The Summer of Secrets (12 page)

‘Be careful with it, darlings. I’m feeling a bit tired.’ As she drifted by, Helen couldn’t help recalling the naked arms and stomach of the woman in the painting, her face so full of life as she turned to smile at the artist. Victoria’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she was jerked back to the present.

‘… Piet knew had a dinghy. We went to see him, and he gave us a lift.’ Victoria, the handle twisted around her fingers, was looking up at her. ‘Are you going to give me a hand?’

Together, they pulled it as far as the door, and the twins fell on to it, tugging at the red and blue rubber inside. Victoria knelt down.

‘He said it might need some repairs, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot of blowing up, but this is where we get to be Huckleberry Finn.’ She grinned at Helen. ‘Has your dad got any rubber glue?’

Each day followed the next, with no more interruption to their tempo than there was to the run of unbroken sunshine. It felt as if the weather had always been like this, and would never change, the temperature outside matching her blood, so it was like being absorbed into the atmosphere. With no appointments to keep or places to be, Helen found herself stopping to wonder where she was in the week. August began to roll by, and there was never any question that, every morning, she would go and join the Dovers down at the cottage, though, if anyone had asked her what they spent their time doing, she would have struggled to answer. They fiddled with the dinghy every so often, finding the holes but getting no further. The boat in the garage was making better progress. Unlike her father, with his plans permanently stuck in sometime or never, Piet made things happen. The heat seemed to energize him, and Mick seemed determined to keep up. She would pass the open door of the garage and hear the rumble of voices from inside the boat. As she climbed over the stile at the end of the lane, the sunlight on the canal was a living, breathing Monet, and she would let the grasses that overhung the towpath slip through her fingers so she could pinch off the seeds in a neat bouquet and throw them over the water like an offering.

‘Helen!’ Pippa was kneeling on the edge of the grass in the garden behind the cottage. ‘Come and see!’

She had cleared a space in the tangled mass of weeds that filled the border by the wall, and was building a miniature garden of her own. A winding path of stones made its way through the middle, and she was trying to make some daisies stand up in the earth on either side. Helen crouched down next to her to take a closer look.

‘You need trees.’ She looked around for something within reach, and broke off a handful of twigs from a straggling shrub with small yellow flowers. ‘Do you want them in a clump at the back or in a line down the side?’

Pippa sat back to consider. ‘Over there.’ She pointed at the far corner.

For a few minutes they worked in companionable silence. ‘Can you help me make a house?’

Her question reminded Helen of her younger self crouching in a garden and building a tiny log cabin from sticks, setting up a table of bark with leaf plates. Where had that been? Their old house? She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember who she’d been with. They’d picked raspberries as well, and hidden in a tunnel of runner beans.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Victoria’s voice came from overhead. Helen squinted as she looked up to see her hanging out of the bathroom window, hair in wet strands on either side of her face.

‘Nothing much.’ Helen stood up, brushing dirt from her hands.

Pippa tugged at her shirt.

‘Don’t go, I need you to help me.’ She had a streak of earth running down one cheek, and a twig caught in her hair. Helen reached for a discarded daisy and stuck it behind Pippa’s ear.

‘I’ll help you for a bit.’

Above them, Victoria was squeezing at the ends of her hair, sending water dripping on to the path below. ‘I’ll be down in a sec.’

They had made the walls of the house by the time Victoria joined them, with twigs broken to the right length and pushed into the soil. Victoria extended a bare foot and poked at the earth to one side of it.

‘You should have a pond there.’

‘Don’t! You’ll knock it over!’ Pippa gave Victoria’s foot a sideways swipe. Victoria swung her arms in a wide circle, in a show of trying to balance, and ended with both hands against the wall and her foot inches above Pippa’s little stand of trees. She let it hover, keeping her eyes on Pippa’s face.

‘I can’t keep it up, I’m losing my balance …’ and she let it drop a fraction. ‘Oh, oh, it’s going …’

‘Leave her alone.’ Helen too was watching Pippa’s expression. ‘You’re going to ruin it.’

