I was definitely staying in the house today. I pulled at my muddy clothes. Mum would have said to get changed, immediately, but Aunt Liv didn’t seem to notice dirt.
“Can I phone Mum?” I said.
“You could, only I think she’s going to be busy preparing for the conference right now. Wait until this evening, then you can have a proper chat.”
She tilted her head and tucked her hair behind her ear.
“How about you take some things over to Rita at Keldacombe Farm? Rita’s not been herself since Mr Hemsworth passed away last year. She’s felt rather down.”
She pushed the hair away from my face and smiled. “But I’m sure a visitor would cheer her up.”
My brain woke up. Rita might know something about the horse and also, even more importantly, the girl who stole the carousel case!
“You mean go on my own?” I said.
Aunt Liv looked at me for a long time before she answered. It was the most normal thing for me to say, but obviously not the most normal thing for her to hear.
“Of course. You’ll be fine.”
Aunt Liv gave me a box of eggs and a flask of tea. She explained how to get to the farm next door, which didn’t really mean next door like at our house. You had to go down the track a bit, cut across a field and through a yard.
“Shall I ask Rita about that horse?”
“Good idea, Nell. And later we’ll see about finding you some more suitable clothes.”
Nothing moved or made a sound except the black rooks croaking as they swept away from the roof.
I walked towards the house. Grass and weeds grew through cracks in the yard between the stables, except near one door where the grass was flattened, as if somebody had walked over it.
The porch door was open. I thought I heard voices.
I know you’re not supposed to listen to other people talking when they’re in another room. I wasn’t sure if I should go inside if Rita had someone else with her.
I called, “Hello?”
It went quiet for a moment. I stepped inside the hallway. There was a coat with dusty shoulders hanging there, two pairs of old boots. A grandfather clock looked down at me. Its silent ivory face had stopped at six o’clock.
“Anybody there?” I said.
A lady’s voice. “Come on in, whoever you are.”
Rita was sitting up against some pillows on top of a bed in her sitting room. Another house where everything seemed to have tumbled into one room. It was gloomy and smelled old, filled with dark wooden furniture and tarnished brass handles. There were packing cases along one wall, half filled with things wrapped in newspaper. The green velvet curtains were partly open, but the rest of the room was dim and I couldn’t see anyone else there. I wondered who Rita had been talking to.
“My name’s Nell,” I said. “I’m staying at Lemon Cottage with my Aunt Liv. She asked me to bring you some things.”
Rita didn’t speak again straight away, but then said, “I don’t get many visitors these days.”
She had grey hair, with brownish-reddish waves grown out long ago.
“So you’re Liv’s niece. She mentioned you were coming to stay.” She patted the bed next to her. “Sit, sit. Tell me all about yourself.”
I sat on the end, but there was nothing to say. So I gave her the flask and said, “Would you like some tea? Aunt Liv made it for you.”
A tired smile carved into her cheeks.
“How do you like it here?” she said, pouring greenish tea into a cup.
“I just got here yesterday,” I said. “I don’t know much about animals and plants and things.”
She looked at my dirty clothes.
“It’s not something you can read about in schoolbooks,” she said. She gave me the cup, held her hands out, turned her palms over and back.
“See these hands?”
They were wide and freckled, with knotted knuckles, and they reached towards me.
“That’s how you know, with your hands.”
The cup was getting hot and I tried to give it back.
“Drink,” she said. “It’ll make your hair curl like mine.”
She smiled, but I didn’t get it.
“Take no notice. Just a saying. And Brussels sprouts won’t put hairs on your chest either.”
She laughed, but I still didn’t know what she was on about.
“Go on, try it.”
I tasted the tea and it was horrible. Like watery grass.
Rita chuckled again and took it away, then sipped from the same cup.
“Well, you can tell Liv I think it’s delicious.”
Then she put the cup down and knitted her fingers together.
“So what is it you wanted to tell me?”
Well, I didn’t know what she meant by that either, but I was waiting for my chance to ask her about the horse.
“Aunt Liv said you used to have a hundred black- and-white horses,” I said. “I saw one yesterday and my mum thinks it might be dangerous.”
Before she could answer there was movement from the alcove in the far wall. Out of the shadows stepped a girl with long, dark, unbrushed hair, a big coat and a mean scowl. She stepped into the light and her eyes flashed sky-blue.
“You’re the dangerous one,” the girl hissed. “It’s all your fault, jumping out and scaring her!”
“Now, now, Nell’s just telling it like she saw it,” Rita snapped. “Don’t you mind her, Nell. Angel doesn’t care much for people and being pleasant.”
So this was Angel – the angel. And what I’d told Alfie was true: just because you’re called something doesn’t mean anything. This girl looked more like a mean pixie than an angel.
Rita reached for Angel’s hand.
“Is it Belle we’re talking about? What are you doing with her? She should be with the others at Old Chambers’ farm; the auction is coming up soon.”
Angel didn’t take her piercing eyes off me.
“Old Chambers said I could look after her for a couple of weeks.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
“Yes, he did!” Angel shouted. “But now she’s spooked her and Belle’s got lost—”
Rita held on to Angel’s arm, stopped her flying across the room at me, pulled her back.
“That horse knows this place even better than you. She won’t have gone far.”
Rita tried to look into Angel’s face, but she wasn’t having any of it. Angel shook Rita’s hand away,