The Hiding Places Read online

  RICH IN MYTH, MYSTERY, WARMTH AND WIT — A TOUCHING NOVEL ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ALIVE.

  When April Turner’s small son is killed by a car, she decides she is no longer entitled to anything but the barest existence. Five years on, she has shed everything and everyone she loves, and expects to be this way for ever. Then a letter arrives from an English solicitor, informing April that she is the last surviving heir to Empyrean, a long-abandoned country house.

  At first, April resists. But with the letter comes a map full of tiny mysteries, and she is drawn all the way from New Zealand to the English countryside, and into a small but intriguing circle of people: musician Oran, who remains loyal to his faithless wife; Jack, who lives wild in the woods with a dog; and Sunny, Lady Day, approaching ninety but more vital than others half her age.

  Sunny knew Empyrean in its prime, and her stories bring the past to life. But will April be prepared to give up her principles and start coming alive again herself?

  Robertson’s previous books have been reviewed as ‘warm, laugh-out-loud, funny romantic’, ‘an earthy, authentic tale of love and loss’, ‘quirky, funny and unafraid’, ‘wry and endearing … humorous and evocative’, ‘wickedly funny, clever and well-written’, ‘poignant, warm and entertaining’, ‘a wonderful read’.

  THE

  HIDING

  PLACES

  CATHERINE

  ROBERTSON

  For my mother, who was never one for

  unrestrained displays of emotion but

  who I hope would have said she quite

  enjoyed reading this book

  Contents

  Title page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE January, 1947

  CHAPTER 1 early February

  CHAPTER 2 early February

  CHAPTER 3 late February

  CHAPTER 4 late February

  CHAPTER 5 late February

  CHAPTER 6 late February

  CHAPTER 7 late February

  CHAPTER 8 late February

  CHAPTER 9 late February

  CHAPTER 10 August, 1933

  CHAPTER 11 early March

  CHAPTER 12 mid-March

  CHAPTER 13 late March

  CHAPTER 14 April, 1936

  CHAPTER 15 mid-April

  CHAPTER 16 late April

  CHAPTER 17 May, 1937

  CHAPTER 18 early May

  CHAPTER 19 mid-May

  CHAPTER 20 August, 1938

  CHAPTER 21 mid-May

  CHAPTER 22 early June

  CHAPTER 23 mid-June

  CHAPTER 24 late June

  CHAPTER 25 August, 1939

  CHAPTER 26 early July

  CHAPTER 27 mid-July

  CHAPTER 28 June, 1941

  CHAPTER 29 late July

  CHAPTER 30 early August

  CHAPTER 31 December, 1942

  CHAPTER 32 mid-August

  CHAPTER 33 mid-August

  CHAPTER 34 December, 1943

  CHAPTER 35 mid-September

  CHAPTER 36 late September

  CHAPTER 37 May, 1944

  CHAPTER 38 early October

  CHAPTER 39 mid-October

  CHAPTER 40 December, 1946

  CHAPTER 41 late October

  CHAPTER 42 January, 1947

  CHAPTER 43 last day of October

  CHAPTER 44 early November

  CHAPTER 45 late November

  CHAPTER 46 December

  EPILOGUE February

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  About the Author

  ALSO BY CATHERINE ROBERTSON

  Copyright

  I will bury something, so that in spring

  I can dig it up again

  — ‘SPELL FOR COLD WEATHER’, HELEN LEHNDORF

  PROLOGUE

  January, 1947

  James lay in the snow, puzzled by the fact he felt hot. Only minutes before, the cold, like a marauding army, had breached the barricades of his coat and woollen layers and rioted through his body, robbing him of breath and strength, so that he’d had no choice but to collapse into the snow and lie there, staring upwards through a blur of branches at the grey-white sky. He’d felt the cold begin to shut him down, extinguish him bit by bit as a housemaid snuffs out candles. Then, suddenly, as if his internal forces had rallied, James’s body had heated up again, to the point where he was now uncomfortably, restlessly feverish.

