Summer of Secrets

by Nikola Scott

Genres: World War II; Women's Fiction; Historical Romance

Synopsis

'The perfect summer read' Liz Trenow

'I loved this touching exploration of love and its capacity for consolation and destruction... compelling and satisfying. It was beautifully written' Judith Lennox

The heart-breaking and unforgettable new novel from Nikola Scott about two women born decades apart caught up in dark secrets. Perfect for readers of Dinah Jefferies and Kate Morton.

August 1939

At peaceful Summerhill, orphaned Maddy hides from the world and the rumours of war. Then her adored sister Georgina returns from a long trip with a new friend, the handsome Victor. Maddy fears that Victor is not all he seems, but she has no idea just what kind of danger has come into their lives...

Today

Chloe is newly pregnant. This should be a joyful time, but she is fearful for the future, despite her husband's devotion. When chance takes her to Summerhill, she's drawn into the mystery of what happened there decades before. And the past reaches out to touch her in ways that could change everything...

Praise for Nikola Scott:

'A well-written, intriguing read full of family secrets... Brilliant' Fabulous

'An intriguing twisting story with a lush opening and beautifully descriptive writing throughout. I loved it' Dinah Jefferies

'Beautifully written' Daily Mail

'Compelling, atmospheric and beautifully written...trembles with family secrets. I adored it' Victoria Fox

'An emotional and involving story' Woman & Home

'A gripping family mystery told in lush, evocative prose' Erin Kelly

(P)2018 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: September 6, 2018

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 432

Sample

I could find Summerhill anywhere on a map. Blindfolded, without pause or hesitation, I could draw it from memory. It looked like a heart, its flank lining up with the edge of the river, the sharp end pointing out to sea. In reality, of course, the estate was more sprawling, a tumble of greens and browns tugged at by the tide, the house clinging onto the side where the river widened into the bay. But my mind had carved it out of the land exactly like that, a heart-shaped map of my childhood where I was safe and where nothing could touch me.

Even now that Chamberlain had grudgingly decided it was time for action and my Aunt Marjorie was either glued to the wireless or watching the horizon for signs of a German invasion, it seemed impossible that life here would change.

My father would have disagreed. War is like love, he used to say when I was six or seven. It always finds a way, Maddy. We forget, but before we know it, there it is again. He had always thought we needed to know, my sister Georgiana and I, about all the terrible things humans were capable of doing. I never wanted to listen, but Georgiana did, would beg him for stories about the Great War, about surviving the horrors of Ypres and the Western Front. Leaving them to it, I would run down to the kitchen for one of Cookie’s rock cakes, whistle for the dogs and disappear outside with my sketchbook. Through the woods and down to the river, lying face-down on the jetty to draw the tadpoles in the mudflats and wade through rock pools at low tide. To the little islet where swimming was best and where the sun sank into the water at the end of yet another glorious Summerhill day, flooding the bay with fiery reds and oranges that defied the entire contents of my colour palette.

And today, with the wireless forever spitting out new and alarming updates from Germany, the village crowded with uniformed men from the nearby army base and Hobson despairing over ever producing blackout curtains big enough for the enormous stained-glass windows in the entrance hall, I did exactly what I always had. I left Aunt Marjorie poring over Herr Hitler’s advance on Danzig in the newspaper, fetched my sketchbook and a shovel – the wall up in Fairings Corner had collapsed yet again – and disappeared into the grounds.

Surveying the small avalanche of stones washed out by the heavy rains of last week’s storm, my heart sank slightly. I started picking up rocks and stuffing dirt into holes as best as I could. That wall really should be looked at properly one of these days. The fence up by Pixie’s Wood needed patching up too, and the well at the bottom of the garden was leaking. Without Papa’s quelling eye, the garden had been allowed to explode in the last six years, so overgrown now that Georgiana often said we would wake up one day to discover it had swallowed us whole.

