The Family Secret

Can they see her? Yes, she’s stood at that very window many times before. It has the best view of the lake.

Why aren’t they running out to help her? Why isn’t he helping her?

Maybe they don’t want to. That shouldn’t surprise her after all she’s learnt today.

No, he wouldn’t allow me to die. He wouldn’t, no matter what has passed between us.

There is another possibility, of course. She could be imagining the figures at the window. Hallucinating. Does that mean she’s dying? As she thinks that, her vision blurs.

Snow-blind already?

Either scenario is terrifying. She tries to plead with him again. ‘I’m sorry, I – I won’t say anything,’ she says, her voice cracking. ‘Please …’ She puts a shaking hand out to him. He frowns slightly, hesitation in his eyes. But then he crosses his arms.

Terror surges through her, making her strong. She forces herself to push up from the water again, despite the growing heaviness of her trembling limbs and the strange pain starting to seep through the core of her body. She twists around, long hair shimmering in the frigid water around her, shaking fingers feeling across the ice to find a stronger wedge to pull herself up on.

But there is none, the ice is too thin. So she tries to smash her hands into the ice instead. If she can plough her way through, maybe she can reach the bank again and scramble back up.

The pain is excruciating though and her hands feel like boulders.

And then the ice breaks.

Hope surges. Maybe the rest of the ice will break. She can swim through it! She tries to propel herself forward. But her legs can’t move, the remaining ice firm.

She pinches her eyes closed. Don’t fail me now, she pleads with her body. Please please.

But all she can see is ice heaped upon ice, and all she can feel is the frozen water pulling her beneath the surface.

She should have known it would end like this, here in the very place where it all began. As she’d looked across the frozen lake all those years before towards the lodge, Christmas lights twinkling in its windows, she’d known, somehow, she’d be tied to the place for ever. She just hadn’t realised it would be her death tying her to it.

And she hadn’t realised he would just watch as it happened.

She closes her eyes and imagines a scrabbling of boots, a deep breath, his hands grasping her and pulling her out. She imagines looking up under iced eyelashes to see his soot-black hair, his eyes taut with concern. And then safety on the lake’s banks and in his arms.

But he’s still just watching.

Snow falls around her and she remembers another time when it snowed like this. She hears the laughter of children; red cheeks and icy smiles. Her memories are running to her, calling her name, pulling her into a bottomless past. She opens her arms to them as her head sinks beneath the frozen lake …

Chapter One (#ulink_f74b4f20-763f-5e98-86c8-520f12d99bda)

Amber

Winterton Chine

12 December 2009

Winter in The Chine, as the locals call it, can be brutal. Freezing winds sweep in from the east across the English Channel, buffeting down a valley that’s carved into the land, the trees above frigid with ice. Despite this, the beach rarely ices over, except during two of the harshest winters on record: the 1962 winter and the one Amber Caulfield wakes up to on the morning the girl first walks into her life.

She considers staying curled up beneath her duvet that morning instead of doing what she does six days out of seven: walking to the beach and opening up her gift shop.

‘Nope,’ she says to herself in a harsh voice as she grabs a towel and makes her way to the shower. ‘I need those sales and those walls still need painting.’ Winter isn’t just harsh in Winterton Chine because of that east wind. The absence of summer means no tourists, Amber’s main customer base. But she’s hoping a fresh lick of paint and some other renovations will get the shop all ready for the brief Christmas rush during the annual festive market in The Chine. A market that’s due to start in just over a week.

She showers, pulls on a pair of thick leggings and long black jumper and sweeps her red hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. When she steps outside, still buttoning her long black coat, the cold hits her like a sledgehammer. She rubs at the stubs on her left hand, sore with the memory of another winter as cold as this, and walks towards the beach. It’s just a five-minute stroll from her flat down the winding road that dominates the centre of The Chine. As she walks, she waves at the familiar faces she passes: some of the mums walking their kids to school, Jim from the local newsagents, a bus driver who lifts his hand in greeting as he drives people past, on their way to the main station for another day of work.

The beach opens up at the bottom of the road, a narrow stretch of sand. Above it sits a forest, the same forest that lines the main road. A long, straight promenade lines the beach, popular with dog walkers. On the promenade are thirty pastel-coloured beach huts, three of which have been taken over by Amber’s gift shop. She takes in the way the roofs of the little huts are fringed with small icicles and shakes her head. Not a chance anyone will be venturing onto the beach today. That’ll change in one week, she’s determined it will, especially when people see the new colours she’s painted it. She strides towards it with a forced enthusiasm.

