The school didn’t have a uniform as such, but there was a list of generally acceptable guidelines, and I was quite happy to give the girls a budget and let them choose what they’d like to wear. My girls however had talked it over between themselves (very nearly a board meeting!) and made their own decisions.“Basically,” Hazel said, “the most efficient way to do it is to have a separate set of school clothes. We’re all the same size so we can borrow from each other if one of us spills something, say…”
“And I like feeling like I look smart,” Daisy added. “It makes the teachers take me seriously.”
“And it helps me concentrate. And then when I get home, I can change clothes and change personality.” That had been Fern.
“Are you okay, Madda?” Both Hazel and Fern were looking at me.“I didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all,” I said. “Just one of those nights. I don’t feel ill or anything.”
After the girls had gone to school, I started to do various things around the house and garden, but my heart wasn’t in it. In the end, I decided to leave it and go fishing down in the cove behind the house. We could always use the fish, and Hazel wanted to start experimenting with fertilisers anyway.“The more efficiently we can grow high quality food the better,” she’d said. “But I’m not paying foe artificial fertilisers…”
“Waste of money,” Daisy said.
“Organic is a better selling point,” Fern chipped in.
“…when we’ve got free stuff on our doorstep.” Hazel finished off firmly.
I felt better straight away. Big skies, wide views, the sound of the waves – I’d been feeling squashed in the house. And some of my bad dreams had been about trying to squeeze myself into or through small, small spaces. I emptied my mind and relaxed into the rhythm of rod and line. I didn’t even have to be back home for the girls’ return from school – I’d left them a note telling them where I was.
In fact, I stayed to watch the moon rise, huge and beautiful. And to do some thinking. Well, not so much thinking as feeling. I was beginning to feel like there was a box full of stuff inside me that I’d shut the lid down on – and now it was beginning to want to come out of its box. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted that lid to come off. What if I couldn’t handle the contents?
I came in to a warm and friendly scene: my girls and Fawn Annan doing their homework together. Daisy and Fawn had been close friends since primary school.“I invited Fawn to stay for dinner, because Fern says what she’s making will go round easily,” Daisy told me.
“Lovely,” I said smiling, – Fawn was so shy I always felt like she needed encouraging more than some of their other friends. “I’m just going to do some work in the garden – give me ten minutes’ notice before we’re going to eat, so I can change. And don’t forget to do the same yourselves!”
“No, Madda,” they chorused, teasing me.
“That sounds like Dad’s car. Thanks ever so much for having me, and that was a lovely salad, Fern,” Fawn said, pushing her stool back.“Can’t beat fresh ingredients!” Fern said, grinning.
“Come again soon,” Daisy said.
“Yes, do,” I said warmly. “And it was a great salad, Fern,” I added. I’d changed into my one dress in honour of having a visitor, and it had been fun.
“I’ll come out to the car with you,” Hazel said. It was dark out there!
When Fawn had left, the girls filled me in on the rest of their day, what had gone well, what was new and exciting.“And Hazel’s got a day of work experience!” Daisy announced triumphantly.
“That sounds great. Tell me more about it – no, not you, Daisy! Hazel.”
It was Daisy though, at bedtime, who came to talk to me about Fawn and what she’d said when she came round.“Did we mind her dressing like us? Was that okay? She didn’t want us to think that she was copying, but she liked the look…And it was as though she thought we might be offended. I mean, why?” Daisy’s puzzlement was genuine. I thought before I answered.
“Fawn’s quite shy, isn’t she?”
“Yes. None of the others are…”
“Well, that might be part of it. When you’re a quiet younger child in a loud confident family, it’s easy to think that you must be wrong when you think something different to the others.”
“But when I disagree with Fern or Hazel, I know I’m just as likely to be right. Or wrong,” Daisy added fairly after a moment. “But I could be either, so I might as well give it a try. My opinion, I mean.” She thought some more.
“So is that why you were so extra nice to her?”“Yes. If I just do normal nice, it’s a bit like I’m speaking to her in a whisper, and she might not hear it.”
