Secret Keeping for Beginners Read online

  As she hummed out the very last of her third om, she heard her home phone ring and then shortly after, her mobile tinkled its little tune, but with her brain gently sinking into theta waves she batted it all away as peripheral noise.

  And when her mobile whistled to signal the arrival of a voice message and then buzzed for a text, she didn’t even hear them.

  Several minutes later, Joy opened her eyes, put her right foot back on the ground and took a moment to enjoy the sensation of her customary calm, balance fully restored. She bowed deeply to the Buddha, then turned and walked purposefully into the conservatory, where she picked up the letter and envelope from the table.

  Then, with Muffin trotting along beside her, she went back through the house to the smaller room at the front, which she used as a study.

  ‘What a mess,’ she said to Muffin, taking in the dusty piles of paper that had built up on all the flat surfaces, as she bent down to flick the switch on a wall socket. ‘I think we need to do a bit of space clearing in here, get rid of this negative energy that is trying to get in, don’t you?’

  And once the red light indicated the machine was on, she fed the letter and envelope through her shredder.

  Thursday, 29 May

  Cranbrook

  The minute she heard the jaunty raps on Tessa’s front door – knock knock knocketty knock – Natasha ran to answer it.

  ‘Rachie!’ she cried, hugging her sister.

  ‘Tashie!’ said Rachel with equal enthusiasm. ‘So great to see you, loving the hair. Very Eton crop. Doesn’t your neck get cold?’

  ‘Not in the New York summer, no.’

  Rachel laughed. ‘Good point. Where’s Tessa?’

  ‘Who knows where Tessa is in the space–time continuum?’ said Natasha. ‘She was in the kitchen a few minutes ago, but then she just drifted out.’

  Natasha made wafty movements with her arms and Rachel smiled and nodded in recognition, no need for further explanation about their older sister’s tendency to wander off, irrespective of where she might be needed at any particular moment.

  How lovely it was to slip back into sister shorthand, thought Rachel, but then the beeping sound of a reversing lorry snapped her back into the moment.

  ‘Well, I’ve got a van full of the garden furniture we’re lending Tessa for this shoot tomorrow, blocking the road out there, so I’d better find her quick so she can tell me where she wants it.’

  As Rachel walked into the hall, big enough to hold a small banquet in, the curved staircase sweeping up, Tessa’s crazy murals covering the walls, a set of stag’s antlers hanging over a splendid marble fireplace, she was hit by the house envy that struck whenever she visited Tessa Towers.

  And the really stupid thing was that the sprawling old rectory with its lofty ceilings, endless space and cosy corners, was probably worth about the same as her cramped London terrace. Less even.

  Then she reminded herself it was an hour and a half, or more, to the nearest Ottolenghi and got over it.

  ‘Tess!’ she shouted up the stairwell, only to hear an answer from completely the opposite direction.

  ‘Hey, Rachie-roo,’ said Tessa, coming up from behind and tapping her on the shoulder.

  ‘Oh, there you are, vagabond,’ said Natasha, smiling as her two older sisters hugged warmly, noting with a professional eye how good their two heads – basically the same hair, but one blonde, one brunette – looked side by side, at exactly the same height.

  But also feeling a familiar tug of envy that they shared all the same DNA, while she was some kind of half-blood afterthought. You’d never even pick out they were related to her in a line-up. Thanks to her lanky Aussie dad, she stood a good head taller than both of them.

  ‘Where on earth have you been, Tessa?’ Natasha asked. ‘We were sitting at the kitchen table, I turned around to get the milk and when I looked back you were gone.’

  ‘Oh, I just had to see to something in the garden,’ said Tessa, hiding her phone behind her back. She’d taken some lovely pictures of the waterlilies flowering in an old copper water tank, clouds reflected in the still water. She’d had about twenty Likes on Instagram already.

  ‘Good,’ said Rachel. ‘I hope you were getting some space cleared for the garden furniture I’ve brought you. There’s enough to furnish Kew.’

