The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

and skinny, bespectacled with a small goatee, he didn’t exude any obvious raw sexual energy, but there was something in his quiet, easy-going manner that had hooked her ambitious, outspoken friend.

Former friend? Holly was staring at the TV screen again, her head resting in one hand, as though she could flick it off ‘pause’ through sheer willpower alone.

‘Wanna join us?’ Dev asked, the remote poised in his hand. ‘It’s about a paedophile in the seventies who abducted this girl – twice. Twice! He’d befriended her parents so, the first time, okay, they could be forgiven for not seeing what he was. But the second time . . .? Come on, dude!’

The word quivered in the room for a moment; Dev really wasn’t someone who could pull off the word ‘dude’.

‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .’ Holly muttered.

‘Thanks, Dev, but we’ve got early starts tomorrow.’ Tara gave an apologetic smile. She couldn’t stand here for much longer without Holly sniffing something was off between her and Alex. Her friend had unerring instincts and lived by her hunches, be it for choosing the Grand National winner in the annual sweepstake, predicting the Oscars or diagnosing rare conditions. She was rarely wrong – which was precisely why her words on the Serpentine bridge had been so bruising. ‘You still coming to Sophie’s this weekend?’

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I?’ Holly replied, looking aggrieved by the question. Sophie, who’d been in halls with them in the first year, was celebrating her twenty-first with a girls’ weekend at an Airbnb near her parents’ farm in Shropshire; it had been in the diary for weeks.

‘No reason. Just checking. I’ll drive, shall I?’ It was a rhetorical question and she instantly regretted it – they both knew perfectly well Holly didn’t have a car – but nerves were making her jumpy.

‘Sure.’ Holly gave a resentful shrug. ‘What time do you wanna leave?’

‘Eight?’ They were both answering every question with another question. Holly was on edge too.

‘Cool. Night then.’ Holly’s voice was clipped and dismissive.

Tara swallowed. ‘. . . Night.’

‘Night, guys,’ Alex said, raising a cheery hand back to Dev.

Tara walked down the narrow corridor to her room. Space was so pinched, she could easily place both palms flat on opposite walls at the same time and tonight, for the first time, she felt the gulf between her family life and this one. Was that because she was seeing it through Alex’s eyes? He’d come straight from a Mayfair townhouse to this. The contrast was marked.

He shut the door behind him with a soft click. She was aware they were both trying to be extra-quiet and not betray their discord to Holly and Dev, as though it in some way undermined them. A chink in the armour after all.

She sat on the bed and stared back at him, her heart pounding both from the conversation she’d just had and the one she was about to have. Alex remained with his back to the door; his hands were pinned behind him and the pose struck her as boyish and young. He was such a clash of contradictions – all guileless innocence at one turn, passionate orator at another; puppy-dog eyes, wolfish grin. How was anyone ever supposed to stay angry at him? Say no to him? But then she remembered what he’d just put her through.

‘So?’ The word was hard and accusatory.

‘Twig, I’m sorry. It just didn’t seem like the right time.’

The laugh escaped her body like a jet of steam. She’d had a wretched evening, sitting in apprehensive silence, waiting for him to ask for a private moment with her father, trying to catch his eye over the dinner table as the minutes and then hours slid past and still no mention was made . . . ‘Not the right time? You were right there, in the same room as my father. What more did you need?’

‘More time! That’s what I needed.’

‘Why? You’re not marrying him, are you?’ She felt close to tears, disappointment flooding her bones that the big moment she’d been preparing for all week had simply . . . not transpired. She had felt distracted and nervous for days, and for what? To watch her father and fiancé fall into some weird mutual love-in where Alex had seemingly forgotten the entire reason for their get-together?

He walked across the room, but her body language was closed and he stopped a few metres short. ‘Look, your father’s not like . . . most fathers. He’s just not.’ He pinned her with a look that said he wasn’t being unreasonable. ‘I didn’t get it before, what you were trying to tell me, but I do now and there’s no point beating about the bush – he’s a very rich, powerful man who is going to be protective of his daughter.’

‘So?’

‘So I need to get to know him better. I don’t want him thinking that I’m with you because of . . . his money.’ He looked exasperated, flustered.

‘He wouldn’t think that! He knows I’m cautious.’

‘Yes, he knows you are – but he doesn’t know me! It’s about self-respect, Ta; I don’t want him thinking I’m on an easy ticket here. Look, it wasn’t till I walked into that house that I got the “scale” of what you’d been trying to tell me. I mean, I know you didn’t want me to be ambushed, but nothing can really prepare you for that.’ His eyes were wide at the memory. ‘And if I’d just strutted in there and asked for your hand . . . well, why the hell would he agree? He doesn’t know me from Adam.’

He was right, of course. Why would he? It was precisely the question she’d asked herself in the study. Looked at objectively from her parents’ standpoint, they’d been together just four months; it wouldn’t have crossed their minds – not even her mother’s! – that she had gone over there to tell them she was getting married and forfeiting the career for which she had fought so hard. And her father had referred to Alex as her ‘friend’, she remembered; he really hadn’t got it at all.