The hidden truth, p.5
The Hidden Truth, page 5
She was puzzled as she replayed the message at the end of the day. Hearing Precious saying goodbye to her last client, she went out into the hall. ‘Hey, come in here a sec, will you?’
Her friend followed her. ‘Listen.’ Sara pressed the voicemail button again.
Precious raised an eyebrow when Bernard had finished. ‘Tearoom man?’
Sara nodded. ‘I saw him on Saturday, on the high street. I was pretty sure he recognized me but he didn’t even say hello. Just blanked me and walked on.’
‘You must have reminded him that he liked you, though.’ She frowned. ‘It does feels like there’s a bit of resistance going on here …’
‘Only a bit?’ Sara asked, with a wry grin.
‘The wife is properly dead, isn’t she?’
Sara grimaced. ‘You think he made that up?’
Her friend laughed and gave Sara’s arm a friendly punch. ‘Hey, only teasing. Anyway, if Mrs Bernard is cavorting in the attic, you’ll find out soon enough.’ She turned to go, then swung back. ‘You are going to phone him, aren’t you?’
Sara baked a potato for supper, filled it with leftover ratatouille she’d made for Peggy on Saturday night and crumbled feta cheese over the top. She poured a small glass of white wine – for fortification – and drank it all perched on a rush stool at the wooden island in the middle of her small kitchen. It was her favourite room in the house, these days: she had recently painted it Tiffany blue, taken away all the cupboards and put up open shelves for all her crockery and glassware – which wasn’t much for just her. She’d also replaced the black marble worktops Pete had installed with pale oak, hung all her pots, pans and ladles, whisks, spoons and spatulas on a mesh of metal hooks on the wall beside the stove. The faded Italian quarry tiles had been there when they’d bought the house the year before Pete died, after selling their rambling, impossible-to-heat home in South Malling on the north side of town.
Now, as she ate, she was aware of fluttering in the pit of her stomach. Should I call him? she kept asking herself. Her head told her not to. He’d bothered to track her down, but why hadn’t he taken her number at the time … called sooner? She didn’t buy Precious’s sinister, albeit jokey, premise. Still, she wondered why he’d waited two weeks.
If Sara had been a game player, she might have waited a similar length of time before calling back. But she wasn’t that sort of woman. She couldn’t help remembering how comfortable she’d been with him, how much she’d enjoyed his company. Better the devil you sort of know? she thought, imagining all the other ‘frogs’ – as Margaret liked to call them – she would have to wade through to find someone she liked better.
Suppose I get his voicemail? she worried, as she continued to dither. Should I leave a message? And, if so, what should that message be? It all seemed way too complicated.
Sara went on with her meal, but she was distracted, barely noticing what she ate, her phone lying accusingly on the worktop by her side. It was realizing that if she didn’t call she would continue to wonder if she should that in the end made her grab her mobile and press the number she’d stored in her contacts earlier – on Precious’s insistence – before she had a chance to change her mind.
It rang twice, then a male voice – deeper than she’d remembered – said, ‘Hello?’ He sounded wary, but then he wouldn’t recognize her private number.
‘Bernard?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Sara. Sara Tempest.’
‘Oh … hello.’ His voice softened: he sounded pleased. ‘You got my message then.’
Sara felt a stab of panic at the ensuing silence, even though it was barely a couple of seconds. ‘How are you?’ she blurted out, then kicked herself. It was the sort of thing you asked someone you actually knew, with whom you had a reasonable amount of shared context. If Bernard said he was OK, that would mean nothing to her.
‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘I thought I saw you the other day, in Lewes. But you were across the road and I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t be sure.’
‘Might have been me,’ she said, noncommittally. ‘I do live there.’
‘Yes, I remember you saying.’
They both sounded so formal with each other, it almost made her laugh.
‘I was visiting a friend, my business partner, actually, Joe Fane. Do you know him? He always says it’s a very small town, Lewes.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t, but he’s not wrong. I sort of like that. Although Pete, my husband, used to find it pretty claustrophobic at times, but then he was never particularly sociable.’ She stopped, worried she was babbling.
