Ellie Read online

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  Ellie had heard raised voices from the parlour but it hadn’t occurred to her that the disagreement between Mr and Miss Gilbert had anything to do with her. The talk with Miss Wilkins after school had made her feel better about herself and she’d even begun to think of herself as a woman rather than a child. She looked up in surprise as Mr Gilbert came into the living-room with two cups of tea in his hands.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Do you want to listen to the wireless now? I’ve almost finished my homework.’

  It was half-past seven. Miss Gilbert always ordered her to bed before eight, and usually Mr Gilbert went into his office across the passage straight after the evening meal. Miss Gilbert always stayed in the kitchen until it was time to hear the nine o’clock news, but Ellie assumed she was coming in here now too.

  ‘The tea’s for you,’ he said putting one cup down by her and sitting down at the other side of the table. He cocked his head to one side, listening to the sound of aircraft going overhead. It seemed to him that each night there was more and more activity on the air bases. ‘I didn’t come in to listen to the wireless, but to talk to you.’

  Amos wasn’t a man who thought about people’s appearance much, but he noted now that Ellie had changed dramatically in six months. Losing so much weight had revealed high cheekbones, and her face was heart-shaped, not round as he’d always supposed. Her dark eyes had always been her most attractive feature, but now she was so much thinner they were huge and dramatic. He could see now what Dora had meant about her hair being dull and the glow gone from her skin, yet despite this she was slowly turning into a beauty, and maybe that was just what Grace couldn’t stomach.

  He wondered whether he would’ve made a good father if he’d had children of his own. He couldn’t help but think how proud he’d be if Ellie was his.

  Out of loyalty to both Dora and Grace he had to pretend he’d observed things weren’t quite right himself. Brusquely he said it had come to his notice that she was doing too many chores and she looked pale. ‘I’m sorry if it’s been hard for you here,’ he said, running one finger inside the collar of his shirt nervously. ‘I know my sister can be very difficult to please, but neither of us are used to children. But I intend to change things, to make it better for you. I want you to see your friends after school if you want to, and on Saturdays you can please yourself how you spend your time. If you are troubled about anything, come to me.’

  Ellie was astounded. It didn’t occur to her that Miss Wilkins had intervened on her behalf. ‘I don’t mind helping you,’ she said, sensing something more was troubling him, and wanting him to know he wasn’t responsible. ‘Or doing things around the house. I just hate it when Miss Gilbert is so nasty.’

  Amos looked into Ellie’s eyes and saw complete honesty. It pricked at his own conscience and he faltered. ‘If you want to be moved, I’ll understand,’ he said. ‘But can we give it another shot first?’

  Amos felt a sense of shame as a warm, almost affectionate smile spread across her face.

  ‘Yes please,’ she said without any hesitation. ‘I’ll try harder to make Miss Gilbert like me. And I do like helping you in the workshop, really I do.’

  Some kind of current passed between them. It was soothing, comfortable, a kind of silent reassurance that their relationship was going to grow from now on. Amos wished he could find the words to explain how he felt, but he’d always been a listener rather than a talker.

  ‘ITMA’s on in a minute,’ he said to hide his acute embarrassment. Grace had never allowed Ellie to listen to the programme, but he guessed she would like it. ‘Will you stay and listen to it with me?’

  The joy in the girl’s face was like an electric light being switched on. ‘Oh yes,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’d love to.’

  Grace Gilbert lay awake, every bone in her long thin body stiff with rage. How dare Amos say she should be in an asylum? Hadn’t she scrubbed, cooked and sewed for him for years without complaint? It was that girl! She was a she-devil, and she was turning Amos against his own flesh and blood.

  Grace had seethed with anger as she heard them laughing at ITMA together. How dare he sit in her living-room with that common child and exclude her?

  ‘Just you wait,’ she whispered into the darkness. ‘I’ll get even with you, little Miss Perfect. Just when you least expect it.’

  Amos tossed and turned, unable to go to sleep. He switched on the bedside lamp, sat up and reached for a book and his reading glasses.

