But I hadn’t woken up feeling frightened of the house. Instead I had the oddest sense that it was trying to tell me something.
‘Funny isn’t it,’ he said, ‘how the little things can mean so much? You can’t put a price on, say, a beautiful sunrise; one will keep me whistling for the whole of my postal round.’
I stared at him and nodded. A transparent expression stared back. Ben didn’t have a side, a hidden face, he spoke from the heart and you also couldn’t put a price on that.
I stood up to get some kitchen roll and switched on the light. Dark clouds had ambushed the sun.
Ben held out his hand. ‘Come on. Let’s get cracking and start our search upstairs.’
I slipped my fingers into his hand. It felt right, a gesture that needed no explaining. We were just about to make our way upstairs when a knock sounded at the door. Ben lifted Taz up and held him tightly whilst I answered it.
A woman stood there behind a large bunch of flowers. At least I assumed the person was female due to the skirt and high heels. Petals were missing due to a strong breeze. From the distance came a rumble of thunder.
She checked behind her before pushing inside. After I’d shut the door, she thrust the flowers into my hands and smoothed down her hair.
‘Caroline. Hello.’
‘A grateful customer gave these to the agency. I- I’ve just taken them out for a while. They aggravate Julie’s hay fever.’ She peered into my face. ‘Do you suffer too? Your eyes look red.’
‘Um—’
‘Anyway, I wondered if you could check my tattoo, I know you said it would scab but—’
Ben cleared his throat.
Caroline looked down the hallway. ‘Oh. I didn’t see you there. When I say tattoo what I really mean, is, is…’ She shot me a desperate glance.
‘Mum had one yesterday,’ said Ben. ‘A cat, on her wrist. It’s really cute.’
‘She what? Jill?’ Caroline gave a nervous laugh. ‘What an outlandish thing to do.’
‘Is outlandish such a bad thing?’ he asked.
She paused, thought for a moment and then leaned forwards. ‘It’s been really itchy but my niece thinks it looks fantastic. I can’t wait to show it off on the beach. I guess you could have a look if you wanted,’ she said to Ben. Without waiting for a reply Caroline pulled her blouse out of her skirt, hitched it up and turned around. I switched on the hallway light.
Ben got closer. ‘That’s pretty cool.’
‘The scabbing’s a bit gross,’ said Caroline. ‘I just wanted to check everything was as it should be.’
I studied her lower back. With a first tattoo it wasn’t uncommon to worry about the healing process. ‘It’s fine. Remember your tattoo is effectively an open wound, then it scabs over and that hardened layer will soon start to peel and flake away. It will look perfect by the time your holiday arrives, I promise.’
Caroline tucked in her blouse. ‘Thanks so much. Right, I’d better go before it starts to rain.’
I picked up the flowers. ‘Do you want to take these?’
Caroline looked at me and then Ben. ‘No. You keep them. And Ben, tell Jill I’d love to see her tattoo.’ She stepped outside and then came back in. ‘By the way, Lizzie, I was thinking about our chat, about the tenants who’d lived in this cottage and I remembered something, just a small detail, it’s probably nothing.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘The strange woman who visited and freaked that young couple out with the baby.’
‘She threw a rose into the river.’
‘Yes. Well, the couple kept going on about the fact that she was extremely well dressed with shoes you could see your face in and her hair tidily swept up into a chignon.’
33
Now
The Indian Apatani tribe used to tattoo young girls to make them unappealing to rival tribes who might abduct the most beautiful women
I thanked Caroline for the information and said goodbye. I stumbled outside, collapsing onto the doorstep. Ben joined me.
‘Where’s Taz?’ I asked, numbly.
‘In his bed. Lizzie, do you know the woman she described?’
‘It makes no sense. I’m one hundred per cent convinced it was Mum.’
A worm twisted its silky-smooth body across the soil and onto rough gravel. Its unsuitability to the new environment reminded me of my first days in Leafton. I transferred it back to the border and sat down once more.
