The Last Lost Girl

by Maria Hoey

  “What’s the use in looking nice when I’m not allowed go to the marquee?” says Lilly. “And when no-one can see me and I have to be home by half ten.”

  “People will see you at the carnival, Lilly,” says Jacqueline’s mother.

  “Oh please, Mrs Brennan!” says Goretti Quinn. “Please, can Lilly come to the marquee?”

  “Not this time, Goretti. Her daddy says no.”

  “But you said you’d talk him into letting me go! You said you would, but you didn’t!” Lilly is almost crying.

  “I tried, love.”

  “Well, you didn’t try hard enough!”

  “At least you’re allowed to go to the carnival.’

  “Only if I take that little sneak with me!” Lilly points up the stairs to where Jacqueline is standing on the landing, looking down. “Look at her up there, earwigging as usual. How am I supposed to enjoy myself with her spying on me and listening to every word I say?”

  “Now, Lilly, I know you’re upset but I won’t have you talking about your little sister like that. Come down here, Jacqueline – the girls are waiting for you. And don’t you be any trouble to Lilly now, do you hear me?”

  By the time Jacqueline reaches the hall, Lilly and Goretti are already at the gate. She has to run to catch up with them halfway down Blackberry Lane. The whole way to the carnival Lilly sulks and doesn’t speak to Jacqueline or Goretti, and Jacqueline wonders why she ever thought going to the carnival would be fun.

  But it is fun, even though she has to walk behind Lilly and Goretti so she won’t make a show of them and even though Lilly calls her “creep” and “little freak” and “spoilsport” so often Jacqueline loses count. The evening air is cool and there are crowds of people at the carnival, queuing for the rides or standing around at the stalls where there are fluffy toys, dolls and goldfish to be won. There are other stalls too, selling candyfloss and sticks of rock and toffee apples.

  Lilly and Goretti run straight to the bumpers and leave Jacqueline to stand and watch. When the ride is finished, they stay in the car and pay the man collecting the money for another turn. By the time they come back, Lilly is laughing and in good humour again.

  “Can we go on the swing boats now, Lilly?” asks Jacqueline.

  “You can go on your own – I’m not getting in with you,” says Lilly.

  “You can’t go in the swing boats on your own,” says Jacqueline. The swing boats are like a seesaw – you need two people for them to work.

  “Then go on the roundabout or something, can’t you?”

  “I’ll tell Daddy on you, Lilly. I know he gave you money for me too.”

  Lilly calls her a sneak again, but she takes her on the swing boats and then on the bumper cars. The man who takes the money on the bumpers says, “Here comes Miss Ireland again!” and Lilly laughs and looks happy. Jacqueline does not like the bumpers very much – they swing first one way and then another and boys keep crashing their cars into Lilly’s car. Jacqueline bangs her elbow against the side of the car and it hurts but, when she asks Lilly to make the boys stop, Lilly only laughs and shouts back that she can’t make them stop. By the time the ride is over, Jacqueline feels sick.

  Lilly gives her money to go and buy herself sweets and Jacqueline buys a packet of Spangles and a toffee apple. She looks around for Lilly and Goretti and sees them standing at the shooting range. A boy has his arm around Lilly’s waist. He is showing her how to shoot. Nobody, Jacqueline thinks, is showing Goretti Quinn how to shoot. Jacqueline sucks her Spangles and watches Lilly and Goretti for a while, then she gets tired of waiting and queues up by herself to go for a ride on the roundabout. Her horse has big black staring painted eyes and a blue mane. While it goes round and round, Jacqueline watches Lilly and Goretti. She sees them climbing into the swing boats. The man in charge of the boats has screwed-up eyes and a hump on his back. The boys in the next boat keep reaching out and trying to grab Lilly and Goretti Quinn’s boat and the man with the hump shouts at them to stop.

  When the roundabout stops, Jacqueline gets off and wanders around. The crowd has got bigger and, even though it is getting late, the sky is still bright. People keep bumping into Jacqueline and her elbow hurts.

  From the marquee tent, she can hear the sound of music. A loud voice says over and over again: “Testing, testing, one two, three.”

