Read Online Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones - Free Book Online Page B

“I’ll go back for it. You take the cat food and wait in the main square. I seem to remember this picturesque little dump has a café there. I’ll buy you an ice cream before we go back to the workhouse.”
    Which shows that Mum is a fairly human saint. But cat food weighs a ton. When I got to the main square I put it on the steps of the war memorial and wandered about. The café was shut. Of course. So I went down the street Mum was most likely to come to the square by so that I could wave and save her the journey when I saw her. And instead I saw a car parked by the drugstore. It was a blue car with well-known dents—the one we saw at the station the other night. It looked so like our old car that my heart began to bump and hammer in my throat, even though I could see its number plate. Ours had been a Y-registration. This was an H, and its number plate was all old and rusty. But it was the same kind of Ford, the same color exactly. I found myself thinking, I’ll just go round on to the pavement and see if the dents in the driver’s door are there. Dad had kicked it furiously the first time it stopped unlocking. And before I’d finished thinking that, I was round on the pavement, staring.
    That door was quite smooth. It looked a slightly different color from the rest of the body. Its window was wound down and there was a blond lady sitting in the driver’s seat busy doing her face in one of those little handbag mirrors. I hadn’t seen her from behind because the car had high backs to the seats, like gravestones—just like ours again. She had a pouting mouth and cared-for dyed hair. In fact, she looked so exactly like I always imagined Verena Bland that Dad went away with, that the most awful suspicions went through my mind. My heart hammered even harder, and I went nearer—or I tried to. But I found I was sort of bending down, with a hand on each knee, in a most peculiar way. If you walk like that it’s even more peculiar. And I thought of spies using handbag mirrors and car mirrors to watch people in. I thought, She’s watching me in that mirror!
    After that I was so terrified that she’d suspect my suspicions that I was forced to straighten up. I walked right up to the car window and I said, “Excuse me, miss.”
    I tried to get a sniff of the inside of the car as I said it, to see if it smelled of seawater or the same old smell as always, but all I got was an absolute blast of the blond lady’s perfume. She turned her head with a jump. “Yes?” she said, surprised and unfriendly.
    I hadn’t a clue what I was going to say but somehow I found myself asking, ever so shy and pretty, “Excuse me, did you get your beautiful perfume at this drugstore here, miss?” I didn’t know I had that much presence of mind.
    She gave a sunny smile and shook her head. “No. It came from Bond Street in London. It’s ever so expensive. You couldn’t afford it, dear.”
    â€œI come from London,” I said. “Do you live here, miss?” I was practically lisping. She must have thought I had no brain at all. “You’re ever so pretty. What’s your name?”
    She liked me thinking she was pretty. She gave a pleased wriggle and quite a sweet smile. “My name’s Zenobia Bailey,” she said. “I live here and I have to go home now.” And she started the car and drove it away down the street.
    I started to give her a sickly little good-bye wave, then gave it up. It had gone boring again, like the orphanage. It wasn’t our car. She wasn’t Verena Bland. And Mum was pounding up from the other direction with the cat food and the new skirt, saying, “Mig, for goodness’ sake ! Don’t just go away and leave things like that! What were you doing?”
    â€œBeing a moron,” I said. And I still think it was our car. I can’t seem to shake myself out of it. Chris says that if