‘You can stand here and keep watch at the window,’ I told Tansy after I’d let us into Aunt Thecla’s house with the spare keys. ‘I won’t be long.’ I left her standing by the net curtains in the front room while I hurried to the kitchen.
Placing the notes in a spot that my aunt might actually believe she’d overlooked proved harder than I’d first thought. I knew she’d already searched her kitchen for the missing money. I knew she’d taken everything off the kitchen shelf where the tin was kept and even checked behind the radiator under the shelf in case the money had fallen and got stuck there.
After I’d rejected every possible location, I spotted her wellington boots by the back door. OK, so she might have already looked there too, but I couldn’t think of anywhere better and I was running out of time.
I found Tansy in the hall, peering at one of my aunt’s paintings. ‘Is that depressing or what?’ she said.
‘I know,’ I murmured.
The painting depicted a small figure crouched on the ground outside a church. The lower two-thirds of the canvas were mostly grey and black while the upper third had a rainbow in the sky. Aunt Thecla had told me the painting represented hope.
‘Yikes!’ Tansy exclaimed as she spotted a larger painting of a scary-looking orange cat on the stairs.
I grinned. ‘That’s the orange version of the purple one she painted for us. Only ours has more evil eyes. Mum and Dad are pretending it got lost in the move.’
‘So where’s this painting you think might be my dad?’ Tansy asked.
I checked my watch. ‘We’ll have to be quick.’
I led her up to the attic room, where the door was unlocked. ‘This is Aunt Thecla’s art studio,’ I said. As I took her inside I felt a bit guilty but I didn’t let that stop me.
Seconds later Tansy was laughing at the pictures of all the nudes. ‘Imagine taking off your clothes and having to sit there with all those people staring at you. Would that be embarrassing or what? And why would anyone want to paint a bunch of naked people anyway?’
‘It’s not that big a deal,’ I said. ‘Loads of famous artists painted nudes. Rubens did and … and … well, there are loads of others.’
Tansy had just spotted the painting of the young man in the field of bluebells. ‘OMG! Is this the one?’ She let out a half-embarrassed, half-delighted snigger as she went to look more closely at the painting. ‘The hair certainly looks the same – not sure about the rest – but I mean, who else can it be?’ She was fishing out her phone to take a photograph.
‘Hey, you can’t do that!’ I protested.
‘I won’t show it to anyone,’ she insisted with a grin. ‘Except my mum. I’ll see if she thinks it’s Dad. Did I tell you she’s home from Africa now? She’s coming for a visit at the weekend.’
‘Tansy, you can’t show her! If my aunt finds out –’
‘She won’t find out! Come on, Libby … you want to know for sure if it’s my dad, don’t you?’
‘But, Tansy …’ I followed behind her down the stairs, feeling a bit sick and wondering how I could ever have thought showing her that picture was a good idea.
‘Hi, Bella,’ I said nervously as she walked into the kitchen.
It was early afternoon and for the last hour I’d been alone in our house – something that doesn’t happen very often. When Mum and Bella had arrived back from their shopping trip they’d both headed out again almost immediately. Mum had gone to the surgery and Bella had gone to the garage to see Sam. Dad and Grace were still out too.
‘How dare you tell Sam about that money!’ Bella burst out angrily the second she saw me. ‘Now he thinks I’m a thief, thanks to you!’
‘Oh, Bella, I didn’t mean to –’
‘Yes you did! Anyway, thanks to you we’re finished now!’
‘Finished?’
‘That’s right! It’s probably just what you wanted, isn’t it? You’ve always been jealous of me! Just because you’re such a geek that no boy would ever look twice at you!’ Her voice trembled and she turned and ran up the stairs.
At that point her nasty words didn’t sink in because I was so shocked by her news. I’d never dreamed Sam would dump her because of what I’d told him.
‘How come you’ve split up? What happened?’ I pursued her upstairs, feeling a bit sick.
‘Didn’t you hear what I just said? Doesn’t it even bother you that you’re so unpopular?’ she spat out.
