This Secret We're Keeping by Rebecca Done Read Free Book Online

gave the can a jaunty little toss without thinking. ‘I thought you could maybe do with a Diet Coke break.’
    Of course, I completely missed what she was saying – mostly because I was wondering if this could be an opportunity to renew her interest in solving basic formulae.
    ‘Well, that was very thoughtful of you, but you really shouldn’t be spending your money on me,’ I told her. ‘And you know, fizzy drinks aren’t good for your teeth.’ I wiggled the can at her like a twat and she started laughing.
    ‘Oh, by the way, Mr L,’ she said then, brushing her hair back from her face, ‘my mum said it’s okay.’
    I smiled at her. ‘Your mum said what’s okay?’
    ‘Maths club,’ she said, as if there could only be one thing in the world that a fifteen-year-old would be begging her mother permission to do after school (ironically enough, such a scenario was indeed the stuff of my teaching fantasies). ‘I’m coming to maths club.’
    I didn’t know it then, of course, but the simple act of signing her up that afternoon was the moment the tide began to rise.



4
    ‘Fuck,’Zak growled. ‘Late.’
    Zak had a habit of restricting his sentences to single syllables when he was tired or stressed – something Jess assumed had come straight from his hospital A & E department, where such efficiencies probably meant the difference between life and death. Hung-over and sour-tempered, he was supposed to be dashing off to meet his father, a retired architect who was redesigning the roof of Zak’s new weekend bolthole to let more light in. Zak always referred to it as a beach house but, in fact, it was of that industrial style of architecture that made it look more like a misplaced storage facility. There was steel involved, and talk of tensile forces, and given that Zak’s neighbours already considered him to be a crass city-dweller with no respect for surrounding sand dunes, Jess could envisage raised voices, which she didn’t foresee doing much for her headache. So she opted to quietly nurse her hangover solo with the aid of some fresh coffee – a free sample from Colombia via Philippe, which was very generous of him, given that he usually sold the stuff for five quid a cup.
    Unable to sleep, she’d risen early this morning, creeping down the staircase and on to her mother’s old Shaker-style chair next to the Aga in the kitchen. Smudge, her border collie, had loyally migrated from his basket to lie on top of her feet, squeezing his eyes shut and keeping her toes warm while they’d waited together for the sun to rise.
    One year with Zak, yet all she could think about when she closed her eyes was Matthew.
    ‘Where are my fucking keys?’ Zak was raging now, his neck going pink as he turned over the contents of Jess’s living room with escalating frustration like a drug addict in urgent need of items to sell for cash. ‘Jesus, Jessica. If you actually chucked out some of this junk then maybe you wouldn’t lose things so often.’
    The junk he referred to – her trinkets made from driftwood, collection of vintage postcards, half-burnt candles, old photographs and miniature glass milk bottles – was scattered lovingly across her stuffed, creaking bookcases, mantelpiece, mismatched furniture and upright piano that still had the book of Christmas carols open on ‘Joy to the World’. She knew that it was ramshackle and tumbledown, and that it all probably could have done with a squirt of furniture polish, but it was her.
    ‘I like my junk,’ Jess replied, feeling a little bit riled that Zak was criticizing her for losing things while he looked for something he’d lost.
    Finally he located his keys within the folds of her cotton paisley scarf, which he’d hastily unwound on her behalf last night before discarding it on the sideboard. ‘Okay,’ he said, shaking his head and bending down to kiss her where she was curled up on the sofa, ‘I’ll see you tonight. I’ll pick you up at seven, okay? Be