Great Aunt Beulah cloaked herself in secrets. They were all she had left. Secrets kept her out of the grave and were her chief weapon—in her feebleness, trembling and reliance on a keeper—against first Grandmother Ison and then Mrs Mac. Come here, dear, she would say, drawing Anna to her like another secret: We don’t want that old bat to hear this, do we, sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted. Anna glanced back over her shoulder. Surely Mrs Mac had heard? Yes—you could tell by her tipped-up nose that she had. Beulah’s clamped claw trembled on Anna’s forearm as if to shake her apart: I had a lover, dear, forbidden to me by my father. Such a fine-looking man, riding up the drive on his horse to see me, grinning to beat the sun. And sing! She lowered her voice: I would sneak out after dark to be with him. He wanted us to run away together. He said: Don’t tell your father. But I did, I don’t know why. Don’t you make the same mistake, dear. The lost six weeks of Anna’s grandfather in 1920 was another incident in the secret history of the family, and Anna’s mother did not reveal it until he was dead. She said: It’s not that he went mad, you know. It was just a breakdown, the sort of thing that could happen to anybody. Imagine the pressures he was under, the disappointments, stuck for weeks on end in that godforsaken place with no one to talk to. It’s no wonder he lost track of time. But you’re not to think that that kind of thing runs in the blood, Anna, and there’s no need to repeat any of this. Anna reared back. As if she would! Anna herself was full of secrets and always would be. She gave up none of them, secrets confided or her own. Lying and evasion are components of secrecy. Whenever Anna got into trouble she’d spin explanations and excuses so elaborate and confounding that her accusers would soon abandon grilling her. Yet she was struck by how easy it was to free others of their secrets. Anna was a listener, always watching, thinking, making connections, and she had only to sit and stare at the eyes to hear all there was to hear. It was not only children, drunks and adulterers who wanted to confide in her. Most people felt the burden of their secrets and gave them up with a sigh the moment Anna pinned them with her clear, unblinking, acquitting eyes. But Lockie found out about the tutor. One night he followed Anna to the house in Unley and kept watch on it until the dawn, shivering grimly behind a dewy windscreen and putting two and two together. Your secret life, he said sourly. Anna retorted: At least I don’t sneak about. He scowled: Anna, listen to yourself. What do you think screwing behind my back is if it’s not sneaking about? She folded her arms: Who are you to talk morals? You’re about to go off and learn how to kill people. He went away to camp, he sailed for the South China Sea. She didn’t see him again. There was only a postcard, an exhilarated postcard that left her feeling oddly abandoned and outpaced. Habits of secrecy and evasion were necessary if Anna and Sam were to contend with Sam’s parents. They learned to conceal what they had spent their paltry allowance on, to conceal their only holiday together, their thoughts, even their children. One day Mrs Jaeger abruptly ceased her endless polishing and stared fully at Anna, her face twisted in fury and impotence: You’re a sly one. I don’t understand people like you. Anna made love to Chester only once, but once was enough. It was a terrible secret. Perhaps even thinking about him to begin with was enough to count as a dangerous hidden fact. She happened to read in a magazine at the doctor’s that in three out of four couples one partner harbours a secret which, if revealed, would destroy the partnership. Anna snorted, startling the others in the waiting room: Don’t reveal it, then. Rebecca was eighteen when she telephoned to say that she was bringing a friend home for the weekend—and oh by the way, the friend was a woman and they were lovers. This last bit was muttered hurriedly and there was a click and then the dial tone as Rebecca broke the connection. Anna thought, irrelevantly: My daughter has no skills for this kind of thing. The revelation itself affected her not at all. Anna didn’t mind, she wanted only for her daughter to be happy, but irritation set in: Does she expect me to tell Sam, or does she want it kept secret from him, or does she want to tell him herself? No, she wants me to tell him. And when I do, he won’t say anything. He won’t know how to deal with it and so he’ll not deal with it. Beyond being faintly embarrassed when Rebecca and her friend are here, he’ll say and do nothing to acknowledge the fact that he knows, or that he cares. It will be as though Rebecca has a secret life, in a parallel time, and he need never be aware of it, if it’s not brought to his attention. And bringing it to his attention will practically entail sitting him down and stating it slowly, loudly, clearly into his face. Why do that? It would only hurt everybody. And what of the grandparents? My mother will be okay about it but the Jaegers won’t. I shall never tell them. I’ll leave that up to Becky. Anna did tell Sam, it was not mentioned again, and things are mostly okay now. Sam has jokey phone conversations with Meg whenever he rings Rebecca, so that’s all right. A few weeks ago there’d been something he wanted to get off his chest. Anna had waited patiently, and one evening, as she was sorting through photographs from the Public Record Office, he said hesitantly: Anna? Yes, my love? He swallowed: I’ve some bad news. Uh huh. In a rush: I borrowed against our place and sank it into that breeding scheme of the Showalters’. We’ll maybe get back two cents on the dollar. The world is teeming with secrets but few of them surprise Anna. She will play ‘Can You Keep a Secret?’ with her granddaughter and enjoy her visits to Pandowie, where she will listen to the stories Hugo and her mother have for her about the people she grew up with. She will hear a secret that will leave her feeling numb with pity and love. Her mother will ask, unexpectedly: Were you involved with Chester Flood at the time Michael was killed? Kind of, yes. Silence for a while, then: It was understood that Wes Showalter and I would get engaged. But I was more interested in Rex. We used to meet in secret, but the war took him to Europe and he was lost over Germany. After that I couldn’t marry Wes. Funny how things turn out.