‘But it might be nothing at all, and now everyone will know. Her teachers, the billeting officers—’
‘Do you want her found or not?’ he demanded.
‘Of course I do!’ She turned to Butch again. ‘Was there anywhere else she liked to go, Butch? Somewhere you haven’t thought about yet?’
‘Well, sometimes she said she was going to do what your girl does. She had a terrible screechy voice, but she kept saying the men at Aunt Betsy’s liked her carol singing at Christmas. P’raps she’s gone back to London to be a singer.’
Skye threw up her hands. ‘Oh, that’s the last thing I want to hear, that she’s tried to get back to London—’
‘Hold on a minute,’ Nick said. ‘She’ll know the way to Betsy’s, and I bet that’s where she is. She’ll be there preening herself, singing to a captive audience. And knowing what a devious little liar she is, she’ll have told Betsy it was all right with us to stay as long as she likes.’
‘I don’t care how many lies she’s told, as long as she’s safe,’ Skye declared feverishly. ‘Let’s go there right away.’
‘You two go with Nick,’ David said, ‘and leave your bicycles here. I’ll get someone to bring them back tomorrow.’
‘Bless you, David.’ Skye got into Nick’s car with shaking legs, and Butch breathing down her neck in the seat behind her.
For one crazy moment she had the strangest feeling of déjà vu, from when her own little girls and the precocious Sebby and Justin Tremayne had been breathing down her neck in a car on the way home from a fitting for wedding outfits for Vera’s wedding to Adam Pengelly, all those years ago…
She brushed the feeling aside at once. This was a far more desperate occasion, and she urged Nick to drive at more than his usual careful speed towards Killigrew House.
The minute Betsy came to the door, astonishment on her face at seeing the deputation, Skye’s intuition told her they were out of luck.
‘Well, this is a surprise, my lambs,’ Betsy began. ‘But if you’re wanting that pretty little minx of yours, you’ve missed her by a long while.’
‘She’s been here then? Daphne, I mean? How long ago? When did she leave?’ Skye said in a rush, sick with disappointment.
‘Oh ah, she were here all right, along with a few of her school friends – all making eyes at my boys, the little madams,’ she chuckled. ‘Most of t’others went a long while back, but your girl and a little friend stayed for tea, saying you knew all about it. You did know, didn’t ’ee, Skye? I didn’t do anything out of turn in letting her stay, did I?’ she added, finally aware of the tension in the other three.
‘I didn’t know, but it wasn’t your fault, Betsy. I know how plausible she can be. She hasn’t come home from school, and we’ve been out looking for her for hours—’
‘Oh well, she’ll be back home by now, sure to be,’ Betsy said complacently. ‘You’ll have missed her, that’s all.’
‘Can we telephone New World?’ Nick said, taking over. ‘We need to be sure before we do anything else.’
And if she wasn’t there, the next thing they would have to do was to inform the police, Skye thought, feeling sick.
* * *
‘Are you sure this is the place?’ the smaller of the two girls said uneasily. She and her clever friend seemed to have toiled over the moors for hours and were now crouched in a hollow near the very peak, gazing towards the hovel with the curl of smoke rising into the still air.
Daphne snorted. ‘’Course I’m sure. There’s a witch living there, and she’ll cast a spell for yer, quick as lightning.’
‘What sort of a spell do you want then?’
Daphne glared at her. Tilly was soft and a bit stupid, but she usually did what Daphne said. They all did. Daphne was the leader of the gang, though the others had gone home long ago, and only Tilly Green had agreed to come with her to try to find the old witchwoman the locals spoke about.
Tilly’s mother thought she was spending the evening at her Granny’s, and her Granny would just assume that Tilly had gone home instead, she had told Daphne triumphantly.
Daphne wasn’t scared of witches, but Tilly’s jitters were starting to affect her, and she began to wonder if this had been such a good idea. But Tilly was still waiting for an answer, and she said the first thing that came into her head.
‘I’d ask her for a spell to send me back to London.’
‘Don’t you like it here then?’
