A Durham Girl's Secret

by Elizabeth Gill

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Sagas; Historical Romance

Synopsis

An unbreakable bond. A devastating discovery. From the bestselling author of Miss Appleby's Academy comes a gritty and emotional family saga.

London, 1944. A young man is killed in an air-raid, leaving a wife and two children - and a secret. After the tragedy, Ailsa, Margaret and Luke are persuaded by to return to the north east. Despite their grief and bitterness, they find a new life there. But it isn't long before the past catches up with them, and they must confront the secret the family left behind.

Note: this book was previously published under the title The Secret.

Release date: April 7, 2016

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 164

Sample

London, January 1944

Sometimes they went to a hotel near Charing Cross Station. Jaime thought the afternoons spent in bed there with Nancy were the happiest times of his life. He had loved the big gilt bed and the blue velvet curtains.

Lately she had moved into this flat on the North Side of the Common across from where he lived with his wife and two children. He hadn’t wanted her so close. He did not like to think there was nothing between them but a big piece of grass.

He would lie awake at night with Ailsa breathing beside him and think of Nancy alone in her bed a short walk away. She liked the danger of it. He thought that laughable. His wife would not think in a hundred years that he could be having an affair.

He worked for the government, the Ministry of War Transport, a leg injury which left him with a limp had kept him out of the forces. He made a lot of money and he enjoyed spending it, mostly on the black market, and they rented a large Victorian house with spacious rooms.

Now he watched Nancy lying still, her eyes closed, her hair falling over one cheek, her arm flung across the pillow. Her skin was so white, so pretty.

The air-raid siren had gone long since but not the all-clear. He no longer cared. They had made love after the siren and since then Nancy had gone to sleep, she cared so little either.

She had asked him several times to leave his wife and children for her and since he had not done so she had ceased to question him.

He had been with her since half past four. It was his favourite time of day. When he had been a little boy the chink of teacups and the smell of coffee cake and the fire in the dining room at home had been everything he had wanted.

Even now he felt homesick for Northumberland but it was not for something that was real any longer, it was for the time when he had thought that happiness was lasting.

He heard Nancy say his name and turned further over towards her. She was as unlike his wife as she could be. Maybe that was the point. She was not the mother of his children, waiting at home for him.

He hated how Ailsa was always waiting. He did a job he didn’t like to provide for his wife and children and it was a good job and he was good at it but it had never been what he wanted. He felt as though his life had been a complete waste.

Ailsa was a pale thin shadow of the lovely blonde girl he had married. She took solace in her children and her piano, which he had learned to hate the sound of, and he had gone to other women.

Until Nancy. Their affair had been going on for two years. Several times he had almost left Ailsa. He didn’t know what had stopped him, it was certainly not the children.

He had been fond of them when they were little but they were fourteen, twins, Margaret and Luke. There had been no more children, the horror of having them had put Ailsa off sex for good. She had spent a good deal of time crying after they were born and had told him to sleep elsewhere, so he had.

He supposed the twins were like all people their age, half-formed, rude, boisterous, dull and expensive. They were to educate, feed, clothe, house and nothing was enough for them.

They were always wanting things and they whined continually. Margaret had dull brown hair, had to wear glasses over her short-sighted eyes and was overweight. Luke looked like his mother and was almost unbearably handsome, with pale blond hair, skin that browned golden given a day of summer sunshine and exquisite blue eyes with long dark lashes.

He was tall and slender, elegant and intelligent. Jaime had brought him up to rough games and he took those in his stride too. Somehow Jaime could not forgive his son that he was apparently perfect.

Perfection was boring but so too was the daughter, who was not very bright. She did badly at school, she couldn’t sew, she couldn’t make a cake without burning it. Margaret had no shining qualities whatsoever and she was most unattractive. She was quiet almost to the point of being taciturn and cared nothing for the things most girls loved, pretty clothes, dancing classes.

Thinking of the children made him even more reluctant to go home. There was nothing to get him through the evening’s dullness other than a particularly fine bottle of Scotch he had been wading his way through. It took the edge off his boredom. Ailsa didn’t drink. She was too good to have any faults.

Nancy had lots of faults, it was one of the reasons he loved her. She swore and drank and cared nothing for what people thought and she accepted him as he was, she wasn’t always wishing he wouldn’t drink so much or that he would come home sooner or that he would pay more attention to the children. This was his favourite place to be, safe against the warmth of her soft body.

Luke and Margaret took the dog, Roly, out.

‘Don’t be long,’ their mother called from the house, ‘it’s getting dark and it’s going to rain.’

She had made a carrot cake, Luke could smell it, a proper cake with margarine and sugar. Today was a special day, it was their parents’ wedding anniversary and later there would be dinner, his mother had been hoarding ingredients. Wouldn’t their father be surprised and pleased, she said, their sixteenth anniversary? She hoped he wouldn’t be too late.

