Secret Smile

by Nicci French

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

Miranda's sister, Kerri, has a new boyfriend. He's a raven-haired, handsome charmer who seems to dote on Kerri. But Brendan isn't the man he says he is. Miranda should know, because she broke off her own affair with him just a few weeks ago when she found him reading her diary.

Now Brendan claims that it was he who ended their short-lived relationship—and everyone believes him. When he and Kerri announce their engagement, Miranda's parents are thrilled for their shyer, less confident daughter. Then Kerri and Brendan beg Miranda to let them live in her apartment until their new home is ready. Against her better judgment, Miranda agrees.

Like a virus, Brendan starts spreading destruction throughout her life. He invades her privacy and disrupts her relationships with her family and friends. And then the real nightmare begins.…

Like the obscenities he whispers into her ear, his onslaughts are as undetectable as they are devastating. Those closest to her begin to doubt her mental stability and accuse her of the very thing she believes drives Brendan: obsession. When Miranda decides to take off the gloves, fight back, and discover what is behind her enemy's bemused, secret smile, the consequences will be terrifying.

Release date: June 22, 2004

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 320

Sample

CHAPTER1

I’ve had a dream recently, the same dream, over and over again, and each time I think it’s real. I’m back at the ice rink on the afternoon I first met Brendan. The cold stings my face, I can hear the scrape of the blades on the ice and then I see him. He’s glancing over at me with that funny look of his, as if he’s noticed me and he’s got something else on his mind. I see all over again that he’s good looking in a way that not everybody would notice. His hair is glossy black like a raven’s wing. His face is oval and his cheekbones and chin are prominent. He has an amused expression on his face as if he has seen the joke before anybody else and I like that about him. He looks at me and then gives me a second look and he’s coming over to say hello. And in my dream I think: Good. I’ve been given another chance. It doesn’t have to happen. This time I can stop it now, here, before it’s even begun.

But I don’t. I smile at what he says to me and I say things back to him. I can’t hear the words and I don’t know what they are, but they must be funny because Brendan laughs and says something and then I laugh, and so it goes, back and forth. We’re like actors in a long-running show. We can say our lines without thinking and I know what’s going to happen to this boy and this girl. They have never met before but he is a friend of a friend of hers and so they are surprised that this is the first time they have come across each other. I’m trying to stop myself, in this dream that I both know and don’t know is a dream. An ice rink is a good place for a boy and a girl to meet, especially when neither of them can skate. Because they have to lean against each other for support and it’s almost compulsory for the boy to put his steadying arm around the girl and they help each other up and laugh at their joint predicament. Her laces are frozen together and he helps her to untie them, her foot in his lap for convenience. When the group starts to break up, it’s only natural that the boy asks the girl for her phone number.

The girl is surprised by a moment of reluctance. It’s been fun but does she need something like this at the moment? She looks at the boy. His eyes are shining from the cold. He is smiling at her expectantly. It seems easier just to give him the number and so she does, even though I am shouting for her not to. But the shouting is silent and in any case she is me and she doesn’t know what is going to happen but I do.

I’m wondering: How is it that I know what is going to happen? I know they are going to meet twice—a drink, a movie—and then, on her sofa, she’ll think, Well, why not? And so I’m thinking if I know what’s going to happen, it must mean that I can’t change it. Not a single detail. I know they’ll sleep together twice more, or is it three times? Always in the girl’s flat. After the second time she sees a strange toothbrush in the mug next to hers. A moment of confusion. She will have to think about that. She will barely have time. Because the next afternoon, her mind will be made up for her. It’s at about that moment—the girl coming home from work, opening the door of her flat—that I wake up.

AFTER WEEKS OF GRAYNESS and drizzle, it was a beautiful autumn afternoon. A blue sky just beginning to lose its electric glare, a sharp wind that was shaking bright leaves from the trees. It had been a long day, and I’d spent most of it up a ladder painting a ceiling, so my neck and right arm ached and my whole body felt grimy and sore, and there were splashes of white emulsion over my knuckles and in my hair. I was thinking about an evening alone: a hot bath, supper in front of the TV in my dressing gown. Cheese on toast, I thought. Cold beer.