  Jacqueline is very thirsty but all her money has gone. All of a sudden, she feels tired and dizzy and a little bit sick. She finds a place to sit and she tears the plastic wrapper from her toffee apple. It looks very nice on the outside, shiny and sticky brown, but when she bites into it, the apple tastes soft and spongy.

  Jacqueline wants to go home.

  She goes and stands beside the swing boats until the old man with the hump brings Lilly’s boat to a stop with his big wooden stick.

  “Lilly, can we go home now?”

  “Not yet. I’m not going home yet.”

  Goretti Quinn squeals. “Oh look, there’s Pauline Fitzsimons and the others!” Then she stops and looks at Lilly. “I said I might go in with them, only because …”

  “Yeah, right, you’d better go, Goretti.” Lilly bends down and fiddles with the strap of her sandal.

  Jacqueline watches Goretti Quinn walking away. A crowd of girls surrounds her: Pauline Fitzsimons, Margaret O’Sullivan, Ann-Marie Nugent, Eileen Delaney and Irene Casey. They are wearing bright tops and wide trousers and their frizzy perms look huge under the carnival lights. Jacqueline watches them picking their way carefully across the field in their platform sandals, then they disappear through the flap in the big white dance marquee. When she looks down at Lilly, she is watching them too, the strap of her shoe forgotten.

  Before they leave the carnival grounds, the band in the marquee begins to play, and as they start up the road they can still hear the words of the song they are singing: “Oh, What a Night.”

  All the way home, Lilly does not speak, but Jacqueline is too tired to care. People are coming towards them, passing them by, on their way to the marquee. There are gangs of boys and gangs of girls and couples – boys and girls holding hands or with their arms linked about each other’s waists. The girls mostly have permed hair and some of the boys do too, fluffy and huge in the evening light, like giant dandelions. The boys smell of aftershave, some of it sharp and some of it sweet. It seems to Jacqueline that she and Lilly are the only people going in the other direction.

  Lilly whispers something under her breath, and Jacqueline can just about make it out: “It’s not fair, it’s just not fair.”

  Chapter 14

  Afterwards

  The streets were slick from a recent summer downpour as Jacqueline came out of the small station. A flower bed laid out to spell the name of the town in damp and ragged red and yellow blossoms welcomed her to Coldhope-On-Sea. A signpost led her through the heart of the town, along narrow streets of candy-coloured shopfronts with a gull on every chimney and bunting strung from roof to roof like someone’s faded washing strung out to dry. On the wide and pretty promenade, Jacqueline would have liked to sit down, but the benches were wet from the rain. Another downpour sent her running for cover to the nearest café, and she waited out the shower with a leaky stainless-steel pot of tea. Before leaving, she asked directions to Shore Road and the way led her on a winding ascent above the town, with a clear view of the sea and the long pale stretch of sandy beach below. The sun had come out again. Jacqueline stopped to catch her breath and watched a group of boys who were crossing the sand carrying something between them: it looked like an armchair.

  Even without the sign on the gates, Jacqueline would have recognised Sea Holly Villa from the sketch on the matchbook. In reality, the house was cream-coloured with pale-blue shutters. A narrow veranda ran the length of its front and, to Jacqueline, everything looked a little shabby and in need of painting. A short drive gave way to a flagstone path that zig-zagged between flower beds smelling of lavender. Jacqueline walked up three steps to the veranda. The d
oor was wide open and she considered the large black lion’s-head knocker and the brass bell. She decided on the bell and, while she waited, a gust of wind sent petals from potted geraniums swirling like red confetti about her feet. When nobody came, she put down her holdall, grabbed the knocker with both hands and rapped smartly twice. After a second attempt at the bell, she picked up her holdall again and stepped through the open doorway.

  “Hello?” Her voice echoed round the high-ceilinged hall but nobody came.

  The fan-shaped stained-glass window above the open door threw a jewelled pattern on the dark tiles of the floor. Jacqueline called out again then crossed to an open doorway on her right. She took a step inside the doorway and peered about her. The room was long, dim, narrow and overcrowded with dark and cumbersome furniture. Most of it, Jacqueline noticed, had claws. The walls were papered in an ugly pattern of ruby and yellow flowers interspersed with exotically coloured butterflies and birds. Almost every surface held a clutter of ornaments and knick-knacks. From under a glass dome, the eye of some long-dead and stuffed creature glittered. The only redeeming feature in the room was the bookshelf that lined the length and width of one entire wall.

