So did the part of her that loved her uncle for his kindness, and knew in her heart that whatever he’d done in his past, he wasn’t a wicked man now. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him, any more than she could bear leaving her attic room at Ocean View Terrace, or lovely St Ives. The restless sea and fairy-glow light that illuminated the town in the mornings and evenings had crept into her bones and taken up residence in her soul.
Skye whined and that decided her. There was no way on earth that Matron would allow a dog, particularly one who resembled a wolf and had X-ray blue eyes, to reside at Sylvan Meadows, and there was no way Laura was going to be separated from him. They were together for life, for better or worse, that’s the promise she’d made to him.
She was stuffing her homework into her school bag when a newspaper article Mr Gillbert had given the class to illustrate a geography lesson dropped onto the floor. She smacked her forehead so hard she left a white mark. Of course. How could she have been so dumb?
Bill Atlas, the sleazy reporter, had asked Calvin Redfern for an interview very familiarly, as if they were well acquainted and he’d done so before. That meant there had to be at least one story about her uncle in the archives of the Daily Reporter newspaper. It wouldn’t necessarily be complimentary, but it would be there. Laura slung her bag over her shoulder and clipped on Skye’s lead. She had risen extra early so she could take him for a walk before class. After school, she’d go to the library and do an internet search on Calvin Redfern. If her hunch was correct, she’d finally have some answers.
For better or worse.
The drama of the night had forced Laura to put aside all thought of the notes in the bottle, but as she and Skye leaned into the wind on Porthmeor Beach she recalled the words in the second letter with something approaching panic. BECAUSE IF I TRUST THE WRONG PERSON I COULD DIE.
Until now, she’d tried to remain detached from the stark horror of that sentence, partly because the letter could still turn out to be a hoax and partly because the notion that it might be true was too much to take in. But it was time she made a decision. Either she had to trust the writer, just as the writer was taking a leap of faith with her, or she had to put the whole thing out of her head.
Laura already knew which of the options she was going to choose. She quickened her pace. Skye tugged at his lead, all but pulling her off her feet as he strained to chase after the seagulls scurrying in and out of the waves on their spindly pink legs.
‘Not today, Skye,’ said Laura, hanging on to him. The power in his shoulders and legs, a legacy of centuries of sledge-hauling forebears, threatened to wrench her arms from her sockets. ‘Somebody needs our help and I can’t have you running off.’
She wondered where her penfriend was now? Was he or she in hiding? Were they terrified, or being beaten? Laura glanced up at St Nicholas’s Chapel, the perfect spot for viewing the Island path. A sudden movement set butterflies dancing in her stomach. The message writer? But the red-and-green blur resolved itself into two tourists in garish sweaters photographing the view.
Despite the blustery wind, it was a sparkling blue day. Much to Laura’s annoyance, a steady stream of dog walkers and joggers occupied the Island path. Wincing at the pain in her ankle, which was severely bruised, she climbed a little way up the hill and perched on a lichen-plastered rock. Now that the bottle was in reach and was real to her again, she was nervous. Her stomach felt as if she’d breakfasted on nails. She hugged Skye and he licked her face and whined softly. The warm, strong bulk of him soothed her.
Twenty minutes later, her patience was wearing thin. The path was as busy as an athletics meet. Laura, who was panicking about the time because she still had to take the husky home, was about to give up and go, when the path emptied and she and Skye found themselves alone.
The Atlantic rollers thrashed and seethed on the rocks just below her. When Laura lifted the bottle from its hiding place, they peppered her with spray. Moving out of range, she prised the parchment paper from the bottle with a stick. It was rolled up and secured with a piece of shiny gold thread. She opened it out.
It was blank.
Laura was so exasperated that she screwed the paper into a ball and threw it in the bin. ‘Time waster!’ she shouted up at St Nicholas’s Chapel. ‘I should have known that this was all some stupid joke.’