‘He’s always late,’ Margaret said as they left the house, Roly bounding as far ahead as his lead would allow.

‘He has a difficult and important job,’ Luke said. He was very proud of his father.

They walked across the Common, munching the Maltesers which their sweet ration allowed them, slowly because the taste of the chocolate was so special. Not far away was an old church, dark in the growing shadows, several pubs and houses, some of which had been bombed ages ago and had boarded-up windows and mended doors.

Their mother had been right, it began to rain when they were too far to get back without being soaked. He could hear Margaret swearing under her breath as they turned around. Great big drops began to fall. The air-raid siren went. Margaret gathered Roly’s lead close and they ran for home.

The rain stopped almost immediately. Out of breath, Luke was aware of a strange silence and then, seemingly from nowhere, there was an almighty explosion as though from every part of the Common, the sound of glass breaking and the suck and pull of buildings blowing up. They drew back and Margaret gathered both him and Roly in and they tried to make themselves as small as possible.

Luke had no idea how long they huddled there, only that there was eventually an all-clear. His sole thought was to get back.

As they drew closer wardens appeared on the North Side of the Common, blowing whistles, and he could see that part of the street had been completely ruined. Not their house, please God not theirs, but the South Side appeared to be unharmed, no noise came from there, no smoke. He and Margaret ran with the dog, not looking at one another.

And then they saw their mother running down the street to them. Luke was so relieved, so pleased that he wanted to cry. She gathered them both to her and the dog.

‘Thank God you’re all right,’ she said, ‘I was so worried about you,’ and she kissed Roly on top of his head.

Jaime did not come home. This was not unusual and she had often telephoned his work to find out where he was and been embarrassed because he had already left.

He had forgotten their anniversary. She should have been used to it by now, she thought, but she had reminded him when he left that morning, so she would have thought he could keep the information inside his head for the rest of the day. He had gone without her seeing him and she had been upstairs and called down as he left, ‘Don’t forget, I’m making a special meal tonight for our anniversary.’

‘I’ll be back on time,’ he said and clashed the outside door.

She gave the children their meal and waited. After they went to bed – but not to sleep, she could hear them talking upstairs – there was a knock on the door and she opened it to find a warden, looking apologetic, concerned.

‘Mrs Gray?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you be able to come along with me, please?’

She hesitated. She didn’t like to leave the children but then Evie, their general maid and housekeeper, was in.

‘Why?’

‘We think your husband may have been hurt.’

She went upstairs and knocked on Evie’s door and when it was answered told her and then she collected her coat and went back downstairs. Luke and Margaret came out of Margaret’s room and on to the landing.

‘Where are you going?’ Luke asked.

‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ he offered, already turning around in his striped pyjamas, ready to go and dress. Ailsa shivered. It wasn’t warm up there.

‘No, you stay here and look after Evie and Margaret.’ It was best to appeal to his instincts, she thought. ‘I won’t be long.’

Very often Luke disobeyed her but he didn’t now and stood there, shivering with cold and perhaps with fright like the child he thought he wasn’t.

Margaret looked like a ghost in her long white nightdress, her hair plaited so that it would not tangle while she slept. Her hair was her only claim to beauty and of late she had wanted to cut it. Ailsa felt such love for them that she didn’t want to go.

‘I won’t be long,’ she promised and stumbled back down the stairs.

She clashed the door and then followed the warden across the Common through the darkness. It was bitterly cold now.

Part of the street had been completely ruined and he preceded her to a house which no longer had a front door. The back of the house appeared to remain, the steps were badly damaged but part of the front wall was still there. All around there were mountains of rubble.

Worse still, in the shadows there were two bodies, covered up and not yet taken away. Perhaps many people had died and they had just been found. The warden uncovered one of the bodies and shone a light.

‘Is that your husband, Mrs Gray?’

Ailsa made herself look though there was nothing to look at, just a corpse where a person had once been, the face of her husband but nothing to do with him somehow.

‘Yes.’ Then her gaze strayed to the other. ‘Who is that?’

‘I don’t know.’

Another warden from further across did not even look up. He said, ‘Nancy Carpenter.’

The warden near her did not look at Ailsa.

They had been listening for her, she thought as she made her way back to the house, trying to imagine what she would tell them. She didn’t know which had been the greater shock, finding Jaime dead or the realization that he had been with another woman, had possibly died in her arms. There were worse ways to go, Ailsa thought bitterly.

She walked back, trying to put off that she had to tell the children their father was dead. It had never been such a short walk home. She went in as softly as she could but they had been waiting, listening and the moment she was safe in the hall the sitting-room door opened and there they stood, Evie behind them, the two children in their dressing gowns and slippers, their faces already half expecting what she had to tell them.

Ailsa didn’t know how to say it.

‘It’s Daddy, isn’t it?’ Margaret said, and when they waited she said into the silence,

‘Yes. He was … he had to visit several houses in the area today and …’ She was not good at lying, she knew.

