Past Secrets

‘What’ll I say?’ he used to beg Maggie when he had to write the only birthday card his wife didn’t write for him.

‘To Una, happy birthday, I love you so much, Dennis,’ was Maggie’s usual suggestion.

It was what she’d have liked written on a card to her. Grey, for all his eloquence, hadn’t been much good at cards either, although Maggie had kept every single one he’d given her.

Mum hugged Maggie tightly, then somehow managed a final squeeze and whispered in her ear: ‘We’re so glad you’re here, Bean.’

Bean or Beanpole was her nickname, so given because she’d been long and skinny as a child.

‘Like a beanpole!’ her cousin Elisabeth used to say joyfully.

Elisabeth, also tall but with Victoria’s Secret model curves instead of Maggie’s racehorse slenderness, was never called anything but Elisabeth.

While Dennis bustled off with Maggie’s suitcases, Una told her daughter that the osteoporosis was advanced.

‘They can’t believe I haven’t broken anything before,’ she said finally. ‘It’s a bit of a miracle, and at my stage, I could end up breaking bones with just a knock against a bookcase.’

Maggie was shocked. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said. ‘That’s terrible. Dad said it was osteoporosis but he never said it was that bad.’

They heard Dennis coming back.

‘I don’t want him to know everything,’ her mother went on. ‘It’d only worry him and what’s the point of that?’

‘He ought to know, Mum.’

‘Ah, why? It won’t be good for his heart if he’s watching me every moment worrying about me. I’ll be fine.’

Maggie’s father came back into the kitchen.

‘What’ll we have for dinner?’ said Una breezily. ‘I can’t wait for a decent meal. Your poor dad is doing his best but he can only do soup and rolls. How about a roast? I fancy beef.’

‘Roast beef? Is there beef in the fridge?’ Maggie asked.

Her mother looked blank. ‘I don’t know, love. I can’t get near the fridge. But look. Or you could go to the shops. The car’s there.’

At that instant, Maggie began to feel panicky. Everything was more serious than she’d thought.

Her father wasn’t exactly one of life’s copers. He’d never been able to cook, and viewed both the iron and washing machine as arcane specimens, beyond his ability. Her mother had done everything in the Maguire household.

And yet here she was, expecting Maggie, who had just arrived, to know what was in the fridge, not to mention to feel confident hopping into a car she had never driven before and going to the supermarket. Maggie had passed her driving test when she was a teenager but she’d never owned a car and could barely remember the difference between all the pedals.

Had breaking her leg broken something else in her mother too?

‘Mum,’ Maggie said, feeling horrendously guilty at not being able to do this simple thing in a family crisis, ‘I can’t drive. You know I can’t.’

She looked into the fridge. There were several big chill-cabinet cartons of soup, half a pack of butter and eggs. Nothing else. ‘We shop from day to day,’ her father added helpfully. ‘I’ll stay with your mother.’

Maggie shut the fridge. She was in charge. She wondered how this had happened. She was not qualified for this. Her mother was the one who was in charge.

‘You’ll be able to go, won’t you?’ Una’s voice quavered slightly.

With frightening clarity, Maggie saw that their roles had swapped. One cracked femur and she was the parent.

She had no option.

‘I’ll do a shop right now,’ she said firmly. ‘The mini supermarket will have everything we need. I’ll walk.’

Speedi Shop on Jasmine Row had been open from dawn to dusk since Maggie had been in infant school. More expensive than the proper supermarket a mile away, it was always busy but there were never any long queues at the checkouts, mainly because Gretchen, the owner, didn’t encourage chitchat. She was, however, an interrogator of Lubyanka standards and Maggie had always felt that Gretchen was terrifying. She didn’t smile much and when she did, her forehead and face remained static, as if filled with Botox, although it was hard to imagine Gretchen spending the money on such a thing. Beauty, a bit like politeness, was a waste of time in Gretchen’s book.

She was there behind the counter when Maggie arrived at the checkout, her basket spilling over with the makings of a roast dinner, shop-bought apple pie and ice cream for pudding.

‘Maggie Maguire, a sight for sore eyes. Long time no see. I thought you were living in married bliss in Galway.’

