Summer of Secrets

by Rosie Rushton

  Clearly the mystery guy was waiting for her in the church. And despite everything Summer had asked of her, Caitlin had no intention of spending the next hour sightseeing.

  Not when there was a mystery to be solved and a friend to be saved from herself. And of course, Ludo’s eternal gratitude to be won.

  Finding her way towards the church was a lot harder than Caitlin had anticipated. For one thing, a lot of the narrow streets were dead ends – she would turn a corner and discover that she had to retrace her steps and start over. For another, the place was beginning to fill up with people – tables were being erected on the cobbles, women were bustling past her, wicker baskets full of fruit and vegetables and a cluster of American tourists blocked the way as they ooh-ed and aah-ed and gee-whizzed over a blackboard advertising walks to the villages of the Cinque Terre.

  But eventually, when she’d almost given up hope of getting there, she found herself on a steep stony path, which she could see led directly to the arched doorway of the church. She paused, eyeing up her options. She could hardly march into the church in full view of Summer and her friend and yet she knew it was her duty to make sure that Summer wasn’t getting into any danger. Then she noticed that a few metres further on the path forked; the left fork was screened from the church by thick oleander bushes and led round the side of the building. Maybe there would be a window from which she could observe without being seen. She felt her heart begin to beat faster as she scrabbled up the path, slipping from time to time on loose stones and wishing she’d worn trainers instead of her strappy sandals. As she drew closer to the church she slowed down, edging round the building until she came within a metre or so of a narrow, glassless window, almost hidden by russet-coloured creeper. She held her breath and strained to catch any sound from inside the building.

  Nothing. Except – yes, just faintly from within the church the low murmur of voices. She was right – that’s where they were. She crept closer to the window, stretched out her hand, and as slowly and gently as she could, pulled a tendril of creeper aside in order to peer through into the darkness inside.

  What she saw as her eyes adjusted to the gloom made her catch her breath and grab at the broken sill at the base of the window to steady herself.

  Summer was sitting on one of the old pews, zipping up a small holdall. Beside her stood a guy, his hand resting lightly on her arm. Despite the dim light inside the old building, it was clear from the way Summer’s shoulders were shaking that she was crying.

  Caitlin strained her ears to catch what Summer was saying.

  ‘When do we . . . get away . . . take me . . .’

  Oh my God, Caitlin thought, clamping her hand to her mouth. They’re going to elope!

  And as if to reinforce her realisation, as she watched, the guy sat down beside Summer, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently. Summer pushed the holdall to one side and laid her head on his shoulder.

  ‘Soon . . .’

  She couldn’t catch every word that Summer was saying but what she did hear was enough. And one thing was certain: any ideas that Izzy may have had about Summer being afraid of men were clearly way off the mark.

  ‘Allo moto . . .’ The peace was shattered by the digitalised voice on her mobile phone. ‘Allo moto.’

  She grabbed it, heart thumping, and flipped open the cover. Her mother – typical. She switched it off without replying and, hardly daring to breathe, remained frozen to the spot, half expecting Summer to burst out of the ruin at any minute, accusing her of spying – which, of course, she was. She pressed herself against the wall of the church and waited.

  ‘What was that? I heard a voice!’ Summer’s words were now clearly audible. Caitlin spotted a large bush a couple of metres away and hurled herself behind it, wincing as the twigs grazed her legs. Through the tangle of foliage, Caitlin saw the guy – wearing frayed denim shorts and scruffy sneakers – step out of the church and glance round at the terraces. Now that she could see him more clearly, she realised he was quite a bit older than her, short and lean, with olive skin and a mass of short, dark, curly hair.

  ‘You’re imagining things, babes,’ she heard him say in a broad American accent, as he disappeared back into the building. ‘Hey, it’s getting late . . . get going . . .’ His voice faded as the darkness of the church swallowed him up.

  Caitlin’s mind raced and she glanced at her watch. She had to hurry – she couldn’t risk Summer discovering her up here.

  She glanced back at the church door and then ran swiftly to the path behind the cover of the bushes. Her mind was racing; what the hell was going on? Was Summer really going to run away? Was that what she wanted Caitlin to help her with? One thing was clear: she had to act totally innocent and wait for Summer to open up; letting on that she knew anything would be fatal. It might even be a good idea to nip into a shop and buy a few postcards to make it look as if she really had been doing the sightseeing bit.

