by Karen Clarke
Kim got in touch. We kept in contact after the trial, where – after a mental health assessment – she was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. I went to visit her because I felt sorry for her. I’d been furious at first, absolutely heartbroken that she’d tried to steal my grandson, but then I forgave her. She’d lost her first-born too. I understood. Desperate women do desperate things. Of course, if her plan had succeeded, I’d have left no stone unturned in trying to get Finn back, but … well, that didn’t happen. I’m not allowed to see him ever again, anyway. And Kim had no idea about the circumstances of my falling-out with my family and my treatment of Sophy. She seemed pathetically glad to see me.
Her sister hadn’t been to visit, she told me, and the chances of ever seeing her nephew again were as likely as me seeing Finn. I was all she had. We’d always got on well. She knew how much I’d cared about Finn, how I’d do anything for him. At first, I felt bad that I’d been the one to inadvertently inspire her to steal my grandson, by telling her how terribly tired Sophy was all the time, sleeping most of the day, leaving that poor baby to his own devices – until Liv came along, but she was just as bad, leaving the garden doors open so goodness knows who could walk into the house. I wasn’t sure how Kim had known they’d be open, but I figured she’d have found a way into the house somehow. She had apologised so many times, even confessed she’d planned to invite me to Spain, once the dust had settled, so I could see my grandson. I hadn’t believed her, of course, but appreciated her saying it.
Anyway, it’s the most wonderful news. After her release, Kim decided to relocate permanently to Spain. There was nothing for her in St Albans and she’d been in the press a lot, so everyone knew who she was. The residents of The Avenue must have had a field day, finding out one of their own had turned out to be a baby snatcher.
It seems, once she was out in Spain, she had a one-night stand – making up for lost time, I suppose – and surprise, surprise, fell pregnant! After years of thinking she couldn’t have another child, following the loss of her son, it happened just like that! Incredible really. The trouble was, it wasn’t an easy birth and she’s struggling. She’s lonely over there, keeps herself to herself, not wanting to risk anyone finding out she’s the St Albans’ kidnapper.
She knows I’m divorced now, that I live alone too, and wondered whether I’d like to go out and stay with her, help with the baby. She remembers how wonderful I was with Finn, could do with some advice, some familiar company.
I have to say, her phone call made my day – my year, actually. She had a little boy and, in a twist that made tears fly to my eyes, has called him Christopher! Well, wild horses won’t keep me away. Not even my own horses. I’ve sold them, along with the farmhouse and, tomorrow, I’ll be on my way.
No one here will miss me and I’m glad. It will make it so much easier to settle into a new life, in a nice part of Spain, in the small townhouse Kim bought with money from the sale of Indigo Cottage, the one piece of property her husband left her in the divorce settlement. I literally can’t wait to get there and hold little Christopher in my arms.
I say a final goodbye to the horses, who’ve been my faithful companions, and make my way back to the house where my bags are packed, ready to go.
One more thing to check. I feel around the inside pocket of my holdall for the little bottle of pills I’ve hidden there. Just as an insurance policy, in case Kim finds she still can’t cope and needs something to help her sleep.
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Keep reading for an excerpt from The Secret Sister …
Prologue
Ella
When you’ve led a charmed life, I suppose it’s inevitable that it’ll fall apart at some point.
It happened to me after my mother died, though her death was the catalyst, not the cause.
Mum had been ill for a while and had come to terms with dying. She’d lived to see me happily married, and to meet her precious granddaughter. I thought we’d had time to say all the things that mattered.
When the end came it was peaceful, with her family gathered around, and I was holding her hand.
It was much later, while clearing out her bedroom, that I realised I hadn’t known my mother as well as I thought I had.
The one thing that really mattered had been left unsaid.
Chapter 1
Colleen
Saturday
The sun woke me, slanting through the half-open curtains, hurting my eyes. I rolled out of bed, pulled my hoodie on over my pants, and padded to the window.
