The Keeper of Secrets Read Online Free

could make out a series of gouges in the earth. They were about the width of a spade.
    She turned back to Charlie, who was looking decidedly guilty, and for a moment she considered offering to help him with his endeavours. The prospect of searching for hidden treasure, imaginary or otherwise was far more appealing than returning to the morbid task of sweeping away her parent’s existence. That was when her mobile began to ring again. It was Rick checking up on her but she couldn’t answer the call straight away. He would hear the wind howling around her and would at best complain that she wasn’t concentrating on the house clearance and at worst accuse her of being up to no good somewhere else. She ordered a sullen Charlie back into the house and only then did she phone Rick back. As she stood in front of the mountain of bags and boxes she had spent the day filling, she went to great lengths to tell her husband how little progress she had made. Rick wasn’t impressed when she explained how much she still had to do and that they were unlikely to be home before the following evening.
    With the bitterness of her lies fresh on her tongue, Elle risked the wrath of Charlie, too, by demanding he remain in the house for the rest of the day. It was late afternoon and the colourless day was beginning to darken. Charlie’s complaints were short-lived when she explained that they had the whole weekend to themselves and that if he would consider taking her on as his assistant then they could search for buried treasure tomorrow.
    She wasn’t expecting to find anything but with plenty of time on her hands she would enjoy sharing an adventure with her son. Charlie was less enthusiastic but promised to give her offer of help some thought. Unlike his mother, he knew there was treasure waiting to be unearthed, he simply wasn’t sure he wanted to share it.

3
    Charlie had visited his grandparents’ house often in the past but that sense of familiarity wasn’t going to make bedtime any easier, not when he had cried himself to sleep every night since the funeral and not when he would be sleeping in the room next to where his granddad had died.
    The spare room had once been her bedroom. It had a single bed, pine wardrobe and matching chest of drawers and what little floor space remained had been taken up with bin bags and boxes. It was going to be a tight squeeze for Elle and Charlie but neither objected to sharing a bed. By delaying his bedtime and bringing her own forward they were snuggled up together beneath the duvet by nine o’clock.
    The copious amounts of fresh air had been enough for Charlie to find sleep in his mother’s arms despite his initial attempts to keep her talking. He had wanted to know all about her time growing up in the house and those memories played on Elle’s mind as she lay awake long past midnight, watching the shadows dance across the woodchip wallpaper each time the headlights from a passing car flashed across the walls.
    The decor had hardly changed and Elle could almost convince herself that the exhaustion she felt was the result of a long shift at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and she willed her mum to peak around the door with a much-needed cup of tea. But it hadn’t only been a demanding job that used to leave her languishing in bed. Although it had made her angry at the time, she smiled as she recalled the look of disapproval from her dad whenever she dared to stay out late or how her mum deliberately banged doors if she made the mistake of seeking sympathy for a self-inflicted hangover.
    The inevitable battle of wills as she was growing up had been Elle’s way of claiming her independence but it was a battle she had never won. And when she had eventually left home it had been to begin a married life where she would be forced to fit in with someone else’s rules and expectations. As she thought back to some of the dreams she had nurtured while lying