Unspoken: A story of secrets, love and revenge T. Belshaw (good books to read for beginners txt) 📖

me. I wasn’t wishing them dead, but I would dearly have liked to move in here with you.

‘I used to wonder why the other kids at school seemed to have so much while I had so little. I always looked forward to a parcel or a letter from you. You saved my birthdays and Christmases for years. I never got much from them. A book here and there, and a lot of those were second hand. I didn’t complain too much, I just thought that’s the way life was and that was it.’

Jess paused as she thought.

‘I used to think you were a millionaire. Mum never spoke of you without the word ‘money’ in the sentence and when Gran and Marjorie came around it was never long before the conversation worked its way around to you. They really despised you. Martha used to say you’d got a secret stash of cash and gold trinkets hidden on the farm somewhere, and they’d sit around discussing where it could be. They even drew plans of the farm buildings and the inside of the farm house.

‘Martha’s best guess was under the parlour floor. She said there was a secret trap door there that led down to a dark cellar. She claimed to have been down there once when she was about ten, but Miriam had found her and dragged her out before you discovered her. She said that Miriam had told her you’d tie her up and leave her down there for eternity if you ever found out.

‘Marjorie agreed with that and claimed that she had observed it all happening. Martha turned to me and warned me to stay clear of that parlour, as she didn’t want to hear that I had suddenly disappeared. She really does hate you, doesn’t she?

‘One night, around Halloween, she claimed you were a witch and you held coven meetings in the loft. She said there was a chest full of money up there too.

‘Mum and Dad must have known it was all nonsense but they never contradicted her. They were either frightened of her, or reliant on her to help out with money maybe.

‘I used to love listening to her go on about the scary old crone in the big house. It didn’t make me scared of you as I’m sure the stories were intended to do. They made me think of you as someone I’d like to hang around with. Someone who led an exciting life. The witch and cellar tales were just like stories I’d read in books. I really wanted them to be true.’

Jess looked up and caught Alice’s dull, almost grey eyes. She missed that glint of mischief.

‘The stories weren’t true, were they?’ she asked with a glint in her own eyes.

‘Of course they were,’ replied Alice. ‘But sadly, we had to seal the cellar up before Martha was born. We had rats in there, some as big as cats, and my mother refused to go down. As for treasure in the loft… well, you’ll be able to find out for yourself soon enough. It isn’t treasure of a monetary kind though, so don’t go getting your hopes up.’

Jess laughed. ‘Damn! And there was me planning on bringing a lorry round to cart off the gold and jewels.’

Alice smiled; thick folds of skin appeared across her face. Only a few days ago there had been none.

‘I didn’t know about the witch’s coven story. I’d have played up on that one, believe me,’ she said with a throaty chuckle. ‘Alice Mollison, the Wicked Witch of the West.’

She chuckled again, then settled back in her cushions as though the effort had tired her.

‘Now we’ve done with the family history, are you ready to hear some more of my story?’ she asked.

Jess picked up the Dictaphone and spoke into it, setting up her cataloguing system before giving Alice the thumbs up to begin.

Chapter 42

March 1938

The early months of nineteen thirty-eight seemed to be all about claiming territory.

Adolph Hitler took over Austria, Mussolini took over Ethiopia and we finally got back the strip of land that bordered the lane that led to our farm. The land was one-hundred-and-fifty yards long and about twenty-five yards deep. We had lost it back in the twenties when a useless, obviously blind, council surveyor misread a map and pronounced that the border of our farm was a lot further back from the road than it actually was. So, for some fifteen years, there had been a strip of overgrown land lying on the edge of our “official border” that was of no use to us (unless we took up the council’s generous offer to rent it), nor was it any use to them, as there was nothing on that part of the lane except our farm.

This bureaucratic cock up annoyed my mother. She had long harboured plans to build a dozen cottages on the land that would bring in rents when times were hard, but we could never get the council planners to consider it. Although it was private land the cottages would need to be attached to the sewers, water main and so on.

One day in late March, a man in a pinstriped suit strode self-importantly into the farmyard clutching a leather briefcase. He cursed as he stepped onto the detritus left behind by the farm livestock. He grabbed a handful of straw from the barn and began to wipe off the mixture of chicken, pig, and cow manure. We hadn’t yet hosed down the yard.

He was in a foul temper as I let myself out of the new pigpen. I’d been attempting to separate two bad-tempered sows. Barney had heard me yelling at them to stop biting each other and arrived in the yard to help me. If the suited man’s mood was dark, mine was black. I was six months pregnant, sweating, and feeling as fat as the sows I’d just tried to placate.

The man checked his shiny patent leather shoes were clean, then began to