  Catching the sound of a low humming above her head, Jacqueline went back into the hall and started slowly up the stairs, her footsteps soundless on the thick, faded carpet. The darkly gleaming handrail slid beneath her palm as she went and she caught the scent of old-fashioned lavender furniture polish. The humming led her to the second landing where a tall, thin woman was hoovering frenetically.

  “Excuse me?” said Jacqueline.

  The woman turned and looked at Jacqueline from blurry blue eyes set in a latticework of wrinkles. She was dressed in figure-sculpting moss-green leggings and a matching zipped-up top. Her hair, unnaturally red, was so sparse that patches of pink scalp gleamed through. After looking Jacqueline up and down for a moment, she stuck out a sinewy foot in a ballerina pump to switch the machine off.

  “Hi,” said Jacqueline. “I’m sorry for just walking in and I did try knocking. And ringing actually. I was hoping you had a room?”

  “A room?” The woman looked from Jacqueline to her bag and back again.

  “A room,” said Jacqueline, “for tonight. For a couple of nights maybe – if you have any vacancies, I mean?”

  The woman bent down and pulled the plug from the socket.

  Watching her, a sudden fear seized Jacqueline. “I haven’t come to the wrong place, have I? This is Sea Holly Villa? You take guests, don’t you?”

  “Did I say I didn’t? People stay here, if they want to, if I like the look of them.” The woman picked up the hoover and came down the stairs toward Jacqueline. “After you,” she said and Jacqueline hurried ahead of her down the stairs. She waited in the hall while the woman stowed the hoover in a cupboard, then picked up a crumpled paper bag from a small table. “Liquorice Whip?”

  “No, thank you,” said Jacqueline.

  The woman snapped off a piece of liquorice with her teeth and chewed, her eyes on Jacqueline. “So you want a room?”

  Jacqueline wasn’t sure if she did or not now. The sunshine through the open doorway looked inviting and she had to fight an urge to bolt, to run all the way back down the hill and catch the next train back to the airport.

  “Tell you what,” said the woman. “Why don’t you think about it over a drink? I know I need one.” Without waiting for an answer, she pattered away and disappeared round a corner of the hall.

  Jacqueline looked at the open door again, then she followed slowly in the woman’s wake.

  The hall ended in a short flight of stone steps leading down to an enormous kitchen. Jacqueline looked about her at the blend of old and new, the flagstone floor, the ancient range side by side with modern fitted units and a hob.

  The woman, her head in an ancient-looking fridge, called out, “Grab two of those long glasses from the dresser, would you?”

  Jacqueline dropped her bag on the floor, crossed to the enormous dresser and surveyed the rows of exquisitely gleaming crystal. Carefully, she took down two glasses and carried them to the long table. She set them gently down on the aged wood which had been scrubbed to the whiteness of bone.

  “I’ll give those a rinse.” The woman came up behind her and set a frosted glass bottle, which contained some pale pinkish liquid, on the table.

  Was it rosé or something else, Jacqueline wondered. She didn’t want wine, she wanted tea.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” said the woman. “And by the way, I’m Dot Candy.”

  She held out a hand and Jacqueline took it; it was long and bony and chilled from the bottle.

  “Jacqueline Brennan.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Jacqueline Brennan!” Dot Candy carelessly whipped up the glasses and carried them to the sink. “So what brings you to this part of England? Let me guess – you came here on holiday as a child. More than half the people who’ve stayed here have come looking to recapture some childhood summer idyll.”

  “Do they succeed?” asked Jacqueline.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Dot Candy.

  “Well, in any case, I’ve never been here before.” Jacqueline pulled out a chair and sat down. “It’s an interesting house,” she said.

  “I know,” said Dot Candy. She picked up a cloth and began drying the glasses. “It dates from the 1850s. Martin inherited it from his uncle.”

