A Secret Life Read online

  Georgie looked at the children, the girls huddled together with bare legs and white socks, feeling a shiver just at the sight of them she pulled her coat around her.

  The sky was almost clear. They said there might be a frost tonight.

  Georgie searched the suddenly crowded playground for Tabs and for a second couldn’t see her then there she was, running, the hood of her coat bouncing up and down. ‘Darling?’ said Tim, his voice suddenly sharp. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes.’ And repeated back to him everything he’d said, until he was satisfied. She thought but didn’t say, stubborn, But I didn’t dent the car. I’d know.

  There was a pause, then as if he knew what she’d been thinking, tentatively Tim said, ‘I thought maybe it might have happened,’ he hesitated, ‘Saturday morning? I mean, coming home from London you were fairly … out of it? They do say the morning after a big night, you can still be …’ he trailed off.

  Georgie felt her mouth open, she hadn’t driven Saturday morning, she’d got a taxi back – but she said nothing. ‘Anyway,’ said Tim, brightly, ‘have a good day, sweetheart. I’ll call again. See you Sunday evening.’

  The text message came as Georgie was ushering them back inside: she was on the threshold, chilled to the bone after sitting so still and she felt it hum in her pocket. She knew it would be Tim, sending her the body-shop’s number so she could fix a date for him to take the car in. She didn’t remember scraping it against anything. It alarmed her. The thought that she might have been distracted, the thought that some malign neighbour, some teenager, might have wantonly damaged her car, the thought that Tim had it before she did. But then everything alarmed her, at the moment: she could almost hear Tim sigh. Worrying for her.

  At her desk, Georgie got the phone out to look, only wondering at the last minute if it might actually not be from Tim – he was driving after all, he would never write a text at the wheel. Cat?

  No. Not Tim, not Cat.

  Sue had her back to her, feeding something into the photocopier. Georgie stood up, feeling herself flush hot, knowing any minute Sue would turn around again and look at her, and she had to turn and walk out of the office carefully, into the reception area, where the school library was, staring at the spines of the books then – then, she dared to look back at the message.

  Something happened. Something did happen. How could Cat not have seen it, or Holly? She knew it, in her insides turning to water.

  Did you like your flowers? Her heart turned over. The number wasn’t recognised by her phone but she knew whose it was, already. Another message. We’ll do it again, soon. M.

  She remembered something, it was suddenly sharply in focus and in that moment she felt as if anyone could see, through the walls, Sue’s head turning, just visible through the reinforced glass panel in the school office door. M for Mark. She remembered him close up against her, in the hotel room, in the dark, or almost dark, holding her phone. He had her phone in his hand. That was how he had her number.

  And then she knew. He had dialled his number from her phone, then handed it back to her. Clever. How clever. The phone clasped between her hands, held against her front, between her breasts, she stood very still. On the shelves of the little library the words on the books’ titles jumped and blurred. How Things Work.

  We’ll do it again soon. That wasn’t just being a gentleman. That wasn’t just being polite, checking you got home safe. That was something new. Something not safe.

  None of it had been safe, had it? From the minute she reached across Holly, holding her glass out to him. Asking for it.

  ‘Georgie?’

  Tomorrow she’d be in London.

  It was Sue, standing in the school doorway looking at her, holding up one of the photocopied sheets. ‘George?’

  ‘Yes,’ she managed. Dropping her hands as casually as she could, smiling mechanically. Phone in pocket.

  ‘The return date on the school trip – has it been changed?’

  Sue was looking at her oddly. Georgie knew she must be flushed, her whole body felt hot. Something told her she should sense danger and she did, she did. But it was as if she had been inoculated against it by something else, her system flooded with pleasure at this mad thought. And most of it down to their secret, the words on the screen translated into his voice full of intimacy, We’ll do it again soon.

  Stop it. Stop it. School trip.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, calm and level. ‘The centre wanted to add in an extra activity, canoeing, and they said they wouldn’t charge for the last night so the price would remain the same.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Sue, but her body language, the sheet of paper held high between both hands, almost up to her mouth, her eyes over it still inquiring, said she knew something was off, something was happening.

