Page 2 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
In any ordinary family, his loss might have pulled Nessa and me together, but she was not so much grief-stricken as filled with a volcanic rage, mainly directed at me. And she became so obsessed with money that immediately after the funeral she sold the entire contents of Dad’s studio (he was quite a well-known artist) to an American collector without a word to me beforehand, locking the door so I couldn’t even go in there to find solace among the comforting, familiar smells of oil paint and turpentine.
That was bad enough. But then, with even more indecent haste, she moved a new man into the house – and a horrible one, at that, who was scarily over-friendly in an old-lech kind of way whenever she was out of earshot – and I came to realize that now I was just an encumbrance and she couldn’t wait for me to go off to university the following year.
The pain of Dad’s loss was still raw and I couldn’t bear to see another man in his place, so I had the row to end all rows with Nessa, culminating in my saying that I hated her and I was going to go and find myrealmother.
‘She has to be an improvement on you!’ I finished.
‘You’re a foundling, darling, so there’s no way you can find her,’ she snapped cuttingly. ‘And bearing in mind that she dumped you out on the moors on a freezing cold night, she’d be unlikely to welcome you with open arms, even if you did.’
Stunned into silence, I stared at her while I took in the implications of what she’d just told me. ‘She … didn’t leave me in Haworth village, but up on the moors, where she didn’t think I’d be found?’ I asked eventually.
Nessa looked at me, the fury dying down slightly into a sort of malicious, slightly shame-faced pleasure that shook me: I knew she’d neverreallyloved me, but until recently I’d thought her as fond of me as her self-absorbed nature would allow.
‘Your father never wanted me to tell you the truth, but I think that was a mistake. And maybe she was batty and thought someonewouldcome across you,’ she suggested, possibly divining from my expression that she’d gone too far.
‘No, if she left me at night out on the moors, then clearly she hoped I’d die and never be found,’ I said numbly, for the spell of Dad’s fairy tale was now well and truly shattered and there was no way it could be glued together again. I felt empty, alone and lost … and unwanted – totally unwanted – by anyone.
‘I hate you!’ I cried with sudden violence as hot tears rushed to my eyes. ‘I wishyou’ddied instead of Dad – though you couldn’t have had a heart attack, because you haven’t got a heart. You’ve never loved me like Lola’s mum loves her.’
She shrugged. ‘I expect Dolly actuallywantedchildren, which I never did, even if I could have had them. Your father finally wore me down into agreeing to adoption and he was over the moon when we were offered a baby. But you’d only just had the surgery on your face and what with that and the carroty hair, you weren’t exactly prepossessing, darling.’
Now the floodgates of frankness were open, there seemed to be no stopping the hurtful revelations, so I added one of my own: I told her that the day before, when she was out, her creepy new lover had tried to kiss me and made suggestive remarks.
‘You lying snake in the bosom!’ she hissed furiously, clutching those generous appendages as though she’d just been bitten there by an asp.
And though of course she didn’t believe me (which was why I hadn’t already told her), there was no going back after that.
Dawn found me on a coach heading to Cornwall, with the loan of Lola’s birthday money in my bag, to tide me over. I took only one case with me, leaving with her for safekeeping my most precious possessions, including Granny’s books and a small portrait of me in oils, painted by Dad.
Of course Lola had wanted to tell her mum what had happened, but I’d sworn her to secrecy until I’d found a job and somewhere to live.
‘I’ll stay in a bed and breakfast at first, and there are lots of hotels and cafés there where I can get some casual work until I find my feet,’ I assured her.
Inspired by some of Dad’s old stories of the Newlyn artists, and our holidays in Cornwall, I had romantic ideas about joining an artists’ colony, where my aspirations to become a writer and painter could be nurtured, though later I realized this was not only unrealistic, but several decades too late.
The stark reality was that my arrival, late in the evening and off-season, when many places were shut up for the winter and no one was hiring, left me without any option other than spending the first night huddled in a shelter on the seafront … and all too soon my over-active imagination was peopling the darkest corners with evilly muttering goblins and foully hellish Hieronymus Bosch creatures.
When the cold breeze blew a discarded cardboard cup across the prom I thought it was the clatter of running footsteps and even the soft, constant susurration of the sea sounded like an unkind conversation about me.
I’d begun to write my own contemporary mash-ups of fairy tales, fables and folklore, spiced with an edge of horror, but when it came to the crunch,thisprincess was no kick-ass kind of girl able to rescue herself, but a frightened waif in urgent need of a handsome prince … or even a kind, ugly one.
Hell, I’d have settled for a reasonably friendly frog.
Tears trickled down my face and I shivered as the cold wind picked up and wound its way around my legs.
Then, all at once, I heard the staccato tap of high heels and the excited yapping of a small dog. Before I could attempt to shrink even further into my dark corner, it dashed in and discovered me.
A torch snapped on and I screwed up my eyes against the dazzling beam, though not before I’d glimpsed the small and unthreatening shape behind it, so that my heart rate steadied.
‘Well, what have we here, Ginny?’ said a surprised female voice with the hint of a highland lilt. ‘A wee lassie?’
After completely putting the events of that dreadful night out of my head for so many years, it’s odd that now I’ve moved back to live with Father in Upvale, I should suddenly find them creeping back in again.
I have decided to write a full account of what happened, and outline the perfectly logical reasoning that led me to act in that way, in the hope that it will exorcise them. My conscience is, and always has been, entirely clear about the matter.
2
The Bonny Banks