My brain pulsed against my skull. I felt sick and fragile. It had been years since I’d suffered a hangover, but I’d never forgotten the feeling.
The view from the ground-floor window of the guesthouse was nothing special – an area for cars, a scruffy garden with plastic furniture and faded umbrellas – but there was something soothing about the silence. Apart from the occasional cry of a seagull it was a respite from my shite-awful life.
I squinted up at the sky as the sun grew bigger and rounder – a shiny ball of hope. It would disappear within hours, if the puffy grey clouds approaching were anything to go by. Hope never stayed around long.
A solitary magpie landed on the window ledge with a thud and a flap of wings, and I jumped. I’d been on hyper-alert since leaving my husband, nerves jangling at the slightest thing. I prayed Celia wouldn’t tell Jake where to find me – not that she cared. The woman I’d called mother for thirty-three years had long since lost interest in me.
I turned and scanned the room, trying to work out how I got so pissed the night before that I now barely remembered arriving.
A folder on the bedside table informed me the guesthouse was close to the Atlantic Ocean, near Rosses Point, and a forty-minute walk to Sligo.
I turned to look at Gabriel, sprawled face down on the crumpled bed, taking in his narrow shoulders, his flop of lank blond hair. Hopefully, he would be out for hours.
A flashback of me talking too much, and later my words slurring into an incomprehensible blur filled my head.
What had I said to him?
I eyed his open wallet on the floor, stuffed with a wad of euros. A table by the door was littered with rolling tobacco, two empty bottles of wine and half a line of cocaine. I etched a finger round my nostrils, praying I hadn’t taken any. I’d been clean since meeting my husband, Jake, fifteen years ago.
How had I let this happen?
My heart pounded as I tried to recall the night before. But, despite raking around my head for clues, I could barely remember a thing, just tiny bursts of memory that floated in and out in disjointed flashes. ‘But I don’t drink,’ I could hear myself saying in a silly flirtatious voice that didn’t suit me, laughing as a large glass of wine was pushed in front of me. ‘Not anymore.’
I heaved with self-disgust as my eyes skittered around, looking for my rucksack, noticing a row of cheap-looking seascapes, fixed to the wall with nails in case some loser tried to take off with them.
Had Gabriel booked us into this horrible dump?
I couldn’t remember.
There was a laptop on the dressing table, its charge light flashing, and a rubber plant in a plastic pot on the floor, starved of everything it needed, but somehow surviving.
I finally spotted my rucksack, lying on the floor beneath a pillow. I grabbed it and headed into an adjoining bathroom that looked as if it hadn’t been updated since the Seventies. I closed the door quietly, filled a tumbler with water and gulped it down as I stared at my pallid, blotchy reflection in the mirror above the sink. Already, I didn’t look like me. I hadn’t worn a hoodie before, for a start. Jake would never have approved.
I retrieved the black hair dye and scissors I’d bought the day before, and taking a length of my
hair between my fingers, snipped it off. Another clump followed, and another. I daren’t look at the honey-coloured strands of hair in the sink in case I cried.
My eyes stung as I mixed the dye and pulled on the plastic gloves. Once I’d massaged the lotion into my hair, I thought I might puke and hung over the toilet, but after retching several times, nothing happened. I rose and sat on the edge of the bath, waiting, striving to make sense of everything, trying to work out how I got here. I pummelled my temples. Still nothing. Gabriel certainly hadn’t forced me to drink wine. I could see myself, willingly knocking it back. Perhaps Jake had been right. Perhaps he was the only person who could stop me from self-destructing. I’d proved him right within a day of leaving.
Twenty minutes later, I rinsed off the dye and studied myself again. My hair was so dark my skin looked like Snow White’s, my freckles more distinctive.
Jake won’t recognise me now.
I threw the remnants of the dye in the wicker bin then took a lukewarm shower. Afterwards, I pulled on black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt. I didn’t bother with a bra.
Jake would call me a tramp. He knew I’d gone. He’d already cancelled the credit cards, and texted me.
