Can You Keep a Secret?

  “Mmm …”

  “Do you really like it?”

  “Of course I do! Stop quizzing me!”

  “Sorry,” says Connor, and there’s silence.

  “Do you like this?” his voice suddenly comes again.

  “I already told you I did!”

  “Francesca, be honest, OK?” Connor’s voice rises in agitation. “Because if that means no, then—”

  “It doesn’t mean no! Connor, what’s your problem?”

  “My problem is, I don’t believe you!”

  “You don’t believe me?” She sounds absolutely furious. “Why the hell don’t you believe me?”

  I’m filled with remorse. This is all my fault. Not only have I wrecked my own relationship; now I’ve wrecked theirs, too. I have to do something.

  I clear my throat. “Er, excuse me?”

  “Who’s that?” says Francesca in a sharp voice. “Is someone there?”

  “It’s me. Emma. Connor’s ex-girlfriend.”

  A row of lights goes on, and I see a girl with red hair and a belligerent face, her hand on the light switch.

  “What the hell are you doing? Spying on us?”

  “No!” I say. “Look, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to … I couldn’t help overhearing.…” I swallow. “The thing is, Connor isn’t being difficult. He just wants you to be honest. He wants to know what you want.” I summon up my most understanding, womanly expression. “Francesca … tell him what you want.”

  Francesca gives me an incredulous look, then turns to Connor. “I want her to piss off.” She points at me.

  “Oh,” I say, taken aback. “Er, OK. Sorry.”

  “And switch the lights off when you go,” adds Francesca.

  In haste I pick up my bag and hurry along the row of seats toward the exit of the auditorium. I push my way through the double doors into the foyer, flicking the light switch as I pass, then step out of the exit into the courtyard. I close the door behind me, and look up.

  I don’t believe it. It’s Jack.

  It’s Jack, coming toward me, striding fast across the courtyard, determination on his face. I haven’t got time to think, or prepare …

  And now my heart really is racing. I want to speak or cry or … do something, but I can’t.

  He reaches me with a crunch of gravel and takes me by the shoulders. “I’m afraid of the dark.”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid of the dark. Always have been. I keep a baseball bat under the bed, just in case.”

  He what? I’m totally confused. “Jack—”

  “I’ve never liked caviar.” He casts around. “I … I’m embarrassed by my French accent.”

  “Jack, what are you—”

  “I got the scar on my wrist by cracking open a bottle of beer when I was fourteen. When I was a kid, I used to stick gum under my aunt Francine’s dining table. I lost my virginity to a girl named Lisa Greenwood in her uncle’s barn, and afterward I asked if I could keep her bra to show my friends.”

  I can’t help a gurgle of laughter, but Jack carries on regardless.

  “I’ve never worn any of the ties my mother has given me for Christmas. I’ve always wanted to be an inch or two taller than I am. I … I don’t know what ‘codependent’ means. I … I have a recurring dream in which I’m Superman falling from the sky. I sometimes sit in board meetings and look around and think, Who the hell are these guys?”

  He draws breath and gazes at me, his eyes so dark they’re almost black. “I met a girl on a plane. And … my whole life changed as a result.”

  Something hot is welling up inside me, and my throat is tight. He came back. He came back to tell me all this.

  “Jack, I didn’t … I really didn’t—”

  “I know.” He cuts me off with a nod. “I know you didn’t.”

  “I would never—”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” he says gently. “I know you wouldn’t.”

  And now I can’t help it. Tears of sheer relief start flooding out of my eyes. He knows. It’s all right.

  “So …” I wipe my face, trying to gain control of myself. “So, does this … does this mean … that we …” I can’t quite bring myself to say the words.

  There’s a long, unbearable silence. If he says no … I don’t know what I’ll do.

  “Well … you might want to hold back on your decision,” says Jack at last, with a deadpan look. “Because I have a lot more to tell you. And it isn’t all pretty.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything—”

  “Oh, I do,” says Jack firmly. “I think I do. Shall we walk?” He gestures to the courtyard. “Because this could take some time.”

