The Secrets We Share

by Emma Hannigan

  ‘I’ll sleep here with you,’ Amber insisted. ‘That way we won’t miss your flight.’ What she didn’t voice was that she wanted to ensure her daughter didn’t run away. All she had to do was get her on the flight to Ireland and she was certain things would improve.

  As she put her arm around Nathalie, she felt as if her heart would break. How had her sunny-natured girl turned into such a resentful and bitter little terrier in such a short space of time? Not for the first time, Amber wondered why Mackenzie had had to die.

  There were too many things broken right now. She couldn’t fix them all in one go. Quashing the fear that her marriage was teetering on the edge, she forced herself to concentrate on her daughter. She hoped that this mysterious Austrian woman was the answer to her prayers.

  Amber had spent hours on her knees since hearing of Mackenzie’s death. Her faith had always been strong, but now, for the first time, she felt certain God had listened. She wasn’t in the habit of sending her only child halfway across the world by herself, but drastic situations called for drastic measures. Amber prided herself on being an astute judge of character, and she was crossing her fingers and toes that she was making the right call with Max’s mother.

  Chapter 5

  Clara stirred. The forty-year-old white iron bed creaked in unison with her body as she bunched a pillow behind her head. She smoothed her beloved patchwork quilt back into place. Tracing her fingers over some of the hexagonal shapes, she cast her mind back to her childhood. Sewing these unique bedcovers had been her lifeline at one point.

  This particular one had been with her for so long now it was as much a part of her as the liver spots that speckled the backs of her hands, or the creases that surrounded her eyes. Clara still adored the pretty array of fabrics, some floral, others striped, many just blocks of pastel shades. Together they amalgamated to form a complete unit. A little like herself, she mused.

  Glancing to the empty space where her darling husband Gus used to lie made her heart lurch, and a deep, dull ache spread through her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to living without him.

  Still, there was something wonderful on the horizon.

  Smiling, she thought of Nathalie. The grandchild she hadn’t known she even had until last week. The call from Max’s wife had come as a shock. Even though she’d sent the letter in good faith, Clara realised she hadn’t actually allowed herself to believe she’d get a response.

  Amber sounded like a wonderful woman. There was no doubt they were going through a dreadful time with the death of Nathalie’s friends. But Clara was ecstatic that Amber had decided to allow her the chance to get to know her granddaughter.

  ‘I’m sorry she’s hurting,’ she’d said. ‘This is difficult in so many ways. She didn’t even know I was alive so I feel I can take that in one of two ways. I can dwell on it, which will come to no good. Or I can clearly see that this means I have a clean slate with her. Maybe it will help Nathalie to be with someone who won’t judge her or compare her mood to before.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Amber said, as her voice cracked with emotion. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. This is not easy. I’m so confused right now. I don’t know whether I’m more embarrassed or angry at Max. Or worried, for that matter …’ Clara allowed the silence to prevail momentarily. She’d learned over the years that sometimes it was better not to fill those gaps with pointless words.

  ‘I hope you believe I had no idea you were alive and well in Ireland, ma’am.’

  ‘Please, call me Clara, and of course I believe you, dear. Why would you lie? You don’t know me, and you owe me nothing.’

  ‘Well that’s true, I guess …’

  ‘I would be more than delighted if you would accompany Nathalie. Max too, of course.’

  ‘No,’ Amber said quite definitely. ‘I think she needs to find herself.’

  ‘And I would be honoured to try and help her.’

  The conversation didn’t carry on much longer after that. Amber promised to call back with flight details, which she duly did. Clara promised to keep in constant contact and let Amber know if Nathalie was unrealistically unhappy.

  Before she baked a welcome cake, Clara had two important jobs to do. First she needed to speak to Ava. Secondly to Gus.

  She knew Ava often thought her crazy.

  ‘Dad’s not actually there. It’s his grave …’

  ‘I know, dear, but it’s my way of feeling as if I’m physically visiting him. It’s when I figure he can hear me clearest. I’m sure he’s terribly busy in heaven. He can’t spend all day every day looking down to know if I need to speak to him. So I go to the grave and do it there.’

