The Secrets Women Keep (26 page)

‘Of course I won’t if you don’t want me to. What’s happened?’

‘I’m in deep shit.’ He hung his head. If she didn’t know him better, she’d have thought he was about to cry. ‘I really am. I owe a lot of money.’

Only money. Thank God. She relaxed a little. ‘Is that so urgent? You’ll soon have another job and you’ll be able to pay it back. Do you want me to tide you over?’

‘I’m talking thousands of pounds. Thousands.’ He didn’t look up. His elbows were on the table, hands clasped round the back of his neck.

‘But how? What have you done?’ She felt real panic. Their parents had been cavalier about money and had died leaving nothing much more than the rundown hotel, but they had never, as
far as she knew, run up any substantial debts. When they were in financial trouble, they didn’t try to keep up appearances, just let the place disintegrate around them. Rose, Terry and Daniel
were left to borrow what was needed to transform it.

‘Gambling. I’ve got way out of my depth.’

She only just heard him.

‘But you can’t have run up that much.’ He liked the occasional flutter on the horses. All right, perhaps a bit more than occasional. But not any more than the next man.
‘You’ve only been out of work a couple of months.’ Rose realised how Pollyanna-ish she was sounding.

Terry shook his head. ‘It’s been going on for longer than that. Much longer. Years, in fact. Do you think I could have a drink?’

Asking for a drink at this time of day meant it must be serious. Rose didn’t argue, just took a tumbler into the sitting room and poured him a large Scotch. When she returned to the
kitchen, Terry hadn’t moved. She took ice cubes out of the freezer and added a couple out of habit, then filled a jug with tap water and put everything in front of him. At last he sat
straight, added some water and took a sip. His expression told her there was much worse to come.

‘Why do you think I was fired?’ he asked quietly.

Had she missed part of the conversation when she was out of the room? ‘You weren’t fired,’ she said slowly. ‘You were made redundant. That’s what you told
us.’

‘No. That’s the story the partners agreed I could put out. Oh God, it’s such a mess.’ He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I couldn’t tell any of you. You see,
I’d had to borrow some money from them, and Colin, the other senior partner, found out before I had time to pay it back.’

‘What do mean, he found out? What have you done?’ Rose tried to sound calm despite her trepidation.

Terry held up a hand. ‘Shh. Let me finish. I, er . . . I didn’t ask them. I knew they’d want to know why I needed so much cash, so it seemed better to borrow and pay it back
without them noticing. Except they did notice. Colin agreed that if I squared up immediately, before any damage was done, and then left the company, only Neville, our other partner, need know. They
were very decent. The perks of a small company and an old friend. There was no redundancy.’

‘You mean you stole from them?’ But Terry would never steal unless absolutely desperate. If only Daniel were here. He would talk to him, see a way through this, maybe even trust him
with a job. Who else would now?

‘Not exactly. And it wasn’t my fault,’ he hastened to reassure her. ‘Not really.’

‘Whose fault was it then?’

‘I’d had a bit of bad luck. Nothing that couldn’t be put right. If Colin hadn’t found out . . .’ He didn’t finish.

Rose remembered him hunched in front of the TV in Italy, not shifting until the horse racing was over, keeping a tally of the cricket scores and the football results on his phone. Eve had often
complained about his Saturday afternoons spent engrossed in TV sports programmes. But Rose had never taken any of it very seriously. Wasn’t that just what some men did?

‘I’d maxed out my credit cards. Easily done.’ Breezily said, as if the most natural thing in the world. ‘I had to borrow the money just to pay them back and should have
sorted it all out quickly without anyone knowing, but then I had a string of losses . . . A couple of them were dead certs, too. I don’t know what happened.’ He looked suddenly
defeated. ‘You don’t want to know.’

Rose exploded. ‘No, I don’t. You bloody idiot, Terry. You bloody, bloody idiot. Just tell me how much you owe.’

‘Over two hundred grand.’

Rose felt the sum like a punch in the gut. She gasped.

