The Secret Hen House Theatre (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

An Idea

It was a brief moment of triumph. But it was only a moment. And when it was over, Hannah was filled with an overwhelming need.

As soon as she had put Sam to bed she would go to Lottie’s house. She had to see Lottie.

Lottie lived in a Victorian cottage on the edge of the village, just as the fields stopped and the houses took over. Right from the front gate, the place was immaculate. The gate was freshly painted and swung silently on its hinges. The lawn was a perfect grass carpet.

You had to take off your shoes the second you stepped inside the house. The gleaming floorboards were dotted with beautiful rugs and every wall was painted white. No speck of dust was allowed to settle on the polished antique furniture and there wasn’t a stray piece of paper in sight. Lottie’s mum hated clutter.

Lottie led Hannah straight up to her perfectly organised bedroom. The sewing machine was out on her desk. “I was just finishing off Esmeralda’s Scene Three costume,” she said, folding the fabric on the
floor into a tidy pile. “So what’s up? Is it about the fire? What’s happened? How’s your dad?”

Hannah shook her head. “Awful. Everything’s awful. It’s been a hideous, hideous day.”

Pacing the room, she told Lottie what the policewoman had said that morning. She told her about the agent’s visit and the threats he had made. She told her about the uninsured thresher, and how it meant that Dad’s next rent payment had turned into a pile of ashes in the burned-out barn.

The only thing she didn’t mention was finding the matchbox.

Lottie sat very still and listened. Then she said, “Has he got anything else to sell?”

Hannah had asked herself this question on the walk to Lottie’s house. “I don’t think so. The Field Marshall and the thresher were the only vintage things he had that actually worked. He’s got other old stuff but it’s all rusty or broken. You know. You’ve seen it all lying around.”

Lottie was looking at the floor. After a minute she said, “How about—” And stopped.

Hannah looked at her curiously. It wasn’t like Lottie to be hesitant. “What?”

Lottie met her eyes. “OK. I’ve been thinking for a while. The festival prize money’s five hundred pounds, isn’t it? And we’re going to make sure we win.”

“Yes?”

Lottie took a deep breath. “I think we should give your dad the money.”

Hannah stared. “Give all our prize money to my dad?”

“He needs it more than we do.”

But what about the theatre? thought Hannah. What about the red velvet chairs for the auditorium? And the gold curtains? And a fund to buy props instead of making them from cardboard? And … and…

“That is such a kind idea,” she said. “But he’d never accept it.”

“We’ll call it rent. Rent for the theatre.”

And another image flashed into Hannah’s head. The Secret Hen House Theatre Company presenting her father with a cheque for five hundred pounds.

If they won that prize and paid the rent with it, Dad would have to see how important the theatre was, wouldn’t he?

Lottie cut into her fantasy. “I mean, I know it wouldn’t pay the whole rent, but it would be a help, wouldn’t it? How much is the rent?”

Hannah stared at her. How much
was
the rent?

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t
know
?”

“Well, do you know how much your dad’s rent is?”

Lottie gave her a withering look. “They got divorced, remember? They spent about a year arguing over money. I practically know how much every brick in this house is worth.”

Hannah winced. “Sorry.”

“Anyway, those men who took the Field Marshall
said it was worth a few grand, didn’t they? And your dad sold it to pay the rent. So that means the rent is a few thousand pounds.”

“Thousands of pounds? Four times a year? How can anyone pay that much money?”

“Well, he can’t, can he? Not any more. Because they doubled it.”

Anger rose up in Hannah, and then a wave of despair pulled her down. “So five hundred pounds is nothing, is it?”

“It’s not nothing. It’s a lot better than nothing.”

Hannah rubbed her face with her hands, trying to push her brain into action. “If we could think of something else that might be worth another five hundred, then we’d have a thousand pounds to give him.”

“Sell something, you mean? Behind his back?”

A key turned in the lock downstairs. “Hello, darling! I’m home!”

