A Secret Life Read online

  She’d thought work would help: jolt her back on track, it would all recede. Something and nothing, a night out, a break from the real world, just a few hours. A dream. It was just that – it kept coming back.

  In glimpses. The way the club had looked inside, the coloured lights, the girl at the cloakroom. The sound of taxis hissing by in the rain, afterwards. And since she’d got back on the Saturday afternoon she’d felt like she was underwater. As if she couldn’t quite hear things properly. As if everything was passing her in a blur.

  ‘Georgina?’

  Georgie raised her head sharply, face out of her hands. Nobody but her mother-in-law called her Georgina, or ever had, not even Mum.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ Sue in the doorway, half amused, half frowning. Sue didn’t exactly do sympathy.

  ‘Oh, sorry, yes, yes,’ said Georgie, ‘I was just – just – it’s nothing.’

  But it was something. Something soft and warm and dangerous, just out of reach, in the dark of her cupped hands.

  ‘Giving your eyes a rest, yes, I know that feeling,’ said Sue. And sighed. Around them the school had settled into quietness, the soporific fug that always followed the lunch-break. ‘Well, tomorrow’s Thursday. Think on that.’

  Georgie smiled and nodded, looking back at her screen without focusing and eventually Sue moved off, to her own desk at the front of the office.

  The three of them standing there, Cat on one side of Georgie, standing with her elbows behind her on the bar and looking out into the room, Holly on the other side turning to watch the barman walking back in from somewhere behind the cloakroom, and him, him, looking past her at Georgie.

  What had his name been?

  The man who came back to the hotel with them. And that memory was sharp in focus, the memory that had come back to her the morning after and then evaporated again: his hand over hers at the reception desk’s little bell, stopping her ringing it. Following her up the stairs.

  And the shock of it prickled at her: in front of the computer screen she stopped, hands poised over the keyboard. That was new: that memory. He had been in the room with them. So when Holly said nothing happened – Georgie swallowed, lowered her fingers to the smooth warm keys. Dared not look right or left.

  He’d told her his name, but she still couldn’t remember it. And then her throat tightened: it had been her, Georgie, that had let him in. She had been the one had held the taxi door open for him and he had slid in beside her. His hand had been on hers. He had her hand in his and he had turned it over, soft, and raised it to his lips.

  Mark.

  She felt her lips open to say it, but had to stop herself.

  He had been called Mark.

  Frank stirred, heavy, in bed in the pale light. Something about waking up on your day off: everything felt different, before you even opened your eyes. Last night had been a late one and his head was banging in time with the scaffolders. He needed to change his life.

  His mum had been saying it for years. She was a tough act to follow, bringing him up on a cleaner’s wage single-handed, though she’d had Benjy five years now, her tame ex-copper and between them they kept up a barrage. The Cinq was beneath him.

  Eddie was always talking about selling up but never did anything, it was more like a boast, the money he could have if he sold. Now and again Frank had found himself wishing he would, just to shake things up a bit. Eddie about the age to start playing golf, or playing house with Lucy, in his big mansion with the gravel drive out beyond the North Circular.

  Something had changed, not overnight but not long back. A feeling, discontent, maybe you’d call it, with the world in general – all the shit in the streets, fast-food cartons and drunks sat with their legs out to trip you and the silver litter of laughing gas capsules and condoms and all of it – and with himself. Something had made him understand: you shouldn’t mess about. Get pissed, shag people you shouldn’t, drift into something you don’t know how to get out of. Being at Eddie’s beck and call, day and night: he’d started out pretending Frank was the son he’d never had, but if this was what being Eddie’s kid was like it was a good job the old bastard hadn’t had any.

  Frank got out of bed. The flat wasn’t picturesque, it was a white box on Dean Street in a small anonymous sixties block. Eddie owned the block: that and a couple of girly bars with flats over them and the Cinq, the property his nest egg. It had narrowly missed being compulsorily purchased for Crossrail: Eddie had been rubbing his hands ever since. It could be bulldozed, easy, and redeveloped. Eddie biding his time.

  Frank opened a drawer, pulled a T-shirt on over his boxers and wandered back to the window.

