Libby in the Middle

by Gwyneth Rees

  Sure enough, there was an estate agent’s board nailed to the gatepost of the neighbouring house.

  ‘Somehow I don’t think Mum and Dad could afford any of the houses in this road,’ I murmured as I stared at the house through its open gates.

  That’s when we saw Tansy waving to us from one of the downstairs bay windows.

  ‘Let’s go and see her!’ Grace said.

  ‘Wait for me,’ I called, but she was already bolting ahead of me up the gravel drive towards the house.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tansy opened the large front door and shouted a greeting as I followed my sister up the drive.

  Grace immediately started chatting away to Tansy on the doorstep, while behind them I could see a big gloomy hall and dark furniture.

  ‘We’re on our way to the park,’ I explained. ‘Did you get my text?’

  ‘Just saw it. That park up the road is pretty rubbish.’

  ‘We can visit you instead if you like,’ Grace offered eagerly.

  She grinned. ‘Sure. Come on in.’

  Grace dived straight past her and rushed over to an old-fashioned rocking horse, which she’d obviously had her eye on. She immediately began to pet it like it was real.

  I followed her into the hall. ‘Are you on your own?’ I asked, since the house seemed quiet apart from us.

  ‘Yeah. Dad’s off to see his lawyer and then the estate agent. He won’t be back for ages.’ She closed the heavy front door with a bang.

  ‘I thought you were moving in – not selling,’ I said.

  ‘Dad wants to buy somewhere smaller. And less gloomy, he says!’

  ‘Why is your house so gloomy?’ Grace asked.

  Tansy grinned. ‘Grandpa used to say that the ghosts liked it that way.’

  ‘Ghosts?’ Grace looked half-scared and half-thrilled.

  ‘Ghosts aren’t real, Grace,’ I told her quickly.

  ‘Some people believe in them though,’ Tansy said. ‘My grandpa did, sort of, but then he got pretty weird when he got old. He used to tell me stories about the ghost of my uncle who I’m supposed to take after. There are lots of pictures of him in the front room. Come on, I’ll show you.’

  Grace suddenly announced, ‘My friend actually saw a real ghost without a head.’

  ‘Really? That’s cool.’ Tansy was smiling. ‘Was it carrying its head under its arm? I hear a lot of ghosts do that.’

  ‘No – it had lots of blood running down its neck where its head had been chopped off. It was in a big palace that belonged to Henry of the Eighth.’

  ‘Wow! So do you think the ghost was one of his wives?’

  Grace nodded. ‘It definitely was! And Bella says it had to be his number two or number five wife because they were the only ones who got their heads chopped off.’ She started chanting the rhyme Bella had taught her: ‘Divorced, beheaded, died … divorced, beheaded, survived …’ over and over again until I told her to shut up.

  Tansy led us into a large old-fashioned room and stopped in front of a painting of a boy in his late teens dressed in hunting clothes. He had blond hair and a freckled face with laughing blue eyes and he closely resembled Tansy.

  ‘This is my uncle Murray Godwin,’ she said. ‘He was my dad’s older brother. He died when he was twenty.’

  As I glanced around the room I saw there were lots of photos in frames displayed everywhere, and many of them seemed to be of the same boy. Tansy had become really animated as she showed me them and I realised this was something we had in common – we were both interested in old photos. Maybe I’d finally found someone with whom I could share my enthusiasm about the past.

  ‘Grandpa hasn’t changed much in this room since my grandma died,’ Tansy told us. ‘She died twelve years ago – a few days after I was born. Grandpa said she would have died sooner but she was hanging on so she could meet me. Apparently I was the exact likeness of Uncle Murray when he was born, so my grandma was really pleased.’ She joined me by the mantelpiece, where I was looking at more photos of the same young boy. ‘They’re all him,’ she said. ‘Him as a baby, him as a little boy, him as a scout, him and my dad at St Quentin’s – that’s the stupid school that expelled your dad –’

  ‘Wait, you know about my dad being expelled?’

  Before Tansy could respond, Grace interrupted us. ‘I’m bored! Can I go in the garden?’

