The Valley of Lost Secrets

by Lesley Parr

  ‘Rules out a murderer hanging around,’ I say. ‘Surely they’d have killed again by now.’

  ‘Can we go?’ Ronnie asks. ‘Florence’s book is horrible.’

  She closes it. ‘So what’s our next move, Private Travers?’

  ‘We’ll go up to the tree tomorrow. Have a closer look.’ I take Ronnie’s hand and try not to think about going inside the hollow. ‘Come on then.’

  We make our way quietly through the adult section, say goodbye to the librarian and push open the heavy doors into the pouring rain. It’s going to be a long, wet walk back to Llanbryn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  DARK DAYS

  Mr and Mrs Thomas are in the living room. She’s crying.

  I hate it when grown-ups cry. It’s like the world is the wrong way up. After Mum left, I sometimes heard Dad crying in their bedroom. One night there was a crash against the wall and the next day one of Mum’s favourite vases was in the bin. That’s when he swapped rooms with us.

  Ronnie and me are in the garden. He’s talking to the chickens but I don’t suppose they care very much about his Dinky van or the letter we got from Nan this morning. People keep saying there’ll be no bombs in the valleys; they sent us here to keep us safe. The war won’t happen in Llanbryn, they say.

  Except, in a way, it already has.

  Mrs Ringrose’s son, John, has been killed near his army training camp. Car crash. He didn’t even get to the war. His mother got a telegram and it’s his funeral today. His father works down the pit with Mr Thomas and everyone is really sad and keeps saying these are ‘dark days’.

  But I don’t think that’s what’s making Mrs Thomas cry. She took some eggs to Mrs Ringrose but Mrs Ringrose didn’t want them. Mr Thomas said he didn’t know why she’d bothered. I thought they were going to argue, like Mum and Dad used to, but she started to cry and Mr Thomas is sitting with her now.

  ‘Let’s go and call for Florence,’ I say. ‘We need to go to the tree.’

  ‘All right,’ Ronnie says, waving goodbye to Dorothy and the others through the chicken wire.

  Inside, he launches himself like a little space rocket. He flings his arms around Mrs Thomas and almost pushes Mr Thomas off the chair. She laughs and holds him really tight, kissing the top of his head. ‘Ronnie Travers, I have to say, for an English boy you give a good Welsh cwtch.’

  When we step on to the pavement, Ronnie’s face crumples like Mrs Thomas’s hanky.

  ‘Flipping heck, what’re you crying for?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t want Aunty Gwen to be sad.’ He sniffs and raises his arm to his face.

  ‘Wipe your nose on your sleeve and she’ll be more than sad,’ I say. ‘She’ll be flaming furious.’

  It’s all black. The cars and the people’s clothes make a dark river that flows up through Llanbryn instead of down. From a spot on the mountain, Ronnie, Florence and me sit closer together than we need to and watch the funeral procession. It winds its way up from the dead soldier Ringrose’s house along the streets to the church. People are standing on their doorsteps, hats off, heads bowed. Then, as the last car passes, they join the end and become part of it. Mrs Thomas walks with Phyllis, their arms looped together. Mr Thomas refused to go.

  ‘I’m not going,’ he’d said this morning. ‘And that’s an end to it.’

  ‘I know it’s hard for you, Alun,’ Mrs Thomas said. ‘But think how it looks.’

  ‘I don’t care how it looks. The gossips round here will feast on Alun Thomas no matter what. One more story won’t make a difference.’

  She asked Ronnie and me to leave the kitchen then, but we stayed on the stairs to listen.

  ‘But he was a soldier, Alun. And he hadn’t even got as far as fighting … it’s …’

  ‘Cruel? Unfair? That’s life. I know that better than most. And I don’t see why you’re going. That Ringrose woman has been nothing but horrible to you since …’

  ‘Since I became a Thomas?’

  Silence.

  She carries on. ‘You know I’ve never cared about that and I’ve never cared about Hilda Ringrose, but John was a nice boy. Despite his mother. He was always polite and pleasant to us.’ Mrs Thomas sniffed. ‘What about me?’ Her voice went quieter. ‘Don’t I matter?’

