The Keeper of Secrets

The Keeper of Secrets

Amanda Brooke

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2013

Copyright © Amanda Brooke 2013

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover photograph © Laura Ward Photography / Getty Images

Amanda Brooke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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.

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 ebook 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.

Ebook Edition ISBN: 9780007522187

Version: 2015-07-20

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Keep Reading

About the W6 Book Café

About the Author

Also by Amanda Brooke

About the Publisher

1

‘Mum?’

Elle Morgan had almost made it to the door before her six-year-old son called her back. ‘Goodnight, Charlie,’ she said, ignoring his latest attempt to keep her in the room that little bit longer.

Charlie wasn’t giving up. ‘If Granddad’s gone to a better place then why are you sad?’

The delaying tactic worked and stopped Elle in her tracks. She had been doing her best to put on a brave face but it would seem her false smiles had failed to fool her son for the last week so she didn’t try now. ‘Because I miss him,’ she said, ‘but Granddad’s gone to heaven to be with Nana. He’s happy again.’

Charlie’s eyes widened as if his mother’s gentle words had been some kind of threat. ‘It wouldn’t make me happy. I don’t want to go to heaven,’ he whispered.

The fear in her little boy’s voice broke her heart. Despite his tender years he was all too aware of the frailties of life. Charlie had already had to watch his granddad slowly destroyed by grief after the death of his wife two years earlier. Harry hadn’t been prepared to lose her and with good reason. He was ten years his wife’s senior and had always assumed he would be the first to go but at sixty-one Anne had suffered a massive stroke and died six months later. Her devoted husband had been inconsolable and although Elle had willed her dad to fight, if not for his sake then for hers, he had gradually faded into the shadows where she couldn’t reach him. They had buried him that morning, leaving her, his only child, bereft and alone.

‘You’re not going anywhere except to sleep, Charlie,’ she said, adding a firmness to her soft voice as she stood on the threshold. The lamp outside on the landing cast thin fingers of light across the room towards Charlie’s spaceship-shaped bed which floated out of the darkness. Her intrepid astronaut had pulled his duvet cover up over his nose and tearful eyes sparkled in the gloom, beseeching her to stay. His reluctance to go to sleep was completely out of character and Elle could feel her resolve weakening although her warning glare gave nothing away.

‘OK,’ Charlie said with a sigh. ‘Goodnight, sleep tight.’

‘Don’t let the bed bugs bite,’ she finished, closing the door while leaving a crack wide enough to peak through. She had to suppress a smile as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Naively she assumed he was trying to force himself to sleep but after a few seconds, he prised one eye open and then the other. Slowly, he began to peel away his covers and moved a leg as if to get out of bed.

Elle whipped the door open. ‘Charlie, go to sleep!’ she said, now more amused than annoyed.

Charlie burst into tears. ‘I don’t want to die,’ he wailed.

The smile on Elle’s face froze. She rushed over and gathered him in her arms. She should never have agreed to take him to the funeral. At, six, he was too young, too sensitive. ‘You’re not going to die, Charlie, I won’t let you,’ she said calmly as she tried to reel in her growing anger.

‘But you didn’t stop Granddad from dying,’ Charlie cried, his small body shuddering in fear.

‘Granddad was very sick and he died because his body was old and worn out. You’re perfectly healthy and you’re going to grow up to be the tallest, most handsome and cleverest astronaut NASA has ever seen. I promise.’

It took five full minutes of gentle rocking before Charlie began to release his grip on her. His soft golden curls were sodden with sweat but exhaustion did what her soothing could not and by the time she was ready to make a second attempt to slip out of his room, sleep had found him.

‘Sweet dreams,’ she whispered in a feeble attempt to fend off the nightmares that stalked him.

Elle slipped silently down the dimly lit stairs, her toes sinking into the deep plush pile of the cream carpet. It gave her a sense of luxury but not one of belonging. The polished banister felt cold and the hallway clung to the wintry chill that had seeped into the house on their return home from the funeral an hour earlier.

Through the stained-glass window of the front door the streetlights picked out the silhouettes of denuded trees shivering in the breeze, but it was the thin slither of light coming from beneath the study door that drew her attention. As she opened the door she could still feel the dampness of Charlie’s tears cooling on her neck and it fuelled her lingering anger.

Rick looked up from his computer and his face softened in sympathy. ‘You look worn out,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you open a bottle of wine to have with our supper? I’m just catching up on some emails. I won’t be long.’

‘We should never have taken Charlie to the funeral. He’s been sobbing his heart out.’

‘You can’t mollycoddle him, Elle,’ Rick said. He pushed his chair back from the desk but didn’t stand up. ‘He has to understand about life and death sooner or later. Of course he’s upset – his granddad’s just died. But we’re all upset. We can show him how we pull together as a family. It’ll be good for him in the long run, you’ll see.’

