The Secrets We Keep (13 page)

She was just launching into an explanation of who, exactly, the person with the breathing problem was, when Mel looked up from her laptop and said, “Christ, Patricia, I can do Spanish into English, but not with Throckton rattling away in the background, so do you think you could please get to the point? I'm on a deadline here.”

Patricia pauses, waits until both Elizabeth and Mel are looking at her, and says, “Well, the Micklethwaite girl—”

“Kate,” Elizabeth corrects, automatically, one of the many small ways she's found to show her mother-in-law that, despite everything, she's not prepared to vilify the girl. She knows that making a target out of Kate won't bring Michael back.

“Well, Kate Micklethwaite was seen at the hospital, leaving the Early Pregnancy Unit, with her mother, and they both looked a bit teary, and the girl—Kate—was holding what looked like a scan.” She looks at Elizabeth and Mel, who don't seem to be getting it. “A scan. Of a baby. A baby picture that you get when you're pregnant, these days.”

“OK,” Elizabeth says. “Well, I suppose she might be. We don't know a lot about her, really.” She looks to her sister for rescue; babies plus Kate Micklethwaite in any combination aren't going to make her evening bearable.

Mel adds, “There's no law against it. Girls will be girls.”

“It seems that she's no better than she should be, that's for sure, for all of her picture-in-the-paper-with-her-place-at-Oxford.” Patricia sniffs. “And where was the boyfriend when she needed pulling out of a lake. That's what I want to know.”

This is just the sort of malicious triumph that Elizabeth can't stomach. She gets up, walks to the kitchen, switches the oven on, breathes. Deep, deep breaths. She remembers the girl in the garden, beautiful and frail, just as broken as she is, in a different way. Slow, slow breaths.

In the other room, Mel is pointing out that they know nothing, really, and even if she is pregnant, that's her business.

Patricia is arguing for a baby as further proof that Mike Died For Nothing. When Elizabeth hears Mel asking if Kate had fallen into the water because she was reaching for her library card, whether that would be an acceptable reason for Mike to go in after her, she interrupts to see if Patricia wants tea. She doesn't: she's on her way to a meeting of the church council.

“You know,” Elizabeth says to her gently, on the doorstep, “she might be ill. Maybe the Early Pregnancy Unit is in the same direction as the MRI scanner, or the place they take your blood for testing. Maybe it's Richenda that's ill. Maybe Kate is pregnant, because since Mike died she's been reckless and upset. Maybe she is pregnant, but there's something wrong. We just don't know, Patricia.”

Patricia, who has listened quietly to all of this half turned away, turns back, touches Elizabeth on the shoulder, looks straight into her face. “Michael always said you always see the good,” she says, but the way she says it makes Elizabeth feel that her mother-in-law is telling her off, and her husband is joining in from beyond the grave.

• • •

Every now and again Mel thinks about going home, about her sociable Sydney life and the way her friends are changing, new jobs, new relationships appearing on Facebook and making her homesick. But there's something in her that won't let her leave her sister. Not just yet. Even though Elizabeth seems to be ready to go back to work and is sleeping better and spending less time looking like a woman trapped at the bottom of a well, it feels too soon.

But they are establishing a new sort of normality.

Elizabeth is back to full-time dog walking again, although she strides out looking at her feet and the six feet of pavement in front of her. Sometimes she arranges to meet Blake, but any discussion of shift patterns makes her sad, and she quite likes the chance to concentrate on her body and think about the things it can do that aren't crying and aching—stride, climb, breathe deeply, hurl a stick. She has ordered a new pair of her favorite running shoes. She wants her lungs to burn with something other than tears. The thing she likes least about going out is the coming back: the whole weight of Michael not being at home when she gets there, never being at home when she gets there, crashes down on her again. Not quite again, because every time it happens it happens in a slightly different way, so it's always surprisingly, shockingly painful.

Blake is filling the absence created by the death of his friend with more overtime, more sports coaching, more time at the gym. He's not good at dropping by to see how Elizabeth is, but he often finds a purpose for a visit. He mows the lawn; he's battled back the leylandii that Michael and Elizabeth somehow never got around to dealing with.

Lucy had put her foot down when Andy suggested that they might not take an Easter trip in case Elizabeth needed him.

“What Elizabeth needs,” she'd said, “is to start to learn to live without him. And so do you.”

“He would want me to look after her,” he'd replied.

“Yes, but he wouldn't want you to move in with her, and there are times when I think that you might as well.” It was almost six years since Elizabeth, looking closed off and uncomfortable, had come to see them after the boys were born and refused to hold either of them. “I'm not going to make you take one away with you,” Lucy had joked, and Elizabeth had shot her a look full of fury. Lucy would like to think that she didn't hold this against Elizabeth, after all this time, all this tragedy, but she suspected that she did.

“I'm trying to do the right thing,” Andy had said. But he'd known that his wife was right.

