Saving Sophia Read Free Page A

important.” He gazes out of the window as if she was standing in the garden. “Irene Challis was a wonderful woman. She flew spitfire aeroplanes in the war, you know, taking them from the factories and delivering them to the airfields.”
    He smiles at me, and peers into a pot of earth. “She didn’t have radio and had to fly blind into the fog.” He stops to stare into the distance. “She crash-landed in Scotland once in one of those fogs.”
    “In
Calm Before the Storm,
Richard Standfast lands a plane in the desert in a sandstorm,” I say.
    Dad looks at me over his glasses. “Yes, Lottie, but deserts don’t have stone walls and sheep and bothies. Irene got clear of the wreckage and walked miles on her own across Scotland in gale-force winds with nothing but an aviator’s map to guide her. So far as I know she had nothing to eat. Took her a week.
    “Anyway, she was a bit of a looker, by all reports. She was married and widowed twice during the war, and after the war, she married again, this time to a surgeon, but she never had any children.” Dad refills his pipette from a jug of clear liquid. “Instead, she trained as a doctor, and then as an eye surgeon. She worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross in war zones in her holidays. By the time your mother knew her, she’d retired, her husband had died and she was fundraising for the Red Cross, growing vegetables and reading those detective novels witha magnifying glass. By the end, she was almost completely blind.”
    “I never realised that,” I say. “Though I remember her feeling the animals from the Ark before telling me which ones were which. She had big lumpy hands.”
    “Arthritis,” says Dad.
    “And very thick glasses,” says Ned, bursting into the kitchen. “She had newts in her pond, and played old records on an old record player.”
    “She always gave us custard creams and grape juice,” I say.
    “She played crazy golf with us in the garden,” says Ned. “With a cup and a ping pong ball.”
    “She wore shorts and had veiny legs. And she laughed a lot.”
    “Yes, and she sang beautifully, and played the piano until she died.” Dad loads up a tray of cuttings. “I think you’d describe her voice as a rich contralto. Anyway, your mum was devoted to her; she wouldn’t want to see her house ruined.” He pushes out through the back door. “If it was redeveloped, it would break her heart.”
    “Yes, it would,” says Mum, crashing in through the door again, swinging the plucked chickenbehind her. “I couldn’t bear to see more men like that one rolling up in their BMWs and swinging their golf clubs over what used to be Irene’s lawn. I’d… I’d cry.”
    “I bet they’d build a swimming pool in the walled garden,” says Ned. “And put lights all over the place which would confuse the glow-worms so they’d all die.”
    I watch Mum hacking the chicken into squares and throwing them into a casserole pot. She sniffs loudly.
    “Couldn’t we rescue all the stuff that’s hers?” I say. “All the books?”
    Mum lays down the cleaver and goes over to run her bloodied hands under the tap. “They’re not ours, Lottie, so strictly speaking that would be stealing. But it all seems very odd to me. I thought Irene had left everything to a great niece. I’ve been waiting to hear from the solicitors about it.” Mum glances at the Welsh dresser. “I’ve got a key. Somewhere. And I’ve already borrowed a few books but unless that man has a penchant for adventure fiction, I don’t think he’ll miss them. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to rescue one or two other things.”
    “Well, then it would be all right, wouldn’t it?” Isay. “Because other than that it’s only a house, and the last time I saw it, it had little trees growing out of the gutters and moss all over the stone – it needs doing up, it could be lovely if it was a spa…” I stop. Mum’s eyes have filled with tears, and I feel out of my depth.
    She turns towards me.