The Secret Notebook Read online

  Maybe it wasn’t that strange, really. The peace was liberating, as was the sense of being in her escapist heaven – close to the sea – and the feeling that she was still close to her nan was always present. There was another relief that left her feeling a bit guilty, too. She was relieved to have stepped away from her West Hampstead home. It would help her to put her sorrow at Rufus dying into better perspective. A change of surroundings, albeit for the worst reason possible, offered an unexpected comfort.

  She paused at the end of the driveway, letting her gaze travel over the redbrick bungalow: its wide tarmacked drive, side lawn bordered by a mixture of weeds and glorious pads of purple and white aubretia, lavender bushes and heather contained within a low brick front wall.

  She made a mental note to do some weeding soon.

  The door number was displayed beside the front bay window and picked out in white against a varnished oval of tree trunk. Izzie remembered how Grandpop had carved out the numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’ in the slice of trunk before painting them white.

  At around nine years old, she’d sat on a footstool in the back of his garage watching the sweet-smelling wood shavings fall and bounce off the concrete floor; she’d announced confidently to her grandpop that they looked ‘like curls’. He’d smiled at her and asked her to bring the dustpan and brush to ‘sweep those curls up’.

  Relishing the memory, she eased the key from her pocket and moved to the front door, which was actually along the drive on the side of the bungalow and had a tall window off to one side. As she turned the key, the wave of precious, happy memories, the familiar fragrance of muted flowers and the fact that the property was now hers struck her in one huge gulping rush.

  Eyes streaming, nose running, she thought, Oh God, I’d rather have you both back, but then allowed that thought to alter in her mind to one of, I’m so grateful you were mine; I’m so happy I was yours.

  Whilst making herself a cup of tea, Izzie phoned her friend and neighbour in West Hampstead to let him know her rough plans. She told him she was considering staying in the bungalow for several months. That thought alone soothed her, as did her neighbour’s reaction.

  ‘No problem!’ Vinnie said, ‘I’ll keep an eye on the house here, put the mail out of sight.’

  ‘The key to the letter cage is just on the shelf beside the front door.’ Izzie grimaced, ‘I meant to remove it, just never got around to it.’

  Vinnie laughed, ‘It’s been there for years, since the eighties when Rufus had a mail chewing pup! I can take a screwdriver round and take it off if you like? It’ll only take a few minutes?’

  ‘Oh, that would be great, especially since I may well be here for the rest of the year, Vinnie, there’s such a lot to be done.’

  Even that news didn’t faze her stoic neighbour.

  ‘It’s no bother, Izzie. We’re both at the end of a phone if there’s any concerns – I can easily let you know.’

  Before ending the call, they agreed that if Izzie needed to return to West Hampstead for any reason, she could easily jump on a train for a visit.

  She phoned Eddie, her boss at DAS – Design, Admin and Secretarial, the agency she had freelanced for, to let him know she was in Blackpool for the foreseeable future.

  ‘Good to hear from you, Izzie!’ Eddie added that she should take as much time as she needed, and when she was ready to take on work again, she could do so remotely if she wished, whilst staying up north.

  She also reconnected with her work friends through phone calls. They caught up amidst tears and giggles and promises to keep in touch.

  Then Izzie grabbed a little notepad and plonked herself at the kitchen table to make a rough list on how to tackle updating the décor, something she’d regularly thought she would love to do.

  Currently, everything clashed colour wise or had a pattern – just the way Nan had liked it. Slightly nervous that she would lose the sense of connection with her grandparents if she decorated to her own taste, which was much less, well, patterned, Izzie decided she would take photographs first and make a record of the bungalow before she made any alterations. She also decided to use the loft room – which Grandpop had converted many years ago especially for her – as her bedroom and office. That would leave her free to work on clearing the rest of the bungalow and still have somewhere to disappear to without too much dust and chaos; and it would mean she could close the doors on wherever she was working.

  The loft had a drop-down ladder that rested in the hallway, and looking at it now, Izzie remembered that when she’d been naughty – which was regularly, according to her mother – Nan and Grandpop would threaten to put her in the loft and take the ladder away.

