My Sister’s Secret (18 page)

Hope examined Charity’s face under the lamplight. ‘Have you been crying?’

Charity nodded.

‘What happened?’ Hope asked.

‘Long story. Let’s get you inside.’

‘Is it Niall?’ Hope asked.

‘How did you know?’

Hope jutted her chin towards Niall’s motorbike that was parked down the side of the hut.

‘Oh.’

Hope looked up at the dark sky in frustration. ‘How could you go running back to him, Charity?’

Charity didn’t say anything, just looked out to sea.

‘Tell me what happened?’ said Hope.

After Charity told her sister, Hope wrinkled her nose. ‘Really? Niall and Lana North?’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe they suit each other. And didn’t you and Dan nearly kiss? I think this speaks volumes about you and Niall.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What you have is shallow. You
think
you love Niall. But what you love is the memory of those exciting months
before
Faith was snatched away from us – before he took her away.’ Hope shifted around on the bench so she was facing Charity, strands of her long red hair lifting in the wind. ‘Don’t you see, it was your golden age, exhilarating trysts with a rebellious young man, stolen kisses on the beach. It’s everything a teenage girl dreams of. Well, I dreamt about what book I was going to read next but that’s by the by.’ She took Charity’s hand, looking into her eyes. ‘The point is, after Faith died, everything turned grey. You’ve been hoping to get back those days when Faith was alive by rekindling your romance with Niall. That’s why you don’t blame Niall for what happened that night. If you did, you’d lose him…and therefore everything that happened before. To move on, Charity, you need to move on from Niall. But it scares you because it’s the unknown.’

Charity let out a slow breath.

‘Charity?’

They both looked up to see Niall approaching them in the darkness.

‘The question now is,’ Hope said quietly as she watched him walk towards them, ‘are you ready to move on from the past?’ She turned to Charity. ‘Are
we
?’

‘What do you mean, we?’

Hope smiled. ‘I’ve put the café up for sale. Fancy running away somewhere?’

Charity looked between Niall and Hope.

Time to choose.

Willow

Norfolk, UK

October 2016

I take in the rotting tree stumps littered around the beach then peer up at the grey skies, letting the fine mist of drizzle wet my face. I need the cool rain to calm me down. Ever since I left Austria two weeks ago, I’ve felt something buzzing inside: a hunger to know more about my family’s past…and its future. If Niall Lane is my father and Luki is my brother, that changes everything.

I pull Niall Lane’s photograph of this forest out of my rucksack. He’s a gifted photographer, somehow making what’s a dull wedge of a place into something right out of some gothic novel. Maybe it’s the angle he chose, down low so the camera lens is looking right up at a tree stump, dozens of stumps spreading out in the background. Even the brown seaweed that slimes over the tree stumps looks arty, the stumps’ roots reaching out like rotting innards.

As I look at the photograph, I think of the fact Mum might have been here when Niall Lane took it. They’d lived here together after all. I shrug my rucksack over my shoulder and take a deep weary breath. I’m not entirely sure what I’m hoping to achieve by being here. Aunt Hope seemed to have developed yet another case of amnesia when I asked her where Mum and Niall lived. So it’s not like I can visit their place. But I felt drawn here, like I needed to come to the place Mum once lived.

I walk around the submerged remains of the trees trying to see if I can find another etching, squatting down to get a look at each stump. After a while my knees begin to ache. It’s easier doing this underwater. Finally, I find it, a hint of a looping ‘C’ under some seaweed. I pull the seaweed away and settle back on my heels, ignoring the pain in my knees as I stare at the etching.

‘So,’ I say to myself, ‘here it is.’ I take a photo with my phone, might as well keep a memento of my own. I think of the way I obliterated the etching I found in India. I won’t be so childish this time. Instead I trace my finger across Mum’s initial. Maybe she touched it too? Thinking about that gets me all choked up.

I stand, wiping the tears from my cheeks as I pull my grey woollen coat around myself. It’s getting windy, and bloody freezing. Time for a bath, maybe some Irish coffee. Then I can figure out how to find out where Mum and Niall lived.

As I head back to my hotel in my hired car a few minutes later, I’m relieved to be leaving the forlorn landscape behind, the view outside my car window replaced by wispy green marshes, even a hint of blue sky. It’s like the clouds gathered just for my visit to the submerged forest. Now I’m gone, they’ve scattered.

After a while, I realise I’m driving through a village I don’t recognise. White cottages topped with thatched roofs line the road, the spire of a church rising ahead of me.

‘Bugger, I’m lost,’ I murmur to myself.

I stop outside a small newsagent’s and try to get the sat nav up on my phone. But there’s no reception. I jump out of the car and stride into the shop. It’s tiny, so tiny I knock a row of crisps off a shelf as I squeeze down the narrow aisle. I grab some supplies – an energy drink, some cereal bars and, what the hell, a few bottles of beer. As I pay, I ask the bored teenager behind the counter if he knows where my hotel is. He mumbles some directions and I head back out, carrier bag swinging.

