‘That’s mine,’ Frankie said. ‘When I was young.’
‘Last year,’ added Gracie.
‘I sent it home when we went on the holiday. Look!’
Frankie pointed to the picture he’d drawn. Two birds, simple v shapes, above a child’s drawing of a tree – a fat trunk and bushy canopy of leaves.
‘And look!’ he showed them Ruby’s cards, the one to him and the one to Gracie. Both of them had the same picture, but smaller. A little doodle. A whimsical afterthought.
Cook read Frankie’s note, written a year ago when he’d been taken away from his home and shown the countryside.
Come and get me.
He winced. The boy had had the same feeling when he’d been evacuated. And Cook had done precious little to help him settle in, too focused on his own troubles to see how scared the lad had been.
‘Where did they take you?’ Cook asked.
‘Dunno,’ Frankie said. ‘Hours away, in the middle of nowhere.’
Annie smiled.
‘The church does it every year,’ she said. ‘They take a different group of children, give them a taste of the country. I went with Ruby that time, about ten years ago it must have been.’
‘Beaumont’s been scarpering to the country,’ Cook said.
‘So would you lot if you knew what was good for you.’ A voice from the doorway.
Beaumont let the door close behind him.
‘This place is finished,’ he said. ‘You can stay here if you want, but I’m leaving for good.’
‘Nothisplace,’ Annie said. ‘The church place. Father Ryan’s people own it. Up Essex way.’
‘I didn’t like it,’ Frankie said.
‘That’s the problem,’ Annie said. ‘All these young girls go off to the countryside for their health, come back with secrets.’ She winked at Frankie, who seemed nonplussed by the odd statement.
‘This place,’ Reynolds asked Annie. ‘You know where it is?
‘Course,’ she said. ‘Went up there with the nippers every summer.’
102
Ruby was stuck in a nightmare, the same scenes repeating. She had a headache, worse than she’d ever experienced. She was digging, soil in her eyes and mouth, her hands scrabbling. It had been bright for a while, but now it was dark – one small mercy. The brightness had hurt her head, even through closed eyes.
Her mouth was full of soil. She spat, but as soon as she opened her mouth again there was more soil.
Not a dream, she realised.
Ruby tried to bring her hands to her mouth, to scrape away the soil. But her hands were stuck, held down by a weight. She squinted, opening her eyes the barest crack, the piercing pain in her head unbearable.
It was dark. Ruby couldn’t move. Soil everywhere.
She heard a distant noise. Familiar. A spade, slicing through loose soil, then a thud. She felt the thud, as if at a distance.
She was being buried.
She tried to get up, but the weight of the soil on top of her was too much.