‘I’m not either,’ Bernard said.
‘Nor me. In fact, I hate parties, I always think people would rather be talking to someone else. But I like the cosy community side of the town, it makes me feel safe, ridiculously.’ She winced, thinking she was putting out a weedy, socially insecure image of herself that was no longer right.
‘Since I’ve been on my own …’ He paused. ‘I never noticed it before, when Ilsa was alive, the heavy, clock-ticking silence in the house. Sometimes I like it – when I’m working, for instance – but often I feel so lonely out here on the cliffs that it almost hurts.’
Sara was touched at the sadness in his voice and taken aback by his honesty. ‘Even in noisy Lewes I get that – the silence of living alone,’ she said. ‘I listen to a lot of radio.’
Bernard laughed. ‘Me too.’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of me. I’m not often lonely,’ he added, clearly worried that he, too, wasn’t sending out the right signal.
‘I knew what you meant,’ she said.
‘So, what are you doing right now?’
‘I’m sitting at the island in my kitchen, eating a baked potato and ratatouille.’
Sara heard him chuckle. ‘You’re making me jealous.’
‘What about you?’ she asked.
‘Glass of red and a bowl of Twiglets,’ he said.
‘Twiglets?’
‘I know, so last century. An old bloke’s snack, like meat paste and Ovaltine,’ Bernard joked, and they both began to laugh.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘do you fancy meeting up for a drink … maybe supper one night?’
Sara smiled, and was glad he couldn’t see it.
When their call ended, she pushed the half-finished plate away and gave out a long breath. OK, she thought. Restless suddenly, she got down off the stool and went to stand outside in the garden. It was after nine and the light was almost gone, but the sky still glowed a faint wash of primrose. She wrapped her cardigan round herself, although there was still a lingering warmth from the day, inhaling the soft scent of roses on the night air and the more pungent waft of honeysuckle poking over the wall from her neighbour’s garden. For the first time in a long while, she was aware of a small fizz of excitement in her gut. His voice is lovely, she thought, smiling again at the Twiglet comment.
‘I know this place that has the most delicious fish soup,’ he’d suggested, after she’d agreed to meet up. ‘It’s less than half an hour from you. Do you like fish?’
‘Sounds perfect,’ Sara had replied.
‘If it’s a nice evening, we can sit outside,’ Bernard had said.
She was already nervous at the prospect.
Joni’s face appeared on FaceTime a few minutes after Bernard’s call.
‘Who were you just talking to?’ Sara’s daughter – all blonde and tanned and smiling in the Californian sun – demanded, sounding restive. ‘I’ve tried you a couple of times.’
Sara laughed. Joni had always been impatient, eager for the next experience, keen not to let the grass grow under her feet. It had been a family joke when she was young: ‘Watch out, Joni’s looking bored.’ Luckily, her current occupation – starting a fitness centre in Los Angeles with her Californian husband, Mason, also a sport and fitness instructor – used every ounce of her energy and resources, and then some. ‘Just a friend,’ she said, hoping Joni wouldn’t ask which one. But her daughter was already swirling her phone around.
‘Look where I am, Mum … Our new gaff!’
Sara saw the outside of a small, adobe-style house, with pink-washed walls and a terracotta-tiled roof, arched windows with pretty sky-blue shutters.
‘And here’s the pool …’ The image wobbled round some spiky brush and hillside to show an oval turquoise swimming-pool. ‘It’s the size of a pea but, God, you really need it here. It got to nearly ninety-eight degrees the other day.’ She laughed. ‘They still use old money for the temperature here. I’ve had to adjust.’
‘It’s gorgeous, sweetheart. Wish I was there with you right now.’
‘Oh, I totally wish you were too, Mum. Wouldn’t that be brilliant? When we’ve got sorted you have to come out. There’s three bedrooms, so Peggy can come too.’