‘She did own the property,’ he said.
‘But their solicitor, George, had made it clear no one was to ever contact them directly – so why would she visit? Why would she throw a rose into the river?’
Mum had stood on the back lawn just like I had. She’d breathed in this pollution-free air, smelt the fresh flora.
I still missed her.
I still missed Dad.
They’d have got on so well with Ash if they’d got to know him properly. The Christmases we could have had, playing board games or snooker… and he could have talked to Dad about high-spec cars and Mum about exotic holidays. What’s more, they would have considered Katya a great boss – a hard taskmaster who expected nothing less than excellence.
I sat with my knees up, arms folded across them.
‘Were roses a favourite flower?’ asked Ben gently.
‘I used to think so. It was mine and I’d always draw it for her Mother’s Day card. Mum would look so pleased but as I got older, I noticed something else, just fleetingly – a faraway look.’
Perhaps giving her that cut-glass ornament for her sixtieth birthday had been a mistake. Maybe she was glad it had smashed. Ben and I talked over the possibilities. Could there have been a love story behind the rose she’d thrown? What if Mum had an affair with one of the tenants? Perhaps my parents’ marriage almost broke down and that’s why she and Dad never breathed a word about Leafton. Yet they were both so prim and upstanding I couldn’t imagine either of them ever cheating.
Dad said the Strachans had an effect on Mum. Was the rose to remember them by? Perhaps she believed they’d had magical powers. Was that why she was so against me doing art? Did she believe in the curse that made the poet jump out of one of the top windows? Had she fretted that bad luck might follow me because they owned the cottage?
But Mum was always so level-headed. Questions whizzed around in my head.
I stood up and yanked Ben to his feet. We started searching in the biggest bedroom, opposite mine, as clouds outside formed ranks and blackened. Apart from the bed, a side cabinet and huge wardrobe the space was stark and my stomach fluttered as I imagined the colours and textures I would use to furnish it. Ben and I moved the furniture as rain beat the windows. Inch by inch we examined the interior of the cabinet and wardrobe and we pulled up the mattress. We checked all the floorboards to see if one was loose and yanked up a couple of random ones, on the off chance.
‘One room down,’ I said as we headed into the smallest bedroom, the other one at the back. The lack of space inside was balanced by the outside view. Ben stood at the window and I joined him. Rain drenched leaves, and gusts of wind dodged in between branches as if spreading trouble. We went through the same process as before, going over the interior of all the furniture and checking for loose floorboards. Ben went back to the window sill having noticed a small area of rotten wood. His shoulders jolted as a clap of thunder sounded in the distance.
I shivered as a ghoulish, persistent caterwauling crept up the stairs. Ben left to see to Taz. I sat on the bed and surveyed the room, my eyes returning to the sill’s rotting wood. It was often people’s flaws that revealed their deepest secrets, maybe it was the same for buildings. I went over and carefully jiggled the sill up and down. My fingers splayed out, pulse quickening as I felt a ridge underneath. I held it with both hands and carefully pulled.
A hidden drawer?
I jolted, let go and stood back as if the wood had burnt me. There might be something inside that would change my life forever, or it might c
ontain nothing but dust and air. I stepped forwards and shook the drawer from side to side until, little by little, it came out. A musty smell filled my nostrils. Paper covered in mould lined the bottom. On top lay a book.
I took it out, along with a pencil and sheet of curled paper. In the corner of the drawer were three… fruit chews. I recognised the branded wrappers from my childhood.
I ran my hand across the wood.
Thank you.
I sat back down on the lumpy mattress and looked at the sheet of paper first. I should have got up to switch on the light but my legs wouldn’t move. It was a child’s drawing. The artist couldn’t have been out of infants’ school as the people sketched had circles for bodies and basic arms and legs. It was of three adults – two men and a woman – and two children, both girls, one taller than the other. They stood in front a swirl of blue – the stream? And next to either a giant’s head with long green hair or what was more likely an attempt to sketch a weeping willow.