So I opened the door to my flat and walked in, letting my bag drop to the floor. And then I saw him. Brendan was sitting on the sofa, or rather, lying back with his feet up. There was a cup of tea on the floor beside him and he was reading something that he closed as I came in.

“Miranda.” He swung his legs off the cushion and stood up. “I thought you’d be back later than this.” And he took me by the shoulders and kissed me on the lips. “Shall I pour you some tea? There’s some in the pot. You look all in.”

I could hardly think which question to ask first. He hardly knew what job I did. What was he doing, thinking about when I finished work? But most of all, what was he doing in my flat? He looked as if he had moved in.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I let myself in,” he said. “I used the keys under the flowerpot. That’s all right, isn’t it? You’ve got paint in your hair, you know.”

I bent down and picked up the book from the sofa. A worn hard-backed exercise book, faded red, the spine split. I stared at it. It was one of my old diaries.

“That’s private,” I said. “Private!”

“I couldn’t resist,” he said with his roguish smile. He saw my expression and held up his hands. “Point taken, I’m sorry, it was wrong. But I want to know all about you. I just wanted to see what you were like before I met you.” He reached a hand out and gently touched my hair where the paint was, as if to scratch it away. I pulled away.

“You shouldn’t have.”

Another smile.

“I won’t do it again then,” he said in a playfully apologetic tone. “All right?”

I took a deep breath. No. I didn’t think it was all right.

“It’s from when you were seventeen,” he said. “I like to think of you at seventeen.”

I looked at Brendan and already he seemed to be receding into the distance. He was on the platform and I was on the train that was pulling away and leaving him behind forever. I was thinking how to say it, as cleanly and finally as possible. You can say, I don’t think this is working anymore, as if the relationship was a machine that has stopped functioning, some vital bit having gone missing. Or, I don’t think we should continue, as if you were both on a road together and you’ve looked ahead and seen that the road forks, or peters out in rocks and brambles. You can say, I don’t want to keep on seeing you. Only of course you don’t mean see, but touch, hold, feel, want. And if they ask why—why is it over? what have I done wrong?—then you don’t tell them: You get on my nerves, your laugh suddenly irritates me, I fancy someone else. No, of course you say, You haven’t done anything. It’s not you, it’s me. These are the things we all learn.

Almost before I knew what I was about to do, I said the words. “I don’t think we should go on with this.”

For a moment, his expression didn’t alter. Then he stepped forward and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Miranda,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Brendan.” I thought of saying something else, but I stopped myself.

His hand was still on my shoulder. “You’re probably exhausted,” he said. “Why don’t you have a bath and put on some clean clothes.”

I stepped away from his hand. “I mean it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What?”

“Are you about to get your period?”

“Brendan . . .”

“You’re due about now, aren’t you?”

“I’m not playing games.”

“Miranda.” He had a coaxing tone to his voice, as if I were a frightened horse and he was approaching me with sugar on his outstretched palm. “We’ve been too happy for you to just end it like this. All those wonderful days and nights.”

“Eight,” I said.

“What?”

“Times we met. Is it even that many?”

“Each time special.”

I didn’t say, Not for me, although it was the truth. You can’t say, It really didn’t mean much after all. It was just one of those things that happened. I shrugged. I didn’t want to make a point. I didn’t want to discuss things. I wanted him to leave.

“I’ve arranged for us to meet some mates of mine for a drink this evening. I told them you were coming.”

“What?” I said.

“In half an hour.”

I stared at him.

“Just a quick drink.”

“You really want us to go out and pretend we’re still together?”

“We need to give this time,” he said.

It sounded so ridiculous, so like a marriage guidance counselor giving glib advice to a couple who had been together for years and years and had children and a mortgage that I couldn’t help myself. I started to laugh and then stopped and felt cruel. He managed a smile that wasn’t really a smile at all, but lips stretched tight over teeth, a grimace or a snarl.

“You can laugh,” he said at last. “You can do this and still laugh.”

“Sorry,” I said. My voice was still shaky. “It’s a nervous kind of laugh.”

“Is that how you behaved with your sister?”

“My sister?” The air seemed to cool around me.

“Yes. Kerry.” He said the name softly, musing over it. “I read about it in your diary. I know. Mmm?”

I walked over to the door and yanked it open. The sky was still blue and the breeze cooled my burning face.

“Get out,” I said.