“Hi, Mum,” called Lottie. “Hannah’s here. We’re working.”

“Hello, Hannah,” called Vanessa. “You’ve got fifteen minutes, girls, then your dinner will be ready, Charlotte.”

“If it was something he wouldn’t notice was missing, maybe we could,” said Hannah.

“But you said there’s nothing else that’s worth anything.”

“I don’t know though, do I? How can we tell what’s valuable? I mean, maybe some of those old machines half buried in mud are actually
worth something.”

Lottie laughed. “The Antiques Roadshow.”

“What?”

“You know. People take their stuff to be valued. I’d love to see their faces if we dragged in one of your dad’s old ploughs.”

“What sort of stuff do people take?”

“Oh, you know, furniture, silver, stuff that’s been in their family—”

Hannah drew in her breath. “Like candlesticks? Silver candlesticks?”

“Yes, that kind of—” Lottie stopped and stared at Hannah. “But not – you’re not – you can’t sell your dad’s silver candlesticks. I mean, you wouldn’t do that, without telling him, would you?
Would
you?”

Hannah paced the room. “They’re in the theatre already and he hasn’t missed them, has he? And anyway, they’re not my dad’s. They’re my mum’s.”

“That’s even worse! And they are his now anyway. You can’t take them and sell them behind his back. That’s stealing. And—”

“Funny sort of stealing, selling somebody’s candlesticks and giving the money straight back to them. Lottie, if it helps the farm, we have to do it.”

And I have to help the farm, she thought. Because it’s my fault that the barn burned down. It’s my fault that Dad has nothing to pay the rent with.

“But then your dad should sell them,” said Lottie. She was biting her nails now. “Not us. It’s his choice.”

“He’d never sell them. My mum inherited them. They were her great-grandmother’s or something.”

Lottie went white. “Then we definitely can’t sell them. Hannah, you’re mad. He’d go completely nuts. Especially how he is at the moment.”

“Maybe they’re not worth anything anyway.”

“No,” said Lottie hopefully.

“How can we find out?”

“Hannah, you
can’t
sell them.”

“Fine. But we could find out if they might be worth something. Just for fun. Your mum’s into antiques, isn’t she? How do you find out if something’s valuable?”

“You have to take it to a valuer,” said Lottie. “An antiques dealer or an auctioneer or something.”

“Like Sotheby’s?” said Hannah.

“What?”

“You know. Where Miranda’s dad works.”

“He doesn’t work there. He sells stuff there.”

“Whatever. It’s an auctioneers’, isn’t it?”

“But it’s in London. Are you planning to go to London with your dad’s candlesticks now?”

Hannah growled with frustration. “Honestly, Lottie, you’re so difficult. Do you
want
the farm to be bulldozed? I’m just trying to think of things.”

“All right. But I’m not an expert. I don’t know if Sotheby’s sells candlesticks.”

Hannah sat down on the edge of Lottie’s desk chair. “Right. Budge up.”

“What are you doing?”

“They must have a website. I’m going to look it up.”

Lottie sighed. “OK, fine. We’ll look it up. But get
off my chair. I’m going to do it.”

“That’s not fair! They’re my candlesticks.”

“My computer. And you’re so slow we’d be here all night. We’ve only got five minutes.”

“Oh, go on then, bossy boots. But at least let me sit next to you.” Lottie started tapping at the keyboard. “Go to ‘Departments and Services’,” said Hannah when the home page came up.

There was a long list of departments. “‘English and European Silver and Vertu’,” said Lottie. “Your candlesticks are English, aren’t they?”

“What’s vertu?” asked Hannah. She made a mental note to look it up when she got home.

Lottie clicked on the department.

Both girls drew in their breath.

Because right under the title “English and European Silver and Vertu” was a single picture. It was of a set of silver candlesticks.

“So they do sell candlesticks,” said Lottie.

