The Hidden Truth, page 3
Sara bridled. ‘Thanks. Good to know you think I’m “dumb”.’ She’d risen abruptly, picking up her cup from the desk in a marked manner. But her friend, leaning against the therapy-room wall, arms crossed, just grinned.
‘OK, OK, got the message.’
Which left Sara with the problem sitting square in her own lap. She’d gone home that night and steeled herself to open the app and find another connection.
As she walked across the gravel of the car park now, she breathed in the fresh summer air. It would be lovely to sit outside in the sunshine, she thought, but the tables on the terrace were empty, the breeze gusty and cool today, up there on the Downs. This was a place she often brought Margaret to when her mother-in-law fancied a day out. It was run by a young couple: Liam baked, Jessie managed, with help from a rotation of waitresses barely out of school.
Sara hovered in the doorway as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior, winding herself up to be bright and forthcoming with the dentist. The low-ceilinged room was crammed, the buzz of chatter and chinking crockery filling the warm, sugar-laden air. She tried to recall the photo Randall had posted – but she’d flicked through so many recently they’d all begun to blur. Grey hair, bland features, nice smile, she decided. And he’d be sitting alone. Shouldn’t be hard to find, she thought nervously, surveying the mostly female clientele.
‘Hi, there, Sara,’ Jessie greeted her from behind the till.
Sara went over to say hello. ‘I’m meeting someone,’ she said, after they’d caught up, anxious to get this whole thing over with, but suddenly self-conscious, as if she were up to something shady.
She turned back to the room. And noticed two grey-haired men. Both alone, neither with tea, the first by the French windows onto the garden at the back, the other near the till. The one by the windows was staring at his mobile. The other was sitting quietly, gazing off into space, hands clasped on the table, where a black notebook and pen lay. Sara hesitated.
The man near the till, perhaps sensing her stare, looked up. Oh, hello, Sara thought. He looks nice – although not like his photo at all. She smiled. He smiled back. She moved towards him. ‘Randall?’
He looked confused. ‘Umm, no, sorry … wrong guy.’
Sara was instantly embarrassed. ‘Sorry … I thought …’ she said, finding herself a little disappointed.
His light-grey eyes creased with amusement.
They eyed each other for another second. Then Sara pulled herself together. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, turning back to check the table near the window.
‘Looks like my date is a no-show,’ the man went on. ‘If this Randall guy doesn’t materialize either, why don’t you join me for a cuppa? Saves us both a wasted journey.’
She pulled a face, lowering her voice. ‘I think that might be him over there,’ she said discreetly swishing her eyes across the room. Randall – for it must be him, although it was hard to tell as she could see only the top of his head – was still absorbed in something on his phone screen.
The man followed her glance and shook his head from side to side in a considering way. ‘Seems pretty intent on what he’s doing. Maybe he won’t notice your absence,’ he said. ‘Please, have a seat, if you like? You can text to say the cat’s sick and you have to take it to the vet.’
Sara grinned. ‘I don’t have a cat.’ But, without thinking, she pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. ‘This is so rude,’ she whispered, although there was no chance of Randall hearing across the hum of voices. ‘What if he recognizes me when he gets up?’
The man pondered this for another couple of seconds. ‘He hasn’t ordered yet. If that were me, and I got your text about the cat, I’d just curse and walk straight out of the French windows. If you hurry, he won’t bother to look for you.’
Feeling like the naughty schoolgirl she’d never been, Sara, her face firmly turned away from where Randall was sitting, rooted about in her bag for her phone. She felt guilty about him, but not guilty enough to have tea with him. Not when this charming man was offering.
Sorry, she typed hastily, last-minute work thing. Won’t be able to make it. Sara. Unlike her dithering over that first text she’d never sent to Colin-the-radiologist, this time she barely bothered to read it before pressing the ‘send’ arrow. ‘Done,’ she said nervously.
He seemed amused as he turned his gaze to the dentist, Sara guiltily burying her head.
‘Has he got it?’ she asked, when he said nothing.
