The Turn Of The Page. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 I know, the garden needs dealing with. And it will be, in a moment. But I’m seizing time to read the paper…and it’s really nice taking ten minutes for myself. I’ve stopped feeling guilty about the, taking time for myself. I’ve realised that I need it, like I need food and sleep. And it does help that the girls are older – a lot older, from their point of view, I guess: they’re all walking, talking, potty-trained and they have each other for company. They’re not lonely.
Me, in one way I’m only a bit older. If I’d gone to university, as we’d been planning I should do, I wouldn’t even have finished my first year yet. In another way – I feel like I’ve aged a hundred years. Whilst simultaneously feeling totally out of my depth. I’m going to write to old Mr Mellish this week. I don’t know why I’ve been putting it off, feeling reluctant to do so.
I always read the business pages. After all, this is what I would have been studying. In fact, I usually turn there first and today was no exception. North Chocolates has never been floated, so I can’t check their share prices, but I do look for any articles about the firm. So far there haven’t been any that I’ve seen…
Oh. Today was bucking that trend.
And it looked like I’d missed quite a bit when I wasn’t getting a paper, as the writer was doing a recap of previous articles from those dates. I could check them out on line in full – if I’d had a line and a signal and a working phone or computer.
It was worrying reading.
“…Now that probate has been granted” (this was from a previous article) “Mr Garratt-Oldsby, the executor, is proposing to sell North Chocolates to a conglomerate, arguing that this is the best way to provide job security…” Jill would have hated that!
Another previous article. “In a surprise twist in the drama of North Chocolates, another player has entered the stage. Most of our readers will remember the tragedy that overtook the family…” This was never a financial page article originally! The writing was far too emotive. “Mr Mellish, who has equal powers and, most importantly, power of veto, says that for all he knows the seventh shadowy player in this story may not have perished. No proof of death has been presented, owing to the impossibility of recovering the wrecked vehicle…Amanda Woodridge, their adopted daughter, has executive powers invested in her as well, and he considers it his sacred duty to preserve …”
I bet old Mr Mellish never said “sacred duty.” Not his style at all.
And then the current stuff. “This weekend’s worrying events (see full article on page 3)…” I turned to page 3, a feeling of dread washing over me.
“Solicitor’s lucky escape…” I breathed again.
But it still wasn’t good news. Mr Mellish’s office had been burgled. And then burnt down. And his home had been burnt down too: both at the same time and in the middle of the night.
What had saved him was the fact the he hadn’t been there. He’d been hiking in the woods as usual, staying in his cabin hidden away up in the hills.
Garrett-Oldsby has expressed his sympathy, saying that it was probably someone local who had a grudge against Mr Mellish. I just thought: this is all about the firm. Still. Thank goodness I hadn’t written to him! My letter would have been there, and whoever was behind this would have known that I was still alive and so were the girls. Thank goodness I’d wanted to wait until I’d cleaned and tidied the little house that had sheltered us. I was tending the garden almost mechanically, thinking about what I’d just read. The danger to the girls was still real. The danger to me too. It wasn’t safe yet to claim their inheritance. And mine as well, from the sound of it. I was going to have to rethink everything. It felt like going back to square one, back to the living from day-to-day, unable to plan for any future. But as I started to deal with the weeds that were threatening one of my seedlings, I thought again. I would be planning for a different future. A future on this island for the time being. But I also needed to bring the girls up to be ready to take up their inheritance.
Whilst simultaneously keeping them safe. And keeping them in ignorance of it. Hmmm… Something I’d learnt in school came to my mind a couple of weeks later while I was fishing. Monasteries used to work like this! A stewpond for the fish (eels featured a lot, apparently) vegetable and herb gardens…When the girls got older, they could help me with all of this. And I was pretty sure that if things got desperate, I could ask Mr Miller and his wife for help. I wasn’t alone.
