Return to the Secret Garden

by Holly Webb

  For my mother

  Content

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  An Interview with Holly Webb

  Copyright

  The children marched down the street in a crocodile, and only one of them looked back. The others didn’t turn, because they didn’t need to. There was nothing to look back for. Everything they owned was with them – a few clothes, here and there a battered, shapeless stuffed toy. Each of them carried a paper parcel, and a gas mask, and that was all they had.

  Emmie trailed, peering over her shoulder, so that Arthur behind her gave her a shove to tell her to keep up. She kicked him, swiftly, and walked backwards instead, still trying to see.

  But Lucy wasn’t there. It was stupid to expect that she would be, anyway, Emmie thought. Lucy hardly ever came out on to the street – she was shy, and she hated loud noises. Emmie still stared, though, hoping to see the small black cat peering after her round the corner of the tall house. Lucy had probably fled out into the backyard, Emmie decided miserably, and she kicked Arthur again, because he was smirking at her, and because she felt like it.

  “Emmeline Hatton!”

  Emmie whipped round with a sigh. Of course Miss Dearlove hadn’t seen Arthur giving her a push. She never did see. “Me, Miss?” she asked innocently, trying to look as though she didn’t know what was the matter.

  The matron glared at her. “No, the other Emmeline Hatton. Of course you! You bad-tempered little girl, how dare you kick Arthur like that?”

  “He pushed me…” Emmie started to say, but Miss Dearlove didn’t bother to listen; she grabbed Emmie by the arm and hauled her up to the front of the line. She was a tiny little lady, not actually much bigger than Emmie, but Emmie didn’t dare pull away. She had known Miss Dearlove for ever. The matron was like a busy little clockwork train, wound up into a clicking fuss of pure crossness. It was best not to get in her way – but somehow Emmie always did.

  “You can walk here with Miss Rose and the babies, since you can’t be trusted to behave like a ten-year-old. Why is it always you? And after your ridiculous behaviour this morning as well. As if we haven’t got enough to worry about.” She glanced down at her watch. “Miss Rose, we need to hurry; the station’s bound to be busy, and there isn’t that much time to spare.” She scuttled down to the end of the line again, with one last hissed “Behave!” to Emmie.

  Miss Rose was usually less bad-tempered than the matron, but even she eyed Emmie and sighed. “Today, of all days, Emmie? I would have thought you’d have more sense.”

  “He shoved me,” Emmie muttered. She knew it wasn’t quite true, but she wasn’t letting them have the last word. “It isn’t fair. Why do I always get into trouble?” She walked down the street next to Miss Rose, seething and muttering to herself. If she huffed and growled, she wouldn’t cry, and she wasn’t going to give Arthur Banks the satisfaction of that, however much Miss Rose frowned.

  They had been told the day before that they were going. Miss Dearlove had stood up at the end of breakfast, and explained that since war was expected to be declared within a few days, the Craven Home for Orphaned Children would be evacuated “somewhere safe”.

  No one knew what evacuation meant, except that it was vaguely connected with the rows of brown boxes on the shelves in the schoolroom, which had the gas masks in. Once a week for the last few months they had pulled them on, and sat staring at each other, snout-nosed and goggle-eyed. After the first few tries, Arthur had worked out how to make a rude noise, a sort of farting snort around the rubber face piece. He did it every time now, and they all laughed – even Miss Dearlove didn’t sound that cross when she told him off.

  But Emmie had dreamed of those huge round eyes almost every night since. The glass lenses of the masks leaned over her, stooping down close, and staring. The gas masks were supposed to help them breathe, Miss Dearlove said, but when Emmie thought of her mask, sealed away in its flimsy cardboard box, she found her breath catching in her throat. Where was this gas going to come from anyway? No one had said. Arthur and his mate Joey said that it would be dropped by planes, but all the gas that Emmie knew of came in pipes, to the kitchen for the stoves. She didn’t see how it could be carried in a plane. If only someone would explain, she thought bitterly, kicking at a crack in the pavement as they marched on. Where were they going, and why? What was happening? No one told them anything. They didn’t need to know, they just got parcelled up like their clothes and sent away…

  “Look.” The little girl Emmie had been shoved in next to tugged at her sleeve.

