The Key to Flambards Read online

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m an amputee,’ she said, surprising herself by coming straight out with it. ‘But you can’t tell just by looking.’

  ‘Oh!’ The girl was gratifyingly startled, her hands on the reins holding the horse in check. ‘I didn’t mean to …’

  At that moment a voice from farther down the field called out, ‘Charlie!’

  The girl swung round in her saddle. Looking in the same direction, Grace saw Jamie jogging up the slope by the trees.

  ‘My brother,’ the girl said, a little shamefaced now. ‘We live at Marsh House. Jamie told us about meeting you yesterday. Were you coming over to see him? Sorry if I was a bit …’

  Grace only nodded, unsmiling, because she didn’t believe that the girl – Charlie – was really sorry, only embarrassed at being caught out. She was probably used to behaving like that, ordering people off her land, or her parents’ land. This was all new to Grace, meeting people who owned horses and land and behaved as if it was their right.

  For Jamie’s sake she didn’t want to quarrel with his sister. She turned her attention to the horse, not looking at Charlie. She’d never been so close to a horse before, and this one was a beauty, standing now with neck arched and eyes so big and shining that she could see her own reflection in them. It might have been a creature from legend that had dropped down from the sky.

  ‘It’s OK, he won’t bite or anything.’ Charlie was all friendliness now. ‘His name’s Sirius.’

  ‘Serious?’ Grace said, deliberately mishearing.

  ‘Sirius. It’s the name of a star. And he’s going to be a star. He’s lovely, but a bit spooky sometimes.’

  Grace didn’t know what that meant, but raised a hand to stroke the horse’s glossy neck. His coat was silky and fine, fox-coloured, gleaming with health and grooming. ‘Is he yours?’ she asked, though it didn’t seem right for such an animal to belong to anyone but himself.

  ‘Yes.’ Charlie was clearly proud, warming to Grace’s interest. ‘I’ve had him nearly a year. I’ll be competing with him soon.’

  Now Jamie was here, with his binoculars and camera round his neck as before.

  ‘What’s going on?’ He came right up to Sirius, leaning against his neck, and the horse nuzzled his shoulder.

  ‘Sirius spooked, coming up the field. So then I stopped to say hello to Grace.’

  To behave like a snotty cow, you mean.

  ‘Anyway, I’d better get going,’ Charlie said, gathering her reins. ‘I’m due over at Badstocks for a lesson. See you later. Bye, Grace.’

  The horse bounded forward, through the gap in the hedge and on up the hedgerow at a canter. Grace watched how Charlie sat in the saddle, perfectly balanced, hands light and back straight.

  ‘She has lessons?’ Grace said, watching them go, as she and Jamie stood on the edge of the cornfield.

  ‘Riding’s one of those things you never really stop learning. Like football, or playing the piano. You never know it all. Badstocks is a training centre for eventers. She goes there twice a week at the moment, getting ready for competitions in the autumn.’

  ‘Can you ride too?’

  ‘I can, but only for fun. Or transport. I’m not horse-mad like Charlie is. She hardly thinks about anything else. D’you want to go to the lake? Look for the kingfisher?’

  Grace felt something shutting down: the side of herself that could be friendly, and open, and agreeable. He was probably only being nice because his Uncle Roger had told him to.

  ‘I’d better go back now,’ she heard herself say. ‘I’m going with Mum to collect the car and more of our stuff.’

  There would have been time. But now everything was tainted with a mood she had become used to, a mood in which everything looked and tasted sour, her mind closing in on one simple, thumping injustice: it’s not fair.

  She started trudging back up the field edge.

  It was the galloping horse that had done it, and the arrogance of the girl who sat him so easily, enjoying the speed and freedom, the open spaces laid out for her pleasure. Grace thought of how it used to feel to run, to race: revelling in her own speed and energy, the breeze in her face, legs pumping, carrying her forward.

  Now … far from being able to run, she had walked too far. The distance, on uneven ground, was too great, where once she could have run with ease. She felt her armpits prickling with sweat; she felt her lopsidedness and the uncomfortable heat of her leg – what remained of her leg – encased in its sock, and the fibreglass and metal of the prosthesis. She looked down at her feet, walking: her real one that could flex and feel, and the artificial one that looked just the same, but couldn’t.