  ‘Caitlin? Hey – Caitlin!’ She jumped and spun round, blinking furiously as the glare of the sinking sun hit her eyeballs.

  A familiar figure was waving at her from higher up the lane.

  It was Ludo. For a moment, her heart did a double flip at the sight of Ludo’s muscular, tanned thighs and bare chest, but then she realised to her horror that he wasn’t alone. Judging by the striking family resemblance, the tall guy whose hand was resting on Ludo’s shoulder was Sir Magnus Tilney.

  This was a disaster. Any minute now, Summer would be leaving the church and Ludo and his dad – if that’s who it was – would see her. Worse still, they might even see the guy.

  In her mind’s eye, the scene played out. Summer screeching that Caitlin had betrayed her, Ludo and the guy getting into a punch-up, Ludo getting hurt, Caitlin mopping his bloodied lip, Sir Magnus banishing his daughter back to England . . .

  She had no choice. She turned and hurried up the lane towards them.

  ‘Hi there,’ she said, trying to look cool and relaxed despite a scarlet face and perspiring neck.

  ‘Hi – Dad, this is Caitlin Morland, Summer’s friend,’ Ludo said.

  ‘Good to meet you, Caitlin,’ Sir Magnus boomed, taking her hand and shaking it in a vice-like grip. He was well over six foot, broad-shouldered and with grey hair curling into the nape of his suntanned neck. Dressed in a white, open-necked shirt and tailored shorts, he looked, Caitlin thought, like one of those film stars in the old black and white movies who wore cravats and called their wives ‘my dearest dear’.

  ‘But what are you doing all on your own?’ he demanded, fanning himself with his straw panama. ‘Where’s Summer? Don’t tell me she’s abandoned you already?’

  ‘Oh no, nothing like that, she went to the village,’ panted Caitlin, desperately trying to catch her breath, ‘She – er – needed something from the shops and I wanted to take photos – the light was perfect and the view’s amazing.’

  ‘We can do better than this,’ he assured her. ‘Wait till you see the Cinque Terre villages from the sea. Now that is something worth a couple of reels of film. Though I guess you’re all digitalised now, eh?’

  He glanced at his watch.

  ‘Good heavens, nearly half-past six. Come on, we’ll get back to the house and see what culinary delights await us.’

  ‘No!’ Caitlin burst out. ‘I mean – thank you, but I promised to meet Summer in the village and she’ll wonder where I am.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Ludo butted in eagerly. ‘You go ahead, Dad.’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Sir Magnus declared, ramming his hat on to his head. He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and, while Caitlin watched helplessly, punched a number.

  ‘Summer? I don’t know what you’re up to but get the hell back to the house at once, you understand? You don’t go abandoning house guests on their first evening . . . damn! Lost the bloody signal!’

  He stuffed the phone back into his pocket and began striding up the hill, muttering under his breath, ‘That girl is so like
her mother, it scares me sometimes.’

  ‘So – what shall we do tomorrow?’ Caitlin could tell by the urgency in Ludo’s voice that he was embarrassed by his father’s outburst. ‘I thought maybe we could take the boat out – if you’d like to, that is.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Caitlin replied, as Ludo’s father led them up a narrow flight of stone steps between two cottages.

  ‘Now, that is a good idea,’ Sir Magnus butted in, seemingly over his fit of pique. ‘Take a picnic, make a day of it – great plan!’

  He rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.

  ‘Pity I can’t join you, but I’ve got wine buyers to see. Mind you, Gaby will be tickled pink to go,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her as soon as we get back.’

  Caitlin looked at Ludo, waiting for him to put his father straight; tell him this was just a day for the two of them.

  ‘Right,’ Ludo said. ‘Fine. Great.’

  For a fleeting second, the word ‘wimp’ shot through Caitlin’s consciousness but a half-apologetic shrug of Ludo’s shoulders and a silently mouthed ‘sorry’ quashed it on the spot.

  If she had a father like Sir Magnus, she guessed she’d be pretty compliant too.

  ‘Well, thank you so much!’

