A Secret Life Read online

  From beyond the door came a sudden snore, and a grunt, and Holly turned her head to Georgie, catching her looking. Smiling. ‘You weren’t the only one, see,’ she said, and her shoulder pushed into Georgie’s again. ‘What’s the betting she can’t remember a thing when she wakes up?’

  Georgie groaned involuntarily and Holly pushed herself off the wall, leaning forward over her sharp knees, examining Georgie.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked, narrowing her dark-smudged eyes.

  Georgie swallowed, fragile. ‘I can’t—’ she began, but revised. ‘What happened?’ she said. ‘I can’t – I can’t really remember how I got—’ looking down at the slip, pushing it down to try and cover her thighs. The silk was pale greyish, oyster they’d called it and she’d thought it was a sophisticated colour but against it her skin looked grey too. ‘I mean – I remember coming up the stairs. I tripped over. I think I hurt my—’

  She stopped. The room, though. That memory was confused. Coming into the room. Holly reaching into her handbag and pulling out a flat bottle of something amber-coloured, brandishing it. Georgie put her hand to her mouth a second, feeling her stomach wobble.

  ‘You had – was it brandy?’

  Holly shrugged, amused. ‘My bad,’ she said. ‘Just a nightcap. I mean – we’d probably had enough already, yeah, but—’ And shrugged again.

  ‘But what actually happened? Did something – oh—’

  Because she remembered something. She did. The hand reaching past her to cover hers, above the night bell on the reception desk, the wrist in a suit cuff. She blinked, and it was gone: she’d dreamed it, or imagined it.

  Holly smiled, sympathetic, reaching an arm round her. The perfume again, enveloping Georgie: she stiffened reflexively, made herself relax.

  ‘One of those nights,’ said Holly, ‘Wasn’t it? Cat was spark out by the time you came up.’

  ‘What happened?’ Georgie could feel herself redden, stubborn, on the verge of tears again. Holly tilted her head, put a cool hand to Georgie’s cheek a second, then she let the hand drop, patted her on the shoulder, once, twice.

  ‘Chill,’ said Holly. ‘Nothing happened. Just – one of those nights.’ And the ghost of a wink, a sideways smile.

  ‘What did I—’ Georgie had another question, but she thought better of it, the sickness in her belly told her, just stay quiet.

  Holly’s smile widened, as she held Georgie’s gaze, knowing. ‘Nothing happened,’ she repeated. And then that look softened and was gone. Holly leaning back against the white tile, quite relaxed, reassuring, a hint of tiredness, a hint of concern but nothing more than that. Georgie had no reason not to believe her.

  Nothing happened.

  It didn’t feel that way.

  Chapter Six

  Sunday

  The room was hot, sweltering behind the heavy curtains. Even before she woke fully, Georgie could still feel the ache under her ribs, she could still feel her limbs sore and heavy: she lay motionless, trying to make the feeling go away.

  Beside her Tim stirred: she didn’t want him to wake and so when she turned her head to look at the clock she did it carefully.

  The feeling was still there. Was it only yesterday? She’d come home on the train feeling hollowed out, the muscles of her abdomen sore from vomiting; she had sat on the train with her overnight bag, looking at the other people without really seeing them. Dread in the pit of her stomach.

  Out through the brick tenements, the tower blocks, other railway lines and industrial units and then the green of the forest had started to appear. She had looked back a moment, and seen the whole city, the scale of it. Stretching back for miles all grey under the low warm sky, to the east the starburst of skyscrapers and she’d felt herself shiver, as if she was coming down with something.

  When the taxi dropped her off she had already been able to see Tim pacing in the hall behind glass. She had approached diffidently, slowing down the closer she got because the dread somehow was all tied up with this moment, of her stepping back over the threshold.

  She’d told herself, it would all be all right when she got home. All the way, leaving the hotel with her bag and turning to wave, walking to the bus, going through the barriers at the station, she’d waited for the feeling to pass, just chemical, just hangover, but it had stayed.