Daphne looked at her in exasperation, needing to think about why she’d said it. ‘Mrs Pen’s all right, but I’d rather be back ’ome. I miss the pie and mash shops and the jellied eels me Ma used ter buy on a Saturday night—’
‘Ugh!’ Tilly squealed. ‘It sounds horrible.’
Daphne grinned as Tilly’s pasty face paled still more… or was that because they were surrounded by a bit of a mist, now she came to think about it? She sat up cautiously and felt a shock as she saw that they seemed to be sitting in a sea of fog now, where minutes before it had been a bare expanse of moors.
‘Jesus Christ!’ she said out loud.
‘Daphne Hollis, you know you shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,’ Tilly said at once.
‘I didn’t say the Lord’s name. I said Jesus Christ,’ Daphne snapped. ‘And p’raps he’ll tell us how the bleedin’ ’ell we’re going ter find our way back.’
Tilly gave a terrified cry when she saw what Daphne had seen. Without warning she wet her knickers, and the shame and discomfort of it set her wailing even louder.
‘Shut up and let me fink,’ Daphne snapped.
‘We’re going to die,’ Tilly wailed. ‘Nobody knows where we are, and I want my Mum—’
‘I want mine too, but fat chance I’ve got of seein’ ’er,’ Daphne muttered, with a small catch in her throat. ‘I reckon there’s only one fing to do. We’d better see if the witch can help us.’
Tilly screamed, and Daphne clamped a hand over her mouth, so that only her scared, tear-filled eyes showed above it.
‘It’s either that or die of starvation and cold,’ Daphne said dramatically. ‘I dare say there are wild dogs roaming about up here as well, ready to come and tear us apart and eat our flesh – and when they’ve done wiv us there’ll be nothing left but bones,’ she added, warming to her tale. ‘I bet they’re surrounding us right now—’
They suddenly heard a thin, cackling voice close by, causing them to cling together in terror.
‘You tell a fine tale, my pretty maid, one that even old Helza couldn’t improve on.’
For a moment or two they couldn’t see her properly for one of the pockets of mist that frequently slid across the moors at the end of one hot summer’s day and heralded a similar one tomorrow. And then, as ever, it moved away just as miraculously, and they could see the old crone leaning on her stick not two yards away, wizened and hunched, and puffing away on an evil-looking clay pipe.
‘We know who you are,’ Daphne said as bravely as she could, considering that her voice was so croaked.
‘We don’t need no introductions then,’ Helza cackled. ‘I know who you be too. You’m the girl staying with the clay and pottery folk, and this one’s a local, I dare say.’
‘She must be a real witch,’ Tilly whispered, trembling.
Daphne recovered herself quickly. ‘Don’t be daft. She can tell from the way we talk where we’re from. Are you going to cast us a spell then?’ she demanded of Helza.
‘Just ask her to get us home,’ Tilly said in a fright, the chill of her own urine and cold wet knickers making her shiver still more.
‘The devil helps they that help themselves,’ the old crone wheezed. ‘You don’t need no spells now the mist’s lifted. Get on with you and leave old Helza in peace.’
She turned and hobbled away, seeming to melt towards her hovel. Tilly scrambled to her feet.
‘Let’s go before she comes back. As long as we keep going downwards we’re bound to get off the moors, aren’t we?’ she said, her voice e
nding on a squeak.
Seeing her fear, Daphne was filled with guilt now that the adventure seemed to be over. Tilly might be a stupid little cuss at times, but she had been her friend from the day Daphne arrived. She put her arm around the smaller child.
‘I’ll look after yer, Tilly, even if it gets dark.’
She bit her lip. It wasn’t dark yet, but the sun had gone down and after the heat of the day the air was chilled. And those damn wispy bits of mist still kept coming and going.
With one accord they turned and ran, heads down, their chests tight and heaving, then screaming in unison when the ancient standing stone with the hole through its middle that they called the Larnie Stone suddenly seemed to loom up in front of them. They had almost barged straight into it.
