One Secret Summer (61 page)

‘Good luck,’ Anna said, hugging her. ‘Call me if you need to. I’m here. Remember that.’

Niela smiled wanly. ‘How can I ever forget? You’ve always been there for me, Anna. Always.’ She picked up her umbrella and
left Anna’s flat. She was on the verge of heading for the
Tube when she changed her mind and hopped on the bus coming towards her instead. It was a Friday. She’d taken a couple of
days off work to spend with Josh. It was nearly five and she didn’t relish the thought of the Friday rush-hour chaos on the
Underground.

She saw him almost as soon as the bus rounded the corner. He came out of the café, walking fast, perhaps a hundred yards or
so in front of the bus. She stared down at him, wondering if she was mistaken. He hadn’t said anything about coming into the
West End that afternoon. He seemed to be in a hurry. The bus drew level with the café. She wondered whether to get off at
the next stop – she half-stood up, looked down at the street and then she saw her. Julia came out of the very same café Josh
had left. Niela turned her head and looked backwards in disbelief. Julia was hurrying down the street in the opposite direction,
clutching her coat. Niela’s heart began to beat faster. Something wasn’t right. The bus gave a sudden lurch, bumping her back
down into her seat. There was a queer feeling in the pit of her stomach. She clutched her umbrella tightly, aware of a slow,
horrid build-up of dread.

It was almost 8 p.m. by the time Josh returned. Niela was in the kitchen, half-heartedly preparing dinner. Ever since she’d
seen them, the questions had gone round and round in her head. Why was Josh meeting Julia? What business could the two of
them possibly have together? Was she overreacting? She sliced onions, dropped a few tomatoes in a pan of boiling water, put
a frying pan on the hob … her movements were automatic; she wasn’t even sure what she was cooking. Perhaps it was nothing.
Perhaps they’d met to talk about Aaron. Julia had mentioned they were having problems, though she’d been careful not to say
anything else. Perhaps that was it – a bit of brotherly advice, nothing more. She looked at the gently browning onions and
saw that her vision was blurred. She knew. She knew it was more than that.

By the time she finally heard his key in the lock, she couldn’t think straight. The fear that blew up inside her was stark
and pure and it broke over her like sweat. She was terrified, by the thought both of what he might say and what he wouldn’t.

‘Hi.’ He stood in the kitchen doorway. He looked tense, as if he might speak.

‘Hi.’ She waited, holding her breath.

‘Did you have a good day?’ he asked, his voice sounding strained. He lifted his arms above his head, resting them on the architrave
around the door. Niela stared at him.

‘I … I went round to a friend’s,’ she said slowly. ‘I had the day off, remember?’

‘Oh, yeah, right. I forgot.’ He brought his arms down and walked into the tiny space. He reached out suddenly; his hand brushed
her face. She flinched. He removed an offending curl, tucking it tenderly behind her ear. The gesture disarmed her, and in
her confusion, tears came to her eyes. She turned away before he could see and busied herself with a pot. Neither of them
was able to speak.

He lay awake long after she’d gone to sleep, measuring the passing of time by the rhythm of her breathing. He was due to fly
back out to Tanzania in a few days. It was a three-month assignment – by the time he returned, everything would have changed.
Julia would be nearly five months pregnant by then. Impossible to conceal. He rolled over on to his side, facing the wall.
He lay there in the dark, facing the long, endless tunnel of the night that he had no idea how to get through. It wasn’t just
that he’d done the unthinkable and cheated on Niela – there was more to it, and worse. He, more than anyone, knew the sort
of damage a secret could wreak. Secrets were like poison, slipping in unseen, spreading themselves silently until everything
was tainted and nothing was true or pure. That was what he’d been attracted to in Niela – a sense of pureness. She’d seemed
to him to be so open and clear … he’d been drawn to her, to her lightness, her purity, her strength. And now he’d gone and
spread his own kind of darkness all over her and the one thing he seemed to have done right. He closed his eyes, trying at
the same time to close himself against the pain.

