Tell Me No Secrets (2 page)

‘Yes. And it's ready so please don't eat anything.' I drizzle oil and lemon juice over the green salad. ‘Are you going to change?'

She looks down at herself. She is wearing exactly the same uniform as Daisy but somehow on Ella it looks stylish. The navy skirt sits easily on her hips, the pleats swing as she walks then settle against the fronts and backs of her knees. She never has holes in her tights and her tie is always lying on centre. ‘I'm not changing. I'm fine as I am.' She stuffs a piece of cold ham into her mouth, lifts the carton of juice, goes to pour it in the glass, changes her mind and holds it up to her mouth instead, slurping it back in exaggerated gulps.

I say nothing. My head still hurts, my nerves are strung tight –
It's me. Orla
– and, anyway, I pick my battles carefully with Ella. I edge past her and take the warm plates from the oven.

‘. . . and that's when I said, “Don't bother, young man, I'll buy the brown one.”' Ed comes into the house with Paul. ‘What's for tea tonight then, Grace?' he shouts, rubbing his hands together. ‘Best part of the day, this is.'

I smile at him. I love my father-in-law. He's one of life's gentlemen.

‘You're looking a little tired around the eyes, my love.' He clasps my hands. ‘What can I do to help?'

‘You could toss the salad for me,' I tell him, hugging his wiry frame. ‘I can manage the rest.'

We all sit down to eat. Paul and Ed are at either end of the table and the girls are opposite me. My stomach contracts at the sight of the food and I clench my jaw muscles hard until the wave of nausea recedes. I dish up, giving myself a small portion and hand the plates around. Everyone thanks me except Ella. She's busy under the table arranging Murphy's head on her feet. Paul looks down at the dog and orders him to his bed. Murphy ignores him.

‘He's not bothering me, Dad,' Ella tells him. ‘He's keeping my feet warm.'

Paul smiles. ‘Just like Bessie, Dad, eh?'

‘Now there was a dog and a half,' Ed says.

I spoon some spaghetti into my mouth and eat automatically, preoccupied with what's going on inside my head. Memories hatch like chicks in an incubator: Orla does handstands in the sun, her hair brushing over my bare feet as I catch her legs; arms around each other's back, running the three-legged race, giggling and jostling each other until we fall panting to the ground; summer afternoons, rolling up and over the dunes until our noses and ears are itchy and blocked with sand; cookery classes, flour on her cheeks, the rolling pin a weapon in her hand; trying on shoes, tops, trousers, skirts before finally parting with our pocket money. And then the last time we were alone together. The hard slap of her hand on my cheek.

‘Is there any more, Mum?' Daisy is holding her plate towards me.

‘Sure.' I load some on to her plate and pass it back to her. ‘Anyone else?'

Ed reaches over and pats my hand. ‘Delicious as ever, Grace. But I'll save some room for my pudding, if I may.'

I give Paul an extra spoonful and look at Ella. She seems to have more on her plate now than she did when she started. She is moving the food around, arranging like with like, separating out the tomatoes from the olives and the mozzarella from the basil. When she starts to pick the red pepper out of the bolognese sauce, I look away.

‘Wait till you girls leave home,' Ed is saying. ‘You'll appreciate your mum's cooking then. Won't you just.'

‘I already do,' Daisy says, looking sideways at her sister.

Ella seems not to have heard and, pushing her plate away, looks around the table at us all. ‘So guess who got the lead in the play?' she says.

‘Now what play would that be?'

‘
Romeo and Juliet
, Grandad.'

‘Ah!' Suddenly, like a cloud drifting over the sun, Ed's eyes glaze over. He stares down at his fork, examines it from every angle and then puts it neatly beside his plate. ‘I'm not sure what that's for,' he announces. Then, looking around him, says, ‘Where's Eileen?'

‘Eileen's not here right now, Grandad, and we're all having tea,' Daisy says.

‘Of course we are. We're all having tea.'

He looks worried and I sense his rising panic. I rest my hand on his.

‘But where is Eileen?' he says.

How to tell him that his wife has been dead these last five years? In the beginning we tried to orientate him to the present but all it did was make him relive his grief, acutely as a knife through flesh.

