Past Secrets Read online

  ‘Oh Lord, what’s happened?’ she cried. ‘Amber, where are you?’

  She ran for her phone and dialled Amber’s mobile but got nothing but the automated message asking her to leave a message.

  ‘Amber, wherever you are, please phone me back, love, please. It was only an argument, that’s all. I understand how stressed you are, just call. It’s all OK.’

  Faye had no idea what she should do next. She certainly couldn’t go into work as normal with Amber missing. Panic had robbed her of her senses. Finally, she sank to her knees on the landing floor and prayed. Dear God, I know I haven’t been around much lately after all I prayed to you when she was a baby, but find her for me, please, please, I beg you.

  Ella’s phone was off too. They could be together. That might be something, at least together they’d have each other. But if Amber was alone and unhappy, out there somewhere thinking her mother was furious with her…

  Faye scrolled through her mobile directory, found the number for Ella’s house and phoned. The fact that it was six forty-five in the morning was immaterial.

  A male voice answered.

  ‘Marco, it’s Faye Reid. Is your mother or Ella there?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Marco said, catching the urgency in her clipped tone.

  She heard muffled conversation and then Trina, Ella’s mother, came on the line.

  ‘Faye, it’s Trina. What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s Amber, she’s not here and her bed’s not been slept in,’ Faye said shakily. ‘I can’t get her on her phone. We had a row on Thursday, it was over nothing, you know how it is. But she’s been avoiding me since then, barely said two words to me, and now, when I went in to wake her, she’s gone. I’m sure she hasn’t been home all night. Trina, is Ella there? Amber might have stayed with you, or Ella might know where Amber is.’

  ‘Ella’s here but I know that Amber isn’t,’ Trina said, doing her best to hide the instinctive relief that at least she knew where her daughter was. ‘I had to wake Ella for school and Amber’s not there. Hold on, I’ll get Ella now.’

  ‘Ask her,’ Faye begged, ‘ask her if she knows where Amber is, if they talked about the argument.’

  It was several long minutes before a reluctant-sounding Ella said ‘hello’ into the phone.

  ‘Ella, I know she’d talk to you if she was upset,’ began Faye, her voice shaky. ‘Just tell me where she’s gone.’

  ‘I can’t, Mrs Reid,’ Ella said slowly. ‘I think I know who she’s with but I don’t know where exactly. I’m sorry – I shouldn’t be telling you this, Amber should.’

  ‘Tell her what?’ demanded Trina’s voice in the background. ‘If you know anything about where Amber is, you better spill the beans now. Her poor mother is sick with worry.’

  ‘She’ll kill me if I do,’ Ella hissed at her mother.

  ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t,’ Trina hissed back.

  ‘Where is she?’ demanded an anguished Faye.

  Ella sighed. ‘His name is Karl and he’s in a band called Ceres. We met him in a club in town and they’ve been going out for a few weeks. She’s probably at his flat. I don’t know where it is, though, sorry.’

  Two mothers made involuntary gasps of shock.

  The phone rattled as it changed hands and Trina came back on the line.

  ‘Faye, I’m so sorry. I had no idea,’ she said. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Faye, sure that Ella had already fled the scene to text the grisly news to Amber. Your mother knows and you’re up to your neck in it. ‘I’ll leave a message on her phone and then, I’ll have to wait until she decides to come home.’

  Faye rang in sick. She couldn’t cope with work with this huge issue unresolved. She was tidying the kitchen when Amber finally made it home at half eleven that morning, still in her going-out clothes, her eyes wary, her pale skin evidence of lack of sleep. And sex, Faye thought, horrified. Her baby had been out with some man having sex when she’d thought Amber was tucked up in bed.

  ‘Tell me about this Karl,’ said Faye grimly.

  ‘I love him. I’m going to New York with him.’ Amber snapped the words out in a voice that brooked no opposition. On the journey home, with both Ella’s text and a phone message from her mother telling her that she knew about Karl, she’d been caught between fear and fury. Her mother would not stop her seeing Karl. No way.

  ‘You’re what?’ said Faye, disbelieving. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t even know him, how can you love him and leave the country with him?’

