The Summer of Secrets (8 page)

The feeling of being an intruder lingered overnight, and Helen found herself searching for things to do around the house. As she kicked mess into corners and behind furniture, she went over the previous afternoon, replaying the conversation to work out what had happened. Perhaps she’d asked too many questions. She tried taking pictures down from the sitting room walls with the vague idea of making the house more Dover-like, but there was nothing to put up in their place, and the pale squares they left behind made the rest of the walls seem dirty. She hung them back up in a different order, but they were still boring. One day she’d live somewhere beautiful, with colour and clutter and shelves crammed with interesting things. Dissatisfied, she drifted back to the kitchen. The dirty washing-up water still hadn’t gone down the drain. She’d have to tell her dad.

As if on cue, Mick came out from the back of the garage. She watched him shamble along the path to the house and waited for the kitchen door to swing open.

‘Dad, the sink’s blocked.’

Mick didn’t answer, but sank down on a chair and started to roll a cigarette. He seemed tired, the pouches heavy under his eyes and rough stubble covering his chin. The ribbing around the V of his jumper was loose, wool unravelling in a curly spring. Helen felt a twist of love for him in her stomach. It wasn’t fair. Mum had been so mean, always going on about what he didn’t do. She’d make it up to him somehow. Leaving the sink, she crossed to the chair on the other side of the table.

‘Have you been doing something to the boat?’

He lit up; closed his eyes.

‘It’s too much for one person.’ His eyes stayed closed. ‘I’ve missed my time.’

‘No you haven’t.’ She tried to remember the names of friends he’d had, people he could contact. ‘How about Ken? You know, he used to be interested in it.’

‘Too busy with his wife and kids.’ Mick blew out a gush of smoke and opened his eyes to study the glowing end of the roll-up. ‘There’s not enough maintenance done on the canal, anyway. The locks are falling apart, the bottom’s filling up. Won’t be anywhere left to take the boat at this rate.’

‘You could always go to sea.’ Helen forced a smile into her voice. ‘I’ll get you a captain’s hat for Christmas.’

They sat in silence for a while, the weight of Mick’s thoughts an almost palpable mass. Helen made a decision.

‘I’ll be down at the cottage.’

Mick lifted a hand slightly as if in assent. As she went outside and through the gate, her feet picked up speed, lightened by relief at her escape.

The hedges bordering the lane seemed to have doubled in size from the rain. Even the fringe of cow parsley had lifted up into another burst of creaminess. She couldn’t help but feel the optimism. As she reached the end, the sight of the canal made her stop in her tracks. The morning sun had risen into a perfectly clear sky, and the surface of the water was as smooth as she’d ever seen it. It reflected back the blueness without even the hint of a ripple, and the inverted trees stretched downwards with every detail as sharp in the mirror image as it was in the original. Maybe the canal wasn’t really a channel of water, dug out by humans; perhaps it was a portal, the upside-down world as real as the one she stood in.

The thought of what the Helen below ground might be doing took her round the corner and into the garden. She couldn’t remember why she’d been worried about coming back. There was a book lying on the grass beneath the apple tree, and she went over to pick it up.
Little Women
. A tiny unripe apple landed on her head.

‘About time you got here. I dropped that ages ago.’

Victoria was sprawling along the length of the lowest branch, one hand out towards her. Helen stopped, caught between her private story and the reality of Victoria being so normal. She’d momentarily forgotten why she was bothered about turning up, and the sense of something unfinished floated around her like a mote in the sun before disappearing in among the shade of the branches. She made a show of studying the cover.

‘I don’t think this is on the list.’

‘I know.’ Victoria yawned. ‘I needed something easy to make up for that other one you made me read.’

‘I’ve nearly finished
War and Peace
. You can have that.’

Victoria groaned as she swung herself down, arms laced around the branch, and landed neatly on the ground.

‘More Russians, that’s what I need.’ She took the book from Helen’s hand and turned it over to examine the picture of the four girls. ‘You know, I didn’t enjoy this as much as I remembered.’ She flicked through the pages, stopping to study one of the illustrations before slamming it shut. ‘It does make me want to make something, though. They’re always being creative. Painting pictures and sewing things. I feel like being an artist.’ She chucked the book back down on the grass. ‘You can be my model.’

