The Secret Keeper

“She’d dreamed […] of Gerry as a boy. A small and earnest boy, holding up a tin space shuttle, something he’d made, telling her that one day he was going to invent a time capsule and use it to go back and fix things. What sort of things? she’d said in the dream. Why, all the things that ever went wrong, of course—she could come with him if she wanted.”

This dream Laurel has of her brother hints at the bond between them; they were the only children to witness their mother’s act of murder. This passage foreshadows the decision Laurel will make to investigate the past and, if she can’t fix it, at least make peace with it.

“She’d suffered so much, but she still had things to live for—she’d find things to live for. This was the time to be brave, to be better than she’d ever been before. Dolly had done things that made her ashamed to remember them; her grand ideas had been nothing but a young girl’s silly dreams, they’d all turned to ash in her fingers; but everybody deserved a second chance.”

This early chapter shows the crucial scene of the boardinghouse discussion between Dolly and Vivien from Dolly’s point of view, offering a red herring—context clues that imply Dolly Smitham and Laurel’s mother are the same person. Dolly’s resolution hints at the plot she is guilty of as well as the theme of dreams and second chances. The scene turns out to be deeply ironic because it is Vivien who takes her own second chance as a result of Dolly’s death. Dolly’s repentance makes her a sympathetic character.

“It suddenly seemed to Laurel that all the absences in her own life, every loss and sadness, every nightmare in the dark, every unexplained melancholy, took the shadowy form of the same unanswered question, something that had been there since she was sixteen years old—her mother’s unspoken secret.”

This description adds depth and urgency to Laurel’s decision to uncover the truth about the incident she witnessed. The passage also suggests that childhood experiences, especially of loss, shape a character deeply.

“You know, this is a very dangerous piece of equipment you carry, Mr. Metcalfe. Just think of all the things you could capture that people would rather you didn’t.”

This passage where 17-year-old Dolly flirts with Jimmy at the seaside foreshadows what will become an important symbol throughout: the photographs Jimmy takes. The passage employs irony as well, because it is Dolly’s use of the camera that will cause her grief when she takes a picture of Vivien and Jimmy for blackmail purposes.

“Something terrible had happened between the three of them—it was the only explanation for the seemingly inexplicable—something horrific enough to justify what Ma had done. In what little time remained, Laurel intended to find out what that something was.”

The inciting incident for the novel, the event that sets the rest of the present-day storyline in motion, is Laurel’s decision to uncover her mother’s secret. This passage establishes the mystery that both storylines, past and present, will work to reveal.

“A gulf had opened up inside Dolly in that moment: it felt as if her stomach had dropped, leaving a great swirling sphere of shock, loss, and fear in its place. She’d let go of the phone, and stood there in the enormous entrance hall of 7 Campden Grove, and she’d felt infinitesimally small and alone and at the whim of the next wind that might blow.”

Dolly’s reaction to the phone call informing her that her family was killed in the bombing of Coventry shows the devastation of war and the grief of loss—two recurring themes throughout Morton’s body of work. The image of Dolly, tiny in the great hall, emphasizes her loneliness and vulnerability.

“[The photographs] haunted him. He sometimes felt he was stealing a piece of their souls, snatching a private moment for himself when he took his shot, but Jimmy didn’t take the transaction lightly; they were joined, he and his subjects. They watched him from his walls, and he felt a debt to them, not only in having borne witness to a fixed instant in their human experience, but also to the ongoing responsibility of keeping their stories alive.”

Jimmy’s attachment to his photographs helps develop his character, demonstrating his integrity, his loyalty, and his sense that he owes a debt to the people whose suffering contributes his art as well as his income. Jimmy’s photographs make the horror of war real, and they also provide links in his developing relationship with Vivien.

“There was nothing that made her spin quite like it, the invisible moment of transition when she stopped being Dolly Smitham and became instead Someone Else. The details of that Someone Else weren’t particularly important; it was the frisson of performance she adored, the sublime pleasure of masquerade. It was like stepping into another person’s life. Stealing it for a time.”

