Secrets

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  SECRETS

  LYNNE BARRETT-LEE

  ACCENT PRESS LTD

  Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2006

  ISBN 9781423788614

  Copyright © Lynne Barrett-Lee 2006

  The right of Lynne Barrett-Lee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, PO Box 50, Pembroke Dock, Pembrokeshire SA72 6WY.

  The Quick Reads project in Wales is a joint venture between the Basic Skills Agency and the Welsh Books Council. Titles are funded through the Basic Skills Agency as part of the National Basic Skills Strategy for Wales on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government.

  Printed and bound in the UK by

  Clays Plc, St Ives

  Cover Design by Emma Barnes

  CHAPTER ONE

  I WOKE WITH A start, not knowing where I was. And with that came a moment of panic. But I wasn’t pinned to the bed by an intruder, simply by a twisted-up sheet. It was a hot night. It had been a hot evening, the late summer sun seeping into the flat and turning the air thick with dust and scent. I’d tried leaving the windows open, but the steady drone of late evening traffic had forced me to shut them and sweat it out as best I could.

  I wasn’t sure what had woken me, but even as I untangled my limbs from the fabric and took in the strange surroundings, it began again, a low buzzing sound. That was it. That was where I was. At my sister’s flat in Cardiff. And something was going bump in the night.

  ‘Crisis!’ Ffion had said cheerfully a week ago. She was phoning because her nanny had let her down, and she had to go to New York for a week. Not leading the high life myself, I knew as much about nannies as I did about rocket science, but I knew she shared her nanny with a couple who lived nearby. They had two toddlers and the mother only worked mornings, which fitted perfectly with Ffion’s rather less routine lifestyle, because the nanny was then free for after-school and overnight stints. But not this time, it seemed.

  ‘My nanny’s going to have her wisdom teeth out,’ Ffion explained, ‘so she’s got to go into hospital.’ I knew how hard it was trying to run your life as a working single mum. Ffion had been doing it since Emily was three, with varying disasters along the way. It was only in the last couple of years that she’d been able to afford the luxury of having a nanny to let her down.

  ‘So, big Sis, I had a brainwave,’ she went on. ‘I thought of you. You’re not doing anything, are you? You’d only need to have her till the Saturday, and then Tom could drive down and pick her up from you.’

  Which would be a novelty. Ffion’s ex-husband and I hadn’t seen each other for about seven years, which was fine by me, and by him too, I didn’t doubt. With all that had happened he was my least favourite person, and though I knew from Ffion that he’d remained a good dad, that didn’t alter my opinion. The last time we’d met there’d been such a chill in the air I thought ice might start forming on my nose.

  ‘Oh, I’d love to have Emily come and stay,’ I said.

  ‘She’s off to stay at his parents’ caravan for the week after that,’ Ffion went on, clearly not hearing. ‘And you were only saying the other day how long it had been since you last spent any time with Em.’

  This was true. There were almost two weeks left of the summer holidays, and though I still had enough lesson planning to do to make me feel term should be postponed till October, it would be nice to leave it for a few days to spend them with my niece.

  ‘Fine,’ I said again. ‘But you’ll have to sort something else out for Tigger. Lovely though he is, I’ve got Ben at home from college.’

  My son, Ben, had asthma. Not that badly, but my sister’s big hairy dog wasn’t exactly the ideal house-mate for him.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten about that. I suppose I could – I know! Why don’t you come here? To Cardiff? You’re always saying how much you like my flat. And it’ll be a nice break for you. You must be due a rest from running around after Ben and his mates.’

  This was true, too. I loved having Ben around, but there were only so many times a day you could rant on about music being too loud and piles of washing-up being too high. It would also give me a chance to catch up with an old friend I hadn’t seen for a while.

  So I’d come to Cardiff, and here I was now, in an unfamiliar bedroom, with the throngs of people outside, the traffic, and the sticky city heat. But she was right. It did feel like a holiday.

  I listened again. The buzzing had stopped, but now another noise had started up somewhere else. I pushed off the sheet, slipped on Ffion’s old towelling dressing gown, then padded across the bedroom and into the hall. The phone there was silent, and there was no sound from Emily’s room. The light from the hallway spilled through the open door and across her frame sprawled under the duvet. I walked across the hall, the wooden floor warm beneath my feet. The sound grew louder as I approached the study, louder still as I pushed open the door.

  It was a living room really, with French doors that opened onto a little balcony. But Ffion had styled it in typical Ffion fashion. High tech and sparse, with a beech desk and severe looking cupboards, this was the place where she worked much of the time. Her life was – always had been – very different from my own and I felt a little unsure about all the hardware and wires. Anxious that if I touched the wrong button, disaster would strike.

  The fax machine at the side of the desk was now still, though it had been belching rolls of paper on and off since I’d arrived two days ago. Beside it, a green light winking on the computer reminded me it never slept. Another, a red one, had just clicked on to join it. Her work phone. Of course. Abruptly, the ringing stopped and the room was suddenly full of Ffion’s voice. ‘Hi. I can’t get to the phone right now…’. The greeting burbled on for some seconds, then a beep sounded.

