The Romeo and Juliet Code Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Copyright

  I was always told that my dad, Danny, loved danger. I was told that he was a bit reckless and daring. And that’s just the way he pulled the car up into the sandy driveway at my grandmother’s house in Maine. We could see the ocean below us crashing and pounding against the jagged rocks. Danny seemed to put the brakes on just at the edge of the cliff.

  My mum, Winnie, reached out and touched his arm gently and we sat there in silence for a moment while Danny took a deep breath. “Shall we carry on, then?” said Winnie, looking round to the backseat at me. “Felicity, shall I bring Wink up to the porch?”

  Even though I was eleven years old, I was still quite attached to Wink. I was most dreadfully embarrassed about it and hoped no one my age here in America would ever find out that I still loved a big, brownish, cheerful British bear. The thing about Wink was, he always smiled, even at the edge of a cliff.

  Danny got out of the car and started for the house with my suitcases. He took the path through wild rosebushes because he knew the way. After twelve years of being in England, my Danny was coming home. I had never been here before and neither had my mum, Winnie. Winnie kept saying, “Danny, you should have told us how lovely it all is. Felicity, isn’t it lovely! Look at the sky.” She got out of the car, and the veil on her hat blew across her face. Her white linen dress billowed in the wind. She put her arm over my shoulder and we followed Danny along the path towards the old house that seemed to loom at the highest point along the coast.

  Uncle Gideon, whom I had never met before, stood on the long wraparound porch and didn’t say anything much when we walked towards him. His hands seemed large at his sides, and I noticed he was frowning and shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

  Then Winnie’s hat blew off in the wind and went dropping down the long steps towards the sea. Uncle Gideon saw the hat go rolling off and he rushed down the steps, slipping on the last one and stumbling in the sand, but he caught the hat. Then he came huffing and puffing back up to the porch. His hair was all blown about and his face was terribly red. But when he handed the hat back to Winnie, he looked away, and when she talked to him, he wouldn’t answer her.

  My dad, Danny, reached out to shake hands with Gideon, who was his brother, but Gideon seemed unable to move. He stood there frozen as if he’d just been shot. Then Danny lunged towards Gideon and tried to hug him, but Uncle Gideon pushed him away and shook his head. Danny finally slapped one arm across Uncle Gideon’s back. And as they stood there staring out at the water, I saw Danny slip a small box into Uncle Gideon’s jacket pocket.

  “Felicity darling,” said Winnie, with pearly drops of water on her cheeks, “this is your uncle Gideon. Yes, it is. There he is. Run and give him a great hello.”

  On the whole, British children are very forgiving and proper and I was trying to be so, but secretly, very secretly, I was thinking, If Uncle Gideon has been angry with Winnie and Danny, then I shall be angry with Uncle Gideon. Suddenly looking at me, Uncle Gideon got terribly apologetic and he tried to pat me on the top of my head and act all chummy in a very awkward way.

  I took two tiny steps backwards and I said, “Hello,” looking down at my feet. I had a hole in the bottom of one of my shoes and there was sand on the porch and I was letting the sand seep into my shoe, trying to collect as much as I could under my toes.

  My grandmother stood in the hallway. Her face was behind the mesh of the screen door, all shadowy and silent. She did not come out of the house.

  Just for balance, I held on tight to my bear, Wink. I held on because it felt a bit like the wind might sweep us all off the porch and away into the dazzling white American clouds. It felt like the wind might sweep us all off the porch and away into the blue ocean sky that seemed to pitch this way and that with the sound of the roaring sea crashing against the rocks below us, over and over again.

  I always called my mum Winnie and my dad Danny. I never called them Mum and Dad as other children do.

  “Is that the British way?” asked Uncle Gideon, picking up a shell and holding it out in front of me in his large palm. I thought his hand was shaking ever so slightly. “Is that the way they say it over there?”

  “No actually,” I said, rolling my eyes away, trying not to look at him or the shell. I was wondering what terrible things had happened in the past that had caused everyone to seem so uncomfortable. And besides, I was trying not to cry because Winnie and Danny had just pulled away in that car without a roof. Winnie’s hat was tipped to one side, her veil blowing out behind her. Danny was in a white linen suit as well, with his silk necktie fluttering in the wind. They beeped the horn as they disappeared down the road and I could still hear it in my mind.

  “Just as if they’re going off to be married again. It’s so romantic,” whispered Aunt Miami to me. She had stayed in the hallway with my grandmother while they were here, but in the end she had rushed out to hug Danny good-bye. “Did you see how he held her hand the whole time? Does he often do that?”

