by Sue Wallman
“Bet Kate’s wishing she were here,” says Elaine. “You can’t beat New Year’s Eve at Roeshot House. Still, I expect she’s having a nice time with that chap of hers.” She smiles at me.
I don’t smile back.
“My best New Year’s Eve was in the Caribbean,” says Tatum.
I see Elaine look at Marc with annoyance.
“Stay here and play charades,” says Auntie Gabs. “Count me out, though. I should be getting to bed. I’m so damn tired.”
“I think we should all turn in, to be honest,” says Elaine.
“Quit while we’re ahead,” agrees Marc. “Wake up in good time for a trip to the castle the other side of Riddingham.”
Castle. We all look at each other in alarm.
I look at Jakob and mouth, Margery.
“We’ve got plans for tomorrow,” says Jakob. “Meeting up with a few of Evan’s friends.”
“Oh, honestly,” says Elaine.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” says Marc, tugging on Elaine’s arm. “’Night, all.” The three adults go upstairs, shouting back to us to remember to switch off the lights.
If Ivy didn’t have such a bad headache, and if Tatum wasn’t with us, I know we Amigos would be raiding the larder for biscuits and sweets to take up to the attic. Or we’d be planning to congregate in one of our bedrooms. We’d climb into the same bed and tell each other ghost stories about heads on sticks banging against windows and sinister dolls. Tonight, none of us are hungry. We wait for Ivy to get a glass of water while Tatum tells us how we’re going to have to steer the conversation with Margery so that we get off the subject of a memorial as soon as possible and on to Alice Billings herself.
“If Alice and Margery were school friends, Margery is likely to have met Rose,” says Tatum. “That would be wonderful: a first-hand account of Rose. I want to know about Doug Billings as well. He must have known what was going on. Alice wasn’t that big, so would she have been able to bury a body on her own? How long would that take, with no one noticing? And why did he die three years after Rose? Was it really a heart attack?”
I glance at Ivy but she’s found the paracetamol and is taking a couple of tablets.
“I’ll lead the questions,” says Tatum. “Evan’s not going to want to do it, though he’d be best, given she knows him.”
“She’s won’t like you filming her,” says Jakob.
“I’ll be subtle.” She pauses. “I can be subtle, you know.”
We walk through the house together, turning off the lights as we go. We don’t say it out loud, but none of us would want to be doing this on our own. At the half-open door of the little lounge, Ivy pauses to see if she can hear whether Poppy is asleep. We hear her turn over in bed, making a whimpering sound which makes me wonder if she is dreaming about Baz.
The hallway is in gloom even with the lights on, and we notice the difference in temperature as we walk through to our side of the house. The smell changes too, from food and an open fire, to slight damp and old fabrics.
Ivy and Tatum are ahead of me and Jakob on the stairs. I strain to hear what Tatum is saying to Ivy. It’s something about the Holiday Village. Beside me, Jakob hums one of his violin pieces.
I have a sense of déjà vu as Ivy slips on the stair with the loose carpet. Tatum and Ivy fall into each other and Ivy drops her glass of water. I watch it bounce as they both step back into Jakob. He’s screaming and falling and I spin round, too late to catch him, shouting at him to reach for the banister, but the words are clogged in my throat because it’s happening too fast and I’m too agonizingly slow. The glass smashes. The noise as Jakob hits another step, unable to save himself, and lands on the hard floor at the bottom is a double thud followed by an inhuman noise of pure pain. He lies on his side, his arm underneath him, a leg at an angle that’s wrong.
I reach him first, shaky and nauseous, the other two thundering back down the stairs behind me. His eyes tell me he’s only half-conscious, and I scream for Elaine, Marc and Auntie Gabs, for someone to tell us what to do, and how to help him. He’s panting, eyes rolling. There are three or four tiny pieces of glass embedded in his face.
“What happened?” Marc appears in a dressing gown. Elaine is still dressed. Their faces have sagged with shock. “One of you call an ambulance!” Marc screams. “Go to the end of the driveway for a signal. Now!”