  Then Tim had seen her and he was flinging the door open and on the doorstep Georgie saw his tennis bag straight away, and a flush went through her. How could she have forgotten? Saturday afternoon was tennis.

  On the pillow now she turned her head slowly. He was facing away from her, his back rounded.

  She’d been so scared in that moment on the doorstep, a panic out of nowhere, but then as if he knew, he had been pulling her against him, bestowing a kiss distractedly somewhere, above her ear, ‘Tabs’ll be back at five,’ he said, speaking into her hair and she had held very still, squeezing her eyes tight ready to smile when he looked at her. But he didn’t: he released her and in the same moment he was off down the path with his keys jingling. Just turning back as he let himself into the car and she raised a hand to wave and off he went, too fast round the corner as always.

  So much for that. She could see Cat’s face. Hear her voice. ‘Come on. This is your husband we’re talking about. Love of your life. Do you think he doesn’t know what a girls’ night out is all about? We all need to let our hair down now and again.’

  The flush came on Georgie again now in the hot room and she pushed the covers away gingerly. Perhaps she was coming down with something, because yesterday, alone in the house despite the warm day all she had been able to do was shiver.

  Yesterday. The day had seemed to go on for ever: the weekend stretching out ahead of her, before normality could return.

  Putting down her bag in the hall, tiptoeing into the kitchen, filling the noisy kettle she had felt like – like someone who didn’t belong there, like the cleaner, or a burglar. Without Tabs in it the house had felt cold and empty and alien. She had gone upstairs and looked in Tabs’ room: neat as a pin, the duvet pulled completely straight, cushions and soft toys in a row, as if it was a bedroom in a hotel. A photocube on the bedside table with pictures of her: the one facing Georgie was of her with Tim, on a fairground ride, Tim’s arms right round her holding her steady and his face pressed against hers, beaming.

  She had thought then, While I was out there, dancing, Tim was home alone, and she had shivered again, at the memory of the dark dance floor. Her hair flying, catching on some man’s button. His? Yes, his. Him smiling and disentangling it.

  And then when they had been waking up in that horrible room in a hotel that could have been a brothel, thinking about it – who had booked it? Cat? Holly? – Tim had been making his own breakfast, filling the kettle, packing his own tennis bag.

  Georgie had stood in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, pinning all her hopes on a cup of tea, trying not to shiver. Now, in bed, she put a hand to her forehead, tentative: it was clammy, yes. It would be too easy, wouldn’t it? To lie in bed, pretending to be ill, so as not to talk. The sweat cooled: she lay still.

  Maybe she was coming down with something, maybe it was not getting enough sleep, she wasn’t used to that. In bed by ten, although she often woke at four. Often. Always. Woke certain she’d done something wrong and she just had to work out what it was. And then lay there, with things running round in her head, mostly about Tabs. Trying not to want another baby. Trying.

  Standing in the kitchen yesterday where she hadn’t even turned on the lights, the Saturday afternoon grey and dull beyond the window, Georgie had thought, maybe, a hot water bottle. They kept them in the garage, for some reason: and it was true, a hot water bottle was an untidy-looking thing, flopping, antique, their covers always grubby, they had a habit of springing out of drawers and landing like fish on the floor. But every cool night when she was a kid Mum had used to fill her one, and underfloor heating wasn’t the same.

  It had been properly chilly in th
e garage: it was a while since Georgie had been in there because it was Tim’s domain. His neat tool shelves, his power drill, his fold-out work bench. She stood, trying to remember where she’d seen it.

  It was Georgie’s talent, finding, if she was allowed to stand and think, and Tabs loved it. It seemed like magic to her, she liked waiting while Georgie closed her eyes and held up a hand, she clapped and clapped when, opening her eyes, Georgie led her straight to it, the special pen or the science workbook or the merit badge. And now Georgie knelt, looking under the work bench and there it was, or rather they were, three hot water bottles in various states of disrepair. She reached for the most presentable one, red rubber with a floral cover, and stopped, awkwardly, half under the bench. There was a box against the wall that she hadn’t seen before, a wooden box on its side, with a snap fastening, and a little brass padlock.