  “OK,” I say, my voice still wobbling a bit. Jack holds out an arm, and after a pause I take it.

  “So … where was I?” he says as we step down into the courtyard. “Oh, OK. Now, this you really can’t tell anybody.” He leans close and lowers his voice. “I don’t actually like Panther Cola. I prefer Pepsi.”

  “No!” I say, shocked.

  “In fact, sometimes I decant Pepsi into a Panther can—”

  “No!”

  “It’s true. I told you it wasn’t pretty …”

  Slowly we start to walk around the edge of the dark, empty courtyard together. The only sounds are the crunching of our feet on the gravel and the breeze in the trees and Jack’s voice. Telling me everything.

  Epilogue

  It’s amazing what a different person I am these days. It’s like … I’ve been transformed. I’m a new Emma. Far more open than I used to be. Far more honest. Because what I’ve really learned is, if you can’t be honest with your friends and colleagues and loved ones, then what is life all about?

  The only secrets I have nowadays are little essential ones. And I hardly have any of those. I could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. I mean, just off the top of my head:

  1. I’m really not sure about Mum’s new highlights.

  2. That Greek-style cake Lissy made for my birthday was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.

  3. I borrowed Jemima’s Ralph Lauren swimsuit to go on holiday with Mum and Dad, and I busted one of the straps.

  4. The other day, when I was navigating by map in the car, I nearly said, “What’s this big river all around London?” Then I realized it was the M25.

  5. I had this weird dream last week about Lissy and Sven.

  6. I’ve secretly starting feeding Artemis’s spider plant Rebuild plant food.

  7. I’m sure Sammy the goldfish has changed again. Where did that extra fin come from?

  8. I know I have to stop giving out my “Emma Corrigan, Marketing Executive” card to everyone I meet, but I just can’t help it.

  9. That reflexology treatment I had on Tuesday didn’t really make me feel transformed and energized like I told the therapist.

  10. Last night, when Jack said, “What are you thinking about?” and I said, “Oh, nothing,” that wasn’t quite true. I was actually planning the names of all our children.

  But the thing is, it’s completely normal to have the odd little secret from your boyfriend.

  Everyone knows that.

  To H, from whom I have no secrets. Well, not many.

  Acknowledgments

  A big thank you to Mark Hedley, Jenny Bond, Rosie Andrews, and Olivia Heywood for all their generous advice.

  And hugest gratitude as always to Susan Kamil, Margo Lipschultz, Kim Witherspoon, Araminta Whitley, and Celia Hayley, my boys and the board.

  Watch for Sophie Kinsella’s new novel

  I’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER

  Coming February 14, 2012

  Perspective. I need to get perspective. It’s not an earthquake or a crazed gunman or a nuclear meltdown, is it? On the scale of disasters, this is not huge. Not huge. One day I expect I’ll look back at this moment and laugh and think, Ha-ha, how silly I was to worry—

  Stop, Poppy. Don’t even try. I’m not laughing—in fact, I feel
sick. I’m walking blindly around the hotel ballroom, my heart thudding, looking fruitlessly on the patterned blue carpet, behind gilt chairs, under discarded paper napkins, in places where it couldn’t possibly be.

  I’ve lost it. The only thing in the world I wasn’t supposed to lose. My engagement ring.

  To say this is a special ring is an understatement. It’s been in Magnus’s family for three generations. It’s this stunning emerald with two diamonds, and Magnus had to get it out of a special bank vault before he proposed. I’ve worn it safely every day for three whole months, religiously putting it on a special china tray at night, feeling for it on my finger every thirty seconds … and now, the very day his parents are coming back from the States, I’ve lost it. The very same day.

  Professors Antony Tavish and Wanda Brook-Tavish are, at this precise moment, flying back from six months’ sabbatical in Chicago. I can picture them now, eating honey-roasted peanuts and reading academic papers on their his ’n’ hers Kindles. I honestly don’t know which of them is more intimidating.

  Him. He’s so sarcastic.

