Freya North 3-Book Collection: Secrets, Chances, Rumours

‘Oh, for God's sake,’ he said. ‘Grow up.’

She swung round to face him, as if she was about to land a punch. ‘You should have said something about Kate, you know. Because – you were going to kiss me on the Transformer Bridge. You were. It's not nice for me – I'd been looking forward to you coming back, idiot that I am. Don't you play with me, Joe Saunders, don't you dare play with me.’

Her eyes might be bristling with indignation but her voice was wavering and Joe hadn't the heart to correct her transformer bridge to his Transporter Bridge or say, don't you mean toy with me?

‘Tess, can we please sort this Kate business out? Why do you keep harping on about someone called Kate?’

Fury scratched itself across Tess's face. ‘You're going to deny it? Oh, come on, Joe. Tell me to my face that your phone isn't in the bed of some girlfriend in France?’

Joe gave himself a moment. ‘I am not in a relationship with anyone.’

‘Forgive the semantics,’ Tess said. ‘Your phone is in the bed of some woman you're shagging, then. Go on then – deny it.’ Yet as soon as she said it, she suddenly dreaded the confirmation.

Again, Joe paused while he organized his response. ‘Look, I don't know why you think it's any of your business but OK then, there is a woman in France who I –’ He paused. Whom he what, exactly. ‘There's a woman in France – it's not a relationship. But yes, I sleep with her – it's just casual.’

Tess looked appalled, as if she'd just been winded. He was not going to feel guilty – which wasn't to say that her visible distress didn't unnerve him.

For Tess, it wasn't the specifics of Joe's consensual fuck-buddy set-up that had stabbed her (she'd had to broaden her outlook when she met Dick); it was Joe referring to Kate as a woman. She felt a girl by comparison, diminished somehow. She couldn't imagine any man referring to her as a woman, despite the fact that she was a mother. She felt suddenly small, unappealing, defeated by Kate and her grown-up, no-strings womanly sexiness. She was acutely aware of standing in this man's kitchen with a sulky pout across her face, and stupid Winnie-the-Pooh socks on her feet, her figure swamped and denied by her shapeless hoody and her slack jeans. She felt ashamed of herself and she wished she could look up at him and tell him so. But if she looked at him, he'd look at her and all he'd see was her flushed face and the socks and the sweatshirt and the hair that desperately needed a cut and could do with a wash too.

Joe wanted her to speak to him and he wanted to say something to make her feel a little better. ‘Tess, if it helps, she isn't Kate – she's Nathalie.’ His tone was gentle. He thought the information would appease her – if she thought she had the wrong name, she might think she had the wrong end of the stick too.

However, Tess's hands fell so sharply to her side that when they hit her thighs it sounded as though she'd slapped herself and hard. ‘Great, so you've got more than one on the go.’ She could cry but she fought to glower instead. ‘One for love, one for sex – and me to bandy about in some fucked-up game?’

‘Game? What on earth are you on about?’

Do not cry. Don't you bloody dare cry. ‘You were going to kiss me on the bloody bridge!’

Joe paused. This was true.

‘You were going to kiss me. You could've, you know.’

She sounded defeated and she looked broken.

Was he meant to reach out for her? Look at her, having a silent battle against tears – he could hear it in the brittle croak of her voice. He could so easily put his arms around her, coax that crumpled face up to his lips. Plant the kiss that had germinated that night on the bridge. But he really didn't want to kiss her now – not with her like this.

‘I was, Tess. You're right – that night I really did want to kiss you. And it wasn't just a heat-of-the-moment thing. I was about to kiss you on the bridge that night. And when we got back – I could've done so then too.’

‘But you didn't!’

‘Because you gave me no signs of reciprocation.’

Tess stamped with frustration. It was so true. He was absolutely right and her indignation came from Joe's perception. It was maddening. The sides of the hole she'd dug herself were crumbling and she could not work out how to clamber back to normality.

‘Well! I'm bloody glad I didn't. We wouldn't want you three-timing Kate, would we!’

Joe closed his eyes, placing fingers against his temples as if to keep his temper in check, or to protect himself from further onslaught, or to guard against the threat of a headache of blinding proportions.

‘I do not know a Kate, Tess.’

‘You're lying – I've seen the photo!’ Tess was not going to listen to him or think before she spoke.

‘The photo? What photo?’

