Burning Secrets

“What if we were coming here to visit friends?” demanded the smaller man. “That would be all right, would it?”

“Oh yes,” said the official reasonably. “That would be perfectly all right. But you’re not.”

The rest of the queue, displaying surprising patience in the face of this hold-up, was eavesdropping shamelessly.

The other biker was beginning to smoulder. He was a big, muscular type, and looked to Daniel like he’d prefer to settle a disagreement with a fist fight rather than a battle of words.

“OK,” said his mate, to head off a scene. “What if we want to have a drive around the island, and then get the last ferry back tonight. That’s not illegal, is it?”

“Of course not,” said the official, his face wreathed in smiles. “That would be absolutely fine.” He gestured to his colleague to raise the barrier.

“What time does the last ferry leave?”

The man drew back a stiff shirt cuff to check his watch. “Forty-five minutes,” he said cheerfully. “Starts loading in thirty.” He turned his back on their protests, and advanced towards the next car in the queue, beaming with satisfaction. “Welcome to Wragge.”

When it came to their turn Daniel felt suddenly anxious that this Little Hitler with his clipboard would find some excuse to send them packing too. But instead he looked over their residency permit and nodded in recognition.

“The Brow,” he said, reading the address on the document before passing it back. “Ericsson’s old place. That’s been empty a while. The neighbours have been keeping an eye on it though. Garden was getting a bit overgrown.”

“Well, my grandfather moved into a nursing home on the mainland about a year ago,” Daniel’s mum replied. “He’d been quite infirm for some time,” she added, as though obliged to explain his shortcomings as a gardener.

“Nice old boy. Used to see him walking about in his shorts in all weathers,” the official said. “How is he?”

“Dead,” said Louie.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” The man shook his head sadly. “You moving here for good then?”

“Six months,” Daniel’s mum explained. “Then we’ll see.” Daniel knew there was no going back early: they had let their London house to an American academic and his family, and this cottage – The Brow – which Daniel and Louie had never seen, was now their only home.

“You’ll probably find,” said the official, putting his face very close to the open window and beaming in at Daniel and Louie, “that once you’ve settled in here you’ll never want to leave.”

“He was kind of friendly,” said Mum, once they had passed through the barrier and were on their way, leaving the fishing boats and cottages of Port Julian behind.

“I don’t call it friendly,” sniffed Louie. “I call it freaky.” Of the three of them she had been the least enthusiastic about the move, and was ready for any chance to criticise.

Daniel had already proved he could survive without pretty much everything that made life OK. There was nothing this place could throw at him. As long as he had Chet he could be happy anywhere. He wasn’t sure about Mum though. Happiness wasn’t really her thing. Grim determination was more like it. But Louie was the real difficulty. She felt everything so deeply, and took things so personally – she just didn’t have that streak of hardness you need to withstand the knocks. She’d hated school, hated London – but it was difficult to tell which way her mood would swing on the island.

Wragge was only nine miles long and six miles across at its widest point but the journey to The Brow, on the south-west tip of the island, took half an hour, because Mum took the coast road instead of the more direct route over the moor. The road was narrow and pot-holed, with high hedgerows and few passing places, and they had been stuck for ages behind a woman on horseback, ambling along with no sense of urgency. Eventually they reached a farm gate and she had steered the horse to one side to let them pass, acknowledging them with a twitch of her riding crop and continuing to stare after the car until it was out of sight.

Occasional breaks in the hedgerow gave glimpses on one side of fields studded with sheep, and beyond and below on the other, the beaten metal of the sea. At each junction signposts pointed towards unseen villages with curious names: Stape, Crosskeys, Last. Their destination was Ingle. It hardly seemed to need a name of its own as it consisted of just two houses and a stone chapel, which stood at some distance on a little knoll surrounded by a crumbling wall. The chapel had clearly been derelict for some time as there was a gaping hole in the roof, now an entry point for nesting birds.

The turning to The Brow was indicated by a hand-gouged sign nailed to a fence post, and the track itself was unsurfaced, worn into ridges and furrows by passing tyres. The car bounced along the last half-mile, the suspension almost collapsing under the weight of luggage and passengers, the exhaust pipe clanking each time it hit a ridge. They passed a small boxy brick house beside a well-stocked vegetable garden. A row of massive off-white pants and greying bras had been pegged out on a line strung between two apple trees. Daniel and Louie exchanged looks of mild horror. The front door of the house had been left open, giving it a blank open-mouthed appearance. The empty eyes of the upstairs windows seemed to follow the cloud of dust that marked the car’s progress down the parched track.

“The neighbours, I guess,” said their mum. Around another bend the road rose sharply, and the car faltered and strained like an elderly cart-horse. Just when it threatened to expire altogether, they found themselves on the edge of the plateau, moorland to their right, and to their left, sheltering behind ivy-covered walls, a simple two-storey stone cottage in an overgrown acre of wildflowers and weeds. The Brow.

Chapter 3

“THIS IS IT,” Mum said, adding, “don’t even think about rushing off to explore before we’ve unloaded this clobber.” On closer inspection the garden wasn’t all overgrown – someone had attempted to cut the grass, recently too, judging from the pile of fresh clippings beside the wall.

“God knows what sort of state this place is going to be in,” Mum said, over her shoulder. She went to put the key in the lock, but at the faintest pressure the door swung open.

