Secrets We Keep
by
Faith Hogan
Blog Tour
It's my turn to host the Blog Tour for Secrets We Keep by Faith Hogan. Below, I have an extract for you. Enjoy...
Extract
Sometimes crossroads appear in
the last place you expect Athem. Kate Hunt knew, as the Atlantic winter air dug
hungrily into her bones, that she was standing at one now. The beach was empty,
save for an occasional reluctant dog walker; certainly, she was the only
holidaymaker. Was she a holidaymaker? She was staying with her great-aunt Iris
and her husband Archie in their quaint hotel as far away from her real life in
London as it was possible to get. Even if it was only an hour by plane to the
west of Ireland, Kate felt like she was in a different world. Iris was her only
real family now, unless you counted her mother and well, she and Adaline had
never been close.
Ballytokeep did not get
many tourists outside the summer months; none at all at the end of December.
Kate booked the break on Christmas night. It was a whim, she needed to get
away, to jump off the treadmill her life had become, just to breathe. Since
they met at Pamela’s funeral, Iris sent a Christmas card each year. Just a
card. ‘Hope you’re well,
thinking of you, love if you had time to pop across,’ it was the kind of thing people said.
Probably, you never took them up, but Kate saw it as a sign, a lighthouse in a
vast ocean – maybe a place, or people, to call her own. Alone in her London
flat, it felt like the whole world was sharing the holidays without her. The
city outside twinkled with festive cheer. She convinced herself for so long
that it didn’t matter. It was a time for drunks, rows and disappointments and,
for almost a decade, she managed to ignore the silly cheerfulness around her.
This year, she’d cracked open a bottle of champagne, a gift from work, had it made her maudlin?
Rumour had it; her boss, Lyndon Tansey had just bought a winery in South
Africa. He brought in a crate of white and red for their Christmas drinks and
they’d all got nicely sozzled. Maybe, Kate thought that Christmas night, as she
eyed the half-finished bottle of champagne, maybe that was what had made her
feel restless, as though she was missing something. While other people were
buying vineyards, she was wading through divorce papers for the rich and
famous.
She booked it on a
whim. Now, she was pleased she’d come here to this antiquated little place that
was too big to be a village, too small to be a town. Ballytokeep, for all the
desertion of the summer trade, was a place like no other she had ever been to.
It was built on a stony hill, a picture postcard of gaudily painted shopfronts
and houses looking down to where the powerful ocean swept up to the weathered
promenade. The sea, with its rolling surf whispering slowly and determinedly up
the golden sand, seemed to promise the cleaning rejuvenation she so badly
craved. Far off in the distance, the towers of a Norman castle keep rose high
into the skyline and Kate knew she would visit here again to sit beneath its stoic
turret. She loved the little hotel; her room the only one with a guest, peeped
out of the centre of the Victorian building. The view was spectacular, small
blue and white fishing boats bobbed on the icy waves that beat against the old
harbour.
In London, they’d call
Hartley’s Guesthouse boutique, shabby-chic or maybe bohemian. If the place was
a little faded, its chintz too threadbare to be fashionable, its varnishes
dulled with age, it was no less charming for all of that. Here, it was what it
was; there was no pretension about the Victorian building with all its original
features and impressive views.
On New Year’s Eve they
stood looking out across the harbour, just the three of them and toasted the
year ahead.
‘To family,’ Archie said
and Kate knew she had done the right thing in coming here. The night air was
fresh, it seemed that every lighthouse in the distance might wink across the
blue-black ocean waves. If Kate could wish for anything, it was that she could
have these people close forever.
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