‘This one, idiot!’ And Tess darted back in to the kitchen, snatched the photo off the dresser and brandished it at Joe. ‘This one – look. K.L. See! K.L. – and the date on the back and smiley loved-up Joe on the front.’

Joe took the photo from her as if he'd never seen it before. He turned it over and over; from the photo on the front to the writing on the back. Then he looked at Tess but she gave him no chance to speak. She was on a mission to have her coup de grâce; a little girl power over Kate and Nathalie, a swipe at Joe for saying she'd given the impression she didn't want to be kissed when she had.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I don't need the photo to know about Kate. Your mother has told me all about her.’

‘My mother?’

‘Yes, Joe. Your mother. You know – the secret one you keep squirrelled away at Swallows. I thought I was seeing ghosts – someone lurking outside the house at weird times. And one day I confronted this little old lady loitering in the garden and what do you know, she used to live here!’

‘You met my mother?’

‘More than met – I visit her now. I've had her here for tea, for a little sit-down. I drove her back to Swallows. I bought her an ice cream. I chat to the other biddies. So yes, I know your mother, Joe, and she told me all about Kate.’

Joe said nothing. But he needn't have said a thing for Tess to know in an instant that something was very wrong. He was no longer looking at the photo, he was looking utterly poleaxed. She saw that this had nothing to do with Kate or Nathalie or Tess – his expression then had been one of wry bemusement. Now something far more fundamental, something darker altogether, striated his face. He turned his back on Tess and walked off, whistling for Wolf who didn't give her even a glance as he trotted after his master for a late-night ramble.

Tess sat by herself for a while trying to figure out what had just happened. She felt no triumph, she just felt panicked. When that subsided, she experienced surges of dread and remorse. What had she done and what could she do? Was there anything she could salvage from the jagged twists of the horribly crossed barbed wires? She tried to tell herself that she'd saved herself future hurt by exposing Joe's duplicity, or even triplicity. But then she pointed out to herself that, in doing so, she'd also forfeited the possibility of ever having that kiss and being able to return one. And what was she to think about his reaction to his mother? She couldn't work that one out at all. By the time she went to bed, though, she deeply regretted her tirade. If only she'd shut up about Kate and Nathalie. If she'd just shut up instead of flying off the handle, then there could have been room for her in Joe's life. Her more involved presence might have furnished him with enough to decide there was no room for the other two. But then she told herself her high self-regard was ludicrous. And so her low self-esteem slid back around her like a constrictor.

I'm just his house-sitter.

And beyond that I'm just a single mum who has run away from a mess of my own making that I fear I'll never be able to clear up.

The look on Joe's face when she told him about his mother.

She might have made a fool of herself venting about the other women. But the look on his face when she told him about his mother. She had been wrong but she had no idea how to make it right.

They met again, in the kitchen, the next morning. Tess shuffled in meekly, fussing quietly around Em. Wolf was spread out in a deep, twitchless sleep, as if he'd been up all night and his battery was dead. Joe was at the stove, cooking a fry-up.

‘Breakfast?’ he asked and Tess tried to analyse his tone of voice. It sounded normal really, friendly even.

‘Um –’ She didn't have an appetite. She didn't have words, either. ‘OK.’

‘The works?’

‘Thank you.’

Five minutes later, a loaded plate was laid before her. She looked up at Joe who was looking down on her, his expressionless face somehow contradicting the gesture of making her breakfast. Actually, he wasn't expressionless, he was closed down, shut off – as if he was giving her breakfast and nothing else.

She looked at the eggs, sunny side up, a little of the browned butter flicked back over the white – Joe's forte. She'd lauded it when he first cooked her one. He'd said, why thank you, ma'am, and it had made her laugh. The morning after, he'd cooked her the same again, and in front of her place setting was a silver salt and pepper set. She'd seasoned her food and held her cutlery with her little finger stuck out at a theatrical angle and that had made Joe laugh. You are a one, he'd said, flicking the tea towel over his shoulder, rolling up his shirt-sleeves to wash up. You are a one, Miss Tess.

He'd been whistling that morning. Never had eggs tasted so lovely. She'd eaten her breakfast listening to him, watching his back as he washed up. The way his shirt caught over his shoulder blades. How it would feel to rest her face between them.

Now look at him – an awful lot to see, nothing coming back. Tess looked down at her plate, thoughts racing to say the right thing.

‘Joe?’ She forced herself to maintain eye contact though she'd rather slip under the table and lie alongside Wolf. ‘I'm very, very sorry.’