Page 5 of The Girlfriend’s Secret

‘Erm, yeah, I think so,’ Joel replies, seeming a little less certain of that than his girlfriend, although he isn’t dispelling the idea either.

‘So the dream life in Australia isn’t actually any better than working in a mechanic’s garage back here in this rainy town, is it?’ Scott says with a laugh.

‘Shut up,’ Joel says, returning the cushion at his brother’s head with just as much force as it was thrown at him a few moments earlier.

‘Are you serious? You’re not going back to travelling?’ I ask, wanting to firm up the facts here in amongst all the sibling shenanigans going on.

‘Yeah, we’ve talked about it, but we think we might stay and get a place together here,’ Haven replies.

‘That’s wonderful,’ Frederik says. ‘You mean I won’t get any more phone calls in the middle of the night from my son asking me to transfer him a few hundred pounds because he’s spent it all on partying again?’

Everyone laughs at my husband’s comment, simply because we all know it to be true. There have certainly been a few times this year when Joel has completely forgotten the time difference between the UK and Australia and phoned home to request some emergency funds to keep his fun in Australia alive. There’s nothing that proves you never stop being a parent more than a 2 a.m. call from your penniless, hungover and charming child of twenty-five, asking for an urgent bank transfer to get him through the day Down Under while your day hasn’t even started yet.

‘I guess not,’ Joel says. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

We all laugh again and, just as I thought, having Joel home is helping take my mind off my mother’s untimely demise, for now, at least.

‘But how will you get your own place if you have no money?’ Scott asks. ‘No offence, but aren’t you just a couple of broke backpackers?’

‘Charming,’ Haven says, looking a little aggrieved by how my eldest has just summed up her and her boyfriend’s lives.

I notice Scott doesn’t look particularly amused either, so I guess he wasn’t exactly joking there. That makes me wonder if I am not the only one who has some misgivings about Haven. But there’s no time to dwell on it. Not when my youngest son suddenly speaks up.

‘We were wondering,’ Joel says as he looks at me and then his father, ‘would it be okay if Haven and I moved in here for a while, just until we save some money and figure out where we are going to live?’

I barely even need to think about it. There’s no way I am going to say no to my son moving back home, especially not when the alternative is him going back to the other side of the world. But I do hesitate, just for the smallest of seconds, and it’s because of the person sitting on the sofa next to him. The person who now comes as a package with my son and the person who will also be living here if Joel comes back home.

Can I have Haven in my home full-time, for however long that might be?

I guess I have no choice. Neither does my husband, and the subtle but knowing nod we share with one another confirms it.

‘Yes, of course,’ I say with a smile, and Joel looks pleased to hear that. But then I notice something strange.

For the first time all day, Haven seems to have stopped smiling.

FOUR

LIANE

‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ Frederik says as he takes off his watch and places it on the bedside table. ‘And she seems to make Joel very happy.’

‘Yeah,’ I mumble back as I take off my earrings and put them back in the top drawer of my dressing table. I haven’t worn earrings for a while because I haven’t had many occasions to wear them. I only got them out for the funeral, so now they can go away again, and I hope that is the last funeral I go to for a very long time.

‘I can’t believe they’re not going back to Australia,’ Frederik says then as he takes off his shirt and reveals the still impressive, but slowly declining physique of a man who used to swim and stretch often but now barely has time for that with his demanding day job in the local council office. He still has muscles, but they’re more naturally gifted than those that have been honed in the gym. I know Frederik wishes he had more time for working out, but that wouldn’t help pay the bills, and we have plenty of those. They promise to be even bigger bills soon, now that my son and his girlfriend will be using the facilities around here.

I work as a cleaner, though I am currently on compassionate leave after informing my employer about the loss of my mother. What I haven’t informed them of yet is that I do not plan to return to work. I haven’t informed my husband of that plan either, but I will do very soon.

‘I thought Joel was loving it over there,’ my husband goes on. ‘I’m surprised he’d give all that up to come back here.’

‘It’s good that he wants to come home,’ I say as I take off my dress, doing so in such a fashion as to not give my husband too much of a glimpse of my body, because like him I have lost my shape over the years but, unlike him, I am more self-conscious about it.

‘Yeah, of course it is. I’m just saying that it’s a surprise, that’s all. At his age, he could be doing anything, yet he’s moving back in here with us.’

‘We were married with two children at his age,’ I remind my husband. ‘Maybe he’s got the travelling out of his system and wants to settle down like we did.’

‘Yeah, except we settled down before we had travelled,’ Frederik reminds me rather unnecessarily.

‘What do you mean by that?’