Love Always: A sweeping summer read full of dark family secrets from the Sunday Times bestselling author

I swing my legs off the side of the bed. ‘She’s a client. It was after a conference.’ I am looking for my shoes. I can say it out loud if I just disassociate myself from it, completely pretend it’s not happening.

‘But . . .’ Jay is frowning. ‘But it’s you two. You’re like my perfect couple. You can’t split up.’

‘We’re not a perfect couple.’ I want to cry. He looks bewildered. I say gently, as though it’s him I’m breaking up with, ‘Things . . . things have changed. I don’t know him any more.’

‘But – you’ve known him for ever, Nat. He hasn’t changed.’ I met Oli at college. He was the first person – the only person – to tell me my green eyes in my sallow skin were beautiful. We were already friends by then. It was in the student union bar; we were both in Dramsoc, celebrating the end of our successful run of HMS Pinafore with a themed nautical party Oli had organised. I think I fell in love with him a little bit then, though we didn’t get together for years after that. Six years, in fact. I hugged him, when he said it. He looked so pleased, he was easily pleased back then.

I have to remind myself of this now, but Oli wasn’t a cool kid when I met him. Over the years, he transformed himself from an earnest young man from a small Yorkshire village with a spluttering manner of speech and a terrible habit of blushing. Now his enthusiasm is much more high-octane. He likes doing the deals, meeting the clients, pressing the flesh; he wants people to like him, I guess. He always did. I used to find that intensely endearing. Until the way he got them to like him turned into shagging them. That I don’t find endearing.

‘But that’s just it,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I do know him any more. Even before he told me about . . . about it. Things haven’t been right. With either of us.’

Jay stares at me. He looks as if he’s about to say something, and then stops. We’re both silent, listening to the rumble of conversation from downstairs.

It seems such a long way away from here, that London life we have, full of expensive meals and hospitality suites, the cool flat with its seventies film posters on the walls and the bright red Gaggia espresso machine. From our disinte-grating marriage and secrets that we – both of us – have been keeping from each other. Small secrets, biting the lip here and there, not talking, not telling the truth, the kind of secrets that grow and grow until they fester within you, and you can’t go back and make them right. We started lying to each other too long ago for that. I see that now I’m here, far away from it all.

I draw my legs up and hug my knees. ‘Open the curtains,’ I say.

‘It’s getting dark, you know.’

‘I know.’

The light is fading and the moon is just appearing, full and yellow. The sky is gun-metal grey, the sea an oily lavender-black. It feels too soon for it to be dark; we’ve only just got here. Suddenly I wish with all my heart I could stay, that I didn’t have to go back to any of it, to tomorrow. We are silent for a moment, Jay sitting next to me, and above the voices downstairs I can hear the faint roar of the sea outside, like a shell against my ear.

‘We should go down,’ I say. ‘Sure, in a minute.’ Jay wrinkles his nose, and takes his watch off his wrist, holding it in his hand, an old habit of his. ‘What you going to do, then? Are you going to kick him out?’

‘He’s gone already, that was the night he told me.’ Two weeks ago.

‘Seriously? And you didn’t tell anyone?’

‘He wants to come back, he didn’t want to leave. He keeps saying how sorry he is, what a mistake it is.’ I drum my fingers on my forehead, and wince as they touch my bruised flesh. ‘I didn’t . . . know what to do.’

‘You could have talked to someone about it. So – no one knows?’ He looks incredulous. I take a breath.

‘Cathy knows. And – well, Ben.’

‘Ben?’ Jay makes a loud clicking sound with his tongue. ‘You told Ben but you didn’t tell me? Or your mum?’

Ben has the studio next to me. He’s a photographer, an old friend of Jay’s from college, that’s how I heard about the studio in the first place. We have tea most days. Ben wears woolly jumpers and loves Jaffa Cakes, like me; he’s a very comforting person to be working next to all day, like a shaggy dog, or a nice old lady who runs a sweet shop. I cried all over him the day after Oli left.

‘You should have told us about this, not Ben,’ Jay says. ‘Should have kept it in the family.’

Jay does have a tendency to talk like a Corleone. ‘Oh, Jay, honestly.’ He is frowning. ‘I couldn’t! And then Granny died, like, a week later. I’m hardly going to email everyone and go, “See you at the funeral, and by the way? I’m separated from my husband, fill you in then!”’

Jay shakes his head. ‘You’re mental.’ He gets up and stares out of the window, then turns to me. ‘Nat, it’s me. OK? It’s me. Of course you should have told me. I – I’m here for you, you know that?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I know you are. I just couldn’t.’ My eyes are filling with tears. Jay squeezes his watch in his hands; I hear the links of the metal strap clinking together.

‘Sometimes . . . I just feel like I don’t know you any more,’ he says, after a pause. ‘You’re a different person these days, Nat. Quiet, subdued. You’re not yourself.’

