A Secret Life Read online

  Christobel Kent was born in London and educated at Cambridge. She has lived variously in Essex, London and Italy. Her childhood included several years spent on a Thames sailing barge in Maldon, Essex with her father, stepmother, three siblings and four step-siblings. She now lives in both Cambridge and Florence with her husband and five children.

  Also by Christobel Kent

  The Crooked House

  The Loving Husband

  The Day She Disappeared

  What We Did

  *

  A Party in San Niccolo

  Late Season

  The Summer House

  A Florentine Revenge

  Copyright

  Published by Sphere

  ISBN: 978-0-7515-6881-3

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Christobel Kent 2019

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Sphere

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Christobel Kent

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Postscript

  Acknowledgements

  For my dad

  Christopher Kent 1923–1992

  It had turned cold at last, after the long mild spell: overnight the temperature had dropped. The sky outside was a bright empty blue and where the sun hadn’t yet reached the glass an edge of frost still misted the window at one corner. The early light dazzled in the small, bright white space. She hadn’t bothered to pull the curtains but the sun didn’t wake her.

  The room was warm, overheated even and just as well because she was naked, or close enough. There was a half empty bottle of red wine on the side, the glitter of a party shoe on its side on the rug and a little overnight bag had been flung open and was spilling underwear. Sooner or later they’d come and root through it all with gloved hands, a finger through the underwear, lifting it, looking at each other then down into the little bag for what treasures she might have brought with her, what equipment. Looking for a sign, what kind of woman is this? It was all evidence, now.

  Her eyes were open, staring up at the Anaglypta of the ceiling that had been painted over ten, twenty times like everything in these old streets. Front doors, window frames, railings, the bell pushes at the doorways with one name overlaid by another, little strips of sticky tape, calling cards. They said it was all change with the new rail link but then when hadn’t it been all change? Change had always been life, in London. Forge ahead, push on. Except in Soho one name might have got stuck down over another but the same bargains always seemed to be being struck on the grimy yellow-lit stairways; it had used to be change in the way a termite mound is always changing but always stays the same. Now the upheaval looked set to turn the whole anthill inside out, and steel and glass were pushing up through the old uneven pavements, opening cellars, shining light into basements.

  She was past considering that, now, just like she was past sunshine and blue skies. She lay on her back on the floor on a deep-pile synthetic sheepskin half under a coffee table. Her head was back, chin up, her hair spread out around her head all gleaming and her lips parted, just a fraction, dry lips in the unforgiving light, and purpled, swollen. The tongue was visible.

  One bare leg – the left – lay straight out in front of her, she would have been recognisably a woman just from the gleaming curve of her calf, even if the rest of her hadn’t been on display. The right knee was up and had fallen outwards to rest against the coffee table; she had on a silk slip feathered with lace, a pale pink like the inside of a shell, that had been pushed up so high it exposed her all up to the underside of her breasts. Their skin gleamed bluish-white like skimmed milk in the sharp pale light, pale up into the tender armpits where her arms had been flung wide open.

  The darkening place was from below her upturned chin down to her collar bones. Something terrible had been done there, it was mottled, a hatching of dark red turning purplish-green with the beginnings of bruising. They’d decide very quickly she’d been strangled, the men with their evidence bags. If you looked close you could see her open eyes had a reddish, bloodshot look, where the pressure had burst the tiny vessels. There was some blood, too, smeared on the synthetic sheepskin, so there could be other injuries, when they turned her carefully with their gloved hands. They weren’t here yet, though; for the moment she was alone.

  She was cold enough to have been dead eight hours or so, dead long before the streets turned quiet down below the little room, in fact they probably would have been around their noisiest, with last orders being called and punters heading to find more drink and a bit of a dance, the smokers on the street jeering and sloshing their pints and the taxis cruising with their lights on. She wouldn’t have seen the light change beyond the window, she wouldn’t have seen the inky sky, the pinprick stars fading in the bright blue morning. Never no more. She was gone.

  Chapter One

  Her bag was packed and standing by the front door, Tabs’ dinner was out on the side cooling, and Tim was waiting. He’d texted her from the office, first thing. Call in on your way to the station? Georgie stood in the hall, looking at herself nervously in the big chrome-edged mirror and wished for the mirror of her childhood, Mum’s one with its soft kind speckled glass. It had never looked at home here, though.

  She smiled at her reflection uncertainly. Not quite ready. Not quite sure. Hesitated. Was her coat too warm? It was almost November but it felt like late summer, sultry. Crazy weather. She ran back up the stairs.

  Tim would have none of it, this global warming business, but Georgie disagreed. Silently, of course, well mostly. But the glaciers are melting, she’d said, stubborn last Sunday evening, as on the big TV shoals of fish raced and wheeled across a blue screen, Tabs looking up at her.