She was stalking off down the path when it occurred to her that she should hold on to the piece of parchment just in case. ‘In case of what?’ she asked herself, but didn’t have an answer. She only knew that Matt Walker would have kept it in case he ever needed to test it for fingerprints or study it for clues.
‘Sit, Skye,’ she ordered. ‘Wait for me here.’ She ran back along the path and, using her scarf as a glove, retrieved the paper and thread from the bin. She was stuffing them into her pocket when a gaunt, hollow-eyed jogger came up the path. He halted beside the bench, panting exaggeratedly, undid a shoelace and tied it up again.
There was something about him that made Laura uneasy. ‘Skye,’ she called, hurrying away down the path. But the husky was not where she’d left him. ‘Skye!’ She sprinted up the hill, ankle protesting, and shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun. The husky was chasing a seagull down the steps that led to the beach. Laura attempted a whistle but the husky was too far away to hear her. He left the beach and disappeared from view. Laura tore down the slope, across the grass, and jumped down onto the sand. Which way? Out on the main road, there was a squeal of tyres and furious hooting.
Skye! Visions of her husky lying crushed and bleeding under a car lent wings to Laura’s feet. She flew past the Sea Wind holiday apartments, swerved past a van disgorging piles of colourful artwork, rounded the corner and stopped dead. Skye was in Tariq’s arms. That is to say, Tariq was on the kerb outside the North Star Grocery with his arms wrapped around Skye. A man in a large BMW was leaning out of the window giving him an angry lecture about keeping his dog under control. Tariq was nodding in a serious way, but each time he looked at the husky he grinned.
When the driver departed, Laura walked stiffly over to Tariq. A whole host of emotions were bubbling in her. On the one hand, she was unexpectedly pleased to see him and grateful to him for saving Skye. On the other hand, seeing him brought back the memory of the day when he and Mr Mukhtar had laughed at her and humiliated her.
Skye gave a joyous bark, wriggled free of Tariq’s arms and came loping over to her. Tariq stood up hurriedly.
Unable to resist the impulse to hurt him as much as he’d hurt her, Laura said: ‘Yes, he is my dog. Thank you for saving him, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with a dog who belongs to someone as boring as me. I mean, he’s probably as boring as I am.’
Tariq lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘Laura,’ he began, but before he could get any further, Mrs Mukhtar came out of the North Star. She was as glamorous as ever but wearing an ugly frown. ‘Tariq, I’m sick of your laziness,’ she chided him. ‘Get inside and finish doing the dishes.’
Tariq looked from her to Laura and then he did something out of character. Without a word to either of them, he ran away down Fish Street.
‘Tariq, come back here before I call your father!’ screamed Mrs Mukhtar, but he ignored her.
‘Why do you talk to him like that?’ demanded Laura. ‘You treat him like a servant.’
Mrs Mukhtar registered her presence with a scowl. ‘I will not stand for being lectured by a girl such as you, Laura. You are single-handedly responsible for the trouble that has come into this house. Everything was fine until you came along.’
‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Laura retorted rudely. ‘I doubt that very much.’
She picked up Skye’s lead and walked away with her head held high, but inwardly she was both furious with herself for being mean to Tariq and mystified. What was Mrs Mukhtar going on about? Laura had had nothing to do with Tariq for weeks. How could she possibly be responsible for the trouble at the North Star? What trouble?
She checked the time. She was wracked with guilt for being needlessly cruel to a boy who had probably prevented the premature end of her husky. Ideally, she’d have gone after him, but she was running late for school. She weighed up the consequences. If she took Skye home and spent time explaining to a scowling Mrs Webb how to care for him, she could be as much as an hour late for school. Whereas if she took Skye to school with her, she could explain that this was a one-time-only, never-to-be-repeated emergency. Mr Gillbert would be hopping mad, but what could he do? Send her home? Laura wouldn’t mind that at all.
‘You’re going to have to be on your very best behaviour today to make up for almost giving me a heart attack,’ she told Skye, pausing to rub him behind the ears and cuddle him as they half walked, half jogged along St Andrews Street to Porthminster Beach. ‘No more running away and no more talking to strange boys, even if they have just saved your life.’
