Past Secrets Page 24

  I love you.

  To think of him offering to marry her while hiding the fact that he’d betrayed her in the past.

  Grey had tried to phone her every day but she never answered when she saw his number appear on her phone screen. She wasn’t ready for him yet. She’d cry if she spoke to him and she didn’t want to do that: she wanted to build herself up to be strong and angry for that conversation.

  ‘I’m not starting again with anybody ever,’ Maggie said decisively. ‘I can’t go through all that dating, smiling and trying to be something you’re not. Hoping they’ll like you.’ She shuddered, partly with remembered shame. She’d tried so hard to be what Grey wanted and, in the process, had lost sight of who she was. The past had scared her and Grey had made her feel safe, so she’d never tried to work out who Maggie Maguire actually was and what she wanted from life.

  ‘Hoping they’ll like you sounds like me once,’ reflected Faye. ‘Trying to be something I wasn’t instead of having the courage to be what I really was.’

  There was silence. The CD had stopped playing and there was no noise at all, apart from the sound of somebody’s lawn mower and a dog barking, far away in the distance.

  ‘You have to tell Amber about the past when you see her,’ Maggie said. ‘All of it.’

  Faye nodded. She had been thinking a lot about everything over the previous few days.

  Ellen, the makeover lady, had been right when she said Faye tried to be invisible. Faye had tried to blend into the background, to make herself as asexual as possible, so nobody could connect her with the wild child she’d been. And she’d protected Amber like a crown princess, stifling her out of love, never telling her the truth. It kept coming back to secrets and lies.

  ‘I’m going to tell Amber everything when I see her,’ she told Maggie. ‘It’s just that I thought I was doing the right thing by inventing this person: Faye Reid, mum extraordinaire, conservative, decent, long-skirt-wearing person, pillar of the community, the sort of woman no one would ever imagine hanging out with dodgy men, having no respect for herself. I thought if I insulated Amber from the world, bad things would never touch her and she would grow up strong and confident. And if she ever met a man like her father, I thought by then that she would know better, that she would be stronger than I was. But I was fooling myself.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Maggie, thinking that she wasn’t much different from Faye after all. At least Faye had changed her life and begun to respect herself once she’d given birth to Amber.

  While Maggie had always felt as if she wasn’t worthy of Grey, that it was surprising someone like him loved her. She’d had to pretend to be the confident person to hide her insecurities. If that wasn’t living a lie, what was?

  ‘And the more you lie, the more you have to lie. The lies become bigger until there’s no way out, apart from admitting that you’re fabulous at being deceitful. What mother wants to say that to her daughter?’ Faye asked.

  ‘You thought you were protecting her,’ Maggie said. ‘She’ll understand that, when you tell her.’

  ‘But it’s gone on for so long,’ sighed Faye. ‘Imagine if you have an adopted child and you never find the right time to tell them. Maybe, you miss that window of opportunity when they’re two or three, when it should become part and parcel of their life—You’re adopted. Mummy and Daddy love you and picked you to be our baby, so our love is special—and time moves on and you haven’t told them. So you wait a bit longer and then you have to turn around when they’re an adult and go, Well, actually, by the way, we’re not your parents, we adopted you. It’s like that with me and Amber. I should have told her in the beginning, but I didn’t know how. It’s gone on so long that telling her will destroy her and she’ll hate me and I…’ Faye paused. ‘I don’t know if I can face that. I love her so much, Maggie. Everything that I’ve achieved in my life this past eighteen years, has been for her. I couldn’t bear for her to hate me.’ Maggie got up and put her arms around Faye, holding her tightly.

  And Faye, who longed for the comfort of another human being since Amber had stormed off, leaned against Maggie and began to sob.

  ‘I just wish she’d come home, I wish she’d make contact, anything. Just so I could tell her I love her and explain it all to her, that’s all I want,’ she said, as she sobbed. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie, I’m sorry. You don’t need this.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Maggie, still holding Faye tightly, as the other woman’s sobs subsided. ‘Hey, you’ll be doing this for me in a minute, when I tell you all my deep, dark secrets.’

