Inspector Khan stands up and brushes cat hair and biscuit crumbs from his suit. “Good,” he says. I suspect he finds family stuff odd. He doesn’t look like a family man. He looks more like a catching murderers sort of a man.
Auntie V’s still clutching Ollie when her phone goes off in her pocket.
“Sarah – yes – today? That’s brilliant! But I haven’t got any food in.” Auntie V glances anxiously around the room as if it might suddenly turn into a supermarket. “You can? But that’s great – and what about Dad?”
There’s a long silence while I realise that Mum must be talking about Granddad.
Auntie V turns her back and walks to the window.
“OK – well, if you think he’s well enough. I mean, the house is freezing.”
And then I hear Mum saying loud and clear, “Well, do you want us to come down? We can always stay away, you know.”
“Of course I want you – I’ve never wanted… We can light the fires in the bedrooms. It’s just the house is a bit – basic.”
Another pause.
“Yes … yes … yes … brilliant,” says Auntie V.
She finishes the call, sniffs and turns around.
“They’re coming. They’re all coming.”
“Even Granddad?” I say.
Auntie V nods, her eyes are full of tears. “They’re coming to our house for Christmas.”
Chapter 30
The stables smell awful when we get back, old kippers and singed wood and even though the snow fell heavily after the fire, there’s still straw smouldering. A fire-investigation unit is poking about in the embers and emergency vehicles are scattered up the hillside, searching for evidence. Now in sunlight, I can see the car that we sent over the edge is halfway down the bracken slope, the one that the bulldozer tipped seems to have gone altogether, but the bulldozer is still up there on the track, dusted with snow.
“Bit different from yesterday morning?” says Auntie V.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
She ruffles my hair in answer, picking up a horseshoe from the edge of the ash. She places it U-shaped against the porch. “To catch the luck,” she says.
“How are the ponies?” asks Ollie.
The ponies in the garden have eaten everything they can get their teeth on – they’re all there apart from the two we rode up the mountain. And they all look perfectly well. Ollie and I chase them into a windy cowshed at the back of the garden and bung hay in the mangers.
We watch them for a moment.
“They’ll be OK when the snow melts,” he says.
“Samson was brilliant on the mountain,” I say. “He saved my life. And Megan – she showed me the way to the village.”
“You’d never have made it you know,” says Ollie. “Without them.”
“I know,” I say.
* * *
The house seems fine. The power’s restored. The dogs bark madly and snuffle about waiting to be fed.
I run up the stairs to find my bag still hanging on the door. Ollie follows.
“Seriously – in there?” he says. “With all your make-up and yuk?”
I tip the bag up and empty the whole thing on the bed.
We go through every last lipstick, search every pocket.
“It’s not there,” I say. “Perhaps—”
Ollie picks it up and shakes it really hard. A slim white biro thing slips from the front pocket and bounces on the eiderdown.
“Whoa!” he says. “Is that it?”
I pick it up and twirl it between my fingers. “I don’t recognise it. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it before.”
We look at each other. We look at the tube.
“Two hundred million,” I say. “Can you believe it?”
“Well, open it,” he says. “Let’s have a look.”
The end has a tiny white plug sealing it, and I try to get my nail underneath. It’s really stiff.
Downstairs, someone bangs on the door, and Auntie V lets them in.
“Here, let me have a go,” says Ollie, taking it off me. He grabs the tube and locks the plug between his molars.
Feet sound on the stairs.
“Sorry,” says someone behind me. I turn. It’s Inspector Khan. He leans over the bed and grabs the tube from Ollie. “I’ll take that.”
“No! Can’t we just—! Couldn’t you show us?”
“No,” says the inspector, hiding it in his jacket pocket. “You absolutely can’t. No one but a restoration specialist should take it out of the tube. Certainly not you two.”
“Aw!” sighs Ollie. “After all that – I really hoped we’d get to see it.”
“Well, you got to hold it,” replies the inspector.
“Kids,” calls Auntie V from downstairs. “We need to get this house ready – it’s a tip.”
* * *
I don’t know where we get the energy from but while Ollie and Auntie V move around the house like slow zombies tidying and vacuuming and lighting fires – I go into full party mode. Firstly I find my inner Zahra – sourcing fairy lights, vases that I can put red berried holly in and things to make paper chains from. Poor Ollie then sits there cutting strips and we make a giant paper chain that stretches all around the inside of the house. I find some plastic flowers, wash them, and bung them in jam jars and plump all the cushions on the sofa. We cut a small pine from the side of the track, wedge it in a bucket and bring it inside as a Christmas tree. Auntie V nearly blows herself up resurrecting the fairy lights, and excels herself by producing a box of mangy Christmas decorations.
By four o’clock, the house is warm and looks pretty good and we eat Sergeant Lewis’s leftover curry, this time with an appetite.
By five, we’re all asleep on sofas.
“Hello, hello, hello!” Dad’s voice booms in the hall. “Where are we at? Deck the hall and that! Merry Christmas to one and all!”
