They were so lucky to be found by my lovely nana.
A tug in my tummy makes me think of my gran again now.
Did Nana feel abandoned by Mum and me over the last year? I wonder. Did she look at my photo on the mantelpiece and miss the chats and fun we used to have when I was younger?
And when me and Mum go back to Chelmsford, will Nana feel lost and bewildered – with only a fat dog and crazy parrot for company – as the quicksand of dementia starts to suck her into a different, unrecognizable world… ?
“What can we do to help Nana?” I blurt out, my jealousy over Dean and Zephyr’s closeness to Nana on pause now that genuine worry has taken over.
“Right,” says Mum, slapping her hands on her knees, and looking instantly less uncomfortable now that she’s switching into Practical Mode. “Zephyr, I’m sure your dad talked to you on the way over here, and told you what was discussed in the meeting at the hospital.”
Zephyr nods. So he’s heard what I have: that they’ll keep Nana in under observation over the weekend. That on Monday some specialist person will do some test on Nana, asking her a bunch of questions to find out where her head’s at (quite literally). That a social worker needs to visit the flat on Monday, to check if it’s possible for Nana to come back here and be safe and comfortable. Ha ha ha ha…
“Obviously, we need to do a massive clean-up and clear-out here,” Mum carries on, staring around and probably wishing she had a clipboard so she could make a to-do list and assign us all tasks.
“Well, we’re here, and ready to dive in!” says Dean.
“Great,” Mum replies with a nod. “So I’ve already googled and found a rubbish dump nearby with weekend opening hours. We just have to decide whether we want to hire a van so we can get rid of all this junk quickly, or just do several trips in the two cars.”
“Whoa!” exclaims Zephyr. “We can’t just dump it all! Patsy spent ages getting all this stuff together. She was going to open up, like, some vintage store downstairs.”
“Zeph’s right; it was what she was hoping to do,” Dean chips in, nodding sagely, though Mum is rolling her eyes at the sound of another Nana plan. “She was only storing things here in the flat till she found someone to do building work and decorate downstairs.”
“But it’s all total trash!” Mum says, frowning as she waves her hands around at the assorted boxed and bagged stuff-ness.
Actually, I hate to side with my unknown uncle and cousin, but I kind of do think some of this junk is cool, and some of it might be valuable. I’m sure I’ve seen ancient 1960s phones – like the ones on the cabinet here – in the style section of magazines. The old, fancy flowery teapots that line the small staircase to the loft; they look like they may be worth something. And when we were on our way to the hospital, I saw a couple of vintage clothes shops that would surely be interested in buying some of the second-hand coats and dresses and shoes Nana’s collected. (Not before I’ve gone through them first, though… )
“Hey, maybe we could store it all down in the shop for now, so the flat’s not such a mess,” I suggest. “Then Nana can decide what to do with it later, once she’s back home… ?”
Dean and Zephyr nod at my idea, but Mum is giving me the glare of doom. I guess her neat-freak side had clearly been looking forward to sweeping the flat clean in one satisfying fell swoop.
“Fine,” she says wearily, “but we’ll have to find the keys for downstairs first. I had a look around in all the drawers this morning, but no luck. And where do you even start in a mess like this? It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Hmm, well, we can ask Patsy when we visit later, of course,” says Dean, “but it would be good to get started clearing this straightaway, really, since there’s so much—”
Dean’s suggestion is interrupted by Mum’s mobile jangling with an incoming text.
“Sorry,” Mum apologizes, rifling for the phone in her bag on the floor. “I’ve got to check this in case it’s something important to do with work. Oh; actually, it’s a text from my mother. Her ears must’ve been burning!”
“Is Patsy all right?” Dean asks, before I have the chance to.
“Uh-uh,” Mum mutters distractedly, as she reads what’s written on the small screen. “She’s given me a description of the pyjamas she wants; I chose the wrong ones earlier, apparently. Zephyr, she’s asking if you can show her how to use FaceTime when you visit so she can chat to Angie and Mr Spinks later on. Oh, and this is for you, Scarlet. She says to tell you, number four is all in a day’s work… Does that make any sense?”