  Caitlin had just finished phoning her mother to assure her that yes, she had arrived safely; yes, she would beware of local romeos, and no, she wasn’t going to swim in a sea full of jellyfish, when her bedroom door swung open and Summer stomped in and flung herself down on the end of the bed. ‘How could you drop me in it with my father like that?’

  ‘Thanks for knocking,’ Caitlin retorted, wrapping a towel tightly round her wet hair and fastening her bathrobe. ‘And don’t blame me – it wasn’t my fault that your dad and Ludo happened to bump into me. What did you want me to do – let them walk right up to the . . .’

  She checked herself just in time. As far as Summer knew, Caitlin hadn’t a clue what was going on.

  ‘. . . to the village and risk meeting you and this guy strolling around?’

  Summer pulled a face and Caitlin noticed that her eyes were suspiciously pink.

  ‘I guess,’ she murmured. ‘I hadn’t thought. Sorry. So, did you have a good time? Where did you go?’

  ‘All over,’ Caitlin replied quickly, jettisoning her bathrobe and pulling on her pants and bra. ‘I took a few pictures, explored a bit and got lost. What about you? Is everything OK?’

  Summer sighed.

  ‘Yes – no – sometimes I wonder if everything will ever be OK again.’

  For a moment she fiddled with the corner of the silk throw on Caitlin’s bed and then suddenly began talking so fast that Caitlin had trouble keeping up with her.

  ‘He’s such a control freak! Well, this time we’ve got the better of him, and serve him bloody well right! He thinks he can rule everyone’s life, make them into something they’re not, just to make him feel good . . .’

  ‘But Summer, if he’s like that, why the hell are you meeting up with him?’ Caitlin gasped, wriggling into a sundress and gesturing to Summer to zip her up.

  ‘Not Alex – my father! Alex is great – he’s my total hero. Of course, as far as my dad’s concerned the whole di Matteo family are the pits but that’s all down to his stupid prejudices.’

  Caitlin, reeling from this sudden, uncharacteristic divulgence of information, managed to ask, ‘Your father knows him?’

  ‘That’s what’s so silly about it all. Alex’s parents and mine were friends for years – us kids all used to play together. Alex’s dad ran this swish restaurant down the coast and he used to let Mum hang her pictures there. It was some arty friend of his that saw them and wanted to do that exhibition I told you about.’

  ‘And that’s why your dad and he fell out? Just because your dad didn’t want your mum to have this exhibition?’

  ‘I guess,’ she sighed. ‘He and Mum had these horrendous rows about it, and Mum said she was going to do it anyway – but not long after, she died.’

  There was a catch in her voice as she turned away, her fingers brushing her eyes.

  ‘The two families haven’t spoken to one another since.’

  Caitlin’s mind was racing. It was like being caught up in an episode of a TV soap, where no one had shown you anyone else’s script. What happened to break the friendship? Why was Summer’s father so uptight about his wife’s work? Just what was going on between Summer and Alex, and how could she find out about the holdall she’d seen in the church without making her friend suspicious? This was just the kind of story that ended up in magazines like Prego and Spot On.

  ‘So you can only see him if you meet in secret?’ she queried, slipping her feet into flip-flops, her imagination conjuring up the opening paragraph of a My Secret Love feature with a soft-focus photo of Summer, the tears on her cheeks digitally enhanced.

  Summer nodded. ‘It’s the pits. See, his family moved back to the States when Alex’s granddad died – they’re Italian/American and own a chain of restaurants in New England. So instead of being here all through the holidays, Alex only comes for a week or so to visit his other grandparents in Vernazza.’

  She smiled suddenly.

  ‘After Mum died I didn’t see him for two years because we never came back here. I guess, what with us being in England and the di Matteos in the States, Dad thought he’d cracked it; what he doesn’t know is that Alex spent the whole of this last year on a uni exchange – Sussex University, to be exact!’

  ‘In Brighton? So you got to see him . . .’ She paused as the pieces of the jigsaw began falling into place.

  Summer nodded.

  ‘He rang me last October when he got over there and we met up. That’s when we started to – well, you know . . .’

  ‘Fancy one another?’

  ‘Yeah. Big time. Of course, Dad would have gone ballistic, but luckily, he’s dead keen on me doing lots of sport – says it’s a balance to sitting at the piano all day. So I pretend to go out to play tennis or swim or whatever . . .’