“Miranda.”

“Just go.”

So he left. I pushed the door shut gently, so he wouldn’t think I was slamming it behind him, and then I suddenly felt nauseous. I didn’t have the meal in front of the TV I’d been looking forward to so much. I just had a glass of water and went to bed and didn’t sleep.

My relationship with Brendan had been so brief that my closest friend, Laura, had been on holiday while it was going on and missed it completely. And it was so entirely over and in the past that when she got back and rang me and told me about what a great time she and Tony had had—well, after all that, I didn’t bother to tell her about Brendan. I just listened as she talked about the holiday and the weather and the food. Then she asked me if I was seeing someone and I said no. She said that was funny because she’d heard something and I said, well, nothing much and anyway it was over. And she giggled and said she wanted to hear all about it and I said there was nothing to tell. Nothing at all.

CHAPTER 2

Two weeks after Brendan had walked out of my door, I was up a ladder and just reaching with the brush to get into the corner when my mobile went off and I realized it was in my jacket pocket and that I didn’t have my jacket on. We were working on a newly constructed house in Blackheath, all straight lines and plate glass and pine. I was painting the wood in a special almost transparent oil-based white paint that had been imported at great expense from Sweden. I scrambled down and put the brush on the lid of the tin.

“Hello?”

“Miranda, it’s Kerry.”

That was unusual enough. We met fairly regularly, every month or so, usually at my parents’. Maybe once a week we would talk on the phone; I was always the one who rang her. She asked if I was free that evening. I’d half arranged something but she said it was really important. She wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t. So of course I had to say yes. I started to discuss where we should meet, but Kerry had it all worked out. A very straightforward French restaurant had just opened in Camden, fairly near where I lived, and Kerry would book a table for eight. If I didn’t hear back from her, I should assume it was set.

I was completely baffled. She’d never arranged anything like that before. As I slapped the paint over the huge pine wall, I tried to think of what she could possibly have to tell me and I couldn’t even come up with a plausible answer to the basic question: Was it likely to be something good or something bad?

Within families, you’re stuck with the character they think you are, whatever you do. You become a war hero and all that your parents ever talk about is something supposedly funny you used to do when you were in nursery school. You can end up moving to Australia just to get away from the person your family thinks you are—or who you think they think you are. It’s like a room made out of mirrors, with reflections and reflections of reflections going on into infinity. They make your head ache.

I hadn’t fled to Australia. I lived less than a mile from the house I grew up in and I worked for my uncle, Bill. Sometimes it’s hard to think of him as my uncle because he is so unlike my father. He has long hair that he sometimes wears in a ponytail, and he hardly ever shaves and what’s more, rich and trendy people queue up to employ him. My father still calls him a painter and decorator and when I was a child I remember him working with a raggle-taggle collection of no-hopers, usually driving a dodgy van he’d borrowed from someone. But nowadays Uncle Bill—which I never call him—has a big office, a company, a lucrative agreement with a team of architects, a waiting list that you can hardly even get onto.

I ARRIVED AT LA TABLE at about one minute past eight and Kerry was already there. She was sitting at the table with a glass of white wine and the bottle in a bucket by the side and I knew immediately that this was good news of some kind. She looked illuminated from the inside and it showed through her eyes. She’d changed her appearance since the previous time I’d seen her. I have my hair cut quite short. I liked the look anyway and it made particular sense when I was working so that my hair wouldn’t get dipped into resin or caught around a drill. Kerry wasn’t someone who had ever had much of a particular look, just medium length hair, practical clothes. Now she had had her hair cut short as well and it suited her. Almost everything about her was different. She was wearing more makeup than usual, which emphasized her large eyes. She had new clothes as well: dark, flared trousers, a white linen shirt and a waistcoat, of all things. She had an elfin, eager look about her. She waved me over to the table and poured me a glass of wine.

“Cheers,” she said. “You’ve got paint in your hair, by the way.”

I wanted to say what I always want to say to this, which is: Of course I have paint in my hair because I spend half my life painting. But I never do and I especially wasn’t going to this evening when Kerry looked so happy and expectant. Expectant. It couldn’t be, could it?

“Occupational hazard,” I said.