  ‘You mean you have deep, dark secrets too?’ hiccupped Faye. ‘Oh please, tell me, I don’t want to feel like the only screw-up on Summer Street.’

  Maggie laughed. ‘There are lots of screw-ups on Summer Street,’ she said. ‘It’s just we don’t know about them, that’s all. Do you think everyone hiding inside the pretty houses, with the coloured doors and the beautiful maple trees, lives a perfect life? Of course they don’t. If you knew my mother, then you wouldn’t think that. She knows everything that goes on around here.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Faye.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Maggie, seeing that Faye looked cheered by this line of conversation. ‘Mum is a fount of knowledge about everyone on Summer Street. It’s the café, you see. She and dad go into the Summer Street Café at least once a day and Mum learns things, all the time. Not in a bad way: she’s not a gossip, but she’s interested in people’s lives and she knows what goes on. Christie’s the same, really,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Christie seems to know about everyone.’

  ‘She’s a wise woman,’ agreed Faye. ‘I wish I’d known her properly before, instead of just nodding a distant hello in the street. That was another one of my obsessions,’ she added. ‘I thought if we kept ourselves to ourselves, nobody would get close enough to ask what exactly happened to Amber’s father. But someone like Christie, she’d never ask you those sort of questions, would she? If I’d known her then, she might have been able to help me, stop me screwing everything up.’

  ‘No,’ insisted Maggie, ‘we’ve got to help ourselves. I’ve got to fall out of love with my cheating boyfriend, a man who must think I’m the dumbest woman on the planet if I agree to marry him when he’s had other women all the time we were going out.’

  ‘You can’t be the dumbest woman on the planet,’ Faye joked. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘No,’ argued Maggie. ‘It’s me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Did you cut the arms off his suits and throw paint all over his car before you left?’ Faye inquired.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m a wimp. I went back to the apartment that night, talked to him like an adult and even considered—in my own head of course, I didn’t say this out loud—letting him sleep in the bed with me because then he’d hug me and cuddle me and it’d all be all right.’

  ‘Ouch,’ said Faye.

  ‘I know,’ Maggie agreed, ‘not just the world’s dumbest woman, but the wimpiest too. But fortunately I stood firm and made him sleep on the couch. Then, the next morning, I packed and flew home to Summer Street. Cutting the arms off all his clothes might be fun though. He doesn’t really wear suits, he’s more of a casual jacket type of guy.’

  ‘You could tell people he had some appalling venereal disease?’

  ‘My friend, Shona, thought of that one too,’ laughed Maggie. ‘She works in the library with me and was all set to spread the rumours, but I said that sort of revenge would be beneath me.’

  Faye grinned. ‘It wouldn’t be beneath me. Fight fire with fire. He slept with a student, so why don’t you let that be known? He’d be sacked. The ultimate revenge.’

  ‘True,’ said Maggie, ‘but I’m trying to put myself in that happy, Zen state where the only true revenge is living my own life well.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Faye said gravely, ‘that’s exactly the right thing to do. Modern and very politically correct.’ But she added wickedly, ‘It would be great fun, wouldn�
�t it?’

  ‘Not as much fun as telling him I don’t need him,’ said Maggie firmly.

  ‘Good for you. When are you going to do it?’

  Maggie took the last chocolate. ‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell him tonight.’

  ‘I’ve got some chocolate-covered biscuits in the kitchen,’ Faye said. ‘I quite fancy one of them. What do you think?’

  ‘Good plan,’ said Maggie. ‘Men are nothing but trouble. We should stick to chocolate. It’s safer.’

  When she left Faye’s house, Maggie walked across Summer Street to the park. Its cast-iron gates would close in half an hour but there were still plenty of people enjoying the summer evening. She headed for the pavilion and climbed the old wooden steps to sit on one of the built-in benches that overlooked the tiny fountain.

  Birds sang to one another in the trees overhead, and there were giggles coming from the group of girls huddled on the benches beside the playground. Normal life went on no matter what personal disaster you were living through, she thought, taking out her mobile.