  ‘Great …’ said Tessa, not sounding quite as excited as Rachel thought she should, ‘can I have a look at it?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rachel, ‘and you can tell Bill the driver where to put it, because he has to get the truck back to his depot.’

  Tessa had no idea where she wanted Bill the driver to put the furniture, because up until the moment Rachel had mentioned it she’d completely forgotten it was coming. The shoot was the next day, she really needed to get organised, but she felt exhausted at the thought of it.

  It wasn’t that she minded arranging things around the house. Far from it, Tessa could spend whole days tweaking little corners into magic moments of perfectly curated objects. A bunch of long grasses in an old lemonade bottle. A rusty watering can at the foot of a paint-splattered wooden ladder. A bowl of antique marbles.

  She could create visual poetry with random stuff, the more knackered-looking the better; it was just the house as a whole that defeated her. It was pretty big and with the three boys constantly leaving things lying around – and Tom wasn’t any tidier – it was impossible to keep the place in some kind of frozen state of perfection. And she didn’t even like houses that looked like that.

  Whenever it had been shot for magazines before Tom was famous, when it was actually about the house, rather than ‘TV’s Tim Chiminey and his fascinating family home’, the art directors had totally got her thing. Her Rousseau-esque mural, featuring all British native flora and fauna, winding up the staircase, had been in the Telegraph mag, as well as on that Interiors cover.

  Now it was expected to look like some kind of luxury hotel and she’d have to be in the bloody pictures too, a human ornament. She groaned inwardly at the thought, her hand flying up to those disastrous grey roots again. Rachel was so lucky to be blonde, her grey just blended in. Thank heavens Tasha was there to help.

  An hour later, after Rachel had drafted the burly manager over from the salvage yard to do the heavy lifting, the furniture was finally arranged in various spots around the garden. Tessa regarded the scene thoughtfully, grateful that Rachel was distracted taking pictures of the set-up on her phone while Natasha snapped shots of her doing it with hers. While the two of them were absorbed in their tiny screens, she took the opportunity to head off to the big shed at the back of the yard.

  Somewhere in there, there were several interesting bits of old agricultural equipment and a bundle of ex-army blankets, which she could usefully press into service to take the edge off the shiny newness of Rachel’s luxury sun loungers and chairs.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like them. Tessa could see what good quality it all was, and she loved the bold floral prints, plus she was very happy to help her sister promote one of her clients, but there was still a broader issue to consider.

  Hunter Gatherer was all about re-using and re-purposing old things, so she needed to make Rachel’s brand spanking new furniture blend in more before the shoot. Showing that used and new worked beautifully together would be a good thing for all of them, but it had to look just right. She wasn’t going to compromise on that.

  Tom might be doing the interview to promote the TV show, but she was going to make sure Hunter Gatherer got a mention too. She was increasingly worried about how he was neglecting the company they had worked so hard together to build up, and one day would have to rely on again. He couldn’t expect his moment of telly stardom to last forever.

  It couldn’t end soon enough for her.

  Their pictures posted on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, Rachel and Natasha gave up waiting for Tessa, who’d done another of her disappearing acts, made themselves some tea and took it back out into the garden.
/>   Rachel stretched out in a hammock made of a tropical leaf– print canvas, which the bloke from the salvage yard had slung up between two trees, and Natasha climbed inside a huge egg-shaped chair constructed from stiff knotted rope.

  ‘This chair’s amazing,’ she said, putting her head out of the front and looking over at Rachel. ‘I feel like I’m in a nest, or a chrysalis, but I can still feel the sun on my skin. I love it.’

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ said Rachel, smiling over at her little sister. ‘We only won this contract yesterday and being able to say I’d already placed it in a You magazine cover story, really helped clinch the deal.’

  She allowed herself a moment of pleasure remembering how well the pitch for the Lawn & Stone business had gone the previous morning. She could still see the expression on Simon’s face when Arnold Arkwright had stopped him before he could even start on his outline of Rathbone & Associates’ many previous triumphs, after she’d finished her presentation.

