Something Secret

  For Robert and Eliza, with love

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter One

  I stared at the diary in Marla’s hand.

  ‘Did you read it?’ I asked nervously

  Maria gave me her most severe look. ‘Laura, I may be your mother’s best friend, but I don’t think that gives me the right to read her private diary, do you?’ She stressed the word private as if she thought I might not have associated it with Mum’s diary before.

  I didn’t answer. She’d caught me with the diary and she knew I’d read it. Now she was working really hard at trying to make me feel guilty.

  ‘I realize your mother left for the airport a whole ten minutes ago, but, believe it or not, I haven’t yet seized the opportunity to search through all her personal things. I suppose by your standards that’s a bit slow, is it? I mean, there might be some more diaries, or some interesting letters we could read!’

  I squirmed, despite not really feeling guilty. Marla can be very sarcastic when she’s cross. This time though, she had no right to be cross. Not with me anyway.

  ‘It’s all Mum’s fault,’ I said defensively. ‘If she’d told me the truth in the first place I wouldn’t have had to go and read her stupid diary. I wish I hadn’t read it anyway. It’s . . . It’s . . . HORRIBLE!’

  I heard myself make an awful choking sound as I burst into tears.

  ‘Laura, what are you talking about?’

  I could hardly speak. I started taking short, sharp breaths. ‘You know M-m-mum’s sister, Kathleen?’ I stammered between sobs.

  ‘The sister who died in an accident when they were children?’

  I nodded. ‘Except that it wasn’t really an accident!’ I gasped. ‘What really happened . . . What really happened was . . . Mum killed her!’

  As soon as I’d said it there was a complete silence, as if Kathleen had dropped dead in front of us, right now, in this very room, instead of in some other room more than twenty years ago.

  Marla sat quite still on the settee with an expression of complete disbelief on her face. ‘Laura . . .’ She was shaking her head in utter dismay. ‘Laura, I can’t believe . . .’ Her voice dried up.

  We just stared at each other dumbly.

  It was very unusual for Marla to be speechless, even if she couldn’t believe something. It didn’t last long.

  ‘Laura, I can’t believe that you can believe . . .’ She pulled some tissues out of her pocket and threw them at me. ‘I think you’d better stop crying and tell me the whole story.’

  I gulped. I was feeling pretty speechless myself. I mean, finding out your mother is a murderer isn’t even the sort of thing you always imagine happening to someone else but not to you. It’s the sort of thing you can’t ever imagine happening to anyone!

  ‘Just start at the beginning,’ Marla said firmly. ‘Come on. You’ll feel better. It’s no good trying to bottle things up.’

  I sniffed. I have to admit I’ve never been a great one for bottling things up . . .

  Chapter Two

  Mum never used to hide things from me. In fact, she always used to go on about how adults should try to be as open and honest as possible with children, rather than keeping them in the dark about things.

  ‘It’s far better for children to be told the truth, however bad, than to be left on their own imagining something even worse,’ she used to say.

  That’s why, when I realized she was hiding something about Kathleen, I knew it had to be something far worse than she thought I could possibly imagine – and she knows I’m capable of imagining some pretty horrendous things.

  I think it first crossed my mind that something was wrong round about the time when my best friend, Janice, started trying to persuade me to go to Guides with her. When Mum wasn’t very keen on the idea, I didn’t realize at first that it had anything to do with Kathleen. I just thought it was because Mum didn’t think I’d like Guides. From the way Mum described it, I didn’t think I’d like Guides much either. Then Janice told me there was going to be a Guide barbecue in one of the parks, with a huge bonfire and an endless supply of sausages, and I had to admit that it did sound like a lot of fun. I told her I’d think about it.

  Like I said, it wasn’t as though I particularly wanted to be a Girl Guide before that. In fact, I used to tease Janice about it.

