First published by Methuen Children’s Books Ltd in 1991

First published in paperback by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2000 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1991

Illustrations by Paul Hess 2000

All rights reserved.

Diana Wynne Jones and Paul Hess assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780006755289

Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780007440191

Version: 2019-06-25

This book is for Elly

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Books by Diana Wynne Jones

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

We have had Aunt Maria ever since Dad died. If that sounds as if we have the plague, that is what I mean. Chris says it is more like that card game, where the one who wins the Queen of Spades loses the game. Black Maria, it is called. Maybe he is right.

That is the first thing I wrote in the locked journal Dad gave me that awful Christmas, but I think it needs an explanation, so I will squeeze some in. Dad left early in December and took the car. He rang up suddenly from France, saying he had gone away with a lady called Verena Bland and wouldn’t be coming back.

“Verena Bland!” Mum said. “What an awful name!” But she said it in a way which meant that wasn’t the only awful thing. Chris doesn’t get on with Dad. He said, “Good riddance!” and then got very annoyed with me because all I seemed to be able to think of was that Dad had gone off with the story I was writing hidden in our car in the space on top of the radio. I mean I was upset about Dad, but that was the way it took me. At that time I thought the story was going to be a masterpiece and I wanted it back.

Of course Dad had to come back. That was rather typical. He had left a whole lot of stuff he needed. He came and fetched it at Christmas. I think Verena Bland had disappeared by then, because he came with a necklace for Mum and a new calculator for Chris. And he gave me this lovely fat notebook that locks with a little key. I was so pleased about it that I forgot to ask for my story from the car, and then I forgot it completely because Mum and Dad had a whole series of hard, snarling rows and Mum ended up saying she wanted a divorce. I still can’t get over it being Mum who did! Nor could Dad, I think. He got very angry and stormed out of the house and into our car and drove away without all the stuff he had come to fetch. But my story went with him.

He must have driven off to see Aunt Maria in Cranbury-on-Sea. He was always very dutiful about Aunt Maria, even though she is only his aunt by marriage. But he never got there, because the car skidded on some ice going over Cranbury Head and went over the cliff into the sea. The tide was up, so he could have been all right even so. But there was something wrong with the door on the driver’s side. It had been like that for six months and you had to crawl in through the other door. The police think the passenger door burst open and the sea came in and swept him away while he was stunned. The seatbelt was undone, but he may have forgotten to fasten it. He often did forget. Anyway, they still haven’t found him.

Inquest adjourned. That is the next thing I wrote. Mum doesn’t know if she’s a widow or a divorcee or a married lady. Chris says “Widow”. He feels bad about saying “Good riddance!” the way he did before, and he got very annoyed with me when I said Dad could have been picked up by a submarine that didn’t speak English or swum to France or something. “There goes Mig with her happy endings again,” Chris said. But I don’t care. I like happy endings. And I asked Chris why something should be truer just because it’s unhappy. He couldn’t answer.

Mum had gone all guilty and agonising. She sent Neil Holstrom packing, and I thought Neil was going to be her boyfriend. Actually, even when I wrote that I wasn’t sure Mum liked Neil Holstrom, but I wanted to be fair. Neil reminded me of an earwig. All Mum did was buy Neil’s nasty little car off him, which was hard on Neil, even though I was glad to see the back of him. But it was true about Mum going all guilty. Chris and I went rather strange too – sort of nervy and soggy at the same time – and couldn’t settle down to do anything. There are huge gaps in the notebook when I couldn’t be bothered to write things in it.

Mum’s worst guilt was about Aunt Maria. She said it was her fault Dad had gone driving off on icy roads to see Aunt Maria. Aunt Maria took to making Lavinia, the lady who looks after her, ring up twice a day to make sure we were all right. Mum said Aunt Maria had had quite as much of a shock as we had, and we were to be nice to her. So we were all far too nice to Aunt Maria. And suddenly we had gone too far to start being nasty. Aunt Maria kept ringing up. If we weren’t in, or if it was only Chris at home and he didn’t answer the phone, Aunt Maria telephoned all our friends, even Neil Holstrom, and anyone else she could get hold of, and told them that we’d disappeared now and she was ill with worry. She rang our doctor and our dentist and found out how to ring Mum’s boss when he was at home. It got so embarrassing that we had to make sure one of us was always in the house from four o’clock onwards to answer the phone.

It was usually me who answered. Mum worked late a lot around then, so that she could get off work and spend Easter with us. The next thing in my notebook is about Aunt Maria phoning.

Chris has a real instinct for when it’s going to be Aunt Maria. He says the phone rings in a special, gently persistent way, with a clang of steel under the gentleness. He gathers up his books the moment it starts and makes for the door, shouting, “You answer it, Mig. I’m working.”

Even if Chris isn’t there to warn me, I know it’s going to be Aunt Maria because the first person I hear is the Operator, sounding annoyed and harassed. Aunt Maria always grandly forgets that you can look up numbers and then dial them. She makes Lavinia go through the Operator every time. Lavinia never speaks. You just hear Aunt Maria’s voice distantly shouting, “Have you got through, Lavinia?” and then a clatter as Aunt Maria seizes the phone. “Is that you, Naomi dear?” she says urgently. “Where’s Chris?”

I never learn. I always hold the phone too near my ear. She knows London is a long way away from Cranbury, so she shouts. And you have to shout back or she yells that you are muttering. “This is Mig, Auntie,” I shout back. “I prefer to be called Mig.” I say that every time, but Aunt Maria never will call me anything but Naomi, because I was called Naomi Margaret after her daughter that died. Then I transfer the receiver to my other ear and rub the first one. I know that she’s shouting to know where Chris is again. “Chris is working!” I shriek. “Maths!”

She respects that. Chris has somehow managed to fix it in her mind that he is a mathematical genius and His Work Is Sacred. I wish I knew how he did. I would like to fix it in her mind that I am going to be a Great Writer and my time is precious, but she seems to think only boys have the right to have ambitions.

Aunt Maria’s voice takes on a boomingly reproachful note. “I’m very worried about Chris,” she says, as if that is my fault. “I don’t think he gets enough fresh air.”

That starts the tricky bit. I have to convince her that Chris gets plenty of fresh air without telling her how he gets it. If I say he goes to see his friends, then either she says Chris is neglecting his work or she rings his friends to check. I nearly died the time she rang Andy. I want Andy to think well of me. But if I leave it too vague, Aunt Maria becomes convinced that Chris is in Bad Company. She will ring Chris’s form master then. I nearly died when she did that too. Mr Norris asked me about Aunt Maria every time he passed me in the corridor. She obviously scarred his soul.

But I’ve learnt how to do it now. Chris will be surprised to know that he plays tennis every day with a friend who isn’t on the phone. Then I have to do the same for Mum. Mum plays tennis, too, with the phoneless friend’s mum – who is a widow, in case Aunt Maria gets worried about that. Then we get on to me. For some reason, I am not supposed to do anything, even get fresh air. Aunt Maria says, “And what a good little girl you are, Naomi, working away, keeping house for your mother!”

I agree with this, for the sake of peace, though it always makes me want to say, “Well, really, I’m just off to burn the church down on my way to the nudist colony.”

After that she goes on to her latest theories about what really happened to Dad, and then to how upset she is. All I can do there is shout a soothing “Ye-es!” every so often. That part makes me feel awful. But I have to keep listening, because that part always leads to us being the only family she’s got now, and then, “So when are you all coming to Cranbury to visit me?”

This is where I get truly artful. Aunt Maria gets enticing. She says, “Chris can have the sofa, and if Lavinia moves down to the little room, you and Betty can share Lavinia’s room.”

“How kind!” I say. “But I’m afraid Chris has this exam.” You wouldn’t believe how often Chris has exams. Chris doesn’t mind. He gives me suggestions. One thing Chris and I were really determined on was that we were not ever going to visit Aunt Maria in Cranbury-on-Sea. We both have dreadful memories of going there as small children.

Now of course we had other reasons. Would you want to go and stay in the place your father didn’t quite get to before he died? No. So I put Aunt Maria off. I did it beautifully. I kept it all politely vague for months, and we were looking forward to the Easter holidays, when Mum answered the phone one evening I was out and undid all my good work in seconds. I got back to find she had agreed for us to spend Easter with Aunt Maria.

Chris and I were furious. I said I thought it was very unfeeling of Aunt Maria to make us go. Chris said, “There’s no reason to have anything to do with her, Mum. She was only Dad’s aunt by marriage. She’s got no claim.”

But Mum’s guilt was working overtime. She said, “It would be horrible not to go if she wants us. She’s a poor lonely old lady. Dad meant a lot to her. It will make her terribly happy to have us there. We’re going. It would be really selfish not to.”

