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CHAPTER 12
Rosie straightened up with a groan and pushed the heel of her hand into the aching small of her back.
The armchair she’d just dragged into the middle of the sitting room was heavier than it looked. The squashy cushions on the chair still had a dent where her mum used to sit. Though it was always Dad’s chair when she was growing up. He’d drop into it after work and eat his tea in front of the telly. But Mum claimed it after he left.
Rosie was devastated when he as good as disappeared from her life when she was ten, following his affair with a work colleague. Although she and her dad shared few interests and often clashed, she loved him and regular phone calls and the occasional get-together didn’t make up for his absence. But after a while, she began to appreciate the calm he left behind. It was good not to be roused from sleep by the sound of raised voices and banging doors.
She brushed her hand across the cushions where her mum would sit, curled up with her feet underneath her, watching American shoot ’em up detective shows. They were her favourite, even though she was the least confrontational or aggressive person ever. Rosie could picture her sitting there, elbow on the arm of the chair, chin in her hands, eyes on the flickering screen.
Rosie shook her head to dislodge the image. This was no time to be sad and distracted when there was so much work to be done. Yesterday, she’d washed down all the walls on the ground floor, and today the painting would begin. She started rooting through the paint pots and brushes, looking for the dustsheets she was sure she’d bought. The furniture in here was old, but it was solid – her aching back was testament to that – and it would do for now, with a few new cushions here and there.
She rooted through the pile again. She’d meant to buy dustsheets. She was sure they’d been on the list but they weren’t included in the supplies that Liam had delivered yesterday.
Rosie stood with her hands on her hips in the midst of the muddle. Maybe she could drape sheets from the airing cupboard over the huddle of furniture, like Dad used to do. She could remember her bed, dressing table and books covered in paint-splattered white sheets when Dad had decorated her bedroom.
Twenty years on, the walls of her old room were still a deep purple – she’d never been a pastel-pink kind of child. The purple was going to need at least two coats of white paint to cover it, she realised. And the furniture in there would definitely need protecting from her lack of decorating finesse. Maybe the old dustsheets were stored in the attic? It was worth a look.
Rosie climbed the last rung of the loft ladder and stepped gingerly into the gloomy space. She hadn’t been up here for years, not since she’d helped search for her mum’s old foot spa and had come across an enormous spider instead. Mum had stood up so quickly when Rosie screamed, she’d cracked her head on the sloping roof. Understandably, she hadn’t been best pleased and Rosie had avoided the attic ever since. Being yelled at by a parent and terrorised by a massive arachnid had drilled avoidance into her soul. But now Mum was gone and it was time to brave the terrors of the attic like the grown-up she was.
The floor was boarded over and safe to walk on, but the single lightbulb hanging from the apex of the roof cast dark shadows. It really was quite creepy up here, especially with the wind whistling and moaning through loose roof tiles.
Taking a deep, dusty breath – did that musty smell mean there were mice? – Rosie switched on her torch and started sweeping its beam ahead of her.
It was pretty much a dumping ground up here. Cardboard boxes overflowing with books, and transparent plastic cases packed with old blankets and duvets vied for space with a box of Dad’s old DIY tools, Grandma’s old Singer sewing machine, an ancient gramophone with a wind-up handle, several boxes of vinyl records, and Rosie’s old scooter – the one she’d fallen from on the quay when she was seven years old and broken her arm. Memories came flooding back as Rosie stood amid the detritus of her family life. A life that had once been so safe and secure, but now had so many people missing from it. She gulped and brushed away a tear that plopped onto the grimy floorboard. Where were the dustsheets, so she could leave this attic and its painful memories behind?
Rosie picked her way forward, trying to ignore the huge cobwebs that shone like delicate, silver filaments. She wasn’t a frightened child any longer. She was an adult. A seasoned traveller. An orphan.
But there was far too much junk up here to search through and no sign of the dustsheets. Rosie had turned back towards the loft ladder when she spotted a pile of old tablecloths on top of a cardboard box: a blue spotted cloth she remembered from her childhood, a Christmas one covered in sprigs of holly, and a plain white one that had yellowed with age. They’d be perfect for protecting Driftwood House’s furniture.