  She’d told him she lived in the suburbs, with a dreamy look in her eye. Shy Georgie from Brockley Rise. That was where she must be now, back out beyond the dirty edge of town in the green, where one forest blended into another. Where the old gangsters used to bury their victims, his mother had told him once but now it was where people like Eddie had their big houses.

  She hadn’t looked to him like your average mum on a night out looking for excitement, though. Frank had seen enough of them at the Cinq to know. And there it was again, the discontent, the sense that he’d taken a wrong turning somewhere, that twenty years ago, thirty, he should have been walking down her street in Brockley Rise. Waiting outside her door, being polite to her parents, planning for a mortgage. His ring on her finger, even if he’d never have been able to afford diamonds for her ears.

  But while he’d been unblocking a sink in the gents’ Dom had made her another of his dirty martinis and some other bloke had taken his chance, moving in.

  Something wasn’t right. She wouldn’t have. Frank sighed: it wouldn’t be the first time he’d got a woman wrong. He leaned his head against the window in the warm light, knocking it gently against the glass, over and over.

  Back on the floor beside the bed, his phone buzzed and jiggled, the screen lighting up.

  Frank took his time, the phone beginning to turn itself in a circle by the time he got there.

  It was Eddie. Of course it was.

  ‘Late one was it, son?’ and Frank sat down on the bed, scratching his stubble. Got to get out of this place.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Look,’ Georgie said, trying to make it sound upbeat, not pleading. Not bloody desperate.

  Because you had to know. When you couldn’t remember something, you needed to find out.

  ‘Cat. I just – there’s something—’

  The school playground was empty: the school had hummed with pre-lunch industry as Georgie carefully let herself out of the main entrance. She could see Sue through the office window, head down, minding her own business. She hadn’t needed to say anything, just gestured with the phone and Sue had nodded.

  Coming around the corner of a classroom with the blinds down against the midday light, she kept going until she got to where reception had planted a little garden, dusty-looking in October, in need of trimming back, but there was a bench under a big overarching buddleia. A bench where you wouldn’t be seen or heard. Because teachers were nosy: it was one of the first things Georgie had learned about them. Nosy and unhappy, and they liked nothing more than someone to judge. Parents and colleagues their favourite subject, and she was both.

  If you sat on the bench you couldn’t be seen from school: there was competition for it at break time, a lot of bum-shoving. Georgie sat on it gingerly. The school was on the edge of the village, and you could see where the trees began.

  ‘Cat?’ A sigh and she’d launched into it, It’s about Friday night, I just want to know but then it had caught up with her, the sound of Cat’s voice as she picked up. With the memory Georgie stood up, twitchy. She’d been like this since – since. Like her system was running twice as fast as usual. Food didn’t stay in her: she could feel it now, her stomach loosening to water. ‘Cat?’

  She said it again, because Cat still hadn’t spoken. They hadn’t talked since Saturday morning, unle
ss you counted the two texts. Five words in total.

  And then it dawned on her. Something was wrong. Not with Georgie, with Cat. ‘Is everything all right? Cat?’

  There was a sigh, slow, something waterlogged about it. Tearful? Georgie paced, sat back down again abruptly and the buddleia showered her with tiny brown seeds. ‘Look, forget me, never mind, it doesn’t—’

  But Cat answered, weary. ‘Calm down,’ she said. ‘Nothing happened.’ That again. Georgie found she was holding her breath.

  ‘Nothing?’ she said, looking away from the school.

  The trees were dense quite close up to the road, she hadn’t realised that. They didn’t walk there, after the first few times: there were paths, but too many of them, they criss-crossed, and once you were out of the sight of the road – and anyway quite soon litter appeared, magazines with pages stuck together, cans and condoms. Waiting, Georgie looked back at the building, a light going on behind the long windows of the assembly hall. Cat cleared her throat.

  ‘He was quite a gentleman, actually, as far as I could tell.’

  ‘Really?’ said Georgie, not quite relieved. Because she still wasn’t sounding like Cat: she sounded jaundiced, cynical, where Georgie had wanted forgiveness. Or even to know what she needed forgiving for. Kindness would do, and Cat was always kind, wasn’t she? Georgie felt slightly sick.

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘But he—’ Georgie hesitated.

