Free The Secrets Between Us by Louise Douglas

awful!’
    ‘It was years ago,’ said Alexander. ‘Before I met Genevieve, but she remembered him.’
    ‘He shouldn’t of been in there,’ said Jamie solemnly.
    ‘No, he shouldn’t,’ said Alexander. He was silent for a moment. Then he said very quietly: ‘Nobody goes there any more. People have forgotten it exists.’
    We drove on.
    At the top of the hill, the lane opened out. On either side were fields bordered by hedges and fences. I noticed a pair of handsome liver-chestnut horses standing beneath a small clump of trees at the centre of a gently rolling meadow to our left. Alexander nodded his head without taking his eyes from the road.
    ‘Genevieve’s,’ he confirmed.
    The first building we reached was set back from the lane and surrounded by a high fence and electric gates, so all I could see was the roof and a huge, arch-shaped window. It was clearly a large barn that had been beautifully and extensively converted. Laurie and I used to be addicted tohome-buying and restoration television programmes and I could tell that no expense had been spared. Everything was perfect.
    ‘That’s where my cousins live,’ said Jamie, leaning over me to point.
    ‘Wow!’
    ‘Classy, eh? Mixture of Claudia’s old money and Bill’s new,’ Alexander said. I looked at him. Was he being sarcastic? Was that jealousy I’d heard, or resentment perhaps?
    ‘And here’s the church,’ he said in an ordinary voice. ‘If you’re interested, there’s loads of Churchill family history inside and in the graveyard.’
    ‘Oh, OK.’
    ‘And just over there,’ Alexander continued, nodding his head to the other side of the lane, ‘you’ll see the roof-tops of Eleonora House.’
    ‘They live here? Almost on top of the old quarry?’
    ‘The original Mr Churchill wanted to build his house as close as he could to the source of his wealth,’ Alexander said. ‘I suppose it made him feel proud; connected. Plus, he could keep a close eye on things.’
    ‘It must’ve been tough on the workers,’ I said quietly. ‘They wouldn’t have been able to get away with anything.’
    Alexander smiled.
    He pulled the Land Rover up at the entrance to the drive to Eleonora House, and left its engine running.
    The house was bigger and grander than anything I could have imagined. It was a real old-fashioned country pile, with wisteria curling up a façade that was set a good way back from the lane at the end of a straight drive lined with topiary bushes shaped abstractly like clouds and waves. A life-size statue stood on an ornate pedestal just outside the gates at the entrance to the drive. It was a Victorian-style child-angel, with a lovely face and downcast eyes. One hand held a roseto her breast, the other was extended, as if to draw visitors into the drive.
    ‘That’s Eleonora,’ Alexander said. ‘She was the original Mr Churchill’s youngest daughter and the one he loved best.’
    ‘She died young?’ I asked quietly.
    Alexander nodded. ‘Some kind of masonry accident while they were building the house. The sculptor used her death mask as a model for the statue.’
    ‘How morbid!’
    ‘Gen thought it was romantic. She was the image of the statue when she was a child.’
    I would have liked to know more, but at that moment Jamie, who was sitting behind me, shouted: ‘There’s Grandpa!’ and I was distracted.
    The Land Rover’s window was open. I could see, quite clearly, the figure of a tall, aged man in a hat just outside the house. He was stooped over a cane and was examining something, a rose bush perhaps.
    ‘Can we go and see him? Can we go and say hello?’ Jamie asked.
    Alexander glanced at me.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we waited.’
    ‘Too late,’ Alexander said. A thin woman had come to stand beside the man. She was shading her eyes with one hand and, with the other, she beckoned us down the drive.
    ‘Virginia,’ Alexander said, almost under his breath.
    ‘Couldn’t you