  A chair scuffed the kitchen floor. I think he must have gone over to her. ‘You’re all that matters.’ Mr Thomas didn’t sound cross any more. ‘But I can’t go. You know why, Gwen. It’s about more than Hilda Ringrose.’

  ‘I know.’

  Footsteps. The back door opened and closed. We went upstairs and Ronnie drove his Dinky van over the bedspread, up and down the fluffy candlewick.

  Now, Mr Ringrose helps Mrs Ringrose out of the second car. Jack Evans’s dad, dressed in full vicar robes, steps forward to shake their hands. The river of black forms a puddle around the church gates and six men lift Private John Ringrose’s coffin out of the back of the hearse.

  It takes ages for everyone to follow it into the church.

  ‘What happens in a funeral?’ Ronnie asks.

  ‘The vicar says nice things about the dead person and people cry and sing hymns,’ Florence says, picking a daisy and spinning its stem in her fingers.

  ‘What about the coffin?’

  ‘That gets buried in the ground.’

  ‘In a grave?’

  She nods.

  Ronnie picks a daisy too. ‘I’m going to make you a necklace,’ he says. ‘I’m good at daisy chains, aren’t I, Jimmy?’

  I smile. ‘For someone with fat little sausage fingers, you do a decent job.’

  He pokes his tongue out at me and turns to Florence. ‘Our mum showed me.’

  The smile slips off my face like melted butter.

  ‘What happened to her?’ Florence asks.

  Ronnie puts his head down and concentrates really hard on piercing the daisy stem with his fingernail.

  ‘She ran off with the butcher from Green Lane,’ I say. ‘Some people say they’re in Ramsgate, some say Southend. Don’t know why they would go there, she hates the seaside.’

  Ronnie’s tongue is sticking out and he’s frowning hard as he threads a stem through the hole he made.

  ‘I heard rumours,’ Florence says. ‘Do you miss her?’

  ‘Sometimes. Not really. I don’t know.’ I shrug. ‘It’s Nan and Dad who always looked after us.’ I nod at Ronnie and mouth, ‘He does though.’

  Florence ruffles Ronnie’s hair. ‘How are you getting on?’ He holds up a chain of three squashed daisies. ‘Well, that’s just beautiful,’ she says.

  They’re lowering the coffin into the ground. Mr and Mrs Ringrose hold each other up. Jack Evans’s dad is saying words we can’t hear. People throw handfuls of dark, Welsh dirt into the grave. Some throw flowers. Once they’ve all gone, two men come with shovels and scoop piles of earth on top of Private John Ringrose.

  That’s it.

  The first funeral I’ve ever seen.

  Florence sighs. ‘Up to the tree then, troops?’

  I shake my head. ‘I’ve had enough of death for one day.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE SEARCH PARTY

  Dad’s sent us a picture postcard of Tower Bridge. He says he’ll take us there when the war is over and we can have a picnic and watch the ships go past. Sitting here on the garden bench, I imagine Dad, Nan, Ronnie and me eating sandwiches and cake right next to the Thames. I want to be there now.

  There’s a thud and Mrs Thomas comes flying out of the back door. ‘I can’t find Ronnie! He’s not out here, is he?’

  ‘No, I thought he was playing upstairs.’

  Her eyes dart everywhere. ‘So did I, but he isn’t.’

  ‘He’s not out here, either,’ I say, standing up. ‘I’d have seen him.’

  She looks in the air-raid shelter anyway.

  Thoughts tap at my head like a tiny hammer. Bones. A murderer.

  It was more than ten years ago. Ronnie will be fine.

  But t
he tapping doesn’t stop.

  Mrs Thomas rushes into the house, muttering about checking the wardrobes. I follow. ‘He hid under the bed once,’ I call. ‘When he was being a pain.’

  That must be it – he must be hiding – playing a game, that’s all.

  She thunders up the stairs. I hear her pull Ronnie’s mattress across the floor, then shove it back again. I shout up from the passage. ‘I’ll look in the street.’

  ‘Yes – do that!’ It sounds like she’s in their bedroom now. He won’t be in there; even Ronnie wouldn’t go in there.

