The Secret Notebook Read online

  Meeting up with him had been the most important thing to Izzie, something etched in stone, the focus of her future; and she would have walked from London to Blackpool to keep their pact if she’d had to. It clearly hadn’t been as important to him though.

  Her gut now seemed to squeeze painfully as they neared the promenade. She forced the emotions back down into Pandora’s box, deep inside, tamping the lid down hard. The effort of locking them down again was intense.

  The sea breeze blew fresh against her cheeks as they reached the prom, and Izzie raised her face to inhale the sea air, breathing deeply and coming to a halt overlooking the beach, a wide rim of sand darkened by the outgoing tide.

  Justin moved beside her and when she heard him take a deep breath too, she almost – almost – leaned against him as she would have in the past. Shaking herself into the present, she wrapped her arms around her middle, and rubbed her upper arms beneath the floaty top to quell the urge to touch him that sprang from nowhere, or, more accurately, sprang from somewhere in the past.

  ‘Are your mum and dad having some work done?’ She’d heard some loud banging earlier and had assumed it was workmen his folks had in.

  ‘They wanted the back window out and some French doors put in to look out on the garden. Mum said you should come over and have a look and a brew with them when you’re free.’

  ‘Always such a welcome at your mum’s.’ Izzie smiled. ‘Thanks, tell her I will.’

  ‘How’s things going with you, Izzie?’

  Bloody marvellous.

  Thank God she didn’t have a think bubble over her head flagging up how she really felt. By unspoken mutual consent, they began walking slowly again, along the prom.

  ‘It feels easier than it did sorting things out after Rufus died, probably because Nan and I spent some time every visit going through her stuff.’

  She touched Nan’s rose-gold locket, which hung around her neck. Nan had given it to her on one such visit and Izzie smiled at the memory as they strolled along the prom overlooking the grey, sunlit sea, tips of white that rose then disappeared. They came to a standstill again, the evening breeze salty and warm, the gulls cawing, the tingle in the wind and the whole sea front seeming so familiar to her.

  Like home. The perfect place to heal before moving on with her life.

  ‘If you need help moving things, I’m here for a few days before I’m taking off again.’

  They both turned to look at one another at the same time.

  Izzie’s breath caught when Justin’s eyes met hers, his pupils dilated and a slight smile twitched at the corner of his mouth; in response, her insides tangibly squeezed. She desperately wanted to keep the lid on her pain. She also desperately wanted to know what he was thinking…

  Attraction and heartache twisted together like the strands of a silk rope.

  She took a deep breath; it wasn’t easy to stay upset when he offered to help.

  Was it guilt making him offer these kind gestures?

  What was the harm in having him help?

  She could use him like he had obviously used her – but somehow that thought didn’t ring true…

  ‘Thanks. It’d be a help when it comes to handing stuff down the ladder.’

  Gulls cried loudly as they circled overhead, their racket reminding Izzie and Justin they were on their way somewhere…

  ‘As much as I love Nan’s bungalow, it feels great to escape for a while.’ Izzie sipped the red wine, taking a moment to study Justin whilst he concentrated on cutting his steak. Soft music played in the background and the lights were dimmed a little. The restaurant had a cosy, amber glow that glistened in the highlights of his sun-lightened, dark blond hair. He’d always reminded her of a surfer: tanned, mussed hair touched with pale gold highlights, and a constant five-o clock shadow dusting his firm jaw.

  ‘I can imagine.’ He looked up, gave a small smile, picked up his own glass and clinked it against Izzie’s. ‘We always did enjoy escaping.’ His smile sank without a trace; pain flashed in his eyes briefly, almost as if he realised that he’d unintentionally brought up their shared past. He looked away from her, then downward, deliberately focusing on his meal instead.

  Pain stabbed Izzie unexpectedly at his words, that familiar sense of something lost welling up.

  Why did he think it was fine to break her heart and offer no explanation? Never any letters, any word to let her know why he hadn’t turned up?

