A Secret Life Read online

  She’d read Tabs her goodnight story: she might be back down, there might be the patter of feet but she had seemed sleepy, a wide luxurious smile after Georgie’s kiss goodnight, at the thought of the weekend just the two of them. In the kitchen the radio played some seventies tune.

  The clock’s hand moved and on cue somewhere underneath Georgie on the sofa her phone buzzed. Someone was calling her, but the wine had taken the edge off, she sighed, sat up, groped for it. Tim.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, a little light-headed.

  ‘Sweetheart!’ Tim sounded buzzy, like he was having fun. ‘Just checking in.’ In a bar: she could hear glasses chinking.

  ‘You got there safely, then?’ she said, pointlessly.

  ‘You still planning on going up to town tomorrow?’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘I’ve been thinking, you really ought to. You don’t need to just – just sit around waiting for me to get back. Have some fun at the zoo.’ Georgie lay back again, let her hand fall so it touched the glass on the floor.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I think I – I think we will.’

  Running the bath for Tabs an hour earlier she had been sure they wouldn’t. Tentatively she’d started to say, with Tabs standing there in her vest, hopping from foot to foot. ‘I thought tomorrow maybe—’ But she didn’t get a chance to finish.

  ‘The zoo, Mummy, yes, yes. I told Lydia we were going.’ She’d obviously picked up on it from yesterday and played it cleverly, biding her time. Thinking about it all day.

  Georgie had leaned down, testing the water, straightening back up before proceeding, cautiously. ‘Maybe we could go and see Granddad too,’ and now Tabs was jumping, jumping for joy. ‘Yesyesyes, Granddad!’ she said, pulling off her vest and clambering into the bath, singing at the top of her voice.

  Beside the tub Georgie had sat back on her heels. Suddenly it felt easier, it felt safer. See Dad, a cup of tea and a bun in some old café somewhere. She’d call him in the morning.

  ‘Tabs can’t wait,’ she said now. But Tim had moved on; Georgie half listened as he talked about the conference programme for tomorrow, a lot of detail she didn’t need and perhaps it was the wine but she found herself wondering, Why does he think I’d be interested? Because she should be. Because he was her husband.

  ‘And you called the garage?’ That registered. Georgie sat up quickly and the wine slopped in the glass. ‘I – yes – no—’ she said. Improvising, because she had forgotten. ‘That is, they said call back on Monday.’

  Tim clicked his tongue, the sound of dissatisfaction. The wine had gone on her hand, she could smell it. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Friday night, get off early.’

  ‘Well,’ said Georgie, and she leaned down and licked the wine from the pad of her thumb. Not thinking. ‘It’s Friday night for all of us, isn’t it?’ And then a silence. She heard a slow intake of breath and waited for him to say it. It’s not a bloody holiday, you know. But he didn’t. Sighed, instead.

  ‘Well, you just have fun, darling,’ he said, and his voice was soft, now. Behind him she could hear the hum of voices, glasses chinking. Someone laughed, a woman’s voice. ‘Better go,’ said Tim. A pause. ‘Sleep well.’

  Putting the phone aside Georgie got up from the sofa on stiff legs. Looking down, to her surprise she saw that her glass was empty, and in the kitchen the music was still playing. She wandered in there, barefoot, poured herself some more and set it on the side carefully. Swaying – she liked this song – she could see herself reflected in the glass door, darkness beyond it. She moved her hips and lifted her arms, nodding.

  What would Tim do if he could see her? She turned, arms up, feet knowing where to go, from memory. Put his hands on her hips and move with her? He’d never done that: Tim didn’t like dancing, it made him uncomfortable, but most men were like that. Except the ones who practised, the man in the hat twirling her in the dark. The barman silhouetted against his rows of bottles watching. And him. He hadn’t danced with her, but he had liked looking.

  She turned again, looking for her reflection and in silhouette she looked almost graceful even in her old jeans, almost – what was the thing she most wanted to be? – willowy. And then something else moved beyond her reflection, further off, a flicker of white, and Georgie stopped. The song sounded tinny suddenly, and all the grace seemed to drain out of her, she felt cold and stiff. Stepping up to the window she looked, hands flat against the glass. A cat in the garden or a pale branch moving – or just her imagination.

