Burning Secrets

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“What if we were coming here to visit friends?” demanded the smaller man. “That would be all right, would it?”

“Oh yes,” said the official reasonably. “That would be perfectly all right. But you’re not.”

The rest of the queue, displaying surprising patience in the face of this hold-up, was eavesdropping shamelessly.

The other biker was beginning to smoulder. He was a big, muscular type, and looked to Daniel like he’d prefer to settle a disagreement with a fist fight rather than a battle of words.

“OK,” said his mate, to head off a scene. “What if we want to have a drive around the island, and then get the last ferry back tonight. That’s not illegal, is it?”

“Of course not,” said the official, his face wreathed in smiles. “That would be absolutely fine.” He gestured to his colleague to raise the barrier.

“What time does the last ferry leave?”

The man drew back a stiff shirt cuff to check his watch. “Forty-five minutes,” he said cheerfully. “Starts loading in thirty.” He turned his back on their protests, and advanced towards the next car in the queue, beaming with satisfaction. “Welcome to Wragge.”

When it came to their turn Daniel felt suddenly anxious that this Little Hitler with his clipboard would find some excuse to send them packing too. But instead he looked over their residency permit and nodded in recognition.

“The Brow,” he said, reading the address on the document before passing it back. “Ericsson’s old place. That’s been empty a while. The neighbours have been keeping an eye on it though. Garden was getting a bit overgrown.”

“Well, my grandfather moved into a nursing home on the mainland about a year ago,” Daniel’s mum replied. “He’d been quite infirm for some time,” she added, as though obliged to explain his shortcomings as a gardener.

“Nice old boy. Used to see him walking about in his shorts in all weathers,” the official said. “How is he?”

“Dead,” said Louie.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” The man shook his head sadly. “You moving here for good then?”

“Six months,” Daniel’s mum explained. “Then we’ll see.” Daniel knew there was no going back early: they had let their London house to an American academic and his family, and this cottage – The Brow – which Daniel and Louie had never seen, was now their only home.

“You’ll probably find,” said the official, putting his face very close to the open window and beaming in at Daniel and Louie, “that once you’ve settled in here you’ll never want to leave.”

“He was kind of friendly,” said Mum, once they had passed through the barrier and were on their way, leaving the fishing boats and cottages of Port Julian behind.

“I don’t call it friendly,” sniffed Louie. “I call it freaky.” Of the three of them she had been the least enthusiastic about the move, and was ready for any chance to criticise.

Daniel had already proved he could survive without pretty much everything that made life OK. There was nothing this place could throw at him. As long as he had Chet he could be happy anywhere. He wasn’t sure about Mum though. Happiness wasn’t really her thing. Grim determination was more like it. But Louie was the real difficulty. She felt everything so deeply, and took things so personally – she just didn’t have that streak of hardness you need to withstand the knocks. She’d hated school, hated London – but it was difficult to tell which way her mood would swing on the island.

Wragge was only nine miles long and six miles across at its widest point but the journey to The Brow, on the south-west tip of the island, took half an hour, because Mum took the coast road instead of the more direct route over the moor. The road was narrow and pot-holed, with high hedgerows and few passing places, and they had been stuck for ages behind a woman on horseback, ambling along with no sense of urgency. Eventually they reached a farm gate and she had steered the horse to one side to let them pass, acknowledging them with a twitch of her riding crop and continuing to stare after the car until it was out of sight.

Occasional breaks in the hedgerow gave glimpses on one side of fields studded with sheep, and beyond and below on the other, the beaten metal of the sea. At each junction signposts pointed towards unseen villages with curious names: Stape, Crosskeys, Last. Their destination was Ingle. It hardly seemed to need a name of its own as it consisted of just two houses and a stone chapel, which stood at some distance on a little knoll surrounded by a crumbling wall. The chapel had clearly been derelict for some time as there was a gaping hole in the roof, now an entry point for nesting birds.

The turning to The Brow was indicated by a hand-gouged sign nailed to a fence post, and the track itself was unsurfaced, worn into ridges and furrows by passing tyres. The car bounced along the last half-mile, the suspension almost collapsing under the weight of luggage and passengers, the exhaust pipe clanking each time it hit a ridge. They passed a small boxy brick house beside a well-stocked vegetable garden. A row of massive off-white pants and greying bras had been pegged out on a line strung between two apple trees. Daniel and Louie exchanged looks of mild horror. The front door of the house had been left open, giving it a blank open-mouthed appearance. The empty eyes of the upstairs windows seemed to follow the cloud of dust that marked the car’s progress down the parched track.

“The neighbours, I guess,” said their mum. Around another bend the road rose sharply, and the car faltered and strained like an elderly cart-horse. Just when it threatened to expire altogether, they found themselves on the edge of the plateau, moorland to their right, and to their left, sheltering behind ivy-covered walls, a simple two-storey stone cottage in an overgrown acre of wildflowers and weeds. The Brow.