  If he could move, James thought, he would leap up, strip off jersey, coat and boots and launch himself naked into the snow, which would surely hiss and steam as it made contact with his burning skin.

  But he was locked immobile, lying there flat on his back as if he’d fallen out of the sky. Even the tears that the cold wind had stung from his eyes had iced up and could not flow. If someone found him they would have to carry him. No hope that he could walk out of here on his own.

  Who would come, though? No one knew where he was. The one person who might have found him, who knew these woods so well, was dead, and even if ghosts did walk, they could hardly bear a grown man’s weight.

  Nor would that particular ghost want to. Even though he was the most forgiving person James had ever known.

  Did James want forgiveness? It seemed selfish to pray to God for his own second chance when his selfishness had caused so much pain already. If he did send any words skywards, they should be for the people who were left, who’d been so damaged by his lies. They were the ones who deserved to behold the stars.

  Or perhaps he would be better off sending his words down into the earth, to where the old spirits slept. He was closer to them than he was to God in Heaven, after all, lying here on this snow-blanketed ground. The old spirits cared nothing for morality or sin and only for the sap that rose and ebbed, the rain, wind, sun and snow, sex and birth and death. That said, chances were high they didn’t give two hoots about James, either. Maybe, though, if they wouldn’t save him, they’d send a robin to cover him with leaves.

  Robin redbreast had covered the dead babes, abandoned in the woods by their avaricious uncle. The pretty babes were innocent, thought James, and they had not wanted to die in each other’s arms. James knew he was not innocent, but though ice was splintering his mind, he was fairly sure that dying had not been his intention when he’d set out earlier into the snow. Then again, he thought, it was entirely possible that whatever he’d intended was immaterial. God or Fate or whatever force was in charge of natural justice might well have already decided how it should be; his path had already been chosen. Celestial symmetry was at work and he was powerless to interrupt it. His eye must be taken. His punishment must fit his crime. The bad choices he’d made during his life were being accounted for now. His chickens were coming home to roost, every one of them having laid a sulphurous rotten egg.

  He knew it was no good protesting that he couldn’t have helped it, because his nature was fundamentally bad, his mind diseased. James could remember with perfect clarity the moment he’d decided to act. He’d recognised the evil in his thoughts — why not, that darkness had been his companion all his life — but he could not say it had possessed him. His choices, his actions, had been of his own free will. And now, for that offence, the great axe would fall.

  James had an urge to burrow, to make a cave in which he could curl up and sleep, but his fingers had abandoned him. Above, the only direction in which his eyes could look, the trees appeared to coalesce, and for a moment James thought they formed the shape of an antlered head. A stag. King of the forest. No, not a stag, he saw, as the head came closer. A man, framed by black winter branches.

  You, thought James. Finally, you let me catch you.

  The man above him sighed, but though their faces were only inches apart, J
ames could not feel any waft of breath. He did not feel the warmth of the fingers, either, as their calloused tips rested gently on his eyelids and pressed them shut.

  CHAPTER 1

  early February

  The man at the door did not look like a harbinger. He looked, April thought, like the kind of man sent by disgruntled business owners to collect overdue debts, which he would achieve by installing his overfed and unkempt presence in the debtor’s reception area until someone thrust a cheque at him to make him leave.

  A harbinger. More than a messenger. One who forewarned. Centuries ago, April remembered from somewhere, harbingers rode ahead of a royal party and sought out lodgings. Not a room at The Fat Lady’s Arms but a large country estate belonging to a rich man who would be demonstrably less rich afterwards, royal parties being a lot like swarms of locusts, or the tiger in the children’s book, who came to tea and managed to eat and drink everything, even all the water from the tap. No wonder forewarning was required, thought April, because you certainly didn’t have the option to pretend you weren’t home. ‘Back in five minutes’ would not cut it when his or her glorious majesty was trotting up to the portcullis.