Daisy thought about that some more. “You’re right. When it’s just the two of us, Fawn is quite – well, not noisy, but she’s got plenty to say. But when other people are around, she goes all quiet.” Another pause. “So what should I do?”
“What do you think?” An even longer pause.
“Make sure I invite her. Instead of just assuming that she knows she’s wanted, maybe? Because she might not know that.”
“That sounds good. And get the other two in on it as well? If she knows all three of you want her company, like having her around, I think she’ll relax even more. It's easy for people to assume that because you've got each other, and like each other, then you don't want or need them.”
“It’s funny. I’ve always thought of Fawn as the – the alpha female, because she’s got more money than us. But it’s not about money, is it?”
I’d been along to the phone box to do one of my intermittent chats with Mr Mellish. And I hadn’t liked what he’d had to say – but I also had to acknowledge the truth of it.“I’m not going to be around forever. We need someone else to succeed me. Unless you’re ready to come forward…”
And I wasn’t. Not yet. When the girls were of age, and there were four of us to take on everything and everyone, then yes. But not yet.
I was too restless to sit. I set off for the headland and the wider views, past the tangled and deserted garden that looked and felt like a metaphor for my life. Bright patches of colour in some places: that was the girls. Brambles waiting to snag and trap me: that was the past accidents and the unknown enemies that Mark and Jill had undoubtedly had. And rampant weeds, choking out what had once been there, should have been there still: that was what would have been my story. If Mark and Jill hadn’t been killed.
“You’re going to have to arrange a face-to-face meeting,” Mr Mellish had gone on to say. “I would trust Gregory Miles with my life. His grandfather was one of my closest friends and I’ve seen his children and grandchildren grow up into fine folk. Can you think of somewhere that you can get to, that would also be a convincing place for Greg and his family to go to? His children are seven and five years old. They love the outdoors and Greg’s teaching them to sail…”That made things a lot easier!
“I want you to feel safe.” That kindness had almost made me cry. “Greg’ll go somewhere busy later on, some big city, and then we’ll make the handover public straight after that. Then if anyone’s looking for you, they’ll assume he met you there.”
I was going to suggest my own island. Pretend that I'd come for the day... It’s a popular day trip place, nice beach, quaint old houses by the harbour – and across on the mainland, there’s a good sailing school. Coming here with his family for the day would look quite normal. And Greg needing to go and do a bit of “work” for a couple of hours – that shouldn’t be a problem, according to Mr Mellish. And Mr Mellish was right. Both about his age and about me still needing help. I did, and I would when it came to claiming the girls’ inheritance for them.
Hazel’s ruthless focus on quality was paying off. The garden was thriving and we were making a good living (by our standards, anyway!) from it. This was going to be the prize bed, with all the best plants in it, and I was busy adding to our watering system. Just as they had been whole-hearted about the lemonade stand and the cake stall, now the girls had thrown themselves into the gardening, discussing it together, reading up on it. And watching them do that had given me the beginnings of an idea for a summer holiday project for them.
Little by little, our house was beginning to look more home-like. The fact that the girls had stopped growing had helped enormously: I wasn’t having to budget for total replacements of entire wardrobes any more. And although never being able to pass anything down had worked against up when they were young, now the fact that they could share clothes was working for me. Their approach to school clothes had been sheer genius. And the funny thing was that Fawn Annan wasn’t the only one copying them either.
Never mind the girls, I needed some new clothes too. Something a bit more stylish, maybe (well, a girl can dream, can’t she?). Trouble was, I didn’t know my style any more. Last time I’d had the time or income to choose my clothes, I’d been eighteen years old, getting ready to go to university and, if I’m honest, not that clothes-minded anyway. Fern, Hazel and Daisy had a better sense of what they liked. I could at least tell Fern that there were some pretty skirts in at the moment if she wanted to spend some of her earnings on them. But I wasn’t sure if they were me. I left without buying anything.
So many things were easier now. I could go out, go to the library and arrange for the girls to meet me there. We’d been coming here ever since they could cycle that far, but I’d always been keeping an eye on them, watching out for traffic (though this back road was pretty quiet) and even when we got there, I didn’t have a huge amount of time to read for myself. And even if I went while they were at school, I needed to be back for the end of the school day.Now I didn’t. Money wasn’t as tight, and it would get even less tight as the girls got older. I’d met up with Greg Miles, showed him all my ID, signed various important bits of paper, and now it wasn’t all down to old Mr Mellish and me. There was someone else on board.
