The Skylark's Secret Read online

  OTHER BOOKS BY FIONA VALPY:

  The Dressmaker’s Gift

  The Beekeeper’s Promise

  Sea of Memories

  The French for Love

  The French for Always

  The French for Christmas

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Fiona Valpy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542005159

  ISBN-10: 1542005159

  Cover design by Emma Rogers

  For the people of Loch Ewe,

  then and now.

  CONTENTS

  Start Reading

  Lexie, 1980

  Lexie, 1977

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1939

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1939

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1939

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1939

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1940

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1940

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1940

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1941

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1941

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1942

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1942

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1942

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1942

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1942

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1943

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1944

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1944

  Lexie, 1978

  Flora, 1944

  Lexie, 1979

  Flora, 1944

  Lexie, 1979

  Lexie, 1979

  Lexie, 1980

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  When I’m lonely, cridhe gaolach,

  Black the night or wild the sea

  By love’s light my foot finds

  The old pathway to thee.

  From ‘The Eriskay Love Lilt’, traditional Scottish song

  Lexie, 1980

  It’s one of those days, on the cusp of early summer, when the sky and the sea alike are awash with sunlight. Days like this are rare enough up here in the Scottish Highlands to be remarked upon and stored away in the memory, hoarded as talismans against the long darkness of the winter. I button Daisy into her coat and pull a woollen tammy over her curls. Even though there’s warmth in the sunshine, the wind on the hills above the croft can still nip noses and chill ears, turning them cherry pink. Then I buckle her into the carrier and hoist it on to my shoulders. She chuckles, loving the sensation of height, burying her fingers in my hair, and we set off up the path.

  Climbing steadily, leaving the waters of Loch Ewe behind us, my breath becomes more laboured as the path steepens, twisting through the pines alongside the burn that chatters and babbles companionably on its way down the brae. Finally, we emerge from the darkness that pools beneath the trees, into the sunlight of the higher ground. Calf muscles burning, I stop for a moment, my hands on my hips, taking gulps of air that is as clear and cold as the water in the stream. I turn to look back the way we’ve come. The clusters of whitewashed croft cottages fringing the road here and there along the lochside are still just visible, but in a few steps more they will disappear as the heather-clad arms of the hills fold us into their embrace.

  Along the edge of the path, half-hidden among the scrub of rowans and birches, primroses turn their faces to the sunshine while shy violets attempt to hide theirs. The climb evens out a little and Daisy and I sing as we go, our voices chiming in the clear air.

  ‘And we’ll all go together

  To pull wild mountain thyme

  All around the blooming heather,

  Will ye go, lassie, go? . . .’

  Higher still, when we run out of songs of our own, a lark bursts from the cover of the yellow-flowered gorse, soaring like a tiny skyrocket into the blue above us. Against the silence, its song seems to hang, suspended, each note cut with perfect clarity, creating a necklace of sound. I stand stock-still and Daisy and I hold our breath, listening, until the bird is a tiny dot, high above the hills and its song is stolen away by the wind.

  The path becomes a narrow, grassy track, more accustomed to the hooves of sheep and deer than to the soles of walking boots. At last, we turn the corner and there is the lochan, sheltered in its dip in the hillside. Daisy waves her arms in delight and laughs at the sight. Today, the water of the pool is scarcely visible. In a magical transformation, its peat-blackened depths are obscured by a coverlet of white waterlilies whose petals have been coaxed open by the sun’s warmth.

  I ease the carrier from my shoulders, rubbing the ache where the straps have pulled, and lean it against the lichen-spotted remains of one of the stone walls of the old bothy as I undo the buckles, lifting Daisy out. She immediately takes off on her sturdy little legs, red wellies sinking into the mossy ground, and I grab her, hugging her close and burying my face in the warmth of her neck. ‘Oh no you don’t, Miss Speedy! Water can be dangerous, remember? Here, hold my hand and we’ll go and have a look together.’

  We potter at the water’s edge, peering between the reeds and the broad blades of yellow flags at the spot where an otter’s tracks scar the damp ground, the telltale furrow of a heavy tail winding between the scrapings of the animal’s sharp claws in the mud.

  Once we’ve finished exploring the bankside, we settle ourselves in a little moss-lined hollow and sit on my coat, side by side, out of the wind in the shelter of the bothy’s gable wall. The roof of the ancient building – once someone’s home, perhaps, or a summer shelter for a hill shepherd – has fallen in completely, leaving only the collapsing shell of the walls and a blackened hearth beneath the chimney. While Daisy plays at making a cup and saucer with the waterlily that I’ve picked for her, humming busily to herself as she pours out imaginary pots of tea for me, I gaze out from our hillside perch beside the lochan to where the wider waters of the sea loch spread out below us. The light skims across its surface like a skipping stone, splintering into fragments that dazzle eyes more used to the grey of the winter sky.