  ‘Don’t waste your breath,’ he’d said, in his broad Sheffield accent. ‘The lass has convinced me, you’re worth a try for this new posh gear we’re doing. I’ll give you six months and if you’ve made me more money than you’ve cost me, we’ll sign for longer. If you haven’t, you’re out.’

  She’d been a little disappointed Simon hadn’t confirmed her job there and then, but it had to help. Big time.

  ‘That’s great, Rach,’ said Natasha, ‘good job. You always have been a demon pitcher.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rachel. ‘It was super lucky for me that the magazine editor specifically wanted there to be some new stuff in the shots today, that readers could actually buy, as well as all the Hunter Gatherer salvage one-offs.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all a bit model’s own, isn’t it,’ said Natasha. ‘Belt, model’s own. Necklace, model’s own. Falling-to-bits deadly dangerous old rotting ladder, model’s own.’

  Rachel laughed.

  ‘In my world the one-off stuff is more “Tessa found the vintage ladder in a bed of nettles in the South of France.”’

  ‘Tessa found the moulding old sofa in a donkey’s shed in Turkey.’

  ‘Tessa found the rotted-through unusable copper pots in a toxic-waste dump in Chernobyl.’

  ‘Tessa started collecting old nuns’ knickers as a teenager and has used them to create a festive room divider.’

  They sat in silence a moment, sipping their tea and enjoying the closeness engendered by making fond fun of the older sister they both adored.

  ‘Where is she now, do you think?’ Rachel asked eventually.

  ‘I think she’s gone into that wardrobe again,’ Natasha replied.

  ‘The one with all the fur coats?’ said Rachel. ‘And snow on the other side?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Natasha.

  They smiled at each other, not needing to say any more. Of course they’d loved C.S. Lewis as kids, like everyone else, but those books were particularly important to them because they’d been among the very small collection they’d been able to take along when they’d spent a year driving around Australia in a VW camper van, with their mum and Natasha’s dad, Tony.

  He was an art photographer and the road trip had been for a big project he was putting together for an exhibition. There’d been an awful lot of driving across flat red landscape and Tessa and Rachel had made their mum read the books out loud until they had practically known them by heart. Then, when Natasha was old enough, they’d read them to her.

  ‘So when are you going to Mum’s?’ asked Rachel, reminded of her by association.

  ‘Well, I was going to head down there yesterday, but I got held up in town another day for some meetings, so when Tessa rang in distress about tomorrow’s photo shoot I came here instead. Mum’s coming over later and staying. Tessa’s had this great idea Mum can rustle up one of her fabulous lunch spreads for the whole crew tomorrow.’

  They sat quietly again, Rachel flat on her back in the hammock, holding her mug on her stomach, Natasha cross-legged inside the enclosing chair. Neither of them spoke, but they both knew what the other one was thinking. It hung in the air between them, like a giant bubble floating past ready to pop.

  Rachel broke first.

  ‘You don’t say,’ she said, ‘Tessa thinking of a nice exhausting job for somebody else to do.’

  Natasha was laughing the moment her sister started to speak, knowing exactly what the theme of it would be.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘so out of character for her, getting someone else to do all the hard work.’

  ‘It’s hard work wafting at that level, Tash,’ said Rachel in a pretend-serious voice.

  ‘Yes, it takes years of study. She’s a black belt in drifting about, you know.’

  ‘Has an Olympic gold medal in gliding through.’

  They were both yelping with laughter, the spice of complicit guilt making it much funnier than it really was. Throwing her head back too vigorously, Rachel spilled hot tea all over herself.

  Realising she’d better get out of the hammock quickly in case the tea ran onto the very expensive fabric and stained it, which would not be a good start with the new client, she threw her legs over the side. But in her haste to leave it, the hammock lurched backwards and deposited her on the grass, before swinging back and hitting her on the back of the head.