  Crouched in the dim dusty space Georgie had looked at the box: in that moment it had seemed to her that Tim lived in another universe, the man who owned all this stuff. She took the hot water bottle and sat back on her heels. She’d never seen him use any of the tools he already had and here was another one. She shuffled back, up and out, the movement, or something, bringing her out in a sweat that cooled immediately. She went back into the house through the kitchen door, hurrying, hurrying: she filled the bottle, still hurrying, and she could hear Tim in her head, hear him clicking his tongue, exasperated, careful – and burned herself. Shit.

  Stop. Stop. What’s going on? Why are you in such a state?

  Because Tabs wasn’t there. Because she thought everything would settle down when she got home and it hasn’t. Because Tim would come back from tennis and say something, she didn’t know what, he would say something and Georgie wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye.

  Because she still couldn’t remember how she got to bed on Friday night.

  And then outside a car door had slammed and there had been footsteps on the path.

  And Tabs on the doorstep, her own little pink wheeled suitcase parked beside her because she’d been on a sleepover and why hadn’t Georgie known that, Mummy, Mummy, Mummy. And Georgie kneeling to receive her, ‘Daddy fixed it with Millie’s mummy,’ Georgie was saying, while last night had retreated, back into the shadows.

  The shepherd’s pie on the side, not needed.

  After that, things had settled, soft, Tabs bringing with her that little comforting tick of motherhood, her steps overhead, padding in and out of her bedroom, the bathroom.

  Tim had come home late, from tennis and a few beers after the tennis, he said, they’d had something to eat too, only a passing frown at the hot water bottle, untidy on the kitchen counter and suddenly Georgie had been exhausted, so she had crept up to bed. Heard him watching TV, letting the cackle of voices lull her, the bursts of canned laughter. It would be all right in the morning. That was what she’d told herself.

  And now the morning was here.

  Out of bed, shower, clean your teeth, downstairs to make breakfast. It was early still, if she was quick – and then in that instant as she hesitated, readying herself for the quick quiet movement that would attract no attention Tim’s hand came out and took hold of her.

  It wasn’t inevitable, sex on Sunday morning, sometimes it was Saturday, sometimes he was too tired, particularly after an evening with the tennis boys, which was normal, wasn’t it? Once or twice she’d been tentatively on to mums’ chatrooms to see what other people did. All sorts of things seemed to be normal, which had unaccountably disturbed her. And now Tim tugged at her in the dark and she made herself soft, made herself relax. She moved into him, full body contact and he put his hands up under her ears, pulling her face towards him, looking at her in the dark, his fingers in her hair.

  She swallowed, hoping he wouldn’t hear. He didn’t seem to. He turned her over and his hands were on her hips from behind and Georgie closed her eyes. She let the thoughts into her head, shapes moving in the dark, the feel of his hands but she didn’t have time, he was quick. She waited, in darkness suppressing the old stiffening reflex, no, turning it into simple relief, until she was sure. Until his breathing slowed, regularised, and his hands slipped off her.

  She closed the bathroom door behind her softly and seeing her face in the mirror – pale, pouchy with sleep, unmade-up and something else – and hurried past it. She heard the light click on in the bedroom.

  Under the shower Georgie told herself, having sex was good. That was good, it meant things were getting back to normal, it meant – she put her hands up to lift her hair as she washed it, up under her ears and then she felt a lurch, back into panic. Her hands slippery with shampoo, she couldn’t be sure – left ear, yes, there, relieved, how could she have forgotten she had them in, right ear – no. No. There was no earring in her right ear. No diamond earring, the ones Tim had given her at Tabs’ birth, how could she – how could she—? The water ran on, drowning her, she grappled for the dial and pushed at it and the flow stopped. Blindly, eyes stinging with the shampoo she reached for a towel and in the same movement knelt, squatting in the shower tray.

  It wasn’t there. Could it have gone down the drain already? She sat back on her haunches a second, then set to work, quickly. There was a quick release on the drain cover and with clumsy fingers she prised it off. Water still beneath it, a swirl of hair half blocking the outflow – if it had come out in the shower it would still be there. She leaned back against the shower, and heard Tim clear his throat next door. He’d be reading in bed. Would he get up and make a cup of tea?

