Secrets. Freya North

she finally felt able to open her eyes and prise her grip from the tree, she stood still awhile, blinking in the reality of her surroundings in a series of snapshots. The beauty and breadth of the grounds. The majestic poise of the house. The warmth of the bricks. A date stone carved with 1874. She repeated the date out loud quietly, over and over, the sound of the words regulating her breathing. She honed in on another stone plaque over the front door just visible from this angle. She wheeled the buggy over to take a closer look. The lettering was in relief. RESOLUTION, it read. Strange name for a house, she thought. And then she thought, it's time for resolutions of my own. It was a bright moment of calm after a storm of turbulent emotions. She placed both palms flat against the bricks. This house, by name alone, had instilled a new sense of purpose in Tess and she didn't feel merely soothed now, she felt bolstered. She returned to the main swathe of garden and parked the buggy in a quiet spot under a tree within sight and earshot of the kitchen windows and went inside to boil the kettle.

      She made a cup of tea, more to hold than to drink. And there was Joe again, grinning from the photo on the dresser, yellow hard hat and the bridge in the background. Thank you, she said, thanks for this chance. She turned her gaze outside. She could see that Em was asleep in the buggy, Em was just fine.

      ‘Here.’

      Joe's back.

      Tess hadn't heard him come in and her vantage point from the kitchen window precluded seeing the approach to the house.

      ‘Keys – though as you've probably found out, the doors are rarely locked.’ He reached up for an old toby jug on the top shelf of the dresser, full of keys, and jangled a set. He looked at her quizzically. ‘Or you could keep mine,’ he said, ‘and I'll take this pair.’

      It was then Tess realized the keys were still firmly in the clench of her fist as if she had no intention of letting them go. She looked at them. A Chubb and a Yale on a key ring from Brazil spelled with an ‘s’. Like the postmark on the card on the dresser from Giselle.

      ‘Have you been to Brazil, then?’

      ‘Yes. Many times.’

      ‘Have you a bridge there?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Tess wondered why she wanted to say, and have you a Giselle there too? ‘Tea?’ she said instead.

      ‘Ta.’

      ‘Resolution.’

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘Your home – it's a good name. Different.’

      ‘Next door is Endeavour.’

      ‘That's different too. But I prefer Resolution. I like the meaning.’

      ‘Not that up on British history, then?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Resolution? Endeavour? They were the ships James Cook sailed on his voyages of discovery. This is Cook Country – he was born not far from here, just outside Middlesbrough. He sailed from Whitby – just down from here.’

      Tess grasped the information. ‘Where did he go to on the Resolution? Where did he discover? When was that?’

      ‘1772. Cook sailed the Resolution for three years, disproved the southern continent by sailing round Antarctica and discovered Tonga and the New Hebrides. 1776 was his third and final voyage – off to the North Pacific on the Resolution to find the end of the North-West Passage which of course he didn't. But he did sail through the Bering Strait and he did discover Hawaii where, on a return visit, the natives killed him.’

      Tess felt shy for her ignorance but she thanked Joe and said that Resolution was a beautiful name for a house.

      ‘Better than Dun Roamin',’ said Joe who appeared to Tess to be oddly immune to the romance of it all.

      She thought about the house, inside and out. ‘All the windows,’ she said. ‘It's like a compass – views from every point.’

      ‘Well, your maritime analogy is strengthened by the fact that there are mice in the cellar and in a raging storm, the rain finds its way in through the lower windows.’ With that, he let Wolf out into the garden from the boot store off the utility room. Tess realized this must have been the way he'd come in just now. She followed him.

      ‘Does Wolf always go in that patch – over there? You know, “go”?’

      ‘Yes, he's very particular.’

      ‘Could you fence that part off, then?’

      Joe looked at her. ‘How about I put a sign up instead. Like in municipal parks – you know, like Keep off the Grass.’

      ‘What – No Dogs instead?’

      ‘I thought more along the lines of No Children.’

      There was a loaded pause between them.

      ‘Em can't read,’ Tess said, and her tone harked back to when she first saw Joe's dog. ‘She's only eighteen months.’

      ‘Wolf can't read,’ Joe said bluntly. ‘He's only a dog.’

      ‘You didn't say anything about a dog,’ Tess muttered.

      ‘Ditto child,’ said Joe. He felt curiously irritated. Not because of the child or the dog or the shit, just because this girl was doing it again. Unnerving him. Maybe it was sharing his space that caused it. Maybe those house-sitters who did the job unseen and not heard, suited him better. ‘I'm going to go to France early – tomorrow,’ he said.

      ‘Very good,’ she said because then she could have the place to herself.

      The chill between them lasted a few moments longer but then Joe watched a whisper of vulnerability cross Tess's face.

      ‘Tea?’ she said though he hadn't finished his first cup.

      ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I need to crack on. We'll go through my diary in a while.’

      Alone again, Tess looked out to the garden. Wolf was mooching around like a hairy metal-detector, never far from the buggy. Em's little fists were agitating the air around her.

      They'll be OK, those two, Tess thought, they'll get along fine. It's not that relevant if Joe and I don't. He won't be here that often.

      But she was appalled that her mind's eye had returned to the smatter of dark hair running from his stomach down to his jeans that she'd seen when he had reached up for the jug of keys.

      Get your mind off that, she scolded, and fix your eye on your child outside.

      And, though she had no reason to glance again at the photo on the dresser, she was helpless not to. It wasn't the hard hat or the bridge or the bare chest, it was the smile. A blend of euphoria and tenderness and utter focus. There had never been a time when someone had smiled at her like that.

      Who were you smiling at, Joe? Where is she now?

      ‘It's a peace offering.’

      Tess turns around, mortified. She is stooped over the bath with her bottom in the air and she knows her jeans are not the most flattering at the best of times. From this angle, there's no escaping builder's bum.

      How long has he been standing there, holding the bottle of red wine?

      ‘A peace offering?’

      ‘I was arsey,’ Joe says, ‘before – about Wolf and the garden and Emmeline.’ He takes his eyes off Tess and focuses on the slippery pinkness and the foam Afro demarcating her daughter.

      Tess scoops Em out of the bath and cocoons her in a towel. She sits down on the side of the bath not knowing what to say. ‘Well, that's OK, Joe. I was a bit – demanding. I'm just the house-sitter anyway. Not a house mate.’

      Joe considers this. ‘Well, whoever you are, would you like to share a glass of wine? Save me from drinking the whole bottle?’