Whispers (25 page)

When no answer was immediately forthcoming she pulled her handbag towards her and reached inside for her cigarettes. As her hand fumbled for them her fingers brushed against the card that Emile had given her in Paris and she withdrew them as if they had been scalded.

‘Do you even begin to realise how serious it was, what you were going to do, Mel?’

Again only silence, so pushing her hair from her face Jess tried again. ‘It was Emile who asked you to bring the drugs into the country for him, wasn’t it? That’s why you went off downstairs on your own the night before we left on the pretence of visiting the gift shop, wasn’t it? So that he could hand them over.’

‘NO!’ Mel’s head shot up and Jess saw colour burn into her cheeks.

‘I’m not a fool, Mel. We scarcely spoke to anyone else but him the whole time we were there, so who else could it have been?’

‘Look – just leave it can’t you? You’re always on at me! It’s done now – and I’m sorry.’ With that, the girl ran from the room as Jess lit up and puffed furiously on her cigarette. I handled that well, she thought wryly. But somehow she
would
get to the bottom of this mess. She was determined to, one way or another.

Jo appeared seconds later dressed for the outdoors with a big grin on her face, and Jess couldn’t help but notice the difference between Jo and her sister. Nothing ever upset Jo for long whereas very little ever seemed to please Mel.

‘Me and Alfie are going to call for Beth now,’ she told her mother as Alfie sloped out of his basket to join her.

‘That’s fine, but be very careful. The river will be up with all the rain we’ve had and I don’t want you falling in. You’d have no chance
of
getting out with that current,’ Jess cautioned her. She felt as if she’d had quite enough dramas in her life over the last couple of days and didn’t want to be faced with another one.

‘We’ll be careful,’ Jo promised as she barged out of the back door with Alfie close behind her. Jess then flipped through a book of wallpaper samples to see if there was anything that caught her eye for the small lounge, but she discovered very quickly that she wasn’t really concentrating, so she slammed the book shut and went upstairs to get dressed.

After a quick shower she decided to start sorting out the attic. When they had first moved in, Simon had expressed a wish to use the big room up there as his office, but he’d had neither the time nor the inclination recently to tackle it.
Well, it certainly ain’t going to sort itself
, Jess told herself as she flipped on the overhead light in the gloomy room.
And perhaps if I make a start it will put me in his good books again
.

Hands on hips she gazed about at the masses of old packing cases and furniture, wondering where to start, and it was then that the overpowering smell of roses reached her. Instead of being afraid as she had been in the past, she smiled. Martha was close by, she could sense it. But why had she stayed here? Laura was insistent that Martha was worried about something to do with her.

‘I know you’re here,’ she whispered to the empty room. ‘And I wish I could talk to you.’ She knew that Simon would think she had lost the plot if he could hear her, but she didn’t care now. There was a mystery to solve and somehow she was going to solve it. She wandered about, peering at the old-fashioned sideboards and chairs. Some of them were lovely and she decided she would get Simon and his workmen to carry them downstairs so that she could take a closer look at them when he had the time. Some of them might be worth restoring; the rest could go to an antique shop or to the council tip. They were certainly too heavy for her to move on her own, so now she turned her attention to the chests. The last time she had started rooting around up here she had found Martha’s journal and she wondered what she might find this time.

After a few minutes, however, Jess realised that she was still too worked up and worried about what had happened in Paris with Mel to fully concentrate on anything. She was still no nearer to knowing what to do about it. Walking towards the attic window she peered out across the rolling lawns just in time to see Jo haring towards the house with her hair flying out behind her and Alfie and Beth following.
Frowning,
Jess hurried downstairs and arrived in the kitchen at the same time as Jo did. She saw at a glance that the child was breathless and excited about something, and waited while she clutched her side and got her breath back to tell her.

‘There’s some gypsy caravans on our land down by the river,’ Jo gulped eventually, wildly gesticulating in that direction. ‘An’ Dad just got home and saw them and now he’s down there rowing with them.’

‘Oh no.’ Jess groaned. She knew what Simon was like when he lost his temper. ‘Just hold on while I get my coat and my wellies on and I’ll come back there with you.’

