Gracie’s Secret_A heartbreaking page-turner that will stay with you forever

by Jill Childs

  My legs juddered. I couldn’t keep still. I could feel my father there with me, quietly invisible in the background as he always liked to be. And Catherine too, a baby with ginger hair who never had the chance to grow. I paced up and down the kitchen, my hands trembling on my cup. I thought about Ella and the love in her face as she looked down at her little girl.

  And I thought of Matt. Of the knowing look in his eyes as he leaned forward to me across that gritty table and told me what he’d discovered about Ella Hicks and his suspicions about her dead child. Of his vagueness that night in the taxi when I asked him what Ella said to him in the club.

  You deserve each other, she had told me.

  The parcel, now neatly addressed to Matt’s daughter, lay there on the side. I grabbed it, reached again for my coat and car keys and headed for the door.

  Forty-Eight

  The address on the parcel was in west London, a suburb about half an hour’s drive away. As I drove closer, the streets looked increasingly depressed. The route took me down a main road, which was dotted with small parades of shops: kebab, pizza and burger chains, late night convenience stores, laundrettes, betting shops.

  The ground was patched with scraps of litter. The walls that bordered the road were daubed with spray-can graffiti in bright colours. I stared out of the window, feeling a growing sense of unease.

  As I entered the neighbourhood, I lost confidence and pulled into a burger place. It was soulless. The interior was designed not for comfort but to thwart vandals and drunks. The tables and benches were made from cheap plastic with rounded corners and were moulded to the ground. The floor was covered in scuffed tiles.

  I bought some chips from a spotty Chinese youth in a paper hat and sat in the window to eat. The shiny table, designed to be indestructible, was scored with cigarette burns. I looked out through the grimy window at the scruffy people waiting at the bus stop across the road. A homeless man, over-dressed in woollen hat and miser mitts, sat in a corner of the shelter, bulging with carrier bags. I wondered what kind of home Matt’s ex lived in and what sort of upbringing his daughter was getting.

  The house was a little further on, a few minutes from the main road, set in a cul-de-sac on an estate. The properties were square and uniform. Nineteen-thirties, perhaps. They might have been council-owned until Margaret Thatcher put them up for grabs.

  They reminded me of my childhood. Each had a short driveway and a curve of rounded bay windows across the front. The sort of rather poky house my mother would have described as a two-up, two-down.

  I stopped just before number thirty-eight. The sitting room of number thirty-six was concealed by net modesty curtains. A vase with a cornflower blue posy, flanked by two neat rows of china dogs, decorated the sill. They were the kind of ornaments my grandmother used to own, before she moved into a home and most of her possessions went to the auction house.

  The next house, clearly visible over the low fence, was the same design. A small garage sat beside the house, its paint peeling. The driveway was empty.

  I hesitated. My thoughts had been focused on finding the house and learning what I could about it, with the pretext of delivering the parcel. Now I faltered, unsure quite why I was here. My legs faltered. The taste of chips was thick and greasy in my mouth. I didn’t know if I really wanted to meet Matt’s ex. Or his daughter.

  A car slid past. It slowed, turned round at the far end of the cul-de-sac and came crawling back. I felt conspicuous. I thought of the police officers and their warning all that time ago. No more trouble.

  I unfastened my seatbelt, reached for the parcel and climbed out of the car.

  The house needed a fresh coat of paint. I marched up to the front door, eager now to get this over with and go home. Perhaps no one was at home and I could just leave the parcel on the doorstep.

  The curtains were drawn back and I glanced through the windows as I approached. It was dark inside but light enough to show an old-fashioned and solidly conventional sitting room. It was dominated by a brushed cotton three-piece suite, set round a coffee table and angled towards a medium-sized television set on a stand. A few magazines lay on the table in a neatly aligned pile. A mirror with a gilded frame hung over the fireplace. A pair of candlesticks stood at either end. A mantel clock with a dark wooden case sat plumply between them. It was exactly the sort of room my mother would like. Tasteful, she might say. Unpretentious. It might have waited, unchanged, for the last thirty years.

