Secrets by Lynne Barrett-Lee

Author:Lynne Barrett-Lee [Barrett-Lee, Lynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781423788614
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2012-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

I WAS AT A loss for words. Not so much because I couldn’t find the words, but because there were so many of them, all fighting for space in my brain. I couldn’t believe it, yet it must be true. Who would joke about something like that?

‘I can’t believe you just told me that,’ I said to Tom.

‘It’s true, nevertheless,’ he said. His voice had changed, had become flat and toneless. No wonder he’d looked so upset on Saturday when I’d asked him if he knew who Jack was.

‘But how –’ I began. ‘I mean, have you always known? And what about Ffion? And what about Emily? Does she know?’

‘No.’ There was an edge to his voice now. ‘She knows nothing about it, and she isn’t about to. Megan, I…look. We need to talk. I need to talk. But I have to get back to work. Can I call you later? Or better still, can we meet up? Have you got anything on this evening?’

Anything I might have been doing would have seemed trivial in comparison. But it was Monday evening, and I had nothing more pressing to attend to than a basket of ironing.

‘Of course we need to talk,’ I said. ‘But you’re in Cardiff and I’m out here. Do you want to meet somewhere halfway?’

‘Where’s here?’ he asked. Of course. He’d no reason to know where I lived these days.

‘ I t ’s a village just outside Pembroke,’ I told him. I gave him the details. ‘So I guess we could meet up somewhere near the motorway –’

‘No, no,’ he interrupted. ‘I’ll come to you. Shouldn’t take me more than a couple of hours. I’ll finish up here and drive straight down. Say be there around seven?’

‘Don’t you have to get home?’

‘I’m sure the cat will cope,’ he said grimly.

The afternoon, now hijacked, stretched before me, but there was no question of getting any more work done today. Emily not Tom’s daughter? I still couldn’t believe it. More incredible still was that during all the years Ffion had confided in me she never let slip even the tiniest hint about all this. What had she done? How did it all happen? Why was Tom bringing up another man’s child?

But going over and over it was pointless. The answers I wanted would be coming with Tom, at seven.

He arrived at a quarter to. He’d called me for directions five minutes before. When he arrived, I was trying to revive the neglected tubs of flowers in the front garden. He slammed the door of the car and walked up the path, shoulders slightly drooped.

‘A lost cause, I think,’ he said, nodding towards the flowers.

I put down my watering can and led him inside.

‘Forgot to remind my son to water them,’ I said regretfully. ‘Are you hungry?’

He shook his head as he took off his jacket and yanked at the knot of his tie. I pulled out a chair for him at the kitchen table, feeling all at once self-conscious. And guilty, as well, that I’d spent so many years angry with him.

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