Your Secret's Safe With Me Page 4

  Pearl looked a little bashful. ‘Well, she didn’t actually say she wanted you to ghost-write her memoirs, but she did say she’d like to tell her side of the story, put things straight after all these years. I suggested you could meet to see if there is a potential book there. Why not, Becca? Why are you looking at me like that? What else have you got to do?’

  I hadn’t actually given a thought to what I was going to do if Pearl followed through her retirement plan. I was still living in hope she’d pull out of it. Just because I’d relented to the marriage, it didn’t mean I endorsed everything else that apparently came with it.

  ‘I don’t need you interfering in my life any more, thank you,’ I said. ‘You’ve done enough damage already.’

  Pearl looked quite hurt. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Selling my home, giving up your career, putting me out of a job. Okay, I understand why you want to stay here. Rivermede is a lovely property, but does this have to be the end of your writing? Surely you can find inspiration here for some new stories? Just because you are marrying Jack, it doesn’t mean it all has to stop, does it?’

  ‘Yes it does, Becca. I’m afraid it does. Jack needs looking after. I want to look after him, and I don’t want to be constantly thinking about writing, and about all the publicity stuff we have to do to go with it. I’ve already told you. I want to immerse myself in village life, join the gardening club, the WI, take art classes.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I said, ‘this isn’t you. You shouldn’t give up your career to join the village gardening club.’

  ‘But I want to give up my career,’ Pearl said. She patted my arm. ‘I’m sorry, darling, it’s over. I know you’re upset, but you’re a great writer yourself. Talk to Stella, see if you can make something out of her story. Who knows? This could be your big break. She’s a fascinating woman.’

  I sighed. With no other work on the horizon, what real choice did I have? I agreed to talk to Stella Markham and Pearl settled on doves rather than balloons, as I always knew she would.

  The community of Kerridge covered a wide area. There was no high street as such, but the church and its adjacent hall appeared to constitute its centre, with a village green surrounded by sprawling chestnut trees. Clusters of chocolate-box cottages juxtaposed by modern detached designer properties dotted winding lanes along the river valley. According to Pearl, most of the action in Kerridge took place on the waterfront but I had yet to see the delights of Kerridge Hard, as she referred to it – home of the marina.

  It all looked and sounded very charming, but it was impossible to imagine my gregarious, cosmopolitan mother being happy in such a sleepy backwater, despite her protestations to the contrary. When had Pearl ever been interested in gardening? We didn’t even have a window box in Battersea, and the house-plants were plastic imitations for ease of maintenance. As for the WI, a few months ago the mere mention of the organisation would have sent her into spasms of mocking derision.

  The Ship of Fools was situated on the outer regions of the village, in a picturesque spot on a bend of the River Deane. Pearl’s directions were not easy to follow, and my sat nav directed me over the ford once again. The pub’s sign depicted three colourful court jesters in a sailing boat, one of whom bore more than a passing resemblance to Owen Markham. History had never been my thing, but I was pretty sure waxed moustaches weren’t popular back in medieval times.

  I had to stoop to enter. Inside, sloping black wooden beams dominated an interior decorated with fishing nets, lobster pots, and ships’ lanterns. A fire roared in the grate, giving the pub a cosy, smoky, atmosphere. For six-thirty on a Monday evening, it seemed remarkably busy; there was a small crowd at the bar and several of the tables were already taken.

  At Pearl’s insistence, I’d conducted some online research so that I was already prepared with the background to Stella’s story. Owen Markham didn’t have a good word to say about his ex. What should have been seen as major triumph for amateur sailor Stella, captaining an all-woman crew for the Tri-Island long distance yacht race – Isle of Wight, Madeira, The Azores – had been overshadowed by a vicious dissecting of her personal life and accusations, later proved to be totally unfounded, of cheating.

  She was serving behind the bar; a short, rather dumpy woman of about sixty, with a greying, pudding basin haircut. She wore a black and white striped T-shirt with jeans. It was easy to picture her stood at the helm of a yacht, battling the elements, but totally impossible to imagine her ever being married to a flamboyant character like Owen. Her skin was weather-beaten and her face devoid of any make-up. She was aided behind the bar by a young man in his twenties, bearded and pierced, and eager to serve.

