Free This Secret We're Keeping by Rebecca Done

like butter, the sort of tone she probably used to introduce herself before going in for the kill over unpaid invoices. Jess felt her stomach contract with something halfway between fight and flight as she braced herself to be strongly warned against enlisting legal expertise, and most specifically the sort that did a good line in fake cricked neck claims.
    They had exchanged telephone numbers in the aftermath of the accident, though not face-to-face. The food fair’sstewards, having been issued with bumper packs of craft beers in lieu of sterling for their time, had found themselves able to agree at lightning speed that Jess was unequivocally at fault and Natalie not a woman to be crossed. For the purposes of the accident book, they had dithered temporarily at the end of their shift to ensure that party details were swapped, after which they had all legged it out of the first aid tent and back across the grass to their cars, roaring off in convoy down the driveway without so much as handing in their tabards or swerving to avoid no-waiting cones.
    So Jess had received a folded piece of paper headed
Will Greene
, which she’d propped up next to her bedside lamp. Only last night, unable to sleep, she’d struck a soft line through his name in pencil and written
Matthew Landley
instead.
    Finally, squinting against the sunlight, she found her voice. ‘Natalie, hello. How are you?’
    Natalie sounded as if she was forcing a smile down the phone. ‘Wanting to see how
you
are, of course.’
    Jess flushed momentarily with guilt as she considered replying with the truth:
Thinking non-stop about your boyfriend
. But she opted to go with a slightly less confrontational response by offering Natalie an update on her wounded thigh tissue instead.
    Natalie, however – clearly a woman for whom rhetorical questions were a mark of social competence – simply rattled on across the top of her. ‘We’re having a bit of a party on Saturday. Nothing fancy, just a get-together so we can meet some other people in the village. Convince them we’re not ghastly second homeowners.’ She spoke airily, without a trace of irony. ‘Anyway, we’re looking for a caterer.’
    Jess wondered perhaps if Natalie had forgotten the car accident after all. There followed an expectant pause, duringwhich Jess felt sure she could discern the impatient tapping of fingernails on the other end of the line.
    Natalie finally made an intake of breath that was verging on brusque, as if she was rarely expected to qualify her demands. ‘I’ve been asking around, and you come highly recommended. Your friend Philippe assures me there’s no one better. Short notice, I know, but would you be up to it?’
    Jess hesitated. She had a christening already planned for Sunday, and had earmarked Saturday for prepping. But it seemed ungracious to decline off the back of glowing recommendations – and, right now, she needed all the work she could get. ‘What time?’ she asked doubtfully.
    ‘Seven? You’d be doing us a huge favour. With all this building work to coordinate I simply don’t have the time to be messing around with canapés.’
    Forced to assume that Will’s input to this decision had either been declined or overruled, Jess knew that either scenario made accepting unwise. But her desperation to see him again was too strong for logic to prevail. ‘Yes, okay,’ she said impulsively, making a quick mental timetable of how she’d fit it all in.
    She realized the offer was probably just a hasty appendage to the money Natalie had already persuaded Will to give her – another way to try and soften the blow of a bumper to the leg. In negotiations of a difficult nature, Jess suspected that Natalie was always firmly in the driving seat.
    ‘Wonderful. I’ll text you some ideas. Right, must dash – Charlotte’s late for horse riding. And where’s her father been for the past half an hour? Standing in the power shower singing at the top of his lungs like he’s