The Secrets She Keeps Read online

  “You’re right,” he said sarcastically. “That’s because I get up and go to work so I pay for this lovely house and our two cars and those clothes in your wardrobe . . . and the holidays, school fees, gym membership . . .”

  I should have kept my mouth shut.

  Jack belittles my blog, but I have over six thousand followers and last month Mucky Kids was named by a parenting magazine as one of the five best mummy blogs in Britain. I should have hit Jack with that fact, but by then he’d gone to have a shower. He came downstairs wearing nothing but his short dressing gown, which always makes me laugh. After apologizing, he offered to rub my feet. I arched an eyebrow. “What are you going to rub them on?”

  We settled for a cup of tea in the kitchen and began discussing getting a nanny, trotting out the same cases for and against. I love the idea in theory—the me time, added sleep, and extra energy for sex—but then I picture a tight-bodied Polish girl bending over to fill the dishwasher or wrapped in a loosely tied towel as she leaves the bathroom. Am I paranoid? Maybe. Sensible? Absolutely.

  I met Jack at the Beijing Olympics. I had a job in the media center looking after the accredited journalists. Jack was working for Eurosport. He was still quite junior, learning the ropes, watching how it was done.

  Both of us were too busy in Beijing to notice each other, but when it was over the host broadcaster threw a party for all the affiliated media. By then I knew a lot of the journalists, some of whom were quite famous, but most were boring, always talking shop. Jack seemed different. He was funny. Cool. Sexy. I liked everything about him, including the name Jack, which made him seem like a regular Tom, Dick, or Harry. He also had a great smile and film-star hair. I watched him from across the room and made the mistake of plotting our entire relationship in the course of sixty seconds. I had us marrying in London, honeymooning in Barbados, and having at least four children, a dog, a cat, and a big house in Richmond.

  The party was winding down. I thought of something clever to say and made my way through the crowd. But before I could reach Jack he was waylaid by a female reporter from Sky Italia. Big hair. Voluptuous. Faces close. Shouting to be heard. Twenty minutes later I watched him walk off with the Italian job and I immediately felt cheated upon. I found a dozen reasons why I didn’t like Jack. He was cocky. He put highlights in his hair. He whitened his teeth. I told myself that he wasn’t my type because I didn’t go for pretty men. This might not have been a conscious choice. Pretty men didn’t usually go for me.

  It was two years before we met again. The International Olympic Committee held a reception for delegates who were in London to inspect venues for the 2012 Games. I saw Jack arguing with a woman in the hotel foyer. He was animated and adamant about something. She was crying. Later I saw him alone at the bar, drinking the free booze and hijacking plates of canapés from passing waiters.

  I pushed my way between bodies and said hello. Smiled. Was it wrong to catch him on the rebound?

  We chatted. Laughed. Drank. I tried hard not to try too hard.

  “I need some fresh air,” Jack said, almost falling off the stool. “Fancy a walk?”

  “Sure.”

  It was nice to be outside, walking in step, leaning close. He knew a coffee place in Covent Garden that stayed open till late. We talked until they threw us out. Jack escorted me home and walked me to my front door.

  “Will you go out with me?” he asked.

  “On a date?”

  “Is that OK?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about breakfast?”

  “It’s two thirty in the morning.”

  “Brunch, then.”

  “Are you angling to spend the night?”

  “No, I just want to make sure I see you tomorrow.”

  “You mean today?”

  “Yes.”

  “We could do lunch.”

  “I don’t know if I can wait that long.”

  “You’re sounding needy.”

  “I am.”

  “Why did you fight with that woman I saw you with?”

  “She broke up with me.”

  “Why?”

  “She said I was too ambitious.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that it?”

  “She also said I killed her fish.”

  “Her fish?”

  “She keeps tropical fish. I was supposed to be looking after them and I accidentally turned off the water heater.”

  “When you were living with her?”

  “We weren’t exactly living together. I had a drawer. It’s where she kept my balls.”

