The Library of Lost and Found(33)

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she closed the gate and looked down the country lane one way and then the other, wondering where to go. For someone so focused on planning, she’d overlooked something very big. She’d not given any thought to how she was going to get home.





13


Monkey Puzzle

Martha walked down the country lane for more than a mile before she spotted a wooden sign that told her the town center was a farther mile away. She was aware of putting one foot in front of the other but found herself unable to take in her surroundings. It was as if she was gliding in a dream. Her heart pounded so strongly it felt it might burst out of her chest.

My nana is alive.

As she passed by hedgerows and fences, she half expected a man to leap out holding a microphone and wearing a manic grin, to tell her that she’d been pranked for one of those shouty Saturday night TV shows. “Surprise. You thought you’d found your nana, but it was all a big joke. Bad luck.”

Adrenaline flooded her body and she wanted to break into a run, to feel the wind whooshing through her hair.

She wanted to scribble down all the questions that were piling up in her head, down in her notepad. She’d mark them with an amber star, because they were all in motion but none of them resolved. Her discovery of Blue Skies and Stormy Seas was rewriting her family history as she knew it.

She also knew that among the highs of happiness of discovering Zelda, secrets and lies were lurking.

She passed by a church and her stomach hardened as she remembered her dad telling her she couldn’t go to her nana’s funeral. “It’s not an experience for young people,” he’d said. “You can find your own way to let her go.”

“I want to say goodbye properly,” Martha had insisted.

“Your mother and I will attend. Not you.”

“Your dad has made up his mind,” her mother had repeated, over and over, as Martha pleaded to go.

“I don’t want to go to a funeral, anyway,” Lilian had said when Martha tried to get her on her side. “People crying and sniffling and wearing black. No, thank you.”

Martha had walked around the cemetery for weeks after Zelda died. She’d read every single gravestone but couldn’t find anything with her nana’s name on it. She scoured through the remembrance book in the church, and there was nothing there, either. She wondered if her grandmother had originated from somewhere other than Sandshift, so the funeral might have been held elsewhere. It was a puzzle she couldn’t solve.

However, now she knew the reason she hadn’t been able to find anything to do with Zelda’s death.

Because it hadn’t happened.

The revelation made her feel both ecstatic and sick at the same time.

And with these thoughts tangling in her head, Martha didn’t even notice that she had walked the rest of the distance and arrived in the village.



* * *



Benton Bay was the type of place that spelled out its name in flowers on a grass verge, and it still had a red telephone box on a corner.

Still in a daze, Martha meandered past a baker’s shop, newsagent, chemist and butcher’s shop. When she looked in the window, at the strings of sausages, she pictured Zelda chasing her across the lawn, holding on to raw sausages and shouting, “I’ve got giant fingers.”

She half smiled at the memory and continued along the street, not really noticing the shops and people surrounding her. But then something made her halt in her tracks. A wooden sign, hanging on chains above a door, featured a tree and book logo.

Martha stood beneath it and looked up. “Monkey Puzzle Books,” she said aloud. Her senses lit up as she admired the shop’s cream-painted mullions and the colorful array of children’s books and soft toys on display in the window. She reached out to touch the glass.

She paused on the pavement for a while, thinking of how Rita’s words had led her to the vicarage and to Zelda, and about the pristine version of Blue Skies and Stormy Seas. She had to go inside.

Pushing open the door, she saw a woman standing behind the counter, wearing a green-and-blue woolen shawl and a chunky gemstone necklace. Her skin was black and glowing, and her shiny, curly hair sprang down either side of her orange-framed glasses.

Martha instinctively knew this was Rita.

“Hello, my lovely,” the lady said as she patted a sleepy dachshund dog who lay in a basket on the counter. “Can I help you?”

Martha glanced around the gorgeous shop. There were tables with small blackboards on easels that announced Benton Bay Bestsellers and Seaside Stories. The children’s area had low plastic yellow chairs and beanbags. A man who wore a purple bobble hat and wellies stood reading books in the New Fiction section.

“Um, hello. I’m Martha Storm,” she said shakily as she approached the counter. “We spoke on the phone about my grandmother’s book and—”

Without warning, Rita launched forward, as if diving over the counter. She reached out her fleshy arms and her pat on Martha’s back was more like a thump. “How marvelous that you’re here. You should have told me you were coming.”

“I only decided this morning…”

“Fantastic, and Owen should be back any minute now.”

Martha swallowed hard. “Um, Owen?”

“Oh.” Rita pulled away, her hands still holding onto Martha’s shoulders. She cocked an eyebrow. “Haven’t you traveled here together?”