  He read a whole page, yet as he turned to the next he realised he hadn’t taken in a word.

  With a deep sigh he put down the book, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Should he go downstairs and make himself a drink?

  His room was his parents’ old one and the only thing he’d replaced was the mattress his father had died on. Both he and Grace had been born in the old oak bed, and he could still see his mother sitting at the dressing-table brushing her hair, laughing as he bounced up and down.

  His childhood had been a happy one. Both his parents had been jovial characters, not at all how people supposed undertakers to be. What had happened to make Grace so deeply disturbed? She had been loved just the same as he was.

  It had been an odd sort of day. First calling to measure up old Herbert Lucas who had died the previous evening and finding his wife, crippled with rheumatism, struggling to dress him in his Sunday suit. Herbert had treated Mrs Lucas shamefully for sixty years of marriage, beating her, drinking and womanising, yet she still insisted on making him look his best to meet his Maker and was prepared to spend her meagre savings to give him a funeral to be proud of.

  Amos had spent the rest of the day in his workshop making the coffin for the Sawyers’ baby, brooding as he sawed and planed about why God saw fit to take a small, dearly loved child, yet keep someone like Herbert in rude health till he was over eighty.

  Dora’s unexpected visit had stirred him up still more. Not just the shame of discovering he had failed to notice cruelty to a child going on right under his nose, but also reminders of what he might have become if only he’d been stronger willed.

  His life was built on regrets. For not standing up to his father and refusing to become an undertaker. Even for agreeing to provide for Grace. But above all for not sharing his suspicions about Grace with someone, anyone, all those years ago.

  He could still see himself, mutely walking before the black-plumed horses. Everyone in the town turned out for that tragic double funeral, the shops all closed in respect, almost every window draped with black. Amos couldn’t think of that day without hearing the sobbing. It came from everyone – relatives, friends, neighbours, even his father when, earlier in the day, he’d had to place those blackened skeletons in the two coffins.

  Only Grace had dry eyes. Yet just a few months earlier she’d claimed she loved Sean O’Leary.

  Grace was eighteen when she met Sean at a dance in the Corn Exchange. Amos remembered it well, because Grace came into his room when she got home, all flushed and excited, whispering to him that she’d met the man she intended to marry and making Amos promise he wouldn’t tell anyone.

  Amos was fifteen then, more interested in fishing and carpentry than his sister and her romantic ideas, but he was pleased that at last she was behaving like other girls.

  In the next few days Amos found his sister’s announcement a little premature. The man she’d set her heart on was a devil-may-care Irish labourer who’d only recently arrived in the area to work on Firth’s Farm beyond the abbey, and it seemed every single girl under the age of twenty-five was as captivated by the black-haired, blue-eyed charmer as Grace.

  Sean never came to call at the house and Grace didn’t make excuses to go out. Nor did she mention Sean again. But one evening Amos went into Grace’s room and found her sitting on her bed sketching. She tried to cover it up, but Amos snatched the pad from her. To his surprise she was drawing a wedding dress.

  Amos teased her, but for once Grace didn’t fly into a rage.<
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  ‘I told you I was going to marry Sean, and I am,’ she said firmly. That was the only time Amos had ever thought Grace looked pretty. She was normally very pale, her features sharp and her body too thin to attract any attention. But that night she was different. Her fair hair was loose and fluffy round her face, she had colour in her cheeks and her grey eyes were lit up.

  ‘You mustn’t tell,’ she begged Amos. ‘We’ll have to run away because father won’t approve of Sean.’

  Amos was confused. He couldn’t see how Grace had managed to spend any time with Sean, and rumour had it he was walking out with Meg Butterworth, a sparkling blonde whom any man in his right mind would prefer to Grace. But Amos couldn’t voice these thoughts. Grace always chilled him and he didn’t want to provoke one of her rages.

