Nicci French - Secret Smile

'What the fuck…?'

'Mmm?' He smiled at me, though his face had gone rather pale.

'You're mad! Jesus!'

I grabbed hold of his fist and started to pull it loose. Blood seeped out between his fingers, ran down my wrist.

'You have to ask me to stop.'

'You're a fucking lunatic'

'Ask me to stop.'

I looked at the blood gushing from his hand. I heard the front door open again, Kerry's footsteps coming towards us. She started to say she was sorry that she'd stormed out like that and then she stopped and began to scream wildly. Brendan was smiling at me still. Sweat ran down from his forehead.

'Stop,' I said. 'Stop!'

He opened up his hand and shook the glass out on to the table. Blood puddled into his outstretched palm and overflowed on to the table.

'There you are,' he said before he passed out.

At the hospital they gave Brendan twelve stitches and a tetanus jab. They wrapped his hand in a bandage and told him to take paracetamol every four hours.

'What happened?' asked Kerry for about the tenth time.

'An accident,' said Brendan. 'Stupid, eh? It really wasn't Mirrie's fault. If anyone was to blame it was me.'

I opened my mouth to speak. 'It wasn't…' I began. 'It didn't…' Then I ground to a halt, choked by all the things I couldn't say because no one would believe me and I didn't even know any more if I believed myself. 'Fuck it,' I said, mostly to myself.

Brendan was smiling in a drowsy and contented way. His head was on Kerry's shoulder and his bandaged hand lay in her lap. His shirt was covered in splashes of blood.

'You two girls should make up,' he said. 'It was a stupid argument anyway. It's very nice of Mirrie to give us her flat for a while you know, Kerry.'

Kerry stroked his hair off his forehead. 'I know,' she said softly. She looked up at me. 'OK,' she said. 'Thanks.' Then she looked back at Brendan as if he were a war hero or something.

'These things happen in families,' said Brendan and closed his eyes. 'Tiffs. I just want everyone to be happy.'

I left Kerry with him, holding his unwounded hand, and went home to pack.

Moving out had seemed like an essential response to an emergency, like pulling the communication cord on a train. But like so much in my life, it hadn't been properly thought out. I remembered a friend of mine who had been at a dinner party. He'd got into a flaming row with someone and finally shouted 'Fuck off!' at the other person and stormed out. As he slammed the outside door behind him and walked down the steps to the pavement, he realized that he had just stormed out of his own flat. He had to turn round and ring humbly at his door to be readmitted.

Now I was outside and feeling foolish. I had exited at high speed without a plan. On my second evening at Laura's I sat up late with her, drinking a bottle of whisky that I had brought home with me, along with half a dozen bottles of wine, some fresh ravioli and sauce from the deli along from where I was working and a couple of bags of prepared salad. Tony was spending the evening doing something laddish, so I made a meal for just the two of us. It was good spending time with her like that. It took me back to when we were at university, staying up all night. But we weren't at university any more and we both had lives to lead. I wondered how long it would take before her patience started to wear thin. I poured some more of the whisky for both of us.

'You know,' I said, 'I associate whisky with moments like this.' I was starting to slur my words a bit, but then so was Laura. 'When I think of whisky and me and you, I think of very late nights and one of us would be crying and then the other one would start crying as well and we'd probably be smoking too. Like that time when I was on my bike and a taxi ran into me, remember?'

'Sure,' said Laura taking a sip, and flinching with the expression of pain that people display when they have taken a bigger gulp of whisky than they meant to. "Why was it always whisky?'

'Why not?' I said. 'Am I mad?'

'Is this still to do with the whisky?' said Laura.

I took another sip and shook my head.

'Look at the facts,' I said. 'I break up with Brendan. Next thing, he's engaged to my sister. I can't bear the very sight of him. Next thing, he's living in my flat. Them living in my flat is awful. Next thing, I've moved out. So after days of manoeuvring, the result is that a man who makes me want to throw up when I'm around him is living in my flat and I've become a vagrant.'

'You're living here,' said Laura. 'That's not being a vagrant.'

I put my arms round her and hugged her.

'That's so lovely,' I said, overflowing with emotion.

To an observer we would have looked like two drunks outside a pub after closing time.

'I must say, I'm curious,' said Laura.

'What about?'

'This Brendan. You make him sound so appalling that I'd actually quite like to see him. It's like one of those exhibits in an old circus. Do you dare see the bearded lady?'

'You think I'm exaggerating.'

'I want to see him in action,' Laura said with a laugh. 'I want to see what it takes to make you vomit.'

The next day I was at work early, wanting to give Tony and Laura a bit of time together. I went back to the Hampstead house because the owners kept changing their minds about what they wanted. They'd decided that all the lights in the living room were wrong – they didn't want side-lights after all, but soft halogen spotlights on the ceiling. The Venetian red in the bedroom was too dark; in fact, it was too red. Maybe they should have gone for the pea green colour after all… The man of the household, a Sam Broughton, had arranged to come back to the house at lunch to discuss the fine details, and I spent the morning painting doors and skirting boards, laying licks of glossy white over greying wood.

Sam Broughton had just arrived from the City, insistent that he only had twenty minutes to spare, if that, and we were walking through the house, me with my notepad, when my mobile rang.

'Sorry,' I said to him. 'I'll turn it off after this. Hello?'

'Miranda? Thank God you're there.'

'I'm just in the middle of a meeting, Mum. Could you call back in a…'

'I wouldn't have called except it's an emergency.'

I turned away from Broughton's impatient face, his overdone glances at his watch, and looked out of the window at a sodden squirrel immobile on the branch of a chestnut tree outside. 'Tell me.'

'I've just had a phone call from Troy 's tutor and she says that Troy 's not come in.'

'That's not really an emergency, Mum.'

'He's not come in for days.' She paused. 'Most of last week.'

'That's not good.'

'It's like before. Pretending he's going there and then not turning up. I thought he was getting better.' I heard her gulp. 'I'm worried, Miranda. I called our house and he's not there, or at least there's no reply, and I don't know where he is or what he's doing and it's cold and raining outside.' Another gulp.

'What do you want me to do?'

'I'm stuck here at work. I can't really get away – and, anyway, the dental surgery's miles away. I tried your flat, but there was just an answering machine. So I thought you could just pop over and see if you could find him.'

'Find him?'

Behind me, Broughton cleared his throat angrily. His polished brogue tap-tapped on the newly varnished floorboards.

'It's much easier for you to get away and Bill wouldn't mind. And if something's happened

'I'll see if I can find him,' I said.

'I can't bear all of this any more,' said my mother. 'I've had enough of being strong. It's too much for me. What's wrong with us? I thought it was all going to be all right.'

'It will be all right,' I said, too loudly. 'I'll go now.'