‘Umm, must have … Hold on, he’s … Yes, he’s shaking his head … Getting up … oops, looking around …’ The man’s eyes widened in mock panic. ‘No, it’s OK, just grabbing his jacket. He’s frowning, seems a bit put out … but …’ long pause ‘… off he goes.’
Sara felt a bubble of laughter in her chest. She looked up, gave a quick glance around, then breathed a huge sigh of relief. She turned back to him. ‘That was really rubbish behaviour,’ she said, suddenly ashamed by how rudely she’d treated someone who was probably a perfectly decent person.
‘He might be pissed off momentarily, but it won’t be terminal. Look, I’ve just been dumped by a Ruth and I’m fine.’ He stretched out his arms, as if to prove his point.
Sara cocked an eyebrow. ‘Maybe she’s bonding with Randall in the car park as we speak, relieved she’s been saved by some random stranger from having to endure tea with you.’
He grinned, holding out his hand across the table. ‘Bernard Lockmore.’
She shook it. ‘Sara – without an h – Tempest.’ As she said it, she had a flash of the first time she’d told her mother about Pete. ‘Isn’t Pete Tempest such a wonderful name?’ she’d said dreamily. Her mother had just laughed and given her a knowing look. Sara had been happy to dump ‘Colquhoun’ when she married … not just because it was impossible for anyone to spell.
She felt a sudden pang of the usual shyness. The joke had carried them through the introductions, but now Randall had been summarily dispatched, she was alone with this complete stranger.
‘Shall we order?’ he was asking. ‘I don’t know if you’ve been here before, but the coffee cake is delicious.’
A pot of tea and two slices of cake sat on the table between them.
‘So was Ruth a first date?’ Sara asked, as Bernard poured tea for them both.
‘No, much worse. We had a drink last week.’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘This is a humiliating rejection of me personally, not just my online profile.’
‘You liked her, then.’
‘She was nice enough. But my friend Joe – who’s never online-dated in his life, while insisting he’s a world expert – says the first date should be considered ground zero and you have to give it one more go.’ He shrugged. ‘Clearly Ruth didn’t get the memo.’ Smiling, he added, ‘Which, I have to say, seems like a bonus right now.’
Seems like one to me, too, she thought, surprising herself, amazed by how quickly she was starting to feel at ease with a man who, half an hour ago, she’d never set eyes on before. ‘Everyone’s been on my case about dating,’ she said.
Bernard seemed to hesitate before asking the next question. ‘Divorced?’
‘Widowed. Pete, my husband, died six years ago.’
Sympathy was immediately apparent in his eyes. ‘Five years and four months since Ilsa died.’
Sara thought this was oddly precise. Silence fell between them. She didn’t know whether it was all right to ask what had happened or wait for him to tell her: she never volunteered details about Pete’s death unless required. But Bernard seemed to invite confidences, and although she didn’t have one single fact about him, apart from his name and his wife’s demise – she knew way more about Randall-the-dentist, whom she’d never even met – she found herself beginning to speak.
‘Pete had a cerebral aneurysm,’ she said. ‘He got this blinding headache, out of the blue … As if he’d been clubbed on the head, was how he described it.’ She took a breath. ‘Then half an hour later he just fell down right there, in the street, walking home with me from lunch at a friend’s house.’ She stopped again. It never got any easier, taking herself back to that moment. ‘Everything’s gone blurred,’ was the last thing Pete had said to her as he slumped to the pavement, clutching his head. ‘He never regained consciousness … died that night.’
Bernard was watching her quietly as she talked. He had a strong, intelligent face, with a slightly crooked nose and dark brows, although his hair was almost white, in a longish crewcut. His tanned, weather-beaten skin made his light-grey eyes stand out and implied, as did his lean frame, a fair amount of time outdoors. By any standards, he’s an attractive man, Sara thought.
‘So sudden. That must have been terrible. I can’t imagine.’
His eyes were full of compassion. So much so that she felt her own well up. It still surprised her, after all this time, that memories of her husband’s death had the power instantly to reduce her to tears.