  ‘Ffion?’ a voice said. ‘God, it is you, isn’t it? You sound…well, just the same. No different at all. Look, don’t faint, but…well, it’s Jack…’

  The voice was male, rich like dark chocolate, it now paused for a second, as if unsure what to say next. I paused too, feeling a little like I was eavesdropping. It was just after midnight. So late to be calling. But then it could be one of her foreign authors. Ffion worked as a publicist for a big firm of publishers. It was her job to see their authors got noticed. She had always been good at getting herself noticed so it was no surprise she was so good at her job. That was how she’d first met Scott, her fiancé, a chef with two bestselling books already published. But this was probably nothing important. She’d told me not to worry about faxes and messages. She’d deal with them when she got back. I could let the man carry on and go back to bed.

  I turned to leave him to it, but it was the silence, which continued for four or five more seconds, that made me pause to hear more. It was as if he really didn’t know what to say.

  ‘It’s me, Ffion. Jack,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know if…well…’ Another pause. A breath taken and exhaled. ‘Oh, Ffion, I can hardly believe it. I can hardly believe I’ve…’ Another breath. Another pause. ‘Look, I’d just really like to speak to you. I need to speak to you, Ffion. Would you ring me? Please?’

  He began reciting a number, but his pauses had been so long that the machine cut him off before he could finish it.


  I stood still for several seconds, conscious that there was something about the message that was causing me disquiet. It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on – just a nagging sense that this was s o m e t h i n g important. I’d never heard the name and I didn’t know the voice, but this was clearly someone who knew Ffion well. No surnames. No sense of this being business. He knew she’d know exactly who he was. And he sounded intimate. Like someone who knew her very well, in fact.

  I picked the receiver up and dialled 1471. We do not have the number to return the call, the voice told me. Perhaps he was ex-directory. I put the phone down again, pulling the dressing gown tighter around me, conscious of a draught and the click-clack of Tigger’s feet on the beech flooring, as he came in to find out what was going on. If it was important, he’d call again, I reasoned, as I took the dog back into the kitchen. But still I dithered. It would now be early evening in New York. Perhaps I should give Ffion a quick ring anyway, just in case it was someone she’d been waiting to hear from. Yes, I’d go back and do that.

  But she wasn’t in her hotel room. Probably out at some party or other. She was on tour with an author, and these tours, I knew, were as much about fun as they were about meetings. I left a message. Just telling her there was nothing to worry about with Emily, but that there’d been a message on her work phone from someone called Jack.

  I lay awake for some time after I got back into bed. I was sure she’d never mentioned a Jack to me before. Yet I also felt sure my gut response to his message was right. There was something about his words and manner that set off alarms in my head. ‘Oh, Ffion…’ he’d said. The words kept replaying. I’d been through all sorts of dramas with Ffion over the years. I hoped this wasn’t about to become another one.

  Hoping wasn’t going to make any difference, of course. But I didn’t know that, as I drifted back off to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘THOSE ARE SO NOT cool’, moaned Emily as we stood at the till in the shoe shop the following morning and she frowned at the cream satin shoes in my hand.

  ‘You will look like a princess,’ I told her. I put them back in the box. Emily, just eleven and on the edge of scowling adolescence, viewed her mother’s forthcoming wedding with a mixture of little-girl excitement and pre-teenage angst. Today was clearly one of the ‘angst’ days, but as bridesmaids didn’t generally attend weddings in trainers, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  I paid the shoe shop assistant for them and mentally ticked them off the list. Ffion never did miss a chance to delegate. I’d long since stopped trying to make her see that just because teachers weren’t in school over the summer it didn’t mean they weren’t working. Besides, I thought now as my niece grinned up at me, there would be plenty of evenings for my school work, and far fewer chances to be spending time with her.

  We headed back up St Mary Street and along to the department store, where Emily expressed similar dismay over the so sad little drawstring bag and headdress Ffion had chosen. But she brightened at the prospect of pizza for lunch.

  ‘Shall we go now?’ she asked eagerly.

  I looked at my watch though I didn’t really need to. ‘It’s not even eleven!’

  ‘But I’m starving!’ she said firmly. ‘Anyway, we mustn’t be late,’ she reminded me. ‘Hannah’s mum is coming to collect me at three, remember, and I still have to get my jeans for the weekend.’

  Another thing on the list. Emily couldn’t possibly go to Gran and Grampy’s caravan without the latest fashion must-haves. I smiled and reassured her I hadn’t forgotten, and we headed off for our lunch.

  The restaurant was half empty, and I chose a table by the sunny window while Emily trotted off to the Ladies. I was just sitting down when my mobile rang from my bag.

  It was Ffion.

  ‘Good grief,’ I said. ‘What time can it be there?’

  ‘Around six,’ she said. ‘I just picked up your message.’

  ‘Oh, sorry about that. But you know what it’s like. I was worried it was something urgent, and –’

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell –’

  ‘Tell it anyway. Exactly what he said.’

