Secrets

Synopsis

Set in the 1930s, the classic novel from bestselling author Lesley Pearse tells the story of one girl's struggle against cruelty and, her quest for love.Twelve-year-old Adele Talbot's unhappy mother Rose succumbs to madness after a family tragedy and Adele is placed in a bleak children's home. But when her trust is betrayed she runs away - hoping to find her grandmother in Sussex.By the time she does so, Adele is desperately ill and has to be nursed back to health among the beautiful Rye Marshes. And then she meets the wonderful Michael Bailey.As friendship blossoms into love and they come of age together - Adele becoming a nurse and Michael joining the RAF - she believes she can put her troubled past behind her. But with the outbreak of war and the sudden appearance of Rose, bearing shocking family secrets, suddenly all of Adele's hopes appear impossibly fragile ...

LESLEY PEARSE

Secrets

MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Georgia
Tara
Charity
Ellie
Camellia
Rosie
Charlie
Never Look Back
Trust Me
Father Unknown
Till We Meet Again
Remember Me

To my father, Geoffrey Arthur Sargent, who died in 1980, too soon to see me become a published writer. I chose to set Secrets in Rye because it was his home town and he loved it.
Also to my uncle, Bert Sargent, who remained living in Rye until his death in 2002. Some of my best childhood memories were of holidays spent there with him, my aunt Dorothy and my cousins.

I read too many books in my research to name them all, but the most noteworthy ones were:
Fighter Boys
by Patrick Bishop;
The London Blitz, a Fireman’s Tale
by Cyril Demarne OBE; and
London at War
by Philip Ziegler. And extra special thanks to Geoffrey Wellum DSO, for his inspiring book
First Light
, his story of his time as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain. A big thank-you to William Third for digging out information on Hastings and Winchelsea. You were always a dear friend, now you qualify as a researcher too.

PART I

Chapter One

JANUARY 1931

Adele had a stitch from running by the time she reached Euston Road. She was late for collecting Pamela, her eight-year-old sister, from her piano lesson on the other side of the busy main road. Aside from the darkness and the usual six o’clock heavy traffic, crossing the road was made even more hazardous by the lumps of blackened ice in the gutters from a fall of snow a few days previously.

Adele Talbot was twelve – small, thin, pale-faced and waif-like in a worn adult tweed coat many sizes too large for her, woollen socks fallen to her ankles and a knitted pixie hood covering her straggly brown hair. Yet despite her still tender years, there was an adult expression of anxiety in her wide, greenish-brown eyes as she hopped from foot to foot impatiently watching for a break in the traffic. Her father was supposed to have collected Pamela on his way home from work but he forgot, and Adele was frightened that her little sister might have got tired of waiting for him and set off for home on her own.

Poised on the kerb, panting from her run, she suddenly spotted Pamela through the traffic. There was no mistaking her – the street lights picked up her long blonde hair and her vivid red coat. To Adele’s dismay she wasn’t just waiting either, but hovering on the kerb, as if intending to cross on her own.

‘Stay there!’ Adele yelled out, waving her arms frantically. ‘Wait for me.’

Several more buses came past in close succession, preventing Adele from seeing what her sister was doing, and suddenly there was an ominous squeal of brakes.

Heart in mouth, Adele darted out between a bus and a lorry. As she reached the centre of the road her worst fears were realized: her little sister was lying crumpled on the ground between a car and a taxi.

Adele screamed. All the traffic stopped abruptly, steam rising like smoke from the bonnets of cars. Pedestrians halted, gasping in shocked horror; everyone was looking at the small mound in the road.

‘Pamela!’ Adele yelled out as she ran to her, terror, disbelief and absolute horror enveloping her. The taxi driver, a big man with a fat belly, had got out of his cab and was now staring down at the child between his front wheels. ‘She just ran out!’ he exclaimed, looking round wildly for assistance. ‘I couldn’t help it.’

People were already crowding around and Adele had to push and shove to get through them. ‘Don’t touch her, luv,’ someone said warningly as she finally got right into the circle and crouched down beside her sister.

‘She’s my little sister,’ Adele gasped, tears streaming down her wind-whipped cheeks. ‘She’s supposed to wait until she’s met. Will she be all right?’