  ‘And see Alex instead! That’s why you never went out with the Mulberry Court lot. You were seeing him and using them as an alibi.’

  Caitlin eyed her with new respect.

  ‘And Izzy’s party!’ Caitlin went on. ‘You’d been to see him that night, hadn’t you? That’s why you were in tennis gear, never mind Wimbledon – the Movie!’

  ‘Exactly!’ Summer replied. ‘And that’s why I asked you to come out here. It was that history of art class that decided me.’

  ‘Now, you’re not making any sense,’ Caitlin protested. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Remember when Mrs Cathcart showed us that picture of The Three Graces and you said what you thought was going on?’

  ‘OK, so I lost the plot a bit . . .’

  ‘No, that’s the whole point,’ Summer stressed. ‘You can think out of the box – you see things other people miss. It’s like the way you take photos of things that other people don’t even notice and how you’ve just clicked about how me and Alex got to see one another.’

  She paused.

  ‘My mum would have liked you,’ she said softly. ‘Most people just look at a picture, she used to say; only special people know how to search for the message behind it.’

  ‘A bit like that project that Mrs C’s given us,’ Caitlin said, nodding.

  Summer took a deep breath.

  ‘I reckon you and me think like Mum did,’ she added, slipping her arm through Caitlin’s. ‘That’s why you’re going to help me find out what really went on when Mum died. Why my dad got rid of all her pictures and why my whole family carry on like she’s a total unmentionable.’

  ‘Well, Summer my dear, so at last you’ve brought your friends to see us!’ Sir Magnus Tilney put the jug of Pimms he was carrying down on the table and strode across the terrace to greet them, kissing Summer on both cheeks and beaming broadly at everyone. It struck Caitlin that this was a different man from the one who’d blasted his d
aughter over the phone.

  ‘Now, you, Caitlin, I’ve met already,’ he went on. ‘And this is?’ He turned to Izzy.

  ‘Izzy Thorpe,’ Summer said.

  ‘No relation to that politician fellow? The chap on the world news?’ Sir Magnus guffawed. ‘The one who’s in trouble for enjoying a bit of the highlife . . .’

  The colour drained from Izzy’s face.

  ‘He’s my father, actually,’ she replied. ‘And he’s not––’

  ‘Your father? Oh, don’t look so worried, my dear, I’m not criticising the chap. The media, though – that’s another matter. Can’t trust them further than you can throw ’em – I’ve had enough run-ins with the press myself to know that.’

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘Besides, Parliament’s in recess – it’ll all blow over. Something of nothing, I don’t doubt.’

  He turned hastily to Jamie.

  ‘And you are . . .?’

  ‘Jamie Morland, sir, Caitlin’s brother.’

  ‘He’s my boyfriend,’ Izzy butted in, thrusting out her chin in defiance. Caitlin and Summer exchanged amused glances.

  ‘And what do you do, boyfriend?’ asked Sir Magnus. ‘Golf? Tennis?’

  ‘I sail a bit,’ Jamie began.

  ‘You’re into boats? Wonderful!’ Summer’s father boomed, clapping Jamie on the shoulder. ‘Of course I don’t do as much sailing as I used to – broke the bloody collar bone and knackered my hip a year ago, but no doubt I could helm while you crew and . . .’

  He grabbed Jamie by the arm and led him away, still talking non-stop.

  Caitlin touched Izzy’s arm.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Sure I am,’ Izzy snapped. ‘What’s not to be OK about?’

  Caitlin felt as if she was sitting in the middle of one of those TV adverts for Italian cars or jars of pasta sauce. A long trestle table had been set up under the trees at the side of the villa and was laden with bowls of salad, dishes of olives, baskets of garlic bread and jugs of wine. Two barbecues sizzled away at the side, grilling huge shrimps, whole fish and chicken legs doused in honey and herbs. Sir Magnus had invited friends from the neighbouring villa to the meal, and Caitlin’s ears were assailed with the rapid staccato of Italian spoken so fast that she couldn’t understand a single word, despite having scanned the pages of Italian in Seven Days at the airport. She felt as if any moment now a Fiat Punto would hurtle through the olive groves, or some fat señora would brandish tomato sauce to background music of Arrivederci Roma and pronounce that it was full of Italian sunshine for just two pounds thirty-five.