  Grey answered the apartment phone quickly.

  ‘Maggie, hello,’ he said warmly.

  ‘Hi, Grey,’ she said, her voice flat. She still didn’t feel angry. Her anger seemed to have deserted her and her main emotion was sadness at seeing how hollow her life with Grey had turned out to be. ‘I don’t want us to get back together, I’m afraid. It wouldn’t work.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s over. I can’t go back.’

  ‘But Maggie, you want to, you know that. I love you and you love me. That’s all that matters. We can get over what happened. We could have couples’ therapy,’ he volunteered, which made her smile wryly. Grey was proud of the workings of his own mind but would hate to have a third party probe it and question his beliefs.

  ‘I don’t want therapy,’ Maggie stated. ‘I want to sell the apartment and move on. You could buy me out, if you’d like. It’s a good apartment and I don’t want it. I’m not sure if I want to move back to Galway at all.’

  She had friends there but a total break would help her more. The whole city was filled with memories of the past five years.

  ‘We can start again, Maggie. We can move apartments, get married, do all the things I said.’ He sounded earnest and Maggie’s feeling of sadness grew. How easily he lied. And how easily she’d believed it all.

  ‘I want to be with someone I can trust, Grey,’ she said, ‘and you’re not that person. It’s not easy doing this. I feel like I’m wasting five years of my life…’

  ‘You are!’ he cried. ‘You can’t give up on us that easily.’

  ‘I’m not the one giving up,’ Maggie replied. ‘You are. Because you lied to me about how you’d never cheated before and now I know that’s not true. There have been other women. Don’t try to deny it. Shona told me. It’s no secret apparently, except to me, that you’ve had other women.’

  ‘Why does she have to interfere?’ he growled.

  ‘That’s not interfering, that’s telling a friend the truth,’ Maggie said. ‘I can’t live that way any more, Grey. You’ve cheated on me, not with one woman, but with at least four—who knows how many? So you’re the one who’s ending our relationship. You made the choice to sleep with other women. Not me.’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. She wondered if he’d lie again or confess. What would the politician in him do?

  ‘It was stupid,’ he said finally. ‘I have no excuse, Maggie. None whatsoever. But it will never happen again, I promise. Please come home. I love you.’

  Maggie wiped her eyes but once the tears started to flow, she couldn’t stop them running down her cheeks.

  ‘You just don’t love me enough, Grey,’ she said. ‘I won’t accept second best. I’m sorry. I’ll call again about the apartment but don’t call me. It’s over. Believe me. I won’t change my mind.’

  And without giving him a chance to beg, she hung up.

  The birds singing in the trees didn’t take any notice of the woman sobbing silently on the pavilion. Neither did the teenage girls chattering and texting furiously on the opposite side of the park.

  They probably still believe in true love, Maggie reflected, watching them through blurry eyes.

  She wished she could warn them, but there were some things you had to experience yourself.

  Mum and Dad were in the kitchen watching a film when she got home. It was National Lampoon’s European Vacation and the Griswold family were touring Europe, leaving mayhem and bewilderment in their wake.

  ‘Sit down, Bean,’ said Dad, wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘This is hilarious. You used to love it.’

  Maggie pulled up a chair, settled the cushion on it, and sat down.

  ‘Did you have any dinner?’ asked her mother.

  ‘Yes,’ fibbed Maggie. She’d had chocolate biscuits after all. She didn’t feel up to eating anything else now and her mother would be bound to start fussing if Maggie had said no.

  ‘I’ll make us a pot of tea,’ Dad said, patting her knee. ‘Isn’t this nice? It’s like old times, isn’t it, Una?’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Mum happily.

  Maggie looked at her parents with love. It wasn’t what she’d planned to be doing when she was thirty—back living with her mum and dad, boyfriendless, and with her confidence shot to pieces. But it must have all happened for a reason. Faye wasn’t letting circumstances stop her in her tracks: she was going to find Amber and try to make sense of the past. And that’s what Maggie had to do too. If this was what a new life was all about, then she was going to give it her best shot.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  On the plane, Faye sat in an aisle seat and watched her fellow passengers board. She had a fat magazine on her lap, but the scenes playing out in front of her were far more intriguing than anything else.

