The Secrets We Keep (14 page)

Mike,

Your mother looks terrible. Drained and tired and obsessed with Kate Micklethwaite and her baby. Yesterday, she came in—it was raining—and before she'd even taken her coat off, she'd started talking about what she'd have done with Kate. How at the first sign of trouble she'd have kept her busy, put her in charge of the ironing, including the sheets. “People iron sheets?” Mel mouthed at me before she made her apologies and bolted.

It would have been volunteer work or helping with a church group, a part-time job in the library. Kate wouldn't have been allowed to “moon about” after she decided she wasn't going abroad, if Patricia had had anything to do with it. (I started to feel sorry for the poor girl at this point.) How she'd have taken her shopping on the weekends, and invited her friends around, and made sure every second of her time was accounted for.

Under your mother's hand, Kate would have spent a lot of time with people who loved her, and when she went to bed at night she would have been tired out, and have had no time or thought for mischief.

And then, she said, and then, within a month, I'd have turned her around, and she'd be a normal, well-behaved girl with a bright future ahead of her, and I might be proud that Michael had saved her, and understand it a bit more.

It was just as well that Mel had ducked out as soon as this all started, because your mother was in tears and I know she hates to cry in front of—well, of anyone at all. I sat her down and I said, “Patricia, we might not like what's going on here. It's hard. But I think of it as Mike saving two people. I didn't want him to die, but there are going to be two people walking around Throckton, Kate and her baby, for a very long time, for longer than you and me, probably, because of what Mike did that night. It's cold comfort, but it's something.”

She was quiet for a minute while she dried her tears. So I told her that I'd baked a cake, and she looked so proud. God knows what she would have been like if we'd had our baby. She declared it “a bit dry but not a bad effort” and then said she'd write down the recipe for her fruit cake that you liked.

I said I'd like that and we'll call it “Michael's fruit cake,” even though you're not here to eat it.

She told me how she's always thought of her steak and kidney pie as John's pie because he liked it so much.

And then we were both crying. I was having a better day until then, feeling a little bit like me.

Mel came down and put the kettle on. This is a long road.

E xxx

Kate feels like a lion cub in one of the nature documentaries that she and her father used to watch. There are times when she seems to have gotten cornered by something with big horns, and she can't see her way out of it, and then the mother lion appears, all claws and teeth, and the predator is gone, running for the hills.

Her mother seems to have developed a sixth sense for trouble, so that every time Rufus appears, his eyes cold, and starts talking about Oxford and the future and hard decisions now being the best in the long run, Richenda will come in and say something like, “Rufus. We had a long talk about this and we agreed that Kate has made her decision and we'd say no more about it.”

At the library, when Mike's mother had been at the desk, horrible staring and pursed-up face, Richenda had appeared at her shoulder and said kindly, “Mrs. Gray, I hope that you're well. I know things must be very difficult,” and ushered Kate away before there was time for a response.

When they had gone to see the midwife, and she had asked about the baby's father, and Kate could barely trust herself to speak, Richenda had said firmly, “The father isn't involved,” and that had been the end of that conversation.

Afterward, Richenda had said, quietly, “When you are ready to talk about the father, Kate, I'm ready to listen. Until then, I'm not going to badger you about it. I trust that you have your reasons.”

Kate had nodded, and just for a moment she'd been ready to tell her mother the whole of it. But then, she'd remembered her promise.

• • •

Blake finds himself at the Micklethwaites' house. He hasn't called in advance; he was just walking past and thought he'd drop in on the off chance. That's what he tells himself, anyway, the conversation he'd had with Mel the other night refusing to leave him. He pushes the gate open, winces at the squeak as he does every time.

“Infuriating, isn't it,” Richenda calls from where she's kneeling by a flower bed. “I've asked Rufus to deal with it a thousand times, and so I can't do it myself now. It's a sort of garden argument. Neither of us will give in.”

She gets to her feet, pushes her hair out of her face. Blake notices that she's barefoot, her toenails painted pale purple. “I didn't know you were coming today. Have I forgotten?” She makes a gesture—a twist of her palm, a drop of her shoulder—that says,
The
way
things
are
at
the
moment, I could forget anything, so please forgive me if I have.

“No, no,” Blake says. “I was just passing, and, well, I thought I'd see how you are doing.”

“You've heard then?”

“I've heard.”

She smiles, and moves toward the house, speaking over her shoulder to him.

