Holly Read online

  Thanks to my friends at National Missing Persons Helpline

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Also by Mary Hooper

  Chapter One

  I remember the day the first parcel arrived. I remember it because the brown paper package came with the rest of the post for the shop and then just sat on the shelf, waiting for someone to bother to take it downstairs to the office, which is next to the staffroom. And because Mrs Potter, who’s the shop manager, didn’t come in until late afternoon, it was only then that I found out it was for me. It was a dead boring day and the customers had been playing up something rotten, so I was a bit miffed – thinking that I could have had this exciting thing, this surprise parcel, to open and think and gloat about all day if only I’d known about it earlier.

  As it was, the day was dominated by – well, tiresome customers, of course, but mostly by Ella’s phone call. By midday she and I had had our lunch, which had been a sandwich from the Tempting Treats menu, and were sitting staring at the payphone in the staffroom downstairs from the shop.

  ‘Oooh-er,’ she wailed, ‘I can’t do it!’

  ‘Go on!’ I urged. ‘You must. Now that you’ve got this far.’

  ‘Oooh … what if he doesn’t want to … I mean, what if they find him and he just says he’s not interested in me?’

  ‘He will be interested!’ I said, pretending to sound certain.

  She gave a squeal and clutched at her tummy. ‘I don’t know if I can.’ She looked up at me and asked pathetically, ‘Will you phone for me?’

  I shook my head. ‘Suppose they ask me something I don’t know the answer to. Look – ’ I took her hand – ‘I’ll hold your hand. I’ll dial the number for you!’

  ‘Go on, then.’ She pushed the piece of paper towards me and I dialled the Freephone number and then gave her the receiver.

  Ella made a strangled noise sounding like ‘Help!’

  I didn’t mind all this fuss because Ella’s my best friend and anyway, it was quite exciting and something different to think about. It was the school summer holidays – we were both going back into Year 11 in September. Ella and I had temporary jobs in a big tea shop near where we live. Well, to be quite accurate, it was an Olde Tea Shoppe and a tourist trap. The town where we live is just outside London and it’s got a palace with Henry VIII connections, so it gets a million visitors a year. Or it might be two million, I forget. Anyhow, there were a lot of tourists and as they were mostly American we called them doodles – from Yankee-doodles – and loads of them came into the tea shop, and there we were dressed all Olde Englishe in long blue check dresses and big white aprons, with soppy bits of hats stuck on our heads. We felt really stupid. Or we did at first, but in the end I kind of got used to looking like a cross between a nurse and a crinoline doll. At least the uniforms were kept at work, so we could change when we got there and didn’t have to walk through the streets looking daft.

  We were both pleased to have the jobs, as we were desperate for money for clothes and stuff. It wasn’t all that brilliantly paid, but we got tips, sometimes really good ones from the Americans, who – because they were only in England for a couple of days – often didn’t bother to work out the money and just gave us whatever came to hand, which was usually a pound coin or three. We usually worked Monday to Friday, because although the shop was open at the weekends there was a regular weekend staff that worked throughout the year.

  That morning, as the phone rang on, Ella stared at me, terror written all over her face. It rang about five times, then I heard the person on the other end say, ‘Missing Persons Helpline.’

  Ella’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything.

  I nudged her hard. ‘Say something!’

  ‘Can I help you?’ the woman’s voice asked. It sounded quite posh, but friendly and concerned as well. As if she really did want to help.

  ‘I … want … ’ Ella began falteringly.

  I squeezed her hand encouragingly.

  ‘Yes?’ the voice asked.

  ‘I want to contact my dad,’ Ella said in a rush.

  ‘And how long has he been missing?’ I heard the voice say.

  Ella made frantic eyes at me. ‘Since I was two.’

  ‘And how old are you now?’

  Ella looked at me again and raised her eyebrows. She was ready for this one. ‘Eighteen,’ she lied. She knew that you had to be eighteen.

  ‘And has there been any contact between you and your dad since he left home?’

  Ella swallowed. ‘No. At least, I don’t know. My mum and dad are divorced and she always said that she’d burn anything that came from him. So … ’

  ‘All right. What’s your name?’ the voice asked kindly, and when Ella told her, said, ‘Do you have any details about your dad? His date of birth, for instance?’

  Ella stared down at the piece of paper she held. ‘Eleventh September 1953.’

  ‘And do you know anything else about him? Did he marry again after your mum and dad divorced?’

  ‘I’m not sure … ’ Slowly, Ella started giving the information, her voice sounding less strained and scratchy with every word. I knew she was pleased to be talking about her dad and telling someone about him.

  Ella’s mum had recently got married again, for the third time. The first husband, Ella’s dad, had walked out on them (or been driven out, Ella always said), the second one had spent most of his time drunk, and the third one, this new one, Ella hated with a passion. He bossed her about and told tales to her mum about her and was altogether a complete pillock. I’d only met him a few times but I thought he was snidey. Once I went round there in a short skirt and he looked at me in a funny way and said something about little girls not wearing short skirts unless they meant it. I told my mum about him and she said I should take care not to be alone with him, not under any circumstances.

