The Summer of Secrets Read Free Page B

spiky silver-green leaves ‘I’m so sorry about your grandmother. She was a good friend to my aunt.’ He was pulled into Harriet’s concerned grey gaze and felt as if he had drawn into calm moonlit waters. His breath came more easily.
    â€˜I think this is the worst day of my life,’ he said. ‘All these people. She didn’t even like most of them. I feel like I’m letting her down.’
    â€˜What would she do if she were here?’
    â€˜Point at the clock and ask them all to leave.’
    Harriet’s grey eyes were burning, like the ashy coals at the end of a fire. She slipped her hand into his. It was light and supple. His thoughts blurred at the edges and he thought he could hear his own heartbeat, the blood pulsing in him as proof of life, and he drew in a breath that briefly and tantalisingly held the scent of rosemary. He swept his thumb over the crook of hers and felt a small increase in pressure.
    â€˜Do it,’ she whispered.
    Danny raised his voice to be heard over the idle chatter. ‘Excuse me? Excuse me?’
    He picked up a tea cup and let it fall back onto its saucer with a loud clatter that drew the attention of the room. As all these unknown people turned to face him he felt his throat itch the way it always did when he was nervous. He took a single deep breath and fixed his eyes on the portrait of his grandmother in a frame on the mantelpiece, a young woman shortly after the war, determined and free.
    He addressed the room in a voice that was rich and constant. A voice that demanded to be obeyed. A man’s voice. ‘Excuse me? Everyone? I’d like you to go.’
    There was a hushed silence and several people looked embarrassed, shuffling and looking down at their feet. Nobody made a move to leave.
    He started to gather up the cups and saucers, sloshing unfinished lukewarm tea as he tried to carry too much crockery into the little kitchen. Harriet helped, smiling apologetically at the bewildered mourners and offered to help get people’s coats.
    The house was eventually silent, but for the sound of Harriet washing teacups in the little back kitchen. Danny opened the stuffed drawers in the sideboard and together they went through her things. The council house needed to be vacant by the end of the following day.
    He wanted to find old love letters and poetry, dried rose petals and secrets, but instead he found bank statements and dust.
    â€˜Don’t cry,’ said Harriet, squeezing his hand.
    â€˜She would be upset about the dust,’ he said, blinking back the tears.
    â€˜What will you do, Danny?’ said Harriet. ‘What will you do now that you’re all alone?’
    In years to come Danny would marry Harriet. For their honeymoon, they would journey to Mexico, their lives ahead of them.

Q&A with Alison Lucy
    When did you decide you wanted to become a writer?
    I have never really considered doing anything else. I wrote my first romance when I was about nine or ten, I distinctly remember that I didn’t want to write the word ‘bra’ so my heroine was wearing a bikini before she got seduced by a piano player and I was terrified that my mum would find my notebook. I was reading a lot of
Sweet Dreams
and
Sweet Valley High
at the time. I studied screenwriting at university, then I was a writer’s agent for a while. The epiphany moment, when I decided to knuckle down and write a complete novel, was making peace with the fact that I prefer Jackie Collins to Anna Karenina, and realising that was what I should write.
    What inspired you to set your book in Mexico?
    I love Mexico, I have been there a number of times and one day I hope to retire there. It’s a passionate, fun-loving country that gets a lot of bad press. A couple of years ago we went to Isla Mujeres, a perfect little sleepy Caribbean island just twenty minutes away from crazy Cancun. On the wild eastern shore there is a rock that proudly declares itself