The Keeper of Lost Things(39)

“You complete arse!” she muttered.

“I beg your pardon?” Even the normally imperturbable Sarah looked a little shocked.

Laura grinned. “Me, not you.”

“I knew that.” Sarah grinned back at her.

It was slowly dawning on Laura that life was still exciting and full of possibilities; opportunities that she had wasted years of her life wishing for instead of chasing. She had some serious catching up to do.

“What about Sunshine?” she asked. “Any advice?”

“Talk to her. She has Down’s syndrome, she’s not daft. Tell her how you feel. Work something out. And while you’re at it, tell her what really happened on your date. If you won’t tell Freddy, I’m pretty sure she will.”

Laura shook her head. “You heard what he said when you suggested that we’d been up to no good in the pantry. Not a chance.”

“Oh, Laura! Sometimes you can be really thick.” Laura resisted the urge to stab her in the back of her hand with a fork.

“Do you remember Nicholas Barker from the boys’ school?”

Laura remembered a tall, freckled boy with strong arms and scuffed shoes.

“He was always pulling my hair on the bus or ignoring me completely.”

Sarah grinned. “He was shy. He did it because he fancied you!”

Laura groaned. “Oh God. Don’t say we’re no further forward than we were in the fifth form.”

“You speak for yourself. But in my opinion, you’ve definitely got some serious ground to make up. Especially if you fancy Freddy as much as he obviously fancies you. And now I want some pudding!”

Sarah called a taxi from the pub to take her back to the station. As they stood waiting in the car park for it to arrive, Laura hugged her friend gratefully.

“Thanks so much for coming. I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain.”

“No change there,” quipped Sarah. “But seriously, it’s fine. You’d do the same for me.”

“Damn well wouldn’t!”

That was Laura; always hiding behind a joke, shrugging away compliments. But Sarah would never forget that it was this Laura, eight years ago, who sat wiping away her tears, in a side room of a hospital ward, while Sarah’s shattered husband paced the car park chain-smoking and sobbing. It was Laura who held her hand while she delivered her first child; a precious daughter who died before they had a chance to meet. A daughter who would have been christened Laura-Jane.

Later that afternoon, Laura went and found Sunshine, who was sitting on the bench across the green from the house.

“May I sit down?” she asked.

Sunshine smiled. A warm, welcoming smile which filled Laura with guilt and shame.

“I want to apologize,” she said.

“What for?”

“For not being a good friend back to you.”

Sunshine thought for a moment.

“Do you like me?”

“Yes, I do. Very much.”

“Then why do you hide?” she asked sadly.

Laura sighed. “Because, Sunshine, this is all new to me; living in this house; the lost things; trying to do what Anthony would have wanted. Sometimes I get cross and muddled and I need to be by myself.”

“So why didn’t you just tell me?”

Laura smiled at her. “Because sometimes I’m just a silly arse.”

“Do you ever get scared?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

Sunshine took her hand and squeezed it in her own. Her soft, chubby fingers were freezing. Laura pulled her up from the bench.

“Let’s go and have the lovely cup of tea,” she said.





CHAPTER 26


“I think he needs the biscuit,” said Sunshine, tenderly stroking the bundle of fur and bones that ought to have been a lurcher. He watched her with frightened eyes that mirrored the beatings he had endured. Tired of their torture, his tormentors had kicked him out to fend for himself. Freddy had found him the previous evening lying on the grass verge outside Padua. It was raining hard and he was soaking wet and too exhausted to resist when Freddy had picked him up and brought him inside. He had been clipped by a car and had a superficial wound on his rump that Laura had cleaned and dressed while Freddy had held him shaking and wrapped in a towel. He refused to eat anything but drank a little water, and Laura stayed up with him all night, sleeping fitfully in an armchair while the dog lay inches from the fire, wrapped in a blanket and never moving. As the first wraithlike light of the winter dawn seeped through the lace panels of Anthony’s study, Laura stirred. Her neck was cricked and complaining after a night spent folded awkwardly into a chair. The fire was reduced to a few struggling embers but the dog hadn’t moved.

Please, God, she thought as she leaned forward to check for the rise and fall of the blanket that would prove her prayer had been answered. Nothing. No movement. No sound. But before the tears that had filled her eyes could spill, the blanket suddenly twitched. There was a ragged intake of breath, and the sonorous snoring that Laura had somehow managed to sleep through resumed.

Sunshine had been ecstatic when she had arrived that morning to find that they had a canine guest. It was the most animated that Laura had ever seen the normally rather solemn and serious Sunshine. Between them, they had coaxed him to eat a little cooked chicken and a slice of bread and butter. Sunshine had gently examined his skeletal frame and was determined to feed him everything she could.