The noise of Piet’s van distracted Victoria from her teasing. He was coming up the rough track that cut across from the lane to the back wall of the cottage gardens. Piet had to take his time, bumping around the holes and, seeing Victoria’s attention was diverted, Pippa gave her a shove, which sent her to the ground.

‘I’m going to get you!’ With one of her swift changes, Victoria jumped up and began chasing Pippa round in manic game of tig. Helen knelt to put the trees straight in Pippa’s garden. Victoria had Pippa down on the grass and was tickling her. As Helen stood up, the engine cut out and she heard the van door open. Pippa’s giggles stopped.

A girl was getting out of the passenger side. She was young, twenty or so, with dirty blonde hair reaching to the waistband of her jeans. Wearing heavy army boots and a battered leather jacket, she stood by the van, her eyes sweeping past them with an air of detached interest. Her fingers flicked at the strap of her canvas satchel.

‘This is Moira. She didn’t have anywhere to stay tonight, so I offered her the sofa.’ Piet had come up to the gap in the brick wall, his arms loaded down with plastic bags. He stopped next to Victoria and tilted his head towards the van. ‘There’s a box in the back. Can you bring it in?’

Victoria threw one leg over the wall and sat there, watching them go down the garden. ‘Where did you find her?’

Piet didn’t seem to hear, and carried on, but Moira glanced over her shoulder, letting her gaze rest on Helen, as if she thought she was the one who had spoken. Her voice was cool and mocking.

‘Where do you think he found me, in the bargain bin?’

Helen felt herself colour, her mouth opening and closing in mute protest. Victoria swung her second leg across and went over to the van.

‘Bitch.’

Helen heard the softly spoken curse, but Victoria didn’t seem to be inviting any opinion. She reached into the van for the box and headed towards the house without saying anything more. Helen could feel her animosity, though, imprinted on the air. It was disturbing, as if there was some kind of history playing out. For a second, Moira reminded her of the older girls at school, the tough ones who rolled up their skirts to unofficial shortness and smoked more or less openly at break times. But she had the gut feeling this was between Moira and Victoria; although Moira had been looking at her, she hadn’t
seen
her. She followed Victoria into the cottage, pushing against her own reluctance.

Piet and Moira were in the sitting room, both leaning back in their chairs, both with a foot crossed up on their other knee. Victoria was over by the window, fiddling with a group of small animal figures left there by Pippa. Helen had followed Victoria to the doorway, but hung back from entering. She watched as Moira studied the painting, and felt her fingers grip the door curtain with dislike. Who did she think she was, curling her lip like that?

‘Have you told Alice that we have a
guest
?’ Victoria’s voice was almost normal.

Again, Piet ignored her, taking his time in rolling a cigarette before passing the tin to Moira. Then he flicked his lighter, inhaled, and reached down for a cardboard tube on the floor next to him.

‘For you.’ He tossed it to Victoria. ‘I found a poster stall at the market, every girl needs Che Guevara on her wall.’

Victoria slid the poster out and unrolled it. Intense, shadowed eyes burned out from a red background. She didn’t say anything, but with one finger, she touched the red star on the man’s beret.

‘Helen, here’s something to broaden your reading list.’

Dumb with surprise, Helen held out her hands in time to catch the books he threw over to her. There were two of them, both battered paperbacks. She tilted them sideways to read the titles along the spines.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
and
Bonjour Tristesse.

‘Thank you!’ She looked up, saw his uneven smile. She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t read French, though.’

‘Don’t panic, I got you the English version.’ He winked at her and she smiled back.

‘Did you get me anything?’ Pippa, who had been standing behind Helen, pushed her way past in a hurry, and leant against the arm of Piet’s chair. Piet looked up at her and pulled at a pigtail.

‘They didn’t have anything for your wall, trouble. But I might have found something in the sweet shop.’ He levered himself up slightly, and felt in his back pocket. ‘Here you go. Share them with Fred, mind.’

Pippa grabbed the bag and gave him a hug. Helen was watching their faces, so close together, when a sudden realization flooded her mind. Piet had been in Greece when Victoria’s dad had vanished. She remembered her calculations about birthdays. If Piet was the twins’ father, it would explain why he took care of everyone. Piet’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

‘And Victoria.’ He was holding out a small box. ‘Repair kit for the dinghy.’

