The Sister-In-Law(66)

I’d nodded. ‘I understand, but please, for everyone’s sake, just try to forget about it.’

‘Just so you know, Clare, I’d never say anything. But little Freddie, I mean who wouldn’t be proud of him?’

Then he kissed me on the cheek, and thanked me, said I mustn’t worry, that he’d never say anything to anyone – ‘Our secret,’ he’d said. I remember seeing him to the door that day and before he left, he turned to me, touched my face and said, ‘He looks just like me, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes. Though you look a bit like Dan,’ I said, which is why no one would ever guess.

So, for almost three years, we kept our secret and the status quo. Jamie continued to turn up at family get-togethers when he wasn’t abroad and I was always pleased to see him, not because of any residing feelings but because he was always warm, and easy with me, which was more than could be said for Dan.

‘What are you doing with a dork like that?’ he’d tease, in front of Dan. ‘You could do so much better, Clare, he really is punching…’ And Dan would laugh, and say something equally disparaging, and I’d go blotchy on my neck knowing what Dan didn’t know. And despite carrying this huge weight around with me, the dynamic between the three of us continued, and I felt like I belonged. Until last summer, with Ella, who wanted to tell everyone and ruin everything.

And yes, now I can admit, when Jamie arrived with his lovely new wife, my first feelings were tinged with jealousy. I’d convinced myself it was nothing, that my feelings for Jamie were sisterly and what happened wouldn’t affect anyone if it stayed locked away in its box. Kids looked like their aunts and uncles all the time. No one would question why Freddie looked so much like his Uncle Jamie as long as no one knew what had happened. But when Jamie told Ella, he handed her a little bomb. One that she now held threateningly in her perfectly manicured hands.

Now she knew about me and Jamie, I just wanted the holiday over. So when Ella asked Joy to go into town with her and I wasn’t invited – which was clearly deliberate – I spent the afternoon in mild panic. The two of them alone together could spell trouble for me. If Ella was feeling mischievous – or downright vindictive – she was likely to tell Joy everything about me and Jamie… and Freddie. Ella had been building up to something, she had to be after I’d announced her guilt to the family. And now I had nothing – I’d already played the card I was holding over her, but no one seemed to either believe me or care about the theft of the earrings. After all it didn’t look like they’d been stolen given they were found in the kitchen – and I was sure everyone thought I was mistaken, or even worse, just nasty.

The children were sitting around with Dan, who was fixing Alfie’s toy truck, and Jamie was on the other side of the pool, reading, while Bob snored nearby.

This was my chance to talk to Jamie without Ella around, so I casually walked over, like I was just checking out the pool from all angles.

‘Jamie, you told her, didn’t you?’ I muttered through my teeth, sitting on the end of the sunlounger next to him. I gazed around smiling, pretending to anyone that was interested that this was a friendly chat.

‘I didn’t exactly tell her…’

‘She said you told her everything.’

Jamie looked really uncomfortable. He sat up. ‘Clare I… I didn’t just blurt it out. Me and Ella, we hadn’t known each other long when I asked her to marry me—’

‘So what has that got to do with anything?’

‘She said we had to be able to trust each other, and that meant no secrets. She said if she was going to spend the rest of her life with me, we had to share everything.’

‘Sshhhh, keep your voice down.’

He looked around shiftily, then continued. ‘She’s very intuitive, said she knew I was hiding something and if I didn’t tell her, she couldn’t say yes – she said secrets eat away at people.’ He looked at me knowingly.

‘Mmm. Or perhaps she just wanted you to tell her stuff so she’d have something over you.’

‘Clare,’ he said under his breath, ‘that isn’t true.’ He looked out across the pool and I looked out too, making like we were talking about the colour of the water, or the weather. ‘I happen to think she’s right,’ he suddenly said.

‘About what?’

‘Secrets, they eat away at you. Ella and I don’t have secrets. Doesn’t it get to you that you’re living a lie, Clare?’

‘I’m not. We don’t know anything for definite,’ I said, defensively, and this was true. But if I had to make a guess on dates, colouring, temperament, Freddie was certainly looking more like Jamie’s son than Dan’s. I had to keep up the pretence though, there was too much to lose.

‘You know as well as I do that even if you could prove Freddie was yours, it wouldn’t be worth the carnage. Dan would divorce me, he’d never speak to you again,’ I said, waving to Violet sitting with her dad at the other side of the pool. ‘And Joy and Bob… imagine. Then the kids, think of the kids, their world would end – especially Freddie’s.’

‘But like Ella says, this is all about you and Dan and the kids… but have you ever really thought about how I feel? What about me, Clare?’