Too Many Secrets

by Adele Broadbent

  Dedication

  For Corey, Simon and especially Clive—for everything

  My thanks to Vicki, Sian, Mary and Christine for being on this writer’s journey with me, Lorain Day for seeing what I see, and the Spinning Gold 09 team for bringing it all together.

  I’d also like to thank Barbara Else and the NZSA Manuscript Assessment Programme.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1—Becs

  Chapter 2—Becs

  Chapter 3—Becs

  Chapter 4—The boy

  Chapter 5—Becs

  Chapter 6—Becs

  Chapter 7—Becs

  Chapter 8—Becs

  Chapter 9—Becs

  Chapter 10—Becs

  Chapter 11—Becs

  Chapter 12—Becs

  Chapter 13—Becs

  Chapter 14—The boy

  Chapter 15—Becs

  Chapter 16—Becs

  Chapter 17—The boy

  Chapter 18—Becs

  Chapter 19—The boy

  Chapter 20—Becs

  Chapter 21—The boy

  Chapter 22—Becs

  Chapter 23—Becs

  Chapter 24—Becs

  Chapter 25—Becs

  Chapter 26—Becs

  Chapter 27—Becs

  Chapter 28—Becs

  Chapter 29—Isaiah

  Chapter 30—Becs

  Chapter 31—Becs

  Chapter 32—Becs

  Chapter 33—Isaiah

  Chapter 34—Becs

  Chapter 35—Becs

  Chapter 36—Isaiah

  Chapter 37—Becs

  Chapter 38—Becs

  Chapter 39—Becs

  Chapter 40—Becs

  Chapter 41—Isaiah

  Chapter 42—Becs

  Chapter 43—Becs

  Chapter 44—Becs

  Chapter 45—Becs

  Chapter 46—Becs

  Chapter 47—Isaiah

  Chapter 48—Becs

  Chapter 49—Becs

  Chapter 50—Becs

  Chapter 51—Becs

  Chapter 52—Isaiah

  Chapter 53—Becs

  Chapter 54—Becs

  Chapter 55—Becs

  Chapter 56—Isaiah

  Chapter 57—Becs

  Chapter 58—Becs

  Chapter 59—Isaiah

  Chapter 60—Isaiah

  Chapter 61—Isaiah

  Chapter 62—Isaiah

  Chapter 63—Becs

  Chapter 64—Becs

  Chapter 65—Isaiah

  Chapter 66—Becs

  Chapter 67—Becs

  Chapter 68—Becs

  Chapter 69—Becs

  Chapter 70—Becs

  Chapter 71—Becs

  Chapter 72—Isaiah

  Chapter 73—Becs

  Chapter 74—Becs

  Chapter 75—Isaiah

  Chapter 76—Becs

  Chapter 77—Becs

  Chapter 78—Isaiah

  Chapter 79—Becs

  Chapter 80—Isaiah

  Chapter 81—Isaiah

  Chapter 82—Isaiah

  Chapter 83—Becs

  Chapter 84—Becs

  Chapter 85—Becs

  Chapter 86—Becs

  Chapter 87—Becs

  Chapter 88—Isaiah

  Chapter 89—Becs

  Chapter 90—Becs

  Chapter 91—Isaiah

  Chapter 92—Becs

  Chapter 93—Becs

  Chapter 94—Becs

  Chapter 95—Becs

  Chapter 96—Becs

  Chapter 97—Becs

  Chapter 98—Becs

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1—Becs

  I woke as we jerked to a stop. I must’ve fallen asleep. Mum said it would be a long trip to our new place. She wasn’t kidding. My bum was numb and I rubbed the crick in my neck. I climbed out of the ute to see I was in a clearing surrounded by bush. When I turned to see where Mum and the others were, I wished I’d stayed in the ute.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ They all smiled back at me and I wanted to throw up. ‘No way! You can’t be serious? Not in a million years.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Mark. He grinned even wider.

  ‘Is he for real?’ I asked Mum.

  ‘Come on, Becs. It’s not that bad.’