‘Mum's busy right now, Dad,' Paul tells him. ‘You're eating with us this evening.'

‘Yes, right.' He nods to himself, trying to make sense of it, hanging on to the words. He looks at me. ‘Is there pudding, Alison?'

‘Coming right up,' I tell him. In these moments he often mistakes me for his daughter and I don't correct him.

‘Anyway,' Ella says, turning to her father. ‘I got the part.' She gives a broad, excited smile that lights up the whole table.

‘Congratulations!' Paul and I say, both at the same time.

‘That's fantastic! And who's playing Romeo?' I ask.

‘Rob.' She shrugs. ‘He wouldn't be my choice but Mr Simmonds seems to think he's the best.'

‘And how many girls auditioned for Juliet?'

‘About twenty.'

‘And you were the best. Well done.' Paul reaches over and claps a hand on her shoulder.

‘It's because she's good at flirting,' Daisy comments under her breath.

‘I heard that,' Ella says.

‘Well, it's true, isn't it?'

‘For your information there's more to acting than meets the eye and at least I have boyfriends. Maybe if you didn't dress like a dyke—'

‘Maybe if you weren't such a fashion victim, you wouldn't always be borrowing money from me.'

‘Well, maybe if you were a better sister you'd be pleased for me,' she bites back. Her eyes well up with angry tears and she pushes back her chair and flounces from the room, banging the door behind her.

Daisy watches her go. ‘With acting like that, is it any wonder she gets the parts.'

‘Daisy!' Paul says with a sigh. ‘Surely that was unnecessary.'

Daisy's face colours. I pass her some pudding.

‘Be careful of sour grapes,' Paul continues, digging his spoon around in his crumble. ‘It's not worthy of you.'

Daisy stops her spoon midway to her mouth. ‘Why would I be jealous of her? We're identical twins. Capable of exactly the same achievements.'

‘And that's why winding each other up makes no sense. I appreciate that you might have wanted the part—'

‘I didn't audition,' Daisy tells him, enunciating each syllable. ‘I don't like acting.'

‘Is that any reason not to support Ella?'

‘I do support Ella. More than you know.'

‘Well, it doesn't look that way to me.'

His tone is mild but Daisy is bristling. I wait for her to raise the stakes but she doesn't, she calmly finishes her pudding and gives me the bowl. Her hands are steadier than her eyes and as she leaves the room she murmurs, ‘What's the point?'

‘Daisy!' Paul calls after her but she ignores him and he offers me an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry, love. You've cooked a lovely meal and now they're both upset. I don't know what gets into Daisy sometimes. It was Ella's moment to shine and she spoiled it for her.'

‘They're sisters.' I shrug. ‘That's what sisters do. They bicker and they fight. Ella's just as bad when the mood takes her.'

‘You're right.' He looks regretful as he passes me his bowl. ‘I'll make it up to Daisy later. Whoever said being a parent was easy?'

‘Not me.' I think of my own parents and the trouble I put them through. ‘But at least you're managing to be liked by them both.'

‘Not this evening. Or not by Daisy, at any rate.'

‘Most of the time,' I acknowledge. ‘And they respect you. Sometimes I think Ella would rather I wasn't around.'

‘She'll change sides soon and then it'll be my turn to take the flak.' He leans over and kisses my cheek. ‘We'll get there. We have each other. That's the most important thing.' His eyes meet mine. Soft, the grey of dove's wings, they are both wise and calming and it makes me want to tell him about the phone call. And more. But I can't. Not now, not ever.

He looks to the end of the table. ‘How about a game of Scrabble then, Dad, eh?'

Ed, quietly finishing his crumble, brightens immediately and they both go through to the living room, leaving me to stack the dishwasher. While my hands do the work, my mind is elsewhere. Orla. Until this evening, I hadn't heard from her for over twenty years. So successfully have I locked away her memory that I have barely even thought of her. As young teenagers we were best friends. We went everywhere together, shared dreams and ambitions, triumphs and failures. And then, the year we both turned sixteen, everything changed. Rose died. And though we had our chance to be truthful, we didn't take it. We lied; each lie feeding the next until we had created a huge, irreconcilable secret.

