A Daughter's Secret
Read A Daughter's Secret Online
Authors: Eleanor Moran
a
daughter’s
secret
Eleanor Moran is an executive producer for TV Drama. She’s worked on shows ranging from
Rome
to
Being Human
, as well as being behind a number of biopics such as
Enid and Shirley
during a long career at the BBC. Eleanor grew up in North London, where she still lives. This is her fifth novel.
Also by Eleanor Moran
Stick or Twist
Mr Almost Right
Breakfast in Bed
The Last Time I Saw You
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd.
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2015 by Eleanor Moran
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Eleanor Moran to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1
st
Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London
WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue copy for this book is available from the British Library.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-4169-0
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-4170-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-5406-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To my Aunt Claudia, with love
Contents
24 December 1984 (six years old)
January 1990 (eleven years old)
March 1994 (fifteen years old)
November 1994 (sixteen years old)
December 1994 (sixteen years old)
February 1995 (sixteen years old)
March 1995 (sixteen years old)
March 1995 (sixteen years old)
March 1995 (sixteen years old)
December 1995 (seventeen years old)
Shock cleaves me. As my eyes strip their way across the glowing screen of my phone, each of my senses separates out, develops a mind of its own. The stench of hospital-strength disinfectant almost overpowers me, my free hand shooting out to grasp hold of the frame of his hospital bed, clammy against the cold metal. I dip my head down: I can’t afford to let him see this.
He’s speaking now, but the blood is pounding too hard in my ears for the words to reach me. The beep, beep, beep of the ward’s machines sounds like a symphony – electronic caretakers, the difference between life and death.
I force myself to look up, blindsided yet again by the sight of him. The livid bruises, his right arm suspended and bandaged. I make my voice bright and sterile. In this moment, truth is not to be trusted.
‘Nothing. It’s nothing for you to worry about.’ I give him a flash of a smile. ‘Just my mum.’
I didn’t lie to you, Mia. It’s the truth!! I need your help. Gemma xxx
Delete. Delete, delete, delete.
MARCH
(two months earlier)
Chapter One
It’s chrome, the oven. Chrome so gleaming and polished I can see every last crack and crevice of my face. I peer critically at my nose, the tiny train track of a scar that skitters down the centre a lifelong testament to my dubious skills at riding a two-wheeler. Just for a second, I wonder how I could erase it.
Marcus looms up behind me, filling the frame. I spin on my heels, caught out. This is the fourteenth flat: my nose is really not the point. Everything about Marcus is big; his broad shoulders, his expanse of chest bursting out of his well-cut suit like a superhero with an office job. He’s fifty-four, nearly twenty years my senior, and he looks like he’s juiced every one of them, but somehow it adds to his appeal. He doesn’t hide his greys under a sneaky rinse of Just For Men, he lets them add to his handsome authority. He wears his narrow-framed black glasses, they don’t wear him. For Marcus, life does exactly what you tell it to do.
‘Sorry, darling, I’m an unpunctual dick,’ he says, powering across the acreage of dark-wood floor and kissing me extravagantly, oblivious to Lucy, the timid blonde estate agent who is trapped in the doorway. I’m convinced it’s her first week, the way she keeps anxiously scrabbling through her too-new handbag for her phone like it’s an animal that she needs to keep fed. I can’t help liking her for her awkwardness: she lacks the bullet-proof determination of her brethren, all of whom behave as if renting us a home would be up there with single-handedly brokering world peace. Her skirt and jacket pretend to match, but they don’t, not really, they’re different shades of black, and she’s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt underneath, as if a crisp white shirt would be too galling a surrender. It’s March. I bet she graduated last summer, started out dreaming of a miraculous opening on a broadsheet or slaving away at a TV company for just her tube fares and a foot on the ladder. She thought she was too good for this job, but now she’s starting to wonder if it’s the other way round. I spy on her over Marcus’s shoulder, her teeth worrying away at her cuticles.
‘Finally!’ I say, rolling my eyes at her, conspiratorial, cringing inwardly the second I’ve done it. Spoilt bitch, she’s probably thinking. I’m off duty. I need to focus.
‘So could you be mistress of all of this?’ says Marcus, oblivious, swinging an expansive arm into the flat’s cavernous kitchen. It’s like it’s his already, like it’s him deigning to give Lucy a look-around – I could love him or hate him for it.
I force myself to engage, feel how the space feels, stop obsessing about what it is I’ve got to do today. It makes me light-headed. You could pretty much fit my whole flat into this kitchen. There’s a tea towel hanging over the oven handle: I neaten the edges, move it until it sits, perfectly flush, in the centre.
