My Mother's Secret Read online

  Copyright © 2015 Sheila O’Flanagan

  The right of Sheila O’Flanagan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2015

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 1073 9

  Author Photograph © Laurie Fletcher

  Cover credit: Shutters © Panoramic Images @ Getty Images.

  Woman © LoloStock; balcony © Roy Pedersen; flowers © balounm and © Naypong; leaves © Madlen, all from @ Shutterstock

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Book

  About Sheila O’Flanagan

  Also by Sheila O’Flanagan

  Praise for Sheila O’Flanagan

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  The Party

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  The Storm

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  The Wedding

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  About the Book

  When Steffie helps her two siblings organize a surprise wedding anniversary party for their parents her only worry is whether they’ll be pleased. What she doesn’t know is this is the day that her whole world will be turned upside down.

  Jenny wants to be able to celebrate her ruby anniversary with the man she loves, but for forty years she has kept a secret. A secret that she can’t bear to hide any longer. But is it ever the right time to hurt the people closest to you?

  As the entire family gather to toast the happy couple, they’re expecting a day to remember. The trouble is, it’s not going to be for the reasons they imagined …

  About Sheila O’Flanagan

  Sheila O’Flanagan is the author of many bestselling novels, including If You Were Me, Things We Never Say, Better Together, All For You, Stand By Me and The Perfect Man.

  Sheila has always loved telling stories, and after working in banking and finance for a number of years, she decided it was time to fulfil a dream and give writing her own book a go. So she sat down, stuck ‘Chapter One’ at the top of a page, and got started. Sheila is now the author of more than nineteen bestselling titles. She lives in Dublin with her husband.

  Also by Sheila O’Flanagan

  Suddenly Single

  Far From Over

  My Favourite Goodbye

  He’s Got To Go

  Isobel’s Wedding

  Caroline’s Sister

  Too Good To Be True

  Dreaming Of A Stranger

  Destinations

  Anyone But Him

  How Will I Know?

  Connections

  Yours, Faithfully

  Bad Behaviour

  Someone Special

  The Perfect Man

  Stand By Me

  A Season To Remember

  All For You

  Better Together

  Things We Never Say

  If You Were Me

  My Mother’s Secret

  Praise for Sheila O’Flanagan

  ‘Romantic and charming, this is a real must-read’ Closer

  ‘A big, touching book sure to delight O’Flanagan fans’ Daily Mail

  ‘A spectacular read’ Heat

  ‘A lovely book that will keep you guessing right up until the end’ Bella

  ‘Her lightness of touch and gentle characterisations have produced another fine read’ Sunday Express

  To my husband and my family, always

  looking after my back

  Acknowledgements

  As always, many thanks to:

  Carole Blake, who looks after business

  Marion Donaldson, who looks after the creative stuff

  Jane Selley, who looks for the mistakes

  Team Hachette/Headline, who get the finished book to the shops

  The booksellers and librarians, who get it to the readers

  My translators, who do such a great job at making the story come alive in other languages

  And, most especially, all of you, who read my books in so many different countries, and who are fantastic about letting me know your favourite characters, locations and books. You make it all worthwhile! I love hearing from you, and you can keep in touch with me through my website, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. I do hope you enjoy My Mother’s Secret.

  The Party

  Chapter 1

  A tiny bead of perspiration rolled along Steffie’s eyebrow, gathering momentum as it slid down her cheek before landing with a plop on the enormous cardboard box she was carrying. She used the top of her shoulder to wipe her face as she walked gingerly towards her ancient blue Citroën C3, and sighed with relief as she finally placed the box on the passenger seat. As far as she was concerned, the thirty-second journey from the bakery to her car couldn’t have been more nerve-racking if she’d been carrying a box of gelignite. And the consequences of dropping it would have been equally explosive.

