One Secret Summer (17 page)

‘What’s so funny?’ A voice suddenly materialised out of the darkness behind her.

She whirled round. It was Aaron Keeler. She felt the weight of the boulder reassert itself. ‘Nothing,’ she said tightly. What
the hell was he doing there? She heard the worrying into flame of a match; he’d come outside for a cigarette.

‘Smoke?’ He held out the packet.

Julia hesitated. She wasn’t much of a smoker – the odd one or two at a party, nothing more. But she didn’t know what to do
with her hands, and Aaron’s proximity was unnerving. She could smell his aftershave – a subtle, tangy scent that brought her
father to mind. ‘Thanks,’ she muttered, taking one. He bent down to give her a light; for the briefest moment as their hands
touched, there was a spark that ran straight through Julia, leaving her slightly dizzy and drawing on her cigarette as if
it might save her, keep her upright. She was furious with herself. It was the wine. Or the fresh air. Or both.

‘So … a printer and a trade unionist. What does he do now? Retired, I suppose?’

‘He’s dead. They’re both dead. Killed in a traffic accident when I was fifteen.’ It came out more abruptly than she’d intended.
She looked away, flicking the ash from her cigarette over the balustrade.

‘Oh. Shit. I’m sorry. I … I didn’t know.’ Aaron’s voice was suddenly gentle.

‘Why would you?’

‘No, really. I’m sorry. It … it sort of explains things, though.’

‘What?’ She turned back and eyed him suspiciously. He was looking down at her with the strangest expression on his face. She
was aware of a sudden increase in her heart rate.

He gave a small shrug. She looked up at him. They stared at
each other for a second, then his hand came out, catching her off balance. He touched her arm, producing a second wave of
tiny electric shocks running up and down its length. ‘I don’t know … You’re … you’re so …’

But whatever it was he was going on to say about her, he was suddenly cut short. ‘Aaron?’ It was Minty. Her voice was plaintive.
‘What’re you
doing
out there?’ There was the sound of the door being opened and Minty stepped out. Aaron drew back from Julia and the shocking,
unexpected moment of intimacy was lost. He turned around; in a flash, Minty’s hand was on his arm, pulling him away. Julia
felt as though she’d been slapped. Her face was hot and her hands were clammy. She didn’t wait for another second. She tossed
her cigarette over the edge and quickly walked back into the dining room. She slid back into her place beside Dom, her heart
racing.

‘Have you been smoking?’ Dom asked, his eyebrows going up in surprise.

‘Just the one,’ Julia said tightly. She reached for her wine glass. Her hands were still shaking. What the hell had happened
to her out there? She
hated
Keeler. But the surge of emotion he’d drawn out of her so easily and quickly had nothing to do with hate … the opposite.
For a brief, mad second when his hand came down on her arm, all she could think about was being pulled close. From the far
end of the room she could hear Aaron and Minty coming back in. Minty was laughing at something he’d said, and as they returned
to the table and took their places again, Julia glanced up briefly, caught his eye and was forced to look away. She’d never
given much thought to it – who
cared
if they were a couple or not – but she was horrified to find herself gripped by a feeling that was suspiciously close to
jealousy. She couldn’t help herself; she stole another quick glance down the table. Aaron’s hand was resting casually on Minty’s
in almost the same place he’d touched her: on the forearm, his fingers moving lightly across Minty’s pale skin. His own arm
was tanned and strong. He looked down the table at Julia, and again their eyes caught and held. She watched as he lifted his
arm from Minty’s
and draped it slowly across her back, pulling her to him. He turned his head and whispered something in her ear. Minty smiled,
one of those awful smiles of smug, self-satisfied possession, and she too turned to look at Julia. They were probably laughing
at her, Julia thought to herself miserably, and felt the awful burn of tears behind her eyes. She got up again, ignoring Dom’s
puzzled frown, and practically ran from the room. The dinner party was nowhere near ending but she’d had enough. The question,
the piercing look he’d given her and the briefest of touches had triggered a host of unfamiliar feelings inside her, and she
wasn’t sure she knew how to cope.