  The thought made her chuckle quietly. The pair of them always had a twinkle in their eyes – especially when they tried to tell her off. She always believed the threat to be her mother’s, not her grandparents’.

  Izzie photographed all the rooms, pausing to take pictures of all Nan’s individual treasures. There was a set of shelves, nestled at the side of the chimney breast, where Nan had always put her favourite bits and bobs. There were photographs of Izzie’s dad and herself, Grandpop and Nan, and one of their wedding day – taken when they were laughing and Nan held her daffodils in the air – all in free standing heavy frames. ‘I couldn’t throw them, Izzie,’ she’d told her, ‘they were too joyous to go flinging over my shoulder!’

  Photographing, hesitating, remembering – it all took Izzie much longer than she’d imagined it would. But then, there was no hurry, she reasoned, and savoured the task. She felt so much love here in the memories.

  One of Nan’s treasures was a little bowl that Izzie had made from dried penne pasta; it was a rough hexagonal shape, built up on a cardboard base and painted bright blue, a piece of red ribbon threaded through the top layer of pasta and tied in a bow. It had been a rainy day make and holding it, photographing it took Izzie right back to working on it at the kitchen table – kneeling up on the chair, working on a sheet of newspaper, armed with a small pile of pasta and a tube of glue, a tester pot of bright blue paint and a length of red ribbon. ‘How about making me something for my special shelf?’ Nan had asked, and Izzie remembered how excited she’d been at that prospect.

  The dark red rose petals from the garden that Nan had packed into the blue pasta bowl spilt out, spilt their scent… Izzie realised how true it was that smells could evoke the most powerful memories.

  The dish looked so simple and yet had taken hours to make. Maybe, she thought, she would put this aside, keep it. It twisted her insides to think of throwing it away, and there was no way that a charity shop would want to take a very dodgy but much-loved pasta bowl… ‘Maybe I could use it for paper clips,’ she whispered, popping it on top of the cream tiled mantelpiece. How typical of Nan that she would keep a gift so childishly made amongst her other most special treasures.

  As she worked, Izzie thought she’d get an album especially for the bungalow pictures, and write little notes about some of the photographs so that she could have the best of the memories, without having to physically keep everything. It was hard though – the temptation was to keep so much.

  She hadn’t thought there would be much to sort out at her nan’s bungalow. Every visit for the past few years, her nan had directed Izzie to parcel up this and take that to the local charity shop. Now Izzie understood why.

  There wasn’t too much but there was a lot more than she’d thought.

  She tackled the rooms systematically, ignoring the large kitchen at the back of the bungalow for now and concentrating on clearing the lounge first.

  She would keep a recliner chair and the two-seater leather settee and the ‘all mod-cons telly,’ as Nan had called it, mainly because it had a remote control. The large upright armchairs and heavy coffee table could go to the local charity shop – they’d know her well pretty soon – and a phone call secured their pickup later in the week.

  Deciding to begin by clearing knick-knacks from the fireplac
e and wrapping them in newspaper, Izzie paused as she held a cast iron, crocodile-shaped nutcracker that was over a foot long. It was in two halves, and the bottom jaw was moved by lifting the tail.

  Once, when she was very little, Nan had been looking after not only Izzie, but also a neighbour’s child, a boy of about five years old from across the road, whilst his mum went to the dentist. ‘Just for an hour,’ she remembered the neighbour saying.

  The two of them had played with building blocks on the rug because it was too wet to play in the back yard and Grandpop was having an afternoon nap, feet propped on the step of the tiled fireplace.

  Izzie had gone to get them both a biscuit from the kitchen – they’d made some with Nan earlier – and when she came back into the lounge, she found that the little boy, Timothy, had jiggled Grandpop’s big toe into the crocodile’s jaws, and she saw him leap into the air to jump on the tail. Izzie had squealed as Grandpop’s toe was crushed in the jaws.