  I run up and down Heol Mabon, checking the hill at each end, but I can’t see him. I shout but no one answers. I’m just running back to the house when Mrs Maddock the tortoise opens the top window next door.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing bellowing in the street? Got a bell in every tooth, you have!’

  ‘I’m looking for my brother.’

  ‘Passed my front window about an hour ago.’ She straightens the net curtain.

  ‘Which way did he go?’

  ‘Manners cost nothing, you know.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Now let me think …’

  Mrs Maddock doesn’t need to think. Mrs Maddock knows everything that happens in this street because she’s always in the flaming window.

  ‘That way.’ She points towards the Bryn. If she thinks I’m going to thank her, she can whistle. When I get back in the house, Mrs Thomas is in the passage.

  ‘Mrs Maddock saw him go out about an hour ago,’ I say.

  She tugs at the straps of her pinny. ‘But he knows not to go without letting me know.’

  I grab my jacket. ‘I’ll go and have a proper look around, I know the places he likes. He’s probably just gone to call for Florence.’

  Please let that be true.

  She manages a smile. ‘All right. But straight back once you’ve found him, mind.’

  Ieuan says Phyllis has taken Florence out for the morning and he hasn’t seen Ronnie at all. I head up the mountain, jumping and twitching at every little sound. Flipping countryside. Everything’s so quiet you could hear a mouse sneeze and think it’s a bomb. There’s no sign of him. The little hammer turns into a mallet as I walk towards the tree.

  But the branches we put over the entrance haven’t been disturbed. I’m sure of it. And I don’t know why, but all the breath comes out of me in a strange sort of dry sob.

  I’ll go back; he’s probably in the kitchen stuffing his face with bread and dripping by now. Just as I’m climbing over the gate, something – someone? – moves in the hedgerow. There’s a rustling sound. I stand very still. ‘Ronnie?’

  A large black bird flies screeching into the air.

  Flipping stupid countryside.

  Mrs Thomas is getting more and more frantic. I put the kettle on for a cup of really strong, sweet tea. Nan says it’s good for shock.

  We sit at the table, not saying a word. The hammer tap-tap-taps inside my head. I can’t tell her how worried I am. I wish Mr Thomas was here. He doesn’t get in a tizzy. He’d know what to do and where to look.

  ‘Honey!’ Mrs Thomas’s cup hits its saucer with a clatter, tea slopping over the side.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Ronnie was asking if he could go and see Mrs Powell’s beehives, that’s where he’ll be.’

  Blimey, I hope she’s right.

  There’s a noise from the passage and we both jump up and almost run to the front door. Mr Thomas is standing there black as the night. I’ve never seen him come straight from a shift before. His eyes and teeth are very white in his dark face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he says, taking off his cap.

  I wait for Mrs Thomas to say something but all that comes out of her mouth is a strangled squeak.

  Mr Thomas tilts his head as if searching for something behind us. ‘Where’s Ronnie?’ There’s a tone in his voice, a look on his face that I can’t work out. Just like how Mrs Thomas was in the garden.

  ‘We don’t know,’ I say. ‘He went out and hasn’t come back.’

  Mr Thomas twists his cap up tight in his big, dark hands. ‘How long?’

  ‘Nearly three hours now. I’ve been out but I couldn’t find him.’

  Mr Thomas shakes out his cap. Coal dust floats to the floor but Mrs Thomas doesn’t even notice. He puts his cap back on. ‘I’m going down to the institute to find Ceri Bevan. He can organise a search party. Jimmy, fetch Florence and get some doors knocked, someone must have seen your brother. Send any adults who want to help to the institute. Gwen, you need to stay here in case he turns up. I’ll ask Ceri if Margaret can come and sit with you.’

  Mrs Thomas nods through her tears.

  The tapping in my head gets quieter. Mr Thomas sounds like a soldier planning a military operation. He sounds like Florence. We’re bound to find Ronnie now. I follow him out on to the pavement and he grabs me by the shoulders. For one awful second I think he’s going to tell me off for not looking after my little brother, but then he says, ‘We’ll find him, Jimmy.’ Except the fear in his eyes tells me he’s as worried as I am.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A GOOD LOOK OVER THE VALLEY

  ‘Why are your shoulders black?’ Florence wrinkles her nose as we knock on the door next to Phyllis’s shop.