  “What?” Emmie muttered, not looking.

  “Over there.” Ruby pointed across the road. “See, Emmie, there! Do you think they’re being evacuated too?”

  Emmie turned, and saw that they were passing a school, where a long column of children were lining up in the playground. They were carrying an assortment of battered cases and brown paper parcels, and there were labels tied on to their coats.

  “I suppose so.”

  “Just like us…” Ruby said thoughtfully. “I didn’t know everybody was.”

  “We have to get out of the cities – in case of planes flying over,” Emmie said vaguely. “All the children do.” That was what the boys had thought, anyway. They had been lurking about the matrons’ sitting room, listening to the news broadcasts, so she supposed it was possible they were right. The children in the playground did look quite like them, except that there were mothers huddling around them, and even a few fathers. They were pushing packets of sandwiches into children’s pockets, hugging them, running along beside them as the line of children started to snake out on to the street. The children marched away, following two older boys, who had a banner with the school’s name stitched on to it – almost like a procession, Emmie thought.

  Some of the school children were crying, Emmie noticed. A lot of the smaller ones were clinging on to their mothers, pale-faced and bewildered. They didn’t seem to know what was happening either. But some of the others looked happy, swinging their cases as if they were off on holiday. Perhaps they were – they might end up at the seaside.

  Emmie blinked thoughtfully. She was almost sure that she’d never been out of London. Until now, she hadn’t really thought about where they were going; she’d been too worried about what they were leaving behind. Maybe those two boys in the line grinning all over their faces were right. It was an adventure…

  But almost all the mothers were brushing tears away, quickly, with the sides of their hands so as not to show. Emmie shivered. She supposed the children from the Home were lucky – all the adults they knew were coming with them. It didn’t make her feel lucky though. She tried to remember the softness of Lucy’s head bumping against her fingers, the warmth of her breath as the little cat nuzzled against her. But all she could hear was Ruby, grizzling because she was tired, and her shoes were too tight.

  They hadn’t gone all that far, but the streets were so much busier than the quiet area around the Craven Home. Even Emmie felt tired, with so many people pressing around her, and the constant roar of cars and carts and buses along the bustling street. On any other day, it would have been fun to stand on one of those islands in the road and watch, and wonder where all these people were streaming off to. Today, Emmie wished she was back sitting in the window of her dormitory, peering out at the street for the grocer’s va
n, and a car every so often. She’d wished for something to happen, something exciting, and now it had.

  “We’re almost there, Ruby,” Miss Rose said soothingly. “The station’s just along the road there, do you see – the clock tower, and the name underneath. King’s Cross.”

  The station was huge, with two great curving arched windows across the front, like tunnel mouths.

  “London and North Eastern Railway? Are we going north-east, then, Miss?” Emmie demanded curiously, looking at the rest of the white letters along the roof. But Miss Rose ignored her, starting to chivvy the line of children across the road. A policeman waved them over, holding up a line of buses, and smiling down at little Ruby, clutching her faded bear.

  There were other lines of children converging on the station now, hundreds of them, marching along like little ants. More and more poured out of buses, labelled, carrying parcels and bags and battered cases. Emmie had never seen so many people her own age before. How many were going out of London?

  Miss Rose slowed as she walked them past the scattering of shops around the front of the great building, and glanced round anxiously for Miss Dearlove.

  “What is it?” Emmie asked. Miss Rose looked so suddenly uncertain. All the staff at the Home had been brisk and decided about the move, brushing away questions and hurrying the children over their meagre packing. Now, for the first time, Emmie wondered if they were as confused and worried as the children. Mrs Evans the cook was clutching her big black handbag against her front like a shield.

