Alice's Secret

by Lynne Francis

  She made tea and toast. There was only some rather elderly white bread in the bread bin. She’d need to do a bit of shopping this morning, stock up again. At least there was jam left in the fridge. Strawberry, but not homemade like she’d become used to at Moira’s house.

  She took her tea and toast back to bed and settled down, pillows propped, curtains firmly shut. She thought longingly of her casement window back at Moira’s, its outside curtain of creeper, the backdrop of trees, hills, weather. If she opened her curtains here, the family across the road would have an unimpeded view of her Saturday morning laziness. She had quite a relaxed relationship with them, although they’d never spoken beyond saying ‘hello’. The little kids would wave at her as she watered her window boxes or brought in her shopping. She loved to watch them all out in the street: the eldest, too-cool-for-school in his designer trainers and compulsory street attire, sent out to watch the others. He’d appeared on crutches for a brief spell, carefully setting them to one side and easing himself onto a kitchen chair outside their front gate, bouncing the youngest, the only girl in the family, on his knee as he supervised her noisy brothers playing football. The little girl greeted her brothers with shrieks and chuckles when they took it in turns to come up and kiss or tease their sister.

  Alys guessed that they played in the street because they had no garden. Perhaps the extension, needed to house at least eight people in what would otherwise have been a tiny house, had all but filled it up. Or maybe it was a cultural thing, a way of being sociable in a community, something that a suspicious London seemed largely to have given up on? She herself barely knew the names of anyone in her street apart from her immediate neighbours. Although in the past she had referred to her neighbourhood as her ‘London village’ she realised now that it could hardly be more different to the friendliness of Northwaite.

  At least it was peaceful this morning: no planes on take-off to disturb her. She’d be fine unless the wind changed. Then they’d be back – the smaller ones high and distant, the long-haul flights roaring over and shaking the windows.

  Later that morning, Alys stepped out into the back garden, which was lit by a sudden burst of July sunshine. The bamboo had grown while she’d been away. Great fat shoots pointed at the sky, sprouting antennae as each one started to unfurl. The stems must be at least six or seven metres tall now; they had grown at an alarming rate while she’d been gone. The fig tree had grown a little, too. Trying to unravel the bindweed which clung to it, she managed to snap off one of the figs and felt sad: it had so few. It really ought to be moved to a sunnier spot. Like everything in the garden, it had been planted without a plan; with no thought as to how big it might grow, or how much light it might need.

  She found a mysterious replica bird lying on the paving stones. Yellow and purple, with a beady eye and a fat chest, it had a bit of wire instead of feet. Its feathers, such as they were, were tattered and torn. It looked as though it was something that might once have adorned a plant pot. Perhaps it belonged to the fox, a regular visitor by night? It liked odd playthings, and unusual objects had turned up in her garden before: a golf ball, a strange plastic disc, a small doll.

  She settled guiltily in the garden with the newspaper, only too well aware that she should really be gardening. The sun had brought others outdoors, keen to make the most of a good day. Alys suddenly felt hemmed in – children were laughing and shrieking in the gardens around her, barbecues were being fired up. She longed for wide-open spaces – how could just a few weeks away have left her feeling like this? ‘Time for a walk,’ she thought. She’d head down towards the canal. At the end of a day in the office, it had always been balm for her soul. There were plenty of possibilities for getting away from people, and forgetting that you lived in a big city. ‘As long as you blot out the noise from the motorway. And the planes,’ she thought wryly, newly conscious of the roaring of jet engines as she went in search of her sunglasses.

  Chapter Two

  What did that foliage smell like? Alys struggled to pin it down, closing her eyes to see if it helped bring some images to mind. Pollen, wet dogs perhaps? Down towards the canal it smelt of meadows and summer holidays. Quite different to Yorkshire when she’d left it.

