“It’ll be lovely to live together, even just for a little while,” said Star.
“What about Joe?” asked Simone.
“What about him?”
“Come on, Mags.”
“I guess he’ll be unemployed. But he’ll be okay. Troy’s already offered him a few shifts in the bar.”
“You never said anything to us for all that time, not at the funeral or when Dad died . . .” Star trailed off.
“We’re not the kind of sisters who call each other up on a Sunday for a catch-up. We don’t call each other—period. And it didn’t seem like the right time to burden either of you. You’ve both had your own stuff going on.”
“That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have at least lent you a sympathetic ear,” Simone protested. “Just because you’re the oldest doesn’t mean you have to be the mum. We’re your sisters, we’re both grown women, you should be able to tell us this stuff.”
Star could see that Maggie was far from convinced by this statement, and she couldn’t help feeling her own part in it. What reason would her sister have to confide in her? Over the years Maggie had bailed her out with bailiffs, helped her with rent, been her guarantor, loaned her deposits—which she’d rarely paid back—and both her sisters had tolerated her sofa surfing. It was exhausting to think about.
“We’re here now,” she said. “We’ll help you in whatever way you need.”
“I never thought I’d say this,” Simone said, frowning, “but . . . what Star said.”
It was the tiniest throwaway comment, but Star took it and banked it in the place in her brain where she kept meaningful things. Such an affirmation, even one as small as this, would have been inconceivable a week ago, and she wasn’t too proud to take her micro-miracles where she could get them.
18
At half past two the following afternoon, Maggie left her sisters to the strongbox search and went to pick Verity up from school. The sky was dark, the sun having been hiding all day, and a dogged mist ensured wayward hair and consistently damp clothes. It was Thursday already, three days since Vanessa had first told them about the winter solstice celebration. Time felt like a herd of buffalo barreling toward her at high speed, and she had nowhere to run.
Verity delightedly handed over a pattern for her Christmas play costume—courtesy of the PTA, who genuinely thought that this was helpful—and skipped off along the road, leaving Maggie wondering when in god’s name she was going to have time to rustle up a pomegranate costume.
“I need to pop in to see your aunts. Would you like me to drop you at home with Patrick?”
“No, I’ll come with you. I like the shop, it smells funny.”
Star and Simone were no closer to finding the elusive strongbox than when she had left them, though they had unearthed a clay painted pot, which Duncan surmised could be Roman, a terrifying Mickey Mouse gas mask, and a set of brutal-looking pliers whose cardboard tag proclaimed them to be Early Victorian Dentistry Tools.
Verity was intrigued by Duncan, but her interest quickly wore off and soon her restlessness, which took the form of very expressive dancing, was in danger of causing a bric-a-brac avalanche.
“Shall I take you back home, sweetheart?” Maggie offered.
“No, I’ll go and play in the fairy house.”
“Okay, but your coat and gloves stay on and no bouncing up there. I know Joe fixed the boards, but it’s been very damp lately, and the wood might be soft.”
“Oh, Mama, you worry too much!”
Star guffawed.
“I worry so that you don’t have to,” Maggie replied. “Go on, off you go, I’ll come find you in a bit.”
The fairy house, as Verity called it, was in fact the sisters’ old tree house, built by their dad and well loved by all their friends and both of Maggie’s children. It was still pretty sturdy given that it was over forty years old, and Joe had given the whole structure an overhaul in the summer, which should see it through for the next few years. She experienced a pang of melancholy when she thought about it not being the North tree house any longer after the building sold. It would be the end of an era. There had been Norths on the property for almost three hundred years. Soon it would be just another photograph in an estate agent’s window, an “investment opportunity” pared down to nothing more than acreage numbers and room measurements.
If there was one good thing to come out of her eviction, she decided, it was getting the chance to stay here in her ancestral home for one last time.
Duncan continued studiously with his work while the sisters pulled out furniture and delved into hidey-holes around him. Earlier in the day, he and Star had rescued a stout George II （according to Duncan） walnut kneehole desk from beneath a display of dead-eyed porcelain dolls and fashioned a workstation for him near the back of the shop. He now had room to lay out his laptop, notebooks, and magnifying and measuring equipment, which seemed to please him immensely.
By five o’clock, all they had to show for their search were dirty hands and aching muscles.
“I’d better get Verity in before she turns into an ice pop.”
The garden used to be lit with fairy lights; now the decayed wires hung in sad loops from the skeletons of apple and pear trees that grew along the high stone garden walls. Augustus had made sure that his daughters could play out in the woods till late by hand-carving signs that read This way home! This way to the tree house! This way to the Fairy Glade! and nailing them to rowan tree trunks throughout the area. Winding through the middle of the garden was a stepping-stone path studded along each side with footlights, which Joe had put in during the summer. Maggie followed the path down to the end and stepped through a stone archway into the woods. Here too was Joe’s handiwork. Following the original pattern left by Augustus, he had wired in new lights, which twinkled out from blackberry bushes and rhododendrons like golden fireflies and lent the otherwise dark woods a glowing warmth.
Her footfalls were dull against the soft mossy ground; only the occasional snapping twig gave her away. Above was the canopy of rowan branches with their bunches of red berries hanging down like Chinese lanterns.
“Verity!” she called as she rounded another twist in the path and saw the tree house lit up ahead. The word tree house suggested a kind of makeshift affair, but this more resembled a log cabin built across the boughs of two trees.
Verity came to one of the windows and peered out. “Oh, good, you’re here,” she said, as though she had been telepathically summoning her mother.
“It’s time to go home, sweetheart, come down from there now.”
“I can’t go yet. I’ve lost my holly sticker down the back of the fairies’ treasure chest.”
“It’s only a sticker, darling, I’m sure we’ve got some more at home.”
“No, Mama, this one’s special! Sameera gave it to me in class—it’s the best-friend sticker! I can’t lose it!”
Maggie knew better than to argue: you were never going to dissuade a ten-year-old of the power of best-friend stickers.
“Can you pull the fairy treasure out a bit so you can reach behind it?”