels of the offices on either side of the hushed corridor.

We’re in The Shard, that huge building near London Bridge station. It’s been so long since I’ve been to London that I didn’t even know it had been built, so the address was a bit of a shock, and I had to check the piece of paper I was holding three times before I had the nerve to come in here. I’ve never been in a skyscraper before, let alone one like this. It’s like I’m in a spaceship.

Ahead, at the end of the corridor, Frau Gunter opens a thick wooden door, which swishes against the plush carpet, and nods at me to walk inside. As I step over the threshold I take in the aroma of the stunning room beyond the door, and let satisfaction fill my lungs.

It smells of money.

Or of how I imagine money to smell, at any rate: of the best leather and of expensive perfume. Across the vast expanse of pristine cream carpet is a glass wall with a panoramic view. For a second, it takes my breath away. It’s as if we’re on top of the world. I can see the whole of London stretched out before me: thousands of buildings, their windows winking in the sunlight; red buses on the bridges, barges on the sparkling river. Seeing the pulsing, breathing city right there fills me with awe and a thrill of excitement that, for once, I’m part of it.

‘Miss Henshaw?’

I turn to see the older woman gesturing to a soft fawn leather sofa and I quickly walk to it and sit down carefully, remembering to tuck my dress in underneath me and cross my legs. I lower myself, keeping my knees together, but the sofa seems to swallow me. I smile at her, but she cocks her head to one side and frowns.

‘You don’t look comfortable. Please. Stand.’

Surprised, and worried that I’ve already mucked the whole interview up through my lack of sofa etiquette, I get up – less gracefully. I think I’ve flashed my gusset, but she hasn’t noticed as she’s walking towards the other side of the room where there’s a plush bar area. She drags a high stool towards me.

‘This will be better, I think. Sit.’

With difficulty I hoist myself onto the stool, my back to the view. I feel a bit of an idiot, sitting on the high chair in the middle of the room. I notice now that in front of the bar area is a tripod with a camera on it, facing me. Gunter sees me looking at it.

‘I hope you don’t mind, but my clients asked me to record the interviews,’ she says. ‘They cannot be here, so I will send them the tapes later.’

I nod, wondering how many other people she’s already interviewed. I’m relieved, too. She’s not the client, then. I wouldn’t be working for her. If she had kids at all, I imagine them to be frowning blond ones, in stiff lederhosen.

Gunter stands behind the camera, adjusts the angle so that it’s pointing away from the sofa and directly at the stool, and then, referring to her clipboard, starts the interview abruptly, with no preamble. I tell her a bit about my experience, but I can’t help my eyes darting to the camera occasionally. It’s weird being recorded, and I feel judged in a way I can’t put my finger on. I can see the tiny red recording light, and a miniature version of myself in the shiny black lens of the camera.

Who will watch these tapes later, I wonder? The whole set-up makes me think that ‘the clients’ (whoever they are) must be rich. As in super-rich.

Gunter nods as I speak, but her steely expression soon means that I’m exaggerating my qualifications. Trying to be light-hearted and amusing, I tell her about my initial desire to be a dancer/actress when I left school, which was quickly superseded by my love of children. How this is what I long to do. That I’m brilliant with kids, and kids
love
me. That I’m flexible, easy-going, yet strict, of course. Manners are my big thing. Isn’t it awful when kids don’t have manners?

I’m babbling a monologue, but I can’t tell whether she’s impressed or not. Eventually, when I pause, she says, ‘And you exercise regularly? You’re fit? You’d say you have stamina?’

For a moment I’m tempted to joke,
Of course I have stamina! You try going out with someone with Scott’s libido.
But of course I don’t. I lie instead; about how I don’t mind working long hours and how I regularly swim to keep in shape. Although that’s not true. I hate going to our local public swimming pool. All that body-piercing and tattoos on show makes me squeamish.

The truth is that I just have lucky genes from Mum. I seem to be able to eat loads without getting fat. People always used to tell her she was lucky, but there’s nothing lucky about getting breast cancer at forty. Besides, everyone’s thin when they die of cancer. Believe me.

‘You don’t have any commitments here, do you? I mean emotional commitments?’ She glances down at her clipboard. ‘You’re single?’

‘Yes,’ I lie, backing up the fib on the application form that Tiff made me tell for my own good.

My cheeks colour as I wriggle in my seat and cross my legs with difficulty and sit on my hands, which I realize I’ve been waving around far too much. She glances up at me, her eyebrows drawing together. Is she some kind of body-language expert? In which case, she must know I’m lying. But it’s too late now. I can’t tell her about Scott. Yes, he’s an emotional commitment, but not a ‘forever’ one, surely? But even as I justify my lie like this, I know I’m being unfair. Scott has hinted enough times that our relationship is super-serious, as far as he’s concerned.

‘You’d be free to travel straight away?’

‘Uh-huh,’ I say, biting my lip.

‘And how are you in new situations? Would you say that you’re an adaptable kind of person?’

‘Oh yes. Totally. Completely flexible,’ I tell her, with a little laugh, knowing that I’ve gone a bit over the top. ‘No, seriously. I believe that you can only truly live life if you expand your horizons. That’s why I’m here. Always do what you feel in your heart. Even if it scares you. That’s what I always say.’

‘And, Miss Henshaw, would you say that you’re a discreet kind of person? I assume that you are. You don’t appear to use your Facebook account ever, and you’re not on Twitter, as far as I can see, but perhaps you prefer other social networks?’