  She pushed a damp wisp of cinnamon-gold hair from her forehead, and shuddered as she imagined Roisin’s reaction to the loss of their parents’ anniversary cake. A missing cake would have been a major disruption to the Master Plan, and Roisin didn’t allow her plans to be disrupted by anyone or anything. Secure in the knowledge that for once she hadn’t fallen short of her older sister’s high expectations, Steffie eased into the driver’s seat and rolled down the car windows. Then she turned the fan up as high as possible in an effort to combat the unexpected end-of-summer heatwave. During the last fortnight the media had happily replaced gloomy reports on the wettest August on record with daily guides to staying cool, as forecasters pointed out that Dublin, Ireland was currently as warm as Dublin, Ohio, and hotter than Madrid, Paris or Rome. Which would be wonderful, Steffie thought, as a weak stream of tepid air finally began to flow from the vents in front of her, if Irish houses had air conditioning and outdoor swimming pools instead of central heating and double-glazing.
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br />   A swimming pool in the garden of Aranbeg, her parents’ home in Wexford, would have been something to look forward to this afternoon. But even if they could have afforded it, Pascal and Jenny weren’t the sort of people who’d install something that would be used approximately one summer in five. Steffie, and the rest of the day’s guests, would simply have to cool off with lots of chilled drinks at the fortieth wedding anniversary party instead.

  She exhaled slowly as she thought of the surprise they were about to spring on their parents, who were in blissful ignorance of the fact that they’d be arriving home to a party later. She still wasn’t entirely convinced that surprising them was a good idea, but Roisin had been adamant and Steffie knew from long experience that when her sister’s mind was made up, changing it was pretty much a lost cause. All the same, she muttered darkly to herself, the next time she rings me with one of her covert plans in which she gives all the instructions and I’m left with the donkey work, I’ll do what I keep promising myself and say that I’m too busy to get involved. I’ll remind her that I keep proper working hours even if my office is Davey’s old bedroom. I’ll take a stand and be strong, firm and businesslike and I won’t allow her to railroad me into anything because she’s twelve years older than me and she thinks that entitles her to boss me around.

  She luxuriated for a few minutes in the fantasy of telling Roisin to sod off and then allowed herself a wry smile. It was never going to happen because Steffie knew that in the face of the force of nature that was Roisin in full organisational mode, there was nothing she could say to stop her. Besides, it isn’t only me she bosses around, she acknowledged. She’s the same with everyone and we all accept it because Roisin is a born leader, methodical and organised, and the rest of us, maybe with the exception of Dad, are too lazy to bother. Which makes it all the more surprising, she muttered to herself as the Citroën surprised her by getting up enough speed to pass a plodding Fiesta, that I’m the one with my own business and Roisin is a full-time mother. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she conceded that the reality of their situations was quite different from appearances. Roisin had been a high-flyer in the insurance company where she worked, only deciding that she needed to devote more time to her family after the birth of Dougie, her third child. And describing herself, as she did, as a full-time mother was disingenuous. Roisin still did occasional contract work for various insurers, while being an active member of the parents’ council at the local school, and currently running a summer sports camp for under-tens. Every second of her day was managed and accounted for and she frequently remarked that she was busier now than she’d ever been. Steffie, on the other hand, had set up Butterfly Creative in her brother’s old bedroom because she hadn’t been able to find a job as a graphic artist anywhere else, and justified the time she frittered away on social media sites as important networking opportunities to get her brand noticed.

  She liked to think that working for herself suited her free-spirited nature, but she was uncomfortably aware that her current status as the owner of a company where she was the sole employee had more to do with her lack of corporate solidarity than her entrepreneurial skills. Her previous job, with a design studio on the far side of the city, had come to an abrupt end after she’d refused to work on a campaign where they wanted to use images of semi-naked women to promote a line of jewellery.

  Both her parents had been totally supportive of her stance (although she’d had to apologise profusely to her dad, who’d lent her the money to buy the Citroën and whom she couldn’t immediately repay), but Roisin hadn’t been able to hide her exasperation with her younger sister when she heard the news.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ she asked, before launching into a diatribe about there not being room for principles when you needed a job. ‘You’ve got to roll with the punches, Steffie.’

  ‘You can’t possibly mean that,’ retorted Steffie when Roisin finally paused for breath. ‘Not when those punches are blatantly sexist. If you can’t have principles about your work, then what’s the point?’

  Roisin said it was all about being pragmatic and realising what was important.

  ‘My principles are very important to me,’ said Steffie.

  ‘Oh, grow up. You’re in the real world now,’ said Roisin. ‘You’re like all those girls who scream harassment every time a co-worker passes a remark about how they look. You’re letting yourself be offended.’

  ‘It depends on the remark, don’t you think?’ said Steffie. ‘But in any event, nobody has ever passed one about how I look.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Roisin was so astonished she forgot to keep haranguing her.

