The Secret Years

by Barbara Hannay

  Abruptly, with chilling sharpness, Ro remembered the English aunt who’d come to Kalkadoon for a second time when she was ten. Remembered the earth-shattering discovery that her father had gone back on his word. Broken his promise.

  This time he had let her go . . .

  A groan broke from Ro now and she curled into a clenched ball as she blanked out the most painful memories of all – leaving Kalkadoon and travelling with the strict English nanny on the long plane journey to England. But despite her best efforts, her relentless mind still threw up images of Cornwall, forcing her to once again relive the heartbreak and homesickness.

  She’d left her beloved Kalkadoon, the simple timber homestead surrounded by open verandahs and sunny plains, to live in a great rattling cold stone house called Penwall Hall, with stone stairs on the inside that led up to rows of bedrooms, most of them also cold and strangely empty.

  In Cornwall, instead of a sleepy slow outback river dappled by overhanging paperbarks, there’d been a wild, angry sea, a sea that constantly battered the cliffs as if it was trying to destroy them. And there’d been an earnest, straight-laced family. An aunt and an uncle and two cousins, a boy and a girl, who could never, in a million years, have replaced her father and Shirleen and Dougie. But that was what the Cornish family had expected.

  As for boarding school, from the start Ro had never fitted in. She didn’t try very hard, of course, and the other girls hadn’t made it easy. They were all so chummy and they played team games like cricket and hockey, which Ro had never played. Bottom line, they’d been very English.

  And she’d felt so dumb. In the classroom she was way behind the girls of her age. Clearly the governess she’d had at Kalkadoon hadn’t been up to scratch. Embarrassed, lonely and homesick, Ro would have tried to run away if she’d known where to run to, but her home was twelve thousand miles away. She had nowhere to go, which had made it so much worse.

  The injustice and the sheer futility of being sent there had always angered her. Surely, her father must have known that she would hate it? And yet, despite the earlier promise he’d made when she was six, he’d sent her away as if he didn’t really care, as if the love he’d always shown her was only a pretence.

  Of course, he’d tried to explain his motives later. He’d only done what he thought was best for her, yadda yadda yadda. But Ro had never been convinced and all these years later, the hurt was still there, lying deep within her, along with the guilt she’d felt for the way she’d behaved. Inescapable wounds.

  She knew she shouldn’t be crying again now, knew all too well that tears only helped momentarily, and that the pain always came back. She had decided long ago that the only sensible way to deal with this business was to forget, to simply carry on as if it had never happened.

  Of course, she’d never really felt close to her father again, and he’d known that. When Lucy was born, he’d switched his allegiance to the baby.

  Actually, Ro was proud of the way she’d stepped back, allowing Harry and Lucy to form a close bond. The decision had been instinctive, or perhaps it was a form of self-preservation. She’d stuffed up so many things in her life, but the bond between her father and her daughter had become sacrosanct. Looking back, she believed this was possibly her greatest achievement.

  But enough with the bloody navel-gazing.

  It was time to stop thinking about all that. She’d schooled herself to compartmentalise her life, to keep the really painful stuff locked away. Buried. And her plan had been working pretty damn well until Lucy chose to go over to England, wanting to ferret up the past and to ask all kinds of pesky questions.

  With another groan of impatience, Ro rolled onto her side. Oh no, not a good idea. Her stomach rebelled. Maybe she was more pissed than she’d realised.

  She lay very still now, willing her stomach to settle. She didn’t want to be sick. God no, please, no. She couldn’t bear to have Keith come home to find her hunched over the toilet. She tried to relax, to let the boozy weariness wash over her.

  That was better. Enough with the memories. All she really needed was sleep.

  The apartment was in darkness when she woke and it took a good few moments to remember why she was lying on top of the bedspread in her bathrobe.

  Shit. Keith had gone to get the fish for their dinner.

  Where was he now?

  She sat up quickly and winced as her head threatened to split open. Bloody hell. She needed aspirin and water. Gallons of water. Damn it, why hadn’t she remembered to drink water? For that matter, why hadn’t she remembered that drinking a bucket of wine on an empty stomach made a person feel like dying?

