Lizzie and the Lost Baby by Cheryl Blackford

Author:Cheryl Blackford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chapter Sixteen

LIZZIE

LIZZIE FOUND A TOWEL for Peter’s dripping hair. “You shouldn’t disappear like that. I didn’t know where you’d gone.” She paused. “That boy looked like one of the Gypsies. What did you say to him?”

She bent down and whispered into his ear, “You didn’t say anything about the baby, did you?”

He mumbled into his chest. “I didn’t tell the secret.”

Elsie rocked in her chair, cuddling the sleeping baby. “Madge has some wellies for you two. You’d better go and get them, Lizzie. You’ll need them if this keeps up.” She nodded her head at the rain-streaked window.

Lizzie ran to Madge’s house and knocked on the door.

“Come in out of the rain. I expect you’ve come for these.” Madge pointed to two pairs of olive-green boots on the floor by the sink.

Madge’s kitchen was cozier than Elsie’s, with a big rug on the flagstone floor and flowered curtains at the window. On a shelf above the stove, Lizzie saw three silver-framed photographs. In one, a young woman wearing a sundress reclined in a deck chair.

“That’s our Susan when we went to Scarborough,” Madge said. “She came home when her young man joined the air force. She’s lucky to be working for the colonel now.”

“What does she do there?” Lizzie asked.

“She helps him with his paperwork and such. He’s a very busy man these days, what with his Local Defense Volunteer work on top of everything else. He says he couldn’t manage without her.” Madge beamed with pride. “I expect you’ll see her at the weekend—she gets Saturdays and Sundays off.”

In the second photograph, a woman wearing a floaty dress danced with a man whose long coattails streamed out behind him.

Madge followed Lizzie’s gaze. “That’s me and Fred. Dancing in Harrogate.”

Lizzie leaned in for a closer look. The man was a younger, slimmer version of Fred, but it was hard to believe that the glamorous woman, with her hair slicked back in waves, was Madge.

“You wouldn’t know it to look at us now, but we was good. We even won some competitions.” Madge’s voice had a wistful edge.

“You look like a film star,” Lizzie said.

Madge’s smile smoothed out all the angry little creases around her lips.

In the last photograph, a man had his arm around a laughing woman, who held a chubby baby.

“That’s Elsie,” Lizzie blurted. “Whose baby is she holding?”

Madge straightened the shiny frame. “You might as well know. It’s Alice, Elsie’s baby. She died last year of the double pneumonia. And then Norman, Elsie’s husband, was killed in an accident with a tractor. Elsie’s not been the same since.”

Elsie’s baby, Alice, had died—that was the secret! But how could Elsie think this new baby was Alice?

“Doesn’t Elsie know the baby we found isn’t Alice?” Lizzie asked.

Madge sighed. “Her mind’s playing tricks on her. She sees what she wants to see.”

Lizzie thought about Colin Craven in The Secret Garden. He was lonely and sad because his mother had died and his father ignored him. He believed he had a lump on his back even though his spine was perfectly straight, and he was sure he’d die young.

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