The Secret Keeper (32 page)

Kitty lifted her bony shoulders, but there was something devious about the gesture. ‘Dolly really never told you anything about it, did she?’ Her expression was one of surprise disguising deeper pleasure. She sighed theatrically. ‘Well, I suppose she always was a one for keeping secrets. Some mothers and daughters just aren’t as close as others, are they?’

Susanna beamed; her mother took another bite of scone.

Laurel had a strong feeling Kitty was holding something back. Being one of four sisters she also had a pretty good idea how to winkle it out. There weren’t many confidences that indifference couldn’t shake lose. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time, Mrs Barker,’ she said, folding her napkin and realigning her teaspoon. ‘Thank you for talking to me. It’s been most helpful. Let me know, won’t you, if you think of anything else that might explain what happened between Vivien and my mother.’ Laurel stood up and pushed in her chair. Started towards the door.

‘You know,’ said Kitty, who’d been shadowing Laurel’s every step, ‘there is something else, now I think of it.’

It wasn’t easy, but Laurel managed not to smile. ‘Oh?’ she said. ‘What’s that?’

Kitty sucked in her lips as if she were about to speak against her will and she wasn’t quite sure how it had come to this. She barked at Susanna to top up the pot and when her daughter was gone, ushered Laurel back to the table. ‘I told you about Dolly’s foul mood,’ she began; ‘awful, it was. Terribly dark. And it lasted all the rest of our time together at Campden Grove. Then one night, a few weeks after my wedding, my husband had gone back on duty and I arranged to go out dancing with a few of the girls from work. I almost didn’t ask Doll—she’d been such a bore of late—but I did, and quite unexpectedly she agreed to come.

‘She arrived at the dance club, dressed to the nines and laughing like she’d given herself a head start with the whisky. Brought a friend with her, too, a girl she’d grown up with in Coventry—Caitlin something- or-other, very hoity-toity at first but she soon warmed up—no choice with Doll around. She was one of those people—spirited—made you want to have a good time just because she was.’

Laurel smiled faintly, recognising her mother in the description.

‘She was certainly having a good time that night, let me tell you. She had a wild look in her eyes, laughing and dancing and saying the oddest things. When it was time to go, she grabbed me by the arms and told me she had a plan.’

‘A plan?’ Laurel felt each hair on the back of her neck stand up straight.

‘She said Vivien Jenkins had done something terrible to her, but she had a plan that was going to set everything to rights. She and Jimmy were going to live happily ever after; everyone was going to get what they deserved.’

It was just as her mother had told Laurel in the hospital. But things hadn’t gone to plan, and she hadn’t married Jimmy. In-stead, Henry Jenkins had been made angry. Laurel’s heart was racing but she did her best to seem unmoved. ‘Did she tell you what her plan was?’

‘She didn’t and, to be honest, I didn’t put much stock on it at the time. Things were different in the war. People were always saying and doing things they wouldn’t have otherwise. You never knew what the next day might bring, whether you’d even wake up to see it—that sort of uncertainty has a way of loosening a person’s scruples. And your mother always did have an eye for the dramatic. I figured all her talk of revenge was just that—talk. It wasn’t until afterwards that I wondered if she’d not been more serious than I realised.’

Laurel edged a little closer. ‘Afterwards?’

‘She disappeared into thin air. That night in the dance club was the last I saw of her. Never heard from her again, not so much as a word, and she didn’t return any of my letters. I thought she might’ve been got by a bomb, until I had a visit from an older woman, just after the war ended. Very secretive it was—she was asking after Doll, wanting to know if there was anything “unmentionable” she might have done in her past.’

Laurel had a flashback to the dark cool of Grandma Nicolson’s spare bedroom. ‘A tall woman with a handsome face and an expression like she’d been sucking lemons?’

Kitty cocked a single brow. ‘Friend of yours?’

‘My grandmother. Paternal.’

