Page 99 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘But then, that might have made it an important clue!’ I said eagerly.
‘I don’t think so: I put two and two together myself and made five, because there was a young girl in the village with a Mini, and it wasn’t her, because I saw her getting petrol later that day and she looked just the way she always did.’
‘I suppose you can’t just shrug off having a baby and act perfectly normally a few hours later,’ I agreed, disappointed.
‘No, and when I thought about it, she wasn’t that kind of girl, either.’
I remembered something. ‘George said his father thought he’d seen car tail lights in the distance some time before he found me, but he didn’t take any notice because he was searching for his lost sheep.’
‘Well, then, that was probably the same car,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I thought maybe it had come from one of the isolated cottages off the lane and they’d been as startled at finding someone there at that time as I was, so I carried on and up to the Oldstone.’
‘You didn’t notice the farmer?’
‘No, but he would already have been on the other side of the escarpment, where the rocks have tumbled down. The full moon was starting to sink, but it was still so bright everything cast long shadows.’
I shivered a little. ‘It sounds scary!’
Those light eyes stared at me, puzzled. ‘I don’t know what you mean – the moor’s the same moor, day or night, isn’t it?’
‘I … suppose it is,’ I agreed. ‘Do carry on with the story.’
‘Right, well, I was just standing next to the Oldstone, looking in the direction of where the sun would rise, when my dog barked. Another one answered it from below, so I looked over the edge and there was a man holding what looked like a lamb. He called out to me to stay there while he climbed up, though I wasn’t going anywhere.’
She rolled out the scone pastry vigorously and began thumping circles out of it with a metal cutter.
‘Go on, then,’ prompted Gloria, who was listening as avidly as I was.
Em shrugged. ‘When he climbed up he accused me of abandoning a baby – he’d shoved you down the front of his shirt by then for warmth, but he showed me – and I told him he was mad and anyway, I’d only just got there. Then luckily I spotted my friend arriving in her car, so we all got into it, went to his farm and called the police and an ambulance.’
‘And they took me away,’ I finished for her.
‘Yes, but once you’d gone, the police asked us a lot of questions before we could go home, and they snooped about afterwards until they were certain I wasn’t the mother.’
She gave a sudden smile. ‘Joe Godet was convinced I was part of a coven of witches and probably told the police I was going to sacrifice you on the rock, or something daft like that.’
‘As if you ever would,’ scoffed Gloria.
‘Was I really wrapped in just a sheepskin, with no clothes or anything else?’
‘A small sheepskin mat, the sort you have by the bed, that was all. You hadn’t even been cleaned up.’
‘I wonder if the police tried to trace the sheepskin rug?’
‘I doubt it. They’re ten a penny round here. No, where you came from remained a mystery, but it seemed likely to me you’d been brought there in that car that passed me. The police never traced it, so it wasn’t from the cottages.’
‘So it’s still a dead end,’ I said. ‘Though it’s good to hear what really happened from someone who was there. Thank you so much for telling me about it.’
‘I’ve thought of you whenever I’ve been up there, which is quite often. The place has great spiritual significance,’ she added, though she didn’t define what kind.
I thought Joe Godet might have been right about the coven, but I was very sure Em hadn’t taken me there for sacrificial, or any other, purpose.
As if she’d read my thoughts she grinned and said, ‘Joe’s son always seems to turn up when I’m there with my friends, so he probably hopes we do all the witchy things the Sunday papers go on about, like get naked and dance around.’
By now, Gloria had poured the tea into wide porcelain teacups and they swirled with big, tattered tea leaves. I’d rather it had been strained, but said nothing and sipped carefully. The roughage, should I inadvertently swallow any of it, would probably do me good.
Gloria took my cup when I’d drained it and I thought she was going to refill it, but instead she swirled the dregs round and peered into it.
‘See anything interesting?’ asked Em, seriously.
