Secrets Through the Lens

Connie Eales

Description

Murder, suicide, guilt, revenge, and fear invade the lives of so many people - all because of one mistake made by one woman.

Although married and living in the same house in a leafy Sydney suburb, John and Laura Milford pursue, for the most part, separate lives. Both harbour dark secrets from their pasts.

Daughters, Mallory and Bannon have been afforded private schools, travel, expensive extra-curricular activities - in fact almost anything money can buy. Their parents are dutiful, but not close to their children or to each other, so the girls’ lives have become intensely enmeshed as they try to help each other negotiate destructive and perilous forces in their lives. Both girls continually seek the love they can never find from others. So, they love each other.

Bannon comes across intriguing black and white photograph in Laura’s study and it sets her on a path to find answers. Photographs play a large role in Bannon’s search, as she gleans more and more worrisome clues about her parents’ past lives.

Then there is Jennifer, a much older sister who lives with her husband in rural Queensland. Jennifer has secrets of her own which Bannon also seeks to unravel.

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Relationships
• Suspenso
• Psychological thriller
• Domestic
• Relationship
• Mystery
• Crime
• Suspense
• Thriller
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 26 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669831037
• Langue: English

Extrait

secrets THROUGH THE LENS
 
 
 
 
CONNIE EALES
 
Copyright © 2022 by Connie Eales.
 

Library of Congress Control Number:
2022914566
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-3105-1