It’s great, it’s like having a bear come in. A huge cuddly magnificent strong bear – the whole family as one creature, all except Mum who just bursts into tears and drips all over me, and can’t stop saying things like “so glad,” and “so awful!” and hugging Auntie V and me, and even Ollie. Zahra glues herself to my side, hugging, and grinning and making stupid remarks that make me laugh. The twins race into the house and run round and round and pat the dogs who sniff at them and lick their faces.
And Granddad is standing there, looking really old but with this huge fabulous smile on his face, beaming at me, at Ollie and Auntie V.
Mum and Auntie V hug, streaming with tears, holding each other’s hands – like sisters do.
And everyone’s smiling and laughing and it feels really good.
“Oh, my lovely girl,” says Mum, over and over. “My lovely girls, and she scoops Zahra to her side and holds us like she’ll never let go and Auntie V holds us close on the other side and much to my surprise, Ollie joins in too.
* * *
On Christmas Day, Ollie brings the bulldozer down.
“Goodness gracious!” says Granddad, tiptoeing birdlike across the mud. “What a beauty she is. Can I have a go?”
So Christmas divides into two groups. Those playing bulldozers in the yard, and those playing Monopoly inside. It’s a weird Christmas, with mismatched supermarket ready-meals and no presents, unless you count the rice krispy cakes that Zahra makes on Christmas morning.
But we eat together, and sing together, and laugh together.
* * *
We stay until the day after Boxing Day, when Dad starts to get itchy feet and says that we really ought to go because: “The lads’ll be after their U-bends.”
In the morning, I go with Ollie and Megan for a last ride up the mountain. I take a pony called Duchess who doesn’t bite and doesn’t like liquorice. The snow has almost melted away – the grass is yellow underneath, with long scores where the bulldozer’s tracks mashed the ground.
Megan races off, chasing imaginary crows.
“I didn’t think I’d say
this, but I’m going to miss it,” I say.
“I didn’t think I’d say it, but I’m going to miss you,” Ollie says, and we trot up to the mine and he tells me that the bird that circles is a red kite and that he’d love it if I came back in the summer.
“Really, do you mean that?”
“Really,” he says, “I really do.”
Epilogue
In May, just after my birthday, which was a proper party with Zahra and my friends and treats from Borough Market, a beautifully addressed envelope comes for all of us.
“What’s in it?” asks Zahra.
“It’s an invitation, to a private view. What’s a private view?”
Granddad takes it and reads it. “It’s your picture, sweetheart. The Vermeer. At Buckingham Palace.”
“Picture, picture, picture!” shouts Precious, scribbling on the fridge.
* * *
We all go, even the twins. Ollie and Auntie V join us and we hold hands through the giant doorway and through all the posh people with fizzy wine and canapés.
Inspector Khan meets us, shaking hands with everyone and propelling us past the crowd to a smaller room on the side.
In the middle is a single painting on an easel. But no one seems to be looking at it – they’re all just talking to each other, sipping from their sparkly wine glasses.
“Is that it?” says Zahra. “It’s tiny.”
“It is, isn’t it?” says a voice from behind us. I turn, and face the buttons on a neat black suit. “Peter Romero, at your service.” He looks utterly smart, not at all like the man I saw lying on the stretcher, and he doesn’t have any bullet wounds, or blood. I almost wouldn’t recognise him but for his flaming-red hair that catches in the powerful lights of the gallery like a halo, and his warm voice that echoes around the space.
“Hello,” I say. “This is my sister, Zahra, and this is Ollie.”
He shakes hands with his left hand and I realise that his right hand is tucked into his jacket. Perhaps he hasn’t recovered yet.
“What do you think of the painting?” he asks.
Zahra wrinkles up her nose. “Is that all it is?”
It is tiny. It’s a very small portrait of two girls holding hands. Behind them, more figures stand in near darkness in a corridor, but it’s just possible to make out faces, smiling.
“It’s lovely,” says Mum. “It’s really pretty. Warm. Loving.”
“It’s so fresh,” says Auntie V. “It doesn’t look like it was painted over three hundred years ago. It looks like it was done yesterday.”
“Two hundred million dollars,” says Dad. “For that.”
“Wow,” says Ollie.
“It’s a very valuable painting. There aren’t very many authenticated Vermeers in the world,” says Peter Romero. “It’s crazily rare. It’s great to see it back where it belongs.”
“Forget the money,” says Granddad. “Look at the craftsmanship. Look at the light, the shade, the way it’s painted. Beautiful.”
“Look at the love there,” says Auntie V.
I gaze at the faces of the two girls. One older, looking across at the younger one, her face full of warmth, and the little one smiling, bursting with energy.
They look really happy and so do the people behind them.
“They’re just like us,” I say.
“Yes,” says Granddad, putting his arms around Ollie and me and Zahra. “They are.”
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2016 by Nosy Crow Ltd
The Crow’s Nest, 10a Lant Street
London, SE1 1QR, UK
Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd
Text © Fleur Hitchcock, 2016
Cover illustration © Robert Ball, 2016
The right of Fleur Hitchcock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved
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