Yet even as Adele asked the question, she sensed that Pamela was already dead. Her blue eyes were open wide, her expression startled, but there was no movement or sound, not even a grimace of pain.

Adele heard someone say an ambulance had been called and a man stepped forward, felt Pamela’s pulse and removed his coat to place it over her. But he shook his head as he did so. That, and the stricken faces of everyone gathered round, confirmed her fears.

She wanted to scream, to pummel the taxi driver responsible. Yet at the same time she couldn’t believe Pamela’s life was over. Everyone had loved her, she was so bright and funny, and she was too young to die.

Leaning over her sister, Adele smoothed Pamela’s hair back from her face and sobbed out her shock and heartbreak.

A woman in a fur hat took hold of her round her waist and drew her away. ‘Where do you live, sweetheart?’ she asked, holding her tightly against her chest and making a comforting rocking movement. ‘Are your mum and dad at home?’

Adele didn’t know how she replied, all she was aware of in that moment was the rasp of the woman’s coat against her cheek, and the feeling she was going to be sick.

But she must have answered her questions before she broke free to vomit by the kerb, for later, after the arrival of the ambulance and the police, she heard the same woman informing them that the sister of the child who had been run over was Adele Talbot and she lived at 47 Charlton Street.

Yet in the time until the police and the ambulance arrived, Adele wasn’t aware of the faces of those around her, what they said to her, or even the biting cold wind. She felt only her own anguish, saw only the golden glow of street lights picking out Pamela’s blonde hair fluttering in the wind on the black, wet road, and heard only the noise of car horns honking impatiently.

Euston belonged to her and Pamela. Maybe to others it was the dirty and dangerous hub of London which people were forced to pass through on their way to other safer and more attractive parts of the city, but to Adele it had always felt as harmless as a park. Charlton Street was right between Euston and St Pancras, and the railway stations were like her personal theatres, the passengers characters in a drama. She was always taking Pamela into them, particularly when it was cold or wet, and she would make up stories about the people they saw there to entertain her. A woman in a fur coat, tripping alongside a porter carrying her big suitcases, was a countess. A young couple kissing passionately were eloping. Sometimes they saw children travelling alone with a label pinned to their coat, and Adele would make up some fantastic adventure story involving wicked stepmothers, castles in Scotland and treasure chests full of money.

At home there was always an atmosphere. Their mother would sit for hours in sullen silence, barely acknowledging her children or her husband’s presence. She had always been the same, so Adele just accepted it, but had learned to read the danger signs which preceded the eruptions of wild rage and got herself and Pamela out of there as quickly as possible. These rages could be terrifying, for their mother would fling anything that came to hand, scream abuse and more often than not lash out at Adele.

Adele tried to convince herself that the reason the full force of her mother’s anger was always directed at her, rather than Pamela, was just because she was the elder. But deep down she knew it was because Mum hated her for some reason.

Pamela had sensed it too, and she had always tried to make up for it. If she got any money from their mother she always shared it with Adele. When she got her new red coat for Christmas she’d been embarrassed because Adele hadn’t got one too. In her little way she’d done her best to make amends. With her sunny smile, her generosity and sense of fun, Pamela had made Adele’s life bearable.

Now, as she stood there crying helplessly, wanting an adult to put their arms around her and reassure her Pamela wasn’t dead, merely unconscious, Adele was all too aware that if her sister was really gone for good, then she might as well be dead too.

A burly young policeman took Adele’s hand as Pamela was lifted into the ambulance. As they laid her on the stretcher, they put the blanket right over her face; unspoken confirmation that she was really dead.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the policeman said gently, then bent down so his face was on her level. ‘I’m PC Mitchell,’ he went on. ‘Me and the Sergeant will take you home in a minute, we have to tell your mum and dad about the accident, and get you to tell us exactly what happened.’

It was only then that Adele became afraid for herself. From the moment she’d heard the squeal of car brakes, her mind had been centred entirely on Pamela. All her thoughts and emotions were single-track, nothing else existed but her sister’s little body on the ground and what they were to each other. But at the mention of her parents, Adele was suddenly terrified.