  Real Grace might as well have died that day. What was left was just a … a cripple.

  Jamie was puzzled; she saw it in his walk. He was heading the same way, towards the stile that led into the wood. At first he slowed his pace to hers, till – in a mood to resent that – she said crossly, ‘Don’t wait for me. I know you want to go faster.’

  He was being as considerate today as he’d been yesterday, but now it rankled. This was for always. People would be kind, and she’d have to smile and be grateful while seething inside, because she hadn’t chosen this.

  Jamie hesitated, then said, ‘OK. See you later,’ and set off, jogging.

  She watched him go. Always she was watching people go.

  At times like this she needed Marie-Louise, who never had to say much for Grace to feel that she understood. Marie-Louise was the only one who could get her out of her blackest moods; often by doing something daft, like making a mournful sad-clown face. Even when Grace was determined not to, she could never quite stay miserable when Marie-Louise did that.

  But Marie-Louise wasn’t here. Grace was on her own.

  There was no phone signal out in the fields, but when she got back to the flat she found a text message: Hi, hope you’re having fun exploring. Have you met anyone to be friends with? M-Lx

  No, Grace replied. Only Boy 1, geeky. Girl, snobby + rude. Boy 2, moody. That’s it so far. Gx

  Geeky was unfair to Jamie and not even what she thought, but it suited her sour mood. Waiting for a reply she flopped down on her bed and lay looking up at the sloped ceiling.

  Six weeks of this. Six weeks.

  ‘It’s like you’re following Christina, coming here from London,’ Mum had said last night.

  Even though Grace had already been thinking this, she preferred to keep her thoughts to herself, to examine in private. Now she wondered whether Christina had lain on her bed like this, in her first days, and stared at the ceiling, wondering how on earth she’d survive here and what she was supposed to do with her time. She couldn’t have known then that she’d fly the Channel in an aeroplane that looked as flimsy as a model made by a child, or fall in love three times, or gallop across fields on a headstrong horse and jump huge hedges and ditches.

  In spite of her mood, Grace quite liked this train of thought. It made the years slip away, as if she and Christina had just arrived here together, from their different times and in their different clothes, and might pass each other in the yard. It made her feel less alone, thinking of Christina.

  Irina, talking on the phone in the office, waved at Grace through the window while she stood outside with her mother, waiting for Roger to drive round from the car park. He was taking them to Chelmsford to pick up the car Mum was buying.

  ‘It’s not red, is it?’ Grace asked her mother. She didn’t think she could get into a red car, ever.

  Mum didn’t get it at first; then she did. ‘Oh, Gracey, no! It’s yellow. A nice cheerful yellow.’

  Roger’s car was dark green. As they got in and fastened their seat belts, Mum asked Roger about Marsh House – what it was like, and how long his brother had lived there.

  ‘It’s been in our family since the 1920s,’ Roger told her. ‘So we’d be sorry to part with it, though my father could only afford to keep it by dividing it in two and renting out half. My great-grandfather �
� Fergus, the one who had the terrible facial burns – set up his business there, after the war. He seems to have been pretty successful. Eventually he bought the place.’

  ‘What sort of business?’

  ‘Restoring and repairing cars – this was when cars were fairly new on the scene. He must have been quite go-ahead. Now Ian lives there with his wife Gail, and’ – Roger wasn’t going to ignore Grace in the back seat while he chatted to Mum, the way some adults would have done; he glanced round to include her in the conversation – ‘Charlie and Jamie, my niece and nephew. You’ll probably see Charlie around, on her horse – she often rides in the Flambards woods.’

  Grace didn’t let on that she and Charlie had already met.

  ‘She’s got a horse of her own?’ Mum was asking.

  ‘Yes – horse-mad, like your Russell ancestors. She gets that from her mum – Gail used to ride a lot, not so much now. There’s a stable and a paddock next to the house. With Jamie it’s wildlife, always has been. He’s set on being a wildlife photographer. He’s already very knowledgeable.’