  ‘He just got into the taxi with us,’ said Cat. ‘It wasn’t really your fault.’ Sighing. ‘I mean, I wasn’t in any fit state to argue, myself.’

  ‘I remember that bit,’ said Georgie. Him sliding warm against her and pulling the door shut, the taxi moving off before any of them could say anything, and then Georgie feeling laughter bubble up inside her. He’d been looking at her, that had been all it took.

  Inside the taxi he had still been looking at her: he had taken her hand.

  ‘But what happened after?’

  The tiny seeds were scattered down her arm, clinging, and she brushed at them, they clung. She remembered his hand coming round to stop hers, at the bell on the reception desk, his thumb soft in her palm, his back against her back.

  How long since she’d had sex with Tim, before Saturday night? A month, at least. Two. Something about that felt odd. Absence made the heart grow fonder. She shifted, uneasy, at the thought that somehow another man being interested in her had left a trace. A trace she couldn’t see or smell, but Tim could.

  ‘I don’t know why you let him into the hotel,’ said Cat, stiffly. ‘But no harm done, eh? He left again.’

  ‘Right,’ said Georgie, uncertain.

  ‘You remember that bit, right?’ Cat was still dry, withholding. Was it that there was someone else there? It was in the middle of the day, though. Harry would be at work, the boys at school.

  ‘Sort of,’ said Georgie. ‘I remember—’ Halting: she made an effort, actually to pin it down. Because, she realised, her efforts up until now, until Cat put her on the spot, had been not to remember. In case. ‘I remember him coming up the stairs with us.’ He’d been behind her. She remembered tripping on the worn carpet, falling upstairs. His hand on her hip from behind. Remembered not protesting.

  Cat was still talking. ‘Because you can’t rely on me to remember past that, once Holly got that brandy out, I was pretty much gone,’ said Cat. ‘Until I heard the door close, when he went.’

  ‘He came into the room with us,’ said Georgie. She could see him standing there under the low ceilings, looking around, quite relaxed as if it was all normal, three in the morning, him and three women in a cheap room full of beds. Mark.

  ‘His name was Mark,’ she said.

  There was a sigh, then Cat said, drily, ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I found the glasses,’ said Georgie suddenly. That was new. She’d gone into the bathroom looking for plastic cups and come back out with nothing, and there they’d been on the bedside table where she and Cat had left them, after emptying the bottle of champagne. ‘And then—’

  She remembered Cat pushing hers away, the brandy slopping. She remembered Cat lying down, face down on the single bed. ‘Should put her on her side,’ he’d said. Mark had said. He’d leaned down to her, solicitous.

  ‘Then I can’t remember anything else.’ It came out like a confession. Why couldn’t she remember? Georgie got to her feet.

  ‘You saw him off the premises,’ said Cat. ‘There. Job done.’

  ‘I did?’ Georgie stood very still. She didn’t remember that. If Tim knew.

  ‘I saw you go,’ Cat said. ‘I was spark out when you came back in – but you did come back, we both know that much. Because next morning, there you were, right?’ That tired, rusty laugh. ‘So like I say. No harm done.’

  And Holly said, Nothing happened. Why did it feel like she meant the opposite?

  Forget it.

  ‘All right,’ said Georgie. ‘All right.’ She needed to move, to get back to work, the permissions letters for activities week. The Christmas production timetable. From the school came the sound of a classroom full of chairs being scraped back, Janette’s voice raised. And silence, from Cat.

  ‘Cat,’ she said. ‘What is it? You’re not all right. Please tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Cat. ‘George. Shit. I wasn’t going to tell you.’

  Inside the school hall, Janette’s class began to sing.

  They’d been so young when they’d started working together. They’d been kids. Her and Cat.

  ‘Stage two, left boob, size of a Malteser.’ Once Cat had reeled it off, her list. ‘Harry found it actually, not me, he was—’ she’d broken off there but not before Georgie had pictured it, Harry with his arms round Cat in bed, sweet grumpy Harry. ‘Lumpectomy and a bit of chemo, so could be worse—’ Cat had sounded immediately better, normal. ‘Could be a lot worse.’