  An older couple walked down the aisle slowly, resigned expressions on their faces at such a long flight ahead. A large group of teenage schoolgirls in some kind of sports strip arrived in a frenzy of excitement, already discussing swapping seats for maximum fun.

  ‘Girls, you’re supposed to sit in your correct seat,’ said one of the harassed adults with them, either a teacher or a parent, already, Faye reckoned, realising that they’d bitten off more than they could chew.

  ‘Oh, a baby, how cute!’ one of the girls said, and the woman in the opposite row with an infant on her lap smiled weakly because at least she’d be surrounded by people who wouldn’t object to the poor child’s crying.

  It had been years since Faye had been on a plane on her own. It was nice, she decided. Freeing. There was nobody to worry about but herself. Nobody could reach her on her mobile phone with bad news; nobody needed her.

  For the first time since Amber had left, Faye felt a strange sense of acceptance at being alone. Amber would have left home inevitably and Faye would never have been ready for it. She could see that now. Her world was too tied up with her daughter, which hadn’t, it turned out, been the right thing for either of them.

  Faye ate the airline meal, watched the movie, then stuck in earplugs, pulled on a home-made lavender-filled eyemask Christie had given her for exactly that purpose and went to sleep.

  The midtown hotel where her taxi pulled up was part of a budget chain and looked nothing like the adorable boutique hotels that the airline magazine had mentioned glowingly as places to stay in New York. Here, she reckoned the concierge wouldn’t be able to whisk tickets for a Broadway show out of thin air. However, the marble lobby was clean and the whole place felt safe to Faye. Her room was a tiny twin on the seventh floor, with a microscopic bathroom and a mini kitchen that consisted of a kettle, toaster, microwave and sink, all cunningly concealed behind one cupboard.

  Faye double-locked the door, stripped off and climbed into bed for another hour’s rest.

  It was mid-afternoon when she woke up and she stood at the window looking out over the city. She couldn’t see much but other buildings, and direct
ly below, she was staring at a grimy rooftop where somebody had once put a few wooden deckchairs, then forgotten about them.

  But never mind the view, this was New York. She wasn’t the victim any more, she was doing something, taking her power back, as Ellen, the makeover lady, had said. Ellen had a point, Faye realised. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost her power. Not any more.

  In the lobby, she sat at a public phone and fed in her credit card. She couldn’t afford the hotel-room charges, but down here, the price was pretty standard. It took seven calls to track down the production company who were supposed to be working on Karl’s album with the band, Ceres. Then an interminable wait followed as a bored young guy searched for details of the band’s schedule, saying all the time: ‘I can’t give you inside information, lady, this is only public domain stuff. If you’re a stalker, I’m not taking the rap.’

  ‘Do many unsigned bands have stalkers?’ Faye demanded. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. I told you, I’m Amber Reid’s mother, she’s Karl Evans’s partner, and I have an urgent message for her.’

  He didn’t reply for a minute, then said: ‘They did a gig at the O’Reilly Tavern recently, and that’s all I have written down here because Sly was supposed to go to it. That’s all I can help you with.’

  ‘But they’re recording an album and your company are producing it. I can leave a message for them, surely?’ said Faye, who planned on just turning up and surprising them but wasn’t going to tell this guy so.

  ‘They were,’ the guy said, and she could hear him flipping pages, ‘but they’re not down in the log any more. Doesn’t say why.’ More pages flipped. ‘Not down for next month neither.’

  ‘How could that be?’ asked Faye, confused.

  ‘Hey lady, it’s all about dollars. If you can’t pay, you can’t stay. Guess whatever deal they had fell through. If they’re good enough, Sly and Maxi will produce your album for a percentage deal. If you’re not and nobody else is paying, it’s hasta la vista.’