Secrets of the Tides Read Online Free PDF Page A

baby to arrive,’ agreed Daphne.
    Helen raised one sardonic eyebrow at Richard, but he missed the gesture, turning instead to reach for the wine.
    ‘Of course you must talk to Edmund,’ suggested Daphne. ‘He has places dotted all over London. I’m sure he would love to help you out, Richard. Why don’t you give him a ring?’ Seeing Helen’s curious glance, she turned to her and explained, ‘Edmund’s my brother . . . Richard’s uncle. He’s a lovely man, very kind, and he dotes on Richard.’
    Helen nodded politely as she chewed carefully on a green bean; privately she wondered what sort of family just happened to have ‘places dotted all over London’. Sitting here in his family home next to his parents, Richard suddenly seemed even more self-assured and grown-up. She couldn’t help but compare the way he acted with Alfred and Daphne to how she felt when she returned to visit her own parents; it didn’t matter how hard she tried, she always felt more like a petulant teenager than a grown woman.
    As the conversation moved along without her, Helen stole covert glances around the grand old room. Along one wall hung a collection of paintings, still lifes and landscapes shimmering seductively in the candlelight. There was a mahogany sideboard, its surface cluttered with an array of items including an elegant silver champagne bucket that looked like it could use a good polish, a dusty old crystal decanter, a hand-carved wooden bowl overflowing with lemons, and a rather beautiful porcelain vase depicting two young women standing beneath the swaying fronds of a weeping willow. The artful chaos of the room contrasted wildly with her parents’ own sterile dining room, with its hostess trolley and electric plate-warmer and the best sherry glasses, polished and permanently out on display. She knew she was a world away from her own mother’s careful domesticity.
    The meal progressed slowly, but Helen forced herself to swallow everything Daphne put on her plate, even though her stomach churned with nausea, until, unable to take any more, she had excused herself, claiming tiredness.
    ‘Of course,’ agreed Daphne. ‘You must be exhausted. I’ve made up the blue room for you, my dear. I hope you’ll be comfortable.’ Richard had already told her they’d be in separate rooms. His parents were old-fashioned like that.
    ‘I’m sure I will,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Mrs Tide.’
    ‘Oh, please, call me Daphne. We’re going to be family, after all.’ The false note of cheer fell flat in the room.
    ‘Yes, thank you, Daphne . . . Well, goodnight, everyone.’
    ‘Goodnight,’ they cried valiantly at her retreating back.
    Helen felt immense relief as she carried herself up the creaking stairs to the guest bedroom. She lay down fully dressed on the generous brass bed and breathed deeply. The faded grandeur continued up here. The bedroom was beautiful, its walls lined with flocked wallpaper in the softest duck-egg blue; a pretty dressing table stood in one corner, a velvet covered stool pulled up in front of its speckled mirror. Dusty, leather-bound books lined a solid mahogany bookcase; a smattering of white lace cushions lay strewn across the window seat, perfectly positioned to look out across the gardens below. A tiny jug of snowdrops had been placed on the bedside table, and at the foot of the bed lay a cosy hand-embroidered quilt, its colours bleached with age and sunshine. Away from the candlelight and conversation downstairs, Helen suddenly felt the night chill close in around her. She shivered and pulled the quilt up over her legs, drinking in the heady smells of fresh laundry, beeswax and money.
    It occurred to her then that entering Clifftops was like entering a whole new world, a world whose ground Helen wasn’t quite sure of; it certainly felt as though it were shifting beneath her, as though she could trip or stumble at any given moment. She rested her hands on her belly, wondering for the millionth time