  Georgie had been pacing, one hand cupped over her ear against the reedy little voices raised in the hall. They were singing ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’: it was a church school. She didn’t know if Cat could hear, and hoped not. Like Georgie, Cat wasn’t religious in any bone of her body.

  Kids, and this was when you grew up. Stuff like this: hospitals. Biopsies.

  ‘Stage two is—’

  ‘Not as good as stage one but it’s OK. It’s good. It’s not aggressive, blah, blah—’ But Georgie could hear Cat’s voice tightening up.

  ‘Sorry I made you tell me,’ Georgie said. ‘I’m glad you did, though.’ She couldn’t stop thinking back down the years, and Cat’s boobs, the running joke, Cat and her cleavage, out for every special occasion. Parties, weddings, funerals.

  As it had been Friday night, squeezed up against the bar, Cat’s eyes sparkling as she ordered dirty martinis. ‘So – you already knew,’ said Georgie. ‘On Friday night.’

  ‘I just wanted to forget about it,’ said Cat. ‘Still do, really. The boys don’t know, OK? So—’

  ‘I get it,’ said Georgie. ‘I understand. How’s Harry?’

  ‘Shitting himself,’ said Cat. ‘And lovely. Of course.’

  ‘Well, if there’s anything – what can I do? What?’ Stop asking stupid bloody questions about how badly you behaved last Friday night, for a start. ‘Cat, there must be something. Have the boys?’ Tim would go nuts. ‘Send casseroles?’

  ‘Let’s make a date for when it’s all over,’ said Cat. ‘Another night out. That’s all I want. Honest, it could be worse. Honest.’

  Coming back into the office Georgie’s face must have said it all, because Sue had taken one look at her and decided not to ask. Back in front of her keyboard, Friday night receded: because what was all that worth? It seemed like nothing, or even, something benign. A bit of reckless behaviour and everyone back to their own beds. Nothing. Life’s too short.

  On playground duty at lunch Georgie stood with her sandwich and the children whirling around her, the forest beyond them silent and green. One thing had stuck, s
tubborn, out of all of it, one thing, in Georgie’s head: Cat and Harry. Harry, rolling over to take hold of Cat in bed, had probably saved her life one way or another. They could work wonders these days, and stage two was better than stage three, and – Georgie didn’t want to jinx it. She made herself stop.

  As the children circled and ran, from the tarmac to the play area to the fence against the road, Georgie identified Tabs, running, running, on the grass, white socks, hair flying. It seemed so long ago that Georgie had felt like that. She wrapped the sandwich back up in its foil and guiltily thrust it in the bin: a bad example. Sometimes she wished she could go back and start again. Still have Tabs – but somehow start again.

  Her phone buzzed. And as if on cue it was a text, from Cat: her heart jumped inside her at the name, on high alert, but it wasn’t what she’d expected, it wasn’t, Don’t tell Tim, or Do.

  Holls asked for your number, it read. Thought you might want hers.

  She stared, again, remembering Holly’s sharp knees, raised in the bathroom, the flash of smooth thigh, the narrowed eyes examining her and the hair went up, on the back of Georgie’s neck. They were chalk and cheese, her and Holly. Why would she want to be in touch?

  She knew why. Cat had been asleep – No use asking me, wasn’t that what she’d said, deliberate? Spark out and snoring. But Holly hadn’t. Out of nowhere, Georgie wanted a cigarette. Another message came through: Cat thinking again.

  Watch yourself with that one, though, it read. No holds barred with Holly. Specially when she’s on the rebound. A big heart emoji.

  On the rebound: Holly roaming with her wheelie suitcase, Holly debris in outer space, looking for a home.

  It could be Cat, kidding around, Cat pretending everything was normal, Cat teasing.

  Miss, miss! Georgie looked around, stuffing the phone away hastily, because Jason Burke, a beefy boy from Tabs’ class was tugging at her. Someone had got stuck in the hedge, a tiny girl from reception whose name Georgie hadn’t learned yet, they’d only been back two months, crying because her hair was caught, there was a scratch on her leg and blood on her sock. It took Georgie a full five minutes to coax her out, disentangling the hair, hanky for the blood, talking to her the whole time to stop her wriggling, calming her when the bell began to ring.