  I couldn’t understand Ella’s mum marrying someone like that, but – well, she was a bit dodgy too, actually. She had hair that was bleached as white as straw, and was the only mum I knew who had a tattoo of a Harley-Davidson motorbike badge on her arm.

  I knew that Ella desperately wanted to find her real dad. She’d been talking about him for ages but since her mum had married the pillock, as we usually called him, it had become really important to her. I know what she was hoping, of course: that he’d come and get her and take her away from her mum and the pillock, then she and her dad would live together happily ever after. It all sounded a bit fairy-tale to me, but I wasn’t going to say so. And, well, he might come along, and he might have a big car and a beautiful house with an indoor swimming pool, like she dreamed about.

  I listened as Ella gave her address to the woman at the helpline. She then put the phone down and beamed at me. ‘They’re sending forms!’ she said. ‘They’ve put me on the database and are sending forms.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I’ve got to fill them in, giving as many details as possible about where he came from and what he might be doing for a job, and then when I return the forms to them they’ll start looking for him.’

  I stood up and readjusted my mobcap thingy, because it was nearly time to go back to work. ‘But that doesn’t mean to say that they’ll definitely find him, does it?’

  Her face fell.

  ‘I mean, I’m
not being horrible but I don’t think you should get your hopes up too much.’

  ‘But if he knows that I’m looking for him! He must want to know about me.’

  ‘Yes, but he might have … ’ I paused. ‘He might have got married again and have another family.’

  She frowned. ‘That’s what the woman on the phone said. She told me he might have a new family now and that I might cause him embarrassment.’ She brightened up a little. ‘That’s nothing, though, is it? He’ll soon get over a bit of embarrassment. I mean, he’ll have to. He must want to know about me. I need him. He’s got to come and rescue me from pillock attack.’

  I giggled.

  ‘I bet he’s nice,’ she said wistfully. ‘I bet he’s really nice. One of them’s got to be, haven’t they? It’s not fair if I have a mum and dad who’re both horrible. I bet he’s done all right for himself, too. I bet he lives in a decent house and not just some grotty old council flat.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘I wish I had your mum and dad!’ she said, not for the first time.

  I pulled a face. This wasn’t to say that I didn’t think I had a decent mum and dad – I did. It was just that I didn’t want to gloat about them in front of Ella.

  They were pretty OK, as it happened. I mean, we did have rows sometimes, but not terrible ones with yelling, ripping of clothes and throwing people down the stairs like they have in Ella’s house. My mum’s quite young for her age – she’s fifty – not in the way Ella’s mum’s young, with tight jeans and dangling earrings, but just quite giggly and chatty. She’s the sort of person who wants to know who’s asked who out and whether there’s been any snogging and all that. I don’t always tell her about the snogging, mind you, especially if it’s been me who’s been doing it.

  My dad’s about six years older than her and he’s OK, too, but in a different way. He’s not giggly, and he’s got a bit of a beer gut and he’s balding, but he’s quite good at sorting things: problems at school or bus timetables or homework. He’s cuddly, too – and sensible and calm and quite different from my mum, who’s a bit scatty.

  ‘Have you told your mum you’re looking for him?’ I asked Ella.

  She shook her head. ‘I told her once before that I wanted to find him, and she said she didn’t know why I was bothering. That he was a useless layabout.’ She shrugged. ‘She would say that, though.’

  ‘Have you got any photos of him?’

  She gave a short laugh. ‘No, because she’s got rid of them. There are some of the day they got married but she’s cut him off. She’s there in her long white dress holding on to thin air. She won’t tell me anything about him – I expect she’s forgotten because of all the others she’s had since.’

  In between the husbands, her mum had had a succession of boyfriends. Occasionally they’d moved in and sometimes there had been an extra child or two around that Ella had had to share her room with. I was just going to ask about the pillock’s children when Cody, who’s the assistant manager, stuck his head round the door of the staffroom.

  ‘Are you two still in here?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s it look like?’ Ella said. Not rudely, though, but in a funny way. Cody’s only a few years older than us and he’s all right. Not good-looking – although the striped cotton jackets and gingham bow ties all the guys who worked in the tea shop have to wear don’t help.

  ‘It looks like you’re five minutes late,’ he said. ‘And I’ll have less of your cheek. Get on that floor and get serving.’

  We got. As we went up the stairs we left staffroom land of black plastic and peeling wallpaper and entered one which had pale-pink walls hung about with painted china plates, tiddly bits of brass, sparkly cut glass and big arrangements of artificial flowers. As we went up I glanced at the little pile of post and noticed the brown paper package again, though I can’t really say why I did.

  Mrs Potter came in at four thirty. She part-owns the shop and is really nice. She’s about forty, I suppose, and she always wears a navy-blue suit with a check blouse instead of a dress and an apron. She waved hello to us as she passed through the tea room and went downstairs. About ten minutes later she came back, holding the package. She caught my eye as I cleared away some disgusting debris on a table for four – it looked as if they’d been dunking their almond tarts in their tea – and held it up.