  I would always remember Winnie and Danny like that, in a wash of sunlight, veiled and waving, the ocean behind them and beyond the ocean, Britain, England, my true home.

  As I walked back towards the house with Aunt Miami, Uncle Gideon tried to interest me in several more seashells, but my eyes were all blurry. I actually only cried about five teardrops. I was counting them to keep the sadness away. I found out that one eye cried more than the other eye, or else a few tears got away without being accounted for.

  In the dark hallway, my grandmother (everybody called her The Gram) looked at Uncle Gideon and said, “Have they gone?”

  And Gideon nodded. The Gram closed her eyes and leaned her head against the brown wallpaper. Then she popped the
m open and said, “Well, after all these years, I meet my granddaughter! And how do you do! I see she has the true Bathburn forehead.”

  “I am half Budwig,” I said quite loudly. “My mum, Winnie, keeps her maiden name. And I am called Felicity Bathburn Budwig.”

  Then my grandmother whispered something in Gideon’s ear and he said, “Oh. Um, of course. Well, shall I show you where your room is and all that?”

  I tried not to answer, but in the end I said, “Yes,” in a very solemn way. And I climbed the long stairs behind my uncle Gideon.

  As I climbed those long dark stairs, so began my stay in Bottlebay, Maine, USA, where they didn’t have tea at night, they had supper, and no one said “jolly good” or “jolly right” or “I should think so, shouldn’t I.” Instead, they said “super!”

  “Oh, that’s super,” said Uncle Gideon with one suitcase in each hand, looking nervously back at me over his shoulder to check that I was still there.

  That was after I had said, “I think I am going to be staying here a while because there’s a war in England and a lot of the buildings are being bombed to pieces.”

  Uncle Gideon said again, “Super! Oh, I don’t mean about the buildings, but super about your being here, staying here. We live on a sandy point which is unusual for this part of Maine. A lot of people like the ocean generally. I mean, sometimes they pay oodles of money to stay near it. I mean, do you like the sound of the sea? Maybe? Sort of?”

  “No,” I said, “it’s a very lonesome sound, isn’t it.”

  Uncle Gideon turned his head away from me then, as if he was trying suddenly to hide his face.

  We were now up one flight. There were some bedrooms off the long hall and we passed a closed door near the landing. I was feeling ever so tired from the long stairs, so I stopped for a moment. Uncle Gideon said, “Wait. No. I mean, oops, would you mind staying away from that door over there? Could you kind of steer clear of it for me?”

  “Oh,” I said, “sorry.”

  “Well, now, about your aunt Miami,” Uncle Gideon said, clearing his throat. “Her room is just across the hall here. She loves flowers. Look at all the bouquets she’s got in there. And I’ll tell you something while she’s downstairs, to get things straight from the start. We are the Bathburns of Bottlebay. And your aunt Miami’s real name is Florence Bathburn, but she changed it a while back to Miami. And you can see why, being as she is a young woman and living way out here on the point on the ocean … Florence Bathburn sounded boring and old maid-ish, but Miami has a lot of pizzazz. Don’t you think?”

  “I should think so,” I said.

  “Oh, you should, should you?” said Uncle Gideon. “Now, don’t stop here. We’ve got to lug these suitcases up and around one more time to the third floor.”

  I looked back at the door I was not to go near. It looked like a perfectly ordinary dark wooden door. I thought about The Gram standing in the shadows in the hallway. She didn’t come out to kiss my Winnie and Danny. Why didn’t she kiss them and hug them?

  “Yes, this house gets blown about pretty badly now and again in the weather. But we usually stay put during storms. We Bathburns take pride in the fact that we have never gone to the shelter in town during a hurricane. Not once,” said Uncle Gideon, taking a deep breath and then looking over at me out of the corner of his eye.

  Why did The Gram stay in the hallway? Why did Uncle Gideon push Danny away when he tried to hug him? How long would Winnie and Danny be gone?

  I tried not to say one more word. I pretended my mouth was sewn shut like Wink’s. I was practically strangling that poor bear right now, my arm was so tight round his neck.

  “So, what do you think? Do you like the house?” said Uncle Gideon in a hopeful, rather sheepish way. He closed his eyes and put a hand over his face and then he opened one eye and peeked at me through two of his fingers while he waited for my answer.

  “Well,” I said finally, “it is rather tall, isn’t it.”

  “It’s what you call a Victorian,” he said. “It was built in 1850. Hasn’t been touched since. But that’s no fault of mine. I guess we should get rid of some of the old Victorian furniture, but we’re used to it here. It’s cozy and lived in. Every year, Miami threatens to tear down the old wallpaper and put up something with some pizzazz. But The Gram won’t let her, because The Gram runs things around here. You’ll find that out.

