Past Secrets Read Online Free Page A

Amber broke into a run, high heels
    notwithstanding, and was gone down the street
    before Christie could move.
    Christie shrugged. Amber was a good student,
    hardly a serial absentee. She and Ella had never
    been part of the school’s wilder cliques and had
    both managed to move from adolescence to young
    womanhood without any noticeable bursts of
    rebellious behaviour.
    There might be a perfectly good reason for her
    absence today. And Christie herself knew that you
    could learn plenty of things outside school as well
    as in.
    When she’d been young, she hadn’t done everything
    by the book either.
    Yet again, Christie thought about the past and
    the places she’d lived. The house in Kilshandra
    with bitterness and misery engrained into the wallpaper
    so that she’d barely been able to wait till
    she was old enough to leave. The bedsit on Dunville
    Avenue where she’d met so many friends and
    learned that she didn’t have to hide her gift. And
    Summer Street, where all the best things in her life
    had happened.
    She could remember what the young Christie
    had looked like when she’d moved to Summer
    Street long
    dark hair drawn back in a loose ponytail,
    always in jeans and Tshirts and
    she could
    remember how lucky she’d been, with a kind husband, enough money so they weren’t in debt, with one beautiful, healthy child and another on
    the way. Yes, the years on Summer Street were the
    ones she liked to remember.
    But there were other times she’d like to forget.
    The strange feeling came through her again
    and despite the warmth of the morning, Christie
    shivered.

CHAPTER TWO
    Amber Reid was concentrating so fiercely on getting to the bus stop in time that she hadn’t noticed Mrs Devlin walking along Summer Street behind her. This was despite her intention to watch out for anyone who might sneak to her mother about her appearance out of uniform on a school day.
    ‘We’re going on a field trip,’ Amber had planned to say blithely should the need arise, though the final-year students at St Ursula’s didn’t have time for field trips this close to the all-important state exams. And even if they did, what sort of field trip would require her best high heels Oxfam spindly sandals revitalised with bronze paint a sliver of a silk camisole and a flippy skirt, all topped off with the curious and fabulous silver tiger’s-eye pendant she’d recently found buried in her mother’s bottom drawer? The pendant was a mystery. She’d never seen her mum wear it. Faye dressed in boring suits and was resolutely against making the best of herself, no matter what Amber said. The pendant was so not ‘her’. Amber was still wondering where her mother had come by such a thing. She didn’t like to ask, because Mum would be hurt that she had been snooping. But it was odd of her to keep it hidden because they shared everything.
    Well, not everything. Amber felt a splinter of guilt pierce her happy little cocoon. Today was a secret she couldn’t share with her mother. It wasn’t the first time she had concealed something. Mum was so square, so protective, that on the rare occasion that Amber had done anything outside her mother’s rigid code of what was acceptable, she’d had to fib a little. But the current secret was certainly the biggest.
    Ella had phoned just as Amber slammed the front door behind her.
    ‘Ring me later and tell me how you got on, won’t you?’ Ella begged.
    ‘Promise.’
    ‘Wish I was bunking off,’ Ella grumbled. ‘I’ve history in ten minutes and I haven’t finished my bloody essay on the Civil War.’
    ‘Sorry, I did mine and I could have lent it to you so you could use some of my ideas,’ Amber apologised. She loved history and the words flowed effortlessly from her pen to the page. Although how she’d written her essay last night was largely a mystery, as she’d been consumed with excitement thinking about today.
    When she’d said goodbye to Ella, she broke into
    a run so as to race