  The paths around the canal had changed a lot since Easter. The lacy heads of cow parsley were held aloft on stalks that were taller than she was. And the birdsong was different – no raucous songthrush or persistent chiff-chaff. But there was a bright jay, right by the path, unconcerned. More squawking parakeets than usual. And flocks of noisy black-and-white magpies; a greenfinch, plump and very, very green. A spotted woodpecker, flying from tree to tree. This year’s baby rabbits were already half grown. Now they had plenty of greenery to hide in by the path. She spotted red vetch: single bright flowers on a stem. She slipped a sprig into her pocket. She’d become hooked on identifying the flowers that she saw, but she knew it was wrong to pick specimens in the wild. She should just have taken her usual photo, but she’d left her phone at home.

  Alys hadn’t passed a soul on the path. It was always quiet – today even more so. The noise as her mobile phone started to ring made her jump. Except, of course, it wasn’t her mobile – hers was sitting on the table by the sofa. In any case, this one was playing a quite different refrain. But it was clearly a mobile. Alys looked around. It was hard to pinpoint the direction of the sound, but it seemed to be coming from where the tangle of brambles, just bursting into flower by the path, was at its thickest. She crouched down and tried to peer in, but it was too dense. And too thorny to reach in. In any case, the sound had stopped. She guessed the phone hadn’t been dropped there by accident. Someone must have been trying to get rid of it.

  She pressed on, rounding the corner, the path dropping down towards the canal bridge and the place she thought of as ‘her’ kingfisher pool. The sight of a heart-stopping flash of turquoise there last September now brought her to this spot every time she walked here, in the hope of a repeat performance. She stopped short. Three or four police officers surrounded a young man, spread-eagled on the ground. More police were walking up the path towards her.

  ‘You’ll have to go back the way you came, I’m afraid,’ said the tallest and broadest one.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Alys, trying to peer around him.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’ His tone suggested that further discussion wasn’t an option.

  Alys wondered whether to tell them about the mobile phone in the brambles, but the Londoner’s mantra – ‘Don’t get involved’ – sprang to mind. In any case, she guessed the phone would ring again. They’d probably find it.

  Later that day, Alys’s neighbour asked her if she’d heard the helicopters circling. ‘What with that and the planes, it quite spoilt the lovely afternoon.’ She sighed. ‘I heard a couple were stabbed a few streets away. Up near the station. One of them’s dead, the other critical.’ Alys put two and two together and probably made five, but in that instant her mind was made up. London didn’t feel like the place she wanted to be any more.

  Chapter Three

  Tim set the glass down in front of Alys. The contents looked suspiciously strongly coloured. Alys favoured crisp, dry whites, pale in colour. This looked too much like a Chardonnay for her liking. She sipped cautiously and tried to disguise a shudder at the unmistakable oily flavour. Cheap, pub Chardonnay. And, as a bonus, he’d bought a large glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Alys, raising her glass. Guilt over her failure to respond properly to his emails had made her reluctantly agree to meet up with Tim. He’d suggested a drink and so here she was – curious, it’s true, to see how she would feel about him after three months apart. He seemed to be having difficulty accepting that, as far as she was concerned, they had split up. He was insistent that the break would have helped their relationship.

  Tim got straight to the point.

  ‘So, what’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve been away for weeks – months – and I’ve barely heard a word. Did
you lose your phone or something? Although I sent you emails as well that you clearly couldn’t be bothered to answer.’

  He glared at her. Alys looked at him dispassionately: his lips were narrow, pursed in disapproval; eyes too pale a shade of blue, and rather small, now that she came to think of it. She shook herself: it was unfair of her to be so critical. She was here to give him a second chance, wasn’t she?

  ‘I turned my phone off when I got there. It felt like an intrusion, somehow. It was such a wonderful place, steeped in history, cobbled streets and everything. A mobile felt – out of place …’ she tailed off. Tim was looking at her as though she was mad. She should just have lied and said there was no signal. Truth was, she’d used her phone a lot – well, at least the camera on it. To capture the still, dark woodland, the twisted and exposed tree roots, the waterfalls in every level of spate, the unfamiliar flowers. She’d locked their secrets deep within the phone’s digital heart, so whenever she looked at the pictures she had a shock of recognition and it took her right back to the beautiful spots she’d come to cherish so much.