Dolly’s wish to take on other roles points to her dissatisfaction with her life, her fantasies about becoming something more, and her love of performance, which parallels Laurel’s career as an actress. For Dolly, the fantasy feels illicit, like a theft, an ironic foreshadowing since it is Vivien who essentially steals Dolly’s life.

“It was only after minutes had passed and she still hadn’t returned that Jimmy finally grasped what had happened. And he saw himself suddenly, as if from above, as if the subject of his very own photograph, a man who’d somehow lost everything, kneeling alone on the dirty floor of a dingy restaurant that had become very cold.”

When Dolly doesn’t accept his proposal, Jimmy has a moment of grief and loss that he witnesses as if he is photographing his subjects—an image that communicates the feelings of disassociation that accompany a sudden shock of grief or loss—consistent themes throughout the novel.

“On one side was Dolly Smitham, the naïve young girl from Coventry who thought marrying her sweetheart and living forever in a farmhouse by the stream was the sum of her life’s desires; on the other was Dorothy Smitham, friend to the glamorous, wealthy Vivien Jenkins, heir and companion to Lady Gwendolyn Caldicott—a grown woman who didn’t need to invent elaborate fantasies because she knew exactly the tremendous adventures that lay ahead.”

Dolly’s fantasy of becoming someone else evolves when she lives in Campden Grove and encounters the world of Lady Gwendolyn and Vivien Jenkins. In wanting to be someone else, Dolly loses touch with who she is, and her fantasies overshadow reality in a way that will hurt her deeply when Vivien doesn’t recognize her. This schism in her identity again foreshadows a new and different Dorothy Smitham—Vivien’s version.

“[Henry’s] embrace was lingering, romantic […] and Dolly realized, with a twinge of envy, how passionately Henry Jenkins loved his wife. […] [B]eing in the room, observing them, drove it home. What was Vivien thinking, involving herself with that doctor when she was so well loved by a man like Henry?”

Meeting Vivien at her home is the turning point that sets Dolly’s plan in motion. The scene is full of irony because Dolly misreads Henry’s tenderness for his wife and also believes the gossip that Vivien is having an affair. Vivien’s rejection is an unwelcome wake-up call to Dolly’s fantasies of being accepted and admired by beautiful people. The embrace is also a cruel mimic of what Vivien herself truly longs for—a loving husband and family.

“Never discount the possibility of turning up an answer none of the current theories predicts.”

Gerry’s remark to Laurel after they discuss what could have motivated Dorothy to kill Henry Jenkins foreshadows the twist intended to surprise a first-time reader.

“[Henry and Vivien Jenkins had] almost succeeded in making Dolly feel as if she were nothing more than a neighbor’s maid, come calling in an old dress borrowed from her mistress’s wardrobe. Almost. Dolly was made of sterner stuff than that, though.”

Dolly’s fantasy about her own image—her refusal, in a way, to see the truth and instead insist on a different vision of herself—parallels Vivien’s belief that her own grief, the loss of her family, is an unreal experience, perhaps a dream. Both women use fantasy to navigate painful experiences.

“Every ounce of Laurel ached to see her mother, the ancient ailing woman who’d chased away monsters and kissed away tears, racked now by guilt and contrition. She wanted desperately to offer comfort; she wanted equally to know what her mother had done.”

This passage hints at a motif that surfaces throughout the book—the connection between mothers, or mother figures, and children. Dwelling on Dorothy’s supposed guilt is a red herring designed to put the reader’s focus on Dolly’s failed plan.

“She thought about her mother in the hospital, the regret she’d expressed, her talk of ‘taking’ something, of being grateful for a ‘second chance’—they were stars, all of them, appearing in the dark night sky; Laurel might not like the patterns she was beginning to see, but she couldn’t deny that they were there.”

The image of stars and identifying patterns or constellations in stars serves as a metaphor for the pleasure of solving the mystery. Stars also serve as a motif connecting characters, for instance in a story Laurel’s father tells her about navigating by stars, and in Gerry’s work measuring distances between stars.

