The Hidden Truth, page 7
Sara had repeatedly told herself over the years that she wasn’t bitter about Frank’s absence in her life. But when the children were at the age she had been when her father had left, and she saw Pete holding each of them tenderly to his broad chest, his face lighting up with such love, it was hard to understand how her father could have walked away so comprehensively.
Margaret had nodded off, her head lolling uncomfortably on her chest. Sara did not get up. She continued to sit, regarding the woman in front of her. Pete’s mum. The only other person who’d known and loved her husband so intimately. It had been one of her greatest pleasures, talking about him endlessly with Margaret, often repeating the same old stories, over and over, both of them imbuing their memories with a consolingly rosy glow. There was no one else with whom she could do it so openly, not even the girls – she didn’t want to overburden them.
Feeling sleepy, she laid her head against the sofa back. Heather had gone to the shops and wouldn’t be back for a while. She closed her eyes, but was jerked awake a few moments later by her mobile vibrating in her pocket. Grabbing it and clicking on the call, in her haste to avoid waking Margaret, she got up and hurried out into the garden.
‘Hello?’ she said, in a fierce whisper.
‘Is this a bad time?’ Bernard’s voice sounded apologetic.
‘I’m with my mother-in-law and she’s sleeping.’ Surprised to hear his voice, she found she was also mildly irritated. No reply to her message, then he rings at the most inconvenient moment.
‘Sorry. I’ll call back later.’
‘No, go ahead.’ Bird in the hand, she thought.
‘Short notice, but I wondered if you fancied a film this evening? I still haven’t been over to check out the Depot – although I know one of the architects quite well – and they’re showing Rear Window … I thought it might be fun.’
When she didn’t immediately reply, taken aback by the sudden invitation, Bernard went on, ‘You do like the cinema?’
The question felt vaguely patronizing. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ She, Precious and Sammi went every couple of weeks to whatever was showing. The new three-screen cinema, built around an old warehouse complex, was a big boon for the locals.
‘Ilsa didn’t. Too many people crushed together. Germs.’
‘Oh …’ Odd, she thought. She’d been about to add that in fact Pete hadn’t liked the cinema either, reasoning that it was a waste of his day when he could be out climbing something, biking somewhere or taking his dinghy for a sail.
But Bernard was speaking. ‘Sorry … nervous tic, can’t seem to stop mentioning my wife.’
She laughed, no longer offended.
‘So, are you up for the movie?’
After thinking she might never hear from Bernard again – or at least not in the immediate future – Sara was suddenly faced with two dates in one weekend. It took her breath away. He is interested in me, after all, she thought, with a smile.
Sitting next to Bernard on the plush new cinema seats in the semi-darkness, Sara found that she was pleasantly aware of his closeness as their shoulders touched. The glass of wine they’d drunk at one of the outside tables before the film had loosened her inhibitions and she was tempted to lean into his warmth. But she resisted, and soon she was lost in the suspense on the screen. By the time Jimmy Stewart was sitting in his wheelchair with yet another broken leg, she’d almost forgotten she was there with Bernard. When the lights came up and they rose to their feet, neither immediately spoke.
Outside it was dusk, the August air only just beginning to cool.
‘Are you hungry?’ Bernard asked.
She had been amused and fascinated by his animated appraisal of the building, his talk of design, the cinema complex, and discussion of Hitchcock before the show, but she hadn’t thought about what might happen afterwards. Standing there now, watching his brows rise in question above his grey eyes, she felt suddenly bold, on a bit of a high after her enjoyment of the film. ‘Come back to mine? I could rustle up an omelette and salad – and there are blueberry muffins …’
Later, they sat opposite each other at the kitchen island, eggs and salad dispatched. Outwardly, she’d prepared the meal with her usual quiet efficiency, while inwardly rattling like a tree in a storm. A plate of muffins lay on the table between them. She had a moment of bewilderment, seeing Bernard sitting there in her kitchen. It wasn’t to do with Pete, she thought. It felt very much like her place, now, rather than the old marital home. But she rarely had guests, let alone an attractive single man.