  Her astonishment was due to the fact that Steffie was the sort of person people tended to notice. She was tall and willowy, her open face framed by a tumble of burnished curls. Roisin made no secret of the fact that she felt the looks genes had been unfairly distributed between them, because she herself had inherited their father’s darker colouring and stockier frame, which meant she was locked in a constant battle to keep her figure in the kind of shape that Steffie didn’t even have to think about. That battle was the only one she’d never quite succeeded in winning, despite her enthusiastic embracing of various diets and workouts, and it infuriated her. Steffie would tell her that willowy implied you could sort of glide into rooms looking cool and sophisticated whereas she was all arms and legs and falling over herself. On the other hand, when Roisin walked into a room everyone knew she was there thanks to the force of her personality, not because she’d tripped over her own two feet.

  ‘But I’d like to tower,’ said Roisin. ‘It’d give me a greater presence.’

  ‘You wouldn’t really,’ Steffie told her. ‘It’s not always comfortable. Besides, you don’t need a greater presence. Everyone does what you tell them anyway.’

  ‘That’s because I’m always right,’ said Roisin. ‘And I’m right about this work thing too. You need to grow up, Steffie. Get out there, work hard and prove yourself.’

  Which by setting up her own company she thought she had, even if the decision had been forced on her by a continuing failure to find a full-time job following the jewellery debacle. She wondered if she’d been blacklisted from the graphic artist community – if there was such a thing – because she’d never gone through such a job drought before. In the end she’d got her break by designing some flyers for a friend who owned a café on the nearby industrial estate. The flyers were noticed by a marketing manager at one of the estate’s manufacturing companies and they’d asked her to be involved in a packaging design for them.

  When she got the business she was elated, even though she knew in all likelihood it was because she’d quoted such a ridiculously low price for the job that they couldn’t turn it down. Her parents were happy to see her busy, and even happier when she got more work from other companies in the area. They suggested that instead of having the laptop in a corner of the living room, she use Davey’s bedroom as a work zone. After he’d moved out a number of years earlier they’d kept it as a guest room, but as they hardly ever had guests it didn’t matter if she took it over. So she bought some office furniture from IKEA (which Pascal assembled for her), registered her business and hoped she hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

  It hadn’t been a mistake, but it continued to be a rocky road. She’d built up a small number of regular clients and she occasionally landed more complicated and interesting projects. Nevertheless, her income was erratic and she wouldn’t have been able to keep going if it wasn’t for the fact that she was living practically rent-free in the house.

  Shortly after Command Central, as Roisin called it, was moved to Davey’s bedroom, their father took an early retirement package from his job at the Revenue Commissioners, and he and Jenny moved to Aranbeg, the Wexford house where they’d spent every summer for the past thirty-five years, leaving Steffie to live in the Dublin house alone.

  ‘It’s your corporate headquarters now,’ her father had joked the day they loade
d up the car. ‘We’re only in the way.’

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m forcing you out.’ She looked at them anxiously.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Steffie, it’s a joke.’ Pascal, a good two inches shorter than her, had to reach up to squeeze her shoulders. ‘I hope you’ll be very successful.’

  ‘So successful that you’ll be moving into bigger and better premises in no time,’ added Jenny.

  That had been a year ago. So far there was no danger of her needing to look for anywhere bigger. But she lived in hope. Not because she didn’t like the fact that her daily commute was a matter of walking from one room to another, or because she could work in her PJs if she felt so inclined, though she tended not to, feeling more creative when she was properly dressed, but because she wanted to believe that she could support herself and not have to rely on the generosity and good nature of her parents to keep her going.

  She fiddled with the Citroën’s air vents again. Thinking about her work always made her hot and bothered, as if the whole party thing hadn’t got her hot and bothered already. When Roisin had phoned to say that they should surprise Jenny and Pascal with a celebration of their forty years of marriage and invite all their family and friends to Aranbeg, Steffie hadn’t voiced her own opinion, which was that she hated surprise parties and she wasn’t sure they’d be their mum and dad’s cup of tea either, because Roisin was already well into her stride and telling her what had to be done. Nor did Steffie say that she was too busy to do all the things that Roisin had already designated as her responsibility. Roisin wouldn’t have believed her, because Roisin didn’t really think that Butterfly Creative was a proper job at all. And even though she really was occupied with a proposal that could turn out to be her most profitable contract yet, Steffie was simply unable to resist the unstoppable force that was her sister in full flow.

  ‘We’ll do it the Saturday before their actual anniversary to properly surprise them. Aranbeg is the ideal place too. So many of us used to gather there when we were younger. It must be years since it was full of people, and Mum loved it so much like that,’ Roisin informed her.