She walked quickly down the corridor to her room and shut the door firmly behind her, leaning against it with all her weight,
as if that might lock out what it was in Aaron Keeler that she feared. As she angrily scrubbed off the mascara and lipstick
she’d put on for the evening and brushed her teeth, it came to her in a flash that it wasn’t just Aaron Keeler she was afraid
of – it was herself. He’d exposed a moment of weakness in her and she’d been unable to stop herself from revealing it to him.
She lifted her head and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were reddened with tears. There was a hollowed-out trembling
in the pit of her stomach and the taste of sorrow was back in her mouth. She’d been a fool – she
was
a fool. It was March – another four months to go. She would avoid him at all costs; it was the only way.

MADDY

New York, February 1992

Maddy pulled back the curtain for the tenth time and stared out anxiously across the sea of faces. The auditorium was packed
full; there were people standing in the back row. It was the final
show of the second semester, a new play by Joel Silver, and she’d somehow won the leading role. Her stomach gave a lurch.
She let the curtain drop, ran her hands down the fabric of her hot-pink pantsuit and tried to remember everything she’d been
taught about controlling her nerves and her breathing. It was the first time since she’d been at Tisch that she’d landed a
leading role, and to say she felt sick was the understatement of the century. It was a good role – a juicy, well-crafted,
complex role – all she had to do was deliver the performance she’d been working on for nearly a month to the exclusion of
almost everything else. She breathed in and out slowly, holding a hand over her diaphragm, forcing herself to calm down.

The music suddenly swelled, the lights dimmed and all of a sudden, It Was Showtime. ‘Break a leg,’ someone whispered as the
opening score faded away and the curtains peeled back. Maddy drew a deep breath, steadied herself and then walked on to the
stage. All concentration in her was channelled into the single point of her performance. Sydney, her hyper-thin, hyper-rich
and hyper-selfish character, took over; Maddy Stiller ceased to exist. For the next ninety minutes, she was truly someone
else. And then suddenly, it was over. She delivered her last lines, there was a moment’s pause and then the audience erupted
in applause. Dazed and unable to see more than a few feet beyond the edge of the stage, Maddy took her place alongside the
other cast members, bowed deeply and was called back twice more. She’d done well; she could
feel
it. She stumbled off the stage with everyone else, too drained of emotion to think.

Backstage, her fellow students were full of praise. Sandy hugged her as soon as she came through the wings. ‘You were just
awesome
!’ she cried, squeezing the breath out of her. ‘And you’ll
never
guess who was in the audience?’

‘Who?’ Maddy asked, still too dazed to speak properly.

‘Althea Katzmann.’ Sandy delivered the news with the air of someone giving away state secrets. ‘Althea Katzmann!’

Maddy’s mouth suddenly went dry. Althea Katzmann was one of New York’s top casting agents. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yep. She was sitting one row behind Loughlin. Oh shit, here he comes! Call me later, OK? We’re all going to Jimmy’s on Canal.’
She rushed off, winding her scarf around her neck, and blew her a kiss from the stage entrance door.

‘Maddy.’ Loughlin was suddenly upon her. He stopped and for a brief, giddy second, Maddy thought he too might actually hug
her. ‘Good performance,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘You did well.’ It was probably the first and only time she’d ever seen
him smile. It was such a far cry from the man who’d snarled contemptuously at her a few months earlier that it was all Maddy
could do not to burst into tears.

‘Th … thank you,’ she croaked out, her eyes smarting.

‘Well done. Some pretty important people out there saw it too. Keep at it, Stiller. You’ve got talent.’ And then just as suddenly
as he’d appeared, he was gone. Maddy remained where she was, wondering if the whole thing hadn’t been a dream. There was a
part of her that almost didn’t want to believe it could happen. She held on tightly to the childish superstition that if she
said something –
any
thing – she’d jinx it, or worse. She watched everyone around her scurrying about, putting things away, shutting the theatre
down, high-fiving one another and tossing out congratulations over their shoulders. The evening had gone well; she knew from
the horror stories that circulated around the drama department of evenings where things
hadn’t
gone well. Freshmen students who’d fluffed their lines, delivered wooden or flat performances or just simply had a bad day
had had their careers wiped out before they’d even started. Alongside the humiliation and the pain of their weekly classes,
there was the stress of the final semester performance thrown in, weeding them out even further. Well, she’d been in New York
City all of six months; she hadn’t given up; she hadn’t fluffed her lines or delivered a weak performance. Somehow she managed
to muddle her way through, and in those moments when she felt she couldn’t give anything more, Sandy had stepped in. To Maddy’s
immense surprise, she’d resisted Maddy’s attempts to draw away. The more Maddy retreated into
herself, the closer Sandy came. Perhaps it really was as she said. Her mother was a shrink; somehow she’d picked up more than
her fair share of empathy. She’d said no more about the thing Maddy feared the most – that she’d guessed her little secret
– and to Maddy’s great surprise, the better she got at acting, the less she felt the need. By the time spring rolled around
and she’d won the part of Sydney, it had been weeks since she’d crept away to the bathroom after supper or lunch. She didn’t
dare believe it, but … perhaps she really was on the way to curing herself. It didn’t seem possible, and yet … She picked
up her clothes from her locker and quickly made her way to the showers. Time to scrub off the theatrical paint, put on her
own clothes and see if some of Sydney’s confidence had rubbed off on her … hopefully for good.

