A Secret Life Page 5

  ‘You friends check out two hour ago,’ he said. She’d forgotten: Cat and Holly had made a weekend of it, hadn’t they?

  ‘Oh, I—’ she began to apologise but he was still talking.

  ‘Nothing has been give in with me,’ he said, ‘but if you leave you number.’

  She did that, hastily, guiltily, and hung up. Cat and Holly wouldn’t have been looking for any earring, would they? And if they’d found it they would have told her.

  Later, when Georgie went looking for Tim with his coffee, calling up the stairs with Tabs trailing behind her, she found him in his study examining the insurance documents for the house. He looked up at her, preoccupied and murmured vaguely ‘Just – you know, I thought we might be covered. They’re named on the house policy. The earrings are.’ And took the coffee. His eyes resting on her, mild, vague.

  What if he asked, Did you, could they? What if he asked, half joking but not quite, ‘What on earth did you get up to on Friday?’

  He smiled. ‘What about a barbecue this evening?’ he said. ‘Still warm enough, isn’t it?’

  Setting Tabs bouncing down the stairs, full of excitement; Georgie could follow, with a rush of relief that for the moment they didn’t have to go there, talk about it any more. It would come up again, because they had been expensive, because Tim was a numbers man, a money man and a hole in the accounts would niggle at him, he wouldn’t be able to help himself. But for now. Tabs skipping ahead of her, out through the kitchen, sticky hands on the glass to where her sandpit distracted her almost immediately.

  The question was still there, though, in her head: sooner or later it would have to be answered. What on earth?

  In the kitchen, resting her back against the counter, Georgie got out her mobile phone. Looking down at the little screen, looking up, around the room. Sleek matt cupboards without handles and matching toaster and blender and juicer. She’d chosen it all, in the big department store with Tim, so why didn’t it look like hers? In a kind of daze she reached out and touched the kettle, forgetting it was hot, and let out a yelp. Stupid: it brought tears to her eyes, which was more stupid.

  The kitchen Georgie had grown up with was nothing like this: there had been stained cookbooks on a shelf and toast crumbs and a table covered with stuff: papers and bags of bananas and Dad’s fishing tackle. Brockley Rise: it seemed so far away but it was still there, wasn’t it? Dad was, there were people, barmen in Soho, who knew it as well as she did.

  The thought came into her head, comforting, a little lifeline, that Cat’s kitchen was probably like that, boys barging in and out of it and with half an ear for where Tim was she got out her phone and dialled Cat’s number.

  Thinking, while it rang, These things happen, don’t they? On a girls’ night out.

  *

  Because there were things she did remember. Of course there were.

  A girls’ night out in some dodgy club, getting carried away to the music, you lose a button or an earring but you keep dancing, you have another drink. You talk too loudly, and then a slow dance with a man you don’t know. A kiss – all right, but she hadn’t asked for it and it hadn’t been that kind of kiss.

  At her ear Cat’s phone rang and rang, and then Georgie heard Tim’s feet on the stairs, and she hung up.

  At seven, eight, it was still hot. There was something funny with the weather, whatever Tim said. Tim had pulled the barbecue – his pride and joy, a big, shining state-of-the-art contraption, with teak and steel and a hanging row of implements – out on to the paving. Tabs was standing beside him obediently, two feet away and if she came closer his hand would go up instantly. The fridge was full of meat, chicken marinading, a big steak, sweetcorn on skewers – and standing between the glass doors waiting to be told to bring it out Georgie could feel the heat, it made her queasy. She was still wearing a sweatshirt and jeans.

  ‘I need to put something else on,’ she said: Tim didn’t hear but she went anyway, running on the stairs.

  In the bedroom she’d stripped off the jeans, when she heard the buzz from the pocket, a text. Bending for it she saw the bruise she’d seen yesterday, darkening at her shin, and then another. Her inner thigh, high up, a patch of yellow-green. She touched it: it was tender, and in that moment her whole body felt tender, her neck felt sore, under her arms.

  She took the phone from her pocket. It was from Cat. You OK?

