The Secret Letter

I took hers too. ‘These are all wonderful,’ I said.

And suddenly I was surrounded by children, all giving me their corn dollies – the little creations they’d all worked so hard on.

‘Miss, they’ll bring you good luck,’ they told me. ‘They’re lucky.’

I took each one, gathering them into my lap and trying not to show the children how overwhelmed I was by their kindness.

Then the parents started handing me their dollies too. Some of them were like tiny works of art – the dried corn twisted into heart and star shapes, or made to look like little ladies with fronds of corn forming their skirts.

‘Good luck,’ they each said as they handed them over.

By the time they’d finished I reckoned I had a hundred or more of the dollies heaped in my lap, and tears streaming down my face.

‘Thank you,’ I said over and over. ‘Thank you.’

I wasn’t sure what to do next. I couldn’t stand up because my knees were covered in corn and slightly alarmingly I couldn’t seem to stop crying either.

Luckily, like a guardian angel, Paula appeared behind the group of children and parents.

‘Let’s take all these to your office, shall we, Ms Armstrong?’ she said.

Sophie handed her a linen bag and together we carefully put all the corn dollies inside.

‘Come on then,’ Paula said, like I was one of her reception children. ‘Come on, Lizzie.’

I blew a – slightly snotty – kiss to the children as I followed her into school feeling like something important had just happened. Perhaps I wasn’t planning to stay at Elm Heath forever, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had to do my best to reverse the trend of children going to Blyton and do everything I could to make sure the school stayed open.

Chapter 8 (#ulink_6e4685d3-2b7e-564b-9386-5df44bf61a94)

Lizzie (#ulink_6e4685d3-2b7e-564b-9386-5df44bf61a94)

‘I can’t believe they did this,’ I said later. I was sitting at Paula’s kitchen table with an enormous glass of wine and the corn dollies all spread out in front of me. ‘I can’t believe they gave them all to me.’

‘It really was something,’ she said. She picked one of them up and showed me. ‘Look, this one is like a peacock’s tail.’

I admired it.

‘They’re all wonderful. I’ll ask Jeff if there is some way we can display them in my office.’

Jeff was the school caretaker and a very creative handyman to boot.

‘He’ll come up with something, I’m sure,’ Paula agreed.

I picked up Jayden’s corn dolly – the little circular twist of corn tied with a ribbon – and smiled. ‘So they symbolise luck?’

Chris was rummaging in a kitchen drawer, looking for a takeaway menu.

‘Luck,’ he said without glancing up. ‘And fertility.’

I swallowed a gulp of wine as I laughed.

‘Well I’ll just take the luck, thanks.’

‘I can’t find the blasted menu,’ Chris said.

‘I don’t suppose Deliveroo delivers here?’ I said hopefully. I’d been looking forward to a curry since Paula suggested it earlier on, after my corn dolly experience.

‘Noooo,’ said Chris doubtfully.

I picked up my phone and found the app, then I showed them how it worked.

‘So you choose what kind of food you want, then pick a restaurant, and then you scroll through and add what you want to your basket …’

I tailed off, aware both Chris and Paula were staring at me.

‘I’ll just call Nish on his mobile, instead of calling the restaurant,’ Chris said. ‘He won’t mind. What do you fancy, Lizzie?’

‘Chicken biryani?’

‘Done. Usual for you, Paula?’

She nodded and Chris pulled out his phone and went into the hall to make the call. I heard him laughing with the person on the other line.

‘Living in a village is very different from living in London,’ I said to Paula. ‘It’s strangely both harder and easier.’

She grinned at me. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said.

‘I am starting to, I think.’

‘You’ve not got much choice, now.’

I looked at the piles of corn dollies on the table. ‘Do these mean that I’m one of you now?’

‘Definitely. You might never leave.’

The idea didn’t fill me with horror, much to my surprise.

Chris had come back into the kitchen and was topping up our glasses.

‘You’ll like Nate’s husband,’ he said.

‘Marc?’ I remembered seeing him at my welcome barbecue.

‘He’s the son of a friend of Sophie’s, or a distant relative, or something like that,’ Paula said, leaning forward in a conspiratorial way. ‘He came to work on some project nearby …’

‘He’s a surveyor,’ Chris put in. ‘Or is he an architect? Something along those lines.’

Paula tutted at his interruption. ‘He stayed with Sophie for a few weeks, met Nate and boom! That was it.’