  It must be a trick of that same light because, for a moment, I imagine I see the hulks of great ships anchored there. Perhaps they are ghosts, shadows left behind from those years when the loch was a secret gathering place. I blink and they disappear, leaving only the water and the island with the open sea beyond.

  A cloud passes across the face of the sun and, as the light shifts, suddenly I become aware of the deep, dark waters of the lochan, hidden beneath their drift of lilies. On the crest of the hill above us, a red deer hind watches silently, slipping away when I lift my head to meet her gaze. And then the shadows pass and the sunlight is back. From the slopes above us, I can hear the lark’s song again. I wish it had words so that she could tell me all she knows.

  For this spot, too – hidden above the sea in the arms of the hills – is a place of secrets. This is a place where lives beg
an and lives ended. A place where the only witnesses were the skylarks and the deer.

  Lexie, 1977

  As I hurry along the street, weaving in and out through the crowds, the clock at Piccadilly Circus tells me what I already know: I’m late. And this audition is my big chance, a shot at a major female lead in a West End production. In my haste, I catch the platform toe of my boot on an uneven paving stone and trip, gasping with the sudden pain of it, stumbling against a passer-by.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mutter, but he doesn’t even raise his head to acknowledge either the contact or the apology and we both hurry onwards, caught up in the rush of our busy lives.

  I’m used to it now, the impersonality of the city, although at first, all those years ago, I found the move to London pretty tough. I missed Keeper’s Cottage so much it hurt. And I missed my mother even more. She was my friend, my confidante, my greatest supporter and I thought of her often, alone in the little whitewashed house beside the loch. The city was full of people and lights and the sounds of the traffic. Even a cup of tea didn’t taste the same as it did back home in the Scottish Highlands because the kettle in the galley kitchen in my digs was encrusted with phlegm-coloured limescale that tainted the water as it boiled.

  But, at the same time, a part of me was relieved to have left Ardtuath. The anonymity of the city was welcome after the claustrophobia of living in a tiny community where everybody made it their business to know your business and no one was ever backward in coming forward with their considered opinion on it. My new life gave me a freedom that I’d never had at home and I was determined to move forward into my bright future without so much as a glance back over my shoulder.

  I’d soon made friends at the stage school I was attending as a scholarship student and begun to adapt. The long hours of gruelling classes – dance, singing, acting – and the novel excitement of my urban life quickly replaced my old reality with a new and far more superficially glamorous one.

  Of course, that reality wasn’t really so glamorous at all. Up close, the costumes and make-up lost their magic under the glare of the spotlights, revealing their makeshift tackiness. We would change in cramped dressing rooms, vying for space in front of the mirror among a clutter of clothes, eyeliner and hairpins, where everything was covered in a fine layer of the powder that we used to set our make-up and kill the shine. The air would be heavy with the smells of sweat and stale perfume and the damp soot carried in on our coats from the London streets, and we would snap at each other, releasing little bursts of pre-performance nerves. But all of that would be forgotten in an instant with the adrenaline rush of the five-minute call.

  Little by little, I’ve grown accustomed to walking for miles along streets where the air is filled with the stale breath of seven million people and the sky above is cut into dirty grey rectangles, glimpsed here and there between the buildings. It’s a far cry from the skies over Loch Ewe, which arch from hills to horizon in an unbroken sweep. I’ve grown used to the London weather, too. Or rather to the lack of it. The seasons in the city are marked by the changing of the displays in the shop windows rather than any real climatic shifts: even in the middle of winter the city seems to generate its own heat, rising up from the damp pavements and radiating from the brick walls of the houses. Occasionally at first I used to miss the sense of wildness that the Scottish weather brings, the unfettered power of an Atlantic gale, the breathtaking chill of a clear, frosty morning and the first faint, elusive warmth of a spring day. But I quickly buried my hand-knitted jumpers at the back of the chest of drawers in my bedsit and replaced them with the figure-hugging cotton tops and floaty cheesecloth shirts that the other students wore, more suited to the fug of audition rooms and more likely to catch the eye of an agent or a producer. And I learned to drink coffee instead of tea, even though a cup cost more than a whole jar of the instant stuff that Mum would buy from the shop in Aultbea.

  I duck into the alleyway that runs down one side of the theatre and shoulder open the stage door. My stomach churns with nerves and I swallow the bile that rises in my throat, which isn’t going to help my voice one bit. The last few months have been stressful, finishing my run in Carousel and starting the whole gruelling process of going for auditions again. I’ve not been eating or sleeping very well. I tell myself the anxiety is entirely understandable, given the work situation and worries about how I’m going to pay my rent as my bank balance dwindles. But underneath that lies another horrible realisation that has dawned slowly but inexorably over recent weeks: Piers is losing interest in me. Maybe, just maybe, if I land this role then he’ll love me again. Maybe we’ll be able to recapture the passion and the excitement of those early days and everything will be all right.