That’s when I notice the lighthouse in the distance. It looks just like the lighthouse from a photo that was packed away with a bunch of others from Mum’s study after she died. I’d scoured them for hours, picking out all the tiny details.

It can’t be a coincidence.

I head towards it. When I get there, marshes spread out before me, the sea soft and calm beyond. I’m on a small lane looking out on to the sea, a weather-beaten old bench perched on the marshes to my left, something else I recognise from the photo. I look around the corner and see a row of beach huts lining the lane. They’re all the same army-green colour, the paint peeling.

The photo must have been taken from outside one of those huts, judging by the angle.

Did Mum stay here with Niall Lane? Did
he
take the photo?

I go to the first hut. Like the others, it has a small veranda at its front. It seems empty so I’m not surprised when there’s no answer to my knock. Bright blue curtains hang from the window in the hut next to it, a gold wind chime tinkling in the breeze. There’s a TV on inside. I take a deep breath and knock on the door. The TV goes silent then I hear floorboards creaking before the door swings open to reveal a woman in her mid forties with white hair and sparkling blue eyes.

‘How can I help?’ she asks in a brisk voice.

‘I think my mum may have stayed in one of these huts years ago,’ I reply. ‘She passed away when I was a kid so I’m visiting all the places she stayed.’

Her face softens. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. There’s a chance she may have rented the place. My mother used to rent it out back in the day. No records mind, my mother was scatty as anything.’ My heart sinks. ‘But we’ve got a box of items people left behind over the years just in case they come back for them. You could have a look through, see if there’s anything you recognise?’ She opens the door wide. ‘I’m Jean. Come in, have a cuppa while you’re looking through it all.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure.’

I might as well give it a go. What else have I got to do? Gorge myself on energy drinks, chocolate and beer all alone in my hotel room?

‘Thanks,’ I say as I walk inside. ‘I’m Willow, by the way.’

‘Lovely name.’

I welcome the warmth as I walk in. It’s brightly decorated inside with sapphire blue walls and framed paintings of lions and tigers on the walls. Expensive-looking teddy bears of different colours line the top of the cream sofas and I almost miss the tabby who’s licking its paws next to one of them.

‘When did your mum pass away, Willow?’ Jean asks.

‘When I was seven.’

She sighs. ‘That must have been difficult for you.’

I make my face a mask like I always do when people get like this. ‘I was too young to understand really,’ I lie.

‘Make yourself at home, I’ll go put the kettle on.’ As she walks from the room I sit down on one of the sofas and place my hand on its seat. Did Mum sit here once? The sofa doesn’t look old enough to have been here nearly thirty years.

I look around the room. There’s a long mahogany bureau that lines the wall across from me with several framed photos of smiling families behind the glass doors. Aunt Hope only has one photo on display in the house, an old one of her with the poet Ted Hughes from an event she attended. None of Mum, or of my grandparents. None of me neither…nor my Aunt Faith. Maybe it’s for the same reason she doesn’t tell me much, it hurts.

Jean comes out with a tray of tea and biscuits, placing it on the scratched mahogany coffee table in the middle of the room. Then she strides back into the kitchen before bringing out a large cardboard box.

‘Let me help,’ I say, jumping up.

‘No, no, it’s fine, really. I’m stronger than I look thanks to all the gardening I do.’ She gestures towards patio doors that look out on to a small well-kept garden.

‘Very nice,’ I say.

‘Thank you. Keeps me busy…and fit.’

She places the box on a pine table in the corner of the room then settles into the seat across from me.

‘Sugar?’ she asks as she pours me tea.

‘Three please.’

She laughs. ‘Good for you. Too many girls your age obsess about dieting. I bet you’re like me, as long as you’re fit and active, you keep the pounds off.’

I smile. ‘I think I am.’

‘So, do you know when your mother stayed here?’

‘I’m not sure. There’s a photo my mum had of the area just outside this place. There was a banner across one of the gift shops in the distance saying something about the village’s two hundred year centenary?’

‘That’d be 1987. She may have been here when the Great Storm hit.’

‘Storm?’

She smiles sadly. ‘It barely appears on the radar for you youngsters. It affected most of the UK, eighteen people died, one of them from Norfolk. I had to muck in that night with my mum,’ she says, peering towards a photo of what I presume is a teenage Jean standing next to a woman with short blonde hair, the lighthouse in the background.

I ache for photos like that of a teenage me with Mum. I don’t even think I have any of me with Aunt Hope, she was never one for cameras. The only photos from my teen years are ones taken at school.

Jean hands me my tea in a ‘World’s Greatest Grandma’ mug and I take a sip.

I look towards an old photo she has of her with an elderly lady who I presume is her mum, their arms around each other. ‘You’re lucky to have had such a special relationship with your mum,’ I say.