  So once she’d finished attempting to cajole Ava, she’d go to the grave and tell Gus the good news.

  She showered and dressed quickly and called Ava’s mobile.

  ‘Mama, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Good morning, dear!’ Clara said, ignoring her daughter’s brisk tone. Knowing she’d have a limited amount of time before Ava blew her top, Clara spoke swiftly, explaining as best she could, what had happened. How she had found Max and discovered he was married and how she had subsequently sent a letter to America.

  ‘Did you get a response?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did. Better than that, my invitation was accepted and I’m getting a visitor.’

  ‘So your darling son is coming home, is that it?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Clara hesitated. ‘His daughter is coming to visit.’

  ‘Pardon? His what?’

  ‘His daughter,’ Clara repeated. ‘Ava, she’s seventeen and her name is Nathalie.’ Clara closed her eyes as she heard the deep gasp coming from Ava. She waited for a moment to allow her daughter to digest the information. When there was no further sound she spoke again. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Talk to me, Liebling. Tell me what’s going through your head. Please.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ she barked crossly.

  ‘Ah now, Ava. Rudeness doesn’t help anyone. I need you to tell me how you’re feeling about Nathalie coming.’ There was a long pause.

  ‘Her name’s Nathalie … I see …’ Ava harrumped loudly. ‘This is just fan-tassss-tic,’ she seethed.

  ‘Ava, please … I know this must be a shock and it’s so hard for you especially …’

  ‘Hard? Well that’s putting it mildly.’ There was a loud clunk and Clara feared she’d hung up. ‘I dropped the phone,’ she said. ‘Don’t panic, I haven’t gone off in a fit of rage or anything,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Oh good. I know this is all so much to take on board, but the timing is right, Ava … I just know it.’

  ‘How come she suddenly wants to waltz into our lives? Has my darling, precious, non-communicative prodigal brother suddenly decided he wants to speak to us after all these years?’

  Clara felt her chest tightening as she willed Ava’s anger to cease.

  ‘Sadly this has nothing to do with Max,’ she said. ‘I wrote to Nathalie not him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s my granddaughter and your niece. Because she should be part of our family.’

  ‘That hasn’t concerned her before.’

  ‘She didn’t know anything about us,’ Clara reasoned.

  ‘And you really believe that?’ Ava harrumphed.

  ‘Yes I do, actually. Her mother, Amber, phoned me yesterday.’

  ‘How is this Amber person involved now all of a sudden?’

  Clara knew she needed to try and explain things a little more clearly before Ava refused to talk. She’d clammed up about things before and Clara knew she was a hard nut to crack once she closed her mind to someone.

  ‘Amber called as soon as she read my letter. It’s a long story but she found the letter and even though it was addressed to Nathalie she opened it. She called the second she read it. Obviously I don’t know her, but she sounded so genuine.’

  ‘She did?’

 
‘Yes. Oh Ava, she sounded wonderful. She’s so polite and articulate. So American!’ Clara giggled. ‘Which sounds terribly stupid of me to point out, but I don’t suppose I ever imagined anyone connected to Max not sounding the same as us.’

  ‘Well you really are bats now,’ Ava said, though her voice softened somewhat.

  Clara continued. ‘Anyway, we chatted for a short while and Nathalie, it seems, is in the midst of a crisis.’

  ‘I see,’ said Ava.

  ‘So, as I said Amber read my letter and clearly saw the invitation I’d issued as an opportunity for Nathalie to try and sort her life out. She asked if I honestly wanted her to come to Ireland. Of course I said yes. Amber set about organising it all and so she’s …’ Clara hesitated. ‘She’s coming to visit.’

  ‘And that’s meant to be normal, is it? After no contact for her entire lifetime, she’s going to hop on a plane and drop in for coffee and cake and act as if nothing has happened? When is this emotional reunion taking place?’

  ‘She arrives this evening.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ava said, sounding quite winded. ‘So soon.’