  It could have come off in the bed. Couldn’t it? Of course. That was where it was.

  But she knew, the pattering of her heart told her. Deep down, she knew. She put a hand to the right ear: it was tender, but not much.

  Blinked, and there she was on the dance floor, smiling as he disentangled her hair from his shirt button.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ Tim’s voice from next door, on cue.

  ‘Oh yes please, thank you.’ It came out higher-pitched, more relieved than it should have but perhaps he wouldn’t notice through the bathroom door.

  She could hear Cat say, Just tell him. Exasperated. Just tell him, you don’t know where it came out. It’s just an earring.

  She heard the bedroom door, and Tim on the stairs. The quilt was folded back neatly, exposing the sheet and she could see straight away there was nothing there but she looked anyway. Carefully, scrupulously, she felt across the sheet, shook out the duvet: she was on the floor and peering under the bed when he came back in. Georgie hadn’t heard him coming back up, the first she heard was him laughing and that was her chance, she knelt back and looked up at him.

  ‘I—’ her hand going up to her ear. But Tim got there first, his face already clouding.

  ‘You haven’t—’ he said. Exasperated. Controlling it. Disappointed.

  ‘I don’t know – I thought it might have come out in the shower,’ she said, desperate suddenly.

  ‘But—’ he was shaking his head, regretful. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he said. He sat down next to her. A hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘It wasn’t there last night,’ he said.

  She stared. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ she said, and could hear herself, querulous like a child. He looked at her. And sighed.

  ‘Because you were asleep, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘You were lying on your side and I kissed you there, under your ear, that ear—’ her hand went up to it reflexively, she hadn’t remembered, she hadn’t woken. His hand patted her shoulder now. ‘I didn’t think anything of it except that your ear looked a bit sore, I assumed you’d taken them both out and put them away.’

  ‘So it must—’ she shifted on the bed and he turned away from her to pick up her mug. ‘It must have been while I—’

  He turned back, and handed her the tea, shrugging. ‘You know what,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Smiling, sad. ‘It’s only money.’

  Staring down into her lap, the tea burning her hand, Georgie blinked
back something, not tears, panic. Not, though. Not, though. Not only money.

  And from across the landing she heard Tabs call.

  *

  It had taken five years of IVF to get Tabs. Donor eggs and donor sperm in the end, and thousands of pounds. Thousands, Tim’s face grim and set as another round went for a burton, Georgie off work, and it turned into a full-time job, lying there having her ovaries manipulated. The hormones. The pregnancy tests, crouched on the loo not daring to look. My little baby.

  Her world had blossomed that night, the night Tabs was born, everything Technicolor, a big beautiful cherry tree with pink pompoms on every branch, against a bright blue sky. Tim beaming, the next morning, so full of it she could hear him booming in the corridors outside, boasting, telling anyone who’d listen. And Georgie had lain there, floating on the narrow bed, her head turned sideways to gaze through the perspex of the cot.

  She hadn’t got pregnant from ordinary unprotected sex since that first time, when she’d been twenty-three.

  They got through the day. Sundays always felt endless, didn’t they?

  Tim didn’t really mention the earring again. Only to say, mildly, maybe she should call the hotel and see if it had been found, which made Georgie’s heart sink because if only he knew what kind of hotel it had been he wouldn’t have bothered.

  Georgie did call: the receptionist listened, to give him credit (she remembered a young woman when she’d left yesterday morning, a narrow face although this was a foreign male voice), but there was an edge of amusement in his questions, when, where, which bed that gave Georgie no hope at all. If you worked on zero-hours cleaning contracts and you found a diamond earring, what would you do? Answering his questions, though, talking about that grubby low-ceilinged room, remembering the thin mattresses – the mildewed bathroom – while looking down from the bedroom window at Tim’s velvety lawn, she felt that uneasy feeling that had never really gone away stir and grow, she felt the shiver.