Past Secrets (18 page)

‘Hello, Grey.’

‘Hi, Maggie.’

They stared at each other. Maggie’s instinct was to move to hug him until the picture flashed into her mind again: Grey and his blonde in their bed.

Immediately, her stomach did the other sort of flip, the betrayed and devastated flip that completely neutralised the effect of his charisma.

‘How are you?’ he said. ‘I’ve really missed you.’

For an instant, she forgot where they were: all she could think was that Grey was here to tell her that he loved her and that they should forget the past, she was the one for him. Then, reality reasserted itself. She was at work. Grey was saying these things in front of Tina, whose eyes were protruding so far it looked as if she was a rabbit with myxomatosis.

She imagined his face if the positions had been reversed and she’d accosted him in a tutorial. He’d have been furious.

This was not a game, Maggie thought darkly.

It was her life and she wasn’t going to be played with.

‘Long time no see. What are you doing in Dublin?’ Maggie asked evenly.

‘I came to see you,’ he replied. ‘To bring you home.’

He hadn’t spoken to her in two weeks and now he’d just turned up at her place of work and thought he could fix everything. How dare he?

Anger and heartache fought in Maggie’s head and anger won.

‘How did you know I was working here?’ she asked. ‘Paul told me. By mistake,’ Grey added. ‘He said Shona would kill him. And me,’ Grey added, as if the possibility was ludicrous. Women never stayed angry with him for long, he was too charming. Able to charm them into bed, Maggie thought.

‘I’m at work, Grey,’ she said with a coolness she didn’t know she possessed. ‘I can’t talk.’ ‘Later then?’ he asked. ‘Lunchtime?’

Maggie managed to keep her game face on. ‘I’m busy at lunchtime,’ she said with the air of someone with so many appointments she needed an assistant to keep her diary straight. The keep-‘em-keen angel that was Shona hovered in her head, shrieking, make him suffer, make him wait for you!

She remembered Shona’s advice when she had told her what had happened.

If you go back to him, I’ll never speak to you again! Don’t ditch your principles just because you’re crazy about him. You deserve better.

Grey leaned against the end of the J-K shelf, graceful as ever, long legs crossing at the ankles.

Maggie could almost sense Tina sighing in appreciation, and she felt irritated again. Not for jealousy’s sahe but because Tina - who was twenty years older than Maggie and should know better was.falling into the same trap Maggie herself had tumbled into: believing that a stunning-looking man was a prize beyond rubies.

Only if he was faithful.

‘When then?’ And Grey looked straight into her eyes as if they were in a private room and he was able to caress her into agreeing to anything.

‘After work. Half five.’ Maggie felt jolted by how much she suddenly wanted him to hold her, despite it all.

‘The Summer Street Cafe.’ It was the only place she could think of and instantly regretted it. Just up the road from home and her parents might drop in, you never knew. Maggie couldn’t cope with a scene, not now.

‘That pretty little blue and white place on the corner?’ Grey asked.

She remembered she’d taken him there once before when he’d visited her parents. It had felt like a royal tour, showing him where she’d grown up, wanting him to love it all and approve of it, and Grey had said he did, but she’d imagined he felt it all a bit provincial really. A street where everyone knew everyone else. The only street where Grey would like to know everyone was probably in a toney neighbourhood in Washington DC where world policies were discussed with undersecretaries at dinner parties, not gossip over muffins in a little cafe.

On that occasion, Maggie had lost count of the people who’d come up to them in the cafe and said, ‘I haven’t seen you for ages, Maggie,’ and then, with unconcealed fascination: ‘And who’s this gentleman?’

‘Yes. We’ll only have half an hour but I’m sure that’ll be long enough,’ she said coolly.

He didn’t respond to the barb.

‘See you then.’ He touched her arm gently as he left and Maggie closed her eyes in pain.

Tina took the books from Maggie’s arms. She was at least a foot shorter than Maggie and favoured pale blue above all other clothes colours.

With books in her arms and a glint of pearl earrings peeking out behind a grey bob, she looked like the archetypal librarian. But Maggie knew she had a wicked sense of humour and could make the library staff room rock with laughter.

‘There’s a new hair salon up the road,’ she said, eyeing Maggie’s unwashed, tangled locks. ‘You could take early lunch today. It’s my turn, but I don’t mind. I wasn’t going anywhere.’

