Secrets. Freya North

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СКАЧАТЬ at her, standing there with her hands on her hips and a tea towel he knew wasn't his slung over her shoulder, her sleeves rolled up as if she was ready to fight.

      ‘Where?’

      ‘I've cleaned it up,’ she said. ‘I wasn't going to leave it there.’ She folded her arms. She looked peculiarly defiant and Joe found he didn't know what he was meant to say but felt she was waiting for an apology and fast.

      He glanced at the clock and then regarded Wolf who didn't look like a dog that'd just been sick. The dog was engrossed in a hearty lick of his nether region, his tail spread across the kitchen floor like a length of old frayed rope. ‘Sorry – I overslept. I don't usually. And no, Wolf isn't sick often. You should have left it for me to deal with.’

      ‘What – with Em around?’

      Now he felt guilty – as if he'd brought a lack of hygiene into the home of a child. Ridiculous – this was his house, wasn't it! And only her first day. He looked over at her sternly but she shrugged and popped her hair into a pony-tail. He'd quite liked her spirit yesterday – but not this morning when he'd just woken up.

      ‘It's not a problem,’ she said as if she sensed his reservation. ‘I just thought you needed to know.’ Now her equanimity made Joe feel a different sort of guilt, which was just as unnerving. All the more so when Tess then handed him a cup of tea in the china cup and saucer she'd left outside his study last night and he'd left, unwashed, in the sink. He sipped, giving himself time to think, but he was distracted as much by the unblinking attention of the infant as by the very good cup of tea.

      ‘So, you haven't done this job before?’

      ‘No – it's a brand new adventure.’

      He thought she must mean venture. ‘What did you do in London?’

      ‘Nails.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Manicures, pedicures.’

      He glanced at her nails. They were unspectacular, unvarnished and there was a Mister Man plaster around one. If these were the tools of her trade, they were not a particularly good advertisement. Manicures and pedicures? He didn't feel such a career could have suited her. He reckoned she looked more like a potter, or a photographer's assistant, or a landscape gardener at a push. He couldn't see her in a salon. She was pretty behind her slightly unkempt exterior – but her hair didn't have a particular style, her clothes were nondescript, asexual, and well worn. The lace of her left trainer was shorter than that of the right – the bow being tied on the penultimate eyelets. He thought, OK – fashion is not her thing. He thought, she hides behind her hair. He thought, you wouldn't notice her if you passed her on the street. He thought, perhaps that's a look she's honed.

      There's more, Joe thought, noticing a twitch of discomfort cloud her face. A nail-person, whatever they're called, doesn't stand there fidgeting with her own – it's bad for business.

      ‘Well, actually, I'm trained as a beautician,’ Tess pre-empted, ‘a beauty therapist. Highly qualified, in fact.’

      ‘I'm not sure there's much call in Saltburn,’ Joe told her. ‘There are a couple of salons already. You might have luck further afield.’

      ‘But now I'm looking for a change and that's why I'm here,’ she said, as if she'd been mid-sentence.

      ‘A change?’

      ‘That's why I'm here,’ Tess said and she folded the tea towel briskly to signify the matter was closed.

      ‘Well – welcome to your first day. I need to go through my diary with you.’

      ‘Of course,’ Tess said, ‘but perhaps when Em has her nap after lunch.’

      ‘Well, actually I would rather—’

      ‘I ought to figure out where I am,’ Tess interrupted and Joe, to his bafflement, found himself saying, OK, get your coat and I'll show you around town.

      Joe had overslept, for the first time in his adult life. Strangely, the sound of someone else was less intrusive than the usual silence. It was as if, with the clatter and attendance of someone else in the house, Joe could sleep longer. He hadn't yet checked a single email. Nor had he shaved because the hot water had sputtered lukewarm in his shower. And when he walked into the kitchen, he was met with a reprimand for his vomiting dog and a change to the order of his day.

      ‘Joe?’ She was calling him. ‘Five minutes? Ten?’

      Twenty would have suited him but he agreed to ten.

      Tess had driven in daylight but her urgency to arrive at the destination had precluded any appreciation, or awareness even, of the new landscape. The drive had been arduous, it had all felt interminably uphill from London; even through the monotonous flatlands of the Fens and the plains around York, she'd still sensed she was climbing north. She had never driven such a distance and her eyes had continually darted to the fuel gauge. She needed the journey to be done on what she had in the tank. But having never been further north than Milton Keynes, she didn't know how to judge it. It had added stress to the journey, but not enough to warrant thoughts of retreat. ‘Space, Em,’ Tess had said, over and again. ‘Proper space.’

      And this is the sentiment she is repeating today as she walks down the drive with Joe. Em in her buggy. Wolf loping circuitously alongside.

      ‘It wasn't the pollution or the second-hand aspect of London air and water,’ Tess tells him, ‘I just felt hemmed in. There are places – in the city – where the buildings are so tall and packed they appear to converge and steal a part of the sky.’

      ‘Living place plotted and pieced by subdividing space into a size that is simply sufficient,’ Joe says and it is so perfectly phrased that Tess stops to consider it. ‘Paving stones butting right up against tree-trunks.’ He's walking on. She catches up so she can listen. ‘People living on top of you, underneath you, crowding into you on buses, pushed up against you on tubes, encroaching on your personal space but avoiding eye contact at all costs.’

      ‘But how do you know this?’

      ‘I lived there too. When I was studying. A century ago,’ he laughs. ‘I lived in Peckham.’

      ‘From here to Peckham? What is there to study in Peckham?’

      ‘Peckham – because it was a cheap place to live,’ he says. ‘I studied Design. And then I studied Engineering. Not because I wanted to be an eternal student. But because I knew what I wanted to do.’

      ‘Are you doing it still?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘What is it that you do?’

      ‘I build bridges,’ he says.

      ‘As a metaphor? Are you a counsellor? Marriage guidance – that kind of thing?’

      Joe laughs and she looks cross that he should. ‘No – real bridges, the type that go from A to B. Bridges that span valleys and rivers and cross divides. Bridges that enable one to traverse air and water; bridges that take you closer to the sky or allow you to skim the sea. Bridges that join and unify places otherwise kept apart, that pacify areas previously hostile.’

      Tess СКАЧАТЬ