  “Nothing, Emmie!” Miss Rose said, sharply for her. She was glancing between the sandbags built up around the doorway, and a flight of steps down – still signed to the Underground, but blocked off with a great pile of bits of broken stone. She glanced down at Emmie, with a bright smile that showed her teeth. “I just wasn’t quite sure which door we were to take, that’s all. We must expect everything to look a little different in wartime, mustn’t we?” she added in a comforting, sing-song voice, as though Emmie had been the one to be scared.

  Miss Rose didn’t allow herself to be daunted by the huge space inside the station, or the milling crowd of children. She straightened her shoulders and marched them in, then started counting everybody again in case one of the twenty orphans had disappeared on the way. Emmie didn’t think that any of them would have dared. Not with those planes coming, and the gas. She had thought about running away before – on days when nothing happened, and no one spoke to her. But that had been before she found Lucy.

  Miss Dearlove marched over to a man in station uniform, and he frowned down at his list, and eventually pointed across to one of the furthest platforms – and then he checked his watch, and pointed again, flapping his hands.

  The matron came trotting back to them, and caught Emmie’s hand, pulling at her sharply. “We haven’t much time – come along, all of you. No dawdling. There are so many extra trains for the evacuated schools,” she added to Miss Rose. “The timetable is all upset. If we miss this one, we’ll have to wait hours.” She glanced irritably down at Emmie as she said it – it was her fault that they were late, after all.

  The train was already steaming as the children hurtled on to the platform, and a porter flung the doors open for them, bundling them in as Miss Rose and Miss Dearlove and Mrs Evans wrestled with bags and food baskets.

  Emmie collapsed on to a padded seat, clutching her brown paper parcel of clothes, and stared out of the window – she could see another train in the next platform, with a girl gazing back at her. She smiled faintly, recognizing the strange girl’s expression of fear, and excitement. There was even something of her own sickening loneliness. Perhaps that girl had never been out of London either. Perhaps she’d never been on a train. But maybe, just perhaps, the train was taking her towards something new and different. Things might be better – even though she’d had to leave so much behind.

  The girl waved at her, and Emmie lifted her hand, slowly, as their train shuddered and creaked, and began to pull out of the station, out of London, making for somewhere else.

  Emmie leaned back against the scratchy velour of the seat. She was facing the window, but she was hardly looking at the green banks of the cutting that the train was racing through. She wondered where that other girl’s train had been going. She had looked nice – no, not nice. Nice was what Miss Dearlove and Miss Rose were always encouraging them to be. Play nicely. Now, that isn’t nice, is it, Emmie? Nice little girls don’t behave like that.

  The only other girl Emmie’s age at the Craven Home had left when they were both about five. Louisa had been very nice indeed, and that was why she had been adopted. It had been made quite clear to Emmie that if only she had been more like Louisa, she might have been adopted too. But she was much too old for that now. And she didn’t care anyway.

  Emmie ran her hand over the arm of the seat, and tears stung the corners of her eyes. The dark, dusty stuff reminded her of Lucy’s fur.

  Whenever one of the younger, sweeter, nicer children was taken away to have a proper home, or when Miss Dearlove snapped at her for being ungrateful, or the boys teased her for being skinny and pale and ugly, Emmie would simply shrug and stare. Miss Dearlove called her insolent, and Arthur had boxed her ears for giving him that look.

  She’d stare, until Miss Dearlove flounced away, or the boys grew bored. And then she’d sneak upstairs, to the little window on the landing outside the girls’ dormitory. There was a great cupboard half in front of it, full of musty blankets, and spare clothes, and a skinny, ugly little person could squeeze behind the cupboard, and open the window – and climb out on to the rusted iron fire escape without anyone knowing where she had gone.