At the thought of my sister, I shoved the last rock into the wall and hurried up the hill. From the top you could watch the road coming up from the village, and I wanted to be the first one to see my sister arrive. Georgie had left for Europe six months ago despite all the dire news from Germany. Having invited herself to stay with any and all distant relatives across the Continent, she’d driven Papa’s old car up to London and then on to Amsterdam and France, sending ecstatic postcards that made it very clear she was not remotely ready to cut her trip short. Eventually Cousin Xenia had called from Nantes, entreating dear Marjorie to rein in that hell-raising niece of hers and pointing out that all sensible English folk were fleeing the Continent. Georgiana had had no choice but to return and I was glad. I’d never been without my sister for a single day, and the last six months were the longest I could remember.

Sternly ordering the dogs not to dig anywhere in the vicinity of the wall, I pulled myself up into the ancient oak tree that towered over the hillside and settled back against the trunk to keep an eye on the road. Georgiana always drove fast. She had taught herself when she was seventeen, despite Aunt Marjorie standing in the courtyard and muttering disgruntled things about needlework and French lessons. Having pestered Frank into helping her get my father’s old Morris back up and running, she’d practised in the courtyard using hay bales as road markers, and later roared through the lanes with me glued to the passenger seat because I knew she’d kill herself and the least I could do was to be with her when that happened.

The lane lay as still and sleepy as ever, though, and with a small sigh of contentment, I pulled out my sketchbook. The green, linen-covered brick of paper was almost full, because with Georgie gone I’d been drawing more than usual. Aunt Marjorie, who was a great one for lecturing on a variety of subjects, had been on at me about conserving paper, and I had tried, squeezing sketches close together and using all available space, because it seemed quite likely that if I didn’t start conserving paper soon, the world would actually run out. I was always drawing. The house. The kitchen. My favourite fox cub, persecuting the hedgehog living behind the rotten tree in Pixie’s Wood. The way the light came through the trees in the little copse where the wild strawberries grew. People, too: Cookie making plum cobbler; Hobson sneaking a smoke behind the stables; Susan running up and down the stairs with a bucket. Georgiana, who couldn’t draw a straight line if you held a gun to her head, loved writing, and together we’d come up with countless stories over the years. All summer I’d been working on finishing a funny series featuring the fox cub and his best friend, a worried little squirrel we’d called Stu. I flicked slowly through to where I’d left Foxy trying to survive a fall into the rain barrel, and started colouring his fur with tiny red strokes.

The late summer’s warmth was lingering, and up high the sky was the colour of bluebells, effervescent with the kind of brightness that made you believe you simply had to push off and you’d be flying. Little gusts rustled through the leaves, and it was so quiet I could hear my pencil moving across the page, the dogs digging surreptitiously at a rabbit hole by the wall, and swallows singing above. Georgiana was finally coming home, and it wasn’t at all hard to forget that it was late August 1939 and war was brewing in the world.

Without warning, a roar split the morning air, and seemingly out of nowhere the bluebell sky above the oak tree was filled with dark shapes. Planes. In formation, like the geese that left the coast in November to head south across the Channel, they roared past me, shadows flitting over fields and pastures. I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding and sagged back against the tree. Get a grip, Maddy, for heaven’s sake. They’re ours, our planes. From the airfield up north, out on a training exercise. Aunt Marjorie had talked about them excitedly only this morning: wasn’t it splendid how the nation’s boys were rising to the occasion and standing up to Herr Hitler in the way that only the British could? I tracked the shapes getting smaller along the horizon, waiting for the noise to fade. But it didn’t. Far out, they turned in a wide arc and came back, flying straight at me, it seemed, almost as if they’d seen me hiding among the branches, honing in like an arrow on my Summerhill heart. Now they were above me, so close I thought I could make out the little wheels underneath them, hear the engines turning and smell the fumes.

The dogs cowered below me, ears flattened against furry heads, yipping anxiously, and together we watched the planes manoeuvring above us, their ear-splitting noise filling the canopy of the ancient oak tree. It seemed to go on for ever – figures and turns – but just as I didn’t think I could possibly bear it any longer, they finally started heading inland one by one.

