by Lily Graham
The eggs were always the wrong side of runny; she thought to cook chicken was to boil it and to make porridge was to burn it. The scent would carry itself up from the kitchen all the way to the breakfast room and lodge itself into the curve of Mother’s disapproving scowl.
What was even more extraordinary was the fact that all of Mother’s threats concerning her dismissal were resolutely ignored by Father, in the same way one tries to block out thoughts of being outdoors when you’re cooped up in church or listening to one of our governess Celine’s insufferable lectures. Mrs Price was here to stay, and no amount of meaningful scowls or burnt breakfasts seemed to make any difference.
She appeared in our lives, a new, yet enduring fixture, like the house that began to take form at the very edge of the property. Which, at first, Father attempted to deny existed. Then, when he could no longer do that, he said it was business. Though he never called it that, exactly. When I kept probing, he lost patience with me and told me that I shouldn’t pry into things that didn’t concern me.
Of course, Rose was convinced he had a lover and was embarrassing Mother by installing a mistress on the estate, but that was absurd. Even I knew enough about my father to know that he wasn’t someone who would willingly involve the family in scandal. Or worse, ridicule.
My cousin Tim, who called me Spriggy on account of the fact that I was all elbows and knees since my growth spurt the year before, was staying with us for a few weeks while on his half-term break from school. He believed my father was setting up an illegal trade route from the old pirate cove at the end of the estate.
Years ago, the story went, the cove had been used to offload the plunder that had first led to the Aspreys’ wealth – though I couldn’t believe Father was really considering giving up his farms for the life of a pirate. For starters, he turned green by simply looking at the water.
No, it was something else. I heard the upstairs servants talking about it. It was all anyone ever spoke about after the builders arrived.
I gleaned what I could by turning as near invisible as I could. The servants didn’t know about my favourite hiding spot in the library, with the curtain pulled in front of the window seat, my legs tucked behind me. Dust motes flickered in the air as I learned the truth. It wasn’t about business at all. Or a lover. It was something else entirely. It was for a friend. Somebody from the war.
Chapter Thirteen
Present day
Every night in the marina, the wind carried snips of music and the scent of the water, mingled with wild garlic, basil and the promise of summer. Golden lights threaded every boat, creating amber ribbons that guided me back to my waterside home each evening.
I was finding that living on a houseboat was anything but ordinary. Living on the water took away the boundaries created by land and custom and introversion. Without fences and driveways, the water provided a constant thread of connection and dependency. You soon learned that being a good neighbour wasn’t merely about being nice, but was an essential part of life. Unlike land dwellers, you needed your neighbours.
Some chores simply couldn’t be done alone, and everyone lent a hand, knowing that soon enough the time would come when they would need a favour in return.
It was a surprise at first – the kindness of strangers. I was used to London and the feeling of being isolated in a city of millions of people. Of never knowing the names of the people who lived across the road, though you’d seen them from a distance for years.
Jason and Derron, the guys who lived in the houseboat next to mine, were always there to lend a hand, or to show me how things worked on the boat.
Jason played the guitar, while Derron sang. He had blue eyes and an easy smile, and almost every night they sat in the bow of the boat, wrapped up against the cold while they played their music, the soft thrum of a guitar and Derron’s languorous voice the backdrop to my evenings.
Boat people had their own language, and you soon learned that saying the ‘back of the boat’ instead of the stern would earn you some good-natured ribbing.
Easily the most interesting houseboat belonged to my favourite hippie, Angie. The Floating Bookstore was every bit as wondrous as its name. It was an island of books, where every available space had been given over to shelves. Some of them slid and stacked together, and you could pull them apart as you browsed, though you had to be careful not to crush anyone in the process. You learned that ‘coming through’ really meant ‘jump aside’.
There were comfortable velvet armchairs and beanbags and a wood burner that warmed the toes and scented the air with the pine and beech that Angie collected from the forest.
There were only a handful of tables due to the size of the shop, but here you could enjoy a cup of hot chocolate and a slice of Angie’s famous lemon drizzle or orange polenta cake, which paired beautifully with rooibos tea.
The first time I’d visited, I’d marvelled at the sheer volume of books in such a small space. Every available inch was stacked with books – tottering, towering and terrific.
They were old and new, first editions and the latest releases, literary and bonkbuster, all sitting companionably amongst each other. And, perhaps most interesting of all, she shelved them alphabetically. There were no distinctions of genre made in Angie’s bookshop. No demarcation between non-fiction or fiction, geography or history, past or present release. No separation between thriller, sci-fi, romance or otherwise. Her only concession, no doubt due to a few horrified parents, was a plaque that said ‘Old/Young’, with a hand pointing left or right. On the whole, it was an anarchical system that you either loved or loathed.
It had taken me some time to see the beauty in the chaos – the genius, too. In some ways, it meant a slightly slower way of discovery, one that allowed for a bit of magic, a little like the houseboat community lifestyle itself. You took your time browsing and picked up books and stories and plays you might never have ordinarily.
Angie told me, proudly, that since she’d done away with the sections, she found more people giving different genres a chance. There were a few people who simply grumbled and left the shop altogether, complaining that they didn’t have the time to waste, but they were a minority.
