Contents
Cover
Recent Titles by Sarah Harrison from Severn House
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One: 1978
Chapter Two: 1998
Chapter Three
Chapter Four: 1989
Chapter Five
Chapter Six: 1981
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten: 1999
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen: 1969: Nico
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen: 1969: Nico
Chapter Twenty: 1999
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two: 2000
Recent Titles by Sarah Harrison from Severn House
A DANGEROUS THING
THE DIVIDED HEART
THE NEXT ROOM
THE RED DRESS
ROSE PETAL SOUP
MATTERS ARISING
RETURNING THE FAVOUR
SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS
THE ROSE IN WINTER
LOVE IN A MIST
LOVE IN A MIST
Sarah Harrison
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain and the USA 2018 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY
This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2018 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD
Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Harrison.
The right of Sarah Harrison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8812-9 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-940-5 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-992-3 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
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ONE
1978
I’d just turned nine when this happened. For the first and only time I had been away with a friend’s family for a week in Wales, but the friend (I didn’t like her all that much) had been taken ill and we’d come home a day early. I sensed my parents were a bit flustered by the change of plan but I didn’t care – it was bliss to be back in my own bed.
Midsummer, and the night was stifling hot. Those were the days when summers seemed always to be hot, and there were still so many moths about that you had to keep the curtains tightly drawn when you had the light on. Unless of course you liked moths, which I didn’t. Their nasty fluffy bodies and their frantic flittering and bumbling around the lampshade horrified me, and if one blundered against my face I would scream and leap out of bed, arms flailing. Daddy longlegs were nearly as bad, trailing their wobbly, purposeless cotton-thread limbs all over the place.
I was reading one of my many books about a girl with a jolly dog and a sweet old pony. Petunia, my prized birthday cabbage patch doll was tucked in next to me. Zinny (I’d always called my mother by her Christian name) had come upstairs an hour ago to say goodnight but I hadn’t been able to sleep, and I soon turned the lamp on again. It was much later when I finished the book. The girl had realized that she was going to have to get another pony if she wanted to win at shows, but that she would never get rid of her faithful old friend, the one who’d taught her to ride. I’d read it many times before but I liked the familiarity, the book’s world of gentle tests and healthy challenges sturdily met; the girl’s occasional lapses into, and recoveries from, selfish ambition; the cosy anticipation of a happy and improving ending. There were other stories about the same girl – not in real time; she always stayed the same – and I had all of them on my shelf.
I put the book on my bedside table and turned the lamp off. All the internal doors were open to let the air circulate and I could just make out the lowered voices of my parents on the downstairs verandah. No sound of the sea tonight, but I could imagine the smooth, oily waves creeping forward on to the beach, delivering a tiny ‘spit’, and drawing silkily back over the shiny sand and little stones. During a lull in my parents’ conversation I heard something else – a soft rattle and click, like a window or a cupboard door, and a brisk tread – my father’s – came to the foot of the stairs and paused for a moment before going back to the verandah. I heard him say ‘Nothing … out for the count …’ and thought he meant me.
Our house was a sort of bungalow, but one which crept up the hill, so it was on two levels. The higher, back level consisted of my room and the spare bedroom, with a small bathroom in between. A short flight of stairs led down to the lower floor which was effectively a large flat with my parents’ room (they had their own bathroom), the kitchen and cloakroom, and the big living room which ran across the front of the house with a glass door opening on to the verandah. The house was 1920s, and Zinny used to say it looked like a cricket pavilion, a simile I didn’t understand as a child, but came to recognize as accurate.
Outside the back rooms a narrow stone-flagged area ran the width of the house, with a parapet, no more than two feet high and topped with coping, on the far side. Beyond that the grassy cliff-top hill rose smoothly to the road half a mile away. What we thought of as ‘our’ lane, which looped down past us and on over the next headland, was at night like Alfred Noyes’ ‘ribbon of moonlight’, and I often imagined the highwayman riding … riding … riding … on his way to his tryst with Bess.
Picturing this now made the air in the room seem even stuffier. I got out of bed and hauled first one curtain back, then the other. The window was set quite high and I was short for my age: standing on the floor I could only just see the parapet. There was no moon tonight and the moving lights of a single car on the horizon only made it seem darker. I lifted the window latch and pushed it wide, leaving my hands on the ridge between the inner and outer sill.
And then – another hand appeared on top of mine.
The hand was spongy and large. It lay heavily on mine, holding my own in place. The back of it was spattered with freckles, the skin slippery and loose, the little finger bent inward at the first joint. It could have been a man’s or a woman’s, I couldn’t tell. The nails were broad, ridged and unkempt and I caught a sour smell in the air.