Even after they were gone, though, engine noise filled the air, and when I turned towards the sea, I realised that one of them had stayed behind, still practising its turns. The dogs and I watched it for a few moments before I noticed that something didn’t look quite right. The plane was flying in an odd pattern, and even though it was partly obscured by the headland cliffs, you could see that it . . . yes, it seemed to be dropping. The branches above me were too fragile for my sixteen-year-old weight, but I started climbing nonetheless, my hands and feet scrabbling for footholds amid the slender, swaying greenery. There it was again now, level with the cliffs at – my mind proffered the two words before I could stop it – Hangman’s Bluff. Shivers were running up and down my spine, and the skin at the back of my neck started tightening, squeezing inward, making me fight for breath, because I, of all people, knew how steep those cliffs were, how dangerous, how deadly . . .

Pushing another breath through my closed-up throat, I wanted to look away, wanted to slide back down and hide behind my sketchbook, draw Foxy loping across the little meadow behind Pixie’s Wood at dawn. Instead, I kept watching, my eyes wide as the plane dropped above the cliffs, more quickly now, as if its occupant had already given up hope. And then it disappeared from sight altogether, and was lost.

War is like love, Maddy, it always finds a way.

My sweaty hands slipped on the bark of the tree; my eyes, still trained on the thin sliver of horizon, watered in the brightness of the sun. What if I’d been the only one to see it? What if no one would come to help? I could get to there from here, skirt the Muttonhole field, run along the little grassy path at the edge of the cliffs that my father and I had taken on a morning much like this six years ago. Frank said they let sheep graze right up to it these days because people were afraid to walk there any more.

But I hadn’t been back to Hangman’s Bluff, not since they retrieved my father’s body from the cove below the cliffs, the one that was always submerged at high tide, with waves pounding against the rocks at the bottom. I hadn’t left Summerhill much at all, and the most I’d seen of the sea was the blue-grey horizon from the top of the oak tree, where a few puffs of white cloud were now drifting along, unaware of the terrible thing that had happened.

Another noise cut through the air: a car horn from the village lane. I scrabbled for purchase on my branch, my eyes blinded for a moment from the sheer effort of looking into the distance, and when my vision cleared again, I saw a familiar battered car and an arm extending from the window, waving cheerfully in my direction, because my sister, who knew me better than anyone else in the world, knew that I’d be up in the oak tree waiting for her.

I dropped down from the tree, hardly noticing when a branch caught and ripped my trouser leg, and then I ran without stopping, without looking back, all the way down to the kitchen garden and the pear orchard, past our old tree house and the small pond with the massive carp that Georgiana hated, tumbling out into the courtyard and straight into my sister’s arms.

‘There’s absolutely no doubt, Mrs MacAllister. None whatsoever.’

Chloe took in the man across from her, hands folded against the edge of his standard-issue NHS desk. Had fate ever sent a more unlikely harbinger than this balding, tetchy man sitting there frowning at her, tapping his fingers impatiently on her notes?

She saw the doctor’s eyes flick briefly to the clock on the wall and tried to pull herself together. The NHS tried to keep consultations to ten minutes or less; Aidan had told her countless stories of patients who were too slow, dragging everyone else down and upsetting the system. She’d already overstayed her welcome by five minutes, four of which she’d wasted with white-faced silence and useless denial of the fact that there was no doubt whatsoever. None.

‘I’ll send the paperwork home with you,’ the doctor said briskly, making little flapping motions with his hands as if to propel her into getting up from his yellow plastic chair. ‘Now what you’ll need to do in the next few weeks is—’

It was the word ‘home’ that did it, that finally unglued Chloe’s tongue from the roof of her mouth and dimmed down the white noise whooshing in her ears just enough for her to say, ‘I’m sorry, but please, would you mind checking just one more time? To be absolutely sure, I mean. There could be a mix-up, maybe?’ She took a deep breath, dropping her hands into her lap. ‘Mistakes are made all the time, aren’t they?’ She tried to add the last bit casually, as if to imply they were made by anyone but him.

‘We’ve checked twice already, Mrs MacAllister,’ Dr Webb said impatiently, ‘and only because you were so insistent, but in reality, it’s a waste. The test is accurate. I can’t see what the issue is – your situation is perfect, your age is near-perfect. Do you work?’

She shook her head and he nodded approvingly. ‘There you go. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you have a lovely home in,’ he consulted her notes, ‘the nicest part of Plymouth. Hartley. My godmother lives there.’