DIANA

London, August 2000

Dr Geoffrey Laing stopped talking. His voice fell away into the deepening silence. Outside, barely visible through the grey-blue
of the Venetian blinds that hung at every window, a slow, steady rain was falling. It was almost the end of August. It felt
as though it had been raining for months. Diana took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate.

‘How long?’ she asked, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in her ears. She brought a finger to her mouth, absently tracing
the fine line of her lips. Although she hadn’t smoked in forty years, she suddenly longed for a cigarette. She needed something
to do with her hands. The clock on the wall chimed suddenly. It was 11 a.m. The whole morning felt unreal. She’d known from
the moment her secretary took the call, asking her to come in, that the news wouldn’t be good. In some hard-to-define way,
she’d been expecting it for longer than she could remember.

‘It’s very difficult to say, Diana.’ Geoffrey was a colleague of Harvey’s and a friend. The results for which she’d come into
his clinic that morning were as difficult for him to divulge as they were for her to hear. There was barely muted distress
in his voice. ‘There’s new, experimental treatment available, which we could quite easily put you on. We don’t yet have all
the results of the clinical trials, but early indications are that it’s looking—’

‘How long?’ Diana interrupted him, repeating the question. She raised her head to look him squarely in the face.

He lifted his shoulders and let them drop. ‘Six months? A year. It’s almost impossible to say.’

‘And if I don’t agree? To this new treatment?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Then we’re looking at something greatly reduced.’

‘What? Weeks? Months?’

‘A few months. Not much more. It’s unusually aggressive, Diana … I haven’t seen a case like this in a while.’

‘Does Harvey know?’

He looked shocked. ‘Goodness, no. I wouldn’t … no, this is between you and me. It’s up to you when and what you tell him.
I’m available to you both, of course, you know that.’

‘Thank you, Geoffrey.’ Diana was conscious of the formal note that had crept into her tone. She’d known Geoffrey Laing for
years. He and Harvey had been at medical school together. When she’d first discovered the small, hard lump under her left
arm, just at the point where her breast separated from the muscle, a couple of weeks after coming back from Mougins, there’d
been no question of going to anyone else. She’d told no one, not even Harvey. Judith, her secretary, made the appointment.
She’d gone along to Geoffrey’s consulting rooms just off Harley Street. He’d come out into the waiting room as soon as he’d
seen her name. He’d held up a hand and quietly flagged her in. No need for her to wait. Under a few raised brows, she’d passed
through the doorway and into the quiet sanctuary of his office. He’d kissed her on both cheeks – she caught the oddly familiar
scent of his aftershave as he showed her to a seat. She’d last smelled it in the context of a dinner party, or at one official
function or another of the sort she and Harvey had once attended when their careers were younger and there’d been more time.
It had been a while since she’d been to any of the annual Medical Society dinners or the various fund-raising events. Cancer
research, usually. The irony of it didn’t escape her.

Now, almost ten days later, with the results of the tests he’d done spread in front of him, the moment of truth had finally
arrived.
A moment of truth
. The oddly biblical tone of the phrase struck her anew. She, more than anyone, knew just how many of those moments were now
to be had. As she sat there in the comfortable chair opposite Geoffrey’s desk, the realisation that
this was it
– this was the definitive moment of her life, forget everything that had gone on before – was slowly breaking over her in
waves.

‘Thank you,’ she said at last, getting to her feet. She picked up her bag and turned to face him. ‘I’d like to have some time
to think this over, Geoffrey. I’ll be in touch again very soon. I … I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to Harvey.
Not just yet.’

‘Of course, Diana. I—’ He hesitated for a second, his professional mask momentarily giving way. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry. I don’t
know what to say. You, of all people. I’m sorry. It just doesn’t seem fair, somehow.’

‘Thank you, Geoffrey.’ She nodded her head gravely. ‘Who’s to say what’s fair?’ She touched him briefly on the arm and left
the room before either he or she could say another word.

There was a cab waiting for her as soon as she stepped outside the door; Judith would have organised it. ‘Primrose Hill, please,’
she directed the driver. She couldn’t return to chambers just yet. There was a tea shop on Chalcott Crescent that she hadn’t
been to in years. It was just the sort of place she needed to go right now. She needed to be alone. There were things she
had to think through first.