Then she'd said, “The right thing is to put your own family first now and treat her like your friend, and let her work out how to cope on her own”—and she'd taken his hands—“and you can start working out how to manage without him as well. Don't use helping Elizabeth to stop you from missing your friend. You can't fix this, Andy. Don't break other things trying.”

So they'd agreed that he would go around for an evening every couple of weeks, invite Elizabeth to their home now and then—“Not yet,” she'd said last time, “but I think I will, soon, thank you”—and drop in for a coffee sometimes in between. It seemed to be working.

Meanwhile, Patricia is doing what she always does: being busy, being helpful (in the ways she judges to be helpful). She can't talk to Elizabeth about Michael, much—can't even bear to hear her call him Mike, a version of his name that he'd rejected with everyone else—but she can feed her, and encourage her, and try to keep her interested. So that's what she does.

The evening before Elizabeth goes back to work sees her, Mel, Andy, and Blake gathered in the garden. Mel is cooking chicken and salmon on the barbecue; Elizabeth has assembled a salad and bought a pavlova; Andy and Blake have brought the beer. Elizabeth had suggested this, wanting to mark the occasion. “Although it's not an occasion, and it's definitely not a celebration,” she'd said to them all. “It's just a—” But she couldn't find a word. “It's a gathering,” said Blake, and Elizabeth had agreed that that would do. Patricia, who is at the WI this evening, has brought some bread and said not to worry about her not being there, she doesn't really like food cooked outdoors anyway.

It's not an uncheerful evening. Elizabeth is more present than she has been, and Michael is an occasional, gentle topic of conversation. Tonight it feels as though it's Mel's turn to be quiet. “My head's in Spanish. I'm having to translate you all,” she explains, when Elizabeth puts her hand over hers and asks if she's OK, as the others talk of nothing much.

When Blake gets up to go, Mel goes with him, picking up her cigarettes and clipping Pepper's lead on. “You're a hell of a good excuse, and that's all,” she mutters as she takes him to the door. “Don't go thinking I like you.”

“I assume,” Blake says, “you're talking to the dog.”

She waits until they turn into the corner of Blake's road before she tells him the short version of Patricia's story. “Well,” he says, “that's Throckton for you. They were probably visiting someone, and before you know it, Kate will be having triplets.”

“Yes,” Mel says, “but, Blake, if we didn't know Michael, if all we knew was that she went into the water, he was there, close by, he went in after her, he died, and now it turns out that she's pregnant, what would we think?”

“Mel, you can't be saying…” Blake is standing very still. He's looking over her shoulder. She can't read him.

“I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying, if we hadn't known Michael, what would we be thinking?”

• • •

Walking away from what he still thinks of as Elizabeth and Michael's house, Andy remembers a time—the only time—when he and his friend were both at the scene of an accident. A cyclist had got caught in the wheels of a truck, just along the road from the office, and a horrified witness had come to find a doctor after calling an ambulance. Andy had been standing in reception at the time. He'd picked up the emergency kit and run.

In the event, there wasn't a lot for him to do. The cyclist had possible spinal injuries and a crushed pelvis at the very least, but it didn't look good. The guy would be lucky to walk again, let alone get on a bike. Andy cleared his airway, got a line in ready for the paramedics, and told Michael, who was standing on the pavement making sure that no one whose curiosity got the better of them would be able to have a look, that he'd never complain about doing a diabetic clinic again.

And then the man's phone, on the road by the doctor's knee, started to ring. “Gran” came up on the display, shaking Andy more than the blood and shattered bone and the sound of the truck driver sobbing.

He'd held the phone up to Michael, mute, horrified, thinking that the next time this Gran was likely to hear her grandson's name would be attached to some very bad news. The cyclist was no longer a jigsaw of bone and blood, a game played against poor medical odds.

Michael had taken the phone from him and switched it off, then put it back in the cyclist's bag.

“What you have to remember on days like this,” Michael had said, “is that everything works out, somehow, in the end.” Seeing the look Andy gave him, he'd added, “I'm not saying it happens for a purpose or a plan. I'm saying, even with the terrible things, it works out somehow, in the end. The river always gets to the sea.”

Mike,

Well, I did it. I put on my black skirt and my white shirt and mascara and tights and heels, and I went to work. I said, “Welcome to Throckton,” and I smiled and I chatted a little bit, and I was all right. Ian hovered for the morning, and Emily took me to lunch, which I'm sure wasn't as casual an arrangement as it seemed, but I'm getting to be graceful when people try to help me, because God knows I'm not good at life without you, and I need all the help I can get.

It's funny to see people arriving and exclaiming over how pretty this place is, something I'd forgotten. I just see the bits I don't like: the sky too close, the streets too narrow, the people knowing exactly who I am and where I fit into the Great Scheme of Throckton. But today, walking home, I remembered how I felt during my first spring here, and I was happy. I remembered my amazement at how green everything is, all the time, not just during spring and autumn, like it is back home.

