Nicci French - Secret Smile

'To see what you find.'

Rob looked irritably puzzled.

'What is it with this guy, Brendan?' he said. 'Have you got some problem with him?'

'It's a bit of a long story.'

He was definitely wary now, glancing at his watch.

'Miranda, I'm a bit pressed…'

'It won't take a minute,' I said, and I gave him the quick version of the story of Brendan and me as the view from his window darkened behind him. It "was one of those dark December days. When I finished, it was harder to make out his expression.

'So?' I said.

'You've had a tough time,' he said. 'Breaking up with a boyfriend.'

'He wasn't exactly my boyfriend.'

'And a death in the family. I'm really sorry, Miranda, but there's nothing I can do.'

'What about this creep?' I said. 'Doesn't he sound dangerous?'

'I don't know,' Rob said. 'One of the things I don't do is get involved in private disputes.'

'Until a crime has been committed.'

'That's right. I'm a policeman.'

'Do you want more evidence? Is that it?'

'No, no,' he said urgently. 'Definitely not. You've done enough.' He stood up, walked round his desk and put his hand on my shoulder. 'Miranda, give it some time. In a few weeks, or months, it will seem different. I promise.'

'And you're not going to do anything at all?'

He patted a large pile of files on his desk.

'I'm going to do a lot,' he said.

Laura looked gorgeous. She'd just had her hair done at a place in Clerkenwell where you virtually have to take out a mortgage, but I had to admit it was worth it. Streaked and tousled, it glowed like a beacon on this horrible grey day. It seemed to light up the bar. She looked smart as well. I'd met her straight from work and she was wearing a suit and a white shirt with a ruffle down the front. I suddenly became self-conscious and looked around to see if I could catch my reflection in the window. I had an uneasy feeling that I didn't look particularly presentable. I didn't seem to have had the time for a few days. There had always been something more urgent. I'd been in a hurry to get to meet Laura, walking along Camden High Street, and I'd been going over in my mind what I wanted to say to her, getting it right, when I passed two schoolgirls and noticed that they were giggling and one of them glanced at me. They were giggling at me. I realized I'd been thinking aloud, walking along muttering to myself, like those people you cross the street to avoid because you think you might catch their eye and they might turn scary.

In my sloppier moments, like when I was working hard, without the time ever to get ready properly, I tried to tell myself that I had a cute gamine look. I wondered if it had tipped over and I just looked like someone who had been released into the community.

I brought the bottle of wine over to the table. Now that was another issue. I was going to start keeping track of my drinking. I didn't think it was particularly excessive, but I was going to start thinking about it. Not now, though. I had other things to sort out first. As I poured the wine, Laura looked at me and with a flicker of a smile she took a packet of Marlboro Lights and a lighter from her bag.

'You've started again,' I said.

'I used to love smoking so much,' she said, taking a cigarette from the packet and placing it between her glossy red lips. 'And then suddenly I thought: why not? I'll give up again when I'm old. You want one?'

She flicked the lighter and sucked the flame into the end of the cigarette and then ejected a dense cloud of smoke. I was very tempted. The smell of it brought back late nights in a fog of drink and talk and laughter and intimacy. But I shook my head. Things were bad enough already. I had to make one gesture towards healthy living, however feeble. It took an effort. Laura was breathing the smoke deep into her lungs and when she exhaled she seemed to be savouring its taste on her tongue. I took a gulp of wine to take my mind off it.

'I'd hoped we could go for a walk,' I said.

Laura looked through the window with an expression of distaste.

'In this weather?'

'I wanted to breathe some cold air,' I said. 'Clear my head.'

'You can do that on your own,' Laura said. 'I'm not dressed for it.'

I had planned what I was going to say to Laura, so that it would seem coherent and sane, but it all came out wrong. I talked about Troy and Brendan and going to the police and it turned into a chaotic exercise in free association, hopping from one subject to another as ideas occurred to me. By the time I was finished, Laura was on her third cigarette.

'This isn't like you, Miranda,' she said.

I took a deep breath and tried not to get angry.

'I don't want you to make a judgement about my psychological state,' I said. 'Or at least, not yet. Just listen to what I'm saying. It adds up.'

'You know what I've always admired about you, Miranda? You've always been wonderful about putting things behind you. When I had snarl-ups in my life, you were the one I'd come to and you'd give me this amazingly sensible advice.'

'Now I'm. the one that's coming to you.'

'Listen to yourself,' Laura said. 'I'm so sorry about Troy. We all are. But listen to yourself. I know what it's like to break up with someone. I know what it's like to be dumped by someone. When Saul broke up with me, you remember what I was like. I couldn't get it out of my head. I kept going over and over it, wondering if he would still love me if I had done this thing or that thing differently. It makes me embarrassed to say it, but do you remember that I even came up with schemes to get him back. Do you remember?'

'Of course I do, darling.'

'You do because I poured it all out to you. And what did you say to me?'

'It's a completely different situation.'

'You told me to bite my tongue, not do anything I would regret and just let time pass and that you promised it would look different. I wanted to slap you yet you were absolutely right.'

'This isn't just a break-up and, as you know, I broke up with Brendan, but I don't want to get into that again…'

'For God's sake, Miranda. I've talked to Brendan. He's puzzled by all this, as much as I am.'

'What?' I said. 'Brendan? Have you been discussing me with Brendan?'

'Miranda

'You've gone over to him. That's it. I can tell. You think he's charming? A nice guy? How dare you? How dare you talk about me to him? What have you told him? Have you given away things I've said to you about him?'

'Miranda, stop this, this is me.'

I stopped and looked at her. She was beautiful and slightly evasive. She took a drag on her cigarette. She was avoiding my eyes.

'You like him, don't you?'

She gave a shrug.

'He's just an ordinary, nice guy,' she said. 'He's concerned about you.'

'That's it,' I said. I rummaged in my purse and, dimly feeling I'd done all this before, in a dream, found a ten-pound note and threw it down on the table. 'There. I'll be in touch. Sorry. I can't say anything more. I've got to go. I can't be doing with this.'

And I walked out on Laura. Out on the pavement I looked around, stunned by what I had done. What did I do now? The damp cold stung me. Good. I walked and walked without knowing where I was going.

There were sixteen days to go until Christmas and four days until Kerry and Brendan were to be married in the register office half a mile from my parents' house. Overnight, the weather changed. It was still cold, but it became greyer, wetter, foggier. I woke in the morning to darkness outside my windows and the sound of rain, and for several minutes I couldn't make myself get out of my warm bed. The hot-water bottle I'd made myself last night was stony cold, so I pushed it on to the floor with my feet. I thought of having to scrape the ice from the van's windscreen, of hammering nails into floorboards in the empty and unheated house in Tottenham with bare, numb hands, and squirmed deeper under my duvet.