‘Well, maybe just a little less.’ He brightened for the briefest of moments before he went on. ‘But the real problem . . .’ he swallowed as he clasped his hands tightly
together, ‘is that I’ve taken a mortgage on the house without Eve knowing. She thinks it’s all paid off. Well, it was. But I had to find the money somewhere if I was going to pay
off the firm and then two of my Visa cards. I thought I was an expert at juggling debt. Turns out I’m not. Now I’m about to default on the bloody mortgage and I’ll be in worse
shit than ever.’

‘And even if I find the money to help you, then what?’ She looked him straight in the eye, refusing to let him turn away. ‘I’m not agreeing to the sale of all three
hotels as a package to Madison Gadding to fund your gambling habit. You need professional help.’

Terry looked pained. ‘But a third of the profit from them is mine by rights. You can’t deny me that. Look, I didn’t mean to get into this mess, but once it started to go wrong
 . . . This is just a blip. Once I’ve sorted it out, I’ll be fine. I don’t need to see anyone. I don’t need help. I can stop this tomorrow once I’ve straightened
everything out.’

‘Tomorrow?’ she shouted. ‘Why not today? That’s the talk of an addict. Christ, Terry, can’t you hear yourself? Therapy’s for people smart enough to realise
they need help.’ Furious, she wasn’t going to let him talk his way round her. ‘A blip? How can you say that? Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘How could I? I can’t talk to Eve and you’ve had so much on your plate. I would have asked Daniel. If he’d been here, perhaps I wouldn’t have got in this
mess.’

‘You can’t blame him.’ Rose was outraged. Daniel would be as angry with him as she was, but he would do his best to be fair (as she was trying to be), and would stick to his
guns (as she would too). ‘I’m not going to sort out your problems by selling Trevarrick. Just not.’ She ignored his despairing sigh. ‘There has to be another way.’

Terry didn’t stay for much longer. Once they’d finished their coffee, there wasn’t much more to be said. His relief at having unburdened himself was obvious, although he was
still determined not to confide in anyone else. ‘I’m on top of it, Rose,’ he insisted. ‘I just needed you to understand why I need the money urgently.’

‘I do. And I am going to think about the best way to help you. But there is one thing before I do anything,’ Rose concluded. ‘If you’re going to get yourself out of this,
you must tell Eve.’

Terry looked aghast. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I can’t do that. You don’t understand. I can’t tell her the house is under threat. She’ll kill
me.’

‘I wouldn’t blame her, but you’ve got to be honest with each other,’ said Rose, reminded of how Daniel had ultimately let her down. But would she really have wanted to
know the truth if he had lived? Sometimes she thought the answer was yes; at others, no. This was hardly the same thing, though. ‘However difficult it’s going to be, Eve would want to
know. In fact, she deserves to know, and I’m sure she’ll be on your side. That’s one condition. And I want you to get proper help. If you do those two things, I’ll find a
way to help you, with or without Madison Gadding.’

He pursed his lips, weighing up what might happen if he refused. Then he inclined his head slightly. ‘I’ll think about it. I will. Although I really don’t want to involve
her.’

‘I know you don’t,’ sympathised Rose. ‘But if you want my help . . .’

Eve was feeding the chickens. Five of them had followed her up the garden, flapping round the corner of the potting shed, waddling out from under bushes, fluttering down from
the low wall that divided off the vegetable garden, clucking behind her. Her rescue hens. Their evident enjoyment of their new freedom after a half-life as battery hens was a pleasure. When she
reached the run, they dashed in, fussing round the dish as she tossed in the pellets, dropping the leftovers from last night’s supper on the ground. While they ate, their beaks tapping
against the metal dish, she filled the drinker with water from the garden tap and put it in the centre of the run.

Terry was out. His note only said he’d gone to London, but she was praying that a job interview might have taken him from home. He had been so difficult over the last few weeks that she
was pleased to have the place to herself for once. She had tried to be sympathetic, by not coming home too late, by cooking what she knew he liked, not complaining about the wall-to-wall sport on
TV, telling him about what was going on at the agency, and had tried talking to him about his situation. But nothing jolted him out of this awful lethargy. He wasn’t interested in what she
had to say, or in talking. She imagined them living like this for the rest of their lives, and despaired.

