Greenwich Park, Katherine Faulkner [ereader android .txt] 📗

‘Turned all our sofas upside down,’ Daniel finishes. Rory laughs. Serena shoots me a quizzical look.

I pause, grasping for an explanation that Serena would understand, that would make Rachel sound like her sort of person.

‘We were making space for … yoga,’ I improvise.

It was the first time I’d invited Rachel back to the house.

‘This is us,’ I’d said.

‘What – all of it?’

She’d let out a low whistle as she’d shrugged her denim jacket off, walking around with her head tilted back, gawping at the chandeliers. ‘Bloody hell, it’s amazing.’ I couldn’t help enjoying it, just a little. I led her into the kitchen, started to fill the kettle.

‘Have you ever checked to see if there’s any gold under the floorboards?’

I turned the tap off, thinking I’d misheard over the sound of the water. ‘Have I what, sorry?’

‘Checked for gold, under the floorboards. Loads have got it, the houses this side of the park.’

I set the kettle back. I couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg. I’ve been told I’m terribly gullible about things like this.

‘You really haven’t heard this story?’

I shook my head.

She hopped onto a stool, gestured up to the ceiling rose, squinting. ‘Back when these houses were built, it was all these wealthy merchants living in them.’ She spun a pointed finger around at the windows. ‘People were always travelling back and forth over the park with gold, jewels, money, cloth, all that sort of stuff.’

She paused, then. Narrowed her eyes a little.

‘But on the other side of the park, Blackheath – that’s where the robbers were. The road to Woolwich was safe – it had these big high walls – no highwaymen. But sometimes you couldn’t avoid Blackheath. And the robbers were merciless.’

She glanced out of the window, as if making sure none of them were watching us from the rose bushes.

‘There’s all these stories about it – how they’d tear the jewels from the throats of women, take an axe to a carriage if they thought there were gold coins inside. They’d slash at the harnesses, so they could steal your horses and ride away. No one could hear you there. If you screamed.’

I tried to laugh, to show Rachel that I wasn’t taking it seriously, but I found I wanted to hear the rest, even if I didn’t believe her.

‘What the royal household didn’t know,’ she went on, spooning sugar into her tea, ‘was that the wealthy merchants of Greenwich were in league with the robbers on Blackheath. That’s why they got away with it all. The merchants protected them – and in return, they always took a share of the gold. Of course, they’d be hanged if the king found out, so they hid it in these houses. Usually, under the floorboards. Honestly! I read all about it somewhere.’ She stared at me. ‘I seriously can’t believe you haven’t heard about it. So many people round here have found stuff in their houses – jewellery, antiques, all sorts of stuff. A fortune, sometimes.’

I thought for a moment. Did it ring a bell somewhere? Mummy saying something once, about some people down the road, finding a hoard of old coins?

‘Maybe,’ I said uncertainly.

Rachel shrugged, threw me a wolfish grin. ‘You don’t want to look now?’

I find myself blushing at the memory of it. How I’d pointed Rachel to places upstairs – away from the building work – where the floorboards might be loose. How I’d pulled up Mummy’s rug, turned the sofa over, both of us giddily intoxicated with the idea of finding hidden treasure. Rachel was so convinced – she’d insisted on looking for loose floorboards in the bedrooms, in the bathroom, all over the house. But of course, we didn’t find any that would come up on their own, and we couldn’t work out how we’d get them up without making a huge mess, so we didn’t bother in the end. Rachel seemed to lose interest in us having coffee after that. By the time Daniel got home, she was gone, and I hadn’t had the energy to put the furniture back.

‘She sounds perfectly normal to me, Helen,’ Serena says loyally, casting a wry look at Daniel. ‘I’m glad you met someone nice.’ She is so good at this: smoothing things out, like wrinkles in a tablecloth. Daniel smiles at her, then turns to me, speaks more gently.

‘I wasn’t annoyed. I was just a bit surprised about the furniture.’ He is slurring his words slightly, which makes me even more cross.

‘The sofa thing was one time,’ I hiss at him. ‘I don’t know why you keep going on about it.’

‘Oh, relax, Helen,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m teasing.’ But the anger is gathering in my throat, and somehow I can’t let it drop.

‘It’s not as if our living room is a very pleasant place to be. Moving the sofa was hardly going to make much of a difference.’

‘Oh, here we go,’ says Daniel. He is cross now, too. ‘The building work. All my fault.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘It’s all you ever say.’

Our words jab back and forth at each other and Rory and Serena start to avert their eyes from us, sitting in a tactful silence. I realise, to my mortification, that I have seen them do this before, when forced to witness one of our marital spats.

I hold my tongue, determined not to let it escalate. Only when the heat dissipates do I risk a glance over the table. Daniel has filled his glass again, then pretends to study the label on the wine bottle. When I catch Serena’s eye, I grimace, mouth ‘sorry’ at her. She furrows her brow in a ‘don’t be silly’ gesture, shakes her head, telling me not to worry. Fills up our water glasses, and Rory’s.

Later that night, Daniel passes out, drunkenly, on the bed, his eyes closed over flitting eyeballs. Soon he is making the little whistling breathing noise that means he is sleeping deeply. His glasses sit on his bedside table