I don’t look at him. I don’t want to talk about it, to acknowledge that he might be right, how wrong everything is. ‘I spend a lot of time on my own,’ I say, blankly. ‘In the studio, at home.’

He shakes his head. ‘That’s not it. I feel like you . . . you’re sad, and I don’t know why.’ He puts his finger under my chin. ‘Nat. What’s the meeting tomorrow about?’

I’m silent. He looks at me, and the kindness and concern in his eyes are like pains in my heart. It’s just easier if he doesn’t care. If he leaves me alone.

‘It’s with the bank.’ I stare back at him, hugging myself. ‘It’s not good.’

‘How come?’

My voice is croaky. ‘I’ve defaulted on my loans. They want to take me t-to court.’ Jay opens his mouth, shocked. ‘I’m probably going to lose the business. It’s not working. Well – it’s me. I’m not working.’ I swallow.

‘Yes – yes, you are!’ Jay says, in outrage. ‘You’re brilliant, Nat!’

‘I’m honestly not,’ I say. ‘Not any more. Don’t think I ever was. I haven’t drawn anything for months.’

‘But you’re always – you’ve always had your pencil going, sketching something –’ he waves his hand round, indicating, here, here – ‘coming up with some design for a tiara when you were a kid, some earrings, a ring – you love that stuff! You’re brilliant!’ He says it again, and it just sounds hollow.

I touch his hand. ‘I can’t do it any more. I don’t know why.’ I look down, I can’t bear to meet his gaze. ‘I’ve got no new ideas. And the stuff that’s out there already – no one’s buying it. The business, me, it’s all –’ I take a deep breath, to steady myself – ‘it’s screwed. Not that the website doesn’t look beautiful, Jay.’ I want to reassure him of that. ‘It’s just we’re in a recession. People aren’t treating themselves to a nice bracelet from some jewellery designer they’ve never heard of.’

Jay looks bewildered. ‘But you’re going places, you’ve had your stuff in magazines, that celebrity girl wore your necklace thing? I don’t understand.’

‘That was ages ago. And I got too big for my boots,’ I say. I am trying to sound chipper, but I am very scared. This is my job. I don’t know how to do anything else, and it terrifies me that I’ve let myself come so low. ‘Oli’s been keeping both of us, the last couple of years,’ I say, and my eyes fill with tears again. ‘It was fine, at the start. We knew it’d take a while. I’ve had to buy gold, and materials, and pay for the business cards and the stationery and everything – and the rent on the studio. Plus the accountants and all that, to do with the company accounts. But . . . I’m about fifteen grand in debt.’ I breathe in . . . I hate saying it out loud. I hate it all.

It’s the look on Jay’s face I can’t stand, this is why I don’t want to tell people, to see the disappointment, the surprise in their eyes. He shakes his head, as though he doesn’t understand it, as though I’m an idiot, which I have been.

‘I didn’t know things had got that bad,’ he says eventually. ‘What will you do?’

‘I have no idea,’ I say. ‘But I have to do something. I’ve known it for a while, and then Oli – Oli told me about the girl, and then Granny died, and it’s all I can think about, how disappointed she’d be, how I’ve let her down . . .’ My throat is closing up; I don’t want to cry. ‘I never used to think I’d find someone, or be able to do something I’d like. I thought I’d end up like Mum, you know? In a horrible flat, lying about everything and pretending she’s in a film, not reality. I thought I’d got away from it . . . me and Oli, the two of us, my job, you know . . .’ I ball my hand into a fist and push it into my stomach. ‘Oh, God.’

‘Granny dying was always going to do this, unleash a lot of crap,’ Jay says. He puts his arm around me. ‘Oh, Nat. Man, I’m sorry.’ He squeezes me tight. ‘Hey, why don’t you come and stay with me? I’ve got that little study, I hardly use it.’

I smile. ‘That’s really kind. No . . . I hope – I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

‘You mean you hope he’ll come back?’

‘I think he wants to come back,’ I say. ‘He keeps texting, asking to talk about it some more, wanting to meet up. I just don’t know if that’s right or not. I don’t know anything any more.’ I look up at him. ‘What’s going to happen, Jay?’

‘It’s going to be OK.’ Jay pats me on the back. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘It’s getting late. You need to show your face back downstairs, especially if you’re running away in an hour or so.’

‘Yep,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put all this on you now.’

‘I’m glad you did, Nat,’ he says. ‘You should have earlier.

I’ve been worried about you. Look, you’re talented, OK? This meeting tomorrow, it’s going to go fine. And then you can talk to Oli, work things out . . . it’s going to be all good again. Promise.’

I nod. ‘If you say so.’

‘Trust me. Family.’ I give a mirthless laugh, pull on my boots and we head towards the light, out of the dark, echoing corridor downstairs to Granny’s wake. Arvind’s chairlift is at the top of the stairs; he must be up here, having a nap. I hear a noise next to us and look round, half-expecting to see Granny in the shadows, standing behind the banister, coolly enquiring where we’re off to, what we think we’re doing? But she’s not there. No one’s there.