  ‘Mr Thomas took hold of me.’ I see the shock on her face. ‘No – not in a rough way. He’s still dirty from work.’

  ‘Didn’t he have a wash?’ she asks. ‘I mean, he must have been really worried if he didn’t even have a wash.’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ I tap my foot on the pavement. Answer the door, answer the door. ‘I’m going over there,’ I say, pointing across the road. ‘It’ll be quicker if we take one side each.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  We get knocking. Before long there are lots of people grabbing coats, saying they’ll help. Some go to the institute like Mr Thomas asked; some tear off on their own. Some just say he’s a daft little boy who’ll come home when he’s hungry. One says he probably ran away to London because he stole the church collection money. Florence has to pull me away from that doorstep.

  By the middle of the afternoon word’s got around. Most of the doors we knock are unanswered or we’re told that someone in the house has already gone to look for Ronnie. Florence and me sit on the fence looking up to the mountain.

  ‘Are you sure he wasn’t at the tree?’ she asks for the hundredth time.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I did hear a noise in the hedgerow, but it was only a bird.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A bird. You know, flappy thing with wings. Flew out of the hedge and into the sky.’

  She pulls a face, then looks at me too hard and too long. ‘Jimmy, there’s no murderer round here, you know. If there was, he’d have killed more people by now.’

  There’s no point pretending I was thinking of anything else. ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘I am,’ she says. Then, ‘Do you think someone in the hedge could have spooked that bird?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Wait here!’ She runs like mad back down the street. There’s no point asking what she’s doing; she’s already so far away she wouldn’t hear me.

  I rack my brain to think of anywhere else Ronnie might go. After only a few minutes, Florence is back with a brown leather case slung across her body. It bumps against her gas mask box.

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll see.’ She taps the side of her nose and winks.

  Before I can tell her how annoying she is, she’s over the fence and halfway up the field.

  Florence says we need to be up in the tree so we can get a good look over the valley. We leave our gas mask boxes at the bottom and climb to the end of the thickest branch, where there aren’t as many leaves. I see green fields, black coal tips, rows and rows of houses. But no Ronnie. Where is he?

  Florence lifts the brown leather case and pulls out a pair of binoculars. I reach
out but she snatches them away.

  ‘You can’t have them!’

  ‘Crikey, Florence, it’s not like I’m taking your flipping ribbon!’

  ‘Very funny.’ She pokes out her tongue. ‘They’re Ieuan’s – for birdwatching. And he doesn’t know I’ve got them. I don’t think he’ll mind when he knows why I took them though.’

  Florence makes a big show of putting the strap around her neck and moving the wheel.

  ‘Anything?’ I ask.

  ‘The gate looks so much closer; I can even see the latch we never use!’

  ‘Never mind the blooming gate! Can you see Ronnie?’

  ‘No, but there are some people by the stream. they’re probably looking for him too.’

  She turns to the next field, the one with the footpath that leads to the church. It looks like she’s following it down the mountain. She stops still and twiddles the wheel.

  ‘Jimmy.’ Her voice is an excited whisper. ‘There’s something in the corner a couple of fields down.’ She lowers the binoculars. ‘Looks like a den.’

  We stop running when we reach the footpath. A little way along, there’s one of those gates that isn’t a gate. Florence says it’s called a stile. We stand on it and look across the field. She’s right; it is a den, made of planks of wood and corrugated iron. Thick tarpaulin fixed to the ground with tent pegs makes a roof. There’s a sign over the door: The Bunker.

  A pair of hands moves the iron sheet away and one of the twins comes out. He snaps a stick off a tree and goes back in. Florence and me look at each other.

  ‘Jack’s gang,’ I mutter. ‘They wouldn’t tell us if they’d seen Ronnie or not.’

  ‘Let’s keep looking then.’

  We jump down, carry on along the footpath, then turn left around the field, keeping low and quiet because the den’s on the other side of the hedge. Just as we reach the corner, there’s a whimpering sound. It’s coming from the Bunker. I grab Florence’s arm and we freeze.