I should’ve asked Nate if he was all right. But I wasn’t feeling especially friendly. Nor was Lena, who, after her own long illness, didn’t have much patience with sick people.
‘You again,’ I said, keeping my distance from the figure crouched by the roadside.
Unsteadily, Nate got to his feet. In the village hall light he looked ghastly: there was sick all down the front of his coat, and not a drop of the star quality Mrs Lamb prized so highly. It was, I had to admit, rather satisfying.
‘Ugh!’ Lena pinched her nose. ‘You smell revolting!’
‘Well, you smell like a stable yard!’ Nate shot back. His face crumpled, and he turned away as if he was trying not to cry. 65
I didn’t know what to do. It was raining hard, and I wanted to get home – and Lena was right: he did smell awful. Yet though Nate Clatworthy was my least favourite person, he was quite poorly.
‘Should we fetch someone?’ I asked.
‘No, don’t do that,’ he answered, whip quick. ‘I’ll be tip-top in a sec. It’s being in Dad’s car – I get sick every time.’
‘Not surprised,’ Lena remarked. ‘He’s one heck of a dangerous driver.’
‘He is,’ I agreed, still cross about it. ‘You know he nearly killed us – and the horses – at the ford?’
Nate’s chin wobbled, tears still threatening. ‘I was about to throw up, that’s why he was going so fast. He’d murder me if I did it in his car.’
‘Well, it is a very decent car.’ Lena narrowed her eyes at him. ‘So if your dad’s not a film director, why’s he here?’
‘He’s obviously not,’ I added, quickly. ‘Not if he’s talking about water pipes.’
‘A film director?’ Nate looked confused. ‘No, he’s from the South West Water Board.’
‘Oh. Is that all?’
It was, all told, disappointingly dull, though I supposed it explained the pipes.
Lena yawned into her hand. 66
‘Well, Nate, we won’t keep you,’ she said, and pulled at my arm. It was our turn to make tea tonight and we’d not settled on cheese on toast or oxtail soup.
But Nate kept talking, fast and nervous.
‘You won’t know this yet but the water board has bought this whole valley. That’s why Father’s here tonight, to break the news to the village. I only came along because Eddie – he’s my little brother – wouldn’t stop crying at home and it—’
‘Hang on!’ I stopped him, thinking I’d misheard. ‘Someone’s bought our valley?’
‘That’s the long and short of it, yes,’ Nate replied.
‘Yeah, right! Bet they’ve bought the village too, and the school and the church and all the houses,’ Lena finished with a snort. ‘Pull the other one, Clatworthy!’
‘No one would sell, even if it was true,’ I said confidently, thinking of the Blackwells, whose house and land had been in their family for generations. It was a ridiculous idea.
‘It is the truth,’ Nate insisted. ‘It’s called a compulsory purchase order. The people who live here don’t have a choice. Damn shame, I know.’
I didn’t know what a compulsory wotsit was: nor, from the look on her face, did Lena. But something told me Nate wasn’t lying. I felt prickly and hot, suddenly. 67
‘Go on, then!’ I cried. ‘Amaze us! What’s your water board going to do with our valley? Turn it into a holiday camp?’
Lena laughed.
Nate glanced at us both. He’d gone pale again.
‘They’re building a reservoir. The towns around here need more fresh water, and your valley is the best place for it because … well …’
He stopped as the village hall’s door swung open. The meeting was over. Lantern light and what appeared to be the entire adult population of Syndercombe spilled down the steps: Mrs Lee, who ran the post office, Reverend Matthews, Miss Setherton, Mr Smythe the master of the local hunt, Captain Farley, the Blackwells. Everyone was talking over each other, finishing each other’s sentences, arguing, considering.
‘—can’t believe they can do that, sell our homes from under us.’
‘He’s offering decent compensation—’
‘—chance of a fresh start after the war—’
‘One of them new houses in town would suit us, eh, Derek?’
‘All that water, though, and Syndercombe underneath. I can’t picture it.’ 68
‘Best not to then, Marge. Think of it coming out of a tap, and straight into your kettle.’