“I can't believe how calm I am. I had no idea, of course, although looking back, it's obvious…” They are in the kitchen now, Blake leaning close to hear her over the sound of the water filling the kettle. “But there you are. I think it's because I was there for the scan. It makes it real. My mother used to say, a baby brings its own love, and, well…”

It's as though now Richenda has started talking, she can't stop. She blurts it all out: due date, Rufus's fury, Kate's calmness, the planned decorating, how much easier it is when you know what sex the baby is, the university place released, the way that four months isn't anywhere near as long as you think it is. And, as she does so, a waterfall of words, she recognizes that she hasn't had a true conversation with anyone. Kate she protects, with her words as well as her actions, her watching. Rufus she bickers with, over the father and the future and the fact that he can't accept what's happening to them.

She's had the briefest of conversations with everyone she needs to in the wider family, who have sympathized and said things like “Well, I suppose you'll make the best of it,” with an undertone of “My child would never/has never done such a thing.” Richenda hadn't noticed how much she is holding on to, how many words, how many worries and doubts. But now here is Blake.

And Blake is telling her things that resonate with her own, unexpressed thoughts. That an unplanned child is not the same as an unwanted child. That these things can be the making of a family. That babies are born into circumstances thousands of times worse than this one will be, and that there's no reason why Kate shouldn't be OK, with the right support.

Richenda's face makes a shrug, because her hands are holding mugs. “She's not getting a lot of support from her father. Or from the baby's father, come to that.”

“Do you know who he is?” Blake's voice, well trained, is behaving exactly as it does when asking any other question.

“No. She won't say. I'm not going to try to make her. She's as stubborn as me and her father are over that wretched gate—she gets it from both sides—so it wouldn't do any good, anyway. Not that Rufus isn't trying. But, well…” Richenda pauses, hands coffee to Blake, takes a sip of her own as Blake waits. “All that she'll say is that he's not around, and that could mean anything. It must have been after Christmastime when she got pregnant, because it was too early for the pregnancy to show in the hospital tests, and she didn't leave the house for three weeks afterward. So he could have been someone here, visiting, over Christmas. He could be away on a trip, or already at college. She might not even know who he is.”

She looks to Blake, who, understanding what's required, nods a nod that says sad but true. He's turning over “he's not around,” examining it. Looking for clues, not wanting to find them.

“I've got a shortlist of her friends who came back from their gap-year things for Christmas, but, well, I just don't know.” She pauses, going through the lineup in her mind. She remembers them, part of the group of almost-adults sprawled over her sofas, waiting for Kate before going out on New Year's Eve. While the girls downstairs had been flirty, giggly, already a little drunk, upstairs Kate had been sullen, dragging her heels. Maybe—

“There's no point in speculating,” Blake says gently.

“No,” she agrees. She remembers that Rufus had a junior working with him, from September to January; he'd come to the house a few times, seemed to get on well enough with Kate, although she'd rather assumed he was gay. Still, there's no telling. She wonders how she can ask Rufus about him without appearing to ask; she'd gotten furious with him last night for doing exactly what she is doing now.

“And how are you, Richenda?” Blake asks.

“I have absolutely no idea,” she says.

• • •

Upstairs, Kate teases Beatle with a ball, waiting for the grumble and throb of the voices downstairs to fade, so that she can take a walk. She knows she will soon be tired again, her body too heavy to be easy with, but for now she feels strong and her breath moves happily in and out of her. She doesn't have to hide her baby anymore, and she knows how to hide her eyes, looking constantly away from people, above or below or toward the ever-helpful Beatle, so that she can't be stopped, chatted to, engaged in conversation.

Her favorite walk is to Butler's Pond, the place where the mix of emotions is so sharp and strong that she doesn't know whether she'll be elated or distraught. But both feel true, and in most of Kate's world at the moment truth is not an easy thing, but rather, something to be protected, hidden, cosseted away, as her pregnancy has been.

She won't tell her mother where she's going. She's been letting her assume she's going to the graveyard with her posies, sure that no one will find the flowers where she really lays them, between the roots of an ancient tree, hidden from the water's edge and the people passing by with dogs and children on bikes, trikes, and scooters. She wished she'd put them here all along, but she'd been so afraid of coming back to this place, for all the power and the pull it might have.

As she waits, she thinks through her list of names. And suddenly, she has it, and she doesn't care who's downstairs or what they're talking about.

She heads down to the living room, and sees her mother and Blake look up at her, startled, caught out. Yes, definitely talking about her. Well, let them. Blake takes his hand from her mother's arm. Kate almost changes her mind about what she's going to say. She hesitates, and in that moment Blake gets up, faces her, and says, “Congratulations, Kate. You must be very excited about the baby.” He looks straight at her as he says it. And he smiles.

Kate is thrown, completely thrown, because it's the first time someone has congratulated her about her little girl. She stands very still, absorbing the feeling of it, thinking of all the other people who have babies, who are washed in congratulations for months, who would think nothing of this heartfelt reaching out, these simple words. She looks at Blake again, just to make sure there's no ill will, and he's still looking at her, still smiling. She remembers that Mike had said he was a good man, but then, Mike had only good things to say about everyone. And she smiles back.