I put the drawing to one side and brushed my arm over the book. It was purple and flowery with swirling doodles across the front. Slowly I opened it. A photo album? A snap of bulrushes was stuck to the first page. It was wonky and slightly out of focus. The grown-ups must have let this girl have a go with their camera. On the next page was a ticket for the cinema – the movie 101 Dalmatians. So, this was more of a scrapbook. I flicked to the next page and a picture cut out from a magazine of a dog. On the page was a drawing of a stick girl next to a cat. I turned over again.
A flash of lightning lit up the room and my eyes fell to another photo, a much older one, this time. Her parents perhaps? It was a young couple from the seventies, wearing flares. My eyes narrowed before I quickly turned over the page. Then I went back. I studied the woman’s face and the man’s, their relative heights, her strong nose and thick hair… his prominent chin.
A clap of thunder punched me in the chest.
‘Ben!’ I shouted. ‘Ben!’
He appeared within seconds. Ben was a good friend. He’d gone to the vet’s with me when I first found Taz. He’d taken me to Henchurch for the book signing. He’d woven his way into my life here without me realising it. I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have here to share this.
‘I don’t understand, this photo – it’s of my mum and dad.’
‘A scrapbook? Where did you…?’
I jerked my head towards the window sill as cascading rain collided with the glass.
‘This is crazy.’ He took it and flicked through. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It must have been taken whilst they were at Cambridge University, where they met. In fact look…’ I pointed to the Gothic chapel behind with its arched stained window. ‘I’d swear that’s Kings College.’
Was there a connection between this and the photo I’d found of The Best Inn and Green & Brown?
‘Then this book must be yours.’
My hands shook as I picked up the drawing again and glanced at the figures – Mum, Dad, me… who was the other girl?
‘Why would these be hidden? It’s as if we all lived here once and if that drawing is of our family, who is the second man?’ I turned to another page. ‘Do you think that’s a sketch of a birthday cake, with five candles?’
He nodded. We looked at another drawing of a girl, and a boy with sticky-up hair.
I progressed through the scrapbook, studying tickets to parties stuck in and favourite sweet wrappers. Finally, I settled on another photo and shook my head. ‘Look. That’s me… me when I was little with another girl.’ We were holding hands. My finger rested on the other child. She looked a bit older. Lightning illuminated her features. Shortly afterwards thunder threw another punch.
It winded me.
The reflection… the girl in the mirror who featured in my memories and recent dreams.
She had been real.
I turned to the last page, part of me not wanting to look, part of me unable to wait. It was another photo, of me and a little boy, we had our arms wrapped around each other.
‘Jimmy Jammy,’ I said without thinking. ‘That was my best friend. I couldn’t pronounce his proper name. We were always playing out.’
‘What the hell?’ Ben pored over the photo then straightened up. His eyes scoured my face. He got to his feet and paced up and down, running his hand through his untidy hair. He sat down, voice trembling. ‘Lilibet?’
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
‘Jill used to say this good friend of mine, her mum thought Lilibet was a sweet nickname seeing as Elizabeth was too difficult for me to pronounce.’
I stared at his face as the room appeared to spin.
‘My name’s Benjamin,’ his voice faltered. ‘I can’t believe this. The friend, it was in infants, called me Jimmy Jammy because Benjamin was too tricky. Then one day she and her family disappeared without even saying goodbye.’
‘Jimmy Jammy?’ I let go of the scrapbook and it fell to the floor. Instead I scrolled back through my childhood, searching for concrete evidence. Even though the images in my mind had dimmed, the feelings kept true, the pure joy of running through fields, hand in hand, without a care in the world; the stomach ache from incontrollable laughter; the yucky hot breath of in-the-ear whispers. The… the oneness.
