The Girl in the Picture Page 6

  I went back to the search results and chose 1861 this time. But now our house was listed as unoccupied. And the same in 1871.

  ‘No one at all,’ I said. ‘Where are you all?’

  I clicked off the census website and found another that showed birth, marriage, and death certificates. But there was nothing online this time. Instead the website suggested checking parish records for the time.

  Disappointed, I sat still at my desk for a minute. Then I gave up all pretence of working on my book and instead I picked up my notebook and a pen, and headed downstairs.

  Margaret was throwing a ball to the boys in the garden. I went outside and she looked round.

  ‘All done already?’ she said. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘I just need to pop out – I can take the boys with me but if you don’t mind staying, I would get it done quicker …’

  ‘Go,’ she said, without hesitating. ‘We’re having a great time.’

  Pleased to have something to think about other than Dad and the stress of our move, I bounded down the lane towards the village church.

  I’d not been inside before, but we’d admired it on our walks to the shops. It was a gorgeous Norman church with old graves in the churchyard and a square bell tower. The heavy wooden door was open, so I ducked inside.

  Luckily for me, the vicar was there, pinning a notice to the board in the porch. He smiled at me as I walked in.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said.

  I introduced myself and explained what I was after. And the vicar – who was much younger than I expected vicars to be and who told me to call him Rich – showed me into a side office where the parish records were kept.

  ‘They’re all fascinating,’ he said. ‘I sometimes look up people at random and trace their family back to see how far they go. Lots of folk have lived here for generations.’

  He pulled out the books for me and I settled myself down at the desk.

  It wasn’t as easy as searching online, but it didn’t take me long to find the christening record of little Violet in 1837, and then, in 1842, I found the record of Violet’s mother’s death. Harriet had died of childbirth fever, the record said.

  Not a murder then, I thought. I was disappointed that the mystery wasn’t a mystery after all.

  ‘Found what you were looking for?’ said Rich, peering over my shoulder.

  ‘I did,’ I said. ‘But she wasn’t murdered. She died in childbirth.’

  ‘The baby died, too,’ Rich pointed out. He showed me the line below Harriet’s entry. ‘A little boy – look.’

  ‘Frederick Hargreaves,’ I read out loud. ‘Aged two days.’ My voice caught in my throat on the last words.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Violet was five.’

  ‘Violet?’ Rich asked.

  ‘Harriet’s daughter,’ I said. ‘She was five when Harriet died. My mum died when I was five.’ I paused. ‘And I lost my baby brother too.’

  The vicar put his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘You said you were a writer?’

  I nodded, still looking at the entry in the records.

  ‘Maybe writing this story can help you make sense of your own,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe it can,’ I said. ‘Maybe it can.’

  I thanked him and promised to come back another day to do more research. Then, with my head full of this unknown Violet who lost her mum as I’d done, and poor Harriet, I wandered home.

  I’d only been back about two minutes, and I was saying hello to the boys and Margaret, when I heard the front door open. Ben walked out into the garden, a bundle cradled in his arms. A little bubble of excitement popped in my tummy as he placed the bundle gently on the grass in front of the boys.

  ‘Careful,’ he said to Oscar who was bouncing up and down. ‘He’s just a baby.’

  ‘Mummy!’ shouted Oscar, almost roaring with excitement. ‘Mummy! It’s a puppy! Come and see!’

  I exchanged a look with Margaret.

  ‘Looks like you’re staying put then,’ she said with a smile.

  I nodded. ‘Looks like it,’ I said.

  Chapter 12

  1855

  Violet

  After I’d run away from Mr Forrest on the beach, I went into the house through the kitchen – I didn’t want to see Father asleep or awake – and went straight up to the attic. I slumped in the chair and took my hat off. I could hardly bear to look down at the bottom of the cliff, where I’d been so rude to Mr Forrest. Cutting him off, rejecting his kindness.