  ‘Sure,’ Tansy said. ‘I’ll come and open the back door.’

  While they were gone I spotted a photograph of four children – three boys and one girl. The smallest boy was definitely Dad but I didn’t recognise the others. The girl had a mass of dark wavy hair – very similar to mine except it was a lot longer – and I suddenly realised who she was. ‘Aunt Thecla,’ I murmured, struggling to match the girl’s eyes, full of mischief and excitement, with the stern glinty eyes of the woman I knew today. Perhaps there was a certain determination in her gaze, which remained the same, but it was difficult to see much of a likeness.

  I stared at the photograph for ages. It felt so strange to see Dad and Aunt Thecla in someone else’s photograph in someone else’s house. The other two boys in the picture had blond hair – the older boy’s was clipped short while the younger’s was shaggy and curly. The younger boy had his arm around the girl.

  As Tansy walked back into the room she said, ‘That was taken on Murray’s twelfth birthday. The cricket bat he’s holding was his birthday present. He was really good at batting and Grandpa thought he was good enough to play professional cricket, so he bought him this top-quality super-expensive bat. But Murray didn’t want to be a cricketer. All he cared about was travelling.’

  ‘Is that your dad?’ I pointed to the young boy with his arm around Aunt Thecla – the one with the curly hair.

  Tansy nodded. ‘My dad and your aunt were the same age and they were best friends. They started dating when they were fifteen.’ She grinned. ‘Apparently your dad got really jealous and protective because he worshipped his big sister.’

  I was surprised. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. My dad used to take your aunt on secret picnics in the countryside. She always had a sketchpad with her and sometimes she’d draw him. Dad was pretty handsome when he was young.’ She sounded proud.

  ‘Did your dad still have curly hair when he grew up?’

  ‘Yeah – until he left university. Then he started getting buzz cuts. Why?’

  ‘It’s just, I think I might have seen an actual painting Aunt Thecla did of him.’

  ‘Really? I’d love to see it.’

  ‘And I’d love to show you.’ I started to rack my brain to think of a way. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be that easy to sneak her into Aunt Thecla’s art studio. ‘Leave it to me,’ I said.

  ‘You know, it’s weird,’ Tansy said as she glanced at the photograph of the four children. ‘You look at them there and you can hardly believe what happened to them all …’

  ‘What did happen?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘Well …’ She pointed to each child in turn, starting with her uncle. ‘First Murray died in an accident in India, then my dad and your aunt broke off their engagement, and then your dad got caught breaking and entering and got sent away for two years.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I just about choked on this last piece of information.

  ‘Your dad must have told you?’ She started to look uncomfortable as I stood gaping at her. ‘OK, so maybe he hasn’t told you … maybe you should just forget I told you …’

  I shook my head. ‘Tell me everything,’ I said as I plonked myself down on the nearest seat to let her know I wasn’t going anywhere until she did.

  So Tansy sat down on the sofa beside me and told me what she knew. Most of the story had come directly from her dad and I felt a little envious of how much he’d shared with her. Tansy clearly knew loads about her family and about her dad’s childhood. It was so different to how private my own dad was on the subject.

  ‘Your dad was sixteen at the time,’ she began
. ‘Your aunt and my dad were eighteen and they were engaged. On the day it happened my grandparents were taking my uncle Murray to the airport because he was leaving to go travelling. My dad didn’t go with them because he was studying for his A levels … Anyway, after a couple of hours he got fed up and went out for a bit of a break. When he got back he found his parents arriving home much earlier than he’d expected. And my grandpa had just caught your dad inside their house. He’d broken in to steal Murray’s cricket bat!’

  ‘No way!’ I couldn’t believe Dad would ever break into someone else’s house, let alone steal anything. And I instantly felt as if I liked Tansy a bit less for telling the story, even though I know you’re not supposed to blame the messenger.

  ‘It’s true!’ Tansy insisted. ‘My grandpa agreed not to call the police, but he told the school and that’s why they expelled him. Your dad got sent away to a really strict boarding school for delinquent boys.’

