Love Notes from Vinegar House (11 page)

I grabbed a sheet from the basket and tried to drape it over the line, but the wind picked it up and threw it back into my face, then onto the ground. I almost heard the
brringgg
of my fairy godmother’s wand. She was obviously in a bad mood today. I let out a low growl when Luke moved forwards to help me.

“Look what you’ve done,” I said. “This is all your fault.”

“Shrimp–”

“Don’t call me that! Shrimp was a little kid – somebody you used to know. You don’t know me. And don’t pretend–”

“Luke!”

Mr Chilvers was lugging a barrowload of mulch and nodding at Luke to follow him.

Luke picked the sheet up off the ground. He placed it gently into the empty washing basket.

He took my face in his hands and looked deeply into my eyes in a way he had never looked at me before. And then he leaned in and we locked lips tighter than the seal on the hatch of a diving submarine, his thumb gently brushing away a tear that had rolled down my cheek …

I really had to stop daydreaming about someone who didn’t even exist.

The real Luke left me standing at the washing line.

The sheet was still on the ground.

Luke followed Mr Chilvers to the vegetable patch without a backward glance.

And I didn’t need to look behind me to feel Vinegar House frowning down on us.

“Oh, shut up,” I said.

The attic had always been out of bounds to the grandchildren. Dad told me there was nothing up there anyway, just some old stuff that nobody had bothered to throw away. But Isabella and I had spent hours imagining all kinds of things: ancient treasure maps and toys, wedding dresses and telephones with dial-up numbers. We’d even asked once or twice if we could just look and not touch anything, but Grandma Vinegar insisted that it was no place for nosey children and we’d probably just get ourselves injured or incredibly dirty. I got the feeling that the idea of dirt was the thing that affected her the most.

There were other rooms in Vinegar House locked against prying eyes, but they never held the same appeal as the attic. Mrs Skelton was the keeper of the keys. She wore them on a crocheted chain around her neck, along with another chain that held her reading glasses. This meant she had access to any of the locked doors at Vinegar House whenever she wished. Some days I’d catch a glimpse of a normally locked up room through a half-opened door as Mrs Skelton ran her duster over unused furniture or opened a window to let air into the room. Grandma Vinegar was very big on fresh air. She was always telling us to go outside and get some air into our lungs, as if the house didn’t have enough oxygen to spare.

And then one day I had my chance. It was the day after the
washing line incident
, as I had labelled it in my head. As I left my bedroom to go downstairs for lunch, I noticed a shaft of light at the end of the corridor where there shouldn’t have been one. I wondered if the blackbirds had made their way through to the ceiling. Mrs Skelton had been complaining that the birds had made a nest in the eaves, and that Mr Chilvers needed to find out where they were getting in and board it up. But of course, because Mrs Skelton was complaining about it, Mr Chilvers was taking his time getting around to fixing the problem.

I hurried past the bathroom door. As I walked past Rumer’s bedroom there was the faint sound of a keyboard being tapped. Further down the hall I realised that the shaft of light was spilling down the tiny flight of stairs which were usually out of bounds. The door to the attic was open. I stopped at the foot of the stairs and listened, but there were no sounds from above. Mrs Skelton must have left the door open accidentally. She was probably on her way back right now to close it. Even as I was thinking this, I climbed the stairs, the sun shaft like a beckoning finger that I couldn’t resist. The stairs were quite steep, the boards narrow as if made for tiny feet. At the top there was a small landing and the half-opened door. I pushed it fully open and walked into the forbidden space.

I was disappointed.

The attic was spotless. No cobwebs hung from the ceiling. No mountains of treasure were piled up high. There were boxes. Plenty of boxes. Some looked like boxes that tinned food might come in. Others looked older, like tea-chests, or wooden-slatted things, dark with age. In one corner sat a stack of old suitcases with brass corners and tarnished locks. A scrap of material peeked out from one suitcase, so I figured it might hold old clothes. And there, solving the mystery of the missing piece of furniture from the Blue Room, was the floor-length mirror.

The window was at shoulder-height and the outside was speckled from years of sea spray. It was octagonal in shape and dusty inside, apart from a spot in the centre that looked as if someone had cleared it recently for a better view. I didn’t remember ever seeing the window from outside. The overhanging eaves may have had something to do with this, or it could have been that I never bothered to look up that high. I imagined children dressed in old-fashioned clothes playing marbles or hide-and-seek up here. Had anyone peered from this window waiting for the arrival of a horse and cart? Had someone watched a sailing ship glide through the grey water beyond the bluff?

I could see the edge of the sweeping driveway and the bluff rocks that surrounded us. The water was white-capped today, a hectic motion created by the wind which whistled through the gap in the window’s lintel. Sunlight poured weakly through the window, hitting the mirror that had been propped up against a wardrobe just opposite the stairs.

“What are you doing?”

I fell against the window in fright and looked around to see Rumer peering in at me from the doorway.

“The attic,” I said simply. “I’ve never been in here before.”

“Boring, isn’t it,” she said. “Daddy showed me up here once.” She wandered about the room, sniffing once. She wrinkled her nose then sighed. “This is the worst holiday ever. You’d better come down for lunch. I am not going down there by myself.”

As we left, a wooden chest caught my eye. Its curved lid was tied down with leather straps, each strap secured by a rusted buckle. I touched it briefly as I left the room, and it seemed warm to my fingers. As I passed the mirror I thought I caught a glimpse of blond hair in its cracked corner, but when I took a closer look there was just the reflection of the door. Even as I decided I had seen Rumer’s reflection as she left the room I shivered a little.