She gave them a shake to dislodge any spiders and shoved them under her arm. It was only then that she spottedSofia’s Stuffscrawled across the top of the closed box underneath in black marker pen.
The box was sealed with plenty of brown parcel tape but the tape had lost its stickiness over the years and Rosie was able to peel it back easily. Inside there was a jumble of clothing – skirts, dresses and cardigans that smelled of moth balls. Why had her mum bothered keeping all of this stuff? It could have gone to a charity shop rather than sitting up here mouldering for decades. In fact, it was about time it did.
Rosie pushed the box across the floor and, with only the slightest hesitation, shoved it through the open loft hatch. It bumped down the stairs and came to rest on the landing, on its side. She threw the bundle of tablecloths after it before carefully making her way down the ladder and stepping over the mess.
Then, she sat cross-legged on the landing carpet and started emptying outSofia’s Stuff.None of the clothing was familiar and it all looked pretty old. When Rosie hugged one of the jumpers tight and sniffed it for her mother’s scent, she could smell only the slight tang of damp. The clothes would need washing before they could go to a charity shop.
Underneath the jumble of clothing, Rosie’s fingers hit something cold and hard. She pushed her other hand beneath the clothes and brought out a metal box that glinted copper in the light. The sides of the box were smooth and unremarkable, save for a few dents and scratches, but the lid was beautiful. Strips of different metals – copper, silver and gold – were woven together in a pattern that reminded Rosie of making willow baskets in primary school. She ran her fingertips across the colourful strands and tried to open the box, but it was locked.
She stared at it for a moment, as though force of will might make the box spring open, and when – surprise, surprise – that didn’t work, she started shaking out clothes in search of a dropped key. But there was nothing, other than a couple of lost buttons.
Rosie wasn’t the type of person to listen in to private conversations or read people’s diaries. She’d always thought that people who did were idiots, and likely to find out things they’d rather not know. But her mother had deliberately kept her in the dark about the Eppings owning her childhood home, and the mysterious J who must have known her so well. What other secrets had she been keeping? Suddenly, finding out what was in the box became the most important thing in the world.
Where would her mum keep a key to a copper box that she’d hidden away in the attic? Taking her find with her, Rosie went to the sitting room and started rummaging through the oak bureau. There was so much old tat in here – ancient bills, brass radiator keys, tags for Christmas presents, endless half-used rolls of sticky tape – but nothing that would fit the small lock in front of her.
The box might even be empty, thought Rosie. It wasn’t particularly heavy and nothing rattled when it was shaken. But why would her mother have locked and buried an empty box in a muddle of old clothing in the attic?
Rosie picked up the box again and studied its small lock before fetching the tool box from under the stairs. Many of the ancient tools inside were rusty, but a small screwdriver caught her eye. That might do the trick. Inserting it into the lock, she jiggled it up and down. This kind of thing looked easy on TV detective shows – how tricky could picking a lock be? Very tricky, she soon realised, abandoning the screwdriver for a larger one that she forced under the lid. It was a shame because the box was beautiful, but brute force was the only option.
Sitting back on her heels, she started levering the screwdriver upwards as carefully as she could and the side of the box began to warp and bend. At last, with one final push, the lock gave way and the lid sprang open.
Rosie exhaled loudly – she hadn’t realised she was holding her breath – and peeked inside. For one mad moment, she wondered if the hidden box might be full of stolen cash or counterfeit notes. But the box contained nothing more than a few folded sheets of paper and a letter inside a ripped open envelope.
The letter was addressed to her mother atCove Cottage, Smuggler’s Lane, Heaven’s Cove.That was the tiny, damp house where Sofia had lived when she first moved to Heaven’s Cove, eighteen months before Rosie was born. As a child, Rosie would stand outside the cottage and imagine her mum living there as a young woman, before she was married to her dad; before Rosie even existed. But the thought of not being in the world was too much to get her childish head around. Now, it was her mother who was no longer in the world, and some days that was too much for her adult self to take in.
Rosie pulled the letter from its envelope and, feeling like a thief stealing secrets from the dead, began to read the black writing that sloped across the single sheet:
My darling Saffy,