So here we all are at Aunt Maria’s house in Cranbury-on-Sea. We only got here this evening and I’m so depressed already that I decided to write it all down. Mum said that if I am going to write rude things about Aunt Maria, I’ll have to make sure she can’t read it. So I sighed heavily and decided to use my hardback notebook with the lock on it. I was going to use most of it for my league table of King Arthur’s knights and pop groups, because I didn’t want Chris to find those and jeer, but I’d rather have Chris on to me than Aunt Maria any day. This will be under lock and key when I’ve written it down.

Unfortunately, Mum drove us down in Neil’s car. It’s small and slow, with so little space for people that Chris’s guitar was digging into me all the way; and there are horrible crunching noises from the suspension when you drive with luggage in. Chris and I wanted to go by train. That way we wouldn’t have to go on the road over Cranbury Head. But Mum ignored our feelings and put on her brave and merry manner which annoys Chris so much, and off we drove. Chris and I tried not to look at the pale new section of fence on the clifftop, and I think Mum tried too, but we could sort of see it even when we weren’t looking. There’s a big gap in the trees and bushes there, because it’s not quite spring yet and no leaves have hidden the place. Dad must have swooped right across the road from left to right. I wondered how he felt, in that last second or so, when he knew he was going over, but I didn’t say so. We were all pretending we hadn’t noticed the place.

Aunt Maria’s house failed to cheer us up. It’s quite old, in a street of other old houses, which look very picturesque, all in shades-of-cream-colour, and it’s not very big. It looks bigger inside – almost grand and imposing. It must be the big dark furniture. All the rooms seem dark, somehow, and it smells of the way your mouth tastes when you wake up to find you’ve got a cold. Mum hasn’t admitted to the smell, but she keeps saying she can’t understand why the house is so dark. “Perhaps if she put up cheerful curtains,” she says, “or moved the furniture round. The house must get quite a lot of sun through the garden at the back.”

Aunt Maria greeted us with the news that Lavinia’s mother was ill and Lavinia had gone to look after her. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, stumping towards us with two sticks. “Chris can have the little room now. I can manage quite well if somebody helps me wash and dress, and I’m sure you won’t mind doing the cooking, will you, Betty dear?”

Mum of course said she’d help in any way she could.

“Well, so you should,” Aunt Maria said. “You’re not at work at the moment, are you?”

I think even Mum privately found this a bit much, but she smiled and put it down to Aunt Maria being old. Mum keeps doing that. She points out that Aunt Maria was brought up in the days of servants and does not realise quite what she’s asking sometimes. Chris and I suspect that Aunt Maria no sooner knew we were coming than she gave Lavinia a holiday. Chris says Lavinia was probably going to give notice. He says anyone who has to live with Aunt Maria is bound to want to leave after an hour.

“We don’t need to have supper,” Aunt Maria said. “I just have a glass of milk and a piece of cheese.”

Mum saw our faces. “We can go out and find some fish and chips,” she said.

“What?! In Cranbury! ”said Aunt Maria, as if Mum had offered to go and carve up a missionary or the postman. Then she hummed and hawed and said if poor Betty was tired after the journey and didn’t want to cook, she thought there was a fish stall of some kind down on the sea front. “Though I expect it’ll be closed at this season,” she said.

Chris went off into the dusk to look, muttering things. He came back in half an hour looking windblown and told us that everything by the pier was shut. “And doesn’t look as if it had ever been open in the last hundred years,” he said. “Now what?”

“What a good boy you are to look after us all like this,” said Aunt Maria. “I think there were some nut cutlets Lavinia put somewhere.”

“I’m not a good boy, I’m hungry,” said Chris. “Where are the beastly nut cutlets?”

“Christian!” said Mum.

We went and searched the kitchen. There were two nut cutlets and some eggs and things, but there was only one saucepan and a very small frying pan and almost nothing else. Mum wondered how Lavinia managed. I thought she may have taken all the cooking things with her when she went. Anyway, we invented a sort of nut scrambled eggs on toast. When I set the table, Aunt Maria said, “We’re just camping out tonight. Don’t bother to put napkins, dear. It’s fun using kitchen cutlery.”

I thought she meant it, so I didn’t look for napkins until Mum whispered, “Don’t be silly, Mig! It’s just her polite way of saying she’s used to napkins and her best silver. Go and look.”

Mum was very good at understanding Aunt Maria’s polite way of saying things. It has already caused her a lot of work. If she doesn’t watch out, she’s not going to get any kind of holiday at all. It has caused her to clean the cutlery with silver polish and to roll up the hall carpet in case someone slips on it in the night, and put the potted plants in the bath, and force Chris to wind all seven clocks, and help Aunt Maria upstairs, where Mum and I undressed her and put her hair in pigtails, and plumped her pillows in the way Aunt Maria said she wouldn’t bother with as Lavinia was not there, and then to lay out her things for morning. Aunt Maria said we were not to, of course.

“And I won’t bother with breakfast, now Lavinia’s not here to bring it me in bed, dear,” was Aunt Maria’s final demand. Mum promised to bring her breakfast on a tray at eight-thirty sharp. It’s a very useful way of bullying people. I went downstairs and tried it on Chris.

“You don’t need to bother to bring the cases in from the car,” I told him. “We’re camping on the floor in our clothes.”

“Oh!” said Chris. “I forgot the damn cases …” And he had jumped up to fetch them before he realised I was laughing. He was just deciding whether to laugh or to snarl, when there was a hullabaloo from Aunt Maria upstairs. Mum, who was halfway down, went charging up in a panic, thinking she had fallen out of bed.

“When Lavinia’s here, I always get her to turn the gas and electricity off at ten o’clock sharp,” Aunt Maria shouted. “But you can leave it on since you’re my visitors.”

As a result of this, I am writing this by candlelight. Mum is on the other side of the candle, making a huge list of all the things we are going to buy for Aunt Maria tomorrow. Reading upside down I can see “saucepans” and “potatoes” and “fish slice” and “pruning shears”. Mum’s obviously been not-asked to do some gardening too.

We kept the electricity on until 10.15 in fact, so that we could see to get settled into our rooms. Chris’s little room is halfway up the stairs and full of books. I feel envious. I don’t mind sharing with Mum, of course, but the bed is not very big and the room is still full of Lavinia’s things. As Mum said, rather wryly, Lavinia obviously couldn’t wait to get away. Her cupboard and drawers are full of clothes. She has left silver-backed brushes on the dressing-table and slippers under the bed, and Mum has got all worried about not making a mess of her things. She has moved the silver brushes and the silver-framed photograph of Lavinia and her mother to a high shelf. Lavinia is one of those people who always look old. I remember thinking she was about ninety when I last came here when I was little. In the photo, Lavinia and her mother might be twins, two old ladies smiling away. One is labelled “Mother” and one “Me” so they can’t be twins.

Then at 10.15, when Mum was taking the potted plants out of the bath in order to make Chris get into it for what Chris calls washing and I call wallowing in his own mud, someone hammered at the back door. Chris opened it as Mum and I came running. A lady stood there beaming a great torch at us. She was Mum’s age – or maybe younger: you know how hard it is to tell – and she had a crisp, clean, nun-like look.

“You must be Betty Laker,” she said to Mum. “I’m Elaine. From next door,” she added, when she saw that meant nothing. And she marched past Chris and me without noticing us. “I brought this torch,” she explained, “because I thought you would have turned the electricity off by now. She insists on it. She worries about fires in the night.”

“Chris,” said Mum. “Find out where the switch is.”

“It’s behind the door here,” said Elaine. “Turn it off when I’ve gone. I’ll only stay a moment to make sure you know what needs doing. We’re all so glad you could come and look after her. Any problems up to now?”

“No,” said Mum, looking a bit dazed.

Elaine strolled past us into the dining-room where she sauntered here and there, swinging the big torch and looking at Mum’s knitting and my notebooks and Chris’s homework piled on various chairs. She was wearing a crisply belted black mac and she was very thin. I wondered if she was a policewoman. “She likes the place tidier than this,” Elaine said.

“We’re in the middle of unpacking,” Mum said humbly. Chris looked daggers. He hates Mum crawling to people.

Elaine gave Mum a smile. It put two matching creases on either side of her mouth, but it was not what I would call a real smile. Funny, because she was quite pretty really. “You’ve gathered that she needs dressing, undressing, washing and her cooking done,” she said. “The three of you can probably bath her, can’t you? Good. And when you want to take her for some air, I’ll bring the wheelchair round. It lives at my house because there’s more room. And do be careful she doesn’t fall over. I expect you’ll manage. We’ll all be dropping in to see how you’re getting on, anyway. So …” She looked round again. “I’ll love you and leave you,” she said. She shot Chris, for some reason, another of her strange smiles and marched off again, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t forget the electricity.”