‘Ah,’ Kitty smiled toothily, ‘the mother-in-law. She didn’t mention that, only told me she was your mother’s employer and was performing a little background check. They still got married though, your mum and dad—he must’ve been terribly keen on her.’

‘Why? What did you tell my grandmother?’

Kitty blinked, all innocence. ‘I was hurt. I’d worried about her when I didn’t hear, and then to learn she’d just up and left and never bothered to say a word.’ She waved her hand vaguely. ‘I might’ve embellished just a little, given Dolly a few more boy-friends than she’d really had, a taste for liquor … nothing too serious.’

But quite sufficient to explain Grandma Nicolson’s sour grapes: boyfriends were bad enough, but a taste for liquor? That was akin to sacrilege.

Laurel was anxious suddenly to be outside the cluttered cottage, alone with her thoughts. She thanked Kitty Barker and started to gather her things.

‘Remember me to your mother, won’t you?’ Kitty said, ac-company- ing Laurel to the door.

Laurel assured her that she would and pulled on her coat.

‘I never did get to say a proper goodbye. I thought about her, over the years, especially when I knew she’d survived the war. There wasn’t much I could’ve done though—Dolly was very determined—one of those girls who always got exactly what she wanted. If she wanted to disappear, there’s no one who’d have been able to stop or find her.’

Except Henry Jenkins, thought Laurel, as Kitty Barker’s door closed behind her. He’d been able to find her, and Dorothy had made sure that whatever reason he had for seeking her out, had died with him that day at Greenacres.

Laurel sat in the green Mini at the front of Kitty Barker’s cottage, engine running. The air vents were on full and she willed the heating to hurry up and make things warm. It was almost five and darkness had begun to hover outside the window. The spires of Cambridge University were visible glints against the dusky sky, but Laurel didn’t see them. She was far too busy imagining her mother—the young woman in that photograph she’d found—standing in a dance club, grabbing Kitty Barker by the wrists and telling her in a wild voice that she had a plan, that she was going to set things right. ‘What was it, Dorothy?’ Laurel mumbled to herself, reaching now for her cigarettes, ‘What on earth did you do?’

Her mobile phone rang while she was still digging in her handbag and she fished it out, hope crystallising in an instant that it would be Gerry, returning her calls at last.

‘Laurel? It’s Rose. Phil has his toastmasters meeting tonight, and I was thinking you might like some company. I could bring over dinner, perhaps a DVD?’

Laurel exhaled, stalling while she tried to invent an excuse. She felt disloyal about lying, especially to Rose, but this quest of hers wasn’t something she was able yet to share, not with her sisters anyway; to sit through a rom-com making light chit-chat while her mind raced ahead trying to unknot her mother’s past would have been agony. A pity—there was a part of her that would have loved to hand the whole tangled mess over to someone else and say, ‘See what you can make of this’; but the burden was hers, and although she had every intention of telling her sisters eventually, she refused to do so—indeed she couldn’t do so—until she damn well knew the whole of what there was to tell.

She tousled her hair, still racking her brain for a reason to turn down dinner (Lord but she was hungry now she thought about it) and as she did, she noticed the proud towers of the university, majestic in the gloomy distance.

‘Lol? Are you there?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

‘The line’s not very good. I said would you like me to make you dinner?’

‘No,’ Laurel said quickly, glimpsing suddenly the hazy outline of a rather good idea. ‘Thanks, Rosie, but no. How about I give you a call tomorrow.’

‘Everything all right? Where are you?’

The line was becoming cracklier and Laurel had to shout. ‘Every thing’s fine. It’s just—’. She grinned as her plan became clear and sharp. ‘I’m not going to be home tonight, not until rather late.’

‘Oh?’

‘Afraid not. I’ve just remembered, Rose, there’s someone else I’ve got to go and see.’

