How to Keep a Secret

“Nobody does that stuff, Mom. It’s the moods that get me. I know it’s hormones, but knowing that doesn’t help.” Helen finished her coffee. “It makes me feel guilty because I know I was the same with my mum, weren’t you?”

Ruth nodded. Lauren said nothing.

As long as they weren’t doing anything that interrupted her painting, her mother had left her and Jenna alone. It was one of the reasons she and her sister were close.

“The only one with a predictable temperament in our house is the dog.” Ruth gave a wicked smile. “Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d married your first boyfriend?”

“I’d be divorced,” Helen said. “My first boyfriend was a total nightmare.”

They looked at Lauren and she felt her face heat. “Ed was my first real boyfriend.”

It wasn’t really a lie, she told herself. Boyfriend meant someone you had a relationship with. The word conjured up images of exploratory kisses, trips to the movies and awkward fumbling. A boyfriend was a public thing. I’m going out with my boyfriend tonight.

Using that definition, Ed had been her first boyfriend.

“You’ve been with one man your whole adult life? No flings? No crazy, naughty teenage sex?”

Lauren felt her heart pick up speed. That didn’t count, she told herself. “For me it’s always been Ed.”

“Well—” Helen spoke first. “I’m going to stop talking before I incriminate myself.”

“I auditioned a lot of men before finally awarding the role of my husband to Pete.” Ruth finished her croissant. “I’d better go. I left my house in chaos.” She reached for her bag. “See you at the party tonight, Lauren. Sure there’s nothing we can do?”

“No thanks, I’ve got it covered.”

“Is your sister coming over from the States?”

“No, she can’t get away from school right now.”

Lauren felt another stab of guilt. When they’d last spoken, Jenna had confessed that her period was late. Lauren had heard the excitement in her voice and felt excited with her. She knew how desperately Jenna wanted a baby and how upset her sister was each month when it didn’t happen. She’d intended to call, but party planning had driven it from her head.

“What about your mum? She’s not coming either?”

Lauren kept her smile in place. “No.”

Of course that had a lot to do with the fact that she hadn’t been invited.

Lauren had never had a close relationship with her mother, but things had been particularly strained last time she’d visited home. Her mother had seemed preoccupied and even more distant than usual.

When her father had died five years earlier, Lauren had expected Nancy to be devastated.

She’d flown home for the funeral and been humbled by how strong her mother was. Her father had been a much-loved member of the community and there had been plenty of people sobbing at his funeral. Her mother hadn’t been one of them. Nancy Stewart had stood with her back as straight as the mast of a ship, dry-eyed, as if part of her was somewhere else. Lauren assumed she handled grief the way she handled everything else life threw her—by vanishing to her studio and losing herself in her painting.

Lauren stared into her coffee.

Growing up, her father had been the “fun” parent.

“Let’s go to the beach, girls,” he’d say, and scoop them up without giving a thought to what they were doing. He’d bring them back long past bedtime with sandy feet, burned skin and salty hair. They were hungry and overtired and it was their mother who had dealt with the fallout.

Nancy would be waiting tight-lipped, the supper she’d prepared congealing on cold plates. She’d serve the ruined food in silence and then dunk both girls in the shower, where Jenna would scream and howl as the water stung her burned flesh.

By the end of the summer the sun had bleached their hair almost white and freckles had exploded over Jenna’s face. To Lauren they looked like sand sprinkled over her skin, but Jenna thought they looked like dirt. She’d scrub at her skin until it was red and sore and the freckles merged.

“You could at least remember sunscreen,” Nancy had said to Tom one night and Lauren had heard him laugh.

“I forgot. Loosen up.”

It seemed to Lauren that the more her father told Nancy to loosen up, the tighter she was wound.