‘Oh, it wasn’t always like that. We used to argue like crazy, I always thought she was a battle-axe and she thought I was a spoilt brat.’ She offers me more biscuits. ‘You look disappointed to hear that.’

‘Do I? I guess I had this vision of you two being some mother-daughter superhero act.’

She chuckles. ‘Mum would like that description! No, on the contrary, she had to force me to help her with the storm. But you know what? Now I have my daughters, I realise it’s a rite of passage, hating your mother for a bit.’ She puts her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, Willow, I’m sorry. Here’s me going on about mother and daughter relationships and your mum passed away before you had a chance to know any of this.’

‘Don’t apologise, it’s fine, really.’

‘Did you grow up with your dad?’

‘My dad passed away too. Remember the cruise ship that sank in Greece, the MS
Haven
? They were on it.’ I feel sick, the orange jelly of the Jaffa Cake squirming over my tongue.

Jean shakes her head. ‘Oh good Lord, how terrible. Did family take you in?’

‘My aunt.’

‘How wonderful of her. Do you get on?’

I hesitate.

‘Ah, so you
did
experience a mother-daughter relationship,’ she says.

‘I wouldn’t quite say that. We really clashed, still do.’

‘Maybe it’s because you’re so similar, that’s why my mum and I clashed.’

I shake my head. ‘No, we’re not at all alike.’ I look at the box. ‘Okay if I look through?’ I ask, wiping the crumbs from my hands.

‘Of course,’ she says, standing up. ‘I’ll give you some space. Shout if you need anything.’

When she leaves the room, I approach the box. Written across it in faded black is ‘Lost Property’. I open it up, dust bursting out at me. I wave my hands about, coughing. It’s clearly been a while since anyone’s opened it. There are the usual suspects in there, scarves and partner-less gloves; battered old books and lipsticks. As I delve further, I find some more unusual items, like a bright blue wig, a long sharp animal tooth and even a pair of false teeth which I try not to touch.

I flick through the books, try to find any writing inside and search a notepad too. But all it contains are passages from the Bible. There are a couple of newspaper cuttings, one about a baby winning a child model contest – the baby looks like Winston Churchill to me, but then they all do. And then some letters, mainly gas bills.

Then as I get to the bottom of the pile I notice a blurry photo of four teenagers – three girls, one boy – on a beach.

And behind them, Aunt Hope’s house, the one I grew up in.

This clearly belonged to Mum.

The sea is grey behind them, the skies above thick with white cloud. I recognise my mum instantly with her distinctive cloud of black hair and beautiful face, her head thrown back in laughter, shapely legs darting out from cut-off denim shorts as she sits on the pebbles. She must be about fifteen or sixteen in this photo. I recognise Aunt Hope too, how can you not with that long red hair, her skinny pale arms? She’s sitting on a rock, knees drawn up to her chest with her chin resting on her knees as she watches another girl.

My Aunt Faith?

I peer closer. She really is beautiful, long blonde hair to her waist, round cheeks and blue eyes. She’s wearing a simple white dress, long legs crossed beneath her, a concentrated look on her face as she cleans her diving mask.

And then next to her, a boy about Mum’s age with dark skin and hair, his blue eyes on Mum.

Niall Lane.

It’s clear from this photo that he knew all three sisters, not just Mum. Plus he dived with them.

‘Find something?’ Jean asks, coming back into the room.

‘Yes, a photo,’ I say. ‘Okay if I take it?’

‘Of course,’ she says.

I look at her family photos in the bureau again and feel unbearably lonely.

I quickly gulp down the tea she made, scorching my tongue. ‘I better head back,’ I say. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

‘Not a problem. You take care alright?’

I smile. ‘I will.’

When I get back to my room, I open my beer and sit by the window, feet up as I stare out at the sea. It looks infinite. The clouds have completely disappeared now, the sun streaming in, warming my skin. I lean back, taking a sip of beer as I imagine all the summer holidays Mum, Hope and Faith must have spent together by the beach. Was Niall with them during all those summers too?

I reach for my rucksack and pull the map of submerged forests out. Why has Niall Lane spent most of his life taking photos of submerged forests? Did it start as an homage to Faith? Or was he the one who inspired Faith to do this map?

Something catches my eye under the glare of sunlight. I peer closer. It’s an imprint of writing, like someone has leant on the map to write a letter.

I sit up, manoeuvring the map around, trying to make out what it says.

…just not sure I can do it. The past few weeks have been the unhappiest of my life. I’m so confused but most of all I’m scared.

I just wish you’d understand what I’m going through.

Faith. x

I look at the photo of Faith. She was scared? I reach for my phone and call Aunt Hope.

‘Hello?’ she asks when she answers. She sounds tired.

‘It’s Willow.’

‘Are you back?’

‘Yes, I got back yesterday.’

‘Where are you then?’

‘Norfolk. I found the place Mum lived with Niall Lane.’

‘I see.’