  Maybe, she thought, setting down her glass, he had forgotten that part of their past. Maybe it meant nothing to him, especially once his celebrity work began to pour in.

  If only it had been that easy for her. Instead, life with Rufus ensured she rarely looked back at her time spent with Justin.

  What she hadn’t realised when she’d cut off her feelings, was that they hadn’t miraculously disappeared as she’d subconsciously assumed, they simply remained to be faced another day.

  Unfinished business.

  The following day, the hallway at her nan’s bungalow – her bungalow now, she reminded herself – was stacked with things to go to charity shops, lowered down from where they had been stored in the loft room which was now much clearer. Izzie was closer to having her loft haven sorted, ready to work and sleep in whilst she decorated the rest.

  Justin called up to her that he was going to start taking the stack of boxes and bags out to the car. ‘I’ll run these boxes to the charity shop, shall I Izzie, before they close? Should get at least half of them moved today.’

  He added that he’d ask his folks if they wanted anything whilst he was out and reminded Izzie that his mum had made a casserole they could eat whenever they wanted.

  ‘Shall I pick up the grub when I get back?’

  ‘Sounds good, thanks. Take the key off the side, Justin. And tell your mum she’s a star!’ She almost added and so are you, but stopped herself – she wasn’t sure why, and she was equally unsure why she wasn’t liking herself for holding back her gratitude.

  It made her feel petty, ungrateful. Much like she’d been with her mum and stepdad as a teenager. An awkward feeling. Maybe it was time she accepted that she and Justin could be friends – or at least kind of friends – despite their past? Could she stop the rushes of emotion? Get them under control enough to be just friends? It certainly didn’t seem to be bothering Justin that they’d been lovers – more than lovers actually, two youngsters in love so deeply, but knowing in their ambitious hearts that they needed to follow their individual dreams before settling down with one another.

  Hearing him drive away, she forced herself to put that aside and think about the job in hand.

  Every inch of the bungalow held Molly’s giant personality in its fabric.

  Heavily patterned wallpaper, swirly carpets and a kitchen straight from the 1950s. It had been Molly’s idea of perfection.

  She’d always batted away Izzie’s ideas of bringing the décor up to date, saying that there’d been enough years of plain and drab in wartime. She wanted – and enjoyed – colour and large patterns in her life. It doesn’t matter if they clash, Nan always said, colour and patterns make me happy.

  Izzie couldn’t – and didn’t – argue with Nan’s reasoning.

  Climbing the ladder to the loft, Izzie wanted to do another check around to see if anything else needed ferrying downstairs.

  Smiling and arching backward in a stretch, Izzie looked around the wide-open space of the large loft room.

  Her bed, the one that had been hers to use any time she visited and then permanently when she moved in at fifteen, needed to remain for some time yet. A sharp pang took her breath for a moment, as she remembered Justin and herself lying there and kissing…

  She had thought she would melt; she’d been seventeen, Justin eighteen, almost nineteen, and they’d nipped up into the loft when they were home alone, Nan and Grandpop having gone to a long birthday lunch with a pal.

  That had been right at the beginning of when their friendship became something
more. Something far more.

  Snapping herself back into work mode to stop any further memories of Justin, she smiled at the sunset seascape painted by her granddad that she had always loved – one she’d hung above the bed beneath the sloped ceiling.

  She had sat with him at the back of the bungalow in the sun lounge that ran all across the rear of the bungalow watching, spellbound, whilst he painted.

  At the grand age of eleven, she had her own special paper to paint on and attempted to copy how Grandpop painted. He’d showed her how to mix colours, how to put a white froth on the blue sea at the shoreline, but when they were done, she’d announced that Grandpop’s painting was better than hers. She’d asked if she could have it for her upstairs bedroom and he’d said only if he could have hers for the kitchen. She’d grinned, well aware she’d got the better deal but wondering if Grandpop realised that.