  ‘What can I get you?’ he asked with a smile.

  ‘I’m actually here to see Stella,’ I said, nodding in her direction, ‘but I’ll have a small white wine, please.’

  Pearl had phoned ahead to let Stella know I was my on my way. ‘Are you Pearl’s daughter?’ she enquired with a beaming smile. ‘I’ll get this, Ben. Can you take the wheel for a while?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he grinned.

  ‘You look very busy,’ I remarked as Stella handed me a large glass of white wine.

  ‘It’s quiz night,’ she replied. ‘We do a pie, chips and quiz special on a Monday. They’re all regulars, so we’re in control. Pearl said you were heading off back to London tomorrow so tonight was our only chance for a chat.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, but I suspect I’ll be coming back to Kerridge fairly regularly.’ More than regularly, if Pearl had her way and the Battersea flat was sold, although I fully intended to make Beech Mews as unsellable as possible – a major task, considering our flat was in one of the most desirable blocks in the area. I would put off contacting estate agents for as long as I could, and I certainly had no intention of ‘staging’ anything, as Pearl had suggested, to make the flat look more attractive. Potential buyers would have to view it warts and all. I was definitely not going to waste my time whitewashing Freddy’s black bedroom walls.

  Stella suggested we head to a small table well away from the bar in the quieter end of the pub, hidden away behind a couple of cross-beams.

  ‘Pearl thinks my story could make a good book,’ she began as we sat down.

  ‘They do say everyone has a book in them,’ I smiled, ‘and you’ve certainly led an interesting life, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You think?’ Stella grunted. ‘It’s been pretty hellish a lot of the time, to be honest. Besides everything else that went on, it’s not nice being accused of cheating, you know. That smear never wears off.’

  ‘Well, maybe it is time for people to hear your side of the story,’ I suggested.

  ‘That’s what your mother said.’ Stella gave a shrug. ‘Do you think you can make it a bestseller?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure about that,’ I confessed. I didn’t want to give Stella the wrong impression. I wasn’t sure the name Owen Markham carried enough kudos any more to create a great deal of interest from the paying public. Many other celebrity chefs had come and gone since his glory days. ‘It’s very hard to predict what will make a bestseller and what won’t,’ I told her. ‘Sadly, it’s a lot more to do with marketing hype. I suppose that’s another thing you have to consider. Are you prepared for the inevitable publicity?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?’ Stella replied. ‘I’m not sure I am. Chloe and I live very quietly here in Kerridge, and part of me would like it to stay that way. On the other hand, I suppose it would be an opportunity to tell the truth about everything that happened, put the record straight.’

  ‘So why not do it then?’ I suggested. ‘Have you given any thought to what sort of format this book could take?’

  ‘To be honest, I’d not thought about any of it for years, until Pearl mentioned it,’ Stella admitted. ‘At the time it all blew up, I did try and cobble some notes together, but I couldn’t get a publisher to touch it. I’ve kept a lot of the old newspap
er cuttings about the race itself and all the build-up, because I was pretty proud of that despite Owen’s accusations, but I certainly didn’t keep any mementoes of the fall-out. You’d have your work cut out making my original scribbles into something readable, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Have you still got the notes?’ I asked hopefully. ‘It would give me something to go on.’

  ‘I’ll have to have a dig around,’ Stella said, ‘and see what I’ve got up in the attic.’

  ‘Great.’ I couldn’t help but feel Pearl’s suggestion of writing Stella’s memoirs was nothing but a ruse to keep me in Kerridge. However, it could be something worth pursuing. ‘Look, I’ll probably be back down here in a few weeks,’ I told her. ‘Why not have a good think about whether you want to proceed? The newspaper cuttings and photographs would help me to get an understanding of the facts, give me some idea of whether the project could work. Maybe you can send me what you’ve got? I’ll give you my email and postal address. In the meantime, it wouldn’t do any harm to jot down some retrospective thoughts about the emotions you felt at the time, the high obviously of winning that race, then how it felt afterwards to be vilified by your husband in the press. I’ll do a bit of online research, too. If we do go ahead, what about your ex? How would he feature in this?’

