Secrets

Freya North

Secrets

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

1

Copyright © Freya North 2009

Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007325801

Version: 2017-11-28

Acclaim for…

pillow talk:

‘Fast paced, page-turning and full of endearing, interesting characters.

I defy anyone who doesn't fall in love with it’

Glamour

‘Warm, sexy, satisfying’

Heat

‘Darkly funny and sexy – literary escapism at its very finest’

Sunday Independent

‘The novel's likeable central characters are so well painted that you feel

not only that you know them, but that you know how right they are

for each other… the beauty of the North Yorkshire countryside

contrasts convincingly with the bustle of London’

Daily Telegraph

‘North charts the emotional turmoil with a sexy exactitude’

Marie Claire

‘With a storyline packed full of teenage nostalgia and

old-fashioned romance, this is a must-read’

Woman

‘A heart-warming and witty romance’

Bella

‘North has excelled in making her latest novel fresh and exciting.

Pillow Talk is an absorbing novel which will capture and hold your full attention from the opening pages … North keeps the reader guessing to the very end’ Irish Tatler

love rules:

‘Freya North has matured to produce an emotive novel that deals

with the darker side of love – these are real women, with real feelings’

She

‘Tantrums, tarts, tears and text-sex… what's not to love about

this cautionary tale for true romantics?’

Heat

‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters…

an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of:

love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship’

Glamour

‘Plenty that's fresh to say about the age-old differences

between men and women’

Marie Claire

‘Sassy, feel-good chick lit with a good sting in the tail’

Cosmopolitan

home truths:

‘An eye-poppingly sexy start leads into a family reunion laced

with secrets. Tangled mother/daughter relationships unravel

and tantalising family riddles keep you glued to the end’

Cosmopolitan

‘You'll laugh, cry, then laugh some more’

Company

‘Freya North manages to strike a good balance between drama, comedy and

romance, and has penned another winner in Home Truths… touching, enjoyable’ Heat

‘An addictive read with a realistic view of home life, sisterhood and identity crisis’

Prima

For Jessica Adams, Sarah Henderson, Kirsty Johnson – and Jo Smith –

for your unconditional and bountiful support, love and laughter. thank you xxx

I could not get tae my love if Aa wad dee The waters of Tyne cem betwixt her and me Sae thor Aa wad stand wiv a tear in my ee Till the Smoggies1 cem and built a bridge Ower them for me

(regional version,

‘Waters of the Tyne’, trad.)

1 Geordie moniker for Middlesbrough folk

Table of Contents

Copyright

Praise

Epigraph

Resolution

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Freya North

About the Publisher

RESOLUTION

1 resolve, determination, purpose, dedication, 2 promise, commitment, pledge, undertaking 3 answer, solution, disentanglement, sorting out, 4 Captain Cook's ship for his second (1772–5) and third (1776–9) voyages of discovery. James Cook, born Marton, Middlesbrough, 27 October 1728. Died Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, 14 February 1779.

Prologue

House-sitter wanted. Sea views. Immediate start.

As Tess and Em crept soundlessly to a corner of the kitchen and crouched down to make themselves as small as possible, Tess chanted the words to herself. It helped to block out partially the banging at the front door and, like a mantra, it gave her some composure.

The banging, though, continued, almost in time to her quickened heart rate, but louder. Stronger.

Go away.

But she had known they'd be back. They were hardly likely to have had a change of heart since their last visit, never to return. She knew that. Of course she did. However, she had not anticipated them coming back quite so soon, certainly not on a Thursday afternoon, the day she didn't work. She put a smile on for Em and they continued to crouch in silence.

House-sitter wanted.

House-sitting sounded so much better than crouching. After one final aggressive barrage, the banging ceased at last, though Tess and Em remained in situ for a cautious minute or two longer until they were quite sure that the people at the front door had gone. Em didn't object, she was used to it by now, content to follow Tess's lead – going along with the silence when Tess put her finger to her lips at the sound of banging; appearing not to notice if Tess answered the phone in a cod American accent. Being silent and feigning absence were two things that Tess and Em did well. Quite the double act. After all, Tess has managed to make it all a form of entertainment, both to lighten the load and fill the loaded silences between banging or ringing. Sometimes, she'd even run through her repertoire of daft faces.

Let them bang all they bloody want – I stick out my tongue and pull my fish face at the lot of them.