Daniel, untying the rope from the roof rack, heard her say, “This is weird.” He and Louie left Chet chasing squirrels and caught up with Mum in the kitchen – a large sunny room with yellow curtains and a flagstone floor. It was surprisingly clean and dust-free, cleaner in fact than their house in London ever was. On a long wooden table were three place settings, a teapot wearing a knitted cosy, milk jug, sugar bowl and a large fruit cake covered with a cloth.

“It’s like Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” said Louie.

“But are we Goldilocks or the bears?” Daniel replied, putting the back of his hand against the spout of the teapot and withdrawing it sharply from the heat.

They moved through the rest of the house, looking for other signs of occupancy, but the rooms, though furnished and free of cobwebs, had an abandoned air. From the garden came the sound of barking. There goes a squirrel, thought Daniel.

“Well, I don’t want to sit drinking tea until we’ve got everything in,” Mum decided, heading back outside and almost tripping over a basket of vegetables – runner beans, tomatoes and courgettes – which had materialised on the doorstep, like an offering left at a shrine.

“Coo-ee,” said a voice, and a short, very fat woman in a pair of drawstring shorts, trainers and a man’s check shirt appeared around the corner of the house, with an excited Chet capering at her heels. She was carrying a string bag of apples. “Windfalls,” she panted, indicating the bag. “Hope you don’t mind. They only rot if you leave them.” The effort of this act of trespass had left her sweating and short of breath. “I’m Winnie-next-door,” she went on. “Been keeping an eye on the place since Mr Ericsson left. I pop in and give it a clean every now and then.”

“Thank you,” said Mum. “It’s certainly very tidy inside. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Oh, we all look out for each other here,” said Winnie-next-door. “They phoned from Port Julian when the ferry got in. Said you were on your way, so I left you some tea indoors. And there’s some veg. I’ll send my son, Kenny, round tomorrow with eggs.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Mum.

Daniel didn’t think it was kind. He thought it was creepy having their movements tracked and privacy invaded. This woman wandering in and out and having her own key to the place, like some kind of jailer.

“I suppose you two will be starting at the high school,” Winnie said, smiling at Daniel and Louie, who shrugged and refused to be drawn into conversation.

“I’m planning to home educate them, actually,” said their mum, coming to the rescue. “We’ve had bad experiences with schools in the past.” Winnie’s eyes widened. “Bullying and stuff.”

“Well, there’s no bullying at Stape High,” Winnie insisted. “The head won’t allow it. She’s turned the place around in the last five years. Got a wonderful atmosphere now. You can tell all the pupils are happy the moment you walk in the place. Oh yes,” she gave a satisfied smile, “we’re very lucky on Wragge. Our young people never give us any trouble at all.”

She set off across the grass, clearly her own short cut that didn’t involve using the path or gate.

Fifteen minutes later the luggage was indoors, a small mountain of cases, holdalls and cardboard boxes at the bottom of the stairs. “You can only bring what we can fit in the car,” Daniel and Louie had been told back in London. “Which isn’t much, so pack wisely.” There’d been some disagreement about what items counted as personal belongings and what could be considered ‘house stuff ’ – saucepans, crockery, Chet’s basket, Chet himself. Somehow or other – chiefly by overloading the roof rack with larger items and stuffing every cranny of the car with smaller squashable things – life’s essentials had been accommodated. Now, they looked at the heap blocking the hallway without enthusiasm. “I suppose I’d better go and get some food before the shops shut,” Mum said wearily. “Are you coming?” she asked Louie.

“What’s the alternative?”

“Staying here. Putting away.” She gave a cardboard box marked KITCHEN STUFF a gentle kick.

“Coming,” said Louie.

“What about you?” Daniel’s mum asked him.

He grunted, non-committal. He didn’t have the slightest intention of doing any more ‘putting away’. From the tiny bathroom window upstairs he had caught a glimpse of sandy beach, and as soon as the others were out of the way he was going to check it out.

“Can we get pizza?” he said to his mum as she shouldered her handbag and made for the car. “Pepperoni.”

She hooted with laughter. “You’ll be lucky. I’ll be amazed if I can get a loaf of bread.”

He watched the car disappear up the track in its own dust-ball, then whistled to Chet. The two of them set off across the garden and through a gap where the wall had collapsed, in the direction of the sea. He didn’t bother to lock the door – it had been open when they arrived, and the neighbours clearly had a key, anyway. The clouds had broken up and widening gashes of blue appeared. In the sun it was hot after the cool dead air of the house. A narrow path about the width of Chet led through a field of long tussocky grass and thistles to a stile, where it met a wider path following the outline of the coast. Daniel headed in the direction of the beach, picking a broad flat stem of grass and stretching it between his thumbs to make a reed. It gave a piercing whistle when he blew on it.

From the opposite direction, a woman appeared dressed in jogging gear, but striding rather than jogging. She had short dark hair and was about Daniel’s mum’s age, which meant she was of no interest and could be ignored. Except the footpath wasn’t wide enough for them to pass without some acknowledgement. Daniel prepared to plunge into the long grass to avoid conversation, but the woman’s friendly smile faded as she approached and she stopped in front of him, puzzled. “I don’t know you,” she said, which struck Daniel as an odd thing to say. In his experience, knowing random people who passed you in the street was the exception not the rule.