The Secret Keeper, Page 2

  Unthinkable, then, that she should miss even a second of his birthday party. What had she been playing at, hiding in the tree house so long, particularly when she planned to sneak away with Billy later?

  Laurel frowned and weathered a wave of recriminations that cooled quickly to resolution. She would make amends: climb back to the ground, fetch the birthday knife from the kitchen table and take it straight down to the stream. She’d be a model daughter, the perfect big sister. If she completed the task before her wristwatch ticked away ten minutes, she would accrue bonus points on the imagined score sheet she carried inside her always. The breeze blew warm against her bare sun-browned foot as she stepped quickly onto the top rung.

  Later, Laurel would wonder if things might have turned out differently had she gone a little more slowly. If, perhaps, the whole terrible thing might even have been averted had she taken greater care. But she didn’t, and it wasn’t. She was rushing and thus she would always blame herself in some way for what followed. At the time, though, she hadn’t been able to help herself. As keenly as she’d earlier craved to be alone, the need now to be in the thick of things pressed upon her with an urgency that was breathtaking.

  It had been happening this way a lot lately. She was like the weather vane on the peak of the Greenacres roof, her emotions swinging suddenly from one direction to the other at the whim of the wind. It was strange, and frightening at times, but also somehow thrilling. Like being on a lurching ride at the seaside.

  In this instance, it was injurious too. For in her desperate hurry to join the party by the stream, she caught her knee against the wooden floor of the tree house. The graze stung and she winced, glancing down to see a rise of fresh blood, surprisingly red. Rather than continue to the ground, she climbed again into the tree house to inspect the damage.

  She was still sitting there watching her knee weep, cursing her speed and wondering if Billy would notice the ugly big scab, how she might mask it, when she became aware of a noise coming from the direction of the copse. It was a rustling; natural and yet separate enough from the other afternoon sounds to draw her attention. She glanced through the tree-house window and saw Barnaby lolloping over the long grass, silky ears flapping like velvet wings. Her mother wasn’t far behind, striding across the meadow towards the garden, each step stretching the fabric of her summery home-made dress. The baby was wedged comfortably on her hip, legs bare beneath his playsuit in deference to the day’s heat.

  Although they remained a way off, through some odd quirk of the wind current Laurel could hear quite clearly the tune her mother was singing. It was a song she’d sung to each of them in turn, and the baby laughed with pleasure, shouting, ‘More! More!’ (though it sounded like ‘Mo! Mo!’) as Ma crept her fingers up his tummy to tickle his chin. Their focus on one another was so complete, their appearance together in the sun-drenched meadow so idyllic, that Laurel was torn between joy at having observed the private interaction, and envy at being outside it.

  As her mother unlatched the gate and started for the house, Laurel realised with sinking spirit that she’d come for the cake knife herself.

  With every step went Laurel’s opportunity for redemption. She grew sulky and her sulkiness stopped her from calling out or climbing down, rooting her instead to the place she occupied on the tree-house floor. There she sat, stewing darkly in a strangely pleasant manner, as her mother reached and entered the house.

  One of the hula hoops fell silently to hit the ground, and Laurel took the action as a show of solidarity. She decided to stay where she was. Let them miss her a while longer; she’d get to the stream when she was good and ready. In the meantime, she was going to read The Birthday Party again and imagine a future, far away from here, a life where she was beautiful and sophisticated, grownup and scab free.

  The man, when he first appeared, was little more than a hazy smudge on the horizon; right down at the farthest reach of the driveway. Laurel was never sure, later, what it was that made her look up then. For one awful second when she first noticed him walking towards the back of the farmhouse, Laurel thought that it was Billy, arrived early and coming to fetch her. Only as his outline clarified and she realised he was dressed all wrong—dark trousers, shirt sleeves, and a hat with an old- fashioned brim—did she let herself exhale.