Sometimes the moment of his death seemed almost more real than the rest of his life. Not saying goodbye to Pete had been the most painful. ‘One second he was there, walking along, completely normal. The next he was just gone.’ And telling the girls, of course. It had happened in June: Joni just finishing her finals at Loughborough, Peggy away in Indonesia on her gap year. Neither had answered her first call. She would never forget the horrified, stuttering quiet her words evoked when her daughters eventually got through.
A shadow passed over Bernard’s face. ‘So cruel, that moment when everything changes, when life is never the same again,’ he said.
The silence that followed did not feel awkward. Here she was, divulging her innermost feelings and Bernard had absorbed them, made her feel heard. So many people, she’d discovered, shied away from anything more than platitudes when confronted with death. ‘I know exactly how you’re feeling,’ they would say, with all the best intentions. ‘My brother died last year.’ But nobody knew how she was feeling: it was different for everyone.
He didn’t reciprocate with details of Ilsa’s death, and Sara didn’t ask. The atmosphere had become sombre and she wanted to lighten it. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to tell me something about yourself. I’ve got no online profile to refer to.’
Bernard cleared his throat. ‘OK … where to start? I’m sixty-two, an architect. I share a practice in Eastbourne with Joe Fane – the friend I mentioned. We do mostly eco-stuff. My twins, Adam and Carrie, are now in their twenties, both off doing their own thing.’ He paused. ‘What else? Grew up in Broadstairs. Dad was an industrial designer for rehab equipment – splints, supports, that kind of thing. Mum stayed at home. Both long dead. One older brother, who died more recently.’ He paused again. ‘Oh, and I live up on the cliffs just past Hastings.’ He grinned. ‘Your turn.’
Still trying to take in the information he’d given her, she stumbled through a similarly brief outline of her daughters and her job, her dead mother. She didn’t mention her father or that he had not been in touch – made no attempt whatsoever to communicate with her throughout her childhood – until the day of her mother’s funeral, when Sara was thirty-six. That now she had contact with him once a year, for Thanksgiving, at his North Wales bungalow – his third wife, Lois, to whom he’d been married for fifteen years, hailing originally from Kentucky. It was all a source of embarrassment to her and endless fascination to anyone she told. But Bernard either didn’t appear to notice the omission or chose not to ask.
‘A nutritionist, eh?’ He pointed to the remains of the coffee cake with a raised eyebrow, and she laughed, although it was such a tired old joke.
‘Not you as well,’ she said. ‘It’s always assumed us nutritionists are prim spoilsports who frown on anyone who doesn’t eat kale and spirulina for breakfast, lunch and supper. I truly believe good food – a nutritious diet – is one of the principal secrets to a happy life. The difference it makes is huge … but it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the odd piece of cake.’ She heard her voice rising and couldn’t help blushing at her zeal in front of this stranger.
Bernard was looking at her appraisingly. ‘It’s great to feel so passionately about something,’ he said.
Still embarrassed, she hurried on: ‘I reckon Liam’s cakes are good for the soul. It’s just people always get self-conscious when I tell them my job. Like smiling at a dentist.’ She cringed guiltily at the thought of dentists.
He chuckled. ‘Don’t worry about old Randall. He’ll get over it.’ His phone suddenly pinged with a text as he spoke and he picked it up, glancing briefly at the screen. A fleeting look, which Sara interpreted as worry, crossed his face, then he put the phone down, without answering the text, and gave her a smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
Sara had her back to the room, but she saw Bernard glancing over her shoulder. He seemed distracted now, his mood quite changed. ‘Think they’re closing up … We’re the last men standing.’
She was surprised – she’d been completely unaware of what was going on around her. Then she remembered she’d deliberately made the appointment with Randall to last, at the most, forty-five minutes.
Outside, they stopped before heading for their cars, parked in opposite corners of the almost empty car park. Hers was a much-loved duck-egg blue Mini, Bernard’s an old, stately silver Mercedes. There was a fleeting moment of awkwardness. It seemed to Sara as if his mind were elsewhere now and he was in a hurry to get away. He held out his hand, but barely met her eye. ‘That was a pleasure, Sara. Thanks for choosing me.’ He imbued his last words with a terrible American accent.
