The Secrets of Summer House by Rachel Burton

Author:Rachel Burton [Burton, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781801100588
Publisher: Head of Zeus

18

Cambridge, June 2018

Olivia dreams of Summer House again. This time she is alone, walking in the wood, looking for someone – in the dream she isn’t sure who – she begins to feel lost, unsettled.

She wakes to the sound of a phone ringing somewhere in the house, the low rumble of Jacob’s voice answering it. The bedside clock reads 7.45 a.m. She’s late. She should have got up for work half an hour ago, but rather than leap out of bed and start getting ready as she usually does when she’s late, she just stares up at the ceiling, because the dream has jogged a memory, one she’d long since forgotten.

The summer before Olivia had turned seven, the Midsummer garden party had been a particularly lavish affair and even her grandmother’s sister had come over from Argentina. It had been a very hot day, giving way to a warm, balmy evening and, growing tired of all the people and the heat, Olivia had wandered off into the cooler wood where she could be alone to make up stories about children who had been abandoned in the wood by their parents and then found by a young couple who couldn’t have children of their own. It was almost dark when she’d realised she had lost track of where she was, that she’d wandered deep into the woodland and couldn’t find her way out. She’d started to cry, thinking about the other sorts of stories set in a wood. The sort of story where children were lost and never found, or kidnapped by the Queen of Fairies. Eventually, after walking in circles for what felt like hours, she’d sat down, burying her face in her hands. Her grandfather had found her there later, she had never really known how much later but it had probably been nowhere near as long as it had felt. Her grandmother had been almost hysterical. ‘We thought we’d lost you,’ she’d said.

Like most children, Olivia had been resilient and bounced back from the experience quickly after a cup of warm milk and a good night’s sleep, happy to play in the wood again the next afternoon. But after that evening, Mary had always seemed nervous about her playing there, tempting her back with new books or her favourite afternoon tea treats.

We thought we’d lost you.

Tash had been right when she’d said that Olivia’s grandparents adored her, that her childhood had been wonderful. But she’d never really connected that love back to the father she had never known, the son that her grandparents had lost – not until Tash spelled it out to her. She had always been more than just a granddaughter; she was Mary and Henry’s only real link to Tristan.

Was it possible that her grandmother’s grief had been a large, but at the time unnoticed part of Olivia’s childhood? Was it Mary’s grief that had made her lie, that had made her keep so much from Olivia over the years? Had her grandfather supported the

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