Secrets of the Tides Read Free

completely? The truth is that she doesn’t believe she deserves a family of her own. She doesn’t deserve a fresh start with Dan. She doesn’t deserve happiness. But how can she tell him that?
    ‘Go to sleep,’ Dan murmurs into her neck. ‘Everything always seems worse at night. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ His grip loosens on her slightly and she can tell that she is losing him to sleep again. ‘You’ll feel better in the morning,’ he whispers.
    ‘Night,’ she says, before turning in his arms to gaze into the blackness of the bedroom. Dan is wrong. She knows she won’t feel better in the morning. She has spent the last ten years willing each morning to be better . . . to feel better. And each morning she awakens to the sickening knowledge that she is to blame for the disintegration of her family. She feels, sometimes, as though they’ve all abandoned her, as though she’s been cut loose and left to drift through life on her own. But then she remembers that it is her fault they have been scattered like the floating debris from a shipwreck. She feels the guilt of it like a deep, throbbing pain.
    As Dan begins to snore gently, Dora closes her eyes. She wants sleep to claim her too, but she knows it is a long way off. Instead, she lets her mind wander down the pathways of her past. Slowly, it drifts down a wide, tree-lined drive. She can almost hear the wind rushing through the tall sycamores and smell the salt carried on the breeze. She rounds a corner and there it is, a rambling old farmhouse standing high upon the Dorset cliffs, its whitewashed walls gleaming like a beacon in the sunshine. As she draws closer she sees the tangle of ivy creeping up its exterior, curling around the eaves of the grey slate roof. She drifts closer still and sees the solid oak front door, bleached with weather and age. In her mind’s eye she pushes on the door, the smooth wood familiar under her fingers, and enters a hallway, cool and dark and haunted with the footsteps of a generation of Tides. She walks past an open door, ignoring the elegant dark-haired woman bent over a desk of books and papers. She turns away from the sound of giggles echoing down the creaking staircase and passes a handsome, fair-haired man seated in the drawing room peering at the newspaper spread across his lap. She ignores the lure of the house, instead making for the conservatory where the scent of roses and lilac wafts enticingly through the open doors. Drifting through, she wanders down the sprawling lawn towards the siren’s song of the sea, crashing far away onto the cliffs below.
    As she reaches a twisted old cherry tree down in the orchard she turns and studies the house, gazing up at the wide sash windows. She stares at them, searching for answers deep within their shadows, but the glass is blackened by the glare of the sun.
    Clifftops. The house she once called home.
    Dan shifts and sighs in his sleep and as Dora moves her hands onto her still-flat belly and contemplates her future, she suddenly understands. She cannot hide any longer. She must return to Clifftops. She must return to face her past.

HELEN

    Sixteen Years Earlier
    Helen stood in the hallway and surveyed the ever-growing pile of suitcases, bags, shoes and coats. It would be just fine by her if someone decided to cancel Easter. The packing was bad enough. There were the piles of washing to sort through, a fridge to clear, the airing cupboard to dig around in for long-lost beach towels, and then the challenge of squashing everything into the groaning boot of the car. Add to that the fact that Richard was still sitting in the study on a last-minute work phone call while the girls drifted about the house in aimless slow motion and it was enough to make Helen want to scream at someone, long and loud.
    She entered the kitchen to empty the bin and found Dora, sitting at the kitchen table, gazing dreamily into the garden over her bowl of cereal.
    ‘You’re not still eating those cornflakes