“Kayla,” she says. “I've decided to call her Kayla.”

Mike,

Everything is dull. People say I'm doing well, and I suppose I am. They say it as though I've been crippled and am learning to walk again, which I suppose is also true. I'm doing well in the sense that I don't spend every minute of every day beating my breast and wailing. But everything is dull. Flat.

You know that argument we used to have, when you used to say I didn't like the weather in England, and I used to say that it wasn't that I didn't like the weather, it was those days when there was no weather I couldn't bear. When the air is still and the sky is gray and it's not sunny and it's not raining and there's no wind and it's certainly not warm but it's not exactly cold either. Those days. My life is one of those days. The sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow and everything is just going along. And it's fine, bearable anyway. So long as I don't look up from this dull, gray path and see my dull, gray life stretching on and on and on.

You were a third of my life, which feels like so little. One day you'll be a quarter of it, then a fifth, maybe only a sixth if I live to be 72. Awful thoughts, when I look up from this gray path on this gray day.

We had made a little nest of our life, you and me. Our favorite places, our long weekends away, our barbecues and our crosswords and our walks and our wine.

You, saying, “We're just like an old married couple.”

Together, it was lovely. On my own, it's too sad. But I'm just getting on with it.

I've told Mel she should go home. She still says no. I think I'm glad.

I miss you, so much.

E xxx

Mel's only real source of Throckton gossip—if she cared, which she doesn't—is Patricia, with her blending-into-one-after-a-while tales of babies born and conservatories built and cruises embarked upon.

Elizabeth had done a good job of stopping her mother-in-law from talking about Kate Micklethwaite and her baby, and so Mel hears very little about her. Until the day when a flurry of texts between her, Andy, and Blake means that she is sitting at the kitchen table while Elizabeth is at work, having a conversation that she really doesn't want to be having.

“I know I complain about Throckton being boring, but I take it all back. I didn't know how much I liked boring, until now,” she says as they settle with coffee that she has insisted on making, although none of them wants it.

“It's never boring,” Blake says.

“Too damn right,” Andy adds.

Mel remembers that the brother-in-law she was very fond of had been a decades-long fixture in the lives of these two. So she takes charge.

“Come on then,” she says, “from the top.”

Andy nods. “When I got to the office this morning, Peggy, who's our receptionist, brought me a coffee along to my office. She doesn't usually. She shut the door behind her. I assumed that she wanted to talk about something medical—you know, the staff are supposed to make proper appointments like everyone else but they never do—but she said she knew that I was good friends with Michael Gray, so she thought I ought to know there was a rumor going around that he was the father of Kate Micklethwaite's baby.”

“Which we don't think he would be,” Mel clarifies, “although we can see how people might put two and two together, after the accident.”

“Which we don't think he would be,” Andy says.

Blake says, “Richenda says she won't say anything about the father, except that he's not around. Rufus Micklethwaite is playing holy hell with her every chance he gets, but she won't say a word.”

“Just like she won't say anything about when Michael died,” Mel adds, “and she's lying about that as well.”

They all look at one another.

Mel says carefully, “We're assuming this is no more than a rumor, right? Blake, I know what I said to you, about what we'd think if we didn't know Mike, but we did know him. I can't imagine…” Her words falter, fail.

Blake says, just as carefully, “Elizabeth and I were talking, at the Christmas party, and she was saying that between work and his marathon training and Pepper having taken to running off on walks, she'd hardly seen him.”

Andy adds, “She went into the water. He was there. He was near enough to get her out. It was cold. She wouldn't have had long.”

“What are the chances of that?” Mel asks.

“Not high,” Blake offers.

They look at each other, seeing in each other's faces the chasm that they've opened. Andy shakes his head, a furious clearing motion. “No. No. He wouldn't. He adored Elizabeth.”

Mel says, “Unless he'd met her nearby, and she was upset. He'd have walked her home, wouldn't he? He'd have been near enough then.”

“Yes,” Blake says, “but—”

“Oh God.” Mel puts her head in her hands. “I'm always telling Patricia that there's no bloody point in speculating, and here I am, chairing a speculation meeting.”

“We might never know,” Andy says, and the chasm closes again, thanks to all of their good efforts. Mel reaches for her cigarettes and is about to head for the door, when Blake speaks, and brings her back to her chair with a bump and a groan.

“Surely the point is not whether or not Michael fathered that baby,” he says. “Surely the point is that people are speculating about it, and sooner or later someone is going to say something to Patricia, and then Patricia will say something to Elizabeth, if someone from the hotel doesn't first.”

“You're right,” Andy says. “We need to do something.”