Everyone was stirred up, and no wonder if what Nate had just told us was true. Just for a second, the swimmer in me marvelled at having a freshwater lake on our doorstep: I could go open-water swimming every day!
Then I heard the word ‘flood’.
And Ma Blackwell did something I’d never seen before: she burst into tears. A few people, made awkward by it, turned away. Mr Blackwell put an arm around her shoulders. Mrs Lee passed her a hanky. Since we were meant to be at home getting the tea, Lena and I shrank back into the shadows.
‘How can they flood us out of our homes? How?’ Ma Blackwell sobbed.
It wasn’t the sort of question that needed an answer, though Captain Farley tried.
‘From what the water board chap said, they’ll build a dam down by Crowsfoot Farm, then reroute the river up at Marley’s Head. The school will clear out first, then the churchyard, then us …’ He trailed off, smoothing his moustache wistfully like he did when people mentioned the Great War.
‘Blimey, how do you clear a churchyard?’ Lena whispered. 69
I didn’t know. But if it meant I couldn’t visit Mam and her mystery yellow roses any more, then I didn’t like the sound of it.
*
At supper, no one had much of an appetite. Ma Blackwell, who was strict about food waste, scraped our half-full plates into the pig-swill bucket without a word. Normally, after clearing up, we’d listen to the wireless by the fire, or play rummy for the tops off the lemonade bottles, which we’d then trade for sweets at the post office. But tonight Mr Blackwell put on his best corduroy jacket and said he was off to the White Lion.
‘On a Wednesday, John?’ Ma Blackwell’s knitting needles went silent. ‘That in’t usual.’
‘These in’t usual times, my love,’ he replied.
When he’d gone, Ma Blackwell went to the kitchen. From behind the jars of pickled walnuts, cucumbers, red cabbage and shallots, she produced a brand-new bar of Bournville chocolate. Lena winked at me: we knew all too well where she kept her secret chocolate stash, and would often take it in turns to sniff the bar through its paper. 70
‘Chocolate’s very good for shock,’ Ma Blackwell told us with authority, and proceeded to snap the bar into three.
We ate our chocolate slowly, quietly, savouring its sweetness.
‘Will they really flood the village?’ Lena wondered.
‘That’s the plan,’ answered Ma Blackwell. ‘Though it won’t be happening till June at the earliest.’
‘How will they do it?’ I dared to ask.
‘The whole village is to empty by the sixteenth of June: the deadline’s two in the morning.’ Ma Blackwell tutted. ‘Though I ask you, who’s going to be moving house in the middle of the night?’
‘What about the flooding?’ Because in my head I pictured a giant tidal wave surging down the valley.
‘They do it slowly, so the man said. It takes months, which I s’pose gives us time to get used to it.’
‘I won’t ever get used to it,’ I declared.
‘It is mind-boggling, you’re right,’ Ma Blackwell agreed. ‘Twenty billion gallons of water, Mr Clatworthy said. Tis going to be a big old reservoir. And deep too. Has to be, to cover St Mary’s spire and the chimneys at Hadfield Hall.’
I couldn’t imagine it. Even to me, so happy in deep water, the idea of everything being flooded was beyond 71strange. Some things were meant to be underwater – fish, shipwrecks, swimming-pool tiles – but not a whole village and all its buildings. Not my mam lying in her grave.
‘You can’t just pick up a village and put it somewhere else,’ I insisted.
‘Seems you can, pet,’ Ma Blackwell replied sadly. ‘If you’ve enough money and enough power, and enough people in the towns needing fresh water, then that’s the priority, not our village.’
But if our homes were being flooded for the reservoir, where would we go? What would happen to me – and to Lena? My whole world felt suddenly very shaky indeed.
‘Will I be coming with you when you leave, Ma Blackwell?’ I asked, wanting reassurance.
She started knitting again, needles clacking at speed. ‘If it can be afforded, dear.’
I’d hoped for a straightforward yes, and was taken aback.
‘Afforded? You mean I’m too expensive?’