  Tim was stony-faced, waiting. Originally attracted to Alys’s impulsiveness and scattiness, he was now deeply irritated by it. Why couldn’t she be more like him?

  Alys stared down at the weathered wood of the table, twiddling the stem of the wineglass with her fingers. When she’d first arrived in Yorkshire, she’d been so caught up in helping Moira, learning about the café and exploring the area, that she’d barely given Tim a second thought. Her London life felt like a distant dream, like something that had once belonged to someone else. She’d actually avoided reading his emails after the first few because she just didn’t want to deal with what she might find in them. After all, she’d told him in her letter that she needed a bit of space, some time to think. And in her defence, she had replied at first. Then, becoming annoyed by their increasingly demanding tone, their insistence that Alys was making a mistake and should return, it was true that she’d started to ignore them. It had dawned on her that they were all about Tim; there were no enquiries as to how she was getting on, how Moira’s recovery was going, whether she was enjoying working in the café.

  Alys pushed back her chair and stood up, her glass of wine barely touched.

  ‘You know, Tim, I came here today prepared to believe that maybe our time apart would have done us both good. I guess I must have changed more than I realised while I’ve been away. I’m sorry. I don’t want things to go back to how they used to be, and I’ve decided I’m not going travelling either – I’m going back to Yorkshire.’

  Until she spoke, Alys had no idea that she had such a plan. The words had just popped out of her mouth. If she was honest with herself, her heart wasn’t in finding adventure abroad. She could rent out her London place for twice the rent she’d need to pay there, with a bit left over. But how would she earn a living? Would Moira be prepared to have her back at the café?

  It took only a couple of phone calls, an email and an Internet booking, and Alys was back on the train to Yorkshire the next day. Her temporary lodger, Seb, had bucked the interning trend and landed himself a permanent job, along with a salary. So he was keen to move back in and find a friend to help him pay the rent. He was also happy to keep an eye on the cats for the time being, relieving Alys of the guilt she felt about stepping out of their lives once more. Moira, who’d felt bereft when she’d waved Alys off in the taxi to the station only a few days earlier, had laughed and cried down the phone and said that she couldn’t be more delighted that Alys wanted to come back to work with her.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ she’d said, when she’d recovered herself enough to string a proper sentence together. ‘I haven’t been able to master the lemon poppy-seed cake recipe at all. The regulars are very put out.’

  The spare room was hers for as long as she needed it, Moira added, which would give Alys time to find somewhere to rent now that she was going to be paid a salary.

  So far, it had all slotted together incredibly well, and Alys couldn’t suppress a smile as she settled back into her seat on the train and contemplated the weeks and months ahead. She could barely acknowledge to herself that, additionally, the thought of something – or should that be someone – was making her return seem even more appealing.

  Chapter Four

  Alys’s swift return from London had provoked a lot of good-natured joshing from their regular customers, while Moira was just unreservedly pleased to have her back. After a week of jokes along the lines of how amazing it was that round-the-world trips could be fitted into a weekend these days, Alys was relieved when it all started to die down.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Moira, laughing, as Alys tried to remain good-humoured in the face of all the teasing. ‘They’re as pleased to see you as I am, and they’re really chuffed that you’ve thrown over your exciting travel plans to come back to them.’

  Alys raised an eyebrow and was about to respond when the café door opened and Rob appeared. ‘Heard you were back,’ he said with a grin. ‘It’s a hard place to leave.’

  Alys, who had been expecting another joke at her expense, was rather taken aback. He was right. But how did he know?