“She gives her orders!” Chris said. “Mum, did you know what we were in for? If you didn’t we’ve been got on false pretences.”

“I know, but Aunt Maria does need help,” Mum said helplessly. “Where’s the electricity switch? And are there any candles?”

There were two candles. Mum added “candles” to her list before she got into bed just now. Now she’s sitting there saying, “These sheets aren’t very clean. I must wash them tomorrow. She’s not got a washing-machine but there must be a launderette somewhere in the place.” Then she went on to, “Mig, you’ve written reams. Stop and come to bed now or there won’t be any of that notebook left.” She was beginning on, “There won’t be any of that candle left either—” when Chris came storming in wearing just his pants.

He said, “I don’t know what this is. It was under my pillow.” He threw something stormily on the floor and went away again.

It is pink and frilly and called St Margaret. We think it is probably Lavinia’s nightdress. Mum has spent the last quarter of an hour marvelling about it. “She must have been called away in a hurry after all,” she said, preparing to have more agonies of guilt. “She’d already moved down to the little room to make room for us. Oh, I feel awful.”

“Mum,” I said, “if you can feel awful looking at someone’s old nightie, what are you going to feel if you happen to see Chris’s socks?” That made her laugh. She’s forgotten to feel guilty now and she’s threatening to blow out the candle.

CHAPTER TWO

There is a ghost in Chris’s room.

I wrote that two days ago. Since then events have moved so fast that snails are whizzing by, blurred with speed. I am paralysed with boredom, Mum has knitted three sleeves for one sweater for the same reason, and Chris is behaving worse and worse. So is Aunt Maria. We all hate Elaine and the other Mrs Urs.

How can Aunt Maria bear living in Cranbury with no television? The days have all gone the same way, starting with Mum leaping out of bed and waking me up in her hurry to get breakfast as soon as Aunt Maria begins thumping her stick on the floor. While I’m getting up, Aunt Maria is sounding off next door. “No, no, dear. It’s quite fun to eat runny egg for a change – I usually tell Lavinia to do them for five and a half minutes, but it doesn’t matter a bit.” That was the last two days. Today Mum must have got the egg right, because Aunt Maria was on about “how interesting to eat flabby toast, dear.” The noise wakes Chris up and he comes forth like the skeleton in the cupboard. Snarl, snarl!

Chris is not usually like this. The first morning, I asked him what was the matter and he said, “Oh nothing. There’s a ghost in my room.” The second morning he wouldn’t speak. Today I didn’t speak either.

Mum has just time to drink a cup of coffee before Aunt Maria is thumping her stick again, for us to get her up. We have to hook her into a corset-thing which is like shiny pink armour, and you should just see her knickers. Chris did. He said they would make good trousers for an Arabian dancing girl, provided the girl was six feet tall and highly respectable. I thought of Aunt Maria with a jewel in her tummy button and was nearly sick laughing. Aunt Maria made me worse by saying, “I have a great sense of humour, dears. Tell me the joke.” That was while Chris and I were helping her downstairs. She was in full regalia by then, in a tweed suit and two necklaces, and Mum was trying to make Aunt Maria’s bed the way Lavinia is supposed-to-do-it-but-it-doesn’t-matter-dear.

She comes and sits in state in the living-room then. It is somehow the darkest room in the house, though sun streams in from the brown garden. One of us has to sit there with her. We found that out the first day when we were all getting ready to go shopping for the things on Mum’s huge list. Chris was saying sarcastically that he couldn’t wait to see some of the hot spots in town, when Aunt Maria caught up with what we were talking about.

She said, in her special urgent scandalised way, “You’re not going out!”

“Yes,” said Chris. “We are on holiday, you know.”

Mum shut him up by saying, “Christian!” and explained about the shopping.

“But suppose I fall!” said Aunt Maria. “Suppose someone calls. How shall I answer the door?”

“You opened the door to us when we came,” I said.

Aunt Maria promptly went all gentle and martyred and said none of us knew what it was like to be old, and did we realise she sometimes never saw a soul for a whole month on end? “You go, dears. Get your fresh air,” she said.

Naturally Mum got guilty at that, and, just as naturally, it was me that had to stay behind. I spent the next three hundred hours sitting in a little brown chair facing Aunt Maria. She sits on a yellow brocade sofa with knobs on and silk ropes hooked around the knobs to stop the sofa’s arms falling down. Her feet are plonked on the wine-coloured carpet and her hands are plonked on her sticks. Aunt Maria is a heavy sort of lady. I keep thinking of her as huge and I keep being surprised to find that she is nothing like as tall as Chris, and not even as tall as Mum. I think she may only be as tall as me. But her character is enormous – right up to the ceiling.

She talks. It is all about her friends in Cranbury. “Corinne West and Adele Taylor told Zoë Green – Zoë Green has a brilliant mind, dear: she’s read every book in the library – and Zoë Green told Hester Bayley – Hester paints charming water colours, all real scenes, everyone says she’s as good as Van Gogh – and Hester said I was quite right to be hurt at what Miss Phelps had been saying. After all I’d done for Miss Phelps! I used to send Lavinia over to her, but I wonder if I should any more. We told Benita Wallins, and she said on no account. Selma Tidmarsh had told her all Miss Phelps had said. Selma and Phyllis – Phyllis Forbes, that is, not Phyllis West – wanted to go round and speak to Miss Phelps, but I said No, I shall turn the other cheek. So Phyllis West went to Ann Haversham and said …”

On and on. You end up feeling you are in a sort of bubble filled with that getting-a-cold smell, and inside that bubble is Cranbury and Aunt Maria, and that is the entire world. It is hard to remember there is any land outside Cranbury. I got into a kind of daze of boredom. It was humming in my ears. When you get that way, the most ordinary things get violently exciting. I know when I looked round and saw a cat on the living-room windowsill it was like Christmas or my birthday, or when Chris’s friend Andy notices me. Wonderful! And it was one of those grey fluffy cats with a flat silly face that are normally utterly boring. It was staring intensely in at us through the glass, opening its mouth and dribbling down its grey ruff, and I stared back into its flat yellow eyes – they were slightly crossed – as if that cat was my favourite friend in all the world.

“You’re not attending, dear,” said Aunt Maria, and she turned to see what I was staring it. Her face went red. She levered herself up on one stick and stumped towards the window, slashing the air with her other stick. “Get off! How dare you sit on my windowsill!” The cat glared in stupid horror and fled for its life. Aunt Maria sat back down, puffing. “He comes in my garden all the time,” she said. “After birds. As I was saying, Ann Haversham and Rosa Brisling were great friends until Miss Phelps said that. Now you mustn’t think I’m annoyed with Amaryllis Phelps, but I was hurt—”

I thought she was horrid to that cat. I couldn’t listen to her after that. I sat and wondered about Chris’s ghost. It could have been a joke. But if it wasn’t – I didn’t know whether I wanted it to be Dad’s ghost trying to tell Chris where his body was, or not. The idea made my teeth want to chatter, and I had a sort of ache of fear and excitement.

“Do attend, dear,” said Aunt Maria. “This is interesting.”

“I am,” I said. She had been talking about Elaine-next-door. I had sort of heard. “We met Elaine,” I said. “She came in last night with a torch.”

“You mustn’t call her Elaine, dear,” Aunt Maria said. “She’s Mrs Blackwell.”

“Why not?” I said. “She said Elaine.”

“That’s because I always call her that,” Aunt Maria said. “But if you do, it’s rude.”

So I’m calling her Elaine. Elaine came marching in again, in her black mac but without her torch, at the same time as Chris and Mum. I’d heard Chris’s voice and then Mum’s and I jumped up, feeling I was being let out of prison. Something was actually happening! Then the living-room door opened and it was Elaine. “Don’t go, dear,” Aunt Maria said to me. “I want you here to be introduced.”

I had to stand there, while Elaine took no notice of me as before. She went to Aunt Maria and kissed her cheek. “They’ve done your shopping,” she said, “and I told them where to put things. Is there anything else you want me to tell them?”

“They’re being very good,” Aunt Maria said. She had gone all merry. “They’re trying quite hard. I don’t expect them to get anything right straightaway.”

“I see,” said Elaine. “I’ll go and tell them to make an effort then.” She was not joking. She was like a Police Chief taking her orders from the Great Dictator.

“Before you do,” Aunt Maria said merrily, “I want you to meet my new little Naomi. Such a dear little great-niece!”

Elaine turned her face towards me. “Mig,” I said. “I prefer being called Mig.”