Tatum has her phone ready. Of course she does. She runs to the front door and out into the cold night with only a thin wrap-top over her dress
Marc holds Jakob’s hand and tells him that he needs to stay still and breathe in and out. Auntie Gabs appears, with crumpled clothing and messed-up hair, as if she’s been lying on her bed fully clothed. “I’ll drive you to hospital,” she says.
“You’ve drunk too much,” says Marc.
“We shouldn’t move him,” says Elaine. “Tatum’s calling an ambulance.”
Jakob whimpers and he clutches his dad’s hand more tightly. I hear a noise further up the hallway and see a small pale figure. Poppy. Her face is fearful.
“Jakob fell,” says Elaine. “He’s hurt.” She’s crying. I’ve never seen her cry.
“Come here, Pops,” says Auntie Gabs. She ushers Poppy back into the little lounge.
Ivy sweeps up the smashed glass and it seems ages before Tatum comes back, her teeth chattering from the cold, red-raw hands pulling her top round her. She says the ambulance is on its way.
“Thanks,” says Marc. “Jakob, you’re going to be all right. What were you doing? Were you fooling around? How much have you drunk?”
Jakob grimaces. The pink bits in his hair look silly, as if we coloured them in with a permanent marker.
He shakes his head. “Ivy slipped and fell into Tatum. They stepped backwards…” he gasps. “My ankle twisted. I’m not drunk.”
“It was the loose carpet,” says Ivy.
“I’m sorry,” says Tatum.
“Me too,” says Ivy.
Two paramedics arrive and they assess Jakob and say they’re pretty sure he’s broken his arm and his leg and his ankle is badly twisted. They say he’ll need an operation. As they move him carefully, screaming with pain despite an injection, on to a stretcher, I remember the prediction: There will be an unexpected twist of fate.
I wonder if Tatum’s phone was recording when he fell.
TWENTY
After Elaine goes off in the ambulance with Jakob, with Marc following by car, Auntie Gabs says, “That was traumatic. My heart breaks for that boy. I’ll go back to the little lounge and check Poppy’s asleep. Will you three be all right? Sure?”
Ivy, Tatum and I go upstairs carefully. I hold on to the banister tightly. At the top we say goodnight and we hug. I still feel shaky.
“Poor Jakob,” says Ivy softly.
“Poor Jakob,” echoes Tatum.
I nod.
I think I’ll never fall asleep. I expect Tatum to talk endlessly about her theories, but she’s silent.
The next thing I know, light is edging through the gap in the curtains and there are strange scratching, fluttering noises coming from outside. I freeze. It could be someone trying to break in through the window. I listen harder, distracted by the pounding of my heart. My body is slick with sweat by the time I work it out; it’s a bird on the windowsill. I breathe in and out slowly, and think of Jakob in hospital, shocked, grey-faced, pink-haired. I wonder what time his operation is scheduled for, or if they operated as soon as they got him to the hospital.
I fumble for my phone to check the time. I don’t want to miss meeting Evan; he’s the one good thing that’s come out of this holiday. My memories of last night are a mix of horror at Jakob’s fall, but also pleasure at dancing with Evan. There was definitely something sparking between us. But perhaps he got carried away because it was New Year’s Eve? He might be embarrassed to see me this morning.
I have to get moving if I want a shower and a quick breakfast. I go into the bathroom. It’s cold, bare and unwelcomin
g. The heater ticks loudly when I pull the cord, but the heated bar doesn’t go orange. When I’ve showered, I knock on Ivy’s door, and open it.
“Morning,” she says in a groggy voice. I’ve woken her up. She looks fragile, still tired out after a night’s sleep.
Tatum is awake when I go back into our room. She’s talking in a low voice into her phone, recording something, and stops when she sees me in the doorway. “Any news about Jakob?” she asks.
“’Course not,” I say. “No one’s been to the end of the drive yet.”
Tatum rolls her eyes. “This place. It’s not romantic with no signal or Wi-Fi, or even a basic payphone. It’s dangerous. Imagine if you didn’t have anyone to run to the end of the driveway to call an ambulance.” Her eyes meet mine.
“I’m going downstairs,” I say, not wanting to think about that.
