Secret Smile

CHAPTER 29

The next morning I woke early and knew before I even opened my eyes that it was a warm and lovely day outside. The strip of day between the curtains was blue. There was a warmth in the room. And, for the first time in a long while, I didn't feel clogged with tiredness, but alert, as if there were something that I had to do. Although it was a Saturday and I didn't have to go to work, I got up at once.

I stripped my bed and put the sheets in the washing machine, then put on my running clothes. I went to the Heath again, but this time ran to the wilder part, where the trees are thick and you can even fool yourself that you're not in the city with millions of people around you in every direction. The sun, still low and pale, shone steadily. There were primroses and tulips among the tangle of bushes, fresh, unfurling leaves on the branches above me. I ran as hard as I could, until my legs ached and, as soon as I stopped, sweat trickled down my forehead. I felt as though I were cleaning out the inside of my body, making the blood run faster, the heart pump stronger, opening up my pores.

Nearing home, I stopped at the baker's and bought a loaf of wholemeal bread that was still warm. I had a quick, hot shower, washed my hair vigorously and pulled on a denim skirt and a shirt. I put on Troy 's watch, but for once the sight of it didn't make my eyes well up with tears. I made a cup of peppermint tea and tore a hunk of bread from the loaf, eating it just as it was, chewing slowly and letting the doughy texture comfort me. I vacuumed the carpets, plumped up the pillows on the sofa, piled old newspapers and magazines into a box and opened the windows to let in the bright day.

Before I could change my mind, I pulled on a jacket and walked to the underground.

Kerry was already behind her desk when I walked in. Someone was sitting across from her, leafing through brochures and pointing things out, so she didn't see me immediately, and when she did her face flickered through various emotions: surprise, discomfort, pain, welcome. It smoothed out again into politeness as she turned back to the woman.

I watched her as she leaned across the desk, pointing at pictures with a finger whose nail was a delicate pink. She looked much better than I'd been expecting. I'd grown used to seeing her pinched and blotchy. Now she looked rosy and plumper. She was growing her hair again, and it fell in blonde waves round her smooth, pale face.

'Fancy a cup of coffee?' I said, when the woman left, clutching a pile of brochures, and I eased myself into her seat. I smelt Kerry's perfume, something subtle and sweet. Her skin was satiny, her lips glossy, and she had tiny gold studs in her ears. Everything about her seemed considered, delicate, well cared for. I looked down at my hands on the desk, with their dirty, bitten nails. I saw the cuffs of my shirt were slightly frayed.

Kerry hesitated, looked at her watch. 'I don't know if I can.'

'Go on,' called a woman at the next desk. 'We'll be busy soon and then you won't have the time.'

She looked at me and gave a nod.

'I'll get my coat.'

We didn't talk until we got to the cafe down the road. We took our coffee downstairs, where they had a sofa and armchairs, and looked uncertainly at each other over the rims of our steaming mugs. I said something about the new flat she was renting, and she said something about being frantic at work. We lapsed into an awkward silence.

'Sorry I haven't been in touch,' I said eventually.

'You've been busy.'

I waved away the polite words.

'That's not the reason.'

'No, I suppose not.'

'I didn't know where to begin.'

'Miranda

'You said something to me – just after he, you know… just after Brendan walked out. You said everything was ruined and he'd just kicked over the last standing stones. Something like that.'

'I don't remember.' She put her mug down on the table. There was the faint red semicircle from her lips on its edge.

'Of course not. Why would you? I don't know why it stuck in my mind, but it did, maybe because of my job – that image of him razing everything to the ground until we were all just standing in the rubble of our lives. That's what he did to us.'

'You shouldn't think about him so much, Miranda,' she said. 'You should let him go.'

'What?' I stared at her.

'I have,' she said. 'He's out of my life. I never want to think about him again.'

I was startled by what she had said.

'But everything that happened…' I said, stammering. 'With you and me. The whole family. With Troy.'

'That's got nothing to do with it.'

'And Laura.'

'Do you think I didn't care about Laura?'

'Of course not.'

'Do you think I felt a little stab of pleasure when I heard? That some sort of revenge had been taken?'

'No,' I said. 'Of course not.'

'Well, I did. Just for a moment. I hated Laura so much and I'd wanted something bad to happen to her and then the worst possible thing did happen and I felt some kind of triumph for a second and then I felt terrible, as if I were responsible for it in some way.' She had looked fierce for a moment, but then her expression turned sad again. 'In the end I just felt, well, what has any of it got to do with me? I decided we've just got to put it behind us.'