  Her squeal was nothing compared to the noise Grandpop had made as he shot upright out of his chair to standing in less than a second. ‘Yeoooooow!’

  Izzie grimaced at the vivid memory – she’d never heard her Grandpop swear either before or since but on that occasion, she’d heard some new words … and was told by Nan that she must never repeat them. Ever.

  Nan had ushered Izzie and Timothy into the kitchen, distracting them with biscuits whilst she got ice on Grandpop’s toe, and it wasn’t long before Izzie and Timothy had heard laughter from the front room.

  Izzie learned some time later that Grandpop’s toenail had gone black with bruising, but there wasn’t any serious damage.

  The crocodile had disappeared onto a high shelf in the hallway cupboard for many years after that, reappearing only when there were no toe-cracking youngsters around anymore.

  It wasn’t easy, Izzie thought, to get rid of knick-knacks that had such powerful memories attached, but she took a deep breath and wrapped the cast iron crocodile in newspaper, popping it in a bag whilst she reminded herself that that was why she’d photographed every single item.

  She slid some newspaper-wrapped ornaments into an ancient string shopping bag and laid it in the hallway; she could carry a bag or two up to Cleveleys – the nearest town centre – most days, it’d be a good excuse to get some of that potent sea air.

  ‘No one’s breathed that air before you do,’ Grandpop used to say.

  Because her nan had been ninety-six, had outlived Grandpop by ten years and had appeared content to go, the sadness Izzie felt was all for herself and there was a strange ease in that. Nan always said that she’d had a good life despite having lived through the war, life in a boarding house and multiple recessions. And she always spoke with warmth and a twinkle in her eyes when talking about her much-loved husband.

  As she continued to dust then wrap ornaments and books before packing them into easy-to-carry bags, Izzie let the memories embrace her whilst she worked, small bursts of quiet laughter escaping her when she thought about things like how she’d believed her granddad when he told her that they had to sweep the dead cowboys out of the back of their TV at the end of the night back when he was younger… She’d been about seven years old and part horrified, part fascinated. But it never occurred to her at the time that the story wasn’t true.

  The rat-a-tat-tat on the door knocker just under a week later made Izzie straighten up from where she was sanding the skirting board.

  ‘Just a minute!’ she called out, blowing dust from her face.

  She opened the door to find Justin on the step.

  ‘Justin? I – I didn’t know you were back.’ She mentally shook herself to stop her mind from flying back in time, fighting the urge to leap into his arms so he could swing her around the way he used to when they’d been apart for more than an hour or two.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ Whilst she spoke, a small smile tilted his mouth at one corner.

  Izzie froze in place, finding it hard to breathe. Was the fizzing effect he had on her visible?

  His dark blond hair had been tousled by the breeze and his clear hazel-green eyes closed a little against the bright afternoon sun. He wore a soft, tan leather jacket, khaki T-shirt and dark jeans. The combination was powerful, sexy; she fought that thought.

  Unsuccessfully.

  ‘I won’t, thanks – I’m on my way out to pick something up for Mum and Dad—’ he indicated with his thumb in the direction of next-door ‘—so thought I’d check in, see if you fancy eating out tonight and taking a bit of a break?’

  ‘Yes.’ Why? Why did she say that?

  She wanted to recant and say no, because, well – was she forgiving him by saying yes? Justin was quicker to respond.

  ‘Great! I’ll call back in a couple of hours, then. We could walk into Cleveleys?’

  ‘Okay.’ Izzie nodded and raised her hand in farewell as he made his way off down the driveway; she watched until he turned the corner of the avenue, out of sight.

  As she moved back indoors, she caught sight of her reflection in the full-length hallway mirror and was stunned to stillness. Her cheeks were pink, eyes over bright, and she could feel her pulse pounding a bit too quickly.

  She had on a shapeless, blue checked button-up of her nan’s, leggings, unwashed hair trapped in a clip, dust smeared on her forehead and shocking pink Marigolds with black fur round the top and a purple plastic bling ring. They were a joke pair she’d bought for Nan once, and she’d happily worn them and then hung them up with a dolly peg each time, in pride of place, she’d confided, as they made her feel glamorous.

