Brodmaw Bay (32 page)

They arrived at four in the afternoon. As they crested the rising hills and passed the circle of standing stones to their left and the bay came fully into view, the children in the seats behind them gasped audibly at the panorama revealed by the descent they were about to take. Lillian could understand why. It was a vista full of the promise of adventure and vibrant new life. The sun still hung high in the sky before them. The beach was a vivid orange crescent against the deep blue of the sea. The fishing fleet bobbed picturesquely beyond the granite breakwater to the right of the Leeward Arms and the whitecaps stretched to the horizon almost infinitely before them.

‘Blimey, Dad,’ Jack said, ‘you didn’t half come up with the goods.’

James heard air escape Jack’s lungs in a rush as his sister elbowed him expertly in the side. ‘Mum organised most of it,’ she said.

‘Dad deserves the credit, Livs,’ Lillian said. ‘Dad was the decision-maker on this one. On this one you were the big cheese, weren’t you, darling?’

‘Uurgh, they’re going to kiss,’ Olivia said.

‘Not while Dad’s driving,’ Jack said. ‘Mum’s too sensible. He might crash and kill us all.’

‘You mean in a ball of fire?’

‘Yep, in a raging inferno of flames.’

James smiled, thinking about what his wife had just said. It was odd. He had only found the bay in the first place because her illustrations had led him to it. That was a mystery the accelerating pattern of events had forced him almost to forget. But it was a puzzle, too, wasn’t it?

Jack thought the bay pretty cool on first impressions. He thought that living in the sort of place you generally only went on holiday would be great. He couldn’t see a downside, other than for the fact that it was all so hilly. The sea was flat, obviously. But the land behind the town rose steeply. The only flat patch was that big circle surrounded by standing stones they had passed on the way down. That was the only place you could realistically have marked out a football pitch. It looked like an ancient monument, though, so the prospect was unlikely. And they weren’t going to do it just for him.

As his dad drove down into the village, he still couldn’t quite believe that his parents had actually done this. They had been talking about it for as long as he could remember. It had got to the point where he had thought talk was all it was and that it would never really happen. At some point he had come to the conclusion that his parents talked about moving to the coast
instead
of doing it.

When Alec McCabe had shaken his hand and said goodbye, he hadn’t really believed they would go. Even when he had taken his old boots and Xbox and jigsaws he’d outgrown and a couple of Airfix kits he’d never got round to building to donate to the Oxfam shop, he hadn’t really believed it. But here they were. The car roof was down and the sun was hot in his face and the air smelled fresh and clean and strongly of salt and the sea. Some kids who looked about his own age were wobbling in wetsuits on windsurf boards just off the beach.

He thought then about Robert O’Brien. This was a day O’Brien had not lived to enjoy. He would never enjoy anything ever again; not windsurfing or riding his motorbike or signing autographs for fans. Jack thought for a moment about how rarely he considered death. People of his age didn’t, did they? They thought they were never going to die. Even on that bus in Peckham he had not really thought he was going to be killed. And at the time someone had been trying to kill him and making a pretty good attempt at it.

He thought that he should feel sorry about the death of Robert O’Brien. They were always being told in the R.E. lessons no one listened to at school that human life was sacred. Also it was usually quite shocking when someone young died and O’Brien had definitely been younger than his parents and they weren’t exactly old.

He didn’t feel sorry, though. He didn’t feel exactly happy about it, but he did not think it a tragedy or a waste. He would never have read another of his stories. They had been spoiled for him. During a game he would turn the other cheek, as they called it in R.E., because that was the sensible thing to do. Off the pitch, he did not suppose he had a very forgiving nature. Maybe he should work on it. Alec McCabe had hinted at something like that and he liked and admired the big policeman.

The village was so picturesque it was like something out of a film. The shops were all old-fashioned. The streets were narrow and cobbled and there were flowers in hanging baskets above the shop doorways. People nodded and smiled as his dad drove the car slowly along. But there were not many pedestrians. Jack noticed that the shops were all shut, which was odd because it was a Sunday afternoon. He wasn’t worried about it. His mum had said there was plenty of stuff already bought for them to eat and drink when they arrived.

When they got into the new house there was a huge bunch of flowers on the kitchen table next to an equally huge bowl of fruit and he just beat his sister to it and they started wrestling over the grapes until their dad told them in his stern voice, which was not actually particularly stern, that they should remember their manners and share. They did share, wolfing grapes while their mum opened an envelope and read the note it contained.

‘We’re invited to a little gathering being held to welcome us at the Leeward at seven o’clock,’ she said; ‘seven till eight, totally informal, completely child-friendly, no obligation to go.’

‘We can’t really refuse,’ their dad said. ‘Then again it’s only an hour, why would we want to?’

Jack explored. Their new house was much bigger than their old one and his new room had an epic view out over the bay. His new bed was bigger than his old one had been. Everything in his room looked more serious and grown-up and he was delighted with it all. It only lacked a few team photos, but he’d wait until the new season for those, when the transfer activity had calmed down and the new Chelsea squad was complete and settled.

Livs was up to something. By now he thought she should have had him by the arm, pulling at him, begging him to go and look at her new room, excited by all her boring, girly new things, thrilled by her new wallpaper, which was probably floral and pink. But wherever she was, she was being very quiet. Having greedily gorged herself on them, maybe she was throwing up her grapes in one of the loos, sending a stream of purple vomit into the toilet bowl.