  For the first few times Emmie had been out there, in the days just after she found the window, she’d sat there alone, gazing out across the roofs below. She loved the view – watching the clouds streaked with red as the sun went down. Even on the days when London was choked in fog, she had imagined the sky, and the rooftops, beneath the layers of grey. If she leaned against the railings, she could just see a slice of the road, and watch for passers-by, and wonder where they were going, and where she would go, one day. She’d even taken a few steps down the fragile old metal staircase. But then common sense had sent her slinking back again. She had nowhere to go. She couldn’t leave.

  Emmie had been out on the fire escape on a February afternoon when she first saw her. It had been almost dark, and icy cold, especially as she hadn’t a coat. She couldn’t sneak her coat upstairs, not without someone stopping to ask her why. But being cold was worth it, for time alone to think, and watch the sky.

  Emmie had felt as though she was all alone in the city. A purplish light had soaked through the sky, and wisps of cloud floated by, looking almost close enough to touch. Emmie leaned against the metal railings, feeling the hard cold of the iron bite into her cheek, and knowing she should go in, before they missed her.

  Something had made her stay. Afterwards she thought she’d known something was going to happen. There was the faintest creaking on the metal steps, and a darker patch of shadow slunk on to the tiny landing where Emmie was curled.

  “A cat!” she whispered. The cat was tiny – hardly more than a kitten – and shy. It hesitated at the edge of the landing, watching her suspiciously. She caught a gleam of light reflected in its eyes. Why had it come all the way up here?

  Emmie moved her hand cautiously towards her pocket, trying not to move suddenly and scare the cat away. She had hidden a sandwich in her handkerchief – fish paste. She hated it, and they were supposed to finish everything that was on their plates. Usually she dropped the scraps off the fire escape, but she’d forgotten. She held back a laugh. Perhaps this cat had eaten her leftovers before. Perhaps that was why it had come.

  She opened out her handkerchief, and wrinkled her nose at the smell. But there was a scuffling in the darkness; the cat had moved. It could smell the fish paste t
oo. Someone turned on the light inside and both Emmie and the cat froze. But no one saw the open window. There was a quick patter of footsteps up the stairs, and one of the little girls disappeared into the dormitory.

  With the light on, Emmie could see the cat, tiny and skinny – like her. It was hunched at the corner of the metal floor, eyes fixed on the half-unwrapped sandwich, but too scared to come closer.

  Slowly, Emmie put the handkerchief down between them, and unfolded it properly, to let the little thing have a glimpse of the food. Then she wriggled further back against the wall of the house.

  “You may as well eat it,” she whispered. “I won’t. You can have it.” She watched the cat curiously – it was nothing like the cats she had seen in the schoolroom books. They were plump and cushiony, with long white whiskers. This creature looked half-starved – and it couldn’t resist the sandwich for long. It darted forward and began to tear at the bread, glancing over at Emmie every so often, to check that she wasn’t moving.

  When the sandwich was gone, the cat sniffed at the handkerchief, and even licked it, as if the flavour of the fish paste had soaked into the cotton.

  Then it turned and whisked away, skinny tail held low, and Emmie leaned over to watch it scurry down the steps.

  The next night, she had only bread and butter, but the cat didn’t seem to mind. It ate the whole slice, and then when Emmie held out her fingers, it sniffed them curiously before it darted away.

  Emmie kept taking her scraps out to the fire escape, and the cat kept turning up. As soon as she climbed out of the window, a small dark shape would appear, faster and faster each time. There were days she couldn’t get out, of course, days when Miss Dearlove decided on a “brisk walk” or the inspectors came. But it only took seconds for Emmie to slip behind the cupboard and open the window a crack, and drop her scraps out on to the fire escape.

  It was an odd feeling, waiting and hoping for a glimpse of black fur. It wasn’t even as if the cat stayed for long, not for those first few days, anyway. She – Emmie was only guessing it was a she, but “it” all the time sounded mean – would eat whatever Emmie had brought, and then when she was sure that all the food was gone, she would hurry off back to whatever it was she had been doing. Sniffing around the bins, probably, Emmie thought.