House of the Lost by Sarah Rayne Read Free Book Online Page A

door.
    ‘So have I. God bless.’ It came out naturally and unselfconsciously. Since Theo could not think of a suitable rejoinder he merely nodded and waited until she had walked back down the overgrown drive and into the lane beyond.
    Rinsing the cups in the kitchen, he considered that remark about some of the nuns having known his mother. It was vaguely surprising, because Petra had never spent much time at Fenn House. She had certainly shared one or two of the Christmases there, but they had been brief holidays and no one had ventured much out of the house because Norfolk in winter was about the bleakest place imaginable. And during Theo’s school years she had usually driven him to Melbray in July, stayed a night or two, then left him to it.
    ‘Too many Kendals,’ she always said, with the smile that Theo sometimes found painful although he had never quite known why. ‘When I married your father I didn’t realize I was marrying an entire clan, and I’m not very good at family gatherings. But you stay and riot with your cousins, darling, and I’ll collect you well before term starts so we can have a bit of time together in London.’
    She had always arrived at Melbray punctually to pick him up, usually with gifts for everyone. Guff, who was a regular visitor to Fenn, said happily that she lit up the house the minute she came in, but Nancy said sourly it was Petra currying approval as usual. ‘Playing fairy godmother,’ Nancy said. Nancy never seemed to come to Fenn because she enjoyed the house or the company of the family; she apparently came because the drains had packed up at her house, or because she wanted peace and quiet to work out next term’s assignments for her sixth-formers, or she was recovering from flu.
    They had all enjoyed the presents from Petra’s travels, though. There were generally clothes for Charmery who said delightedly that no one had such exquisite taste as Aunt Petra, books for Lesley, who would seize them eagerly and vanish for hours on end, and unusual toys for Lesley’s small twin brothers, whose birth had taken everyone by surprise, including Lesley’s father. Charmery’s mother and Lesley’s would be presented with frivolous designer silk scarves or perfume, and there was vintage port or brandy for the men. Once Petra brought a pair of embroidered Turkish slippers with curved toes for Guff who trotted delightedly round the house in them, refusing to listen to Charmery’s father, Desmond, saying he looked like an escapee from a harem.
    Theo, Charmery and Lesley always stayed up later than usual when Petra was there. ‘She turns it into an occasion,’ said Lesley’s father, rather wistfully. Lesley’s father was Desmond’s younger brother, and Theo often thought he seemed a bit over-shadowed by the genially successful Desmond, just as Lesley so often seemed over-shadowed by Charmery.
    Charmery had loved those evenings; even from the age of nine or ten she flirted with Guff and any other uncles who were there, laughing and making a fuss of them, coaxing her father to let her have a sip of wine in water like French children and usually getting her way. Lesley, three years younger than Charmery, always sat quietly, listening to the conversation. ‘Only speaking when she’s spoken to,’ had been Nancy’s approving observation, and Petra had told Theo she sometimes wondered which century Nancy lived in because her outlook was positively Victorian at times. ‘But then Helen and Desmond are Edwardian anyway,’ she added. ‘Nursery tea and children being allowed to eat with their parents, my God, it’s archaic. D’you suppose they’re really time travellers from about 1900?’
    ‘I don’t know, but there’s a peculiar machine in the shrubbery, labelled, “Property of H. G. Wells”,’ said Theo, and was pleased when she smiled appreciatively and made a joke of her own about the Tardis parking in the cabbage patch.
    Time machines or not, there had been something