The Couple's Secret Read online

  ‘I want you to tell me what this is. I want you to look at it and try … just try …’ The tears are threatening to come now and I swallow hard. ‘Just try to tell me why you would have put something like this in our family Dropbox account?’

  He continues to stare at the computer in silence still, a look of mounting horror on his face. I watch as he casts his eye down the page on the screen, seeing how it affects him. His mouth twitches slightly, but overall his face settles into something strangely blank. Then he reaches down and presses the lock button, shutting off the cold white light that had been illuminating his face. The room suddenly feels very dark.

  ‘Oh, Julianne,’ he says. He turns back to me now and his face looks sad. Troubled and sad, as if I’ve just told him I’m unwell or that someone has done me a terrible, terrible wrong. He steps forward and reaches out, trying to hold me, but I step back.

  ‘No,’ I say, quietly but firmly. ‘Don’t touch me. Just tell me why the fuck something like that is on here. This is your one and only chance or I swear to God I’ll go to the police.’

  He looks even more upset now. ‘The police?’ He says the words as if he doesn’t fully understand what I mean, as if I’ve just offered him an ice cream. ‘Oh God, Julianne, is this why you’ve been acting strangely all evening?’

  My eyes widen. ‘Of course it is. What am I supposed to think when I find something as strange as this in a file with your name on it? And there are more of them. This isn’t the only one. Who are they? Why do you have all these details on them? Are you having an affair?’

  As soon as these last five words are out my mouth, I regret them. And I know they’re foolish. Whatever this is, it isn’t simple infidelity. If infidelity is ever simple.

  ‘Please, darling, listen to me. Please.’

  I stand in silence, ready to back away if he comes any closer. I don’t want his hands on me. I don’t want him trying to comfort me. ‘I’m listening.’

  He takes a deep breath. ‘Julianne, you know what I do for a living. You know that part of my job is to gather information for our clients. Publicly available information, gathered legally and ethically.’

  ‘This doesn’t look legal or ethical.’

  He holds up a hand, a habit of his that’s always irritated me. ‘This isn’t from me or my company. It’s from a start-up firm we were looking to acquire. It’s based in an office block in Mile End and, well, it all looks very promising. It’s run by two young women, actually, along with a few men they subcontract to. They’re very good, very ‘of the moment’, one might say. Very keen to see how information can lead to political gain, social reform. This was part of a project of theirs, looking at disadvantaged people in certain parts of London and the South-East. I think they were looking to sell this to a left-wing pressure group.’

  His words are tumbling around inside my head. Have I got this so catastrophically wrong?

  ‘We aren’t acquiring the firm. We had concerns about their methods – the legality of them. We would never condone people posing as social workers and health professionals in order to get key personal info, like their STI status or drug-use habits. To be completely honest, that kind of thing does go on. Data harvesting through surveillance and undercover work. But those services are usually provided for either rather shady clients paying big bucks or …’ He stops, as if he’s just lost his nerve. Or caught himself before saying something he doesn’t want to.

  ‘Or?’ I ask.

  ‘Or MI5.’

  I look at the floor. ‘Right. I see.’

  ‘I think it’s likely this company is trying to appeal to clients who don’t have the same ethical standards I hold so highly. I can honestly assure you, Varvello would never, ever take part in this kind of thing. If it needs to go on, and I’m sure it does, this is the sort of surveillance the security services should carry out on people they’re suspicious about. It shouldn’t be done on the general population by a private firm, with the resulting information sold to the highest bidder.’

  I can feel him getting energised. He’s passionate about his work, about the amazing things that can be done with big data, the influence it can have. It both impresses me and scares me. ‘I’m so sorry you had to see it. But please believe me when I tell you it isn’t anything to do with me personally.’

  I stare at him, watching the pleading eyes, clearly willing me to believe him. He wants to save me, I can see it in his face. He wants to save me from the horror, be my protector, convince me the hell I’ve been going through is all over now. But I’m not convinced.

