Janina Matthewson - Of Things Gone Astray

The Friday Project

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Copyright © Janina Matthewson 2014

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Janina Matthewson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007562473

Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007562480

Version: 2015-10-13

For Ronnie

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Mrs Featherby.

Cassie.

Delia.

Robert.

Marcus.

Jake.

Delia.

Mrs Featherby.

Robert.

Jake.

Cassie.

Delia.

Robert.

Marcus.

Delia.

Jake.

Mrs Featherby.

Cassie.

Robert.

Marcus.

Delia.

Mrs Featherby.

Robert.

Jake.

Cassie.

The Status.

The Fight.

The Looks.

The Heart.

Jake.

Delia.

Marcus.

Robert.

Cassie.

Delia.

Mrs Featherby.

Robert.

Cassie.

Jake.

Marcus.

Delia.

Robert.

Cassie.

The Watch.

Delia.

Mrs Featherby.

Jake.

Marcus.

Robert.

Delia.

Cassie.

Jake.

Marcus.

Delia.

Robert.

Mrs Featherby.

Jake.

Delia.

Robert.

The Notebook.

Robert.

Mrs Featherby.

Jake.

Cassie.

Delia.

Marcus.

Cassie.

Mrs Featherby.

Robert.

Jake.

Cassie.

Delia.

Robert.

Mrs Featherby.

The Ring.

Delia.

Robert.

Cassie.

Jake.

Marcus.

Cassie.

Mrs Featherby.

Robert.

Delia.

Mrs Featherby.

Cassie.

Delia.

Marcus.

Jake.

Robert.

The Perfume Bottle.

Mrs Featherby.

Cassie.

Delia.

Marcus.

Mrs Featherby.

Robert.

Jake.

Mrs Featherby.

Cassie.

Marcus.

Delia.

Mrs Featherby.

Cassie.

Jake.

The Wedding Certificate.

Mrs Featherby.

Jake.

Cassie.

Robert.

Jake.

Marcus.

Robert.

Delia.

Jake.

Delia.

Acknowledgements.

About the Publisher

MRS FEATHERBY HAD BEEN HAVING pleasant dreams until she woke to discover the front of her house had vanished overnight.

They had been dreams of when she was younger and more energetic, dreams of a time when she had full use of her knees. She had saved someone in one of them, someone helpless, she thought, but once awake she couldn’t remember who or why or what had happened next.

It was the breeze that woke her, naturally. It wasn’t that it was a cold breeze, or even a particularly strong one, but when a person has gone to sleep in perfect stillness, the unexplained movement of air around the room is a rousing influence, and Mrs Featherby had never been a deep sleeper.

She looked around her for a moment in that state of bewilderment that often occurs in the moments after waking. The light from the street was flooding into the room through the gaping hole that the previous evening had been her bedroom wall. Mrs Featherby blinked hard twice and decided to pull herself together. She stepped out of her bed and walked to the edge of the floor, the wind whipping the hem of her ancient nightgown and pulling at her long, flint-coloured hair.

It was early, barely five o’clock, so there were no people around, but Mrs Featherby knew that when there were people, those people would stare. She knew that they might even approach the house. That they might ask questions. That they might attempt to breach the sanctity of her home, of her fortress. She set her mouth and turned away.

Mrs Featherby, whose first name was Wendy, or had been many years earlier, did not waste time in wondering how a tonne of brick and mortar could have been uplifted and transported away without waking her or leaving a trace of masonry on the road. She did what was practical and called the police. She didn’t particularly trust the police, but she felt that it was the correct procedure.

She was informed that an officer would be sent within the hour, so, thanking her stars that the bathroom was at the back of the house, she performed her ablutions efficiently and impeccably and moved downstairs to the sitting room to wait.

She wondered if she should have anything ready for the constable when he arrived. She’d always considered herself lucky to not have had the police in her home before, but the downside to this was becoming apparent: she had no idea of the correct etiquette.

Indeed, it had been so long since she’d had anyone of any kind in the house that she’d all but forgotten how to go about it. The only person that had crossed her threshold in recent months was the young man who delivered her groceries at nine fifteen every Tuesday.

Was it correct, Mrs Featherby wondered, to refer to the impending officer of the law as a guest? If he was to be a guest she should certainly have, at the very least, a cup of tea waiting, and possibly a biscuit. The cake she’d made on Sunday had been past its best yesterday and she’d thrown it out. She had intended to bake a replacement, but doing so before seven in the morning simply for the imminent arrival of an officer of the law seemed a little extravagant. And he might arrive in the middle of the process, which would be entirely inappropriate. She would make some biscuits later in the day, she decided, as she’d intended. There was no need to rush the process.

Tea would do, she decided. Tea would be enough.

Mrs Featherby sat still and upright in her chair, gazing through her absence of wall into the garden beyond. She sat still and upright and waited.

CASSIE WAS LIT FROM WITHIN, or so she felt. She gloried for a moment in how little she cared about the strangers that surrounded her, that may have noticed her. Let them look, she thought, let them marvel at her secret joy. Let them recognise her as one of the few for whom life holds wonder. For it must be only a few, she thought, who are designed to know this kind of exultation. If it were everyone, the earth’s orbit would be altered by it, forever thrown off course by the collective gladness of its inhabitants.

Her eyes seemed to throb with the smile hidden behind them. The corners of her mouth were set in a curve that any moment threatened to beam.