  I blinked. For the second time in a day, I must have picked the wrong house, the wrong street. There was no trace of a child living here. No toys, no clutter, no books. This was not the house of a young woman, a Londoner of about my own age.

  A shadow shifted. I started, jumped back. A figure there, to one side of the room, watching me. A stout woman. She disappeared. My palms made sweaty marks on the padded envelope. I turned, ready to bolt.

  Before I could move, the door opened. The woman stood there in the doorway. She was smartly dressed, about seventy years old. She had short, permed hair. With one hand, she pulled together across her stomach the draping flaps of a cardigan. Her other hand held the door.

  ‘Hello.’ She looked thoughtful.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘I think I’ve got the wrong house.’

  She reached out, lifted the parcel from my hands and studied the address, the handwriting, then, with the same appraising look, studied me. Her eyes were faded blue, as if time had slowly drained the colour from them. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her.

  ‘You’re Jennifer, aren’t you?’ she said calmly, reading me as if she understood everything. ‘Won’t you have a cup of tea?’

  She opened the door wider and stood to one side to let me in.

  ‘I thought you’d turn up, sooner or later.’ She sounded resigned and rather sad. ‘But I wasn’t quite sure when.’

  Forty-Nine

  I perched on the edge of an armchair in the hushed sitting room and followed her movements in the kitchen by sound. The whoosh of water as a kettle filled. The click of a cupboard, opening and closing. The soft suck of a fridge door.

  I blinked. The parcel sat on the coffee table beside the women’s magazines. Beneath, the carpet was hectic, with red and pink swirls. The cushions on the beige settee seemed carefully chosen to reflect the same shades. The wall-lights were semi-transparent glass, the bulbs held by pale-pink petals.

  Jennifer. She’d greeted me by name before I had the chance to speak. Had she mistaken me for someone else? It made no sense. I wondered what Matt would think if he knew I’d come.

  ‘Do you use a teapot?’

  She came in carrying a laden tea-tray, lined with a lace-edged cloth, and began the methodical business of setting out the teapot, covered with a hand-knitted cosy, two cups and saucers, the milk jug, a sugar bowl and teaspoons. A plate of plain biscuits. Serviettes. She was entertaining, in the old-fashioned way. Making an effort.

  ‘So many people have lost the ability to make a decent cup of tea. Don’t you find? I went to New York once. A long time ago, when Harold was still alive. I asked for tea at breakfast and do you know what they brought me? A mug of lukewarm water, no saucer, with a rather dismal teabag floating in it.’ She tutted. ‘They may be the leaders of the free world but really, they have a lot to learn about tea.’

  She spoke softly but efficiently as if she were used to being in command of her own ship. Her back was straight and firm as she sat forward to pour the milk, then placed a metal tea strainer over my cup and added the tea. It was strong. She struck me as the kind of woman it might be dangerous to underestimate.

  ‘Do have a biscuit.’ She set a plate in front of me and a serviette, folded into a triangle. ‘I always use loose-leaf tea. Everyone seems to use teabags. But you know what they put in those bags? Sweepings from the floor.’ She nodded. ‘It’s true. I read an article about it.’

  She seemed perfectly at ease, crossing her legs neatly at the ankle and watching me with a
half-smile as I sipped my tea. She was wearing light slip-on shoes, rather than slippers, and I wondered if I’d interrupted her as she was getting ready to go out.

  I took a deep breath. ‘I am sorry to disturb you. I was delivering a parcel, you see. For a little girl. It’s her birthday in a few days and I didn’t trust the post.’

  She nodded as if she already knew. ‘Katy.’

  I stared. Katy’s name wasn’t written on the envelope, only her surname, Aster.

  She smiled, watching me. Again, I had the sense that she understood far more than I did and was giving me time to catch up.

  ‘Let’s drink our tea and have a chat first. Then I’ll explain about all that.’

  She talked easily for a while, as if we were old friends. Inconsequential chat about the warm weather. The accelerating pace of life in London and the demise of good neighbours. The changes to the cul-de-sac since she and Harold moved there, more years ago than she cared to remember.

