Ever since then, Eleanor has made sure she keeps in touch more frequently in an attempt to move some way towards being a dutiful daughter. She’s been meaning to arrange a visit for ages, in fact; she thinks about it every few weeks. But the weeks and months have quietly stretched and become years, and somehow all this time has passed and now it seems the disease is starting to crank up.
*
Eleanor is working in the kitchen this week. Jobs on the farm are allocated on a rota system for the sake of variety, so if you’re in the kitchen one week, you’ll probably be working in the grounds the week after, either on gardening duties – digging, weeding, planting; anything associated with growing food – or you could be on maintenance and repairs. That can mean loose guttering or perhaps repainting the house and the cabins – the salty sea air tends to eat through the exterior paint quickly. If you have a particular talent or skill, that’ll be taken into account, too. Bread-making is one of her regular duties, and she and David take turns because they both seem to have the knack for it, whereas Jill can make cakes but is, in her own words, completely bloody useless with yeast!
They bake two or three times a week, depending on how many volunteers they have, and she’s always trying out new things. She loves the smell of newly baked bread and the sight of the table laden with fresh loaves, rolls and baguettes, and she revels in the warm appreciation of the volunteers, especially those used to limp supermarket sandwiches grabbed on the way to the office. And although she hates to admit it, she likes it when the volunteers – with their homes and families, their proper jobs, their mortgages and pensions – look at her properly and say things like, Where did you learn to bake like that? Or, What a wonderful skill to have.
She has just started mixing water into a mound of flour and yeast on the kitchen table when her phone vibrates in her pocket. ‘Shit,’ she mutters. This is not a point at which she can stop, so she carries on mixing with her fingers until she has a loose dough, then she pulls what she can off her hands before washing them and getting her phone out of her pocket. It’s her mum again. At least that means she must have remembered how to use the stored numbers. There’s a voicemail. ‘Eleanor?’ Her voice sounds hesitant. ‘Is that you? It doesn’t sound like you.’ There is a pause, then she hears her mum make a tutting noise. ‘Oh, it’s the machine, isn’t it? Are you there, Eleanor? Pick up the phone if you’re there.’ Eleanor has explained voicemail again and again, but her mum can’t seem to hold onto it. Marjorie is seventy-four, so not exactly old. Well, not old old, anyway. Next new message. ‘Eleanor, it’s me again. I need you to telephone me.’ She doesn’t sound upset exactly, but there is an undercurrent of anxiety in her voice. ‘There’s something I need to tell you. It’s very important, so I must speak to you.’ Pause. ‘Yes, so ring me, please.’
She calls back immediately. It’s less than twenty minutes after her mum’s message, but by that time, Marjorie has completely forgotten what it was she wanted to tell her, or that she’d even called.
The Secrets We Left Behind
Susan Elliot Wright
It was a summer of love, and a summer of secrets . . .
She has built a good life: a husband who adores her, a daughter she is fiercely proud of, a home with warmth and love at its heart. But things were not always so good, and the truth is that she has done things she can never admit.
Then one evening a phone call comes out of the blue. It is a voice from long ago, from a past that she has tried so hard to hide. Scott knows who she really is and what she has done. Now he is dying and he gives her an ultimatum: either she tells the truth, or he will.
And so we are taken back to that long hot summer of 1976 to a house by the sea, where her story begins and where the truth will be revealed . . .
‘Tense and emotional drama’
Daily Express
Available in print and eBook
Susan Elliot Wright grew up in Lewisham in south-east London. Before becoming a full-time writer, she did a number of different jobs, including civil servant, cleaner, dishwasher, journalist and chef. She has an MA in writing from Sheffield Hallam University, where she is now an associate lecturer, and she lives in Sheffield with her husband.
To find out more,
visit her website: http:/www.susanelliotwright.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @sewelliot.
Also by Susan Elliot Wright
What She Lost
The Secrets We Left Behind
The Things We Never Said
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2019
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Copyright © Susan Elliot Wright, 2019
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The Flight of Cornelia Blackwood Page 28