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

“Disaster?” Ruth blinked. “You mean like not fitting into your jeans?”

“No. I—” She shook her head. “Ignore me. I’ve had a crazy morning. Busy.” It was Ed’s fault, for making her think about things she didn’t want to think about.

“Ah, yes, the birthday. How was Ed?” Helen picked up her spoon and stirred circles into the foam on her coffee. “When Martin hit forty he bought a sports car. Such a cliché, but I get to drive it so I’ve stopped complaining.”

Lauren sipped her coffee. “Ed seemed fine about it.”

She’s not the problem.

“I had a crisis when I turned forty,” Ruth said. “Having a sixteen-year-old daughter reminds you how old you are. I don’t have daughter envy yet, but I can see how it could happen. You don’t have that problem—” she glanced at Lauren “—because you had Mack when you were still in your pram, or whatever you call it across the pond.”

Lauren laughed. “I was nineteen. Not that young.”

But she’d been pregnant at eighteen, which was only two years older than Mack was now.

“And you still look twenty-one, which makes me want to kill you.” Ruth waved a hand in disgust. “At least your daughter doesn’t think you’re too old to understand anything.”

Thinking of some of the conversations she’d had with Mack lately, Lauren gave a tight smile. “Oh, she does.”

“But you have energy. I’m too tired to cope with a teenager. I thought the terrible twos were supposed to be the worst age and now I’m discovering it’s sixteen. Peer pressure, puberty, sex—”

Lauren put her cup down. “Abigail is having sex?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. She has a ‘boyfriend.’” Ruth stroked the air with her fingers, putting in the quote marks. “The phone pings all the time because he’s messaging her.” Was that the problem with Mack? Was it a boy?

“Phoebe is always on her phone, too,” Helen said. “Why is it they don’t have the energy to tidy their rooms, but manage to hold a phone? Last night when I finally wrenched it from her grabby hand and told her all electronic devices were banned from the bedroom, she told me she hated me. Joy.”

Lauren’s sympathy was tinged with relief. Even during their most prickly encounters, Mack had never said she hated her. Things could be worse.

“They don’t mean it,” Ruth said. “It’s one of those lines straight out of the teenage phrase book, along with I hate my life—my life is so crap.”

“And but all my friends are doing it.”

“Nobody does that stuff, Mom. It’s the moods that get me. I know it’s hormones, but knowing that doesn’t help.” Helen finished her coffee. “It makes me feel guilty because I know I was the same with my mum, weren’t you?”

Ruth nodded. Lauren said nothing.

As long as they weren’t doing anything that interrupted her painting, her mother had left her and Jenna alone. It was one of the reasons she and her sister were close.

“The only one with a predictable temperament in our house is the dog.” Ruth gave a wicked smile. “Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d married your first boyfriend?”

“I’d be divorced,” Helen said. “My first boyfriend was a total nightmare.”

They looked at Lauren and she felt her face heat. “Ed was my first real boyfriend.”

It wasn’t really a lie, she told herself. Boyfriend meant someone you had a relationship with. The word conjured up images of exploratory kisses, trips to the movies and awkward fumbling. A boyfriend was a public thing. I’m going out with my boyfriend tonight.

Using that definition, Ed had been her first boyfriend.

“You’ve been with one man your whole adult life? No flings? No crazy, naughty teenage sex?”

Lauren felt her heart pick up speed. That didn’t count, she told herself. “For me it’s always been Ed.”

“Well—” Helen spoke first. “I’m going to stop talking before I incriminate myself.”

“I auditioned a lot of men before finally awarding the role of my husband to Pete.” Ruth finished her croissant. “I’d better go. I left my house in chaos.” She reached for her bag. “See you at the party tonight, Lauren. Sure there’s nothing we can do?”

“No thanks, I’ve got it covered.”

“Is your sister coming over from the States?”

“No, she can’t get away from school right now.”

Lauren felt another stab of guilt. When they’d last spoken, Jenna had confessed that her period was late. Lauren had heard the excitement in her voice and felt excited with her. She knew how desperately Jenna wanted a baby and how upset her sister was each month when it didn’t happen. She’d intended to call, but party planning had driven it from her head.

“What about your mum? She’s not coming either?”

Lauren kept her smile in place. “No.”

Of course that had a lot to do with the fact that she hadn’t been invited.

Lauren had never had a close relationship with her mother, but things had been particularly strained last time she’d visited home. Her mother had seemed preoccupied and even more distant than usual.

When her father had died five years earlier, Lauren had expected Nancy to be devastated.

She’d flown home for the funeral and been humbled by how strong her mother was. Her father had been a much-loved member of the community and there had been plenty of people sobbing at his funeral. Her mother hadn’t been one of them. Nancy Stewart had stood with her back as straight as the mast of a ship, dry-eyed, as if part of her was somewhere else. Lauren assumed she handled grief the way she handled everything else life threw her—by vanishing to her studio and losing herself in her painting.

Lauren stared into her coffee.

Growing up, her father had been the “fun” parent.

“Let’s go to the beach, girls,” he’d say, and scoop them up without giving a thought to what they were doing. He’d bring them back long past bedtime with sandy feet, burned skin and salty hair. They were hungry and overtired and it was their mother who had dealt with the fallout.

Nancy would be waiting tight-lipped, the supper she’d prepared congealing on cold plates. She’d serve the ruined food in silence and then dunk both girls in the shower, where Jenna would scream and howl as the water stung her burned flesh.

By the end of the summer the sun had bleached their hair almost white and freckles had exploded over Jenna’s face. To Lauren they looked like sand sprinkled over her skin, but Jenna thought they looked like dirt. She’d scrub at her skin until it was red and sore and the freckles merged.

“You could at least remember sunscreen,” Nancy had said to Tom one night and Lauren had heard him laugh.

“I forgot. Loosen up.”

It seemed to Lauren that the more her father told Nancy to loosen up, the tighter she was wound.

She’d long since given up wishing her relationship with her mother were different.

She and Ed returned to Martha’s Vineyard for ten days every summer, but Lauren felt edgy the whole time. It was part of a life she’d left behind, and being there made her feel uncomfortable, as if she was dressing in old clothes that no longer fit. Not having her father there with his endless jokes and energy made the visit even more awkward.

The only good part about it was seeing her sister in person.