  Do what again?

  Following Sue back into the office, suddenly small and crowded, Georgie sat. She had to fill out a form for uniform orders online: she looked from paper to screen, her fingers tapped. White polo shirts, medium, times twelve. Sweatshirts with embroidered logo. But the danger was still there, it wouldn’t go away: it felt too good. She remembered details of him, his collar, the shape of his head, the feel of his suit. His hands – she remembered his hands, long-fingered. The sound of his deep voice, talking low just to her and the brush of his lips. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, and she trembled.

  Do what again?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Frank headed up east on the tube, a long way, then a walk from the tube, trees, hedges, big houses, birds singing and as foreign as Zanzibar to Frank. As he plodded he could see it in glimpses, down at the end of a street or beyond a stretch of dual carriageway, the big forest. Epping, a place of murders and satanic ritual, to believe his old mum, a wilderness to her. He found himself turning to search for it, disappointed when it wasn’t there, when all there was was another neat terrace, stretching off, bay fronts as far as the eye could see. Epping Forest had trees older than the city, he had read somewhere, places to hide the bodies, swamp and all.

  Eddie’s house was big, ugly red brick at the top of a drive with a massive stained glass window, hideous to Frank’s inner London eye but what did he know? It cost a fortune anyway but Eddie was smart, he’d have claimed it against the business somehow. Frank had been here a couple of times before, but never inside, just to pick Eddie up. He rang the doorbell, hearing the chimes, and saw a bulky shape behind the stained glass. Eddie stood there in slippers and a suit next to a stack of big removal boxes, looking him up and down. ‘You take the scenic route?’ It had been forty minutes, since he picked up the message – to get right out of London – but Frank knew better than to defend himself.

  As he stepped across the threshold Frank could hear a shower going and caught Eddie’s eye, unwillingly. Eddie winked. Oh shit, thought Frank. Is this about Lucy?

  He kept a straight face. He stood there like a plank in the hallway, stiff with nerves. ‘You never seen the place before, have you,’ said Eddie, though it wasn’t really a question. ‘I’ll give you the guided tour then, shall I? While her ladyship performs her toilette.’ Eddie had a voice that was soft, like velvet. He went straight for the wide staircase and Frank had no choice but to follow.

  The master bedroom was all pinks, the feminine touch like the eyelashes on Matteo, fooling no one. Over the bed was a big portrait in oils of Lucy, naked and of course Frank couldn’t look anywhere else. Sitting up on the bed, elbow on one knee, looking straight at you. He gave the painter his due, it was Lucy, head-on stare and all. They’d been married five years: she must have been twenty-four or something. Frank stood there like stone, listening to the shower still going and Eddie just looking at him, laughing his head off inside: Frank could smell her perfume, the stuff she washed with.

  He thought of Brockley Rise and getting the train to go fishing near Bromley with the old fellers and their rods. Hurtling around the school playground like a kid and the girls st
aring. He didn’t want to be here.

  ‘So what’s the kitchen like?’ he found himself saying, just to get out of there, and then Eddie did laugh.

  What the kitchen was like was massive, and masculine where the bedroom was feminine: island in the middle, all granite and steel. There was nothing on the surfaces except an expensive coffee machine.

  ‘What’s the job, exactly?’ Frank said, hands flat on the speckled granite surface as if it was the bar at the Cinq, brusque out of desperation. He could see Eddie’s face go still and watchful but Frank felt it again, the sudden itch to get out of there. On cue, upstairs the drumming of the shower stopped. They looked at each other, him and Eddie, then Eddie said, ‘Come on, then.’

  It was the boxes, the ones he’d seen stacked in the hall. Eddie wanted them driving up to town and stored at the club. ‘Some old papers,’ he said though Frank had not asked. Of course he hadn’t. Another wink. ‘And just for the meantime, all right? Just temporary.’

  Eddie fished in his pocket and handed the Jag’s keys to Frank. ‘Get going, then.’

