The Secret Sister. Karen Clarke

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СКАЧАТЬ had been ill for a while and had come to terms with dying. She’d lived to see me happily married, and to meet her precious granddaughter. I thought we’d had time to say all the things that mattered.

      When the end came it was peaceful, with her family gathered around, and I was holding her hand.

      It was much later, while clearing out her bedroom, that I realised I hadn’t known my mother as well as I thought I had.

      The one thing that really mattered had been left unsaid.

       Chapter 1

       Colleen

       Saturday

      The sun woke me, slanting through the half-open curtains, hurting my eyes. I rolled out of bed, pulled my hoodie on over my pants, and padded to the window.

      My brain pulsed against my skull. I felt sick and fragile. It had been years since I’d suffered a hangover, but I’d never forgotten the feeling.

      The view from the ground-floor window of the guesthouse was nothing special – an area for cars, a scruffy garden with plastic furniture and faded umbrellas – but there was something soothing about the silence. Apart from the occasional cry of a seagull it was a respite from my shite-awful life.

      I squinted up at the sky as the sun grew bigger and rounder – a shiny ball of hope. It would disappear within hours, if the puffy grey clouds approaching were anything to go by. Hope never stayed around long.

      A solitary magpie landed on the window ledge with a thud and a flap of wings, and I jumped. I’d been on hyper-alert since leaving my husband, nerves jangling at the slightest thing. I prayed Celia wouldn’t tell Jake where to find me – not that she cared. The woman I’d called mother for thirty-three years had long since lost interest in me.

      I turned and scanned the room, trying to work out how I got so pissed the night before that I now barely remembered arriving.

      A folder on the bedside table informed me the guesthouse was close to the Atlantic Ocean, near Rosses Point, and a forty-minute walk to Sligo.

      I turned to look at Gabriel, sprawled face down on the crumpled bed, taking in his narrow shoulders, his flop of lank blond hair. Hopefully, he would be out for hours.

      A flashback of me talking too much, and later my words slurring into an incomprehensible blur filled my head.

       What had I said to him?

      I eyed his open wallet on the floor, stuffed with a wad of euros. A table by the door was littered with rolling tobacco, two empty bottles of wine and half a line of cocaine. I etched a finger round my nostrils, praying I hadn’t taken any. I’d been clean since meeting my husband, Jake, fifteen years ago.

      How had I let this happen?

      My heart pounded as I tried to recall the night before. But, despite raking around my head for clues, I could barely remember a thing, just tiny bursts of memory that floated in and out in disjointed flashes. ‘But I don’t drink,’ I could hear myself saying in a silly flirtatious voice that didn’t suit me, laughing as a large glass of wine was pushed in front of me. ‘Not anymore.’

      I heaved with self-disgust as my eyes skittered around, looking for my rucksack, noticing a row of cheap-looking seascapes, fixed to the wall with nails in case some loser tried to take off with them.

      Had Gabriel booked us into this horrible dump?

      I couldn’t remember.

      There was a laptop on the dressing table, its charge light flashing, and a rubber plant in a plastic pot on the floor, starved of everything it needed, but somehow surviving.

      I finally spotted my rucksack, lying on the floor beneath a pillow. I grabbed it and headed into an adjoining bathroom that looked as if it hadn’t been updated since the Seventies. I closed the door quietly, filled a tumbler with water and gulped it down as I stared at my pallid, blotchy reflection in the mirror above the sink. Already, I didn’t look like me. I hadn’t worn a hoodie before, for a start. Jake would never have approved.

      I retrieved the black hair dye and scissors I’d bought the day before, and taking a length of my hair between my fingers, snipped it off. Another clump followed, and another. I daren’t look at the honey-coloured strands of hair in the sink in case I cried.

      My eyes stung as I mixed the dye and pulled on the plastic gloves. Once I’d massaged the lotion into my hair, I thought I might puke and hung over the toilet, but after retching several times, nothing happened. I rose and sat on the edge of the bath, waiting, striving to make sense of everything, trying to work out how I got here. I pummelled my temples. Still nothing. Gabriel certainly hadn’t forced me to drink wine. I could see myself, willingly knocking it back. Perhaps Jake had been right. Perhaps he was the only person who could stop me from self-destructing. I’d proved him right within a day of leaving.

      Twenty minutes later, I rinsed off the dye and studied myself again. My hair was so dark my skin looked like Snow White’s, my freckles more distinctive.

       Jake won’t recognise me now.

      I threw the remnants of the dye in the wicker bin then took a lukewarm shower. Afterwards, I pulled on black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt. I didn’t bother with a bra.

      Jake would call me a tramp. He knew I’d gone. He’d already cancelled the credit cards, and texted me.

       Where the hell are you?

      I returned to the bedroom, opened Gabriel’s wallet and took out the wad of notes. There must have been over a thousand euros. It would help me get by until I found my father. What little money I’d withdrawn from a cashpoint before Jake cottoned on wouldn’t go far.

      Gabriel was snoring into his pillow, his spine rising and falling. Had we had sex? Surely I’d have remembered that.

      He suddenly swung his arm above his head and it landed with a thud on the pillow, making me jump. A flash of memory of his arm tightly round me, him whispering, ‘I love you, Colleen.’

      Had that happened?

      I shoved the money back in his wallet and left it on the table.

      After pulling my hoodie back on, I pushed my feet into my trainers, grabbed my rucksack, and left without looking back.

      Thick clouds gathered as I walked towards Sligo, and heavy spots of rain began to fall. A bus drew up at a shelter, and I ran and jumped on it. It was empty, apart from an old lady talking to herself.

      As the bus revved a man leapt on, tall and slim with dark hair slicked to his head. My heart began to hammer against my ribs. I dragged up my hood, and slid down in my seat, but the man wasn’t Jake. Apart from his build and hair colour, he looked nothing like him. My heartbeat slowed as he sat in front of me and took out his phone.

      Before I walked out yesterday, I’d felt sure Jake had been following me for months. ‘Are you having СКАЧАТЬ