  I flushed again, thinking of how he’d seen right into my soul. How had he known how trapped I felt? How I was looking at him to help me escape? I knew I’d been lucky so far, that Father hadn’t married me off to the first man to show an interest. But recently he’d started talking about a man called John Wallace, who worked with him on one of his projects. He mentioned how clever he was and how good with money, and how he ran a tight ship. And I knew – I just knew – that these were qualities Father admired. Qualities he thought would make a good husband.

  So far I’d resisted all his efforts for me to meet Mr Wallace, but it wouldn’t be long, I thought in misery, before Father invited him down to Sussex, and that would be it.

  I knew I ought to speak to my father. I should tell him how I felt, that I wanted to paint and that Mr Forrest seemed to be taking my painting seriously, because for all his talk of taking my work to London, I knew that in reality I could do nothing without Father’s approval. But what would he say if I told him? I shuddered at the thought.

  On the whole, Father had been supportive of my love of art to begin with. Lots of girls like me took drawing lessons and I had been taught by a mousey-haired woman from the village who’d been very keen on technique. She’d sent me down to the beach to collect things – shells, feathers, a stick – and then made me sketch them over and over using only charcoal. Never any colour.

  Despite the repetitive nature of the task, I had loved it. Loved it more than the lessons I got from my succession of elderly governesses who droned on about kings and queens and made me recite poetry. Urgh, just remembering old Mrs Pringle who had a passion for the Reformation and who liked to share it with me, made me want to curl up into a ball and go to sleep. But when I was drawing I felt like I had become who I was supposed to be.

  When my lessons were over, I would shut myself in my bedroom and draw some more. First I sketched parts of myself – a foot or a hand. Then I would gaze at myself in the mirror and draw my face again and again, struggling to get my hair right.

  I sketched Father then too and he exclaimed in delight that I’d got his expression ‘just so’ and patted me on the head proudly. He even took me to the Royal Academy most years, laughing as I gazed in speechless wonder at the paintings there.

  But as I got older, Father’s indulgence of my art waned.

  ‘No more talk of painting, Violet,’ he would say if I tried to talk to him. ‘It’s not becoming for a young woman to be so focused on one thing. You need to extend your skills. Your arithmetic could do with half the attention you give to drawing.’

  He would tut if he saw me with paper or pencil and refuse to answer if I asked for another visit to the Royal Academy. So I took to drawing upstairs in my bedroom, moving into the lounge – which had much better light – only when Father was on one of his frequent trips away.

  The only people who knew about my work – until Edwin found me on the beach that day – were Mabel, our housekeeper, and Philips, who did everything else around the house and garden. Mabel regarded my drawings with a sense of wonder – briefly.

  ‘Oh look, you’ve got your father’s eyes perfect there,’ she said when I showed her a sketch. ‘Aren’t you clever? Now move out the way while I clean this floor.’

  Philips was more interested. He asked me questions about my work and pointed out where things weren’t quite right – and when I’d improved. I complained to him about the lack of light in my bedroom and wishe
d aloud that I had a place of my own in which to paint. Then one day, when Father was in Manchester, he’d taken me up the rickety stairs to the attic room, which had once been a home for old furniture, trunks, and linen.

  ‘Look,’ he’d declared, standing back to let me enter the room.

  I’d gasped in pleasure. He’d moved all the junk out – into the outhouse in the garden he told me later – cleaned the wooden floor, and distempered the walls. A battered old chaise stood in one corner (‘Who knew that was up here?’ Philips had said with a good-natured grin.’) and there was a bowl with a jug next to it.

  ‘I thought this would be a good spot,’ he’d said. ‘It catches the sun, see?’

  I had been overcome with gratitude and excitement. Now I could really work.

  That had been nearly two years ago. The attic room remained hidden from Father. I hadn’t lied exactly but I’d never told him about it and he’d never asked, obviously just assuming it was still a storage space. Philips continued to help me. He mended the stairs and made them safer for me to run up and down. He even bought paints and brushes for me in Brighton when I asked him to, and proved to be a useful sounding board for my musings about art.