  “She was crying.”

  “She’s a good actress.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “No. Are you always like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Interrogating.”

  “I’m interested.”

  He laughed.

  Our first proper date was a lunch at Covent Garden, close to where we both worked. He took me to the Opera Terrace. Afterwards we watched the street performers and buskers and living statues. Jack was easy company, curious and attentive; one good story led to another.

  We went out again the next evening and shared a cab home. It was past midnight. We both had to work the next day. Jack didn’t ask to come inside, but I took his hand and led him up the stairs.

  I fell in love. Madly. Deeply. Hopelessly. It should happen to everyone once—even if love should never be hopeless. I adored everything about Jack—his smile, his laugh, his looks, the way he kissed. He was like an everlasting packet of chocolate biscuits. I knew that I’d eat too many and make myself sick, but I ate them anyway.

  Six months later we were married. Jack’s career blossomed, then stalled for a while, but now it’s moving again. I fell pregnant with Lucy and turned down a promotion that would have taken me to New York. Lachlan arrived two years later and I quit my job to become a stay-at-home mum. My parents helped us buy the house in Barnes. I wanted to go farther south and have a smaller mortgage. Jack wanted the postcode as well as the lifestyle.

  So here we are—the perfect nuclear family—with an oops baby on the way and the doubts and arguments of the middle years starting to surface. I love my children. I love my husband. Yet sometimes I rake my memory to find moments that make me truly happy.

  The man I fell in love with—the one who said that he loved me first—has changed. The happy-go-lucky, easygoing Jack has turned into a brittle man whose emotions are wrapped so tightly in barbed wire that I cannot hope to unloop them. I’m not focusing on his failings or tallying his shortcomings. I still love him. I do. I only wish he wouldn’t fixate so much on himself or question why our family isn’t more like the Disney Channel variety where everyone is happy, healthy, and witty and there are unicorns tethered in the garden.

  AGATHA

  * * *

  My shift finishes and I get changed in the stockroom, rolling my smock and name tag into a ball and shoving them behind the tins of olive oil and cans of tomatoes. Mr. Patel expects employees to take their uniforms home, but I’m not doing his laundry.

  Shrugging on my winter coat, I slip out the rear door, skirting the rubbish bins and discarded cardboard boxes. Pulling my hood over my head, I imagine I look like Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. She was a whore abandoned by a French ship’s officer, who spent her life staring out to sea, waiting for him to return. My sailor is coming home to me and I’m giving him a baby.

  On the eastern edge of Putney Common I catch the number 22 double-decker bus along Lower Richmond Road to Putney Bridge. In the early part of my pregnancy people weren’t sure whether to congratulate me or buy me a gym membership, but now I get offered seats on buses and crowded trains. I love being pregnant, feeling my baby inside me, stretching, yawning, hiccuping, and kicking. It’s like I’m never alone anymore. I have someone to keep me company and listen to my stories.

  A businessman sits opposite me, dressed in a suit and tie. In his midforties, with hair the color of mushroom soup. His eyes travel over my baby bump and he smiles, finding me attractive. Fertile. Fecund. Isn’t that a good word? I only learned it the other day. Fe-cund. You have to put the accent on the un sound and punch out the d.

  Mr. Businessman is checking out my rock-star cleavage. I wonder if I could seduce him. Some men get off on sleeping with pregnant women. I could take him home, tie him down, and say, “Let me do the touching.” I would never do it, of course, but Hayden has been away for seven months and a girl has needs.

  My sailor boy is a communications technician in the Royal Navy, although I don’t really know what that means. It’s something to do with computers and intelligence and briefing senior officers—which sounded very important when Hayden tried to explain it to me. Right now he’s on HMS Sutherland chasing Somali pirates somewhere in the Indian Ocean. It’s an eight-month deployment and he won’t be home until Christmas.