  ‘Then why were the files in your family’s Dropbox file? Why not in your work account or on your computer? Surely you of all people know how sensitive that kind of thing is? Surely it’s illegal your even having it, so easily available?’

  He winces. ‘It wasn’t clever of me, I know. I did it by mistake. I meant to put them in my personal account, but I was already logged in to this one and didn’t notice when I dragged them over to my folder.’

  I shake my head. ‘I think there’s something else. Something you’re not telling me. And we can’t sort this – we can’t properly fix this – until we talk about it.’

  He looks at me appalled. ‘Julianne … there’s nothing more to this …’

  ‘The truth. All of it. Not some dialled-down version of it.’ I say it loudly and firmly and it takes him aback.

  ‘Stephen will hear you,’ he hisses. ‘Julianne, please can we just forget about all of this?’

  ‘Forget about it? Are you serious? If all of what you’re saying is true, surely these would be kept on some kind of secure server or in some other safe place or on a hardrive, only to be looked at by people like you at work. Do you routinely just fling files by accident into your family accounts? What else will I find in there if I go digging? Company policy documents? Pension details?’

  He’s looking a bit desperate now. ‘I know. What you’re saying makes sense and that’s usually the case. But …’

  ‘You copied them, James. You took files from this dodgy company and you copied them. You kept copies for yourself. And you don’t want to know where my mind is going right now.’

  ‘Okay.’ His deep, hazel eyes are still fixed on me imploringly, his hands reaching out for me, but I step away from him. ‘I’ll tell you everything. I didn’t want to go into it, but if I really have to, I’ll explain. Just … sit down.’

  I stay completely still for a few seconds, then take a seat on the small, single-seat sofa we have by the bedroom desk we rarely use. He looks put off – apparently he expected me to sit on the bed – but he sits down on top of the covers on his own, the two of us facing each other.

  ‘You know I mentioned the security services?’

  I don’t reply. Just watch him.

  ‘Well, I have a friend. Someone Ernest and I went to school with. You don’t know him. He didn’t go to Oxford with us. He works … in that area of things.’

  He pauses, waiting for me to react, but I still say nothing.

  ‘This is all a bit difficult to speak about. It’s sensitive territory. Well, he’s the type of person who would have some use for the data this company provides. For his own services. In the interests of keeping the country safe. So I took some of their files to send on to him.’

  It takes me a moment to digest this.

  ‘Are you telling me you headhunt data companies for MI5? Let them know when you come across people who would do things for them that ordinary, law-abiding people can’t?’

  He squirms a little, sitting up straighter. ‘I would prefer it if we just didn’t talk about this. Really, Julianne. That’s all I want to say and, honestly, it’s all I think you should know. But you can rest assured I don’t approve of such practices and neither I nor my colleagues commission them or have any part in them.’

  I’m rather stunned by all of this. I knew this wouldn’t be an easy conversation, but of all the places I expected it to go, this wasn’t one of them. He’s not seeing
prostitutes. He’s not having multiple affairs with women across London. He’s still James. My husband.

  Eventually, I nod. The relief spreads across his face. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘But there’s still another problem. Stephen.’ He looks as if he’s about to hug me, but stops himself at the mention of his son’s name.

  ‘Stephen? What does Stephen have to do with this? With any of this?’

  The tears come now. I’m not sure if it’s relief or still the after-effects of tonight’s ordeal, but they pour down all the same. ‘Stephen saw the files. He found them. That’s how I know about them. He brought them to me.’

  His hands go up to his face and for a second I think he’s about to scream. ‘Fuck,’ he says through clenched teeth. He falls onto the bed and kneels forward, running his hands through his hair. ‘Christ. I’m so sorry about all this. I’ll talk to him. He doesn’t … he doesn’t really think … I have anything to do with them?’

  I watch him agonise for a second or two before replying. It’s as if he’s a teenager again; the same eighteen-year-old I fell in love with, but with the quiet confidence stripped away. ‘But you do have something to do with them. Don’t you? You just explained it to me.’

