Time seems to stop again while we all catch up with life’s latest plot twist.
‘Nancy?’ Lily calls, but there is no answer. Our mother is now also nowhere to be found.
We search the rest of the rooms downstairs together, with Poppins following us. I think she thought it was a game before, but now she walks with her tail between her legs and her ears back. I can’t help wondering whether she might be able to hear something we can’t. The thunder and lightning continue as we move through the house with just a torch and a candle, though the storm does at least seem to be moving further away.
‘Trixie!’ Lily calls her daughter’s name repeatedly – we all do – but there is no answer.
We step inside the library. It is filled with Nana’s books, crammed in no particular order into every available space on the shelves that line the room. The sofa shows no sign of where Rose slept on it earlier, but her overnight bag is in the corner. The room is cold, and dark and empty.
Rose leads the way to the kitchen next. It’s obvious that the huge room at the back of the house is uninhabited too, but we take it in turns to look under the table, inside cupboards and behind curtains. Conor is taller than the rest of us, and accidentally walks into the black and orange paper chains Nana had decorated the ceiling with for Halloween. I feel as though we are going through the motions, scared of running out of places to search. And we are all trying not to look at the chalk poem written on the wall.
‘We should check Nana’s studio,’ Rose says. She and Lily exchange uncomfortable glances, I think because it is somewhere they were not allowed to go as children.
‘It’s probably locked, always used to be,’ says Lily, walking towards the door. But when she tries the handle, it swings open with an eerie creak. Even in the dim light, we can all see that the studio has been ransacked.
Conor steps inside first. ‘What the—？’
‘Maybe someone was looking for the book Nana said she was working on?’ Rose suggests, offering an answer before anyone had time to ask a question.
‘Or looking for Beatrice Darker author memorabilia they can flog on eBay,’ Conor says.
Rose ignores him. ‘Nana said she was going to write one last book about all of us . . . maybe that was something someone didn’t want people to read.’
The studio, which always had an air of organized chaos, has been trashed. There are drawings and paper strewn all over the floor, drawers pulled out, pencils snapped in two, and paints knocked over. We walk through the mess, from one end of the room to the other, and I notice some of the newer illustrations and poems on the wall. They are all very different, but all very Nana.
This is where the story ends,
Of fractured families and forgotten friends,
And people too blind to make amends.
One of my favourite Nana sayings is painted in silver writing over a blue and black background of the sea. It always makes me think of Seaglass, and of coming back here year after year.
If you can’t find your way back to Happy,
Navigate to the place you know as Less Sad.
‘I think Rose might be right. What if someone in the family wanted to find Nana’s last book, to stop anyone from publishing it?’ says Conor.
‘I think someone should stop playing detective,’ Lily says, but he carries on regardless.
‘Nana was always hiding secret meanings in the poems she wrote . . . they were never really just for children . . .’
‘What if someone had secrets they didn’t want shared?’ I say, agreeing with him.
‘Secrets worth killing to keep,’ Conor adds. ‘And that’s why they killed her—’
One of the windows is open, and a gust of wind blows out the candle Conor is carrying.
‘Can we please concentrate on trying to find my daughter?’ Lily says.
‘Where is Nancy?’ I ask, but nobody replies. I think we’re too scared of the answers silently auditioning inside our heads. My mother was always a proud and private person. We all know how much she would have hated the idea of someone writing the truth about her or her children. Even disguised as fiction.
The last little poem on the wall is accompanied by an illustration in Nana’s familiar style. The watercolour silhouette is of three little girls holding hands. It was destined for her final book, the one about us, I’m sure of it. The room feels colder than before when I read the words. The same ones that were on the kitchen table earlier, but this time in Nana’s swirly handwriting. Which makes me think that someone else found the illustration in here, copied the words, and left them on a scrap of paper in the other room for us to find.