Secret Smile

'But you do kind of owe it to Kerry, don't you?' His voice was still soft and insinuating. 'After what happened. Mmm? Mmm?'

'Sorry?' said Kerry.

I stared at Brendan. There was red behind my eyes and I thought of throwing my wine into his face, of smashing my glass against his cheek, of kicking him in the legs, punching him as hard as I could in his belly, pushing him violently out of the door.

'Miranda?' said Kerry. 'Just a few days?'

I turned to her and tried to focus on her reproachful face. I thought of lying in my bed and knowing Brendan was a few feet away, on the sofa, with my sister. Of getting up in the morning and seeing him sitting at the kitchen table, as if he belonged there. Bumping into him on my way to the bathroom… But maybe I could stay with Nick for a night or two, or even with Laura. Maybe go away for the weekend somewhere. Anywhere.

'All right,' I said. 'One week.'

Kerry gripped my hand, and Brendan came towards me with outstretched arms. If he touched me, I would scream, vomit, become violent. I ducked out of reach.

'I'm going to have that interrupted bath now,' I said. 'Finish your wine.'

The water was tepid, but I lowered myself into it anyway. I closed my eyes and sank beneath the surface, where I waited for my heart to stop battering itself against my chest. When I came up for air, I heard a knocking at the door, Brendan calling my name.

'What?'

'The phone for you. I answered it. Hope you don't mind.'

'Who is it?' I asked, reaching for a towel.

'Someone called Nick,' said Brendan. 'He seemed a bit surprised to get me.'

I yanked open the door and marched through to the living room. 'I'll take it in my bedroom. You can put it down out here.'

'Is this Nick your new boyfriend?' When I didn't answer he put his arm around Kerry and pulled her close to him before saying, 'That's wonderful news, Mirrie. We're so glad for you.'

I pulled sharply at my bedroom door and it shut with a bang. I picked up the phone.

'Nick?'

'I just wanted to hear your voice. How are you?'

'All the better for speaking to you,' I said.

Then I heard breathing. There was someone on the other line. I waited until there was a small click. A few moments later, I heard the front door shut.

CHAPTER 9

I leaned over the dishes of curry and cleared my throat.

'There's something I want to say. It's nothing serious,' I added, seeing his suddenly wary look. 'I just felt that when we were talking with Laura and Tony, things came out wrong.'

'It's not a big deal,' Nick said.

'I know it isn't,' I said. 'But I've been thinking. I want to be completely straight with you.'

'Weren't you being straight?'

'I was, but it came out in a confused way that felt wrong. So I want to tell you about it in a clear way. It's really very simple.'

I took a sip of wine and then gave him a basic digest of what had happened with Brendan and Kerry and my family.

'You see,' I said. 'He was someone I had no strong feelings about, except maybe that by the end I thought he was a bit of a creep. But now he's with my sister and everybody's going on about how she's happier than she's ever been, so, you know…'

'So maybe you're starting to wonder if you made a mistake.'

'What do you mean?'

'Breaking up with him.'

I pulled a face.

'Oh, God, not for a single second. I broke up with him assuming I'd never see him again, and now he's part of the furniture.'

Nick cut a piece of tandoori chicken with his fork and ate it with deliberation.

'So why did you go out with him if he's a creep?'

'We only saw each other a few times. Then I stopped going out with him.'

'It's strange to think of you with someone like that.'

'Have you never started going out with someone and then gradually realized that you didn't like them that much after that?'

'I don't know,' said Nick.

'You've never been attracted to someone and then once you've got over the attraction found that there was nothing left?'

'I'm just wondering what you'll think when you get to know me,' said Nick.

'I think I know,' I said. 'That's why I'm going to such trouble to explain it to you.'

'You don't need to explain anything to me.'

'But…'

'Let's go home.'

Afterwards we lay side by side, the room dark except for the glow of the street lights around the curtain edges. I lay with my head on Nick's chest, stroking his stomach softly down to the edge of his soft pubic hair. His breathing was slow and regular, and I thought he might be asleep, but then he spoke.

'What did he say?'

'What?' I said.

'Brendan,' Nick said. 'What was it he said? I mean, what did he really say?'

I raised myself on an elbow and looked down at his face.

'You can ask me anything, you know,' I said.

'That's why I'm asking.'

'I was going on to say that some things aren't good to know. Sometimes you can feel contaminated by knowing something.'

'But once you mentioned it, I had to know. It's hard not to think about it. It can't be so bad.'

I felt a chilliness on my skin, like I'd once felt cold while suffering from a fever.

'He said…' I drew a deep breath and said it in a rush. 'He said he was thinking how he had come in my mouth. I felt – well, I left the room and threw up. So now you know. Now you know the truth.'

'Jesus,' he said. There was a silence, and I waited. 'Did you tell anybody?'

'I'm telling you.'

'I mean, why didn't you tell someone? They'd have thrown him straight out.'

'Would they? I don't know. He might have denied it. He might have said I'd misheard. He'd have thought of something. In any case, I couldn't think clearly. I felt like I'd been punched in the face and the stomach simultaneously. So was that worse than anything you'd imagined?'

'I don't know,' he said, and then we didn't speak. I didn't fall asleep straight away, though, and I'm not sure if he did. I murmured something to him, but he didn't reply and there was just the sound of regular breathing. So I just lay there beside him looking at the lights outside, the car headlights sweeping across the ceiling.

When my mother walked into the bar, I suddenly realized that it wasn't just Kerry who had changed. She looked lovely and somehow younger than I was used to thinking of her. Her hair was brushed up on to the top of her head and she was wearing a belted mac that swished as she walked, dangling earrings, dark red lipstick. She smiled, raised a gloved hand as she crossed the room. When she bent to kiss me, I smelt perfume, face powder. Out of the blue, I remembered an episode from my childhood. We had gone for a bike ride and I had struggled along way behind the others. I had tried as hard as I possibly could, but they drew further and further away from me. They would wait and I would catch up slowly, and then they would leave me behind again as I pedalled stolidly through tears of rage and exhaustion. At the end of the ride, my father finally took a look at my bike and saw that there was a problem with the brake and it had been jammed down against one of the wheels for the entire journey. Maybe it's too convenient a metaphor for times when things just seem too hard: pedalling 'with the brake on. Now I wondered if my mother had spent years with the brakes on and that now, with Kerry in love, she was released and pedalling free.

'I've got a bottle of white for us,' I said.

'I really shouldn't,' she said, which in mother-speak meant thank you very much.

'Don't worry,' I said. 'There's a special deal here. You order two glasses and they give you the bottle. You know that I can never resist a bargain like that.'

I filled her glass and she clinked it against mine, inevitably toasting Kerry and Brendan. I tried not to mind; tried to banish inside me the five-year-old Miranda who wanted to be toasted and made a fuss of.

'Kerry's told me about your help with the flat-hunting and letting them stay and everything,' she said. 'I know she's not good at expressing her gratitude. She's probably embarrassed. But it means so much to her. And to me as well.'