'Don't you want to talk about it at all?' I asked.

'I want to get on with my life.'

'Don't you want to think about it? To understand what happened?'

'To understand?' She blinked at me. 'Our brother killed himself. My fiancé left me.'

'But…'

'I'm not saying it wasn't terrible. I'm saying that it was quite simple. I don't know what there is to talk about.'

I sat for a few moments. All the turbulence, the waves of emotions and hatred and despair that had battered our family, was now a calm, dark pool.

'What about us?' I asked at last.

'Us?'

'Us, you and me, the two sisters.'

'What about us?'

'You hated me.'

'I didn't,' she said.

'You blamed me.'

'A bit, maybe.' She picked up her mug and drained the last of the coffee. 'That's in the past. Are you all right? You look a bit…' She left the sentence dangling.

'I've been a bit down.'

'Of course.'

I couldn't just leave our conversation there.

'Oh, Kerry – I wanted to make it all right between us,' I said, then, realizing I sounded like a two-year-old asking to be kissed better, I added, 'I thought there were some things that ought to be said. Made clear.'

'I'm quite clear about everything.'

'I hope you know now that I was never in love with Brendan. Never. I left him and

'Please, Miranda,' she said in a disgusted tone. 'Let's leave that.'

'No, listen, I just want you to understand that I was never trying to wreck things between you two, never; I wanted you to be happy; really I did; he was the one who was…' I let my words trail away, realizing what I sounded like. 'Like you said, it doesn't matter any more. That's all finished with. He's out of both of our lives. I wanted to know if you're all right, that's all, really. And that we were all right. It would be terrible if we allowed him to alienate us from each other.'

'I know,' she said in a small voice. Then she leaned forwards and for the first time her face lost its smoothness. 'I should tell you something.'

'What?'

'It feels almost wrong. After Troy and – you know, I thought I'd never be happy again. And it's all happened so suddenly.' She blushed. 'I've met someone.'

'You mean

'A nice man,' she said. 'He's quite a bit older than I am, and he really seems to care for me.'

I put my hand over hers. 'I'm very, very glad,' I said warmly. Then: 'No one I used to know, I hope?'

The stupid attempt at a joke fell flat. 'No. He's a junior hospital manager. His name's Laurence. You must meet him sometime.'

'Great.'

'He knows about everything…'

'Of course.'

'And he's very different, from, you know…

'Yes. Good. Great.'

'Mum and Dad say they like him.'

'Good,' I said again hopelessly. 'Really good. I'm so happy for you.'

'Thank you.'

I bought a big bunch of tulips and daffodils and irises and hopped on a bus that stopped a few hundred yards from my parents'. The scaffolding had finally gone from the outside of the house, and the front door had been painted a glossy dark blue. I knocked and listened: I knew that they'd be there. They never seemed to go anywhere these days. They worked, and then my mother sat in the house watching television and my father spent hours in the garden, plucking weeds from borders and nailing bird boxes to the fruit trees at the end.

There was no reply. I walked round to the back and pressed my nose against the kitchen window. Inside everything gleamed new and unfamiliar: stainless steel surfaces, white walls, spotlights on the ceiling. Dad's favourite mug stood on the table, beside it a plate with orange rind on it and a folded newspaper. I could imagine him methodically peeling the orange and dividing it into segments and eating them slowly, one by one between sips of coffee, frowning over the paper. Everything the same, and everything changed utterly.

I still had the key to the house so I fished it out and opened the back door. In the kitchen I found a vase and filled it up with water and crammed the flowers in. There were a couple of segments of orange left on the plate on the table, and I ate them absent-mindedly, gazing out at the garden that just a few months ago had been a mess of potholes and discarded kitchen units, and now was neatly tended and planted out. I heard footsteps on the stairs.

'Hello?' It was my mother's voice. 'Who's there?' she called from the hallway. 'Who is it?'

'Mum? It's me.'

'Miranda?'

My mother was in her dressing gown. Her hair was greasy and her face was puffy with sleep.

'Are you ill?' I asked.

' Ill?' She rubbed at her face. 'No. Just a bit tired. Derek went out to get some garden twine and I thought I'd have a nap before lunch.'

'I didn't mean to wake you.'

'It doesn't matter.'

'I brought you some flowers.'

'Thank you.' She glanced at them without taking proper notice.

'Shall I make us some tea or coffee?'

'That'd be nice.' She sat down on the edge of one of the chairs.

'Which?'

'What?'

