House of Echoes. Barbara Erskine

tell you what.’ She reached to turn on the main light, flooding the room with brightness. ‘Let’s change your jym-jams, and make you a nice clean, dry bed, then you can come downstairs for a few minutes to Mummy and Daddy’s party before going back to sleep. How would that be?’

      Holding him on her hip she went through the familiar routine, extracting clean dry clothes and bedding from his chest of drawers, changing him, sponging his face and hands, brushing his hair with the soft baby hairbrush, aware that every few minutes he kept glancing back towards the window. His thumb had been firmly plugged into his mouth as she sat him on the rug and turned to make his bed, stripping off the wet covers, wiping over the rubber sheet.

      ‘Man go away.’ He took his thumb out long enough to speak and then plugged it in again.

      Joss turned. ‘What man?’ Her voice was sharper than she intended, and she saw the little boy’s eyes fill with tears. Desperately he held out his arms to her. Stooping she hauled him off the ground. ‘What man, Tom Tom? Did you dream about a nasty man?’ In spite of herself she followed his gaze to the corner of the room. She had found some pretty ready-made curtains for his window. They showed clowns somersaulting through hoops and balloons and ribbons. Those and the soft colourful rugs had turned the nursery into one of the brightest rooms in the house. But in the shadows of the little night light, had there been anything there to cast a shadow and frighten him? She bit her lip.

      ‘Tell me about the man, Tom,’ she said gently.

      ‘Tin man.’ Tom reached for the locket on a chain round her neck and pulled it experimentally. She smiled, firmly extricating it from his grasp. ‘A tin man? From one of your books?’ That explained it. She sighed with relief. Lyn must have been reading him The Wizard of Oz before she left. With a glance round the room she hugged him close. ‘Come on, Tom Tom, let’s take you down to meet the neighbours.’

      She knew from experience that within ten minutes, sitting on Luke’s knee in a warm kitchen, the little boy would be fast asleep and tomorrow before anything else she would buy a baby alarm so that never again would the little boy scream unheard in his distant bedroom. With a final glance round she carried him out into the darkened main bedroom. It was very cold in there. The undrawn curtains allowed frosty moonlight to spill across the floor, reflecting a soft gleam on the polished oak boards, throwing the shadow from the four-poster bed as thick bars over the rug in front of her feet. She stopped, cradling Tom’s head against her shoulder, staring suddenly into the far corner. It was deep in shadow. Her jacket, hanging from the wardrobe handle, was a wedge of blackness against the black. Her arms tightened around the little boy protectively.

       Katherine

      It was a whisper in the silence. Tom raised his head. ‘Daddy?’ he said. He craned round her shoulder to see.

      Joss shook her head slightly. It was nothing. Her imagination. Luke was in the kitchen. ‘No, darling. There’s no one there.’ She kissed his head. ‘Daddy’s downstairs. Let’s go and find him.’

      ‘Tin man.’ The thumb was drawn out of the mouth long enough for Tom to point over her shoulder into the darkness of the corner. ‘Tin man there.’ His face crumpled and a small sob escaped him before he buried his face in her shoulder again.

      ‘No, darling. No tin man. Just shadows.’ Joss made for the door. She almost ran along the corridor and down the stairs.

      ‘Hey, who is this?’ Roy stood up and held out his arms to Tom. ‘How come you’ve been missing the party, old chap?’

      ‘Joss?’ Luke had spotted Joss’s white face. ‘What is it. What was wrong?’

      She shook her head. ‘Nothing. He was crying and we didn’t hear him. I expect he had had a bad dream.’

      A dream about a tin man who skulked in dark corners.

       8

      The drawers of the desk were full of papers and letters, the general detritus of a life time, dealt with, filed, and forgotten. Sitting on the floor with them spread out around her a couple of evenings later Joss could find nothing to explain or even relate to her mother’s mysterious notebook. She had studied it again and again. No pages had been torn out. No entries eradicated in any way. It was as if, having carefully inscribed the flyleaf for Joss, her mother had once, and once only, grabbed the empty notebook in desperation and scribbled those two lone sentences in it. They haunted Joss. They were a plea for help, a despairing scream. What had happened? Who could have upset her so much? Could it have been the Frenchman who the village thought had come to woo her?

      She had said nothing to Luke about the notebook. It was as if her mother had whispered a secret to her and she did not want to betray the confidence. This was something she had to find out on her own. Putting down the notebook she reached for the coffee mug standing on the carpet next to her and sipped thoughtfully, staring out of the French doors across the lawn. There had been another heavy frost in the night and the grass was still white in the shelter of the tall hedge beyond the stables. Above it the sky was a clear brilliant blue. In the silence, through the window she could hear the clear ring of metal on metal. Luke was well into his work on the Bentley.

      A robin hopped across the York stone terrace outside the window and stood head to one side staring down at the ground. Joss smiled. Earlier she had thrown out the breakfast crumbs, but there was little left now after the flock of sparrows and blackbirds had descended on them from the trees.

      The house was very silent. Tom was asleep and for now at least she had the place to herself. Lightly she touched the back of the notebook with her finger. ‘Mother.’ The word hovered in the air. The room was very cold. Joss shivered. She had two thick sweaters on over her jeans and a long silk scarf wound round and round her neck against the insidious draughts which permeated the house but even so her hands were frozen. In a moment she would go back to the kitchen to warm up and replenish her coffee. In a moment. She sat still, staring round, trying to feel her mother’s presence. The room had been Laura’s special, favourite place, of that she had no doubt. Her mother’s books, her sewing, her desk, her letters – and yet nothing remained. There was no scent in the cushions, no warmth of contact as her hand brushed the place where her mother’s hand had been, no vibrations which still held the vital essence of the woman who had borne her.

      The envelope with the French stamp had slipped between some old bills in a faded green cardboard wallet. Joss stared down at it for a moment, registering the slanted handwriting, the faded violet ink. The post mark, she noted was Paris and the year it was posted 1979. Inside was one flimsy sheet of paper.

      ‘Ma chère Laura – As you see I did not reach home yesterday as I intended. My appointment was postponed until tomorrow. I shall ring you afterwards. Take care of yourself, my dear lady. My prayers are with you.’

      Joss squinted at the paper more closely. The signature was an indecipherable squiggle. Screwing up her eyes she tried to make out the first letter. P? B? Sighing, she laid the paper down. There was no address.

      ‘So, what are you up to?’ Luke had come into the room so quietly she had not heard him.

      Startled she looked up. ‘Sorting through the desk.’

      He was dressed like her in several old sweaters; over them the stained overalls and the woollen scarf did nothing to hide how cold he was. He rubbed his oily hands together. ‘Feel like some coffee? I need to thaw out.’

      ‘Yes please.’ She was pushing the papers together in a heap on the carpet in front of her when the telephone rang. ‘Mrs Grant?’ The voice was unfamiliar; female; elderly. ‘I understand you have been trying to reach me. My name is Mary Sutton.’

      Joss felt a leap of excitement. ‘That’s right, Mrs Sutton –’

      ‘Miss, dear. Miss Sutton.’