Secrets (30 page)

‘OK?’ he said, a little sternly.

‘OK,’ she said, a little shyly.

They paused with their empty glasses and dabbed at microscopic remains of cheese.

‘So why look for work?’ Joe said at length. ‘Surely there's still plenty here that could do with your magic touch?’

She looked desperately uncomfortable and it took her a while to respond.

‘Because I'm a bit broke.’

‘Shit,’ he said, ‘I'm so sorry – I completely forgot. I must owe you two months?’

‘I didn't mean—’

‘No,’ Joe protested, ‘that's crap of me. Hang on.’ He left. And then he returned. He sat down and opened his cheque-book.

‘
Miss Tess
,’ he wrote. Then he paused. ‘Tess – I don't know your surname.’

Tess felt enormously tired all of a sudden. Too tired to tell him her surname, let alone request cash instead of a cheque.

‘Are you OK, pet?’

‘I don't know. I feel odd. I think I'd better lie down. Stilton does this to me sometimes.’

It wasn't true, but Stilton did make Tamsin come over all funny and just then, to appropriate her close friend's condition provided Tess with a much-needed connection to her past. She touched Joe's shoulder as she left the table. He made to take her hand but she was already beyond reach.

He could only make out the top of her head from the depths of his duvet when he went to bed much later. It seemed to him that she was fast asleep.

She woke and wondered if there was any way she could avoid the goodbye, short of running away. But there was a baby to feed and a convalescing dog to attend to. And there was so much to say, if only, if
only
, she could muster the courage. She had to get up and get the day moving because what else could she do.

In the kitchen, on the table, was the cheque. It was made payable to
Miss Tess
and the biro had been left on top of it. It was for two months wages’ with something on top. She didn't want to accept it at all, really. She wanted to dispense with this particular dynamic with Joe. Boss and house-sitter – where could that leave love? Two months’ pay – with extras. Were those last week? But she needed the money, God knows she needed it. However, the same old problem remained: relinquishing a cheque to her fetid bank account. It was like a bog. A cheque would be sucked down until the surface closed over and it looked no different from before. However, asking her sister for a postal order was one thing. Asking Joe for cash again was another. It didn't make her feel cheap; it just made her feel poor. And that decimated her self-esteem.

‘Morning,’ he said, suddenly behind her, a gentle smack to her bottom. He noticed she was holding the cheque.

‘Everything OK?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘I don't believe you.’ He crossed his arms and looked at her askance. ‘I know you, Tess,’ he said.

And Tess thought, but Joe, there's stuff about me you
don't
know. Secrets I don't want to share.

‘I'm fine – honestly – it's just the last throes of that bloody Stilton.’

Joe thought to himself, but I know you, Tess – we've shared Stilton on previous occasions with no adverse reactions.

She was hiding something and he wasn't sure he liked it.

‘I'd better make tracks, really,’ he said.

She nodded whilst fixating on a recount of the eyelets in his shoes.

He lifted her chin with his thumb. ‘Bye.’

He kissed her and oh how she kissed him back.

‘Bye,’ she said eventually, when it really was time for them to pull apart.

Chapter Twenty-five

Lisa and her husband were taking Sam on the miniature railway to the Italian Gardens for a picnic. With May in full swing, the weather was glorious. They only lived a stone's throw away and doubtless lunch would be a far easier affair to have at home – but she'd found it fun to prepare a picnic. Sam had a new baseball cap with NYFD embroidered on it. She'd bought it on a trip to Coulby Newham and though she knew it wasn't the genuine article, if Sam looked cute, what did it matter. The hat, high-factor suncream, the picnic – it all filled Lisa with joy that summer was undoubtedly here. The train rolled away on its short journey with a satisfying clicketting along the narrow-gauge tracks and Lisa thought how she'd be perfectly happy taking the little train to and fro all day.

‘Is he all right?’

Lisa's husband jolted her back to reality.

‘He keeps saying “oof” – sounds like he has tummy troubles.’

‘Oof.’

Lisa turned this way and that. ‘Where's Oof, Sammy? Where's Oof?’

‘Lisa?’

‘Look, Sammy – there's Oof! There's Oof! Oof all better!’

‘Lisa – what the –?’

‘Stop the train!’

‘You can't stop a miniature railway, you daft bint. What's this oof business?’

‘It's Wolf – Tess's dog – the one who was hit! Look, there he is. Christ alive, he looks shite. Tess! Tess!’

But Tess, who had adopted a similar gait to Wolf, appeared not to hear.

