The Secret Keeper's Daughter by Samantha King

Author:Samantha King [King, Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-06-29T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

‘I know what that is,’ Maria said twenty minutes later. ‘My youngest granddaughter has one just like it. Ethan got it off eBay. Ask him, when we go back in.’

‘No, it’s OK, thanks. I know you’re right.’ I didn’t need to check with Maria’s eldest son; I recognised the Bratz doll perfectly well myself.

‘It might even be hers,’ Maria said, hooking it up and brushing away dark, claggy earth. ‘Ethan often brings Lauren up here on his days off. She probably dropped it.’ She examined it more closely, shining her torch closer to the doll’s pale, mud-streaked face.

The light was fading now, and I was glad you’d stayed inside the farmhouse. In fact, you had refused even to set foot outside. I’d had to leave you and BB with Ethan, who thankfully was used to children, having two of his own. You played with them sometimes, and I knew you would be safe with their daddy, even if you didn’t look too happy about it.

As Maria had hunted for a torch, I’d given you a reassuring hug, smiling as I watched Ethan set up a game of Snap at the kitchen table. You clung on to me, silently begging me not to go. ‘Everything’s fine, love,’ I reassured you. ‘I’ll be back in three shakes of a lamb’s tail!’

As I took the dirty, bedraggled doll Maria held out to me, I was glad you weren’t there to see it. The sight of its torn dress, matted black hair and dead, broken eyes in their hollow sockets would have terrified you. Just as it did me …

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said, deciding not to tell Maria that I knew she was wrong. The doll had a scribbled-out ‘J’ on her left hand. I’d have recognised it anywhere. It was Chloe. My friend Jane’s favourite toy. The one Amy had taken from her twenty years ago.

‘Not sure anyone’s going to want to play with it now, though,’ Maria said. ‘Looks like the foxes have got to it.’

‘Yes.’ I glanced around, scanning the dark landscape between the corrugated hay barn and the allotment, the softly lit greenhouses in between. ‘It’s a fox’s paradise round here,’ I agreed, knowing you would also consider it the perfect playground for ghosts. What on earth had Amy been thinking, scaring you and Leah with spooky stories like that?

Instantly, I thought of the tale she’d spun about Jane all those years ago. I recalled her pointing towards St Andrew’s Church, eyes glinting as she told me my friend was buried in a ‘cold, dark grave … over there’. I’d assumed she meant the church, but from the garden at Sea View where we’d been sitting that day, the Cartwright farm was in the same direction.

Suddenly, I felt my heart rate slow down, and then speed up, faster and faster. Had Amy been pointing here? Could she have been telling the truth about hurting Jane? But how would that even have been possible? She’d been just eleven years old herself when Jane had either vanished or moved to London.

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