  I listened for clues but her conversation was as carefully neutral as the three-piece suite. She clearly cherished the vanishing English art of small talk as dearly as she valued properly made tea.

  Finally, as we reached the bottom of the pot, she set aside her cup and saucer, picked up the parcel and got to her feet.

  ‘Come.’

  Fifty

  I followed her out of the room and up the stairs to a narrow landing. She opened the door to a box room. It was a little girl’s bedroom, with cream walls and a small chest of drawers painted with stars and moons. A jewellery box rested on top. A clown doll, with a soft body and chipped china face, sat slumped against it.

  A single bed, squeezed in against the far wall, was covered with a bobbled pink counterpane and a cushion with an appliqué dancing elephant. The elephant’s tutu, a semi-circle of starched white net, stood proud from the fabric.

  A row of soft toys sat along the length of the bed, their backs against the wall. Teddy bears with red ribbons, a knitted rabbit, a giraffe, felt dolls.

  It was too still, too tidy. The sunshine streaming in through the small window danced with motes of dust.

  She pointed, inviting me to step inside. There wasn’t a lot of room. A low table sat behind the door. It was piled with brand-new toys.

  Dolls in unopened packaging. Jigsaws, still in cellophane. A shiny box of building bricks. Packet of pristine crayons, paints, felt tip pens. Above it all, a framed drawing of a large, ornate letter ‘K’. On the end of the table stood a bud vase with a single yellow rose, its petals already loose and starting to fall.

  I turned back to her. She was watching my confusion, her expression sad.

  ‘Katy’s room?’

  She nodded. She opened the padded envelope, tore off the wrapping paper I had taped with such care and placed the box on top of a jigsaw. The little girl, her wrists decorated with plastic bracelets, smiled up at us both. The room was lifeless.

  ‘She doesn’t live here, does she?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She frowned. ‘But we like to feel she’s here.’

  She ushered me out. The door directly across the landing was open, showing a second bedroom. That one was clearly occupied. I crossed to the threshold and peered in.

  The walls were a neutral beige, the carpet and curtains dark blue. The jazzy duvet on the double bed was crumpled as if it had been pulled across in haste. The bedside table was piled with books and scraps of paper.

  A pair of men’s trousers hung across the back of a chair. Used socks and a pair of underpants were strewn on the seat. Across the bottom of the bed, an abandoned sweater. Matt’s sweater.

  She stepped past me and stooped to pick up the dirty washing, then dropped it with a low sigh into the canvas laundry basket by the door. It was an automatic gesture that suggested years of repetition, years of arguments.

  I looked again at the line of her jaw, the shape of her eyes.

  ‘You’re his mother.’

  Her forehead creased, worried. ‘I am.’

  I looked back towards the box room. ‘Katy’s grandma.’

  She nodded.

  I shook my head, looked again at the messy male room. ‘He lives here?’

  ‘He didn’t tell you, did he?’ She reached forward and patted my arm. ‘He’s a good boy. Don’t be angry with him. He really cares for you. I’m his mother, you see. I know. He just hasn’t been himself. Not since we lost Katy.’

  I stepped further into his bedroom. Along the wall to my left, partly hidden by the door, hung a long cork noticeboard. Its surface was covered with a mess of black and white pages, stuck with coloured pins. Grainy photographs, printed off from a computer. My stomach contracted. I went across to look more closely.

  Pictures of me. Walking through the shopping centre. On the high street. Outside nursery. Standing in the park. Images of our home. Some taken from the far side of the road, shot through parked cars. Others from right outside the house, from the gate. They were scribbled with marker pen. Hearts drawn crudely round my face. A cartoon flower stuck in my hand, another in my hair.

  Several were dark, taken at night. Dim close-ups of the shadowy front door. An image of my bedroom window, a line of light tracing the edges of the curtains. ‘How dare he.’ I turned back to her, angry now and slightly sick. A memory rose in me from those weeks just after your accident when I felt most vulnerable and had a sense of being watched, of being followed, of glimpsing a figure in the shadows, staring at the house through the darkness from across the road.

  ‘He followed me, didn’t he? Before we really knew each other. He spied on me.’