Bernard looked up at her and asked, ‘What do you want from your life, Sara … at this stage in the game?’
Caught off-guard by the sudden shift in tone – they had been laughing a minute ago about how ridiculously perfect Grace Kelly was in High Society – she wondered what he was really asking.
‘Generally, do you mean?’
He nodded. ‘We’ve both got our kids. We’ve recovered as much as we’re going to from our spouses dying. We’re both involved in our work …’ He trailed off.
Taking a deep breath, Sara hesitated. ‘OK … Well, aside from all that … I suppose I would like to be with someone … not be alone forever.’
Bernard’s eyes widened. It wasn’t surprise, she thought, more recognition she saw there. ‘Me too,’ he said softly. ‘Me too. I wasn’t sure. These dating apps skew your sense of what’s real, what people are after. I’ve never been good at sexual politics, anyway.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘But I don’t want to hook up with someone just for sex.’
He must have seen her mouth twitch in amusement, because he hurried on: ‘I didn’t mean … Obviously I’d love to have sex with you … Oh, God, now what have I said?’ Then he added, ‘But if that’s all you want …’
Sara could not help blushing, at the same time delighting in his outburst.
Bernard groaned. ‘Sorry, I’m famous for coming out with stuff inappropriately, along with losing things and wandering about the cliffs at night. You should hear my kids on the subject.’
She frowned, then took the less contentious conversational option. ‘You have trouble sleeping?’
‘Persistent. For years. So I like to walk at night, that’s all. But the neighbours – and particularly their dogs – freak out, thinking I’m some evil home-invader. I suppose I can see their point.’
‘That must be so horrible,’ she said simply, and saw Bernard’s eyes cloud. Precious might be able to help with acupuncture, she thought, but did not articulate her notion. People, she knew, weren’t always looking for solutions. They just wanted to be heard.
‘It really is. If you don’t suffer from it, it’s hard to understand just how bad it feels.’
He looked so lost, she was tempted to reach out and take his hand. But he beat her to it. At his touch, Sara felt a deep, buried yearning … to be held, just held tight, to rest in a man’s embrace. Those moments when Pete had gathered her to him and wrapped her close, she missed them so much.
Letting go of her hand, Bernard got up. Coming round to where she sat, he waited as she too stood. Very slowly, he opened his arms. The touch of his body against hers, the rough warmth of his cheek, the feel of his shirt beneath her fingers as her hands encircled his back, and his clean, masculine smell of soap and fresh laundry was so achingly enticing – surprising, but also familiar in an atavistic sense – that she heard herself give a soft gasp. She paused a minute to savour the sensation, wanting this not to end. The frisson between them as he met her gaze was palpable and, again, she wanted to cherish it, to experience every inch of it, make it last. He seemed in no hurry either, his previous awkwardness replaced by a certainty she had not anticipated.
The moment stretched out, every second they didn’t kiss making her breath shorter and shorter in her chest, until it was fluttering high in her throat. Then his mouth was seeking hers, his lips warm, charged as they touched her own. She tasted salt and wine and the sweetness of blueberries on her tongue.
Finally pulling back, dazed, she heard him let out a long, slow breath as her own heart began to ease off from its frantic syncopation.
Bernard was smiling as if in slow motion.
Trembling slightly, she leant back against the island. ‘I didn’t expect that,’ she murmured.
‘You didn’t?’
‘I wasn’t sure you fancied me.’
Bernard let out a soft laugh. ‘Oh, you can be very sure I do.’
She blinked, suddenly exhausted and overwhelmed, not only by what had just happened, but by how she felt about it. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked, and they both began to laugh.
They sat in the darkness on the garden bench. The lights of the town rendered the sky pale, and the summer night air was chilly, but there was a lovely intimacy as he threaded his arm across her shoulders and pulled her close. Neither spoke. Neither tried to kiss the other again. It was as if they were delicately holding the secret of what had just happened between them, like a precious thing.
