It doesn't stay secret for long. Anthea remains oblivious, of course, either failing to notice or consciously ignoring the scarves and self imposed silence and the fact that her daughter is always home, unless she's at school. No late nights, no barely there outfits, no male visitors, except Cook and she's sort of grown to like Cook, or at least tolerate him. He brings flowers and gateau, cigarettes and vodka. He doesn't try to make awkward small talk in the morning or pretend they don't both know he's just fucked Effy, but sometimes he does make breakfast and nothing's burnt or underdone either.
Effy ignores the obvious subtext of emotion between them, which is that he loves her and is in love with her, even though he isn't supposed to be because he's not that type of person. She likes fucking him and she likes that he always has some sort of supply of something to get them fucked up. She leaves the breakfasts and the gateaux to her mother. She hides the bruises and covers up a lot more at the same time; she wears sleeves and hemlines that at least skim her knees. She isn't shocked that no one questions her about being even quieter than usual. She returns to her normal wardrobe after barely a week, which is apparently too soon because JJ gets "locked on" to her almost healed neck. At first the others think he's staring at her cleavage and they laugh, but then Naomi sees the faint yellow and she frowns.
"What happened? Cook play a little rough?"
Then Katie starts to cry.
The Fitch father says apologising is a sign of weakness. Their mother struggles to comprehend her daughters' motives [she's talked to Naomi, who is currently, perhaps against her better judgement, up in the girls' room with Emily, because she may be the mother of twins but she can really only deal with one problem at a time and Katie's is far more serious].
Emily doesn't know how to feel, fills herself with alcohol to dull the conflicting emotions. "I just...I don't understand why she'd do that. She's not...I mean, she'd never..."
"But she did Ems."
"I know, I know, but she...she didn't mean to. She can't have meant to. She wouldn't..."
Naomi sighs, flops on her back on Emily's bed. "She wasn't tripping. She didn't eat any mushrooms. I don't even think she was drunk."
"No, no, I know that, but-" Then Emily starts to cry, hard, until she can't catch her breath and Naomi holds her, rocks her, tries to soothe her but eventually just gives up to wait it out with her. She cries for a long time, and then she falls asleep.