‘Bella –’
‘Sam calls you a lump! Did you know that? He always asks me, “How’s Gracie and how’s the Lump?”’
I frowned. This is what she always does when she gets mad at me. She yells and I stay calm, which makes her even more furious, so she goads me and goads me until she gets me to totally lose it too.
‘You’re making that up,’ I said warily. ‘Sam wouldn’t say that.’
‘How do you know what Sam would say? You don’t even know him! You don’t know any boys! The way you act you probably never will!’
I know the best thing is to walk away and let Bella calm down when she gets like this. I don’t know why I wasn’t doing that today – why I couldn’t seem to let it go.
‘I know Sam wouldn’t say that because he’s not mean like you!’ I told her, sounding a lot more confident than I actually felt.
She laughed scornfully. ‘I know why you’re defending him! You fancy him, don’t you? You’ve probably been making up some pathetic fantasy about him inside your head, haven’t you?’
‘Don’t be stupid!’
‘Then why is your face so red? I bet that’s why you went running to him. You want to cause trouble because you’re jealous that he’s my boyfriend!’
‘That’s not true!’ I snapped hotly.
‘Don’t lie,’ she said with a sneer, looking triumphant now that she knew she’d got to me. ‘It’s such a cliché! Little sister fancies her big sister’s boyfriend and hopes that one day he’ll notice her. Do you really think he’d ever look at a pathetic kid like you? He thinks you’re really boring and plain and immature … oh, and fat!’
That onslaught was too much. I felt myself struggling not to cry at the thought of the two of them saying those things about me behind my back.
‘I HATE YOU, BELLA!’ I exploded.
‘Well, I wish you weren’t my sister!’ she shouted back at me.
And I ran downstairs not even thinking about where I was going – all I wanted was to get away from her.
As I walked around aimlessly outside, I tried to remember if Bella had ever said anything that nasty to me before. We’d had plenty of rows over the years and we’d told each other countless times that we hated each other. This time felt like the worst though. This one felt really serious.
After a while I started to calm down. Maybe, just maybe, Bella had made up that part about what Sam thought of me. (Usually when we make friends again after a big argument she’ll confess to making up most of the nasty things she’s said.)
I started to question my own part in the whole thing. Had I been wrong to go and speak to Sam? No way did I mean to destroy their relationship. But I knew people sometimes acted unconsciously, driven by motives they weren’t even aware of. Mum had talked to me about it when I’d fallen out really badly with my best friend, Sarah, just before she left. Mum suggested that perhaps I’d picked the fight in order to take back some control – ‘I’ll leave you before you can leave me’ sort of thing – without even being aware of what I was doing.
Did I fancy Sam? Maybe a bit. I remembered how I’d put on make-up before I went to see him. Why had I done that if I hadn’t wanted to impress him? But it didn’t mean I thought there was any chance he would actually go out with me. After all, he was seventeen and I wasn’t even thirteen for another couple of months. And in any case I’d never do that to my sister.
I found myself walking towards Tansy’s house.
I needed to take my mind off my fight with Bella, and Tansy was probably the only person who might be able to do that. I could also find out how her dad had got on with Aunt Thecla at lunchtime.
When I got there, all the windows were shut and their car wasn’t in the driveway. I still rang the doorbell but I didn’t hang around when there was no response. I didn’t want to go back home yet, so I started to walk further up the road to the little park where I’d been meaning to take Grace.
The playground was deserted. I decided to walk across the fields towards the wooded area. I knew St Clara’s was on the other side of those woods because Aunt Thecla had told me how she’d walked this way to school every morning when she was my age.
As I approached the fence that separated the woods from the field I saw a stile and a wooden sign saying Public Footpath. When I’d suggested to Bella that maybe in the summer we could walk to school this way, she said there was no way she’d be traipsing across the fields and woods, treading in cowpats and getting bitten by insects. Dad laughed when she said that and called her a typical townie.
Suddenly my phone rang and I was surprised to see Aunt Thecla’s name on the screen. Why was she phoning me? Unless … I felt my gut churning nastily as I wondered if she’d just found the fifty pounds.