  ‘He seems such a nice boy. Doesn’t he, Grace?’

  ‘Mmn,’ Grace mumbled, feeling bad about the way they’d parted and her text to Marie-Louise.

  ‘So – where were you living?’ Mum asked Roger. ‘Before you got the job here?’

  ‘In Colchester. I was working there and about to buy a house, but things didn’t work out.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It was complicated,’ Roger said. Grace saw his sideways look at Mum, his smile that was part grimace. Don’t ask, was what he clearly meant. For a moment Grace thought her mother was on the brink of asking more, but then she thought better of it, and was quiet.

  Driving into Chelmsford felt like re-entering the normal world, with busy traffic and streets full of shops and buses and pedestrian crossings. Roger dropped them at the car dealer’s, and Mum checked and signed paperwork and produced her bank card, and the little yellow Fiat was theirs.

  Mum looked pleased with herself as they drove away. ‘Isn’t it lovely? I feel attached to it already. Home, next. Look, we’ve got satnav!’

  A fast country road, a brief stretch on the motorway, and back into north London slowness and congestion; then home to Rignell Road, though it no longer seemed like home. Planted in the pocket-handkerchief garden that fronted the house was an estate agent’s board saying SALE AGREED. Everything should be completed in about a month, Mum said.

  ‘But our stuff’s still here. What’ll we do with it all?’ Grace asked.

  ‘There’s still some of your dad’s things here, and he’ll take his share of the furniture. I hope we’ll have found a flat by then. If there’s more than we can fit in, we’ll have to put the rest into storage.’

  It all sounded so uncertain. For now, they packed more clothes and belongings into holdalls and bin bags, and stowed them in the car. What to take, what to leave behind? Grace chose some of her books, another pair of jeans, two sweaters and five tops, and then – ridiculously, she knew – a fluffy black cat toy Dad had bought for her on a work trip a few years ago.

  Black cat for luck.

  In the slow hospital time after the accident, Grace had thought that maybe – maybe – the shock to them all would be enough to bring her parents back together. Not that she’d have willingly made such a bargain, but still, something might have been salvaged from the wreckage. Now she knew how naive that hope had been – things had gone too far, Dad was already living with Chloe. They had their own lives that couldn’t be swerved off course even by her own disaster. Plans had been made, divorce proceedings already started, before It happened. Mum-and-Dad were finished, and it was time she got used to it.

  Mum locked up and they drove away. Quite possibly, Grace thought, she’d never see 14 Rignell Road again.

  ‘Shopping, next,’ Mum said. They took a longer route than necessary to the supermarket, through side streets, to avoid the fateful junction.

  Flambards welcomed them back. There it was, calm and unchanging, overlooking its lawn and garden and fields, used to people coming and going. Mum drove the car along the avenue of chestnut trees that flanked the drive, and parked behind the stableyard. When Grace looked back, the yellow Fiat was a splash of sunshine yellow against the duller colours of the other cars parked there.

  She and her mother lugged their bags up to the Hayloft. Taking the stuffed black cat into her bedroom, Grace was surprised to find a real cat sprawled on her bed, yawning widely and throwing her a casual glance as if it had every right to be there. It was the tabby cat she’d seen yesterday; it must have come in through the open window.

  Later, over at the house for supper, she told Roger.

  ‘Who does it belong to?’

  ‘Oh, that’s Cat Siggy. He turned up here a couple of months ago, and I started feeding him and he stayed around. Now he’s decided to live here.’

  ‘Siggy?’

  ‘Yes. Short for Siegfried.’

  ‘Why did you call him that?’

  ‘Oh …’ Roger looked a little embarrassed. ‘I named him after Siegfried Sassoon. See, I told you I was obsessed by the First World War. Do you know about him? He wrote some of the best-known poems about the war. Criticizing it, criticizing the waste of lives.’

  ‘But he sounds German? Was he on the other side?’

  ‘No – you’d think so from his name, but he was English. He was given a medal for bravery, but he chucked it away in disgust. I’ve got his books packed up somewhere.’

