‘This is cool,’ I said when I set eyes on it.
They’d first discovered the abandoned den while we’d been living at the cottage, when Bella had already been meeting up with Sam in secret. Apparently he’d driven here the day after we had. The den was made under a low overhanging tree, using lots of broken-off branches propped up and wedged into place to make slanting walls. Sam had found an old sheet of plastic in a skip, which he’d used to cover part of the roof.
Inside the shelter was all Sam’s stuff, including his motorbike. Bella’s bicycle was leaning up against it.
‘I’m still a bit worried about leaving my bike here for too long,’ he said. ‘Whoever made this den might come back, and I don’t fancy a load of kids crawling over it or someone siphoning off my petrol. I think I should stay here at night, Bella, at least for now.’
‘Don’t be daft. You should totally make use of the cottage. It’s not like you’ll be doing any damage.’
‘But it’s still against the law.’
‘Well, you won’t get caught,’ Bella said firmly. ‘Especially now that the people next door are going away.’
‘Katie told me the dogs went to the kennels this morning,’ I said.
‘See!’ said Bella. ‘And the old lady in the third cottage is deaf and never answers her door, so she won’t be any trouble.’
‘All the same, I think I’ll sleep out here tonight,’ Sam said stubbornly.
‘You do realise that the weather forecast is really bad for this weekend, don’t you?’ I said. ‘There’s supposed to be a storm, and it’s not safe to shelter underneath trees if there’s thunder and lightning. You could get electrocuted.’
Bella looked at me gratefully as he sighed and said, ‘If the weather’s bad I’ll sleep in the cottage. But really I just want to find some work so I can move back to the B & B.’
As we headed back towards civilisation my phone rang. The three of us had just reached the road where the trees ended and Sam was about to ride off to the jobcentre in Castle Westbury. I checked to see who was calling me and wished I hadn’t when I saw that it was Aunt Thecla.
‘Don’t answer it,’ Bella said.
‘I have to,’ I grunted.
Thankfully it was Grace at the other end. ‘Libby, we’ve just put our cakes in the oven,’ she told me excitedly. ‘And now Aunt Thecla wants to give me an art lesson. Oh … and a girl called in to see you.’
‘What girl?’
‘Tansy. Aunt Thecla called her Pansy and she got really cross.’ She giggled. ‘She was going somewhere on the bus and she came to see if you wanted to go with her.’
‘Going where on the bus?’
‘Shopping. In a castle.’
‘Castle? Oh, do you mean Castle Westbury?’
I could hear our aunt saying something in the background, then Grace said, ‘Aunt Thecla wants to know where you are.’
‘With Bella. We’ll be home soon.’
As I came off the phone, Sam said, ‘I can give you a lift to Castle Westbury if you like.’
‘What? On that thing?’ I had butterflies in my tummy just at the thought of riding on his motorbike.
‘Hey, I’m a perfectly safe driver, you know,’ he said indignantly as he fastened his helmet.
‘Don’t take it personally,’ Bella said. ‘Dad’s completely brainwashed her about motorbikes.’
I averted my eyes as they kissed goodbye.
After Sam had gone, Bella and I cycled back to the village together, with Bella barking, ‘Car!’ whenever she heard one approaching. And instead of feeling annoyed every time she yelled at me to keep closer to the hedge, I found myself feeling pleasantly surprised by how protective she was being.
We arrived back to find Aunt Thecla in the kitchen with Grace, showing her how to draw pictures using charcoal.
‘Girls, I need one of you to go to my house and fetch me some hairspray,’ she greeted us. ‘I need it to set the charcoal on these drawings or they’ll smudge. I’ve looked upstairs but your mother doesn’t seem to have any.’ She sounded a bit irritated by that fact.
‘Yeah, well, only old ladies use hairspray these days,’ Bella muttered.
‘I’ll go,’ I offered hastily.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Bella said, ignoring our aunt’s glare.
Once we reached the house I realised why Bella had wanted to come. ‘I’m going to see what food she’s got in her kitchen,’ she told me.
‘Don’t take too much,’ I warned her as I hurried up to the bathroom where Aunt Thecla usually kept her hairspray.
When I couldn’t find any, I decided to look in her bedroom instead. I’d glimpsed inside her bedroom before while we’d been staying here, but she usually kept the door closed and we weren’t allowed to go in without her permission. Also off limits was her art studio, though she never took any chances with that, keeping it locked the whole time we were there.
Now I had the opportunity to look around her bedroom properly I noticed that it was the lightest, most colourful room in the house. It had three bold abstract paintings on one wall, which were her own work, and which I liked a lot more than any of the paintings she’d ever given us. I looked on her dressing table for hairspray but I couldn’t see any.
The top drawer of the dressing table was partly open and I could see loose photos and what looked like a couple of small photo albums inside. Of course I knew I should close the drawer immediately but I was far too curious.
I carefully slid out a small black leather album. To my surprise it was filled with photographs of me and my sisters as babies. I returned it to the drawer and took out an envelope containing some older-looking colour photos. They were of Aunt Thecla as a girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen. In one picture she was sitting in a field of bluebells. In another I hardly recognised her because her hair was loose – a rich dark-brown colour, flowing in waves down her back. In that one she wore a blue summer dress and she was balancing on the branch of a tree. There was another of her pulling a silly face, and another of her waving to the camera. I was surprised to see what an attractive young woman she had been.
Lastly there was a photo of a young man standing in the same field of bluebells, blowing a kiss to whoever was holding the camera (presumably Aunt Thecla?). I studied the young man’s face to see if it resembled Michael Godwin’s. I couldn’t really tell, but then I noticed the writing on the back of the photograph:
A kiss for my Bluebell, with love from M
‘WOW!’ I said out loud. I could feel butterflies in my chest, a mix of nerves and excitement. I felt like I’d found a clue in some huge and tantalising mystery.
‘Wow, what?’ Bella asked from the doorway.
I instantly wished that Tansy was here instead of Bella. I had a feeling Tansy might actually share a bit of my excitement.
‘You do know Aunt Thecla would kill you if she knew you were going through her stuff, don’t you?’ Like I already said, Bella isn’t nearly as curious as I am about other people and she’s always saying I’m way too nosy.
I hurriedly replaced the photos in the drawer. ‘I’m still looking for the hairspray,’ I said, although I couldn’t have cared less about finding that now. All I wanted to do was search through the rest of my aunt’s stuff to find more clues.
‘Oh, I already found that in the kitchen. Come on.’
I suppose I should have been grateful that she was forcing me to leave before my curiosity got the better of me. I can so relate to the saying that curiosity killed the cat. You wouldn’t think curiosity could be so dangerous but, believe me, sometimes it can pretty much choke to death any sense you’ve got and make you behave in a way that’s just plain wrong.
Sitting ready by the front door was a large carrier bag of food. ‘Bella, you can’t take all that!’
‘It’s OK. It’s all stuff from the back of her cupboards. She won’t notice – at least not for a while.’ She shoved the can of hairspray into my hand and told me to take it to our house. ‘I’m going to stash this lot at the cottage for Sam.’