Elle was tempted to explain in graphic detail how distraught Charlie had been but Rick had already seen the look of horror on the little boy’s face as he watched his granddad’s coffin being lowered into the ground. His reaction now would be the same as then; he would tell him to man up, shaming his son for getting upset. Experience had taught her that she would be doing more harm than good by arguing so with some reluctance she swallowed her anger and changed the subject. ‘I’ll have to make a start on clearing Dad’s house since it has to be emptied by the end of the month.’

‘If that’s a dig about me ending the lease then it’s not my fault your dad left no estate. I don’t expect you to understand the figures, but even you can work out it would be a waste of money renting the house for longer.’

‘I wasn’t disagreeing; I was just saying there isn’t much time. I was going to suggest I spend the weekend there rather than travelling to and fro all the time.’

Elle’s parents had lived in a small terraced house in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, which was a forty-mile round-trip from their house in Southport. Between Charlie’s school runs and her other daily chores, it left only a few snatched hours here and there during the working week. It made perfect sense to stay over, but as she watched Rick picking through the papers on his desk she knew he was about to dismiss the idea. ‘I was only planning to stay over on Saturday night and you’re out that evening anyway,’ she added.

‘I don’t like the thought of you being in a half-empty house on your own overnight, that’s all. I’m working in the day, but I suppose I could always forgo my night out with Chris and join you later,’ he said, as if he was seriously considering the possibility. ‘But he’s so miserable at the moment and I’d hate to let him down. Angie really has done him over. How he managed to hold his tongue with her at the service today is beyond me.’

She didn’t rise to the bait. Rick and Chris were architects and worked for the same engineering firm and Chris just so happened to be a nephew of one of the owners. Rick had once been eager to nurture the friendship between their respective wives but since Chris and Angie had separated three months ago, he had made it clear whose side they should take. So far Elle had evaded the issue by suggesting there was still a chance of reconciliation. She was in no mood to be drawn into an argument that might lead to her forfeiting a friendship, not today. ‘So go out with him. I’ll be perfectly fine with Charlie to keep me company and it is only one night, Rick,’ she said, steering her husband back to the matter at hand.

‘But I’d be coming home to an empty house. I might as well stay out all night in that case,’ he said sullenly. ‘We haven’t had a single night apart since Charlie was born.’

Elle was well aware of the fact and it was a statistic she was far from proud of. It would be to her eternal regret that she hadn’t spent the last days of her father’s life at his bedside. It might have made all the difference. He had been taken to hospital with pneumonia but had discharged himself. Like an errant schoolgirl rather than a thirty-five-year-old woman, she had been told in no uncertain terms by her husband not to nursemaid Harry but to leave him to his own foolishness. He had died alone.

‘If I don’t clear the house in time then we’ll end up paying extra rent,’ she warned.

‘But you don’t even have to do the clearing out at all. There’s a clearance company I know who should be able to give me a good deal and I can ask them to go through everything. Let’s face it, Elle, there’s not much there worth salvaging and I don’t want you cluttering up this house with your parents’ junk.’ Rick continued shuffling paperwork distractedly as he spoke but then something caught his eye. He hurriedly dropped the stack of pages back down onto the desk but he wasn’t quick enough.

‘Is that Dad’s watch?’ Elle asked in utter disbelief. She had been standing at the door, preferring the bite of cold air at her neck than stepping into the oppressive warmth of the study but the sight of what was clearly her dad’s watch drew her in.

Rick sighed and snatched up the papers to reveal the old-fashioned pocket watch her dad had worn religiously during her formative years. It had reappeared a month or so ago when Harry’s health had started to deteriorate and he had given her explicit instructions that he wanted to be buried with it. The last time she had seen it was in his coffin and now she knew why Rick had insisted on his own private farewell to her father at the funeral parlour.

‘It’s of no use to him now,’ Rick said, picking up the watch by the chain and letting the dial sway from side to side.

‘But you said it wasn’t particularly valuable, so why not let him have his dying wish, for God’s sake?’ The steel in her voice was alien to Elle but the anger she had put to one side had bubbled back to the surface without warning, leaving no time to draw on the self-restraint she had learned over the years.

‘Don’t you think Charlie deserves some kind of heirloom?’ Rick countered, completely unabashed. ‘Your dad left barely enough to cover the funeral costs. The watch is only plated but the chain’s solid gold. It has some value.’

‘Yes, sentimental value to my dad.’

Rick ignored her. ‘And have you seen this?’ he asked. There was a small brass key dangling from the other end of the chain and he caught it between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Any idea what it belongs to?’