  Imagining being looked at: that was what she’d been doing, after all. There was a bit of wind: she peered closer. She could see the big philadelphus moving at the back, her ear to the glass she could hear it, even. There was no curtain she could close, but she switched off the light, instead, and the radio sang on, in the half dark. Leaving her drink on the side, she slipped through the door and ran on quick feet upstairs, to the bedroom. Left the light off.

  The wardrobe door was open, Tim’s suits hanging there in the dark, a smell of dry cleaning from them. It was open because she’d been looking at her little section, wondering what to wear tomorrow. Her soft-coloured cashmere jumpers – Tim got her one every Christmas – raspberry and apricot and rose, hadn’t seemed quite right, then Tabs had called her to get her out of the bath and she’d forgotten to close the doors again.

  Now Georgie went noiselessly past the suits to the window and stood, just off to one side, looking down into the back garden.

  Once her eyes adjusted to the light it looked as usual: neat and empty. The heavy wooden table and chairs, the big terracotta pots, the cropped grass. Tim would be better at looking: he could see a cigarette butt in the lawn from thirty feet away, when the nice Hungarian man who laid the patio had left one in a plant pot Tim had got them to take thirty quid off the bill. The big shrubs along the back of the garden didn’t look any different, no branches broken, their carefully trimmed shapes intact. Behind them was the six-foot fence: Georgie could go and inspect in the morning, but she knew it was just her imagination. She wouldn’t even mention it to Tim – well, of course she wouldn’t.

  The list of things she wouldn’t mention to Tim seemed to be getting longer and longer: the thought simultaneously frightened Georgie and made her want to laugh. And made her remember something: the garage. She could call in the morning, they were there Saturday mornings, she knew that even if Tim didn’t. And then she found she wanted to see this dent, this famous dent, that Tim had noticed and she hadn’t.

  Outside on the front path in bare feet and jeans, she shivered: maybe it was the wine but the long warm autumn wasn’t warm any more. The car sat there on the drive, the perky sensible little car Tim had chosen – well, they’d chosen it together, really. For the fuel consumption, or whatever. It was white – so he could see her coming, he said, the safest colour for a car to be according to the surveys although secretly she’d have liked something chic and dark, like navy blue.

  Georgie came alongside it, running her hand over the bodywork – where had he said it was? She should have brought a torch, maybe, she couldn’t see much but the light at the street corner had come on and there was the tiniest bit of light left in the sky even though it was getting late. Long shadows, from the neighbour’s hedge, the neighbour she still hardly knew to talk to after five years, shadows from the two round bushes at the end of the drive. She held her wristwatch up to catch what light there was and saw that it was almost nine: she wondered at how much time seemed to have passed since Tim phoned, it unnerved her. Left alone, without Tim inside watching the news and reloading the dishwasher, time seemed to have turned more fluid. Flexible.

  Maybe that was it, the thought came to her as she felt the smooth cold metal of the car’s wing under her hand, that night out with the girls, it had just been the unfamiliarity of being without Tim, then staying up most of the night. Maybe that was what had turned things uncertain, in her memory. She let the thought move on and out the other side, not worth dwelling on. Maybe she would finish
that glass of wine when she got back in.

  And then she stopped because she felt it before she saw it. Much more than a scratch: she had imagined someone knocking against the car while it was parked, or at most keying it, although this wasn’t the kind of car vandals picked on. She stepped back to get a better look then remembered her phone, in her jeans pocket and held the glowing screen up to the place. Rear door, passenger side, a proper dent and scrape about six inches long, requiring force, a flake of red paint against the silver: it wasn’t a question of someone keying it. Georgie felt herself sway, unsteady with disbelief.

  She didn’t remember doing that. Not at all. She swallowed, feeling tonight’s booze in her system.

  Stepping back from the car Georgie looked at the dent, where it was, halfway down the body work, just beyond the passenger door. Odd. Something odd about where it was. A low bollard? Bollards weren’t painted red.

