12. Clara
12
Clara hurried across the grass, sand escaping from the sides of her sandals, and let herself into the cottage. Her laptop was sitting on the hall table, ready for her to do some work, but she walked past it and up the stairs to her bedroom. Booking the flights to Geneva would have to wait.
Dropping to her knees, she began to root through a box in the bottom of the wardrobe: her treasure box of mementos that was crammed with photos, cards and gig programmes. She ran her hand across a picture of her dad and then began to pull everything out onto the carpet.
Memories tumbled around her – her first holiday abroad, her mum’s fiftieth birthday party, going with Michael to see the Stereophonics in London. But the blasts from the past weren’t what was making her jittery.
She felt at sixes and sevens following the news of Brellasham Manor’s fate, and after her encounter at the cove with River and Bartie.
But, most of all, she felt shaken by what she had noticed as she sat by the sea. The numbers written on the scrap of paper that River had handed back to her looked more stark against white paper in bright sunlight. And there was something about the way the numbers were formed – the curve of the six and the nine – that rang a bell. A louder bell this time. The writing had seemed vaguely familiar before, but now she had an idea why that might be.
Rooting through the now almost empty box, Clara at last found what she was looking for.
‘Here you are,’ she murmured, pulling out a handful of birthday cards from her grandmother, Violet. ‘I knew I’d kept some of you.’
Clara caught a slight waft of lavender as she opened the last card that Violet had sent her before she died. The sight of her grandmother’s handwriting, especially on what was turning out to be a ridiculously emotional day, left Clara sniffing back tears. Violet had always been a loving gran and she was sorely missed by her family.
Clara squinted at the writing – Have a lovely birthday, Clarissa – and smiled through her tears. Violet had turned Clara’s dislike of her full name into a running joke, which had served to take the sting out of it when she was a child. But was her writing the same as on the scrap of paper found at the back of Audrey’s diary?
Clara opened the other cards from her grandmother and compared their writing with the numbers on the paper that she pulled from her bag. The heaviness of the pen stroke and the neatness looked similar and yet…Clara frowned because the evidence was inconclusive. There was nothing concrete to confirm her suspicion that Violet had been the author of the mysterious note.
She began piling her precious mementos back into the box, her body warmed by a patch of sunlight that was falling through the open window. And then she saw an image she’d thought lost for ever.
It was funny, she thought, picking up the photo that had attracted her attention. It was funny how at ease she and River had looked in each other’s company twenty years ago when nowadays they were, in many ways, strangers.
Clara thought she’d ditched her photos of River after he’d left for good, but this one had survived. Grainy and partially faded, it showed her and River sitting by the stream that flowed through the manor grounds. They must have been about ten, in shorts and T-shirts, and they were laughing as they trailed their toes in the water: her hair dark and pulled into a ponytail; his fair and close-cut, ready for his return to boarding school.
Those were happy days, she mused. Before people left and people died, and the future of the manor house and their cottage was put in jeopardy.
Placing the childhood photo carefully in the box, she piled her grandmother’s cards on top, closed the wardrobe door and stood up. It was a shame that Violet’s writing proved inconclusive, she thought, flexing her aching knees. If only there were numbers that her grandmother had written down to compare with the ones on Audrey’s scrap of paper.
‘Of course!’ said Clara, swinging her bag onto her shoulder. ‘I know just the place.’
Julie was still in the manor kitchen, where she seemed to spend most of her time, and Clara was pleased to see that she was looking brighter.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’ she asked, surreptitiously shaking out the last of the sand from her shoes before she got any closer.
Julie looked up from the table where she was poring over a large ledger. ‘I can’t just sit back while Geoffrey has to sell his home, so I’m going through the household expenses to see where I can make cuts.’
‘That’s great.’ Clara sat at the table and put her hand on top of her mother’s. ‘But I think it’s going to take more than cutting back on cleaning products and switching off a few lights to save this place.’
‘Perhaps, but I have to try. Geoffrey has been here for generations. Our family, too, keeping this house and its occupants going. I was hoping that you would take over as housekeeper when it’s time for me to retire.’
Was she? Clara blinked, not sure that she or Geoffrey would ever want that. But she said soothingly, ‘I know, Mum. I’m so sorry.’
‘There must be a way to save this beautiful house. I can’t bear the thought of its rooms being ripped apart and turned into apartments.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘Though, if that does happen, perhaps you and I could buy one of them, so the Netherways are still here in a sense. Or Michael could.’
‘That’s a lovely idea, Mum, but none of us could afford to buy a flat here. The manor is in a beautiful location and has such history that apartments will sell for top prices. Finding a flat we can afford to rent in Heaven’s Cove, when we lose the cottage, is going to be challenge enough.
‘But,’ she added quickly, seeing her mother’s face fall, ‘I’m sure we’ll find something and, who knows, maybe the Brellasham Manor apartments won’t cost as much as I’m anticipating.’
They would. Probably more. But there was no point in making her mother even more despondent.
Julie gave a wobbly smile. ‘Let’s hope not. Oh, you’ll never guess what happened when I took Geoffrey his poached salmon. He asked how I was and apologised for not speaking to me before the meeting this morning. He was very sorry that he hadn’t had a chance to make me aware of the situation in private. That was nice of him, wasn’t it?’
‘Mmm.’
‘It was very unexpected. I don’t think Geoffrey has ever apologised to me for anything before in his life.’
‘Gosh,’ said Clara, taking a sudden interest in the open ledger on the table. ‘That is nice.’
‘Gosh?’ Julie leaned forward. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say “gosh” before.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Did you get to him?’
