This Secret We're Keeping Read Online Free PDF

their heart broken, in one way or another? Did it mean he loved her any less?
    But by the time she’d remembered that Zak had a particular talent for making her question herself, he was on his feet and waiting for her to choose: traditional anniversary as observed by functional couples or sullen celebratory stand-off?
    So with some effort – given that her leg felt like it had been force-fed through a meat grinder – Jess got to her feet and made her way through the bar towards the door, Zak at her shoulder. But she’d only managed to take two steps on to the gravel outside before he reached for her arm and pulled her to a halt.
    ‘Jess, what the fuck is up with your leg? How pissed are you?’
    For a brief moment, she felt relieved. Clearly he had not yet been privy to any local gossip about the accident and, with a bit of luck, it wouldn’t be long before her ageing collection of witnesses began to confuse it with something they’d seen on
Midsomer Murders
.
    ‘It’s fine,’ she said, wincing as she took the weight off it, though the pain was actually starting to feel worse.
    Zak frowned and stared down at her thigh like he had X-ray vision. ‘Hang on, you’re not fine. What have you done?’
    She hesitated, but the thought of his reaction if she told him exactly how it had happened deterred her. ‘Just bruised it,’ she mumbled eventually. ‘Nothing serious.’
    ‘Baby,’ he said, more softly then, ‘I’m a doctor, remember? I can tell when something’s wrong.’
    This was true, and was one of the arguable downsides to dating a medical professional. (Another was the impromptu requests for medical advice Zak often received from friends-of-friends while out and about. They’d been at lunch a fortnight earlier when a middle-aged female acquaintance of his former best man had approached their table and virtually moonied him to get a second opinion on an arse boil that had gone septic.)
    ‘I’ll be fine,’ she insisted, praying he wasn’t overly adept in hands-off diagnoses.
    He slid an arm round her ribcage to support her, putting up a hand to sweep the hair from her face with a tenderness that made her shiver. Clearly thinking they had reached that point of the night where he could attempt to disguise contentious issues as seduction, he put his mouth close to her ear. ‘Have you had any more thoughts,’ he murmured, letting his voice go gruff, ‘about moving to London with me?’
    For a moment, she didn’t attempt to speak, just allowed herself to feel the heat of his breath on her skin as his lips moved down to gently graze her neck.
    ‘I’m sorry about all that Octavia stuff. I’ve thought about you all week,’ he whispered. ‘You keep me going when things get shitty.
Tú me alegras el día
.’
    He did this occasionally – swapped over to Spanish when he thought he might need a little help in winning her over. His success rate with it to date was fairly low, in ratio terms of smile to shrug; but tonight Jess was particularly tired, in addition to which she appreciated the fact that he was holding her up and taking the weight off her bad leg.
    ‘I’m sorry I never told you about Octavia,’ he insisted then, lowering his head to kiss her. ‘I want to be with you,
cariño
. I want you to move to London with me. Happy anniversary, baby.’
    Then his lips were on hers and, just like always, the taste of him shot straight to her groin, a sort of erogenous equivalent to mainlining class-A drugs. And as she found herself pressed up against a patch of nearby brickwork, Zak’s hands running all over her and their kissing becoming more and more urgent, Jess resolved – as she did every time – that tomorrow she would make her mind up about London once and for all.



3
Matthew
Wednesday,22 September 1993
    It was the start of a new school year and, to mark the occasion, I’d been entrusted with teaching the first year of the GCSE maths syllabus to a portion of the lower fifth. Admittedly it