  We met last New Year’s Eve at a nightclub in Soho. Hot and noisy, with overpriced drinks and strobing lights. I was ready to go home well before midnight. Most of the guys were drunk, checking out the teenage girls in their crotch-defying dresses and fuck-me heels. I feel sorry for hookers these days—how do they stand out anymore?

  Occasionally some guy would summon up enough courage to ask a girl to dance, only to be dismissed with a flick of her hair or the curl of a painted lip. I was different. I said hello. I showed interest. I let Hayden press his body against me and yell into my ear. We kissed. He grabbed my arse. He assumed he was in.

  I was probably the oldest woman in the place, but a hell of a lot classier than the rest of them. Admittedly, gravity has made some inroads on my arse, but I have a nice face when I paint it properly, and I can hide my muffin
top with the right clothes. All-importantly, I have great boobs, have done since I was eleven or twelve, when I first noticed people staring at my bust—men, boys, husbands, teachers, and family friends. I ignored them at first—my boobs, I mean. Later I tried to diet them away and strap them down, but they wouldn’t be easily squashed or flattened or diminished.

  Hayden is a boob man. I could tell from the first time he set eyes on me (or them). Men are so obvious. I could see him thinking, Are they natural?

  You bet they are, buster!

  At first I thought he might be too young for me. He still had pimples on his chin and looked a little scrawny, but he had lovely dark wavy hair, which I always think is wasted on a boy.

  I brought him home and he shagged me like a man who thought he might not get laid for another eight months, which was probably right, although I don’t know what sailors get up to on shore leave.

  Like a lot of my boyfriends, he preferred me on top so my boobs hung down around his face while I bucked and moaned. Afterwards I cleaned myself up in the bathroom and half expected Hayden to get dressed and leave. Instead he snuggled deep under the covers and wrapped his arms around me.

  In the morning he was still there. I cooked him breakfast. We went back to bed. We had lunch and went back to bed. That was pretty much the story for the next two weeks. Eventually we ventured out and he treated me like his girlfriend. On our first proper date he took me to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. We caught the River Bus from Bankside Pier and Hayden pointed out landmarks along the way, like HMS Belfast, a museum ship near Tower Bridge. Hayden knew the whole history—how she’d been damaged by a German mine in World War II and later took part in the Normandy landings.

  At the Maritime Museum he continued my education, telling me about Lord Nelson and his battles against Napoleon.

  One particular painting caught my eye. Called Tahiti Revisited, it showed an island in the South Pacific with rocky peaks, lush forests, palm trees, and voluptuous women bathing in a river. As I stared at the scene, I could feel the warmth of the sand beneath my toes and smell the frangipani blossoms and feel the salt water drying on my skin.

  “Have you ever been to Tahiti?” I asked Hayden.

  “Not yet,” he said, “but I’ll go one day.”

  “Will you take me?”

  He laughed and said that I looked seasick on the River Bus.

  On another date we went to the Imperial War Museum in South London and I learned that more than fifty thousand sailors died in World War II. It made me frightened for Hayden, but he said the last British warship to be lost at sea was the HMS Coventry during the Falklands War, which was before Hayden was even born.

  We had three months together before Hayden had to rejoin his ship. I know that doesn’t seem like long, but I felt married during that time, like I was part of something bigger than both of us. I know that he loves me. He told me so. And even though he’s nine years younger than me, he’s old enough to settle down. We’re good together. I make him laugh and the sex is great.

  Hayden doesn’t know that I’m pregnant. The silly boy thinks we broke up before he left. He caught me going through his emails and text messages and completely overreacted, calling me paranoid and crazy. Things were said that I’m sure both of us regret. Hayden stormed out of my flat and didn’t come back until after midnight. Drunk. I pretended to be asleep. He fumbled with his clothes, pulling off his jeans, falling on his arse. I could tell he was still angry.

  In the morning I let him sleep and went out to the shops to buy bacon and eggs for breakfast. I left him a note. Love. Kisses. When I returned, he was already gone. My note was balled up on the floor.