‘Bleedin’ stupid place this is,’ Daphne snarled between her gasping breaths. ‘Who’d wanter stick a bleedin’ great rock on top of the moors where people could fall over it?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that awful word,’ Tilly almost sobbed. ‘If my Mum heard you, she’d stop me playing with you, Daphne.’
She was clinging on to Daphne with vice-like fingers now, pulling at her cardigan sleeve as she tried to keep up with Daphne’s scrabbling feet. She knew she couldn’t do it. Her legs were too short, and her chest was hurting too much, and she couldn’t see where she was going because her eyes were smarting, and the insides of her legs were being rubbed raw by her navy knickers now…
With a sudden almighty shriek of pain, she lost her footing in a rut in the ground, flying past Daphne, but somehow still managing to hold on to her cardigan, so that the two of them went hurtling forward and crashed to the ground together, completely winded.
It took a few minutes for Daphne to untangle herself from Tilly’s arms and legs that seemed to be stuck out at all angles. Worse than a bleedin’ octopus, she thought sourly, having no real idea what an octopus looked like.
She peered down into Tilly’s white face and then sat back, feeling a momentary grudging admiration at the way the girl could act like she was dead just to give her a scare.
‘Come on, you ain’t hurt that bad,’ she said roughly, and aware of an almighty headache the size of St Paul’s, ‘I ain’t carrying yer, that’s for sure.’
Then she saw the slow trickle of blood on the girl’s forehead, and her heart skipped a couple of beats. She spoke fearfully, her throat threatening to close up completely.
‘Tilly, stop pretendin’, fer Gawd’s sake. Come on, open yer eyes, there’s a love. We’ve got ter get off these moors before it gets dark.’
Tilly still didn’t move, and Daphne smothered a sob. But she could see now that she wasn’t dead. There was a pulse throbbing away in her throat, though she wouldn’t open her eyes.
Daphne panicked, not knowing what to do. Instinct told her she shouldn’t try to move the girl. She could screech for the old witchwoman to come and help them, but she didn’t know how far they had run, and she doubted that the old crone would hear her anyway.
The pottery was somewhere around here, she thought next, but even if she could get to it, it would be shut now that it was getting dusk. However, there were cottages at the top of the moors above the old clayworks, she remembered, and perhaps she could reach one of them and get help.
She started to scramble to her feet, and a searing pain like red-hot needles shot through her ankle. She had been so busy worrying about Tilly and her next move, she had hardly thought about herself. Her agonised scream was strangled in her throat as she looked down at the ankle that was rapidly swelling and turning several shades of blue and purple, and she found herself blubbing hysterically.
In a wild panic, she began to shout as loudly as she could, but her voice was quickly carried away until her throat ached and dried up with trying, and still nobody came. There was only the soughing of the evening breeze through the bracken to break the silence.
‘There’s nothing for it, Tilly,’ she said hoarsely to her unconscious friend. ‘We’ve just got to sit it out and hope somebody will miss us and come looking for us.’
Her words ended on a sob, because how could anybody even guess where they were? They were going to be in a God-awful heap of trouble when they were found, too. And the night ahead of them would be very long and cold.
But she knew this was all her fault, and she tried not to notice the stinging pain in her ankle as she covered Tilly with her own body as gently as she could to try to keep her warm until somebody came. Somebody would, she thought, with a faint echo of her usual cockiness. Somebody must.
* * *
‘They’ve got to be somewhere,’ Skye said frantically to the police sergeant who had come to the house and was now in charge of the investigation. ‘Children can’t just vanish.’
His constable was taking such an interminable time in writing down all the details that she could have hit him. Didn’t they sense the urgency of the situation?
‘Mrs Pengelly, I assure you they’ll be found,’ the sergeant said complacently. ‘We’ve contacted the school to find out the other child’s surname, and contacted her parents. They’ll be here any time.’
Nick spoke angrily. ‘You’ve asked them to come here? What good will that do, man?’
‘People like to be together in a crisis that affects them all,’ he said pompously.
Skye groaned. The last thing she wanted was the arrival of two hysterical parents who would be blaming Daphne for taking their little girl away – and that blame would obviously be transferred to the Pengellys. But she smothered the thought, knowing it was uncharitable, and that Tilly’s parents would be as frantic with worry as they were.