  She came back to the table, glasses in one hand and a tray of ice cubes in the other. Jacqueline watched as her long skinny fingers pushed the ice cubes from the soft rubber tray. Dot dropped three cubes into each glass, opened the bottle and poured the pale pink liquid.

  She handed a glass to Jacqueline, picked up her own, threw back her head and drained it in one go. While she refilled it, Jacqueline sipped at her own drink: it was cool and tart with an agreeable but unfamiliar flavour.

  “Of course, Martin always knew it was coming to him – Peter made no bones about that. He had no other family except Martin, so there was nobody else to leave it to. Still, nobody expected him to go so soon, so all of this came to us a whole lot sooner than we expected.”

  Has she forgotten that I don’t know who these people are, Jacqueline wondered.

  “Only, as it turned out,” said Dot, “there wasn’t so much time to enjoy it as we thought – not for Martin at any rate.”

  In the silence that followed, Jacqueline could hear the sound of Dot Candy swallowing. She wondered if she should ask about Martin. But I don’t know Martin, she thought, and I don’t care about Martin. She looked up to find Dot Candy watching her over the rim of her glass.

  “Like it, do you, the drink?”

  “Yes, thank you, it’s very nice, very unusual. What is it exactly?”

  “It’s sumac lemonade.”

  “Come again?”

  Dot Candy smiled. “Bring your drink and I’ll show you.” She got up and walked through the open doorway.

  Jacqueline picked up her glass and followed her outside onto a wide terrace.

  Dot walked down a short flight of steps to a wide lawn. “Behold the staghorn sumac tree!” she called. She was standing before what looked to Jacqueline like a large shrub with hairy branches.

  Jacqueline walked down steps which were worn dark and smooth by time, and crossed the grass to stand next to Dot.

  “It doesn’t look like much now,” said Dot, “but you should see it in the autumn. The leaves turn a fiery red and it’s just beautiful.”

  “And that’s what you use to make the lemonade?”

  “Yes, the very same way the native American Indians used to do it. The tricky bit is making sure the berries are ready. Then all you have to do is boil them, strain them, add the sugar and Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Isn’t it a lot of trouble?” said Jacqueline.

  “You could say the same thing about roasting a chicken,” said Dot Candy.

  Jacqueline felt unable to argue the point.

  “Of course, the
re’s a poison sumac too,” said Dot Candy, “but there’s no way you could mix them up – the berries are quite different – hairless, waxy, just like white grapes really. You wouldn’t want to make lemonade from those babies.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Jacqueline faintly. “Well, I suppose I’d better be …”

  But Dot had moved away. “This one here is what the house gets its name from,” she said over her shoulder.

  Jacqueline looked where she was pointing, at a shrub with brilliant silver-green foliage and bluish-purple flowers.

  “It’s a sea holly tree,” said Dot.

  It reminded Jacqueline of thistles.

  Her hand brushed against something soft and furry to the touch. “What’s this one?” she said.

  “That’s lamb’s ear – you can feel why.”

  “It’s pretty,” said Jacqueline.

  “It’s practical,” said Dot Candy. “The salt sticks to the fuzz so the plant can survive.” She waved an all-enveloping hand. “A seaside garden is a challenge: you have to choose plants with sea legs, plants that can cope with wind and drought and salt. That cosmos over there – looks like a puff of wind would knock it over, doesn’t it? But it’s tough: the poorer the soil, the more it likes it. And that lavender and the Artemisia, they reflect light away from themselves, protect themselves naturally from sizzling up in the sunshine.”

  Jacqueline surveyed the beauties of the garden with a vague depression. “Wasn’t anything chosen just for its aesthetic qualities?” she asked.

  “If I’d had my way it would have been.” Dot Candy came to stand beside her. “I had big plans for this garden once. If I’d had my way this would have been the most beautiful wildflower garden you’ve ever seen. I wanted clover and campion, and hemlock to attract butterflies and insects and bees and – oh well, never mind.” With a sudden deft movement, she whipped the glass from Jacqueline’s hand. “I’ll take that if you’re finished.”

  Startled, Jacqueline watched her walk away.

  “You know,” Dot Candy called over her shoulder, “you’d probably be a whole lot more comfortable somewhere else. I can give you the name of some good guesthouses in the town if that’s what you’re looking for.”