The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells

Virginia Macgregor
was brought up in Germany, France and England by a mother who never stopped telling stories. From the moment she was old enough to hold a pen, Virginia set about writing her own, often late into the night – or behind her Maths textbook at school. Virginia was named after two great women, Virginia Wade and Virginia Woolf, in the hope she would be a writer and a tennis star. Her early years were those of a scribbling, rain-loving child who prayed for lightning to strike her tennis coach. After studying at Oxford, Virginia started writing regularly while working as an English Teacher and Housemistress. Virginia lives in Berkshire with her husband, Hugh, and their daughter, Tennesee Skye.

 

Keep in touch with Virginia on Twitter (
@virginiawrites
), or her website:
www.virginiamacgregor.com
.

What Milo Saw

Table of Contents

• About the Author
  
• Also by Virginia Macgregor
  
• COPYRIGHT
  
• Dedication
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Epigraph
  
• Friday Morning
  
  • Willa
    
  • Ella
    
  • Norah
    
  • Adam
    
  • Ella
    
  • Willa
    
  • Norah
    
  • Ella
    
  • Norah
    
  • Ella
    
  • Norah
    
• Friday Afternoon
  
  • Willa
    
  • Ella
    
  • Adam
    
  • Ella
    
  • Willa
    
  • Fay
    
  • Norah
    
  • Ella
    
  • Willa
    
  • Fay
    
• Friday Night
  
  • Willa
    
  • Fay
    
  • Ella
    
  • Adam
    
  • Ella
    
  • Fay
    
  • Ella
    
  • Fay
    
  • Adam
    
• Saturday Morning
  
  • Norah
    
  • Fay
    
  • Adam
    
  • Ella
    
  • Willa
    
  • Norah
    
• Saturday Afternoon
  
  • Ella
    
  • Adam
    
• Saturday Night
  
  • Norah
    
  • Willa
    
  • Ella
    
  • Adam
    
  • Norah
    
• Sunday Morning
  
  • Willa
    
  • Ella
    
  • Fay
    
• Sunday Afternoon
  
  • Norah
    
  • Willa
    
  • Adam
    
  • Norah
    
  • Willa
    
• Sunday Night
  
  • Norah
    
  • Ella
    
  • Fay
    
  • Fay
    
  • Willa
    
  • Ella
    
  • Norah
    
  • Fay
    
  • Fay
    
  • Willa
    
  • Adam
    
• Monday Morning
  
  • Willa
    
  • Fay
    
  • Adam
    
  • Ella
    
  • Willa
    
  • Norah
    
• Monday Afternoon
  
  • Willa
    
  • Ella
    
  • Adam
    
  • Willa
    
  • Fay
    
  • Norah
    
  • Ella
    
  • Willa
    
  • Willa
    
• Monday Night
  
  • Ella
    
• Tuesday Morning
  
  • Adam
    
  • Fay
    
• Tuesday Night
  
  • Willa
    
• Wednesday Morning
  
• Five Months Later
  
  • Willa
    

To my beloved daughter, Tennessee Skye

Thank you to my agent, Bryony Woods, for championing my stories. Thank you to Manpreet Grewal, my editor, for helping me polish my novels until they shine. Thank you to the whole team at Little, Brown – Emma, Kirsteen, Thalia, Zoe, Andy, Jack – for bringing
The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells
to the world. Thank you to my writing buddies Helen Dahlke, Jane Cooper, Charlie Penny and Jo Seldon. Thank you, Richard, for making the best coffee and for being one of the loveliest people I know. Thank you Vi and Seb, for being there, like Louis. Thank you to my incredible nanny, Samantha Pittick, for loving my little girl and looking after her so well while I write. Thank you, Mama, for reading my first drafts, for sharing my stories with the world and for believing in me as a writer. Thank you to my late auntie, Marina du Fontenioux, for building me a place to write when I was nine years old and for championing my novels, even in your last days. Thank you Tennessee Skye, my gorgeous little girl, for making me fall in love with the world all over again. And thank you Hugh, my first reader, my best friend and the love of my life.

The world is waking up. Or it's trying to, anyway.

It's waking up in the small town of Holdingwell.

It's waking up on Willoughby Street.

It's waking up in Number 77, the tall red-brick house with scaffolding that stretches up to the roof.

At the top of the house, dawn tugs at a teenage girl. She rubs her eyes, sticky with the soot of make-up. Her bed is littered with A4 paper; strips of neon highlighter smudge the words. At the foot of her bed sit a pair of battered running shoes. The girl sinks deeper under her duvet and prays to the alarm on her phone:
Just give me a few more minutes
…

On the landing, a little girl hovers outside her father's bedroom. She spent the night out here, comforted by his sleeping body on the other side of the door. They've made a deal: no more sneaking in in the middle of the night, not unless it gets really bad.
If you don't pander to them, the dreams will go away
, says her father.
You need to train them, like we trained Louis.
But the little girl isn't sure. She's never heard of anyone who could train a ghost.

