A Place of Secrets Read Free Page A

think it’s Tate and Yasmin’s flat-warming—no, that’s the Saturday.” He picked up his BlackBerry and started pressing keys. “Yeah, but we don’t have to do that.”
    “Really?Only we could see my sister, Claire, and her little girl. You haven’t met them, you see, and I thought … Their place is too tiny for both of us, but there’s a bed and breakfast in the village or maybe we could go out to the coast. The countryside’s beautiful; we could go walking…” She stopped, aware that he wasn’t listening.
    Caspar’s eyes narrowed as he stared at his BlackBerry, the blue lightfrom the screen flickering eerily across his face. He seemed tense, worried.
    “Ah,” he said, suddenly cheered by something he’d found. “I’m really sorry, Jude, but I’m due in Paris on the Sunday for a presentation on Monday. Jack and I’ll need Saturday to prepare.”
    “Oh, that’s a shame. You haven’t met my family. I particularly thought you’d like Claire.”
    “She’s … the disabled one?”
    “She hasa slight limp, that’s all.” Disabled is not how Jude thought of her sister. Pretty, feisty, outspoken, an astute businesswoman, yes, but never disabled. She’d been born with one leg slightly shorter than the other; something that had meant a childhood punctuated by hospital operations. “Her little girl’s called Summer. I haven’t seen them properly for weeks.”
    “I thought you all met up at theairport last week.” They’d gone to see their mother off to Spain with her new husband, Douglas, who was renovating a villa in the hills behind Malaga.
    “Stansted Airport is hardly a relaxing place for a chat.”
    “Well, I’ll have to meet Claire and Summer—cute name—another time.”
    Now he’d worked his way into the part, he managed to look sincerely sorry, but Jude was disappointed. It wasn’t thefirst opportunity he’d turned down of meeting her family, and it mattered to her. Come to think of it, she hadn’t met any of his relations either. This hadn’t struck her as odd before, but now it did.
    One of the little earrings was hurting. She put a hand up and loosened it carefully. It came apart. She caught the bits just in time.

CHAPTER 2
    Coming home to the white terraced house in Greenwich was always a pleasure. She elbowed the door shut and dumped her supermarket bags in the kitchen. She’d stayed at Caspar’s in Islington the previous night, but, although today was Saturday, he had some things to sort out at the office, so she had traveled back into town with him on the tube and they went their separate ways at King’sCross. They hadn’t spoken much. He’d looked the worse for wear—he’d had far too much to drink the previous night, the dinner party having gone on until the small hours. Jude had enjoyed the evening even less than she’d feared. The six other people there, who encountered individually had seemed friendly and amusing, proved dreary en masse. Last night they talked about restaurants she hadn’t beento, and designer names she didn’t care about, and old university friends she’d never met and she’d quietly picked at her food, feeling excluded and mutinous. The thought of spending a fortnight in their company was frankly depressing. When, at one gap in the conversation, she had asked about sightseeing near Brantôme, their hostess, languid Marney, had wrinkled her nose and said that they usuallypassed their days by the villa’s pool, only emerging in the evening to find somewhere for dinner. “It’s usually too hot for walking around anyway,” she drawled.
    “And let’s face it,” broke in plump, giggly Paula, “once you’ve seen one chateau you’ve seen the whole bloody lot.” Everybody laughed and Jude forced a polite smile.
    Jude, whose pale English skin turned scarlet in the sun, hated lyingaround by pools. Her ideal holiday involved exploring tranquil towns and villages, and finding out about their histories, which were often surprisingly