‘Let’s do the tour,’ I say, slipping my hand into Marcus’s large paw, and deftly leading him away from the question.
I’m late now. I’m half running once I get off the tube, trying to avoid barrelling into the milling crowds of tourists, their worldly goods humped on their backs like they’re camera-wielding tortoises. Every time I reach this door, tucked away behind Baker Street, I have to metaphorically pinch myself. It’s navy blue, the paint worn, with a round brass bell to the left, an instant target for your finger. It’s a tall, thin Victorian building, a maiden aunt who’s fallen on hard times.
Brendan – our part-time receptionist, part-time Hollywood star in training – is bustling around the waiting room, putting out flowers and dispatching hastily abandoned coffee mugs. He’s handsome, Brendan, properly handsome, twenty-six years old, with those kind of well-turned, angular features that look great on camera and make mere mortals like me feel utterly pudding-faced. He’s dark-haired and olive-skinned, with soulful green-grey eyes that can make you feel like you’re the only thing that matters in the entire world, when all he’s asking is if you want a Very Berry smoothie from Pret. Despite all that, I don’t find him in the slightest bit attractive. For me he’s like an incredibly sweet and efficient work of art.
‘Morning, gorgeous,’ he says, jiggling a mug at me quizzically. ‘Judith should still have twenty minutes, if you go straight through. Pink tea?’
I appreciate the compliment, even if I don’t entirely deserve it. I’m not gorgeous per se, but I do work hard with the raw materials. My face is a bit too much of an upside-down triangle, which I offset with my masterful use of bronzer, and my long dark hair lacks the luscious bounce of a Pantene advert. I blow-dry it painstakingly, slather it with unguents, and I know how to dress in such a way that looks deceptively expensive (trust me, therapists only earn the big bucks in Beverly Hills).
‘Perfect. Did you hear . . .?’ I tail off, seeing his crestfallen smile. How does he stand it – all those baby-faced directors demanding he stand on one leg and mime being a tree, then sniffily telling him he ‘didn’t quite sell spring’ to them. ‘They’re fools, Brendan!’ I say, hurrying towards Judith’s office. ‘Nothing but fools!’
Judith’s my supervisor, which basically makes her Yoda to my Luke. All therapists have one – a senior figure who monitors the progress of our cases, and makes sure we’re following the ethical guidelines. I’ve known Judith since I was in training, and she’d come to give the occasional awe-inspiring lecture. I was thrilled enough when she agreed to supervise me , but when one of her therapists left London last year, and she asked me to join the practice, I was ecstatic. For me, it was like that call from Spielberg that Brendan’s waiting for, and I’ve been doing everything I can to justify her faith in me. The fact she’s assigned me today’s case, when she could have assumed it demanded her level of seniority, is making me feel just a tiny bit triumphant.
Judith’s got a large corner office, graced with a sweeping view over Regent’s Park. No herbal tea for her: she’s sipping from a tiny china cup of espresso that I know will be strong enough to stand a spoon up in. She’s wearing a red-velvet shirt over some cropped green trousers: she should look as though she’s auditioning for Dick Whittington, but instead she seems vivid and unapologetic. She’s late fifties at least with the wrinkles to prove it, but she still oozes sex and vivacity. I think about that famous poem, the one about growing old disgracefully wearing purple and munching sausages, and hope I’ll have the balls for it.
‘Mia,’ she says, bright eyes taking me in. ‘What’s the panic?’
I throw myself down on her sofa, pulling Gemma Vine’s notes out of my bag at the same time. I don’t just see the ‘worried well’ – the slightly anxious but essentially sorted people who use therapy to give them the sense of calm they need to survive an increasingly chaotic world. I also specialize in treating children, particularly those who’ve experienced serious trauma. You might find me kneeling in my sand tray, working with a six-year-old who hasn’t got the words to express his grief over his mummy dying, but can build it for you once you hand him a plastic spade.
‘I’ve been going back over Gemma’s notes . . .’
Gemma’s too old for the sand tray. She’s thirteen, the last person to see her dad before he disappeared off the face of the earth three weeks ago. Her father owns a large accountancy firm, whose clients include a tycoon named Stephen Wright. Wright claims his multimillion-pound business is whiter than white, but the police are convinced that waste disposal and property are cover for a whole host of nefarious activities, from money laundering to people trafficking to large-scale fraud. His assets have been frozen, leaving thousands of investors – who thought they’d poured their savings into a legitimate business – desperate and angry. Meanwhile his trial, which was due to start this Monday, is on hold for seven weeks whilst the police search for their key witness: Gemma’s dad.