Free A Place of Secrets by Rachel Hore

him of stuff.”
    “I did have a reason … I was shocked, that’s all. Oh hell, haveI made a fool of myself?”
    “I expect he’ll forgive you.”
    Claire seemed very supportive of Euan. Jude smiled and said, “So, married, is he?”
    “No, divorced, I think. But don’t go thinking anything,” Claire said, prickly as a chestnut burr. Close as one, too.
    Jude put up her hands in mock defense. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said.
    * * *
    It was a long time since there had been a man inClaire’s life. “I’m too independent. I frighten them off,” she’d confessed a year or two ago after a couple of glasses of wine. Her relationships had often been short and fiery. Jude had seen her go in too deep, too quickly with a man and then, before you knew it, she would be practically throwing saucepans at him, and he’d be on his way. In all honesty, no one knew who Summer’s father was. Clairehad always refused to tell.
    “That pop singer she met at the arts center,” was their mother’s belief, though Claire had never admitted it, but Jude thought she could be right. Jon, was his name. He’d had a mop of curly yellow hair and Summer’s large, dreamy blue eyes. Claire brought him to Christmas lunch at their mother’s because he’d fallen out with his dad. It was the first Christmas sincethe girls’ father had died, and they were finding it difficult enough to be jolly as it was. Jon had arrived late and Claire hardly spoke to him the whole time; he kept going outside to smoke odd-smelling roll-ups and then he’d left early. “Without even saying a proper thank you,” Valerie whispered angrily to Jude and Mark that evening over the washing-up. Valerie and Claire had a row about it andClaire had stomped up to bed and slammed the door, as she used to when she was fifteen. “You can never say anything to her without her flying off the handle,” Valerie said bitterly.
    After that Christmas, Jon made no further appearance, and a few weeks later, when Jude rang her sister and asked tentatively about him she said, “Oh, him,” dismissively. It was a couple of months after this that sheannounced with a kind of grim delight that she was pregnant.
    Having Summer made Claire suddenly grow up.
    “How do you think Summer is?” Claire asked her now as she placed plates in the oven to warm. Jude couldn’t see her face, but she heard a note of anxiety under her casual tone. She didn’t think it an overstatement to say that Claire would die for Summer.
    Once the baby came, it was plain toall that Claire had discovered a purpose in life. She’d given up her job at the vintage-clothes stall on the market and started up her own business with her friend Linda; she had saved for a deposit and bought this dear little house, which she’d decorated so beautifully. “Summer seems her usual happy self to me,” Jude replied.
    “She is, most of the time,” Claire said, opening the fridge. “That’swhat’s so strange. If the bad dreams are because of stress, then she certainly doesn’t show it in other ways.”
    “When did the dreams start?” Jude asked.
    “About a month ago,” Claire explained. “At half-term. Not every night. About one in three, though.”
    “Do you know, they sound rather like the ones I used to have when I was little.”
    “Really? I’d almost forgotten about those,” her sister said.“That’s why I asked to move into my own bedroom. You, moaning and groaning in your sleep. When did they stop?”
    Jude shrugged. “I don’t remember. I suppose I grew out of them.” She didn’t mention the one she’d had recently; it seemed to be a one-off.
    “Perhaps it’s a normal phase with Summer, then.”
    The thought seemed to reassure Claire.
    “Will you allow me to lay the table?” asked Jude.
    “Yes,of course. There’s a cloth in the top drawer. Pass me that bowl of broccoli, will you? Can you call Summer?”
    * * *
    “Mum rang last night,” Claire said, when they sat down to eat.