On the other side of the door, the father reaches out for the woman he loves. Nothing but cool, empty sheets. He rubs his eyes and reaches for his glasses, and listens to the house waking up.

A bark from the kitchen.

His little girl's footsteps on the landing.

His teenage daughter's alarm.

In the tall red-brick house, a big dog lies heavily in his den under the stairs, his fur as curly as an old lady's perm. He drools, his mouth slack with sleep. He smells a shift in the air. He's smelt it all night, weaving between dreams of lampposts and the Chihuahuas from across the street and the bone he's going to get tonight because it's Friday.

Across town, in the Pediatric Ward of Holdingwell General, The Mother Who Stayed washes her hands. She rubs her palms, scrubs under her nails, and laces her fingers under the scalding water. Her raw skin flushes pink and she wonders whether one day she'll rub so many cells off her hands her skin will give way to flesh and bone. She closes her eyes and releases a long breath to ease the nausea. She thinks of the May bank holiday – a whole weekend away from the hospital. Sleep. Peace. Home.

Back on Willoughby Street, two old ladies lift their net curtains and look at the tall red-brick house. On the doorstep, under the full bloom of a cherry tree, they see The Mother Who Left put down her trumpet case and look up at the house she hasn't seen for six years.

Six-year-old Willa presses her nose to her bedroom window. She looks down through the scaffolding at the front garden.

The clatter of the recycling box on the paving stones drew her to the window. Sometimes, the clink of a jam jar tells Willa that a wild animal has come looking for food. There are more wild animals on Willoughby Street than most people realise: crows that swoop down for trays of chips from the kebab van and fat sewer rats with their skinny tails and otters with their old-man heads that duck in and out of the lake in Holdingwell Park. And Willa's favourite: the foxes that stalk through the garden at night – flashes of red like they're on fire.

Mrs Fox will be there for her birthday on Sunday, Willa can feel it. Mrs Fox and her new cubs. And that will make it the best birthday ever.

But on this Friday morning, Willa doesn't see any of the wild animals she loves. Instead, she looks down at the long red hair of a woman who stands a few feet away from the front door. The woman stares up at the windows of the house as though she's looking for someone. Willa catches her eye and smiles; the woman takes a step back and bows her head.

With his big grey muzzle, Louis nudges open the bedroom door and lumbers over to Willa's feet. He knows he's not allowed upstairs, but that's only when Mummy's watching, and Mummy's at work. Willa bends down and kisses his big furry nose. Louis is not a fox or any other wild animal, but Willa still loves him more than anything in the world.

‘Willa, we're late!' Ella, Willa's fourteen-year-old sister, crashes into the bedroom in a cloud of sweet perfume.

Willa loves the smell and she loves the big yellow bottle in the shape of a trophy that sits on Ella's bedside table: it's called
Shalimar
, which means strong and beautiful – that's how Willa thinks of Ella.

‘Come on, Willa, I've got a maths test this morning.'

Ella never used to care about tests, not until she was made to repeat a year.
She's going through a bad patch
, Daddy said.

Mummy called a family meeting so they could all help Ella, but Ella never showed up.

‘Willa?'

Willa doesn't move. There's something about the woman with the leggings, the baggy jumper, the wheelie suitcase and the black music case that makes her want to stare for a bit longer.

Miss Rose Pegg, one of the twins from across the road, steps out of her front door with a watering can. A Chihuahua yaps at her feet.

‘Yoo-hoo,' she calls over to the woman on the doorstep.

But the woman on the doorstep doesn't turn round.

Weird.

‘What are you looking at?' Ella picks up Willa's school bag and stuffs it with Willa's
Fantastic Mr Fox
lunch box.

She comes over to the window and eases the bag over Willa's shoulders.

‘Why's she not ringing the bell?' Willa adjusts the straps of her backpack so that it sits high on her shoulder blades.

Ella leans into the window and sucks in her breath.

Louis puts his paws on the windowsill and growls.

‘What is it?' Willa asks.

Ella stands back.

‘Ella?'

‘It's no one.'

But Ella's face doesn't look like it's no one.

Willa feels a crash in her tummy like when a baddie in a film cuts the cord of a lift and it plummets a hundred floors in one big whoosh.

As she looks back down at the doorstep Willa scratches the star-shaped scar under her eye. It's hot and itchy. She doesn't care what Ella says – the woman definitely doesn't look like a no one.