“What was your house in London like?” she said. “Was it big and spooky, like Braër?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much, do you?”
“It must have been quite big, because there were more people living in it.” I had a hazy memory of closing my bedroom door so that I could sit still and be quiet and alone in the small space. It was a busy house where I never had a moment to myself. There was always raucous laughter, occasional yelling. Sometimes there were smacks followed by kisses to take the pain away. “It was very different to Braër,” I said.
Stacey got up from the bank, brushing the dirt from her shorts. I started to hand the brooch to her.
“No, you keep it. It’ll bring you luck,” she said. “People lose things all the time—make sure you don’t lose it.” She smiled. She had a pretty smile. It transformed her face.
“You look like a girl now,” I said.
She laughed. “That’s why I don’t smile very often. I wish I was a boy sometimes.”
“Why?”
She kicked at the grass. “I don’t know. Boys have it easy. They fight better.”
I glanced at the sky. Behind the low clouds the sun had begun to peer out. We were both squinting in the hazy light.
“I’d better go home,” Stacey said with a sigh. “Can we play again?”
I nodded, squeezing the brooch in my hand.
“Right ho. See you, wouldn’t want to be you!” She grinned at me, and then she was off, running across the grass.
I watched her go, jealous of the speed at which she could run, then looked at the watch on my wrist and wished it was more than a plastic toy. Dad would be frantic. I started on my way home, the mud on my trainers weighing me down like an astronaut with moon boots.
Chapter Three
I wanted to see Stacey again, but every time I thought about climbing the gate and going looking for her, I felt a sick feeling clenching in the pit of my stomach. Dad hadn’t mentioned my mud-encrusted trainers, but they appeared on the clothesline the next day, clean and sopping, with muddy drips leaking from the ends of the laces. They took three whole days to dry.
It rained every day for the next week, and I spent my days inside, not daring to venture away from Braër on my own without Stacey.
But being inside meant I was in Dad’s line of sight more often. He followed me from room to room, drawing pad in hand, commanding me to stop while he quickly sketched in an outline. On a really wet Wednesday, when the rain was so torrential that the sound drummed into my skull, he managed to corner me, a comb replacing the usual pencil in his hand.
“You really can’t carry on like this, Romilly. Your hair is so knotted it’s actually growing upward.” He pushed me onto a stool in the bathroom and set to with the comb, ignoring my gasps and winces as he attempted to untangle the knots.
“Ow, Dad.”
“I’m sorry, but we should never have let it get this bad. It’s like cotton candy, for goodness sake.” He stopped, staring at my hair in the mirror. “There’s nothing for it,” he said at last. “I’m going to have to get the scissors.” He abandoned the comb, its teeth chewing at my hair, and went marching off.
“No, Dad!”
“I’m not going to cut it all off. I just need to get rid of a tangle or two, that’s all.”
I looked in the mirror. He was right: I could see thick matted areas that looked almost solid. There was a raven’s feather hanging from the back that I had stuck in there days ago. I tried to imagine myself with short hair. I thought about Stacey. She had short hair. It suited her.
When Dad came back, I said, “Does having short hair mean you turn into a boy?”
“Not in the least.”
“You can cut it off, then. But keep the feather in it. I like it.”
* * *
When Dad let me go, my new haircut rustling around my ears, I roamed the house, turning my head this way and that, liking the way the air breathed on my exposed neck.
It was still raining outside, and I decided I would spend my time indoors wisely. Talking to Stacey at the bridge had brought to mind my mother, so I set out to discover as much as I could about her.
All of Braër’s rooms were accessible to me except one: Dad’s study, which was locked whenever he wasn’t inside. But Dad wasn’t very good at security, and he always hung the key on the wall next to the study door. Shaking my head at his lack of ingenuity, I unlocked the door and slipped inside.
This was his painting room. It was a small, square space that hung out over the moat at one end of the house. The walls were dark with mold where the damp had crept in, but the view made up for it: a huge picture window that looked out from the north end of the house toward a meandering stream. Dad had told me there was a watercress bed somewhere beyond the little bridge in the distance, and every time I ventured out that way, I picked a leaf from a different plant and tasted it, hoping for the peppery bite on my tongue.
I looked around the room, searching for vestiges of Mum that Dad might have brought with him: a pair of high-heeled shoes tucked away in a corner, or a pretty scarf hanging from a hook. There was a pair of shoes, half-hidden under the cupboard near the window, but they were much too small to be my mother’s—something a little girl would wear, with large red bows at the toe. I picked them up and examined them, wondering if they had belonged to the same girl who owned the baby doll and the parasol. I turned to Dad’s desk, hoping for a letter from my mum, or else a paper knife, engraved “to darling Tobias, from your loving Meg.”
Instead, the desk was scattered with half-squeezed tubes of paint. A cloudy jar of water stood in one corner, its contents silty and gray like the moat outside. The painting I had glimpsed before was still there: a woman in a sequined leotard with cotton-candy pink feathers in her hair. She was riding an animal in the circus ring, but the rest of the painting hadn’t been completed, and it was impossible to tell what animal it was going to be. I hoped it would be a dragon, or else a polar bear. Something unusual.
Scattered around the desk were close-up sketches of the same woman’s face. They were simple line drawings, but her eyes burrowed into me with a deep wisdom that belied their simplicity. I gazed back, transfixed. Was this my mother?
“Romilly, what are you doing in here?” Dad’s voice, usually so loud and booming, was somehow more menacing in its quietness.
I turned around. He was standing in the doorway. “Looking for Mum,” I said.
“Your mother doesn’t live here.”
“I know. I just wanted to remember her a bit. To find something of hers.”