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Overview
AN EBOOK BESTSELLER
'An atmospheric and gripping read' My Weekly
'Wonderful characters and a very moving storyline' Sun
'I was completely enthralled' Kathryn Hughes
'I loved this touching exploration of love and its capacity for consolation and destruction... compelling and satisfying ' Judith Lennox
August 1939
At peaceful Summerhill, orphaned Maddy hides from the world and the rumours of war. Then her adored sister Georgina returns from a long trip with a new friend, the handsome Victor. Maddy fears that Victor is not all he seems, but she has no idea just what kind of danger has come into their lives...
Today
Chloe is newly pregnant. This should be a joyful time, but she is fearful for the future, despite her husband's devotion. When chance takes her to Summerhill, she's drawn into the mystery of what happened there decades before. And the past reaches out to touch her in ways that could change everything...
What readers are saying about Summer of Secrets:
'An absolute joy... If you only read one book this year I recommend this one' 5 Star Amazon Reviewer
'Nikola Scott has a magical way of piecing her stories together and has done her characters proud with the way she has written their journeys. An emotionally charged, harrowing and majestic novel' Kaisha at The Writing Garnet
'Such an intriguing story with a balance of lighter and darker moments. Rich in detail and beautifully told. Five stars from me!' Rachel at Rae Reads
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781472241184 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Headline |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2019 |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Maddy
I could find Summerhill anywhere on a map. Blindfolded, without pause or hesitation, I could draw it from memory. It looked like a heart, its flank lining up with the edge of the river, the sharp end pointing out to sea. In reality, of course, the estate was more sprawling, a tumble of greens and browns tugged at by the tide, the house clinging onto the side where the river widened into the bay. But my mind had carved it out of the land exactly like that, a heart-shaped map of my childhood where I was safe and where nothing could touch me.
Even now that Chamberlain had grudgingly decided it was time for action and my Aunt Marjorie was either glued to the wireless or watching the horizon for signs of a German invasion, it seemed impossible that life here would change.
My father would have disagreed. War is like love, he used to say when I was six or seven. It always finds a way, Maddy. We forget, but before we know it, there it is again. He had always thought we needed to know, my sister Georgiana and I, about all the terrible things humans were capable of doing. I never wanted to listen, but Georgiana did, would beg him for stories about the Great War, about surviving the horrors of Ypres and the Western Front. Leaving them to it, I would run down to the kitchen for one of Cookie's rock cakes, whistle for the dogs and disappear outside with my sketchbook. Through the woods and down to the river, lying facedown on the jetty to draw the tadpoles in the mudflats and wade through rock pools at low tide. To the little islet where swimming was best and where the sun sank into the water at the end of yet another glorious Summerhill day, flooding the bay with fiery reds and oranges that defied the entire contents of my colour palette.
And today, with the wireless forever spitting out new and alarming updates from Germany, the village crowded with uniformed men from the nearby army base and Hobson despairing over ever producing blackout curtains big enough for the enormous stained-glass windows in the entrance hall, I did exactly what I always had. I left Aunt Marjorie poring over Herr Hitler's advance on Danzig in the newspaper, fetched my sketchbook and a shovel – the wall up in Fairings Corner had collapsed yet again – and disappeared into the grounds.
Surveying the small avalanche of stones washed out by the heavy rains of last week's storm, my heart sank slightly. I started picking up rocks and stuffing dirt into holes as best as I could. That wall really should be looked at properly one of these days. The fence up by Pixie's Wood needed patching up too, and the well at the bottom of the garden was leaking. Without Papa's quelling eye, the garden had been allowed to explode in the last six years, so overgrown now that Georgiana often said we would wake up one day to discover it had swallowed us whole.
At the thought of my sister, I shoved the last rock into the wall and hurried up the hill. From the top you could watch the road coming up from the village, and I wanted to be the first one to see my sister arrive. Georgie had left for Europe six months ago. Having invited herself to stay with any and all distant relatives across the Continent, she'd driven Papa's old car up to London and then on to Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna, sending ecstatic postcards that made it very clear she was not remotely ready to cut her trip short. Eventually Cousin Xenia had called from Vienna, entreating dear Marjorie to rein in that hellraising niece of hers and pointing out that all sensible English folk were fleeing the Continent. Georgiana had had no choice but to return. I was glad. I'd never been without my sister for a single day, and the last six months were the longest I could remember.
Sternly ordering the dogs not to dig anywhere in the vicinity of the wall, I pulled myself up into the ancient oak tree that towered over the hillside and settled back against the trunk to keep an eye on the road. Georgiana always drove fast. She had taught herself when she was seventeen, despite Aunt Marjorie standing in the courtyard and muttering disgruntled things about needlework and French lessons. Having pestered Frank into helping her get my father's old Morris back up and running, she'd practised in the courtyard using hay bales as road markers, and later roared through the lanes with me glued to the passenger seat because I knew she'd kill herself and the least I could do was to be with her when that happened.