When they’d finished their tea, Bernard said, ‘I suppose I’d better get going.’
She could have asked him to stay. It was late, he had an hour’s drive ahead of him, and his car was down by the cinema still as they’d walked to her house after the film. But she didn’t and he didn’t seem to expect her to. She wanted more than anything to be alone, now, to go over the evening in minute detail in her head, to relive the joy of his kiss, her delight in his embrace.
‘Shall I call you?’ Bernard asked, as he shrugged on his jacket. ‘Or you could call me … Might be more reliable.’
She laughed. ‘I’m saying nothing.’
He grinned, then bent to kiss her. Just a single soft one, plumb on her lips. ‘Goodnight,’ he whispered.
12
Driving home through the summer darkness, Bernard accompanied one of his favourite Dylan songs on the radio at the top of his lungs … until he realized what he was singing about. ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ chronicled a man pulling relentlessly away from commitment, from love. A man who knew he couldn’t give the girl what she wanted. But while Dylan cheerily – almost smugly – wriggles free of his responsibilities, it was already too late for Bernard. He knew he was in too deep now. That kiss. It was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Not even, he thought guiltily, with Ilsa, who’d seemed perpetually to slip through his fingers, even when he actually held her in his arms. Sara had been so giving, so open, so – words failed him – so there.
For the first time in years, Bernard felt a tiny spark of optimism. He was not a terrible person, he knew that. And he was sick of being consumed by the past, constantly on the back foot, feeling bad about himself because of the decision he’d made. Perhaps Joe was right. When the time came, maybe Sara would understand.
As he unlocked his front door, he took a deep breath, steeling himself to face the house. Tonight he’d crossed the Rubicon. Not just because of their spectacular kiss. For Bernard that had been the icing on the cake. The bigger betrayal was the way Sara’s company was making his mind, almost imperceptibly, begin to slide away from Ilsa – the woman who had taken centre stage in his psyche for such a long, long time.
The house seemed to watch him silently. He felt the air heavy with imagined reproof. It was ridiculous, he knew, the foolish obsession he’d developed about four solid walls of wood and glass. It had begun even before Ilsa died, this sense, each time he entered the place, that it was somehow measuring his worthiness like a judgemental gatekeeper – a paid-up agent for his wife. He remembered his sheer relief on the times when Ilsa greeted him with a smile and a soft kiss of welcome – rather than the more familiar punishing stare, denoting some wrongdoing on his part, of which he was unaware. Since her death, the feeling of reproof – tinged, he knew, by the various strands of guilt from which he continued to suffer – had only intensified.
Turning on the lights in the open-plan kitchen-living room, he glanced around. The usual brooding silence greeted him. But this time he squared his shoulders, inhaled the warm air until his lungs were full and ready.
‘I met a woman tonight, Ilsa.’ He spoke loudly to the empty room, surprised by the confidence he detected in his voice. ‘She’s called Sara. We went to the movies … and then I kissed her.’ He waited, breath held, expecting, ridiculously, some kind of reaction, a sign that Ilsa had heard him. When there was nothing, the room as hushed and still as ever, he was unnerved … almost disappointed.
13
Walking to work the following morning, the memory of Bernard’s kiss still feathering her lips, the sound of his laugh in her ears, Sara found she was smiling to herself. This thing they seemed to have with each other … In all her vague imaginings about a relationship at this time in her life, the timbre of the connection had been sedate, companionable, what she’d thought of as ‘older’ love. But the surge of longing Bernard had evoked in her last night was just as intense – if not more so, for the sheer unexpectedness of it – as what she remembered feeling for Pete in those heady early days.
Back then, though, it had been almost a given. You were young, you fell passionately in love – everyone did. Now, at her age, surely this was exceptional, feeling so – she flailed around in an attempt to find the correct word – just so right with him. Her heart seized at the thought it might not be real.