Poppy is in the kitchen drawing comic strips. She tells me it’s about a ghost-girl who isn’t really a ghost but everyone thinks she is so they don’t take any notice of her and so she’s able to go round solving crimes and beating bullies.
I look at her precise pictures and try not to think about Jakob. Or Tatum.
“You’ve got so good at drawing over the last year,” I say.
“That’s because I’ve practised a lot,” says Poppy. She pushes up her sleeve. “Drawing and reading.”
I point to the Sharpie marks on her arm. “What’s the tattoo?”
“Not my best one,” says Poppy. “It’s a plant growing up my arm. Did I tell you I’m going to be a tattoo fixer? People are going to come to me when they have a scar or a tattoo that’s gone wrong and I’ll make it into something really cool.”
I tug her sleeve up and the inside of her arm is covered in leaves of different greens with a big purple flower at the elbow. “Pretty,” I say.
Poppy pulls down her sleeve and says, “Don’t make me eat breakfast.”
“You have to eat something,” I say and ask her what she wants to eat.
When she says chocolate, we sneak into the larder and I make a bargain with her. I’ll let her have a slice of Terry’s Chocolate Orange if she eats a few mouthfuls of fruit salad. She agrees but it takes her ages to nibble the chocolate, and when I place the fruit in front of her she takes a bite of apple and says it tastes sour.
“Should have made you eat the fruit first,” I say, hitting my head with the palm of my hand.
She smiles. “I might eat it later.”
“That would be great!” I say, squeezing her arm.
She winces and I apologize for forgetting about her muscle aches. In my head I also apologize for not being willing to stay home and spend time with her when I have Evan and Margery to meet.
I tell her we’re going to meet Evan’s friends and that Auntie Gabs will be down soon, and she settles down in the lounge to watch a film on her iPad.
We leave a little extra time so we can check our phones on the way. Tatum tells me not to be surprised if Mum has an announcement. I ask her what she’s on about.
“You’re dense if you don’t think them going away, just the two of them, doesn’t mean anything,” she says as we walk down the driveway.
“It’s not just the two of them,” I say. “Steve’s sister is there. And her husband and kids.”
“Steve’s introducing your mum to his family. Don’t you think that’s significant? Look, I know you don’t think so, but I’m just being kind, preparing you for the inevitable.”
“Sure, sure,” I say, as if I don’t believe a word of what she’s saying. I resist jogging ahead but the moment I have signal, I scan for a message from Mum. She’s sent one saying there’s snow where they are and she and Steve are going to delay their return journey until tomorrow, and won’t be back until the afternoon. She hopes Gabs and Elaine won’t give her too hard a time for that but better to be safe than sorry. It doesn’t sound as if she’s keeping anything back of significance, but when I tell Tatum that she says, “Wait and see. I hope the snow doesn’t wash away any evidence from the car.” I message Mum back to let her know about Jakob and to say there’s no snow in Pinhurst.
No messages from Jakob. I don’t even know if he had his phone on him when he fell. It might still be in his room. No messages from either Elaine or Marc, but I wasn’t expecting any. They don’t know my number. They’d have contacted Gabs, who we still haven’t seen this morning.
Evan is already there outside the takeaway and he opens his arms when he sees us. “Morning!” he shouts, and when we reach him, he says, “Where’s Jakob? Overslept?”
He looks distressed when we tell him, especially when we say it was because of the loose carpet. “Could this week get any worse for you?” he says quietly.
“Or you, to be honest,” says Tatum. “There are so many things at Roeshot House which need to be fixed.”
“Hey,” I say. “It’s not Evan’s fault.”
“It’s his dad’s, then,” says Tatum.
Evan looks pained. “Dad’s going round this morning to look at the window. I hope Ivy’s mum will show him the carpet too. I’m sure we’ll compensate you, obviously, but I don’t know how that works. Money back or whatever.”
“It’s not been the best few days,” says Ivy.
“But it’s been interesting,” says Tatum.
“You’re feeling better, though, yeah?” Evan says to Ivy.
She nods. “Sleeping helped, but I still don’t feel a hundred per cent, especially after Jakob’s fall.”