I’m amazed that she’s checked, although I realize that she must have, for me even to be sitting here. I don’t tell her that this is not through choice. That I stopped going on Facebook when Ryan got cyber-bullied at school after Mum died. In a show of solidarity for Dad, I stopped writing anything at all about any of us online.

‘That’s not my thing,’ I tell her. ‘I think a person is entitled to a private life that stays just that. Private,’ I add, putting as much gravitas into my voice as I can. ‘In my opinion, people share far too much personal information about themselves that I’d rather not know.’

She nods in agreement. I seem to have got that right.

‘I ask because my clients are often in the public eye and they do not wish to have any of their affairs – and I mean,
any
of their affairs,’ she stresses, ‘divulged in any way.’

They’re famous, I realize. What if they’re really famous? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie famous. What then? But no, people like that wouldn’t even consider someone like me, surely? But then, I do sound good on paper. But what if I’ve sounded
too
good? What if I’m already out of my depth?

‘It is of the utmost importance that they would be able to trust you,’ she emphasizes, staring at me so forcefully it feels like she’s pointing a gun. I spread my hands out in a gesture of submission.

‘I’m trustworthy. I can keep secrets,’ I tell her, remembering Mr Walters fumbling with his belt. Remembering how I cupped my hand around the hard bulge in his soft cotton pants and whispered that this was just ours. Our secret.

6

The monotonous hum of the plane throbs below me. When I open my eyes, I realize that my mouth has been open and someone has put a blanket over me. My tongue is thick from all the free champagne I have downed, and I have pins and needles in my left foot.

There’s an intimate, hushed atmosphere in the business-class cabin. Everyone is asleep as we hover, seemingly suspended above the clouds. The smart air hostesses, who positively fell over themselves to serve me earlier, are all tucked away out of sight. I wanted to tell them that they’d made a mistake, that it was just me. Little old Sophie. That they didn’t need to make a fuss. But I guess you can’t say that kind of thing.

Besides, the facts speak for themselves: I am a paid member of the business class. I am going to work for some lah-di-dah people called Edward and Marnie Parker in New York. And they are paying for me to fly at this astounding level of luxury. And not only that, they will be paying me – wait for it – a staggering 1,500 dollars a week. That’s more than I make in two months at FunPlex. ‘Lucked out’ doesn’t cover it. And yep, I suppose champagne is the only appropriate drink, given the circumstances. So I had my fill and zonked out in a sozzled fug.

I needed it. After all, it’s been an exhausting twenty-four hours. Saying goodbye to Tiff, Dad and Ryan was just awful. And then there was Scott. Oh God. Poor Scott.

Quietly, so as not to disturb anyone, I take off my headphones and ease myself out of my extraordinarily large seat and into the wide aisle. My eyes feel puffy and I need to wash my face.

I limp, with difficulty, up the aisle to the loos. They’re free, but as I go to open the door, someone blocks it from inside and I jump back, startled.

‘Hang on.’ I hear a voice. The door locks and the green light goes on overhead with a muffled ‘bing’. I hear hushed giggling.

Suddenly, there’s a slap on the other side of the door and a gasp. I imagine someone’s hand. More giggling and another low, male ‘Shhh’.

I don’t know what to do. I didn’t think the mile-high thing was real, but obviously, if you’re posh and fly business-class to America, it is very real. Every plane loo I’ve ever been in has been minging, but maybe this one isn’t so smelly or gross. I suspect, judging from the sounds of the couple inside, they just couldn’t help themselves – regardless of their surroundings.

I glance down the cabin, wondering who the couple could be, but I can’t see any empty seats. I should go and find a different loo, but I don’t. I don’t want to draw attention to the couple inside.

There’s another faint slap on the door and a high gasp. My interruption has clearly not put them off their stride. Something about the noise makes me remember my own hand slapping the wall, my legs wrapped around Scott as we had sex for the last time. It was only hours ago, I realize, but it feels like weeks. As if he’s already faded. Already dissolving in my head.

I’m not usually a voyeur, but the sensation, the vibration is undeniably horny and I can’t help myself responding with an involuntary flip in my crotch. And the fact that I’ve so readily responded makes me feel like the traitor I am. I don’t deserve to be horny. And anyway, I mustn’t. I promised Scott.

Just like I promised him that this job wasn’t a big deal. That I’d only be gone for a couple of months at the most. That I’d be back, only with more money. Which we could use as a deposit maybe, for a place of our own together?

I know I’m a cow for giving him false hope. The whole point of this adventure is that I don’t know how it will end. That it’s a chance at the unknown, an opportunity to take a different path, away from the inevitability of the one that my life has been on, which has led me here.

But I didn’t say any of this to Scott. I’m a coward, of course, but I couldn’t bear how rejected he felt. He blamed himself for me taking the job. He assumed it was because he hadn’t shown enough commitment to me. It didn’t occur to him that I was the one who wasn’t committed enough. That no matter how much he’s prepared to offer, I still want more.

I duck around the corner into the air hostesses’ area, where they make the tea and coffee. It’s dark and empty, cold rows of steel containers lined up like it’s a morgue. I lean up against the wall, but from here I can hear what’s going on inside the loo even more clearly.

I lean against the plastic wall, but then push back. Because I can feel them through the wall. They are thrusting up against it and, as I press the palms of my hands back against the wall, I sense the warm, rhythmic banging against them. It gets faster and harder, and she gasps and he makes a guttural noise, too.