Dangerous Secrets (ebook)

Argumento de Dangerous Secrets (ebook)

Julia Renton returns from a trip to Kenya to discover her mother is dead ? evidently having committed suicide. Her brother Ryan is equally devastated and the pair rushes to their cottage in Cornwall to escape their cold and unforgiving father. Soon, a body is discovered in an outhouse and things start to go wrong, including the presumed murder of one half of an elderly pair of sisters, and the Renton?s cottage burning down.

Trying to move on, Julia takes employment with Bryce Davies, a local holiday and property dealer. There seems to be something major in the pipeline and Bryce is involved, but his intentions with the Rentons are possibly less than innocent. When strange things start happening to Julia, she realises someone has made themselves involved in her life ? and closer than she originally thought.

Pale-faced and red-eyed, Julia stared at her brother in total disbelief.

‘You’re saying she committed suicide? My mother committed suicide? No. You’re wrong. I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.’

‘She was my mother too, don’t forget. She was very sick, you know. She had no chance of getting better and didn’t want everyone to see her gradually withering away. I’m sorry but you had to know.’ Ryan’s voice wavered as he spoke but he gritted his teeth.

He felt tears burning his eyes but he knew he mustn’t cry. A harsh voice from somewhere deep in his past was telling him that boys don’t cry. He swallowed the tears away and wished he hadn’t been born a boy, now a man. But still he wasn’t allowed to cry. He had dreaded this moment. Telling Julia the truth.

Julia listened in horror, her eyes burning with tears. This new information from her brother could not be true … whatever her mother had been, she was not a coward. In Julia’s eyes, anyone taking their life was cowardly. In any case, didn’t people taking their own lives always leave a note? Something to explain their actions to those left behind. But her mother had left nothing.

‘And how exactly was she supposed to have done it, if she was so ill?’ She forced herself to speak.

‘The pills. She saved them up for a few days and took the lot in one go. It seems quite certain. Father had employed a nurse and she said it was the only possible conclusion. Mum was far too sick to write a note. You didn’t see her at the end. She was shrinking to nothing. You should be glad that your memories of her will be as she was. Not what she had become.’

Despite his words, there was no accusation in Ryan’s voice. Those days had been desperate, as he and his father had desperately tried to contact Julia. The speed of his mother’s decline had terrified him and he desperately needed his big sister to be there to share the burden. His father would have poured scorn over him if he once allowed his emotions to show.

Julia’s trip to Kenya had put her out of reach for several weeks and it was only pure chance that she had phoned home the day before the funeral. Despite a dramatic dash across country, she had failed to get a flight home in time to join the mourners. While her mother was being cremated, she was weeping bitter tears of remorse somewhere over the ocean. She had wept for the loss of her mother and, just a little, to salve her own conscience.

The trip abroad to work as cook to a luxury camping tour was her rebellious escape from her father’s dominance. It had denied her the chance to share the last few days of her mother’s life. If she had been with her mother surely it could never have happened? She would have looked after her mother properly. They would never have needed the nurse. The nurse.

‘What about this nurse? Who was she? Another of Dad’s little friends ? Do we know anything about her? She could have fed the pills to Mum.’

‘Unlikely. She was at least fifty and large with it. Dedicated and unemotional. Not at all father’s type,’

Ryan answered, his voice carefully controlled.

‘I don’t understand how it could all have been so rapid. Mum wasn’t all that well when I went but she said it was nothing serious. I would never have left her if it was.’

Overcome, Julia went outside. She stood silently, staring out into the lush garden of their Buckinghamshire home. The mass of spring bulbs had no business looking so cheerful without her mother there to see them. She had planted banks of them everywhere. Julia would never again look at a daffodil without remembering her mother. Damn her father. Damn the pompous prick he was. Always so cocksure of himself. Always knowing what was best for everyone. Now he’d won, as usual. He’d tried to stop his daughter going on the working holiday. It had made him feel uncomfortable and out of control. What was it he’d said? ‘Heavens, girl. If you suddenly have some urge to see wild animals, I’ll pay for you to go on a safari. You don’t have to work your passage. Tell me what you want and I’ll write you a cheque. Take a friend with you.’ He never listened. Never took time to understand. Never realised the effect he had on his family. He was always too busy making money, building his precious business. His trips. They’d always been a joke and were assumed by the family they provided excuses to go and screw every tart he could lay his hands on. It had been a family saying for years – Father’s little friends. Mum had pretended not to care nor gave a clue that she knew. Even when challenged with the truth, her mother had always made excuses.

‘I’m happy with my home and family. I couldn’t want more. If it keeps your father happy when he’s away, whoever he is with, it’s fine by me. He comes home in the end. He provides for us very well. You’ve both been to the best schools and university and when you decide what career you want, he will help you with that as well.’

‘But I want to do some things for myself. Take a few chances and even make a few mistakes … mistakes that Daddy can’t buy me out of. I want to enjoy something I have accomplished by my own efforts. I have to take this job. Two months. A chance to make my own decisions. You do understand don’t you, Mum?’

And it seemed she had understood. For once, she had supported her daughter against her husband. Julia could clearly remember the sense of pleasure she had gained from the expression on her father’s face. His jaw had dropped in disbelief and his eyes had narrowed. He’d shrugged his shoulders and walked from the room.

‘Does that mean he agrees?’ she had asked her mother.

‘Looks like it, darling. But you will keep in touch, won’t you? Phone home as often as you can.’

‘You’re all right with this aren’t you, Mum?’

‘Of course, darling. I understand what you’re saying and why you want to do it.’

Had she sounded a bit frail at that time? Julia tried to remember. Maybe there was something in her voice … a clue she should have picked up on. But Julia had made up her mind to stand firm for once and her father was not going to change it.

Despite her promises to keep in touch, it hadn’t been that simple. Her phone had been stolen on her first day in Nairobi and, from then on they had been camping out somewhere deep in the African country. The villages they had visited rarely had a telephone at all, let alone one she could have used. It was an adventure holiday after all and she was enjoying every minute of it. She’d achieved exactly what she wanted … anonymity and freedom from her father, but at what cost?

‘I had to go, Ryan. I had to get away from his eternal control. He never lets us make any decisions for ourselves. Thinks he can buy us off all the time. I’m twenty-five, for Heaven’s sake. Why should I feel guilty?’

‘Because he can control us. He’s made us depend on him for every penny but we have enjoyed our lives so far, haven’t we?’

‘I suppose.’ She fell silent as she thought about their lives so far.

Even university had been a mockery. She’d spent three years gaining a low grade degree because she had never needed to fight for anything. This final fiasco of the trip to Kenya proved it. Her urge to rebel had turned sour with a vengeance. She had lost her mother for ever. She glanced around their beautiful home and began to hate every last well-chosen artefact; every perfect item of expensive furniture.

‘I’ve got to get away from here.’ Julia rushed out of the room. She needed time on her own. She stuffed an assortment of clothes into a holdall and grabbed a few provisions from the kitchen, driving away at a speed endangering anything in her way.0