Page 27 of The Diary at the Last House Before the Sea

‘Where did you find it?’

‘In that carrier bag of Gran’s possessions. Do you think that might be Gran’s writing?’

Julie’s lips drew into a thin line. ‘I wish I’d thrown that bag away without telling you about it. Why does it matter if your grandmother wrote this…’ – she peered at the paper again – ‘incomprehensible string of numbers? There’s enough going on right now without harking back to the past.’

‘I know, Mum, and it might not matter at all but it’s intriguing, don’t you think? And I’d like to find out. I wondered if you still had the ledgers that Gran wrote in when she was the housekeeper here? So I can see how she wrote her numbers.’

‘You’re not going to let this drop, are you?’ Julie’s shoulders slumped. ‘You always were a stubborn child. Michael never dug his heels in like you did.’

Michael was actually stubbornness personified, but Clara said nothing and Julie finally nodded towards the store cupboard she’d retreated to a couple of hours earlier.

‘The old ledgers are in there, in the tall cupboard that’s against the back wall. Geoffrey doesn’t like us to throw any records away, though quite what he’s going to do with them when he moves, I don’t know. You’re wasting your time, Clara.’

‘Probably but I’d like to check it out.’

‘You’re so like your father,’ Julie muttered. ‘Stubborn. Determined. He could never let anything go either.’ But she sat back in her chair and shrugged.

Taking that as grudging assent, Clara went into the store room and straight to the cupboard that stood in the corner. She’d never looked inside before, and judging by the dust that rose into the air when she pulled the door open, hardly anyone ever did.

Piles of hardback ledgers were stacked onto the shelves. Dozens and dozens of them. She pulled one down and recognised her mum’s neat figures set out in the right-hand column on each page.

Electricity bill paid – £1,453

Food shop – £85

Repair to downstairs WC – £140

The list of expenses went on and on and included an increasingly large number of repairs to the manor. No wonder Geoffrey’s financial problems were stacking up.

Clara replaced the ledger and searched through the others until she came to one with 1957 inked onto its spine: a year when her grandmother was working here as housekeeper – the same year that Audrey had died.

She pulled out the ledger, opened it and ran her finger across pages filled in by Violet as she’d balanced the books. It was hard to imagine the elderly white-haired grandmother she’d known writing this back then, when she was hardly older than Clara was now.

Leaning closer until her nose was almost touching the paper, Clara carefully studied the figures that were neatly written in the right-hand columns. Then she closed the ledger, carefully replaced it in the cupboard and went back to her mother.

‘Well?’ asked Julie, dark shadows beneath her eyes. Today was proving too much for her.

‘The figures in one of Gran’s ledgers and on the piece of paper I showed you look the same, especially the way the sixes and nines are written. It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law but I’d say they were written by the same person. By Gran.’

‘Which means what?’

Now was a good time to confess that she’d pulled Audrey’s diary out of the bin and read it. Tell her that the book contained more of these mysterious numbers, and the scrap of paper, apparently written on by Violet, had fallen from it. But Clara couldn’t add to her mother’s stress. Not today of all days.

‘It probably means nothing at all,’ she said, pushing the paper into her pocket. ‘And now, I don’t care how much you rail against it, I’m taking you home so you can rest.’

‘I have to make dinner for Geoffrey, River and Bartie.’

‘They’re grown men who are completely capable of making themselves a meal.’

Clara put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and, when she pulled her to her feet, Julie didn’t resist. ‘Well…I do have a bit of a headache. I suppose I could have a little rest before I come back and make dinner but I’ll need to let Geoffrey know. After all, he is my employer.’

Not for much longer, thought Clara, keen to get her mother home as quickly as possible. ‘I can hear Phillip mowing the lawn. We can ask him to let Geoffrey know once he’s put the mower away.’

Fifteen minutes later, while her mother dozed on her bed, Clara sat by the stream and dangled her bare feet in the cold, rushing water.

It had been a shocking, surprising and frustrating day. The manor was going to be sold, her mother would be out of work and both of them homeless, Bartie was being surprisingly flirtatious, River was being awkwardly awkward and, though it now seemed likely that her grandmother had written the strange note, Clara was no nearer to knowing what the numbers meant. Or the numbers in Audrey’s diary, for that matter.

Leave it, Clara. She could almost hear her mother’s voice whispering in her ear.

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