Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
More Books by Margarita Morris
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thank you for reading
Acknowledgements
SCARBOROUGH BALL
Margarita Morris
This novel is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Margarita Morris asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover design by L1graphics at 99designs.com
Copyright Margarita Morris 2016
All Rights Reserved
margaritamorris.com
In Loving Memory of
Enid May Stephens
(1933-2016)
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice; Act 4, Scene 1
Also by Margarita Morris
Oranges for Christmas
Berlin. 1961. The war is over but the fight for freedom has only just begun.
The Sleeping Angel
Something is astir in Highgate Cemetery. The dead want justice and so do the living.
Scarborough Fair
(Scarborough Fair series, book one)
Dare you step inside? All is not what it seems at Scarborough Fair, a world of illusion, thrills and danger.
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PROLOGUE
June 1986, Sea View Nursing Home
The dead are calling me to account.
Three days ago I received a letter.
“You’ve got a letter from America, Lilian,” said Sue in her sing-song voice when she brought me my morning cup of tea. I waited for her to leave the room before opening it, eyeing the unfamiliar postage stamp with suspicion. Already I feared the envelope’s contents.
I slit the envelope carefully with a paper knife and pulled out a folded piece of paper with an old photograph tucked inside. The photograph was black and white and creased with age. I recognised it instantly and my heart contracted. I put it to one side with a trembling hand and turned to the letter.
It was a brief note, from an address in California, informing me that my friend, Ruby, had passed away peacefully in an old people’s home. I expect it will be my turn soon. The writer was Ruby’s daughter, Cynthia. Ruby was eighty-two when she died. Mom wished to be remembered to you, wrote Cynthia. She had a good life in America but she always looked back on her time in Scarborough with fond memories.
I paused when I read the bit about the fond memories and wondered what Ruby had told her daughter. Then a lump formed in my throat and the tears started to fall.
I hadn’t heard from Ruby in decades and had no idea she still knew where I was. I picked up the photograph again and peered at the image: the two of us arm-in-arm, dressed up for a New Year’s Eve ball in the Grand Hotel in 1923, and the events of over sixty years ago came flooding back to me. Had Ruby specifically asked Cynthia to send this particular photo? Or had Cynthia picked it out from her mother’s belongings by chance? That seemed to me unlikely. I had the distinct impression that Ruby was sending me a message from beyond the grave.
I had thought the past was long buried, washed out to sea by the passage of years, not to mention a second world war, but since receiving this letter the events of 1923 have haunted every waking moment and I haven’t been able to sleep properly. What this photograph says to me is that Ruby hadn’t forgotten the past either and she was telling me it was time to remember.
So I gave Sue some money and asked her to pop into town and buy me a large notebook and some pens.
“Are you going to write your memoirs?” she asked me.
“Something like that,” I said.
I will write down the story of what happened to me and Ruby in the hope of finding some peace before I, too, go to meet my maker. I shall leave the story to my daughter, Janice, in my will and let her decide what to do with it. I have been wondering where to start the story but I think I shall start in December 1923 on the day that Theodore Franklin first came to the Futurist cinema and invited everyone to the ball at the Grand Hotel.
CHAPTER ONE
No, that didn’t look right either! Rose pulled the striped top off, flung it onto the growing pile of discarded clothes on her bed and rummaged in the chest of drawers for something less casual. She didn’t usually fuss so much over what to wear, being happy to pull on a pair of jeans and the nearest clean T-shirt, but today was different. She was starting in the sixth form at Scarborough College and, if she was totally honest with herself, she was suffering from a bout of first-day nerves. Ridiculous, of course, but she couldn’t help the way she was feeling. The College insisted on business dress for its sixth formers which meant there wasn’t a uniform as such, just a detailed dress code that was no less demanding when it came to the permitted length of skirts and the type of tops deemed suitable. She found a shirt half hidden beneath a pile of summer T-shirts. She grabbed it, pulled it on and started to do it up, her fingers fumbling over the fiddly buttons.
Her state of mind wasn’t helped by the fact that she’d had the dream again. Or the nightmare, to be more precise. She’d dreamt she was back on the yacht with Max and his henchmen, the deck lurching under her feet, streaks of lightning flashing across the sky, the roar of thunder in her ears.
The barrel of a gun pointed at her.
She’d woken up just as the yacht capsized and she was dragged under the churning waves, the taste of salt in her mouth and the sensation of water in her nostrils. She had been so sure she was going to drown. She’d bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath, her pyjamas clinging to her body, damp with sweat. The display on her bedside radio-alarm said it was three o’clock in the morning.