  ‘Shit,’ he says bitterly, rubbing his eyes now. When he sits up they look red and tired. ‘I had minimal involvement, Julianne. Please believe that. I know I keep saying it, but I’m so sorry. I really am. I’ll talk to him. I’ll make sure he understands.’

  I’m still watching him carefully. I’m convinced. I think. All the torment of the past few hours is starting to feel like a bad dream. A nightmare. I want it to go away. I go to him and take his head in my arms and hold it to my chest, then lower myself down to his level so I can look him in the face.

  ‘When you tell Stephen, you’re not to mention anything about what you just told me. Nothing about the security services. Nothing about spies or MI5. He’s a teenage boy. That type of thing should be confined to TV shows and novels. Tell him what you told me first.’

  ‘That I got the wrong Dropbox account?’

  I nod.

  ‘I love you.’ He says it simply, but I know what he wants in return. Reassurance. Comfort. Absolution.

  ‘I’m sorry I ever thought … what I thought,’ I say.

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s over. It’s okay.’ He leans forward and kisses me tenderly. I hold him close for a moment, and then we separate.

  ‘Be careful with how you talk to Stephen. I mean it. I don’t want his Christmas ruined over this and to go back to school thinking …’

  ‘I promise,’ he says.

  ‘And …’ The words catch in my throat as I say them and come out in almost a whisper. ‘There’s nothing else? Nothing else at all … that you want to tell me?’

  His expression turns hard to read and he says, sounding slightly puzzled, ‘What else could there be?’

  I nod. ‘Okay. Let’s just … let’s just go to sleep.’

  ‘Good idea,’ he says, and walks towards the bathroom. I watch him, hoping to feel relieved. Hoping to see again the man I love above everything else. But all I notice is the way his hand trembles as he reaches out to close the door. Ever so slightly.

  Chapter 10

  Holly

  Oxford, 1990

  ‘I’m not sure it’s really my thing,’ I said, looking up at her. Ally sat on my bed with a twang of springs, slightly ruffling the corners of the duvet. I tried not to let it bother me.

  ‘Oh, you simply must. Really, Holly. You must.’ She did her wide-eyed, I-can’t-believe-you’re-even-doubting-this expression.

  I pursed my lips and looked back at the piece of paper in front of me, the familiar sight of my deliberate, neat handwriting filling its lines. ‘I have a lot of work to do. I’ve already decided not to go to the main Christmas and Winter balls. The official ones.’

  Ally gave a noise of contempt. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t bother with them. Just a mixture of horny eighteen-year-olds hoping to get their first handjob and wannabe politicians who think networking around the Christmas trees will help them become PM.’ She rolled her eyes.

  ‘So why should I come to this … thing?’

  Ally sighed. ‘Have you not been listening to me, Holly? It’s not a “thing”. It’s a party. A house party. At the Ashtons’.’

  ‘Where’s the Ashtons again?’ I asked, thinking it was the name of some nightclub or bar that had passed me by.

  More sighing. ‘The Ashtons’ as in the house owned by Thomas and Linda Ashton. I swear I mentioned this, Holly.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you did—’

  ‘Well,’ she said, cutting me off, ‘Thomas and Linda Ashton are family friends of ours. They’re actually Lord and Lady Ashton, but that’s beside the point. Basically, their son Rupert went to school with Ernest. He lives in Oxford. Like, actually from here. Not just a student here.’

  ‘But he’s a student here, too?’

  ‘Oh gosh, no. Apparently couldn’t stand the thought of living so close to home. No, he’s gone to St Andrews. But he’s back now. They break up for Christmas early. Must be a Scottish thing.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, unsure how I was supposed to respond to this.

  ‘So will you come?’

