Bay of Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

here for the rest of our holiday?’
    ‘Suits me.’ Lucy was lying on her back, arms folded under her head. ‘I’d like to get to know Brian a bit better too.’ They giggled.
    *
    After they returned to West Sussex, everyone told Vivien it was just a holiday romance. She was only sixteen, they said. She had her whole life in front of her. Which was true. The difference was that now Vivien wanted it to include Tom.
    *
    ‘Viv? It’s lovely out. Too nice to be stuck in here,’ Tom said now.
    In reply, Vivien arched an eyebrow and drew her brush wetly across the top of the paper.
    Tom pulled a disappointed face.
    She felt it. ‘If you’ve finished work, go and play,’ she said, smiling to soften the words.
    He studied her. ‘How long will you be?’
    Vivien gave a little sigh and a small smile. She’d had it all planned. Do the background wash. Prepare supper. Sort outsome mounting. Do some more to the painting – the first real colours, the exciting bit. Cook supper. Phone Ruby. Have a relaxing evening with Tom and the telly.
    She lifted the paper, to allow the wash to curtain down, creating the desired effect with a rhythmic sweep of her brush. She paused, frowning at it. ‘What were you thinking of?’
    ‘A trip on the bike to Pride Bay? I need to take her out for a test run. I’ve been tinkering around with the carburettor.’
    ‘Oh, yes?’ He really knew how to tempt a woman …
    ‘A 99 ice cream?’ he added. ‘A walk round the harbour. Maybe a beer?’
    ‘In that order?’ Vivien jiggled the paper around a bit.
    ‘We could swap around the ninety-nine and the walk. “Born to be wild”, my lovely. What do you reckon?’
    She chuckled. ‘All right then. I suppose I could do with a break. Give me ten minutes or so?’ Vivien mentally readjusted her evening. Spontaneity was, after all, one of the qualities she loved about her husband.
    ‘Good girl. Nice colour.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘I’ll make us a quick cup of tea.’ And he was gone.
    Head to one side, Vivien surveyed the wash. The hint of colour was about right – only just there.
    The worst thing that could happen, she thought, putting her brush in the clean water, was not being forgiven. That was why she hadn’t told. There had been many valid reasons for not telling at first. There still were. But now … To be not forgiven was too awful to contemplate. The secret andthe keeping of it had become a wall between them; the kind of wall that was hard to climb.
    And the best thing that could happen? Vivien wasn’t sure that there was one. She selected a few tubes of paint from the pile in front of her and clattered the rest back into the large cake tin they lived in. Was honesty its own reward? She squirted a few experimental blobs of colour and shifted them around a bit with her mixing brush. No. The best thing – for her – would be not to have to worry about this any longer. To be open about it all. To explain the whys and the wherefores and how it had all come to be.
    Ah. She breathed out. Screwed the caps back on the paints. Later.
    That was what she needed to do – explain how it had all come to be.

CHAPTER 3
    Fuerteventura, June 2012
    Slowly, painfully, Sister Julia got to her feet. It was growing dusk. She brushed the fine dust from the white habit she wore – the visible sign of her departure from the world outside; the symbol of her inclusion in the monastic community of her spiritual family. Dust.
Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes
 … A reminder – as if she needed another reminder – of all the deaths she had witnessed. Of the decision that she must make.
    She fingered the rosary beads she carried. Here there was always dust, even in the chapel, which was decorated with scrolled stonework in pinks and blues, and faded frescos above the altar depicting the Crucifixion. She had been praying for two hours, but these days she hardly noticed time. It simply passed by. There was still so much to ask Him. What should she