I needed to work out how to make a business of my vegetable patch. I had an outlet, so what I needed to do was ramp up production. Was there any part of it that I could mechanise to speed things up? I’d have to think about that. Right. That’s the girls safely penned in with loads of toys and books to keep them happy. Those dungarees aren’t going to fit beyond this year – I’ve got the shoulder straps extended as far as they’ll go! And just about everything else they own is also too small. Another problem… This is everything cleared out of the house (memo to self: get those pans properly cleaned up). And this is me, ready to get the walls and ceiling scrubbed down and cleaned up. I was planning to do this before we left: now that we’re staying, it’s even more important. And this is afterwards! Not bad, huh? I just need to get those pans cleaned up, and this will look great. Let’s get this lot on the line, and start another day. I’ve been planning…now all I need is to earn enough money to start making my plans a reality. What could I do to make the gardening more efficient? Fishing is so my thinking time. We scraped by last year, with some help over the winter, but this year I’ve started much earlier, and I’m planning to grow a lot more. However, there are still only so many hours in the day. I reckon if I can cut the time I spend watering, that’ll help. I’m hoping that there’ll be something, some ideas in the DIY books Jill had sent up for Mark and her to learn from.
Time’s a resource too, isn’t it? Not one that I can write down on my balance sheet, but it’s limited, and I have to think how I use it. Someone has dropped off a pair of gnomes. Go figure! The children love them – they keep moving them round the garden, given half a chance. When I have time to keep and eye on them, I let the three of them out of the pens! They’re pretty good at understanding No now, and they do stay away from the pond, but I can’t do anything else at the same time. So they don't get much chance to be totally free-range. It has taken weeks to earn enough for the parts for this, but I’ve finally got there. And it will make life a lot easier. Once I get it up and running, that is… It’s pretty, isn’t it? “Take a couple of nice dresses with you,” Jill had said. “And we’ll go out all three of us one evening for a nice meal, and we’ll do an afternoon tea, you and I together. I want to say thank you for all you’ve done for us, all you’ve been to us, before you go off to university.”
This was going to be for the evening meal. I couldn’t resist putting it on one last time. But actually, I’m about to unpick it and use the fabric to make something for the girls. They have practically nothing to wear! And I’m going to need the money I’m saving up for winter clothes. I’ve got a detailed financial plan now… And there we are. Three little girls in cute matching dresses. I made the pattern out of the ever-useful newspaper. I’m glad they’re all still small – hand-sewing is not quick, and I couldn’t just tack the dresses together. I would never have believed that my school sewing lessons would have come in useful for something though! And thank goodness for beach sandals – their toes can poke out of the ends as much as they need to. This folder, and the paper in it – they were going to be for me to make notes on those textbooks. Ready for my course starting. Now I’m making notes on our finances, on my business plan, counting every last penny. Twice. And using this year’s figures to forecast for next year, working out what I can put aside for when they outgrow the cots (we are going to have four beds!). And clothes and shoes: they’re a constant need.
Mr Miller said that there is a place where I can sell all their stuff that they’ve finished with later on – the potty, the cots, the toys, the books. I’d love to keep the books as a memento of Mark and Jill, but that’s not going to be possible. We’ll need every penny.
We’ll need every penny, but this is going to work. We can – just – do this.

The Turn Of The Page. Chapter 2

Chapter 2. I’d managed to fit in quite a fair bit of dozing, one way and another. Daisy was now crashed out in the cot and Hazel and Fern were fed, clean, and playing happily: I could hear them babbling away. And it hadn’t rained this morning: I could grab ten minutes to sit down and read the paper. And Mark and Jill would definitely arrive today, and I could move out to the Island Inn with its spa and quiet bedrooms and delicious food that I didn’t have to cook for myself in between managing three small children. Bliss! I actually felt the colour leave my face as I unfolded the paper and saw the headlines.
“Crash Was No Accident!”
“North Chocolates Family Forced Off Road To Plunge To Death!”
I read the words but my mind couldn’t actually believe that they were true. I read the article four times before it even made sense to me.
They should have been here when I was expecting them. They would have been here: early. The car had gone off the road along the cliffs on the mainland side. The assumption had been that it was driver error, that Mark or Jill had dozed off at the wheel.
“We had done a very full day’s business,” Mr Garratt-Oldsby, their solicitor had said.
No-one had seen it happen – or at any rate no-one had come forwards. And then a bird photographer had gone to retrieve his camera that he’d had set up to film the dawn flights.