Opening her email, she was disappointed that there was no further communication from Julian Cameron. It felt like unfinished business, and it niggled at her. She turned her attention to Martha, her next appointment. The charming middle-aged woman was keen to accept Sara’s advice, although her digestive issues, post gall-bladder removal, were proving slow to respond to the dietary changes and she was having frequent bouts of irritable bowel syndrome. Sara intended to start her on a digestive enzyme today, see if that might help.
All in all, it had been a tiring day: client after client, notes to write up, appointments to confirm, arranging for Helen Withy, Margaret’s GP, to visit her mother-in-law. By the time she’d had supper and was sitting outside at the table in the garden – it was a beautiful, still, warm summer night – a cup of fennel tea and a square of dark chocolate in front of her, she should have been worn out. But the thought of perhaps speaking to Bernard hovered over her tiredness, creating a fluttering excitement in her gut. Does it seem over-keen to call so soon? she asked herself. But she knew it would be playing games to wait three days when she fancied speaking to him tonight. He doesn’t have to answer if he doesn’t want to.
‘So, tell me more about your twins?’ she asked, when they’d been chatting for a while. They’d sketched out their families in previous meetings, but only briefly.
‘They both work really hard. And they’re so far away …’ His reply sounded flat and a little bleak. She waited for him to go on, to supply the sort of personal things she’d divulged – facets of their personality, like Joni always needing to be in the middle of the action, for example, and Peggy being a very private person, seldom disclosing anything about her social life – but he went so silent Sara thought briefly they’d lost connection.
‘I suppose that means you don’t see them much?’ she prodded, treading carefully.
‘Hardly ever.’ Bernard’s reply was blunt, almost angry.
Sara felt a sudden frisson, which she didn’t understand. For a second, she let the silence lie, then found herself trying to reassure Bernard. ‘It’s the stage they’re at, trying to establish their careers. It’s so competitive out there. I really miss my two.’
He didn’t immediately answer. Then he said softly, ‘I miss mine, too.’
His words were so full of sadness and seemed oddly final. Sara felt his resistance, like the pull of the tide, dragging her away from the subject with a quiet relentlessness. She hesitated, wondering what was behind his unwillingness to engage about his children. But she felt she didn’t know him well enough, yet, to ask.
Bernard was talking, deftly changing the tenor of the conversation. ‘OK, so I’ve visited your place. Time for you to visit mine.’ Before she had a chance to agree, he added, ‘Are you free on Saturday? There’s this Thai café in Hastings, in an old bookshop. You sit and eat in these little nooks, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling books. Great food, too. All home-cooked. Maybe you could come and see the house, then we’ll go there for an early supper?’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ she replied, thoughts of his children forgotten in her pleasure at the prospect of the weekend. The brief silence that followed felt almost alive with possibility. ‘Look forward to it,’ she said softly.
14
The part of the phone conversation about the twins left Bernard feeling very uneasy. It was the beginning of all that he’d dreaded when he’d taken the plunge with Sara – made the call last Sunday that had ended in probably the best kiss of his entire life. Like the first tiny crack in an eggshell. Checking the time on his mobile – it was only just after nine – he pressed his daughter’s number, knowing as he did so that the chances of Carrie picking up were beyond slim. He was right. The call went straight to voicemail.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Bernard said, unable to keep the weary frustration from his voice. ‘Please … can you call me? We really need to talk. It’s been ages.’ He paused. ‘Hope you’re OK,’ he added, in a more conciliatory tone.
Sighing, he clicked off and immediately pressed Adam’s number, with the same vain hope that his son would pick up. He almost jumped when an actual voice said, ‘Hey, Dad.’
‘Just rang for a chat,’ Bernard said, almost adding, as he had in his message to Carrie, ‘It’s been a while,’ but thinking better of it. He didn’t want to sound peevish, now he finally had his son on the line.
Silence.
‘How’s things?’
A tired sigh, then Adam replied, ‘Yeah, you know …’
