The Secret Keeper Read online

  ‘I—’. Dolly’s thoughts made her blush. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know that—I wasn’t the one to find it, you see, it was just given to me to return to Vivien. On account of our closeness.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘I wonder, Mrs Smitham—’

  ‘Miss Smitham.’

  ‘Miss Smitham—’ his lips twitched, the hint of a smile that only deepened her blush—‘at the risk of sounding impertinent, I wonder why it is you didn’t return this to my wife at the WVS canteen? Surely it would have been more convenient for a busy lady like yourself?’

  A busy lady. Dolly liked the way she sounded when Henry said that. ‘Not impertinent at all, Mr Jenkins. Only, I knew how important it was to Vivien, and I wanted her to have it back as soon as possible. Our shifts don’t always align, you see.’

  ‘How strange.’ His fist closed thoughtfully around the locket. ‘My wife reports for duty every day.’

  Before Dolly could tell him that no one went to the canteen every day, that there was a shift book and a Mrs Waddingham who ran a very tight ship, a key turned in the front lock.

  Vivien was home.

  Both Dolly and Henry glanced keenly at the closed door, listening to her footsteps on the entrance hall parquet. Dolly’s heart began to chirrup as she imagined how happy Vivien was going to be when Henry produced the necklace; when he explained that Dolly was responsible for bringing it back; the way Vivien would be overcome with gratitude and yes, love, and a radiant smile would spread across her face and she’d say, ‘Henry, darling. I’m so glad you’ve finally met Dorothy. I’ve been meaning to invite you over for tea for such a long time, dearest, but things have been impossibly busy, haven’t they?’ And then she’d make a joke about the hard taskmaster at the canteen, and the two of them would dissolve with laughter, and Henry would suggest they all have dinner together, perhaps at his club …

  The sitting-room door opened and Dolly sat forward on the edge of her seat. Henry moved quickly to take his wife in his arms. The embrace was lingering, romantic, as if he were drawing in her scent, and Dolly realised, with a twinge of envy, how passionately Henry Jenkins loved his wife. She knew already, of course, having read The Reluctant Muse, but being in the room, observing them, drove it home. What was Vivien thinking, involving herself with that doctor when she was so well loved by a man like Henry?

  The doctor. Dolly looked at Henry’s face, his eyes closed as he pressed Vivien’s head firmly to his chest; as he held her in the sort of clinch one might expect if months had passed and he’d feared the worst; and she realised, suddenly, that he knew. His agitation that Vivien was late, the pointed questions he’d asked Dolly, the frustrated way he’d spoken of his beloved wife … He knew. That was, he suspected. And he’d been hoping Dolly might confirm his suspicions either way. Oh, Vivien, she thought, knotting her fingers as she stared at the other woman’s back, be careful.

  Henry pulled back at last, lifting his wife’s chin to stare closely at her face. ‘How was your day, my love?’

  Vivien waited until his grip loosened and then she took off her WVS hat. ‘Busy,’ she said, patting the back of her hair flat. She set down the hat on a small table beside her, next to a framed photograph of their wedding day. ‘We’re boxing scarves and the demand is enormous. It’s taking much longer than it should.’ She paused, paying judicious care to the rim of her hat. ‘I didn’t realise you’d be home so early; I’d have made sure I left in good time to meet you.’

  He smiled, unhappily, it seemed to Dolly, and said, ‘I’d hoped to surprise you.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘No reason you should. That’s the whole nature of surprise, isn’t it? To catch a person unawares?’

  He took her by the elbow and steered her body slightly so she was looking into the room. ‘Speaking of surprises, darling, you have a guest. Miss Smitham has come to call.’

  Dolly stood, her heart pounding. Finally, her moment had arrived. ‘Your friend has come to see you,’ Henry continued. ‘We’ve been having a lovely chat about all the good work you do for the WVS.’ Vivien blinked at Dolly, her face completely blank, and then she said, ‘I don’t know who this woman is.’

  Dolly’s breath caught. The room began to spin.

  ‘But darling,’ said Henry, ‘of course you do. She brought this back for you.’ He took the necklace from his pocket and put it in his wife’s hands. ‘You must have forgotten it when you took it off.’

