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

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СКАЧАТЬ It was like drinking her coffee with subtitles.

      Lauren’s mugs were white and they all matched. Not a chip. Not a crack. Not a single accolade emblazoned on the side. Her home looked like something out of one of those glossy magazines she’d been addicted to growing up.

      Jenna glanced at her sister. She’d changed into black yoga pants and a black roll-neck sweater. Her hair was twisted into a severe knot at the back of her head and the pallor of her skin emphasized the dark hollows under her eyes.

      Her sister could have taken a role in a horror movie without bothering with makeup, Jenna thought. She suspected Lauren spent most of the night crying, although during the day she managed to hold it together.

      After Mack’s revelation, the gathering had been more farce than funeral. Her confession had shaken the atmosphere so dramatically the resulting shock waves should have been measurable on the Richter scale.

      Everyone’s mouths had been open, with the exception of Mack’s. With hindsight, Jenna wished her niece had closed hers sooner.

      At first she’d assumed it was grief talking, but then she’d seen her sister’s frozen expression and had second thoughts. She knew that look. It was the same look Lauren had worn as a child when they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t, like the time William Foster had reported them for letting his chickens out.

      Jenna considered what she knew about her sister’s relationship.

      Lauren and Ed had met on the beach and married a month later. It had been a whirlwind, but everyone who met Ed found it easy to understand why Lauren had fallen in love with him so nobody questioned it too deeply.

      When Mack had been born barely nine months later, Jenna had wondered if Lauren had already been pregnant when she and Ed had married, but so what?

      Now she felt like one of the kids in her class doing a basic math puzzle. If Jane has four apples and Mary takes one away, how many apples does Jane have left?

      Could she have had an affair? No. Lauren had already been pregnant when she’d come back from her honeymoon.

      How could Ed not be Mack’s father?

      Like Mack and the rest of the people at the funeral, Jenna wanted to know the answer to the key question.

      Lauren hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the funeral.

      Jenna wanted to call Greg for advice, but since when had she needed Greg’s advice on how to talk to her sister, someone she knew almost as well as she knew herself?

      She removed two perfect matching mugs from the cabinet, boiled water and made hot tea.

      That was what the British did in a crisis, wasn’t it? They drank tea. Lauren had lived here for sixteen years, which made her as close to British as it was possible to be without being born here. “Was Mack telling the truth?” She pushed aside a stack of papers and put the two mugs on the table.

      Lauren stared at the tea but didn’t touch it. “Yes.”

      Jenna sat down next to her and took her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

      “I didn’t tell anyone.”

      I’m not anyone. I’m your sister. “Since when do we not talk to each other?”

      “I wanted to protect my daughter. I always planned to tell her, but I was waiting until I was sure she was old enough to understand. I wanted her to grow up in a secure, stable home knowing she was loved. I didn’t want her to have doubts or fears. I didn’t want her to be—” She lifted bruised, exhausted eyes to Jenna. An ocean of memories flowed between them.

      “You didn’t want her to be like us.”

      Lauren’s eyes glistened. “You’re probably the only person who can understand.”

      Jenna felt sweat prickle at the back of her neck. “Do you want to talk about it?”

       Please don’t let her want to talk about it.

      “No. It’s not relevant.”

      It was funny, Jenna thought, how they’d both managed to ignore the past. It was like being in the room with a wild animal and hoping that if you didn’t look at it, it wouldn’t bite you.

      “If it’s impacting the choices you make, then it’s relevant.”

      “Didn’t it impact yours?”

      Jenna felt her cheeks grow hot. “This is about you, not me. You kept a major secret from your husband and daughter.”

      “No, I didn’t. Ed agreed we should wait until Mack was older. We were planning on sitting her down and talking to her soon.”

      “Wait—you’re saying Ed knew?”

      “From the beginning.”

      “And he married you in spite of that?”

      “He married me because of that.” Lauren let go of Jenna’s hand and reached for her tea. “It’s complicated.”

       No kidding.

      Jenna was still getting her head round the fact there was a huge part of her sister’s life she knew nothing about. “Did you tell him everything? He also knew about—”

      “No. Not that. Just about Mack. And she’s all that matters now. She’s lost her dad, and she can’t even grieve properly because she’s so confused.” Lauren’s voice wobbled and she glanced toward the door that Mack had slammed between them the moment they’d arrived back at the house. “Is she going to be okay? I need you to tell me she’s going to be okay.”

      “She’s going to be okay,” Jenna said, hoping it was true. “It will take time of course, but she’ll figure it out and so will you. And you have each other.”

      “Right now I don’t think she finds that a comfort. She’s so mad at me.” Lauren blew her nose. “She’s obviously known Ed wasn’t her father for a while. It explains so much. She’s been difficult lately. Moody. I thought there might be something she wasn’t telling me—” She glanced at Jenna, who shrugged.

      “No one is better qualified to recognize the signs of secret keeping than the Stewart sisters, right? Do you know how she found out?”

      “She was doing an ancestry project at school as part of her history coursework. I guess it must have been to do with that. I haven’t worked out the details yet. But why didn’t she talk to me? Why not ask me?”

      “Er—did we ever talk to Mom about things?”

      “No, but we didn’t talk to Mom about anything. Mack and I talked about everything.”

      Not quite everything, Jenna thought.

      “Did Ed adopt Mack?”

      Lauren stared at her tea. “No. We talked about it, but at the beginning it would have meant—” she drew in a breath СКАЧАТЬ