  Gingerly, she edged off the bed, wondering if Keith was in the living room watching the cricket with the lights out and the sound turned down. Her hip bumped into the doorway as she left the dark bedroom. She’d forgotten to turn a lamp on and there was no light coming from the television screen. No sign of Keith.

  For a moment she panicked, worrying that something terrible had happened while Keith was out and he hadn’t made it home. But then she told herself that someone would have phoned.

  Oh God, she felt sick.

  Feeling her way to the kitchen, she found a light switch and turned it on, flinched at the brightness and quickly flicked it off again. The automatic light in the pantry was a kinder option so she opened the pantry door and was relieved to find a box of aspirin with two tablets left.

  With these downed and two glasses of water consumed, she waited till her stomach settled, then felt her way, guided by the soft shaft of light from the living room windows, across the kitchen and down the hallway to the second bedroom. Even before she reached it she could hear Keith’s gentle snores, which meant he must have brought their dinner home and found her passed out.

  Ro pictured him standing at their bedroom door, wondering whether he should wake her, then deciding not to and eating his meal alone.

  Now, he was sleeping in the guest bedroom. Alone.

  She felt terrible. Such a failure. She hadn’t lasted six weeks with Keith before her cracks showed, and soon he would leave her just as all her other boyfriends had. Except this time there would be one major difference. In the past Ro had been the one who’d kicked her useless no-hoper boyfriends out.

  This time, the man in question was faultless. True Blue. Salt of the fricking earth. The kind of partner she had never dared to hope for, the style of man she’d never believed she deserved.

  And damn it, tonight she’d just proved herself bloody right.

  17

  Nicholas Myatt, once again looking far too attractive in his black sweater over a crisp white shirt, was the perfect host when he escorted Lucy around Penwall Hall on her third day in Cornwall. He’d been busy with business the previous two days, which she’d found a bit disappointing, but he was now available and, for once, the sun was out as he greeted Lucy at the grand front entrance to the Hall.

  ‘I hope you’ve been managing to enjoy yourself here, despite the filthy weather.’

  ‘I’ve had a great time,’ she assured him. ‘I’ve discovered I’m quite partial to standing on the top of sea cliffs and almost being blown off my feet.’

  The sudden flash of concern in Nick’s dark eyes seemed out of character. Until now he’d come across as confident and commanding. ‘I hope you didn’t go too close to the edge.’

  ‘No, I saw the warning signs to keep away.’ Quickly, because he was still frowning like an over-fussy parent, Lucy added, ‘And I’ve had a fab time exploring the quaint towns. I just love all those steep, crooked little streets.’

  At this, Nick seemed to relax and he stepped back, giving the merest hint of a bow as he gestured for her to come inside.

  ‘My parents are still away in London,’ he said. ‘They should be back on Thursday.’

  Lucy had been disappointed to learn from Jane Nancarrow that Nick’s grandmother had died a few years earlier.

  Nevertheless, the absence of the older generation could prove
to be a bonus, if it meant she could relax without worrying about too many airs and graces. That said, she was relieved that Nick’s parents were returning before she was due to leave. She was sure they’d be able to tell her much more about George, Harry or Ro than Nick could.

  It was a weird situation though. Thanks to her family and their bloody secrets, she found herself relying on a couple of strangers to fill in the gaps in her knowledge about her own mother.

  The Hall was grander and more luxurious than anything Lucy had ever been in before, and as Nick escorted her from room to room, she did feel slightly overawed by the sheer scale of everything. There were so many beautiful and amazing details – a music room with an ornate soaring ceiling, a huge library, lined wall-to-wall with old books, classical statues in the great hall, and a precious Qing dynasty porcelain bowl taking pride of place at the foot of the grand staircase.

  Any hint of austereness was countered with colourful rugs, and paintings in huge gold frames as well as enormous vases filled with greenery and berries. In spring and summer there would, no doubt, be flower arrangements. It was immediately clear to Lucy that the inside of Penwall Hall was even more appealing than the outside had suggested.

