Secrets (14 page)

‘In
Yorkshire
.’

‘Yes, in Yorkshire. On the north-east coast. It's gorgeous.’ Another pause. ‘I'm so glad you're enjoying your extended holiday.’

‘Tamsin, don't sound like that.’

‘Look, lady, people have been worried
sick
.’

Tess paused, racked her brains. ‘Who?’

‘Don't pull the “I don't have any friends” stuff on me.
I've
been worried. Geoff too. And I bumped into that girl you worked with – she said it was the gossip at the salon.’

‘But I told them.’

‘You didn't tell them why or where.’

‘I couldn't.’

They both paused. ‘When are you coming back? And where are you going to live when you do? I'm moving in with Geoff next month – otherwise, if I'd only known – And I saw your landlord, bizarrely, when I went round to find your corpse – he had a face like thunder saying you'd done a runner.’

‘I have.’

‘So I said he should calm down and there was probably an explanation and maybe there'd been a family crisis –
what
did you just say?’

‘A runner. I
have
done a runner, Tamsin. I've run away. I'm not coming back.’

Tamsin didn't dare pause. ‘I sort of want to hang up on you, but if I do I'll risk you never calling me again.’

‘Don't hang up, Tamz. Please don't. You have this number now.’

‘Don't hang up on me either – I just need to know if you're OK?’

‘I think so. I will be.’

‘Tess, were things really that bad? Why didn't you turn to me? I know Clapham is the other side of the world to Bounds Green – but Yorkshire's even further.’

Tess paused. ‘I had to go.’ Memories came back and she shuddered. ‘People made it seem that things were very bad for me.’

‘So you're hiding? How the hell can that help? You can't hurl your secrets out to sea and hope they'll disappear into the deep depths.’

‘Actually, I'm house-sitting, not hiding, and it can help. It already has. It's the most beautiful, beautiful place. And the man is called Joe – he builds bridges. And there's an old lady – Mary. I've just found out she's his mother. And there's a surfer called Seb. And a dog called Wolf. And a garden, the size of which you just can't imagine.’

‘It all sounds charmingly Mary Wesley, Tess.’

‘I had to leave, Tamsin. I know it's cowardly. But it was the only option. I was really starting to panic.’

‘I kept telling you to go to the Citizens Advice Bureau.’

‘I don't want advice. I know what they'll say. All I want is to bury the bad stuff. I just want a new start.’

‘Tess Tess Tess.’

‘I know,’ Tess said, ‘I know, I know.’

‘Don't you think you might be burying your head in the sand?’

‘I don't do beaches, Tamsin.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I don't think so. I'm not actually
hurting
anyone.’

‘But you – are
you
OK? And my goddaughter – is she OK too?’

‘We're both very OK. Em's really blossoming. It's just that today I felt a little – I don't know. Lonely. I don't want to cry –. Shit.’

‘Oh, Tess, come back – I'll help you work things out.’

‘You can't.’

‘Well, what
can
I do? Who knows you're there?’

‘Just you. And my sister.’

‘And I bet she's really interested.’

Tess considered this. And she realized that her sister hadn't even sounded surprised to hear from Tess, let alone to discover she had packed up her life and left London for a seaside town in the North. Tamsin's initial fury at Tess was different. It came from genuine concern. It came from love. And that helped. Tess didn't feel quite so lonely. She might not have Tamsin to hand, she might not see her for quite some time. But the fact that she was there for her, in spirit and now, at the end of the phone, was a comfort.

‘Please keep in touch, Tess?
Regularly
. Let me know you're OK.’

‘I will but I binned my mobile phone – it's snail-mail or landline only.’

‘How frightfully quaint,’ Tamsin murmured in a BBC accent.

‘Quaint is quite a good word for Saltburn, actually,’ Tess told her, ‘though it's gritty too, but that's what I like about it – it's
real
. I saw the most incredible sunset the other day. Then the next afternoon, I came across some young scamp glue-sniffing.’

‘You can see that down here,’ Tamsin said.

‘I know what you're saying. And I know why you're saying it. But there is something about this place – at this time – for me.’

‘OK, I hear you. Just stay in touch – please.’