Maggie translated this bit of faux politeness in her head: fancy seeing you here, and is it true you’re not married at all but still shacking up with some fellow who clearly won’t marry you?

‘Home for a few days,’ said Maggie, aiming for the happily unconcerned approach. Had Gretchen X-ray vision? Could she see that Maggie’s man had cheated on her? It wouldn’t surprise her if the answer was yes. ‘And I’m not married, actually, I’ve a long-term partner.’

Translation: I am a fulfilled woman who has made interesting life choices and wouldn’t be bothered getting married when I could live the free life of a modern feminist unshackled by silly old wedding vows.

‘Right.’ Gretchen nodded appraisingly and began to scan Maggie’s groceries. ‘You remember my Lorraine, don’t you? You were in the same year in school. Lorraine’s living in Nice, married to this gorgeous French pilot, Jacques, with three kids and a live-in nanny. You should see their house: Jacuzzi, pool, bidet in every en suite, the lot.’ I don’t buy your story, said her eyes. Long-term partner, my backside. Now Lorraine, she’s a success story. She has it all: fabulous husband, children, everything money can buy. She’s not home with her tail between her legs at the age of thirty with no ring and no kids either.

‘How wonderful for her,’ Maggie said, adding a large bar of chocolate to the basket to comfort herself. ‘Lorraine always knew what she wanted, didn’t she?’ She snatched back her shopping and shoved it into a bag. Lorraine was a hard-nosed little madam and she was always keen on self-improvement without doing any actual work. Like stealing other people’s homework or hanging round with the class bullies.

‘Bye, Gretchen, have to rush.’

On her way home with the grocery bags weighing her down, Maggie passed the time by trying to remember who lived in the various houses on Summer Street. Many of them were still owned by the people who’d lived there when she was a child, like the Ryans, who bred Burmese cats and never minded the neighbourhood children coming in to coo over the latest batch of apricot-coloured kittens. Or sweet Mrs Sirhan, who’d looked eighty when Maggie had been small, and now must be unbelievably old, but still went for her constitutional every day, up the street into the café for a cup of Earl Grey with lemon.

There was a sign on the park gate: ‘Save Our Park’, written in shaky capitals on a bit of cardboard, and Maggie idly wondered what the park had to be saved from. But the sign-writer hadn’t thought to add that bit of information. Rampaging aliens, perhaps? Or people who didn’t scoop the dog poop?

The old railway pavilion was her favourite part of the park: she’d played in it many times during her childhood and it was easy to imagine it as a train station, with ladies in long dresses sobbing into their reticules as handsome men left them behind, sad stories behind every parting. There hadn’t been a train that way for many years.

The train tracks were long gone, too. Maybe that was the lesson she needed to learn: nobody cared about the past. Her misery over Grey would mean nothing in a hundred years.

It was ten before Maggie managed to escape to bed and to her private misery. She’d left her mobile phone unanswered all day and when she finally checked there were seven where are you? texts from Shona, along with two missed calls and one I am so sorry, please answer your phone text from Grey.

Yeah, right, Maggie thought furiously, erasing it. One lousy text and a couple of phone calls. What an effort that must have been. Feeling angry with Grey was easier than giving in to feeling hopeless and alone. If she let go of the anger, she’d collapse under the weight of the loneliness.

She unwrapped the giant bar of milk chocolate she’d bought and dialled the only person in the world, apart from Shona, who might possibly understand: her cousin Elisabeth. Despite coming up with the nickname Bean, Elisabeth was one of Maggie’s favourite people.

Elisabeth was tall, athletic, had been captain of the netball team and was wildly popular at her school, a fact that had often made Maggie wish they’d gone to the same one. She might have protected Maggie. She was now a booker in one of Seattle’s top model agencies and incredibly, despite all these comparative riches, she was a nice person.

It was eight hours earlier in Seattle and Elisabeth was on her lunch break, sitting at her desk with her mouth full of nuts because she was still doing the low-carb thing.

‘How are you doing?’ asked Elisabeth in muffled tones.

‘Oh, you know, fine. You heard about Mum’s accident?’

‘Yes, Dad told me.’ Her father and Maggie’s were brothers. ‘You don’t sound OK,’ she added suspiciously.