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  Grandma sighed. ‘You’re just like her,’ she said. ‘I suppose I shall have to let you have your way. So long as it doesn’t get too serious.’

  ‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ Martha said. She reached out and held Grandma’s hand. ‘Thank you.’

  Grandma nodded.

  ‘I’m going to try to be a good actress. Like Mum.’

  And Grandma nodded again, and smiled, and fished in her bag for a handkerchief.

  So after Martha’s splint came off in October Grandpa drove her and Tug to Marcus’s every Wednesday evening, where they worked together on their new speed films.

  *

  It was awkward the first time they went back, not least because Grandpa insisted on coming in and being introduced to Mr and Mrs Brown, who were, in turn, confused about what he wanted.

  ‘Just checking that there are some responsible adults around,’ he said, and Mr and Mrs Brown peered about them vaguely, as if hoping to find some.

  It was awkward meeting Marcus and Laura again too. It was the first time Martha and Tug had seen them since just after the car crash six weeks earlier.

  ‘What’s it like,’ Laura asked, ‘living with your grandparents?’

  ‘All right,’ Martha said.

  ‘Bloody horrible,’ said Tug, who was trying out some of Laura’s mannerisms.

  ‘I met your grandmother,’ Marcus said. ‘She seemed like a nice old bird.’

  Tug scowled. ‘You wouldn’t say that if she fed you salad.’

  Laura asked, ‘How’s your father doing?’

  ‘He’s gone away for a little while.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  There was a silence after this.

  ‘I think it’s for the best,’ Martha added.

  Marcus said in a normal voice very unlike his usual one, ‘If ever you need anything, if ever you want to talk, if ever you just want company, I’m here, Laura’s here. You know that, don’t you?’

  Martha nodded.

  Then he cleared his throat and said, in his usual theatrical voice, ‘But in the world of media celebrity we look forward, not back. A new challenge, a new dawn, a new working partnership. For the first time, Speed Version Productions will feature Martha Luna in the starring role. And I, Marcus Versace Brown, will create her wardrobe.’

  37

  Marcus told Tug the story of Gone with the Wind. ‘It’s very simple. Rhett loves Scarlett. Scarlett loves Ashley. Ashley loves Melanie. Do you follow?’

  Tug nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Scarlett marries Charles, whom she doesn’t love. Charles dies of measles. So Scarlett marries Frank. She doesn’t love him either. Are you with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Frank gets killed. So at last Scarlett marries Rhett. And he leaves her. Good, isn’t it?’

  Tug gazed at him. It was hard to tell what Tug was thinking.

  ‘Did you listen to any of that?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘No,’ said Tug, who had been thinking about biscuits. ‘I was thinking about the songs.’

  ‘There aren’t any songs. There are a lot of deaths. Would you like to be killed?’

  ‘I’d rather be second grip.’

  ‘He’s getting quite stubborn, isn’t he?’ Marcus said to Martha. ‘Quite ferocious, aren’t you, little Tug? All right, you can be second grip. Laura, watch out, he’s a terrible man for the equipment. Martha, let me show you how the curtain dress should be worn.’

  Now that Marcus was doing costumes he was more flamboyant and enthusiastic than ever. He had made two dresses for Martha. One was the ‘garnet gown’, which Scarlett wears to a party. It was red and flouncy with lace, feathers and tassels. The shoulders were so big Martha couldn’t see sideways. The other was a calico dress which, in the film, Scarlett makes herself from curtains. So Marcus had made it from curtains, not his own curtains, of course, which were essential for keeping daylight out of the studio, but the curtains in his parents’ room. The dress was a purple and lilac stripe with blackout lining and a valance, which didn’t quite work, but which certainly looked like it was made from curtains. Both dresses were trimmed with electric-blue artificial fur and Marcus was very proud of them. ‘The most beautiful of all my creations,’ he called them, though in fact they were his only creations. He was sad not to be wearing them himself.

