Our Little Secret (32 page)

I can’t breathe as she strides out of the room, away from me.

73

I just about manage to regain my composure, but I can’t concentrate at dinner. All I can think of is Edward earlier, and of Marnie kissing me just now. Just when I’d put it all behind me. Just when I thought it was simply Edward and me again, Marnie kissed me. and I didn’t repel her. How could I, when she knows me like she does?

My mind struggles to cope with what it means. How can I be involved with them both? How can this be happening? Under their roof? I’m in way over my head. I don’t look at either of them. It’s too confusing. Too scary. I feel tied to both of them, as if by elastic, pulling me in different directions, as if the power of the secrets I hold will rip me in two.

In the gallery at dinner I’m sitting opposite the nude painting of Marnie, and just seeing her like that reminds me of her on the bed in the gallery. Has she positioned me here on purpose, so that she can taunt me with her nudity?

Edward is opposite me, below the painting. His look is dark and unreadable as he catches my eye, but he is the perfect host. He introduces me to a German guy and his wife, who are sitting on either side of me, as ‘our English friend’.

‘You’re from Manchester,’ the woman, Hilda, says. ‘What a great city.’

I like her. She’s got rosy cheeks and drinks like a fish. She has flawless English and is a Professor of Art History. It sounds like she has a very high-profile academic career somewhere very important. She mentions several art books that she’s written, but their significance is lost on me. As she talks on about her achievements, I feel more and more uncomfortable. I have nothing to offer. Nothing to share. I feel like an ill-educated fool. Edward comes to my rescue.

‘Miss Henshaw is a part-time model,’ he tells Hilda, in a low whisper.

For one hideous second I think he must know about the shoot yesterday. Has Marnie told him about what happened? Can she have shown him the shots? But then his eyes bore into mine.

‘She quite inspired me back into life drawing.’

‘Anyone who gets Edward back at the easel gets my vote,’ Hilda says. ‘He was the prodigy at the Sorbonne when we were there, a million years ago,’ she laughs.

I smile at her and at Edward. I’m touched that he’s made me sound like his muse. I feel a pang of jealousy that Hilda knows his history. Were they lovers once, I wonder?

I glance over at Marnie, who is blissfully unaware of this conversation taking place. She’s holding court at the end of the table, but she too is talking about a world I know nothing about. I listen, as if I’m observing myself from the corner of the room, as she tells anecdote after anecdote about her own and Edward’s life together, and he chips in, charming his guests.

At one point she comes down the table, insisting that all the men move around for the next course. She talks quietly to Edward and then he laughs.

I stare at them, watching how connected they are. I see Marnie lean up and kiss him. He closes his eyes and kisses her back.

‘Oh, you two, you’re always the same,’ one of the guests next to them teases. ‘Get a room!’

Some others around the table laugh. ‘They are insatiable, those two,’ a woman opposite me crows. ‘I don’t know how she does it. How you can keep a man loving you that much.’

Marnie trills with laughter, her hand on Edward’s chest. ‘You’re just a jealous old divorcee, Anna. Get over it.’

The woman, Anna, laughs. ‘And you’re always sickeningly happy and in love.’

I can’t stand it any longer. As soon as I can, I make my excuses and go to bed, announcing that I have a headache. I don’t give Marnie or Edward the chance to persuade me to stay, as they are with their guests. Neither of them can leave the table, and I don’t look at them as I leave the room.

It feels like I’ve made a statement to them both, but as soon as the glass panel slides back, I feel ejected and shut out in the cold. I glance back at the warm ambience of the table and long to return. But it’s too late.

Up alone in my room, I open the window and listen to the music and laughter downstairs. I keep wishing I had the nerve to go back downstairs and join in the fun. I know I’ve rather backed myself into a corner with my jealousy, but it’s so difficult to see Edward and Marnie together like that, knowing what I do about them both. Knowing that what they’re presenting to the world isn’t the truth.

I am the truth.

The party goes on until the small hours and, eventually, the first of the cars starts crunching on the gravel drive, taking its occupants back to their amazing lives and their exceptional homes elsewhere.

When the house is finally quiet, I lie, tense in the dark, waiting for the knock on my door. I’m convinced Edward will come to me, but he doesn’t.

