Three Things About Elsie(73)

‘Starving ourselves isn’t going to help, is it?’ Miss Ambrose shovelled a fried mushroom into her mouth. ‘We have to keep our strength up.’

The wallpaper looked very tired. It was the kind of wallpaper that has a texture, as well as a pattern. The kind of wallpaper that makes you want to touch, just to see what it feels like.

‘You should really stop that,’ Elsie said. ‘People are looking.’

I took my hand away. ‘But what’s the point in putting velvet on the walls, if no one is going to feel it?’

The tea was lukewarm and the toast sat in its letter rack, cold and unwanted. It’s odd how worry affects your appetite. Some people completely lose all interest in food, whilst others do absolutely nothing but eat.

‘Starve a fever, feed a cold,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you’re supposed to feed a worry as well?’

‘Haven’t got the stomach for it, I’m afraid.’ Jack pushed his plate an inch forward. ‘Have you heard anything from the police?’

Miss Ambrose attacked a hash brown with her fork. ‘Not yet, but I’m sure they’re doing everything they can.’

‘I’m sure they are.’ He sat back. ‘And hopefully, they’ve listened to all of us very carefully.’

The hash brown disappeared. It left an echo of tomato sauce around Miss Ambrose’s lips, and I wiped my own mouth in sympathy. I’d never admit it to Elsie, but Beryl dying made me lose faith in the police force. How they never managed to get Ronnie. How something like that could happen, and no one was ever punished. Sometimes, you go through an experience in life that slices into the very bones of who you are, and two different versions of yourself will always sit either side of it, like bookends.

After she’d pushed the last hash brown around her plate, Miss Ambrose said we should all try our best to carry on as usual, but could we please try to avoid getting lost, and be back at the hotel for six o’clock at the latest. Jack cornered his eyes at us, and Elsie and I cornered ours back, even though neither of us was really sure why we were doing it, and he couldn’t really explain it all until we were out on the front step.

‘The man who owns the music shop,’ he said, buttoning up his coat. ‘I think we should ask him to elaborate on that research he said he did.’

I took a deep breath of seaside air, and the three of us walked along the little path towards the whalebones in the first catch of sunlight.

There is something special about a coastal morning. The day seems to have so much more potential when there’s a seaside attached to it. Perhaps it’s the brightness from the water, scrubbing everything clean like a front step, ready for you to start again.

We walked past sleeping ice-cream vans and wet concrete shelters, but the nearer we got to the whalebones, the more people began to appear. Everyone had made an early start, trying to squeeze as many minutes as they could out of their day. They all looked like tourists to me, because they had that air of holiday clothes and bellies full of hotel breakfasts. The traffic seemed local, though. Boy racers, speeding up and down the seafront, squealing their brakes and sending flocks of seagulls escaping into the sky.

As we turned a corner, there was a woman by the side of the road. She had two children, one strapped tightly into a buggy, and the other wandering the pavement, stepping on and off the kerb in some strange little-girl game. One where only she knew the rules. The woman was bending down, pushing hair behind her ears, trying to free one of the wheels of the pushchair, which had jammed against the concrete. The bells of St Mary’s rang a Saturday morning out across the harbour.

‘Help her, Jack. She’s struggling.’ I pointed Jack an instruction towards the pushchair, and he rested his walking stick against a bench and bent down. She stood up and looked round for the little girl, taking her hand and pulling her away from the road. Jack freed the wheel. He stood up and the woman was in the middle of thanking him when one of the racer cars tore around the corner, sending a wall of air across the seafront. It nearly knocked Jack off his feet and the woman reached out to steady him.

When he walked back to us, I said, ‘There’s your good deed for the day,’ and Jack said, ‘It was nothing.’ But there was satisfaction drawn into every line on his face.

‘Quite the character, our Gabriel Price.’

The man in the music shop stood behind the glass counter, his hands laced together on his chest, as though he had remained there for the entire night, just waiting for us to return.

We all leaned forward a good inch.

‘How do you mean?’ said Jack.

‘Well.’ The man’s fingers unlaced and laced back again, like a magic trick. ‘I’m not one to gossip when someone isn’t here to defend themselves. Heaven forbid that any of our own lives should be open to such scrutiny.’

We all said no, no and of course not, and made reassuring sounds at the backs of our throats.

‘He was a bit of a chancer, by all accounts,’ the man said.

‘He was?’ said Elsie.

‘Always dabbling in this and that. Spending his time at the racetrack.’

‘Are you sure?’ I thought of the soft smile and the gentle eyes.

‘Oh, quite sure.’ The man rested his fists on the counter. ‘He’s from Whitby, and it’s like any other small town. It never lets you forget. There are still people who remember him, I’m sure, although they will be in their later years, of course.’