Read Online 2006 - Wildcat Moon by Babs Horton - Free Book Online Page B

scrap book was another photograph. It was of a boy standing outside the summerhouse in the garden at Killivray. There were pretty curtains at the windows and the door was open; she could just make out someone inside in the shadows. The boy was dressed in a sailor suit and was holding some sort of bat; his hair was sticking out as though he had just been swimming. He was smiling at somebody or something not shown in the photograph. He had the kind of smile that made Romilly want to smile too. He looked so happy, like he was having the very best day of his life.
    Sometimes, when she was allowed outside, she walked down to the gloomy summerhouse in the hope that she might find him there but she never had.
    She closed the scrap book and replaced it in the trunk. Next she took out a bundle of dreary-looking letters that she couldn’t be bothered to read.
    There was a mouldy old atlas, a half-filled stamp album and the diary she’d found beneath a broken floorboard in the summerhouse; a diary with a lock on the front but no key.
    Lastly she lifted out a small metal box and opened it carefully. Inside were the most wonderful treasures of all.
    A small silver capsule that pulled apart revealing a tiny replica of a holy saint. She turned it over in her hands and marvelled at the detail on such a tiny thing. She put the saint back into the capsule and put it back into the box.
    Saints were not allowed in Killivray House. Or holy pictures. They were Papist paraphernalia and once Papa found Mama’s secret rosary and broke it in half and the beads fell onto the wooden floor of the dining room and made a sound like hailstones on the nursery windowpanes.
    Finally, she took out her most favourite possession of all.
    She had found it in the nursery, wedged down behind the skirting board. She’d been afraid that Nanny Bea would take it off her so she kept it here in the secret trunk. It was a silver bird through which a tangled silver chain was threaded.
    “Romilly! Romilly!”
    Heck! Nanny Bea was calling loudly from the nursery.
    Romilly piled the treasure hastily back into the trunk, dosed the lid and tiptoed back across the attic. She put on her shoes and went quietly down the stairs.
    “I’m coming, Nanny Bea,” she called when she was safely back down on the landing. “I was just in the long room looking at a picture book,” she lied cheerfully.
    Down in the hallway Mama stood beneath the huge stag’s head, dabbing her nose with a handkerchief.
    She had been crying and the skin around her eyes was as puffy as pink marshmallows.
    She held out her arms and Romilly ran to her eagerly.
    Mama hugged her tightly and Romilly breathed in her lovely smell, rose-perfumed soap that she bathed in each morning, Midnight in Paris perfume and an overlay of menthol cigarettes mat she smoked when she had a headache.
    Mama whispered in Romilly’s ear, “Be good, my darling, while I am away.”
    “I will.”
    “I promise you that whatever it takes this is the last time we shall ever be separated.”
    Romilly whispered back, “Oh, Mama! I hope so. Can we go with the elephant on the road to Mandalay?”
    “Perhaps,” She kissed Romilly gently on the forehead.
    “Mama, may I play the gramophone records while you are gone to remind me of you?”
    “Of course.”
    Outside a car parped its horn impatiently and Mama let Romilly go reluctantly.
    “Make sure that she gets plenty of fresh air and is not kept cooped up all day in the house.”
    Nanny Bea nodded curtly.
    Romilly ran behind Mama to the door but Nanny Bea caught hold of her arm and pulled her back.
    Instead Romilly watched from the window as an old man got out of a grey car, lifted Mama’s suitcase into the boot then held the back door open for her.
    Mama looked out through the window and waved, trying to keep a smile on her face.
    Romilly smiled back and blew a kiss.
    Nanny Bea turned away from the window with a sly smile. From what Master Jonathan had told her, Margot Greswode