‘I will. But I'd better go – the dog and child need feeding. Bye.’

‘You're loved!’ Tamsin interjected and with such urgency that Tess couldn't reply.

She stood looking at the replaced handset for a while, then wondered what to do about paying for the call. So she went and found one of the clean, empty jam jars she'd stored away and put a fifty-pence piece in it. Then she fed Em and Wolf, after which she bathed the former and turfed the latter out into the garden for his ablutions. She spent her evening designing a label for the jar, complete with a narrative of doodles and fancy lettering.

Telephone Tab.

Every now and then she'd say, oh shh! when the house creaked or the pipes groaned or a door squeaked open all by itself. But it didn't unnerve her. She quite liked it, now she'd grown used to it. The house – its sounds and smells and quirks – was now familiar. The place had such personality. It was as if the house had been a welcoming stranger at first, but Tess now felt she was living with a friend.

If she picks up the phone, I'll be phoning to say I'm coming back tomorrow. If she doesn't, bugger leaving another message – perhaps I'll squeeze in another weekend in London, see Rachel, head to Belgium on Monday. Or maybe I'll stay put, here in France. I don't know yet, until Tess answers.

Odd, though, that out of all the scenarios I'd probably forego rampant no-strings sex to spend time instead with her – to return to the North, to that faded old town, to that hulking old house and to that slightly odd single mum who is rearranging my home.

Tess could hear the phone ringing but she was not going to disrupt her luxuriating in such a decadently full bath. Whoever it was could leave a message. And if they didn't leave a message, then it wasn't her they wanted anyway.

Chapter Thirteen

The house was filled, during daylight, with the gibberish chatter of the toddler and the huffing and occasional yowls of the oversize dog. In the evenings, the pipes took over with their cacophony of gurgles and groans while elsewhere the house creaked and rattled sporadically. Recently, such sounds had faded benignly into the background and Tess began to notice instead the quiet that seeped its way through her once her baby was asleep and the dog was dead to the world. Initially, she wasn't sure if she liked it; it felt intrusive and confrontational because the only thing she could listen to was herself. She tried to trivialize it by thinking, well, it's a damn sight better than London where by now Upstairs Bloke would be crashing around, Over the Hallway would be having their flaming row and Ocado, Tesco and Sainsbury vans would be leaving their engines running, making their deliveries. How she used to exclaim, shut up, everyone, you'll wake the baby! Shut up everyone, I can't hear myself think! Thinking back, Tess realized how those warring sounds of London were easy to listen to because they had nothing to do with her. Hearing nothing, here in this old house, was far more confrontational.

Now, she could think. A bit too much, some days. Some evenings the quiet would wrap itself around her like a soft blanket and lull her into gentle fantasies of the life she intended to make for herself and Em. At other times, however, it could goad her relentlessly. See! No one here but you! You're on your own, hiding out here, slave to your secrets, stupid idiot girl!

On such occasions, the silence was like a clock that had stopped, trapping Tess in the present – a situation caused by her past and which tarnished the future. Those evenings, she felt frightened and though she rarely reached for the phone or turned to the TV, nor did she face her fears. Instead, on that initial surge of adrenalin and at the first prick of tears, she'd lunge for a book and immerse herself in the lives of others instead. She had to start off by reading out loud, until she felt settled enough to have the silence surround her again.

For the first time in her life, she read voraciously. Anything that was on Joe's bookshelves she considered to have a worthy seal of approval. She tried authors she'd never heard of and authors she'd always meant to read. Every now and then she read passages twice, three times even, enjoying the wordcraft, the drama – but imagining that Joe had liked that book and wondering when he might be back and if there would be dinners they could share to discuss books they'd both read. His collection was vast and varied, from sumptuous coffee-table tomes to dense books about engineering, from the classics to modern masters and cutting-edge contemporary fiction. Tess was well aware it was escapism but what a way to pass another evening on her own. And anyway, wasn't that a function of fiction – a magical place that could transport you a world away? It wasn't as if she could solve anything just sitting there letting thoughts and memories and doom descend like a dark, damp veil. She'd done enough of that on evenings in London. Anyway, didn't Joe do just this when he was here, home alone – settle down with a good book until bedtime?