“Oh, my goodness, look at that!” Hannah pointed to a box on the other side of the screen. In it was a smaller version of the same picture. And underneath the picture, a description of the candlesticks and a price. It said 229,600GBP.

They looked at each other, eyes wide. “Does that mean,” Hannah almost whispered, “that those candlesticks sold for two hundred and twenty nine thousand pounds?”

Lottie was frowning at the screen. “It’s a set of six, and it says they’re royal. So—”

Hannah was wriggling with excitement. “But even
if ours sold for a third of that – and OK, they’re not royal, so take a bit off – that’s still, say, I don’t know, maybe … Lottie, they might be worth fifty thousand pounds!”

“Mmm,” said Lottie. “I don’t know if it works like that.”

“OK, but even if they were worth half of that – even if it was just a few thousand – Lottie, that’s amazing!” Hannah was bouncing up and down in her chair now.

Lottie was clicking on links. Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Look, this is brilliant. We can get them valued free! We can fill in a valuation form online and email photos, and then they’ll send us an estimate of what they’re worth.”

“Charlotte!” called her mother from downstairs. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Coming!” called Lottie.

Hannah was reading the screen greedily. “Send clear colour photographs, front and back… photographs of signatures, maker’s marks, and any areas of damage… Oh, my goodness, Lottie, we can do this! Can I borrow your camera? I’ll take the photos tomorrow morning. In the theatre, before the others come out. They look great on the stage with the painting behind them. Much better than they did in the sitting room in front of the peeling wallpaper.”

“It says here they take four to six weeks to reply with a valuation,” said Lottie.

“Well, that’s OK, I guess. He only just sold the Field Marshall to pay the rent – he must have a while
until the next payment’s due. How long do you—”

Footsteps sounded, running up the stairs. Lottie closed down the website.

The bedroom door opened. “Come on, you two. Your dinner’s ready, Charlotte. How are you, Hannah? How’s your poor father today?”

As Hannah put her coat on in the porch she reached into the pocket for her gloves, and her fingers brushed against Jack’s matchbox. Her stomach lurched.

“And do you have any idea what caused the fire?” asked Vanessa.

Hannah glanced up. Vanessa was holding her scarf out to her and looking straight into her eyes. Hannah felt her cheeks burning. Could Vanessa read minds?

She took the scarf and busied herself with wrapping it around her neck.

“No. Nobody knows. It’s a complete mystery.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Overheard

Tuesday morning, nine thirty. Hannah flicked back through the photographs on the camera. They looked good. Really good.

Her heart fluttered with excitement. Imagine the look on Dad’s face when she presented him with the biggest cheque he’d ever seen in his life! How happy he would be when all his problems were solved forever.

She slipped the camera into her coat pocket and looked around the theatre. It was still exactly as they’d left it when the fire broke out. Lottie had brought all the costumes back but she’d clearly been in a state of shock, because she’d just dumped them in a heap on the queen’s bed. They stank of smoke.

Hannah began the calming, satisfying work of putting the theatre in order. She smoothed out the creases in the costumes and hung them back on the rail. She replaced the jewellery in the middle drawer of the chest and the props on the props table. She opened up the Book at the Props page to check against her list that everything was present.

The front-of-house door slid open and a shaft of
morning sun fell across the floor. Once again, Hannah felt how wrong it was that the queen’s bedroom had a bare concrete floor.

“Hannah?” said Lottie.

Hannah looked up. Lottie sounded nervous.

“Hannah, we’ve got a problem. A really big problem.”

Hannah’s blood ran cold.
Another
problem?

Lottie’s words tumbled out in a breathless torrent. “The judge just phoned to ask directions to the farm for Saturday and she sounded really nice but she wanted to know where to park and I couldn’t tell her to park at the end of the track and walk because if she walked all the way down the track and then saw there was loads of space to park in the yard she’d think we were really rude. And I couldn’t tell her it was a secret because what if it’s against the rules to have a secret theatre, so I said to park in the farmyard but what if your dad sees her and finds out?”