They chatted on and it was late before Sara began to clear away her supper things. She was still smiling. Seeing her daughter so happy and involved in her life warmed her heart. There had been a time after Pete died when she’d worried Joni was coming off the rails. She’d turned down the job she’d lined up – post sports-science degree – in a primary school in Buckingham and returned home to Lewes, where she’d taken to her bed in silent despair. So unlike Joni. Sara, distraught herself, and unable to focus on pretty much anything more than getting through the day, was at a loss as to what to do. It had been Precious stepping up, cajoling Joni into volunteering with the kids at the Shoreham sailing club, that had finally rescued her daughter, brought her back to life. And it was at the club that she’d met Mason – who was crewing on a large yacht owned by friends of his parents.
As she poured herself a glass of water from the filter jug and made her way up to bed, her thoughts returned to Bernard. She hadn’t asked why he didn’t call earlier, of course. But she wasn’t investing too much in the supper with him. If he had stuff going on in his life that was making him reluctant on some level, she didn’t want to get involved.
8
Sara’s hair was playing up. Usually, she just turned upside down and blow-dried it without any product, but this evening, of all evenings, she’d rashly introduced some mousse to give it more body, resulting in a set of uneven bulges she couldn’t brush out without wetting her hair. Now it looked like she’d had a row with her hairdresser and walked out mid-styling. Sighing, she shook her head vigorously from side to side and left it at that. If my hair’s a deal breaker, then so be it, she thought, managing a small smile through her fluster.
It was another hot, muggy evening as Sara made her way to her car, which was up the hill in the council car park behind the church – there was no parking on the high street in front of her house. She set the satnav, although she didn’t really need it, then pulled out onto the main road, her stomach hollow with nerves, as it had been all day.
‘Don’t have too many expectations,’ Precious had warned.
Sara didn’t think ‘expectations’ were the problem. She told herself she didn’t have any at this stage, beyond managing to get through the evening without making a fool of herself. But the step change from a chance forty-five minutes over a piece of cake and a cuppa to dinner seemed daunting.
She was led through the other seated diners, out to the pretty courtyard garden. She saw Bernard at once, seated beneath a fig tree, arms leaning on the white tablecloth as he perused the menu. As she approached, he rose, laying his glasses on the table, and held out both hands, taking her own – cold from nerves, despite the hot night – in his and squeezing them in greeting. He was dressed in a white shirt and blue linen jacket, with faded black jeans, and looked different, somehow, from how she’d remembered him. Just as attractive, certainly, but also tense, almost wary, she thought. Seeing him, instead of calming her nerves, made her heart up its rhythm.
‘You found it OK, then?’ he asked, when she was seated and a bottle of wine had been ordered from the proprietor, who appeared to know Bernard.
She smiled. ‘No excuses, these days.’ Looking around, she added, ‘This is lovely.’
He hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. ‘I came here sometimes with my wife.’ He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t going to mention it, but we might as well be upfront, don’t you think? Seeing as we’re in the same boat.’
A bit startled by his directness, she nodded. ‘I’ll mention mine if you mention yours sort of thing?’
Bernard laughed and she saw his face suddenly open up.
‘OK,’ Sara said. ‘Well, in the spirit of confession, Pete and I used to get takeaway fish and chips from the place next door in the summer and eat them on the beach.’ She hadn’t realized until she arrived that her destination that evening would be so close to the chip shop, and had felt a wave of nostalgia so powerful it had brought tears to her eyes. Pete, a perennially fussy eater, said the smell of fish made him retch, so she’d always done the ordering: haddock for her, a minced beef and onion pie for him, plenty of chips for them both.
‘Sounds like fun.’ Bernard suddenly looked worried. ‘Would you have preferred the beach tonight?’
‘No, no, this is perfect,’ she assured him, then panicked that ‘perfect’ was too strong.
They smiled at each other, as Sara scrabbled for a follow-up.
‘It was so much easier dating when we were young, wasn’t it? Our lives were simple by comparison,’ she commented.
‘Ooh, not sure about that,’ Bernard replied. ‘My world seemed endlessly complex and gripping back then – to me at least.’