  ‘You mean you dragged me away from my friends and school and our perfectly good house to live in that?’ I glared at Mark. This was all his fault. We were perfectly happy before he came along. Mum told all her friends he’d swept her off her feet. Yeah right. And then five minutes later he was asking her to marry him. No-one ever asked what I thought about it.

  And look where we end up. Out in the middle of nowhere facing a shack. That’s the only word for it. A tumbledown, rickety shack. It looked like bits had been added on all over the place. The walls were bits made of brick and bits made of logs and bits made of planks nailed together. The windows were smeared with gunk and the roof looked like it could slide off any second.

  ‘Cool!’ said Nick.

  If I’d been standing any closer to her, I’d have throttled her on the spot. Yes, her. Nick is short for Nicola. She prefers ‘Nick’ because she’s in the middle of an identity crisis. Her hair is cut short and I’ve never seen a skirt near her, let alone on her. Just my luck. I get a sister who hates shopping. Nicola is my stepsister who came with her father when he married my mother. The ‘complete’ family. Right at that moment I thought they were all completely crazy.

  ‘Can we go inside?’ asked Nick. She bolted around the left side of the shack, past a lean-to. This one leaned way over. With any luck, I thought, it would pull the whole place down with it and we could all go home.

  ‘Come on, Becs,’ called Mum as she followed Nick and Mark around the back.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I groaned, trudging after them. ‘How can this be happening to me?’

  The back was worse than the front. Same deal with the bitsy walls and an even bigger lean-to. I figured that the previous owners kept building them on to help steady the place.

  ‘Look, Nick,’ said Mark. ‘That must be the vege garden.’

  Vege garden? A crooked stick fence leaned around an area of knee-high weeds.

  ‘And look at the cute chicken house, Dad.’ Nick ran over to a smaller version of the shack. Poor chickens. Not that there were any. She looked disappointed.

  What was really scary was the bathtub. It squatted on bricks—outside the back door. A tin bucket filled with leaves sat next to a pipe sticking out of the ground with a greasy tap on top. I looked from one to the other, the awful connections clicking in my brain. I shook my head. ‘Uh uh.’

  ‘Yep.’ To my horror, Mark was nodding.

  ‘We have to use that?’ I spun to face Mum. ‘Are you nuts? This is a joke, right? Our real place is up the road a bit. This is all just a trick.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Becs.’ She smiled at the others. ‘This is our new home.’

  Chapter 2—Becs

  If I was one of those wussy girls from the olden days I would’ve fainted for maximum effect, but I didn’t. I exploded.

  ‘How can you do this to me? How can we live like this? I want to go home right now!’, which I thought was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances.

  Mum and Mark ignored me and Nick disappeared further around the house. Was I the only sane person? When I finally ran out of puff after repeating myself fifteen times, I could tell I was getting nowhere. Nick came back and they all looked like they’d won Lotto.

  ‘Crikey,’ said Mark. ‘That red hair gets redder the louder you get.’

  ‘If
you remember, Becs,’ said Mum, ‘this was all part of the deal.’

  I pulled a face and pointed at the shack. ‘I don’t remember living in that as part of the deal. Mark said something about the bush, and a huge house and—’

  ‘Becs! Calm down,’ said Mum. ‘We told you about all this weeks ago. As usual, you only listened to the bits you wanted to.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I mumbled, staring at the ground. ‘Where’s the loo?’

  ‘Just down that path, Becky,’ said Mark, pointing into the bush. ‘It’s not far.’

  Still in shock, I didn’t even go off at him for not using my proper name. I hate ‘Becky’. It makes me feel five years old. Nick shot off in front of me. ‘I’ll find it. Last one there is a rotten egg!’ Like I was going to race her? Not!

  ‘So our bathroom and toilet are outside?’ I asked gritting my teeth, trying not to go mental again.

  ‘Yep,’ said Mark, like it was a bonus.

  I don’t know about you, but every long drop I’ve ever used has been at the top of the gross scale. When I pushed my way past the overgrown bushes along the dirt path, I found this one was no different.

  ‘Don’t watch!’ Nick cried, trying to hold the tin door closed.

