The Secrets of Happiness Read online

  ‘Don’t try and talk for now,’ the woman told her kindly. ‘I’m afraid you’ve fractured your jaw and cheekbone rather nastily, and you’ve got the mother of all bumps on your head. We think you’re concussed as well, so if things seem a little strange, that’s why.’ As Rachel stared at the woman’s face, it seemed to split into three, each with the same green eyes and moving mouth. Like looking through a prism. One of those toys children had with sparkly colourful pieces at one end. Telescope – no. Periscope – no. That thing, anyway. What was it? The word had slipped out of reach. Think, Rachel. Think!

  ‘Uhh,’ she moaned in reply. It was becoming her catchphrase.

  She was swung around brightly lit corridors on a trolley, lights strobing above her head. Nightclubs, she thought. Thudding music. Going home and throwing up in her step-mum Wendy’s shoes. I’m very disappointed in you, Rachel!

  Wendy, she thought disjointedly. The two of them had never got on. You’re not my mum! she had shouted in all their arguments. And . . . Oh. Something clicked in her head. An image came to her of a chilly station platform, her smart shoes pinching as she stood waiting, ticket in hand. Manchester Piccadilly, a voice intoned. All change, please.

  I’m here to get some answers.

  Alarm swept through her as the connection was made. She was in Manchester, that was it. Manchester! Far from home, far from the children. Who was picking them up from school if she was in Manchester? It was like wading through treacle trying to think straight, but then came a dim memory of the car full of voices first thing; Sara’s children, she thought, frowning. Yes – and Sara was collecting Scarlet and Luke in return. But how was Rachel going to get back there now? Sara would kill her if she wasn’t back for five, as arranged – literally throttle her with those perfectly manicured hands.

  A sob burst from her throat and she tried to haul herself into a sitting position. She had to get home. She had to tell someone to ring Sara!

  The swinging movement of the trolley stopped, and a nurse appeared by her side. The Glaswegian one, she thought, recognizing the dark curls. ‘All right, hen, lie down, that’s it,’ she soothed. ‘We’re just on our way up to the ward; we’ll make you more comfortable there, all right? Shut your eyes for a wee while and try to rest.’

  There was a clicking sound below her, and then wheels rolling, squeaking; the bed on the move again. The ceiling blurred dizzily above, the strip lighting leaving orange trails swaying in her head when she closed her eyes. ‘That’s it, darling, you have a snooze,’ the nurse said, her voice floating in from a distance. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing.’

  Chapter Three

  Becca packed an overnight bag – or rather she threw a pair of knickers and her toothbrush into a Sainsbury’s carrier bag – then phoned her boss, Jeff, at the White Horse, pretending to have come down with a disgusting stomach bug. ‘I’m so . . . sorry,’ she groaned down the line. She had taken the phone into the bedroom, as Meredith was still murdering the opening bars of ‘Greensleeves’, and perched on the edge of the bed, trying to sound ill and weak. ‘I’ve been puking up for the last two hours,’ she went on hoarsely. Just for good measure she did some fake retching. ‘Can’t come in for my shift tonight. Really sorry.’

  Jeff, the landlord, was a broad, grizzled Wolverhampton Wanderers fan with an unerring bullshit detector, unfortunately for Becca. ‘Ahh,’ he said in his low growl. She pictured his baggy blue eyes narrowing with disbelief. ‘That’s strange, because Nick said he saw you coming out of Pizzarella about five o’clock this evening. Comes and goes, does it, this stomach bug?’

  Oh bollocks. Bloody supergrass Nick! He was the spivvy little assistant manager who seemed to spend his life poking his nose into other people’s business and then telling the rest of the bar about it. That was one of the problems with living in a tiny flat above a betting shop on the high street, just a few hundred metres from the pub. Everyone seemed to know every last thing she ever did.

  ‘That . . . wasn’t me,’ Becca said lamely, pulling a face at herself in the mirror. Cringe.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Jeff, not even bothering to argue. ‘Take the night off, yeah? And take tomorrow off too. And the day after that, and all. Do you hear what I’m saying? I can’t be doing with all these excuses, that’s the thing. I need staff I can rely on, not flakes and fakers. See you around.’