  She tried to think when she’d last used the car. Driving to the florist’s, yesterday? She couldn’t remember that for sure, either. She’d been in a state, it was true but this – this. It would have been loud. She’d have heard it. Tabs had been in the car too, and she’d have heard it. Slowly Georgie put the phone back into her pocket: the dark shadows of the drive seemed longer suddenly. And then she turned and ran, light on bare feet, back in, back inside her house because if she hadn’t noticed that scrape then what else? What else? Someone might have slipped inside, behind her.

  Once back in she downed the wine without thinking and put the glass in the dishwasher, set it going though it was only half full. She checked the back door, the wide glass sliding doors of the sitting room, then paced the house quickly, quietly, from room to room, under the little lights of Tim’s systems, the thermostats and security monitors and sensors that should reassure her but didn’t, not quite. Her heart bumping.

  Of course there was no one there. Of course. Georgie came to a stop at Tabs’ room, pushing gently at the door and standing in the doorway. And there she lay in bed, curled like a dormouse in a swirl of duvet and cushions, mouth half open in sleep, precious and golden in the glow of her nightlight. All around them the house was quiet.

  Georgie took a pill. She hadn’t done that in three years. She thought about taking two, and decided against it. Even opening the little medicine box and seeing the packet churned her: an episode, not long, when Tabs had been one or so and Mum had finally died after all those years getting less and less recognisable, six months or so when everything had panicked her. Everything had frightened her. She’d been good about it, though. She’d done her research, she’d stopped taking the pills when they advised it even though Tim had reassured her, another month or so wouldn’t do any harm and look how much better they made everything. He’d been kind.

  It didn’t take long before she felt things soften, as if the house was growing warmer around her. Georgie opened her drawer in the wall of drawers and compartments and hanging space to look for something to wear in bed and took out the pretty slip, silk and lace, that she’d worn in London and pulled it over her head. In the soft dark of the room, alone, it slipped down and settled on her and it felt just the right thing, not too warm, not too bare. She closed the doors carefully on the shelves and drawers and the row of dark expensive suits and slipped into the cool bed, luxuriously alone.

  Drifting, only half listening now to the sounds that reached her, the rustle of cats in the undergrowth, a hum of far-off traffic, the clicks and ticks of the house talking to itself, closing down, it was the feel of the suits that came back to her, and Tim, on their wedding day.

  Clean-shaven and bright-eyed in a pearl-grey morning suit with tails, a top hat, although they’d been twenty-four and twenty-six respectively. Dad as smart as he could manage, aghast at the sight of the limo and the flowers and Tim, specially Tim, with Dad in his best suit that was shiny at the elbows and a frayed tie. Mum in the care home and long past any of it, they couldn’t even get her out of the bed most days so he’d been on his own.

  Ten, twelve years ago, they’d been so young: but Tim had pressed ahead, eager. He had been infatuated with her, it occurred to her now, dreamy on the pillow in her silk slip. Behind her eyelids the memories flickered, the feeling came back to her, excited and awed and anxious, of how it had been to be on the receiving end. It didn’t seem so hard to believe in that warm encouraging quiet, lying there with her eyes closed. He’d been obsessed with what she wore, the make-up she put on: he had wanted sex every night, twice a night, he had wanted to be married. And he’d wanted them to try again. For a baby. In the bed Georgie shifted, feeling heat, unease.

  Nowadays she heard Tim tut over couples who went into marriage without pre-nups, when he saw the aftermath in his clients’ accounts – but he’d never asked for one when they got married. Tim Mr Organised, Mr Professional, Mr Practical. In the dark Georgie turned over on her side, wondering. If they got married now, would he ask for one? Life was long. Marriage had to last a long time.

  Georgie slept.

  In the Cinq they were crowded up against the bar four deep, and even Dom was moving at something like normal speed, on the edge of flustered as he leaned across from pouring four Old Fashioneds to flick on to the late night playlist on his laptop. Friday night and no time to think.

  Sometimes Frank wondered where they got their money from. Eleven quid a cocktail, a hundred quid minimum just on drinks, and they weren’t trust fund babies, they were anyone and everyone. Kids from the suburbs, from further out, Southend. Kids living in dodgy rentals on main roads. They weren’t buying houses, they were living instead and when the living ran out – well. No one knew what happened then.