I feel Mum, Dean and Zephyr’s questioning eyes on me.
“Mmm, sort of,” I answer non-committally, though I’m buzzing inside at the thought of another clue in my chapter hunt. Even if I don’t have the faintest idea yet what it means.
I’m just about to ask Mum if I can have her phone to text Nana back when the stupid thing blasts out that annoyingly frantic ringtone that definitely means the office is calling.
“Sorry. Excuse me,” she mutters, jumping to her feet and clip-clopping out of the room in her smart work shoes.
“Actually,” says Dean, getting to his feet too, “I’m going to go up to our room, Zeph. It’s nearly midnight back home in Melbourne, but hopefully your mum’s still awake and I can quickly let her know what’s happening.”
“OK,” Zephyr mutters, holding his phone up in front of him again as he films Mr Spinks’s fat tummy and then swoops around, taking in the wonders of the over-stuffed living room. I lean out of the way, in case he’s trying to get me in there.
Angie doesn’t seem keen on getting in the shot either, and hops off the table and on to the arm of my chair. Us camera-shy girls are sticking together.
“Love the one of the Rose Window,” Zephyr says, now aiming the phone at the three paintings on the back wall.
“The what?” I say, though Zephyr has to be talking about the third picture, the one of a circle of stained glass in a triangular brick wall.
“The Rose Window… ?” he says, turning back to me with an I-can’t believe-you-don’t-know-that expression. “It’s, like, the main feature of Alexandra Palace. You can see it from the attic.”
Aargh! How does this boy from the other side of the world know so much more than I do, including the view from my own bedroom here?
I’m about to get up from my seat and go upstairs to unpin the makeshift tea-towel curtain when Zephyr carries on yakking.
“Cool story about Nana proposing to Grandad Manny right under the Rose Window, isn’t it?”
Angie is weaving and bobbing on the arm of the chair, which is a bit distracting. But I still manage to spot Zephyr throw me the quickest of sideways glances. He knows I have no clue about this, doesn’t he? Same as I don’t know a ton of other Nana-related details that he clearly does.
I’m going to have to fake it.
“I can totally picture Nana just going for it,” I say as Angie continues to dip and dive, as if she’s examining my hair.
“Grandad always said Patsy was like a whirlwind,” says Zephyr, lowering the phone and turning back to me. “He knew as soon as he met her in the café that she was pretty special.”
Time for more faking.
“Which café was it again?” I ask, trying to pull away the lilac lock of hair that Angie is experimentally tugging at with her beak.
“One that was near her art college,” says Zephyr, as Mr Spinks lazily paws at him upside down, desperate for more tummy tickles. “Grandad Manny went in there, when he was visiting his sister Sita. Isn’t it weird that she was doing her nursing training at the same hospital Patsy’s in now?”
OK, I’ve given up on faking.
I must look ridiculous. My mouth is hanging open in surprise and I’m trying to restrain a parrot from eating my hair.
So my middle name isn’t some random, pretty Indian name from a random member of the Chaudhary clan, but an actual great-aunt who used to live around here?
<
br /> My family – it’s getting bigger and more complicated by the minute…
Though I can’t quite concentrate on the latest mind-tangling piece of news, since the hair-tugging is getting quite sore and irritating and I have no idea how to discipline a bird.
“Stop it!” I say, flailing my arms around, sending my glass of orange juice tumbling to the floor.
“WHEEEEEEEEEEEP!” comes a loud whistle, and I feel Angie release my hair and hear her flap, flap off.
There’s a TINK, TINKLE, TINK! followed by a clipping noise. I shove my hair off my face just in time to see Zephyr closing the door to Angie’s cage.
“I’ve seen Patsy do the whistling thing on Skype – when Angie’s getting too playful and needs time out in there,” he says.
Great. Zephyr knows everything about absolutely everything around here, including how to train an African grey parrot.