Victoria had let the poster roll back on itself. Her eyes were on Piet as she reached out to take it, but she spoke to Helen.

‘Come and help me put it up.’

Helen gave Moira a wide berth as she crossed over to the stairs, but she couldn’t help a quick glance before she followed Victoria up. The older girl was relaxed in her seat, taking no apparent interest in what was going on around her. One hand held a cigarette, the other lay motionless on the armrest. It was all wrong. Instead of gratitude, she gave off an air of being in her rightful place. As if tuning in to her thoughts, Moira lifted her eyes to return Helen’s inspection. They rested on her with no expression, leaving Helen to turn away hurriedly, feeling she’d failed some kind of test.

When she got to the bedroom, Victoria was lying on the bed staring at the poster of her dad behind the drums. Helen put her books on top of the piled surface of the chest of drawers and took in the crowded walls.

‘Which one do you want to take down?’

Victoria gave a dismissive wave. ‘It can go on top of the others.’ She rolled on to her side, propping her chin up on one hand, the other one picking at the fringe of the bedspread. ‘What did you make of her?’

‘Dunno.’ Helen wasn’t sure what Victoria herself thought. ‘She’d be prettier if she washed.’

‘You’re so bourgeois sometimes.’ Victoria had one of the strands of the bedspread wrapped around her finger. She gave a vicious tug downwards, but the threads refused to break, digging into her skin instead. She let them unravel and inspected the white and red grooves left behind. ‘I don’t trust her.’

‘Why?’

‘She had that look.’

They were silent for a while. Helen could hear the twins running in the garden and Seth in his room playing his guitar. Either it was something new he was making up, or he didn’t know the chords too well. He would start with a run of single notes spilling over each other, but when he tried to add the chords underneath he had trouble keeping them straight. Over and over, he stumbled on the same section. Part of Helen’s mind was following his attempts, willing him on, the other half was preoccupied with Moira and Alice.

‘Will she stay for long?

Victoria glanced up.

‘Who, Moira? Shouldn’t wonder. I reckon she’ll be hard to shift.’ She pulled at the thread again, and this time it snapped. ‘It’s something Piet does. Sometimes he paints them.’

Helen imagined Moira lying on the sofa, Alice forced to watch from her picture frame above. In her mental picture, Moira was wearing her boots, the cool, assessing expression on her face. She shook her head as if that would get rid of the image, but she didn’t seem to have a stop button. Her mind turned its viewfinder, with helpless clarity, so she could see Piet standing there, holding a brush and studying both women.

‘If your mum …?’

Victoria interrupted with a snort. ‘Seriously? Alice? Anyway, Piet pays the rent.’

She went back to picking at the bedspread. Helen stayed where she was, perched on the edge of the chest of drawers, and feeling somehow in the way. The books from Piet were next to her, but it felt as if reaching for them would send a signal saying she wasn’t involved in this, that she didn’t care. The silence stretched out, broken only by the sound of Seth’s guitar. He finally got the run of notes in the right order. Victoria lifted her head and yelled through the wall.

‘Play something with a tune!’

Seth’s reply was brief and profane.

Moira’s presence changed everything. She didn’t have to do anything; it was the mere fact of her that made the difference. On the day following her arrival, Helen stayed at home, reluctant to face the cottage whilst Moira was there. She expected Victoria to come and find her, secretly looking forward to another session of complaining about Piet’s unwanted guest. When Victoria didn’t show up, Helen finally made herself go and see for herself what was happening, only to find the cottage was silent and the doors locked and unwelcoming. There was no reason why the family couldn’t go out, of course, no law that said they had to tell her where they were. But it hadn’t happened before, not like this, and she felt as if a layer of her skin had been stripped away.

There’d been no sign of anyone today, either, so here she was, in the garden by herself again, transported back to the beginning of the summer but with the emptiness doubled. The same roots were pressing against the small of her back and the same light flickered over her closed eyes. She couldn’t bring herself to make the walk down the lane, though. If no-one came, at least they wouldn’t know how much she cared.