  He stood there in his slippers watching as Frank sweated, four boxes, and heavy. He could have had his driver take them up, Frank knew that. When he dropped the boot shut and turned Eddie wasn’t in the doorway any more. He came inside shutting the door behind him quietly. Wary. He could see Eddie’s slippered foot wagging in the living room, and could hear him, on the phone.

  ‘Coffee, Frank?’ Lucy’s head came around the kitchen door, her voice bossy like a teacher’s and Frank watched her move, getting coffee out of a cupboard, filling the machine, knowing where everything was. He let out a breath warily, wondering what this was all about. He didn’t usually get waited on by Lucy.

  Eddie’s voice murmured away, across the big hall. Both doors between them were standing open: if Frank took two steps, maybe three, across the kitchen’s underheated stone floor, Eddie’s nodding slippered foot would come into view. ‘Milk?’ Lucy twisted to look at him over her shoulder and her robe fell back, he could see her thigh. He shook his head. Swallowed.

  As the machine rattled, grinding its beans and the smell – of morning, of breakfast and Soho, far away – filled up the big room, Frank didn’t move. It was a test and he was going to pass it. How could Eddie still be talking? On and on. The coffee machine’s noise stopped and suddenly Frank could hear Eddie’s voice more clearly. ‘No, no, mate,’ he was saying, soft and persuasive, and despite himself Frank took a step towards the door. He’d never been curious about Eddie before: something had always told him, it wasn’t a good idea. But he couldn’t help himself now.

  ‘Be patient, these things take time.’ A business associate, but not quite business they were talking. Eddie didn’t distinguish between friends and business acquaintances. Frank heard a low chuckle. Then, ‘When he’s done it we’ll get together,’ insinuating something. ‘Get the girls together.’

  At the coffee machine Lucy looked back at him over her shoulder and rolled her eyes.

  Was it about sex? Eddie’s conversation. That was what it sounded like. Sex was business too, for Eddie, he’d got other properties in Soho than the Cinq. They might be in someone else’s name, Lucy’s maybe, and at least one of them, Frank was fairly sure, was being used for immoral purposes, or whatever they called it.

  Frank had always thought it wasn’t his business and safest to go on thinking that way but something about sitting here in Eddie’s kitchen was making him ponder it. How Eddie made his money. Why he’d brought Frank here: it felt like he was being shown something, or told something, or warned off something. Off Lucy? No need for that.

  And there on cue was Lucy, coming round him, setting down the coffee he didn’t want. And she sat herself, ladylike, opposite Frank, one leg up on the stool he sat on and then her robe fell open and she leaned toward him to put her hand on him, and ladylike was a thing of the past.

  In a hurry Frank got off the stool and took two steps, three, away from her. She leaned back against the breakfast bar, amused. Crossing her legs and taking her time adjusting the robe.

  Frank didn’t know what her game was. Jealousy? Not Lucy. But then why had she mentioned to Eddie that he’d been chatting up a customer? For a second he wondered if Matteo might have mentioned his questions already, about the women, to Eddie or to Lucy – though why would he? – that everything had felt different since he’d taken an interest in what happened to those women, Friday night.

  Eddie murmured on, his voice fainter now because Frank, putting a safe distance between him and Lucy, was at the window, looking out into their back garden. A marble statue of a naked girl holding her boobs. With an effort, Frank made himself focus.

  ‘What’s Eddie talking about?’ Asking out of desperation, to change the subject, work out what you’ve got yourself into. Something to do with feeling trapped here. The more information, the better, when you were under threat, even if you couldn’t work out where the threat was.

  ‘I don’t know who it is,’ said Lucy, not moving from the breakfast bar, cupping her chin between her hands. ‘Someone he’s doing a favour for.’ When Frank stayed where he was she straightened, shrugging. ‘You know Eddie, always doing a favour here and there.’

  And then the door opened behind her and there was Eddie, looking preoccupied.

  ‘Good coffee?’ he said, looking from Lucy at the bar to Frank in the window, a faint smile appearing. He knew all right.