  ‘Yes, as I said, Amber is at a loss as to what to do with Nathalie. Her best friend was killed in a car accident. Nathalie was in the car at the time and things have gone from bad to worse for the poor mite.’

  ‘Wow, that’s rough,’ Ava admitted. ‘Is Max coming too?’ she asked warily.

  ‘No, she’s coming on her own.’

  ‘And have you had any contact from Max at all?’ Ava demanded.

  ‘No, love. I haven’t,’ Clara sighed. ‘But who knows. Maybe Nathalie will become the glue we all need to bring us back together as a family.’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying about Nathalie, she’s just a kid, but it will take a lot for me to forgive Max’s silence. As the years have clocked up, he’s made it crystal clear he wants nothing to do with us. Way back when, I was hurt. Now I feel nothing for him either way. He’s dead to me.’

  ‘Ava, please,’ Clara said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘Try not to sound so hateful. I’m in the winter of my life, and if there’s any chance, no matter how slim, that Max will come back into our lives, I’m going to take it.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about him,’ Ava said crossly.

  ‘Does that mean you won’t come and meet Nathalie?’

  ‘I …’ Ava hesitated. ‘I don’t know. It’s not just Nathalie … There’s all the other stuff. Mama, all those things that happened eighteen years ago are part of a time I’ve buried. I’m not sure I can allow Max to dredge it all up again.’

  ‘I understand, dear,’ Clara said with compassion. ‘I’ll leave you to have a think about it, and if you feel you’d like to meet Nathalie, nobody will be more thrilled than me. Call me any time if you want to discuss it. Maybe you’d come for dinner and bring that nice fellow Michael along.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Michael who I met you with last week.’

  ‘Ah, him. Nah, he’s toast.’

  ‘Why? He seemed very … grounded.’

  ‘Boring, more like it. He was so damn serious. He had to go. I’m going on a date tonight, though. With a guy called Steve. He works at the betting shop in town.’

  ‘I see,’ said Clara. She didn’t want to sound disapproving. Ava was old enough to make her own choices. But she longed to see her settle with someone decent. She couldn’t exactly tell her daughter that serial dating wasn’t the way to go. Perhaps it was. How else would she meet the man of her dreams? All the same, Clara couldn’t help worrying.

  They finished chatting and Clara placed the phone on the charging cradle. She was always leaving it in odd places and it would take her ages to find it again. And when she did, inevitably it would have run out of battery. Ava got so cross with her when she didn’t answer. She’d even closed up the shop and driven over to check on her at one point. Clara knew Ava worried about her, and she was grateful for that. It was part and parcel of being a family.

  It was six months since Gus had passed away, yet on autopilot each and every morning her hand reached for two coffee cups from the cupboard. Sadness crept through her for the umpteenth time.

  She’d heard great things about the local grief counselling service, so she’d decided to go. It turned out to be a marvellous thing. Her counsellor was called Barbara, and they chatted about all sorts of things: Clara’s childhood, Max’s departure and the subsequent years of silence.

  Apparently the way she was feeling was perfectly normal. Whatever normal happened to be! Barbara said it was actually healthy to feel sad. That it was part and parcel of learning to let Gus go.

  ‘But what if I don’t want to let him go?’ Clara had asked.

  ‘I don’t mean you ought to forget him,’ Barbara explained. ‘There’s a difference between remembering and remaining in a state of raw pain.’

  ‘I see,’ Clara had said, nodding. She didn’t really, though. She couldn’t distinguish between the awful hollow aching and simply reminiscing. They seemed to go hand in hand for her so far.

  She and Gus had been married for sixty-three years. She was only seventeen the day she’d said ‘I do’. A mere child really. Very few girls got married that young now. That was probably a better idea. Although Clara knew she didn’t regret a single day she’d spent with Gus. Her only sorrow was that he wasn’t still here to hold her hand.