‘There we go.’ The smiling waitress put down a cup of tea and a slice of home-made cake in front of her. ‘Can I get you anything
else?’

Diana shook her head. She looked at the pretty cup with its pattern of pink and red roses and smiled faintly. It was the sort
of cup her mother would have appreciated. Bone china, hand-painted, delicate – just the sort of old-fashioned English aesthetic
that she had liked. She lifted it to her lips. It had been a long time since she’d thought about her mother. It felt as though
she’d
been gone far longer than the twenty-odd years since her actual death. It had always been that way; memories would come to
her in the oddest moments, catching her unawares. For most of her life, she’d barely registered her presence, and when she
died, it seemed to Diana that she’d already mourned her passing long before. She couldn’t remember much about her; her presence
in the house had always been overshadowed by Diana’s father. She put the cup down with shaking hands. It was odd how she came
to mind, not in anything she did or said, but in those little details that were so insignificant Diana had difficulty remembering
how she’d come by them in the first place. The bone china cups; the colour of the curtains in the living room; the flowers
she favoured – pale, pretty, nothing flamboyant or particularly memorable. Much like herself, in fact. Diana was suddenly
unable to swallow her tea. She couldn’t even remember the exact details of her mother’s death. What was the cause? Dementia,
was what she remembered everyone saying, but how old had she been? Sixty? Sixty-five? Did people really die of dementia? Some
illness brought on by her drinking was much more likely. What would that have been? Something to do with the liver. She brought
her hands up to her face. Her cheeks were wet. How was it that she remembered so little of either of them? She’d principally
been afraid of her father; fear was what she’d always associated with him. Fear and the terror of being hit. In more ways
than she cared to admit or remember, her ability to live with secrets had come from there. Behind the respectable façade,
things had gone on in that house that no one should ever have known about, least of all a child. Her father was a doctor;
he knew precisely where and how to hit. Her mother rarely, if ever, showed the scars. She’d taken it all in – the beatings,
the rages, the uncontrollable moods, the bullying. All Cathy Pryce ever did was turn the other cheek. From her Diana had learned
how
not
to be a woman, not the other way round. Her mother sickened her; she hated the excuses and the way she put up with things,
excusing him for everything, even beating her half to death. There were times when she’d hear him hitting her, softly
at first, then with increasing anger and rage, and she’d stand at the dining room door, her hands pressed over her ears. It
made no difference. His voice and his fists came through the walls as if they were paper. Later, much later, she would hear
her mother petting
him
, tending to the bruises on his fists and sometimes the small cuts on his fingers
as if it had been the other way round
. She would do anything to block out the sound of
that
. Her mother’s weakness enraged her. In the terrible closeness of such moments, when they were shouting and struggling with
each other, it seemed to her like a murder. One day she would kill him, that was what she thought. One day. Soon. It was Rufus
who’d first put the words into her mouth. She’d gone next door as she always did when they fought, only this time, there was
a faint bruise showing up underneath the lightly freckled skin of her cheek. She’d been in the way of his hand as he reached
across the dining table to administer a slap. She sat there, the pain gathering under the surface of her skin, unable to say
or do anything until he’d told her to leave the room. She knew what it meant, of course … that the beating he was about to
administer would be harder and worse, partly to assuage his own guilt at having hit her, even inadvertently. That was the
rule – only her mother, never her.

‘Did he hit you?’ Rufus’s voice was low and controlled.

Diana shook her head mutely. ‘No. It was an accident. I got in the way.’

‘Good. ’Cos if he does, I’ll fucking kill him.’ It was said with such clarity and assuredness … that was the day she’d fallen
in love with him. He would protect her in a way that no one else could or would. She’d been wrong, as it turned out. Rufus
wasn’t capable of protecting anyone, least of all himself. It was Harvey. Kind, gentle Harvey. He’d watched it all silently,
never saying anything, no dramatic outbursts like Rufus. Just a quiet, confident watchfulness. When the time came, and she
really was in need of protection, it was Harvey who’d stepped forward, not Rufus. But it didn’t change a thing. It was Rufus
who held sway, not Harvey. No matter that she’d married him.