Elle was momentarily distracted from her anger by this tiny relic from her childhood, one she had barely acknowledged. The key had been an intrinsic part of the watch and so she had never once thought of it as an object in its own right. ‘I’ve no idea. All I know is the watch was given to him on his twenty-first birthday and it was so important to him that he didn’t want to be separated from it, even in death,’ she answered pointedly.

‘How important, do you think? What if your dad’s left some hidden treasure after all? Surely he must have picked up the odd piece on his travels when he was in the navy?’ Rick mused. ‘It’s hard to believe that he has nothing to show for seventy-three years except a pitiful insurance policy. Keep an eye out for anything this might fit while you go through his stuff.’

‘I’ll go over on Saturday morning with Charlie and stay until Sunday,’ Elle said, eager to take advantage of Rick’s curiosity. ‘You’ll hardly notice we’re gone.’

Rick seemed not to hear her. ‘I’d better get on. I’ve missed enough today as it is and I’ll be working on Sunday too if I can’t catch up.’

Elle took the absence of objection as his agreement. Normally she would have retreated after such a rare victory, but something kept her in the room. ‘You shouldn’t have taken it, Rick,’ she said, the tears welling in her eyes as she picked up the watch he had thoughtlessly set to one side.

Rick watched her and perhaps for the first time considered his actions. Without a word, he stood up and walked around the desk until he was standing in front of his wife. He was only marginally taller than Elle so when he dropped his head in remorse, she could see the glint of scalp through his thinning brown hair that had been slicked back with hair gel. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t think this through, did I? I was simply thinking of what was best for you and Charlie.’ He waited a moment before raising his green eyes towards her.

Such play-acting had once been endearing and had often secured Elle’s immediate forgiveness for one indiscretion or another, but not this time. Today a man’s dying wish had been broken so she held his gaze.

Failing to get the reaction he wanted, Rick cupped her face in his hands and with a thumb wiped away a trickling tear. ‘I’ll tell you what. You go and have a relaxing bath. When you come down, I’ll have supper ready,’ he offered gently.

Elle couldn’t help herself. She leaned in towards the warmth of his hand. Tonight more than ever she needed to be held and loved.

‘Am I forgiven?’ he asked.

She forced a smile and as she nodded, she tightened her grip on the watch. The metal case was still cool to the touch and Elle was convinced that she could feel the gentle ticking of the timepiece against the palm of her hand, a fragile echo of her dad’s heartbeat. She wouldn’t condone Rick’s actions but, despite herself, she took some guilty pleasure from having that connection left open.

2

The house had been devoid of life for less than two weeks but it was already beginning to smell of dank decay. The two-bedroom workman’s cottage had one main reception room and a single-storey extension which provided a decent-sized kitchen. It had been her parents’ home for the whole of their married life and they had never seriously considered moving anywhere else; or, to be more precise, Harry had never seriously considered moving anywhere else. He had spent over a decade at sea before settling down and said that a larger house would have unsettled him. His wife, on the other hand, was far less enamoured with confined spaces. The construction of the extension twenty years ago had been the direct result of her constant complaints to Harry and the landlord. Anne had still thought the rest of the house small and pokey but she told people she would put up with it just like she put up with Harry, with a half-smile that revealed her true feelings. The cottage’s only redeeming feature was the garden, which was narrow and long with a wooden shed tucked beneath the shade of a large sycamore tree. This was where her dad would escape to when her mum wanted some ‘space’.

‘Leave the door open, sweetheart,’ Elle said to Charlie as she made the short journey from front door to the centre of the living room, where she dropped a stack of flattened cardboard boxes onto the floor.

It was a blustery day and didn’t take long for the cold breeze to whip away the musty, tobacco-tainted air. The closed curtains billowed and the flickering grey light brought ghostly shapes to life. Elle quickly pulled the drapes open wide to chase the shadows out of the room, but then took a moment before turning back to face the last remnants of her parents’ life. When she did turn it was Charlie’s beaming smile that greeted her and this gave her the courage to stay. His chubby cheeks were ruby red from the cold and his blue eyes sparkled with ice fire. The sight of his unruly mop of hair made her instinctively bring a hand to her own head where she found a rogue blonde curl that had escaped her ponytail. She tucked it behind her ear and smoothed down the rest in an effort to keep the frizz under control.

‘Can I go out and play?’ he asked.

Elle raised an eyebrow. ‘Can I stop you?’

Charlie narrowed his eyes. ‘No,’ he said with as much defiance as he dared.

‘Only in the back garden, and on the condition that you stay relatively clean and dry,’ Elle told him. She knew that she would get through far more without Charlie at her side asking endless questions about what she was doing and why.