  The prospect of spending time feeling even more out of my depth than I did with Ally and her friends filled me with horror. Ever since I’d seen James talking to that girl outside the bookshop, I’d tried my best to distance myself from him and Ernest, something Ally had been rather successful in counteracting. She saw to it that I was invited to every outing and often cajoled and pleaded with me to come along on trips to restaurants (‘Don’t worry, it won’t be awkward, Ernest pays for everyone, absolutely everyone’) and to study groups (‘I desperately need some help with this essay and I just know you’ll come up with more useful suggestions than anyone else there!’). So I’d swallowed my inner turmoil and joined in. I’d even discovered that the girl’s name was Julianne and that she was from America. I was still having some difficulty in pinning down what relationship – if any – James had with her. When I’d mentioned her to Ernest, asking if James’s girlfriend was coming along to one of our meals out, he’d laughed and said, ‘Girlfriend? Not James’s style. He’s more into brooding attraction followed by heavy flirting, culminating in a long night of full, constant and athletic sex. That’s how James does it. After that, on to the next girl, with a few months of celibacy in between.’ Ally, however, seemed to think there was romance in the air. ‘They look at each other in that way. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was serious.’ Ernest had made noises of disbelief and Ally had remarked that he was ‘just jealous’. I wasn’t sure if Ally’s firmness on the subject was a way of telling me to get over my attraction to James or if she just didn’t really have a clue. Whichever it was, I often found myself torn in these discussions, both wanting to know more and wishing I didn’t know any of it.

  ‘Wouldn’t it look as if I were gate-crashing?’

  Some violent shaking of Ally’s head dismissed this concern.

  ‘Okay, er … well, would they mind?’

  ‘Of course not! Rupert said specifically “please bring anyone along”, so that is what we’ll be doing. You’ll love Rupert. He’s gorgeous. I would try to set you up with him, but he’s gay. Not that that stopped him and me indulging in a bit of heavy petting in the library a couple of years ago. His library, that is. The library in his family home is stunning. I’m sure you’d die for it. He’ll inherit it all, one day. He really is quite a catch. I’d go the whole way with him if I was certain he hadn’t messed around with my brother at some point.’

  I turned around to face her properly, easing the ache in my neck that had come from the awkward sitting position I adopted when writing. ‘Ally, why do you keep implying that your brother has sex with men? James, and now this guy Rupert. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but it … it just seems weird.’

  Ally raised an eyebrow. ‘Weird? Good God, Holly, he went to Eton. They
all did. What do you think they got up to, shut away for years without women during the most fevered part of their hot-blooded masculine lives? Of course they turned to each other; who on earth wouldn’t? It would be weird if they kept everything zipped up, don’t you think? It doesn’t make someone gay just because they enjoy a bit of fun with a close friend. Not that it matters about being gay, anyway; I have pretty strong opinions on that subject. I read an article on prejudice in the newspaper at the dentist’s last summer and it made me a firm believer in gay rights. We’re now in the 1990s. Not far from the twenty-first century. People need to mind their own business and get on with their lives.’

  I nodded quickly, regretting bringing up the subject. ‘Okay, okay. Sorry, it’s just I feel there’s so much I don’t really know. How things work. What people do. I just worry about making a faux pas and people laughing at me.’

  ‘Nobody will laugh at you and you won’t make a “faux pas”,’ she said, using an exaggerated French accent for the last two words. ‘Rupert and his friends are lovely. And if you did want to get laid – and there’s no pressure to – but if you did want to …’

  ‘If I came along, there wouldn’t be anything like that on the cards.’ I gave a half-laugh, half-tut. I certainly didn’t imagine my first time occurring at some drunken party. Eventually I nodded and said to Ally that, okay, so long as she didn’t think I was going to be the odd one out, I would join them at the house party.

  I was going to be the odd one out. I could tell that as soon as the car Ernest had ordered to collect me, him and Ally paused at the wall surrounding the property to allow the gates to swing open automatically. The house looked like something from a C.S. Lewis novel, the type of place that would have multiple rooms full of secret wardrobes, libraries full of big old leather-bound books and maybe the odd bit of taxidermy. This prediction turned out to be rather close to the truth, and I grinned to myself as we passed a stuffed owl on a table in the cavernous entrance hall. ‘This …’ I said, then stopped myself. I was about to say This place is amazing but decided it would be better to keep my wide-eyed innocence to myself.