  No, her. With all that frizzy hair and always asking you questions about your views on feminism.

  OK, they’re both bloody scary. And they’re landing in about an hour, and of course they’ll want to see the ring—

  No. Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive. I just need to look at this from a different angle. Like … what would Poirot do? Poirot wouldn’t flap around in panic. He’d stay calm and use his little gray cells and recall some tiny, vital detail which would be the clue to everything.

  I squeeze my eyes tight. Little gray cells. Come on. Do your best.

  Thing is, I’m not sure Poirot had three glasses of pink champagne and a mojito before he solved the Murder on the Orient Express.

  “Miss?” A gray-haired cleaning lady is trying to get round me with a Hoover, and I gasp in horror. They’re Hoovering the ballroom already? What if they suck it up?

  “Excuse me.” I grab her blue nylon shoulder. “Could you just give me five more minutes to search before you start Hoovering?”

  “Still looking for your ring?” She shakes her head doubtfully, then brightens. “I expect you’ll find it safe at home. It’s probably been there all the time!”

  “Maybe.” I force myself to nod politely, although I feel like screaming, “I’m not that stupid!”

  I spot another cleaner, on the other side of the ballroom, clearing cupcake crumbs and crumpled paper napkins into a black plastic bin bag. She isn’t concentrating at all. Wasn’t she listening to me?

  “Excuse me!” My voice shrills out as I sprint across to her. “You are looking out for my ring, aren’t you?”

  “No sign of it so far, love.” The woman sweeps another load of detritus off the table into the bin bag without giving it a second glance.

  “Careful!” I grab for the napkins and pull them out again, feeling each one carefully for a hard lump, not caring that I’m getting buttercream icing all over my hands.

  “Dear, I’m trying to clear up.” The cleaner grabs the napkins out of my hands. “Look at the mess you’re making!”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” I scrabble for the cupcake cases I dropped on the floor. “But you don’t understand. If I don’t find this ring, I’m dead.”

  I want to grab the bin bag and do a forensics check of the contents with tweezers. I want to put plastic tape round the whole room and declare it a crime scene. It has to be here, it has to be.

  Unless someone’s still got it. That’s the only other possibility that I’m clinging to. One of my friends is still wearing it and somehow hasn’t noticed. Perhaps it’s slipped into a handbag … maybe it’s fallen into a pocket … it’s stuck on the threads of a jumper … The possibilities in my head are getting more and more far-fetched, but I can’t give up on them.

  “Have you tried the ladies’ room?” The woman tries to get past me.

  Of course I’ve tried the ladies’ room. I checked every single cubicle, on my hands and knees. And then all the basins. Twice. And then I tried to persuade the concierge to close it and have all the sink pipes investigated, but he refused. He said it would be different if I knew it had been lost there for certain, and he was sure the police would agree with him, and could I please step aside from the desk as there were people waiting?

  Police. Bah. I thought they’d come roaring round in their squad cars as soon as I called, not just tell me to come down to the police station and file a report. I don’t have time to file a report! I’ve got to find my ring!

  I hurry back to the circular table we were sitting at this afternoon and crawl underneath, patting the carpet yet again. How could I have let this happen? How could I have been so stupid?

  It was my old school friend Natasha’s idea to get tickets for the Marie Curie Champagne Tea. She couldn’t come to my official hen spa weekend, so this was a kind of substitute. There were eight of us at the table, all merrily swigging champagne and stuffing down cupcakes, and it was right before the raffle started that someone said, “Come on, Poppy, let’s have a go with your ring.”

  I can’t even remember who that was. Annalise, maybe? Annalise was at university with me, and now we work together at First Fit Physio, with Ruby, who was also in our physio course. Ruby was at the tea too, but I’m not sure she tried on the ring. Or did she?

  I can’t believe how rubbish I am at this. How can I do a Poirot if I can’t even remember the basics? The truth is, everyone seemed to be trying on the ring: Natasha and Clare and Emily (old school friends up from Taunton), Lucinda (my wedding planner, who’s kind of become a friend) and her assistant, Clemency, and Ruby and Annalise (not only college friends and colleagues but my two best friends. They’re going to be my bridesmaids too).