  ‘As little as bloody possible, I hope,’ Stella grumbled. ‘I haven’t spoken to Owen for years.’

  ‘We might just have to warn him about the book, if it gets as far as publication. We have to be aware of the libel and defamation laws.’

  ‘He didn’t seem to worry about that when he slagged me off to all and sundry,’ Stella pointed out. She looked up at the bar. ‘Look, I’d best go and help Ben out. I’ll have to discuss it with Chloe anyway, see how she feels about everything coming back out into the open.’

  ‘That would be a good idea,’ I agreed. I knew from my research that Owen Markham’s sous chef, Chloe Poole, had been his rival for Stella’s affections. Together, the Markhams had owned a top-end restaurant in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, a popular haunt of the sailing fraternity. Chloe had accompanied Stella on her infamous yacht race. The fact that she and Stella were still together thirty years later was testament to the strength of their relationship, although it had been a double whammy for Owen. He hadn’t just lost his wife, he’d lost his top chef, too. No wonder he’d been so bitter.

  ‘Chloe is with you here tonight, I take it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, she’s in the kitchen, as always,’ Stella smiled. ‘This joint is hers as much as it is mine. I don’t suppose I could interest you in our pie, chips and quiz deal, could I?’

  Pearl had already extolled the virtues of The Ship of Fools’ extensive menu, and I’d made no arrangements to be back at Rivermede for dinner.

  ‘Sure, I’d love to,’ I said.

  Chapter Five

  Stella insisted on fixing me up with a quiz team, even though I assured her it wasn’t necessary.

  ‘I’m quite happy to sit here eating on my own,’ I protested.

  She wouldn’t hear of it. ‘The Twitchers are a bit thin on the ground tonight. Let me introduce you.’ Somewhat reluctantly, I followed her through the pub to a table in the nook by the fire place. I noticed she walked with a slight limp, as if she had seized up from sitting down.

  There were three people sat at the table, all tucking into their pies – a couple in their early sixties, wearing matching navy sweatshirts; and a younger man, bearded, with scruffy collar-length dark hair, his shoulders hunched.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Twitchers, but you don’t mind Becca joining you, do you?’ Stella announced.

  ‘Not at all,’ the woman in the blue sweatshirt smiled.

  ‘Take a seat,’ her partner added, waving his fork at the vacant chair. ‘I’m Craig and this is my wife, Chrissie.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said, as Stella headed back to the bar.

  The third occupant of the table looked up from his meal. Our eyes met. Locked.

  It was inevitable that along life’s journey you encountered people you never wanted to see again, people you went out of your way to avoid, crossed over to the other side of a road or hid in a shop doorway to avoid; those kinds of people. And then there were people who if you didn’t know they had already left the country, you would seriously consider moving to the other side of the world to avoid, people who you had vowed never to speak to again because they had betrayed you, hurt you, and humiliated you so much. The kind of people who didn’t just break hearts, they destroyed them. The kind of people like the third member of the Twitchers’ quiz team.

  ‘Where’s your manners, Alex,’ Craig laughed, giving his teammate a nudge. ‘You don’t mind Becca joining us, do you?’

  I could almost see the cogs turning in his brain, whirring at top speed, his mind running through the same dilemma, questioning the unlikeliest of scenarios, how we two people had ended up here in the same room, in the same pub, in the same village, miles away from where we both lived, fifteen years after our last encounter.

  The last time I’d seen ‘Alex’ was when I’d flounced down the aisle of St Mary’s Church in Battersea, and he certainly hadn’t been called Alex then, although it might possibly have been one of his middle names. Nick Quinlan could well have a double, but from the look on Alex’s face, Nick’s doppelganger was not currently sat having a pie and pint in The Ship of Fools in sleepy Kerridge. This was the genuine thing, my ex, in the pub, pretending to be someone he was not, and by all accounts he was as horrified to see me as I was to see him.

  He regained his composure first. ‘No, not at all. I’m Alex McLean,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Becca.’

