The Darkest Secret by Alex Marwood Page A

us, daring us to mention her name.
    I don’t answer. My brain is buzzing.
    â€˜Do you know when it is yet?’ she asks. ‘We’re out of the loop a bit.’
    â€˜Not yet. The coroner has to release the body.’
    â€˜So not till after the inquest?’
    â€˜No, it’ll be before then if they find a medical cause. But I think he has to be buried, not burned, so they can dig him up again if they need to. But that’s okay. He always wanted a big flashy gravestone near his mother’s in the village he grew up in. No revenge like success, eh?’
    Claire gulps at the bald facts and the way I tell them. I don’t add that they won’t be able to embalm him either. Little Ruby won’t be having any final bonding sessions with the open coffin.
    â€˜Will you think about it?’ she asks.
    â€˜I hadn’t decided whether to go myself,’ I say, reluctantly.
    â€˜Oh,’ she says, and I hear her throat fill with tears. ‘That’s sad, Milly. I’m sorry. I thought maybe you’d… I don’t know. None of his kids at his funeral? I can… I don’t know. Maybe I could bring her down to Devon and ask someone to pick her up? I just. I can’t. I really can’t.’
    She sounds so different from the woman I knew. There doesn’t seem to be any anger left, just fear.
    â€˜I’ll think about it, Claire,’ I say. ‘I can’t say more than that.’
    She sucks in a heavy breath, steadies her crying. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you. I just don’t know what to do, that’s all. She’s been crying and crying and I’m afraid she’ll never…’
    She trails off.
    â€˜I’ll let you know when it is.’
    â€˜Thank you. Do you have my number?’
    â€˜Yes, it’s on my phone now.’
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘I always forget about that.’
    I hang up before she can go on. Sit under the duvet and let my eyes wander over my bedroom. I’ve not given it a lot of love since I moved in. I didn’t even bother to cover over the old owners’ paintwork, just moved Granny’s hand-me-downs in against the walls and bunged her pictures up with nails. Apart from my clothes, there’s very little in this place that came here through my own choices. Perhaps that’s why I spend so much time on my wardrobe, why I cherish my tattoos, why I like to stand out each time I pass through the front door. Even the pots and pans in the kitchen are Granny’s. India was on her way across the Pacific by that point and didn’t want the cargo, and Mum was in her fifties and had adult versions of most of the things you need in a house, so I was basically able to take my pick. It’s a bit like living in a furnished apartment. A nice one, where the kitchenware is Le Creuset, but still a furnished apartment, like the ready-for-sale houses we grew up in. Only, I’ve covered every surface with books and unread mail and discarded food wrappers, as if I’m trying to disguise it. How odd that I’ve never noticed that before.
    My tears have passed. As is often the way with bouts of emotion, I feel tired but also weirdly calm. And almost unable to fathom that such strong feelings can ever have existed, or ever could again.
    I think about Ruby. I’m not so far from fifteen that I don’t remember what it felt like, that horrible, confusing time suspended between childhood and adulthood, longing for and terrified by independence in equal measure. The world was a scary, exciting place, back then, and home was a place we longed to leave. Mum struggling to find her post-marital personality, Dad spawning offspring at what felt like a repellent rate in one so old, and boys sprouting extra pairs of hands. We didn’t fit in anywhere much, never having had the sort of home you brought people back to. And when I was fifteen the Coco thing happened and we went