How To Keep A Secret: A fantastic and brilliant feel-good summer read that you won’t want to end!

Jenna had loved the newly painted room so much she’d taken to sneaking in and sleeping on Lauren’s floor, settling herself between a friendly-looking octopus and a seahorse. She and Lauren had giggled and talked long into the night cocooned in their underwater paradise and when her sister had changed her room three months later, Jenna had felt bereft.

It was at least twenty years since the paint spill episode and yet her mother still talked about it as if it had happened yesterday.

“I’ve improved since then,” Jenna said. “I did most of the decorating in my house.” But her mother had already walked back into the kitchen and wasn’t listening.

Irritated, Jenna used the bathroom and walked back to the kitchen.

Her mother was staring at another set of papers but she quickly pushed them to one side.

“Have you spoken to your sister lately?”

“Last week. I thought I might call tonight, but then I remembered it’s Ed’s fortieth birthday party. She’s booked caterers and a string quartet.” Jenna tried to read the papers, but they were upside down. “If she still lived on island I could have loaned her my recorder group. That would have blown everyone’s eardrums.” She realized her mother wasn’t listening. “Mom?”

Her mother gave a start. “Sorry? What did you say?”

“I was talking about Lauren’s party. She was nervous something might go wrong.”

“Knowing Lauren, it will be perfect. I don’t know how she does it all.”

Jenna refrained from pointing out that Ed was seriously wealthy and that they could buy in whatever help they needed.

For the past couple of years Lauren had been studying for an interior design qualification, but study was a bed of roses compared with hauling yourself out of bed every day to deal with a bunch of kids with runny noses.

Her sister’s life seemed effortless.

“Mack has big exams this summer.”

“She’ll fly through them, as Lauren did.”

“I guess she will.” Did her sister have to be so perfect? Much as she loved Lauren, there were days when Jenna could happily kill her. And then she felt guilty feeling that way because as well as being perfect at everything else, Lauren was the perfect sister and always had been.

It wasn’t Lauren’s fault that her sister couldn’t get pregnant.

Feeling empty, Jenna reached for the tin on the table. The book group wasn’t going to miss one cake, were they?

She fought an internal battle between want and willpower.

Willpower might have won, but as she went to pull her hand back her mother frowned.

“Are you sure you need that?”

No, she didn’t need it. But she wanted it. And dammit if she wanted it, she was going to have it. She was thirty-two years old. She didn’t need her mother’s permission to eat.

She took a cake from the tin, so annoyed she took a bigger bite than she intended to. Too big. Damn. Her teeth were jammed together so now she couldn’t even speak. Instead she chewed slowly, feeling like a python that had swallowed its prey whole.

Her mother went back to sorting papers. “Mack is doing well. Like Lauren, she is very disciplined.”

The implication being that she, Jenna, showed no self-discipline at all.

She swallowed.

Finally. In the battle of woman against cupcake she was the victor.

“Good to know.”

“Lauren is lucky Mack hasn’t turned out to be a wild child like—” her mother waved her hand vaguely “—some people.”

“You mean me.” Jenna kept her tone light. “Thanks, Mom.”

“You have to admit you didn’t sit round waiting for trouble to find you. You went out looking for it and you dragged your poor sister into it with you. You, Jenna Elizabeth Stewart, were enough to give any mother gray hairs.”

“I’ve been Sullivan for more than a decade, Mom.”

“I know.” Nancy’s expression softened. “And you are lucky to have that man.”

Annoyed: irritated or displeased.

“He’s lucky to have me, too.”

“I know. But let’s be honest—you stopped getting into trouble the day you married Greg.” She glanced at the clock. “It will be dark soon. You should probably leave.”

“I can drive in the dark, Mom. There’s this amazing invention called headlights.”

“I don’t like you driving in the dark. Remember when you drove the car into the ditch?”

She did remember, but even smashing her head against the windshield hadn’t been as uncomfortable as this stroll down memory lane. “I was twenty-one. My driving has improved since then.” Jenna stood up. “But you’re right. I should go. I need to stop at the store to pick up some things for dinner. Take care, Mom. Enjoy your book group.”

“I will. Thanks for dropping by.”

As if she was a stranger, not family.

There were days when Jenna wondered whether the only way to get closer to her mother was to join the book group.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_10cef3db-105d-534f-ab70-a292d53adf87)

Nancy

Secret: a fact that is known by only a small number of people, and is not told to anyone else

AS SOON AS the door slammed behind her daughter, Nancy grabbed her coat.

She’d been so desperate for Jenna to leave, she’d almost bundled her out of the house.

Pushing her arms into the sleeves, she stepped into the garden.

At this time of year it looked sad and tired. Maintaining a coastal garden was always a challenge, and this one was particularly exposed.

The narrow strip of windswept land was all that separated The Captain’s House from the sea. She’d seen this view in every season and every mood. Today the surface of the water was smooth, almost glass-like, but she knew it could change in a moment from deceptive calm to boiling anger. Her seafaring ancestors would have told her that you should never trust the sea.