Ma Blackwell gave me one of her killer frowns. ‘Now then, it all costs money, Nellie – food, clothes, all this to-ing and fro-ing to the swimming pool each week.’
My heart froze. ‘You’re sending me to the orphanage, aren’t you?’ 72
‘I never said that, no!’ she cried.
‘What about Lena?’ I was starting to really worry now.
Ma Blackwell looked from me to Lena. ‘You’ll be going back to London, missy, to your father.’
Lena yelped. ‘But—’
‘No buts about it. Your chest cleared up months ago. I should’ve insisted on it then.’
‘I want to be with Nellie,’ Lena begged. ‘I’m no trouble, am I?’
Ma Blackwell gave her an arch look but seemed to soften. ‘Maybe you could stay on till the June deadline – if, and only if, your father agrees to it.’
She meant if he kept paying. It was only a small amount, but at least he was sending something towards her keep.
‘Oh, he will!’ Lena replied earnestly. I hoped she was right: his most recent payment had been less than usual, and she hadn’t known why.
‘But I warn you, girls,’ Ma Blackwell reminded us. ‘When we move, it’ll be a fresh start for everyone.’
*
I was out of sorts for the rest of the evening. All year I’d lived with the Blackwells and Lena: a whole year of being 73part of a warm, busy, bustling family. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing that – or Lena. That night as we brushed our teeth, side by side at the kitchen sink, Lena and I were both fighting back the tears.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ I wailed.
‘Nor do I.’ Lena spat into the sink with force. ‘I want to be here with you, Nell. I hate it in the city. Anyway, Ma Blackwell can’t make me go back.’
‘Can’t she?’ I wasn’t so sure. Ma Blackwell was as strong as Perry and Sage, and twice as formidable. And right now, it felt as if she held both our fates in the balance.
We went up to bed in silence, quickly changing into our nightgowns and diving in under the bedclothes because our room was always freezing cold. As I lay in bed, the sheets slowly warming, I thought more about what Ma Blackwell had said – or not said.
The truth was, raising a child cost money. The Blackwells had been very kind to take me in when Mam died, when clearly I was an expense they could barely afford. They were responsible for me – for Lena too while she was under their roof. Had we been their daughters or nieces it would’ve been different. But we weren’t the Blackwells’ blood relatives. They didn’t have to look after either of us; no law said so.
In the dark I reached for Lena’s hand. 74
‘Whatever happens we’ll stick together, you and me,’ I told her.
‘Too right, Nellie. I’ve never had a friend like you before.’
I sighed. ‘So what can we do?’
‘We need money – our own money so we’re not a burden to anyone.’
I liked Lena’s thinking. There were plenty of jobs people our age got hired to do – paper rounds or help with lambing, or mucking out horses. But I kept coming back to Mrs Lamb’s offer: a sponsorship deal like that would pay for everything Lena and I could ever need. If only Mrs Lamb had chosen me.
Lena’s bed creaked as she turned to face me.
‘Hey, what’s the story, morning glory?’ she asked.
‘What’s your tale, nightingale?’ I replied, even though it was the wrong time of day for our catchphrase.
Our fingers entwined.
‘We’re meant to be together, you and me,’ Lena said.
I nodded in absolute agreement. ‘Yup. It’s you and me, no matter what.’
What we needed was a way to make it happen before the sixteenth of June.
*
75That night I dreamed I was swimming through an underwater graveyard, searching for Mam’s headstone. Trouble was, all the gravestones looked like hers and every single grave had yellow roses on it. There was a girl floating alongside me, wearing peculiar short trousers and swimming a funny beginner’s doggy paddle. She told me they’d moved Mam’s grave, but she didn’t know where. So I kept searching, and the more I searched the more frustrated I grew.
‘It’s the Clatworthys’ fault,’ I told the girl. ‘They take everything decent.’
Yet even then, in that awful dream, I was glad to be swimming. And gladder still, eventually, to swim home down the main street to Combe Grange, to reach out and turn the big brass door handle, and push open our front door.