She laughed, although the joke fell a bit flat now the magic between them had ebbed away. ‘It was rude, but I’m glad I did.’
Again, there was a self-conscious silence.
‘Bye, then,’ Bernard said eventually.
Oh, she thought. Is that it? ‘Bye,’ she echoed, and quickly turned away so he wouldn’t notice her disappointment.
When Sara was safely on the road again, heading in the opposite direction to her tea companion along the coast, she felt thoroughly despondent. Bernard obviously had no intention of seeing her again. The atmosphere had changed after the text and she wondered who it was from. Another woman? He’d enjoyed her company, she was pretty sure of that. She sighed. This was obviously how it went. But there had been something about the man. From the first moment she saw him, she’d felt it. You always know … She remembered Margaret’s words but quickly pushed them away. There was no point ‘knowing’ if the other person didn’t.
4
Wow, Bernard thought, as he drove away from the tearoom. She was like a breath of fresh air. However unwelcome, he was perversely grateful for the timely text from Adam, reminding him – if, indeed, he needed a reminder – of all that stood in the way of him sailing into the sunset with any woman. Plus, the message itself had worried him. Instead of the usual Talk soon, which was pretty much standard for his son’s fitful communication these days, Adam had written, Everything’s pretty rubbish, Dad, since you ask x. He vowed to try to actually talk to his son as soon as he got home – these cryptic texts were hopeless.
As his mind reverted to the tea, he felt bad about not suggesting they meet again. He’d seen the flash of puzzlement as Sara said goodbye – and he couldn’t deny how well they’d got on. But real involvement with someone wasn’t the plan. Not that he’d known exactly what the plan was when he’d begun dating in the spring – significantly, just after the fifth anniversary of Ilsa’s death. Diversion, he supposed. Being alone in the house often felt so suffocating and sad.
So, today faced him with a new problem. The woman he’d just had tea with was different. He’d immediately felt a connection. She seemed gentle, really grounded … someone with whom he could relax, laugh, be himself. He shook his head. He hadn’t anticipated that. Casual dates were one thing – there’d been a few of those, none leading to anything. Something more serious was out of the question. When would you tell her? the voice in his head taunted him. What would you tell her?
He sighed now, wondering if this feeling of isolation, of being set apart from the rest of the human race, would ever soften into something he could live with. It seemed to have been made even harder by meeting Sara, however fleetingly. She’d provided a tiny glimpse of something he thought of as normal – although not his normal – and he forced himself to sweep away the afternoon, like so much dust. I should have left her to the dentist, he thought resentfully, as he drew up outside his empty, echoing house on the cliff.
Once inside, for a second it was as if he were arriving home from the Eastbourne office and Ilsa was upstairs. He almost called out to her – his wife’s presence was so strong in the silent kitchen. He shivered, turning on the lights in an almost reflex action, because sunshine was still pouring through the windows.
At the five-year marker for Ilsa’s death in March, he’d gone to the cupboard in his office and reached up for the box pushed to the back of the top shelf, behind packets of printer paper. The rectangular, pale-oak urn was wrapped in a Sainsbury’s bag. Taking it out and placing it on his desk, he’d sat and stared at it for a while. He always spoke to her like this on the yearly anniversaries. Told her how much he loved her, missed her … how sorry he was.
But that day his mind refused to settle into the groove. None of the usual phrases formed in his head, only flickering images of Ilsa: her flying white-blonde hair, her soft laugh, her light, frightened eyes, which were capable, on the turn of a penny, of switching to solid steel. And instead of the sadness that usually engulfed him, he’d sensed a small renegade spike of rebellion. One that made him instantly glance around, as if the walls could hear.
Nonetheless, he’d found himself whispering to the remains of his wife, ‘I love you, Ilsa, always will. But it’s five years, now. I need to start again.’ It seemed, however, as if she and the house – always more hers than his – had chosen to ignore his plea. Ilsa was still there, in every corner of every room … in the very air Bernard breathed.