“I was just hoping for some good shots, but the camera had slipped a bit – some animal must have knocked it – so it was filming the road as well as the sky. I nearly didn’t even bother looking at it, but you never know what you might have caught, so I checked it anyway.” What he had caught was Mark and Jill’s car being forced off the road and over the edge by a small – and stolen – lorry. Which had now been found, burnt out in a disused quarry, so no clues there. There was a map, showing just where the accident had happened, and an explanation about local currents and depth and undertow – it all came down to “What goes off there is never seen again.”
Never seen again.
Mark and Jill were never going to be seen again?
I looked out at the bleak gray sea and couldn’t believe that they were somewhere under there, lost forever. I unfolded the paper with numb fingers that fumbled at the pages and carried on reading inside. Pictures and biographies of both of them. That map again and a more detailed explanation of why it was highly unlikely that their bodies would ever be recovered. “Too dangerous for even the most experienced of divers…” A financial article about North Chocolates’ market share, how it had grown and some decently restrained speculation about its future. And then something that made my heart jerk inside my ribs.
“The tragedy is even greater when we realise that these callous thugs also murdered three innocent children…” I leapt to my feet, the blood rushing back into my face as quickly as it had left it, and raced into the house. The children were just where I’d left them – Daisy asleep in her cot and Fern and Hazel each looking at a book. Of course they were safe.
Everyone, though, thought they were dead. But what if someone found out that they were alive? Their parents had been killed…
A phrase from Jill’s letter (her last message to me. Ever.) came to my mind. “I’m so glad the girls are safe with you…”
“I’ll keep them safe, I promise,” I said softly. “If I can. I will do all that is possible…”
How I was going to do it, I had no idea. I had a little money, but not much. And I couldn’t apply for any other funds. And I didn’t know who I could trust either. We were going to need this garden. By the next day, my brain was beginning to work, albeit a bit sluggishly. I’d better extend it. Maybe I could sell some produce, later, as well as store it for the winter. Time to get to work… It was raining. The place was grubby. The children cried for Mamma and Dadda some of the time. But they were fed and healthy: I was keeping their bodies together. And I could usually soothe them, eventually. They were used to me being around, looking after them, playing with them, from their birth. They’d heard my voice while they were still in the womb.
There was no-one to soothe me. I fell asleep with tears on my face, time after time and woke with stiff cheeks and sticky eyes. And summer moved towards autumn. Daisy and I mostly spent time together at night – and not much time either, because I needed some sleep too. I’d got them into a sleeping rhythm that more or less worked without some poor child crashed out on the floor. Daisy sharing my bed had been a disaster that had involved falling out of bed (both of us) down the side of the bed against the wall (Daisy) and getting no sleep at all (me). The disastrous day that had followed that night had convinced me that I needed sleep if I was going to be able to take care of the children. And now it’s autumn and moving towards winter. And we’re still all in one piece, though my clothes are loose on me. But the children are growing nicely. I’ve got them all potty trained (and just in time!), and they don’t ask for Mark or Jill as often. They’ve taken to calling me Madda – sounds like Mamma and Dadda rolled into one, which is quite apt. I’ll keep it as a name.
Plus – it doesn’t sound like Amanda. I can say it’s short for Madeleine, which was my great-great aunt’s name.
Mark and Jill’s story faded off the front page after a few days. I kept reading, in the hope that it would turn out not to be true, that they would have had a miraculous escape, fallen onto a ledge or something and been rescued eventually. No. But something that did come up was an article saying that “their adopted daughter, Amanda, was presumably also in the car as she has not been seen or heard of since the accident either.”
I’m supposed to be dead too. So Madeleine Woodridge’s descendent is a safer person to be. Another midnight chat with Daisy, before I sleep for a bit. Bless her, she’s really good at entertaining herself. I need to replace the other door before winter, but I think I can manage that. I have a market for my surplus fruit and veg – organised via the paper delivery. Once a week, this old guy – Mr Miller – turns up in a van and collects what I have and pays me for it. I think we exchange a sentence at a time.
“One of Madeleine Woodridge’s tribe are you?”
“I ‘member her quite well.”
“You’ve got a look of her.”
“She was one determined lady.”
“She’d be pleased to see you’re keeping the place up.”
