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‘What’s with the numbers? Are you taking a maths course or something?’ He grinned, aware that maths had always been Clara’s nemesis at school. The subject that she would rail against at length as they sat here in this cove, back when they were younger and life was full of possibilities.
‘Yeah, something like that,’ she said tersely, pushing the paper into her open handbag. ‘It’s nothing important.’
She was lying to him. He could tell by the way she twisted her mouth and began to bite her lip, just as she used to do. But he let it go and gave her a faint smile.
‘I suppose I’d better get on.’
‘Yeah, you and Bartie have a lot to sort out.’
He should move – go back to the house and try to speak to his father. But his feet seemed planted in the sand.
‘So, tell me,’ he said after a while, ‘what will you do?’
‘Me? Oh, I have work to finish. Well, start, really. Flights and accommodation to organise in Geneva.’
‘Are you going to Switzerland?’
‘Sadly, no. I’ve been working as a virtual PA since moving back in with Mum, before Dad died, and I have some travel arrangements to organise for a client.’
‘Right. But actually I meant what are you going to do when my father sells the house and you and your mum have to move out of the cottage?’
‘Oh.’ Clara puffed air through her lips. ‘I guess we’ll find somewhere else to live, in the village, hopefully, and Mum will need to look round for a new job. We’ll be all right.’
Would they? River hoped so.
He tried to think of something else to say, but the atmosphere was strained and he couldn’t take much more stress today. So, he said goodbye and left her, and he only looked back once.
She was still sitting on the rocks, turned away from him, with her shoulders slumped. But she’d taken the mysterious piece of paper from her bag and was staring at it closely. Brellasham Manor, as always, had its secrets.
12
CLARA
Clara hurried across the grass, sand escaping from the sides of her sandals, and let herself into the cottage. Her laptop was sitting on the hall table, ready for her to do some work, but she walked past it and up the stairs to her bedroom. Booking the flights to Geneva would have to wait.
Dropping to her knees, she began to root through a box in the bottom of the wardrobe: her treasure box of mementos that was crammed with photos, cards and gig programmes. She ran her hand across a picture of her dad and then began to pull everything out onto the carpet.
Memories tumbled around her – her first holiday abroad, her mum’s fiftieth birthday party, going with Michael to see the Stereophonics in London. But the blasts from the past weren’t what was making her jittery.
She felt at sixes and sevens following the news of Brellasham Manor’s fate, and after her encounter at the cove with River and Bartie.
But, most of all, she felt shaken by what she had noticed as she sat by the sea. The numbers written on the scrap of paper that River had handed back to her looked more stark against white paper in bright sunlight. And there was something about the way the numbers were formed – the curve of the six and the nine – that rang a bell. A louder bell this time. The writing had seemed vaguely familiar before, but now she had an idea why that might be.
Rooting through the now almost empty box, Clara at last found what she was looking for.
‘Here you are,’ she murmured, pulling out a handful of birthday cards from her grandmother, Violet. ‘I knew I’d kept some of you.’
Clara caught a slight waft of lavender as she opened the last card that Violet had sent her before she died. The sight of her grandmother’s handwriting, especially on what was turning out to be a ridiculously emotional day, left Clara sniffing back tears. Violet had always been a loving gran and she was sorely missed by her family.
Clara squinted at the writing – Have a lovely birthday, Clarissa – and smiled through her tears. Violet had turned Clara’s dislike of her full name into a running joke, which had served to take the sting out of it when she was a child. But was her writing the same as on the scrap of paper found at the back of Audrey’s diary?
Clara opened the other cards from her grandmother and compared their writing with the numbers on the paper that she pulled from her bag. The heaviness of the pen stroke and the neatness looked similar and yet…Clara frowned because the evidence was inconclusive. There was nothing concrete to confirm her suspicion that Violet had been the author of the mysterious note.
She began piling her precious mementos back into the box, her body warmed by a patch of sunlight that was falling through the open window. And then she saw an image she’d thought lost for ever.
It was funny, she thought, picking up the photo that had attracted her attention. It was funny how at ease she and River had looked in each other’s company twenty years ago when nowadays they were, in many ways, strangers.
Clara thought she’d ditched her photos of River after he’d left for good, but this one had survived. Grainy and partially faded, it showed her and River sitting by the stream that flowed through the manor grounds. They must have been about ten, in shorts and T-shirts, and they were laughing as they trailed their toes in the water: her hair dark and pulled into a ponytail; his fair and close-cut, ready for his return to boarding school.
