Nicci French - Secret Smile

They were halfway through the meal and I said I'd quickly catch up, but I helped myself to just a token portion of lasagne. I sat next to Eamonn and talked briefly about my plans. He was very encouraging, but he had assumed I was looking in London. I told him I was going to move away, probably to the countryside. He looked baffled.

'Where?' he said. 'Why?'

'I need to get away,' I said.

'That's fine,' he said. 'Take a weekend break. There are some great deals. But don't go and live there. London is where you live. Everywhere else in England is for…' He paused, as if it were difficult to remember what it was for. 'I don't know, going for walks in, flying over on your way somewhere.'

'I'm serious,' I said.

'So am I,' said Eamonn. 'We can't afford to lose you. Look, there are people from all over the world stowing away on ships and in containers and under lorries, just because they want to get to London. And you're leaving. You mustn't.'

Philippa raised an eyebrow at her new boyfriend.

'She said she was serious.'

Maybe Philippa thought that Eamonn was being too nice to me. He sulked a bit and said he would talk to his boss to see if he knew any people who 'weren't good enough to make it in London '. We chatted for a bit and then the conversation lapsed and I felt a nudge. It was the man sitting on the other side of me. He was one of the ones who had looked familiar. Of course I hadn't caught his name. Unfortunately he remembered mine.

'Miranda,' he said. 'It's great to see you.'

'David! Blimey!' I said. He'd cut his hair short and had a small moustache over his upper lip.

He waggled his finger at me roguishly. 'Do you remember where we last met?'

'It's on the tip of my

'I saw you sitting on your arse on the ice at Alexandra Palace.'

A wave of nausea swept through me. Oh, yes. He had been one of the group on the day I met Brendan. What was it? Was God punishing me? Couldn't he have given me a single evening free of this?

'That's right,' I said.

David laughed.

'A good day,' he said. 'It's the sort of thing you ought to do more often and you never really get around to it. Didn't we do a sort of conga on the ice?'

'I wasn't really secure enough, I…'

He narrowed his eyes in concentration. I could see he was trying to remember something. I thought to myself, please, God, no.

'Didn't you…?' he said. 'Someone said that you had a thing with that guy who was there.'

I looked around quickly, and I was relieved that an animated conversation about life in the country was proceeding without me.

'Yes,' I said. 'Briefly.'

'What was he called?'

Couldn't he shut up?

'Brendan,' I said. 'Brendan Block.'

'That's right. Strange guy. I only met him a few times. He was an old friend of one of the guys, but…' David laughed. 'He's out there. He's just one of these people, the stories you hear about him. Amazing.'

There was a pause. I knew, I just knew, that I should start talking about anything else at all. I could ask him about where he lived in London, what his job was, if he was single, where he was going on holiday, just anything except what I knew I was going to say.

'Like what?'

'I don't know,' said David. 'Just odd things. He'd do things the rest of us wouldn't do.'

'You mean, brave things?'

'I mean things you'd think of as a joke, he'd actually go ahead and do.'

'I'm not following you.'

David looked uncomfortable.

'You're not still together, are you?'

'As I said, it was just a brief thing.'

'I just heard about this from someone who was at college with him.'

'He went to Cambridge, didn't he?'

'Maybe later, this was somewhere in the Midlands, I think. From what I heard, Brendan was really winging it. He did no work at all. Apparently his idea of hard work was to photocopy other people's essays. He was doing one course where the tutor got so pissed off that he failed him altogether. Brendan knew where he lived and he went round there and saw his car parked outside the house. He'd left one of the windows wound down about an inch. What Brendan did was to put some rubber gloves on – you know, the kind you use for washing up – and what he did was he spent an entire night going around the area picking up dog shit and pushing it through that crack in the window.'

'That's disgusting,' I said.

'But amazing, don't you think? It's like a stunt in a TV show. Can you imagine coming down in the morning and opening your car door and about a million dog turds fall out? And then trying to clean the car. I mean, try getting that smell out of the car.'

'It's not even funny,' I said. 'It's just horrible.'

'Don't blame me,' David said. 'He wasn't my friend. And then there was another story about a dog. I'm not exactly sure of the details. I think they were renting a house somewhere and a neighbour was getting on their nerves. He was some old guy with one of those scraggly, mangy dogs. It used to run around the garden barking, driving everyone mad. Brendan was very good with animals. My friend said that the most ferocious Rottweiler could run at you and in about five seconds Brendan would be scratching it under his chin and it would be rolling on the ground. So Brendan got hold of the dog and he put it in the back of some builder's lorry that was just about to drive off. There were these other people around who thought he was joking and that he'd get the dog out, but he didn't. Someone came along and got in the lorry and drove off, and it headed down the road with this barking coming out of the back. Insane.'

'So this man lost his dog?'

'Brendan said he was testing those stories you hear about in the local papers about dogs finding their way home from miles away. He said he definitively disproved it.'

I looked around once more and the table had fallen silent. Everyone had been listening.

'How cruel,' said a woman from across the table.

'I must admit,' said David, 'that the story came out sounding less funny than I thought it was going to. This guy was always talked of as a practical joker, but you don't want to be on the receiving end of his humour. Better to hear about it.' He looked around warily. 'Maybe better not even to hear about it.' The rest of the people started talking among themselves again. David leaned closer to me and spoke in a murmur. 'Not someone you want to get on the wrong side of. And if you do, roll your windows up, if you get my meaning.'

'I don't understand,' I said. 'How could you be friends with someone like that?'

'I told you,' David said, shamefaced now. 'I didn't know him that well.'

'That behaviour sounds psychotic'

'Some of the stories were a bit extreme, but he seemed all right when I met him. I didn't know the people he played jokes on. Anyway, you know more than I do. You… well, you went out with him.'

Fucked him. That's what David meant. I breathed deeply. I couldn't stop myself now. I was furious, but I wasn't exactly sure who to be angry with. I tried to speak calmly.

'I wish I'd heard these supposedly amusing stories about Brendan before I went out with him.'

'It might have put you off.'

'Of course it would have fucking put me off.'

'You're a grown-up,' said David. 'You have to decide for yourself who you go out with.'

'I didn't have the information,' I said. 'For fuck's sake, I thought I was with friends. I feel like someone who's been given a car with dodgy brakes.'

'It's not like that. I remember you talking to him. I only heard about you as a couple later.'

'Did you think of us as a nice couple?'

'I wouldn't have chosen him for you, Miranda. Maybe someone could have said something. Does it really matter? You said you weren't seeing him any more.'

'I think it does matter,' I said. 'You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking of a group of people I thought of as friends watching me get into conversation with someone who had filled a car with dog shit because he got an F.'