“Hello, Naomi,” said Elaine, and she strode out of the room again. When I went after her, I found her standing over Mum and Chris and scads of carrier bags, saying, “And you really must make sure she is never left alone.”

Mum, looking very flustered, said, “We left Mig here.”

“I know,” Elaine said grimly, meaning that was what she was complaining of. Then she turned to Chris. Her mouth made the stretch with two creases at the ends. “You,” she said. “You have the look of a gallant young man. I’m sure you’ll keep your aunt company in future, won’t you?”

We think it was meant to be flirtatious. We stared at one another as the back door shut crisply behind Elaine. “Well!” Mum said. “You seem to have made a hit, Chris! And talking of hits, hit her I shall if she gives me one more order. Who does she think she is?”

“Aunt Maria’s Chief of Police,” I said.

“Right!” said Mum.

Then we unpacked all the loads of provisions and, guess what? We found a deep-freeze in the cupboard beside the sink, absolutely stuffed with food. There was ice cream and bread and hot dog sausages and raspberries in it. Half the stuff Mum had bought was things that were there already. Chris sorted through it with great zeal. Mum is always amazed at how much he eats and keeps saying, “You can’t still be hungry!” I have tried to explain, from my own experience. It’s a sort of nagging need you have, even when you feel full. It’s not starving, just that you keep wanting more to eat.

“Yes,” says Mum. “That’s what I mean. How can you find room? Oh dear. We wronged poor Lavinia again. She left Aunt Maria very well supplied after all.”

Chris taxed Aunt Maria with this over lunch. Aunt Maria said loftily, “I never pry into the kitchen, dear. But frozen food is very bad for you.” And before Chris could point out that Aunt Maria was at the moment eating frozen peas, Aunt Maria rounded on Mum. “I was so ashamed, dear, when Elaine came in. The thought of her seeing you and Naomi in that state. And you went out like that, dear.”

“What state? Out like what?” we all said.

Aunt Maria lowered her eyes. “In trousers!” she whispered, hushed and horrified. Mum and I stared from Mum’s jeans to mine and then at one another. “And Naomi’s hair so untidy,” Aunt Maria continued. “She must have forgotten to plait it today. But of course you’ll both change this afternoon, won’t you? In case any of my friends call.”

“And what about me?” Chris asked sweetly. “Shall I wear a skirt too?” Aunt Maria pretended not to hear, so he added, “In case any of your friends call?”

“These peas are really delicious,” Aunt Maria said loudly to Mum. “I wouldn’t have thought peas were in season yet. Where did you find them?”

“They’re frozen,” Chris said, even louder, but she pretended not to hear that either.

It is very hard to know how deaf Aunt Maria is. Sometimes she seems like a post, like then, and sometimes she can sit in the living-room and hear what you whisper in the kitchen with both doors shut in between. Chris says the rule is she hears if you don’t want her to. Chris is thoroughly exasperated by that. He keeps trying to practise his guitar. In the little room halfway upstairs, with his door shut, Mum and I can hardly hear the guitar, but whenever Chris starts to play, Aunt Maria springs up, shrieking, “What’s that noise? There’s a burglar trying to break into the house!” I know how Chris feels, because Aunt Maria does that when I have my Walkman on too. Even if I turn it so low hardly a whisper comes into the earphones, Aunt Maria shrieks, “What’s that noise? Is the tank in the loft leaking?”

Mum has made us both stop. “It is her house, loves,” she said when we argued. “We’re only her guests.”

“On a working holiday!” Chris snarled. Mum was cleaning Aunt Maria’s brass, because Aunt Maria said that this was Lavinia’s day for doing it, but she didn’t-expect-Mum-to-do-it.

On the same grounds, Mum changed into her good dress and made me wear a skirt. I pointed out I’ve only got one skirt with me – my pleated one – and Mum said, “Mig, I’ll buy you another. We are her guests.”

“Oh good,” said Chris. “Is that a rule – visitors have to do what the owner of the house wants? Next time Andy comes round in London I’ll make him kiss Mig.”

That made me hit Chris and Aunt Maria shrieked that slates were falling off the roof.

“See what I mean?” said Chris. “It is her house. Pieces fall off if you hit me. Wicked, destructive Mig, knocking nice Auntie’s house down.”

I think he meant me to laugh, but Aunt Maria was getting me down too, so I didn’t. I stopped talking to Chris for a while. What with that, and being numbed with boredom, I didn’t manage to speak sensibly to Chris until two whole days later. It was silly. I kept wanting to ask him about his ghost, and I didn’t.

In the afternoons, Aunt Maria’s friends all come. They are the ones she talks about all morning. I had expected them all to be old hags, but they are quite ordinary ladies mostly in smart clothes and smart hairdos. Some of them are even nearly young, like Elaine. Corinne West and Adele Taylor, who came first, are Elaine-aged and smart. Benita Wallins, who came with them, was more the sort I’d expected, stumping along with bandages under her stockings, in a hat and a shiny quilted coat. From the greedy interested looks she gave us, you could see she knew we’d be there and couldn’t wait to inspect us. They are all Mrs Something and we are supposed to call them that. Chris calls them all Missis Ur and mixes their names up on purpose.

Anyway they came and Mum made them all mugs of coffee. Aunt Maria gave a merry laugh. “We’re camping out at the moment, Corinne dear. Now this is Betty and Chris, and I want you all to meet my niece, my dear little Naomi.” She always says that, and it makes me want to be rude like Chris, only I can never think of things to say until after they’ve gone. I am a failure and a hypocrite, because I feel just as rude as Chris. But it just doesn’t come out.

They must have gone straight next door when they left. Elaine marched in ten minutes later, using her two-line smile and uttering steely laughs. When Elaine laughs it is like the biggest of Aunt Maria’s clocks striking – a running-down whirr, followed by clanging. We think this means that Elaine is being social and diplomatic. She flings her hair back across the shoulders of her black mac and corners Mum.

“You’ll have a lot of hurt feelings,” she said, “if you give any of the others coffee in mugs.”

“Oh? What should I do then?” Mum asked, making an effort to stand up to Elaine.

“I advise you to find the silver teapot and her best china,” Elaine said. “And some cake if you’ve got it. You know how polite she is. She’d sit there dying of shame rather than tell you herself.” She shot out the two-line smile again. “Just a hint. I’ll let myself out,” she said, and went.

“Doesn’t she ever wear anything but that black mac?” Chris asked loudly as the back door clicked shut. “Perhaps she grows it, like skin.”

We all hoped Elaine had heard. But as usual she had conquered. Mum got out best tea things when Hester Bayley and three Mrs Urs turned up soon after that. Aunt Maria would not let me help because she wanted to introduce her “dear little Naomi” and when Chris tried to help, Aunt Maria said it was woman’s work. “I don’t trust him with my best china,” she added in a loud whisper to Phyllis Forbes and the other Mrs Urs. Mum ran about frantically and Chris seethed. I had to sit and listen to Hester Bayley, who was actually quite sensible and nice-seeming. We talked about pictures and painting and how horribly impossible it is to paint water.

“Particularly the sea,” Hester Bayley said. “That bit when the tide is coming up over the sand, all transparent, with lacy edges.”

I was saying how right she was, when Aunt Maria’s voice cut across everything. How can Elaine think Aunt Maria would rather die of shame than say anything?

“Oh dear! I do apologise,” Aunt Maria shouted. “This is bought cake.”

“Oh horrors!” Chris promptly said from the other side of the room. “Mum paid for it herself too, so we’re all eating pound notes.”

Poor Mum. She glared at Chris and then tried to apologise, but Selma Tidmarsh and the other Mrs Urs all began shouting that it tasted very wholesome, it was very good for a bought cake, while Aunt Maria pushed her plate aside and turned her head away from it. And Hester Bayley said to me, “Or a wave, with green shadows and foam on it,” just as if nothing had happened at all.

She gave me a book when she got up to go. “I brought it for you,” she said. “It’s the kind of pictures a little girl like you will love.”

“I’m sorry,” Mum said to Aunt Maria after they’d all left.

I think she was meaning she was sorry about Chris, but Aunt Maria said, “It’s all right, dear. I expect Lavinia has put the baking tins in an unexpected place. You’ll have found them by tomorrow.”

For a moment I thought Mum was going to explode. But she took a deep breath and went out into the rain and the wind to garden. I could see her savagely pruning roses, snip-chop, as if each twig was one of Aunt Maria’s fingers, while I put Hester Bayley’s book on the table and started to look at it.

