The Children's Secret Read online

  “I don’t need looking after.”

  Blood rushes to Priscilla’s cheeks. Before she went into academia, she was an attorney. She’s argued in front of some of the toughest judges on the East Coast without her heart rate rising a notch, but a few words from her eleven-year-old daughter and she feels like she’s unraveling.

  Priscilla remembers the first time it dawned on her that she had no control over Astrid. A Sunday morning trip to the grocery store. Two-year-old Astrid had a meltdown about not being allowed to have a popsicle. It’s the middle of winter, Priscilla had tried to reason with her. But reason didn’t cut it with Astrid. She started taking items out of the cart and hurling them across the store in protest. A milk carton split open, sending a river of white down the aisle.

  Priscilla had felt them staring, the mothers.

  You’re a terrible mom, she heard them thinking.

  Ten years of legal training, and she had no authority over her own child.

  Nothing had prepared Priscilla for motherhood. For Astrid.

  Tentatively, Priscilla steps forward and kisses Astrid’s cheek.

  Astrid jerks her head away.

  Priscilla feels guilty about going into the office on a Sunday. Tuesday is Astrid’s first day at Brook Middle School. Maybe she should stay home and make sure she’s ready. They could go shopping for new clothes. Get an ice-cream in town. Wasn’t that what mothers and daughters were supposed to do?

  Priscilla sits next to Astrid on the sofa. “I know it’s going to be hard—starting at a new school …”

  Astrid had been struggling at her private school. Cliques. Girlish rivalries. The teachers said she was socially isolated and underperforming academically. It had gotten worse when Peter left. Priscilla had decided that Astrid could do with a fresh start. Being in a public school might help ground her. And now it was just the two of them, it would be good for Astrid to have some local friends.

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Astrid says. “Just go and work.”

  Even before Peter left, their relationship wasn’t great. But now, it’s as though Astrid is punishing her for being stuck with the parent she doesn’t like.

  “Okay. But call if you need anything,” Priscilla says.

  She picks up her laptop bag, looks over at Astrid once more, and walks out into the blazing sunshine.

  A wall of heat slams into her. It hasn’t let up since July. Six weeks with temperatures hovering between 90 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Sweat runs along her hairline.

  As she gets into the car, the leather seat burns her thighs. She puts the AC on full blast. Hot air rushes at her. As she fiddles with the levers, trying to angle the fans toward her, she notices the stack of mail on the passenger seat. The letter sitting on the top is from Peter’s lawyer: another reminder for her to sign the divorce papers.

  She’d been shocked—and hurt—at how fast Peter had processed the paperwork. He left in the middle of a snowstorm in February and a month later, before the snow had even melted, the first letter from his attorneys landed in her mailbox.

  This isn’t going to last, she’s told herself, over and over. He’ll come back.

  That’s why she’s ignoring this letter, like she has the others.

  As the car cools down, she looks across the valley to the other side of Middlebrook. On the crest of the hill, parallel to their house, stands Woodwind Stables, the Wrights’ home. The town lies in the dip of the valley between her cottage and the stable. In the early days, before she fell out with the Wrights, she’d loved this clear line of sight between their homes. They were meant to be friends, she’d thought.

  Not letting Astrid go to the party was the right decision, she tells herself. If anyone knows the damage that firearms can do to a family—to children—it’s Priscilla.

  When she’d had conversations about the party with the other Middlebrook moms—Tracey, her hairdresser who had a son Astrid’s age; Sharon, the mom of four who she was in a barre class with on Friday nights; Zoe, whose daughter did ballet with Astrid; Yasmin, whose husband was building the new mosque—and a handful of others she’d bumped into in the days after Kaitlin mailed out the invitations—they’d listened earnestly. They trusted Priscilla’s opinion. And they agreed: keeping your kids safe is a basic principle of motherhood, and in a country like America, keeping your kids safe means keeping them away from guns.