Where the hell are you?
I returned to the bedroom, opened Gabriel’s wallet and took out the wad of notes. There must have been over a thousand euros. It would help me get by until I found my father. What little money I’d withdrawn from a cashpoint before Jake cottoned on wouldn’t go far.
Gabriel was snoring into his pillow, his spine rising and falling. Had we had sex? Surely I’d have remembered that.
He suddenly swung his arm above his head and it landed with a thud on the pillow, making me jump. A flash of memory of his arm tightly round me, him whispering, ‘I love you, Colleen.’
Had that happened?
I shoved the money back in his wallet and left it on the table.
After pulling my hoodie back on, I pushed my feet into my trainers, grabbed my rucksack, and left without looking back.
Thick clouds gathered as I walked towards Sligo, and heavy spots of rain began to fall. A bus drew up at a shelter, and I ran and jumped on it. It was empty, apart from an old lady talking to herself.
As the bus revved a man leapt on, tall and slim with dark hair slicked to his head. My heart began to hammer against my ribs. I dragged up my hood, and slid down in my seat, but the man wasn’t Jake. Apart from his build and hair colour, he looked nothing like him. My heartbeat slowed as he sat in front of me and took out his phone.
Before I walked out yesterday, I’d felt sure Jake had been following me for months. ‘Are you having an affair?’ he’d asked more than once, as though something had happened to raise his suspicions.
I’d wanted to say, ‘When? When the hell do you ever let me out of your sight long enough to meet anyone?’
My phone vibrated in my pocket, making me jump. I pulled it out and saw Gabriel’s name flash up. Christ, I’d given him my number. I declined the call and within seconds a text came through:
Hey gorgeous. Shall we meet in the same bar tonight in Sligo? xx
‘Not a chance in hell,’ I whispered, typing a reply.
It was a mistake, Gabriel. I’m sorry.
I deleted his contact details, just in case.
My head pounded as the bus rocked and jolted on its way, and I prayed I wouldn’t throw up. I hadn’t even got a bag to be sick in, just the hood of my jacket, which would be all kinds of messy. I breathed deeply, fighting nausea, watching the sea through the window, spreading endlessly.
Rain speckled the window like tears, blurring the view. I gripped the necklace – a letter ‘B’ – that I always wore, and rested my head on the glass. I closed my eyes, but the sound of the man in front watching videos on YouTube on his phone and shifting in his seat prevented me from dozing.
As the bus stopped in Sligo its exhaust backfired, jolting me alert. It had been dark when I arrived the evening before and I hadn’t appreciated the colourful buildings curving around the banks of the River Garavogue. A smile tugged at my mouth. This was the town where everything would change.
I jumped from the bus, bought a local paper from a stand, and searched the pages for somewhere to stay.
The cheapest place I could find was a bedsit, near the town centre.
‘It’s yours if you want it,’ said the man who answered the phone, with very little charm. ‘You can rent on a day-to-day basis.’
It was obviously basic, probably terrible, but it didn’t matter. I was in Sligo, where I needed to be. This was where I would find Reagan, my father. Everything would be better then. I’d have someone on my side, to look out for me, protect me – maybe convince Jake I didn’t want to be with him anymore.
‘Leave her alone, you controlling bastard,’ I imagined my father saying.
Words I could never quite say myself.
As I headed towards the bedsit address, the rain eased off and my thoughts drifted to Celia. I couldn’t call her my mother anymore. Not after what she’d told me two weeks ago, during one of my rare visits.
‘It’s time you knew the truth, Colleen.’ That’s how she’d started the conversation, out of the blue.
We’d become estranged over the years, but I made the effort to see her now and then. We would sit in her dark kitchen – it was always dark, even with the lights on – and she would make tea, a mug for me, and always a cup and saucer for her. We’d sit at the old pine table, barely saying a word, until it was time for me to leave.
But it had been different this time.