Hannah stared at Lottie. Her mind was completely blank. What with everything else that was swirling around in there at the moment, the possibility of Dad discovering the theatre hadn’t even occurred to her. And she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

She swung round as the stage door was shoved open and the Beans burst in.

“Whoa, that was close,” said Jo. “We’re going to have to be really careful. Dad and Adam are just down there feeding the pigs.”

Adam was an agricultural student. He had done
work experience on the farm last year, and he had enjoyed it so much that now he came up nearly every weekend to help Dad.

“Shut the door, quick,” said Hannah.

A giant ball of wool squeezed through the doorway.

“Jo, I told you, no animals in the theatre this week. We’ve got to be professional.”

“Jasper’s not an animal, he’s my friend,” said Jo, hugging his fat woolly neck.

Lottie was checking the state of the costumes. “So what are we going to do about the judge?”

“Jasper, get off the stage!” said Hannah. “Jo, get him off.”

“What about the judge?” said Jo, throwing both arms round Jasper’s vast stomach and dragging him into the auditorium.

Lottie explained the problem. When she had finished, Sam, who was sitting on the floor of the auditorium stroking Jasper, said, “I think we should invite Daddy. He’d like the play.”

“Huh,” said Hannah.

But Lottie, still standing at the costume rail, put on her concentrating frown and said, “You know, what if Sam’s right?”

“
What?
” said Hannah.

“Maybe he
would
like the play. Maybe he’d be proud of you. Maybe, once he saw it, he’d think the theatre was a good thing.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Hannah. “Great idea. And what if he didn’t? What if we invite him and he goes ballistic and orders us to dismantle the theatre and
put all his stuff back here? After all the work we’ve done, and the theatre looking so beautiful, and the judge coming on Saturday—”

“But if we don’t invite him,” said Lottie, “and he sees the judge arrive and finds out what we’ve been doing behind his back, he might go even more ballistic and storm into the theatre and shut it all down on the actual day. We can’t risk that, can we?”

Jo, who had been crouching down at the auditorium wall fixing a piece of sacking, suddenly put her fingers on her lips and hissed, “Sshh.”

They looked at her in surprise. “What?” said Hannah.

“Rustling,” she said softly. “Just outside. I think it’s a dog.”

Everyone listened. There was a definite rustling outside. And now panting too. “It’s Tess,” whispered Jo. “She can smell us.”

The panting turned to whining and the whining to scratching on the auditorium wall. A shout came from the direction of the track. “Tess! Tess! Come back here!”

“Oh, no!” hissed Hannah, rigid with fear. “Dad’s going to find us!”

Sam huddled into her side and clutched her arm.

“What can we do?” asked Lottie. Her eyes darted around the theatre, but there was absolutely nowhere to hide and they all knew it.

“Go away, Tess, go away!” hissed Jo.

The whining and scrabbling grew more frantic. 

“Oh, no; oh, no,” whimpered Lottie. “He’s going
to kill us!”

“She can’t get in unless Dad opens the door,” whispered Hannah. “No one say a single word.”

“Tess! Tess!” It was Dad’s voice from the field. “Come out of there at once! Where is that wretched dog?”

Then they heard Adam’s voice. “I guess she’s stuck in all those brambles.”

“Yeah, I’ll go in and see where she’s got to.”

Frozen like statues, they heard the trampling of nettles and the cracking of brambles. Dad clearly had a stick and he was beating his way to the hen house with it.

Hannah’s heart thumped against her chest so hard that it hurt.

There was more slashing of brambles, and then Adam’s voice, much closer now. “Found her?”

“There she is. You bad dog!” growled Dad. “What do you think you’re playing at?”

He was right outside, less than an arm’s length from where the children sat. And here was the tramp, tramp, tramp of Adam’s feet too.

Tess scrabbled at the wall again.

