“What do you mean, it never arrived?” I said. “Why on earth didn’t they call until now?”
“Apparently, shortly before Graham died he told Ms. St. James that I didn’t work very well under pressure—”
“That’s true—”
“And it wasn’t a good idea to call me and that she wasn’t to worry, because even though I was often late I always turned in excellent work.”
“So that’s a good thing.”
“Oh, Kat!” Mum wailed. “What on earth am I going to do?”
“Now calm down—”
“Calm? I can’t be calm. I’ll never be calm again.”
“All you need to do is send them another copy of Ravished. We can send it overnight. I’ll go into Dartmouth right now.”
There was a deathly silence.
“Oh no,” I cried. “You don’t have a copy, do you? Oh, Mum.”
“And don’t say ‘I told you so!’”
“I don’t need to.” Since my mother refused to use a computer, I had lost count of the times that I had insisted that if she was not going to type with a carbon copy, at the very least she should photocopy everything. The original manuscript really was the original—and only—manuscript.
“Let’s work backwards,” I said. “You posted it in Dartmouth, yes?”
“No. Little Dipperton. I know you told me to go to the main post office, but I was in a rush.” She regarded me with defiance. “But how can that have happened!” Her voice shot up an octave. “I paid for it registered post.”
“Good,” I said. “So that means you have a tracking number.”
“Of course I have a tracking number.”
“Great. Give it to me and I’ll see what happened.”
With one sweep, Mum had cleared the desk. Fabric, pencils, books and what remained of her sandwich tumbled onto the floor. She rummaged through the dozens of pigeonholes, all stuffed with scraps of paper—bills, envelopes and Post-it notes. “Oh! I’ll never find it in all this mess!”
“Calm down,” I said again. “Let me look.”
“No. I don’t want you poking through all my personal things. I put it somewhere safe.”
“Good.”
Mum wrenched open one of the smaller drawers. “Ah. I thought so. Here we are,” she said triumphantly. “I told you I had it.”
I inspected the date. “You posted it—good heavens, on April the seventeenth.”
“So where is it?” Mum demanded. “What happened to it?”
“Leave this with me,” I said. “I’ll go up to the gatehouse and check online.”
Honeychurch Hall still didn’t have access to any Internet. Little Dipperton was supposed to have broadband installed at some point, but I was able to use a British Telecom Wi-Fi hotspot at the top of the drive.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Walk or car?” I said.
“Whichever is the fastest.”
Mum clambered into the passenger seat of my Golf and put the Black & Decker box onto her lap.
I reversed out of the carriageway and we sped away.
Mum took a peep inside the box and gave a shudder. “Personally, I’ve never seen the appeal. Ever since your father made me watch Chucky, I’ve never been able to look at a doll in quite the same way.”
“You went to see Chucky?”
“Oh yes. Your father always enjoyed a good horror film. He said they made him laugh. It used to scare me half to death.”
“I never knew that.”
Mum’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “There was a lot you didn’t know about him, Katherine.”
“And a lot he didn’t know about you,” I retorted.
Given my mother’s insistence that my parents had had a wonderful marriage, I still couldn’t figure out why she had felt the need to keep her writing accomplishments secret. I was certain he would have been proud of her. I was.
“And don’t look at me like that,” said Mum.
“I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell him,” I said. “When I get married, I want to be able to share everything.”
“Sometimes, it doesn’t work like that no matter how much you want it to,” said Mum darkly.
“I disagree.” I knew I was sounding self-righteous, but that’s what I truly believed. “Honesty is everything.”
“Alright, alright,” said Mum dramatically. “I’ll tell you why, but you might not like what you hear.”
“I’m bracing myself.”
“When I first left the traveling fair and boxing emporium, my people—”
“Your troupe—”
“Yes. My troupe! We were one big happy family,” said Mum. “I can’t expect you to understand how lonely I was. I found it hard to adjust to life in a semi-detached house in Tooting.”
“Go on,” I said.
“I missed life on the road. I missed sleeping under the stars. I missed the sound of the fairground at night, the excitement of the boxing ring.” She shrugged. “I adored your father, but … my troupe never forgave me for what I did.”
I could tell the memory still upset her. “I know that, Mum,” I said gently. “But you can’t help who you fall in love with.”
In fact, my mother had met my father when he was representing HM Revenue & Customs. Dad was investigating Bushman’s Traveling Fairground and Boxing Emporium for suspected tax evasion. As it turned out, he was right. There was quite a lot of creative accounting going on in the ticket booth. Naturally, when Mum and Dad fell in love and eloped her troupe viewed her decision as the ultimate betrayal.