‘How clean is rel-ative-ly?’ he asked, struggling to get his tongue around the last word.

‘I have one extra set of clothes for you, so if you get too wet or dirty and need to change then you won’t be going out into the garden for the rest of the weekend.’

Charlie considered his options. ‘OK, I can do that,’ he agreed.

A moment later, when Elle had unlocked the back door and released Charlie into what limited sunlight a bleak February morning had to offer, she realized her mistake. The house was immediately emptied of life and the sense of abandonment hit her with such force that it knocked the breath out of her with a gasp.

She glanced around the kitchen, searching out anything that would anchor her and staunch the tears. Lined up along the shelves was an assortment of jars in tight formation. They were empty and dusty now but had once been filled and refilled with homemade relishes, pickles and jams. The kitchen had been her mum’s domain and Elle could imagine her standing in front of a bubbling pot on the stove while barking orders to her dad in the next room. The memory brought no comfort so she fled to the living room where her eyes were immediately drawn to her dad’s favourite armchair with its dented cushions that had moulded to his shape over the years. The upholstery was careworn and the colours bleached by sunshine that belonged to long-lost summers. Elle’s sight was blurred by tears but she could see her dad sitting there quite clearly with a mug of tea in his hand, pulling faces behind her mum’s back as she continued to nag. It was a scene that once would have brought on a fit of giggles from their daughter but not now. Another sob escaped.

The back door had been left ajar for Charlie but the front was open too so fresh air was being sucked into the house with a vengeance. Without warning the back door slammed shut and jolted her back from the precipice. She stepped into the small vestibule and closed the front door, silencing the wind and allowing a sense of peace to settle around her. Then she wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. She could do this.

Elle had always wanted to be the kind of daughter her parents could be proud of, and they had been, first when she qualified as a nurse and then shortly afterwards when she met and married Rick. He was doing well in his career even then and with the generous support of his parents they had enough money to put down a deposit on a grand house in Southport. Within three years she had become a fulltime wife and mother and was doing far better in life than her parents had ever dreamed possible. The only thing she couldn’t improve upon was their marriage, although she hid it well. She had become an expert at making everyone else happy; everyone except herself.

Rapidly coming to the conclusion that giving in to self-pity was too exhausting, she steeled her emotions to face what needed to be done. Willing herself to be strong, she started systematically going through cupboards and separating treasured items to be kept from the jumble that would be binned or recycled. Whether she realized it or not, she was also looking for a small lock to match the brass key from the stolen watch.

In no time at all, boxes and bags began to pile up and Elle only briefly stopped for lunch. Even Charlie was reluctant to take time out. He hadn’t been put off by the bad weather and gobbled up his sandwiches as quickly as he could so he could return to the fresh air that had upgraded his cheeks from bright pink to neon red.

She spent the afternoon emptying her dad’s writing bureau. Rick had already rifled through the hoard of papers that Harry had crammed into its drawers and taken away a box full of documents that he said would help him settle the estate. The detritus waiting to be sorted included stacks of old bills that Harry should have thrown out long ago and a collection of keepsakes which sentimentality ruled that he could not. He had even kept hold of an assortment of greetings cards and Elle was trying to build up the courage to throw them out when the phone rang.

‘I’m not disturbing you, am I?’ Angie asked. ‘Are you at your dad’s house yet?’

‘Yes and no,’ Elle answered then added, ‘or should that be no and yes? I’m at Dad’s, but you’re not disturbing me. In fact I could do with a break.’

‘I can do better than that. How about I come over to help? I presume Rick’s still going out with Chris tonight, so I could always bring a bottle of wine and a takeaway.’

Elle was glad her friend wasn’t there to see her grimace. ‘It’s a tempting offer, but do you mind if I take a rain check?’

‘Or how about I come around after Charlie’s in bed so Rick need never know how you arranged to meet up without seeking his prior approval?’ Angie replied. She didn’t need to be standing next to her friend to register her discomfort.

‘He’s not that bad,’ Elle said, although Angie’s assumption had been frighteningly close to the mark. ‘It’s just that there’s so much to go through and I need to stay focused – and I don’t care what you say about helping, you will become a distraction. Unless you’re desperate for company …?’ she added, prepared to face her husband’s disapproval if her newly separated friend was in dire need of her support.

‘No, my offer was completely unselfish. I’m actually quite happy to stay at home in my pyjamas on a Saturday night and keep the bottle of wine all to myself,’ she said.

‘Thanks for understanding. I promise I’ll make up for it next week, assuming you’re still happy to go out with us married ladies?’ It was an arrangement that had been in place since Charlie was born. Rick had more than his fair share of nights out with the boys so she was allowed one night out a month with the girls. In theory that shouldn’t change just because Angie and Chris had split up.