Hannah held her breath. Please don’t find the door, Dad. Please, please, God, don’t let him come in.

“What’s up with you?” Dad asked Tess. “Rats?”

“What is this place?” asked Adam. “I never knew there was a shed here.”

Dad cleared his throat before he answered. “Used to be a poultry house. Hasn’t been used for years. Come away from there, old girl. What a mess you
are. Let’s take those burrs out of your coat, eh?”

Jasper gave his head a vigorous shake. Jo fixed him with a stern look and put her finger on her lips.

“So you’re not going to fight the rent review then?” asked Adam.

“No.”

“But it’s such a massive increase. I can’t believe he’s allowed to do it.”

“Well, I’ve spoken to a lawyer and he reckons we wouldn’t win if we fought it. It’s a big increase, but it’s in line with the market. And I’ve no time for a battle. There’s enough to do here. Sit still, Tess, and leave that shed alone! You are a blessed nuisance, girl!”

“You’re not really going to sell the cows, though, are you?”

Hannah’s stomach churned. Sell the cows!

Jo’s face turned white. Sam stared, huge-eyed, at Hannah, and opened his mouth to speak. Hannah put her hand over it and shook her head at him.

“No choice. Got to pay the rent somehow.”

“What about next year, though? How are you going to cope without the milk cheques?”

“We’ll worry about that when we come to it,” said Dad in a tone Hannah knew meant the conversation was over. “Come on, Tess, we’ve got work to do.”

No one moved or spoke as the footsteps and the rustling grew fainter. At last came the distant crunch, clomp, crunch of boots on tarmac. Hannah dropped her shoulders and breathed again.

“Oh, my goodness, that was so close,” said Lottie.
“I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.”

“Hannah, Daddy won’t really sell the cows, will he?” asked Sam.

“Of course not,” said Hannah. But she felt sick inside. Bad enough Dad selling machinery, but selling his animals!

And when there was nothing left to sell, then what?

“He can’t sell the cows,” said Jo. “It won’t be a farm without the cows. I don’t believe he really will.”

“It just shows,” said Hannah, “that we really need to win this competition and give the money to Dad. We just have to make sure our play’s the best, that’s all.”

“Yes, and wipe the smug smile off Miranda Hathaway’s face,” said Lottie. “It would be worth winning just for that.”

At the end of the rehearsal Hannah walked up the track with Lottie. Wisps of white cloud laced the bright blue sky. A kestrel hovered overhead and birdsong poured from the hedgerows. Soon the meadows would be a mass of wild flowers again: birds-foot trefoil, clover, cowslips, buttercups. And her mother’s favourite, lady’s smock.

Hannah took deep breaths of the fresh clean air. Then an image forced its way into her head: a cavalcade of lorries rumbling up the track, disgorging their loads of concrete over the fields, suffocating the grass and the flowers, burying the insects and starving the birds.

She imagined the cows and pigs and sheep loaded
on to trucks and taken off to market, bleating and squealing and groaning in a terrified, trampled mass. And she imagined the demolition ball swinging over her house: crashing through Mum’s bedroom, smashing up the kitchen. She saw it swing through Dad’s office, and the piles and piles of paper whirling and swirling through the yard, the bills and the time sheets and the letters and the journals, like a crazy paper blizzard. She saw the bulldozer crunch through her theatre, ripping up the roof and flattening the walls.

And she heard in her head the roaring of the chainsaws, and the sickening crash as the ancient trees were felled.

And then the silence. The silence of nothingness. Nothing but the silent screams of the fields as they lay buried alive under the hardening mass of concrete.

She imagined what her father must be going through right now.

And she felt the matchbox in her coat pocket.

She could just tell him it was Jack’s matchbox, couldn’t she? She didn’t need to mention
why
the boys had been at the farm.

Telling Dad who might have caused the fire wouldn’t save the farm. But it might just give him one less thing to worry about.

And she owed him that, at least.