They were in the kitchen. Helen sat as still as possible, head side on to Victoria. Seth was sitting beyond the looped-up curtain in the living room, his head bent over a large sketchbook. He frowned in concentration at whatever he was working on as she studied him, trying to decide who he resembled. Victoria, definitely, though neither of them was noticeably like Alice. She pictured the face of their father from the poster. They had the same nose, even the same jaw if you ignored the drummer’s sideburns.

Seth sat back to study what he had done, his hand tapping the tabletop. He had long fingers, the square nails blunt and oddly pleasing, and she had a rush of feeling as she noticed other details: a tiny mole below his ear, the slight difference in the colour of his skin where he shaved. What would it be like to run her fingertips along the edge of his face?

He shifted his head as if he sensed her gaze and she felt her cheeks grow warm, but his eyes travelled past her. He stood up, and came through, walking round to see Victoria’s sketch.

‘You’re making into a Roman centurion. She’s not got a right angle on her nose.’

Victoria ripped the page from her pad, screwing it up and throwing it into the corner.

‘It won’t go right. The shadowing is all wrong.’

Helen started to move, but Seth gestured to her to stay.

‘Give me the pencil. Helen’s got a really individual profile, I’ll do it.’

This time, she focused straight ahead, intensely aware of Seth’s hand inches away, tracing around the edges of her face. It was as if the line of the pencil was on her skin, riffling through her hair; he made Victoria gather it up into a chignon so her neck would be clear. He didn’t call it a chignon, but that was what she pictured, something coiled and tendrilled and elegant, nothing like her own messy attempts in the mirror at home. She imagined the pencil lines carrying on, tracing her shoulder blades, the hollow at the base of her neck. He was making her feel almost pretty.

From another world, she heard the kitchen door crash open, and the sound of footsteps approaching. In the second before her mind began to wonder who might be coming, the scene she was in floated before her eyes, perfect and untouchable. If she stayed exactly where she was, perhaps the moment would continue anyway. She willed Seth to ignore the interruption, to keep on drawing, but almost immediately he was standing, leaving. A man’s voice sounded behind her.

‘Afternoon, everyone. I found these two outside, does anyone want them?’

Nobody would have noticed her pause before she turned. Seth and Victoria had forgotten her anyway. The man was tall and thin, the twins clinging on to him like burrs. Seth was already doing the man thing of slapping shoulders, but Helen could tell from the length of time they left their arms resting how pleased they were to see each other.

Then Victoria leapt past with a shriek of ‘Uncle Piet!’ Her extra weight sent them all staggering back, almost into the sink. Uncle Piet, of course it was, the special uncle, the one who had found the house and paid the bills. It was a bit like seeing someone from the TV. Victoria was right, he didn’t look much like James Dean any more, but he was a cowboy nonetheless; an older, tougher cowboy, with a lined face and greying hair, his eyes slightly narrowed, even inside the house. He wore boots, faded jeans. Helen wondered if he saw it himself, played up to it. She stood by her chair, fiddling with Seth’s abandoned pencil. His sketch was lying there, and she edged it closer. What had he called her? ‘Really individual’. She wasn’t quite sure if that was praise, but the drawing did make her look nice. She pulled it away from the pad and folded it into her pocket as the others barged past her into the sitting room.

Piet went straight over to the stairs. Alice, Helen thought, up there in her secret world. Pippa tried to follow him up, and Helen watched Seth distract her with a question. Pippa swung round to whisper in Will’s ear, and they both ran out through the kitchen, followed by Seth, their voices fading into the garden. Victoria had propped herself against the windowsill and her head was bent over as she picked at the varnish on her nails. The room felt stuffy, motes hovering lazily in the light from the window. At this time of day, it came through in a wedge as the sun hit the furthest edge of the glass. Helen traced the raised fabric pattern on the arm of the chair, wondering if she could follow the others outside. She heard one of them call out, and there was the sound of a ball being hit. French cricket, the twins’ latest passion. She pushed herself up and took a step towards the door, but Victoria put out a hand to stop her.

‘Come on.’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but set off up the staircase, beckoning Helen to follow.

She came to a stop by Alice’s door. Helen, expecting to go straight on to Victoria’s room, fell into her.

‘Ssh.’ Victoria pressed her ear up to the wood, holding on to Helen’s arm. Helen held her breath, unable to hear anything to begin with, other than the blood rushing past her eardrums. Then, slowly, noises began to float through: a low voice, the creak of feet across the floorboards.

