Secrets Read Online Free

She kept the flat clean and tidy, and there was always a hot dinner every night, not bread and dripping like so many other children round here got.
    But Adele would’ve preferred mess if it made her mother happy and affectionate, the way other mothers were. She rarely laughed, she didn’t even chatter, she never wanted to go out anywhere, not even to Regent’s Park in the summer. It was as though she chose to be miserable because it was a good way to spoil things for everyone else.
    Eventually Adele knew she’d have to go to the lavatory, or she’d wet the bed. She opened the door very quietly, hoping against hope she could just slip out down the stairs without being noticed.
    ‘What do you want?’ Rose snapped at her.
    Adele explained and went straight out of the front door before anything further could be said.
    With just her nightdress and bare feet, it was freezing on the stairs. The lavatory smelled bad again and it made her heave. Mum was always moaning about Mrs Manning never taking a turn to clean it, in fact she thought she should do it twice as often as she had twice as many children. In the last row about it, Mrs Manning threatened to knock Mum’s block off. She said she was a stuck-up cow who thought her own shit didn’t stink.
    As she got back into the flat again, Adele hesitated. Her parents were sitting either side of the fire in the armchairs, both with a drink in their hands, and they looked so sad she felt she had to say something.
    ‘I’m really sorry I couldn’t get up there quicker,’ she blurted out. ‘I did run all the way.’
    Her father looked round first. ‘It couldn’t be ’elped,’ he said sadly.
    For one brief second Adele thought they’d both come round, but she was badly mistaken. Without any warning an empty beer bottle came hurtling at her, catching her on the forehead, then falling to the floor and smashing on the lino. ‘Get out of my sight, you little bastard,’ her mother screamed. ‘I never wanted you, and now you’ve killed my baby.’

Chapter Two
    ‘I don’t want her at the funeral,’ Rose Talbot snapped at her husband.
    Alarmed, Jim looked up from cleaning his shoes. He had anticipated Rose might start shouting at him for cleaning them on the table, so he’d put newspaper down first. But he hadn’t for one moment expected that with less than two hours to go to the funeral, she would find something further to be difficult about.
    ‘Why?’ Jim asked nervously. ‘Because she’s too young?’ Rose had been making him very nervous ever since Pamela’s death. Her grief he understood – most days he wished he could die too and be rid of this terrible ache inside him. Having to wait two weeks for a coroner’s report before the funeral had made it even worse, stringing out the misery, but he didn’t understand why she was being so savage to Adele.
    ‘If you want to tell everyone else it’s because she’s too young, do so,’ Rose retorted, flouncing away across the living room. ‘But it’s not the reason. I just don’t want her there.’
    ‘Now look here,’ Jim began, thinking he must be tough and stop all this before it got out of hand. ‘Pammy was her sister, she ought to be there. People will talk.’
    Rose turned and gave him a long, cold stare. ‘Let them. I don’t care,’ she said defiantly.
    Jim did what he always did when Rose was being difficult, let it go, and finished polishing his shoes till they shone like glass. Maybe he ought to be tougher, but he was very aware that Rose didn’t love him as he loved her, and he was afraid to go against her.
    ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said weakly after a couple of seconds’ thought.
    Rose stormed off into their bedroom, afraid that if she stayed near Jim another minute she’d blurt out how she felt about him too. She pulled the curlers out of her hair angrily, and as she picked up her hair brush and moved to the mirror, what she saw made her feel even more angry.
    Everything about her