  As for the evening in town, she’d expected Tim to say no, if she was honest. A girls’ night out, a rowdy gang of them on the town getting back together properly after all this time, a dodgy room near King’s Cross afterwards where they could giggle and haul out a chocolate stash and raid the mini-bar. She hadn’t gone into all that, of course. Even Tabs would have been shocked, wouldn�
�t she, her well-behaved mum, pillar of the school office, pining for an evening getting a bit pissed and going dancing. But Tim had just nodded absently: he had a big client giving him grief and timidly Georgie had made use of that, because she found she wanted to go. Really wanted to go. And by the time he’d inquired into the details more closely, it wasn’t ten of them any more but whittled down to four, then three.

  Back upstairs in the bedroom Georgie stripped off her coat in a sudden sweat of anxiety and flung it on the bed. She told herself she had plenty of time. She’d be ridiculously early for the train then early to London for a night out, turning up with her little stuffed bag at six in the afternoon; they’d be able to see her a mile off, the mum from the suburbs.

  Looking around Georgie grabbed her old raincoat instead: she’d already spent long enough working out what to put in her bag, flicking through the party dresses that had got squeezed up in the corner to give Tim’s suits room. It had been like looking through old pictures, another life. The red sequins. The navy shift with the low back; she hadn’t even dared try that one on, for fear of it getting stuck over her bottom pulling it up. The fringed one, that you could dance in and all the silk tiers would shimmy. The longer she’d looked, the more she’d had to fend off despair, but she’d forced herself. She needed a safe dress, and a spare. Not so safe.

  She hadn’t danced in how long? Fran’s wedding, six years ago. Fran had been one of those supposed to be coming tonight, on the train from the South Coast where she ran a fancy B and B these days but one of the kids had chickenpox, or something.

  The thought of having a dance had been what clinched it, what had made Georgie cling on, determined, to the thought of this night out, that had made her plot and strategise, as meticulous as she once had been at work over the submissions that had come to her for scrutiny. Cook meals ahead of time, arrange a playdate for the next morning, a sleepover maybe, sweet-talk Tabs until she was actively looking forward to her mum being away for the night. And today, ticking everything off: she’d hung out the washing, emptied the dishwasher, made the dinner.

  A moment of panic. Shoes? Were the shoes right – no. In the bright neat room, she stopped herself, there’s no room for anything else.

  ‘So whose idea was this, exactly?’ His tone had been amused. ‘Cat’s idea,’ Georgie had said, hardly looking up from the vegetables she’d been chopping, how long ago, a month and more, not daring to catch his eye, casual.

  ‘Oh yes. Well, you’re hardly likely to get into trouble with her, I suppose.’ Turning a page of the newspaper at the Saturday breakfast table. ‘How many kids’s she got now? Three? Four?’

  Cat was back in their lives – well, Georgie’s – after five years living off in deep country, she was practically up the road, her husband in a new job. Eight miles away, and they’d already managed to meet four, no, five times.

  ‘Three.’ Finding herself defensive, on Cat’s behalf. Three boys, they’d run her ragged but she was still the same Cat. Since she moved back they’d met up for coffee two Saturdays in a row when Tim was playing tennis. A sneaky drink in a wine bar near Cat’s after school while Tabs was at drama club. Cat had come over for tea twice, once with the boys, once without, when they’d moved from tea to prosecco: that was when they decided. A proper girls’ night out was what they needed. Cat’s idea, but one glass down and Georgie had practically bitten her hand off.

  We all used to work together, at the big tax office. People would glaze over when she said what she used to do, before Tabs. But they’d be surprised, what lurked behind those starchy shirt fronts. It was probably different now, it was probably all out in the open, it was dress-down Friday and LGBTQ liaison officers but it had been fun then, guessing what people got up to at the weekends. Portly Simon who covered Lincoln’s Inn, with his nipple ring just visible through his shirt.

  It was where she’d met Tim. Kind, responsible straight-as-a-die Tim.

  And now Georgie reached into her wardrobe, grabbed a pair of high-heeled sparkly sandals and stuffed them in the top of the bag.

  ‘Right,’ she said to the empty air. ‘We’re off.’

  *

  A stopping train, but Georgie didn’t mind. She floated, smiling, looking out of the window. The sun was getting low over the trees and the world looked like a happy place, lines of washing, a red-brick crescent of houses with garages, striped lawns and hedges. Across the aisle four women occupying a table seat had turned to look at her briefly then huddled back over their table, looking at a map.

  The track had skirted the forest first, where it was still deep green, a few leaves just turning to rust only now in the unseasonable warm, and that hazy undergrowth. Epping Forest, Tim insisted that meant they lived in the countryside but the map said different, Google Earth said different. At night the lights of the city cast their glow this far, over the woodland; it felt like a smoke-haze more than a barrier. Tabs would stare into the trees, fascinated, on the rare occasions they drove into town. It should have been tamed, somehow, Georgie always thought on those drives, with Tim grumbling about the traffic, by the cars that wound through it but it was still a strange place. Some of the trees were very old, bent by age, twisted into odd shapes and the ground underneath them soft and grassy. The train rattled faster and they were crossing the undulations of a golf course, a game going on in the late afternoon light and beyond it the glint of skyscrapers in the setting sun.