  The first scene they filmed was the famous final scene, when Rhett leaves Scarlett for ever. It was Martha’s debut performance. They killed all the lights except for a single spot, and after a moment Martha stepped into it, wearing the curtain dress, and stood there very still.

  They all stared at her in astonishment. It was as if she had become a different person.

  Her face glowed, and slowly her eyes filled with tears. The tears spilled out and ran down her cheeks.

  (‘Zoom in!’ Marcus whispered in excitement to Laura. ‘She’s acting!’)

  ‘Rhett!’ Martha cried, and her voice was different too, thrillingly clear and troubled. ‘Rhett! Wait for me!’

  She turned her head and gazed in distress at the far wall. ‘Rhett! If you go, where shall I go, what shall I do?’

  Slowly she sank to her knees, all the time her face glowing and her tears shining, saying in a low, tremulous voice, ‘What is there to do, what is there to matter?’ until she faded to silence.

  No one said anything, or even moved.

  Getting to her feet, Martha briskly wiped her face and said to Marcus, ‘You forgot your line.’

  Marcus found his voice at last. ‘You don’t need any lines from me,’ he said. He stood staring at her, almost humble with excitement. ‘You’re going to be a star.’

  Tug sidled up, gazing at her timidly, and touched her, to check that she was still Martha.

  Even Laura was impressed. ‘Not bad at all,’ she said.

  Martha allowed herself a smile. She was pleased with herself. She had always wondered what it would feel like, finally, to act, and now it seemed to her that she had always known. It was only a question of self-control. Yet how strange that she could make herself cry, and actually feel sad, without thinking of anything. It was as if she wasn’t only Martha, but other people too, and could become them very easily. It gave her a weird feeling.

  Afterwards, she did most of the acting in Marcus’s speed films. She was superb. She could make herself cry, do accents, sing, fall without hurting herself, pretend to die and a hundred other life-like things. Sometimes she seemed a little reserved, as if not quite emotionally engaged, but her technical skill always pulled her through. Above all, she had what Marcus called ‘star quality’, an expression, a sort of stillness, which made everyone want to look at her.

  ‘How did you learn it all?’ Laura asked.

  Marcus answered for her. ‘She didn’t. It’s a gift. It comes from her mother. I could tell. I spotted her. I shall make it all clear in my memoirs.’

  So a new phase of speed films began. Like all Marcus’s films, they were golden classics. When they finished Gone with the Wind in November, they filmed The Blue Angel, with Martha playing a nightclub singer called Lola Lola, wearing a (fur-lined) black-and-white cabaret costume with tassels and a top hat. That took them until Christmas. After that, they did Notorious, in which she was the daughter of a Nazi spy, wearing a classic black skirt suit and (fur-lined) 1940s mesh hat. Then It’s a Wonderful Life, with Martha doubling as Mrs Bailey, dressed in a simple shirt-waist dress of cotton (and fur), and Clarence Odbody, Angel Second Class, appearing in an ankle-length white (fur-edged) nightdress.

  Finally, at the beginning of April, they started work on Brief Encounter, in which Martha, playing a wartime suburban housewife, is parted for ever from her secret lover.

  She was always marvellous, and as time went by even her costumes got better. She was happy. And at some point between the making of Notorious and It’s a Wonderful Life she realized that she had succeeded in not remembering Dad. She hadn’t forgotten him, but she rarely thought about him any mo
re. It was as if she had finally said goodbye to him in her mind, and it was – as she had always known it would be – for the best.

  38

  After Easter the weather brightened. In the park the flowerbeds were full of pansies and marigolds, and fresh green leaves started to appear on the trees. The café re-opened, the boats were put back on the lake and the lawns were given their first mowing of the year.

  Martha went through the park to fetch Tug from his school. Generally he was waiting for her at the school gates, though sometimes he was waiting in the head teacher’s office.

  Today, unfortunately for him, he was in the office. Martha went in and, after a short, one-sided conversation with the head teacher, collected Tug and also a letter to give to Grandma and Grandpa, and they went out together into the spring sunshine.

