The Secret Keeper

by Kate Morton

  Gerry had been listening closely, staring at a patch of table-cloth, his face revealing nothing. Now a muscle twitched in his shadowed jaw and he gave a small nod, more to acknowledge the end of her story than to respond to its content. Laurel waited, finished her glass of wine and poured some more for each of them. ‘So,’ she said. ‘That’s it. That’s what I saw.’

  At length, Gerry looked up at her. He said, ‘I guess that ex-plains it then.’

  ‘Explains what?’

  His fingers trembled with nervous energy as he spoke. ‘I used to see this thing sometimes as a kid, out of the corner of my eye, this dark shadow that made me frightened for no reason. Hard to describe. I’d turn and there’d be nothing there, just this awful feeling that I’d glanced around too late. My heart used to race and I’d have no idea why. I told Ma once; she took me to have my eyes tested.’

  ‘That’s why you got glasses?’

  ‘No, turns out I was short-sighted. The glasses didn’t help with the shadow, but they sure made people’s faces look bet-ter.’

  Laurel smiled.

  Gerry didn’t. The scientist in him had been relieved, Laurel knew, to have gained an explanation for something previously inexplicable, but the part of him that was son to a much-loved parent was not so easily assuaged. ‘Good people do bad things,’ he said, and then he clawed at his shock of hair. ‘Christ. What a bloody cliche’d thing to say.’

  ‘It’s true though,’ said Laurel, wanting to comfort him. ‘They do. Sometimes with good reason.’

  ‘What reason?’ He looked at her and he was a child again, desperate for Laurel to explain it all away. She felt for him—one minute he was happily contemplating the wonders of the universe, the next his sister was telling him his mother had killed a man. ‘Who was this guy, Lol? Why did she do it?’

  In the most straightforward fashion she could manage—it was best with Gerry, to appeal to his sense of logic—Laurel told him what she knew about Henry Jenkins, that he was an author, married to their mother’s friend, Vivien, during the war. She also told him what Kitty Barker had said, that there’d been a terrible falling out between Dorothy and Vivien in early 1941.

  ‘You think their argument is related to what happened at Greenacres in 1961,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t mention it other-wise.’

  ‘I do.’ Laurel remembered Kitty’s account of the night out with her mother, the way she’d behaved, the things she’d been saying. ‘I think Ma became upset by whatever happened between them and she did something to punish her friend. I think her plan—whatever it was— turned out badly, far worse than she’d expected; but by then it was too late to put things right. Ma fled London and Henry Jenkins was angered enough by whatever happened to come looking for her twenty years later.’ Laurel wondered at the way a person could outline such dreadful theories in such a frank, no-nonsense way. To an observer, Laurel knew, she would seem cool and calm and keen to get to the bottom of things; she gave away no hint of the deep distress that was gnawing away at her insides. She lowered her voice, though, to say: ‘I even wonder if she wasn’t responsible in some way for Vivien’s death.’ ‘God, Lol.’

  ‘Whether she’s had to live with her guilt all this time and the woman we know was formed as a result; whether she’s spent the rest of her life atoning.’

  ‘By being the perfect mother to us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which was working out fine until Henry Jenkins came looking to even the score.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gerry had fallen silent; a faint frown creased the skin be-tween his eyes, he was thinking.

  ‘Well?’ Laurel pressed, leaning closer to him. ‘You’re the scientist— does the theory have legs?’

  ‘It’s plausible,’ said Gerry, nodding slowly. ‘Not difficult to believe remorse might act as a motivator for change. Nor that a husband might seek to avenge a slight against his wife. And if what she did to Vivien was bad enough, I can see she’d have thought her only choice was to silence Henry Jenkins once and for all.’

  Laurel’s heart sank. There was a very small part of her, she realised, that had been clinging to the hope he might laugh, poke holes in her theory with the sharp point of his stupendous brain, and tell her she ought to take a good long lie down and leave off reading Shakespeare for a while.