All of these observations took place in the two seconds before I shrieked and snatched – dragged – my hand away from the sill. The thick fingers clawed ineffectually, trying to hold me back, but terror made me quick and strong.
I flew to the door and down the stairs, my feet barely touching the treads, and out to the verandah. The smell here was
of sea and cigarette smoke. They’d heard me coming, because my father’s face was already turned towards me, with the smile he’d been wearing for Zinny.
‘Floss, what’s up?’ I hurtled into the protective curve of his outstretched arm. ‘Hey, come on!’
‘Bad dream I expect,’ said Zinny. My mother was always the cooler one.
‘What is it?’ he asked again, giving me a little shake, trying to see my face. ‘Poor old thing, you are in a way.’
‘I was frightened!’
He put his hands on my waist and hoisted me on to his knee. ‘What of?’
‘I thought there was something outside the window.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘A person.’
Zinny had already got to her feet. I knew, as I always did, that they were looking at each other over my head.
‘How about some hot chocolate?’
I nodded and kept my face hidden in my father’s shoulder as she went to the kitchen.
‘Now then.’ He turned my face towards his. ‘Shall I go up and take a look?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Want to come too?’
‘No.’
He stood up and put me in his chair, one of the woven outdoor chairs with cushions; the cushion was warm.
‘Don’t move a muscle.’
Terror turned to bliss as I sat there, listening to my parents, one upstairs, one in the kitchen, both ministering to me. Just for once, they were apart, and I was the centre of attention. Even after the horrible hand, it was a moment of pure happiness. Zinny turned on the television in the living room and took me through to sit on the sofa. It was boring news, but the flickering picture and the voices were comforting. The newsreader said that a ‘miracle baby’ had been born. I had no idea what she meant.
My father came back down, but went to the kitchen first and said something to Zinny before turning the sound down and sitting next to me on the sofa, putting Petunia on my lap.
‘All well, nothing there. I even went out and had a scout round.’ I didn’t believe this – either part of it – but that didn’t matter for now.
‘Can I sleep in your bed?’
‘Ooh, not too sure about that …’ Zinny came back with the hot chocolate in her own big china breakfast cup, with roses on it. ‘What do you reckon, darling, can Floss go in our bed for a while?’
I knew they were exchanging looks again so I kept my head down. Then my mother said, ‘Alright, just for a while.’
My father fetched his glass from the verandah and settled down next to me again. Zinny closed the verandah door and sat in the wing-back chair she liked. There I was between them, sipping my hot drink, catered and cared for, my fright forgotten, or put in its place.
I fell asleep quickly in their wide, smooth, soft bed that smelt of Zinny. I half-woke once; it was the middle of the night, and neither of them were with me. But I heard muted voices and bumping about … the front door opening and closing … the car starting up …
I sat bolt upright then – were they leaving me on my own?
Zinny came in wearing her green silk dressing gown, her face pale and clear of make-up. Seeing me wide awake she looked startled but only for a second.
‘Come on, you should be asleep.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’ I demanded.
‘Oh, a friend of his has had a breakdown on the other side of Salting. He’s being very, very kind and going to help.’
Even then I realized this was unlikely – my parents didn’t have many friends, let alone one for whom my father would make a mercy dash in the small hours – but I knew not to expect more. I lay down, and Zinny took off her dressing gown and lay carefully down next to me in her pale-yellow nightdress. She touched her fingers to her lips, and then tapped them on my cheek.
‘Night-night, Flora.’
‘Night, Zinny.’
That’s what happened. Something – but I didn’t know what. Not for a long, long time.
TWO
1998
I may not have landed the best-paid job in the world, but I couldn’t have asked for more beautiful surroundings. Edwin Clayborne was squarely in the very English tradition of intellectual humanists who nonetheless love the Anglican church – its books and liturgy, its music, its buildings, most of all its buildings. His house in the cathedral close was itself a Georgian gem, the windows gazing calmly over the green lawns and between the glorious oaks to the leaping spires and buttresses of the minster. The great surges of tourists, and the slighter, more regular flow of clergy and worshippers came and went at an acceptable distance. He had all the beauty and none of the nuisance. I found out that was also true of his church-going. He attended services to soak up the words, both spoken and sung, untrammelled by the need to believe any of them.