  The painting was going to go in the box of keepsake treasures she absolutely could not part with. Ever. She reached up to unhook the painting, intending to dust the narrow blackwood frame and put it back in place.

  ‘Oh!’ sprang from her as the painting came away from the wall.

  Behind the roughly A3 size painting, a rectangle had been cut in the boarding and a small door fashioned and held in place with duct tape.

  Curious, Izzie carefully set the painting down beside her bed and eased the door open slowly to reveal a shelf in the eaves resting against the outer brick wall. A package, wrapped in layers of old newspaper and tied around with string, sat on the shelf.

  ‘What’s this?’ She wriggled the package out of the opening, years of dust rising off it. A shaft of light through the roof window lit the motes as they rose into the air, making her sneeze. Tiny fragments of cement, loosened from the bricks and mortar over the years, scattered from the folds of wrapping, showering her legs and the bed she knelt on.

  Moving to sit on the rug on the floor beside the bed, Izzie slowly peeled away the newspaper to reveal a lovely green notebook.

  She ran her fingertips slowly over the worn green textured cover, pausing over a small, embossed sprig of yellow flowers decorating the top left-hand side. The book felt as if it held more pages than it was meant to, the reason becoming clear when she opened it up to reveal the stiff inner flap that was covered in an array of what looked like mementos. A border of cream and pink flowered wallpaper formed a strip along the top of the page, a deep, neatly cut border of newspaper reinforced the bottom of the page and bore what looked like ink drawings of dandelions and daisies. Colourful flowers had been cut from magazines and stuck on the newspaper too. A stylised ink sketch of a playing card, the Queen of Hearts, had been drawn on the inside of a cigarette box and stuck on the newspaper border. There was also a piece of card that held a beautifully embroidered flower, what Izzie presumed to be a cinema ticket, and, on a scrap of card that could have come from the inside of a pack of cigarettes, an intricate pencil sketch of a beautiful young woman, curls framing her features, a slight smile playing on her mouth…

  ‘Nan.’ She traced the beautiful, delicate sketch. She could hardly bear to drag her eyes away from the drawing. The sheer care with which it had been crafted was breath-taking. What a gift, to be able to capture the essence of a face in such a simple sketch. Moved to capture the lovely moment herself, Izzie grabbed her phone and immortalised the sketch with her own photograph, before broadening the lens’s scope and photographing the entire page. Turning the book over in her fingertips, she touched the edge of the pages, it looked as though extra pages had been trimmed to fit and fixed in place at the back, maybe when more were needed. The pages gaped very slightly because more mementos had been attached to the inside pages. She turned back to the inner front cover once more, fingers gently tracing along the strip of newspaper, an invisible flap lifted unexpectedly.

  Questions crowded Izzie’s mind. Why was the book hidden away? Was it meant to be found? Why did the discovery make her heart trip faster?

  A deep pink rose, cut with tremendous care from a magazine, also decorated the newspaper envelope. There was something inside, she realised. The envelope was very slightly raised, yet she only found the opening by running her finger along the paper. Izzie slid out the contents.

  It was a short letter.

  A huge spear of nervousness tingled through her with the realisation that it was a letter from Nan. Her handwriting had always been the same; small, neat and loopy, tilted slightly to the right.

  It felt like prying where maybe she shouldn’t and her fingers trembled slightly, not knowing what it was she had found. Was it private?

  Questions crowded her mind, but Izzie couldn’t just wrap the notebook up again and pretend she hadn’t found it. The lure of Nan’s words was greater than her prickling conscience. Yet, the enormity of reading someone else’s letter made her breath catch, made her hesitate.

  In the end, the enticement of potentially spending more time with her deeply loved Nan won the battle of conscience.

  Carefully, she flattened out the thin paper of the letter, eyes growing wide as she read:

  1946

  * * *

  I can’t tell a living soul what happened. There’s only one place I can tell the truth and that’s here in this notebook.