  ‘That can’t be right!’ I exclaimed in disbelief, because I’d never heard any of this before. Then again, Dad had only just admitted that he’d been expelled from school – and so far he hadn’t told us anything about the reason why.

  ‘Bluebell – I mean your aunt – broke off her engagement to my dad after that,’ Tansy added. ‘He was devastated because he really loved her.’

  ‘Wait, are you saying Aunt Thecla was the one who broke it off? Are you sure?’ I’d always understood it to be the other way round. In fact, I was pretty certain that Dad also believed it was Aunt Thecla who’d been jilted.

  ‘Definitely. My dad says that in retrospect he doesn’t think he ever got over it, even after he married my mum. Which is probably why their marriage didn’t last very long.’

  ‘Your dad really told you all that?’

  She nodded. ‘He talks to me about everything.’

  I frowned, trying to imagine my own father confiding in me to that extent.

  Suddenly my phone started ringing. It was Dad, sounding cross and wanting to know where the three of us were.

  ‘Grace is with me. We’re at Tansy’s house.’ It felt weird to be talking to my here-and-now dad after hearing what Tansy had just revealed about him.

  There was a brief silence. ‘Come home now please. And ring Bella. I’ve tried her phone but she’s not taking my calls.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Tansy asked when I hung up.

  ‘Not really. Just … well … I’d better get Grace.’ But before I left the room I found my gaze lingering for just a few seconds longer on the photo of those four smiling children from the past.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Bella, what are we going to do now?’ I asked her the second I woke up the following morning.

  ‘About what?’ she grunted as she turned her back on me to finish getting dressed. Mum was taking her shopping for new clothes in Castle Westbury which was the only reason she was up this early.

  ‘You know what!’ I snapped. Sometimes I really feel like I could throttle her.

  The day before, Dad and Aunt Thecla had had a massive row. At first Mum was on Dad’s side when she heard how our aunt had accused Grace of stealing. But when she heard Dad’s account of the confrontation he’d had with Aunt Thecla, she started to get angry with him instead.

  ‘You do realise we’re depending on her for the school fees, don’t you, Paul? Couldn’t you have tempered what you said just a little?’

  ‘I’m not going to let her bully our children,’ Dad said crossly.

  ‘That’s all very well but we can’t afford to pay three lots of school fees if you completely fall out with her,’ Mum said sharply.

  ‘Nina, she’s already put money in a trust to pay the fees. She told me yesterday that just before he died our father said he wanted her to use some of his money to benefit the girls. Can you believe that? So apparently the school fees will get paid no matter what.’

  ‘Really?’ Mum sounded relieved. ‘But we’re still indebted to her, Paul. I’m going round there to try and clear this up. Perhaps if I sit down with her and talk things through, she’ll think of someone other than Grace who’s had the opportunity to take her money.’

  I shot a worried glance at Bella when I heard that, but she wasn’t looking at me.

  Dad said, ‘I’ll tell you what I think happened. She took the money herself and then forgot about it. It’s easily done. I told her that’s what probably happened, but of course Thecla takes that as a huge insult. Apparently the idea that her memory might have let her down is far less palatable than the idea that Gracie stole her precious fifty quid.’

  ‘Paul, would you stop talking like that –’

  I pulled Bella away while they were still discussing it. I was already sure that the best way to stop this from escalating was for the missing money to turn up – and fast.

  ‘Bella, we have to put that money back,’ I whispered.

  ‘We haven’t got it to put back!’ she protested.

  ‘Well, Sam has a job now, so –’

  ‘No way,’ Bella interrupted me fiercely. ‘He’s not getting paid much, and there’s no way Aunt Thecla needs that money more than him.’

  And she stubbornly refused to listen to anything else I had to say on the subject.

  There was something else I’d been thinking about a lot, which was the conversation I’d had with Tansy. I really wanted to talk to Dad about it. In fact, the more I thought about how angry he was with Aunt Thecla for accusing Grace of stealing, the more I wondered about the story Tansy had told me. Could that be the reason Dad was so angry? Because he knew how it felt to be wrongly accused? Because I was absolutely certain that Dad hadn’t stolen Murray’s cricket bat or anything else when he was sixteen, no matter how bad things had looked.