Or maybe he doesn’t know quite everything.
As the chunky glass spins stickily to a stop at my feet, a spark of memory pops into my head. The jar Nana always kept hidden behind the hydrangea bush at her old house, spare keys dry and safe inside.
“Where are you going?” asks Zephyr as I leap up and run out into the hall.
“I think I might know how to find the keys to the shop,” I mutter, not caring if he can hear me or not.
There’s a sudden skitter of claws on the floor as Mr Spinks runs alongside me, probably assuming that he’s about to get another walk. As I open the door at the top of the stairwell, he nimbly dashes down the stairs to the front door without sending even one of the dozens and dozens of books flying.
And it’s one particular stack of books that I’m interested in.
There, at the bottom, opposite the Harry Potters, is a pile of gardening books. One large one is leaning up against the wall, an image of a blue-mauve mass of flowers on it. A hydrangea bush. Mr Spinks thuds his tail on the ground and pants happily as I crouch down beside him and lift the book towards me, away from the wall.
“Yessss!” I call out, reaching out for the glass jar that’s hidden behind it.
“Yes, what?” asks Zephyr, padding down the stairs in time to see me holding up the jar and rattling the two sets of keys inside.
I twist off the lid and reach inside.
“Think these are spares for the front door here,” I tell him, the ordinary set jangling in my hand against a darker, chunkier pair of keys, “and the others are for the shop!”
“I’ll tell Dad! And Aunt Ren!” Zephyr announces, hurtling back up the stairs.
But I’m not about to wait for any of them.
“Stay!” I order Mr Spinks as I open the front door, pushing the disappointed dog gently back inside with my leg.
And just a few seconds after clunking one door shut behind me, I’m unlocking and shoving another one open.
The reason for the shoving is obvious as soon as I get inside the musty shop – piles of junk mail sit behind it. But Nana must have been in fairly recently; a neater pile of junk mail has been placed up on top of one of the three counters arranged around the room.
“Three counters,” I murmur, and then look at the old-fashioned dark wooden shelves that line the walls, and the closed door at the back that must lead through to a storeroom of sorts, and the yard beyond.
No wonder Nana was inspired to set her story here, I think as I slowly walk around the counters, stopping where I assume a till would sit, if this was a bustling, busy baker’s shop. Nothing has been changed in here for decades, except for the fact that there are strip lights in the ceiling, I notice, instead of gaslights hissing.
I stand for a moment, watching dust motes swirl in the little shafts of sunshine managing to peek through between the fly-posters gumming up the large front window.
I try to imagine Ruby standing here on that first day, surrounded by counters filled to the brim with coloured and creamed cakes and biscuits, instead of dead, dried-up flies and what look like old paper bags.
And then something hits me. Did Nana really just make up her tale of The Pearl in the Attic because she’d been inspired by the shop as a setting? Or is it based on a true story?
I mean, was Ruby real?
And Pearl… ?
Prickles of excitement and possibility make the hairs on my arms rise up.
And then something else hits me.
Standing here, serving customers … it would be all in a day’s work for Ruby, wouldn’t it?
All in a day’s work…
My eyes dart madly around the mostly empty shop, then settle on the glass-topped counter where my hands are resting.
You know, those aren’t old paper bags inside the counter.
They’re sheets of cream paper, folded and tied with a dark red ribbon…
The Pearl in the Attic
Chapter 4
A latch scraped back, and the door was pulled open.
She was skinny, the girl who stood warily, just inside the room. Her eyes seemed huge in her gaunt, milk-white face.
And there was a strange softness to her person: a haze around her, as if she were an apparition, almost…
Just as Ruby felt a kick of panic in her belly, she realized the cause of the softness was the spectacles she was wearing, which were only for reading and close work.
With trembling fingers, she unhooked them, folded them neatly and slipped them into her apron pocket.
Now she could see the girl more clearly. Her red hair was scraped back into a messy bun, and seemed in need of washing. The white pinafore she wore over some grey clothing was clean enough, though. And she wore woollen stockings, but no boots or shoes.