Sometimes, on a nondescript evening when her thoughts left her alone, Tess would tinker instead. This was different to the committed spring clean and reorganization she continued to devote much of her days to. Tinkering meant moving vases or clocks or the odd photo frame from here to there or from room to room; swapping the cushions in the TV room for those in the den, setting out the chessboard on the occasional table in the drawing room because, occasionally, it was good for such a table to have a purpose. Tinkering was finding a place for the phone books away from the lovely maps and atlases whose shelf they had shared. And it was when Tess was tinkering in the drawers of the hall console – let's put the pens here and the pads there, have the address book here, the takeaway leaflets in that folder there – that the phone rang. The suddenness of it was shrill and intrusive, having not been heard since that night in the bath that evening last week. Her hands were full of pens that she'd been systematically testing out on a scrap of paper rejecting any which were faint or which smudged. It had been a satisfying job that allowed for inventive doodling, which she was enjoying, but she ought to answer the phone. Putting the pens to one side, she picked up the receiver.

‘The Resolution – good evening?’

She makes the place sound like a hotel.

He waited a moment.

‘I'd like to book a room for tomorrow night, please,’ he said, ‘for a week.’

Tess thought, he sounds a bit like Joe. But then she thought, why would he phone to book a room?

‘I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number,’ she said. ‘This is a private residence.’

She sounded so affronted that Joe had to laugh. ‘Tess – it's me, Joe.’

She cringed but hid it behind a defensive tone. ‘I know that. I knew all along.’

‘You have a very – particular – telephone manner. Made the old place – the
residence
– sound like a posh guest house.’

‘Would you rather I didn't answer the phone then, Joe?’

The barb to her voice snagged against him and he thought, dear God, here we go again. But tonight it amused him more than it irritated him because it was – well, it was so Tess, really. And he could clearly envisage her in his hallway, her cheeks reddening with her silly indignation. It was tempting to wind her up a little more.

She listened hard to Joe's silence and wondered if she'd irked him and whether he might say, yes, Tess, don't answer my bloody phone.

‘I didn't mean it that way,’ she said.

‘I just thought I'd let you know I'll be back tomorrow.’

‘We were half expecting you last weekend.’

‘Things ran on.’

‘Good things?’

A flashback to Rachel's blow-job shot to mind. ‘Not bad.’

‘What time tomorrow?’ asked Tess. ‘Ish.’

‘Mid-afternoon, I would think,’ said Joe. ‘Ish.’

There was a pause.

Joe's coming back.

It was a concept privately welcomed by both. Tess thought of the beans on toast she'd had for supper – today, yesterday, probably the day before that too. Perhaps supper tomorrow would be different now. Proper. With wine. With conversation. And laughter. Joe just thought it would be nice to see her again.

‘Shall I – you know – have stuff in?’

‘Stuffing?’ But he knew what she meant.

She tried to sound casual. ‘Stuff – you know, fish, meat – for supper?’

She couldn't see him smiling; she could only hear the silence, which unnerved her. She wasn't to know that she hadn't over-stepped a mark, that over in Antwerp Joe was thinking to himself that he liked it that she'd asked. And that had she not, he liked to think he might have suggested the very same thing to her.

‘Sounds good,’ he said. He wasn't to know that suddenly she was in a knot as to whether there was enough in her purse – which she'd been keeping out of sight under her bed – to cover much stuff at all. ‘See you tomorrow, Tess.’

She wanted to keep him longer on the phone, to run away from her nagging thoughts to yak instead about the minutiae of her day. She could tell him how she'd enjoyed the Joseph Heller but not the Doris Lessing, that the downstairs loo was now a sunny yellow, that she'd worked out how to record from the television and had saved him a programme called
Megastructures
about a huge bridge somewhere, oh, where! oh, what
was
the bloody thing called! It's in Japan! She didn't want him to go just yet because then it would just be her in the house and another evening stretched ahead and made tomorrow seem a very long way off.

‘Bye then.’

‘Bye.’