She’d fallen back onto the pillows, staring at the beam of moonlight that filtered in through the skylight and across the sloping ceiling of her attic bedroom. She was safe in the cottage in Tollergate, her Gran’s old house. It was only a dream, she told herself. But it had felt so real. She’d thought the events of the summer were in the past, that she’d put it all behind her and was ready to move on with her life. After all, the two henchmen were washed up drowned, and Max was presumed dead, even if there hadn’t been a body to confirm the fact. But it seemed that at times of stress, the memories would come back to haunt her. She had reached for her mobile phone, wanting to call Dan, to hear his reassuring voice, but then she had stopped, her thumb poised over the quick dial button, and told herself not to be silly. He wouldn’t appreciate a call at that time in th
e morning.
After that she had tossed and turned for hours, watching the sky change from black to deep blue to a murky grey. She must have dozed off again around dawn because the next thing she knew her mother was banging on her bedroom door saying it was seven and time to get up if she didn’t want to be late.
No wonder she felt like the walking dead and was finding it impossible to decide what to wear. At her previous school in London she had hated the uniform with its pleated tartan skirt and boxy blazer, but now she appreciated the simplicity of not having to choose your outfit every day. Business dress was all very well, but what exactly did it mean? She hoped she wasn’t going to turn up on her first day and find that everyone else had interpreted the rules completely differently. That wouldn’t be a great start. The button that Rose was doing up popped off and fell to the floor. Rats! She pulled the shirt off and added it to the mountain of clothes on the bed.
Scarborough College was an independent school rather than a state school. That was something else that was making Rose nervous. It had turned out there wasn’t much choice in Scarborough for sixteen to eighteen year olds and the private school had looked like the best bet. It was Andrea, her mother, who had been most keen on the idea of a private school, saying that the sale of their London house would easily cover the fees. If Andrea had had her way, Rose would now be going to an all-girls school but Rose had refused to go to what looked like a convent with hockey sticks, causing a row that had lasted a couple of weeks. Scarborough College was at least mixed and just happened to be Dan’s school which made it all the more appealing. Rose suspected the all-girls school idea had been her mother’s last-ditch attempt to keep her away from Dan. To say Andrea thought Dan was unsuitable was putting it mildly, but that was because she didn’t know him properly and blamed him for the fact that Rose had found herself on a yacht at the mercy of an armed gang of drug dealers. But none of that was Dan’s fault, well not directly.
She checked her watch. Ten to eight. She was running out of time. She picked up a silky red tunic-style top. It was the kind of thing she would normally wear for a night out, but she was running out of options. She teamed it with a black jacket and decided it would have to do. She checked her face in the mirror, instinctively touching the tips of her fingers to her right temple. The inch-long scar she’d got when the boat had capsized was still an angry red. Every time she saw it, she thought of Max and the foiled drug cartel that had been operating in the North Sea between Scarborough and Amsterdam. It had been all over the local papers. Just a few weeks ago a dreadful photograph of her had appeared on the front page of The Scarborough News. She dabbed some concealer over the scar so it wasn’t so noticeable and dashed down the winding staircase that led straight into the dining area off the kitchen.
“Ah, there you are,” said Andrea, looking pointedly at her watch. She looked Rose up and down, taking in her outfit. “Do you think that’s a suitable top to wear to school?”
Rose rolled her eyes. This was just what she needed, a lecture from her mum on clothes when she’d already turned her wardrobe upside down looking for something to wear.
“It’s fine, Mum. They don’t have a uniform in the sixth form, remember?”
“Still, you could wear something less...showy.”
Rose spotted a plain black scarf she’d left on the back of one of the dining room chairs the previous night. She draped it round her neck. “Better?”
“Aren’t you going to sit down and have some toast?”
“No time,” said Rose, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder.
“You should eat something before you leave,” said Andrea. “You don’t want to make yourself ill.”
You’re the one who should eat more, thought Rose, not me, but she kept quiet, not wanting to provoke an argument. All summer Andrea had plied her with cooked breakfasts but now it was wholemeal toast with low-fat olive oil spread. Andrea had been worried about her cholesterol levels and sugar intake ever since Rose’s grandmother had died of a heart attack. In fact, ever since the events of the summer, Andrea’s tendency to worry had sky-rocketed to epic proportions.
“I’ll eat a couple of slices on my way to the bus stop,” said Rose, picking up two slices of toast. She wished they were spread with real butter and strawberry jam.
“You’ll get indigestion bolting your food --”
Rose didn’t hear the rest of Andrea’s tirade because she was already hurrying down Tollergate towards the bus stop on St Thomas Street. The bus came every fifteen minutes and she didn’t want to be late on her first day. The bus arrived just as she joined the end of the queue. She climbed on board, paid the driver and swung into the nearest seat as the bus lurched out into the flow of traffic. She’d definitely have to get ready quicker in future. She pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket and quickly tapped out a text to Dan. On the bus. C u @ college. Xxx. Then she settled back and tried not to worry about how the first day was going to go.