  ‘I know enough to know he’s the man I love.’ Amber spat it out.

  ‘When did this happen?’ This had to be a sick joke, a game that Ella and Amber had dreamed up.

  ‘Last month. He’s a musician, he’s in a band. He’s a songwriter, he’s brilliant,’ Amber said fiercely. ‘I love him.’

  ‘You love him? You can hardly know him. And what do you mean about going to New York with him?’

  ‘I do love him and I do know him. Where do you think I’ve been every night for the past month?’ hissed Amber. ‘Not in my room, that’s for sure.’

  The kitchen suddenly seemed cold to Faye, even though it was sunny outside, as the enormity of what Amber had kept from her struck home. Nothing or no one in her past had ever made her feel so betrayed before, simply because she’d never loved anyone the way she loved her daughter.

  ‘I can’t believe you lied to me,’ she said, then tried a different tack. ‘Amber, you know this is crazy. You can’t head off with a strange guy. You’ve got exams. You can’t have been studying and you’ll never pass…’

  ‘I’m not doing the exams, didn’t you hear me?’ shouted her daughter. ‘Don’t you ever listen? I’m not going to college, I’m going away with Karl. You can’t stop me, you know.’ Amber realised her mother looked as if she’d been struck in the face. Well, it was her mother’s fault – she never listened.

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ she yelled again. ‘I’m an adult. I don’t want to go to college. You’ve always said an education was the most important thing in the world, well, you dropped out of college and you’ve done fine. I can paint any time I want to, Mum. This is about living life now, something you’ve never understood.’

  Faye thought of how she’d lived her life and the pain it had brought her and how the only good decent thing she’d felt she’d ever had was her life with Amber. Now it was disappearing in front of her eyes.

  ‘Running away with some guy in a band isn’t a life,’ she said softly. ‘You think it is but it isn’t.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t know a thing about it,’ yelled Amber.

  ‘I’ve been there,’ insisted Faye.

  ‘Yeah right!’

  Amber’s gorgeous face was angry and bitter. She’d never looked at Faye like that before and it was crueller than all the words to see the fury and resentment in her eyes.

  ‘How did all this happen?’ Faye asked helplessly, knowing the question sounded stupid but not knowing how else to put it.

  ‘It happened while you were trying to make me live the life you want me to live,’ Amber said. ‘I’m not that sort of person, Mum. You can’t make me just like you.’

  Faye choked back a bitter laugh. There were so many things she should have taught Amber. Things she’d had to learn the hard way, lessons she’d sworn her daughter would never need to learn.

  Instead, she’d hoped she could keep Amber cocooned from the crazy wild world and wrap her up in mother love and domesticity. A good school, nice friends, cosy happy families – that would keep her safe. And she’d still failed.

  ‘I’m going,’ Amber said briskly, wanting to be out of there. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you but I’ve got to live my own life and you’ve got to too. You can’t live through me.’

  ‘Is that what you think I’ve been doing?’ asked her mother quietly.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Amber’s face was the impetuous mask of youth. She knew
everything and her mother knew nothing, right?

  ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘You can’t go now.’ Faye came to life and dragged herself to her feet. ‘Don’t be silly, I’ve got to meet this guy. And your exams are only a couple of weeks away, Amber. Think about what you’re doing.’

  ‘I have thought about it,’ Amber said simply. ‘And I’m going. There’s nothing you can do about it. I’ll be eighteen in two days. Old enough to vote, old enough for anything.’

  ‘You can’t leave now.’ Her mother looked crazy, fluttery, uncertain, which was scary because that wasn’t Mum.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t hang around. We’d just fight and you’d stop me seeing Karl.’

  ‘Karl,’ repeated her mother bitterly. ‘Why can’t I meet this Karl, then, if he’s so fabulous? Or is he a down-and-out in a band of no-hopers?’

  ‘He’s amazing and I love him. He makes me feel alive.’

  She couldn’t bear anyone to criticise Karl, not even her mum. Especially not her mum. Her mum didn’t understand, nobody did, not even Ella.