Oh dear. I think Hester Bayley may be as dotty as Zoë Green underneath. Or she doesn’t know better. Mostly the pictures were of fairies, little flittery ones, or sweet-faced maidens in bonnets, but there were some that were so queer and peculiar that they did things to my stomach. There was a street of people who looked as if their faces had melted, and two at least of woodlands, where the trees seemed to have leering faces and nightmare, twiggy hands. And there was one called ‘A naughty little girl is punished’ that was worst of all. It was all dark except for the girl, so you couldn’t quite see what was doing it to her, but her bright clear figure was being pushed underground by something on top of her, and something else had her long hair and was pulling her under, and there were these black whippy things too. She looked terrified, and no wonder.

“Charming!” Chris said, dropping crumbs over my shoulder as he ate the last of the pound-note cake. “Mum’s being told off again, look.”

I looked out of the window into the dusk. Sure enough, Elaine was standing over Mum with her hands on the hips of her flapping black mac, and Mum was looking humble and flustered again. “Honestly—” I began.

But Aunt Maria was calling out, “What are you saying, dears? It’s rude to whisper. Is it that cat again? One of you call Betty in. It’s time she was cooking supper.”

This is the sort of reason I never got to speak to Chris, and never got to write in my notebook either. When I went to guide camp, it was more private than it is in Aunt Maria’s house. But I have made a Deep Religious Vow to write something every day now. I need to, to relieve my feelings.

The next day was the same, only that morning I went out with Mum and Chris obeyed Elaine’s orders and stayed with Aunt Maria. Would you believe this? I have still not seen the sea, except the day we came, when it was nearly dark and I was trying not to look at the piece of new fence on Cranbury Head. That morning we went round and round looking for cake tins, then up and down and out into the country behind, where it is farms and fields and woods, looking for the launderette. In the end Mum said she felt like a thief with loot and we had to bring the bundle of dirty sheets home again.

“Give them to me,” Elaine said sternly, meeting us on the pavement outside the house. She held out a black mackintosh arm. Mum clutched the laundry defensively to her, determined not to give Elaine anything. It was ridiculous. It was only dirty sheets after all.

Elaine made her two-line smile and even laughed, a whirr without the chimes! “I have a washing machine,” she said.

Mum handed over the bundle and smiled, and it was almost normal.

That afternoon Zoë Green turned up for best china and cake, and so did Phyllis Watsis and another Mrs Ur – Rosa, I think. Mum had made a cake. Aunt Maria had spent all lunch-time telling Mum it didn’t matter, to make sure Mum did, but she called out all the same while Zoë Green was kissing her, “Have you made a cake, dear?”

Chris said loudly from his corner, “She. Has. Made. A. Cake. Or do you want me to spell it?”

Everyone pretended not to hear, which was quite easy, because Zoë Green is quite cuckoo. She runs about and gushes in a poopling sort of voice – I can imitate it by holding my tongue between my teeth while I talk. “Stho dthis iths dhear dithul Ndaombi!” she pooples. “Ndow don’d dtell mbe. I dlovbe guessthing. You dwere bordn in lade DNovember. DYou’re Sthagitharius.”

“No, she’s not, she’s Libra,” said Chris. “I’m Leo.”

But no one was listening to Chris, because Zoë Green was going on and on about horoscopes and Sagittarius, loud and long – and spitting rather. She wears her hair in two buns, one on each ear, and long traily clothes with a patchwork jacket on top, all rather dirty. She’s the only one who looks mad. I tried several times to tell her I wasn’t born in November, but she was in an ecstasy of cusps and ruling planets and didn’t hear.

“Such a dear friend,” Aunt Maria said to me.

And Phyllis Ur leaned over and whispered, “We love her so much, dear. She’s never been the same since her son – well, we won’t talk about that. But she’s a very valued member of Cranbury society.”

They meant I was to shut up and let Z.G. go on. I looked at Chris and he looked back at me and then up at the ceiling. Bonkers, he meant. Then I sat there listening and wondering how it was I never seemed to talk to Chris at the moment, when I did so want to know if he really meant that about the ghost.

Then Mum brought in the cake. Chris looked Aunt Maria in the eye and got up to pass the cake round.

Aunt Maria said, in a sad low voice, “He’ll drop it.”

If that wasn’t the last straw to Chris, it was when Zoë Green dived forward and peered at the slice of cake he was trying to pass her. “What’s in this? Ndothing I’mb adlerdjig to, I hobe?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Chris said. “Those things in it that look like currants are really rabbit’s do’s, so if you’re allergic to rabbit’s do’s, don’t eat it.” Everyone, including Zoë Green, stared, and then began to try to pretend he hadn’t said it. But Chris seized a cup of tea and held that out too. “How about some horsepiss?” he said.

There was a gabble of people talking about something else, in the midst of which Mum said, “Christian, I’ll—” Unfortunately, I’d just taken a mouthful of tea. I choked, and had to go out into the kitchen to cough over the sink. Through my coughings, I heard Chris’s voice again. Very loud.

“That’s right. Pretend I didn’t say it! Or why not say, ‘He’s only an adolescent, and he’s upset because his father fell off Cranbury Head’? He did, you know. Squish.” Then I heard the door slam behind him.

Outcry. It was awful. Aunt Maria was having a screaming fit. Zoë Green was hooting like an owl. I could hear Mum crying. It was so awful I stayed in the kitchen. And it went on being so awful. I was coughing my way to the back door to get right away like Chris had, when it shot open and Elaine strode in, black mac and all.

“I’ll have to have a word with that brother of yours,” she said. “Where is he?”

All I can think of is that she has a radio link between her house and this one. How could she have known? I mean, she may have heard the noise, but how could she have known it was Chris?

I stared at her clean, stern face. She has awfully fanatical eyes, I couldn’t help noticing. “I don’t know,” I said. “Outside somewhere probably.”

“Then I’ll go and look for him,” Elaine said. She went out through the door and said over her shoulder, “If I can’t find him, tell him from me he’s riding for a fall. Really. It’s serious.”

I wish she hadn’t said ‘riding for a fall’. Not those words.

When the noise quietened down, I went back to the dining room. Both the Mrs Urs patted my arm and said, “There, there, dear.” They seemed to think it was Chris who upset me.

CHAPTER THREE

Now I feel as guilty as Mum. It got dark and Chris still hadn’t come back. Aunt Maria was really worried about him. “Suppose he’s gone down on the beach and slipped on a rock!” she kept saying. “If he’s broken his leg or twisted his ankle, nobody will know. I think you ought to ring the police, dear, and not bother about getting supper.”

Who wants the police, I thought, with Elaine after him? And Mum said, in the special high, cheerful voice she always uses to Aunt Maria, “Oh, he’ll be all right, Auntie. Boys will be boys.”

Aunt Maria refused to be comforted. She went on, low and direful, “And the pier is dangerous in the dark. Suppose the current took him. Thank goodness little Naomi is safe!”

“That makes me want to say I’m going out for a swim,” I said to Mum.

“You dare!” said Mum. “Chris is bad enough without you starting too.”

“Then shut her up,” I said.

“What’s that, dear?” said Aunt Maria. “Who’s shut up?”

It went on like that until the back door crashed open and Elaine marched Chris in, swinging her torch. She had hold of Chris by his shoulder, just as if she had arrested him. “Here he is,” she said to Mum. “I’ve given him a talking-to.”

“Really? How very helpful you are!” Mum said and took a quick anxious look at Chris’s face. He looked almost as if he was trying not to laugh, and I could see Mum was relieved.

By then Aunt Maria cottoned on. “Oh, Elaine!” she shouted. “I’ve been ill with worry! Have you brought him? Where did you find him? Is he all right?”

“In the street,” said Elaine. “He was on his way back here. He’s fine. Aren’t you, my lad?”

“Yes, apart from a squeezed shoulder,” Chris retorted.

Elaine let go of Chris and pretended to hit him with her torch. “Don’t let him do that again,” she said to Mum. “You know how she worries.”

“Stay with me, Elaine,” Aunt Maria bawled. “I’ve had such a shock!”

“Sorry!” Elaine bawled back. “I have to get Larry his supper.” And she went.

It was ages before I could ask Chris what Elaine had said to him. Aunt Maria made him sit down next to her and told him over and over again how worried she had been. She kept asking him where he had been and not giving him time to answer. Chris took it all in a humorous sort of way, so different from the way he had been before, that I thought Elaine must have hit him on the head with her torch or something.

“No, she just grabbed me,” Chris said. “And I said, ‘Do you arrest me in the name of the law?’ And she said, ‘You can be as rude as you like to me, my lad. I don’t mind. But I’m not having your aunt worried.’”

“What’s that?” said Aunt Maria. “Who’s worried?”

“Me,” said Chris. “Elaine worried me like a rabbit.”

“I expect Larry’s been out shooting,” said Aunt Maria. “He often brings home a rabbit. I wonder if he’s got one for us? I’m fond of rabbit stew.”