  Curiosity arrived hot on the heels of relief. Visitors were rare at the farmhouse, those on foot rarer still, though there was a vague memory at the back of Laurel’s mind as she watched the man come closer, a curious sense of deja vu that she couldn’t place no matter how she tried. Laurel forgot that she was sulking and with the luxury of concealment surrendered herself to staring.

  She leaned her elbows on the windowsill, her chin on her hands. He wasn’t bad looking for an older man and something in his posture suggested a confidence of purpose. Here was a man who didn’t need to rush. Certainly, he was not someone she recognised, not one of her father’s friends from the village or any of the farmhands. There was always the possibility he was a lost traveller seeking directions, but the farmhouse was an unlikely choice, tucked away as it was so far from the road. Perhaps he was a gypsy or a drifter? One of those men who chanced by occasionally, down on their luck and grateful for whatever work Daddy had to give them. Or—Laurel thrilled at the terrible idea—he might be the man she’d read about in the local newspaper; the one the adults spoke of in nervous strains, who’d been disturbing picnickers and frightening women who walked alone along the hidden bend downriver.

  Laurel shivered, scaring herself briefly, and then she yawned. The man was no fiend; she could see his leather briefcase now. He was a salesman come to tell her mother about the newest encyclopedia set they couldn’t live without.

  And so she looked away.

  Minutes passed, not many, and the next thing she heard was Barnaby’s low growl at the base of the tree. Laurel scrambled to the window, peering over the sill to see the spaniel standing to attention in the middle of the brick path. He was facing the driveway, watching as the man— much closer now—fiddled with the iron gate that led into the garden.

  ‘Hush, Barnaby,’ her mother called from inside. ‘We won’t be long now.’ She emerged from the dark hall, pausing at the open door to whisper something in the baby’s ear, to kiss his plump cheek and make him giggle.

  Behind the house, the gate near the hen yard creaked—the hinge that always needed oiling—and the dog growled again. His hair ridged along his spine.

  ‘That’s enough, Barnaby,’ Ma said. ‘What’s got into you?’

  The man came round the corner and she glanced sideways. The smile slipped from her face.

  ‘Hello there,’ said the stranger, pausing to press his handkerchief to each temple. ‘Fine weather we’re having.’

  The baby’s face broadened in delight at the newcomer and he reached out his chubby hands, opening and closing them in excited greeting.

  It was an invitation no one could refuse, and the man tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket and stepped closer, raising his hand slightly, as if to anoint the little fellow.

  Her mother moved then with startling haste. She wrested the baby away, depositing him roughly on the ground behind her. There was gravel beneath his bare legs and for a child who knew only pleasure and love the shock proved too much. Crestfallen, he began to cry.

  Laurel’s heart tugged, but she was frozen, unable to move. Hairs prickled on the back of her neck. She was watching her mother’s face, an expression on it that she’d never seen before. Fear, she realised, Ma was frightened.

  The effect on Laurel was instant. Certainties of a lifetime turned to smoke and blew away. Cold alarm moved in to take their place.

  ‘Hello, Dorothy,’ the man said. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  He knew Ma’s name. The man was no stranger.

  He spoke again, too low for Laurel to hear, and her mother nodded slightly. She continued to listen, tilting her head to the side. Her face lifted to the sun and her eyes closed just
for one second.

  The next thing happened quickly.

  It was the liquid silver flash Laurel would always remember. The way sunlight caught the metal blade, and the moment was very briefly beautiful.

  Then the knife came down, the special knife, plunging deep into the man’s chest. Time slowed; it raced. The man cried out and his face twisted with surprise and pain and horror; and Laurel stared as his hands went to the knife’s bone handle, to where the blood was staining his shirt; as he fell to the ground; as the warm breeze dragged his hat over and over through the dust.

  The dog was barking hard, the baby wailing in the gravel, his face red and glistening, his little heart breaking, but for Laurel sounds were fading. She heard them through the watery gallop of her own blood pumping, the rasps of her own ragged breaths.

  The knife’s bow had come undone, the ribbon’s end trailed into the rocks that bordered the garden bed. It was the last thing Laurel saw before her vision filled with tiny flickering stars and then everything went black.