Lisa put her little finger and thumb in her mouth and gave out a raucous whistle.

‘I didn't know you could do that.’

Lisa put her index and middle fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly through them.

‘Nor
that
,’ her husband marvelled.

She poked her tongue out, then rolled it vertically from side to side.

‘Bloody hell.’

Lisa laughed. She hadn't managed to catch Tess's attention but her husband was captivated.

They alighted at the gardens and then doubled back on themselves, through the meadow between the river and the tracks, looking for a suitable spot to picnic. It was also the direction where Lisa had last seen Tess. She laid out the lunch with only half a mind on the job while she glanced around her every few seconds.

Her husband flicked a cheesy puff crisp at her. ‘Go on – go and see if you can find her.’

Lisa didn't need asking twice and she marched off, leaving her husband to tut, women! to their son.

It didn't take her long to catch up with Tess, on account of how slowly Wolf was moving. Em squealed when she caught sight of Lisa, Tess stood still and grinned, Wolf continued on his lope, unaware of the action behind him.

‘You!’ said Lisa, not sure where to start.

‘Me,’ Tess said with a mixture of pride and embarrassment.

‘Where the – excuse me, Em – fuck have you been!’

Tess shrugged.

‘Feathering some love nest up at the big house?’

Tess drew an arc in the grass with her foot.

‘You old
slink
!’ but Lisa was obviously delighted. ‘That bloke –’

‘Wolf!’ Tess called. ‘Wolf!’

He turned like an old jalopy doing a six-point-turn and ambled back.

‘Wolf,’ said Lisa, giving him a rub, ‘you must have a tale to tell, old thing.’

‘Actually,’ said Tess, ‘he has no tail to speak of.’

Lisa looked at her then smiled broadly. ‘That's good, that is – clever, very clever. You're not just a pretty face, are you, love?’

Tess had a good look at her shoes, and Lisa's, before raising her face. ‘That's what Joe said to me too.’

Lisa put her sunglasses up on her head even though it made her squint a little.

‘So – this Joe, then. Does this mean Seb's not getting a look in?’

Tess visibly paled. ‘Bugger,’ she said. ‘Seb.’ She paused. It sounded too crass and heartless to say she hadn't given him a moment's thought – but that was the truth.

‘The thing is,’ said Lisa, ‘I'll bet that, when Seb came courting, your mind still wandered to Lord of the Manor – even if you didn't want it to. But when Joe was back, I don't reckon the Surfer even made it to the shoreline of your mind.’

Tess thought about this. ‘You're right,’ she said, ‘and God, you have an amazing way of putting things.’

‘I'm not just a pretty face either, you know.’

They laughed.

‘Have you eaten?’ Lisa asked. ‘We've a picnic – if the trolls haven't troughed the lot. Come on.’

So Tess and Em and Wolf joined Lisa's family for lunch. The picnic was set out in the triangular meadow, bridges for Poohsticks at either end, the steep haul of the woods as a backdrop, the river and miniature railway as soundtrack. The grass was lush, long and glossy, not yet put upon by the main brunt of the visitor season. It was the first time that Tess had properly met Lisa's husband and she found him amiable. She liked the way he was with Lisa and with Sam. He gave Wolf some chicken and he sprang Em's curls between his fingers. He also seemed genuinely interested in his wife's new friend which Tess found affirming.

‘And what's next, then?’ he asked, when she'd given him a room-by-room inventory on her work at the house.

‘Well, I'd like to do the attic rooms – but there's so much stuff there and none of it's mine, so I can't chuck it out without Joe's say-so.’

‘You'll have to put it on hold, then, till he's next back.’

She nodded.

‘When'll that be?’ Lisa asked.

Tess ran her fingers through the grass like she did Em's hair. She wanted to appear blasé and not crestfallen. ‘I don't know.’

‘Didn't he tell you?’ Lisa said, indignant, ready to chide the bastard when he next sprang a surprise visit at the playground.

‘He doesn't know either,’ said Tess.

‘Oh,’ said Lisa and her husband.

‘I need to find something else to do – I need to top up my income.’

‘What can you do?’ Lisa's husband asked.

‘I can sing “Wheels on the Bus”,’ Tess said, a little lacklustre. ‘I can puree a carrot to perfection. I can change a nappy in the dead of night without being fully awake.’ She thought to herself how much pride she took in her ability to do all these things, but how lame they sounded out loud.

‘Did you work – you know – before the baby?’