After their laughter, silence descended.
She took a breath. ‘I was nervous as hell coming here tonight.’
A fleeting frown of sympathy was followed by a grin. ‘You were nervous.’
Sara couldn’t meet his eye. Luckily, at that moment the wine arrived with a basket of freshly baked rolls and butter. They both ordered the fish soup.
‘Is that why you left it so long before ringing me?’ she found herself asking, when they were alone again. Her tone was teasing but she immediately froze, wanting to swallow her words. Could I sound more uncool?
Bernard wasn’t looking at her, wasn’t replying, wasn’t laughing. His lack of reaction alarmed her. Then his gaze met hers. His expression was steady, strangely challenging, his voice so quiet as to be almost inaudible above the hum of the surrounding tables. ‘I … I suppose I don’t want to let you down.’
Let me down? Sara wondered if she’d heard him right.
Before she had a chance to speak, he’d composed his face and was smiling. ‘You know that feeling? That you won’t measure up?’
She did, of course, but he seemed overly concerned, so soon after meeting, and his response didn’t entirely ring true.
‘Tell me about your house,’ she said, keen to dispel the intensity that seemed, inadvertently, to have built up between them, move on to more general ground. ‘Did you design it yourself?’
It was a safe subject, surely, but she thought she detected a shadow pass across his tanned features. When he spoke, however, it was with apparent enthusiasm.
‘It’s sustainable, an eco-house, right on the clifftop. Ilsa and I built it together. She was an architect too. It’ll be twenty-five years old next January.’ He paused. ‘I’d show you photos, but they don’t do it justice.’
‘Look forward to seeing it in the flesh,’ she said, without thinking, then quickly backtracked. ‘I didn’t mean …’ She stopped, blushing. The hole she’d dug was already deep enough.
Bernard roared with laughter. ‘What are we like?’ He levelled his gaze at her. ‘I really hope you will see the house, Sara.’
To say she wasn’t flirting would have been wrong – there were frequent flashes when she met his keen grey eyes, when they laughed together, which made her feel as if she were being prodded alive after many years of deep slumber. But her feelings were not so much sexual as quiet pleasure in his company, the lack of constraint he seemed to engender in her.
Sara loved being outside on summer evenings, watching the sky turn through the colours of the rainbow as light slowly faded, the quiet intimacy of darkness. In the courtyard, candles were lit on tables, cooking smells mixed with the sweet fragrance from a clump of white snowdrift in a pot close to where she and Bernard sat. Supper had gone in a flash, the early awkwardness dissipating with more general chat about their lives, their families, the state of the world. He told her that his son Adam was at Nottingham, in his fifth year of medicine; Carrie, his daughter, was doing a design apprenticeship in Liverpool, for Matalan. A million more questions buzzed in her mind that she wanted to ask the man sitting opposite, but she felt there was no hurry, they had time.
Over coffee Bernard asked, ‘I know I left it a long time after Ilsa died before dating … but why did you?’
He was not the sort to fob off with a glib reply. That was becoming increasingly clear. Unlike so many people, Bernard seemed able to talk about anything and everything, to confront his feelings in a way more familiar with her female friends, such as Precious.
‘I really loved Pete,’ she said, as she considered her answer. ‘Our marriage wasn’t perfect – although since he died, I’ve made it so.’ She gave a quick laugh. ‘It’s taken me a long time to get over, I suppose. I think I persuaded myself I’d never find a relationship that worked so well … That and being terrified of the whole dating palaver.’
She wondered if she’d said too much, set the bar too high.
Bernard was regarding her thoughtfully. ‘You were lucky,’ he said.
‘You and Ilsa …’
‘Yes, I loved her very much, too,’ he said, then stopped. She waited, but he didn’t go on, his head bent to unwrapping the foil of a mint chocolate the waitress had brought with the coffee. Then he looked up and met her gaze. To Sara, the expression in his eyes seemed filled with regret, rather than the more obvious sadness of loss. ‘Marriage is a complex business, in my experience,’ he added.