‘I… I remember missing you.’
‘Missed you too,’ he mumbled.
‘You being disgusting kissing me on the cheek when the teacher wasn’t looking…’
‘You always telling me we’d be best friends forever if I gave you my last sweet… I’ve thought about you, now and then, especially during the teenage years and recently. You left without a word, my grandparents didn’t want me, then splitting up with my long-term girlfriend last year… in dark moments I’ve wondered if I’m just one of those Teflon people who can’t get people to stick.’ He sighed. ‘But then I get a bit of perspective, stop the pity party and realise – it’s just life, and you leaving, that suddenly, would have been completely out of your hands.’
Teflon people? It was like me and my parents, like me and Ash.
In so many ways Ben and me were alike.
I went back to the drawing of the girl and boy.
‘Look closely,’ I said. ‘I think it really is you. His arms and face – they are covered with dots.’
We stared into each other’s eyes with confusion but an ease that time hadn’t managed to steal.
‘It’s weird to think I must have lived here once. If I’d stayed, you and I, what a history we’d have had. We spent a lot of time together, didn’t we?’ I said and picked up the scrapbook.
‘Mum’s talked about you, over the years, and how close we were. We were in the same class at school and spent our spare time together as well. We both loved fish fingers and doing snail races. Our knees were grazed all the time from climbing trees. Apparently, you were always jealous of my freckles and I wanted the strawberry shaped birthmark behind your ear.’
Apart from my parents and Ash no one else knew about that.
It made sense now. All this time I felt I’d known Ben previously but he’d never lived in London – it had been me who’d lived near to him.
An image of a toy penguin popped into my mind. The heatable one I’d called Jimmy Jammy. Mum and Dad had made me change its name. It’s like they wanted to erase this part of my history.
‘Your parents didn’t always get home in time to pick you up from school,’ he said. ‘Trish used to babysit and let me come around to play. Sometimes she’d cook – nice stuff, not the green vegetables our parents steamed.’
Green vegetables… My parents and work…
‘Oh my God, of course!’ My heart raced. ‘I remember now… the G & B building… Green & Brown… the photo from the back of the wardrobe…’
Ben’s brow knotted.
‘Mum used to say eat your greens and brown when I was very little and about to eat vegetables and gravy. This was during our family’s phase of naming foods by their colour. We’
d laughed about it years later. She explained it had started because at the time they were working for a company called Green & Brown. Neve’s Granddad said “financial whizzes” from the company next to where his wife worked went to the Best Inn for lunch – that would apply to insurance brokers.’
I ran into my bedroom and came back clutching the photo.
The Best Inn. That must have been where my Dad proposed to Mum during their lunch hour, before their vegetarian days, her eating Beef Wellington, him using the engagement ring to hold a napkin. That would be why they took this photo and kept it. And the infinity symbol drawn onto it… maybe that represented their love.
‘And there’s something else,’ said Ben and he rubbed the back of his neck. He looked nervous.
The caterwauling started again. Reluctantly Ben went downstairs, muttering to himself and shaking his head. I asked him to switch off the light as he went. My head hurt.
Rain. Thunder. Lightning. I sat in the dark as the storm raged. Ben came back up and I took Taz. Frederick spoke of Trish suffering a tragedy to do with the cottage. She’d known my parents. Was there a chance that what upset her had to do with my family’s time living here?
‘I need to see Trish,’ I said and looked at Ben through the darkness. ‘I reckon she’ll be able to make me make sense of all this.’
‘First there’s something I need to tell you, now that I know who you are.’
But I hardly heard him, thoughts swirling like windswept leaves about the scrapbook and the photo of my living reflection.
‘Lizzie?’ He shook me gently. ‘Are you listening? You see—’
I pushed Taz into his arms and picked up the scrapbook. I pointed to the other girl. ‘Who was she? We must have been close. Does she still live around here? Perhaps you can introduce—’
Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage Page 20