  Nick explained a little about the history, and managed to do so without sounding like a tour guide. The house had been built by a baronet called Sir Oswald Lenton back in the early eighteenth century. He’d been an eccentric, given to inventions, but he had also been involved in shipping and had built up quite a fortune. Following him, there had been a straight succession of baronets until just after the Second World War.

  ‘When our great-grandfather died,’ Nick told her, ‘there were no sons, only two daughters – my grandmother, Alice, who was the elder daughter, and your grandmother, Georgina.’

  Lucy liked the way he included her branch of the family, but it was all so new to her that she felt a bit of a fraud. An impostor. Briefly, she wondered if any portion of the family’s inheritance had filtered through to Georgina, but she had no idea how these things worked and the question seemed impertinent. Besides, when it came to info-gathering, money and possessions weren’t high on her need-to-know list. Right now, finding a connection with the people in her family was what counted most.

  It was in the beautiful long dining room that she discovered the collection of family portraits, including a lovely informal portrait of Georgina, which had been painted when George – Lucy liked to think of her as George – had been about eighteen.

  Wearing a simple, summery, blue dress, George was sitting beside her sister Alice on a lawn, with two sprawling Golden Labradors as their companions, and a beautiful flowering rhododendron as their backdrop.

  Lucy stood transfixed, staring at her grandmother, drinking in the details. George’s elegantly waved hair glowed a rich golden honey in the sunlight, and her slim white hand rested companionably on the back of one of the dogs, as if she was in the middle of giving it a scratch.

  It was so amazing to think that this woman had fallen in love with Harry and then left this life of luxury and privilege in England to come to live with him in a remote corner of the Australian outback. And she’d borne him a child: Rose, her mother.

  Lucy could almost see a likeness, if she searched very hard. Her mum’s hair was darker and curlier and she was quite a bit chubbier, but there was something about the eyes and the shape of her face, the set of her mouth.

  ‘I wonder how she met Harry, my grandfather,’ she said. ‘It must have been during the war.’

  ‘I think I was told that Georgina joined the army and was posted to Australia, but somehow she ended up in the thick of things in New Guinea.’

  ‘Really? How amazing.’ Lucy stared at George a little longer, wishing she could have known her. Surely it was wrong to know so little about your own grandmother? ‘My grandfather, Harry, doesn’t like to talk about the war.’

  ‘That’s understandable.’

  ‘Is it? I wish he would. I’d love to know more about how he met George.’

  Lucy also wished that George was smiling in this portrait. Her eyes were fixed on some place in the distance, so that even in this simple garden setting, she carried a sense of mystery and even a hint of sadness.

  ‘I wish she looked happier,’ she couldn’t help commenting.

  ‘She doesn’t look unhappy.’

  ‘No, but it’s hard to judge her mood.’

  Nick gave a slight shrug. ‘My grandmother’s not smiling either.’

  Lucy turned her attention to Alice, who had written ‘the letter’. She had a serious, earnest face that stopped her from being as pretty as Georgina.

  ‘Perhaps smiling for portraits wasn’t fashionable in the thirties,’ Nick said. ‘They might have been trying to look sophisticated.’

  Then he sent Lucy a smile of his own. Which caused her all kinds of problems.

  Unfortunately, nothing had really changed since she’d first seen him in the pub. He was still disturbingly attractive with all that thick, lustrous, dark hair and those strong cheekbones and intelligent dark-coffee eyes. There was a magnetic quality about him that she found desperately difficult to ignore, especially when he was smiling at her, as he was now.

  Her reaction didn’t really make sense. Nick was her second cousin, after all, and she hadn’t thought it was possible to become attracted to another man so soon after breaking up with Sam. Surely loyalty to Sam demanded a longer mourning period?

  But the sorry truth was hard to avoid – getting over Sam had been ridiculously easy and it was pretty clear now that he’d never been The One.

  Disconcerted, Lucy switched her gaze to a collection of more modern photographs, displayed in silver frames on an elegant, highly polished side table, and almost immediately, she noticed a photo of Nick.