  ‘Better get that lot shifted, then,’ Frank said, and he was out the door.

  He could feel Eddie’s eyes on him as he turned out of the drive into the avenue, spinning the wheels on the gravel, just wanting to get out of there.

  At the end of the road, waiting to turn, he came face to face with the tangle of woodland, a stream of cars passing. Frank had to be patient, gazing at the old trees, not knowing their names. And then his thoughts shifted, with the memory of Eddie’s voice, dry and sceptical, to the phone call. Get the girls together.

  There was a gap in the traffic and Frank pulled out, smooth as he could manage, trying to keep it all under control, just like he’d been trying and failing to do all day, and as he straightened the long car, took his foot off the gas, it dawned on him. He had cameras in that house, Eddie did, security or whatever. Spy cameras, for security – or so he knew what Lucy was up to. It would explain the smile. Set up.

  Frank heard himself make an impatient sound and reached to click on the radio: some classical station, that was Eddie, showing his class. Clicked it off again. Alongside him the woodland ran on, dusty, mysterious and empty and then to his relief a junction came into view, a blue sign for the motorway and he told himself, Get a grip. Why would he care, anyway? He joined the traffic, eight lanes of it.

  Should have waved, after, a cheery wave to Eddie and Lucy? He hadn’t touched her. She’d touched him. But all the same, he felt like he’d been set up.

  Do what you’re told: if he wants you to put the boxes in the club or if he wants you to chuck them in the Thames then just do it. All women are the same, none of them is worth it and stop asking questions.

  Message received.

  Georgie was lying on the sofa in her oldest jeans with a drink, bare feet up, radio on. A glass of nice cold white wine balancing on her belly. She still wasn’t hungry. Which was strange because all her life she couldn’t remember ever not being hungry. Once when she’d been nine or ten she’d spent her money on a loaf of bread hot out of the baker’s and thought she could eat it all. Now leaning back on the sofa, stretching her toes, she tried to remember the cravings. Toast with butter, always taking one more bit. Tim wasn’t interested in food: he ate cereal with skimmed milk, every morning, mechanically, then the bowl straight into the dishwasher.

  The morning after Tabs had been born Georgie had been ravenous. Dad had brought a bunch of roses and iced buns in a paper bag to the hospital and she could remember licking the sugar from her fingers while she fed Tabs. Tim had brought magazines, slick and shiny, that ha
d kept falling on to the floor from the bed until the man who brought round the tea took them away and put them in the visitors’ room.

  Coming in with Tabs after school and knowing he wasn’t there, seeing her drop her things carelessly on the floor, Georgie had just stood there not picking them up and for a moment it was like watching grass grow long. The house shifting around them. A garden without a gardener.

  There was a cottage on the corner near the church, on the edge of the forest, where until a couple of years back an old lady had lived: spry, solid, cheerful, with a little dog and a very neatly tended front garden. The dog had been old, greying round his muzzle, and then he’d died. One day, pushing Tabs past in the buggy Georgie had seen the old lady just standing there, looking lost without the dog. May or Mary she’d been called, something like that. And a month later she’d died herself, and within weeks, days, even the garden had changed, the small lawn not velvet any more but ever so slightly shaggy, the browning heads of roses unclipped, dandelions springing up in the gravel path.

  Someone had bought the house and tarmacked the garden and now there was a huge car parked in front of the cottage, obscuring the downstairs windows. Lying on the sofa Georgie tried to think why she had thought of that cottage. Things change, was that it? People move on, move out, move in: this might not be her house for ever. Their house. All she could think now was, the view from the old lady’s front room would be of the owner’s car.

  She’d picked up Tabs’ school bag and gone upstairs to get the discarded uniform, put on the wash. But everything had been done more slowly, leisurely. It didn’t matter if the grass grew a bit longer, did it? If a dropped sock lay in the hall half an hour before she noticed it. Georgie lay her head back on the arm of the sofa and set the glass down carefully on the carpet. On the wall the clock said 6.59 and if Tim was here he’d be reaching for the remote to turn on the news.