They arrived a little while later in a police vehicle, a red-eyed mother and a rough-hewn father, unused to the company that lived in a spacious house near the sea and who were posher folk than themselves. As if any of that mattered, Skye thought, and tried to smile reassuringly.
‘Please sit down, both of you,’ she said swiftly, as they stood awkwardly together. ‘Would you like some tea?’
God, how inane that sounded, and of course they didn’t want any tea, or any kind of comfort from herself and Nick. They just wanted their child home, safe and sound.
The sergeant cleared his throat and addressed Nick.
‘We’ll start a search party, Mr Pengelly, and some of the soldiers have offered to help, so we’re accepting their offer. My men are combing the shore first, to see if they’ve fallen down the cliff’ – he ignored the cry from the suffering Mrs Green – ‘and then we’ll spread out and cover a wider area on the moors.’
‘They wouldn’t have gone up there,’ Skye said. ‘Daphne knows the dangers of the old mine shafts and how the mist can come down quickly and people can lose their footing—’
Dear God, why was she putting such ideas in these simple folks’ minds? she thought, as Mrs Green’s cries became louder. Her husband seemed to have no idea what to do about it other than to pat her back as if she was a family pet.
‘You’ll realise it may be a difficult task, since we’ll have to keep our searchlights to a minimum,’ the sergeant went on carefully. ‘The regulations still apply—’
‘You think some stray German bomber is going to pick tonight to swoop down on a couple of frightened children, do you?’ Skye said angrily. ‘Where’s your humanity, man?’
‘We all have to abide by the rules, madam,’ he said stiffly. ‘We won’t rest until we find these children, though things would naturally be easier in daylight.’
She hated him. She was tempted to say they would have a repeat performance if it suited him better, and let the girls go missing in the morning instead of at night, which would make his job far easier. But she knew how ludicrous that would sound, and it wouldn’t help. Nick’s steadying hand on her arm told her so.
The sound of the doorbell ringing made them all jump, and the constable went to answer it without giving anyone else a chance. He came back into the room a few minutes later.
‘They’ve found two bicycles at the foot of the moors, Sergeant. There’s no sign of the girls, but it looks as if they dumped them there, and went walking.’
Butch had been sitting quietly, afraid to speak up after being questioned earlier, and still feeling guilty for not waiting for Daphne. But he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
‘Daphne sometimes talked about that witchwoman who lives on top of the moors,’ he said reluctantly. ‘She liked to scare the younger ones with spooky stories.’
‘The young devil!’ Tilly Green’s father suddenly spoke up, aggressive and guttural, his fists clenching. ‘She needs sending back where she belongs and locking up, and if I get my ’ands on ’er—’
‘Now then, Mr Green, there’ll be none of that talk,’ the sergeant said sharply. ‘The important thing is to find these children as quickly as possible, and now that this young scallywag has given us a lead, we’ve got somewhere to start.’
‘I don’t know if that’s where they’ve gone,’ Butch said, near to crying. ‘I only said she talked about it sometimes.’
‘It’s all right, Butch,’ Skye soothed him. ‘It’s good that you remembered it, isn’t it, Sergeant?’
He gave a curt nod, unable to resist complying with that unflinching stare from the woman’s blue eyes. He wasn’t a ladies’ man, but he could guess that people would do anything to please her, even this young evacuee lad.
‘Would you like to stay while we wait for news?’ Skye asked the Green parents, praying they would say no, and not wanting to see their accusing faces any longer than she had to. She didn’t waste her energy on feeling shame at the thought either. They had each other, and all her anxiety was for the children.
‘We’ll get off and do our own searching, thank ’ee, missis,’ Mrs Green sniffed. ‘If we don’t find ’er, I dare say we’ll be told when they know what’s ’appened to our Tilly.’
‘But you have no idea where to look.’
They didn’t answer, and Skye gave up protesting as they left, together and yet so alone in their separate miseries. She looked at Nick.
A Brighter Tomorrow Page 17