  When Grace went back later, Cat Siggy was gone, leaving only the imprint of his body on her duvet cover. She hoped he’d come back. It had made the flat feel like a home, having a cat visitor.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Plum

  Next morning Grace came face to face with Marcus.

  It was the dog she saw first. The black-and-white collie loped up to her, smiley-faced, wagging not just its tail, but its whole back end.

  ‘Hello! What’s your name?’

  She bent to stroke it, and when she straightened Marcus was standing a few yards away, probably thinking she was idiotic to talk to a dog like that, as if actually expecting an answer. The dog ran to him and sat at his feet, wriggling with pleasure.

  ‘Flash,’ he said. ‘He’s called Flash.’

  So close, she saw a younger version of the stroppy van man, good looking in a careless way. I bet lots of girls fancy him, she thought. His hair was very dark and so were his eyes, under thick brows; he had a guarded expression and she recalled his anger the other day, wondering if he was often moody, and what made him like that. He just stood looking at her, one hand resting on the dog’s head. It seemed he wasn’t going to say any more, so she said, ‘I’m Grace.’

  ‘I know. I’m Marcus.’

  ‘Is he yours?’

  He nodded, and even smiled – but at the dog, not at her. ‘He’s a working collie. I’m training him. Come on, then,’ he said to Flash. ‘Let’s get going.’ He turned away, and as the dog bounded ahead he threw an abrupt, ‘See you,’ over his shoulder.

  After yesterday’s stop for supermarket shopping, there was food in the Hayloft’s fridge and cupboards. Grace and her mother made sandwiches for lunch, taking them round to the garden terrace as it was too lovely a day to sit indoors. They sat on a bench, Grace throwing breadcrumbs to a group of sparrows who kept close watch. Sally the gardener had been busy; the lawn was newly mown, the air smelling of cut grass and roses. The doors to the dining room were open, but no one was eating lunch there today. The landscape painters had left after breakfast, loading luggage into cars or lingering by the porch to wait for taxis, hugging each other and exclaiming about how marvellous it had been. Without them it was quiet, the only sound the cheeping of sparrows and the occasional baaing of a sheep. A new group would arrive this afternoon.

  Mum seemed preoccupied, not saying much. When Grace asked what she was doing today she answered, ‘Planning, with Roger.’ Grace noticed the downward turn of
her mouth. She hadn’t said anything about yesterday’s meeting, and Grace assumed it was just dull business stuff.

  ‘Isn’t it going well?’

  Mum sighed. ‘It’s just … Flambards isn’t making money. Not enough, anyway.’

  ‘But you already knew that. Isn’t that why you’re here?’

  ‘Yes – but it’s worse than I thought. The Trustees run the place, but one of them’s the main sponsor, Mr Naylor. If he decides to pull out, it’s all over. He was here this morning. I didn’t like him much, even if it’s thanks to him that the Flambards Trust even exists. He owns a local building company, and he’s invested a lot – hundreds of thousands of pounds – to modernize Flambards, convert the rooms, put in bathrooms, all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Can’t they get another sponsor?’

  ‘It’s not that easy. And Mr Naylor expects a return on his money, he made that clear. He and the Trustees have agreed to give it three years, but we’re already well into the second, and things haven’t really taken off. If we can’t get more guests here, more take-up for the courses, he’ll call it a day.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Mum shrugged. ‘Flambards would have to be sold. Someone might take it on as a hotel, or turn it into a luxury health club.’

  ‘No! That wouldn’t be right!’ Grace said fiercely. What about Christina? It would be as if she’d never existed.

  ‘It’s not a question of what’s right, Gracey. Sadly. It’s a question of what brings money in.’

  They both gazed at the ground for a few moments, where two sparrows squabbled over a piece of crust.

  ‘But Flambards doesn’t belong to this Naylor man, does it?’ Grace asked.

  ‘No, it belongs to the Trust. The Trustees committee votes on any decisions. Roger’s one of them. He and the others don’t want it to fail, or to be sold – Roger especially. He’s dead set on saving it. But they can’t carry on without Mr Naylor. They might have to agree to the halfway measure he’s suggested – selling off some of the land for building. That means he’d buy it, for his company. That would raise enough to keep going.’