  No appropriate, polite, words of introduction came into my head as I shook that firm, familiar hand.

  ‘How are you on TV soaps?’ Chrissie asked, resuming her dinner and filling the awkward silence. ‘We always fall down on the soaps without Mark and Marie. Mark and Marie are on holiday, which is why it’s just the three of us this week. Alex is our music buff, and Craig knows his sport. I’m okay with geography and history.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m probably not going to be much help at all,’ I told her, wondering how I was going to get through the rest of the evening. Not only did I have to display some sort of intelligence during the quiz, I also had to maintain a polite conversation with Nick Quinlan sat next to me. It was going to be impossible. ‘I’m not a great TV fan either.’

  ‘What brings you to The Ship on a chilly night like this, Becca?’ Nick asked. The message in his introduction had been perfectly clear. You don’t know me.

  ‘Umm, Stella invited me,’ I replied. It didn’t take much to guess the reason for the assumed name and that unspoken request for my silence. I knew what line of work Nick had been in fifteen years ago; there was no reason to assume he had changed careers, despite a sojourn overseas. I quashed the temptation to blow his cover. Revenge was always a dish best served cold, or at least well-calculated.

  ‘Are you a friend of Stella’s?’ he enquired. His expression had returned to inscrutable benign politeness.

  ‘Not really,’ I smiled. ‘We only met earlier this evening.’ I turned to Chrissie and Craig. The matching navy sweatshirts bore the emblem of the RSPB. ‘So, what’s with the team name? Twitchers? Isn’t that something to do with bird-watching?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Craig enthused. ‘We get a wide variety of wild fowl down here on the salt marshes. We’re all very keen amateur ornithologists.’

  The Nick I knew had absolutely no interest in birds, of the feathered kind at least. ‘You too, Alex? How interesting. Tell me, what’s the rarest bird you’ve come across in Kerridge so far this year? I’d love to know.’

  Before Nick could come up with an answer, Craig interrupted with an entire catalogue of seabirds which over-wintered at Helme Point.

  ‘Yes, all of those,’ Nick murmured in agreement when Craig had finished reeling off his list.

  ‘Alex is alway
s out there on the marsh with his binoculars,’ Chrissie added. ‘Do you have an interest in ornithology, Becca?’

  I shook my head. ‘Oh no, sorry.’

  ‘So, how come you’re in Kerridge?’ Nick enquired. ‘Are you just visiting?’ It was a perfectly reasonable but totally loaded question.

  Stella had appeared at the table bearing a huge plate of food. ‘Becca’s mother has recently moved into the village,’ she answered on my behalf. ‘She is one of our new neighbours. You’ve got our last chicken and leek, Becca, hope that’s okay.’

  ‘Thanks, Stella.’ The pie was enormous. Pearl would never have fixed me an appointment with Stella if she’d known how much pastry was going to be involved in the negotiations. Even Nick appeared defeated by the walls of crust on his steak and kidney, and a good third remained un-eaten on his abandoned plate, although perhaps that was just because he’d lost his appetite.

  ‘Oh, are you Pearl Gates’ daughter?’ Chrissie exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you say? Did you know we now have a famous author amongst us here in Kerridge, Alex? I’m surprised you’ve not come across her yet when you’ve been out on your walks.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I’ve had that pleasure,’ Nick replied. ‘Your mother is here in Kerridge, Becca?’ His discomfort was just starting to show, although he was playing his part very well. Years of undercover work had probably prepared him for every eventuality, although probably not an unwanted encounter with a vengeful ex-mother-in-law-to-be. I may have forgiven Nick for his defection, but Pearl hadn’t. Her mention of him at yesterday’s dinner table had been evidence of that. Nick hadn’t just deprived her of her big day; in Pearl’s opinion, he’d turned me off men for the life.

  Nick stood up abruptly. ‘Another drink, Becca? Can I tempt you with more wine?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you can.’ I smiled.

  ‘How about you come and help me up at the bar?’

  ‘The poor girl’s just got her meal,’ Chrissie said, waving him away. ‘Craig will give you a hand. Let Becca enjoy her dinner.’