  As time went on, Father seemed relieved that I had – as far as he knew – abandoned art. He began to talk about my potential as a wife and I ignored him most of the time. I knew nothing of men. In fact, I knew little of women. I had no friends, only a cousin who I’d lived with for a few years when I was younger. But he’d mostly ignored me, and anyway the family had moved away and I hadn’t seen them for years. With Father away so much we rarely had visitors and when we did, it was normally another man just like Father. I would dine with them in silence while they discussed business and then escape to my room when we’d finished eating. The idea of marriage was so odd to me that I disregarded it entirely.

  But now – now the vague talk of becoming a good wife had changed to specific mentions of Mr Wallace – I knew I was at a crossroads. I knew that unless I asserted myself, I would be Mrs Wallace within a year, and I wasn’t sure I could live that way. But the alternative – the very idea of telling Father how I really felt – was horrifying.

  Father and I had always rubbed along quite nicely. I knew I was loved, even if Father was strict. I missed him when he was away, which was often, but I didn’t miss my mother any more. Not really. She had died when I was so young that I could barely remember her.

  Only once recently had I wished my mother was there. I’d been looking out at the sea from the attic window, when I’d heard laughter from the front of the house, so I’d gone to the opposite side of the room and looked out of the smaller windows there.

  Outside Mabel was talking to an older woman who looked just like her, only a bit shorter and more squat, and who had to be her mother. There were two little girls playing in the lane, running up and down with their hair flying behind them – it was their laughter I had heard. A slightly older boy with fair hair like Mabel’s leaned against a tree and watched the girls – his sisters, I assumed – with an expression of disdain.

  Mabel, who was the oldest of her siblings, I knew, was talking to her mother in what seemed to be an urgent way, waving her hands about as she told her story. The older woman listened, and she took Mabel’s hands and held them still as she replied. Then she brushed a stray hair from Mabel’s forehead and tucked it up under her cap, talking all the time.

  Mabel nodded and threw her arms round her mother as I watched. Her mother extracted herself from Mabel’s embrace, kissed her on the cheek then walked off in the direction of the village. The little girls ran after her waving goodbye to Mabel gaily and, after a few seconds, the boy followed, giving Mabel a salute that she returned.

  Mabel watched them go, then she adjusted her cap and walked back into the house, smiling.

  I had stood at the window wondering what it would be like to have a mother who listened to your woes, who gave advice, and who made sure your hair was neat. Imagining having little sisters who played with you, or a younger brother to torment. I pictured our echoey house full of noise and laughter with children in all the rooms and my mother looking after them all, and I felt a pain in my heart so acute that I had to sit down on the floor for a moment to recover.

  ‘I miss my mother,’ I whispered to myself.

  I stayed on the floor for a little while, feeling lost and alone. Then I got up, brushed the dust from my skirt, and carried on with my painting.

  Chapter 13

  Present day

  Ella

  The puppy was called Dumbledore. Stan had pushed hard for his name to be Batman but when Oscar suggested Dumbledore, the puppy bounced around the lawn and we all agreed he’d chosen his own name.

  He was sitting on my lap in the kitchen a few days later when Priya came round. Mike was mending the back door, which was sticking, and we were chatting about not much as he worked.

  When the doorbell rang, Dumbledore stirred slightly in my lap. Gently I picked him up – he was still just a little bundle of fluff and too-long ears – and put him in his basket where he burrowed into the blanket and went back to sleep. Then I ran to the front door.

  For as long as I’d been writing my thrillers, I’d wanted a massive whiteboard so I could scrawl ideas for my twisty-turny plots and check everything made sense. I pictured it like the incident boards I’d seen in CID offices, only with fictional incidents recorded instead of real-life crimes. So I was absolutely delighted to see Priya in our drive wrestling the very thing I’d imagined out of the boot of her mud-splattered car.

  ‘We’re moving offices so we’re having a clear-out,’ she said. ‘Thought you could probably make use of this.’