Today, though, those six words had provided the diversion. House-sitter wanted. Sea views. Immediate start.

No more banging for today. They'd gone, for now. Tess and Em hugged as they always did when they were sure the coast was clear – in a congratulatory manner. It reminded Tess of the stories her late grandmother had told her of blackouts during the Blitz. The feeling of triumph, of personal success to have come through bombardment unscathed.

‘If ever two people deserved cake, it's you and me, Em.’ She passed Em a slice of chocolate roll with a chipper wink. She kept her anxiety hidden from view.

It is only when she's by herself later that evening that Tess relents and lets her pent-up fear creep around her like an odourless, toxic gas, chilling her to the core like a soundless scream. It has her sweating and short of breath; alternately pacing the confines of the small sitting room or paralysed to the spot. It's a detestable feeling but like severe turbulence during a flight, she has to believe she can weather it and that it will pass. She tries desperately to stifle sobs because if she starts she won't be able to stop. She blinks hard and breathes deeply and eventually she feels calmer. She closes her eyes for a short while, concentrating hard on the colour of nothing behind her eyelids. When she opens them, they alight on the newspaper. She'd found it on the tube home from work yesterday. Right now she is happy to be seduced by the serendipity that, amongst the scatter of all the free London papers in that carriage, the one on her seat was the Cleveland Gazette. She thumbs through it with a sense of urgency, as if the offer she'd chanced upon the day before, which has lingered with her all day today, was so good it would have been snapped up by now and disappeared from the listings.

But it is there. The house with the sea views in need of a house-sitter.

She knows the words by heart, but it is the phone number underneath them which now looms large, turning the abstract mini-poem into a real proposition. Tess knows well enough how today's newspaper can wrap tomorrow's fish and chips. But what if yesterday's newspaper had escaped such a fate? If she'd saved the paper from a brief and greasy end at the chippie – in return, might yesterday's Cleveland Gazette become her map for tomorrow? Did it matter that she didn't know exactly where Cleveland was? It sounded far-flung from North London – and any distance from here and all that had happened, had to be a journey worth making.

I'm crazy, she thinks, as she dials the number. I've been driven completely mad.

Joe considers not taking the call. But once the ringing stops it starts up again.

‘Hullo, my name is Tess and I'm phoning about the ad,’ someone is saying. ‘Could you tell me more?’

He pauses. Isn't he on the verge of offering the position to Mrs Dunn? ‘Well, I just need someone to oversee the old place when I'm not here. I work away from home mostly.’

‘It's old?’

‘It was more a term of affection. Detached. Victorian. Six bedrooms.’

‘Oh.’ Tess wonders if affection can ever be detached. ‘Where is it, exactly?’

‘Saltburn.’

‘Saltburn?’

‘On the outskirts of town, the Loftus Road. The pay isn't much, I'm afraid, but I'm offering a long-term position. Hullo?’

Tess is computing the information. Sea views. Immediate start. House-sitter wanted. Wage provided. ‘Is there a garden?’

‘Of course there's a garden.’

‘You didn't put it in the ad.’

‘No – I thought “sea views” would clinch it.’

‘Is it a big garden?’

‘Not compared to some round here. But sizeable compared to others. A good half an acre. Hullo? Are you there?’

‘Currently, I have a patch of paving stones, mostly cracked. And they're not mine anyway.’

Joe pauses. Suddenly he likes the idea of someone tending his garden who's only had a patch of paving stones that don't belong to them anyway. Perhaps he won't phone Mrs Dunn just yet. ‘Do you want to come and see it?’

‘I'll leave first thing and be with you whenever.’

‘From?’

‘London.’

‘London! You do know you're talking a five, even six-hour drive on a Friday? And the weather's meant to be vile tomorrow even for March?’

‘That won't matter to me. Thank you so much. You won't regret your decision.’

Joe frantically replays the conversation to see just when he'd even implied he'd given her the job. But he can't very well ask her now, nor can he object – she's already hung up.

Tess's grandmother used to say, think before you speak; she also used to say, look before you leap. Tess can imagine how her grandmother would be tutting at her now. She hadn't actually thought about what she was going to say or what she was hoping to hear when she had phoned the number under the ad. What she does know now is that, at a time when she's desperate to run away from the banging and the fear that peppers her life in London, six words in the classified section of a paper from somewhere far away have offered her a way out.