He waited a fraction of a second for Chloe to chime in, either with news of her connection with this undoubtedly eminent lady or else with something that would herald her imminent departure.

‘From a medical point of view, you’re ideal,’ he continued. ‘Couldn’t be better really. Now, Margie will give you all the necessary information at the front desk.’

His voice washed over her, her ears picking out the odd word, like lovely and blood and clinic. And perfect. Yes, it was just all-round perfect. Her husband would be thrilled. He’d been waiting for this kind of news for months.

Dr Webb was by the door now, so she had no choice but to get up from her chair too, more slowly, trying to summon the wherewithal to ask a final crucial question.

‘Could you . . . I mean, would it be possible not to let him know about this? My husband, that is?’

Dr Webb fumbled for his glasses, then squinted at her myopically.

‘Why would I tell him?’ Dr Webb didn’t seem to worship Aidan in quite the same way everyone else did, which was partly why Chloe had chosen him as her GP, even though it did mean that she got the tetchy treatment on any of her infrequent visits. Still, the Plymouth medical world was a small one and chances were high that Dr Webb’s path would cross that of Aidan Mac-Allister at some point soon, and Chloe would prefer that the ensuing conversation didn’t include her.

‘I’d just like to tell him myself. Pick the right moment.’

Dr Webb snorted in dismissal and flung open the door. ‘Of course. Wouldn’t dream of it. Confidentiality and all that. I heard that they’re expanding the surgery. He must be busy. Anyhow, mum’s the word,’ he said heartily.

He made as if to close the door, but she held him back one last time. ‘And Danny, you know, my brother – do you think it might be . . . a problem. For this?’

He considered for a second.

‘I’d have to do some in-depth testing,’ he said. ‘Know more about your parents. You should make another appointment. And if your parents have had any recent blood tests, bring the results. We’ll talk.’

Before she could add anything else, such as the pertinent fact that there were no parents and no blood tests, he had shooed her out of the door and closed it behind her.

Three minutes later, Chloe was standing outside the surgery. She hadn’t asked any more questions of the nurses at the front desk, who always enquired after ‘the lovely Dr MacAllister’, wondering laughingly why on earth she bothered coming all the way out here when she had someone to cure her ailments at home. ‘I know I wouldn’t,’ a pretty red-headed nurse had giggled under her breath to the other one as Chloe stuffed the leaflets they’d handed her into her bag with a little more force than necessary.

She stood for a long time watching buses taking people to work and school and the supermarket for milk. 14. 44. 62. The numbers fluttered by as if trying to convey some sort of secret code, telling her how to make the conversation with Dr Webb become a part of her, rather than just an abstract test result. She might buy some sparkling grape juice. She’d heard somewhere that grape juice was the drink of choice in these situations.

The 5. Then the 62 again. It was warm and humid and clouds were building up towards the east after weeks of strangely restless, unsettled weather. Whooshes of diesel-scented slipstream sent her hair fluttering and tugged on her skirt and reminded her that Aidan didn’t like her taking public transport. It’s a staph infection waiting to happen, Chloe. And the people. Anyone could be on that bus. The next Suffolk Strangler. Lucky Chloe, who didn’t need to go out too often. And when she did, he could always leave her the car, couldn’t he?

He hadn’t left her the car this morning, because he didn’t know that she had somewhere to go. But buses used to be her only mode of getting about, and she quite liked them, the way they neatly traversed the country. A closely knitted grid of connection that would take you anywhere you wanted, right across England if that was what you were after. And she liked the anonymity of it all, how no one cared one iota what she did, what she wore, what she thought. Penny for your thoughts, Aidan was fond of saying, his eyes resting on her closely, as if he needed to try just a little bit harder, look just a little bit longer, and he might be able to squeeze right into her mind. People on buses looked straight through you and you could sit with your thoughts and not always have to share.

She needed to take the 14 and she needed to take it quickly if she didn’t want to be late. On Mondays, Aidan was due home straight after his last surgery, and then he wanted her there to sit on their roof terrace and have a civilised drink, talk about the day. Who he’d operated on and what’d they do at the weekend. The new doctor they were looking to take on at the surgery. Where they might go on holiday. And tonight, they’d talk about the fact – unignorable, undeniable and all round without any doubt whatsoever – that she, Chloe MacAllister, was going to have a baby. That she was twenty-eight years old, perfectly healthy and living the perfect life, which would now be perfectly complete. A family.