74

He finally knocks on my door just before seven the next morning. He’s just had a shower, but he looks sleepy. But then again, that’s probably because he is. I doubt he’s had much sleep. He was with Marnie. His wife, whom he clearly loves. Did he have sex with her last night? I bet he did. Did he enjoy it? Did either of them think about me?

‘You OK?’ he asks. ‘I missed you last night.’

I’m wrung out, chewed up with jealousy, but I’m also so relieved to see him. That he’s remembered his promise.

‘Are you ready?’ he asks me, his eyes boring into mine. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here. I need some fresh air and to clear my head.’

Up until he said those words I wasn’t going to go. I was going to make an excuse about how difficult I’m finding all of this, and that I can’t cope with him and Marnie and what might happen.

But the words stall on my lips. His eyes plead with mine.

And God, I want it, too. I want to get out of here and clear my head. The thought of being on the yacht with him, just on our own, fills my mind and it’s all I want.

Downstairs, the caterers are already clearing up and there are a couple of vans outside and some men packing up tables and chairs. It feels illicit, like we’re sneaking out.

Edward tells me his car is near the garage. We walk in silence together through the back door and round the corner, and suddenly my heart lurches.

Marnie is leaning up against Edward’s blue Aston Martin. She’s wearing a red miniskirt and has a stripy beach bag over her arm. Her eyes are hidden by huge shades.

‘There you are,’ she says, with a big grin. She doesn’t mention that I’m with Edward. ‘We thought you’d forgotten.’

We? What ‘we’? And forgotten about what?

It takes a millisecond for me to realize. She’s coming, too. She knows all about the trip. She clearly doesn’t think Edward and I are in the process of sneaking off together. Quite the reverse. She’s in on the whole thing.

‘Isn’t this fun! Ed is so clever, thinking of going to the Hamptons. I hate clearing up after a party,’ she smiles, opening the passenger door and getting in.

Edward doesn’t look at me, or say anything. He lifts up the driver’s seat to make way for me to squeeze into the joke of a back seat. I baulk, wanting to back out, but he senses this, because he stares hard at me, and I know I have no choice. Marnie has found out about our plan, and now I have to live with the consequence. And so does he.

I squeeze into the small space as he clicks his seat down, sealing me in. There’s nowhere to put my legs. I feel wretched. Like a lapdog.

‘You still not going to let me drive?’ Marnie teases Edward, pulling down the sun visor and smoothing her lipstick. She looks at me over the top of her glasses in the mirror and winks.

‘No,’ he says.

So he still doesn’t know, then. That she stole his car for a joyride.

‘Miss Henshaw, I swear my husband is a tyrant,’ Marnie says. ‘He knows I love cars, buys my favourite car, and then won’t let me drive it. What is a girl to do?’

I feel myself blushing. She’s reinforcing my promise – and her lie – in front of Edward. What is this sick power-trip she’s on?

I catch Edward’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, but he has sunglasses on and I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

The car starts and he drives cautiously up the driveway. I feel like a child. I’m hemmed in and awkward.

Marnie jokes around in the front, dissecting last night’s party with Edward, who hardly responds.

What the hell is going on? How has this happened?

75

I thought we were going to the yacht, but Marnie announces that we’re going to their beach apartment. I didn’t even know they had one, but Edward tells me that this is where Marnie hangs out when he’s sailing. I feel hope flare in my chest. Does that mean we’ll leave Marnie there and go sailing together? But at the coast there’s not a breath of wind.

In fact, by the time we arrive it’s boiling hot and the air-conditioning in the small condo isn’t working. It’s a small white building with a patchy lawn outside. Inside, there are two bedrooms off a central kitchen, each filled with a wooden double bed. It’s basic and beachy, but really quite charming.

‘Ah, home, sweet home,’ Marnie announces. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s nice,’ I tell her, but the walls crowd in on me. It’s stifling in here, and I have a headache.

‘The boys love it here,’ she says. ‘Being so close to the beach.’

She opens all the shutters and then the door to the balcony and attempts to breathe in the sea air, but she can’t hold onto the metal rail of the balcony: it’s too hot. The white beach stretches out to the exhausted ripple of surf. It really is a stunning location, but it feels like we’re totally cut off from the rest of the world. Like we could be stranded on a desert island.