~~~
“Hurry up or you’re going to be late.”
Dan groaned at the sound of his mum’s voice calling to him from the bottom of the stairs. The house they lived in now was so small that she didn’t have to climb the stairs to shout at him, she could just do it from the hallway. Dan tossed aside the duvet and went to the bathroom.
Standing under the shower, he reflected that this was one battle he had lost. He might have survived an encounter with armed drug dealers and a near drowning when the drug baron’s yacht had capsized, but his mum wasn’t going to let him get out of continuing his education.
He’d tried to argue that he’d rather quit school and get a job, but his mother had gone ballistic, saying they’d made sacrifices to send him to a private school and the least he could do was finish his education properly and not drop out at sixteen. He supposed she had a point, but Dan didn’t think he’d be able to concentrate on his studies after the events of the summer: meeting Rose, getting entangled with Max, his dad’s near-fatal car crash. And now his dad’s trial was coming up at York Crown Court in a few weeks. Ryan had been forced to work for the drugs boss Max, delivering a box of cocaine to a client, when his Ferrari had ploughed into a tractor coming in the opposite direction. He could have died but instead ended up in a coma, lasting several days. But the accident had revealed more than just illegal goods in the Ferrari’s passenger seat. The family business, an amusement arcade on the sea-front, was seriously in debt and unable to survive without the loan supplied by Max, which was how Ryan had got involved with him in the first place. The building had gone up for sale just as the property market nose-dived. The fruit machines and penny-drop machines were sold at auction to the highest bidder. A rival arcade at the other end of the prom had taken half the stuff. The rest had gone for scrap metal. To pay off their debts they’d had to sell their large Victorian villa on Oliver’s Mount and move into a rented semi on Greylands Park Drive. Ryan had gambled, and lost everything.
Dan didn’t mind about living in a smaller house. Where they lived now was closer to the centre of town and therefore closer to Rose. And she’d be at the college too; as far as Dan was concerned, that was the best reason for continuing his studies.
He dried off, put on a shirt, tie and suit, the stiff collar feeling uncomfortable after a summer of T-shirts and jeans, and leaped down the stairs two at a time. Fiona, his mum, was already on her way out of the door. She no longer spent all her time at the gym or perusing home-improvement magazines, but was handling their newly impoverished status by training to be a beauty therapist at the salon where she used to be a customer. In the evenings she relaxed by pouring herself a large glass of wine and binge-watching serials on Netflix.
“There’s some coffee in the kitchen,” she called before letting the door bang shut behind her.
Whilst Dan poured himself a cup of coffee and munched on a cereal bar, Ryan limped into the kitchen. He’d broken his leg in the car crash and hadn’t been out of plaster more than a couple of days. He was still wear
ing his pyjamas, the electronic security tag visible around his right ankle. He’d been under house arrest ever since being allowed out of hospital. Dan had always cringed at the look his dad had used to sport, the ageing rocker style with mirrored shades, goatee beard and leather jacket, but this pathetic, shuffling figure was far worse. Another good reason for Dan to get out of the house.
“Any coffee left?” asked Ryan.
“Yeah.”
Never great conversationalists at the best of times, their communications these days had shrunk to monosyllabic utterances.
“Gotta go,” said Dan, dumping his mug into the sink beside an empty wine bottle. There was no point rinsing the mug because the draining board was littered with unwashed plates and foil cartons from last night’s takeaway. Now that his mum went out to work, Ryan was supposed to do the housework but that just meant it didn’t get done. His dad certainly didn’t know how to cook so these days they lived off takeaways, alternating Chinese, Indian, fish & chips and pizza. Fiona came back from work in such a state you’d think she’d spent the day trying to solve the world’s terrorist threat instead of training to be a beauty therapist. The first thing she did each night was open a bottle of wine. If his dad was too incompetent to cook, then she was too tipsy.
The phone in his pocket beeped. He pulled it out and saw a message from Rose. He typed back, C u soon. Xxx. Then he picked up his rucksack and went to fetch his bicycle from the tiny garage that had been built alongside the house in the 1960s. The garage was far too small to accommodate a modern car and was now overflowing with all the junk they’d brought with them from the other house but which wouldn’t fit into this one. At least they didn’t have the Ferrari to worry about any more and Fiona was happy to park her hatchback on the street. Dan wheeled the bike onto the road and looked over his shoulder. A motorcyclist clad in black leathers and a black helmet, visor lowered, was parked on the opposite side of the road, a few houses down. The guy was sitting astride his motorbike, a gleaming black and silver Harley-Davidson, tapping something into his mobile. There was something oddly familiar about him.
Scarborough Ball (Scarborough Fair Book 2) Page 1