A taxi pulled up at the bus stop, depositing a gaggle of girls bound for the cinema in the shopping centre, and Chloe stuck her head in the window and asked the cabbie to take her home.

She pushed open the front door and stood on the threshold for a moment. She could smell the washing drying in the utility room, and the lasagne she’d made earlier because she knew she’d be cutting it close after her appointment. The sweet, heady scent of the calla lilies Aidan had brought back the evening before, a complicated arrangement from his go-to florist. Anything to make you feel special, Chloe. He’d been so busy with his surgery expansion lately that he’d been a little curt with her at times. Had wanted to make up for it.

Her hands twitched across her stomach in a small, convulsive gesture and for one mad moment she fought the urge to turn round and walk back out the door, but then she shook herself. Don’t be stupid, Chloe. Time to go and start dinner, and cut out the stamens from the blooms as Aidan had asked her to this morning, before they showered his expensive countertop with yellow goo.

She was about to hang up her jacket when the sound of a key behind her made her stop in her tracks.

‘Hellooo!’ Aidan had clearly assumed her to be where she always was at this time – in the kitchen at the back of the house – and he started when he saw her behind the door.

‘Chloe, darling. I didn’t see you there.’ He came in, set down his briefcase and shrugged off his suit jacket, then bent to give her a kiss. ‘Where’ve you been?’ He frowned at her jacket, swinging slightly on the hook.

Now was the time to tell him. This exact moment was the time to say, Aidan, I’ve got such brilliant news.

‘Just popped out to the shops,’ she said quickly.

‘Getting what?’ He handed her his jacket. ‘No, not on the hook, darling, on the hanger.’

‘Just . . . something for dinner,’ she said hastily before realising the absence of a shopping bag. ‘But they didn’t have what I wanted,’ she improvised, disappearing into the kitchen to preclude further questions.

‘I can always bring back stuff,’ he called. ‘You know there’s that deli right next to the surgery.’

‘Of course.’ Chloe flicked the oven on. Now. She had to do it now. When he came back down, changed and showered and ready to chat. It would be good, actually, to get it out there, the hard nugget of good news that had been stuck deep inside her belly for hours now. It could start becoming part of her future; their future together. She took a deep breath to ease the nugget upwards, but when she exhaled, a horrible sort of sob suddenly escaped, rasping across the tiled kitchen.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, just pull yourself together,’ she hissed, wrenching open the oven door and shoving the lasagne inside. A waft of Parmesan rose on the warm air, and she pressed her lips together, feeling a twinge of nausea, the same kind she’d been ignoring for days now and which finally made sense. Expectant parents often don’t tell family and friends about Baby coming until twelve weeks, the nurse had said earlier today when she’d caught Chloe reading the brochures in the waiting room. It’s nothing to dwell on, but until twelve weeks, anything can happen. Afterwards too, of course. But most miscarriages occur in the first three months.

So anything could happen. Chloe closed the oven door and thought about that for a moment. Anything. Maybe . . . She inhaled sharply and straightened as she heard Aidan come in through the glass door, quickly fixing a smile to her face.

‘I got a call today,’ he said from behind her.

‘A call?’ A twinge of dread went through her. Surely Dr Webb’s office wouldn’t have . . .

‘It was from a publishing house. In London.’

He turned to hand her a gin and tonic and she masked her exhale of relief by taking a sip, then remembered that she wasn’t actually allowed. She raised the glass again and surreptitiously let the mouthful slide back. She didn’t particularly care for gin to begin with, but according to Aidan there was nothing better than a cold G&T after a hard day’s work. Not that she knew much about that these days. No wife of mine will ever have to work, Aidan was fond of saying, sounding faintly biblical, as if gathering a whole slew of wives around him, none of them engaged in any meaningful profession whatsoever.

‘Who do you know in publishing?’ she said, cutting a tomato into perfect, even pieces because, after all, Food is a feast for the eyes too, Chloe, darling.