  I tried to call him. He didn’t answer. I went to the bus stop and to the train station but I knew he’d gone. I left messages saying I was sorry, begging him to call me, but he hasn’t answered any of my emails or texts and he unfriended me on Facebook.

  Hayden doesn’t realize that I was trying to protect us. I know lots of women who will happily steal someone’s boyfriend or husband. You take his ex, Bronte Flynn, a right slag, notorious for “doing a Britney” (going commando). Hayden still follows her on Facebook and Instagram, posting comments on her slutty selfies. She’s the reason I looked at his phone—out of love, not jealousy.

  Anyway, we’re pregnant now and I don’t want to break the news to Hayden in an email. It has to be face-to-face, but that can’t happen unless he agrees to talk to me. Navy personnel are allowed twenty minutes of satellite calls a week when they’re away at sea, but recipients must be on a list. Hayden needs to register me as his girlfriend or partner and give the navy my number.

  Last week I talked to the Royal Navy welfare office and told them I was pregnant. A nice woman took down my details and was very sympathetic. They’ll make Hayden call me now. The captain will give him a direct order. That’s why I’ve been home every evening, waiting by the phone.

  MEGHAN

  * * *

  My father is turning sixty-five and retiring this month after forty-two years with the same finance company. Tonight is his birthday dinner and Jack is running late. He promised to be home at five thirty and it’s after six. I won’t call him because he’ll accuse me of nagging.

  He finally arrives and blames the traffic. We have an argument in the car, conducted in whispers while Lucy and Lachlan are strapped into their seats listening to the soundtrack from Frozen.

  Jack accelerates through a changing light.

  “You’re driving too fast.”

  “You said we were late.”

  “So now you’re going to kill us?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You should have left earlier.”

  “You’re right. I should have come home at midday. We could have painted our nails together.”

  “Fuck you!”

  The words just slip out. Lucy’s head shoots up. Jack gives me a look that says, Really? In front of the children?

  “You said a bad word,” says Lucy.

  “No, I didn’t. I said ‘duck soup.’ We might be having that for dinner.”

  She screws up her face.

  “I don’t like duck soup. It’s yucky,” says Lachlan, who shouts rather than talks.

  “You’ve never had it before.”

  “Yucky, yucky, duck soup,” he sings, louder than before.

  “OK, we’ll have something else,” I say.

  We drive in silence, edging through traffic towards Chiswick Bridge. Quietly fuming, I think of all the meals that have been spoiled by Jack turning up late. I hate him when he derides and belittles what I do. We reach my parents’ house at seven. The kids run inside.

  “You can be such a shit sometimes,” I say as I grab the salads and Jack picks up the traveling cot.

  My sister comes out to help. Grace is six years younger than me, happily single but always accompanied by an attractive, successful man who seems to worship the ground she walks upon, even when she’s walking all over him.

  “How’s Daddy?” I ask.

  “Holding court.” We hug. “He’s fired up the barbecue. We’re going to be eating charred sausages and kebabs again.”

  Grace and I don’t exactly look like sisters. I’m prettier, but she has more personality, I’ve heard people say, which I thought was a compliment when I was fourteen, but now I know different.

  Jack sets up the traveling cot in one of the spare bedrooms before joining the men in the garden, where they are standing around the barbecue—that great leveler of legends, where any man can be king if he’s holding the tongs. His first two beers go down in a matter of minutes. He gets a third. When did I start counting?

  Mum needs help in the kitchen. We dress the salads and butter the potatoes. Grace is playing with Lucy and Lachlan, keeping them amused until dinner. She says she loves kids, but I suspect that’s only other people’s children, who can be handed back when they’re overtired or emotional.

  I hear laughter outside. Jack has cracked everyone up with one of his stories. They love him. He’s the life and soul of every party—the TV star who is full of gossip about transfers and signings. A lot of guys are knowledgeable about football, but they all defer to Jack on the subject because they imagine he has some added insight or inside knowledge.