Maggie felt herself come back to earth and smiled at Tina.

‘I need a hairdo?’ she asked in mock surprise. ‘It wouldn’t hurt,’ Tina said. ‘Might make him wonder what you were doing for lunch and with whom.’

‘I don’t want him to think I got my hair done for him, though.’

‘When did a man ever notice your hair?’ Tina demanded. ‘He’ll think you’re looking amazing without him, and you’ll feel better if you’re going to dump him and you look marvellous.’

‘True,’ sighed Maggie without much enthusiasm.

Tina shot her a gimlet-eyed look. ‘You are going to dump him?’

Maggie nodded, and found herself confessing. ‘I caught him with someone else. Younger, sexy, big boobs: your basic nightmare.’

‘Well, you’re hardly the hunchback of Notre Dame yourself,’ Tina responded.

‘Oh, I’m just thin,’ Maggie said, exasperated.

People who weren’t thin always thought it was the be-all and end-all of looks. It wasn’t. Sexy and curvy, and with skin that could be tanned and hair that could be tamed: that was something.

‘Just thin, huh?’ Tina came closer. ‘Do yourself a favour, Maggie. I don’t know where they’ve put the mirrors in your house, but there’s a lot more to you than just thin. And if Romeo hasn’t told you so, then you’ve got to dump him because he’s a vampire sort of guy - sucks the life force right out of you and convinces you that you’re ugly and useless.’

Maggie stared at her. She wanted to say that Tina was wrong, that Grey was the only one who’d made her feel sexy and gorgeous, and that his leaving her had taken it all away from her. But it would sound so silly.

All afternoon, after she got back from the hairdressers with tumbling glossy curls that made a gang of workmen on the road whoop and whistle at her, she thought about what Tina had said. And Shona. And Elisabeth.

You’re worth more, they’d said. Grey didn’t deserve you, they’d said. And she’d dismissed their advice because it was well-meaning girlfriend talk where people said the right thing to buoy up your spirits. It didn’t have to be true. It was just verbal hugging. We love you even if he doesn’t.

But for once, she tried to step outside herself and imagine if she was wrong. What if Grey wasn’t good enough for her?

He’d never asked her to marry him, though they’d been going out for five years and it seemed like the next logical step. Even at Shona and Paul’s wedding, where Maggie had been a bridesmaid and had caught the bouquet - well, Shona had flung it directly at her, so catching wasn’t the operative word - even then, Grey hadn’t held her hand tightly or looked at her in a manner that suggested it could be them next.

‘Hasn’t today been romantic?’ she’d said that evening as they sat in the sunset on the hotel terrace, Grey handsome in his pale linen suit, Maggie like a wood nymph in hand-dyed green silk, with tiny creamy flowers woven into her hair.

‘Must be costing them a small fortune,’ Grey had remarked, sucking on his cigar. Shona’s dad had passed round cigars after the toasts and Grey had insisted on going out to smoke it instantly.

He looked like a character in a Scott Fitzgerald novel, Maggie thought, with love. His hair suited him swept back and he twirled the fat cigar expertly, savouring it. ‘You could put a down payment on a fine house for what today’s costing.

‘Is it typically Irish, I wonder,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘this business of a huge, costly ceremony with everyone you know there? It’s like our obsession with owning land. We can’t just rent, we have to own. It’s always the grand gesture. I could write a paper on it, what do you think?’

In the library, an entire year after the event, Maggie felt suddenly aflame with anger at what Grey had said. She’d been annoyed then, too, but hadn’t said it, assuming Grey was just bored because he wasn’t Shona’s biggest fan - it was mutual - and wasn’t as fired up with enthusiasm over the whole event as Maggie had been.

‘It’s nice to have everyone you care about watch you marry the person you love,’ she’d said hopefully.

Her mother would be in seventh heaven organising Maggie’s wedding, and her father would probably spend months working on his speech, a speech that would be loving, respectful and would probably halt halfway through for Dad to wipe his eyes behind his glasses.

That’s what she’d been thinking of at Shona and Paul’s wedding, and bloody Grey had been thinking of another bloody paper. It wasn’t that he wasn’t clever enough to understand what Maggie had been getting at: he wasn’t one of those academics who understood chaos theory but couldn’t change a light bulb. Grey was savvy. He’d simply avoided a discussion about marriage because he wasn’t interested in marrying her.