“I was very unhappy to start with—not because of Frank, never because of Frank,” said Mum. “But I missed my kin.” She gave me a sheepish smile. “You have no idea how much it means to have Alfred living here.”
Alfred. Hmm. I was still on the fence about whether having Alfred around was a good or a bad thing. It was Alfred who had suggested that my mother funnel all her earnings into the offshore account in Jersey and it was Alfred who occasionally disappeared overnight with an empty suitcase and a forged passport only to return the next day with a lot of cash.
“But I don’t see what that has to do with the fact you didn’t tell Dad about your writing,” I persisted.
“Writing was a way for me to escape,” said Mum. “I could get lost in my imagination.”
“Lost in your fake migraines,” I reminded her. “If you knew how worried Dad and I were. We kept thinking you had a brain tumor.”
“I know and I’m sorry.” She thought for a moment. “You know, I never expected to finish writing a book, let alone write one that would sell. I suppose I felt silly, so I didn’t say anything until it was too late.”
“It’s never too late—”
“Once I started with the tiny lies, they just got … bigger and bigger.”
“You’re telling me, they got bigger,” I said. “I’m not judging. I just know that one day it will all come out.”
Mum stiffened. “Don’t worry about my life, worry about yours.”
“I can’t help but worry about yours!”
My mother’s website claimed that not only had my father been an international diplomat who had died in a plane crash, but also she owned a villa on the Amalfi coast and a Devon manor house. One of her publicity headshots showed her holding a Pekinese called Truly Scrumptious.
“And where did you get the Pekinese? At least tell me that.”
Fortunately, we arrived at the gatehouses before we could dissolve into one of our childish squabbles.
“Thank God we’re here,” she muttered. “That was the longest five minutes in history.”
“I’ll get it out of you eventually.”
We got out of the Golf with Mum carrying Chucky, as she insisted on calling the Jumeau.
Mum turned to look over at the parkland beyond where the activity seemed to have tripled since this morning. “Oh,” she said wistfully. “Seeing all those tents takes me back years. We used to set up in that very same spot, too.”
Pointing to a row of blue Portaloos that stood along the hedge, she added, “Toilets. How flash.”
“I bet you didn’t have those in the 1950s.”
I let us into the West Gatehouse.
“It still smells of paint,” said Mum.
“I don’t mind it,” I said.
She started roaming around with a critical air. “You’ve not done much unpacking.”
“I’m waiting for Alfred to put in shelves,” I said as I ramped up my computer. “There’s no rush, though. It’s not as if I’m going to get any foot traffic up here.”
“Nonsense. You’ll get lots of people walking by next weekend. There is going to be a entire camp of Royalists and Roundheads right outside your back door.”
“You think they’ll be in the mood to buy bears?” I said.
Mum gave an exasperated sigh. “I know you wanted a little antique shop in Brick Lane. I know I ruined your plans, but you didn’t have to move—”
“I’m here now,” I said firmly. “And I am happy in Devon. Okay? Anyway, I’m looking at an additional space at Dartmouth Antique Emporium this weekend. Just for the summer.”
“Oh good,” Mum enthused. “It will get you out a bit. I worry about you living like a hermit.”
“Ah—success,” I said as the Royal Mail website came up. “Finally.”
Mum handed me the registered post slip. I typed in the tracking number.
“Did you know that it was King Henry the Eighth who founded the Royal Mail in 1516?” said Mum. “You’d think he wouldn’t have had the time what with juggling all those wives.”
I frowned. “There must be some mistake.” I re-entered the tracking number—then again. “Oh dear.”
Mum peered over my shoulder. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
I tapped the screen. “It says the package is still in Little Dipperton.”
“What?” Mum shrieked. “What do you mean it’s still in Little Dipperton? I don’t understand.”
“I told you to go to the post office in Dartmouth,” I said. “Obviously Muriel must have registered it and … maybe she put it to one side and forgot to post it.”
“She forgot!” Mum shrieked again. “How can she forget? She’s the postmistress!”
“I think that was around the time her husband had just died.” I thought back to the check for three hundred pounds that I had written her just this morning. I decided not to mention this to my mother. “I expect she got distracted.”
“I don’t care! And I can tell you right now King Henry would have had her head off for a lot less. I’m going down there right this minute.”
“Not for Muriel’s head, I hope,” I said. “Let me go.”
“I’m so upset—”
“We don’t know for sure,” I said. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let me find out what happened. You’ve got to finish sewing the costumes, remember?”
Mum’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “You’re right. I do.”
“I’ll be back within the hour,” I promised. “And look on the bright side. The manuscript is most likely still there. It won’t have been lost at all.”