‘What are you talking about?’ Gina trotted into the hall, and executed a petit jeté as she reached high up for her riding hat from the shelf above the coat hooks. Alice got there first and thrust it into Gina’s arms eagerly. Gina was glaring at her sister and simply put out a hand for it.
‘Oh, just pressed flowers. I’ve been doing them for ages, in my spare time,’ replied Eleanor carelessly. ‘There’s a book I use. It’s nothing, just flowers, you know. And some Latin.’
‘Have you had a bash on the head, Elly?’ Gina had looked at Alice and rolled her eyes. Alice rolled hers too making her head go like a duck. Normally this would have enraged Eleanor but she had been fortified by the pressed flower book, which she produced from under her tee-shirt with a flourish.
The small notebook was swollen and bulging with damp, dying flora. She dumped it on the hall table fully thinking it settled all arguments. For a moment no one moved, obviously taken in by the magnificence of her achievement. Then Alice came over and lifting the warped cardboard cover with just the tips of her fingers, flicked open the front page and stepped back revolted. Gina’s interest had passed and she was on her knees rummaging through the shoe rack.
‘You haven’t pressed them properly.’ Alice had rattled the page holding a flower named ‘Yellow Toad Flax’ in tottering capitals that had stained the paper a nasty brown. ‘You can’t put them straight in. They need to dry. You need a special book.’ She paused for Gina to agree, but Gina was struggling into her boots. As Alice flipped through the notebook, the page heavy with a fistful of Nipplewort (Lapsana communis) fell out at her feet. Apparently without realising it, Alice moved her foot, crushing the head of the flower beneath her sandal.
Gina had got up, inches taller in black riding boots, her hat swinging from her arm, and clopped over to give a final verdict. Eleanor was enraged to smell the scent they had given Isabel. Gina was always stealing things.
‘It’s a shame to press flowers. They should be left where they are for everyone to enjoy. If we all pulled them up willy-nilly and carted them home there’d be none left. Besides it’s a form of murder.’ Gina tossed her head and stalked out of the open door, vanishing in a blaze of sunlight like the lady in Star Trek. She didn’t see Alice gazing at her from the porch until long after she was out of sight.
‘Can you think of anything else to tell us, Eleanor?’ Richard the Policeman began dropping the sweets back into the bag one by one with precise movements. Isabel and Eleanor followed each sweet. Last of all, he put the lid back on his pen with a click and stabbed it into the breast pocket of his jacket. Eleanor made a mental note to practise this later with Lucian’s school blazer.
Was there anything else? She furrowed her brow. There was the old railway line that led from the Mill to the halt where the grain was picked up. There were the remains of the Mill Owner’s house, with its empty rooms and flying fireplace. The sand at the end of the beach was dotted here and there with polished pebbles that were engulfed by the incoming tide. But these and other things were secrets she could not tell them. At another of their meetings she did say that when she went down to the beach to see if Alice was there, it was empty, adding quickly that of course she couldn’t say for sure. For good measure she emphasised that no cars passed by the triangular field while she was hiding and that she suspected Alice of interfering with her den because it was very tidy.
Eleanor said nothing that helped him find Alice.
Chief Inspector Hall told Eleanor she could go and play, and that they might talk again.
Eleanor’s bare legs were stuck to the leather chair, and stung like nettles as she climbed down. She mooched into the garden and sat on the camp bed left under Uncle Jack’s tree. She couldn’t think what to play. This disconsolate feeling was unfamiliar. Anyone looking down from an upstairs window would have seen a small girl robbed of spirit, thin shoulders bowed under a bewildering weight. The house was at its best in the late afternoon sunshine, its leaded windows were blocks of molten gold and its white stucco translucent.
Eleanor did not think of her stories as lying, they were true to her and she made them true to others too. She had written a piece for Miss Skoda on the summer holidays last year. She had said how she and Isabel found shells on the beach and picked flowers for the sitting room mantelpiece. Miss Skoda said it was wonderful how she had remembered every detail. Miss Skoda did not know that Isabel had been away on one of the trips when she never sent a postcard. She didn’t know Isabel hated collecting things like shells and flowers. She didn’t know that Isabel hated dawdling and she hated clutter. If she had known, perhaps Miss Skoda would have guessed Eleanor had made it up.
Eleanor often returned to that story about the beach. It made her happy.
Mummy found a shell buried deep down in the sand and washed it clean in the sea until it was pink and white and shiny. She kissed it three times for luck and held it to my ear for me to hear the sea. She said it was a potent spell and to feel the magic. She put it in my pocket and told me to keep it forever.
Eleanor hid the shell in her Box of Secrets.
The story about Alice would be easy to write.
Alice and Eleanor had played hide and seek. It was Eleanor’s turn to hide so she had hidden. With the dragons and robbers and magic spells there was plenty to put in. She need not mention the Mill; or the Mill Owner; or what happened if villagers got home late from the pub. She need say nothing about the chatting voices of the workers in the Granary that made her think of pigeons. She would leave out the sharp scream of the seagull and how she knew that Alice had stolen her amulet. None of this made a happy story.
When Eleanor gazed up at the sky laced with speeding wispy clouds, the house appeared to be falling on top of her.
Six
‘…six… seven… eight… nine… ten!’
At each count Alice inched further round, taking care to let her hair fall forward so Eleanor wouldn’t see her eyes were open. When she was facing the other way, she could see Eleanor running towards the hedge by the triangular cornfield. Alice felt no qualms about looking. It was unfair of Eleanor to choose such difficult hiding places. Alice wouldn’t have known where to start if she had not seen which direction she went in. Besides this, she could not admit she hated shutting her eyes, even to sleep. She could not confess the terror that had closed in on her as she counted. After Eleanor had vanished into the hedge there were crackles and snaps like a fight going on in the bushes, and through strands of hair Alice saw the branches sway. Then they stopped and it was quiet. It was always quiet in the country. More than ever she wished they had stayed in Newhaven where even at night there would be dogs calling to each other over the gardens, footsteps on the street and the bleak mooing of the foghorn for the ferry.
The little girl remained in the lane, enervated by heat and immobilised by the misery of playing with someone she didn’t like. Eleanor would say she was mad if she started counting again, but Alice could think of no other way to put off looking for her. She knew exactly where to go and she didn’t want to find her. Eleanor would be cross to be found so quickly and might even accuse her of cheating. All she wanted was to go home and play with her Sindy dolls who were proper friends.
The sun burned the back of her neck, as she gazed absently at the web of cracks in the ditch: an earthquake for ants. The cracks widened and she realised she was swaying in the intense heat. She slapped the itchy prickles of sweat on her forehead. She was tired and messy which would upset her Mum. How far away her home seemed, even though there were the roofs of the cottages peeping out from behind the trees where the lane bent towards the village, ending with the church. She could walk, one step at a time, towards the beckoning chimneys and find her house. Then she would be safe.