  He didn’t. The logician in him had taken the reins and he said, ‘I wonder what she could have done to Vivien that she came to regret so much.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Whatever it was, I think you’re right,’ he said slowly. ‘It must have turned out worse than she’d intended. Ma never would’ve harmed her friend on purpose.’

  Laurel offered a noncommittal noise in response, remembering the way her mother had brought the knife down on Henry Jenkins’s chest without a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘She wouldn’t have, Lol.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so either—not at first. Have you considered, though, that perhaps we’re just making excuses because she’s our mother and we know and love her?’

  ‘We probably are,’ Gerry agreed, ‘but that’s all right. We do know her.’

  ‘We think we do.’ Something Kitty Barker said had been playing on Laurel’s mind, about wartime and the way it heightened passions; the threat of invasion, the fear and the dark, night after night of broken sleep … ‘What if she was a different person back then? What if the pressure of wartime got to her? What if she changed after she married Daddy and had us?’ After she was given her second chance.

  ‘No one changes that much.’

  From nowhere, the crocodile story leapt into Laurel’s mind. Is that why you changed to become a lady, Mummy? she’d asked, and Dorothy had answered that she’d given up her crocodile ways at the same time she’d become a mother. Was it drawing too long a bow to think the story might have been a metaphor, that even then her mother might have been confessing to some other sort of change? Or was Laurel reading far too much into a tale that was meant merely to please a child? She pictured Dorothy that afternoon, turning back towards her mirror, straightening the shoulder straps of her lovely dress, as eight- year-old Laurel asked, wide-eyed, how such a wondrous transformation had taken place. ‘Well now,’ her mother had said, ‘I can’t tell you all my secrets, can I? Not all at once. Ask me again some day. When you’re older.’

  And Laurel intended to do just that. She was hot, all of a sudden, the other diners were laughing and crowding the room, and the pizza oven let out great tidal waves of warm toasty air. Laurel opened her wallet and pulled out two twenties and a five, tucking the notes beneath the bill and waving away Gerry’s attempts to contribute. ‘I told you, my shout,’ she said. She didn’t add that it was the very least she could do, having brought her dark obsession into his starlit world. ‘Come on,’ she said, drawing on her coat. ‘Let’s walk.’

  Chatter from the restaurants faded behind them as they crossed King’s College quad on their way to meet the Cam. It was quiet by the river and Laurel could hear the punts rocking gently on the moon-silvered surface. A bell sounded in the distance, stark and stoic, and in a college room somewhere someone was practising the violin. The beautiful sad music plucked at Laurel’s heart and she knew, suddenly, that she’d made a mistake in coming here.

  Gerry hadn’t said much since they’d left the restaurant and was walking silently beside her now, pushing his bike with one hand. His head was bowed, his gaze trained on the ground before him. She’d let the burden of the past trick her into sharing it; she’d convinced herself that Gerry ought to know, that he too was bound to the monstrous thing she’d witnessed. But he’d been little more than a baby back then, a tiny person, and now he was a sweet man, his mother’s favourite, incapable of considering that she might have once done something dreadful. Laurel was about to say as much, to apologise and somehow make light of her own obsessive interest, when Gerry said:

  ‘What’s next then? Have we got any leads?’

  Laurel glanced at
him.

  He’d stopped beneath the yellow glow of a streetlamp and was prodding his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. ‘What? You weren’t going to let it go, were you? Obviously we need to find out what happened. It’s part of our story, Lol.’

  Laurel couldn’t think that she’d ever loved him quite so much as that moment. ‘There is something,’ she said, her breath catching, ‘Now you mention it. I went to visit Ma this morning and she came over all hazy and asked the nurse to send in Dr Rufus when she saw him.’

  ‘Not so strange in a hospital, is it?’

  ‘Not in itself, except her doctor’s name is Cotter not Rufus.’

  ‘A slip of the tongue?’