  Vivien turned it over, opened the locket and looked at the photographs inside. ‘How did you get my necklace?’ she said, her voice so cold it made Dolly flinch.

  ‘I—’. Dolly’s head was swimming, she didn’t understand what was happening, why Vivien was behaving like this; after all the glances they’d exchanged, brief, certainly, but loaded with fellow feeling; after all the times they’d observed one another through their respective windows; after everything Dolly had imagined for their future. Was it possible Vivien hadn’t understood; that she hadn’t realised what they meant to one another; that she hadn’t also been dreaming of Dolly and Viv? ‘It was left at the canteen. Mrs Hoskins found it and asked me to return it, seeing as—’ Seeing as we’re kindred spirits, best friends, two of a kind—‘seeing as we’re neighbours.’

  Vivien’s perfect brows shot up and she stared at Dolly. There was a moment of consideration and then her expression lightened, ever so slightly. ‘Yes. I know now. This woman is Lady Gwendolyn Caldicott’s servant.’

  The last word she said with a meaningful glance at Henry and the change in his demeanour was instant. Dolly remembered the way he’d referred to their own maid, the girl dismissed recently for thieving. He looked at the precious piece of jewellery, and said, ‘Not a friend, then?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said Vivien, as if the very idea was anathema to her. ‘There isn’t a friend of mine you haven’t met, Henry darling. You know that.’

  He stared perplexedly at his wife and then nodded slightly. ‘I did think it odd, only she was so insistent.’ And then he turned to Dolly, every doubt and frustration crystallising in a dark frown that pulled at his brow. He was disappointed in her, she realised; worse than that, his expression was laced with distaste. ‘Miss Smitham,’ he said, ‘I thank you for returning my wife’s necklace, but it’s time you left.’

  Dolly could think of nothing to say. She was dreaming, surely—this wasn’t what she’d imagined, what she deserved, the way her life was meant to be. Any minute she would wake up and find herself laughing instead with Vivien and Henry as they all had a glass of whisky and sat down to talk over the trials of life, and she and Vivien, together on the sofa, would turn to one another and giggle about Mrs Waddingham at the canteen, and Henry would smile fondly at the two of them, and say what a pair they were, what an incorrigible darling pair.

  ‘Miss Smitham?’

  She managed to nod, picking up her handbag and scurrying past them both on her way back to the entrance hall.

  Henry Jenkins followed her, hesitating briefly before swinging the front door wide open. His arm barred the way and Dolly had no choice but to stay where she was and wait for him to let her go. He appeared to be deciding what to say.

  Dusk was beginning to fall, and across the street Dolly saw Kitty and Louisa, arriving home from work. Kitty looked up and her mouth formed an ‘o’ when she saw what was happening, but Dolly didn’t have a chance to smile or wave or put a bright face on it.

  ‘Miss Smitham?’ said Henry Jenkins, and she had to struggle to meet his eyes. He spoke as one might to a truculent child, worse, a menial servant who’d forgotten her place, given herself over to elaborate fancies and dreams of a life far above her station. ‘Run along now, there’s a good girl,’ he said. ‘Look after Lady Gwendolyn and do try not to get yourself into any more trouble.’

  Seventeen

  University of Cambridge, 2011

  THE RAIN HAD CLEARED and a ripe moon broke silver through streaky clouds. Having already paid a visit to the Cambridge University Library, Laurel
was now sitting outside Clare College Chapel, waiting to be knocked over by someone on a bicycle. Not just any someone, she had a particular cyclist in mind. Evensong was almost over; she’d been listening from the bench beneath the cherry tree for the past half an hour, letting the great organ and the voices of the choir transport her. Any minute, though, it would all stop and a cluster of people would burst from the doors, claim their bikes from the thirty-odd jumble stacked in metal racks by the door, and whizz past her in different directions. One of them, Laurel hoped, would be Gerry; it was something they’d always shared, the two of them, their love of music—the sort of music that made one glimpse answers to questions they hadn’t known they were asking—and as soon as she’d arrived in Cambridge and seen signs outside the college advertising evensong, she’d known it was her best chance of finding her brother.