  Two

  Suffolk, 2011

  IT WAS RAINING IN SUFFOLK. In her memories of childhood it was never raining. The hospital was on the other side of town and the car went slowly along the puddle-pitted High Street before turning into the driveway and stopping at the top of the turning circle. Laurel pulled out her compact, opened it to look into the mirror, and pushed the skin of one cheek upwards, watching calmly as the wrinkles gathered and then fell when released. She repeated the action on the other side. People loved her lines. Her agent told her so, casting directors waxed lyrical, the make-up artists crooned as they brandished their brushes and their startling youth. One of those Internet newspapers had run a poll some months ago, inviting readers to vote for ‘The Nation’s Favourite Face’ and Laurel had won second place. Her lines, it was said, made people feel safe.

  Which was all very well for them. They made Laurel feel old.

  She was old, she thought, snapping the compact shut. And not in the Mrs Robinson sense. Twenty-five years now since she’d played in The Graduate at the National. How had that happened? Someone had speeded up the damn clock when she wasn’t watching, that’s how.

  The driver opened the door and ushered her out beneath the cover of a large black umbrella.

  ‘Thank you, Neil,’ she said as they reached the awning. ‘Do you have the pick-up address for Friday?’

  He set down her overnight bag and shook out the umbrella. ‘Farmhouse on the other side of town, narrow lane, driveway at the very end. Two o’clock still all right for you?’

  She said that it was and he gave a nod, hurrying through the rain to the driver’s door. The car started and she watched it go, aching suddenly for the warmth and pleasant dullness of a long commute to nowhere special along the wet motorway. To be going anywhere, really, that wasn’t here.

  Laurel sized up the entry doors but didn’t go through. She took out her cigarettes instead and lit one, drawing on it with rather more relish than was dignified. She’d passed a dreadful night. She’d dreamed in scraps of her mother, and this place, and her sisters when they were small, and Gerry as a boy. A small and earnest boy, holding up a tin space shuttle, some-thing he’d made, telling her that one day he was going to invent a time capsule and he was going to go back and fix things. What sort of things? she’d said in the dream. Why, all the things that ever went wrong, of course—she could come with him if she wanted.

  She did want.

  The hospital doors opened with a whoosh and a pair of nurses burst through. One glanced at Laurel and her eyes widened in recognition. Laurel nodded a vague sort of greeting, dropping what was left of her cigarette as the nurse leaned to whisper to her friend.

  Rose was waiting on a bank of seats in the foyer and for a split second Laurel saw her as one might a stranger. She was wrapped in a purple crocheted shawl that gathered at the front in a pink bow, and her wild hair, silver now, was roped in a loose plait over one shoulder. Laurel suffered a pang of almost unbearable affection when she noticed the bread tie holding her sister’s plait together. ‘Rosie,’ she said, hiding her emotion behind jolly-hockey-sticks, hale and hearty—hating herself just a little as she did so. ‘God, it feels like ages. We’ve been ships in the night, you and I.’

  They embraced and Laurel was struck by the lavender smell, familiar, but out of place. It belonged to summer-holiday afternoons in the good room at Grandma Nicolson’s Sea Blue boarding house, and not to her little sister.

  ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ Rose said, squeezing Laurel’s hands before leading her down the hallway.

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed it.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t.’

  ‘I’d have come earlier but for the interview.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And I’d be staying longer if not for rehearsals. The film starts shooting in a fortnight.’

  ‘I know.’ Rose clenched Laurel’s hand even tighter, as if for emphasis. ‘Mummy will be thrilled to have you here at all. She’s so proud of you, Lol. We all are.’

  Praise within one’s family was worrisome and Laurel ignored it. ‘The others?’

  ‘Not yet. Iris is caught in traffic and Daphne arrives this after-noon. She’ll come straight to the house from the airport. She’s going to call en route.’

  ‘And Gerry? What time’s he due?’