  I made sure Grace was out of earshot before I brought up the subject with Dad after Mum and Bella had gone out.

  ‘Dad, you know when I went round to Tansy’s house yesterday …’ I began, as I sat beside him at the table.

  ‘Yes?’ He’d just settled down to drink a mug of coffee while flicking through the newspaper and he looked a bit annoyed by the interruption.

  I took a deep breath, deciding to get straight to the point. ‘Well, Tansy told me why you got expelled from school.’

  He put his paper down and looked at me. ‘Oh yes. And what did she tell you?’

  I swallowed and said in a rush, ‘Her grandfather caught you stealing from his house.’

  He kept looking at me and I felt really tense. ‘And do you think that’s true?’ he finally asked.

  ‘No,’ I said at once. ‘I think he caught you in his house and thought you were stealing.’

  Dad took a big swig of coffee. ‘I guess you want to know the whole story?’

  I nodded, but just then Grace came running into the room. ‘When are we leaving, Daddy?’ she asked. Apparently he’d promised to take her out for a bike ride.

  ‘Soon, sweetheart. Tell you what, you go upstairs and get ready. Make sure you brush your teeth really well or Mummy will get cross.’

  As she raced off to do as he’d asked, he turned back to me and said quietly, ‘I don’t mind telling you, but I’m not sure there’s time right now.’

  ‘There’s time. Please, Dad,’ I begged him.

  So he told me what had happened when he was sixteen.

  ‘It was the day Michael’s older brother, Murray, was flying off to India. His parents were driving him to the airport, and after they left Thecla told me she was going round to see Michael. She wasn’t meant to be seeing him that day because he had an exam to study for, so she asked me to cover for her if our dad noticed she was gone.

  ‘Michael’s parents came back earlier than expected. Apparently they’d argued with Murray and hadn’t stayed at the airport to have a meal with him as they’d planned. They stopped off at our house to talk to my father about Thecla and Michael’s engagement. They didn’t approve of it and they wanted the wedding postponed for as long as possible. Well, anyway … I was worried about
Thecla getting caught next door so I went to warn her.

  ‘No one came to the front door when I rang the bell so I decided to sneak in through the French windows at the back. I knew those patio doors didn’t lock properly because Murray used to sneak in that way sometimes if he was late home. The house was very quiet when I got inside, so I thought the two of them were probably upstairs in Michael’s bedroom …’

  ‘Rolling about on the bed together, snogging?’ I suggested with a giggle.

  He winced. ‘Something like that. Anyway, I knew I had to go and warn them – however embarrassing it was – so I headed for the stairs. On my way through the hall I spotted the cricket bat Murray had promised to give me before he left. He must have forgotten about it in all the rush. I thought I may as well claim it while I was there, so I picked it up. Just then the front door opened and Mr and Mrs Godwin walked in.’

  ‘DADDY!’ came my little sister’s voice from upstairs. ‘I NEED YOU!’

  I quickly put my arm on Dad’s to keep him from going. ‘Leave her, Dad. She’s old enough to wipe her own bum! So what happened next?’

  ‘Michael suddenly appeared from the kitchen and made it pretty clear he knew nothing about me being there – or about Murray giving the bat to me. He looked pretty flustered so I guessed he must have been smuggling Thecla out through the kitchen door just as I was sneaking in through the French windows.’

  I frowned. ‘But I don’t think Aunt Thecla was –’

  ‘DADDY I CAN’T REACH THE TOILET PAPER!’ Grace yelled.

  Dad stood up, talking rapidly as he headed for the stairs. ‘Mr Godwin was furious, needless to say! He called my father, who persuaded him not to call the police and promised to punish me when he got me home. But Mr Godwin decided that wasn’t enough. He was a governor at my school and he knew my headmaster very well. Suffice it to say, he had a lot of influence in those days and he managed to get me expelled.’

  ‘Dad … that’s … that’s …’ I didn’t know what to say, but he had already gone upstairs to sort out Grace.