For a moment, she thought her bait had actually worked. Her mother had stood, a look of agency on her face, and promptly wandered off in the direction of the hallway. Pepper heard the creak of the banister, then another of the floorboards upstairs. It was always so quiet in this house, so different from Pepper’s home, where the radio was barely off and the television chatted late into the night. She was overcome suddenly by an urge to scream and had to stuff her fist into her mouth to stop herself, removing it just as her mother came back into the room.
‘Here,’ she said, handing Pepper a large cardboard box. ‘This was all in the attic. I only just got around to having the ladder fixed. You know it’s been broken since your father–– Well, it’s probably no good to anyone, but perhaps you could take a look through, sell anything you don’t want at the fête?’
‘Thanks.’ Pepper shook the box gently and heard a clunk. When she went to prise open the lid, however, her mother raised a hand.
‘No. Open it later,’ she said quickly, gesturing around. ‘The dust will go everywhere, and I only just polished in here.’
‘OK.’ Pepper frowned. ‘But what’s in there? Surely you can tell me that?’
She studied her mother’s expression, watched as her pale eyes flickered with discomfort.
‘Some clothes,’ she said snippily, sitting down and turning her attention back to her plant. ‘Toys, books – that sort of thing.’
‘Oh.’ Intrigue inflated like a bubble inside Pepper’s chest. ‘My old stuff?’
‘Some,’ her mother replied, through what sounded suspiciously like clenched teeth.
Pepper moved the box from side to side, thinking.
‘Mum?’ she began, her voice small. ‘Is this? Are they? Beth––’
‘Please, Philippa.’ Her mother shot her a warning look.
‘Just take the box and go.’
Chapter 2
Taking the beach route was neither the quickest nor easiest way for Pepper to get home, but she turned off the high street regardless, blinking as the blustery wind picked up strands of her hair and flattened them across her cheeks. Agitated gulls were picking their way over the pebbles, as restless as the sea that was swirling and frothing below them, and in the far distance, she could just make out the shape of a man walking his dog.
Pepper put down the cardboard box and contemplated the murky water. It was not quite brown, not quite blue, not quite grey – as if all the painters of the world had used it to rinse off their brushes. She had always seen the world in this way, always strived to find the familiar in the new, or the magic in the mundane. There had been occasions in Pepper’s past where she saw her artistic nature as a curse, but not even that had stopped her from pursuing a career where she was able to indulge in all things creative. Although it was not the dream she had set out to achieve, Pepper was still proud of her little teaching business, Arts For All, and for the most part, she found it both satisfying and rewarding.
She enjoyed meeting people, inviting them into the studio at the end of her garden to learn a new skill, make a new friend or two, then go home with something beautiful they had created, something they could display or give away as a gift. Solitude was the enemy of creativity, and Pepper did anything she could to avoid it, to shield herself from loneliness.
Aldeburgh was one of Suffolk’s more beautiful towns, but it was also one that people left behind. Pepper had watched each of her school friends move away in turn, be it for a job or a relationship, and as time had ticked by, the bonds between them had started to fray. For Pepper, the whispers of the past had always been more insistent than the beckoning hand of the future, and so she stayed where she was, bound by a mixture of duty and fear.
The next gust of wind felt as if it had passed right through her, and she shivered, cursing the lacklustre April weather as she retrieved the box from the ground. Pepper didn’t stop again until she reached the wooden bench in the sheltered courtyard not far from the fishmongers’ huts. It was too early in the season for any of the vendors to bother opening, but there was still enough ripeness in the air to wrinkle her nose. The fresh catch of the day carried a scent that settled into cracks, submerged underneath layers of damp wood and burrowed into plaster and stone – yet she found it oddly comforting. It was the smell of home, of growing up, of long summer days chasing Bethan across the stones, of chips wrapped in newspaper that stained your fingers, of a time when their family was still together, still intact, not broken by tragedy, the pieces scattered and muddled, the picture of happiness destroyed.
It felt right to be here today, even if the memories were making Pepper feel increasingly melancholy. In a bid to distract her mind, she decided to have a look through the box now, rather than waiting until she was home, and slid a hand under the cardboard flap to open it. Inside, she found a plastic Care Bear with a single tuft of pink hair, a metal Slinky twisted into a thousand knots, and a crude drawing of four people with arms dangling out from where their ears should be, oversized feet and huge, wide-apart eyes. There was an ancient bottle of bubbles, its lid stuck fast, a light-up yo-yo that needed new batteries, a deformed-looking teddy that had been washed one time too many, a battered piggybank, a whistle on a string and a My Little Pony purse. It was all rubbish, yet precious – each item a memory of a made-up game, a shared giggle, an imagination permitted to flourish without constraint. Some of the things had been Pepper’s, but many had been Bethan’s – the sketch, the bubbles, the bear.
As she took out each object in turn, Pepper was reminded of how much her younger sibling had begged to play with her toys, had wanted to be grown up enough to have her own Barbie doll, or her own set of smart pastels instead of crayons, and wished she had given in.
Right at the bottom, tucked underneath a Get Along Gang Montgomery Moose doll and a toy barn that mooed when you opened the doors, Pepper discovered her and Bethan’s Book of the World and exclaimed in delight.
This had been their favourite, the one they had pored over together in their tent of many sofa cushions. Pepper felt her eyes fill with tears as she began flicking through, remembering how her sister had asked her to read it to her again and again, to tell her the story of Tutankhamun and the Egyptian Pyramids, of Mount Everest and the South Pole. They had folded down the corners of all the pages bearing countries they wanted to visit, then turned to the world map at the back and charted their course with a finger, soaring across from England to France to Spain to Greece to Africa to China to New Zealand. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten about this book, about their plans, about that intrepid need the two of them had shared for adventure.
All this time, all these years later, and Pepper had not gone on a single trip.
Shame coloured her cheeks, the compulsion to cry suddenly so strong that she felt compelled to stand up again and move, get herself back to her cottage before her emotions had the chance to overtake her. When she emerged from the courtyard, however, Pepper saw someone she recognised on the beach. The older woman was set up in front of an easel that was wobbling precariously on spindly legs, her body mostly concealed beneath an acid-green coat that would make even a colour-blind person baulk.
As Pepper dithered on the spot, deciding whether to say hello or tiptoe past, her friend stood up and began to pack away her things, only to stagger to the side and fall over.