  * * *

  This began as a place to record my joy at meeting him, but over time it became somewhere I had to write everything down to help me cope with my life and keep my sanity. No one knows what is written in these pages. J and me, and that’s it.

  * * *

  I intend to keep it; it holds precious letters and memories. I intend to keep it for a while and read through it one last time before I burn it. That is my intention, but likely I won’t be able to part with it. There’s too much here that matters to me. To my beloved husband.

  * * *

  In the meantime, whilst I decide what to do, it’s a safe place to keep the secret. M.

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘The book …’ Nan’s whispered words when she’d struggled to speak.

  ‘Hidden … the attic … the picture.’

  Was this it? Izzie closed her eyes as she replayed her nan’s struggle to tell her about the book.

  Had she said any more? She didn’t think so.

  Her own response – ‘Don’t worry, whatever it is, I’ll sort it, Nan’ – had drawn a little, unmistakeable smile, a smile that Nan regarded Izzie’s hands as safe ones. It reassured her that Nan had wanted her to find this – and nobody else. She hugged the notebook to her chest, silently thanked her nan for trusting her with this – and effectively removing any guilt from her for being inquisitive.

  ‘I’m back, Izzie.’ The front door closed and Justin’s voice carried up into the loft. ‘Got our dinner here.’

  ‘Won’t be a minute.’

  Shaken back to the present, Izzie carefully slid the notebook into a clean pillowcase and called down to Justin. ‘Can I pass you something delicate?’

  ‘Sure. Just let me stick these plates on the table first. Be right back.’

  Whilst they ate the casserole, Izzie briefly filled Justin in on what was in the pillowcase.

  ‘It looks like a scrapbook, or diary, or maybe it’s a bit of both.’ She grimaced. ‘Crikey, if my mum had found it, it’d be in the recycling bin by now.’ That thought made Izzie gasp, that something so precious to her nan could have been thrown out without a second glance. So precious that it had been hidden away in a specially made hiding place, and had been carefully wrapped in newspaper and string to protect it against damage. It had been hidden in Izzie’s room, perhaps on purpose with the thought that Izzie would be the one to find it?

  ‘Nan worked in her stepmother’s boarding house in Blackpool during the war. But she was so straightforward and down to earth, I can’t imagine her having any deep, dark secrets.’

  ‘It was a different time, Izzie. What folks kept to themselves then likely wouldn’t shock anyone now.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  �
��I’d say so.’

  They finished eating, and as Justin stood to collect the plates and return them to his folks, he stretched out his back. ‘I’ll make a move now, Izzie, thanks for dinner. Dad wants me to sort out a dripping tap before I go home.’

  She laughed. ‘Thank your mum for our dinner, Justin! And thanks for your help today.’

  ‘Anytime.’ He gave her a smile that was off the sizzleometer and raked his fingers back through his dishevelled hair. ‘I’m working my way through their list of jobs in between my paid jobs. I’ve some work going on in my house, so it helps that I’m here and I can leave the builder to it during the day. He gives me a call and I pop back if he needs anything.’

  ‘You live nearby then?’

  ‘Just a couple of miles away.’ He paused at the front door, faced Izzie fully and for a moment she thought he was going to lean in and kiss her cheek – she could have sworn he leaned slightly towards her. Her breath caught and something akin to a rush of anticipation followed by disappointment assailed her as he straightened up and away, reaching for the door handle. She caught a fleeting expression in his green eyes – was it hurt? It was too fleeting to identify as pain for sure, but she felt it could be.

  ‘Justin…’

  He paused when she said his name.

  ‘Thanks for all your help, I really appreciate it.’ She smiled and watched as an answering smile curved his mouth, then wavered. Izzie felt spikes of adrenaline when his eyes met hers and he held her gaze as he spoke.

  ‘You’re welcome, Izzie.’

  She waved him away, briefly closing her eyes at the effort expended to keep him at arm’s length, to resist the lure of that sensual smile that had always had the ability to speed her pulse.