She was crossing the road to school when she heard Tariq shout her name. Spinning round, she said, ‘Tariq, I’m so sorry . . .’ She stopped. The street was empty aside from a black car idling in the shadows of a nearby tree. A swarthy man with a bald head and the squat, solid body of a wrestler was climbing into the back seat. He wore a brown suit and dark glasses. The door clicked shut and the car powered away quietly. Laura caught a partial glimpse of the license plate: JKR.
The jangle of the school bell distracted her. Casting a last glance at the empty street and smothering her disappointment, she ran up the steps. She was nearly an hour late. Mr Gillbert was going to be livid with her, especially when she explained that she’d brought her husky to school.
One of the worst mornings of her life was about to get a lot worse.
19
‘I’M NOT GOING to say I told you so,’ said Mrs Crabtree.
‘You just did,’ Laura pointed out. She was tired and cross after her sleepless night. Her disastrous morning had been followed by an even more hideous day at school, during which Skye had eaten a file containing Mr Gillbert’s lesson plans and peed on the head teacher’s office door. Laura had been punished with an afternoon of detention. The only good news was that her popularity with her classmates following the door-peeing and eaten-lesson-plan incidents was now sky high. Everyone apart from Kevin, Mr Gillbert and the head teacher had adored Skye, and he’d played up to the attention by being extra cute and loving.
Even so, Laura wished she actually had run away from home that morning. By now she’d be sitting down to vegetarian cottage pie and trifle at Sylvan Meadows and all her problems would be over.
‘If you try to talk to me about Tariq, I’ll walk away,’ she told her neighbour, who was attired in a purple polo neck, mauve corduroy trousers and a violet hat with a guineafowl feather in it, as if nothing could be more normal or ordinary.
Mrs Crabtree pointed her garden shears at Laura. ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you that you’d be making an enemy of Mr Mukhtar if you took his boy gadding about the hills and beaches when he was supposed to be minding the store while Mr Mukhtar was selling the fancy tapestries.’
Laura looped Skye’s lead over her wrist, put her hands over her ears and moved in the direction of number 28. ‘Not listening, not listening . . .’
Mrs’s Crabtree’s muffled voice made it past her palms. ‘So you’ll not be wanting to know the Mukhtars have left town.’
‘What?’ Laura took her hands away from her ears. ‘What do you mean they’ve left town? Where have they gone?’
She immediately thought about how Tariq, or someone with a voice just like his, had called her name on the empty street that morning. Maybe he’d come to say goodbye to her but had changed his mind at the last minute.
Mrs Crabtree put down her gardening shears and regarded Laura triumphantly. ‘That got your attention, didn’t it? Not so quick to dismiss me now.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Crabtree,’ said Laura, trying to prevent Skye from leaping at a seagull hovering above her neighbour’s garden. ‘I’ve had a horrible day at school and apart from that — ’
‘That’s Barbara Carson’s beast you have there, isn’t it?’ interrupted Mrs Crabtree. ‘It’ll be the wolf training classes you’ll be needing if he carries on at that rate. Not, mind you, that I’ll be complaining if he eats a seagull or ten. Nasty birds. I remember — ’
‘Please!’ implored Laura. ‘What did you mean about the Mukhtars? Have they gone on holiday or something?’ She pictured them on a cruise, with Mr Mukhtar hooking marlin out of the sea while Mrs Mukhtar sunbathed and Tariq, trussed up like a tailor’s shop dummy, sweltered in a suit.
Mrs Crabtree made a show of checking her watch. ‘I’m not sure I can stop to chat. I have my bridge club at six . . . Oh, if you insist I’ll tell you, but I must be brief.’
She reached out to pet Skye. ‘He’s quite beautiful, your husky, when he behaves himself, but he does need feeding up. He’s awfully thin. I think I have a spare bit of rump in the fridge.’