He takes my hands and squeezes them, and it’s all I need to know that it’s OK and he’s not embarrassed by whatever it was that happened between us last night. He’s delighted we’ve pinched a jar of homemade rhubarb jam from the larder to give to Margery as a gift – if Auntie Gabs notices it’s gone, we’ll say one of us dropped it and had to throw it away.
“Let’s bounce,” he says and leads the way. I walk next to him, and the other two drop back. The closed-in feeling I had earlier at Roeshot House disappears as he talks about what happened on his walk back from the Holiday Village in the early hours (loud singing, looking for someone’s earring in the dark, Megan and Kai arguing).
“Nice that she wants to be involved with the memorial, don’t you think?”
I make a non-committal sound; I missed the switch in conversation.
“Dad’s not going to want anything obvious. He probably doesn’t want anything at all. He doesn’t even know we’re seeing her, but I’ll have to speak to him soon before Margery bumps into him and says something.”
Margery’s flat is in a low-rise modern block, within easy walking distance of Silverways. Tatum asks us to film her standing outside. On camera she says being granted access to Alice Billings’s friend of over seven decades is the most exciting development in the investigation so far. Off camera she says Margery is going to be a tough nut to crack.
“Imagine being friends for someone that long,” I say.
“And then they turn out to have kept a massive secret from you,” says Ivy.
“OK, listen up,” says Tatum. “I’m going to ask Margery if she minds me filming her. I’m telling her the documentary is a school project and it’s going to be about memorials in general, not specifically Rose. I think she’ll like that.”
Evan gives her a dubious look. “I don’t think she will.”
“Where’s your optimism?” says Tatum. “Right, let’s do this!” She films herself pressing the buzzer on the communal door.
The first thing that strikes me when I see Margery is how blue her eyes are. They match her fitted, long-sleeved dress. She’s not the stretchy, comfortable trouser type. Her grey hair is in an immaculate bob, and she has the longest neck ever, or maybe it only seems that way because she stands so straight. She reminds me of my dance teacher.
We cram into her hall, and introduce ourselves.
“Do any of you play the violin, like Evan here?” I think about Jakob, as we three girls shake our heads.
When Ivy han
ds over the jam, Margery says rhubarb is her favourite.
She’s not very scary until Tatum asks whether she can film our discussions, and then she cuts Tatum off mid-flow and says, “Certainly not.” Tatum says in that case please could she have a photo, and after a disapproving “hmmm”, Margery agrees, not realizing that Tatum is filming instead of taking a still, and she doesn’t turn her phone off as we walk into the lounge.
The overheated room is rammed with photos of children with perfect hair, and students in graduation outfits who she tells us are her nieces and nephews. There’s a piano and several violin cases, and piles of sheet music. The room has doors that lead out on to a very small patio and communal gardens where a dad is playing football with a little boy.
We sit on velvety sofas, and watch Evan bring in cups and saucers on a tray, and then a teapot and milk jug. “Do any of you take sugar?” asks Margery. “No? How sensible.” She asks Evan to fetch a dining-room chair for her to sit on.
We talk about the weather, then Margery asks us how many times we’ve stayed in Roeshot House. Ivy says she can’t remember a New Year that wasn’t spent there. I nod in agreement and Tatum says nothing.
Margery asks us what we think of the house and I say, “It’s amazing.” I notice Tatum raise her eyebrow, and hope Evan didn’t see it.
“Alice’s favourite part of the house was the garden,” says Margery. “The rose garden she planted was incredible. It used to be open to the public once a year.” She looks into her teacup. “Of course now I understand the significance of the roses.”
We nod and lean forward, holding our cups and saucers still. Our breathing is synchronized. In, out, in out. Waiting.
“I gather from Donna you’re keen to establish some kind of memorial to Rose and would like my input.”
We nod enthusiastically, and Tatum asks Margery what she’d recommend.
“Well,” says Margery. She places her cup and saucer on a little table and clasps her hands together. “I’ve been thinking about this. Resurrecting the rose garden would be an obvious thing to do, but that was Alice’s memorial. I think you should consider something completely new.”