The doorbell rings and I jump, drop a plate and watch it skid across the floor before coming to rest against the dog's water dish. I pick it up and put it in the rack then make my way to the front of the house. I have a horrible feeling that Orla will be standing there, her body materialising less than two hours after her voice. But when I open the door, I'm relieved to see that it isn't her, it's Jamie, Ella's latest boyfriend. He's standing on the doorstep looking sheepish. His hair is gelled up in spikes across the top of his head and he smells strongly of deodorant.

Ella clatters down the stairs and elbows me out of the way. She's wearing a tight, short denim skirt and a top that shows off her midriff.

‘Ella, this is Scotland,' I tell her.

She's straightened her hair and it falls like a sheet, down from her forehead and over one eye. The other eye stares at me, belligerence glazing her expression. ‘Your point being?'

‘You'll freeze. Please wear something more substantial.'

‘I'll keep her warm,' Jamie volunteers and Ella giggles. His gaze is frank, lustful. He licks his lips and I think of my beautiful daughter lying in a sand dune under his sweaty, adolescent body. I want to push him back through the door and ban him from the house.

‘Is it just the two of you?' I say.

‘No.' She shakes her head. ‘Sarah, Mat, Lucy, Rob. The usual.'

‘Where are you meeting?'

‘Di Rollo's.'

‘And then you're all going down to the beach?'

She gives me an insincere smile. ‘Duh.'

I watch them walk away, their hips touching. His hands slide down her back and they kiss up against a lamppost. I turn away. Daisy is beside me putting on her boots. ‘You know your dad didn't mean to get at you,' I tell her, stroking the top of her head.

‘I know, Mum.' She shrugs and texts a quick message on her mobile. ‘I'm going out for a bit. I'll be home before dark. And don't worry about Ella,' she shouts back over her shoulder. ‘She's going to be careful.'

She's going to be careful?
Unease creeps along my nerve endings and comes to rest uncomfortably in my stomach. I want to call after Daisy but she's already along the end of the street. I shut the door and rest my back against it then climb the stairs and go into Ella's room. Her dressing table is strewn with make-up, clogged tissues, cotton buds, small change, used bus tickets, empty cans of Diet Coke, spent candles. The floor is a muddle of clothes, clean and dirty mixed up. Schoolbooks are dumped in the corner. I open the drawer of her bedside cabinet and see a half-empty foil strip sitting on top of her hairbrush. I pick it up and read the name. The pills are called microgynon and each one is labelled a different day of the week.

I try to line up straight, coherent thoughts. I can't. All I keep thinking is that she's too young for the stuff of adult life: sex, responsibility, choices and consequences. A minefield. Rationally, I accept that she is hardly a child. She is in fact the same age as I was when Orla and I last saw each other: in the police station, both of us bedraggled, wrapped in blankets, complicit.

I put the pills back into the drawer. I'll talk to Paul. He is more level-headed than I am; his parenting skills are more assured. For me, mothering is instinctive and my instinct tells me that I should protect my girls from making mistakes. But short of locking them indoors, I don't know the best way to do that.

The mobile in my pocket starts to chirrup like a budgie. I look at the name flashing on the screen: Euan.

‘Hi, Grace. Is Sarah there?'

‘No. They're all down at di Rollo's.'

He sighs. ‘Great. She hasn't come back from school yet and she needs to revise for her history tomorrow.'

‘You could always go down and collect her but—'

‘Might be more than my life's worth. What happened to only going out on Friday and Saturday nights?'

‘Like when we were young?'

‘Aye.' He starts to laugh. We have this conversation often. It goes along the lines of: when we were their age we wouldn't have dared . . .

‘So how are things?' he asks.

‘How are things?' I repeat with a laugh. It sounds like I'm being strangled.

‘I missed you at work today.'

‘I took some samples over to Margie Campbell in Perth,' I say, closing my eyes against thoughts of Orla and what she knows about me. ‘She's commissioning me to paint the view from her family home in Iona.'