Some people tried to impose order on the disorder. ‘Human nature,’ Angie told me over a cup of coffee on my second visit. ‘People like to have things make sense, and you wouldn’t believe how many times someone has tried to explain to me why the system doesn’t work. Just yesterday, a woman came to the counter to berate me because she came past a novel about an extra-marital affair filed next to the Kama Sutra. She said it was as if I were encouraging people to break their vows with the placement.’
I laughed. ‘Seriously, she said that?’
She nodded. ‘I just told her it was the shelving equivalent of kismet, and if she really thought about it, the Kama Sutra could have been a sign to spice up her marriage, not leave it.’
I giggled. ‘What did she say?’
‘What you’d expect.’
‘She told you to shove it.’
‘Yep, pretty much where the sun doesn’t shine.’
Despite Angie’s opposition to changing her shelving system, I noticed that people quietly curated when she wasn’t looking. Occasionally, you’d find a cache of the latest thrillers assembled in an odd corner, or a tottering pile of romances tucked behind a potted fern (I presumed this was Frances – the fern that began to live after it was named). These surreptitious stashes helped similar readers to discover their favourite genre more easily, a secret handshake amongst like-minded readers, bound together by a covert, illicit code of order.
Despite her lack of prejudice to reading tastes, I was delighted to discover that Angie could play favourites too, as I saw, in pride of place, a small array of my own biographies stacked on a little table near the front of the shop. When she saw that I noticed, she just winked.
It was the houseboat community way, I’d come to realise. They looked after their own, just like Adam had to
ld me, and it was surprisingly easy to get used to. If you came into some good fortune, like Derron, my guitar-playing neighbour who’d been gifted with a healthy supply of wood from an obliging punter at the pub, you shared it amongst the houseboats in our watery lane.
Derron had told me that, come the summer, he’d get vegetables from Sue and Dave’s allotment, and that every year the Bishop would dole out his latest batch of ginger wine along with The Word. Though as far as I could tell the old man who wore a Russian hat at all times and had a pointed goatee, who lived on a beaten-up houseboat, which was in desperate need of paint and repairs, wasn’t so much ordained as deranged. I was yet to meet him officially. Apparently there was a bit of a ceremony, according to Derron.
After Adam got back from Truro, I saw him jogging along the riverbank, but he was too far away for me to call out.
For the most part, my days had been spent working on the cottage in the afternoons and deciphering Tilly’s diary.
It was hard to believe how much my life had changed in such a short space of time. The first day I found myself sleeping till nine I couldn’t believe it. For years, my life had consisted of twelve- to fifteen-hour days, often with my real work, the writing and research, squeezed into the small gaps between media appearances and book tours. In many ways, it was a wonderful way of life, but for the first time in years, despite the fact that I wasn’t in fact working on a book at the moment, I was doing what I loved – researching and uncovering a mystery.
Some mornings I went past the allotment and helped Sue. Getting my fingers dirty and planting seedlings was therapeutic, and as a bonus I went home with some of the produce, not to mention some of her recipes – though I was yet to try them. I was a bit of a disaster in the kitchen department, but it was one of my new goals. I wasn’t aiming for anything besides the ability to make something edible. Still, I was enjoying the slower pace of life, the little luxuries like falling asleep with a novel. Listening to the rain as it fell on the boat. Waking up to a view of the endless blue river and not having to rush off anywhere, not living life according to a rigidly organised calendar. The shadows under my eyes had begun to fade, and though I was putting on some weight, for the first time in forever I didn’t care. I was discovering that despite popular belief, it wasn’t blondes who had more fun – it was women who ate carbs.
Still, old habits are hard to break and it was difficult to circumvent my workaholic tendencies. I had to discipline myself not to spend all my time deciphering Tilly’s diary. Well, I called it a diary, even though it didn’t seem to follow the general day-to-day structure of most journals.
It was painstaking work and often had to be done word by word, but as I became more accustomed to the code, it was getting faster and easier to decrypt.
This past week had been filled with late nights. It was an odd sort of providence that the diary began with Tilly finding Seafall Cottage when, more than a hundred years later, I’d stumbled across it myself. It couldn’t help but colour my time in the cottage, and I thought of her often while I was clearing out and cleaning. But the real work was only just about to begin.
From Angie I’d gotten the name of the renovators who were responsible for the creation of her fabulous moveable shelves in The Floating Bookstore. They were a father-and-son team – Jack and Will Abrams. I was to go down to the cottage that afternoon to meet them.
I’d given Jack directions and explained how to find the cottage on the phone. ‘What’s this, me lover, Narnia?’ he’d joked.
‘Almost,’ I laughed. Me lover! I’d been coming to Cornwall for years, but this was the first time I’d actually heard someone use that expression on me. I counted it as a victory, like a baptism of sorts.