  They’d been happy for her. Everyone in Tim’s building seemed to know she was off on a night out.

  Georgie had been anxious, parking the car carefully next to Lydia’s little yellow one on the forecourt, so Tim could drive it home. Anxious that something would have come up that would stop her going which was irrational, silly: he would have told her on the phone if there’d been anything. And then Lydia looking up from her desk outside his office had smiled, kindly. Lydia couldn’t be more than twenty-five but she had always looked at Georgie like that: it did rub Georgie up the wrong way sometimes, she had to admit, but on this occasion she was only grateful. Lydia had buzzed Georgie straight through. And then Tim was coming round his desk towards her, and smiling, and the panic had subsided.

  There’d been that moment, a couple of weeks earlier over breakfast when he’d looked up and asked mildly what exactly the plan was, this evening on the town and she’d confessed a few details, the hotel room, the bar they would start out in and he’d raised an eyebrow. ‘Already booked?’ but then he nodded, seeming to accept it, with a frown as if he’d been outfoxed. A smile next: kind Tim, thoughtful Tim. He loved her, she could see that. He wanted her to be happy.

  He’d stepped towards her in his office an hour ago and taken her gently by the elbows. ‘You look lovely,’ he said softly, his smile broadening. Georgie had reached reflexively for her earlobes, the little diamond studs he’d given her when Tabs had been born. ‘Lovely,’ he repeated, and leaning in he kissed her there, on her neck, just below the ear. Over his head she had seen Lydia smile, indulgent.

  The train was in the city now, rolling slower, level with the upstairs windows of a terrace, bathrooms and extensions. They came past an old Victorian school, the playground milling with children letting off steam before heading home. A little boy running like an arrow for his mother in a parka, who had bent to receive him with her arms out.

  Tabs. Georgie felt it like a pain suddenly, blinked her eyes closed. Tabs would spend a couple of hours with her new best friend Millie then Tim would collect her, he’d be on time, she’d told him twice when he had to be there, while he rolled his eyes at the thought of having to interact with mums. The shepherd’s pie cooling on the kitchen counter: it was Tabs’ favourite, she’d be fine as long as she didn’t get told off for dropping her bag on the floor or playing on the iPad. As long as Tim warmed her pyjamas on the radiator and left the light on in the hall when he said goodnight. At the thought of Tabs’ head on the pillow Georgie felt a tight knot in her stomach, she felt the evening slipping away from her.


  Across the aisle there was a burst of laughter and Georgie opened her eyes. She made herself think of Cat. Cat got out, Cat had fun. Cat who had three sons she loved angrily – little sods – and Georgie’s memory of them, as small boys very close in age, scrapping and gap-toothed, was roughly only sweet, only loving, too. Cat who had been taken aback – horrified, even, to hear Georgie’d never left Tabs overnight before.

  ‘Come on,’ she’d said, when they’d been talking on the phone and Georgie had introduced it into the first tentative plans for an evening out, plus hotel, ‘come on.’ And then, briskly and without pausing for breath, ‘We’ll have to do something about that. It’s not—’ and at last a hesitation. ‘It’s not good for you, George. Out there in Stepford or wherever it is, stuck in that school office all day.’ Georgie silent. ‘Come on.’

  And Georgie had taken a deep breath and said, ‘Well, I’m sure nothing would – I’m sure I can – I’ll talk to Tim.’ Of course she’d laid a bit of groundwork before she’d got around to it, but she did talk to him. Eventually.

  The train chuntered on through grey brick, slate rooftops, the old tenements that bordered the City and its towers as the light faded. The group of girls around a table in the seats across the aisle seemed to be on the same sort of mission as Georgie, though no doubt they wouldn’t have guessed it of her, with her unmade-up face and her flat shoes for the journey and her raincoat properly buttoned. Friday night and they already had the high heels on, fishnets, leaning over the table to get closer to each other. One of them had got out a bottle of wine and plastic glasses.

  Georgie looked down into the streets, the street lights blinking on as they went over a bridge and a chain of red buses stationary in rush hour traffic and quite suddenly the old days didn’t seem that long ago, although they were.

  Long, long ago before she met Tim, she calculated. Tabs was five, so Georgie was thirty-seven now, she’d met him when she was twenty-three. Those old days came back to her as a kind of glow: Fridays looking forward to the weekend, Saturdays buying something nice to go out in. The feeling of Saturday morning, the sun always seemed to be shining as you headed out to Topshop. And dancing on a Saturday night.