  Her heart was thumping, ridiculously. What did that mean? What did she mean? Why wouldn’t she be OK? Although she wasn’t, was she? Not OK. Before she could stop herself Georgie was texting back. Lost a bloody earring. Typed like that it didn’t look so bad. Not so serious. You didn’t see anything did you? In the room? How bad was I Friday night? Jokey, right? What am I like? Right?

  She stared at the phone. No answer.

  Cat hadn’t been like that yesterday morning. When they’d been getting up. She hadn’t been clipped or wary. She’d been sitting up when Georgie and Holly came back into the room, woken by the whispered conversation or – more likely – the repeated flushing. She had rolled out of bed with half her hair sticking up. Wrinkling her nose on the threshold of the bathroom and laughing back at them.

  ‘We still making a weekend of it, then?’ Holly had said, standing at the bar, before they even got going. She’d been talking to Cat: they’d tried to persuade Georgie to stay on too. The two of them, and the guy. The guy, leaning on the bar and watching her steadily. She remembered shaking her head, dreamy, tipsy, knowing he was looking. ‘Got to get back to my husband,’ she’d said.

  Remembering that Georgie slid to the floor, bare-legged, leaning against the bed. Outside she could hear Tim, instructing Tabs.

  She’d said that. So it wasn’t as if she’d been acting young and free and single. She’d even felt proud, saying it, I’m spoken for. But there’d been other reasons for saying it: I’m wanted, you see. Turning slightly then so she couldn’t see him. The tall man. He’d told her his name, too. Frank had been the barman, but the other—? Leaning in to her, his mouth smiling, his eyes smiling.

  At the bar Cat had been loudly proclaiming she was up for it. ‘They can fend for themselves, Harry can do the football. Christ he can even stick their kit in the washing machine, he knows how it works.’ Flinging her arms around, defiant and angry, that was Cat. But she gave herself away when she said Harry’s name, her eyes just closed a fraction, her smile just softened. They couldn’t get enough of each other, her and Harry.

  Of course, she’d be on the way home, maybe she’d be home by now and no time to be on the phone, setting Georgie’s mind at rest, maybe that message – of course. She’d called Cat, so the text just meant, Why did you call? Still, Georgie’s heart was fluttering. She needed to get dressed, she needed to bring the plastic-wrapped barbecue food out to Tim.

  But Georgie had been the one had gone home, and Cat had stayed on until the afternoon train on Sunday. For the first time, something about how Cat had behaved pricked at Georgie. She had enjoyed herself, hadn’t she? Innocent fun. Bouncing between blokes on the dance floor, taking none of them seriously. One of them had leaned and whispered something in her ear, turning to laugh with his mates when he said it but Cat had just smiled, beatific, and said to him, That sounds lovely but not just now. I don’t think so. ‘Blokes,’ she’d said in the toilets after, repairing the damage in the mirror. ‘If you had sons you’d know, they can’t help themselves.’

  ‘George?’ Tim was shouting for her. Hurriedly she reached into the wardrobe, tugging out an old sundress, blindly shoving the gold silk that emerged with it back inside.

  ‘Coming,’ she called back. Silence.

  Inside the sundress, pulling it down in a sweat, remembering the hot dark of the dance floor. They can’t help themselves. Cat knew men, with her sons and her Harry, but what did she know, Georgie, about them? Blokes. Her dad, pottering about his sheltered accommodation, worrying about the old bloke next door, down to the pub once a week for skiffle night, perpetually kind, perp
etually anxious, the only woman for him had been Mum. Was that men? Tim, ordering the house around her, building it for her, putting his arms round her to welcome her home. At school there were no men to speak of, only the odd playground dad trying not to catch anyone’s eye.

  Downstairs, the phone still in her hand, into the kitchen. She set the phone down and brought out the meat in its bowls.

  Are you OK? Cat’s message sat on her screen. She wondered what they’d got up to, last night? Her and Holly. Had they talked about Georgie? Outside now, obediently, setting the bowls down on the table in the shade, peeling off the clingfilm. Tim barely looked up and she hurried back into the kitchen. Opened the fridge. Salad, sweetcorn. She hesitated.

