Alice’s Secret: A gripping story of love, loss and a historical mystery finally revealed. Lynne Francis
Rather than having it out with Charles it felt easier to do nothing. Instead, she brooded on the incident. She no longer looked forward to going into work each day and she was hardly aware of how insular she’d become. She found herself going through the motions of life, following her normal routines, but simply not engaging with them anymore. And soon it became easier to dodge invitations and shut herself away.
The Sunday when Alys, setting out to buy milk, realised that she hadn’t left the house or spoken to anyone all weekend, had provided a rare moment of clarity. It had pierced the fug of inertia that had descended upon her. She had decided there and then that the best thing to do was to leave work after all. She was bored in her job, she told herself – blocking out the fact that once upon a time she’d looked forward to each day in the office. She needed a change of scene. As the plan took shape in her mind, the original reasons were gradually buried, and before long she had convinced herself that boredom and restlessness were her only motivations.
Alys dragged herself out of her reverie, aware that the train had just pulled into a station. She forced herself to focus, looking for the name on the platform. It was Doncaster – they were well on the way. She people-watched from the window as the train waited there for a few minutes. A portly, balding gentleman in a suit drank from his polystyrene coffee cup, gazing intently down the tracks. He turned, and Alys caught a glimpse of an unexpected thin, greying ponytail. As the train pulled out, she saw local buses, the top decks filled with people, heading home after shopping. Who knew where to, or what awaited them there? At the next stop, Wakefield, a man stood in shorts and sunglasses, apparently oblivious to the rain and the fact that all those around him sported coats and umbrellas. Alys was intrigued by these little glimpses into other people’s worlds. Who were these people, and what were their lives like? It was a reminder that there were other lives apart from her own, equally filled with problems, challenges, achievements, boredom, and happiness.
She changed trains at Leeds, struggling to pull her case out of the rack. She found herself caught up in the confusion of what seemed to be rush hour, even though it was only four o’clock. The train for Northwaite was already standing at the platform, just a couple of carriages this time, heat belting out as though it was a winter’s day rather than early April. She took a seat near the door, calculating how many stations there were until her stop. Passengers got on, looked uncertain, asked Alys if they were on the right train. She hadn’t a clue, but smiled politely and tried to help.
Once the journey was under way, the elderly man across the aisle tried to draw Alys into conversation. She was guarded in her responses, then felt bad. This was Yorkshire, after all, not London. It was normal here to chat, to be interested in others and what they were up to. This was something she was going to need to embrace: all part of reinventing herself and beginning her new life.
The approach to Bradford held both mosques and mills. It seemed like an odd juxtaposition, the graceful exteriors and gleaming domes of the mosques standing out against the soot-blackened and forbidding Victorian architecture, smoke stacks and minarets paired. No sign of towering office blocks or cranes creating yet more high-rises: this was a landscape new to her. The train rested at the station for longer than usual and, with only a few stops to go now, Alys suddenly felt a flutter of apprehension. What had she done?
Rain was still coursing down the train windows when they pulled into Alys’s stop. She heaved her suitcase onto the platform. She had received a text from her aunt on the train, saying that she’d send someone to pick her up and that there was no need to get a taxi. Alys headed into the car park and looked around. She hadn’t thought to ask for any further details, she’d been so caught up in her thoughts. She’d have to call her aunt and find out who she should be looking for.
She dug into her rucksack, feeling around. She couldn’t locate her phone. ‘Damn’, Alys cursed under her breath, panic rising in case she’d left it on the train. She rested the rucksack on top of her case and began to dig deeper. It was then that a battered Land Rover, the old, green variety, roared into the car park, and pulled up beside her.
‘You must be Alys,’ said the driver, leaning across and flinging open the passenger door, without switching off the engine. ‘Hop in.’
Alys was rather taken aback. ‘How do you know I’m Alys?’ she demanded suspiciously. The driver was a man of about her own age, casually dressed in jeans and a jumper, and apparently oblivious to the weather.
He looked her up and down, taking in her rain-soaked hair, the escaped strands which were plastered to her cheeks for once, rather than springing wildly in all directions, the crêpe-de-Chine dress only partially covered by a rather horrid red-and-grey cagoule that had once belonged to her brother, and the army-type boots.
‘Your Aunt Moira gave me a pretty accurate description when she asked me to collect you,’ he said, with a wide grin.
Alys, feeling her cheeks redden, and trying to hide her embarrassment, attempted to pull her suitcase closer to the Land Rover. There was a grinding noise as one of the wheels caught in the paving stones. She tugged impatiently. The suitcase pulled free of the paving, but left a wheel embedded there and keeled over. Her open rucksack flew off the top of the case and upended itself, scattering her possessions everywhere. Alys watched, horrified, as her phone – clearly not left on the train after all – skidded along the ground and came to a halt perilously close to the grille over a drain.
‘Oh crap!’ Alys bent down and scrabbled around, trying to gather all her belongings before the rain soaked everything, stuffing them haphazardly back into the rucksack.
‘I’m Rob, by the way,’ said her driver, who’d now hopped out of the Land Rover, leaving the engine still running, and was trying to help Alys gather her things. She rather wished he wouldn’t – the emptying of the rucksack had exposed a muddle of dirty tissues, receipts, scribbled shopping lists, half-full packets of chewing gum and sweets, coins, a pine cone and a less-than-clean comb.
‘What about this?’ Rob held up a letter, now crumpled and damp, by his fingertips.
‘Oh!’ Alys almost snatched it from him. ‘I meant to post it before I left. Is there a postbox here?’
‘Maybe you should let it dry out for a bit first? If it’s important.’ Rob seemed to have judged from her reaction that it was. ‘Here,’ he took it back from her and flattened it out on the vehicle’s dashboard. ‘You can post it up in Northwaite later.’
He turned his attention to her suitcase, heaving it into the back of the Land Rover. ‘I see you’ve come to stay for a bit,’ he remarked, looking back at Alys over his shoulder. ‘Good job you didn’t try to fly up – they’d have charged you excess baggage!’
‘It’s mainly books,’ muttered Alys, on the defensive. It was partly true. Moira had asked for several cookery books for inspiration, and she’d tossed in some travel guides for good measure, so she could start planning for her trip.
‘Hope you haven’t been waiting long,’ added Rob, climbing back into the driver’s seat and patting the passenger’s seat to encourage Alys to get in. ‘The battery was flat, so I had to get a push down the hill and hope for the best. That’s why the engine’s running, just in case.’ And with that he slammed the Land Rover into gear and they were off. The letter to Tim sat on the dashboard, an uncomfortable reminder to Alys of something that she needed to resolve.
She settled herself rather gingerly in her seat, aware that it looked as though it might have held a dog or a muddy jacket until recently. She wrinkled her nose: yes, there was a definite aroma of wet dog. Alys looked away, gazing out of the window. The hill out of the town looked nearly vertical. Rob obviously knew the road well – he drove speedily but carefully. He didn’t say another word and Alys began to wonder whether she should try to make conversation. She looked at him surreptitiously out of the corner of her eye, registering wavy brown hair, a checked shirt topped with a ribbed navy sweater (holey at the elbows) and broad hands (none too