She still isn't quite sure exactly where Cleveland is. She's never heard of Saltburn-by-the-Sea. But there's a six-bedroom house there, in which she is going to be paid to stay. It might just be the answer to her most impassioned prayers, it might be the solution to her problems. It might assist her need to right wrongs. It could well be a safe-house for her secrets, somewhere to lie low until she is back on an even keel and able to start over. It is a long way from London and that's a start. She has to believe that she can do something about the people who come banging at her door. Had Tess known running away could be such a good idea, she'd have considered it much sooner.

Chapter One

There was something about the way the small red hatchback slunk onto the gravel of the drive, coming to a shuddering standstill as if it was giving up, as if it was about to conk out, that reminded Joe of an animal in need of a rest; some poorly-kept packhorse exhausted from an arduous day's work. He watched through the window of his study, on the ground floor, through the tangle of honeysuckle branches which clambered around that side of the house and provided useful camouflage at moments like this. Nothing happened for quite some time; whoever was in the car was staying put. Eventually, the car door opened and Joe watched as a woman climbed out. She stared and stared at the house while still clinging to the open door as if it was a shield. She ducked back in and Joe was prepared for her to drive away, for this woman not to be the Tess of the bizarre phone call last night. She looked nothing like the people who had house-sat for him in the past. But now she was out of the car again, walking around to the other side of it, opening the door, leaning in, apparently rummaging around.

And then, when she reappeared, Joe thought, oh, for fuck's sake.

But by now, she was walking slowly towards the front door.

He considered disappearing elsewhere in the house, feigning not to be at home. But even from this distance and through the network of honeysuckle, her look of awe placated him. Suddenly he wasn't staring at his worst nightmare, but at a scene straight from Thomas Hardy. From his vantage point, he watched as she stood timidly on the weathered slab of doorstep like a peasant girl braving the estate of the wealthy squire. Joe hastened to open the door before she rang the bell, fearing the old mellow clang would all but finish her off.

‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Are you Tess?’

Still he couldn't be absolutely sure. Over the phone she'd sounded older, somehow bigger and physically rather more nondescript. If this was Tess, he hadn't accounted for strikingly amber eyes darting from behind a privacy screen of an overgrown fringe. Despite the droop of mousy brown hair, he could see that her features were fine, her skin porcelain pale. Her lips were pursed, as if to imply something on the verge of being either said or swallowed. She was not tall and her slimness diminished her further, yet she stood square and defensive. Joe wondered why she would drench her frame with a drab hooded sweatshirt which fell to mid-thigh length, emblazoned with a college crest that made good design whether or not the establishment existed. He saw that her jeans were old but too scruffy to be acceptably vintage and her trainers were scuffed, with laces that were inexcusably dirty. He thought about first impressions, and why she would choose to turn up looking like this. Previous house-sitters arrived very spruce and professional. But then he glanced at himself and thought he'd better change the subject.

‘Well, Tess, I'm Joe.’

From his brusque manner on the phone, she had him down as a suit-and-tie dour businessman. At any rate, she'd envisaged him much older, sterner. She hadn't considered his wardrobe to contain jeans and a well-worn grey woollen turtleneck. Nor that he'd answer the door shoeless, in socks of the same yarn as his jumper and similarly bobbled. Least of all did she expect quite a handsome face, even if it did need a shave. Good hair, she noted, for someone in his – say, late forties? Thick, short, salt-and-pepper. Dark eyes. Dark brows. Arms folded nonchalantly.

But her arms were obviously too full to shake his hand so he hadn't offered it. Instead, they nodded at each other. She looked up at him through her fringe and he tried not to look down on her with an expression that was too patronizing. But then he regarded the reality staring him in the face – and once again his dominant thought was, oh, for fuck's sake.

‘You never said anything about a child,’ he said.

He watched her freeze, shift the infant higher on her hip, suck in her bottom lip and knit her brow. Oh Christ, she's not going to cry, is she? But her eyes darkened as a scorch of indignation crossed her cheeks.

‘And you never said anything about a dog,’ she retorted.

Wolf had been standing casually at Joe's side. Tess glanced at him with distaste, noting that his coat appeared to be fashioned from the same material as Joe's jumper and socks. Or was it vice versa.