  ‘That’s not my thing, thanks,’ I muttered. ‘This whole nightmare is not my thing.’ For some strange reason I didn’t need to go to the loo any more. I was glad, because one look inside when Nick finished made up my mind. There was no way I was going to sit amongst thick, creepy cobwebs sprinkled with dead insects. At least there was nothing moving. Cockroaches or anything else bigger than a fly are definitely not my thing.

  I trailed back after Nick to find Mum and Mark sliding boxes off the back of the ute. Oh my God, I thought. They really are serious.

  Mum was right. I should’ve taken more notice of our deal. All I remembered was agreeing to live with ‘our new family’ in the bush for a couple of months, and help do up some old house. When it was finished and Mark had sold it for a profit, we would go home and Mum would enrol me in Ascot High for next year—a private school all my friends were going to. Mum and I knew it was the only way we could afford it.

  Mark was always coming up with get-rich-quick schemes. We’d known him for nearly two years and none of his hare-brained ideas had ever worked. I’d learnt to nod in all the right places when he came up with a new idea and raved at the dinner table. None of his grand plans ever affected me. My theory was as long as he made Mum happy, and he and Nick stayed out of my business, I was fine with everything.

  His latest idea seemed no more real than his other schemes, but when Mum told me it could get me into Ascot High, I was instantly sold on the idea.

  All my friends talked constantly about Ascot. All the gorgeous guys from my intermediate were going—and all the girls from the netball team and most of the school band. Suz, Caro, Lexi and I had been friends since kindy. Next year would be the first time we weren’t all at the same school. I’d begged and pleaded with Mum to enrol me, but she kept saying we couldn’t afford it. My life was going to come to a dull and boring end not being with my friends every day. I dreaded it more and more as the year flew by. So when Mum and Mark told me his new idea, I practically packed everyone’s bags for them. Sure it would be torture being away from my mates for a bit, but it was a sacrifice I would make to go to Ascot.

  Standing in the bush facing our new home, I vowed to take more notice of Mark’s ravings. Not ready to give in, I stormed over to him. ‘Excuse me, Mark. I might not know much about real estate, but even I know that no-one in a zillion years is going to come all the way out here in the sticks to buy this run-down pile of planks, no matter how much you do it up. You’d have to bulldoze it and start again from scratch.’

  ‘Becs!’ Now my mum is mostly a cruisy, laid-back kind of person—the opposite of me, you might’ve worked out, but her glare nearly torched me on the spot. Luckily for me, Mark passed her a box real quick to take inside.

  ‘Let’s go over this again, shall we, Rebecca?’ he began, speaking slowly. I cringed at my full name, knowing I’d overstepped the mark (excuse the pun).

  ‘We have moved here to restore Herrick House. Herrick House is a grand old mansion. This is not Herrick House. This is the old caretaker’s cottage. I admit it has been added on to quite a bit and needs finetuning but we are going to live here until we can sort out water and rooms at the main house, which is about one kilometre that way.’

  I peered in the direction he was pointing, thinking ‘finetuning’ was the understatement of the century. But the knowledge that this wasn’t going to be it for the whole two months made me think again. ‘Oh’ was all that I could come up with.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘The sooner we unpack, the sooner we can light a fire. We haven’t got any electricity.’

  Chapter 3—Becs

  Mark sent Nick and me out for wood for the battered black stove in the tiny kitchen. From what I’d seen after lugging boxes inside, there wasn’t much to the ‘cottage’.

  The kitchen had a wood-burning stove, a wall of shelves, two concrete tubs and a long wooden table. I didn’t see any further before Mark sent us off into the bush.

  ‘Don’t go too far,’ he warned. ‘Stay on the paths.’ I reckon if Nick wasn’t with me, he would’ve wanted me to ‘get lost’.

  ‘Isn’t it awesome?’ Nick skipped in front of me along the track. ‘It’s going to be heaps of fun out here. I’ve already seen the bedrooms. There’s one big enough for both of us. It’s got a big window so we can watch the birds.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter to me,’ I said. ‘I’m sleeping in the ute.’ That shut her up. Like I’d want to share a room with a nine-year-old. Her bottom lip dropped. Very mature.

