Free Return to Butterfly Island by Rikki Sharp Page A

the worst of the leaks with, China resumed her exploration of the house with Morgan, who was happy to amble through his old home by her side. This time she went straight to her aunt’s sizable bedroom on the second floor. Sure enough, her memory had been correct. There on the dressing table was the green covered book Mrs. Baxter had mentioned with a slim Parker pen laid neatly next to it. Her aunt’s current yearly journal.
    Eagerly she turned the pages this time, admiring the fine copperplate writing of Beatrice in her eighties. There was time to read the rest of the journal later. First she had to check out if her landlady’s theory was right, that Aunt Bea night have written about making the new will two days before she passed away.
    The last page sat there, written right to the end. Excitedly China read the final paragraph, soaking up every letter. These were her aunt’s words and her aunt’s life. Could she get any closer than that?
    I’m having second thoughts about James’s offer. What made perfect sense a few weeks ago now seems far too altruistic for that rogue. There are some things he is not telling me and I now feel uncomfortable about the whole deal.
    Great news! After all these years, Douglas McGregor has found a young woman named China Stuart living in Manchester. There can’t be two women in the world called that, surely. God bless her poor mother for such a wonderful name. I’ve never given up hope of finding the two of them, even these last hard five years. It has been as if someone has been hiding them from me, for how can two people vanish in this, the information age?
    Which all makes up my mind that I need to draw up a new
    And there the page ended, in mid-sentence. A new what, Aunt Bea? A new will? It’s got to be! China could hardly conceal her excitement as she thumbed through the blank pages after those teasing words. But there was nothing else, not even an inkblot. This didn’t make any sense, as the entry was made three days before her aunt’s death, the day Douglas McGregor had shown Bea that newspaper clipping proving China Stuart was still alive.
    On an impulse China ran her finger along the fold between the pages, finding a slight roughness in the glued spine. Someone had torn out at least two pages! Well, if that didn’t prove the existence of the will, nothing would. Deciding to take the journal with her for safekeeping, China had a further look around the place, opening every cupboard in the room. Doors that she thought were just more wardrobe space revealed a marvelous surprise. On tightly packed shelves were row upon row of green-backed journals, all neatly labeled with the year on their spines.
    Perspiring with sudden nerves, China ran her finger along the dates. Back and further back, down the years to the time her mother had taken her away from the island and the pair of them had seemingly vanished. Odd memories returned to China as she remembered going to Manchester University and then her first working years. Tax forms always being wrongly addressed or calling her ‘Charlie’ or ‘Cherrie’. Mail always going astray, problems with anything she ever filled out that showed on databases. She had always laughed at it all, calling it the ‘Curse of China’. But what if someone had been manipulating things behind the scenes?
    She shook her head. Now she was in Frank Bellamy’s zone of conspiracy theories.
    But as she reached the year she and her mother vanished, there was a space in the tightly packed volumes. Three consecutive years were missing. Three years packed with all that vital information, hiding the secret of what had made her mother flee Butterfly Island.
    China swore again, something that was becoming a bad habit, looking to see if the books had been misfiled. She tried a third time with no luck.
    McKriven was the first word to manifest itself. Hiding the will’s existence she could understand, but why would he be so cruel as to steal the records of her