  ‘I don’t think so. There was a certainty in the way she said it. Besides …’. The shadowy image of a young man named Jimmy, loved once by her mother, lamented now, came to Laurel’s mind. ‘It’s not the first time she’d spoken of someone she used to know. I think the past is going round and round in her head; I think she almost wants us to know the answers.’

  ‘Did you ask her about it?’

  ‘Not about Dr Rufus, but I did about a few other things. She answered openly enough, but the conversation upset her. I’ll talk to her again, of course, but if there’s another way, I’m eager to try that too.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘I went to the library earlier to see if there was any way of finding out details of a doctor who was operating in Coventry and maybe London, too, in the nineteen thirties and forties. I only had his surname and had no idea what sort of doctor he was, so the librarian suggested we start by checking the data-base for the Lancet.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I found a Dr Lionel Rufus, Gerry—I’m almost certain it’s him, he lived in Coventry at the right time and published papers in the field of personality psychology.’

  ‘You think she was his patient? That Ma might’ve suffered from some sort of condition back then?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but I intend to find out.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Gerry suddenly. ‘There are people I could ask.’

  ‘Really?’

  He was nodding, and his words tumbled together excitedly as he said, ‘You go back to Suffolk. I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything.’

  It was more than Laurel had dared hope for—no it wasn’t, it was exactly what she’d dared hope for. Gerry was going to help her; together they were going to find out what really happened. ‘You realise—’ she didn’t want to scare him off, but she had to warn him—‘you might find something terrible. Something that makes a lie of everything we thought we knew about her.’

  Gerry smiled. ‘Aren’t you the actress? Isn’t this the bit where you’re supposed to tell me that people aren’t a science—that characters are multi-faceted, and one new variable doesn’t dis-prove the whole theorem?’

  ‘I’m just saying. Be prepared, little brother.’

  ‘I’m always prepared,’ he said, with a grin, ‘And I’m still backing our mum.’

  Laurel raised her eyebrows, wishing she had his faith. But she had seen what happened that day at Greenacres, she knew what their mother was capable of. ‘Not very scientific of you,’ she said sternly, ‘Not when everything points towards the one conclusion.’

  Gerry took her hand. ‘Did the hungry teenage galaxies teach you nothing, Lol?’ he said softly, and Laurel felt a surge of worry and protective love because she saw in his eyes how much he needed to believe things would all work out, and she knew in her own heart how unlikely it was. ‘Never discount the possibility of turning up an answer none of the current theories predict.’

  Eighteen

  London, January 1941

  DOLLY WAS QUITE SURE she’d never been so humiliated in all her life as she had been the other afternoon at number 25. If she lived to be a hundred years old, she knew she wouldn’t forget the way Henry and Vivien Jenkins had stared at her as she went, those bemused mocking expressions distorting their horrid lovely faces. They’d almost succeeded in making Dolly feel as if she were nothing more than a neighbour’s maid, come calling in an old dress borrowed from her mistress’s wardrobe. Almost. Dolly was made of sterner stuff than that, though; as Dr Rufus was always telling her: ‘You’re one in a million, Dorothy, you really are.’

  At their most recent lunch, two days after what had happened, he’d leaned back in his seat at the Savoy and eyed her over his cigar. ‘Tell me, Dorothy,’ he’d said, ‘why do you think this woman, this Vivien Jenkins, was so dismissive of you?’ Dolly had shaken her head thoughtfully, before telling him what she now believed. ‘I think when she came across the two of us, Mr Jenkins and I, together like that in the sitting room …’ Dolly glanced away, slightly embarrassed as she remembered the way Henry Jenkins had looked at her, ‘ … well, I’d taken rather special care with my appearance that day, you see, and I suspect it was just more than Vivien could stand.’ He’d nodded appreciatively and then his eyes had narrowed as he stroked his chin: ‘And how did you feel, Dorothy, when she slighted you that way?’ Dolly had thought she might cry when Dr Rufus asked that. She didn’t, though; she smiled bravely, driving her fingernails into her palms and priding herself on the way she managed to keep her self-control as she said, ‘I felt mortified, Dr Rufus, and very, very hurt. I don’t think I’ve ever been treated so shabbily, and by someone I used to call a friend. I really felt—’

  ‘Stop it—stop it now!’ In the bright sunlit room at 7 Campden Grove, Dolly started as Lady Gwendolyn kicked a small foot free and shouted, ‘You’ll take my toe off if you’re not careful, silly girl.’