The lane lay as still and sleepy as ever, though, and with a small sigh of contentment, I pulled out my sketchbook. The green, linen-covered brick of paper was almost full, because with Georgie gone I'd been drawing more than usual. Aunt Marjorie, who was a great one for lecturing on a variety of subjects, had been on at me about conserving paper, and I had tried, squeezing sketches close together and using all available space, because it seemed quite likely that if I didn't start conserving paper soon, the world would actually run out. I was always drawing. The house. The kitchen. My favourite fox cub, persecuting the hedgehog living behind the rotten tree in Pixie's Wood. The way the light came through the trees in the little copse where the wild strawberries grew. People, too: Cookie making plum cobbler; Hobson sneaking a smoke behind the stables; Susan running up and down the stairs with a bucket. Georgiana, who couldn't draw a straight line if you held a gun to her head, loved writing, and together we'd come up with countless stories over the years. All summer I'd been working on finishing a funny series featuring the fox cub and his best friend, a worried little squirrel we'd called Stu. I flicked slowly through to where I'd left Foxy trying to survive a fall into the rain barrel, and started colouring his fur with tiny red strokes.
The late summer's warmth was lingering, and up high the sky was the colour of bluebells, effervescent with the kind of brightness that made you believe you simply had to push off and you'd be flying. Little gusts rustled through the leaves, and it was so quiet I could hear my pencil moving across the page, the dogs digging surreptitiously at a rabbit hole by the wall, and swallows singing above. Georgiana was finally coming home, and it wasn't at all hard to forget that it was late August 1939 and war was brewing in the world.
Without warning, a roar split the morning air, and seemingly out of nowhere the bluebell sky above the oak tree was filled with dark shapes. Planes. In fighter formation, like the geese that left the coast in November to head south across the Channel, they roared past me, shadows flitting over fields and pastures. I let out a breath I hadn't realised I was holding and sagged back against the tree. Get a grip, Maddy, for heaven's sake. They're ours, our planes. From the airfield up north, out on a training exercise. Aunt Marjorie had talked about them excitedly only this morning: wasn't it splendid how the nation's boys were rising to the occasion and standing up to Herr Hitler in the way that only the British could? I tracked the shapes getting smaller along the horizon, waiting for the noise to fade. But it didn't. Far out, they turned in a wide arc and came back, flying straight at me, it seemed, almost as if they'd seen me hiding among the branches, honing in like an arrow on my Summerhill heart. Now they were above me, so close I thought I could make out the little wheels underneath them, hear the engines turning and smell the fumes.
The dogs cowered below me, ears flattened against furry heads, yipping anxiously, and together we watched the planes manoeuvring above us, their earsplitting whine filling the canopy of the ancient oak tree. It seemed to go on for ever – figures and turns – but just as I didn't think I could possibly bear it any longer, they finally started heading inland one by one.
Even after they were gone, though, engine noise filled the air, and when I turned towards the sea, I realised that one of them had stayed behind, still practising its turns. The dogs and I watched it for a few moments before I noticed that something didn't look quite right. The plane was flying in an odd pattern, and even though it was partly obscured by the headland cliffs, you could see that it ... yes, it seemed to be dropping. The branches above me were too fragile for my sixteen-year-old weight, but I started climbing nonetheless, my hands and feet scrabbling for footholds amid the slender, swaying greenery. There it was again now, level with the cliffs at – my mind proffered the two words before I could stop it – Hangman's Bluff. Shivers were running up and down my spine, and the skin at the back of my neck started tightening, squeezing inward, making me fight for breath, because I, of all people, knew how steep those cliffs were, how dangerous, how deadly ...
Pushing another breath through my closed-up throat, I wanted to look away, wanted to slide back down and hide behind my sketchbook, draw Foxy loping across the little meadow behind Pixie's Wood at dawn. Instead, I kept watching, my eyes wide as the plane dropped above the cliffs, more quickly now, as if its occupant had already given up hope. And then it disappeared from sight altogether, and was lost.
War is like love, Maddy, it always finds a way.
My sweaty hands slipped on the bark of the tree; my eyes, still trained on the thin sliver of horizon, watered in the brightness of the sun. What if I'd been the only one to see it? What if no one would come to help? I could get to there from here, skirt the Muttonhole field, run along the little grassy path at the edge of the cliffs that my father and I had taken on a morning much like this six years ago. Frank said they let sheep graze right up to it these days because people were afraid to walk there any more.
But I hadn't been back to Hangman's Bluff, not since they retrieved my father's body from the cove below the cliffs, the one that was always submerged at high tide, with waves pounding against the rocks at the bottom. I hadn't left Summerhill much at all, and the most I'd seen of the sea was the blue-grey horizon from the top of the oak tree, where a few puffs of white cloud were now drifting along, unaware of the terrible thing that had happened.
Another noise cut through the air: a car horn from the village lane. I scrabbled for purchase on my branch, my eyes blinded for a moment from the sheer effort of looking into the distance, and when my vision cleared again, I saw a familiar battered car and an arm extending from the window, waving cheerfully in my direction, because my sister, who knew me better than anyone else in the world, knew that I'd be up in the oak tree waiting for her.
