Free This Secret We're Keeping by Rebecca Done Page A

sodding Pavarotti!’
    Lucky you
, Jess couldn’t help thinking – not that she had aparticular weakness for operatic tenors. But the pang of envy she felt was quickly replaced by the reassuring thought that she was, at least, going to see Will again.



6
    ‘Don’tdo it, Jess.’
    Jess and Anna were in Anna’s flat above Beelings, the four-star hotel she owned with her husband, Simon. Jess had been slightly thrown on her arrival to find the living room aglow with candles and whale song reverberating off the walls, with Anna’s ancient fish tank restocked and repositioned in front of the dormant fireplace. There was incense burning and someone had even popped back to the 1990s to dust off a Lava Lamp. The room now resembled the sort of shop that peddled crystals, tarot cards and cotton skirts embroidered with mirrors – all Anna needed was to swap her cashmere pyjamas for a kaftan and she probably could have started inviting guests to pop up for impromptu palm readings before their à la carte.
    But Anna, appearing conversely studious and determined in Buddy Holly glasses with her hair scraped back into a practical topknot, had justified this bizarre home décor refresh by claiming it was all for the benefit of her fallopian tubes. Jess suspected this to mean she was experiencing mild internal hysteria about the fact that, as they spoke, a fertilized egg was quite possibly embarking on the slow and perilous journey towards her womb, where it would then be required to find a suitable toehold before clinging doggedly to the cliff face of her uterus for the next nine months.
    Anna had donated her sofa to the cause of Jess’s bad leg, which was now elevated at forty-five degrees by an armrestand several cushions. The arrangement kept making her dress slip up along her angled thigh, inducing sympathetic flinching from Anna every time the injury became exposed. By now it was so swollen and black, it could have passed for gangrenous.
    Anna was sitting cross-legged in front of the fish tank, its silver light bestowing her with a sort of watery halo. She had cracked open a bottle of sparkling grape juice, which they were sharing now along with some tart tangerines and a difference of opinion.
    ‘It’s work,’ Jess was insisting, wincing through a mouthful of too-sharp citrus flesh. ‘I’m hardly in a position to turn it down at the moment. And it’s an opportunity to make contacts.’ Smaller jobs like private parties and the occasional house-warming kept her ticking over in late autumn and the first few months of every year, when work for larger events tended to dry up.
    ‘Er, you turned down catering for that crazy lady with seven dogs,’ Anna pointed out.
    ‘There’s a clue in there somewhere.’
    ‘I thought you had a christening Sunday.’
    ‘Well, this is Saturday. I can do both.’
    ‘Putting yourself out for Mr Landley already, I see,’ Anna remarked with a smile, though the tone of her rebuke wasn’t entirely jovial.
    ‘It’s just a good opportunity,’ Jess reiterated.
    ‘Don’t you think it’ll be a bit weird though? You know – being at his house with his wife and daughter, surrounded by people?’ Anna scratched her nose and popped a tangerine segment into her mouth, wide-eyed as if to pretend she wasn’t asking leading questions.
    ‘Actually, they’re not married.’
    Anna appeared to consider this for a moment or two.‘Well,’ she said eventually, ‘they have a daughter. So they’re as good as. And what about Zak – have you told him?’
    ‘No. As far as Zak’s concerned, this is just another catering job.’ Jess slid Anna a meaningful glance. ‘As far as
you’re
concerned, this is just another catering job.’
    ‘And you? Let me guess – just another catering job?’
    ‘Yep,’ Jess said quickly, ignoring the urge to hesitate.
    Anna’s face disagreed, but she let it go. ‘So Matthew really is back then? For good?’
    Jess shook her head. ‘Just for a few months. They