The shop is right in the middle of the row, one pink hut, one baby blue, one evergreen. Well, it used to be evergreen. Now half of it is bright red. She’s going for a bolder colour scheme in an attempt to draw in more people. The other huts will follow suit over the coming days, the pink one turning bright yellow, the baby blue a bright emerald. A white wooden picket fence forms a square around them, making it clear they’re all together. She still can’t decide whether to repaint that too. Above the middle hut hangs a sign: Caulfield Gifts. Est 1955.

Amber’s grandfather had opened it before passing it down to his daughters, Amber’s mother and aunt, when he died. But the two women had retired from the business eight years ago, meaning Amber was now in charge. It sated her hunger for some creative output. For December, she created a Christmas feel with stag emblems and snowy scenes, fir-tree bunting and icicle lights, the walls lined with shelves to display local artists’ creations. On dry days, Amber placed more product on the veranda outside on top of four crates she’d painted the same colours as the huts. It caught the attention of people on the beach and in the café nearby, drawing lots of tourists eager to take home keepsakes during the summer months.

But it was so quiet in the winter. So much so that her mother suggested she only open in the summer months, and find a winter job elsewhere. Amber liked the peace of the beach though, the feel of the biting wind against her face. It reminded her she was here, surviving, despite what had happened to her as a child.

She rubs her bad hand again before unlocking the padlock on the three shutters and yanking them up with her good hand. She leans down and switches on the fairy lights that hang across the ceilings of each hut, then sets up a chalkboard outside, declaring ‘Wonderful Winter Discounts!’

She pulls her stool out and sits on it, closing her eyes and enjoying a moment of peace before getting on with the painting.

‘Caught you sleeping on the job!’ a familiar voice rings out. She turns to see her mother Rita and her aunt Viv walking down the beach, bundled up in their winter coats, red hair like hers lifting in the wind. Their arms are linked and they’re both wearing long, fur-lined boots, woollen coats that reach down to their calves, and colourful scarves that seem to go on for ever, wound around their necks. They claim to be six years apart in age, but Amber sometimes wonders if they are secretly twins.

‘Not really catching me in the act if I wasn’t trying to hide it in the first place,’ Amber says, keeping her eyes closed just to prove her point.

‘Here, this’ll wake you up,’ her mother says, handing her a plastic mug of steaming coffee. ‘Shot of gingerbread too, before you ask.’

Amber smiles as she takes the drink. ‘Thanks. Do I have the pleasure of both your company today then?’ she asks as she takes a sip, enjoying the sweet hint of gingerbread she so loves in her coffee at this time of the year.

‘Listen to that sarcasm, Rita,’ her aunt Viv says, shaking her head at her sister. ‘You really ought to take more control of your child.’ There’s a wicked glint in her blue eyes that shows she’s just joking.

‘Child,’ Amber says, shaking her own head. ‘I’m five years away from forty.’

Rita flinches. ‘Don’t remind me. You better not have a party, Len down the road still thinks I’m fifty.’

Viv laughs. ‘Fifty? With those wrinkles!’

‘Wrinkles are the new dimples, don’t you know?’ Rita drawls. They all laugh.

‘Seriously though,’ Amber says, ‘are you going to hang around like you did last week and scare the customers off?’

The two older women look at each other in horror. ‘Us? Scare the customers off? We ran this place for over thirty years!’

Amber can’t help but smile. Truth is, she loves having her aunt and mother there. It makes the day go faster when custom is slow. And while some customers find the two eccentric redheads laughing and joking outside the shop a tad scary, most find them endearing. In fact, they often make a few sales themselves, even if they do sometimes halve the price without checking with Amber first.

‘Anyway,’ Viv says, looking around her, ‘what customers are there to scare off?’

Amber rolls her eyes as she heads to the back of the hut to grab the red paint.

‘You need to get yourself on eBay,’ Viv continues.

‘Or Etsy! That’s the new sparkly thing, isn’t it?’ Rita chimes in.

‘I’ve told you about ten million times, I am not going online,’ Amber says, carefully lifting the tin of paint with her good hand. ‘People need to touch these items, smell them. It’s all part of the experience.’