‘I could be allergic.’

‘And are you?’

‘No. But that's not the point.’

‘Maybe I'm allergic to children.’

‘No one's allergic to children.’

‘Do you not like dogs?’

‘That's not the point either.’

‘Wolf is a soppy old thing.’

‘Does he come with the job, then?’

‘Yes. Sometimes I take him with me. Not if I'm abroad, obviously.’

‘Does he like children, though?’

‘He prefers Pedigree Chum.’

Tess looked at Joe. It was a bad joke but the timing was perfect. She clamped down on a smile, wanting to cling onto the upper hand and invent a moral high ground despite knowing that actually, she was in the wrong. Because she hadn't, on purpose, told him about her eighteen-month old daughter, had she? Whereas he simply hadn't thought to mention his enormous dog.

‘Shall I come in?’ she asked more jauntily, because she was suddenly aware of the threshold still between them and feared the job offer might be rescinded.

Joe looked at her; wondered again how old she was. Thirty? Or possibly late twenties and just tired?

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘come on in.’ He turned and walked into his house.

Nice doggy, he could hear her saying in a voice that was for the baby's benefit and not Wolf's, nice doggy. He heard the infant attempt to emulate her mother's words. It was a very odd sound to hear in the house. Joe had been the last baby here. And that was forty-five years ago.

He thought of the bustling Mrs Dunn from the agency, and her doughy forearms. In comparison, this Tess was a slip of a thing. The flagstones would surely defeat her. The flag-stones were not baby friendly. The flagstones alone could be a deal breaker, to say nothing of the draughts. The rickety banister. The occasional whiff of gas that no one had been able to find or fix. The water that sometimes ran brown. The pipes that bickered loudly. The mutant spiders. Wolf. The wasps that returned to the eaves each summer and fell about the house drunk, drowsy and aggressive each autumn. And then Joe thought how Mrs Dunn would not have tolerated any of this and he looked over his shoulder at Tess standing there in his entrance hall, all wide-eyed in inappropriate teenage clothing. Her baby: wild curls, rosebud mouth and beautifully, perfectly, appropriately dressed. And Joe thought that there was something about Tess's poise and the fact that she'd taken the job without it being offered and had made the long journey in that old red jalopy at a moment's notice, that suggested to him she was here to stay. That it would take more than wasps and a Wolf and water that runs brown to see her off.

‘Tea? Coffee?’

‘Tea, please,’ said Tess.

‘And the – what's your daughter's name?’

‘Em.’

‘Full stop? Or, as in –?’

‘As in Emmeline.’ She saw Joe raise an eyebrow. ‘You were thinking Emma or Emily like most people. She's named after my grandmother.’

‘And was Granny known as Em?’ It came out wrong, Joe could hear it. It implied no lady of that generation would tolerate such a diminutive of the name. ‘I just meant – it's unusual. It's pretty. Shame to shorten it.’

‘Well, you can call her Emmeline,’ Tess said a little tartly. ‘I like to call her Em Full Stop.’

‘OK, I will,’ he said. ‘Emmeline, what would you like to drink?’

‘She's eighteen months old.’

‘Don't they drink at that age?’

Tess paused. It was like the Pedigree Chum remark and she was unsettled to feel simultaneously annoyed yet amused.

‘Emmeline,’ he said very slowly, ‘what would you—’

‘It's OK, I have –’ and Tess contorted herself to keep the child on her hip while she delved around the large holdall dragging on her shoulder. ‘Somewhere in here –’ Finally, she retrieved a colourful beaker with a spout. ‘She's fine.’

Joe looked from mother to daughter. Silently, he agreed with Tess. Emmeline was fine. The house might be fine too, with the two of them. Certainly, the set-up wasn't what he'd had in mind, what he'd had before, but if Tess agreed to Wolf, then he'd agree to Emmeline.

‘Doggy.’

The adults swung their attention to the child.

Clever Em, he heard Tess whisper and there was pure joy in her voice.

The tea was good.

‘Builder's tea,’ Joe said. ‘We don't do gnat's pee in this house.’

They sat opposite each other, with more than just the expanse of a particularly large farmhouse table between them. On it was a veritable mountain range too, complete with landslides and crevasses fashioned from books and mail and newspapers and documents and something scrunched up that appeared to have foodstuff on it. Tess eyed it all.