  Naturally, there were some parents she could never persuade. Avery Cotton, the minister of St. Mary’s, was close to the Wrights: she was bound to take those foster kids of hers to the party. And True Bowen, who walked around the Middlebrook woods with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder, he’d go, no doubt. But the rest of them would stay clear. Kaitlin would be lucky to have more than a couple of kids show up to that party of hers.

  Priscilla looks back at Woodwind Stables. She thinks she can hear music drifting across the valley. A picture flashes in front of her: eight-year-old Astrid and Bryar running hand in hand through the long sheaves of corn in the fields that separated their homes, Priscilla and Kaitlin walking behind them. She’d actually believed that they could be friends.

  She blinks away the image, switches on the ignition and pulls out of the drive.

  CHAPTER

  3

  2.40 p.m.

  BEFORE YASMIN HAS time to switch the incoming call to handset, Ayaan’s voice comes through the car speakers.

  “Hi, it’s me. I’m going to be late again tonight. The damage looks pretty extensive.”

  Early this morning, Ayaan’s project manager called to say there was a crack in the minaret; some kind of fault in the installation process. That, or the heatwave had made the materials expand. Ayaan had driven straight to the construction site.

  “Will you be able to fix it in time?” she asks, trying to sound sympathetic.

  The mosque was due to open in six days: this was the last thing he needed.

  “Of course,” Ayaan says. “I’ll just need to work overtime to make sure it gets done.”

  Sometimes, Yasmin thought that these problems were a sign that the mosque was never meant to be. Not that she’d ever tell Ayaan that. They’d moved their whole lives here so he could build this mosque: taken the twins out of their international school in Lahore, left behind their friends and family.

  “Yas? You still there?” Ayaan’s voice floods back into the car.

  Yasmin turns into the driveway of Woodwind Stables. Several families have arrived already. Kids are tumbling out of minivans and SUVs.

  “I’ve got to go, Ayaan,” Yasmin says.

  “You driving?” Ayaan asks.

  Yasmin swallows hard. “Just taking the twins to see some friends.”

  “Which friends?” Ayaan asks.

  “Oh, just some friends from school—”

  Laila leans in between the front seats and gasps, “Wow! I didn’t think it would be a party like this!”

  Yasmin switches the phone from speaker to handset and brings the cell to her ear. She hasn’t told Ayaan about the party.

  “What did Laila say?” Ayaan asks.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Yasmin looks at the house at the top of the driveway. “Sorry—I’ve got to go, Ayaan.”

  Before he has the chance to respond, she hangs up.

  She should have told him that she was taking the kids to the Wrights’ party; keeping a secret is as bad as lying outright, she knows that. But he would have tried to talk her out of it, especially after the fuss Priscilla Carver’s been making. Priscilla and Ayaan are friends. She’s helped him raise money for the mosque. And in Middlebrook, what Priscilla Carver said was law.

  Ben Wright is a dangerous man, Priscilla had explained, making him sound like a criminal. Better keep your twins away from his house.

  That had struck Yasmin as absurd. She knew that Ben and Priscilla didn’t get on, but there was nothing in the least bit dangerous about Ben Wright. In fact, Yasmin had always been fond of him: one of those all-American guys from the movies she
’d watched as a teenager back home in Lahore. The kind of man she’d dreamt of meeting when she set off for America as a seventeen-year-old student. But then, she’d met Ayaan and, despite herself, she’d fallen in love with him.

  She’d tried to tell him that they needed to work harder to integrate. That people were suspicious of them, walking around in their traditional Pakistani clothes, building a mosque on their land. And they were the only family of color in town. If they embraced American ways a little a more, perhaps it would help. But he didn’t listen to her. They should be proud of who they were and where they came from, Ayaan said.

  She scans the driveway for Ben’s massive red truck with its big LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR on the bumper. Whenever she sees him driving through Middlebrook in his uniform, it reassures her that there’s someone like him around, watching out for all of them. And he’s kind to her. He always stops to chat. And he actually listens to what she has to say—more than Ayaan does, these days.

