My Sister’s Secret. Tracy Buchanan

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       Prologue

      Busby-on-Sea, UK

       March 1977

      Faith lay still, the rain wetting her face and bouncing off the soft skin of her outstretched palms. She heard voices, footsteps, but couldn’t move, couldn’t call out. She looked up at the soaking tree branches above. If she narrowed her eyes slightly it almost looked like she was underwater, floating under a submerged tree…

      Wouldn’t that be wonderful, discovering the drowned forest she and her sisters had spent their summers searching for? She remembered the first time she showed them the map she’d made. Three years ago. She was sixteen, so naïve then, so excited too. She’d hurried down the beach, the pebbles stretching out before her, the sky bright blue above, sun hot and hazy. When she caught sight of her sisters, she slowed down. She liked watching them when they were like this, quiet and still. Her thirteen-year-old sister, Charity – the youngest of the three – lay on a towel, chin tipped up towards the sun, eyes closed, wild black hair a tangle above her head. Her sunburnt legs stretched out from faded denim shorts, her halter-neck top matching her red knees. She was at that confusing age between girlhood and womanhood that Faith remembered so well.

      Sitting behind Charity on a large white rock, her pale knees tucked up to her chest, was Hope. She watched the sea pensively as it foamed against the beach, the end of her pen in her mouth, notepad open in her other hand. The swimsuit she was wearing – an old one of their mother’s, swirling colours of green, red and blue – and the turquoise swimming cap that hid her long red hair made her look more like thirty than fifteen.

      Faith quickened her step towards them, bare feet scrunching pebbles, the object of her excitement hidden behind her back.

      Hope peered up first, face lighting up when she saw her older sister.

      ‘How’s the poem going?’ Faith asked her.

      ‘I’m stuck on the colour of the sea.’ A frown puckered her pale skin as she turned to look back out towards the sea. ‘It’s such a strange colour today, not blue or grey or green.’

      ‘Ribbons,’ Charity lazily murmured without opening her eyes. ‘Blue, grey and green ribbons.’

      Faith smiled as she sat down next to Charity, pebbles warm beneath her bare calves.

      ‘Ribbons. I like that. You’re not so useless after all, Charity,’ Hope declared, scribbling in her notepad as Charity stuck her tongue out at her.

      ‘I’ve got something to show you both,’ Faith said.

      Charity СКАЧАТЬ