  Leaping out of the egg chair to help her, Natasha caught her back foot on the edge of it and went crashing to the ground as well, her mug of tea launching into orbit. They lay on the soft overgrown grass side by side laughing hysterically, kicking their legs like a pair of naughty children.

  ‘Hey, Rach,’ said Natasha. ‘We’re actually ROFL-ing.’

  ‘We are too,’ said Rachel. ‘Race you to be first to put that on Twitter.’

  ‘I thought it first, so I win,’ said Natasha.

  ‘You don’t own it ’til you’ve shown it, baby,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Do.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Do.’

  ‘Don’t don’t don’t.’

  ‘Do do do, double yours every time …’

  ‘Ow!’ said Rachel suddenly, groping behind her. ‘I’ve landed on something spiky. Ouch, it just got me again. What the hell is that?’

  Looking over her shoulder, she found a small branch of dried-up holly.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, lifting it up gingerly by one leaf to show Natasha. ‘This stuff is deadly. I don’t know how people can live in the country, it’s so dangerous.’

  ‘Give me the safe and cosy inner city any day,’ said Natasha, sitting up and leaning against the bottom of the chair.

  Rachel sat up too, looking around in case there was any more holly waiting to ambush her and their eyes met. They started laughing again. Both of them had tea splattered down the front of their clothes. Rachel glanced back to see if the hammock had copped it, but it seemed to be OK. That was a relief.

  ‘That’ll teach us to be nasty about our big sister,’ said Natasha.

  ‘Karma,’ said Rachel. ‘But it’s nothing we haven’t said to her face.’

  ‘In fact we’ve said a lot worse over the years,’ said Natasha.

  ‘How long being back together did it take for us to be reduced to the mental age of my daughters?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Over an hour, which is quite good going for us and now that you’ve mentioned them tell me about your gorgeous girlies. When am I going to see the little poppets? Could your bro pair dude bring them down here after school tomorrow? Then you could stay tonight and Mum can have a cosy dinner with her three girls, which she would so adore, and we can all help on the shoot tomorrow – Tessa will love that – and then we can hang out here for the whole weekend. Daisy and Ari would enjoy it here much more than they would being at Mum’s because they’ll see their big boy cousins too. It would be like a spring Christmas.’

  Rachel looked at her younger sister’s face, its strong bone structure emphasised by her new short haircut, as she chattered on, radiant with excit
ement. Her mind raced, separating out all the different things Natasha was saying and their associated problems.

  Obviously, she was heading back to town later that afternoon, because she had to go into work in the morning. Now she’d won Rathbone & Associates this big new account, she had a lot to do on it – and she wanted to make sure Simon saw her doing it. She needed this job confirmed. With a raise. And ideally a four-day week.

  And as for the weekend, she already had plans for that. Plans she didn’t particularly want to go into with Tasha, or anyone else in the family for that matter.

  ‘Well,’ she said, cautiously, ‘the thing is, it’s Michael’s weekend to have the girls. He picks them up from me when he finishes work on Friday and I don’t have them again until after school on Monday night.’

  Natasha’s face fell so dramatically, Rachel thought she might be about to burst into tears.

  ‘But I thought you were all coming down to Mum’s this weekend. That was the plan.’

  It was the first Rachel had heard of it. She’d known Natasha was in the UK from the text on Monday, but she’d heard nothing else since and had been too caught up with the Lawn & Stone pitch to follow it up herself.

  ‘Was it?’ she asked, in genuine confusion.

  ‘Didn’t Mum tell you?’ said Natasha.

  ‘No,’ said Rachel. ‘I didn’t even know you were coming over until your text the other day and no one filled me in on any other plans. I was waiting to hear from you.’

  ‘Great,’ said Natasha. ‘I took a job in London specially to come over to see you all before my Paris shoot next week, and Mum and Tessa couldn’t even remember to tell you.’

  She was silent for a moment, staring into space.

  ‘I can’t not see the girls, Rachel,’ she burst out. ‘It’s such an opportunity for me to spend some extended time with them. I love it so much when they come in and wake me up in the morning.’

  Rachel laughed.