  It was Frank Butterworth, Meg’s younger brother, who informed Amos about Sean and Meg’s forthcoming engagement. He said it was going to be announced at Meg’s eighteenth birthday party. Mr Butterworth was a butcher, with a fine big shop in The Travers. A big, exuberant man, but tough enough to flatten anyone who threatened his beloved daughter’s happiness. It was very unlikely that Sean was carrying on with Grace too.

  Amos decided he must tell Grace the news before it reached her from another source. He went into her room that evening and blurted it out.

  She was sewing a lace-trimmed white petticoat. At first she seemed not to be taking it in and continued with tiny neat stitches, her thin lips curved into a smile.

  ‘Grace, are you listening?’ Amos snapped. ‘He’s getting engaged to Meg. I don’t know how you got the idea he liked you, but you’ve got to forget him.’

  Her reaction was startling. She held up a finger and jabbed it with her needle, like she had taken leave of her senses. Amos stared at her in alarm as a bead of blood swelled up in her finger and dropped on to the petticoat.

  ‘He will marry me, or no one,’ she said, her eyes sparking with strange lights. ‘He’s mine.’

  Four days later Meg and Sean were dead, burned to a crisp in Firth’s barn, a week before their planned engagement.

  The barn’s close proximity to the town and its position near the River Lark made it a favourite place for lovers to go on long summer evenings. Amos and his friends had often crept up to it and banged on the old door, then run away to hide when couples came out with dishevelled clothing.

  At seven that evening Sean and Meg were seen walking down Mustow Street hand in hand towards the river. At eight-thirty, Stan Beddows, who lived in Cotton Lane, looked out of a bedroom window, saw flames shooting up from the barn and raised the alarm.

  At first the police thought it was an accident. That Sean had lit a cigarette and thrown the match carelessly down amongst the dry straw. But later, when the burned-out barn was checked, they discovered that the door had been secured from the outside with a lump of wood across the two latches, and that the seat of the fire was by a small hole in the side of the barn.

  After an exhaustive enquiry, the police drew the conclusion that a malicious tramp was responsible. Yet still Amos couldn’t be entirely convinced of Grace’s innocence. She may have been in her bedroom all evening, yet she alone out of all the women in the town who knew Sean showed no reaction at all – not grief because the man she once said she was going to marry was dead, or even anger that he died in another girl’s arms.

  Grace got impetigo soon after the funeral and it was curiously convenient for explaining away the obsessive cleaning that followed her maniacal mood swings.

  That double murder was wiped from most people’s memories now, a bit of dark history best forgotten. But not for Amos. Sometimes when he glanced out of Grace’s bedroom window and saw the lean-to shed so close, he thought how easy it would be for someone to go in and out that way without being seen.

  Amos turned out his light and lay down again. Perhaps at fifteen he had too much imagination for his own good. It was wicked and unnatural even to consider his sister capable of murder. But she was crazy, as unpredictable as spring weather, and in future he’d be watching her closely.

  Chapter Five

  Amberley, May 1940

  ‘Step and tap, step and tap,’ Lydia called out above the beat of the music. ‘Heads up, swing your arms, step and tap and step and tap.’

  It was Saturday morning, the main tap-dancing class of the week. Eight girls ranging from seven to twelve, all with flushed faces, all wearing the uniform blue short flared dress and red tap-shoes, but varying enormously in their shapes and heights. Betty was the eldest, a hefty twelve-year-old farmer’s daughter who had been coming here for lessons since she was six but still couldn’t co-ordinate leg and arm movements. Joanie, the youngest, had taken to tap-dancing well, but she was so short and fat Lydia doubted she would ever look right on a stage. Peggy was so thin her dress just hung like a sack and she was struggling vainly to keep in step with the others. Of the eight girls, Lydia felt that only Bonny had all the credentials for a tap-dancer. The grace, confidence, lightness of step and the looks.

  To watch Bonny dance was a pleasure. A smile was switched on the moment the music started, natural rhythm swung her along. Not for her, those admonishments not to look at your feet or to stop chanting the instructions aloud – she was a born dancer.

