Secrets From the Past Read Free Page B

as if you’re just round the corner. Are you in New York?’ I was hoping that she was; Jessica and I had a very special relationship and I hadn’t seen her for some months. When she was with me, I was immensely cheered up.
    ‘Not exactly, but kind of … I’m in Boston on business. Meetings yesterday and this morning. Now I’m done I thought I’d jump on a shuttle, spend the weekend with you, if you’re not caught up with a lot of other stuff. I can’t be
this
close and not see my darling Pidge.’
    ‘I’m not doing anything special, and I’ll be mad at you if you don’t come. What time will you get here?’ I asked.
    ‘I don’t know. I’ll head out to the airport now, get the first flight available. I’ll probably be there in a few hours, but I’ve got my door key, so don’t worry if you have to go out.’
    ‘I’m not going anywhere. Hightail it to the airport and get here as fast as you can,’ I ordered, bossing her for a change.
    ‘I’ll be there in three shakes of a lamb’s tail,’ she shot back, using a familiar expression we’d grown up with. Our English grandmother, Alice, had been unusually fond of it, had used it constantly – much to our irritation most of the time.
    There was a small silence and then we both burst out laughing before we hung up.
    The toast had gone cold, the soup looked congealed, so I threw everything away and started again. I made some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a childhood standby, and a mug of tea, and took everything to my office where I ate at my desk, as I usually did at lunch time, a bad habit picked up from my father and Harry.
    Later, I went to Jessica’s room and looked around, wanting to make sure everything was in good order. It was, thanks to Mrs Watledge, who came in twice a week to clean and do odd jobs for me. She always dusted every room in the apartment, whether it had been used or not. Much to my pleasure, she was fastidious.
    Jessica had left in a rush the last time she’d been here. I had hung up the clothes she had strewn around on pieces of furniture and put away all the scattered shoes once she was gone, and Mrs Watledge had vacuumed, polished the furniture and changed the bed linen.
    I saw there was not a thing out of place, and that would please Jessica, who was normally the neatest of the three of us. A crisis in the auction house she owned in Nice had necessitated her unexpected and swift return to France last November, hence the messy room she had so blithely abandoned without a backward glance, as usual focused on the problems in Nice.
    I was thrilled my sister was coming for the weekend. Although she and Cara had once teased me unmercifully, as the much younger child of the family, things had eventually levelled off as I grew older.
    We became the best of friends, the three of us, very bonded, and we were still extremely close. We shared this apartment and the house in Nice, which our mother left to us equally. The two places were our parents’ main homes for many years. Their special favourites and ours; the ownership only passed to us after our father’s death last year, which was the stipulation in her will.
    Closing the door of Jessica’s room, I went to the kitchen and checked the refrigerator. Mrs Watledge filled it up with basic items and bought a fresh roasting chicken from the butcher every Friday.
    There was plenty of food, and if my sister felt like eating out we could go to Jimmy Neary’s pub on Fifty-Seventh, or the French restaurant, Le Périgord, at Fifty-Second and First. Two old favourites of ours, where we’d been going for years, starting when we were teenagers.
    I wandered down to the office, sat at the desk and opened the top drawer, staring at the two cell phones and the BlackBerry.
    I knew there would be no messages. I never used the BlackBerry these days; only ever took a cell phone with me if I intended to be gone for several hours.
    Grimacing at them, I reached for my Moleskine notebook and closed