‘Aidan?’ She looked up when he didn’t answer immediately.

‘He wanted to speak to you.’ Aidan had become quite still, which Chloe knew meant that all his attention was fixed on her. ‘Said he had a job for you. A portrait.’

She stared at him. ‘But . . . I haven’t worked in ages,’ she said. Two years, to be precise, not since the lovely sunny day in June when she and Aidan had sneaked off to the Plymouth registry office to get married. His mother had been deeply disapproving when she’d found out that her only son had shacked up with a poor photographer with no family to speak of. It made Aidan laugh, but Chloe did feel sorry that his mum had been cheated out of a big wedding. He’d shrugged it off. I’m your family now, he’d said. You and I belong together.

Giving up her photography hadn’t been an easy trade-off at first. But moving across to Plymouth from Torquay, settling into their new home, all that took time, and when the moment had come for her to pick up her Nikon again, start advertising for new clients, there’d always been one reason or another to delay it. No wife of mine will ever have to work, Aidan would say, and Chloe, who had taken it as a joke at first, soon realised that he actually meant it. And eventually, she’d come to see the sense of it too, even felt relieved not to have to rely on the unpredictable work flow, the constant worrying over money.

She’d trained with a photographer called Liz Tallis, a brilliantly talented diva who’d been a pain and an inspiration in equal measure and whose many demands had had Chloe constantly on the verge of being fired from all her real jobs – one behind the till at the cash and carry, the other manning the front desk at a small private hospital at night. Liz had been incredulous at first, then furious when Chloe handed in her resignation, even going so far as to acknowledge that she had ‘some promise’, the highest praise in her book. She didn’t give up easily either: she’d send Chloe flyers for exhibitions and showcases, invite her to openings in London, New York, Edinburgh, none of which she ever attended. There’d be Christmas cards bearing Liz’s hasty, impatient scrawl: Merry everything. Happy Happy. And occasionally a more elaborate if vaguely threatening Are you working? Call me.

But it was important to Aidan for Chloe to be at home, and Chloe had been surprised how easy it was to slip away from it all and simply enjoy the fact that the pressure of providing for herself and Danny had eased.

‘He seemed to know you, anyway,’ Aidan said slowly, intent on her face. Chloe had the very delicate, very pale skin that often came with copper hair: So fine I can look right through it, darling, Aidan often said. He narrowed his eyes a little now, as if it might help him do just that – look into Chloe’s mind to discover the connection between his wife and this mystery man. ‘He had your mobile number. A Matt Cooper. Said he couldn’t reach you on it. Did you give it to him?’

‘Give him what?’

‘Did you. Give him. Your mobile number?’ Aidan repeated, enunciating every word.

‘No!’ she said. ‘I don’t know him.’

Aidan looked at her. ‘I told him you were busy, of course,’ he then said.

He pushed her drink towards her, but she shook her head, setting the plates into the warming drawer. A portrait. She’d been good at portraits, she thought with a sudden, fierce pang of longing.

‘Chloe? Are we going to eat any time soon?’

‘Ten minutes,’ she said mechanically.

He hovered next to her. The sweetish smell of the antiseptic he used at the surgery dropped straight down to the bottom of her stomach, where small waves of nausea were churning around the baby secret. Why on earth would they call it morning sickness when it was really an all-day kind of thing? she wondered. She must have made a small movement of withdrawal, because Aidan’s arms came around her to keep her where she was, cradling her into his chest. When she felt his hands on her sides, moving towards her belly, she jerked backwards, her arm colliding with his chest.

‘What the hell, Chloe?’ He surveyed his sleeve, which was covered in a fine red spray of tomato juice, then looked back up at her, frowning at her red face, the knife in her hand.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Here, give it to me now. If I put some stain remover on, it’ll come out.’

He made a face, started unbuttoning his cuffs.

‘You’re very distracted today,’ he said accusingly.

‘You know,’ Chloe spoke quickly, before she could change her mind, ‘it would have been nice to talk to this Matt Cooper – in person, I mean. It might have been a job I could have done, without taking too much time away from here.’

‘Oh, Chloe.’ Aidan laughed easily. . .