  I shrugged off my jacket one-handed. When I’d woken that morning I’d felt there really wasn’t that much to tell. What had seemed so haunting in the small hours seemed even less so after a dose of morning shopping. Probably it was just work, I’d decided. Or some old flame of no account. Ffion’s voice, however, seemed to be telling me otherwise.

  ‘Nothing very much,’ I replied. ‘Just that his name was Jack, and something about whether it was really you, and that he –’

  ‘You’re sure he said Jack?’ she interrupted.

  ‘ Yes. Definitely. And that he – well, something along the lines of how he needed to speak to you – he mumbled a bit. He –’

  ‘Did he leave a number?’

  ‘Yes, but the machine cut him off before he could finish. I’m sure he’ll –’

  ‘Anything else? Did he say anything else?’ Her voice was becoming agitated.

  ‘No. Not really. Ffion, who is he? Is it something bad?’

  She didn’t answer straight away and I was about to prompt her when she spoke again.

  ‘Jack,’ she whispered. But it wasn’t a question.

  ‘Ffion, what is it?’ I asked. Don’t faint, he’d told her. ‘You sound like you’ve just seen a ghost.’

  Several seconds passed before she spoke again, her voice smaller still.

  ‘Megan, I think I just have.’

  But she refused to say more, and though there were all sorts of questions I wanted to ask her, Emily had returned. She plonked herself down beside me, wanting to know who was on the phone.

  ‘Em’s here,’ I said to Ffion. ‘Do you want a word with her?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said, still sounding odd. ‘And Megan, look. It’s nothing, OK?’ Her voice was suddenly brisk again. ‘Forget it.’

  I handed Emily the phone and picked up my menu, reflecting that if this was about nothing, it was a type of nothing I’d never come across before.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BIG DOGS IN SMALL flats are not an easy mixture. Ffion had had Tigger for four years now, during which time he’d grown from a lively pup to an equally lively adult dog. He needed two good walks every day, if he was not to chew up everything that would fit between his jaws. Not the most sensible choice of pet. But Ffion had never counted ‘sensible’ among her list of virtues, and I knew Tigger made her feel more secure. Besides, she’d always said, with the hours she worked it was the only certain way to make sure she got any exercise.

  I got plenty of that marching up and down the corridors of the sprawling high school I worked in. Walking dogs, therefore, was not on my own list of pastimes, but I was beginning to enjoy my strolls through town and down to the Bay. I watched the rest of the world go about its business, all of which, from my sleepy rural perspective, seemed to happen at double speed and to everyone at once. But there was a quiet little park not far from where Ffion lived, and once Emily had been dispatched with her friend for the afternoon, I put Tigger’s lead on him and headed off there to think.

  Not that there was much to think about. Just the name of a stranger, and my sister’s response to his call. This had made it clear that not only had he meant something to her, but that he still did mean something, and I wanted to know what.

  I skirted the flower garden and found a bench to sit down on, unclipping the lead from the collar so Tigger could have a run around. I knew it wasn’t really any of my business, but as so much of Ffion’s troubled life had been my business, it was difficult to break the habit.

  We’d always been close, even though there were five years between us. As our parents were both in the forces and travelled so much, we spent a lot of time being the new girls in class, so we supported each other more than most. Our mother had died when we were still in our teens, and our father now lived, as he’d always hope
d to, in the wilds of North Wales. We both got up to see him just a few times a year. These days, we didn’t see much more of each other. But the bond was still there, especially when we were in trouble, and Ffion, who’d married young and, as it turned out, unwisely, had had more than her fair share of that.

  But that was in the past, and she was happy now with Scott. It was a relief not to have to worry about her any more.

  Except I did. Scott had called shortly after I’d returned from shopping. He wanted to know, as was his caring way, whether Emily and I wanted to come round for supper – he was having a few mates round for a barbecue. I’d explained about Emily going round to her f r i e n d ’s house, and we’d left things open, depending on when she got back. It was his call that had prompted me to go back into the study and listen to the message on the answer phone again. This time, I wrote down what I had of the number. Now, sitting in the park while Tigger checked out the wildlife, I brooded about what, if anything, to do.

  I was just heading round the last corner before home when my mobile rang. It was Ffion again.

  She was between a meeting and a book-signing, she said, and in the street somewhere, by the sound of it. I could barely make her out above the white noise in my ear.

  ‘I can’t stop,’ she said. ‘I’m using someone else’s cell phone. But I thought I’d call.’ Her breath was coming in gasps, so she must be walking. ‘To see if Jack had called again.’

  I paused by the hedge on the corner of the street. Not ‘that man’. Jack.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not to my knowledge. But, look, Ffion, who is he? Is there some sort of problem?’

  I could hear a blast on a horn in the background.

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘No problem. It’s just that I need to speak to him, that’s all. Look, if he calls again, would you speak to him and get his number? Or give him my number here? Yes. That’s best. Or –’

  ‘Or what? Ffion, I know this isn’t any of my business, but you sound so stressed. Are you sure everything is OK?’