It was around the back where I couldn’t see. She scratched at my hair, so that we must have looked like two grooming chimpanzees in the middle of the restaurant and I even let her do it. She said it wouldn’t come off, which was comforting. I took a sip of the wine.

“This place seems nice,” I said.

“I was here last week,” she said. “It’s great.”

“So how’s things?”

“You’re probably wondering why I called you,” she said.

“There doesn’t have to be a special reason,” I said, lying.

“I’ve got some news for you,” she said. “Some pretty startling news.”

She was pregnant. That was it. That was all it could be. I looked at her more closely. A bit surprising to see her drinking, though.

“I’ve got a new boyfriend,” she said.

“That’s wonderful, Kerry. That’s great news.”

I felt more puzzled than before. I felt happy for her, I really did, because I knew that she hadn’t had a boyfriend for some time. It was something that worried her. My parents were always a bit concerned about it, which didn’t help. But for her to announce it in this formal way was bizarre.

“It’s a bit awkward,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to tell you before anybody else.”

“How could it be awkward?”

“That’s right,” she said eagerly. “That’s right. That’s what I’ve been saying. It really shouldn’t be a problem at all, if we don’t let it become one.”

I took a sip of wine and forced myself to be patient. That was another characteristic of Kerry. She veered between being so incommunicative that she wouldn’t say a word to a sort of babbling incoherence.

“What problem?”

“He’s someone you know.”

“Really?”

“Actually, it’s more than that. It’s someone you went out with. It’s an ex-boyfriend of yours.”

I didn’t respond to this because I started thinking frantically. Who could this be? Lucas and I had had a massive bust-up and he was with Cleo anyway. I’d been with Paul for a year and he’d certainly met Kerry once or twice. But wasn’t he still in Edinburgh? Then it was back to ancient history. There were a few odds and sods from college but that was at a time when I was hardly in touch with Kerry at all. I tried to imagine the massive coincidence that could have brought Kerry together with some figure like Rob from my distant past. But they hadn’t even met, had they? Or perhaps it was way back even beyond that into my primeval past at school, with someone like Tom. That must be it. Maybe there was a school reunion . . .

“It’s Brendan,” she said. “Brendan Block.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it amazing? He’s just about to arrive. He said he thought it would be good if we all got together.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“I know it might seem a bit odd . . .”

“Where did you meet?”

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything. But I wanted to tell you something quickly before Bren arrives.”

“Bren?”

“I just wanted to say straight away, my lovely Miranda, that Bren has told me all about it and I want you to know that I hope it won’t be embarrassing.”

“What?”

Kerry leaned across the table and put both her hands on mine. She looked at me with big sympathetic eyes.

“Miranda, I know that it was painful for you when you parted.” She took a deep breath and gave my hand a squeeze. “I know that Bren broke up with you. He’s told me how upset you were, how angry and bitter. But he has told me that he hopes you’re over it. He says he’s fine about it.”

“He says he’s fine about it?”

And at that moment Brendan Block came into the restaurant.

CHAPTER 3

Kerry met him in the middle of the room and he bent down to kiss her lingeringly on the lips. She closed her eyes for a moment, looking tiny beside his tall, bulky figure. She stood on tiptoe and whispered something in his ear and he nodded and looked across at me with his head slightly to one side and a very small smile on his lips. He gave a nod and walked toward me with both arms outstretched. I didn’t know quite what to do. I half-raised myself from my seat, so by the time he arrived at the table I was crouched awkwardly with the chair jammed behind my knees.

“Miranda,” he said. He put his hands firmly on my shoulders, making me sink a bit lower toward my chair, and stared me in the eyes. “Oh, Miranda.”

He bent down to kiss me on the cheek, too near my mouth. By this time Kerry had managed to wrap her arm around Brendan’s waist so she bobbed toward me too and for one awful second we were all a few inches from each other’s faces and I could see the sweat in the divot above his upper lip and the small scar in Kerry’s eyebrow where I’d hit her with a plastic spade when I was four and she was six, and smell his soap and her perfume and something sour in the air between us. I pulled myself free and sank gratefully back onto my chair.

“So Kerry’s told you?” By now he was sitting, too, positioned between me and Kerry so that we were crammed around a small segment of the table, our knees touching. He put a hand over Kerry’s as he spoke and she looked up at him with her shining eyes.

