Best Kept Secret (The Clifton Chronicles 3)

Matron was lost for words.

Harry led Jessica into the hall and helped her on with her coat. As Matron walked out of the front door, Jessica burst into tears.

'Oh no,' said Emma. 'And I thought it had all gone so well.'

'It couldn't have gone better,' whispered Matron. 'They only start crying when they don't want to leave. Take my advice, if you both feel the same way, fill in the forms as quickly as possible.'

Jessica turned around and waved before she climbed into Matron's little Austin 7, tears still streaming down her cheeks.

'Good choice, Seb,' said Harry, placing an arm around his son's shoulders as they watched the car disappear down the drive.

It was to be another five months before Matron left Barrington Hall for the last time and headed back to Dr Barnardo's on her own, another of her waifs and strays happily settled. Well, not so happily, because it was not long before Harry and Emma realized that Jessica had problems of her own that were every bit as demanding as Sebastian's.

Neither of them had paused to consider that Jessica had never slept in a room on her own, and on her first night at Barrington Hall she left the nursery door wide open and cried herself to sleep. Harry and Emma became used to a warm little object climbing into bed between them not long after she woke in the mornings. This became less frequent when Sebastian parted with his teddy bear, Winston, handing the former prime minister over to Jessica.

Jessica adored Winston, second only to Sebastian, despite her new brother declaring somewhat haughtily, 'I'm far too grown up to have a teddy bear. After all, I'll be going to school in a few weeks' time.'

Jessica wanted to go to St Bede's with him, but Harry explained that boys and girls didn't go to the same school.

'Why not?' Jessica demanded.

'Why not indeed,' said Emma.

When the first day of term finally dawned, Emma stared at her young man, wondering where the years had gone. He was dressed in a red blazer, red cap and grey flannel shorts. Even his shoes shone. Well, it was the first day of term. Jessica stood on the doorstep and waved goodbye as the car disappeared down the drive and out of the front gates. She then sat down on the top step and waited for Sebastian to return.

Sebastian had requested that his mother didn't join him and his father on the journey to school. When Harry asked why, he replied, 'I don't want the other boys to see Mama kissing me.'

Harry would have reasoned with him, if he hadn't recalled his first day at St Bede's. He and his mother had taken the tram from Still House Lane, and he'd asked if they could get off a stop early and walk the last hundred yards so the other boys wouldn't realize they didn't own a car. And when they were fifty yards from the school gates, although he allowed her to kiss him, he quickly said goodbye and left her standing there. As he approached St Bede's for the first time, he saw his future classmates being dropped off from hansom cabs and motor cars  -  one even arrived in a Rolls-Royce driven by a liveried chauffeur.

Harry had also found his first night away from home difficult, but, unlike Jessica, it was because he'd never slept in a room with other children.

But the alphabet had been kind to him, because he ended up sleeping in a dormitory with Barrington on one side and Deakins on the other. He wasn't as lucky when it came to his dormitory prefect. Alex Fisher slippered him every other night of his first week, for no other reason than Harry was the son of a dock labourer, and therefore not worthy of being educated at the same school as Fisher, the son of an estate agent. Harry sometimes wondered what had happened to Fisher after he left St Bede's. He knew that he and Giles had crossed paths during the war when they'd served in the same regiment at Tobruk, and he assumed Fisher must still live in Bristol, because he'd recently avoided talking to him at a St Bede's Old Boys' reunion.

At least Sebastian would be arriving in a motor car, and as a day bug he wouldn't suffer the Fisher problem, because he would be returning to Barrington Hall every evening. Even so, Harry suspected that his son wasn't going to find St Bede's any easier than he had, even if it would be for completely different reasons.

When Harry drew up outside the school gates, Sebastian jumped out even before he'd had time to pull on the brakes. Harry watched as his son ran through the gates and disappeared into a melee of red blazers in which he was indistinguishable from a hundred other boys. He never once looked back. Harry accepted that the old order changeth, yielding place to new.

He drove slowly back to Barrington Hall and began to think about the next chapter of his latest book. Was it time for William Warwick to be promoted?

As he approached the house, he spotted Jessica sitting on the top step. He smiled as he brought the car to a halt. But when he climbed out, the first thing she said was, 'Where's Seb?'

Each day, while Sebastian was away at school, Jessica retreated into her own world. While she waited for him to return home she would pass the time by reading to Winston about other animals, Pooh Bear, Mr Toad, a white rabbit, a marmalade cat called Orlando, and a crocodile that had swallowed a clock.

Once Winston had fallen asleep, she would tuck him up in bed, return to her easel and paint. On and on. In fact, what Emma had once considered the nursery had been converted by Jessica into an art studio. Once she had covered every piece of paper she could lay her hands on, including Harry's old manuscripts (he had to keep his new ones locked up), with pencil, crayon or paint, she turned her attention to redecorating the nursery walls.

Harry didn't want to curb her enthusiasm, far from it, but he did remind Emma that Barrington Hall wasn't their home, and perhaps they ought to consult Giles before she escaped from the nursery and discovered how many other pristine walls there were in the house.

But Giles was so smitten with the new arrival at Barrington Hall that he declared he wouldn't mind if she repainted the whole house inside and out.

'For heaven's sake, don't encourage her,' begged Emma. 'Sebastian has already asked her to repaint his room.'

'And when are you going to tell her the truth?' Giles asked as they sat down for dinner.

'We can't see that there's any need to tell her yet,' said Harry. 'After all, Jessica's only six, and she's hardly settled in.'

'Well, don't leave it too long,' Giles warned him, 'because she already looks upon you and Emma as her parents, Seb as her brother, and calls me Uncle Giles, while the truth is she's my half-sister, and Seb's aunt.'

Harry laughed. 'I think it will be some time before she can be expected to grasp that.'

'I hope she never has to,' said Emma. 'Don't forget, all she knows is that her real parents are dead. Why should that change, while only the three of us know the whole truth?'

'Don't underestimate Sebastian. He's already halfway there.'

7

HARRY AND EMMA were surprised when they were invited to join the headmaster for tea at the end of Sebastian's first term, and quickly discovered it was not a social occasion.

'Your son's a bit of a loner,' declared Dr Hedley, once the maid had poured them a cup of tea and left the room. 'In fact he's more likely to befriend a boy from overseas than one who's lived in Bristol all his life.'

'Why would that be?' asked Emma.