  ‘What’s fun about standing to attention in little lines while the Brown Owl or whatever she’s called checks to see if you’ve got dirty fingernails? It sounds even worse than school,’ I protested, twisting Janice’s long red hair into a French plait so that she could wear it like that to Guides. I’d give anything to have hair like Janice’s. My hair is blonde, which I quite like, but it’s so frizzy it’s impossible to make it stay in any sort of style at all.

  ‘We don’t have a Brown Owl – that’s in the Brownies,’Janice said impatiently. ‘Anyway, it’s not like that. You don’t know anything about it. My mum says it’s really ignorant to sneer at something that you haven’t even tried.’

  ‘And my mum says that Brownies and Guides are guaranteed to stamp out individuality and self-expression and that they’re religiously and culturally biased,’ I retorted. My mother’s quotes are always better than her mother’s. They’re just more difficult to remember.

  No, I certainly wasn’t bothered about missing out on Guides in the beginning. I’m not a lover of uniforms, and having to wear one to school is bad enough. I like to wear clothes that make me look cool, and there’s nothing cool about a cream school blouse tucked into a navy pleated skirt, and an orange and blue striped tie that has to be worn at all times or else. I don’t know who thought up the colour scheme for our school uniform, but it certainly wasn’t anyone with any taste, and as far as I could see, the uniform they made you wear at Guides was ten times worse.

  The other thing that put me off was that, according to my mother, Guides was chock-a-block with rules. ‘All serving no other purpose but to make sure everybody is exactly the same as everybody else,’ she said briskly, removing two rashers of bacon off the grill to feed to Rory, our cat, who was purring manipulatively at her ankles.

  I crouched down to stroke him, gazing up at Mum, still trying to get used to how different she looked with her long messy hair transformed into a shiny black bob. It was Mum’s friend Marla who had practically dragged Mum to the hairdresser’s, and it was Marla who’d seemed most pleased immediately afterwards. ‘What did I tell you? You look like a new woman! Doesn’t she, Laura?’

  I had nodded, awed by the change. Mum didn’t look like Mum any more. I told her she looked like a model on one of those adverts for shampoo. ‘It’s not fair! Everybody’s got nicer hair than me!’

  Mum and Marla had both laughed. (Mum had been laughing a lot lately – almost as much as she used to when I was little and Dad still lived with us.)

  She was laughing now as I solemnly asked Rory if he wanted eggs with his bacon. ‘It is quite obvious that you are not Girl Guide material, Laura.’ She ran her hand through her hair – she’d been doing that every five minutes since yesterday – and smiled at me approvingly.

  ‘I suppose not,’ I agreed, watching the cat tuck in to his once-a-week treat. ‘Still –’ I stood up – ‘this barbecue sounds like really good fun. And they’re going orienteering in the summer for a whole weekend and
you get to sleep outside in tents.’ I giggled. ‘D’you think they’ll have to rub sticks together to make a fire or d’you think they’ll take matches?’

  My mother said nothing. But the next day she was a bit late coming home from the hospital where she works, and it turned out she’d stopped off at our local community centre to enrol me in Scottish Highland Dancing classes. And it also turned out that these classes just happened to be on the same night as Janice’s Guides.

  It didn’t bother me too much at the time. Mum is Scottish and although we live in England now she always goes overboard when it comes to celebrating Hogmanay and Burns Night, and if she gets really homesick she’ll invite some friends round for dinner to eat haggis. (Haggis is really nice by the way, not at all like you’d imagine, considering what it’s made out of.) So it didn’t surprise me in the least when she seized on these classes as the best thing ever to arrive in Birmingham and insisted that I go, regardless of the fact that her own parents had forced her to go to Highland Dance lessons when she was my age and she’d always told me she absolutely hated it.

  ‘Of course I didn’t really hate it! I just thought I did at the time,’ she said when I challenged her. ‘Anyway I’d like to learn all the dances again. If you go you can come home and teach me.’