Just as she was checking for eggs in the nesting boxes, her hand rummaging in the straw, her phone rang. With an egg in one hand, she didn’t bother to check the caller identity, but she
recognised Will’s voice immediately.

‘You said I could call. Bad time?’

‘No, not at all.’ She wiped the shit off her finger on to the chicken wire. Not finding another egg, she shut the lid of the box. Squeezing herself through, then hoicking the mesh
gate past its sticking point, she checked the latch was secure. She didn’t want to make it easy for the marauding local foxes. She retreated briefly to the warmth of the kitchen. The hens
could wait to go into their nesting box until they’d finished talking.

‘I’m hoping you’ll have lunch with me,’ he said. ‘Call it unfinished business.’

Eve took in the kitchen, the pine table where nothing had been put away. The day’s papers were spread across it, the jam pots had been left without their lids, the butter was lined with
deep gashes where one of the cats had helped itself. The sink was piled high with dirty plates and a pan in which Terry had obviously made scrambled eggs. Damp tea towels were strewn over the
worktop, interspersed with mugs of half-drunk tea and coffee, teaspoons laden with cold squeezed-out tea bags. He might at least tidy up after himself. That wasn’t asking too much, was
it?

Leaning against the bar of the Aga, Eve concentrated on Will and what he was saying.

‘I’m off to Borneo. Been commissioned to do some photography on vanishing wildlife and the impact of the palm oil plantations. I thought we might get together before I go. Are you
coming up to town at all?’

The pile of ironing sitting on the side seemed to be even higher than when she last looked. The fridge was emptier. The shoes by the back door were dirtier. But this wasn’t entirely
Terry’s fault, she reminded herself. Usually they rubbed along together, sharing the chores. But the redundancy had knocked him for six, and she had been totally preoccupied with the
agency.

‘Say something, at least,’ Will implored. ‘Anything.’

She imagined the intimacy of a neatly laid restaurant table, the anticipation of good food, the company of someone who wasn’t suffering from one of Terry’s lugubrious moods, who
wanted to be with her. But she knew that agreeing was quite wrong.

‘I am,’ she said, her heart wildly contradicting her head. ‘I’ll be up on Wednesday for a morning meeting.’

After settling on a restaurant, they hung up and Eve went back to shut up the chickens, her mind still on Will.

If she saw him, what harm? She tried to ignore the flutter that told her she was flirting with danger. All she was doing was agreeing to a lunch for old times’ sake. Life was too short to
hold a grudge for ever. They’d air their past, catch up a little more, then say goodbye. Her heart contracted a fraction. By the time she saw Rose, the lunch would be over and they would
laugh about it together. Will would be out of the country and she wouldn’t see him again. Terry would have a job, his mood would lift as his purpose was redefined and life would get back to
normal. The years had changed them all. Nothing was what it once had been. A meeting with Will was hardly likely to be the seismic shift that she understood Rose feared. But to be on the safe side,
perhaps she wouldn’t tell her. Not yet, at least. And she certainly wasn’t going to confess a thing to Terry.

May

T
he sand was left corrugated by the receding tide, pockets of water gleaming among the ridges and runnels. As Rose walked towards the sea, each
footprint was quickly sucked away. She was back in Cornwall at last, and happy. The ghosts she had feared had kept their distance. She felt as at home as always. On either side of her the beach
stretched away to the distant rocks, the tidemark a dark line on the flank of the cliff behind them. Children were racing after balls, carrying buckets, spades and shrimping nets, or flying
neon-coloured kites with patient parents. Out to sea, a couple of hardy windsurfers tore back and forth. Behind her, families sat huddled by the cliffs or the beach wall, sheltered by garish
plastic windbreaks, picking the sand out of their picnics. Everything was much the same as it had always been.