The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (48 page)

I let him ramble on without asking more questions. In the distance, the tip of Castaway rose to meet us, and Dockie suddenly cried, quite from nowhere, ‘Sally! I had
forgotten Sally. Now she – she will never forgive me. I am quite sure of that.’

‘Sally?’ I squinted up at him, and in a rush I remembered the photograph: a dash of a baby’s head in a quarter-inch of sunlight. My heart picked up a pace. ‘My – my grandmother … her name was Sally.’

He touched his scalp. ‘It’s too late for Robert, though. Far, far too late.’

‘Did she live on a farm, do you know? Married a man named Josh Brewer? Had a daughter named Grace?’

But I was babbling, and Dockie was not listening. There would be time, I supposed, later. I hoped there would be time later. I put my arm through his, and we reached the house together. Mrs Hale had gone inside; the doctor was missing from his spot by the window. Lizzie, too. I wondered what thoughts were on all of their minds.

The front door was still open from earlier, and when we crossed the threshold sunlight thrust through the coloured lozenges of glass above the door, painting a motif on the hall flagstones. Blooming beneath my feet in green and red was the legend of the house.

I knocked on the door to the ground-floor flat, and waited, my heart thumping. Dockie pulled down his cuffs and slicked back his eyebrows. After a while Star opened the door and looked out.

‘Is everything all right?’ she said. ‘You’ve been gone for ever.’

‘I went for a walk,’ he intoned in his rich plum brandy of a voice, and only I heard the nervous shake in it. ‘May I come in?’

Star nodded. ‘She’s in the garden.’ She came into the
hallway. I noticed she had the package still clutched to her chest. ‘She said you’re to go on through.’

Dockie looked at her. ‘Alone?’

Star nodded. ‘Alone.’

‘Well, then.’ He turned to me and held out his hand. ‘Thank you for everything, Rosie. I am so utterly grateful.’

I ignored the hand, reached forward and enveloped myself in his hug. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

‘What on earth for, my dear?’

‘Never mind.’ I wiped a hand roughly across my eyes. ‘Go on now.’

He nodded at both of us and disappeared inside the flat. Star pulled the door closed and looked down at ‘Castaway House’ in red and green flooding the floor. She toed the pattern. ‘What a day, eh?’

‘Absolutely.’ She looked up at me and I said, ‘Let’s go for a swim.’

She grinned at me. ‘Meet you back here in five minutes?’

‘You’re on.’

Star raced past me up the stairs as I went up one flight and pulled out my key. The flat welcomed me warmly in through its door, the sunshine lighting the scrolled coving at the ceiling and the flecks of old colour in the wallpaper. I found my swimming costume in the suitcase beneath a pile of unused summer blouses and stripped off, pulling it on and throwing an old dress over the top.

Before I left I took Robert from his hiding place and looked at the sketch. I traced the contours of his face and kissed his forehead. After I put him back I checked my appearance in the mirror; my hair was still scraggy and my
eye sockets hollow with tiredness, but there was a new expression there I couldn’t quite fathom.

I waited for Star in the hallway, listening for the out-of-tune whistling but hearing nothing at all. Dockie’s coins were still on the box below the telephone, and I gathered them into a neat pile. The blackboard above was still empty of messages.

I picked up a sixpence and rolled it between my finger and thumb. I thought of Mrs Bray’s words earlier.
I may be a lot of things, but I am not a coward
.

Well, what about Rosie Churchill? Was she a coward, who ran away when things got tough? I took a breath, lifted the receiver and slid in the sixpence, then dialled the telephone number I knew off by heart.

I closed my eyes as the phone rang, and wished I’d drunk a glass of water first, because my throat was parched, and then I heard my mother in her telephone voice say, ‘Petwick 287,’ and I knew there was no going back.

‘Hello?’ she said now. ‘Hello? Is that you, Rosie?’

I pushed the A button and heard the coin clanking into the box below. ‘Yes,’ I croaked, and swallowed. ‘Yes, it’s me. It’s Rosie.’

There was silence, except for the hammering of my heart. Finally my mother said, as if continuing an entirely separate conversation, ‘After you left the other day I searched your room.’

She hesitated and I held my breath.

‘I found your jewellery box.’

I breathed out and a long
Haaaah
sound spat back into my ear. The secret bottom of my jewellery box was where I’d stored all the notes from Harry. I hadn’t thought to
throw them away. Mum wasn’t a snooper; at least, she never had been before.

‘Rosie.’ Her voice cracked, and a sob emerged.

‘Mum …’ I clutched the telephone wire in my other fist.

‘I should have known.’ She laughed in an odd, bitter sort of a way. ‘When I met him at the Dashwoods’ party they said to me, they said, “Be careful of that one, Grace.” Didn’t listen, of course. But I never thought he’d try it with my own daughter.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, cringing at the inadequacy of the words. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

‘Oh, Rosie.’ Again, the laugh. ‘Oh, Rosie, you’ve nothing to be sorry for.’

