Edward woke when his room flared white and then for a split second, vivid blue. The thunder came almost simultaneously, seeming to crack the attic roof open like an axe splitting a log. He sat up watching it through the curtainless window for a while, until hail spattered so fiercely onto the glass that sudden light and sudden dark were all he could see. He lay down and listened. He had been two or three years old when his half-brother had taken him on a boat and out to sea; they had huddled together in the small cabin as a storm flared and crashed all round them. His brother had been bright-eyed with excitement and Edward had sensed that this was something to revel in, knowing no danger, only the drama and heightened atmosphere. He had loved storms from then, though there had never been one so momentous. Now, this was almost as good, vast and overpowering across the fens and around Iyot House.
The lightning flickered vividly across the sky again and in the flash, he saw Leonora standing in the doorway of his room, her eyes wide, face stark white.
Edward sat up. ‘It’s amazing! I love storms.’
She went to his window. ‘Yes.’ She spoke in a whisper, as if she were afraid speaking aloud might change it.
Edward got up and stood beside her.
‘You should see the storms in the East. A storm across the water in Hong Kong. A storm over the mountains. They race through your blood, such storms.’
He understood her at once and for the first time they shared something completely, bound up together in the excitement and pleasure of the storm, so that he clasped hold of her hand when a thunderclap made the house shake and the walls of the attics shudder and her nails dug into his palm at a blue-green zigzag of lightning.
‘I thought you would be crying,’ Leonora said, glancing at him sideways.
‘We could go out.’
‘Don’t be silly, it’s like a monsoon, we’d be soaked in a minute.’
‘Have you been in a monsoon? I have. The earth steams and you could boil a pan of water on the ground. It brings down whole trees.’
‘I want to go there.’
They were linked in a passion to soar from this storm to that one.
‘My mother is there now,’ Leonora said.
‘Where? In a monsoon?’
‘In India, I think. Or Burma. Or perhaps she is back in Hong Kong. They move about so.’
He was unsure whether to be envious or sorry for her.
‘When will she come back for you?’
Leonora shrugged and flicked her hair about her shoulders. The storm was receding, the lightning moving away to the east and the sea, the rain easing to a steady, dull downpour.
‘I hope she’ll come before too long,’ Edward said. ‘You must miss her very much.’
‘I don’t,’ Leonora said, ‘and I don’t.’ And sailed out of the room on her bare and silent feet.
The next morning, the parcels began to arrive. There were two, one very large, one small, and after that, as the post from abroad caught up, one or two almost every day. Leonora took them upstairs, ignoring the remarks made by Mrs Mullen about spoilt children and the concern of Aunt Kestrel that perhaps some should be put away until later.
‘They are my parcels,’ she said, dragging a heavy one behind her, refusing help.
‘But you,’ she said to Edward, ‘may look if you like.’
Most of the parcels contained clothes, few of which fitted, dresses made of bright silk embroidered with gold thread and decorated with little mirrors, trailing fine scarves and long skirts with several floating panels. Leonora glanced at each one, held it up to herself, then tossed it away, to fall on the floor or her bed. Once or twice she put on a scarf and twirled round in it and kept it on. There were silver boxes and carved wooden animals, brass bells and on one day a huge box of pale green and pink Turkish delight that smelled of scent and sent a puff of white sugar into the air when she lifted the wooden lid. They ate several pieces, one small, sticky bite at a time, and the intense sweetness set their teeth on edge.
‘My mother never sends what I really want. She just doesn’t.’
‘But the sweets are nice. What do you really want?’
‘One thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘And she knows and she never sends it.’
‘When is your birthday?’
‘August the tenth; I am a Leo.’
‘That is quite soon. So I think she is going to send it for then.’
Leonora ripped open the thin brown paper on her last parcel. It contained a black satin cushion covered in gold and silver beads.
‘How horrible, horrible, horrible.’ The cushion bumped against the far wall and fell.
Edward wiped the sugar powder off his mouth. ‘What is it that you do really want?’
‘A doll,’ Leonora said. ‘You would think she could easily send me a doll but she never, never, never does. I hate my mother.’
‘No, you should never say that.’
‘Why? I do.’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because – you just shouldn’t.’
‘You don’t know anything about it. You don’t know anything about mothers because you haven’t got one.’
‘I know,’ Edward said. ‘But I did once have one.’
‘If she sent me what I wanted I would be able to love her.’
He wondered if that could be true, that someone made you love them by giving you what you wanted, or, that you would not love them until they did. It was confusing.
‘I think that she will send you a doll. I think you will get it on your birthday.’
But the birthday came and she did not.
Aunt Kestrel gave her an ivory carved chess set in a wooden casket, a set of hairbrushes and a jar of sweets, which she had handed to Edward the night before, to hand over as from himself. Leonora’s face had been pinched and sallow and when she had taken her things upstairs, with the handkerchief embroidered with her initial from Mrs Mullen, Edward had gone in to their aunt’s sitting room.
‘She doesn’t mean to be ungrateful.’
‘No. It is hard to know what to give but I thought you might teach her chess as you are so fond of it.’ The Bagatelle board had been damaged beyond repair by being left outside in the storm.
Aunt Kestrel sighed.
‘She sends her so many parcels with nice things but never what she really wants.’
‘The trouble is, Violet barely knows her own child and always had more interest in herself than anyone else. You will please never repeat that, Edward.’
‘No.’
He explained about the doll.
‘It seems an obvious thing to send. But I am going to London next week. If Violet has not had the sense to send a doll, I must find one.’