  Holly had been nice yesterday morning. Friendly. Reassuring. Friday night had been – a bit different. Friday night she’d been more aloof, but maybe night behaviour and morning behaviour are different, and maybe having your whole life in a little suitcase in the Ladies’ Cloaks made you more careful. Friday night swam in front of Georgie’s eyes again. Leaning on that bar, Holly watching the square-shouldered barman move to and fro. Nice man, the thought popped into Georgie’s head. Nice man who knew where she was from.

  And then on the side, the phone vibrated again, quick. Georgie left the fridge door hanging open and picked it up. From Cat: Forget about it.

  Which meant? Which meant?

  ‘Georgie!’ Tim’s voice, on the edge of angry, cutting through all of it. Georgie grabbed the salad and the sweetcorn and shoved the fridge door shut with her shoulder, catching her elbow on it and still feeling it as she came outside into the heat.

  Tim in his apron, Tabs in hers, a cloud of smoke and the smell of meat cooking.

  Which meant, Forget it. Don’t give it a thought. Pull yourself together, Georgie.

  She put the bowls down, Tim turning to look at her, and straightened with the smoke stinging her eyes. ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ she said.

  The weekend would end eventually, the traces of Friday night would be washed away, Tim would be back at work. Only a matter of hours and life would be back to normal.

  Forget it.

  Chapter Seven

  Monday passed, and Tuesday, like normal days on the outside.

  Lunchboxes, clean uniform, into school. Tim up and out, passing her in his suit as she stood at the kitchen counter in her dressing gown. The silk and lace slip had been exchanged for one of the T-shirts with cartoon characters she’d slept in more or less since Tabs had been born. Georgie had washed the slip carefully, by hand, after school on Monday and hung it out to dry. Under the dull glare of the October sky, still hot, it had dried in a moment and she had ironed it quickly and put it away at the bottom of her underwear drawer, kneeling in the bedroom and thinking a second, wistful, tentative.

  The panic of the morning after had ebbed, leaving an uneasy curiosity, a guilty fascination whenever her thoughts settled on that night. The room under the eaves. A flash of memory now and again: had she raised her arms obediently to have the slip slither down over her, or had she invented that?

  The diamond earring had not been mentioned again, and maybe it would be forgotten after all, until the next birthday came around and Tim would get her another pair, or something to replace them. The hotel didn’t call, but Georgie went on thinking, thinking. In the school office at her desk, working in a kind of daze that Sue her co-worker tiptoed around, after one or two questions about the night out that Georgie mumbled something and nothing to in response, she found herself putting a hand up now and again, wonderingly, to her earlobe. Feeling for the tenderness.

  She had put the remaining earring carefully in its little leather box, in her handbag, just in case.

  The weather was going to change, maybe at the end of the week. She heard them say it on the radio as she made tea on Tuesday night, waiting for Tim to get home and remembering the rain in the Soho streets and then the germ of an idea started up, vague at first, dismissed at first. Could she go up to town? The thought of those streets on a cold morning was enticing, a bright autumn Saturday in London alone, like the old days – and not just for the freedom, for the shopping. She wanted to know, she had this vague daft idea that if she went back there, stood in front of the hotel, maybe, she would remember. It would fall into place: the steps, the railings.

  But not two weekends in a row, there was Tim’s squash, there was tennis, there was Tabs. He would roll his eyes.

  Could she call the club? Le Cinq. Maybe she would get to talk to him, the nice barman, perhaps he would remember her? He had seemed to her like the kind of man, if he found someone’s diamond earring, or if he saw a cleaner find one— and then the thought of the phone conversation alone – Who? Sorry, love – was enough for her to put the idea to the back of her mind.

  Let it all settle. That was the thing to do. Trouble was, it wouldn’t.

  In the middle of the week, school was always quiet. The further it got from the weekend the more resigned the children were to their captivity. Usually Georgie felt the positive change: Wednesday you could relax, just a bit, things went more smoothly, there was more time.

  This week wasn’t like that, hadn’t been from the start: however much she wanted things to settle back to the humdrum, they refused to. Even Tim had frowned at her, this morning and said, ‘What is it?’ when she raised her voice to Tabs. When she couldn’t find her handbag and there was a muddy footprint in the kitchen and all of it conspiring to put her on edge, everything escaping her.