  ‘Bit grim, Izzie.’ She gave a half laugh at her image and it occurred to her then that she hadn’t made an effort to look decent for ages; the thought of doing so tonight lifted her spirits. That Justin had just called round seemed a bit surreal. Had she really said yes to going out to eat with him?

  The flutter in her stomach began again and whilst she cleared up Izzie forced herself to test how she would feel had she said no. She decided she’d made the right choice – or rather, her mouth had. Yet, at the same time, that sense of past hurt began to bubble to the surface, fought with the part of herself that badly wanted to forgive and move on, and told her that forgiving him would be papering over the emotional crevice that would only come back to haunt her. Surely?

  After stacking her sanding tools to one side, she took a deep breath, and set the shower to run hot in order to soothe the unrest inside with the promise that Justin wasn’t going to hurt her again. Everything was different now. They had both moved on, gone their separate ways to live their own dreams during their time apart.

  That might not have happened if Justin had turned up that day.

  And so, she was going to make an effort to look good for herself this evening, not him.

  At least that’s what she told herself as she scrunched her unruly curls dry using the fabulous hair dryer she’d bought her nan last Christmas. ‘Almost blew my blinkin’ curls off,’ Nan had laughed and confided in Izzie that she used it to warm her hands when she didn’t want to put the heating on.

  After applying a touch of grey eye pencil and a flick of mascara for the first time in months – the sparse make-up that she had stowed away in her rucksack when she’d grabbed it in her haste to leave London – Izzie studied her reflection and thought she looked too pale. She remembered her nan telling her that back as a youngster, if she ran out of rouge, she’d pinched her cheeks to bring colour to them. She tried it and smiled at the mirror when it worked.

  ‘Thanks, Nan.’

  By the time she was dressed in a pair of straight legged jeans, sandals and a floaty deep blue top, time had moved quickly on.

  Her insides gave a nervous jump at the knock on the door. She finished dabbing on a touch of lip salve in front of the still steamed-up bathroom mirror before hurrying to open the front door.

  She was greeted by Justin’s familiar wonky smile, the colour in his cheeks raised from the brisk breeze. ‘Are you ready
to go, Izzie?’

  Grabbing her bag from the hat stand, she pulled the front door closed after her. ‘Yes, I’m hungry.’ She must be – especially if her roiling stomach was anything to go by.

  She knew it was more than that though, she was also struggling to push down the anger and upset she’d kept locked inside for so long. Her bubbling emotions asked, why? Why had he left her waiting? He hadn’t responded to her calls or texts; he’d simply ignored her.

  Yet for a reason she didn’t understand, she couldn’t just ask him why he hadn’t turned up that day. And even though so much had changed for them, and they were both very different people now, she still found him as knee-bucklingly good looking as ever. But it wasn’t just that, Izzie was sure she still felt that magnetic pull towards Justin, that bond that had once seen their lives so closely entwined. So closely entwined that they had made a pact to meet in August 2011, to travel from wherever they were – certain by that time they’d be ready to settle down.

  They walked towards the promenade, a gusting breeze and clamouring gulls negating the need for conversation. When they’d dated, they had never needed to talk all the time either.

  For the first time in almost six years, Izzie let herself peep closely at the deeply buried memory of that fateful day…

  After waving Nan away on a long weekend break, Izzie had taken her time, revelling in her preparations.

  She’d coaxed her hair so it fell in a tumble of curls, carefully applied hardly-there make-up, stepped into a handsewn yellow sundress she had spent all of her spare time making after work especially for the occasion – it had excitement sewn into every stitch. She had also prepared a delicious picnic of their favourite nibbles and packed a bottle of fizz and tumblers.

  As she’d left the bungalow, Izzie had known a delicious, building exhilaration, imagined she felt a little like a bride-to-be about to embark on her future with the love of her life…

  Justin had to have simply forgotten or been distracted by more important things; there couldn’t be any other reason. Distracted by the beautiful models he photographed most likely.