Secrets in one’s life that are at one-time held perilously loosely (despite the belief that the eternal silencing of the secrets are an iron-clad guarantee) have a habitual way of unerringly flowing, ultimately unobstructed, out into the open. Additionally, the seemingly sturdy, yet in reality fragile, lives of those whose very foundations are rocked by the exposure of secrets are frequently seismically altered in their inner being forever.
Such a gut-wrenching predicament is certainly the case in spectacularly successful (her books have sold over ten million copies) English author, Lesley Pearse’s, latest novel, “Deception”.
This novel has the speed and power of a freight train, yet the compassion and empathy of much-loved friend. Set in the Spring of 2015 in England, as well as some seventy odd years leading up to this time in England, we initially, in 2015, find ourselves at the funeral of seventy-five year old Sally Kent in the town of Totnes, not too far from London.
Sally has recently passed away from cancer, her thirty-five year eldest daughter Alice (the regional manager of a group of hotels) having cared for her mother at her parents house in Totnes for Sally’s final four weeks on earth. Sally’s practical, yet kind, husband Ralph is in attendance at the funeral in Totnes, along with Alice and younger sister, Emily, and Emily’s husband, Mike, and their three young children (Ruby, Jasmine and Toby).
Eerily for Alice and Emily, there seems there is not a soul at Sally’s funeral from before she was married to Ralph. Additionally disconcerting for Alice is the fact that she finds herself talking to an elderly man after the service whom she has never laid eyes on before that day, and who says that he was a ‘friend’ of Sally from her past.
Alice sombrely reflects to herself that “their mother had never talked about her life before she met their father. She would have been well over thirty when she married him”.
When Alice meets the ‘mystery man’ for lunch soon after, he introduces himself as Angus Tweedy. Angus it seems has not come in to Alice’s life to talk trifling small-talk, launching a life-defining grenade in Alice’s direction by telling Alice that he is her and Emily’s real father. Further, Angus insists that he was bigamously married to Sally (then known as Helen Tweedy), and that he spent seven years in prison for the deceitful offence.
This astonishingly grave bombshell sets Alice on a fact-seeking journey into Sally’s past, a past that Sally was adverse to discussing with her daughters (Sally would ‘shut them down’ if they ever broached the topics of her childhood, teenage years and young adult life).
Assisting Alice in her quest for information on Sally Kent (also once known as Janet Masters, Fleur Faraday and Sally Symonds) is her trusty side-kick, Stuart McIntosh. Stuart, who is Alice’s dear friend, is an ex-policeman and some twenty years older than Alice. Stuart is not as tenacious as Alice in ‘digging up the dirt’ on Sally, yet is methodical and forensically accurate in his research into Sally’s treacherous and murky past.
As Stuart tells Alice at one point in their ‘investigation’, “A career in the police force is a real eye-opener to what some people are capable of…..I’ve seen terrific courage and compassion, pure evil and everything in between.”
Can Alice get to the bare bones of why Sally was so emotionally absent to her children and stoically secretive about her childhood and young adult life? Do Sally’s still-alive links to her past, the flamboyant Petula (Pet) and no-nonsense Frankie, hold any keys to unlocking the Pandora’s box of secrets that Sally had been determined should never be opened, under any circumstance? What does Ralph actually know?
Who is the dashing Flynn that Pet introduces Alice to? Can the divorced Alice have any sort of future with Flynn?
Can Alice bear to hear the many dark secrets that Sally has guarded like a dog with a bone?
Lesley has written a stellar novel of mountainous intelligence, wisdom and insights. The twists are many and in turns heartbreaking, beautiful, sordid, and at-times evil. It is no wonder that Lesley is a phenomenal international success story. She is undeniably as a writer of prodigious talent.
Bravo Lesley for yet another cracking read. This stellar novel transported me to times and places where descriptions were incisive and spellbinding.
I loved “Deception”, and can’t wait to see what Lesley writes next.
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