The child is distressed?
I didn’t know why she’d written it as a question; Tilly’s distress was audible to most of the postcode.
‘She wanted to stay at home today and watchThe Secret Garden,’ I explained over the top of the wailing. ‘But it’s a nice day and we’ve been home for ages, so I thought…’ I hadn’t yet quite framed my need to persuade Isobel into immediate ejection in words, even to myself.
‘Look, Brass doesn’t like all this noise, give him a cuddle,’ I suggested to Tilly, handing her the felt dragon, who gave me an embroidered look of resigned hopelessness.
‘No!’ Tilly yelled and flung Brass off into the depths of darkness that made up the room behind Isobel. Then she started to cry because she didn’t have Brass to cuddle, and nearly gave me a black eye with her forehead.
Oh dear. This looks like a difficult situation.
She turned around and led the way into the room, where I was stopped on the threshold by one of the big birds which had perched on the windows support and was glaring at me out of one coal-black eye.
‘Oh.’
He won’t harm you. Give the child the diamonds to count.
Torn between the tantrumming Tilly, my need to talk to Isobel and the awful spectre of the silent bird, I rotated in the doorway, not sure which way to go. Tilly, however, decided everything for me by yelling, ‘Balls!’ and going rigid in my arms so that she slithered down my body and arrived on the floor in a socked rush. ‘Brass!’
The little velvet bag of diamonds was on a table, underneath which Brass resided, covered in dust and with an insouciant feather protruding from between his scales.
I half stepped towards Tilly, caught the eye of the bird, stepped back into the doorway again, saw Isobel watching me and took a micro stride inside the room. I couldn’t leave Tilly, who was now plunging under the table to retrieve her dragon with the diamond bag in her other hand.
You look a little worn. Would you like to sit down and have a cup of tea? I assume you’ve come to ask me for my decision about moving out?
Without waiting for an answer, Isobel began filling the kettle from a jug of water and fiddling with the gas ring.
Over at the window the bird made a clucking sound, then a noise like a table being rapped. Isobel turned and lifted a hand, at which the bird shuffled around to face the other way and took off out of the window with what looked like an immense amount of effort. The two actions seemed so interlinked and sequential that I could only assume that she had sent the bird away.
On the other hand at least Tilly had gone quiet, tucking Brass under her arm and rolling the velvet bag around on the tabletop like the world’s most exclusive duster.
Without really looking, Isobel slid the silver tray along the floor with her foot in Tilly’s direction. Tilly grabbed it and began plunging her fingers into the bag and pulling the diamonds out one at a time, to plink them down on to the tray with a look of total absorption on her face and no trace of the tantrum remaining. I felt my shoulders relax.
‘You’re right. I’ve come to find out if you’ve decided anything about moving,’ I said, still hovering uncertainly in the doorway with my gaze fixed on that open window. ‘Only it’s getting a little bit imperative now. Ross has to knock this place down, although it looks as though it’s having a good go at knocking itself down. One more storm and there’s not going to be much left.’
Come in and sit down.
‘I… can’t.’
Jack Dawe has gone. I’ve sent him back into the wood.
‘I know. I just… the window…’ I couldn’t take my eye off that threateningly half-open sash where, at any minute my brain told me, a whole flock of birds might appear and start popping through, one by one.
Isobel gave me a tolerant look, got up and closed the window.
‘Balls,’ said Tilly, from the floor.
‘Yes, darling. Beads,’ I corrected almost unthinking. ‘Look, Isobel, I’ve really come to throw myself on your mercy.’
Isobel straightened away from the complicated business of lighting the gas ring, picked up her paper and wrote:
It may not be a soft landing.
‘I know, I know. It’s just – I think Tilly’s dad might be close to finding out where we are and I can’t let him into our lives again. I’m scared and I need to get away and the money that Ross is going to pay me once you’re out will help us start a new life.’
The words came out in a stapled-together rush, lubricated by fear.
Isobel’s dark eyes regarded me steadily.
