Out of her Box of Secrets came postage stamp pictures of Crawford and pencilled family faces split by joyful laughter. Singing and chatting to herself, Eleanor hung them from threads of cotton in all the rooms.
Minute bedspreads had been fashioned out of squares of material. Her Mum had stitched them one winter afternoon earlier that year. The house was freezing and they had huddled together in the kitchen, close to the Rayburn like conspirators. As a surprise, Isabel had embroidered Eleanor’s initials in the middle of one square: ‘E.I.R’ – Eleanor Isabel Ramsay. Eleanor had laid it on the huge double bed in the main bedroom.
‘One day you’ll show this to your children and tell them their grandmother made it,’ Isabel had pronounced briskly. ‘They’ll treasure it.’ She was always mindful of leaving footprints for the future. Eleanor didn’t choose that moment to tell Isabel she didn’t want children.
Soon Eleanor’s replica White House had been transformed into a cosy home welcoming in plenty of sunshine and quite safe from intruders. Her cars were content there.
That Friday morning, Eleanor had been eager to finish breakfast and embark on her proposed changes. She insinuated herself into the gap between the playroom wall and the house and inched the heavy structure across the painted floorboards until it was about four feet from the wall. A happy rush of anticipation galloped through her as she cleared out every room and gathered the contents in a heap on the rug by the fireplace. She would spend the afternoon painting new pictures for the walls; the main bedroom could also do with a chest of drawers. She knew how to make one out of matchboxes with paper studs for handles. Her Mum might help again.
Then Lizzie called out that she had a visitor, ‘a surprise person’, she would say no more. A selection of perfect people paraded through Eleanor’s mind, starting with Aunt Ginny who only ever visited when they were in St Peter’s Square because she hated the dead Judge and who always brought wild adventure, perhaps a ride in her Austin van with Aunt Ginny’s friend Maggie, all of them singing songs by Cilla Black in shouty voices and swearing at other cars without being told off. After this the list tailed off for it couldn’t be her best friend, Lucy. Perhaps it was the girl at the village shop yesterday afternoon, who had blown pink bubbles with her gum until one burst covering her face like a mask. She had left it there, plastered over her cheeks until her Mum noticed, just as Eleanor would have done.
But the surprise was none of these.
What Eleanor saw from the top of the stairs was a ghost with chalky-white skin in a yellow dress, fair hair fanning out over its shoulders so that Eleanor thought its head was a triangle. Then she saw it was a girl standing to attention in a patch of sunlight outside the porch, smiling with the tops of her cheeks. She had on what Eleanor soon discovered was her new favourite dress; the flimsy frilly frock adorned with lacy bits filled Eleanor with foreboding. The girl was entirely still, her bony knees close together, her feet in black patent leather pumps with no specks of dirt, proving she had flown to the White House without touching the ground.
Like her grandfather, Eleanor wasted no time drawing conclusions, and she instantly wished that she had hidden when Lizzie called. She slowed down for the last few stairs but had inevitably to reach the bottom one.
Mark Ramsay lounged in the porch rocking back and forth on his heels, hands in the pockets of his favourite country trousers. Eleanor was sure he was trying to keep a straight face as he listened to the girl’s mother, who talked very fast then stopped with a hiccup to give way to bursts of cockerel laughter. His genial doctor’s voice kept saying, ‘I see’ and ‘Is that right?’ Then she saw that he didn’t laugh when the woman laughed which meant he wasn’t listening. This was normal. Eleanor relaxed.
‘Ah, Elly, there you are. What kept you?’ He scrumpled up her hair, gently urging her forward out of the shadow of the porch towards the ghost girl. ‘Well, now you can stop sulking around the place moaning. We’ve found Anna.’
‘Alice actually. Nearly right!’ Eleanor was impressed that the woman could move her neck like a pigeon. She splayed her hands in the direction of her daughter as if introducing a circus act.
‘Like Alice in Wonderland! Your favourite book, isn’t it, Alice!’ She gave a squeal.
At this Alice moved her head, which startled Eleanor, as she had grown used to the idea that she wasn’t real. She guessed, without forming the words, that her father made Alice’s mother scared. A lot of people behaved strangely with him. The glistening lady with damp hands, who had tried to teach Gina the flute, got a blotchy neck after encountering him in the hall. Her mother had said it was because he was a doctor and they were idiotic enough to think he could see them without their clothes on.
Suddenly Eleanor remembered hearing about Alice. She was the girl who had moved into the cottage next to the village shop. Her Mum was receptionist at the local surgery, and her Dad was Charbury’s new postman. The bubble gum girl had confided to Eleanor that there was an Alice who could stand on her head for over fifteen minutes. It must be this one. For a moment Eleanor’s unalloyed admiration for this supposed feat overcame her objection to the proposed arrangement.
She was astonished to find her mother outside too. Isabel was walking up and down outside the dining room window, her arms folded tightly as if she was cold; her high heels crunched small holes in the gravel. She was dressed for going out in her turquoise trouser suit and full make-up. Eleanor had thought she was in bed and, although pleased she was up, she was disheartened that she would soon be gone.
Isabel’s two eldest children were too grown up for the ruthless tactics they had adopted four years earlier when Lucian and Gina, aged six and eight with a tearful Eleanor in tow, had hidden their mother’s jewels in seed trays stacked in the potting shed to stop her leaving. The plan had failed. The jewels were found and the gardener was dismissed on the basis that he had boasted to Lucian about stealing a car when he was a boy. The children said nothing, not even to each other and the secret grew like a deadly plant. Gradually they stopped playing together and only formed expedient, if uneasy alliances. These were fluid at first; any two of them might side against the third or close ranks against outsiders, but as they got older Gina and Lucian sealed an unspoken pact, freeing them of guilt and adroitly placing amorphous blame on their little sister. Isabel was smoking, eyes hidden behind sunglasses that reflected the group clustered around the porch. She addressed no one, her voice husky from smoke and hours of silent darkness:
‘She’ll stop my daughter getting into mischief. Gina’s too old to play, although she’ll keep an eye. I am sure Alice is a sensible girl.’
Eleanor’s heart sank as her mother gave one of her very short smiles, which made the girl in the dress shimmer with lacy trembles. She glared at Gina, leaning triumphant against an Ionic column, acting too old to play. They avoided looking at each other in case it was all too clear what was really in their minds.
The four years between the sisters was beyond argument, but this chasm, usually represented by Gina’s devotion to horses, had been widened recently by new differences in their experience. The past week had seen Gina clamped to a hot water bottle with period pains and the failure of a boyfriend (who her family said didn’t exist) to appear at the Hammersmith Wimpy as arranged. Eleanor and her friends’ only interest in boys was around how to win back Eleanor’s champion marble from Chris Thornton who had unfairly refused to risk it in further games. The sisters had little to say to one another.