Softcover
978-1-6698-3104-4

eBook
978-1-6698-3103-7
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 08/17/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
www.Xlibris.com.au
843977
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1 Bannon 1987, 1988
Chapter 2 Laura 1960
Chapter 3 Bannon 1988
Chapter 4 Laura 1960
Chapter 5 Bannon 1989
Chapter 6 Laura 1961
Chapter 7 Bannon 1990
Chapter 8 Laura 1961
Chapter 9 Bannon 1991
Chapter 10 Laura 1961
Chapter 11 Bannon 1992
Chapter 12 Laura 1962
Chapter 13 Bannon 1993
Chapter 14 Laura 1965
Chapter 15 Bannon 1993
Chapter 16 Bannon 1994
Chapter 17 Laura 1970
Chapter 18 Bannon 1994
Chapter 19 Laura 1971
Chapter 20 Bannon 1994
Chapter 21 Laura 1971
Chapter 22 Bannon 1994
Chapter 23 Laura 1971
Chapter 24 Bannon 1994
Chapter 25 Laura 1994
Chapter 26 Bannon 1994
Chapter 27 Laura 1994
Chapter 28 Bannon 1994
Chapter 29 Laura, 1994
Epilogue
About The Author
For El oise
Prologue
1961
God, what have I done? Laura repeated the words over and over under her breath while the steel wheels thumped and crashed on the track and the carriage rocked from side to side as it sped through the night. The old red rattlers seemed to rattle even more loudly on these late-night runs when there were no passenger voices to detract from the noise. She hunched her body into a corner seat at the end of the compartment with the wooden panel at her back. She stared fixedly at the crude stitching that some railway worker had applied in an attempt to repair the slashed vinyl on the seat opposite her. The carriage smelt vaguely of unwashed bodies and stale aftershave.
The spicy sausage she had eaten for dinner sat like a partially digested clod in her stomach, and she could feel the presence of garlic on her breath.
The carriage was empty except for a young couple at the far end embracing, kissing, groping frantically as though they were about to disrobe at any moment and have sex right there on the seat; and a middle-aged man sitting in one of the side seats reading a newspaper. Laura felt sure that what she had done would be written all over her face like a neon sign for all to see, yet the other passengers remained completely oblivious to her presence.
As the train screeched to a halt at one of the ill-lit deserted stations, the couple got out and was replaced by two shift workers still dressed in their work clothes. All they wanted to do was lean back and close their eyes. Laura assumed they were probably bound for where the train terminated so they didn’t fear missing their stop.
How has it come to this? she asked herself. Am I, Laura Hallam, eighteen, the only person in the world to have to face a conflict like this? As she got her breathing to something like normal, Laura thought of her beautiful little mother, who had finally succumbed to the cancer that stole her spirit, and of her dear unworldly father, now facing the greatest challenge of his life.
Laura peered at the black glass of the window to see if she still existed. She almost expected to see a blank black glass reflected at her, but, sure enough, there she was in the middle of the night sitting like a zombie on a train to nowhere with £20,000 in cash in her handbag.
I needn’t have answered that advertisement I saw in the Herald . But I did .
CHAPTER 1
Bannon 1987, 1988
11/ 9/87
Dear Jenn ifer,
Well, we are home from our grand tour of Europe. It was Mum’s idea for the trip but Dad was happy to go along with it and we fitted it all into 8 weeks. Mum asked Sister Josephine about taking Mallory and me out of school and would you believe Sister Joe told her we would learn more with our parents in Europe than we would at school with her. I would never have believed it, but that’s what Mum said.
We saw some marvellous places and even went to a play on Shaftesbury Avenue in London. It was called ‘The Bed Before Yesterday’, and it was very funny. I wouldn’t mind living in Lo ndon.
We went to a Bier Hall in Munich. Dad said Mallory and I shouldn’t be in there, but Mum let us, so we did. It was great fun. They had big mugs of beer called steins. They sang too, it was fanta stic.
I thought the galleries and museums and historic buildings would be boring, but it was quite the opposite. I even learnt to identify stuff by Michelangelo without even looking at the signs. The Sistine Chapel was fantastic and Dad wanted us to see the Pope, but we didn’t manage to see him.
The British museum was fantastic and they had the Rosetta stone in there and lots of Egyptian stuff. It made me want to go to Egypt, and I will som eday.
I have lots of photos to show you when I see you next time. When will that be, Jen? I miss you so much and I hardly ever see you these days.
How is Queensland? Is it hot where you are?
School is just ticking along. Didn’t take me long to catch up, so Joe was right, I didn’t miss much by being out of school. Anyway, some of it was school holidays an yway.
Mallory sends her love. She’s not much of a letter writer, but we talk about you a lot.
Your devoted si ster,
Bannon XXXX
We sit at the dinner table—always semi-formal dinner with cloth serviettes and at least one candle and some background music. It is a family dinner, but without Dad, and we are supposed to talk to each other. Mallory and I are not comfortable, but we try to talk about our school assignments, some of our friends’ escapades, school sport, or whatever we can think of because we know that’s what Mum wants to hear. My mum, Laura Milford, is not one for trivial things however, and she prefers to talk about world affairs or about her current degree course (there have been four so far plus German and Spanish language courses. Sometimes I wonder if she married Dad just so she’d have somebody to fund her endless university studies). Tonight, she chooses a topic to talk about, and she wants us to talk about it with her, but we don’t know what to say. If Dad were with us, he would be asking us about school. He is never interested in Mum’s topics.
Mum is saying something about her psychology course at uni, and I am interested. Not sure about Mallory. I try to think of something important to say but I can’t, so I just listen. Mallory listens too, but her face is in neutral.
We sometimes wish we could just eat dinner off a tray in front of the television like some of our school friends, but we don’t ask because we know what the answer would be. Mum associates such practices with junk food and sloppy lifestyle.
Our meals are far from junk food. Mum makes sure it is a proper meal with at least two courses every night. Mum doesn’t do all the cooking herself, although she does cook most nights.
So, we sit down at our huge carved dining table with our serviettes on our laps. We never eat in the kitchen. Mum gets up and heads for the kitchen. She comes back with Yorkshire Pudding. It is a traditional kind of Yorkshire pudding with the pastry on top and the mince underneath. I don’t know that until Mum sets the dish in the middle of the table and starts to serve us helpings. She tells us her friend Rose prepared it. She says she thinks it is too greasy, but she doesn’t want to offend Rose, so it looks like we will have to eat it tonight.
I think about Rose for a few seconds after Mum says that. Rose is an old friend of Mum’s who comes to help in the house a couple of times a week. She knew Mum way back before she married Dad, when she was still Laura Hallam. Rose is divorced, and Mum says she is a bit hard up. I know Rose has a history. I never ask about her history. I am not that brave.
During dinner tonight, Mum tells us a little about the thesis she is writing for her masters in psychology. It is something to do with abnormal psychology. I am interested. I start to think psychology might be an interesting career for me sometime in the future. But then every time I experience some new profession, I tend to think that might be a good career for me. These have included veterinary science when our neighbour’s dog got run over and we took her and the dog to the vet hospital. It included nursing when we went to see a friend who had just had a caesarean. It included ski instructor when our school went to Thredbo on an excursion. It included the army when I saw the girls marching so beautifully on Anzac Day. I am actually pretty fickle when it comes to career planning. Mum never gives me any advice. She just says it is up to me to make up my own mind. But I can’t. I need advice.
I sit and eat the Yorkshire Pudding. The pastr