‘They’re coming out,’ she whispered, the sound too loud in the waiting air.

Victoria took a tighter grip of her arm. ‘In a minute.’

It was easier to stay than make a fuss by pulling away, but Helen kept her gaze fixed on a dusty cobweb swinging from the corner of the ceiling, trying not to listen. Finally, Victoria turned around.

‘He might even get her out of there. He usually can.’

There was a pause, as if she was about to go on, but Piet’s voice sounded right next to them, and they fell into Victoria’s room, stifling each other’s laughter. It wasn’t funny, though. Helen felt Victoria’s hand over her mouth as Piet spoke again.

‘See you in a few minutes, sweetheart.’

Alice did join them, sitting at the table by Piet, sometimes leaning her head on his shoulder. As the colours leached out of the day, Seth lit candles and shadows filled the corners. They’d had party food: crisps and sausage rolls, a bowl of jelly mixed with mandarin pieces, chocolate fingers. Following the rules of the food, they should all be overexcited and feeling sick by this time, but then again, they hadn’t had pass the parcel or musical statues so it wasn’t actually a party. Helen giggled to herself, wondering if she’d had too much of the golden French cider. Her head felt light, as if it wasn’t entirely real. She leaned it on one hand and picked at fragments as laughter swirled around her. Piet’s face was long in the dusk, his eyes retreating into the sockets as he turned to listen to Seth. Victoria butted in and made Piet laugh and Helen tuned in to hear what was clearly a family story, the punchline chorused by Pippa and, from under the table, Will. The stories grew wilder and funnier, Alice and Piet missing a train connection, bucketing across Istanbul in the back of a car with blacked-out windows in the company of men in dark glasses; a small Victoria in Italy, running away to join a goatherd and his flock in the mountains; Seth falling asleep on a ferry on the way to Mykonos and finding himself back in Athens.

In a lull, Piet turned to Helen.

‘I’m sorry about this, Helen. Listening to other people reminisce gets very dull.’ His eyes crinkled at her. ‘Come on, it’s your turn. Tell us about your family.’

She felt her cheeks grow red as they all turned to her.

‘Mum got locked in the toilet on a cross-country train once, but that’s about it.’ She lifted both hands in the air. ‘Honestly, those sorts of things don’t happen to us.’

‘Tell Piet about your dad’s boat,’ said Victoria, her stool wobbling under her as she tried to pull her feet up into the lotus position.

The atmosphere of the evening inspired her. The story of the day Mick had bought the boat had never seemed so funny. There was Mick, madly pumping away in midstream to stop the boat from sinking, while various passing dog walkers and cyclists hauled on the ropes to bring her into the bank. In reality, Helen had been too small to have any real memories of the event, but it was a tale Mick liked to tell, and she embroidered without shame. It was liberating to laugh at the boat that had signalled the beginning of the end of her parents’ marriage, now landlocked in a garage with her father the only crew member, sitting in his chair down in the hull, a crate of beer the only ballast.

‘So he’s been working on it all this time?’ asked Seth. ‘What a waste, with the canal practically at the bottom of the garden.’

‘It’s why they bought the house, because of the canal. Dad always wanted to live by water. But Mum hated it. And now …’

‘Aluminium hull, you say?’ asked Piet.

Helen nodded. ‘You have to be careful what you build onto it, other metal eats away at it or something.’

‘I spent a few years in Holland once, worked in a boatyard for a bit, learning the trade.’ He turned towards Alice. ‘Do you remember? The family business, building boats. I almost stayed there.’ Alice made no response; her face was expressionless again, withdrawn. He turned back to Helen. ‘I’ll have come and meet your dad. Be good to have another try.’

It was late when Helen left, and dark enough to make her want to run fast, to outpace the shadowy threats behind the hedges. She forced herself to walk, not wanting to misjudge the water’s edge even though she knew the towpath ran some distance up from the bank. There was only a tiny sliver of moon, but it somehow gave enough light to silver the water whilst leaving the edges blank and formless. Dark tree shadows trembled on the surface and she remembered her fancy of the mirror land beneath the water. It felt ominous tonight, hands waiting to grab her feet. A splash made her stop, heart pounding. It was a moorhen or duck. Telling herself this didn’t make the rustles along the lane any easier to ignore as she headed to the house. She broke into a run.