  ‘I’m going to pack,’ Amber said coldly. ‘Don’t bother running after me. I want to live my own life now and you can’t stop me.’

  Faye was silent, thinking of the many things she needed to tell Amber but couldn’t. Because then she’d have to give up her secret and that was the one thing she could never, never do. Amber would hate her for it. Faye hated herself.

  Amber ran upstairs to pack, trying to quickly work out what she needed in her new life: not the knick-knacks on the white chest of drawers, which she’d lovingly painted with butterflies one weekend, Mum varnishing the artwork afterwards, saying how beautiful it was. Not all the good-girl clothes. But she’d take a lot of her stuff. She was moving out, after all. This wasn’t just a holiday.

  And she’d take the pendant. She’d take it because it was beautiful and it was a reminder of home. Not that she needed it but something of the past was good. God knows where her mother had got it in the first place. She couldn’t imagine her mother wearing it, looking cool. What had she said: I’ve been there. Oh yeah, right.

  As if her mother had ever done anything wild in her life.

  Maggie was walking briskly past the railway cottages when she saw the woman standing at the gate of the first cottage, staring wild-eyed up the road, her face wet with tears. She was dressed in a plain navy suit with her hair tied neatly back, but there all vestiges of normality ended. Her face was distraught, as if she’d had the worst news ever and her world was crashing around her.

  Maggie didn’t know the woman’s name, although she sort of recognised her, and for a nano-second, she wondered what the etiquette was for this situation.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, stopping. To hell with etiquette. If the woman wanted to tell her to get lost, then that was fine too. But she just couldn’t walk on by in the face of such human pain.

  ‘No,’ said the woman in a low moan, not even looking at Maggie. ‘She’s gone and I didn’t try to stop her. I knew I couldn’t and now she’s gone and I don’t know where. What am I going to do? I should have locked her in the house, made her stay, but I didn’t.’ She began to cry again, a low keening noise.

  This was bad. Maggie looked around and saw the familiar figure of Christie Devlin on the other side of Summer Street walking her two small dogs back from the park. Christie might know this woman and what to do, because Maggie sure as hell didn’t.

  ‘Mrs Devlin?’ called Maggie. ‘Mrs Devlin? Can you help? Please.’

  Together, Maggie and Christie helped Faye into Christie’s house where they sat her on an old soft armchair in the living room. Once Christie had established what had happened, she thought that Faye might be better off away from her own home and the scene of the row, where Amber’s presence was everywhere. Maggie had located house keys and Faye’s handbag in the Reids’ kitchen, closed the door, and then the trio had walked to the Devlins’ house, with the dogs following quietly, anxious at all the crying.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but Amber, she’s a good girl. You know,’ Faye kept muttering over and over. ‘She’s run off, you see. With a man, someone I’ve never heard of before and have never met, and I didn’t try to stop her. I let her go and I don’t know where she’s gone.’

  ‘It’s hard to stop someone when they’ve made their mind up,’ Christie said gently. ‘Amber certainly has a mind of her own, Faye, and she’s an adult now. She’s nearly eighteen, right? So legally, she’s an adult, whether or not she is emotionally.’

  ‘She’s still a baby,’ wailed Faye. ‘She’s nearly eighteen on the outside but she’s so vulnerable on the inside and I’ve let her down because I never told her the truth. I thought she’d be better off not knowing and now she thinks I want her to be boring and have no fun, except it wasn’t that. I wanted to protect her from what I went through.’

  It was like watching a rock crumble, Christie thought compassionately. She hardly knew Faye Reid and, from the outside, nobody would have guessed that this outwardly together woman would ever react with such wild grief.

  Christie knew that Amber was Faye’s life and that the two were very close. But a man had come into the mix – that’s what Amber must have been up to the day Christie had spotted her skipping school, Christie remembered, and shook her head grimly. The result was the sort of relationship triangle that could never work and Christie felt sorry for the loser – Faye.

  In spite of her exasperation at Amber for leaving her mother in such a way, Christie could see that running away from the scene of the emotional crime often seemed like the only option. It was what she herself had done, wasn’t it?