Chris looked at the ceiling and gave up. He’s playing his guitar at the moment and Aunt Maria is pretending not to hear that either. It looks as if All Is Forgiven. And that’s what makes me feel guilty. Mum and I have put Aunt Maria to bed and she’s sitting up on her pillows, all clean and rosy in her lacy white nightgown, with her hair in frizzy pigtails, listening to A Book at Bedtime on Mum’s radio. She looks like a teddy bear. Quite lovable. Mum asked her to say when she wants the electricity off, and she gave the sweetest smile and said, “Oh, when you’re ready. Let Naomi finish that story she’s writing so busily first.”

And I feel horrible. I’ve read through my notebook and it’s full of just beastly things about Aunt Maria and she thinks I’m writing a story. It’s worse than Chris, because I’m being secret in my nastiness. I wish I was charitable, like Mum. I admire Mum. She’s so pretty, as well as so cheerful. She has a neat little nose and a pretty forehead that comes out in a little bulge. Her eyes always look bright, even when she’s tired. Chris takes after Mum. They both have those eyes, with long curly eyelashes. I wish I did. What eyelashes I have are butterscotch-colour, like my hair, and they do nothing for plain brown eyes. My forehead is straight. I am not sweet at all and I wish Aunt Maria would not keep calling me her “sweet little Naomi”. I feel a real worm.

I felt so bad after that, that I just had to talk to Mum before we blew out the candle. We both sat up in bed. Mum smoked a cigarette and I cried, and we both expected Aunt Maria to wake up and shout that the house was on fire. But she didn’t. We could hear her snoring, while downstairs Chris defiantly twanged away at his guitar.

“My poor Mig!” said Mum. “I know just how you feel!”

“No, you don’t!” I snuffled. “You’re charitable. I’m worse than Chris even!”

“Charitable be damned!” said Mum. “I want to slay Auntie half the time, and I could strangle Elaine all the time! At first, I was as muddled as you are, because Auntie is very old and she can be very sweet, and I only got by because I do rather like nursing people. Then Chris did me a favour, behaving like that. He was admitting something I was pretending wasn’t there. People do have savage feelings, Mig.”

“But it’s not right to have savage feelings,” I gulped.

“No, but everyone does,” said Mum, lighting a second cigarette off the end of the first. “Auntie does. That’s what’s upsetting us all. She’s utterly selfish and a complete expert in making other people do what she wants. She uses people’s guilt about their savage feelings. Does that make you feel better?”

“Not really,” I said. “She has to make people do things for her, because she can’t do things for herself, can she?”

“As to that,” Mum said, puffing away, “I’m not convinced, Mig. I’ve been looking at her carefully and I don’t think there’s much wrong with her. I think she could do a lot more for herself if she wanted to. I think she’s just convinced herself she can’t. Tomorrow I’m going to have a go at making her do some things for herself.”

That made me feel better. I think it made Mum feel better too, but she hasn’t made much headway getting Aunt Maria to do things. She’s been trying half the morning. Aunt Maria will say, “I left my spectacles on the sideboard, but it doesn’t matter, dear.”

“Off you go and get them,” Mum says, in a cheerful loud voice.

There is a pause, then Aunt Maria utters in a reproachful gentle groan, “I’m getting old, dear.”

“You can try at least,” Mum says encouragingly.

“Suppose I fall,” suggests Aunt Maria.

“Yes, do,” says Chris. “Fall on your face and give us all a good laugh.” Mum glares at him and I go and find the spectacles. That’s the way it was until the grey cat suddenly put in an appearance, mewing through the window at us with its ugly flat face almost pressed against the glass. Aunt Maria jumped up with no trouble and practically ran to the window, slashing the air with both sticks and shouting at the cat to go away. It fled.

“What did you do that for?” Chris said.

“I’m not having him in my garden,” Aunt Maria said. “He eats birds.”

“Who does he belong to?” Mum asked. She likes cats as much as I do.

“How should I know?” said Aunt Maria. She was so annoyed with the cat that she took herself back to the sofa without remembering to use her sticks once. Mum raised her eyebrows and looked at me. See? Then we unwisely left Chris indoors and went out to look for the cat in the garden. We didn’t find it, but when we got back Chris was simmering. Aunt Maria was giving him a gentle talking-to.

“It doesn’t matter about me, dear, but my friends were so distressed. Promise me you’ll never speak like that again.”

Chris no doubt deserved it, but Mum said hastily, “Chris and Mig, I’m going to make you a packed lunch and you’re going to go out for some fresh air. You’re to stay out all afternoon.”

“All afternoon!” cried Aunt Maria. “But I have my Circle of Healing here this afternoon. It will do the children such a lot of good to come to the meeting.”

“Fresh air will do them more good,” said Mum. “Chris looks pale.” Which was true. Chris looked as if he hadn’t slept much. He was white and getting one or two spots again. Mum took no notice of Aunt Maria’s protests – it was windy, it was going to rain, we would get wet – and bullied us out of the house with warm clothes and a carrier bag of food. “Do me a favour and try and enjoy yourselves for a change,” she said.

“But what about you?” I said.

“I’ll be fine. I shall do some gardening while she has her meeting,” Mum said.

We went out into the street. “She’s martyring herself,” I said. “I wish she wouldn’t.”

Chris said, “She needs to work off her guilt about Dad. Let her be, Mig.” He smiled in his normal understanding way. He seemed to go back to his old self as soon as we were in the street. “Shall I tell you something I noticed about this street yesterday? See that house opposite?”

He pointed and I said, “Yes,” and looked. And the lace curtains in the front window of the house twitched as somebody hastily got back from them. Otherwise it was a little cream-coloured house as gloomy as the rest of the street, with a large 12 on its front door.

“Number Twelve,” said Chris as we walked on up the street. “The only house in this street with a number, Mig, apart from Twenty-two down the other end on the same side. That means odd numbers on Aunt Maria’s side, doesn’t it? And that makes Aunt Maria’s house Number Thirteen whichever way you count the houses.”

Chris is always thinking about numbers normally. This proved he was back to normal. I said it would be Number Thirteen, and we laughed as we walked down to the sea front. It was very windy and quite deserted there, but very respectable somehow. Chris shouted that even the concrete sheds were tasteful. They were. We went past the kiddies’ bathing pool and the tame little place with swings, and along the front. The tide was in. Waves came spouting up against the sea wall, grey and violent, sending water bashing across the path. Our feet got wet and the noise was so huge that we talked in shouts and licked salt off our mouths afterwards. There was only one other person out that we saw, the whole length of the bay, and he was right at the beginning – an elderly gent huddled in a tweed coat, who tried to raise his tweed hat politely to us; but he only put a hand to it, in case it got blown away.

“Morning!” we shouted. He shouted, “Afternoon!” Very correct. It was after midday. Only I always think afternoon begins when you’ve had lunch, and we hadn’t yet.

When we were near the pier, I shouted to Chris, “The ghost in your room – is it a he or a she?” It was a bad place to ask important things. The sea was crashing and sucking round the iron girders, and the buildings on the pier kept cutting the wind off, so that we were in a nest of quiet one moment, all warm with our ears ringing, and then out again into icy noise.

“A man!” yelled Chris. “And it’s not Dad,” he said, as we went into a nest of quiet. “I saw you thinking it might be and it’s not. It’s ever such a strange-looking fellow, like a cross between a court jester and a parrot.”

The wind howled and I didn’t hear straight. “A pirate? ”I shouted.

“Parrot! ”Chris screamed. And I think what he shouted after that was “Pretty Polly! Long John Silver! I am the ghost of Able Mabel! Parrot cage on table!”

Shouting in the wind makes you shout silly things anyway, and I think Chris was shouting in order not to be scared. Anyway I got in a real muddle and I thought he was trying to tell me the ghost’s name. “Neighbour?” I yelled. “John?”

“What do you mean, Neighbour John?” howled Chris.

“The ghost’s name. Is it Neighbour John?” I screeched.

By the time we got into a pocket of quiet again and sorted out what we both thought we were saying, we were in fits of laughter and Neighbour John seemed a good name for the ghost. So we call him that now. I keep thinking of Chris seeing a large red pirate parrot, and then I remember he said “court jester” too, so I correct the red parrot into one of those white ones with a yellow crest that are really cockatoos. I think their crests look like jester’s caps, and ghosts should be white. But I just can’t imagine a man looking like that.

Chris told me more about the ghost at intervals all through the day. I think he was glad to have someone to tell. But I know there were things he didn’t tell, and I keep wondering why, and what they were.