  Becca’s mouth dropped open indignantly as he hung up and then the breath whistled out of her in a long, exasperated sigh. ‘Great,’ she muttered, shoving her feet into trainers. ‘I’ve just been given the sack, can you believe it?’ she yelled through to Meredith. Exactly what she didn’t need right now. You tried to do someone a favour, and this was what happened. Plus, knowing her luck, she’d drive the whole way over to Hereford to find that – oh, sorry – Rachel was there after all, and it would all be for nothing, some silly mix-up or a flat phone battery, no doubt. Fabulous.

  Meredith looked up as Becca came back into the living room. She had abandoned the lute (small mercies) and was now poring over the cryptic crossword in the newspaper. ‘What? You’ve been sacked?’

  Becca briefly explained the situation, and Meredith blinked in surprise. ‘I didn’t even know you had a sister,’ she said. Meredith had two sisters – one older, one younger – and they met regularly to see experimental theatre, and for dinner in cheap Italian restaurants where they discussed how unreasonable their parents were.

  ‘We’re not close,’ Becca mumbled, which was surely a contender for the understatement of the year. She eyed the cooling remains of the pizza longingly – the pizza that had inadvertently brought about her sacking, no less – then decided against it. Calories, she reminded herself, and besides, the sooner she headed off, the sooner she could be home again. Grabbing her car keys, she said goodbye and left.

  If you wanted to sum up the relationship between Becca and Rachel, the phrase ‘It’s complicated’ was a good place to start. Becca had only been a year old – pudgy and still practically bald apart from a few carroty curls (the camera never lied, unfortunately) – when her single mum Wendy met Rachel’s single dad Terry. The two of them had fallen in love and married within the year. Bingo: one brand new family, like it or not.

  Becca, of course, was so young as to be oblivious to the awkward beginnings of this glued-together family. For as long as she could remember she had known that Terry was not her biological father (that dubious honour fell to a charmer called Johnny, who was long off the scene), but this made no odds to her. In the true sense of the word, Terry was her beloved dad, and that was that. But Rachel, nine years older, seized on this as a source of great resentment. ‘He’s my dad,’ she would hiss, eyes flinty, whenever Becca was wheedling to be carried or read a story or, when older, trying to cadge a tenner from him.

  ‘There’s plenty of me to go around,’ Terry had always replied easily; but in hindsight, Becca could see how it must have rankled with Rachel. Becoming a stepsister might have changed diddly for Becca, but for Rachel it had meant not only having to share her precious father, but also being rudely forced from her place as adored only child into reluctant big sister; the sensible, good one who didn’t make a fuss, unlike tempestuous, tantrum-throwing Becca. You could see how acrimony would start laying down foundations, how decades-long grudges could be set simmering. Even when Wendy and Terry had gone on their honeymoon, Rachel had kicked off and demanded they return after a single night, apparently.

  Fast-forward almost thirty years and the two stepsisters couldn’t be more different. Rachel was the beautiful swan, the success story of the family with her happy marriage (although maybe not any more), her sweet little children, her great career, big house and elegant clothes. Becca had known from an early age it was impossible to compete with such a paragon of achievement and had duly messed up her A levels, had a string of doomed relationships, travelled a bit, gone back to live at her parents’ place several times when she ran out of money, and tried her hand at various careers, none of which
had ever stuck. It did make you wonder how much the family dynamics had influenced the paths they’d each taken. Would Rachel still have aced at life if there hadn’t been Becca to outdo? Would Becca have made such a hash of things if she hadn’t been the baby of the family, the one who’d been let off the hook all along, who could get away with anything if she widened her eyes at her parents?

  They were who they were, though, and unfortunately the definition of the word ‘sister’ had been stretched to its thinnest since Terry had died. He was the one who’d held the family together in the first place. As his funeral had drawn to its tearful close the year before, you could almost hear the split cracking right down the middle of the remaining three, with Rachel on one side, and Becca and her mum on the other. Estranged, they called it, didn’t they, when family members no longer spoke. That was them. The stepsisters had let one another slip away, out of sight, out of mind, no longer needing to keep up a pretence that they’d ever liked each other or got on. Until this evening, with the phone call that had hauled Becca right back across the divide.