  I’ll admit it: I was basking in all the admiration. I still can’t believe something so grand and beautiful belongs to me. The fact is, I still can’t believe any of it. I’m engaged! Me, Poppy Wyatt. To a tall, handsome university lecturer who’s written a book and even been on the TV. Only six months ago, my love life was a disaster zone. I’d had no significant action for a year and was reluctantly deciding I should give that match.com guy with the bad breath a second chance—and now my wedding’s only ten days away! I wake up every morning and look at Magnus’s smooth, freckled, sleeping back and think, My fiancé, Dr. Magnus Tavish, Fellow of King’s College London,1 and feel a tiny tweak of disbelief. And then I swivel round and look at the ring, gleaming expensively on my nightstand, and feel another tweak of disbelief.

  What will Magnus say?

  My stomach clenches and I swallow hard. No. Don’t think about that. Come on, little gray cells. Get with it.

  I remember that Clare wore the ring for a long time. She really didn’t want to take it off. Then Natasha started tugging at it, saying, “My turn, my turn!” And I remember calling out, “Careful!”

  I mean, it’s not like I was irresponsible. I was carefully watching the ring as it was passed round the table.

  But then my attention was split, because they started calling out the raffle numbers and the prizes were fantastic. A week in an Italian villa, and a top salon haircut, and a Harvey Nichols voucher … The ballroom was buzzing, with people pulling out tickets and numbers being called from the platform and women jumping up and shouting, “Me!”

  And this is the moment where I went wrong. This is the gut-churning, if-only instant. If I could go back in time, that’s the moment I would march up to myself and say severely, “Poppy, priorities.”

  But you don’t realize, do you? The moment happens, and you make your crucial mistake, and then it’s gone and the chance to do anything about it is blown away.

  So what happened was, Clare won Wimbledon tickets in the raffle. I love Clare to bits, but she’s always been a tad feeble. She didn’t stand up and yell, “Me! Woohoo!” at top volume, she just raised her hand a few inches. Even those of us at her table didn’t realize she’d won.

&nb
sp; As it dawned on me that Clare was waving a raffle ticket in the air, the presenter on the platform said, “I think we’ll draw again, if there’s no winner …”

  “Shout!” I poked Clare and waved my own hand wildly. “Here! The winner’s over here!”

  “And the new number is … 4403.”

  To my disbelief, some dark-haired girl on the other side of the room started whooping and brandishing a ticket.

  “She didn’t win!” I exclaimed indignantly. “You won.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Clare was shrinking back.

  “Of course it matters!” I cried out before I could stop myself, and everyone at the table started laughing.

  “Go, Poppy!” called out Natasha. “Go, White Knightess! Sort it out!”

  “Go, Knightie!”

  This is an old joke. Just because there was this one incident at school, where I started a petition to save the hamsters, everyone began to call me the White Knightess. Or Knightie, for short. My so-called catchphrase is apparently “Of course it matters!”2

  Anyway. Suffice it to say that within two minutes I was up on the stage with the dark-haired girl, arguing with the presenter about how my friend’s ticket was more valid than hers.

  I know now that I never should have left the table. I never should have left the ring, even for a second. I can see how stupid that was. But, in my defense, I didn’t know the fire alarm was going to go off, did I?

  It was so surreal. One minute, everyone was sitting down at a jolly champagne tea. The next minute, a siren was blaring through the air and everyone was on their feet, heading for the exits in pandemonium. I could see Annalise, Ruby, and all the others grabbing their bags and making their way to the back. A man in a suit came onto the stage and started ushering me, the dark-haired girl, and the presenter toward a side door and wouldn’t let us go the other way. “Your safety is our priority,” he kept saying.3

  Even then, it’s not as if I was worried. I didn’t think the ring would have gone. I assumed one of my friends had it safe and I’d meet up with everyone outside and get it back.