The crowds were descending the hill, filtering off in different directions towards their houses. Harriet’s parents were at the helm of the small group heading towards her and she caught the final flurry of their conversation before they neared her.
‘I be certain sure it were him, Joe, on one of them horses. What do Mr Honeysett be wanting here? I be scared.’
And then they were upon Harriet.
‘Blame me, where do you be getting to?’ her father asked. ‘We be shouting and hollering loud enough to wake all of Sussex.’
‘Sorry, Pa, I ran off and hid. Do they be gone now?’
Joseph seemed satisfied with the answer and nodded his head solemnly. ‘They be gone, but I don’t be surprised if they be a-coming back.’
‘What you got there?’ her father asked, pointing to Harriet’s side.
Harriet flushed as she realised that she was still holding Richard’s clerical hat. She raised it and placed it on her head. ‘A souvenir,’ she answered.
Her father smiled. ‘It ain’t a nice hattie, Hattie.’
Harriet grinned, relieved to have protected her secret. She removed the hat from her head and ran her fingers over the fine felt edge. It felt exciting that she had a piece of Richard and he—holding her shawl to his head—had a piece of her.
Her mother was staring back in the direction of the Priory Bridge, a vacant look in her eyes. Whoever Mr Honeysett was, he had alarmed her.
‘I found him! Stop, everyone, I found him!’ shouted Edward Picknell, the carpenter.
Harriet muffled a gasp and felt her stomach constrict. He’d been found. Some hiding place, she rebuked herself. And he’ll think that it was a trap all along—a lion’s den, as he’d called it. She cursed herself over and over and wondered if there was anything she could still do to help Richard. But she knew she could do nothing.
Edward finally reached her parents. ‘I found him—and he still got it!’ He passed something—a bundle of some kind—to Eliza. ‘He were given it by a mariner mate.’
The threads of the conversation taking place made no sense to Harriet. One thing that she was growing certain of, however, was that the he being referred to was not Richard at all. She watched her mother unfold the bundle—a long sheet of material—and shake it out. She held it out proudly to the small crowd gathered around her. ‘The American flag—our flag!’ Eliza said.
The following day, under a turquoise cloudless sky, a gathering of several hundred watched as William Vine the mast-maker attached the American flag to a tall pole, which he had fashioned from a disused mast.
Harriet Lovekin, standing on the shore between her two sisters and in front of her parents, watched as William hoisted the flag to the top of the pole, where a timely wind unfurled it to reveal the twenty-fifth star, stitched on last night by her mother.
‘From now on, this be known as the America Ground—the twenty-fifth state of America,’ William Vine declared.
A victorious cheer rang into the air and the words The America Ground passed with positivity and hope through the lips of those same cowmen, wheelwrights, bakers, brewers, fishermen and lodging-house-keepers who had yesterday feared the loss of home and business; this newfound sense of identity instilled optimism in all of the America Ground residents.
‘The America Ground,’ Harriet whispered, glancing around at all those that called it their home.
Then she thought of Richard and wondered when he would come back, for she knew with certainty that he would return.
Chapter Nine
Kevin Addison had been the head of security at Riccards-Maloney for twenty-nine years and was paid very well for his work there. Being in his late fifties and not as fit and agile as he had once been, Kevin knew that his continuation in their employ was largely down to his aptitude in one particular area: he used whatever legal or illegal methods that he deemed necessary to get his job done. Since the company’s bank balance had swollen substantially over the years, so too had Kevin’s responsibility to ensure that they always appeared clean and above the law. For his part, two expensive divorces and three children whom he rarely saw but whose lives he continued to fund, guaranteed his continuing commitment to the company.
It was just gone ten o’clock in the morning and Kevin took his first glug from a pint of beer that he had just purchased from the Ship Inn in Rye. He didn’t usually drink so early in the day, but he wasn’t one for tea or coffee and, as far as he could tell, that was all Rye had to offer. Wandering slowly to the bottom of Mermaid Street, he stepped his heavy boots onto the cobbles and started up the street.
He saw the house straight away—up the hill and on the right—exactly as it appeared in Google Street View. The House with Two Front Doors, he thought with a derisory sneer. What a ridiculous name for a house.
Taking another swig of beer, he slowly walked up the street, ignoring the strange looks and double-takes that he was receiving from passers-by who correctly identified him as an atypical visitor. He wore a tight-fitting grey suit, which looked incompatible with his bulky frame, built from years of steroid injections and intense weight-lifting. Despite still having a thick head of dark hair, he had for many years chosen to keep it closely cropped.
Kevin stopped in the centre of the pedestrianized street and looked up at the head poking out of the upstairs window of The House with Two Front Doors. It was him. Morton Farrier. Gawking out blankly, looking dumb. Kevin stared, unblinking. When finally Morton met his eyes, Kevin raised his glass to him and sank the entire contents. Then he turned and headed back the way he
