‘I bet your dad would have really liked you, Iris.’
‘Thanks, Tim,’ she’d said, heart lifting as she’d spotted Robbie coming up the lane. ‘I bet your dad would have liked you lots, too.’
Tim’s mother hadn’t approved of Iris much. Certainly, she’d never invited her to any of Tim’s birthday parties, or on the pantomime trips she’d organised each Christmas to the Theatre Royal in York.
‘Who wants to go to a pantomime anyway?’ Iris’s mum had used to say.
To which Iris had always responded, ‘Not me.’
Only she had wanted to go.
It had made her feel less again, missing out.
‘It was boring anyway,’ Robbie had reliably assured her afterwards. ‘You’d have hated it. I did, without you. When I have enough money and a motorcar, I’ll take you with me everywhere I go.’
He’d used to save his interlude chocolates for her; they’d eaten them together, in Doverley’s woods, holed up in the old gamekeeper’s cottage that they’d never told anyone else about, not even Tim, because it had been theirs, just theirs.
They’d discovered it not long after Robbie had arrived in Heaton, the pair of them stalking a rabbit that had lured them through a disused gate in Doverley’s boundary wall, up to the cottage’s front path.
‘Do you think it actually exists?’ Robbie had asked Iris in a whisper, as they’d stared up at the cottage’s overgrown walls. ‘Or has it been magicked here for us?’
‘It’s definitely been magicked,’ Iris had whispered back, because that really had felt like the most plausible explanation for its existence.
They’d returned to that crumbling, enchanted place as often as they’d been able, rocketing around its abandoned rooms, make-believing they were in a ranch, or a fort, or a boat, or a palace, or a boat-palace.
‘What exactly is a boat-palace?’ Robbie had asked Iris, dangling from one of the windows.
‘This is,’ Iris had replied, throwing her arms wide. ‘This.’
When their games had been spent, they’d lain flummoxed on the decrepit floors, and talked. Iris had confided in Robbie everything there’d been to tell about her own life, including more than she’d shared, even with Tim, about the mystery of her unmentionable father. (‘Why do you think it’s so bad to lift your skirts?’ she’d asked. ‘I’m not sure,’ Robbie had said. ‘Maybe because you could catch a cold?’) Robbie, inturn, had told her about his. It hurt her, still, remembering the pain that had used to crease his troubled face when he’d talked about how silent his dad could be, until he wasn’t. And how, when he lost his temper, his mother would beg him to run and hide.
‘I don’t ever, though,’ he’d told Iris, his blue eyes raw and confused. ‘I couldn’t. He’s so much bigger than her.’
God, how Iris had hated that man.Mr Grayson.She’d often used to catch him staring at her in the lane from the window of the dower house, and she’d stare right back at him, letting him know that she wasn’t afraid. When she’d used to see him at church every Sunday, she’d divert herself from the vicar’s sermons with fantasies about all the things she’d one day say to him, when she’d grown old enough to be listened to. She’d used to study Robbie’s mother, too, on the occasions that she’d appeared at church – always with her gloved hand holding tight to Robbie’s – and had found herself hating her almost as much. She hadn’t been able to understand her not taking Robbie and running away. She hadn’t known, then, that the courts would most likely have taken Robbie from her if she’d tried it. Hadn’t grasped how trapped Annabelle Grayson must have felt.
Iris was sure now though that it must have been a relief to her when, at eleven, Robbie had left Heaton for boarding school in Windsor. Tim, sadly, had gone, too – not to Windsor, but Oxford with his mother, so that they could be closer to her brother and his family. Iris, meanwhile, had stunned herself by passing a scholarship exam to attend the local grammar school.
‘No cleaning for you, my darling,’ her mum had said, dancing her around the kitchen when the letter had arrived, offering her the place.
Even Iris’s gran had smiled.
‘Let’s see her go, now,’ she’d said.
Iris’s mum had emptied the rainy-day savings jar, and taken Iris to buy her new uniform from an outfitter in York.
‘But what will happen now if it rains?’ Iris had asked her, when they’d gone for a cup of tea, but not a bun, afterwards.
‘You let me worry about that,’ her mum had said. ‘Besides, it’s rained on us enough.’
Iris had loved that uniform. Desperately as she’d missed Tim and Robbie, she’d felt so happy, leaving the cottage in it every day, satchel swinging, heading off for the bus to school. She’d never used to take it off, except for washing. She’d even used to wear it to church on Sundays.
Which is even more boring without you,she’d told Robbie, in one of the scores of letters they’d exchanged. They’d had to use a boy’s name for her – his school had had a policy of confiscating any letter to a pupil from an unrelated girl – and, before Robbie had left Heaton, had had a lot of fun debating what that name should be.Clarencehad been the one they’d finally settled on, the pair of them scrumping for cheek-suckingly sour apples in the vicar’s garden. (‘It suits you,’ Robbie had proclaimed, juggling the fruit. ‘Clarence Winterton … It’s got a ring to it.’)Whenever Father Bannister does that thing where his cheeks wobble,Iris had written on,I turn to look at you in your pew, then there’s just your dad…
And my mum?Robbie had written back.When did you last see her?
I saw her this afternoon,Iris had replied, just as soon as shehadlain eyes on her.She was in your front garden picking holly.Robbie’s father had been watching from his usual window, but Annabelle Grayson hadn’t seemed aware of him. Rather, she’d smiled at Iris – tentatively, shyly almost – and crossed over to her, handing her a sprig from her basket.She asked me whether I was missing your ham and cheese sandwiches.
What did you tell her?Robbie had asked.
