The Lady and the Locksmith (Victorian Romance) Page 7

  I veer away from Mrs. Bertorelli and I go and check it out. Staring down, I see that the paper is thick and yellowed with age. It’s folded and crumpled and it’s been trodden on, but I’m guessing there’s writing inside. I bend down and pick it up.

  “Maddie!”

  “Shoelace,” I insist, stuffing the ball of paper into my pocket. I make a pantomime of adjusting my shoe. Then I hurry after her and we make our way out towards the long queue for the checkpoint.

  Outside, in the parking lot, I can see the bus waiting for us, with everyone else on board. The driver is standing outside the bus, pacing up and down. He looks as if he’s been cursing me and Mrs. Bertorelli for a good thirty minutes or more. He helps me stow my trusty tartan friend in the luggage hold and slams down the metal hatch. I climb up into the bus and a big cheer goes up. About ten different people want to know what took me so long. Further back on the bus, my best friend Lydia leaps up out of her seat and starts waving at me. “Here, Maddie! I saved you a place!”

  “Hey, Madison. Did they strip search you?” The question comes from Brody, who sits with me in compulsory English. He has gum in his mouth and his cap is on back to front. As usual, there is far too much interest in his round blue eyes.

  His sidekick, Tanner, answers for me. “Like she’d tell YOU, even if they did!” Then he laughs like a hyena, and sticks his foot out to try and trip me up.

  I roll my eyes and try to step over his leg. “No, they did not mistake me for a terrorist,” I hiss, “but I’ll let them know you’re carrying explosives on the way back if you like.”

  Mrs. Bertorelli turns and yells in a voice that would halt a herd of buffalo. “Enough interrogation, Tanner Doyle! For your information, nobody got strip searched. I did offer, but they just said welcome to the United Kingdom and have a pleasant stay.”

  Everyone on the bus erupts in laughter, but she has their attention.

  “So will you all sit down and shut up, so we can get this show on the road!”

  The bus driver turns and glances warily at Mrs. B over his shoulder. I guess he hasn’t met anyone quite like her before.

  I head for where my friend is sitting, about two thirds of the way down, on the right hand side of the bus.

  Lydia’s great but she’s always been the odd one out. She’s a platinum blonde with braces on her teeth. Her style owes more than a little to Madonna’s early look. Miniskirts and military boots, that kind of thing. She gets up and moves into the aisle and lets me take the window seat. She’s generous like that, and she knows how much this trip to London means to me. I slump down and the bus starts to move.

  Lydia gets out her (pink) cell phone and flips it open. “You’re dad’s been messaging me.”

  I shoot her an agonized look. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. He’s worried. Apparently you promised to call when you arrived.”

  “But I haven’t arrived,” I say, consternation brewing. “I’m barely out of the airport.”

  Dad is unbelievable sometimes. I reach inside my pocket for my phone, which I had obediently switched off when we got on the plane. Instead I encounter the crumbling edges of that piece of paper I picked up off the floor at the airport. Just the feel of it gives me a tiny thrill of anticipation.

  Brody pipes up again. “Hey! Check out the Lamborghini!”

  Everyone on the right hand side of the bus peers out of the window into the parking lot. Sure enough, there’s a highly unusual car oozing down the street. A just-out-of-the-showroom kind of a car. Pale silver, not a mark on it, raindrops beading on all its gleaming bodywork. The windows are tinted and I can’t see who’s behind the wheel, but for some reason, I know who’s inside it. I can feel it.

  It’s him. Mister Didn’t-We-Meet-Someplace-Before.

  “Oh man! That is one hell of a car,” Tanner says. He’s standing up in the seat in front of me, with his face pressed against the window of the bus, flattening his nose. He’s practically licking the glass.

  I’m guessing he looks like a ghoul from the outside.

  Beside me, Lydia lets out a sigh. “That’s two hundred thousand bucks worth of car. Right there.”

  I shoot her what I hope is a sympathetic look, but she frowns at me. I know that Lydia’s family is dirt poor, and I know who paid for her to come along on this school trip, too, and it wasn’t them. I’m sworn to secrecy, and I’m not even sure if Lydia knows the whole truth. Maybe she thinks it really was the school hardship fund that paid for it all. But I know it wasn’t.

  It was my dad. He didn’t want me to make this trip on my own, so he forked out for my best friend’s fare too. I’m glad he did – real glad - but it’s created this tension between me and Lydia that I didn’t expect. Maybe I’ll get a chance to say something to her tomorrow. To clear the air. To apologize for having a generous dad - an overprotective, sentimental old fool of a dad who sometimes has more heart than he has sense.

  It was a difficult call and he did what he thought was best. For me and for Lydia. I know he went over to her house and talked her parents into letting her go. Told them to forget their pride and take the money, for Lydia’s sake. I’m glad they said yes. I hope she’ll be glad too when she gets used to the idea.

  Finally we are on our way, and in spite of being so tired, I look out into the dark night and try to catch my first glimpse of England, but all I can see is a big curving slip road leading to the freeway – or whatever they call it over here. The road up ahead gleams black and shiny in the rain, and traffic from the airport streams past. Red tail lights reflected on the wet road– that’s about all there is to see. Not much to write home about yet.

  Lydia has settled back in her seat to read her book. It’s a dog-eared paperback with a creased spine, and I’ll bet she’s read it before. I smile.

  I lean over and whisper to her. “What is this time? Vampires, werewolves, or shifters?”

  “Vampires. They always win. Hands down.”

  I sit back and try to relax, but my mind is still buzzing from the encounter at the airport. I decide to allow myself a surreptitious look at the little piece of contraband in my pocket. I pull it out and unfold it gently, for although the paper is heavy, the edges are so fragile that they crumble away in my fingers. I smooth it out. I catch my breath and pray I won’t be disappointed.

  It’s like the start of an old, old letter. Written in black ink. There’s no name at the top and no signature at the bottom, either. Just a few words scrawled in black ink – and they could mean anything.

  ‘Forgive me. In time you will forgive me. I’ll be waiting for you at Heathrow, last Wednesday in August, in the year of our—’

  It doesn’t say which year. There’s a harsh black line trailing away from the last word, as if the person who wrote the letter had gotten interrupted before they finished it.

  I gasp out loud, but it’s not the words that shock me. I almost knew the contents would be cryptic. He was that kind of guy - the enigmatic stranger at the airport. It’s not the words that disturb me. It’s the way those words are written.

  The handwriting.

  Fear grips my throat, like a cold hand around my neck. I take a few short sharp gasps for air, and Lydia looks up in surprise.

  “What’s wrong, Maddie?”

  “Nothing!” I fold the letter up. I can’t let her see.

  “What have you got there?”

  She reaches for my precious letter, but I snatch it out of her grasp. My heart is pounding in fear. “Nothing! It’s just … a list … of stuff I had to pack,” I say desperately, struggling to concoct something she won’t question. “I think I forgot my cell phone charger. Can you believe that?”

  “No,” she says. “Your dad will have got you three spares.”

  I stare fixedly out of the window to hide my lies. I’m scared.

  Lydia murmurs something about borrowing her charger when we get to the hostel. Then she leaves me alone and goes back to reading her book.

  When my heartbe
at has slowed down again, I take one more surreptitious glance at the letter, just to make sure I’m not seeing things.

  But I’m not. Every detail is etched into my mind, correctly. The ‘H’ in the word Heathrow. The ‘g’ in forgive me – and the way the writer dots every single ‘i’ with a tiny little circle. Every detail is familiar.

  I know the handwriting. The way the letters all lean backwards. The person who wrote this letter was left handed, just like me.

  The person who wrote this letter was me.