‘I …’ I began, not knowing what to say next, because maybe she hadn’t realized what the notes signified, and now I’d have to explain, and I had no words for that.

‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘For good. So you can come home now, and start school again, and all those things, all right?’

‘He …’ The air was getting stuck in my throat. I tried again. ‘I let him … Ah …’

‘Rosie. Darling.’ My mother’s voice softened suddenly, like a crumpling flower. ‘God, Rosie, you don’t think I hold you responsible, do you?’

‘I sh-shouldn’t have …’

‘Listen to me,’ she said firmly, and now she was like my mum of old, laying out the world for me, a piece at a time. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were innocent.’

‘Innocent,’ I repeated, and said it to myself, inside my head.
Rosie Churchill is innocent
. I felt an insane urge to giggle.

At the corner of the half-landing Star appeared, wearing a green dress with thin straps and a floppy sun hat, the handles of a straw bag slung over one shoulder. She stood there watching me, and I knew she understood.

‘Of course. Now listen, I’ve been thinking. How about I come to your place tomorrow afternoon? And you can make me a cup of tea, and we’ll just have a nice chat. What do you think?’

I nodded, although she couldn’t see me, and thought of Dockie, and the photograph, and his talk of a girl named Sally. ‘I’ve loads of news. Good news, I think.’

Mum sighed through the wires. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you too.’

After I’d hung up I leaned against the G. P. O. list of exchange numbers framed beside the telephone and waited for Star to reach my side.

‘You okay?’ She touched my bare arm.

I smiled at her. ‘Yes, I am.’

Together, we walked down the hill in the sunshine. I peered at a bright orange scarf wrapped around something sticking out of the top of her straw bag.

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Oh, it’s to protect the envelope.’ She waggled her eyebrows at me. ‘Granny let me have it.’

‘What? Not … the package from Robert?’

She nodded. ‘She wants me to read it first, so I can tell her if there’s anything upsetting in it.’

‘Wow.’ I looked down at the beach, the families setting up camp beneath the unexpected sun, the donkey-ride woman further along in her deckchair, the metal edging of the pier winking in the light. ‘She really trusts you.’

‘She does.’ She nudged me. ‘Of course, I’ll let you read it too. She’ll never know.’

‘Oh,
Star
.’ I was pleased all the same, and put my arm inside hers. ‘And you mustn’t forget our date tonight. The One-Two, remember?’

She looked down and blushed. ‘I wouldn’t,’ she murmured, and I felt again the glimmer of power just within my grasp.

I put my shoulders back straighter, and as we crossed the road to the promenade I said, ‘Oh, look, there’s Johnny.’

We walked down the steps, plunging across the filmy sand. ‘This is okay, isn’t it?’ murmured Star, in a sort of wonder, a giggle just under her breath.

I was bright with a new sort of confidence. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’

We nudged each other, sand sinking between our toes as we walked to where Johnny was lying on a towel in shorts and a vest, wearing sunglasses.

‘You two made it up?’ he said, as we unrolled towels and kicked off our shoes. ‘I’ve got the hangover from hell, so don’t disturb, all right?’

Star wriggled out of her dress and stood before me in her black-and-white swimsuit. ‘You coming, Rosie?’

‘Um …’ I looked down at the bag Star had dumped on to the towel. ‘All right. Just give me a second.’

‘I’ll see you in there, okay?’ She turned and ran off towards where children were squealing in the waves.

I bent down to the bag, sand spattering the outsides of it, and pulled apart the fringes of the orange scarf. Inside was the envelope; it had already been unpeeled and I inched out the first few pages. The topmost one appeared
to be a letter; I saw
Dear Clara
in an elegant copperplate hand. The second one began:

Both trains were packed: all the way from Birmingham New Street to London, and again on the connecting service to the south
.

‘Go on, bugger off,’ murmured Johnny from behind his sunglasses. ‘I’ll make sure it don’t go nowhere, okay?’

‘You’d better.’ I gently pushed the pages back and returned the envelope to the bag. I stood up and squinted out towards the shoreline, making out Star’s head bobbing in the waves.

I stepped out of my dress and kicked it on to the towel. I walked towards the glinting blue line of the sea, dodging past the families reading newspapers and the kids building sandcastles. As I stepped into the sea I gasped as the cold water hit my shins.

‘You’ve got to run!’ Star shouted from a short distance away, her lips wide, her eyelashes wet. I took a breath, waded in up to my thighs and then, with a wild scream of abandon, launched myself into the sea and began swimming, the sunshine hot on my head and the gulls wheeling and calling somewhere far overhead.

Thank you Judith Murray, and all at Greene & Heaton.

Thank you, everyone at Michael Joseph and Penguin.

Thank you, Stella Kane and Laura Longrigg.

Thank you, Grit Lit and Rattle Tales in Brighton.

Thank you Sam, my first editor.

And most of all, thank you for reading this book. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey.

Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
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First published 2014

Copyright © Stephanie Lam, 2014
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover © Richard Jenkins

Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes

ISBN: 978-1-405-91701-8