“Yes. But I . . .”

“And it’s really all right?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” I said and realized I’d answered a question that hadn’t been asked. It made me sound tense, rattled, which I was, a bit. Anyone in the world would have been. I saw them exchange a glance. “I mean, it’s fine.”

“I know this must be hard for you.”

“It’s not hard for me at all,” I said.

“That’s very generous of you,” he said. “Typically generous. I told Derek and Marcia you would be like this. I told them not to worry too much.”

“Mum and Dad?”

“Yes,” said Kerry. “They met Bren a couple of days ago. They really liked him. Well, of course they did. Troy did, too, and you know how hard he is to please.”

Brendan gave a modest smile. “Sweet kid,” he said.

“And you told them . . .” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I suddenly remembered a phone call the night before last, when both my parents had talked to me, one after the other, and asked me how I was feeling at the moment. A small tic started up under my left eye.

“That you would understand, because you were a big-hearted woman,” said Brendan.

I felt myself getting angry now at the thought of these people talking behind my back about the way they thought I would react.

“The way that I remember it is . . .”

Brendan held up a hand—large and white, with hairy wrists. Hairy wrists, big earlobes, thick neck. Memories bobbed to the surface and I pushed them back down again. “Let’s not go any further right now. Give it time.”

“Miranda,” said Kerry pleadingly. “Bren just told them what we thought they needed to know.” I looked across at her and saw on her face the luminous happiness that I wasn’t used to. I swallowed hard and stared at the menu.

“Shall we order then?”

“Good idea. I think I’ll have the daurade,” said Brendan, rolling his “r”s at the back of his throat.

I didn’t feel like eating anything.

“I’ll just have the steak and chips,” I said. “Without the chips.”

“Still worried about your weight?”

“What?”

“You don’t need to,” Brendan said. “You look fine. Doesn’t she, Kerry?”

“Yes. Miranda always looks lovely.” For a moment she looked sour, as if she’d said Miranda always looks lovely too many times. “I think I’d like the salmon and a green salad.”

“We’ll have a bottle of the Chablis, I think,” said Brendan. “Do you want a glass of red with your steak, Mirrie?”

That was another thing. I’d always liked the name Miranda because it couldn’t be shortened. Until I met Brendan. Mirrie. It sounded like a misprint.

“White’s fine,” I said.

“Sure?”

“Yes.” I gripped the table. “Thanks.”

Kerry got up to go to the ladies’ and he watched her weave her way through the tables with that small smile on his face. He ordered our meal before turning back to me.

“So . . .”

“Miranda.”

He just smiled, then laid a hand over mine. “You two are very different,” he said.

“I know that.”

“No, I mean, you’re different in ways you couldn’t possibly know.”

“What?”

“Only I can make comparisons,” he said, still smiling at me fondly.

It took me a few seconds to understand. I pulled my hand away. “Brendan, listen . . .”

“Hello, honey,” he said over my head, then stood up to pull back Kerry’s chair for her, placing a hand on her head as she sat down again. The food arrived. My steak was fat and bloody and slid around the plate when I tried to cut it. Brendan watched me hack at it, then lifted a finger to a waitress as she passed. He said something to her in French, which I didn’t understand, and she brought me a different sort of knife.

“Brendan spent time in Paris,” said Kerry.

“Oh.”

“But you probably knew that?” She glanced up at me, then looked away. I couldn’t read her expression. Was it suspicious, resentful, triumphant or simply curious?

“No, I didn’t.” I knew very little about Brendan. He said he was between jobs. He’d mentioned something about a psychology course and about traveling around Europe for several months, but beyond that I could hardly think of a single detail of his life. I’d never been to his flat, never met his friends. He hadn’t talked about his past and he had been vague about his plans. But then of course, there had been so little time. We had been approaching the stage when you start telling each other about your lives when I’d caught him finding out about my life in his own way.

I finally managed to insert a mouthful of steak into my mouth and chewed it vigorously. Brendan inserted a finger and thumb delicately into his own mouth and extracted a thin bone, laying it carefully on the side of his plate, then swilling back the rest of his mouthful with white wine. I looked away.

“So,” I said to Kerry. “How did you two meet?”

“Oh,” she said, and glanced up at Brendan sideways. “By accident, really.”

“Do. . .