‘I’m not your real mother,’ she’d said, fiddling with her spoon, not looking at me. There was no preamble. No preparation. The words sounded surreal, as though she was trying them out to see what they sounded like. As if it was a game. But Celia never played games.
‘What are you on about?’ I said, with a laugh that didn’t sound like mine – not that I laughed often.
She put down her spoon. ‘She died six months ago,’ she said. ‘Your real mother.’
Just like that.
I’d stared at her for what felt like an hour. She kept biting her lower lip with her small teeth, her eyes looking anywhere but at me.
‘And you tell me this now?’ My brain couldn’t form a coherent thought. ‘Now I’m thirty-three?’ I paused. ‘When my real mother is dead? Christ, Mam.’
‘Don’t blaspheme, Colleen.’
Seconds passed. I rose and began pacing, questions flooding my mind. Who was my father? Why did my mother leave me with Celia? Was Bryony adopted too? But I knew better than to mention my sister.
‘I only found out myself because her death was reported in a magazine.’ Celia’s voice cut through my frantic thoughts, and I stopped pacing. ‘She, Anna, is … was … a successful artist.’
I sank back down in the chair. ‘Go on.’
‘I should have told you a long time ago, I know that,’ she said, her fingers twisting together. ‘I should have given you a chance to find her.’
‘Too right, you should have.’ My heart was beating so hard I was surprised she couldn’t hear it.
‘I’m sorry.’ Her eyes shimmered with tears, but this was nothing new. Celia spent nearly every moment on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And the truth was, now her words were sinking in, finding out Celia wasn’t my biological mother wasn’t such a shock, not really. It explained so much.
‘I wouldn’t have wanted to find her,’ I said, anger bubbling up. ‘Any mother who could give up a child—’
‘But you don’t know why, Colleen,’ Celia cut in. Her voice was soft, and her green eyes – eyes I’d thought were like mine – darted around the kitchen as if looking for a quick escape. She rose from the table, smoothed her apron, and went to look out at the garden. It had grown wild since her second husband walked out, years ago, but she had recently cultivated a little vegetable patch. It had made me wonder if she was improving, if her depression of so many years was finally lifting. �
�I want to tell you who your da is too,’ she said, not turning. ‘It’s time you knew everything.’
‘Jesus, you’re full of news today,’ I said, my mind reeling. I’d always believed Celia’s first husband – the man we’d lived with in Cork until I was five – had been that man: my father. But Celia was about to destroy that belief too.
She crossed to a kitchen drawer, opened it, and took out a photo. ‘His name is Reagan Brody.’
‘Wasn’t Brody your maiden name?’
She nodded and sat back down. ‘Reagan’s my brother,’ she said. ‘He lived abroad for a long time, but he’s back now. He’s living in Sligo.’
‘Your brother?’ I cried, covering my mouth.
She nodded, her straight grey hair hanging limply on either side of her face.
‘So, I’d have called him Uncle and Da, had I ever met him?’ My voice was rising. ‘What a bloody mess. Jesus Christ.’
‘Please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Colleen.’
‘So he – my father – knew where to find me all along?’ I snatched the photo, hands shaking. It was too much to take in. I stared at his face, trying to convince myself there’d been a terrible mistake. Unable to take in that he was part of the family, and yet he’d never bothered to contact me.
‘We thought it was for the best,’ said Celia, her voice calm.
As I stared at his image, something tugged at my memory. His tanned face, that fair unruly hair, his cheery smile. He looked familiar. Or maybe it was just that I’d inherited his green eyes, not Celia’s.
I felt so many things, all blended together so they were indistinguishable, my mind buzzing with thoughts. But Celia closed off after her confession, as she so often did; never quite living in the real world.
Yesterday, after I walked out on Jake, I went round to see her to say goodbye and let her know where I was heading. She’d slipped a piece of paper into my hand.
‘I’ve never used it,’ she said, as I read the email address she’d written down. ‘It’s Reagan’s. He sent it to me a couple of years back, in case I needed to get hold of him.’