He said he woke up suddenly the first night, thinking he’d forgotten to blow out the candle. But then he realised it was light coming in from a street light somewhere. He could see a man outlined against the window, bent over with his back to Chris. The man seemed to be hunting for something in one of the bookcases.

“So I called out to him,” said Chris.

“Weren’t you scared?” I said. My heart seemed to be beating in my throat at just the idea. “Yes, but I thought he was a burglar then,” Chris said. “I sat up and thought about people getting killed for surprising burglars and decided I’d pretend I was sleeping with a gun under my pillow. So I said, ‘Put your hands up and turn round.’ And he whirled round and stared at me. He looked absolutely astonished – as if he hadn’t realised there was anyone else there – and we sort of stared at one another for a while. By that time I knew he wasn’t a burglar, somehow. He had the wrong look on his face. I mean, I know he was odd-looking, but it wasn’t a burglar-look. I even almost knew he had lost something that belonged to him and he was looking for it because it was in that room. So I said, ‘What have you lost?’ and he didn’t answer. There was a look on his face as if he was going to speak, but he didn’t.”

Chris said he still didn’t realise the man was a ghost, even then. At first he said he only realised next morning when he snapped at me there was a ghost in his room. Then he said, no, he must have known the moment the man turned round. The room was full of an odd feeling, he said. Then he corrected himself again. I think ghosts must be muddling things to meet. He said he began to be puzzled when he noticed the man was wearing a peculiar dark green robe, all torn and covered with mud.

By the time Chris had told me that far, we had got right along the sea front, past all the little boats pulled up on a concrete slope, almost to Cranbury Head. We looked up the great tall pinkish cliff. It looked almost like a house, because creepers grow up it. We could just see the gap in the creepers and a glimpse of the new fence. And we both went very matter-of-fact, somehow.

Chris said, “You can see some of the rocks at the bottom, even with the tide in.”

“Yes, but it was at night,” I said. “They didn’t see the car till morning.”

Then Chris wondered how they got the car cleared away. He thought they winched it up the cliffs. I said it was easier to put it on a raft and float it to the concrete slope. “Or drag it round the sands at low tide,” Chris agreed. “Poor old car.”

We turned and went back through the town then. I kept thinking of the car. I know it so well. It was our family car until six months ago, when Dad took a lady called Verena Bland to France in it and phoned to say he wasn’t coming back. I wondered if the car still had the messy place on the back seat where I knelt on an egg while I was fighting with Chris. Does sea water wash out egg? And I remembered again that I’d left the story I was writing in that hiding-hole under the dashboard. All washed out with the sea water. I hated to think of that car smelling of sea and rust. It used to have a smell of its own. Dad once got into the wrong car by accident and knew it was wrong by the smell. Chris didn’t get on with Dad. I did, a lot of the time, unless Dad was in a really foul mood.

“When did you know it was a ghost then?” I said.

“Right at the end, I suppose,” Chris said. “He didn’t speak, but he gave a great mischievous sort of smile. And while I was wondering what was so funny, I realised I could see books on the shelf through him and he was sort of fading out.”

That makes four different versions, I thought. “Weren’t you frightened?”

“Not so much as I expected,” Chris said. “I quite liked him.”

“And has he come every night?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Chris. “I keep asking him what he wants, and he always seems to be just going to tell me, but he never does.”

It was windy among the houses too, cream houses, pink houses, tall grey houses with boards saying Bed and Breakfast, creaking in the wind, and sand racing across the roads like running water.

The place had been deserted up to then, but after that we kept meeting Mrs Urs. We saw Benita Wallins first, puffily shaking a rug out of the front door of a Bed and Breakfast house. She shouted, “Hello, dears.” Then there was Corinne West, coming round a corner with a shopping basket, Selma Tidmarsh in the next street with a scarf over her head, and Ann Haversham walking a dog round the corner from that. It was “Hello, how are you? Is your aunt well?” each time.

“Aunt Maria will be able to plot our course exactly at this rate,” I said. “Or Elaine will. How many more of them?”

“Nine,” said Chris. “She talks about thirteen Mrs Urs. I read a book and counted while she was talking yesterday.”

“Only if you count Miss Phelps and Lavinia too,” I said. “What did Miss Phelps say to upset her? Did she tell you?”

“No. Unless it was ‘Stop that boring yakking,’” Chris said. “Let’s get on a bus and get out of this place.”

But the buses don’t start until next month. We went to the railway station and asked. A porter in big rubber boots told us it was out of season, but we could get a train to Aytham Junction, and it turned out that we hadn’t got enough money for that. So we walked out along the path that started by the station car park, through brown ploughed fields to the woods.

“I think it was the day after that I noticed mud on his robes,” Chris said, looking at the ploughed earth. He kept talking about the ghost like that, in snatches. “And the light seems to come with him. I experimented. I went to bed without a candle last night and I could hardly see to find the bed.”

“Do you wake up each time?” I said.

“The first two nights. Last night I stayed awake to see if I could catch him appearing.” Chris yawned. “I heard the clock strike three and then I must have dropped off. He was just there suddenly, and I heard four strike around the time he faded out.”

We had lunch in the woods. They were good, lots of little trees all bent the same way by the sea wind. Their trunks grow in twists from all the bending they get. It gives the wood a goblin sort of look, but as soon as you are among the goblin trees you can’t see any open land outside. We nearly got lost later because of that.

“But what’s the ghost looking for?” I said. I know that was during lunch because I could hear the twisted trees creaking while I said it, and I remember dead leaves under my knees, clean and cold as an animal’s nose.

“I’d love to know,” Chris said. “I’ve looked all along the books in that wall. I took them out and looked behind them, in case the ghost hadn’t the strength to move them, but it’s just wall behind them.”

“Perhaps it’s a book?” I suggested. “Are any of them A History of Hauntings, or maybe Dead Men of Cranbury, to give you a clue who he is?”

“No way!” said Chris. “The Works of Balzac, The Works of Scott, Ruskin’s Writings and Collected Works of Joseph Conrad.” He thought a bit and the trees creaked a bit, and then he said, “I think the ghost brings rather awful dreams, but I can’t remember what they are.”

“How can you like him then?” I cried out, shuddering.

“Because the dreams are not his fault,” Chris said. “You’d know if you saw him. You’d be sorry for him. You’re the soft-hearted one, not me.”

I do feel quite sorry for the ghost anyway, not being able to lie quiet because he’d lost something, and having to get up out of his grave every night to hunt for it. I wondered how long he’d been doing it. I asked Chris if he could tell from the ghost’s clothes how long ago he died, but Chris said he never saw them clearly enough.

The creaking of the trees was making me shudder by then. I couldn’t finish my lunch – Mum always gives you far too much anyway. Chris said he was blowed if he was going to cart a bag full of half-eaten pork pie about and I hate carrying carrier bags. So Chris put some of the cake in his pocket for later and we pushed the bag under the twisted roots of the nearest tree. Litter fiends, we are. The wood was wonderfully clear and airy, with a fresh mossy smell to it. It made it seem cleaner still that there were no leaves on the bent branches – barely even buds. We both felt ashamed of leaving the bag and made jokes about it. Chris said a passing badger would be grateful for the pork pie.

It was after that that we got lost. The wood went steeply up and steeply down. We never saw the fields, or even the sea, and we didn’t know where we were until I realised that the wind always came in from the sea. So in order to find Cranbury again we had to face into the wind. We might have been wandering all night if we hadn’t done that. I said it was a witch-wood trying to keep us for ever. Chris said, “Don’t be silly!” But I think he was quite scared too: it was all so empty and twisted.

Anyway, I think what we must have done was to go right up the valley behind Cranbury and then along the hill on the other side. When we finally came steeply down and saw Cranbury below us, we were right on the opposite hill from Cranbury Head, and Cranbury was looking like half-circles of doll’s houses arranged round a grey misty nothing that was the sea.

I thought it looked quite pretty from there. Chris said, “How on earth did we cross the railway? It comes right through the valley.”

I don’t know how we did, but we had. We could see the railway below us too. The last big house in Cranbury was half-hidden by the hill we were on, quite near the railway. We took it as a landmark and went down straight towards it. By this time it was just beginning to be evening, not dark yet, but sort of quietly dimming so that everything was pale and chilly. I kept telling myself this was why everything felt so strange. There was a steep field first of very wet grass. The wind had dropped. The big house was all among trees, but we thought there must be a road beyond it, so we climbed a sort of mound-thing at the bottom of the field to see where the road was. The mound was all grown over with whippy little bushes that were budding big pale buds and there were little trampled paths leading in and out all over. I remember thinking that it looked a good place to play in. Children obviously played here. Then we got to the top of the hill and we could see the children.