  Noticeably younger, but still tall and broad-shouldered, he was standing with another strapping young fellow, who looked like him, although his hair was lighter and his build a little stockier.

  A brother? Lucy wondered. The two young men were outside a church and were dressed alike in dark-grey suits with pink buttonholes, pale vests and ruby-coloured silk ties.

  ‘Was this taken at a wedding?’ she asked.

  Nick frowned at the photo and his jaw tightened. ‘Yes. I was an usher for my cousin Harriet’s wedding.’

  ‘This fellow looks a lot like you. Is he a cousin? A brother? I never asked about the rest of your family.’ Lucy leaned closer to study the likeness.

  After a beat, Nick said, ‘Yes, that’s my brother, Simon.’

  ‘Does he live here, too?’

  When Nick didn’t answer this, she turned to find him frowning even more deeply. A muscle jerked in his throat as he swallowed, as if the subject was difficult. ‘Simon’s dead.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’ The sudden anguish in Nick’s eyes was heart wrenching. Lucy wished she hadn’t asked.

  ‘Simon was a doctor – a medical officer in the army,’ Nick added tightly. ‘He served in Afghanistan.’

  A small gasp broke from her, but before she could say anything, Nick hurried on, as if now that the subject had been broached, he wanted to finish his story and be done with it. ‘You might as well hear it from me. Simon survived the war. Survived it, physically, at least, but he still came home in a mess.’

  ‘PTSD?’ she asked, unhappily guessing how this sad story might have ended.

  Nick’s gaze flicked to her briefly as he nodded, and in that one glance she saw the painful truth. It was there in the torment in his eyes, in his fists clenched tightly against his thighs.

  ‘I overreacted when you joked about being blown off the cliff. But that’s how we lost Simon.’ His throat worked as he swallowed again. ‘It was officially an accident and he left no note, but I believe my brother took his own life.’

  ‘Nick, I’m so sorry.’

  Lucy couldn’t think of anything more to say. Suicide was devastating, so very difficult for a family to come to terms with, and so much more compli
cated than a combat soldier’s death in battle. On top of Nick’s grief, he would almost certainly be battling a sense of abandonment and rejection, possibly even anger.

  Right now, he was standing stiffly with his hands still clenched in fists by his sides. ‘The army has a lot to answer for.’

  Lucy acknowledged this with a brief nod. There was no point in trying to defend the army. Nick needed to lay blame somewhere and the criticism was fair enough. With PTSD now commonly acknowledged, armies everywhere were working hard to set up effective screening and timely diagnoses. But the unfortunate truth was that veterans suffering PTSD were less likely to seek help than civilians were, and yet they were also more likely to act successfully on suicidal thoughts. Tragic deaths like Simon’s were still too frequent.

  She almost said something along these lines, but she doubted it would help Nick now. It would be like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted.

  One thing was certain. This wasn’t the appropriate time to mention her own connections with the army. Nick might very well send her packing.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, as if he was anxious to change the subject. ‘There are only bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs and you’ve probably seen enough of the inside of the house. Let’s go outside while the sun’s still shining.’ He flashed her another quick, searching smile that didn’t quite show in his eyes.

  ‘Great idea,’ Lucy said, hoping she didn’t sound too enthusiastic. She’d already explored a fair sweep of the grounds, but she was keen to do so again with Nick, second cousin or not.

  They left the house by a side door and, from the step, Nick whistled and a dog came bounding from around a corner, a beautiful black-and-white border collie with bright blue eyes and a tail like a plume.

  ‘Come on, Shep,’ he said, rubbing the dog between his ears. ‘Time for a walk.’

  And it was more than pleasant to walk around Penwall Hall’s grounds in the weak winter sunshine. The place was quite amazing and gorgeous with fifty acres of parkland, woods, and formal gardens, including all kinds of cleverly designed walks on a network of footpaths. Lucy recognised very few of the trees or shrubs, so Nick pointed out that the clipped hedges around the fountain were box and the high hedges protecting the large orchard were yew. Apparently the orchard was filled with daffodils in the springtime.