  The car started first try – always a bonus – and she drove off, flicking the Vs at the White Horse as she went past in the hope that nosey Nick would see. Goodbye Jeff, cheerio whingeing customers, so long crappy kitchen equipment and hasta la vista Brian, the head chef who was in a permanent rage, generally about the low standards of his staff. Yet another bridge burned, yet another door closed to her. It wasn’t that she wanted to be doing veg prep in a pub for the rest of her life – far from it – but at least working there had put some money in her purse and got her out of the flat five nights a week. Not any more, though.

  Meanwhile, her friends were all steaming ahead of her. Stellar careers. Weddings. Babies, even, while Becca was still scrabbling about like an idiot, unable to keep down a pub job at the age of thirty. She couldn’t help worrying that she would be stuck forever in this rut: broke and without any kind of life plan, still sharing a titchy flat with a woman who got her kicks from painting replica shields for medieval combat re-enactments. The worst thing was, people had started treating them as if they were a couple. ‘How’s Meredith?’ her mum would ask fondly whenever they spoke. ‘Oh, do ask your – Meredith, is it? – along too, obviously,’ a friend had said last week when mentioning a forthcoming party. (It was the ‘obviously’ that took Becca by surprise. Obviously? Since when had there been any ‘obviously’ about her and Meredith?) There had even been a wedding invitation recently addressed to the two of them, Becca + Meredith, as if they came as a pair, two lonely spinsters destined to remain together for eternity. It was surely only a matter of time before someone coined the name Beredith. Please, no.

  Still. The key was to stay positive. To remain hopeful of what might be round the next corner, and seize any opportunities that came her way. Up and at ’em, kiddo! That was what her dad had always said. How she wished he was still around to say it to her now. He would take her to the pub and give her one of his life MoTs. You’re in the prime of your life, kid! You can do anything! he would tell her, stabbing the air with his index finger. What are you waiting for? Get out there and have some adventures!

  ‘I’m trying, Dad,’ she murmured aloud, slowing to a stop at traffic lights. ‘I really am.’

  As a man who’d worked in the motor industry most of his life (years at Longbridge as an engineer, and then later for the local Ford garage), it was ironic that he should have died under the wheels of a van – a Ford bloody Transit, no less. It had hurtled round a blind corner in a 20mph zone, mounted the pavement, knocked over a pedestrian (Dad) and smashed into a lamp post. Darling, it’s your dad, there’s been an accident: she could hear her mum sobbing down the phone even now. The driver had been drinking and lost control; given a two-year prison sentence for death by dangerous driving. But no kind of justice system could make up for the fact that Dad’s life had been snatched away from them in one shocking moment; a dark pool of blood on the pavement, the hopeless wail of an ambulance siren echoing through the street, too late.

  Anyway, there was no point dwelling on that. It didn’t help anything.

  Waiting for the lights to change, Becca raked a hand through her hair, already feeling self-conscious about seeing her stepsister again. In contrast to Rachel’s obedient blonde bob, Becca had bright copper hair – yeah, all right, ginger, whatever – that was big and bushy, curls springing out dementedly in all directions. Rachel also had delicate bone structure and the figure of an athlete, whereas Becca . . . didn’t. ‘Aren’t the girls different?’ a particularly blunt aunt had once commented during Becca’s unfortunate puppy-fat decade, her eyes flicking from Becca’s doughnut hips to Rachel’s collection of running trophies gleaming on the mantelpiece in a single damning second.

  The difference was more apparent than ever these days. Since her dad had died, Becca had piled on the pounds, finding comfort in salty chips, iced buns, buttered toast. There was something about working in a pub kitchen, too, that meant she was constantly picking at hunks of cheese or crusty baguette. She braced herself for a look of revulsion on her stepsister’s face, the insincere ‘You look . . . well’ remark that everyone knew was shorthand for ‘You look . . . fat’. Oh, whatever. Water off a duck’s back.

  Traffic wasn’t too bad as she followed signs for the motorway, trying to remember the children’s ages. Mabel must be thirteen now because she’d been born a few months after Becca’s seventeenth birthday, when babies were still a million miles off her radar. Scarlet had come along three years later and Luke . . . he must be about six or seven, she reckoned. It gave her a stab of guilt that she didn’t know the numbers instantly; it showed how little she had thought of them in recent months. Rachel had made it quite clear that she wanted nothing more to do with Becca or Wendy and it had seemed easier to accept that, to allow the wall of silence to build up higher and higher.