Edward pulls me back into the shadow of the corridor.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers to me. I glance around the wall and watch as Marnie starts looking around the kitchen to see what’s in the cupboards. ‘She insisted on coming.’

He reaches out and squeezes my fingers. His eyes are full of longing and apology. I’m furious with him for letting this happen, but he knows this. He looks disappointed, too.

‘Come and see the best bit,’ Marnie says to me, turning brightly. My hand leaves Edward’s as if it has been burnt, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

She leads me through a door off the kitchen and up some white steps. At the top there’s a glass door, which leads to a private roof terrace with its own pool.

‘Isn’t it great,’ Marnie says. ‘It’s a total sun trap up here, and completely private.’

Quite suddenly she strips off her clothes and dives into the pool in her bikini. She splashes water at me from the pool. ‘Come on. Get in. It’s wonderful,’ she calls. ‘Just what we need.’

Then Edward arrives with some cold beers and Marnie climbs out of the pool. She hugs him, making him wet, too, but he doesn’t seem to mind as much. He announces that he’s going to get supplies. I want to go with him, but Marnie has laid out a sun lounger for me and is waiting for me to join her.

‘I won’t be long,’ he says. ‘You ladies have fun.’

‘Oh, we will,’ Marnie says, patting the sun lounger for me to lie down on. My mouth has gone dry.

Alone with Marnie, I feel trapped.

‘Isn’t this lovely,’ she sighs. ‘Getting away, for some time to ourselves.’

I can’t say anything. I’m terrified that she’ll kiss me again, or mention what happened in the studio, and I’m waiting for her to try and snatch another kiss, but she doesn’t. She rubs sun-tan lotion on my back and talks about the party and what a success it was.

I barely listen to her. I want her to shut up and be truthful. Does she know about Edward and me? Does she suspect? Is that why she came? Is that why she’s being so excruciatingly nice?

I don’t get a chance to talk to Edward alone for the whole afternoon, as some elderly neighbours come round and Marnie insists on making iced tea for everyone, like we’re suddenly in the 1950s. And, oddly, the setting could be from another century. I excuse myself and take a walk along the beach as they chat. It really is stunningly beautiful here, but the heat-haze on the sand only reinforces how confused I feel, like there’s a swarm of bees in my head. I glance back often at the condo, hoping that Edward will make an excuse and come and find me, but he doesn’t. I only go so far, before I lose my nerve and head back.

In the evening, at Marnie’s insistence, the three of us go to the little town and eat outside by the harbour, sharing a giant platter of seafood. She keeps touching Edward and flirting with him, and I can’t help feeling that she’s deliberately laying claim to him. Edward takes it all in his stride and, when she excuses herself to go to the bathroom, he grabs my hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘Oh God. This must be awful for you.’

Only for me, I wonder? He can’t exactly be loving this.

When she comes back, he presses his foot against mine under the table. But, despite his efforts, I watch Marnie and can’t help the sinking feeling that something is over. That this must be it. Marnie has cleverly staked her claim on him and I’m here to witness it.

‘Won’t it be lovely when we come back here with the boys,’ Marnie gushes, tipping an oyster into her mouth. ‘They love the clam-bake they do here. And Ed can take them sailing, and you and I can have a long girlie lunch and hit the shops,’ she says, grinning at me.

‘It sounds wonderful,’ I tell her and in a way it does, but somehow the future she’s talking about seems impossibly far away. Because that will be then, and this is now.

And I can’t cope with now.

‘Our sweet Miss Henshaw is very quiet tonight,’ Marnie says.

‘Sorry. It’s been an exhausting few days,’ I mumble.

‘Then let’s get you to bed,’ Marnie says with a grin. There’s a glint in her eye. She looks like she wants to eat me for breakfast.

When we go back to the condo, Edward announces he’s shattered and says that now the air con is finally back on, he’s turning in too, and Marnie says she’ll join him. He doesn’t say anything to me. He doesn’t even look at me.

‘Goodnight, little bird,’ Marnie says, blowing me a kiss, as she goes into the room opposite mine. ‘Sleep tight.’

I stay up on the roof terrace for a while, mournfully sipping a beer as the moon rises and the stars twinkle, hoping that Edward will come. After a couple of hours I tread carefully back down to my room.