‘Did I get to him?’ Clara spluttered. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Julie leaned closer and stared at her daughter for a moment before slumping back in her chair. ‘You did, didn’t you? You said something to Geoffrey. Not content with mentioning his poor, dead stepmother to him the other day, you told him I was upset that he hadn’t spoken to me first.’
‘Not really,’ said Clara, cursing her guilty face and deciding not to tell her mother that she’d also mentioned the theft accusation levelled at Violet. ‘All I did was tell him I was upset that he hadn’t spoken to you.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why? I know he acts all high and mighty sometimes but he’s just an ordinary man who needs to think more about other people’s feelings.’
‘I certainly hope you didn’t tell him that.’
Clara wrinkled her nose. ‘Not in so many words, no. I was very polite.’
Julie raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I’m still not at all happy about it. You can’t go around speaking on behalf of other people. It’s not right.’ She glanced at the floor and frowned. ‘Are you scattering sand everywhere?’
‘Nope,’ said Clara, pushing her feet under the table. ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said quickly, trying to avoid another telling off. ‘Do the numbers on this piece of paper look familiar to you?’
She pulled the paper from her bag and passed it to Julie, who scanned it quickly and then placed it on the table.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘I found it and I’m not sure what it is.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘In that carrier bag of Gran’s possessions. Do you think that might be Gran’s writing?’
Julie’s lips drew into a thin line. ‘I wish I’d thrown that bag away without telling you about it. Why does it matter if your grandmother wrote this…’ – she peered at the paper again – ‘incomprehensible string of numbers? There’s enough going on right now without harking back to the past.’
‘I know, Mum, and it might not matter at all but it’s intriguing, don’t you think? And I’d like to find out. I wondered if you still had the ledgers that Gran wrote in when she was the housekeeper here? So I can see how she wrote her numbers.’
‘You’re not going to let this drop, are you?’ Julie’s shoulders slumped. ‘You always were a stubborn child. Michael never dug his heels in like you did.’
Michael was actually stubbornness personified, but Clara said nothing and Julie finally nodded towards the store cupboard she’d retreated to a couple of hours earlier.
‘The old ledgers are in there, in the tall cupboard that’s against the back wall. Geoffrey doesn’t like us to throw any records away, though quite what he’s going to do with them when he moves, I don’t know. You’re wasting your time, Clara.’
‘Probably but I’d like to check it out.’
‘You’re so like your father,’ Julie muttered. ‘Stubborn. Determined. He could never let anything go either.’ But she sat back in her chair and shrugged.
Taking that as grudging assent, Clara went into the store room and straight to the cupboard that stood in the corner. She’d never looked inside before, and judging by the dust that rose into the air when she pulled the door open, hardly anyone ever did.
Piles of hardback ledgers were stacked onto the shelves. Dozens and dozens of them. She pulled one down and recognised her mum’s neat figures set out in the right-hand column on each page.
Electricity bill paid – ￡1,453
Food shop – ￡85
Repair to downstairs WC – ￡140
The list of expenses went on and on and included an increasingly large number of repairs to the manor. No wonder Geoffrey’s financial problems were stacking up.
Clara replaced the ledger and searched through the others until she came to one with 1957 inked onto its spine: a year when her grandmother was working here as housekeeper – the same year that Audrey had died.
She pulled out the ledger, opened it and ran her finger across pages filled in by Violet as she’d balanced the books. It was hard to imagine the elderly white-haired grandmother she’d known writing this back then, when she was hardly older than Clara was now.
Leaning closer until her nose was almost touching the paper, Clara carefully studied the figures that were neatly written in the right-hand columns. Then she closed the ledger, carefully replaced it in the cupboard and went back to her mother.
‘Well?’ asked Julie, dark shadows beneath her eyes. Today was proving too much for her.
‘The figures in one of Gran’s ledgers and on the piece of paper I showed you look the same, especially the way the sixes and nines are written. It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law but I’d say they were written by the same person. By Gran.’
‘Which means what?’
Now was a good time to confess that she’d pulled Audrey’s diary out of the bin and read it. Tell her that the book contained more of these mysterious numbers, and the scrap of paper, apparently written on by Violet, had fallen from it. But Clara couldn’t add to her mother’s stress. Not today of all days.
‘It probably means nothing at all,’ she said, pushing the paper into her pocket. ‘And now, I don’t care how much you rail against it, I’m taking you home so you can rest.’
‘I have to make dinner for Geoffrey, River and Bartie.’
‘They’re grown men who are completely capable of making themselves a meal.’
Clara put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and, when she pulled her to her feet, Julie didn’t resist. ‘Well…I do have a bit of a headache. I suppose I could have a little rest before I come back and make dinner but I’ll need to let Geoffrey know. After all, he is my employer.’
Not for much longer, thought Clara, keen to get her mother home as quickly as possible. ‘I can hear Phillip mowing the lawn. We can ask him to let Geoffrey know once he’s put the mower away.’
Fifteen minutes later, while her mother dozed on her bed, Clara sat by the stream and dangled her bare feet in the cold, rushing water.
It had been a shocking, surprising and frustrating day. The manor was going to be sold, her mother would be out of work and both of them homeless, Bartie was being surprisingly flirtatious, River was being awkwardly awkward and, though it now seemed likely that her grandmother had written the strange note, Clara was no nearer to knowing what the numbers meant. Or the numbers in Audrey’s diary, for that matter.
Leave it, Clara. She could almost hear her mother’s voice whispering in her ear.
Clara closed her eyes and turned her face towards the sun, knowing that the stubbornness she’d inherited from her father wouldn’t let her leave it alone.
The present was hard going enough but she could feel tendrils of the past wrapping around her and pulling her back to a woman’s disappearance almost seventy years ago, and to the housekeeper wrongly accused of theft.