They were in the garden of the big house. It was a boring red-brick house that looked as if it might be a school. The garden, which we could look down into across a wall, was a boring school-type garden, too, just grass and round beds with evergreens in them. The children were all playing in it, very quietly and sedately. It was unnatural. I mean, how can forty kids make almost no noise at all? The ones who were playing never shouted once. Most of them were just walking about, in rows of four or five. If they were girls, they walked arm in arm. The boys just strolled in a line. And they all looked alike. They weren’t alike. All the girls had different little plaid dresses on, and all the boys had different coloured sweaters. Some had fair hair, some brown hair, and four or five of the kids were black. Their faces weren’t the same. But they were, if you see what I mean. They all moved the same way and had the same expressions on their different faces. We stared. We were both amazed.

“They’re clones,” said Chris. “They have to be.”

“But wouldn’t clones be like twins?” I said.

“They’re part of a secret experiment to make clones look different,” Chris said. “They’ve managed to make their bodies not look alike, but their minds are still the same. You can see they are.”

It was one of those jokes you almost mean. I wished Chris hadn’t said it. I didn’t think the children could hear him from where we were, but a man came up beside me from the bushes while Chris was talking, and I knew the man could hear. Luckily at that moment, a lady, dressed a bit like a nurse, came out into the garden.

“Come along, children,” she called. “It’s getting cold and dark. Inside, all of you.”

The lady was one of the Mrs Urs. As the children all obediently walked towards her, I remembered she was Phyllis Forbes. I was going to tell Chris, but I looked at the man first because it was embarrassing with him standing there. He seemed to have gone. So I looked at Chris to tell him and Chris’s face was a white staring blur, gazing at me.

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!” I said.

“I have,” he said. “The ghost from my room. He was standing right beside you a second ago.”

I ran then. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I went tearing my way through the bushes all across and down the little hill and then out into a field of some kind and then into another field after that. I remember a wire fence twanging and a hedge which scraped me all over, and a huge black and white beast suddenly looming at me out of the twilight. It was a cow, I think. I did a mad sideways swerve round it and ran on. I wanted to scream, but I was so frightened that all I could make was a little whimpering sound.

After a while I could hear Chris pelting after me, calling out, “Cool it, Mig! Wait! He’s not frightening at all really!” I wanted to shout back, “Then why did you look so scared?” but I could still only make that stupid mewing noise. “Hm-hm-hm!” I said to Chris and rushed on. I don’t know where I went at all, with Chris rushing after me telling me to stop. It was getting darker all the time. But I think some of where I ran must have been allotments along the back of Cranbury, because it was all cold and cloggy and I kept treading on big clammy plants that went crunch and gave out a fierce smell of cabbage. My feet got heavier and heavier like they do in nightmares. I could see town lights twinkling to one side and orange street light shining steadily ahead, and I raced for the orange light with my huge heavy feet, and my chest hurt and I kept going “hm-hm-hm!” until Chris caught me up and I suddenly ran out of breath.

“Honestly!” he said. He was disgusted.

We were beside an iron fence just outside the station car park, with dew hanging off it and glittering on all the cars in the orange light. A train was just coming rattling into the station. I had a stitch and I could hardly breathe. I lifted first one foot then the other into the light. They were both giant-sized with earth and smelt of cabbage. We looked at them and we laughed. Chris leant on the fence and squealed with laughter. I hiccuped and panted and my eyes watered.

“It wasn’t really the ghost,” I said when I could speak, “was it?”

“I just said it to frighten you,” said Chris. “The result was spectacular. Get some of that mud off. Aunt Maria will be telling everyone we’re drowned and Elaine will be giving Mum hell for letting Auntie get so worried.”

Now I’m writing it down, I can see Chris was lying to make me feel better. I didn’t realise then and I did feel better. I stood on one leg and took my shoes off in turn and scraped them on the iron fence. Chris scraped his a bit, but he wasn’t anything like as muddy. He had looked where he was going.

While we were doing it, the train had stopped and all the people from it began to come out of the station. They came one after another along past the fence under the light. They didn’t look at us. They were all staring straight ahead and walking in the same brisk way, looking kind of dull and tired. “Rush-hour crowd,” Chris said. “Funny to have it out here too. I wonder where they all commute to.”

“They look like zombies,” I said. Most of them were men and they mostly wore city suits. About half the line marched out through the gate at the end of the car park. We could hear their feet marching twunka twunka twunka down the road into Cranbury. The other half, in the same unseeing way, walked to cars in the car park. The space was suddenly full of headlights coming on and starters whining. “Zombies tired after work,” I said.

“All the husbands of the Mrs Urs,” said Chris. “The Mrs Urs take their souls away and then send them out as zombies to earn money.”

“But the Mr Urs don’t realise,” I said. “They’ve all been zombies for years without anyone knowing.” The cars were all zooming out of the car park by then, crunchle crunchle as they came past us on the gravel, flaring headlights over us. The zombies in each car looked straight ahead and didn’t notice us staring over the fence. Car after car. It was giving me a mesmerised feeling, until one crunched by that was blue, with one headlight dimmer than the other and dents in well-known places. “Hey!” I cried out. I hung on to the fence so that my hands hurt. “Chris, that was—!”

“No, it wasn’t,” Chris said. He was hanging on the fence too. “It had the wrong number. I thought it was our car too for a moment, but it wasn’t, Mig. Truly.”

You can rely on Chris where numbers are concerned. He’s always right. “It was awfully like ours,” I said.

“Creepily like,” Chris agreed. “I really did wonder if they’d dried it out and mended the door and sold it to someone – for a second, till I looked at the number plate.”

By the time all the cars had driven away, the porter in sea boots was padding about in front of the station, closing it for the night by the look of it. We climbed over the fence and trotted out through the car park gates.

“We’d better not tell Mum,” I said.

“No,” said Chris. “We can tell her we’ve seen clones and zombies, but not about the car.”

In the end, we didn’t tell Mum anything much. We were in trouble – both of us for being so late and me about the state my clothes were in. Aunt Maria was really put out about my clothes. “So thoughtless, dear. I can’t take you to the Meeting looking like that.”

“I thought your meeting was this afternoon,” Chris said.

Mum shushed him. She was in a frenzy. The Mrs Urs had been there all afternoon having their Circle of Healing and wolfing cake, and now Aunt Maria had announced that there was a Meeting at Cranbury Town Hall she had to go to at 7.30. That is the reason I have been able to write so much of this autobiography. I have been left behind in disgrace because I have got my only skirt torn and covered in mud. I like being in disgrace. There is still some cake left. Aunt Maria used her low sorrowing voice on me and then told Chris he had to go instead. Mum took one look at Chris’s face and martyred herself again by saying she would go with Aunt Maria.

I can’t think why Aunt Maria needs Mum. When zero hour approached, Elaine and her husband came round with the famous wheelchair. Mr Elaine – who is called Larry – is smaller than Elaine and I think he was one of the line of zombies who got off the train. Anyway he has a pale, drained, zombie-ish look and does everything Elaine says. The two of them unfolded the vast, shiny wheelchair in the kitchen and heaved Aunt Maria into it. Chris had to go away and laugh. He says Aunt Maria looked like the female pope.

At zero hour minus one, Aunt Maria had made Mum array her in a large purple coat, with most of a dead fox round her neck. The fox’s head is very real, with red glass eyes, and it spoilt my supper, because Aunt Maria had supper in it in case they were late. And her hat, which is tall and thin with purple feathers. The wheelchair looked like a throne when she was in it. She kept snapping commands.

“Betty, my umbrella, don’t forget my gloves. Larry, mind the rug in the hall. Be careful down the steps.”

And Elaine always answered for Larry. “Don’t worry. Larry’s got it in hand. Larry can do the steps blindfold.” Larry never said a thing. He looked at me and Chris as if he didn’t like us. Then he and Mum and Elaine took Aunt Maria bumping down the front step and wheeled her off down the street like a small royal procession.

The Meeting was about Cranbury Orphanage. It turns out that the house where we saw Mrs Ur and the clones – and the ghost – is Cranbury Orphanage. How dull. It makes the whole day seem dull now, if they were only orphans, not experimental clones after all. Mum thought the Meeting was pretty dull too. When I asked her about it just now, she said, “I don’t know, cherub. I was asleep for most of it – but I think they were voting on whether or not to build an extension to the Orphanage. I remember a dreary old buffer called Nathaniel Phelps was dead against it. He talked for ages, until Aunt Maria suddenly banged her umbrella on the floor and said of course they were going to build the poor orphans a new playroom. That seemed to settle it.”

I think Aunt Maria is secretly Queen of Cranbury – not exactly “Uncrowned Queen”, more like “Hatted Queen”. I am glad I am not an orphan in that Orphanage.

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