  ‘Betcha Dad won’t let you.’

  ‘I’m not sleeping in that shack,’ I said. ‘It looks like it’s going to collapse any minute. We’ll all die in our beds.’

  Nick stopped. Her bottom lip quivered. ‘Why do you have to be such a drama queen and spoil everything?’ She took off down the track.

  Oh great, I thought. Now she’ll get lost and that’ll be my fault. ‘Nick! Come back. You’ll be in big trouble.’ I followed her deeper into the bush. The track narrowed and branches tugged at my clothes. When ten minutes passed and I still hadn’t found her, I began to worry. ‘Nick! Nick! Nicola!’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’ She stepped out from behind a tree. ‘You know I hate it.’

  ‘How long have you been there? I’ve been calling and calling.’

  ‘Not long.’ She grinned. ‘Nice to see you so worried.’

  ‘Yeah right.’

  ‘Hey, look!’ She pointed upwards. ‘A monarch butterfly.’ She followed it back down the path in the direction of the shack.

  I stared after her then yelled in frustration, sending birds squawking and fluttering from branches above me. ‘Deep breaths,’ I muttered to myself, filling my lungs. Shutting my eyes I lifted my face into the sun, trying to forget everything for a few seconds.

  Suddenly gaining a sister hadn’t been easy. Mum and I had been on our own since I could remember. Mum said my father left when I was three…But I don’t want to talk about that.

  When Mark was going out with Mum, nothing really changed. I had my own life, my mates and my mum. Perfect. But after they got married and Nick and Mark moved in with us, it took some getting used to. Nick thought she was my new best friend, wanting to go everywhere with me. My mates thought she was OK, but it was the last thing I wanted. And now she wanted to be my roommate.

  A bird screeched, and made me jump. I turned to follow Nick but was in no hurry. Who wanted to unpack boxes? Not me.

  Walking slower, I noticed more along the way. Just off the path, there was a seat made from tree branches, held together with wire. Small wooden bird boxes hung from branches high above me. Who’d put them there?

  Something moved out of the corner of my eye. When I looked there was nothing there. Just as I turned away, a brown bird as high as my
knee shot in front of me.

  My scream probably scared the feathers off it. I know—it was only a bird. But to a city girl like me, it was huge and wild. I edged past the bush it ran into, in case it leapt out at me again.

  Watching for the bird, I noticed something else. Another path led off in another direction. Dry broken branches lay across it, as if to hide it.

  I dragged the branches off to one side to see that the path led further into the bush away from the shack. Now that I’d calmed down a little (but only a little), I needed the loo again. I glanced around and decided I’d better find somewhere to go. If only I’d known that taking that path would change everything.

  Chapter 4—The boy

  I was glad I’d listened to Oscar when he told me people were coming. I’d moved my things from Papa’s house only that morning. I watched the strangers from the cover of the bush and saw only three at first. Then a girl appeared from the back seat of their truck. She shouted at the others and I covered my ears. Her long red hair flew around her head as she yelled, waving her arms in the air. Soon her face turned as red as her hair.

  I’d never seen a girl do that before. Mother and my sisters were always very quiet, especially when Papa was in the house. But this girl yelled right at her father. I waited for him to scold her and fetch a switch to punish her, but all he did was smile!

  After a while she calmed a little and followed her brother down the main path to the long drop. It was hard to leave strangers in my papa’s house but I wanted to follow the red girl.

  Her brother ran off into the bush, leaving her calling his name over and over. She looked madder than ever when he jumped out at her. Why did they shout so much at each other? Didn’t they know they upset the birds? Then he was gone again and I followed her, keeping just out of sight.

  Her scream hurt my ears again. How stupid! Who would be scared of a pheasant? I nearly laughed out loud. But she pulled the branches aside. The pheasant had shown her my hidden path. No!

  Chapter 5—Becs

  I might be a city girl (and proud of it) but I know stinging nettle when I see it. I made sure I didn’t sit in any when I found myself a spot to go. But I’m too much a city girl and when I returned to the path I’d found, I had absolutely no idea which way to go. Great. Lost already. Mark’ll be happy. I cringed as something fluttered past me.