Read Online The Secrets Between Us by Louise Douglas - Free Book Online Page B

village primary school. Alexander nodded to a couple of young women coming down the lane on horseback. I backed into the hedge to make way as they passed. The animals were huge. Their big feet clopped and they swung their heads as they went by, eyeing me suspiciously. The young women with their big shoulders and bare arms made no attempt to hide their curiosity. As soon as they had passed, one said to the other, loudly enough for me to hear: ‘Who’s she then?’ And the other said: ‘No idea,’ and then added more quietly, ‘But did you see her shoes?’
    I looked down at my feet. I was wearing purple ballet pumps made grey by the quarry dust.
    ‘You’ll need proper boots,’ Alexander said. ‘It gets muddy here when it rains. I’ll sort some out for you.’
    He showed me where the entrance to the school was, a little way up the lane.
    ‘I’ll drop Jamie off on his first day back on Tuesday morning, and Claudia will pick him up when she fetches her girls,’ Alexander explained. ‘She’ll show you the ropes. After that I need you to be there to meet him every day. He mustn’t come home with anyone else. It’s important.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘And, Sarah, you can’t be late. You have to be at the school gate before three thirty.’
    ‘I won’t let you down. Who’s Claudia?’
    ‘Genevieve’s half-sister.’
    ‘Won’t she mind me being here?’
    Alexander shook his head. ‘She knows I need help. She’s been a rock these last few weeks. In fact, she was the one who suggested I get a nanny.’
    ‘Are her children at this school too?’
    He shook his head. ‘They go to St Margaret’s in Montacute.’
    ‘They have to go to school on Saturday morning,’ said Jamie.
    I pulled a face. ‘How awful.’
    ‘But they have riding lessons and longer holidays.’
    ‘That’s not so bad then.’
    ‘Uncle Bill says he has to pay an arm and a leg for them to have longer holidays.’
    ‘That’s the beauty of independent education,’ said Alexander.
    We walked a little further, past the run-down hotel and what was probably once an old ducking-pond, and soon were at the far end of the village.
    ‘Isn’t there a church?’ I asked.
    ‘It’s up on top of the hill. Close to where Genevieve’s parents live.’
    I smiled at Jamie. ‘Do they have a nice house?’
    ‘It’s big!’ he said, widening his eyes and holding out his arms in an exaggerated fashion.
    Over his head, Alexander nodded. ‘I’ll drive you up,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’ After lunch we got back into the Land Rover. Once again, we turned left at the bottom of the drive, drove along the main road for a while and turned right into a narrow lane about a hundred metres before the entrance to the new quarry. In places the lane was little more than a single track, winding upwards between high hedges. We drove through a narrow tunnel formed by the branches of overhanging trees, climbing steeply through twists and turns until we came to a fork.
    ‘That’s the entrance to the old quarry,’ said Alexander. He slowed the Land Rover. ‘They shut it down thirty years ago.’
    The quarry’s gates towered above the lane. They were locked together by a thick chain secured by a padlock. Barbed wire was threaded between the metal bars of thegates. A gurning skull and crossbones gleamed from the blood-coloured background of a weathered DANGER, KEEP OUT sign that hung at an angle from the gates. Another sign said: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED .
    I shivered.
    ‘Why did they close the quarry?’ I asked.
    ‘It was inaccessible for big wagons. It was more commercially viable for the Churchills to open the new one at the bottom of the hill where the trucks can get out on to the main road without any problems than it was to build a new road up here.’
    ‘Why is it all fenced off like that?’
    ‘Kids kept coming up here in the hot weather to swim in the pit. Teenagers. They ignored the signs and jumped off the cliff. One lad drowned.’
    ‘That’s