Chapter 15
Fifteen
Gemma
‘Spice Up Your Life’, by the Spice Girls blasts out on the radio, and I can’t help but sing along.
As soon as Ethan came home on Saturday night, I threw my arms around him and we spoke for what felt like hours.
Whoever called the police saved him because he’d been about to be charged.
That makes me shudder. I still wonder if Quinn made that call. If she did, I’m beyond grateful.
I dance around the room like all my troubles have been lifted until the reality of our situation hits me again. Someone around here knows that sneaking me an article about Jasmine would bring everything back and I have no idea who they are. All I know is that they remember everything.
I hear the beeping of the vehicle as it reverses onto our drive. That’ll be the skips that Ethan is out there waiting for. Once we’ve smashed a few walls down and removed all the junk from the house, the job will seem more straightforward. We can get everything done and leave.
I walk through the main living space to the tiny dining room-cum-snug at the far end of a small corridor.
It has an original stone fireplace which I know has value so we need to preserve it.
It’s the only room in the house that looks to be perfectly finished, which is a relief.
That’s less work for us to do. It’s a shame Aunt Dorette didn’t look after the rest of the house like she did this room.
I gaze at the solid oak Welsh dresser, which I know is at least two hundred years old, and it looks like it weighs a tonne.
It used to be in the kitchen but it looks good here.
It’s odd being in this room because Aunt Dorette used to do her thinking in here and I was never allowed in.
It has no windows and is surrounded by full bookshelves and the dresser.
Aunt Dorette would have told me to stay out of here because all her important work was done in this room and me being in it would disturb her flow.
I laugh because if I could say one thing to her now, it would be, Don’t worry, Aunty, I won’t touch your room, not even in death.
I go back out to the main family room. The radio signal keeps wavering because we still don’t have Wi-Fi. Aunt Dorette never had a connection, preferring to be non-contactable except for her landline. She’d take her beaten-up old laptop to Whitby to send her emails.
I let out a long breath before checking my phone, and I have a message. My delivery is only one stop away.
Ethan enters through what was once a wall.
‘The skips are on the drive. We can start shifting the clutter out of the hall. Upstairs can wait a while as I haven’t had time to go through everything and I don’t want to tamper with your aunt’s old office.
I’ve boxed up things to sell in the shed and there’s another pile for charity. All of this stuff has to go.’
‘Great.’ I check for delivery updates and a text pops up telling me the package has been left on the doorstep. I didn’t want Ethan to see it arrive but he follows me out.
‘What’s that?’ He glances down at the cardboard box.
‘Just some chocolates.’ It’s no good. Ethan will expect us to be eating the chocolates tonight and that’s not going to happen. ‘I thought we should give them to the neighbours, Tessa and Ray.’
He shakes his head. ‘After the way they treated us?’
‘We have to live here and we didn’t do anything. I want them to see that we’re nice people and one of us has to make the first move.’ I also want to check them out. I want to look into their eyes when I’m killing them with kindness and maybe I’ll be able to work out who sent the hamper.
‘Well, why can’t they make the first move?’ He folds his arms.
‘Because…I don’t know. It feels right.’
‘We haven’t done anything.’
‘Neither have they. They received those letters. They are victims and they wrongly thought it was us.’
‘And let’s not forget how they spoke to Morgan and got me arrested.’
He’s right but I think one of us has to make a move to smooth things over, and with us being the newbies, we have to suck this one up. ‘I know. You’re right but let’s be the bigger people here.’
He blows out a breath and hugs me. ‘You’re too good, you know that?’
I laugh as he folds me into his strong arms. Cora is asleep in her car seat but I know she won’t sleep for long, so I take a moment to enjoy the warmth of Ethan’s embrace. ‘Promise me, as soon as this project is finished, we are gone.’
He pulls away and looks deep into my eyes. ‘I promise.’
I take his hand and place it on my stomach. ‘This little one is our future and our kids mean everything. We’re doing this for them.’
‘Very soon, we’ll be moving out and you can choose the house. We can have four large bedrooms, an office, a garden room and something we didn’t have before – a utility.’
He knows exactly what I’m dreaming of. ‘I love you, Ethan Houghton.’
‘I love you too.’
I enjoy him kissing me again, and I giggle because we have so much to do and us stopping isn’t getting anything done. I hold him close and inhale the scent of his soap mixed with sweat. ‘I was so scared last night.’
‘Me too.’ He kisses me again.
Three loud knocks on the front door make me jump. ‘Are you expecting anything else?’ Ethan asks.
‘No.’
We walk through the house towards the front door and Ethan opens it. Quinn is standing there with a bright shrimp-coloured coat on this time. ‘Quinn.’
‘Hi, I thought I’d pop by, see how you are today.’
I open the door to let her in out of the rain. ‘Sorry about the mess.’ I laugh. There is so much clutter, it sounds silly saying that.