In seconds they were all chasing across the lawn again and just as Jo had said, after a couple of minutes the caravans came into sight. She could see Simon wildly flailing his arms about in front of a large red-faced man who looked just as angry as Simon was. They were shouting at each other, and her heart sank. When Simon got into a temper, things could get out of hand, and this situation looked dangerously as if it might end with fists flying.

‘Simon!’

He stopped shouting when he heard her cry out and turned towards her as she ran closer.

‘Right,’ she said breathlessly as she slithered to a halt on the muddy ground at the side of him. ‘What’s the problem here?’

‘What do you mean – what’s the
problem
?’ He stared at her incredulously. ‘This lot here are the problem.’ He thumbed towards the small gathering of people. ‘They’ve had the downright cheek to bring their caravans onto my land without asking!’

The man with whom Simon had been arguing stepped forward then and took his cap off respectfully as he addressed Jess. ‘Look, missus, we ain’t plannin’ on stayin’ here fer long. An’ we’ll be willin’ to pay yer some rent if that’s what yer wantin’. Me wife there . . .’ he waved a hand towards a heavily pregnant woman who was watching with a frightened look in her eyes from the entrance of one of the vans, ‘she’s expectin’ the child any day now an’ I just wanted some peace an’ quiet fer her till the birthin’s over. I can’t have her droppin’ the kid while we’re on the road. You’ll not even know we’re here if you’ll give us yer permission to stay fer a while. We didn’t realise that this bit o’ land here belonged to anyone when we pulled on, but I promise yer we won’t be no trouble.’

‘Well, it bloody well
does
belong to me and—’

Jess squeezed Simon’s arm and he fell silent although the look on
his
face was murderous. Truthfully she wasn’t much happier about the gypsies being there than he was, but the pregnant woman looked so tired and worn out that she couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

‘Perhaps if it’s only until the baby is born they could stay, couldn’t they?’

Simon glared at her for a moment before snapping sarcastically, ‘Well, you’re the boss, aren’t you? It’s
your
bloody house and grounds, so I suppose if that’s what you want, that’s how it will be!’ With that he turned and stalked away as Jess looked back towards the gypsies apologetically.

‘Excuse my husband,’ she muttered. ‘He’s been working really hard lately and he’s on a bit of a short fuse.’

‘I appreciate this, missus,’ the man told her, screwing his cap in his hands. ‘You’ll not know we’re here, I promise yer, an’ soon as the babby comes we’ll be off.’

Jess nodded and quickly turned away as Beth and Jo hastily followed her.

‘Dad isn’t very pleased, is he?’ Jo asked, as she ran to keep up with her mother. ‘He hates gypsies.’

‘I’m afraid he’ll just have to live with it then, won’t he?’ Jess told her. ‘They are only people at the end of the day and that poor woman looks as though she’s at the end of her tether.’

Once back at the house, Jo and Beth hastily kicked their shoes off and shot up to Jo’s bedroom. Jo could sense a row coming and wanted to put as much space between her parents and herself as she could.

‘So what the bloody hell did you do
that
for?’ Simon exploded the second the girls were out of sight. He was pacing up and down the kitchen like a caged animal and Jess knew she had upset him. Again! It seemed that they were always arguing over something or another these days.

‘Look,’ she said, trying to be reasonable. ‘I know they shouldn’t have just pulled onto our land like that, but that poor woman looked really ill. I wouldn’t mind betting she’ll have had that baby within a couple of days and then they’ll be gone. And it’s not as if they’re hurting us, is it? I mean, they’re far enough away from the house, we won’t even know that they’re there.’

‘Huh! I wonder if you’ll still be saying that when things start to go missing and getting vandalised,’ he growled.

‘Oh Simon, don’t be so dramatic. Gypsies aren’t all thieves and vandals, you know.’

‘No? Well, we’ll wait and see then, shall we? But don’t come crying to me when it all goes pear-shaped.’

‘Can’t we just stop all this bickering now?’ she pleaded. ‘We’ve barely said two civil words to each other since I got back yesterday.’