  Growing up, Georgie hadn’t imagined she’d be this person. Keeping everything neat, a place for everything: the house she’d grown up in hadn’t been like this. Not a mess exactly – but the kitchen table had always had to be cleared for dinner, there had been a jumble of shoes in the hall. And she’d been the worst offender: Mum had always been in despair at the state of her room. It was one of the reasons Dad always used to take a while to sit down in the new house, walking round it like he wasn’t sure if he was in the right place. ‘How d’you find the teabags, George?’ he’d asked her, gazing round the newly finished kitchen, the doors you just pressed for them to spring open. Half joking, half – half in despair.

  She had always understood why Tim wanted it like this. The miscarriage had been as hard for him as for her, both of them so young, such a shock, just when they’d got their heads round it. And messy. The mess. She explained it to herself as nest-building: it touched her heart when she thought of it that way. She’d tried to tell Dad, when she had explained about the IVF and he had nodded as if he understood but he still looked around uncertainly every time he came to stay, not setting his overnight bag down till he was pleaded with.

  And now the house, the big bright house with its wide windows and smooth lawn and empty surfaces, was saying something else to her. It was saying, You need to look after all this, it doesn’t get done on its own, you can’t let things slide. One muddy footprint –

  Tim had stroked her cheek after he’d said it, What is it?, gently. ‘You still haven’t caught up on your sleep, is that it?’ Shaking his head and smiling. ‘I hope it was worth it.’ And he’d kissed her on the top of her head and gone.

  At her tiny desk in the window corner of the brightly lit school office Georgie was writing up an email about next year’s activities week while two teachers stood behind her, bitching about a reception child they had identified as the source of the latest outbreak of nits. Janette Evans, close to retirement and sour, and Marie Webster, her acolyte, watching Janette’s every move for how to be tough, how to be in control. They went on and on, round in circles, not quite coming out with it: The mother’s a lazy cow, single mother, there’s an old fridge in their front garden, it’s got to be her. Georgie took a deep breath. School always smelled of reheated dinners and toilets, kids and their digestive tracts: how had she been here two years without even thinking about it? Perhaps she had a bug: she’d felt sick for days.

  She became aware of Sue, at the door with her coat on, ready to r
ing the bell for the end of break, looking at her. She liked Sue, older, a single mother to teenage Tara, weary and understanding. Georgie smiled, uncertain, then looked quickly back at the computer screen.

  She’d taken the job there a year before Tabs began school, everything in place to be a good mum, socialising with other mothers, acquiring colleagues. How old was Sue? Her clothes said sixty: patterned blouse, thick cardigan, but Georgie knew Tara was sixteen and she probably wasn’t much more than fifty. She was kind, but not unconditionally. She’d been patient, this week, but Georgie was going to have to sort herself out, start smiling, start chatting, move faster.

  Sometimes she could see Tabs, filing past the door for lunch or PE or outdoor play, and her heart lifted, jumped, out of the flatline. The work was easy, but she liked it all right. There was plenty to keep on top of. Sending email reminders, dishing out uniform forms, taking calls when kids are off sick. Chasing down truants and allergies and doctors’ details. And outbreaks of nits.

  ‘It’s not brain surgery,’ she had ventured to Sue once, like a traitor.

  ‘That’s what he says, isn’t it?’ Sue’s eyebrows had been raised in outrage. ‘Your husband.’

  ‘Well—’ Georgie hesitated, uneasy. ‘I did tell him, it’s a good job, and I like it.’ Sue had shoved a hip on to the corner of her desk then and Georgie had thought she was going to go off on one. But all she said was, ‘I’d like to see him do it.’ And then gone out to buy milk for their tea, rather abruptly.

  Georgie looked up again now but the doorway was empty and then from outside in the playground the bell began to jangle. You could tell when Sue was ringing, it travelled, loud and steady. Unhurriedly Janette and Marie departed, Janette’s voice still droning.

  The door closed behind them and it was just Georgie, for a second, for as long as it would take for Sue to see the last child in, and in that second she gave in, and lowered her face into her hands.