  That was what made me agree to try it out – the idea of getting Mum to dance with me afterwards. And it turned out that I really enjoyed it. The class itself was good fun when you got to know the other people there, and I absolutely loved practising the Highland Fling with Mum when I came home. The two of us even gave a performance at Mum’s next haggis party – Mum after much persuasion and several glasses of wine – during which all her friends nearly wet themselves laughing. All in all we were having the best time we’d had since Dad had left three years ago, and it certainly didn’t bother me much that I was missing out on Guides.

  Then one day everything changed.

  ‘This is Hamish,’ Mum said, stepping in through the front door and catching me still up two hours after our babysitter was meant to have sent me to bed. Cheryl, our babysitter, was hovering nervously behind me. She used to spend all evening trying to get me to go to bed and she was absolutely hopeless at it. She’s the daughter of one of Mum’s friends, so Mum finds it really difficult to get annoyed with her. I told Cheryl that Mum never gets annoyed because she’s a psychiatrist and psychiatrists don’t think sleep is very important. That was the biggest lie I’ve ever told, but well worth it. Now Cheryl doesn’t hassle me much at all, unless she’s got her boyfriend with her and wants to get rid of me for that reason.

  ‘Hamish?’ I queried loudly, half-expecting some little stray dog to follow her into the house, because Hamish sounded to me like the sort of name you’d give to a dog rather than a person.

  ‘Hamish Fraser,’ he said, stepping into the hall behind my mother. My heart sank. He had a Scottish accent. Mum’s an absolute sucker for Scottish accents.

  I took hold of the hand he was offering and shook it once. He wasn’t as old as my dad and he wasn’t going bald at the front like my dad either. He looked about the same age as Mum. (Mum is thirty-five this year and she says that from now on she is going to stay the same age for two years instead of one – that way it’s going to take her another ten years to reach forty.)

  ‘Laura, why aren’t you in bed?’ She was taking off her coat, her new red coat I noticed, the one she had spent three weeks debating whether or not to buy because it was so expensive and she’d never had anything that red before.

  I turned and looked pointedly at Cheryl, which was a bit mean of me, but I figured she was getting paid for it.

  ‘She was just going to bed, Doctor Rorison. I’m sorry We lost track of the time.’

  ‘Call me Sylvie,’ my mother said as she always does when Cheryl gets flustered. ‘Don’t worry. It’s all right. It’s just that she’s got school tomorrow. Now, how are you getting home? Have you got the car?’ She turned to Hamish Fraser, who was taking his coat off too, despite the fact that nobody had invited him to. ‘Cheryl passed her driving test last month, first time. I think that’s amazing. It took me four goes and even then I’m positive they only let me pass because I was wearing the shortest skirt I could find.’

  ‘I wonder if that technique would have helped me,’ Hamish replied.

  My mother laughed.

  That annoyed me. It had been her joke, not his. He had only come in at the tail end of it. Besides, she seemed to have completely forgotten about me sitting on the bottom stair in my pyjamas losing more and more sleep by the minute.

  ‘I haven’t got the car tonight,’ Cheryl interrupted shyly. ‘Mum and Dad are using it. I could just walk home. It’s not that far.’

  ‘I could give you a lift if you like.’

  Mum and Cheryl both stared at Hamish.

  Cheryl was about to speak when Mum said in a rush, ‘It’s all right. I’ll do it. It won’t take a minute. If you don’t mind staying here with Laura, Hamish.’

  That’s when I made my move. I jumped up and thundered upstairs making more noise than ten stampeding elephants. How dare she suggest that! How dare she leave me on my own with him even if it was only for a minute! She was the one who was always going on at me not to go with strangers and here she was inviting one right into our house. He could be a murderer or a child-abuser or anything. I slammed my bedroom door. It would serve her right if I got straight on the phone to Child-Line.