  As she finished filling the cafetière with hot water, Clara thought about Max. Could it really be twenty years since she’d seen her own son? A shiver went down her spine. In many ways the awful argument felt like only yesterday …

  She had always harboured hope that Max would return and their family could be reunited once more. Sadly, she had underestimated him when he’d said he never wanted to speak to them again.

  It tore at Clara’s heart that Gus and Max had never settled their differences. Just before he passed away, Gus had spoken about Max.

  ‘Tell him I never stopped loving him.’

  Clara wanted to be able to fulfil that promise, but as far as she was aware, Max didn’t even know Gus was dead.

  Barbara was constantly advising her to write things down. She said it was a wonderfully cathartic way of baring her soul without having to say it out loud.

  ‘Writing offers such freedom,’ she said. ‘Especially when you’re certain nobody is going to read it.’

  Clara’s mother had been the best example of that theory. Clara had only discovered all her writing after her father passed away and she had the heartbreaking job of clearing their belongings from the house.

  The things her mother had written were so deeply private and Clara knew she hadn’t told anyone. It made her desperately sad to think her darling mother had hidden so much of her inner self. But a large part of her could understand it too. She herself wasn’t great at imparting her deepest thoughts. In fact, she’d had to stop going to see Barbara because she knew that sooner or later she’d have to talk about her early childhood and the real reason Max had left, never to return.

  She wasn’t ready to talk. Not quite yet. Not with a veritable stranger and not in a soulless room in the community centre. If and when she decided to speak about her innermost thoughts, Clara knew it needed to be right. The setting, the ears that listened and the timing. As of yet, not all those boxes had been ticked.

  Clara smiled as she pulled on a light summer jacket. The morning sun hadn’t heated the air yet, as she bustled to the graveyard to spend a few moments with Gus.

  ‘It’s happening, darling,’ she said a while later, gazing earnestly at his headstone. ‘A piece of Max is on the way. His most precious and prized achievement. Nathalie is coming to stay. I hope she’ll like me. I hope we’ll find a common bond. You’ll be there, won’t you, dear? You’ll help me and guide me? I know you’re busy. You’re probably fishing and drinking whiskey with Elvis, but maybe you’d look in on me a little more often over the next while? Thank you, darling. I love you.’

  Clara felt exhilarated after
her chat with Gus. She sped home and put the finishing touches to the spare room. Perhaps it was divine inspiration or maybe it was Gus with his arm firmly around her mother’s shoulder as both of them looked down on her, but Clara had a wonderful idea. She would share her mother’s letters with young Nathalie. They had so much ground to make up. So many memories had been missed over the years of estrangement. Clara felt giddily confident that her mother’s story would help her to bond with her granddaughter. There was a massive gap to fill, and she was certain the precious letters detailing an astonishing story were just what was called for.

  Clara loved nothing more than cooking and baking. Since Gus had passed away, she only cooked when she knew Ava was coming. Otherwise things just went to waste. The thought of having someone to fuss over and care for again filled her with excitement.

  Fleetingly she hoped Nathalie wasn’t one of those girls who didn’t like eating. A faddy teen who thought food would poison her and make her fat. According to some magazines Clara had read over the years, lots of people in LA lived on protein shakes while exercising in Lycra to within an inch of their lives.

  Darling Gus had adored her cooking and baking.

  ‘I think I fell in love with your mother’s food before I even laid eyes on you,’ he used to joke. They’d met when he was a boarder at her parents’ home many years before. Clara’s papa had been a music teacher at St Herbert’s school, where Gus was a pupil. Her mama ran an overflow boarding house for ten lucky pupils. There they were fed delicious home-made fare and treated like kings.

  As an only child, Clara had rejoiced in having so many other young people to share her home. The fact that they were all boys was a bonus.

  Clara tried to picture her granddaughter. Would she look like Max, with his blond hair and aqua eyes? Would she have dark bouncing curls and coffee eyes like her own? Of course Clara had never seen Amber so she had nothing to work with there.

  Hope sprang as she drove to the supermarket and glided happily down the aisles filling her trolley with ingredients. She’d make the perfect welcome dinner and bake as many delights as she could today.