We live week to week. I can’t think ahead, can’t plan ahead. Sometimes we just live day to day. This is too hard! I should have been at university by now. Enjoying myself. Learning. Building for my future. And instead…this. Some cleaning has to happen, I suppose. And today is surprisingly mild: one of those fluke late-autumn days with a soft warm breeze. I can open all the doors to dry everything off. And we won’t have another day like this before spring, so I better make a start. And let’s see if I can get the filth off this as well. And wash that disgusting curtain too. That was the last mild day! It will be winter in earnest soon. And I don’t know what the girls will wear next winter, because these snowsuits (which we’d brought with us for chilly days on the beach) are getting a bit tight already. I hope they last this winter. But the girls have been splendidly healthy – no colds or coughs because there’s no-one to catch them from. Makes a change from the endless round of runny noses they used to bring home from playgroup and nursery. They’re eating home-grown food and fresh-caught fish (that pond has its uses!) and getting loads of fresh air. I think Mark and Jill would be happy with how they’re growing. Snow! But we have new doors, so we’re cosy enough. And seeing as I can’t work on the garden, I have more time to spend with my little sisters. Which is nice. And I also have more energy too, which is also nice. The downside is that I also have more time to spend with my own thoughts.
This is so hard. I have been living day-to-day, just surviving. I don’t know who I can turn to. I don’t know who I can trust. If I write to old Mr Mellish, and tell him that the girls are still alive, will that put their lives in danger again? Can I afford to take that risk?
And I miss Jill and Mark so much… I cried yesterday for hours. And it wasn’t missing Jill and Mark that undid me – it was a simple act of kindness.
Old Mr Miller turned up in his van, which was totally unexpected, as I’ve nothing to sell. Then he handed me a gift, which was even more unexpected. And then spoke three whole sentences at one go!
“Old Madeleine Woodridge, she did us some favours in her time.” A pause.
“Figured maybe you could use this food.” Another pause.
“My wife knitted these for your little ones, out of some odds and ends of wool she had left over.”
I was desperately trying not to cry there and then. I figured it would have him high-tailing it for the hills.
“Thank you so much.” I couldn’t get any more words out without dissolving into tears.
He went red, and with an obvious effort got a fourth sentence out.
“Jus bring your little ones up to help others if they get the chance.” The he did practically flee to his van!
And I went inside and cried and cried and cried. I don’t think I’d realised how lonely I’d been feeling. Because I’m never alone…but that kindness, that someone-else-has-thought-about-me moment undid me completely. I hadn’t realised how desperately worried I’d been either, until I felt the burden lift, with that simple gift of food supplies. We’d make it through the winter now. Other small kindnesses have come our way. The newspaper subscription ran out a while ago – Mark and Jill had signed up for the quarter only – and I had no way of knowing what was going on for a while. But then the paper girl started dropping one off from time to time. When I eventually caught her, I told her I couldn’t afford a paper again.
“It’s okay. It’s a spare from yesterday. My boss said to drop it off – he used to do that for old Mrs Woodridge apparently. Better going to you than going to waste.” She smiled cheerfully at me and cycled off.
So now from time to time I can catch up with what’s going on in the world, I know what day it is, and it also comes in very useful for toilet paper too! Nothing goes to waste here. A farmer came by and dropped off a load of logs. “My grandma and your great-grandma was good friends,” he said gruffly. “She’d have been real mad at me if I didn’t look after Madeleine’s great-granddaughter.”
I cried again after he’d gone. It’s spring! We made it through the winter and I am replanting the garden. Some of these I started off indoors: they’ll grow fast. I chitted some of the potatoes, and hopefully we’ll have a nice crop of those too. Next stop this afternoon is the pond, to see if the fish in it survived the winter. I think I’ll throw this one back and let it grow some more! But if the tiny ones made it through the winter, then the bigger ones will have survived as well.
Fishing’s nice for having time to think: sort of calm and meditative. What I’m thinking about is getting in touch with old Mr Mellish. Jill said she’d given him some fairly sweeping powers, though she didn’t say what they were. But she did trust him. And that firm belongs to the girls now: it’s their inheritance. I’d like to get this place clean and tidy though before we leave. It’s sheltered us well these past few months, kept us safe. This old house deserves a bit of love and care in return. And these walls need a good scrub down! As soon as we’ve got a good drying day, I’ll take everything outside and do just that.
And then I’ll get in touch with Mr Mellish, and we’ll see about getting back to our previous lives. Though we’ll come back to the island, often. Our roots are here, and we’ve been welcomed because of that.