  Bonny had been in Amberley for two months now and although there had been minor problems at the village school at first, Lydia found she was becoming very attached to the child. Occasionally this worried her – after all, Mrs Phillips could demand Bonny back at any time – but in the main Lydia just enjoyed each day as it came.

  ‘Well done.’ Lydia stood up from her piano and took up a position in front of the two rows of girls. ‘Now we’re going to learn the next part, so watch me carefully!’

  Lydia wore a similar dress to the children, but hers was black and slightly longer, worn over a pair of pink ballet tights. It was said that fathers volunteered to collect their children from the Saturday morning class in the hope of catching a glimpse of her shapely legs, but they were usually disappointed to find the teacher had wrapped herself in a loose kimono by the time they arrived.

  ‘Now step, hop, step, to the right,’ she said, her arms out in front of her. Step hop, step, to the left and turn.’

  Lydia watched the children go through this routine until they’d got it, more or less, then returned to the piano.

  ‘From the beginning,’ she said, playing the introduction. ‘Heads up, tummies in and smile.’

  It was May now: the German Army had entered Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg and was advancing rapidly through France. Chamberlain had resigned, and Winston Churchill was now Prime Minister. His stirring words, ‘I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears and sweat,’ had won the hearts of the nation, but here in Sussex the war still hadn’t affected their everyday lives very much.

  Littlehampton was preparing for the summer season. Mr Butlin, who owned the amusement park, had claimed back in March that ‘Big business should be done on the South coast. It is a safe area and I am very optimistic’ – though he added that the black-out of course presented a problem.

  Piles of sandbags lay in readiness, the black-out rigorously maintained and collections of waste materials organised. But even though everyone tuned in their wireless each night at nine to hear the latest news of the blitzkrieg of the low countries, for now in Amberley the villagers were more concerned with the threat imposed by land-girls, than with possible bombing or even invasion.

  Hordes of khaki-breeched and stout-booted girls had arrived with spring. Their masculine attire and enthusiasm for country life should have appeased farmers struggling to keep things going now that the able-bodied men had been called up, but almost everyone was deeply suspicious of these town girls. After only the sketchiest training these typists, shop assistants and domestic servants, many of whom had hardly even seen a cow before, were expected to milk, to spread muck on the fields, to plough and cut hay. Local girls were jealous because they had competition for
the attentions of the lads in the Fleet Air Arm stationed nearby. Farmers’ wives were nervous that these more worldly women would seduce their husbands. Most of the old farmers resented the government snatching their experienced labourers and replacing them with novices and they took delight in passing on tales of girls who thought cows only had to be milked once a week and didn’t know a hen from a rooster.

  Lydia had a great deal of sympathy for these girls. They worked cheerfully from dawn to dusk in all weathers, often living in the most primitive of conditions. She admired the way they adjusted to the lack of baths, hairdressers and praise. They were often homesick, missing their families, shops and entertainment, yet still managed to find the energy to get to the nearest Saturday night dance, often outshining the local girls.

  Bonny didn’t appear to miss her home and parents. On the rare occasions when she spoke of them it was in an abstract manner, almost as if she’d made up her mind she was never going to return. When Mr and Mrs Phillips had come down to visit her in April, Bonny had seemed strained and somewhat embarrassed by their presence and she’d put her mother’s back up with a rather tactless eulogy of how blissfully happy she was with both her new home and Lydia.

  Before Bonny’s arrival, weekends had been the time when Lydia noticed her single status most. Saturdays were busy with both dancing and music lessons, but seeing parents collect their children and overhearing talk of trips to the cinema, walks or shopping always reminded her she had no one to share such things with. Sundays were often long and empty.

  But now weekends were transformed into busy, joyful times. On Saturdays they had leisurely breakfasts, talking over what Bonny had done at school, and when the dancing classes were over they often had afternoon tea at Belinda’s Tearooms in Arundel, followed by a film at The Arun. Sundays flew by in Bonny’s company. Whether they went for a walk or sat by the fire after lunch with a shared jigsaw puzzle, it had become a relaxing, happy day which Lydia looked forward to all week.