  ‘What’s the letter about, Tug?’

  ‘Rudeness.’

  ‘Who were you rude to?’

  ‘Miss Savonarola.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t remember. But the letter will say.’

  They crossed the road and went down the street, into the park. They went past the tennis courts and the café, and walked in a roundabout way across the grass to avoid the geese by the pond. They didn’t talk. They were lost in their own thoughts. Martha was wondering how many times she had crossed the park in her life, and how many more times she would cross it. Every time she crossed it, she thought, she was a little bit different. And when she had crossed it enough times she would be grown up.

  They went past the ornamental flowerbeds towards the park gates.

  ‘Do you remember, Tug, that time when Grandma and Grandpa were waiting for us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Last summer. They bought us ice creams.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And I kicked you under the table.’

  Tug turned to her. ‘Yes, you did. And it hurt.’

  ‘Doesn’t it seem like a long time ago now?’

  ‘Will they be waiting for us today?’ he asked uneasily. ‘No.’

  They turned the corner to the gates and Grandma and Grandpa were nowhere to be seen. A man was waiting there. A tall, thin man with a beard, wearing a smart grey suit.

  At once Tug stopped and squeezed Martha’s hand.

  ‘What is it, Tug?’

  Tug was staring at the man. ‘Martha,’ he said in a small voice.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, it’s just a man in a suit.’

  ‘But, Martha.’

  The man with the beard came towards them, and Martha stared at him too, and the closer he came the more he looked like Dad.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ Dad said. He stopped several paces away and stood there quietly. ‘How are you?’

  They were speechless.

  ‘You don’t have to talk to me,’ Dad said. ‘I just wanted to see you. It’s been such a long time.’ He smiled, and they could only just see the smile through the beard.

  ‘You’ve grown,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got a beard,’ Tug said.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘It’s an old beard.’

  They all smiled at the grey hairs in Dad’s beard. The beard made him look different. It was hard to know what he was thinking as he stood there, looking at them.

  ‘Now I have to go,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not allowed to see you. And because you don’t trust me. Quite right too. But I’ll see you again. Look for me by the park gates after school.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes, Martha?’

  He stopped and turned back to face her. It wasn’t just the beard that made him look different. His eyes and nose looked different too. His voice sounded softer. And the way he stood, angular in his loose suit, and the way he looked at her, with a frowning, peering look – these things were different as well. In fact, there was nothing about him Martha recognized. And it was so shocking that for a moment she just stared at him.

  ‘Yes?’ he said again.

  She saw him smile, hesitantly, through his beard.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Away. But just for a couple of months. Then I came back.’

  ‘Where do you live now?’

  ‘In our house, of course.’

  ‘But there’s another family living there.’

  ‘Gone now. I rented the house to them until Christmas. After that, I moved back in.’

  ‘So you’ve been there all this time, and we didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell us?’

  Dad glanced at her sharply. ‘Don’t you get my letters?’

  ‘What letters?’

  He looked as if he was going to say something, then he didn’t. ‘Never mind,’ he said.

  He stepped forward and held their hands, and kissed them on the tops of their heads. His beard scraped their hair. Then he walked away.

  ‘Look for me by the gates,’ he called back, as he went.

  During that evening’s extended reading (seven thirty to eight thirty), Martha didn’t read her library book. She didn’t even open it. For the first time in months she was thinking about Dad again.

  Now that he had reappeared her mind was filled with questions about him. She wanted to know if he had a new job, or a new family, what he spent his time doing, if he thought of them, what sort of person he was now. Above all, she wanted to know if he had stopped drinking.

  She hadn’t been able to tell anything about him from the way he looked in the park.

  Although she wasn’t supposed to, she left her room and tiptoed down the landing into Tug’s.

  ‘Tug?’

  She switched on the light and Tug sat up, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘You have to help me.’

  ‘Help you how?’