It was funny, that. It wasn’t a funny thought for very long, though. It was actually quite worrying because he suspected that an eight-year-old could easily choke on her vomit. Plus it was unlike her to be so quiet. Sometimes two and two did the obvious thing and made four. What had happened to his little sis? What if she was gagging on a bathroom floor? He went to look for her, calling her name anxiously along the high corridor their bedrooms were off.

He felt a surge of relief when she called down to him from the floor above. It meant she had not drowned in a puddle of her own drool. She was okay. He climbed the stairs up to her.

She was kneeling on the bare boards of a small room with a fireplace and wooden shelves in the alcoves to either side of it. The fireplace was small and had a little engraved hood made of iron he thought was there to stop smoke from the fire getting into the room. It was a cosy sort of room with one window that overlooked the slate roofs of the village to the left of their house. Jack thought that it had probably been a study.

Livs had taken up a piece of floorboard. Jack could partially see into the cavity she had revealed under the floor. She had a package in her hand. The package was yellow, like the oilskins fishermen wore to protect them from the wet. But it was old and faded and cracked and tied up with twine that had turned brown.

‘Wow,’ Jack said. ‘Cool, a secret compartment. Clever old you for finding it, Livs. How did you find it?’

‘Madeleine told me where to look.’

‘Who’s Madeleine?’

‘She’s my real imaginary friend.’

‘She can’t be both.’

‘She can so.’

‘Is she an old friend?’

‘Very. She’s easily the oldest friend I’ve got.’

‘What’s that in your hand?’

‘Something Daddy must read.’

‘Is it valuable?’

‘It isn’t treasure. It’s a story.’

‘Is it a secret?’

‘I don’t know,’ Olivia said. She frowned. ‘It won’t be when Daddy has read it.’

Jack held out his hand. ‘Can I look at it?’

‘No. It’s only for Daddy. I promised Madeleine.’

Jack decided he would not debate the point. He could hear their mother calling them from downstairs. He thought the whole idea of imaginary friends slightly disturbing. He had the feeling that Olivia was a bit frightened of this Madeleine. He thought that Livs was very brave. She was much less scared of the dark than he remembered being at that age. The house was not sinister. The room they were in was not in itself scary. Madeleine sounded, though, like someone he wouldn’t much want to meet. He would let it go.

Obviously Madeleine had not told Livs where to find the package because she had made Madeleine up and even if she was real, she was likely someone in Livs’s year at her school in Bermondsey and therefore hardly an expert on secret compartments in a house in Cornwall she had never seen.

There was another explanation, but it involved elements Jack did not want to think about. They would make the house seem eerie and he did not want that. Anyway their mum was calling them and they needed to go down to their parents.

Mum and Dad were drinking coffee in the kitchen. Livs walked straight up to her father and presented him with the package she had discovered. ‘Please promise me that you will read this, Daddy,’ she said.

Their dad took the package and hefted it in his hand and glanced at their mum and shrugged. He put down his coffee mug and untied the twine and unwrapped a small hardback book. The book was bound in musty-looking fabric and when he opened it and thumbed through the pages, they were covered in neat handwriting that looked as though it had been done with a fountain pen. The letters were small and sloping and the ink black. There was a name and a date on the inside front cover of the book.

‘This belonged to Adam Gleason,’ he said to their mum. Then to Livs he said, ‘Where did you find this, darling?’

‘In a secret compartment,’ Jack said, ‘in a room that looks like it used to be the study.’

Jack had a feeling he thought would best be described as a hunch. It was very strong and it insisted that his dad should read the notebook his sister had found. His interruption had been to try to prevent Livs from mentioning Madeleine. If she mentioned Madeleine their parents would simply stop believing what she said. And it was very important that their dad read what she had uncovered. It was vital. Jack’s hunch told him so.

Their dad held the notebook between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and tapped it against the knuckles of his left. To their mum, he said, ‘I should pass this on to that florid old scholar chap, the local archivist.’

‘Michael Carney,’ their mum said.

Livs burst into tears. She did not just start to cry. Her shoulders heaved once and her face flushed a sudden bright red and tears rolled down her cheeks and then her little body shook and she wailed.

Jack reached out his arms to comfort her but he was not as quick as their dad who sank to his knees and wrapped his daughter in his arms saying, ‘I will read it, darling, I promise. I promise you I’ll read every last word of it.’ He kissed her. He ruffled her hair and dabbed at her wet cheeks with his shirtsleeve. He reached up and handed the notebook to their mum and said, ‘Put this in my small bag, darling. It’s in the boot of the car. It’s the bag I’ve packed as hand luggage. I’ll read it on the plane tomorrow.’

She hesitated. She said, ‘And Michael Carney?’

‘It’s been wherever Livs found it for about ninety years, by the look of it. He can wait a few more days to learn about its contents.’

Their mum frowned. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’ll go and put it in the bag. When I get back, I want to see this secret compartment, Olivia. Will you show it to me?’

Livs nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.

They left for the pub about fifteen minutes later. Jack had feared they might be forced to dress up for the event. He’d never been to a welcoming party before. But they went as they were, except that their mum put on a bit of lipstick and brushed her hair in the mirror. It had become a tad wild on the journey what with the roof down and all and, in the words she always used, needed taming.

Jack wondered on the way to the pub what Livs could possibly have said upstairs to her about the secret compartment. He was pretty sure she had left Madeleine completely out of it. That was his second hunch. Mention of the real imaginary friend and her instructions regarding the package would have worried and distracted their mum. But she wasn’t worried. On the walk to the pub her face was free of the frown that sometimes troubled it.