I dropped down from the tree, hardly noticing when a branch caught and ripped my trouser leg, and then I ran without stopping, without looking back, all the way down to the kitchen garden and the pear orchard, past our old tree house and the small pond with the massive carp that Georgiana hated, tumbling out into the courtyard and straight into my sister's arms.
CHAPTER 2Chloe
'There's absolutely no doubt, Mrs MacAllister. None whatsoever.'
Chloe took in the man across from her, hands folded against the edge of his standard-issue NHS desk. Had fate ever sent a more unlikely harbinger than this balding, tetchy man sitting there frowning at her, tapping his fingers impatiently on her notes?
She saw the doctor's eyes flick briefly to the clock on the wall and tried to pull herself together. The NHS tried to keep consultations to ten minutes or less; Aidan had told her countless stories of patients who were too slow, dragging everyone else down and upsetting the system. She'd already overstayed her welcome by five minutes, four of which she'd wasted with white-faced silence and useless denial of the fact that there was no doubt whatsoever. None.
'I'll send the paperwork home with you,' the doctor said briskly, making little flapping motions with his hands as if to propel her into getting up from his yellow plastic chair. 'Now what you'll need to do in the next few weeks is —'
It was the word 'home' that did it, that finally unglued Chloe's tongue from the roof of her mouth and dimmed down the white noise whooshing in her ears just enough for her to say, 'I'm sorry, but please, would you mind checking just one more time? To be absolutely sure, I mean. There could be a mix-up, maybe?' She took a deep breath, dropping her hands into her lap. 'Mistakes are made all the time, aren't they?' She tried to add the last bit casually, as if to imply they were made by anyone but him.
'We've checked twice already, Mrs MacAllister,' Dr Webb said impatiently, 'and only because you were so insistent, but in reality, it's a waste. The test is accurate. I can't see what the issue is – your situation is perfect, your age is near-perfect. Do you work?'
She shook her head and he nodded approvingly. 'There you go. You don't drink, you don't smoke, you have a lovely home in,' he consulted her notes, 'the nicest part of Plymouth. Hartley. My godmother lives there.'
He waited a fraction of a second for Chloe to chime in, either with news of her connection with this undoubtedly eminent lady or else with something that would herald her imminent departure.
'From a medical point of view, you're ideal,' he continued. 'Couldn't be better really. Now, Margie will give you all the necessary information at the front desk.'
His words washed over her, her ears picking out the odd word, like lovely and blood and clinic. And perfect. Yes, it was just all-round perfect. Her husband would be thrilled. He'd been waiting for this kind of news for months.
Dr Webb was by the door now, so she had no choice but to get up from her chair too, more slowly, trying to summon the wherewithal to ask a final crucial question.
'Could you ... I mean, would it be possible not to let him know about this? My husband, that is?'
Dr Webb fumbled for his glasses, then squinted at her myopically.
'Why would I tell him?' Dr Webb didn't seem to worship Aidan in quite the same way everyone else did, which was partly why Chloe had chosen him as her GP, even though it did mean that she got the tetchy treatment on any of her infrequent visits. Still, the Plymouth medical world was a small one and chances were high that Dr Webb's path would cross that of Aidan MacAllister at some point soon, and Chloe would prefer that the ensuing conversation didn't include her.
'I'd just like to tell him myself. Pick the right moment.'
Dr Webb snorted in dismissal and flung open the door. 'Of course. Wouldn't dream of it. Confidentiality and all that. I heard that they're expanding the surgery. He must be busy. Anyhow, mum's the word,' he said heartily.
He made as if to close the door, but she held him back one last time. 'And Danny, you know, my brother – do you think it might be ... a problem. For this?'
He considered for a second.
'I'd have to do some in-depth testing,' he said. 'Know more about your parents. You should make another appointment. And if your parents have had any recent blood tests, bring the results. We'll talk.'
Before she could add anything else, such as the pertinent fact that there were no parents and no blood tests, he had shooed her out of the door and closed it behind her.
Three minutes later, Chloe was standing outside the surgery. She hadn't asked any more questions of the nurses at the front desk, who always enquired after 'the lovely Dr MacAllister', wondering laughingly why on earth she bothered coming all the way out here when she had someone to cure her ailments at home. 'I know I wouldn't,' a pretty redheaded nurse had giggled under her breath to the other one as Chloe stuffed the leaflets they'd handed her into her bag with a little more force than necessary.
She stood for a long time watching buses taking people to work and school and the supermarket for milk. 14. 44. 62. The numbers fluttered by as if trying to convey some sort of secret code, telling her how to make the conversation with Dr Webb become a part of her, rather than just an abstract test result. She might buy some sparkling grape juice. She'd heard somewhere that grape juice was the drink of choice in these situations.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Summer of Secrets"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Nikola Scott.
Excerpted by permission of Headline Publishing Group.
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