  Despite everything, though, she was curious about seeing them again, especially in light of the bombshell that Lawrence and Rachel had split up. She still couldn’t quite get her head around it. Didn’t you know? the woman on the phone had asked. No, she’d had no idea, just assumed that everything was typically rosy in Rachel’s wonderful life. Mind you, Becca thought, biting her lip. When she remembered what had happened the last time she’d seen her sister’s husband, perhaps she shouldn’t have been quite so surprised after all.

  Rachel’s house was a genteel, grey-painted Victorian semi on a quiet road out of town. It was the sort of street where people kept their hedges neatly clipped and cars were washed every Sunday. As Becca parked her wheezing, rusting Ford Fiesta outside, she felt as if she was lowering the tone of the neighbourhood simply by arriving. Then she realized that there was no other car in Rachel’s driveway. Was her sister still not back?

  ‘Hello there. Long time no see!’

  Mabel answered the front door, and Becca could tell by the brief flare of hope that lit up her niece’s face that she’d thought it might be Rachel come home with an apology, an explanation and the blessed relief of everything returning to normal. Her expression fell, but she pulled the door open wide anyway. ‘Hi,’ she said politely. ‘Come in.’

  Christ, she had grown up all of a sudden! Becca hardly recognized her. Still in her school uniform, although barefoot, Mabel was nearly as tall as Becca now, with grey eyes like her mum and a turquoise streak in her long fair hair, her ears pierced twice on both sides and nails bitten down to the quick. Her black pleated skirt was hitched up wonkily with an obvious bulge at the top where she’d rolled the waistband over, and there was ink on her sleeves. This was not quite the cute little hair-in-bunches poppet that Becca had been expecting.

  The cream-painted hall was generously wide, with an oatmeal carpet spreading before them and up a staircase on the left. It was all very tasteful, of course: a huge gilt-edged mirror on one wall, black and white family portraits on another, shoes tumbled tidily into a wicker basket. Look, Becca, this is how grown-ups live, she thought, trying to banis
h her mean, jealous thoughts as she stepped in and hugged her niece. ‘Hi, lovey. I take it she’s not back then?’ she asked. Hmmm. Disconcerting. Becca had been so certain that Rachel would have turned up in the time it took her to drive along the hideously slow Worcester Road, her mood had become grumpier and grumpier with the conviction that this would all be a misunderstanding, a false alarm. Now that she was here and her assumptions had been confounded, she was slightly at a loss for what else to say.

  Before Mabel could reply, there came a hopeful shout from upstairs. ‘Is it Mummy?’

  A pyjama-clad boy appeared at the top of the stairs, thumb in mouth, clutching the banister as he stared down. Luke: all dark tousled hair, cheekbones and skinny limbs. He clearly wasn’t quite as advanced as his sister in terms of social niceties because as soon as he clocked Becca, his shoulders slumped downwards and he trailed back to bed without so much as a hello. Fair enough.

  ‘Hi, Luke,’ Becca called after him as he vanished. She could hear the distant scraping of a violin being practised elsewhere in the house – that must be Scarlet, she deduced. She glanced at Mabel, who shrugged, looking awkward.

  ‘No, she’s not back yet,’ the girl confirmed. ‘He’s a bit freaked out.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He’s been totally obsessed with people dying ever since the lady next door pegged it. Keeps saying he thinks Mum’s died too, over and over, like he’s possessed or something. Which is obviously, like, really cheery and just what we want to hear right now. Yay.’

  Becca smiled briefly at her niece’s sarcasm but for the first time since Sara’s phone call, she felt a prickle of fear crawl up her spine. It was almost eight o’clock in the evening now and it seemed very odd that there was still no word from her sister. Should I call the police? the woman over the road had said, before wittering on about kidnapping – and now Luke seemed to think his mum had died. Becca felt bad now for not taking the whole thing more seriously herself, for driving over grudgingly, feeling cross about her lost job and petrol money. For Rachel to have been missing this long, and with no explanatory text or phone call, seemed seriously out of character. Something must have gone wrong.