  I join the others who’ve already gathered backstage and shrug off my coat, running my fingers through my hair to smooth the unruly red-gold curls back into some semblance of order. ‘Sorry,’ I mouth at the production assistant, who ticks my name off on her clipboard. She flashes me a smile, too brief to be real, and then turns away. I recognise one or two of the others: the world of musical theatre is a small one. But we avoid meeting each other’s eyes, concentrating on keeping our nerves under control and listening to the first hopeful to audition for the female lead. Competition for the role is going to be keen – the press is already buzzing with news of the Broadway revival and the London show is selling out.

  I try to take deep breaths and focus on channelling the role of Mary Magdalene, but my attention wanders back to another audition, two years ago, in another theatre. It was for a production of A Chorus Line, directed by the brilliant Piers Walker whose star was in the ascendant on the West End theatre scene.

  He singled me out at the audition. At the end of the exhausting day, he asked me to join him for a drink. He told me that he wanted me in the show even though I was more of a singer-who-could-dance than a dancer-who-could-sing, which was what they’d originally been looking for. He told me I had a luminosity, that I reminded him of a red-headed Audrey Hepburn. Later that evening, he told me he’d never met anyone like me. That I had a rare talent. That he could help me with my career. And that night, as we lay in the tangled sheets on the bed in my dingy digs, he told me I would be his muse and that together, we would blaze a trail to the very top of the industry.

  I drank in his words as thirstily as I’d downed the glass of wine in the pub behind Drury Lane. How naïve I was: they both went straight to my head.

  The infatuation has worn off now, two years later, and the reality of life has kicked in. Recently, Piers has been coming home later and later from the theatre, more than once mentioning the name of a new starlet who, he makes a point of telling me, really gets his vision and is a total dream to direct. I’ve begun to realise that he needs the affirmation of an audience far more than I do. Life is a performance for him and, like the productions he directs, each of his relationships seems to have its run before the novelty wears off and he moves on to the next one. I’m still clinging to the hope, though, that I will be the one to change all that. That I will be the one who makes him want to stay.

  The constant anxiety is taking its toll. Sleepless nights and a feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach have had an effect on my voice, although I’m not admitting that to anyone. Perhaps I’ve overstrained it a bit, trying out for several parts that have stretched my vocal range. But I can’t afford to let that doubt affect me now. I need to push through today and put in a performance that will land me the female lead in Jesus Christ Superstar.

  ‘Alexandra Gordon.’ The production assistant calls my name. And so I step on to the stage and take a deep breath, determined that, even though my heart is fluttering against my breastbone like the wings of a trapped bird, my voice will soar free again, as effortlessly as the skylarks that fly above the hills surrounding my former home.

  I land the part. And for a few weeks, Piers is as attentive as he used to be, bringing me flowers and taking me out for a celebratory meal. It’s going to be all right, I th
ink, breathing a big sigh of relief. But once rehearsals begin, I seem to be struggling more and more to reach the high notes. The director is concerned, and when he talks to me I can see his eyes flicker with the doubt that he’s made the right choice for the role. Then one day a voice coach takes me aside and asks me if I’m okay.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, forcing a smile that’s a good deal brighter than I’m feeling. ‘It’s been a difficult couple of months but I’m getting back on track. I’ve had a bit of a stomach bug, too, but I’m getting over it now. I’ve just been a little off form, but my voice will be fine once I’m fully recovered.’ I hope I manage to sound convincing. Actually, I’ve been feeling horribly queasy after downing a piece of toast and a cup of coffee this morning, but I’ve ploughed on determinedly and come in to work.

  ‘All right.’ She looks at me doubtfully. ‘But Alexandra, I’ve seen this happen once before. I hope you don’t mind my asking . . . are you pregnant?’

  The second she says it, I know. It’s as if I’d known already, I just hadn’t admitted it to myself. Automatically my hands go to my belly as the blood drains from my face. A pregnant Mary Magdalene isn’t going to look the part on stage, despite it presumably having been a hazard of her profession. I sway as the walls seem to collapse in around me.

  The voice coach sits me down on a stool at the corner of the rehearsal room and presses my head towards my knees to stop me from fainting.

  ‘It can happen,’ she explains. ‘In pregnancy the hormonal changes can cause the vocal cords to swell. It can affect your range. You’ve been straining to reach the notes and that can cause a bleed. You should see a specialist, get it checked out. And definitely rest your voice for a while.’

  Piers’s fury erupts with the force of an Atlantic storm. ‘What a complete disaster,’ he says when I tell him that evening, having seen a doctor who has confirmed both that I am pregnant and that I have what looks like a lesion on one of my vocal cords. I reach out to put my arms around him, desperately needing the reassurance of a hug, but he shakes me off.