  ‘Do you remember what Dad said, about the letters?’

  ‘He said he’d written us letters. But he hadn’t.’

  ‘I think he had.’

  Tug finished rubbing his eyes and thought about it.

  ‘I think Grandma’s kept them from us,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To stop us thinking about Dad.’

  Tug thought about that.

  ‘That’s very naughty of her,’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Good,’ he said with feeling. ‘I’m glad. Usually it’s me who’s naughty,’ he added.

  ‘Where did she put them?’ he asked after a while.

  ‘I don’t know. She might have thrown them away, I suppose. But perhaps she kept them somewhere.’ Martha frowned. ‘It’s important, Tug. I think we should try to find them. They might tell us things about him, like if he has a new job.’

  ‘Or a new family.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right.’ Tug got out of bed. ‘We’re good at finding things, aren’t we?’

  ‘But not now, Tug. We have to wait until they go out.’

  ‘But they never go out. Not without us.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to think of a plan.’

  ‘What plan?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. You have to help me.’

  39

  Next day was Saturday. At 10.30 a.m., according to his schedule, Tug was supposed to be tidying his room. But he wasn’t.

  There was a sudden loud cry from somewhere outside.

  Grandma, who was reading a letter at the kitchen table, got up and went to the window. ‘Whatever is happening?’ she said. She took off her reading glasses.

  There was more noise: hoarse shouting and desperate yelling.

  ‘Martha?’ she called.

  But Martha did not appear. Grandma tutted.

  The noise grew louder. Oddly, it sounded now like singing – wild singing, badly out-of-tune. Grandma thought she detected the words ‘bear’ and ‘mountain’. Collecting Grandpa from his study, she went out into the garden, and there they found Tug stuck at the top of the tallest fir tree, clinging to a slender branch overhanging the very breakable gree
nhouse.

  When she was sure that Grandma and Grandpa were fully occupied, Martha crept out from the downstairs toilet and went quietly into Grandpa’s study.

  She didn’t know if Dad’s letters would be in the study, but she knew that Grandpa kept some box files on a high shelf, and she thought she would look there first. She climbed onto his desk to reach them. There were about ten files, all different colours, labelled Bank, House, Car and so on. But it was soon clear that none of them contained Dad’s letters. Next she tried the desk drawers, where she found a box of pencils, a ball of rubber bands, a packet of paperclips, a pad of writing paper with matching envelopes and several back issues of the Church Gazette. Under the gazettes were some cigarette papers and a very creased copy of a newspaper called The Racing Post. There was nothing else. Finally she looked along the bookshelves. Propped against the books were a number of postcards, birthday cards and invitations, but although she examined them all carefully, none was from Dad.

  She frowned. Her plan had failed.

  Hearing Grandma and Grandpa coming back up the garden, she was just leaving when something on the top shelf caught her eye. She stopped still, and stared. It was a photograph of Mum when she was young, dressed in an old-fashioned gown. Something about it gave Martha a funny feeling, and she took the picture down and examined it. On the back someone had written My Fair Lady, Christmas 1980. Her heart began to beat fast. Mum had been twelve years old – the same age as Martha now. In the picture Mum was pale and smiling, her small nose pointed determinedly at the camera, and her hair was braided in two long plaits, just like Martha’s. Martha stared. It was like looking at herself. And at the same time it was like being someone else. It gave her such a strange feeling. Though she felt like bursting into tears she could feel herself smiling as well.

  But she had no time to think about it. She heard voices very near in the kitchen and, jamming the picture back on the shelf, she made a dash for the door.

  ‘No, Christopher,’ Grandma was saying, ‘I don’t understand why you threw your best JCB into the tree. Nor do I understand how it got wedged in a bird’s nest. And I certainly don’t know why you felt it necessary to “rescue” it yourself instead of informing us. Grandpa has a perfectly good ladder. Martha!’ she called. ‘There you are at last. Will you please help me make Christopher understand that our trees are not there to be climbed?’