She. The girl, Elodie. Tip had found himself watching her occasionally, in turn, across the table at Sunday lunch, mildly puzzled because he recognised something in her that he couldn’t articulate at once; she had reminded him of someone. He realised now, in the sudden focus of her mother’s death, that she’d reminded him of himself. She was a child whose still waters masked her depths.
Tip went over to the shelf where he kept his jar of whatnots and took out the stone, weighing it in the palm of his hand. He could still remember the night the woman, Ada, told him about it. They’d been sitting out the front of the pub in Birchwood; it was summer and dusk, so there hadn’t been a lot of light, but enough for him to show her some of the rocks and sticks he’d been collecting. His pockets were always full at that time.
She’d picked each one up in turn and looked at it closely. She had liked collecting things, too, when she was his age, she said; now she was an archaeologist, which was a grown-up version of the same thing.
‘Do you have a favourite?’ she’d asked.
Tip told her that he did, and handed over a particularly smooth piece of oval-shaped quartz. ‘Did you ever find something as good as this?’
Ada nodded. ‘Once, when I was not much older than you are now.’
‘I’m five.’
‘Well, I was eight. I had an accident. I fell from a boat into the river and I couldn’t swim.’
Tip could remember becoming alert then with recognition; he had a feeling he’d heard this story before.
‘Down I went, through the water, all the way to the bottom.’
‘Did you think that you were going to drown?’
‘Yes.’
‘A girl did drown in the river over there.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed gravely. ‘But not me.’
‘She saved you.’
‘Yes. Just when I felt that I could hold my breath no longer, I saw her. Not clearly, and only for a moment, and then she was gone and I saw the stone, shining, surrounded by light, and I just knew somehow, as if a voice had whispered in my ear, that if I reached out and grasped it, I would survive.’
‘And you did.’
‘As you see. A wise woman once told me that there were certain items that brought a person good fortune.’
He’d liked the sound of that and had asked her where he could get one for himself. He explained to her that his father had just been killed in the war and he was worried about his mother, because it was his job now to look after her and he wasn’t sure how to do it.
And Ada had nodded wisely and said, ‘I’m going to come and see you at the house tomorrow. Would that be all right? I have something I’d like to give you. In fact, I have a feeling that it belongs with you. That it knew you’d be here and found a way to get to you.’
But it must be a secret between them, she’d said, and then she’d asked whether he’d found the hidden chamber yet, and when Tip said that he hadn’t, she’d whispered to him about a panel in the hallway, and Tip’s eyes had widened with excitement.
Next day she’d given him the blue stone.
‘What will I do with it?’ he’d asked as they sat together in the garden at Birchwood Manor.
‘Keep it safe and it will do the same for you.’
Birdie, who’d been sitting beside him, had smiled her agreement.
Tip no longer believed in amulets or good luck, but he didn’t disbelieve, either. What he did know was that the idea of the stone had been enough. Many times, as a boy – at Birchwood, but more so after they’d left – he’d held it in his hand and closed his eyes and Birdie’s words had come flooding back into his mind: he would remember the lights in the dark, and the way he’d felt when he was in the house, as if he were enveloped, and everything was going to be all right.
Thinking of Lauren and the little girl who was now without her mother, Tip began to have an idea. He had a trove of trolleys in his studio, each loaded with items he had found when he was out walking: things that spoke to him, for one reason or another, because they were honest or beautiful or interesting. He began to pick out some of the finest, arranging them on the bench before him, returning some to the trays, exchanging them for others, until he was happy with the selection. And then he began to mix up the clay.
Little girls liked charm boxes. He had seen them at the markets on Saturdays, lining up at the craft stalls, looking for little cases in which to keep their treasures. He would make one for her, Lauren’s daughter, and he would decorate it with all of the items that meant the most to him; the stone, too, for it had found a new child to protect. It wasn’t much, but it was all that he could think to do.
And maybe, just maybe, if he did it right, when he gave the gift to her, he would be able to imbue it with the same powerful idea, the same light and love, that the stone had held when it was given to him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Summer, 1962
She parked the car on the verge and turned off the ignition, but she didn’t get out; she was early. The wave of memories had been behind her all day, threatening to break, and now that she’d stopped, it had rolled over the top of her and spread out in a glittering wash. Juliet was beset, suddenly, with a visceral remembrance of the night they’d arrived off the train, the four of them, weary and hungry, no doubt traumatised after being uprooted from London.
It had been one of the most horrific periods in her life – the destruction of her home, the loss of Alan – and yet, in some ways, Juliet would have given anything to go back. To step through that gate over there, into the Birchwood Manor garden, and know that she would see five-year-old Tip, with his hair like a curtain; Bea, a surly pre-teen too proud to accept a hug; and Red, just Red, irrepressible, with those stubborn freckles and the gap-toothed smile. Their noise, their squabbles, their incessant questions. The stretch of time between now and then, the impossibility of going back, even for a minute, was a physical pain.
She had not expected it to feel like this. For her connection to the house to pull so hard at her chest. It wasn’t a weight upon her; it was a great sudden pressure inside her, pressing against her ribs in its urge to escape.
It had been twenty-two years now since Alan had died. Twenty-two years that he hadn’t lived, in which she had gone on ahead without him.
She didn’t hear his voice any more.
And now, here she was, her car parked on the verge outside Birchwood Manor. The house was uninhabited: she could see that at once. It wore the patina of neglect. But Juliet couldn’t have loved it more.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, she took the letter from her bag and read through it quickly. It was short and to the point; not his usual style. Little more than today’s date and a time.
Juliet still had every letter that he’d sent her. She liked knowing that they were all there in hat boxes in the back of her wardrobe. Beatrice liked to tease her about her ‘pen pal’, though since Lauren had been born, she didn’t have as much energy for stirring.
The clock in the dashboard clicked forward by a minute. Time was passing at a snail’s pace.
Juliet didn’t much fancy sitting in the confines of the Triumph for another forty minutes. She glanced at herself in the rear-view mirror, checked her lipstick, and then, with a decisive breath, hopped out of the car.
She followed the winding lane towards the cemetery, blinking away the ghostly image of Tip, stopped along the way to search for odd pieces of quartz and gravel. She turned left towards the village, and as she reached the crossroads was pleased to see that The Swan was still there.
After a minute of consideration, she summoned up the courage to go inside. Thirty-four years since she and Alan had arrived from London on the train, Juliet doing her best to conceal her pregnancy. She had half expected Mrs Hammett to arrive at the door to greet her, to start talking as if they’d only just had dinner the night before, but there was a new young woman behind the bar.
‘Changed hands a few years ago now,’ she said. ‘I’m Mrs Lamb. Rachel Lamb.’
‘Mrs Hammett – is she … ?’
‘Not likely. She’s moved in with her son and daughter-in-law, down the road.’
‘Close by?’