  I climbed into bed and lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds from downstairs. I heard the front door shut and then I heard some voices in the hall and then a bit later on I heard a car outside and the front door shutting again. Then everything went quiet. I must be in the house alone with him. I rolled on to my tummy because I always sleep better that way, and tried not to listen out too hard for noises. Mum would be back soon. Hamish wasn’t going to come upstairs. Tomorrow I’d tell Mum I didn’t want her to leave me on my own with him again and she’d respect that. She always took me seriously about things like that, in fact she’d probably start apologizing and telling me how guilty she felt. Quite right too.

  The stairs creaked. I froze. Then I heard footsteps on the landing and Mum’s voice softly calling my name. So she hadn’t gone out after all.

  I sat up in bed just as the door opened and Mum came into my room.

  ‘I’ve sent Cheryl home in a taxi,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t thinking before. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I thought you’d gone out and left me with him!’

  ‘I’ve known him at work for a long time now, darling. He’s one of the other doctors there. I would never leave you with a complete stranger.’

  ‘He’s a stranger to me!’

  ‘I know. And we didn’t mean you to get upset.’ She came and gave me a hug and let me cling to her until I felt like letting go. Then she rearranged my duvet so that it covered me instead of being half off the bed. ‘See you in the morning.’

  I felt better, but not better enough to go straight off to sleep. I had this achy feeling inside me, like I really wanted something but I didn’t know what it was. I stuck my thumb in my mouth – something I haven’t done since I was about three – and shut my eyes.

  Chapter Three

  Hamish had been taking Mum out pretty regularly for several weeks and I felt like I was spending more time with Cheryl than I was with Mum.

  I didn’t mind too much at first. Cheryl showed me how to pluck my eyebrows (which is really painful) and how to do a French manicure (which takes absolutely ages, so if your babysitter ever offers to do it for you take my advice and turn her down). I really liked it when Cheryl brought her boyfriend with her. I only had to ask him one maths question and he’d end up doing all my maths homework for me, and he let me play leapfrog with him (which I was practising for gymnastics at school).

  ‘You’re going to break something!’ Cheryl yelled as she deftly stopped Mum’s favourite table lamp from toppling off the edge of the table I’d just knocked with my
foot. ‘Get upstairs and go to bed! Now!’

  ‘OK, keep your hair on!’ I giggled. ‘You’ve still got at least an hour of snogging time before Mum gets back.’

  Up in my room I switched on my CD of Scottish Dance music. I knew that even if Cheryl heard me practising – and I thump around a fair bit when I’m doing my Scottish Sword Dance – she wouldn’t come and investigate. I used to think she must be hard of hearing, but I’ve come to the conclusion that she just pretends not to hear so that she doesn’t have to bother doing anything about it. I can’t say I blame her. If I was her I’d consider it a big enough achievement just to get me up the stairs and out of sight before Mum gets back. Anyway, tonight I needed to practise my dancing because I hadn’t done any all week and my class was tomorrow. I found I wasn’t practising as much now that Mum was always too busy to practise with me. It wasn’t so much fun on my own.

  I watched myself in my wardrobe mirror as I did the steps around the two wooden swords crisscrossed on the floor. Mum had made the swords herself out of some old bits of wood. She kept saying she was going to sandpaper the rough edges, but so far she hadn’t had time – no prizes for guessing why.

  I looked pretty silly jumping up and down in my green and red stripy pyjamas with my face all pink and my hair all messed up because I hadn’t tied it back like you have to at class. I tried to imagine what I’d look like in a kilt and one of those white blouses with a frill down the front like you see people wearing at Highland Dancing competitions. I pulled a face at myself in the mirror and giggled.

  In the mirror I spotted movement that wasn’t me. I instantly stopped dancing and turned round. My bedroom door had been flung open.

  ‘Laura!’ It was Mum. She walked into my room and turned off my CD player. ‘What do you think you’re doing? It’s way past your bedtime.’ She was wearing her red coat and a cream silk scarf that Hamish had bought for her. She smelt strongly of perfume. I decided I didn’t like the way she looked or the way she smelt.