As I waited for them to arrive, I pulled one of the brass handles of the chest, grateful that I’d now have some help in clearing the stairs of all the heavy furniture, which had prevented me from seeing the rest of the cottage. To my surprise, it shifted until there was a sudden gap between it and the armoire. The space was just big enough that I’d be able to squeeze past, up the stairs. When I’d spoken to Jack, the renovator, on the phone about the stairs he’d told me to be careful as the weight of the furniture – combined with the damp – could mean that it was unstable. He advised me to wait for them before I tried going up there myself, but I’d been so curious about the rest of the house which in all these weeks I hadn’t yet seen – surely a little peek couldn’t hurt – if I were careful enough on the steps?
I felt a surge of excitement, laced with trepidation – what was waiting for me upstairs? Especially as it was clear that no one had been up there for years.
I made my way gingerly up the stairs, careful as I ascended. At the top, I found myself staring into a room that looked as if it had slipped back in time.
A thick layer of heavy dust had settled around it, like a cocoon. The bed was dark, ornately carved, a wooden four-poster, perfectly made up with faded, once-white sheets, as if it were still waiting for its occupant’s return. I stepped into the room and saw a butler’s stand, where a pair of men’s trousers had been folded.
A poster on the wall, the tape yellowed and curling, said ‘Welcome to Idyllwild’, and advertised a spring festival at the daffodil farm in 1912.
On the bureau was a hairbrush with a silver handle and a matching comb; there were still fine, dark hairs in the teeth. Next to this was a small, hand-tied posy of dried, blue flowers.
I moved closer to see what they were; it looked like a kind of blue heather. It was wound with a familiar ribbon. My heart began to thud. I touched the thread, and found, wrapped around the fabric, a small scrap of paper, almost like a message intended for a pigeon carrier.
I unwound it, fingers shaking. Inside were letters and numbers I recognised. It was the same code as the diary, only now I had no trouble deciphering it. It read, simply, ‘My love’.
A noise downstairs startled me. I put the note, along with the posy, carefully in the pocket of my hoodie and hurried down to the ground floor – my foot crashing through the rickety wood of the well-worn stairs.
‘Aaagh!’ I yelled, trying to pull my foot out. The pain was tremendous; several splinters from the wood had torn through the fabric of my jeans.
‘Oh my God, are you okay?’ came an American voice from below. I tried to stand up, wincing in pain. My foot, however, wouldn’t budge. I craned my head forward and peered down the stairs. ‘Adam? What are you doing down there?’
A pair of very blue, very wide eyes gazed up at me. ‘What are you doing up there?’ he asked. ‘Are you hurt?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, my foot went through one of the steps. I came down too fast and it just gave out. I’m an idiot.’
He ran a hand through his dark blond hair. ‘No, I’m sorry I startled you.’
He put something down on the floor and then made his way carefully up the stairs towards me, grimacing when he saw my leg. ‘Ouch!’ He bent down and began breaking away the rest of the wood around my leg.
‘Let’s see if we can get it loose rather than trying to yank it out,’ he said with a grin.
I sighed and gave a short laugh. ‘Yes, that would be the smarter approach.’
This close, I could smell his aftershave. It was light and spicy. Without thinking, I leant forward to breathe it in. He looked up at me, and I was sure he could sense my thoughts. I looked away, my face colouring.
He was saying something, and it took me a moment to realise that my foot was free.
As if from a distance, I found my voice. He was staring at me, slightly puzzled.
‘Thanks,’ I said, wiggling my foot and wincing at the tenderness. Luckily, there was no real damage, just slight broken flesh, and the start of what would no doubt be an impressive bruise.
He helped me down, half carrying me as I hopped on my good leg.
‘I just wanted to see how you’re getting on. Brought us some coffee from the Harbour Cafe.’ He handed me a cappuccino, which I took with a grateful groan. S
ue’s cafe made the best cappuccinos.
‘Thought I’d come past and see how you’re doing, hope you don’t mind.’
The last time I’d seen him I’d seemed to imply that I didn’t need his concern – something I regretted the second it came out. ‘I don’t mind at all, thank you so much,’ I said pointedly. ‘How was Truro?’
‘Not so great, my uncle’s treatment hasn’t been working all that well.’
Though I knew that Adam’s uncle hadn’t been well, I hadn’t realised that this was why he’d been out of town. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
‘He’s had a bad run of it with the chemotherapy lately. They might try something else. Not sure if I told you that he has cancer?’
I felt my stomach twist and shook my head. ‘I’m so sorry, I had no idea.’
He ran a hand through his hair again. ‘Yeah, thanks, it’s been a rough few weeks. Anyway, I’m trying not to think about it today, keep picturing my aunt’s face, you know.’
I nodded. ‘That’s – that must be really hard to go through. Are you very close?’
‘Yeah. I mean, as close as we can be. We moved to the States when I was quite young, but we’d visit every few years. This is the longest I’ve been back in the country though. My mom was here for a while, but she’s had to go back – my dad’s hopeless without her, can’t even work the toaster.’
‘Oh, I never realised you were born here. So you’re British?’
‘Half. My dad’s American. The funny thing is, it’s only now that I’m here that I realise that I actually am American.’
‘Didn’t you know?’ I teased.
He laughed. ‘Well, yes, but when you’re surrounded by people who sound like you but don’t exactly share the same ideas or interests you don’t think of yourself as that, you know? It’s only now I’m here that I see what makes me American.’