Mr Mellish had understood why I was so cagey about coming out of the woodwork. Or thought he did, anyway. “I should have – would have died as well,” I’d said to him, “if I hadn’t decided at the last minute to stop off on route: there was an art exhibition I wanted to see in one of the places we were passing through.” A safe lie – there are always art exhibitions on in places you are passing through. “As far as anyone knew, I was with Mark and Jill. Someone thought they were getting rid of all of us at once.”
I was looking at the pages of the book without really taking in what I was reading. Hazel was muttering softly to herself: whatever her homework was, it was not straightforward! In my mind I was talking to Greg Miles again as we walked back to the beach where he’d left his family playing.“Do you know if Mr Mellish has got anywhere with the documentary I told him about?”
He shook his head. “No. That was a bit of a dead end. He tracked down the director who said that the lawyer for the estate had asked for all the footage, all the data. Said they were going to release it at a later date, and he had all the right papers and so on, so he handed it over. And then the film just vanished and was never seen again. The director was a bit miffed actually, as he’d been hoping for great things from it.”
“And was that lawyer Garratt-Oldsby?”
“Got it in one. But he didn’t do anything illegal…So we asked about it, and he said that, sadly, the data had been corrupted and couldn’t be read. So now no-one would ever know what had been on it. And speculation about what Mark and Jill would have wanted to do wasn’t proof of intent…”
“I was thinking,” Daisy said, as we started work in the garden together early one morning. “You know you said we could have a share in the profits?” She paused.“Yes?” I said, encouragingly. We were at the end of the quarter, and this was the weekend for them to get their share.
“Well, shouldn’t we be saving it up for if we want to go to university?” I could hear the worry in her voice.
I put down my handfork and went over and hugged her.“It’s okay. You don’t have to worry about that. There’s money put aside for it.”
“How?” Fern wouldn’t have asked any more, but Daisy did.
“It was…It was left in trust for your higher education” And my breath caught in my throat, remembering Mark and Jill, and my eyes began to fill, knowing how much they would have loved to see their girls growing up, and growing up so well.
“Don’t cry, Madda.” Now I was the one being hugged.“I’m okay really,” I said, sniffing rather a lot. “But there will be enough to send you, all three, to university if you want to go. Is that why you were cross with Fern for wanting to spend some of her money? You were worrying about university costs?”
Daisy nodded, a bit sheepishly. “I should have known you’d have thought about it, planned for it,” she said.
The house was looking good now. We’d deliberately gone for a slightly old-fashioned look. “It suits the house,” Fern had said. Not too quaint, though – Hazel’s art work was up on the wall, done at her after-school club, and that wasn’t old-fashioned at all. They’d all joined different clubs, once it was light enough for them to be able to cycle home afterwards: Art club for Hazel, Sports club for Fern and Music club for Daisy. Who was now saving up for a second-hand guitar, her worries about university fees quite gone.I’d encouraged them to do this. “You all want to get jobs later on, and then you won’t have time for the clubs – do it now, while you can.”
It was hard to believe that our pleasant sitting room had started off like this!
Fern and Hazel had cycled down into the town early that morning to spend a little of their earnings (which had been good: thanks to the girls’ hard work and some good weather, we’d turned a nice profit). Fern had bought a cookery book, and Hazel an art one. Now they were whispering together excitedly.“Shall we call her in?”
“Oh Daisy! Daisy!” they called. I sat on the settee and watched the scene unfold.“A guitar! But how?”
“We spent your savings – well, actually, Madda lent us that amount – and we added ours to it as well,” Fern explained. “You can pay us back, but we didn’t want you to have to wait for months and months and only be able to practise at school.”
“You guys are the best! High five!”
“Thank you so much, Fern.”I looked at the three of them and thought, yes, you’re growing up well. I like who you are with each other. You are good. Our house is good now. Why am I so dissatisfied? I should be really happy. What’s wrong with me?