  No. Priscilla was wrong. About the party. About the Wrights. About Ben. And her views were confirmed when she bumped into Eva Day, the English woman who had just arrived in town with her family.

  It’s a kids’ party—it’ll be fun! Eva had said, so lightly that Priscilla’s warnings had dissolved.

  So, without mentioning it to Ayaan, Yasmin had accepted the invitation. He never needed to find out: he was so busy these days, he hardly noticed her and the twins.

  Yasmin twists round in her seat and looks at Hanif and Laila. “Ready for the party?”

  “Ready!” they chant together.

  She steps out of the car, lifts her salwar kameez so that it doesn’t trail in the dust, and opens the door for the twins.

  CHAPTER

  4

  3.20 p.m.

  ASTRID WAITS FOR a while before leaving the house.

  Long enough to make sure that her mother isn’t coming back to check on her.

  She glances at the pages she called up on her phone and then switches it off and places it on the arm of the couch. Her fingers brush the worn red fabric. She remembers lying here for hours with Dad, each of them at one end, their legs dangling off the edge, talking.

  Now, whenever she calls him, he barely has the time to chat. Kim, his new girlfriend, is always telling him to get off the phone. Mom had given Dad space. Too much space, as it turned out. Perhaps that was the problem—maybe Dad wanted to be nagged.

  Until six months ago, Astrid had taken it for granted that Mom and Dad loved each other. But now she realizes that maybe Dad was pretending; that all this time, he’d been waiting for someone better to come along. For a better life than the one he had with her and Mom. He left fast enough.

  Astrid closes her eyes. Whenever she thinks about her parents and what happened between them, a sharp pain pushes up under her ribcage and she finds it hard to breathe.

  She opens her eyes again, puts on her sandals and shoves her phone into a pocket of her green dress.

  It takes a while for her eyes to adjust to the brightness outside. She stands there blinking.

  The air hums with heat.

  It makes her feel alive—the burn on her pale skin.

  She walks to the front of the house and looks out across the valley.

  Astrid remembers the afternoon, three years ago, when she decided to go for walk on her own. It was winter. She’d found Jake asleep in the kitchen. He was Mom’s dog. Dad had gotten him for her as a present from a shelter in Colebrook. Put a red bow around his neck and tried to make him stand still under the Christmas tree.

  Mom said that she’d wanted a rescue dog ever since she was little. Thinking back now at how Mom had hugged and kissed and fussed over Jake, Astrid wonders whether maybe she preferred having a dog to a kid. Some people were more dog people than kid people.

  She remembers how, as she’d walked past him that afternoon, Jake had lifted his head from his paws, his ears pricked up.

  I’m sorry, buddy, she said to him. You’re not allowed out. Not yet.

  The people at the shelter said that Jake had a bad time with his last owners. Barked and bared his teeth at the slightest thing. He’d wrecked Mom’s fancy couch when he was spooked in a thunderstorm. No one had wanted him at the shelter—Dad felt sorry for him and thought that, with a bit of love and a bit of training from Mom, he’d get better.

  Anyway, Astrid wasn’t allowed to take him on walks, not while he was still getting used to them. But it had gotten to her, his sad, droopy eyes, his tongue hanging out.

  Poor dog, she remembers thinking.

  And he must have heard her thoughts because he let out a low whine, like he was agreeing with her.

  I’ll bring you a stick back from the woods, she’d said.

  But when she walked past him, he’d whined louder. And then he’d got to his feet and thumped his tail and she hadn’t been able to stand it. She’d taken him with her.

  Astrid wishes that afternoon had never happened.

  She blinks away the thought and walks to the bottom of the drive. And then she starts running through the fields and down the valley that separates her house from the stable. The long grass whispers against her legs. She closes her eyes and remembers Jake running ahead of her, fast and hard. He was so happy to have been let out of the house.

  As she runs, she spreads her arms wide, swallowing gulps of hot air. For the first time in ages, she feels free.

  But there’s another feeling in her chest. The same feeling she had that afternoon three years ago.

  That she’d been warned not to do this.

  That something bad was going to happen.