  I was speechless with delight.

  ‘God it’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘Can I give you something for it?’

  Priya shook her head. ‘Honestly, it was heading for a skip.’

  ‘Cup of tea at least?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘Midwife,’ she said, pointing to her bump, which seemed to have got bigger in the few days since I’d last seen her.

  ‘Later?’ I asked.

  ‘Definitely,’ she said. ‘Or, come and see me at work one day this week? I want to know more about this mystery of yours so I can do some digging.’

  ‘Deal,’ I said.

  Mike helped me carry the board up to the attic, and lent me his drill so I could fix it to the wall. I put it on the far side of the room – on the wall with the extra window, or air vent. I half expected – or hoped perhaps – the drill to go right through and prove the wall was just plywood but it didn’t. The wall was definitely brick – the dust drifting down onto the floor proved that. Slightly disappointed that our mysterious window was simply for ventilation after all, I shoved rawl plugs into the holes I’d drilled, and with Mike’s help, screwed the board to the wall.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said, standing back to admire my work.

  ‘Dead straight,’ Mike agreed. ‘What are you going to use it for?’

  ‘Plotting,’ I said with a grin.

  After Mike had gone, I checked on the puppy, then I took a cup of tea, some biscuits, and feeling faintly ridiculous, Stan’s old baby monitor so I could hear if Dumbledore woke up, upstairs. My heroine, Tessa Gilroy, was a private investigator. She mostly worked on divorces but occasionally – and usually reluctantly and inadvertently – got involved in something more dangerous. I was well aware my sort of writing was enjoying its moment in the sun right now, and I knew my next book had to be good enough to appeal to readers on its own merits, rather than being just another thriller.

  I’d been collecting cuttings about crimes and mysteries, and jotting notes about stories Reg had told me for months, and started sketching out an idea involving a woman being set up for something. Probably a murder, I thought, but the alleged victim would still be alive. I thought the ‘murderer’ would contact Tessa from prison and ask for her help in proving the victim was still breathing …


  I pulled out the whiteboard pens Priya had brought with her and wrote a few ideas on the board, feeling the rusty cogs in my mind beginning to whir. But all the time I was writing, at the back of my mind, was the stuff I’d heard about our house, and the story of the Hargreaves family and poor motherless Violet.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Ben said as he peeked round the door of the study an hour or so later.

  I was hunched over my laptop trying to write a synopsis. I jumped, not expecting Ben to be home.

  ‘I’m going back to the training ground in a minute,’ he said. ‘I just had to go and pick up some equipment in Brighton, so I thought I’d pop in and say hello. You look engrossed. Is it going well?’

  ‘Not bad,’ I said, reluctant as always to discuss a book while I was still thrashing out the plot.

  ‘I thought you’d like a cup of tea,’ Ben said. He came over to my desk, put a mug down next to my coaster, and peered at the screen of my laptop.

  Pointedly I moved the mug on to the coaster and shut my screen.

  ‘Don’t look,’ I said. ‘I’m not ready for you to read it yet.’

  Ben chuckled. ‘What’s it about?’

  I looked up at him. ‘Tessa’s working in Sussex,’ I said. ‘That’s all you need to know for now.’

  Ben grinned at me. ‘So you’re writing?’

  I nodded then made a face. ‘It’s words,’ I said. ‘But I’m not convinced they’re quite right yet.’

  ‘It looks better in here,’ Ben said. ‘Like you’ve settled in.’

  ‘I have,’ I said in satisfaction, looking round at the room. ‘But I want to open that cupboard. It would be good to stash some books and stuff in there.’

  I pointed at the cupboard nestled under the eaves in the corner of the room. The one with the door painted shut.

  ‘Mike’s still downstairs,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll get him to have a look at it if you like?’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘It probably just needs a good yank.’

  It took a bit more than that, but Mike got the cupboard open in the end. He gouged out paint from the edge of the door, and wiped the edges with paint stripper and eventually, it opened.