When I left, walking back through town, I think I saw Kate Micklethwaite.

I shouldn't be jealous of that girl. I shouldn't. She nearly died, she's traumatized, and she's fucked up her superbright amazing future. I should feel sorry for her.

Or I should be like Patricia, who is angry. She's muttering about how, when she was a girl, if you got into trouble then you at least had the grace to keep a low profile, rather than “flaunting your shame.” (There seem to be as many ways not to say pregnant as there are not to say dead.) Mel asked her what Kate had been doing. Surely it was a bit chilly to be wandering around Throckton in a bikini? But apparently she'd been to the library to borrow a book about pregnancy. Mel said, “I wouldn't call that flaunting; I'd call it making the best of a bad job.” I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the two of them. Mostly I ignore them, or intervene if it's getting out of hand.

But now I'm jealous of Kate Micklethwaite, who seems to have gotten, accidentally, I presume, what we wanted so badly. She got the baby. And she got the last touch of your life.

In a funny way I'm glad we tried, and failed, to have a baby, because those four years of trying made me understand that life isn't fair. And I'm glad I knew that before you died, because if I hadn't, I can't imagine how much worse these days would be.

I love you. I do.

E xxx

Elizabeth only once thought she was pregnant. It was not long before they went to the fertility clinic. Her body was fraught with hope. She was fit and healthy, making of herself the best possible nest, and at the same time anxious and aching for a baby. She'd given up on trying to note things in her diary and now kept a spreadsheet to track everything she thought might be important: sex, menstrual cycle, exercise, alcohol, working hours, unusual events.

She had always had regular periods, with less than forty-eight hours' variation month to month. Later, she would describe her cycle to the nurse who took their details at the clinic, and when it was all written down, the nurse would look at Elizabeth and say “perfect” with a big smile and no irony. And Elizabeth had laughed, because surely a perfect menstrual cycle would have made a baby. A perfect baby. “That's the spirit,” the nurse had said.

But there was one Wednesday morning, the second summer that they were trying, when Elizabeth got up and ready for work and was putting tampons in her handbag and feeling a bit sad at the sight of them, when she realized that there had been no pain, and there was no blood, and there should have been by now. Mike was at work; they had an agreement that he would be in the house when she did pregnancy tests. (“You don't need to be in the room,” she'd said. “I'll have enough of accompanied trips to the bathroom when I'm home with a toddler.”) She had gone to work and every spare second she had was checking herself over for anything, any sign at all.

At first, Elizabeth was scanning for cramp, the feeling of heaviness, of bleeding, but then, by lunchtime, she was looking for nausea, tiredness, or a feeling of knowing, so that later, she could say to Mike, “I just knew.” She calculated dates, worked out that she would have an early April baby, and thought what a perfect time of year it would be to be born, to be new parents.

She saw the three of them in the garden under the apple blossom, and they were as clear as if she were looking at a photograph. Elizabeth herself would be rounded and smiling, the baby on her lap as pretty as a picture—she had seemed to be a daughter—with her father's eyes and her mother's hair, and Mike, proud and protective, standing over them. Their family, happy and complete at last.

She was bursting to get home and do a test, but it was a day when she was staying until six, so she had thought, well, she would just practice waiting, because she would have until April to wait. Mike would come off shift at four, and so he would have walked Pepper, thought about dinner, and be in the perfect mood for finding out that he was going to be a father.

Then, as Elizabeth was walking home, heart twittering and soul contented, thinking about how she would tell Mike the news, but being fairly certain that she wouldn't need to say a word, because she could feel herself glowing, she felt the cramp tear at her.

When she got home, on the edge of tears, it was to find a message from Mike to say that he'd gone for a run. They tended not to run together so often, these days. (There had been an argument when Mike had suggested that they should both enter the London Marathon next year. “Is that because you've given up on the idea of us ever having a baby?” she'd asked, and he'd said, “No, it's my way of trying to enjoy the life that we have. Do you remember it, Elizabeth? It used to be enough for you.”)

Elizabeth had lain in the bathwater until it was lukewarm. When Mike came in, he was whistling, but he stopped when he closed the door behind him, and she had thought,
Have you stopped because this home has become a house that you can't relax in?

So when she came downstairs, and she saw the look on her husband's face, half hoping, half ready with the sympathy, she had just said, not this time, sweetheart, and left it at that. Life went on. The cycle had kept on cycling their hopes away.

When she lay awake at night, Elizabeth would think about that day and remind herself that nothing had been lost. She hadn't been pregnant. Her period had been late, that was all. But she had felt bereft.

She could have woken Mike and told him. She knew she didn't have to lie there, feeling the way that she did. But she knew that if she told him, he would be upset for her, and it would be more pressure for next time.

Instead, she thought about what they were doing to themselves, about how in not being completely honest she was keeping a secret, for the first time, from this man she loved more than anyone. It didn't feel right. But then, all the books said that having difficulty conceiving wasn't good for a relationship.