  “Now, what we’ve got here,” Uncle Gideon said, opening a short door at the top of the last flight of stairs, “is a little tower room we call the widow’s peak. Look at the height and the views and see the little porch around the outside? That’s called a widow’s walk. This was once a sea captain’s house, and his wife would stay up here to watch for his sailing ship to come over the horizon. All the families along the shore here waited for ships to come home. A lot of them never came back, you know.”

  Once inside the room, there were many windows to the ocean, and I could see the hill behind the house, covered in scrub grass and tangled trees and wild rosebushes, and there was a small road leading away over the hill. I looked out on that small road, hoping to spot Winnie and Danny’s car, but by then, it was already long gone.

  “This will be your room in a temporary sort of way, I guess,” Uncle Gideon said, frowning again and then pinching the bridge of his nose very tightly with his thumb and fingers. “Do you hear the wind? It talks to you up here all the time. Sometimes it moans, sometimes it calls, sometimes it sings. Do you like the sound of the wind? A little bit?”

  “No,” I said. I was hoping to say only words like yes and no to Uncle Gideon whenever possible.

  “Oh, we Bathburns love the sound of the wind. Every one of us, even The Gram. Perhaps it’s because out here the wind is all we have.”

  I wondered then why my grandmother was called The Gram, but I soon got used to it. Just as I grew used to the constant sound of the sea and the tide crashing against the rocks, and the wet, damp smell of seaweed and salt and the forever-calling seagulls and the wind.

  The next day, the sky darkened to a miserable gray, and endless sheets of rain fell and the ocean tossed about like something terrible and unhappy and restless. I had nothing to do but walk here and there, looking at the house. The dining room and sitting room at the front were dark, or at least there were long velvet curtains covering the windows, so you could hear the ocean all round you, but you couldn’t see it unless you peeked through the curtains, which I did. I stood behind them, looking down and out at the water and the rain. I was standing there missing Winnie and Danny. I was writing a letter to them, leaning my paper against the window, watching the rain blur over the glass.

  Dear Winnie and Danny,

  I miss you already. You didn’t exactly tell me when you are coming back. What does “soon” mean? I do wish you wouldn’t go home to London, because of the war and the bombs and all that. I know you said not to send letters to our flat because they wouldn’t get through and to keep them in a box until you get back, but I should like to post this letter. Where should I send it? There’s a telephone on the landing here, but no one uses it. Will you ring me up? Please?

  Love,

  Felicity

  P.S. To be cheerful, I should say I’ve been putting my hair in plaits, as usual. I’ve started calling them braids like you do, Danny. So far I’ve been hearing a lot of Danny words like flashlight and antsy. The Gram asked me yesterday if I’ve always been antsy by nature. Have I?

  I wasn’t hiding, honestly, because British children on the whole never hide or snitch or lie, but it turned out no one knew I was behind the curtains. I was terribly sorry to be sneaking about by mistake. Quite by accident I heard The Gram say to Uncle Gideon in the hall, “So how are you holding up with the child being here?”

  “Oh, I guess I feel like I’m being ripped to pieces,” said Uncle Gideon.

  “Well, you better take this tray up to Captain Derek before she comes downstairs.”

  I stood there ever so quietly behind the curt
ains, trying not to snore or sneeze or cry, hoping I wouldn’t get hiccups, thinking to myself, Ripped to pieces because of me? And who is Captain Derek? Is there an old sea captain hidden away somewhere upstairs? Why didn’t Winnie and Danny tell me?

  I pressed myself against the window until Uncle Gideon had gone upstairs, with the dishes clattering on the breakfast tray, and The Gram had disappeared into the back rooms behind the kitchen. How could Winnie and Danny have left me here with an uncle who was angry with them and a sea captain I knew nothing about tucked away somewhere in the house and a door I had to steer clear of and a sky that only rained?

  I folded the letter and put it in my pocket and I went out into the hall and I opened the front door. I looked far off and away where the edge of the sky touched the water. Everything was all clouded and darkened and blurry with rain.

  “Oh, there she is,” said The Gram. “You scared us. We didn’t know where you were.” I turned round, and The Gram and Aunt Miami were standing there behind me. Gideon was bringing the breakfast tray back downstairs, the toast and eggs on the plate, untouched. Gideon was so tall, with a great bunch of reddish-brown hair, and for some reason that made me notice his eyes. I tried to avoid them, but they seemed to be everywhere, watching me.