The Forget-Me-Not Summer Read Online Free Page A

particularly not on her daughter. But unfortunately the police had felt it incumbent upon them to visit Aunt Vi and had gained a very different picture of the missing woman there.
    â€˜She’ll ha’ gone orf with that young feller she’s been seein’, the acrobat, you mark my words,’ her aunt had assured everyone. ‘Oh aye, a right lightskirt, our Arabella.’
    For a few moments anger had driven Miranda out of her glass case, and she had shouted at her aunt that this was a wicked falsehood. The Players had agreed that they were sure their fellow actor had had nothing to do with any young man, save Gervase, who could scarcely be described as young. It was he who had discovered that the rival company’s acrobat had also gone missing, leaving his lodgings and the variety show on the very day that Arabella had disappeared.
    Furious, Miranda had assured anyone who would listen that her mother would never have left her to go off with a man, but though she knew, with utter certainty, that her mother would never have willingly deserted her, she stopped repeating her conviction. She felt life was stacked against her, that the harder she tried, the less convincing she became. So she retreated into her glass case and simply waited.
    After the first month of bewildered misery, Miranda had stopped expecting the door to open and her mother to reappear. She had forced herself to face up to the fact that something had happened to keep Arabella from her,and when spiteful remarks were made by Aunt Vi, indicating that Arabella had deliberately landed her with her unwanted daughter, she simply folded her lips tightly and said nothing. What, after all, was the point? She and the cast at the theatre had tried hard enough, heaven knew, to make the authorities take Arabella Lovage’s case seriously, but with little success. The police had gone over the house with a fine-tooth comb, searching for any clue as to Arabella’s disappearance or evidence of foul play; there had been none. They had asked Miranda if any clothing was missing, but she could not say. Arabella’s wardrobe bulged with garments; for all her daughter knew, she might have taken away a dozen outfits without Miranda’s being any the wiser. In fact, she could not even remember what her mother had been wearing that last evening.
    Only one small indication, several weeks after Arabella’s disappearance, caused people to raise their brows and become a little less certain that she had gone of her own free will. One dark night, Miranda was woken from a deep slumber by someone shaking her shoulder and speaking to her in a rough, kindly voice.
    â€˜What’s up, me love? Good thing it’s a fine night, but if you asks me them clouds up there mean business.’ The hand on her shoulder gave a little squeeze. ‘Lost your way to the privy, queen? My goodness, I know it’s not as cold as last night, but you’ve got bare feet and the road’s awful rough, and there was you walkin’ down the middle of the carriageway as though you’d never heard of cars, trams or buses . . .’
    Miranda, completely bewildered, opened sleep-drugged eyes and stared about her. In the brightmoonlight everything looked very different; the shadows black as pitch, the moonlight dazzlingly white. She looked down at her feet and saw that they were indeed bare, as well as very dusty and dirty. Then her eyes travelled up her white cotton nightie and across to the man bending over her. He was a policeman, quite young, and his expression was puzzled. ‘Where’s you come from, chuck? I don’t know as I reckernise you. How did you get here?’
    Miranda’s brows knitted; how had she come here? Where was here, anyhow? She shook her head. ‘I dunno,’ she mumbled. ‘Where am I? It doesn’t look much like Jamaica Close to me.’
    The policeman hissed in his breath. ‘Jamaica Close?’ he said