  ‘This is for you,’ she said.

  I didn’t think I’d heard her properly. I finished putting the stuff on the tray and went up to her.

  ‘For you,’ she said again. ‘It just says Holly Devine c/o Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, and on the other side it says, Please see that she gets this. Thank you. Very polite, whoever it’s from.’ She put the package on a shelf on the other side of the counter. ‘Open it when you’ve got a minute.’ She added in a jolly voice, ‘And let me know what it is, won’t you?’

  She went downstairs again and I dumped the tray in the kitchen and picked up the package.

  It was addressed just as she’d said, and it felt squashy. I didn’t recognise the writing. Ella came into the kitchen behind me. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘A present from someone!’ I said, though I didn’t know if it was. It could have been a couple of old newspapers wrapped up, for all I knew. ‘It was delivered here.’

  ‘Ooh, get you!’ she said. She gave the package a squeeze. ‘Is it from Alex?’

  Alex was the boy I was going out with. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I said. ‘That’s not the sort of thing he’d do – send surprises through the post. Anyway, he’d have sent it to me at home.’

  ‘Not if it’s a pair of French knickers,’ Ella said.

  ‘I wish.’ I tore at the package, which had sticky tape all round it. Inside there was dark-blue tissue paper, and inside this, a scarf. A beautiful scarf – lambswool, I thought. Very pale-blue, very soft.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Ella said admiringly.

  I held the scarf up, putting it against my face. A note fluttered to the ground and I bent and picked it up.

  There was no address or signature. It just said:

  Holly. I hope you won’t mind me buying you this. I think it’s the sort of thing you’ll like. Am I right? And I think it matches your eyes. This comes with best wishes from (and I know it’s corny) A Friend.

  A pale-blue scarf. That’s what started it all.

  Chapter Two

  ‘It’s beautiful. That’s cashmere,’ Mum said. She stroked her hand gently up and down the blue scarf. ‘It’s a pashmina.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She shrugged vaguely. ‘It’s just what they’re called. They’re from India or somewhere, and they use the best, softest yarn from the underside of some sort of goat. It cost a lot of money, I can tell you that.’

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘About a hundred pounds, I should think.’

  ‘Blimey!’ I said, astounded.

  We were in the kitchen, where Mum was painting terracotta pots in order to put moss balls in them and sell them at the school Christmas fair. It was months away but she always had a stall there and started making stuff around August or September.

  ‘Pashmina,’ I said. It sounded nice. ‘Pash-me-na.’ I looked at it. It seemed different now I knew it was expensive. Before it had been very nice, but it was just a scarf, something Mum might buy me on the spur of the moment if she was walking through Marks. Now it was a pashmina, though, from India or somewhere, it was different. And someone different from a mum had bought it for me. Someone who – let’s not have any false modesty here – must fancy me to bits to spend so much money on me.

  A rich doodle, then? But they were only passing through, so why would they bother to send a scarf to me? I tried to think whether we’d had anyone likely in the shop. Had I noticed anyone giving me the eye? I didn’t think so. And surely if you were going to spend a lot of money and buy someone a pashmina, you’d want to make sure that that someone had noticed you by leaving them a big tip or engaging them in conversation or whatever. No one had done t
hat.

  Of course I’d seen, very occasionally, boys that I quite liked the look of – there had been a really gorgeous German boy a week or so back – but I only fancied the young, fairly scruffy student types. It couldn’t be one of them. They’d never be able to afford a hundred pounds for a scarf.

  ‘But of course you can’t keep it,’ Mum went on. She moved a silver-painted pot along the newspaper to join the others in the drying zone.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You can’t just take presents from a complete stranger. He might be a bit dodgy – he’s bound to be a bit dodgy. Who goes round giving presents to young girls they don’t know? If you take this, he might expect something in return.’

  ‘What – my body, you mean?’

  ‘You can joke … ’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘but how am I supposed to give it back?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t really know. It’ll probably be from someone who’s seen you in the shop – otherwise they’d know where you live and would have sent it here. So perhaps you ought to leave it in the shop and then if someone comes in … ’

  ‘Who looks a bit dodgy,’ I finished, ‘I could serve the scarf up with their pudding.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘if you’re determined to make a joke of it, go ahead. But I’m serious. I think you ought to take care. Make sure you always leave and come home with Ella, won’t you?’

  I nodded vaguely, draping the pashmina around me and rubbing my nose into the softness of it. ‘Does it?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Match my eyes?’

  Mum laughed and looked at me, head on one side. ‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘It matches three-quarters of your eyes.’

  I have an odd eye – my right – which is half blue and half brown. I quite like having it. Sometimes I make my right eye up in blue and brown, half and half, hoping that people will notice it more, but they hardly ever do.

  I put the scarf down. ‘Guess what?’ I said. ‘Ella’s trying to find her real dad.’

  ‘Is she really?’ Mum said. ‘And what does her mother have to say about that?’