  When she heard the man knock, April had considered pretending she wasn’t home. The only person who knocked on her door was her neighbour, Norman, keen to know if today might be the day she’d found God. April had learned through trial and error that the answer least likely to encourage Norman to rush back to his flat and gather up all his pamphlets was a simple ‘No’, followed by the firm closing of her door.

  April did have a fuller answer in mind. The last time she’d had anything to do with God, He’d sent her a sign that she could not ignore. She had acted on it, had given Him his eye for an eye, and God had left her alone. When — if — God ever wanted her back, April assumed He would give her another sign, one (mysterious ways aside) unlikely to be delivered by Norman. But that would presuppose that God had only abandoned her temporarily. And April was not sure He’d been there for her in the first place.

  Easiest, too, to keep that answer to herself. April had had enough of Norman’s pamphlets. She used them to stuff the cracks in her window frames, and prop up the shorter leg of her thrift shop table.

  Today, the door-knock had not sounded like Norman’s eternally buoyant rap, which is why April had been less reluctant to answer. She wasn’t so sure now that less reluctance had been warranted. Because in the meanly lit corridor outside number 9 Circle Court, stood the man who looked like a debt collector, but who was really a harbinger. Except, if April understood him correctly, for one vital difference. He wasn’t seeking out a large country estate. He was offering one to her.

  ‘Wouldn’t blame you for thinking it’s like being the millionth lucky visitor, or Mr Obasanjo respectfully requesting your bank account so you can share in his good fortune,’ he said. ‘But it’s legit, and it’s all in here.’

  He extracted an envelope from the pocket of a jacket that, stain-wise, rivalled an infant’s bib, and handed it to April.

  ‘But how can you be sure it’s for me?’ she said. ‘And how did you find me anyway?’

  He grinned. There was a patch on his left cheek that the razor had missed. If he ever grew a beard, April saw, it would be ginger. There’d been the faintest possibility that Ben’s hair might have been ginger, but it had come out blond. His father had been so relieved.

  ‘Helpful contacts in various agencies of various governments, and Bob’s your uncle. Or in your case, it’s Wilfred, and he’s your great-great-grandfather on your mother’s side. Your father, of course, having immigrated to New Zealand in the 1950s, which is why you were able to obtain a UK passport. By the way, if you want to travel on it, it’s about to expire.’

  ‘It’s true then that the government spies on us?’ said April.

  ‘I’m a private individual,’ said the man. ‘And, personally, I’d be more worried about Google.’

  Out of the pocket that had contained the letter, he now pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes. There was a policy of no smoking in the shared areas of Circle Court. The man would not be the first to ignore it.

  ‘Do you have a card?’ April had an urge to clutch at his arm. Don’t leave me with this, she wanted to say. Even if it’s nonsense, I don’t want to deal with it.

  ‘It’s all in the letter,’ said the man. ‘Who you need to call. I did a bit of research on him, too, if it’s any help. I like to know I’ll get my bills paid. Forty-eight. Never married. Owns two houses, no mortgage. Hasn’t been struck off.’

  ‘Do you know everything about everyone?’ April was both repelled and rather envious.

  He slotted a cigarette into the right-hand corner of his mouth. It did not make him look like Bogart.

  ‘I probe what is knowable, and quietly revere what is unknowable.’ The cigarette bobbed on his lower lip. ‘Goethe, if you’re wondering.’

  The least of my wonders, April thought. She shut the door behind him, and went and sat quietly on the couch. The envelope in her hand was white, with a weave — good-quality stationery, the sort these days you have to order from a specialist supplier. No, not a supplier — a purveyor. The letter inside would be on matching paper. April also anticipated a watermark, or some kind of embossing. Or perhaps just a neatly printed address in an old-fashioned typeface, the thin and careful kind, no flourishes.