Sixteen

London, late January 1941

THE LAST FORTNIGHT had been awful and Dolly couldn’t help blaming Jimmy. If only he hadn’t spoiled things by pushing like that. She’d been all set to talk with him about the two of them keeping a lower profile, and then he’d gone and asked her to marry him and a rift had opened up inside her that refused now to close. On one side was Dolly Smitham, the naive young girl from Coventry who thought marrying her sweetheart and living forever in a farmhouse by a stream was the answer to her life’s desires; on the other was Dorothy Smitham, friend to the glamorous wealthy Vivien Jenkins, heir and companion to Lady Gwendolyn Caldicott—a grown woman who didn’t need to in-vent elaborate fantasy futures for herself because she knew exactly the tremendous adventures that lay ahead.

Which isn’t to say Dolly hadn’t felt sick walking out of the restaurant like that, all the waiters watching and wondering; she’d had a pressing sense though that if she stayed any longer she might have said yes, just to get him up off the floor. And where would that have left her? Sharing that little flat with Jimmy and Mr Metcalfe, and worrying all the time about where their next jug of milk would come from? Where would it have left her with Lady Gwendolyn? The old woman had shown Dolly such enormous kindness, she’d come to think of her practically as family; how would she have coped being deserted a second time? No, Dolly had done the right thing; Dr Rufus had agreed when she started crying about it over lunch; she was young, he’d said, she had her whole life ahead of her, there was no sense in tying herself down now.

Kitty (of course) had noticed something was askew and responded by parading her own RAF catch across the threshold of number 7 at every opportunity, flashing her mean little engagement ring and asking pointed questions about Jimmy’s whereabouts. Canteen duty was almost a relief by comparison. At least it would’ve been if Vivien ever showed up to lift her spirits. It had been so long Dolly had almost forgotten what she looked like. They’d glimpsed one another only once since the night Jimmy came in unannounced. Vivien had been delivering a box of donated clothing and Dolly could’ve sworn she’d smiled at her from across the room. Dolly had started making her way over to say hello when Mrs Waddingham ordered her back to the kitchen under pain of death. Witch. It was almost worth signing up at the Labour Exchange never to have to see the woman again. Fat chance of that, though. Dolly had received a letter from the Ministry of Labour, but when Lady Gwendolyn caught wind of it she promptly ensured that officials at the highest level understood Dolly was indispensable in her current position and couldn’t possibly be spared to make smoke- bombs.

Now, a pair of firemen with black soot all over their faces arrived at the counter and Dolly dialled up a smile, putting a dimple in each cheek as she ladled soup into two bowls. ‘Busy night, boys?’ she asked.

‘Bloody ice in the hoses,’ the shorter man replied. ‘You should see it out there. We’re fighting flames in one house, and there’s icicles hanging from the one next door where the water’s struck it.’

‘How dreadful,’ Dolly said, and the men agreed, before dragging themselves over to collapse at a trestle table, leaving her alone once more in the kitchen.

She leaned her elbow on the countertop and rested her chin in her hand. No doubt Vivien was busy these days with that doctor of hers. Dolly had felt a little disillusioned when Jimmy first told her—she’d have preferred to hear about the liaison directly from Vivien—but she understood the need for secrecy. Henry Jenkins wasn’t the type to appreciate his wife playing the field: you could tell that just by looking at him. If someone were to overhear Vivien’s confidence, or see something suspicious and report back to her husband, all hell would break loose. Little wonder she’d been so insistent that Jimmy not repeat to a soul what she’d told him.

‘Mrs Jenkins? Yoo-hoo, Mrs Jenkins.’

Dolly looked up smartly. Had Vivien arrived when she wasn’t watching?

‘Oh, Miss Smitham—’ the voice lost some of its sunniness—‘it’s only you.’

Neat-as-a-pin Maud Hoskins was standing at the counter, a cameo cinching her blouse together at the top, tight as a rec-tor’s collar. Vivien was nowhere to be seen and Dolly’s heart sank. ‘Only me, Mrs Hoskins.’ ‘Yes—’ the old woman sniffed—‘so it is.’ She glanced about her like a flustered hen, clacking her beak and saying, ‘Dear, dear me, I don’t suppose you’ve seen her—Mrs Jenkins, that is?’