She placed the handset back in the cradle thoughtfully and looked at the pens, all in a scatter, and couldn't remember which were for keeping. So she had to test them all out again. She saw that she'd doodled the word ‘Joe’ a number of times. She told herself it had been absent-minded scribbling, that if it had been Tamsin she'd just spoken to, she'd've written
her
name a number of times in a variety of colours and squiggles instead. But she certainly didn't want Joe seeing this. She'd be screwing it up and chucking it away.

Don't screw it up.

Don't chuck it away.

Well, the paper, yes. But not the thoughts released by his name.

She told herself to stop it at once. But then she reasoned that it was so quiet tonight – Wolf hadn't even piped up when the phone went and the pipes hadn't made a sound all evening. There was nothing on the box. Her eyes were too tired to start a new book. There was nothing to do but think about tomorrow. She was all on her own and that meant she didn't need to tell a soul what she was thinking. Deluded? So what! The little buzz was – nice.

Later, as she lay in bed still thinking about tomorrow, it crossed her mind whether to invite Mary to tea over the next few days. But she wouldn't – not just because Joe had never mentioned her so Tess oughtn't to interfere. She'd be doing nothing of the sort because actually she was looking forward to having Joe all to herself.

All morning, Em had been saying ‘wol’ over and over and Wolf had been careening around in circles, taking sudden bites at the base of his tail. Tess couldn't work out what Em was saying or why Wolf was doing this. She looked through his coat but could see only healthy skin, pink in places, grey in places. He continued to turn on his imaginary sixpence while Em implored wol at regular intervals.

‘Do you mean Wol-f?’ Tess pointed to the dog but Em continued to say wol.

‘Good God – Wolf, would you
quit
? You two need fresh air. Come on.’

For a girl born and bred in a city, Tess was not quite sure from where her belief in fresh air being the answer to all ills had stemmed. She'd never been particularly sporty, nor had long walks or the great outdoors shaped her childhood. Her memories of that time were of her parents’ emotional and physical inertia: her mother motionless, staring out of windows as if she could see no way out. Her father seemingly absorbed into the fabric of the armchair,
Racing Post
on his lap, racing on the television, telephone at his side. ‘It's a flutter – some men spend all Saturday at the bookies,’ he'd snap, implying they should be grateful for his company. How Tess had craved the house to herself back then. And now she has one.

She'd grown to enjoy living at the top of a hill and the physical exertion it demanded. She'd looked at herself in the bath the previous evening and had noticed how her legs were shapelier than she remembered. And she'd stood naked in front of the mirror and had liked what she'd seen. She'd felt the firmness of her limbs as she lay in bed, giving her thighs a squeeze, tensing and releasing her calf muscles, running her hands along her upper arms to feel the pleasing dip and rise of muscle definition. Sea air and steep hills were doing wonders for her health and physique, she decided. Negotiating West End crowds and having to share the recycled air on the underground never had.

‘Wolf, come.
Now
, you silly dog. Stop spinning. Let's get some fresh air.’

‘Wol!’

Down the drive, across the road, steeply down the divvety path to the Gardens. Daffodils that should be dead by now, a cheeky bluebell out way too early, a profusion of crocuses, bright primroses flirting at all who passed by. Occasionally, the fertile soil beneath certain trees encouraging ancient plants like wood anemone, dog mercury and toothwort. The buggy dinked and lurched over the uneven ground sending tremors up Tess's arms, but Em was too busy saying ‘wol’ to be bothered. Wolf was off foraging; Tess loved how convinced he seemed of his treasure trail despite always bounding back to her empty-mouthed save his huge lolling tongue.

Through the natural tangle of the woods, they came to a vantage point where they could look down onto the sudden and fantastically incongruous splendour of the fastidiously planted Italianate beds, all swirls and ogees and complex symmetry. The planting was rapidly covering the soil now and Tess thought how it would not be long until the flower buds, currently a scatter of multi-coloured beads, would be pulled by summer into full bloom. What are you? Tess wondered, what colours will you be? She'd like to know more about plants, she thought. Maybe Joe has a book about local flora. Did he really, really mean it when he said the position at the house was long-term? With so much that had never been definite in her life, it was stranger still how comforting was the notion of her stay here being potentially indefinite.