Wishbones by Virginia MacGregor

Author:Virginia MacGregor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

It’s Mum’s handwriting.

And she must have written the inscription for me. It’s what she calls me sometimes, her brave little adventurer.

I flip through the pages of the book. It’s all about Max’s adventures at sea.

I don’t believe in stupid books about boys going out and saving the world while girls stay home plaiting their hair and playing with dolls. That’s what I’d told her when, a couple of years ago, she asked me whether I’d like to read them with her.

I’d rejected them. And she’d never told me that they were meant for me.

‘Feather?’

I spin round. Rev Cootes stands in the doorway.

I put the book back down on Clay’s desk and grab my duffle coat from his bed.

‘I was just getting this,’ I say.

He looks over at the book for a second and blinks and looks back to me.

‘It was nice of your mother to call.’

She called? Mum’s got the same crap phone as I do and only has two numbers stored in her contacts: mine and Dad’s.

‘When did she call?’

‘Yesterday.’ He looks across the road at Mum’s window. ‘It was nice of her to think of Clay.’

I used to know everything about Mum’s day: when she got up and when she sat in her chair and what programmes she watched and what she ate and when she went to bed. And now she’s doing all this stuff without telling me.

‘He loved those books when he was small.’ He looks at the cover. A little boy with curly blond hair, sitting in a sailing boat on an open sea with big waves crashing all around him. ‘His mother read them to him every night.’

His eyes go sad. Then he picks up the jute bag and gives me a smile, which makes his face go all soft and kind.

‘Why did Clay’s mum go to New York?’ I ask.

I think back to what Clay said back at the Lido the night when it was just the two of us. That there has to be a trigger. That people don’t just flip their whole lives upside down for no reason.

Rev Cootes looks out of Clay’s window and I know he’s staring at Mum’s window.

‘Willingdon was too small for her.’

‘I know how she feels,’ I say.

I’d always thought Willingdon would be enough. That once I’d taken over Dad’s business, I’d meet someone and that we’d have a family and live close enough for me to see Mum every day. I thought that would be enough. But I’m not so sure any more.

‘It must have been hard for her to move country when Clay was so small. To do it on her own.’

‘Rosemary has family in New York. She’s American. So Eleanor had some help finding her feet.’

‘How did you meet Rosemary?’ I ask.

‘At vicar college. She was one of those Americans who fell in love with England. She dreamt of having a small parish like Willingdon.’

‘So you were both vicars?’

With parents like that, no wonder Clay’s mum went so religious.

‘Rosemary never finished her training. Dancing turned out to be her true calling.

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