  ‘Don’t forget – I tried to leave once,’ Rob went on. ‘But the wilds of Australia have got nothing on Yorkshire!’ He picked up his takeaway coffee and was heading out of the door when he turned back. ‘I did last longer than a weekend, though.’ And with a cheery smile, he was gone. They’d had their first encounter, Alys reflected, and she hadn’t managed to even utter a word.

  Flo had been a source of worry to Alys – after all, she’d agreed to step into Alys’s shoes and cover shifts in the café when Alys left. It didn’t seem fair to take promised work away from her, but Moira had said rather mysteriously on Alys’s return that she had a plan. Moira then began to be away from the café for several hours each day, leaving Flo and Alys to work side by side, and was rather vague about what she was up to. After Alys had fielded a couple of phone calls for her aunt from estate agents and a solicitor she began to have her suspicions but decided to wait until Moira was prepared to share any news.

  A month had passed, business at the café had continued to flourish, and Alys felt as though they had worked out a comfortable routine, when Moira said one evening, ‘I had an email from Kate. She’s going to come and visit for a few days.’

  Alys was surprised – it had never occurred to her that her mother would come up north. Although now she came to think about it, she hadn’t really told her mother much about the change in her plans. In fact, had she told her anything? She thought hard. No, she didn’t think that she’d sent her so much as a text in all the time she’d been back.

  ‘Did she say why?’ asked Alys.

  Moira started to laugh at Alys’s reaction. ‘To see you, I expect? You’re her daughter, remember?’

  ‘But Mum never comes to Yorkshire!’ exclaimed Alys.

  She’d never understood why Kate seemed to have taken a dislike to her home town, while Moira was still so happy in the area. The reasons weren’t at all clear; in fact, Alys wasn’t sure that they had ever been spelt out. She was just aware that Kate was decidedly ambivalent about her Yorkshire roots, and it had become a bit of a family joke, without anyone really knowing what lay behind it.

  Alys knew better than to ask her mother outright, as she was sure that she’d be fobbed off with some vague wave of the hand and an ‘oh, you know, this and that’ kind of an answer. Maybe it was time to quiz Moira? They’d taken their evening meal and a couple of glasses of wine into the garden. The day’s events at the café had been dissected, the plates cleared and a second glass of wine poured. Moira seemed in no hurry to move indoors.

  ‘I was just wondering –’ said Alys, and then paused.

  ‘Yes?’ said Moira, waiting and wondering whether she should be alarmed at what might be coming.

  ‘About why Mum seems to dislike this area so much, especially as you seem so happy and settled here
.’

  ‘Heavens, I wondered what on earth was on your mind! Well, you know, I haven’t really thought about it that much, certainly not recently. That’s just the way we are. I suppose Kate, being the eldest, was always pushing boundaries, restless. She didn’t like small-town life in Nortonstall and so she was delighted when Dad got a job in Leeds when she was in her teens. She’d never really tried that hard at school and when she had to start a new school in Leeds, she more or less gave up. She was very attractive and she got work very easily. Boutiques were just starting up in those days, in the sixties, and they were looking for girls that looked the part.’ Moira paused and took a couple of sips of wine, looking thoughtful.

  ‘I suppose, with Kate gone, my role in the family changed a bit. I went to college for a year, then I took off on an overland trip to India.’ Moira laughed. ‘Don’t look so surprised. It was what lots of students did in those days. Not quite gap-year travel. But then, when Dad died, I was worried about Mum managing by herself, so I came back, went to secretarial college and got a job in Leeds. Then, when Mum died, I used the bit of money I’d inherited to buy this house when it came onto the market. I’d always had my eye on coming back here to Northwaite, but I hadn’t really expected this very house, the one that Grandma Beth had lived in, would become my home.’

  Moira had revealed a lot about herself in just a few sentences, but there was still a lot that Alys would have liked to ask. She was curious to know more about the India trip, and would have loved to ask Moira why she’d never married, but instead she decided to focus on the one thing that she’d said that she’d found the most surprising.

  ‘Mum was rebellious?’ Alys said, aware that she was sounding incredulous.