  ‘You stay with Faye,’ she told Maggie now. ‘I’ll make tea, hot and sweet to give her energy.’

  A faint grin lit up Maggie’s face. ‘Now I know why you and my mother are such friends, Mrs Devlin,’ she said. ‘She thinks tea is the answer to all life’s problems too.’

  ‘And shortbread biscuits,’ Christie added wryly. ‘Don’t forget the biscuits. They might not be the answer but they help you back on your feet so you can deal with the pain. And don’t call me Mrs Devlin. It makes me feel about a hundred when I’m not at school. I’m Christie.’

  It wasn’t like talking to someone of her mother’s generation, Maggie thought when Christie had gone.

  She could also see why her mother said Christie Devlin was sought by all in times of crisis: Una Maguire would have made the tea, all right, and then talked rapidly about anything to fill the air in case anyone started talking about what was really wrong. But Christie said little, and waited calmly and serenely in case Faye needed to talk. And she’d know when there was a deep, dark subject waiting to be brought up, Maggie thought with a flash of pain. She was thinking of herself as a teenager when the painful subjects had never been touched upon. If Christie had been her mother, she’d have seen the trouble Maggie was going through from the very first day she came home from school, shell-shocked at the naked hatred she’d encountered from the gang of bullies.

  And she’d have sorted it all out, too. And Maggie might have become a different person, not anxious and insecure. She might have become the person she’d like to be.

  ‘Are you all right, Maggie?’ whispered Christie, coming back with the tea and laying a cool hand on the young woman’s wrist.

  Maggie nodded, flashing a smile. Christie thought that, with her flaming hair and wistful eyes, she looked more beautiful than Una had been when Christie met her thirty years ago. But Maggie was different from her mother in other ways, Christie realised. Una was a whirling free spirit, happy wherever she was, content in herself and her world. While Maggie was like a nervous deer, easily startled, unsure of herself, hopelessly unconfident.

  Faye was not the only one here today with some secret past, Christie decided.

  The hot, sweet tea did as hoped and stopped Faye crying, but she still looked bereft.

  ‘I suppose you think I’m a hopeless mother,’ sh
e muttered to Christie. ‘I didn’t know what was going on under my own nose. Teachers always say they hear the real story from kids when the kids can’t talk to their parents at home, but Amber did talk to me, she did.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re a hopeless mother at all,’ Christie said. ‘I think you’re a wonderful mum, and it’s not an easy job, I know.’ She gave a rueful laugh. ‘You should try having two boys. They can challenge you, that’s for sure. And there were lots of times – are lots of times still,’ she corrected herself, thinking of Shane and news of the precious third grandchild on the way, ‘when you think you know what’s going on and really you haven’t a clue. Any teacher who says otherwise doesn’t know much about human nature.’

  Faye nodded, sniffing.

  ‘We were so close, you see, that’s what’s hard.’ She turned to Maggie. ‘I know you don’t really know me, but I know your parents and they’d tell you, Amber is a good girl.’

  ‘Mum’s said,’ Maggie interrupted. ‘She’s a wonderful artist, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Faye looked so pleased and proud for a moment, before the realisation hit her again – Amber wasn’t going to college to work on her great artistic ability. She was going off with that horrible man.

  ‘Could we phone the police?’ she asked suddenly.

  Christie looked at Maggie, a look shot through with pity, before replying: ‘They can’t help much when the person is of age, you know. She can go where she wants, really. When’s she eighteen?’

  ‘On Wednesday,’ said Faye.

  ‘And she’s taken her passport, I suppose. Has she got one?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t look. But how can she go to America without a visa or anything…Maybe she won’t go if she can’t get into the country?’ Faye was hopeful.

  ‘If he’s in a band and they’re going there for work, they might organise visas through the record company, with one for her too,’ Maggie said, shrugging. ‘With travel security so tight, they might get round it that way.’

  There was a silence as Faye digested that bit of information. ‘So she’s really gone. After eighteen years, she’s gone.’ And she began to cry again, only this time they were the silent, body-wrenching sobs that were somehow more painful to hear than any noisy ones.