'Tea or coffee?'

'Whichever you'd prefer. I don't mind.'

'Coffee,' I said. 'And then we could go for a walk'

'I can't, Miranda. I've got, well, things to do.'

'Mum…'

'It hurts,' she said. 'The only time it doesn't hurt is when I'm asleep.'

I picked up one of her hands and held it against my face. 'I'd do anything,' I said, 'anything to make it better.'

She shrugged. The kettle shrieked behind us.

'It's too late for anything,' she said.

'I loved her,' said Tony. He was on his third beer and his words were slurring together. Everything about him seemed to have slipped a bit – his cheeks were slack and stubbly; his hair was slightly greasy and fell over his collar; his shirt had a coffee stain down the front; his nails needed cutting. 'I loved her,' he repeated.

'I know.'

'What did I do wrong?'

'That's not the way to look at it,' I said weakly.

'I wasn't good at saying it, but she knew I did.'

'I think…' I began.

'And then,' he lifted up his beer and drained it. 'Then when she ran off like that, just a note on the table, I wanted her dead and she died.'

'That's not connected, except in your mind.'

'Your fucking Brendan. Charming her. Promising her things.'

'Promising her what?'

'You know – whirlwind romance, marriage, babies. All the things we used to argue about in the last few months.'

'Ah,' I said.

'I would have agreed in the end, though. She should have known that.'

I sipped my wine and said nothing. I thought of Laura, laughing, her head tipped back and her mouth open and her white teeth gleaming and her dark eyes shining with life.

'Now she's dead.'

'Yes.'

On Sunday, I ran again. Seven miles through drizzling mist. I had coffee with Carla, who'd also known Laura and wanted us to spend the hour exclaiming with a kind of scarifying relish over how awful it all was.

I worked on the company accounts. I was restless and agitated. I didn't know what to do with my spare time. I didn't want to see anyone, but I didn't want to be on my own. I sorted through old correspondence. I threw out clothes that I hadn't worn for over a year. I went through all my e-mails and deleted the ones I didn't want to keep.

At last I rang up Bill on his mobile and said I'd like to talk to him. He didn't ask me if it could wait till tomorrow, simply said he was in Twickenham but would be back by six. We arranged to meet in a bar near King's Cross that used to be a real dive, but was now minimalist and chic, and sold cocktails, iced teas and lattes.

I had another bath and changed out of my sloppy drawstring trousers into jeans and a white, button-down shirt. I was there fifteen minutes early. When he arrived, he kissed me on the top of my head and slid into the seat opposite. He ordered a spicy tomato juice and I had a Bloody Mary, to give me courage. We clinked glasses, and I started asking him how his weekend had been. He held up a finger.

'What's this about, Miranda?'

'I want to stop working for you,' I said.

Reflectively, he took a sip of his drink and put it back on the table.

'That sounds like a good idea,' he said.

'What!' He just smiled at me in such a kind and tender way that I had to blink back tears. 'Here I was plucking up the courage to tell you and all you can say is that it sounds like a good idea.'

'It does.'

'Aren't you going to beg me to stay?'

'You need to start over.'

'That's what I've been thinking.'

'Away from the whole family thing.'

'You're not like family.'

'Thanks.'

'I meant that in a good way.'

'I know.'

'I feel like my life's one great big enormous ghastly mess and I need to scramble free of it.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I guess I'll try to get a job with an interior decorating company, something like that. I've got enough contacts by now. Shall I give you three months' notice, or what? And will you be my referee?'

' "I've known Miranda Cotton since she was one day old…" Stuff like that?'

'Something like.' I swallowed and fiddled with my drink.

'Don't go all sentimental on me, Miranda. We're still going to see each other. It's not as if you were leaving town.'

'I thought I might.'

'What? Move out of London?'

'Maybe.'

'Oh.' He raised his glass. 'Good luck to you. I've always been a believer in burning one's bridges.'

'I know. Bill?'

'Yes.'

'I never was in love with Brendan. It wasn't the way people thought.'

Bill gave a shrug.

'I never thought much of him. The way he would always squeeze my arm when he was talking to me and use my name three times in a sentence.'

'Do you believe me, then?'

'On the whole,' he said with a half-smile. 'More or less.'

'Thanks.' My eyes burned with tears again. I felt floppy with gratitude. 'I think I'll have another Bloody Mary.'

'Well, I'm going home. Drink all you like, but we start on the new house at eight.'

'I'll be there, eight sharp.'

He stood up and kissed the top of my head once more.

'Take care.'