  Sure enough, a few minutes after Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb came to its breathtaking conclusion, as people started to emerge in pairs and small groups through the chapel doors, one of them walked out alone. A tall lanky figure whose arrival at the top of the stairs made Laurel smile because it was surely one of life’s most simple blessings to know someone so well you could pick them immediately from the other side of a dark courtyard. The figure climbed onto a bicycle and pushed off with one foot, wobbling a bit until he picked up pace.

  Laurel stepped out onto the road as he came close, waving and calling his name. He almost knocked her over, before stop-ping and blinking at her through the moonlit dark. The most wonderful smile broke across his face and Laurel wondered why she didn’t come to visit more often.

  ‘Lol,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I wanted to see you. I tried to call; I left messages.’

  Gerry was shaking his head. ‘The machine kept beeping, that little red light on the front wouldn’t stop bloody blinking at me. It was defective, I think—I had to pull it out of the wall.’

  The explanation made such perfect Gerry sense that no matter how infuriating it had been, not being able to contact him, no matter the way she’d worried he was bitter with her, Laurel couldn’t help but smile. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it gave me an excuse to come and visit anyway Have you eaten?’

  ‘Eaten?’

  ‘Food. Annoying habit, I know, but I try to do it a few times a day.’ He messed his tangle of dark hair as if trying to remember.

  ‘Come on,’ said Laurel, ‘my shout.’

  Gerry walked his bicycle beside her and they talked about music as they made their way to a small pizza restaurant built into a hole in the wall overlooking the Arts Theatre. The very place, Laurel noted, where she’d taken herself off as a teenager to see Pinter’s Birthday Party.

  It was dark inside, with red and white check cloths and tea lights flickering inside glass jars on the tables. The place was crowded with diners, but they were pointed to a free table at the back, right near the pizza oven. Laurel took off her coat, and a young man with long blond hair falling in an elaborate sweep across his eyes wiped down the surface and took their order for pizzas and wine. He was back in a matter of minutes with a carafe of Chianti and two tumblers.

  ‘So,’ said Laurel, pouring for each of them, ‘dare I ask what you’ve been working on?’

  ‘Just today I finished an article on the feeding habits of teen-age galaxies.’

  ‘Hungry are they?’

  ‘Very, it seems.’

  ‘And older than thirteen years, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Little. Around three to five billion years after the Big Bang.’

  Laurel watched as her brother went on, talking eagerly about the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile—‘It does what a microscope does for a biologist’—and the way faint blobs in the sky were actually distant galaxies, and that some—‘It’s incredible, Lol’—appeared to have no rotation of their gas, ‘none of the current theories predicts them’; and she nodded and reacted, though somewhat guiltily because she wasn’t really listening to him at all; she was thinking about the way, when Gerry was excited, his words tumbled into one another, as if his mouth was having trouble keeping up with his beautiful mind; the way he took breaths only when he absolutely had to; the way his hands opened expressively and his long fingers strained, but with precision, as if they balanced stars on their very tips. They were Daddy’s hands, Laurel realised as she watched him; Daddy’s cheekbones and gentle eyes behind his glasses. In fact, there was a lot of Stephen Nicolson in his only son. Gerry had inherited his laugh from their mother though.

  He’d stopped talking and was gulping now from his wine glass. For all the nervousness Laurel felt about this quest she was on, in particular the conversation she knew was still ahead of her, there was an uncomplicatedness about being with Gerry that made her yearn for something she couldn’t quite articulate. The echo of a memory of how things used to be between them, and she wanted to draw out the feeling a little longer before she spoiled it with her confession. She said, ‘And what’s next? What can possibly compete with the eating habits of teenage galaxies?’

  ‘I’m creating the Latest Map of Everything.’

  ‘Still setting yourself small achievable goals, I see?’

  He grinned. ‘Should be a breeze—it’s not like I’m including all of space, just the sky. Only 560 million stars, galaxies and other objects, and I’m done.’

  Laurel was contemplating that number when their pizzas arrived, and the whiff of garlic and basil reminded her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She ate with the tenacity of a teenage galaxy, quite sure no food anywhere had ever tasted so good as that pizza right then. Gerry asked after her work and, be-tween mouthfuls, Laurel told him about the documentary and the new version of Macbeth she was filming. ‘At least, I will be. I’ve taken a little time off.’