I’d not been in the job long. I started in late March, and now it was mid-April and the close was a-flutter with daffodils and narcissi. Pigeons and starlings roosted on the ledges of the minster, but they had to be wary; a pair of falcons was nesting on the east tower, predatory and protected, a camera trained on them day and night. The city was proud of its falcons, even though (the camera and good binoculars revealed) the carved head below their nest was now even more grotesque with thick tears of guano.
The walk to the close from my modern flat on the outskirts of the city took half an hour. If the weather was really bad I drove, but I usually I preferred the walk, which woke me up and meant I arrived ready and firing on all cylinders. This morning was cool and bright, if anything a little too shiny, the bustling high cloud threatening rain before eleven. The first service of the day was over and the coaches had not yet begun arriving. Two clergy – the very tall Dean, and another – were in conversation by the north door. I took a small pride in being part of that select community: people who belonged in the close.
Edwin’s house was directly opposite the north prospect of the minster, at the centre of a run of five late-eighteenth-century houses. All of them were fine, but his was the prettiest. Never having been invited to do otherwise I observed the formalities, going in through the shoulder-high iron gate and up the gravel path between the two neat squares of lawn, one with a dryad birdbath, the other with a sundial. These weren’t the lightweight imitation statuary you could buy from garden centres but the real thing – heavy, mossy and gnarly. It was too early in the year to identify much else, but there was some sort of fruit tree in one corner, climbing plants over the south-facing wall, and an edging of twiggy lavender along the sides of the path.
I went up the three steps to the dark red door and pulled the iron bell-pull on the left (there was one on the right labelled ‘Garden Bell’). The uneven clangour always sounded loud and peremptory, but I was getting to be less embarrassed by that. My employer always answered the door promptly, as if he’d been watching my approach from some vantage point.
‘Hello, hello.’
‘Good morning.’
We rarely if ever used each other’s names. In fact we never called each other anything. Perhaps we were sizing each other up, getting the weight of our working relationship. I had decided to take my tone from him.
He peered out over my shoulder as I entered. ‘What’s it like? I haven’t poked my nose out yet. Hmm …’ He adopted his faux dotty professor tone. ‘We shall have rain.’
‘No, we won’t.’ I patted my shoulder bag. ‘Because I brought my brolly.’
‘Good thinking.’
We neither of us cared whether it rained or not but these little exchanges about the weather were part of our morning routine, and they seemed to amuse him.
‘The kettle is on,’ he said as I hung up my parka. ‘And the hobnobs are out.’
‘Right.’
He followed me through to the kitchen. I sometimes wondered if he fetishised this small ritual, getting everything ready so he could watch me pour the hot water into the mugs and put the biscuits on a plate.
Not that I’d have minded. I liked Edwin, very much. B
eing in his company was like blood temperature for me. We understood one another. After the interview, back on a snowy afternoon in February, I left feeling optimistic. This wasn’t vanity. I quite simply felt at home with him and he, I intuited, with me.
In the interests of due diligence I’d looked up his website. Professor Edwin Clayborne, emeritus professor of English at something-or-other hall Oxford. Now better known as E.J. Clay, author of the bestselling crime novels set in academia, two of which had received the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award. The profile picture showed him as more E.J. than Prof, the long planes of his face moodily half-lit, his overlong curly hair like live wires. A little intimidating, to be honest. In real life he was lanky and charming-looking, with bright eyes, and hands like paddles. He had slight dyspraxia – I was always having to help him open jars and fit the memory stick into the computer, that sort of thing. Which made it all the more surprising that what he liked to do in his spare time was rock-climbing. There were pictures all over the place of him outlined against one yawning void or another, wearing a harness, a helmet and a mad grin – the one reserved for these circumstances. Strange that someone who couldn’t for the life of him untie knots should be happy to entrust his life to a belaying rope. His real-life smile was a shy, retiring thing, only breaking cover occasionally. When it did, it completely changed his face so that he looked ten years younger. From reading his website, and from odd references, I supposed him to be in his early fifties, but the twenty-odd years’ disparity in our ages was compensated for by our complementary skill-sets: Edwin could quote from Beowulf and write bestselling novels, and I could change the strip light over the cooker.
I wouldn’t want to give the impression that he was one of those stereotypical brilliant-but-no-common-sense people. He gave everything the attention that was its due. From what I could tell he was in demand socially (though I suppose being a distinguished professor and bestselling author is a useful entrée), and from time to time I would be despatched to the posher of the local supermarkets to pick up a list of high-end convenience food. He could make an omelette Arnold Bennett, he told me, and when I said I’d never heard of that he made one for lunch, and very nice it was. People came and went, and invitations appeared on the mantlepiece.
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