She raises her brows while smiling. ‘You have your work cut out for you. I was thinking, would you like to come over in a bit, maybe have a snack and a chat. We didn’t get to talk much on Saturday night with all what was going on and it would be lovely to do that…drinks, I mean.’
Ethan nods at me. ‘I got this. I was going to hammer down another wall anyway. One down another three to go. I don’t need you. I’ve got my trusty lump hammer.’ He gives me a cheeky wink. I used to call him lump hammer because he could almost push a flimsy wall through with his bare hands.
‘In that case, yes,’ I say to Quinn. I’m wearing fingerless gloves, an old bobbly grey jumper and my corduroy dungarees, the ones I tend to work in when it’s cold.
I don’t even want to think of how I look in my thermals underneath.
Ethan always tells me he finds this attire sexy.
‘I was going to venture out anyway. I thought I’d try to be the bigger person and take our accusers a box of chocolates, so I’ll do that then pop over. ’
‘Great.’ Quinn glances around. ‘This place is amazing. It’s going to look brilliant when you’ve finished it. I’d love to see the rest of it. Your aunt’s DIY wasn’t the best.’ She walks around, nosing through the open doors.
I laugh. We both know Aunt Dorette was a trier but she never did a great job of anything on the house. I admired how she’d tackle the big jobs – slabbing, plasterboard walls, basic plumbing. Anything to save a few pennies. ‘Would you like a tour now?’
‘I’d love a tour. I’ve only ever been upstairs once.
She asked me to carry a small bookshelf with her from the apartment to the hallway.
After that she made me tea with that pretty china she kept on the dresser, in the old windowless snug room.
She had a couple of couches and a reading chair in there. That was a couple of years ago.’
‘Oh, the room with the stone fireplace.’
I’m slightly jealous that my aunt shared her very private room with Quinn and not me, though maybe it was because I was a kid at the time.
I know I still have to clear the clutter at the far end of that room.
It’s piled up with cardboard boxes full of old writing magazines and children’s books.
It saddens me that she was so good with kids and wrote books for small children, yet she chose never to have any.
Then I feel sadder that I never really introduced my kids to her or her work.
Quinn clears her throat. She’s waiting for me to lead the way.
‘In that case, follow me.’ I wipe my dusty hands on an old towel and lead her to the bottom of the huge staircase. I think I’ll give the snug a miss.
She follows me up, past the stained-glass window and up to the top of the stairs. My lower back twinges a little. It’s been twinging here and there for a while and it’s odd because I’ve never had backache before.
‘The glass is broken. The baby birds are missing.’
I shiver at what she says and I can tell she felt it too. Just using the word ‘missing’ does something to us both. We share a secret and neither of us seems to want to talk about it. Jasmine is someone’s baby bird and I wonder who misses her enough to get that article to me.
From the landing we don’t go left to the apartment – she’s already seen that.
I lead the way along the floral wallpapered hallway with five doors coming off it.
I push them open in turn. The end one was her office and I haven’t properly been in it since my teens.
Since coming here, I haven’t been able to tidy it up or go into the balcony room.
I stare at the office door. Maybe this isn’t a room I should show Quinn because of all the memories.
‘Can we go in here?’ It’s too late to answer, as Quinn has opened the door. Dust motes float in the air. She walks over to the huge oak desk and turns around to glance at the walls. ‘Your aunt was amazing.’
‘She was.’ Every one of her book covers is framed, and they fill her wall.
Her main character, Chegwin, along with his magic kangaroo, Olive, had been the big mystery solvers on the island of Silver Birches, that was until she decided to suddenly stop.
I read online that two years ago her publisher hadn’t renewed Chegwin.
I wonder if that’s when she started getting depressed and letting her house fall to ruin.
Chegwin was how she earned her small fortune and she lived for her work.
‘I don’t think I can go in the balcony room.’
‘I totally understand.’ Quinn looks away. ‘I don’t think I’d like to see it. After that day…when…’
I know Quinn found my aunt. I walk over to her and for the first time in years I hug her. It’s like we’re back in our teens. I helped her through her heartache when she lost her dad and then her grandmother. ‘We should get out of here. You should come and see it when we’ve finished.’
She nods, and I pull away. ‘I’d like that a lot. I know the neighbours are a bit weird but we all really miss Dorette.’
I take one last glance around the room where a lifetime of work is filed on her many bookshelves, along with her notebooks full of ideas. I’ll have to sort through this treasure trove soon, but not now. As I walk towards the door, I realise Quinn isn’t following me.
The sound of the clip on her handbag makes me turn around. I’m sure she took something and put it in her bag, but I can’t see if anything’s missing. The desk is still cluttered with paper and notebooks.
Quinn unravels her hand to produce a lipstick which I’m thinking she took out of her bag. She glides the pink glossy substance across her lips, then she presses them together and smiles but that smile isn’t extending to her eyes.
As she rearranges her bag over her shoulder, I recognise the look on her face. Guilt.