  Gerry held up a large hand. ‘Wait—time off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He tilted his head. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Why does everyone keep asking me that?’

  ‘Because you don’t take time off.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  Gerry lifted his eyebrows. ‘Are you making a joke? I’ve been told I miss them sometimes.’

  ‘No, I’m not making a joke.’

  ‘Then I have to inform you that all empirical evidence goes against your assertion.’

  ‘Empirical evidence?’ Laurel scoffed. ‘Please. You can hardly talk. When’s the last time you took time off?’

  ‘June 1985, Max Seerjay’s wedding in Bath.’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was any different. You and I are two of a kind, both wedded to our work: that’s how I know something’s wrong.’ He swiped his paper napkin across his lips and leaned back against the charcoal- coloured brick wall. ‘Anomalous time off, anomalous visit to see me—I can only deduce the two are related.’

  Laurel sighed.

  ‘Stalling exhalation. All the proof I need. Want to tell me what’s going on, Lol?’

  She folded her napkin into half and half again. It was now or never; all this time she’d been wishing Gerry were along with her for the ride—now was the time to buckle him in. She said, ‘Do you remember that time you came to stay with me in London? Right before you started here?’

  Gerry answered in the affirmative by quoting from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. ‘Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion.’

  Laurel smiled. ‘Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who. Love that film.’ She shifted a piece of olive from one side of her plate to the other, hedging, trying to decide which words were the right words. Impossible, because there were none, not really, best just to leap—‘You asked me something, that night on the roof; you asked me whether anything happened back when we were kids. Something violent.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Gerry gave a single, efficient nod.

  ‘Do you remember what I said?’

  ‘You told me there was nothing you could think of.’
>
  ‘Yes. I did. I did say that,’ she agreed softly. ‘But I lied to you, Gerry.’ She didn’t add that it had been for his own good or that she’d thought she was doing the right thing. Both were true, but what did it matter now? She didn’t want to excuse herself, certainly not, she’d lied and she deserved whatever recriminations came her way—not only for withholding the truth from Gerry, but for what she’d told those policemen. ‘I lied.’

  ‘I know you did,’ he said, finishing off his crust.

  Laurel blinked. ‘You do? How?’

  ‘You wouldn’t look at me when I asked, and you called me “G” when you answered. You never do that unless you’re obfuscating.’ He gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘Nation’s greatest ac-tress, maybe; still no match for my powers of deduction.’

  ‘And people say you don’t pay attention.’

  ‘They do? I had no idea. I’m crushed.’ They smiled at one another, but carefully, and then Gerry said, ‘Do you want to tell me now, Lol?’

  ‘I do. Very much. Do you still want to know?’

  ‘I do. Very much.’

  She nodded. ‘All right, then. All right.’ And so she started at the beginning: a girl in a tree house on a summer’s day in 1961, a stranger on the driveway, a tiny boy in his mother’s arms. She took special care to describe how well the mother loved that boy, the way she paused on the doorstep just to smile at him and breathe in his milky smell and tickle his fat, waxy feet; but then the man in the hat stepped onstage and the spotlight swung towards him. His furtive tread as he passed through the gate at the side of the house, the way the dog knew before anyone else that darkness this way came; the way his bark alerted their mother, who turned and saw the man and, as the girl in the tree house watched, became suddenly frightened.

  As she reached the part of the story involving knives and blood and a little boy crying in the gravel, Laurel thought, as she listened to her own voice as if it were coming from outside her body and watched her grown-man brother’s face across the table, how odd it was to be having this very private conversation in public; and yet, how necessary the noise and hum of this place was to her ability to tell it. Here, in a pizza restaurant in Cambridge, with students laughing and joking all around them, young and clever scholars with their whole lives still ahead of them, Laurel felt enclosed and safe, more comfortable somehow, and able to utter words she didn’t think she’d have managed in the silence of his college lodging, words like: ‘She killed him, Gerry. The man— Henry Jenkins was his name—he died there that day on our front path.’