Читать книгу Burning Secrets - Clare Chambers - Страница 10

Chapter 5

“AND IF YOU come when all the flowers are dying And I am dead, as dead I well may be…”

Fifteen clear soprano voices bounced off the high walls of Stape High’s music room and the teacher let her fingers trail across the piano keys, until the singers straggled to a halt. She had never come across a choir with such tuneful voices and yet so little musical sense. They sang as if they were reading out a shopping list. “Could we try that again with a little bit of emotion?” she pleaded. “Danny Boy is meant to be a sad song. It’s famous for reducing beefy Irishmen to tears. But not the way you’re singing it, girls.”

In the back row of the choir Ramsay was finding herself distracted by thoughts of another boy. He hadn’t turned up to the beach barbecue, which was a shame as she’d worn her new red dress and ended up getting sand and sausage fat on it for nothing. And they’d been back at school for a week now and every day he’d failed to turn up. Ramsay’s one tiny criticism of life on Wragge, which was otherwise perfect, was the lack of new faces. It was reassuring to know and be known by everybody on the island, to be safe wherever you went day or night. She hated the way people lived in cities; squashed together in their little boxes, not talking to the neighbours, frightened to go out after dark. But sometimes Ramsay wondered what it would be like to walk into a roomful of strangers: people who hadn’t already made up their mind about her because they knew her parents and her grandparents and had watched her grow up. It would be nice, just once in a while, to go to a party and not be absolutely certain that she would know every single person there.

Visitors from the mainland or abroad were a rarity – like her friend Georgie’s cousin Josh who came for Christmas. He had been at all the parties, but she’d hardly spoken to him because he was always surrounded by a crowd of admirers. Although more than once she’d caught him staring at her. Then at the New Year’s Eve fireworks at Port Julian she found herself next to him when the countdown to midnight began, and he had grabbed her hand and in the confusion of everyone saying “Happy New Year” and hugging each other he’d pulled her around the back of the war memorial and kissed her. It was the best moment of her life. You could still see the crushed poppies where she’d stumbled and stuck her foot through the wreath. The next day he went back to the mainland and she never saw him again. He’d be eighteen now, she supposed. At university or off travelling somewhere.

As she sang, Ramsay made a mental list of the known facts about the new occupants of The Brow. Their name was Milman. The mum had inherited the cottage from old Mr Ericsson. (She knew this because her dad was Mr Ericsson’s solicitor, and had witnessed the will.) There seemed to be no dad around. Someone in the house was an artist, because there was an easel in one of the upstairs windows which wasn’t there when Mr Ericsson was alive. Mrs Milman smoked Benson & Hedges and drank Bombay Sapphire Gin and someone in the house was a vegetarian, according to Ellen, who had a Saturday job at the grocer’s shop. She’d overheard Kenny the handyman, their nearest neighbour, telling the school cook he’d seen the kitchen light burning through the night – that they sometimes didn’t go to bed before 3 a.m. It painted a slightly odd picture of family life that made Ramsay curious to know more.

“But come you back when summer’s in the meadow,” the choir warbled, mechanically, “Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow…”

“You’re bringing tears to my eyes, girls,” the music teacher called out as she laboured away at the piano, “for all the wrong reasons.”