‘And whose fault is that, eh? You were hardly in a good mood when I came to pick you up from the airport, and then you’d barely set foot in the house before you shot off to bed with a headache. If that’s the way holidays affect you, I suggest you think twice before going anywhere again.’

Jess bowed her head, knowing that what he had said was true. She longed to tell him about Mel and the drugs, but now more than ever she realised that it could only lead to more trouble. She had to put it behind her. Again she wished they had never met Emile. But it had taught her a valuable lesson and she knew that she would be a lot more cautious about who she got involved with in the future.

‘How about I make us both a nice cuppa and we start again eh?’ she said softly.

He sniffed but nodded as she hurried over to the kettle and then quickly started to ask him about his latest job. Simon might have his faults but he was a hard-working man and usually once he got on the subject of his work he could talk the hind leg off a donkey.

Later that afternoon, Simon was watching a football match on TV, Jo had gone home with Beth, and Mel was closeted in her room as usual, so feeling at a bit of a loose end, Jess headed back up to the big attic room and was soon engrossed in finding out what was in the chests. Most of it was rubbish – old sheets and pillowcases that the moths had made a meal of; broken kitchen utensils and old bottles. She piled everything she didn’t want to keep by the door and methodically worked her way through the rest. The large wooden chests were still in surprisingly good condition and she decided she would keep them to store Christmas decorations in and all the other usual odds and ends.

And then she came upon yet another chest set slightly apart from the others, and when she lifted the lid she gasped with surprise. It was full of tiny baby clothes, all carefully wrapped in brown paper. She instantly thought of Grace’s baby. There were tiny crocheted bonnets and hand-made nightgowns, as well as a number of little coats and bootees. But why had they never been worn? As she closed the lid of the chest she smiled, keen to read more of Martha’s journal now and
find
out what Grace had given birth to. The clothes in the chest could have been worn by either sex and gave her no clue.

Sitting back on her heels and swiping her dusty hands across her forehead, Jess’s mind drifted, just as it always did when she thought of Martha. Somehow over the last weeks she had come to regard the girl as a friend, someone she could relate to – and if she really
was
still there as Laura insisted, then as far as Jess was concerned, she was welcome. After all, it had been Martha’s home long before Jess had been born.

It was late on Sunday afternoon before Jess finally spoke to Mel properly again. Simon was out giving someone a quote on an extension, and Jo had gone to a friend’s house for tea, so Jess decided to take full advantage of the fact that they could speak without fear of being overheard or interrupted.

Mel was lying on her stomach on the bed with her head buried in a magazine when Jess went in, and the girl instantly tensed. She had tried to keep out of her mother’s way as much as she could since coming back from Paris, but the confrontation she had been dreading could no longer be avoided.

‘It’s all right, I haven’t come in to read you the riot act,’ Jess told her as she perched on the edge of the bed. ‘But we really
do
need to talk, Mel. What you did, or almost did, is far too serious to be ignored. I think you understand that, don’t you?’

Mel nodded as tears stung her eyes.

‘Right, then let’s talk about it and get it out of the way, shall we?’ Jess straightened her back and folded her hands primly in her lap. ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking about this and I’ve reached a decision. I have to admit my first reaction was to ring the police and pass Emile Lefavre’s number onto them. But if I do that, Social Services and the police will become involved and I don’t think you’d like that, would you?’

When Mel slowly shook her head Jess continued, ‘I thought about telling your dad too. In fact, with something as serious as this I know I
should
tell him, but . . . Well, I’m hoping that you’ve learned your lesson and I don’t need to tell you that your dad would hit the roof if he ever found out what you’ve done. Of course, if Emile turns up looking for the drugs I shall have no choice. Has he tried to contact you on your mobile? It’s important you tell me the truth now.’

When Mel shook her head, Jess sighed with relief. ‘Then if you can promise me faithfully that you’ll never do anything as mad as this again, I think the best thing we can do is to try and put it behind us.’

Mel was crying now and Jess had to resist the urge to take her in her arms. But she didn’t want her to get off too lightly.

She stood up now and walked towards the door before pausing to ask, ‘Can you give me that promise, Mel?’