Lucy slowly removed her hand from her face, wiping the tears from her eyes and wondering what on earth had happened in the last few minutes that meant the sisters were suddenly raging at each other and throwing slaps. Was it the last few minutes that had done this? Or the last few years? Her skin was red. The heat emanating from it told her that much.
‘Are you coming?’ Clara asked.
‘No.’ Lucy couldn’t look at her; didn’t know what to think.
‘What do you mean, no?’ Clara asked.
‘It doesn’t matter if I hear the will read or not,’ Lucy said. ‘It doesn’t change what’s on the document.’
‘Fine, what will I tell them?’
‘Tell them I’ve gone home,’ Lucy announced.
‘Oh, it was only a matter of time before you disappeared again, wasn’t it? I had money on five days and you’ve lasted seven so I owe John ten pounds.’
‘Oh, fuck you,’ Lucy said, unable to rein it in.
‘Actually, it’s typical behaviour so I don’t know why I’m surprised. Nothing you do surprises me. You’re so predictable. Always choose the easy way out. Or give up entirely.’ Clara stalked up towards the town, leaving Lucy standing rigidly.
She hadn’t actually meant that she was going home to the mainland. Regardless, she couldn’t stay at Clara’s tonight. She just couldn’t. Both girls needed to calm down and then they might be able to be civil enough to talk to each other in the morning.
Breathing deeply, she tried to push away the sudden urge to feel sorry for herself. She glanced around, intending to grab a taxi from the rank. But something caught her eye – a plaque on the wall – and she looked back and read the lettering properly.
THIS PLAQUE COMMEMORATES THE ILLEGAL
DEPORTATION BY GERMAN OCCUPYING FORCES
OF 1,003 MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN FROM
GUERNSEY AND SARK IN SEPTEMBER 1942 AND
FEBRUARY 1943 TO CAPTIVITY IN CIVILIAN
INTERNMENT CAMPS IN GERMANY AND FRANCE.
IT REMEMBERS THE 16 ISLANDERS WHO DIED
THERE AND WHOSE NAMES AND
AGES ARE LISTED BELOW …
Lucy scanned the names and ages of the men, women and even small children. The stark reality of the fate of those sixteen meant she didn’t feel quite so sorry for herself and as she turned towards the cab rank she tried with a great deal of effort to remember the history of the Occupation of the Channel Islands. They’d been taught it in school, of course, but it was a long time ago for Lucy.
The things that had mattered to Lucy at sixteen were kissing boys in bus shelters and working out a game plan for eventually getting the hell off the island. She’d achieved that goal only two years later when university had beckoned on the mainland and she’d never looked back. She glanced again at the plaque and then moved on toward the taxis.
At Clara’s house, Lucy asked the taxi to wait and bundled all her things into her holdall. She wrote two notes: one for Clara who barely deserved a note, telling her where she’d gone; and one for Molly, which Lucy left in her niece’s bedroom. Molly’s suggestion that Lucy stay at Deux Tourelles for the time being was actually a fairly sensible idea as long as Dido hadn’t actually left it to a cat shelter. And while she didn’t relish the idea of sleeping alone in a house that size, it beat sleeping under Clara’s roof. The slap still fresh in her mind, Lucy grabbed the keys to Deux Tourelles, closed Clara’s front door behind her and climbed back into the taxi.
Chapter 5
It amazed Lucy just how efficient Clara could be when she set her mind to it. Lucy scanned the kitchen cupboards and found that after the funeral her sister had cleared out every single one. Either that or Dido had been intensely frugal and had owned no canned goods whatsoever. Likewise the freezer had been emptied and Lucy looked in the fridge half-heartedly and was surprised and overjoyed to find three bottles of white wine from the funeral still inside. She grabbed one, opened it and filled a glass that had been left draining on the side, drinking half the glass before she’d even put the bottle back in the fridge.
Keys hung on hooks by the back door, which Lucy thought was a ridiculous place to put them. ‘Not very burglar savvy were you, Dido?’ she asked the empty kitchen. She found one marked ‘Garage’ and went outside, still clutching her wine glass. The evening was warm but inside the double garage it was cold and tidy. Small Perspex boxes were clearly marked with seeds and household tools, and gardening tools were hung on hooks at the back.
There was a little Renault 5, its wheel arches a little rusty, which Lucy wondered if she could borrow for the evening to get her to the shops and back. But given she was halfway through a glass of wine, drowning her sorrows after the row with Clara, she thought the old-fashioned pushbike leaning against the far walllooked more suitable; its basket big enough to hold a few essentials. She wheeled it outside and leant it against the wall of Deux Tourelles near the front door, returned to lock the garage and cursed herself for leaving her glass of wine resting on a Perspex box. She ventured back inside to retrieve it and saw the box was marked ‘P’.
She cast around for a light switch but there didn’t appear to be one and so she lifted the dusty box and her glass of wine and carried them back to the house, returning only to lock the garage door.
She was too hungry to sit and rifle through boxes of paperwork and so decided to first venture out through the lanes to the shops.
