Saving Sophia Read Free

and drawn it.” She gazes round the room, challenging anyone to say anything.
    The chicken’s glazed eye stares up at the lampshade.
    I can’t even look.
    I simply want to die.

Burnt orchids
    “I cannot believe that beautiful place is now owned by that awful man!” yells Mum, slamming forks back into the cutlery drawer. “‘A golf course’, he says! We’ll have to start a campaign to Save the Grange – signatures, letters to the papers, lobby the Department of the Environment.”
    “Will we?” asks Dad. He’s watering his cuttings with a pipette, five drops each.
    “You know we will – it’s the most wonderful site, completely untouched since the ’20s, and the barn’s full of horseshoe bats.” Mum jams the drawer and yanks it backwards and forwards until a chip ofwood pings into the room. “And I’m sure there were burnt orchids there last time I went. Then there’s the walled garden, and that orchard stuffed with mistletoe – the last cider orchard in the village. It’s just…magnificent. The whole thing’s tragic.”
    “Ah,” says Dad.
    “Oh,
honestly
,” says Mum, and she stomps back out into the almost completely dark garden.
    “Oh dear,” says Dad, shaking his head.
    I look at him. “What is the Grange?”
    Dad sighs. “Last known nesting spot of the Devon corncrake, and awash with nightingales in June—”
    “Yes, yes,” I interrupt. “Is it where Irene used to live?”
    Dad straightens and wipes a speck from his glasses. “Yes. And of course Irene was a bit of a hero in your mum’s eyes. I don’t know what’s upsetting her more, the fact that it was Irene’s home or the scientific interest of the place.”
    I think about the house. I never knew it was called the Grange; it was always just “Irene’s house” to me. I’m sure the grounds are special, the orchards are pretty, but they’re only trees after all – it’s the Irene part that worries me. “What about the actualstuff inside? Will he have inherited that, too?”
    “I expect so,” says Dad, inspecting the pipette. “Usually the whole lot goes to the relatives.”
    I remember the sitting room. Sunlight over the wooden floor, tatty Persian rugs, the smell of wood smoke, an aeroplane propeller. Irene’s mohair rug folded over her lumpy old legs. And the bookcases: rows and rows of old paperbacks, adventure stories, mysteries, romances, hours and hours of reading. I think of the man in the expensive suit slinging them into a heap and an unexpected tear springs to my eye.
    “But, Dad – that’s not right – I mean, he didn’t even know her. Who keeps her memories?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Once the house is gone, and the stuff’s gone, what’s left of Irene?”
    Dad shrugs. “Her deeds, I suppose. The amazing things she did. Sadly, Lottie, the rest’s not really up to us.”
    Upstairs, Ned flushes the toilet and a sound like an ocean liner starting its engine reverberates through the house.
    “What will he do with it all?”
    “If he hasn’t already, he’ll probably sell the thingsthat are worth anything in an auction and give the rest of it to house clearers. I’m afraid, in the end, most people just use a skip to clear out the things they can’t sell.”
    “That’s terrible,” I say. “No wonder Mum’s upset.” I imagine the man going through Irene’s personal things, her dressing table dotted with perfume bottles, the cupboard of old wooden toys, and throwing things into a bin bag. “She had a lovely Noah’s Ark, I used to play with it, half the animals had legs missing – I couldn’t bear him chucking that out.”
    Dad sighs. “It’s hard, but it’s the way of the world, love. Perhaps Irene wasn’t thinking very clearly when she left it to him. Though we
have
only met him for a minute – he might be very sensitive underneath.”
    “He doesn’t look sensitive. He looks more like a bouncer.”
    “But they’re only things, love. It’s the woman herself that’s