This Secret We're Keeping Read Free

bell-ringers. Even more thoughtfully, he’d reserved a table in the window for Jess and Anna, topping it off with a Saint-Émilion claret and a plate of Carafe’s best Camembert.
    Jess made slow progress through the bar, exchanging pleasantries with neighbours and acquaintances as if she hadn’t just had the strangest day of her life. On reaching their table she took a seat and poured the wine, allowing her gaze to drift to the courtyard outside and her mind to journey back to the driver of the car crouching next to her in the gravel only a few hours earlier. The expression on his face had been one of bewildered defeat, like he’d just received an unexpected knee to the groin from somebody six inches taller than him, his unspoken anguish a painful reminder of the last time they had met. It made her heart flinch even thinking about it.
    Swallowing the thought away with the aid of the wine, she helped herself to some Camembert. She really should do more with soft cheese, she thought, as its stickiness clung to her fingers. She’d read somewhere that it was a winner paired with raspberries and black pepper.
    And then, like always, there was Anna, raising a hand to Philippe as she elbowed her way through the crowd spilling out from the bar. Joining Jess at their table, she wordlessly took up her wine glass, like the weight of its full bowl against her palm offered a grade of reassurance that the medium of speech, for the moment, could not.
    She looked beautiful tonight, Jess thought, with her kinks of dark hair tumbling softly down in tendrils, skin slightly flushed from the power walk and possibly the prospect of alcohol. Anna had been trying for the past year to conceive, so she wasn’t really supposed to be drinking, but she generally made exceptions for significant occasions, such as weddings, birthdays and unforeseen road-traffic accidents.
    ‘So, your hit-and-run …’ Anna began, and then waited, presumably for Jess to explain how she was not half in plaster and getting her oxygen from a pump.
    So far, Anna only knew what Jess had told her over the phone, which was that a car had driven into her leg but no real harm had been done. She had stopped well short of revealing the driver’s identity. That sort of news could only be delivered face-to-face.
    ‘It wasn’t exactly a hit-and-run,’ Jess said carefully. ‘As in … he hit, but he didn’t run.’
    ‘Probably because you were wedged underneath his front bumper at the time,’ Anna suggested, before softening slightly and taking Jess’s hand. ‘Jesus, Jess. Are you sure you’re okay?’
    In the hours since the accident and arriving at Carafe, Jess’s leg had turned a surprisingly violent shade of purple and had started to gently pulsate like something slowly dying – but she’d been moderately reassured by her clear results from X-ray and the remarkable indifference of the consultant, who had popped his head round the curtain to diagnose soft-tissue bruising before promptly disappearing again. The extent of his advice had been to go home and self-medicate – by which he’d obviously meant it was nothing a fistful of painkillers and a glass or two of wine couldn’t fix.
    ‘I think so,’ she said, nodding slowly. ‘I mean, it’s sore, but it could have been a lot worse.’
    ‘Well, he must have been speeding,’ Anna decided, her face so furrowed up with concern that Jess wanted to reach over and smooth it all out for her.
    Jess shook her head, thinking it might be wise to start by pleading mitigating circumstances on the driver’s behalf. ‘No, it was completely my fault. I ran out in front of the car.’
    ‘Really? Why?’ Anna looked sceptical – which was reasonable enough, given that Jess, like most people, was normally sufficiently level-headed not to jump voluntarily in front of moving traffic.
    As Jess fumbled for the right way to break the news, Anna’s predisposition towards logical analysis began to system-overload with a flurry