  It was a joke and even Rose, the nice Nicolson, the only one who didn’t as a rule go in for teasing, couldn’t help but giggle. Their brother could construct cosmic-distance calendars to calculate the whereabouts of faraway galaxies, but ask him to estimate his arrival time and he was flummoxed.

  They turned the corner and found the door labelled ‘Dorothy Nicol- son’. Rose reached for the knob but hesitated before turning it. ‘I have to warn you, Lol,’ she said, ‘Mummy’s gone down-hill since you were here last. She’s up and down. One minute she’s quite her old self, the next …’ Rose’s lips quivered and she clutched at her long strand of beads. Her voice lowered as she continued. ‘She gets confused, Lol, upset sometimes, saying things about the past, things I don’t always understand—the nurses say it doesn’t mean anything, that it happens often when people—when they’re at Mummy’s stage. The nurses have tablets they give her then; they settle her down, but they make her terribly groggy. I wouldn’t expect too much today.’

  Laurel nodded. The doctor had said as much when she rang last week to check. He’d used a litany of tedious euphemisms—a race well run, time to answer the final summons, the long sleep—his tone so supercilious that Laurel had been unable to resist: ‘Do you mean, Doctor, that my mother is dying?’ She’d said it in a queenly voice, just for the satisfaction of hearing him splutter. The reward had been sweet but short-lived, lasting only until his answer came.

  Yes.

  That most treasonous of words.

  Rose pushed open the door—‘Look who I found, Mummy!’—and Laurel realised she was holding her breath.

  There was a time in Laurel’s childhood when she’d been afraid. Of the dark, of zombies, of the strange men Grandma Nicolson warned were lurking behind corners to snatch up little girls and do unmentionable things to them. (What sort of things? Unmentionable things. Always like that, the threat more frightening for its lack of detail, its hazy suggestion of tobacco and sweat and hair in strange places.) So convincing had her grandmother been, that Laurel had known it was only a matter of time before her fate found her and had its wicked way.

  Sometimes her greatest fears had balled themselves together so she woke in the night, screaming because the zombie in the dark cupboard was eyeing her through the keyhole, waiting to begin his dreaded deeds. ‘Hush now little wing,’ her mother had whispered, ‘It’s just a dream. You must learn to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s pretend. It isn’t always easy—it took me an awfully long time to work it out, too long.’ And then she’d climb in next to Laurel and say, ‘Shall I tell you a story, about a little girl who ran away to j
oin the circus?’

  It was hard to believe that the woman whose enormous presence vanquished every night-time terror, was this same pallid creature pinned beneath the hospital sheet. Laurel had thought herself prepared. She’d had friends die before, she knew what death looked like when it came, she’d received her BAFTA for playing a woman in the late stages of cancer. But this was different. This was Ma. She wanted to turn and run.

  She didn’t though. Rose, who was standing by the bookshelf, nodded encouragement, and Laurel wrapped herself within the character of the dutiful visiting daughter. She moved swiftly to take her mother’s frail hand. ‘Hello there,’ she said. ‘Hello there, my love.’

  Dorothy’s eyes flickered open briefly before closing again. Her breaths continued their soft pattern of rise and fall as Laurel brushed a light kiss on the paper of each cheek.

  ‘I’ve brought you something. I couldn’t wait for tomorrow.’ She set down her things, withdrawing the small parcel from in-side her handbag. Leaving a brief pause for convention’s sake, she started to unwrap the gift. ‘A hairbrush,’ she said, turning the silver object over in her fingers. ‘It has the softest bristles—boar, I think; I found it in an antiques shop in Knightsbridge. I’ve had it engraved, you see, right here—your initials. Would you like me to brush your hair?’

  She hadn’t expected an answer, not really, and none came. Laurel ran the brush lightly over the fine white strands that formed a corona on the pillow round her mother’s face, hair that had once been thick, darkest brown, and was now dissolving into thin air. ‘There,’ she said, arranging the brush on the shelf so that light caught the cursive D. ‘There now.’