  And that it would be her fault.

  CHAPTER

  5

  3.45 p.m.

  LILY CLIMBS OFF the bouncy castle and puts her shoes back on. Her hair sticks to her forehead and she can feel a patch of sweat at the base of her spine. It’s so hot the rubber burnt her feet as she bounced.

  Sometimes Lily wishes she were back in England where people moaned about the rain and not having proper summers. Everything here is too hot.

  “Catch me!” squeals a voice from behind her.

  She spins round. Before she has time to reply, four-year-old Wynn leaps off the bouncy castle and into her arms. He’s a fireball of heat: red-faced and sweaty, his long blond hair tangled. He kicks his limbs in the air and laughs.

  “I could have dropped you,” Lily says.

  She puts him down gently on the ground.

  He shrugs and smiles and looks up at her with his fierce blue eyes and red cheeks. “There’s grass,” he says. “I’d have been fine.”

  She’s not so sure. The ground is hard, the grass burnt by the sun, and there’s a big gap between the top of the bouncy castle and the earth.

  Lily looks around for Wynn’s dad, True. She spots him standing on the porch chatting to some of the mums. He’s got dreadlocks that are tied back with a kitchen-elastic. Mum said that his wife died a few years ago, just after Wynn was born, from something called ovarian cancer. Whenever Lily hears about other people’s parents dying, it scares her. She can’t imagine living in a world without Mum and Dad.

  Wynn stands on tiptoes, looking up the valley at a dark clump of pines where the woods start.

  “Do cubs like bounce houses, do you think?” he asks Lily.

  She tries to unjumble the sentence in her head. “Cubs?”

  “Yes, bear cubs. Maybe they’ll want to come to the party too but then their mom will be angry—”

  “Their mum?”

  Wynn turns back to face her, his eyes wide. “Mama bears don’t like their cubs to be near people. Daddy said.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense.”

  Lily starts to feel out of her depth. She looks around the front yard of the farmhouse.

  “Where’s your sister?” she asks Wynn.

  He shrugs again. “Probably somewhere. Can I have some juice?”

  Lily keeps looking around.

  Finally, she sp
ots Skye, sitting under the tree on a high stool; legs crossed, feet bare, one pointed toe skimming the ground, the top of her head brushing the leaves from a low-hanging maple. She’s having a butterfly painted across her face: a rainbow wing shimmers across her cheek.

  “I’d like some juice,” Wynn says again, tugging at Lily’s T-shirt.

  “Okay, sure.”

  She grabs a juice box from one of the coolers, pierces the foil opening with the straw and hands it to him. While he drinks, she scans the front of the house.

  Rev Avery’s foster kids, Cal and Abi, are sitting in the dirt outside the stable, watching everything but not joining in. Cal keeps looking over at Skye. She’s seen them sneaking into the woods, and once, when she went to the dock on Middlebrook Pond, they were swimming together. She reckons that just about every girl in Middlebrook must fancy Cal—and must be jealous that he chose Skye. He’s got tousled, sun-bleached hair and misty green eyes, like sea glass, and skin that’s so tanned it probably doesn’t even go pale in winter.

  From up in his tree, Phoenix, Wynn’s older brother, picks up a stick, takes a small knife out of his pocket, shapes the end, and then pretends to shoot at a chipmunk as it skitters across the patch of yellow grass in front of the stable.

  “Bang! Bang! Bang!” Phoenix yells.

  “Bang!” Wynn copies and laughs. “Bang!”

  “Hey! Cut it out!” True calls out from the porch.

  The other day, True came by the house and gave Mum some deer meat to put in the freezer as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood present. He said that he goes hunting and that he finds everything his family needs to eat in the woods, so they never go to the supermarket. Mum and Dad said thank you, to be polite, but Lily could tell that they were just as freaked out by it as she was. Anyway, it strikes Lily as a bit odd—True telling Wynn and Phoenix off for pretend shooting when he goes around hunting things.

  Phoenix drops the stick, jumps out of the tree, and runs off.