‘The Mukhtars?’ prompted Laura, ready to scream with impatience.
‘Gone for good, they have,’ announced Mrs Crabtree. She flung her arms up, like a conjurer unveiling a rabbit. ‘Gone in a puff of smoke. Sue Allbright saw a removal van pull up outside the grocery at around midday and next thing she knew Mr Mukhtar was boarding up the shop front. No more North Star. Such a shame. They always had the freshest produce.’
Laura was reeling. ‘But that’s impossible. I only saw Tariq this morning. He saved Skye from being hit by a car. I wasn’t very nice to him because I was still mad at him about something that happened a few weeks ago. Then Mrs Mukhtar came out and started yelling at him and he ran away down Fish Street. Did they find him? Did they take him with them?’
‘Well, they must have, mustn’t they? They’re hardly likely to abandon their own boy, are they? Not with him being the golden goose. Anyhow, Mrs Mukhtar told Sue Allbright that it was because of Tariq they were leaving. She said he’d been keeping some bad company in St Ives, and they were moving to get him away undesirable influences. I don’t suppose you know anything about that?’
Laura pretended not to hear the question. She knew very well that Mrs Mukhtar had been referring to her. She was the undesirable influence. ‘Where were they going? Did Mrs Mukhtar say?’
Mrs Crabtree consulted her watch and heaved herself off the wall, giving Skye a last pat. ‘Sue said Mrs Mukhtar wasn’t telling because she didn’t want any of these bad influences getting in touch with Tariq. If you ask me, that’s an excuse. I’m not one to gossip, but they were up to something, those Mukhtars. Sue is sure they’ve fallen into debt or are evading taxes, but I’d say it’s the tapestries that are the problem - the ones supposedly done by some famous Indian artist. Funny coincidence, but they only started appearing once Tariq came to live at the North Star. He came here once, did I tell you that? He wanted me to give you the little tiger. I was on my way out, so I gave it to Mrs Webb to pass along.’
Laura said in wonderment, ‘That was from him?’ Having it confirmed made her happy, but also greatly increased the guilt she felt for being horrible to him that morning.
Mrs Crabtree picked a couple of grass seeds off her mauve corduroy trousers. ‘Didn’t Mrs Webb tell you that?’
No, thought Laura. She didn’t. I wonder why.
‘At any rate, when he handed the tiger to me I noticed his hands were covered in cuts and scars. I had a blinding flash of inspiration and I said to him: “You made that tapestry, didn’t you? You’re the artist?” Well, you’d have thought I’d asked him if he’d stolen the crown jewels. He shook his head so hard it’s a wonder it didn’t fall off and bolted away like a frightened deer.’
All Laura could think was: So he did care.
‘If the Mukhtars have gone, you only have yourself to blame,’ Mrs Crabtree was saying. ‘They probably saw you as a threat to their investment. You were the girl most likely to destroy their golden goose.’
Whether it was because Laura was in shock or because no fir
es had been lit, number 28 Ocean View Terrace had a cold, shut-up feel when she returned. In the kitchen she discovered why. Mrs Webb hadn’t been in that day. The breakfast dishes were still on the table and no afternoon sandwiches or dinner had been prepared. The dirty clothes were heaped in the laundry basket where Laura had left them.
Laura tried to recall if her uncle had mentioned Mrs Webb having a day off, but nothing came to mind. In a way, she was relieved. She didn’t trust herself not to lose her temper with the housekeeper for tossing Tariq’s gift in the gutter. And Laura had no doubt Mrs Webb had done exactly that, probably hoping it would be swept away by the rain. Doubtless, she’d have told the Mukhtars about it too, possibly earning Tariq another beating. If it were up to Laura, she’d be fired on the spot.
Skye shoved Laura hard with his nose and lay down beside his food bowl looking forlorn. In spite of her mood, she couldn’t help laughing. She opened a can of dog food for him and boiled the kettle for a coffee she never made. Instead, she sat at the kitchen table deep in thought. So much had happened and she didn’t understand any of it.