The Secret Keeper

Jimmy dresses in his father’s suit and studies the photographs he’s taken of the Blitz. Jimmy worries about his father, who remembers his older brother Archie dying in World War I but has forgotten that Jimmy’s mother left them; he speaks as if she will return any moment.

Dolly feels strangely elated as she walks past the devastation left by the bombings to meet Jimmy. She is wearing a dress and fur coat borrowed from Lady Gwendolyn, and at the 400 Club she pretends they are guests at the engagement party. Jimmy worries he will not be able to give Dolly fine things. She tells him about her friend Vivien and the canteen they are running for service folk through the Women’s Voluntary Service. Dolly smuggles Jimmy back to her room, and they make love. Lying next to her, Jimmy thinks of a bedtime story his mother used to tell him of a ship called the Nightingale Star. He can’t wait to marry Dolly.

Greenacres, 2011. Laurel, alone at Greenacres, thinks about how much the place is infused with the spirit of her mother. Dorothy told wonderful stories, including one about a magical ship of dreams called the Nightingale Star. Laurel is reading a semiautobiographical novel by Henry Jenkins that describes how he met his wife. Laurel visits her mother, who says she has regrets, has made many mistakes, and lost everything she loved. Laurel shows her the photograph of her and Vivien, and Dorothy speaks of a plan that went horribly wrong. She mentions Billy, as if Laurel were still 16, and says if Laurel loves him, they should marry. Laurel thinks of her parents’ long, happy marriage and wonders what her mother means. She recalls hearing her Grandma Nicolson gossip that Dorothy married her son to get away from something: “She wanted an escape, and my son gave it to her” (195), Laurel heard her say. Laurel is more determined than ever to uncover her mother’s secret.

London, January 1941. Dolly takes a cigarette break from serving at the canteen. She prefers this to other types of service, though she has hopes that Lady Gwendolyn is getting fond of her and might remember Dolly in her will. Jimmy surprises her with a visit, and Dolly is nervous. She can’t see Jimmy as part of her life with wealthy, important friends like Vivien and Lady Gwendolyn. Dolly is startled when she sees Vivien talking with Jimmy, discussing his photographs. Dolly doesn’t like the photographs “of men with broken bodies and dark hollowed cheeks, and eyes that had seen things they ought not to have seen” (207). When he takes her out later, Jimmy reveals that Vivien noticed a photo he’d taken of a young girl who had been orphaned by a bomb. Vivien says she met the girl, Nella, at a hospital where she volunteers, helping with war orphans. Dolly, distracted with wondering if Vivien really has a lover, is taken off guard when Jimmy proposes. Upset, she leaves Jimmy kneeling there with a ring.

Suffolk, 2011. Laurel researches her mother online and is led to Katherine “Kitty” Barker, who is now widowed with a devoted daughter. Kitty speaks of Dolly as having a great imagination but also keeping secrets and acting too posh for the other girls. Kitty confirms that Dolly had a boyfriend named Jimmy but says she never believed he was a pilot, as Kitty met and married her own RAF pilot. Kitty describes Vivien Jenkins as beautiful, proud, and cold. Kitty says Dolly and Vivien had a falling out in early 1941, after which Dolly concocted some plan. Kitty says she often wondered what happened to Dolly; she was the type who always got what she wanted.

London, January 1941. Dolly volunteers to return a locket that Vivien accidentally left behind at the canteen. It holds a picture of four children, one of them Vivien. Dolly puts on one of Lady Gwendolyn’s old dresses to return the locket in person and is surprised when Henry Jenkins opens the door; he came home early and found his wife gone. He comments on her long hours at the canteen, and Dolly nearly tells him she hardly sees Vivien at the canteen anymore. The house is elegant and modern, and when Vivien returns, Dolly is moved by the fervor with which Henry greets her. But when she introduces Dolly as her friend, Vivien looks blank and says, “I don’t know who this woman is” (241). She tells Henry he has met all her friends and Dolly is simply Lady Gwendolyn’s servant. Dolly is crushed by Vivien’s cold dismissal.

University of Cambridge, 2011. Laurel drives to Cambridge to look up her brother, Gerry, who is a professor there. Laurel takes him out to dinner and confesses that she lied when she said nothing happened when he was a baby. She tells him about the stabbing and what she has learned. They conjecture that Henry Jenkins must have tracked Dorothy down because of something she did to Vivien. Laurel thinks again of the crocodile story, when her mother said she’d changed. Gerry agrees to research Dr. Rufus.

Dolly tells Dr. Rufus, her friend’s father, how Vivien dismissed her. Vivien rings the doorbell one morning, but Dolly worries she will tell Lady Gwendolyn that Dolly had her locket, or her dress, and Dolly wants to stay in the older woman’s good graces. However, when Lady Gwendolyn unexpectedly dies by choking to death on a candy while Dolly is tending her, Dolly learns she has been left nothing in the will but a few coats, most of which Dolly has already given to the WVS to impress Vivien. All she has left is the white fur coat she wore to go dancing with Jimmy. Dolly takes a room at the boardinghouse where she previously stayed and gets a job at a munitions factory, which she hates. Dolly broods on the harm she believes Vivien Jenkins did her and thinks of ways she might catch Vivien with her lover and have proof of Vivien’s wrong-doing.

Greenacres, 2011. Laurel and Rose begin preparations to bring their mother home. Laurel has begun researching Vivien Jenkins and wonders where the photograph of Vivien and her mother was taken. Dorothy tells Laurel she took an opportunity when she felt she’d lost everything. Laurel looks in her mother’s trunk in the attic and finds an unsigned card that reads, “Thank you” and a white fur coat. In the pocket of the coat is a train ticket dated May 23, 1941.

Jimmy goes to meet Dolly, hoping to reconcile with her. He lost his savings, in fact everything, when his flat was bombed, but at least his father survived. Dolly seems changed, broken. She tells Jimmy that Lady Gwendolyn left her nothing and that Vivien was purposefully cruel to her. She wants Jimmy to get a picture of Vivien with her lover so Dolly can blackmail Vivien for money that will let Dolly and Jimmy run away and get married.

London, 2011. Laurel visits the British Library to locate a biography of Henry Jenkins. The book says Henry was intelligent and successful but, after his wife died in the Blitz, he was so devastated by grief that he didn’t write another book. The biography describes how he met Vivien Longmeyer, the niece of the headmaster at his school. After Vivien’s family died, she was brought to England and delivered to her uncle’s care by a teacher named Katy Ellis. Jenkins made wild claims that on the night of his wife’s death, she’d been lured somewhere by con artists, and he vowed to find the people responsible. Laurel becomes even more convinced that whatever her mother did, which made her grateful for second chances, had something to do with Vivien.