  Shut up and pour. Ours is not to reason why. Frank’s shoulder ached from reaching up to the optics and he could feel the sweat dampening his shirt, under the suit. He’d taken off his tie: that much was allowed. Even Sinatra had taken off his tie when things got hot. Frank Sinatra, cool as a cucumber, his vest visible through his shirt like any Italian old-timer.

  He’d stashed the boxes down the corridor, under the velvet curtain where they concealed the spirits. They’d weighed a ton: files, Eddie had said.

  Lucy hadn’t said a word to him, but he’d been working hard avoiding her: he didn’t know what her game was, or their game, hers and Eddie’s – but it was trouble. Frank found himself scanning newcomers, turning every time the curtain at the door was pulled back, in case they returned.

  It was only Georgie from Brockley Rise he wanted to see again, only her that tugged at him. The memory of the afternoon in Eddie’s kitchen, taken for a mug – it felt to him like only she could wipe that out. Maybe it was all about just wanting to be a kid again, in those streets, ducking when the girl you liked turned the corner. Starting over.

  They didn’t come back in, of course.

  The call came just after midnight: if she’d taken two pills, it occurred to Georgie groggily, surfacing, she’d never have heard it. As it was she had to grope for her jeans on the floor, where the phone was buzzing angrily in the pocket.

  It was Holly. Disorientated, Georgie registered a lot of background noise, as if Holly was in a bar somewhere, or a party. A high pitch of noise, too, excitable people. ‘Hey babe,’ Holly shouted into the phone, too loud, too loose, then immediately broke off to answer someone calling across the room.

  Flopping back on the pillow, Georgie waited, woozy still, and a memory came back to her – with the sound of Holly’s bright, excitable voice – of long, long ago, when they’d worked together. Holly coming down after the weekends and someone rolling their eyes, ostentatiously rubbing at their nose as she snapped and dozed at her desk. Coke – well, Georgie supposed everyone took it these days, except her that is, except her and Tim. Maybe even little Lydia the personal assistant took it, perky little Lydia with her yellow car. Cocaine. Why had she thought of Lydia? Everything jumbled in her brain, she must have been deep asleep.

  ‘Holly?’ she said, and Holly was back again.

&nb
sp; ‘It’s you phoned me, remember, sweetheart,’ she said, loud. ‘No need for that tone, I don’t think.’

  ‘I didn’t – what tone?’ said Georgie, feeling things sharpen, anxiety nibbling at the edges. Holly so spiky, her world was another world. This was a mistake. She’d been dreaming, she couldn’t remember what, then she could. A warm soft dream of sex. ‘I called you yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that – it’s just – hold on a minute.’ A muffling of the receiver and then, ‘That better?’ The background noise had gone, as if Holly had left the party. Out on a balcony or something, at a back door with the smokers.

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ Holly said, defiant, then sighed. ‘So—’ sighing, ‘it sounded important.’ A silence. ‘What’s been going on?’

  ‘Oh, just, nothing, just—’ Georgie felt stupid suddenly.

  ‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’ said Holly, lowering her voice as if it was a secret. Dark and sexy and mysterious, their secret. ‘Our girls’ night out. We should do that again.’

  ‘That’s what he said,’ said Georgie, before she could think. Holly pounced.

  ‘Oh he did, did he? What was his name again? Martin? Something like that, right?’ She hadn’t needed to ask who. ‘Well, you did get along, didn’t you?’

  Holly hadn’t mentioned Tim – neither of them had. An alternative universe presented itself, in which Georgie was a free spirit. This was just a game, a fantasy. Nothing was going to happen. A man sending her flowers.

  ‘Mark,’ and she had given in. She was playing the game. Even more, maybe, because it had an edge of danger. ‘He – he’s called Mark.’

  Holly let out a breath, a tiny sound, but distinct, of satisfaction.

  ‘He sent me flowers,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Oh, did he, now?’ Was it her imagination, or did Holly sound almost envious? ‘An admirer. You dark horse, you, Georgie.’ Then a sigh. ‘No one sends me flowers.’