Tess thought back to that distant land that she'd lived in prior to Em arriving; rough terrain that had turned so hostile. Strangely enough, Lisa had never asked her about it directly; as if she considered Tess's life in London and her life pre-Em to be of no consequence to their friendship. But, while Lisa piled coleslaw on Tess's plate and her husband topped up her juice, Tess was so embroiled in her sudden memories that she might as well have been sitting on concrete paving slabs in London, as in a field near the sea.

‘I can't open this flaming box,’ she heard Lisa say and, as she glanced to see Lisa handing her husband a box of cheese biscuits, she thought about the boxes in her car.

‘Before the baby, I was a beautician,’ she said.

Lisa's husband had almost forgotten what he'd asked. Lisa was now all ears.

‘Beauty? What – like nails and the like?’

Tess nodded.

‘And facials?’

She nodded again.

‘Did you do waxing?’

Tess nodded.

‘Can you wax me within an inch of my life?’

Tess laughed and then she nodded.

‘Ace,’ said Lisa, ‘
ace
.’

‘But it all went a bit wrong,’ she said. ‘Very wrong.’

‘What did you do?’ Lisa asked, imagining some plucking session ending in a lawsuit.

‘I set up a business,’ Tess told them because just then, in this meadow, amongst friends who'd fed her and her child and her adopted dog, she felt they'd support her whether or not they sympathized. ‘I set up a business – organic potions and lotions. I took out a loan. I bought pots and pots of the stuff. And – well – now I'm a house-sitter in Saltburn, flat broke.’

Lisa wittered on about all bank managers being bastards, that it wasn't Tess's fault, that it was an outrage that small businesses failed, that she mustn't be demoralized, or blame herself, just blame the recession and the flaming bastard bank. Meanwhile, her husband dunked cheese biscuits into the glob of hummus left on Tess's plate and ate thoughtfully.

‘You've still got some of your stuff then? Your potions and lotions?’

Tess nodded. ‘It's all I use my clapped-out old car for, at the moment. A storage depot for three boxes of pots and tubs.’

‘So – why not have a Tupperware party?’

Lisa butted in. ‘You daft bugger, it's not those types of pots and tubs – it's organic potions and lotions. Didn't you hear her?’

Her husband gave Tess a look which said, I love my wife but dear God, is she annoying.

‘I
know
,’ he said very slowly to Lisa. He turned to Tess. ‘My mum used to do Tupperware parties – at the house. Her friends would come and they'd natter the evening away over wine and cheese. She never did the hard sell – the stuff was just there, like a silent member of the party. But everyone used to buy something to take home.’

Lisa was looking at her husband in awe.

‘I've got it!’ she said. ‘We'll do it at mine – I'll invite everyone I know and you can flog us your stuff. You can do little mini treatments – you know, a quick hand massage with your handcream.’ She looked triumphant. ‘
Try before you buy
.’ Tess cast Lisa's husband a glance that said, thank you – thanks so much. ‘You could sell your stuff and yourself – people can take home a list of what you can do. We must get you a mobile. They can phone you and say, ooh, can I book a facial and can I order two tubes of your whatever it is you have in tubes that's good for faces, Tess.’ Tess was laughing. ‘Next week,’ Lisa was saying, ‘we'll do it at ours, one day next week.’ She turned to her husband. ‘You're all right to watch Sam and Em then?’ She turned to Tess before he'd answered. ‘Hey – you can tidy his eyebrows instead of paying him babysitting. Look at them!’ She snuggled up to her husband and fiddled with his eyebrows. Tess smiled and looked away. She thought to herself how there was something really lovely about being party to another couple's intimacy. Being in the presence of love, when she herself was in love, was a wonderful place to be. She looked around her. What a truly lovely place for a picnic on a warm Sunday in May. Wish you were here, Joe – you could be regaling us about the Halfpenny Bridge because it used to be just over there, didn't it – I remember you saying so.

Tess felt horribly lonely that night, tired too, but she couldn't sleep. The loneliness nagged at her thoughts and sat heavy in her diaphragm. She wished Joe hadn't left her a message on the answering machine but he had, stumbling over his words a little, saying ‘anyway’ a number of times. He sounded simultaneously right there, yet so far away. Should she have phoned him back? She went through the pros and cons and allowed the lame excuse of Belgium being an hour ahead not to. She was tired. She'd caught the sun on her forehead and her upper arms. She'd caught sight of the boxes in her car boot when she'd returned that afternoon. Lisa and her husband might have filled her head with their good ideas for her future but for Tess it served as a reminder of the bad ideas of her past.