And she’d been so besotted, so terrified or frightenning him off, she’d let him get away with it. She’d shut up like a good girl.

Maggie wasn’t sure which of them she was most angry with: herself or Grey.

She’d never seen Summer Street quite so busy as today, when at 5.28 she walked up to meet Grey at the cafe. Just when she wanted no one to notice them. ‘Hello, Maggie!’ Somebody waved across the road at her. Maggie felt cornered. A woman with grey-blonde hair, vaguely familiar. Maggie had no idea who it was.

‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘How are you and …

er, everyone?’ Everyone was the fail-safe for when she couldn’t remember if the person in question had a husband or children or a budgie menagerie.

‘Oh, they’re all fine,’ said the woman. ‘Fine.

How are you? Your poor mother, I heard about her leg. I haven’t dropped in to see her because I’m just so busy with the Guides.’

The Girl Guides! That was it, thought Maggie, delighted. Now she knew. Mrs Cooke, lived at the bottom of the road and was an outrageous busybody.

It was a complete miracle that she hadn’t been to the house already to see Mum’s leg, pass comment on the furniture and circulate details of her visit.

‘I’ll call in now, though,’ said Mrs Cooke with horrible intent.

‘Well, she’s not really having visitors today,’

Maggie said hurriedly. ‘She’s tired, needs to sleep a lot really. It takes it out of a person when they break their leg.’

‘Of course, I completely understand,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘I’ll drop in next week instead. She’ll be feeling better then.’ And she was gone.

By the time Maggie made it to the cafe, she had nodded, waved, smiled and recounted the story of her mother’s leg to two more people. So much for trying to meet Grey in a quiet place.

The cafe was the centre of the local universe and entirely the wrong place to meet a man whom your parents were hatching a plan to stab.

Not that the lovely Henry and Jane would breathe a word to Dennis and Una if Maggie had met King Kong himself and sat at one of the back tables, stroking his furry arms and discussing big buildings to climb. But someone else might blab.

It was in this frame of mind that Maggie shoved open the door of the cafe and looked around suspiciously.

It came as a great relief to see that, apart from Grey, it was empty.

Grey had naturally got the best seat, at a slightly larger than normal table in the window. There he sat, looking gorgeous and relaxed, a black coffee in front of him along with a croissant that he had half nibbled and pushed away. How typically manlike, Maggie thought, irritably. He’d only eaten half the croissant and realised he didn’t need the rest. A woman would have eaten it no matter what: she’d bought it - she’d eat it.

‘Hello,’ Maggie said, and plonked herself down in the seat opposite him. She was angry and nothing Grey could say would change it.

‘Maggie,’ said Henry, coming up before Grey could open his mouth. ‘Can I get you anything?’ ‘Erm, ah, coffee, black,’ she said stupidly, because she took milk and sugar.

‘Anything to eat?’ ‘Muffin, erm, sugar-free.’

‘Carrot or lemon or chocolate?’ Henry asked politely.

It was as if her ability to speak had disappeared. ‘Lemon,’ she said finally.

So much for getting her hair blow-dried into tousled, artful curls at lunchtime. What use was looking glamorous and untouchable when she couldn’t string two sentences together? Henry vanished and Grey and Maggie stared at each other. ‘So,’ she said.

‘I’m really glad you came to meet me,’ Grey said, looking the picture of penitence. ‘I’ve missed you.

You’ve no idea how much.’ He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. Maggie pulled it away. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t rush it,’ he said.

‘No,’ she agreed.

They sat in silence.

‘How have you been?’ he asked. ‘Fine.’

‘You don’t look fine.’

‘Thanks for that vote of confidence,’ she said sarcastically.

‘I didn’t mean it that way. You look beautiful.’

He reached out again for her hand but thought better of it. ‘You always look beautiful.’

‘I thought you preferred blondes with big tits,’

Maggie said, aiming for flippant and sounding desperately hurt instead.

Henry put a coffee in front of her and pretended he hadn’t heard.

‘You know, Henry, maybe you could put a bit of frothy stuff on the top of it, I changed my mind.’ ‘No problem.’ Henry whisked it away. Thirty-five years in the cafe business meant he knew better than to question a woman’s change of mind.

‘I don’t prefer blondes,’ Grey said earnestly. ‘I prefer women with wild red hair, and liquid blue eyes I can’t stop thinking about …’