NIELA

London, December 1992

The continent came and went in long, unbroken expanses of fields, mountains, rivers, occasionally punctured by towns and cities.
Graz. Innsbruck. Basel-Mulhouse. Niela sat stiffly upright in her seat, unable to close her eyes. She stared blankly out of
the window but did not see the tide of green or the snow-capped peaks as the train shot out of one tunnel after another, crossing
the Alps. In her handbag was the envelope containing just under five hundred Deutschmarks. She’d opened it expecting to see
four hundred, and found an extra hundred instead. Christian must have slipped it in. She’d almost wept. No tears, she’d told
herself fiercely, choking back a sob. No tears. Not now, not
ever
. She stuffed the envelope into the inside pocket of her handbag and tried desperately to think of something else. London.
She
was on her way to London. She’d been once before, when she was twelve. She remembered very little – rain, tasteless food and,
one day, a very long queue to see a building full of wax models. They’d stood patiently outside for hours and then when they
finally got in and Korfa realised the scale of the deception, he’d been inconsolable. He didn’t understand the concept – when
Niela told him he was going to see Michael Jackson, he’d believed her. What was this lifeless waxy figure in front of him?
They’d had to take him out, still crying. She smiled a little at the memory. It was enough to prompt an answering smile from
the older woman sitting opposite her. Niela turned her face away. She couldn’t bear another act of kindness, not now, no matter
how small.

Occasionally she got up and walked along the corridor to stretch her legs. Switzerland was the kaleidoscope of images seen
on chocolate boxes, one Alpine village after another, church steeples, wooden barns and fat glossy cows grazing on fields
of dazzling green. At the border with France, the train slowed to a halt. In the silence that followed the screaming and shunting
of brakes, she awoke with a start. The unfamiliar half-light of the train’s interior revealed a dozen or more people moving
towards waking in the same stunned manner. Across from her a man dozed fitfully, his chin sliding further and further down
into his chest.

They pulled into Paris just before dawn. The deserted station glowed under eerie fluorescent lights. She hoisted her bag on
to her back and made her way towards the Métro. She bought a baguette and a coffee and bit into the soft, floury inside hungrily.
The train to London was leaving from the Gare du Nord in just under an hour. The warm air of the Métro rushed at her as she
descended into its depths; from somewhere deep inside came the thin wail of a solitary busker. She bought a ticket and joined
the growing swell of commuters as they began their day. She was too tired to think about anything other than making sure she
got to the station on time. Beyond that the future was an empty, dark hole. She had barely enough money to last her a week,
but
she couldn’t allow it to frighten her. She’d found a job before; she could do it again. She shoved and pushed her way out
of the Métro at the Gare du Nord alongside everyone else and found the London train. She climbed aboard, stowed her small
bag carefully in the luggage rack and found herself a seat next to the window. The carriage began to fill up with people:
students, backpackers, a mother with a young child. As she watched them take their seats and arrange their possessions around
them, laughing and chatting excitedly to those they knew, smiling at those they didn’t, she suddenly felt terribly alone.
No one else could be doing what she had done – no one else was on the run. She looked out of the window. Through the thin
veil of tears she saw Christian’s face again.
Niela, what’s wrong?
She’d been unable to speak, just as she couldn’t speak now. She waited, her breath coming in short, foggy gasps against the
cold windowpane, willing the train to start.