I made sure the door was ajar at the same angle I’d found it, and followed Rumer down the stairs. By the time I reached the main staircase, I looked back to the attic stairs, but the shaft of light had disappeared and the end of the corridor was in shadow.

And somewhere above us I heard the attic door slam shut.

Have you ever noticed that there are some things people say that usually mean the opposite of what they are saying?

Like, when someone says, “To be perfectly honest,” I doubt that’s what they’re being.

Or, “I don’t want to alarm you,” means that they’re just about to scare you to death.

Or, “With all due respect,” means they have no respect for you at all, and they’re just about to be very rude.

So when Mrs Skelton goes around saying, “If you ask me,” it’s usually because she knows that no one is going to ask her, so she’s going to tell you anyway.

I was thinking about this after lunch that same day when Mrs Skelton sent me to look for Mr Chilvers because he hadn’t done something she’d asked him to do, and now his life wasn’t worth living,
if you asked her
.

“And tell him Mrs Kramer is very unhappy,” she added as I left.

Why don’t you tell him yourself? I thought. But I just nodded and slammed the door behind me. I hoped I wouldn’t come across Luke. Just the thought of the stupid wet sheets and my tantrum made the breath catch in my throat.

Outside, the air tasted like a crisp Granny Smith apple, all tart and juicy. I could hear the
thunk-thunking
of an axe at work. Mr Chilvers was obviously down at the woodshed, which is why I took the path that led to the front of the house. Mr Chilvers could wait; I had a sudden urge to visit the tree house.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d climbed up to the tree house. My feet reached for familiar footholds, but I felt awkward and out of practice. By the time I reached the platform I was puffing like an old goat. If I looked behind me, I could see Vinegar House all dark and brooding, smoke trailing from the kitchen chimney. Ahead of me lay the sea. Several large gulls coasted about on the air currents above the bluff.

A few plastic figures – like the ones you find in a fast-food kid’s meal – were all that remained from our elaborate tree house days when we’d drag cushions and blankets and toys up to the platform.

“Hello?” came a voice from below.

I stayed still and peered through the branches, barely daring to breathe. It was Luke. I wondered if he’d go away if I ignored him.

“Freya?”

“Oh. Hi!” I moved slightly so he could see my face.

“How’s the view?” He was pretending that nothing had happened. Pretending that he wasn’t embarrassed by my recent lunatic rantings.

“Good. Great. You should try it sometime,” I babbled.

The next thing I knew, the tree was shaking as Luke clambered up.

“I didn’t mean … oh, there you are,” I continued.

Luke’s face appeared first, then he hitched himself up to sit beside me.

“You’re right,” he said, settling in. “It is a good view. So give me the guided tour.”

Luke Hart was sitting next to me, and he smelled like burning leaves and hand soap and chewing gum. It was the most heavenly thing I had ever smelled in my life. And that included the smell of vanilla and baking bread.

I had never thought of a tree house scenario before, and mentally added it to my list of Luke Hart daydreams.

“Okay,” I said, pointing towards the coastline. “To the right is Homsea. You can’t see it from here, but if you followed the coastline all the way around you’d eventually bump into the Homsea Jetty.”

“Check.”

“To the left of us is the bluff. It gets in the way of us seeing any further, but if you swam along the coastline on the left, you’d come to Craddock’s farm.”

“Check. Look, sorry about that, er …” he said. “I don’t know what I said–”

I wondered what he was apologising for, then I realised he didn’t know either. I interrupted him. “And straight ahead is Seal Rock. And just past that … I think that’s a boat.”

“What?”

“I think there’s a boat.” I pointed out to where I was looking. “A speedboat.”

Luke leaned in closer to follow the direction of my finger. “I can’t see anything,” he grumbled.

His voice was so close to my ear that the words sent a shock wave through me. I wanted him to speak again.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a boat,” I insisted.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

I hadn’t realised I was trembling, but it wasn’t the cold weather making my body shake.

“A little,” I said.

“Do you want my coat?” he asked.

“No!” I didn’t want him to move away.

He grabbed my pointing hand and sandwiched it between his own two hands.

“Is that better?” he asked.

I could barely nod. I’d stopped breathing and everything about that moment was like stumbling into a 3-D movie after living a 2-D life. The rough planks of the tree house were hard against my back. I could hear the screech of the gulls as they squabbled on Bluff Beach and, further out, the faint drone of the speedboat, which was nearly out of sight. The skin on Luke’s hands was rough but his touch was gentle, and he held my hand carefully as if it might break.

“Freya!” Mrs Skelton’s voice rose into the thin winter air and life returned to 2-D.

I took a breath and giggled nervously.

“I need to go. Got an errand,” I explained.

“I’ll go first,” Luke offered, letting go of my hand. “I’ll make a nice soft landing for you if you fall.”

As I waited for Luke to climb down out of my way, I spied a folded piece of paper poking out from between two overlapping wood planks. It was shoved in so tightly that I tore it a little as I pulled it out. Inside only one word was scrawled in untidy writing.

Murderer
.

A left over note, probably, from one of our many games of Murder in the Dark.

“Are you right?” called out Luke.

I shoved the note into my pocket. Then I scrambled down the tree, conscious that Luke was watching my every move.

I walked down the garden path to the stump behind the woodshed where Mr Chilvers was splitting logs. I stood for a moment, unsure what to do, and noticed the way his shirtsleeves were rolled back and the sweat patches that had formed at his armpits. I’d never spent much time thinking about Mr Chilvers, but when I had it was to think of him as an old man. Perhaps it was the grey at his temples or the work overalls he wore that had encouraged this idea, but I realised that he was probably younger than my father. Definitely older than Luke Hart. Not that I was thinking about him …

Mr Chilvers paused in his chopping and started when he looked up to find me watching him.