  Dolly noticed with contrition the tiny, white triangle where the old woman’s pinky toenail had been. It was thoughts of Vivien that had done it. Dolly had gone much harder and faster with the file than she ought to have. ‘I’m so sorry, Lady Gwendolyn,’ she said. ‘I’ll be more gentle—’

  ‘I’ve had enough of that. Fetch me my sweets, Dorothy. I passed a bilious night—wretched ration recipes—veal knuckle with stewed red cabbage for dinner; little wonder I tossed and turned and dreamed of ghastly things.’

  Dolly did what she was told, waiting patiently as the old woman sorted through the bag to find the largest bull’s eye.

  Mortification had passed quickly through indignity and shame to arrive at full-blown anger. Why, Vivien and Henry Jenkins had all but called her a thief and a liar, when all she’d wanted was to return Vivien’s precious necklace. The irony was almost too great to bear, that Vivien—she who was sneaking about behind her husband’s back, telling lies to everyone who cared about her, entreating those who didn’t not to give away her secrets—should be the one to cast her cold darkeyed judgement on Dolly; the very person who’d leapt to her defence time and again when others spoke ill of her.

  Well—Dolly frowned determinedly as she sheathed the nail file and tidied up the dressing-table top—not any more. Dolly had made a plan. She hadn’t spoken to Lady Gwendolyn, not yet, but when the old woman learned what had happened—that her young friend had been betrayed, just as she had—Dolly was sure she’d give her blessing. They were going to throw a huge party when the war ended, a stupendous affair, a grand masquerade with costumes and lanterns and fire-eaters. All the most fabulous people would come, and there’d be photographs in The Lady, and it would be talked about for years to come. Dolly could just picture the guests arriving in Campden Grove, dressed to the nines and parading right past number 25 where Vivien Jenkins sat watching from the window, uninvited.

  In the meantime, she was doing her best to shun the pair of them. There were some people, Dolly was learning, whom it was better not to know. Henry Jenkins wasn’t difficult to avoid—Dolly didn’t see much of him at the best of times; and she’d managed to keep clear of Vivien by withdrawing from the WVS. It had been a relief, actually—in one fell swoop she’d freed herself from Mrs Waddingham’s jurisdiction and gained the time to devote herself more fully to keeping Lady Gwendolyn happy. Just as well, too, as things turn
ed out. The other morning, at an hour when ordinarily she’d have been off working at the canteen, Dolly had been massaging Lady Gwendolyn’s cramping legs when the doorbell rang downstairs. The old woman had rolled her wrist towards the window and told Dolly to take a peek and see who’d come to bother them this time.

  Dolly had been worried at first it would be Jimmy—he’d called a few times now, during the day thank God when no one else was home and she’d been able to avoid a scene—but it hadn’t been him. As Dolly peered through Lady Gwendolyn’s window, the glass pane crisscrossed with tape against bomb blasts, she’d seen Vivien Jenkins below, glancing over her shoulder as though it was beneath her to be calling at number 7 and she was embarrassed even to be seen on the doorstep. Dolly’s skin had flushed hot because she knew, instantly, why Vivien had come—it was just the sort of petty unkindness Dolly was coming to expect from her—she planned to report to Lady Gwendolyn the thieving habits of her ‘servant’. Dolly could just picture Vivien, posed sleekly on the dusty chintz armchair by the old woman’s bedside, crossing her long slender legs, and leaning forward in a conspiratorial way to deplore the quality of servants these days, ‘It’s so difficult to find somebody trustworthy, isn’t it Lady Gwendolyn? Why, we’ve had our own spot of bother lately …’