“And so, when the essence of light and life that had been Vivien Longmeyer contracted itself for safekeeping and disappeared deep inside her, the world kept moving and nobody saw it happen.”

This passage describes Vivien’s internal retreat, her method of coping with her grief when her family dies and she is sent to England, in keeping with the book’s themes of Losing and Finding Family and Surviving War and Trauma. Light also serves a symbolic function throughout the book, representing a character’s fate or future.

“She’d remembered him at once, of course. The moment they’d collided and she’d stepped back and seen his face, she’d known him, and she’d felt recognition fire like electricity right through her. She still couldn’t explain it, even to herself.”

There’s a pattern of instant attraction between couples in the book, and Vivien’s meeting with Jimmy is one example. Their meeting foreshadows the way Vivien will come to care for Jimmy and his father.

“Jimmy thought of all the lost souls he’d photographed since the war began, the dispossessed and grieving, the hopeless and the brave, and he looked at Doll […] so changed from that girl by the seaside with laughter in her eyes, and he thought there were probably a lot of people who’d join his father in wishing to go back.”

Longing for the past is a strong thematic undercurrent in the novel as the characters navigate Surviving War and Trauma. This later passage echoes Laurel’s earlier dream about her brother inventing a time machine.

“Vivien is at risk of disappearing deep inside the safety of the dream world she’s created, remaining a stranger to the real world of human beings, and thus becoming easy prey, as she grows to adulthood, to those who would look to gain by her ill treatment.”

This excerpt describing Vivien, which Katy Ellis records in her journal, helps direct the reader’s attention to Vivien’s vulnerability, amplifying concerns that Dolly’s blackmail plot will harm her. Vivien’s fantasy world parallels Dolly’s love of pretending and Laurel’s career as a character actress. It offers a further irony that, in marrying Stephen Nicolson, Dorothy does indeed escape to a dream world, finding the home and family she’s longed for.

“Vivien had learned early, as a child in a crowded railway station, on her way to board a ship to a faraway country, that she could only ever control the life she led inside her mind. […] [I]t was enough to know that what she had inside was hers alone.”

The shocking loss of her family as a child, and her sense that she is somehow responsible, makes Vivien accept Henry’s abuse as penance. Her strategy for dealing with the abuse reflects a common coping mechanism of people reacting to traumatic experiences.

“It was strange indeed to find herself within this place of childhood memories and see her grown-up, wrinkled face staring back at her. Like Alice falling through the rabbit hole, or else falling through it again, fifty years on, only to find herself the only thing changed.”

This literary allusion comes as Laurel revisits the treehouse where she saw the murder and is startled by her older reflection. The moment of surprising herself foreshadows the surprise she will uncover about her own mother’s identity. The allusion to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of several references the novel makes to classic children’s literature.

“No wonder she’d been so stricken when Henry Jenkins, after all that time, had walked up the drive. She must have seen him as the author of her dream’s demise, his arrival bringing the past into collision with the present in a nightmarish way. Maybe it was shock that made her lift the knife. Shock mixed with fear that she might lose the family she’d created and that she adored.”

Laurel hasn’t yet uncovered her mother’s secret when she imagines this motivation for Dorothy’s murder of Henry Jenkins. Her conclusion serves as another red herring, building the impact of the eventual surprise reveal of Dolly’s true identity, yet Laurel has also gleaned the heart of it: Dorothy killed to protect her family.

“All this time, [Laurel] realized, this whole hunt she’d been on had been driven by a yearning need to know that her happy family, her entire childhood, the way her mother and father had looked at one another with such rare abiding love, was not a lie.”

Following the moment when she sees her older self in the mirror of the treehouse, Laurel feels relief when she understands that the essentials of her childhood are still intact; the foundations of her life and her identity are still solid. The final twist is still to come for the first-time reader, and for Laurel, who is about to discover that her mother’s identity is founded on a deception, though Dorothy’s feelings of familial love have always been real and sincere.