  April held the envelope in both hands. It felt heavier than it ought to, given that it held, physically at least, nothing but paper; she’d pressed her thumbs into it to make sure. Her nameless visitor — the private individual had not introduced himself — had given her a précis of the envelope’s contents. Assuming he had not lied (and why would he?), this meant April had already experienced surprise, so it followed that the contents of the envelope should now be inactive, inert. The blue wire of the device had been cut, the ticking halted. All that the envelope held was confirmation of what April already knew.

  But that wasn’t true, thought April. She may know what it said, but she had no idea what it meant. Her life had been changed once before — suddenly, without warning. In one moment, she’d made a bad decision and lost everything, and she had continued to pay for that, as she knew she must, by reclaiming nothing.

  But now — suddenly, without warning — it appeared someone wanted her to have more than nothing. Substantially something, in fact. A whole house.

  She didn’t have to take it, though, did she? She couldn’t be forced to make any decision, good or bad.

  April worked her index finger in under the flap, sealed, she was sure, not by spit but by one of those moistened sponges that sits in a small container. There was one in the office of the community education centre where she worked a few hours a week teaching English to immigrants. The centre also still had a Gestetner machine that was supposed to be used as a back-up when the printer failed, though April knew some of the staff actually preferred to roll off the warm sheets piquant with purple spirit ink.

  The letter, as she’d expected, matched the envelope. The name in the upper right-hand corner was in a thin, careful serif typeface, no logo or symbol, and said, simply, Dunne and Hollander, Solicitors. Smaller print gave their location as the town of Kingsfield, which, April read, was in the English county of Buckinghamshire.

  Scanning to the signature, April saw that the letter was from neither a Mr Dunne nor a Mr Hollander (instinct discounted the possibility of either being a Ms). It was from a Mr Gill. Edward V. Gill. Whom April now knew to be forty-eight, unwed and, if he weren’t in thrall to a blackmailer, a man of means.

  He was still working as a solicitor, so unless he felt it to be some sort of divine calling, April decided, he could hardly be awash with cash. But mortgage-free on two houses put him safely in the financial category known as ‘rich’, in contrast to April’s own status, which hovered just above ‘breadline’. She could afford the rent on number 9 because Circle Court had been built for people who, in removed, bland officialese, ‘faced barriers in
the mainstream rental market’. Circle Court housed those who were mentally ill, infirm or old, but not mentally ill, infirm or old enough to be eligible for subsidised care in an institution. April did not actually consider herself to be mentally ill — her choices had been made with a clear head — but that was not an opinion shared by the medical profession. They did allow that she was ‘functioning’ — a term April felt was as apt as any. She breathed, she ate, she slept and she did a small amount of unchallenging, very badly paid work. Those were functions and she performed them. Ergo she was functioning.

  It was not much of a life, April knew, but she had chosen for it to be so. She had created it to replace her old life, which had ended when Ben died. When her five-year-old son had been struck by a car outside his school, his small, blond body punted clumsily sideways, like a football kicked by an amateur. The driver was not at fault. Ben had run straight from the school gate out onto the road. He was killed instantly. It was his second day.

  April’s old life had ended then, but, unlike her beautiful boy, had taken time to die. She’d stayed in the house for a few weeks, stayed with her husband, with the stuffed bears, the dinosaur T-shirts, the photos and felt-pen drawings on the fridge. She’d heard what everyone had to say about grief and she’d known they were right, but also completely, utterly wrong. Then she’d left, taking nothing with her, and she’d created a new life more fit for purpose. More suited to who she needed to become.

  Her new life required that she sever all ties, but, despite her best efforts, remnants of her old life had lingered for months — friends, her husband and his large family, Ben’s aunts, uncles, grandparents. April’s own parents were already dead; she had been an autumn-years child. She stopped regretting that they had never known their grandson.

  Those remnants of her old life had been like ghosts, their attempts to catch hold of her always failing, each time their hands slipping through. Or perhaps I’d been the ghost, thought April. In either case, there was no way to reconnect. There was no song to be sung, no bargain to be made that would bring her back. Five years had passed. No one was reaching for her now.