Were they of around the same age, Ruby wondered? She thought so.
“Are you Ruby?” asked the girl, staring at Ruby as much as Ruby was staring at her.
“I… How do you know?” Ruby stumbled over her words.
“The only other girl or young woman here is Nell, I think,” the girl replied. “And I do not suppose you are her…”
Pearl looked at Ruby’s stomach and made a little round gesture with her hand over her own.
Ruby almost smiled – but then questions and wondering and worry took over again.
“Who are you?” she asked, looking back down the stairs, though no one was there.
“I’m Pearl. Come,” said the girl, ushering her inside.
Ruby hesitated, taking only one step forward, enough to see what lay inside the attic.
And what she saw inside made her take a step more.
The sloping-roofed room was bare enough. But there were comforting touches too … a paisley-patterned counterpane on a mattress that lay on the floor, a chair with a dainty oil lamp upon it, a cheerful rag rug, a posy of dried violets in an old jar, some books piled along the far wall where the chimney breast jutted out.
And papers … paper bags, in fact they were, lay spread on an old wooden chest, with drawings scribbled upon them in charcoal.
Bags that were normally used downstairs in the shop, for the cakes and breads.
“What are you doing here?” Ruby asked, taking a further step inside, and seeing more signs of regular habitation. A tapestry bag with knitting needles sticking out. A dirty plate with a cup and a fork neatly piled upon it. A chamber pot in the corner.
“Living. Hiding,” Pearl answered, clutching one arm with the other, and smiling shyly. “I heard you crying in the night.”
Ruby’s cheeks coloured a little. She had eventually sunk into the deep, dark sleep of exhaustion after her encounter with her aunt on the stairs last night, but woke herself up with muddled dreamings and sobs well before dawn.
“I heard you too,” she told Pearl. “Just creaks and taps, as you moved about. I thought you were a rat.”
“Oh, dear,” Pearl giggled, baring her two front teeth, and lifting her hands to become claws.
Ruby really did giggle this time, then jumped back in fright as a great flapping commotion happened at a small window in one of
the sloping walls.
“It’s all right. It’s my friend,” said Pearl, reaching into the pocket of her pinafore for a few crumbs, which she held up to the bird that was now settling itself at the rim of the window.
As she waited for her breath to return, Ruby crept a little closer to the strange girl and the cooing bird.
“It keeps me company,” said Pearl, smiling at first at the pigeon and then at Ruby. “It reminds me of the seagulls of home.”
“Where is home?” Ruby asked, though the room around her seemed to be very much where Pearl was living.
“Hastings…” she replied, her smile fading. “Father died of a fever in the spring, and mother died a fortnight past. Tante Trudy came to the funeral. He did not come. He said under no circumstances was she to bring me back here, but she did.”
Ruby didn’t know where to begin: to say how sorry she was to hear of such a loss, to ask who this Tante Trudy was, and who “he” was.
“Tante is German for aunt,” explained Pearl, seeing Ruby’s confusion. “She was my mother’s sister.”
“Irma!” exclaimed Ruby, her fingers touching the spectacles in her pockets.
So Tante Trudy was Auntie Gertrude. And of course, the “he” was Uncle Arthur…
“Yes!” Pearl smiled again. “Did Tante Trudy tell you?”
“She – she gave me these,” Ruby said apologetically, pulling the spectacles a little way out of her pocket. “I hope you don’t mind? Aunt Gertrude saw that I could not read my numbers, so…”
“Ah, she is so kind,” said Pearl, her eyes pooling a little with tears.
“She does not care for me so very much,” Ruby murmured, thinking of her aunt’s blank looks and brusque manner.
“It’s not your fault,” said Pearl, dropping her gaze as she tried to find a few more crumbs in her pocket for the cooing, hungry bird. “Tante’s husband refused to have me come here because he had already promised his brother he’d take you. He told her they could afford only one charity case, and that she should leave me to the poorhouse’s care.”
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