She didn’t look at them as she stumbled but they would think that was shock and they would be too shocked to notice that she was making a mess of this. They must never know. It was important not to spoil their memories of their father.

Margaret began to cry. Luke stood, white-faced for a few seconds and then bolted. Evie took Margaret into her arms. Luke came back and stood on the landing for a little while after they had gone downstairs, she could see him through the banister rails. Then he must have remembered that he was meant to be grown up and he came down the stairs and looked his mother in the eyes and said, ‘Is there anything I can do?’

Northumberland, January 1944

Callum Gray stood by the window of the small morning room in the old vicarage. He could see right across the gardens and since the garden belonging to the church here had been made over to growing vegetables he thought of how it had once been, elegant lawns and rose beds, and how when he was a child his parents would bring him here on sunny afternoons.

He would play with the vicarage children and they would drink tea and eat scones on the lawns. He remembered the long sweeping staircase, the huge upstairs rooms which overlooked the fields that led to the beach and the elegance of the downstairs rooms well looked after by servants.

It was a different world now. The house was no longer lived in by the vicar, he had a much smaller house near the church. This one had been bought by a retired businessman and his wife, they had come to the country after he had made a lot of money and been able to give up work young and they had been here since before the war began. Two of their three children had died in this war. The third, a young woman, hovered in the doorway now, saying awkwardly, ‘How lovely to see you, Cal,’ and then she closed the door.

He turned and looked at her. ‘I was just admiring the garden.’

‘There isn’t much to admire any more,’ she said. ‘What can you grow in January? But I have lots of plans. As soon as the weather gets better—’

‘Phoebe …’ He stopped there. Having interrupted her he couldn’t go on.

‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ she said.

Phoebe, Cal thought, always assumed there was something wrong. Why should she not? Both of her brothers had been fliers, both had been shot down. She was used to tragedy, as were so many people, and her parents were in mourning for their sons.

He remembered her in 1938. She had been beautiful, always laughing. Life had defeated the family and she was trying, desperately and alone, to bring back some sort of normality.

Her father was always busy, gardening, out helping people, doing what he could to keep the grief at bay with activity. Her mother, Cal thought, had long since given up and spent the dark winter afternoons with sewing in her hands by the fire.

The vicarage was a huge freezing pile and they had no help, all the able-bodied people being involved in war work. This room had been dusted recently but its fire was almost out and as he spoke he could see his breath.

When he didn’t answer her she said, ‘I should have attended to it sooner,’ and got down and began to pile little sticks in intricate fashion above the dying embers.

‘You don’t want to marry me, do you?’ Cal said. She looked up and then got up as the flames began to show themselves around the dry sticks.

‘You said a week. It’s only been six days.’

‘How can it take a week? Surely people know instinctively if they want to marry somebody?’

‘It’s not as simple as that. If I leave my parents who will they have?’

He helped her to her feet.

‘It’s not as if you’re going anywhere. It’s the same town.’

‘Yes, but …’

He was, he thought, impatient. It was one of his biggest faults. For years his parents had been telling him to marry and for years he had put it off. He was forty-three and if he didn’t marry now, as his father was so fond of telling him, he wouldn’t marry at all.

‘Jaime will never come back,’ his father had said, ‘and as for that boy of his …’

Jaime was the prodigal son, the younger one who had got out, had not wanted the business or anything to do with it and when his parents tried to control his life he had left.

The two sides of the family had met on short stilted occasions, always in London since Jaime had sworn never to return to Northumberland.

There was rejoicing when the twins were born but as they grew older they had turned out to be wilful, rude, short on attention, in fact fairly normal, really, he thought. Margaret looked like her father. Luke was exactly like Jaime in character though he looked like his mother and would never make a foundryman, his father had decided. Jaime was inclined to agree. So Cal was left to consider marriage and children.

Phoebe was younger than he was, not thirty-five, though the eldest child. Perhaps that accounted for her feeling of responsibility towards her parents, he thought, but she seemed to like him and he had that age-old stupid desire to try and rescue her as though she were Rapunzel.

She could have done a great many things, the war gave people excuses to leave and go to new experiences, but Phoebe could not because her brothers had died. She was caught here, in the huge vast coldness of the vicarage and her parents’ memories.

She looked pale with tiredness, he thought now, struggling to keep things going, to be cheerful for her parents, to bring in the wood and coal, to clean and cook and even shoot. Stupidly, that was what they did together. They went shooting on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, amidst the cold wet trees, down in the wood below the small town.

He didn’t think her father approved of such things on Sundays – he was a devout man, helping at the church was one of his main activities – but Cal didn’t have a lot of time and teaching Phoebe to shoot had been one of the few pleasures of the war.

She handled a shotgun better than most, he thought with satisfaction, and they needed the meat, no matter wha. . .