*
The next thing I know I’m lying on my back on the pavement with something soft under my head. A woman crouches down beside me; others look on, their faces full of concern.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, attempting to pull myself up to a sitting position, and despite feeling weak and woozy, I glance over my shoulder at the antique shop. There’s no mask in the window. Had I imagined it?
‘We’ve called an ambulance,’ the woman says. ‘Lie back down, sweetie. Everything’s going to be OK.’
*
Once I’ve convinced paramedics I fainted due to not eating, and they’ve checked me over, and ordered me to eat something before I attempt to cycle home, I open the door to the antique shop. A bell rings out. ‘Hello!’
Inside, the air is musty, and high shelves are crammed with ornaments, jewellery, and pictures from past lives. I make my way towards the back of the shop to where a man in his forties is doing a crossword puzzle in a folded newspaper. He doesn’t look up. ‘Strange – connected to death, seven letters, beginning with “M”.’
‘Macabre?’
‘Spot on!’ He scribbles the word, and jolts his face upwards. ‘Can I help?’
‘There was a mask in the window a little while ago. I wondered if you remember who brought it in, or maybe who bought it?’
He screws up his nose. ‘Do you mean the rather lovely Chinese opera mask?’ He points to the wall, where a Chinese mask with a creepy smile hangs.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘This was a modern mask of a young boy’s face, made of plastic.’
His forehead furrows. ‘I’m afraid we only sell antiques. You must be mistaken.’
‘Maybe.’ Had I imagined it? ‘Has anyone been in here in the last half an hour?’
‘Only a man picking up a 1950s sewing machine, I’d put by for him. Are you OK? You seem a little agitated.’
‘And that’s it. Nobody else. Nothing?’ I’m lost for words, and turn to leave.
‘Hang on!’ he says. ‘Now I think about it the bell above the door rang out a couple of times this morning, but whoever it was must have changed their mind – never came in.’
‘So they could have put a mask in your window?’
‘I guess so. But it’s a rather odd thing to do, don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ I say, retreating. ‘Yes it is.’
Chapter 46
Present Day
Amelia
My eyes flick over the lounge where I spent so much of my childhood. Sometimes it’s painful transporting myself back there, but today I feel lucky that I can lose myself in the memories. Today I want to go there.
Dad and Thomas went out about half an hour ago. I didn’t tell them what happened in town today. That I thought I saw the mask in the antique shop window; that I collapsed, an emotional wreck, on the pavement. They’ve got enough to contend with. And I’m OK now, really I am.
I head over to the CD player and put on my parents’ Fleetwood Mac CD, and as the music blares from the speakers, I can almost see Mum dancing around the room in her own world, a glass of wine in her hand, while Dad sits at the table, lost in his museum research, barely seeing her. Maybe they were never as suited as I always dreamed they were.
I drift around the lounge cupping a glass of wine with both hands, as I follow my family’s journey in pictures that grace the walls – from Mum and Dad’s wedding day, through the baby years, the teen years and beyond. There are so many studies, put up by Mum long before she took off with Jackson. Dad hadn’t taken them down when she left. In fact, he changed very little – even the fake sweet peas she made into a beautiful display more than ten years ago still stand on the windowsill.
‘Why were you so flattered by Jackson’s stupid boyish charm, Mum?’ I say into the silence, a bubble of anger rising, then dissipating. ‘You were so lucky Dad was there for you at the end to pick up the pieces.’
I put down my glass, and bend down to pull an old photo album from the dresser, and flop down on the sofa. The album smells musty. Black-and-white photos are held on greying cardboard pages with photo mounts. I’ve seen these photos before over the years, but now they are painful to see. I take in a study of Mum in platform shoes, and a fake-fur jacket. There’s no conservatory but there’s no doubting it was taken outside Ruth and Finn’s cottage, and the other teenagers in the picture are Ruth and Michael Collis.
I look at their young faces, at the way Ruth holds hands with Michael, staring up at him adoringly, and the tragedy that both Mum and Ruth are now gone hits me once more.
I’m far from drunk, but the booze is fuelling my emotions. I desperately want – no, need – to see more photos from the past. I rise. Most of the family albums are in Mum’s old workroom. I make my way upstairs.
Within moments of stepping into her room, I know I shouldn’t be here, encased in this shrine to Mum. The neatly made bed where she spent her final weeks; the boxes of brightly coloured ribbons, silk flowers, and rolls of cellophane that are piled high on a pine table, the pretty curtains at the window, all nudge at my already fragile state.
I take a breath, kneel down, and pull out an album, then another, flicking through the pages at speed, as though searching for something I can’t find, my emotions chaotic.
It’s as I give up my search and thrust the albums back onto the shelf that I see it: a thick, pale-blue notebook, with the words Caroline’s Journey written on the cover in Mum’s swirling, curling handwriting. I’ve seen it before on her bedside table a few days before she died.
I pick it up, clasp it tight against