  She spread her hands by way of apology and inclined her head.

  ‘He didn’t mean anything by it. He just wanted to protect you. He felt it was, well, his mission.’ She hesitated. ‘He’d never hurt you. You know that?’

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know anything any more.

  She guided me back downstairs and into an armchair. She set a glass of water in front of me and I drank it off, my head spinning. All I wanted to do was to run out of that mummified house and go home, lock the front door and crawl into bed. To hide away from all the confusion, the hurt, the betrayal. My legs shook and she seemed to pin me there, with her politeness, with her kindness.

  ‘You have to understand, it’s an illness.’ Her eyes never left my face. ‘He can’t help it. It’s a tragedy, really. He could have done so much more. He was always clever. Did well at university. And he almost qualified, you know, as a doctor.’ She hesitated, reading my shock. ‘Ah. That’s what he told you, isn’t it? A doctor?’

  I stared, shaking with fury. I felt stupid. Tricked. Who was this man who had walked into our lives and lied to me? Who deceived me, abused me.

  She went quietly on. ‘Matthew works in a restaurant. The smart restaurant at the hospital, on the top floor. Have you tried it? A bit pricey but very nice food. It’s not a bad job. He’s very reliable and he cooks well, don’t you think?’

  Her look was almost sly as if she knew, as if she could see him there in my kitchen, my apron round his waist, his strong arms chopping and cutting, grating and stirring. As if I should have known.

  ‘They didn’t plan the baby. But once he got used to the idea, he wanted it desperately. You’ve no idea. He loves children. And then, when they lost her…’ She trailed off, gazing past me at the wall, unseeing. ‘It was devastating. And then she left him almost at once. It was cruel, really. It was more than he could cope with.’

  I put my face in my hands. My temples throbbed. ‘I should go.’

  ‘He said you were different, Jennifer. That you might understand. He told me about all you’ve been through with your husband, with your little girl. We’re both so sorry.’ She hesitated, her eyes back on my face, beseeching now. ‘We’re two of a kind, Mother. That’s what he said. Two of a kind.’

  ‘I went to his flat.’ I thought of the stylish block and the contrast it made with this place. ‘He doesn’t have one, does he?’

  ‘
Oh dear.’ She looked away. ‘No, I’m afraid not.’ She leaned forward, stacked the plates and cups on her tray.

  I sat there, stupid with shock. She got quietly to her feet and carried out the tea things. I looked down at the swirling carpet and pictures seemed to form there. Matt, appearing from nowhere as I sat, alone and desperate, in the hospital café. Matt, appearing on the high street as I walked you home from nursery. Matt in the kitchen, capable and confident as he cooked. Matt, sitting silently in your darkened bedroom, hunched forward, his eyes sad.

  When she came back, she was carrying a large box. She seemed pleasantly surprised that I was still there. She set the box on the table between us.

  ‘What about Geoff?’ I said suddenly.

  ‘Geoff?’ She blinked.

  ‘He doesn’t have a brother, does he? A policeman. A detective.’

  Her face seemed to crumple and she looked down, fiddled with the lid of the box.

  ‘How could he tell so many lies?’ I was on my feet, my hands balled at my sides. ‘Everything. Everything he’s told me!’

  ‘Not everything, Jennifer,’ she said very quietly. ‘You mustn’t think that. He does care for you.’

  The room was unbearably oppressive. I strode through to the kitchen. Compact, neat, ordinary. The tray sat on the worktop. The cups and saucers, already washed, sat upside down on the draining board. I stood there at the sink, looking out at a small handkerchief of garden. The borders were planted with rows of white and yellow alyssum. The square of lawn in the middle was freshly cut. I imagined Matt, his sleeves rolled up, pushing a mower up and down the patch of grass, straightening the edges with shears while his mother, pottering in the kitchen, watched from the window.

  I ran the cold-water tap, splashed my eyes, my face, trying to steady myself.

  He was never a doctor at the hospital. He chopped vegetables and stirred soup for a living. All the stories he told me about difficult nights, about desperately ill children, they were all lies. What a fool I’d been.