Snow Sisters

by Carol Lovekin

  Verity held her book closer until her nose was touching it, let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘Meredith, please? I’m reading.’ Her legs stretched along the cushions on the window seat. Out on the terrace sparrows pecked in the gaps between the paving stones. It was cold and her breath misted the window.

  The sitting room was spacious and in spite of a shabby veneer, still elegant. A pretty chandelier hung from a central rose, crystal lustres hanging in looped ropes. The walls were lined with books and pictures, a small grandfather clock, this one keeping time.

  Meredith’s eyes were wide with challenge. ‘I know. I’m making conversation.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. There’s no point.’

  ‘Why? Because she was mad?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I’m not. She was an outsider, Verity. People don’t see outsiders.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They said she was mad. She wasn’t though, she wasn’t old enough. Going mad takes time.’

  ‘You’re obsessed.’

  ‘She was mad, only she wasn’t, and that’s the point. There’s a difference between being mad and being driven mad.’

  ‘You don’t have to make things up to get my attention.’

  ‘Get your attention? Oh for goodness sake – listen to yourself. They locked her up! It doesn’t get much crazier than that.’ Meredith’s face froze. There was anger in what she left out: a glittering chaos.

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I do – I feel it. No wonder she went mad.’

  ‘You have to stop this, Meri.’ Verity tried not to shout. ‘It isn’t real.’

  ‘It is though. Don’t you see? Before, she didn’t know how to come back and now, somehow she does.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense is all I’m saying.

  ‘I can hear how sad she is.’ Meredith carried on as if Verity hadn’t spoken. ‘Although I still can’t make out every word.’

  Verity stared fixedly at her book.

  ‘All right,’ Meredith said. ‘If you don’t want to talk about Angharad, can we talk about our stories? Like we agreed? Or are you reneging on your promise?’

  ‘Oh, stop showing off, Meri. And do I have to put up a notice to get you to leave me alone?’

  Clearly she did. Meredith rattled on and Verity knew her sister wouldn’t give up until she had her full attention.

  ‘I know you don’t believe me, Verity, I don’t care. I know she’s real.’ Meredith pushed her sister’s legs off the window seat. ‘It’s very, very cold in my room now, a sure sign of a ghost.’

  Irritated, Verity snapped back. ‘No. It’s a sign we’re in for an unusually cold spell, and April’s acting strangely.’ She rubbed the windowpane with her fingers. ‘It still might snow.’

  ‘Well, that too.’

  If Verity thought she’d distracted her sister, she was mistaken.

  Meredith leaned against the window frame, her notebook clutched in her hand. ‘What if I told you, I’ve started writing mine down now only with an element of surprise?’ She flicked through the pages and Verity caught a glimpse of scribbles.

  ‘I’d say well done, and now can I get on with my book?’

  ‘Verity, listen. I’m sort of managing to actually write a story, only because it’s mixed up with hers, it’s difficult.’

  ‘Meredith, what are you talking about?’

  Ignoring her, Meredith demanded to know if Verity had written any more of her own story.

  ‘You are kidding? You didn’t think I was actually going to do it did you? I told you, it’s a stupid idea.’

  Meredith’s face fell. ‘Sometimes, Verity Pryce, I suspect you actually hate me.’

  ‘Oh, stop it; I do not hate you. You do my head in, that’s all. And even if I did hate you, can you blame me? I told you I didn’t want anything to do with your ridiculous scheme only you never listen. You’re just like Allegra. Honest to goodness, sometimes it’s like I’m completely invisible in this house!’

  Meredith sniffed.

  ‘And don’t you dare start crying.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. I’m sorry. You aren’t invisible. And I’m sorry Mam’s so mean to you.’

  ‘Do we have to talk about her?’

  ‘All right, I’ve said I’m sorry. Can’t I at least tell you what I’ve managed to write?’

  Verity set her book aside. ‘If I say yes, will you leave me alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Do you mean it?’

  Outside, the sparrows flew up in a busy mob.

  ‘Yes.’ Verity felt a shiver run through her.

  Her sister flicked the pages of the crumpled notebook. ‘Actually, there’s not a lot. It’s too muddled. The thing is she’s trying to tell me her story.’

  ‘Who is?’

  Meredith growled and slapped a hand against her head. ‘Why do you have to be so obtuse?’

  Verity couldn’t help herself. She laughed out loud. ‘Where on earth do you get these impossible words from?’

  ‘Crossword puzzle.’ Meredith grinned. ‘Allegra’s started doing them in some magazine, the easy ones with the answers in the back. And then I looked it up in the dictionary. It means dense.’

  Still trying not to laugh, Verity said, yes, she knew what it meant and if Meredith wanted to tell her about the mad girl, she was all ears.

  ‘I don’t want to call her that anymore. Nain’s right, it’s horrible,’ Meredith said. ‘And I agree with her. Angharad was terribly sad and angry because something bad happened to her and she wants to tell me what it was.’

  ‘Oh, Meredith, you don’t really believe that, do you?’

  Meredith folded her arms across her chest. ‘See, I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘How could a dead girl be talking to you? This is just you, being you. You’re always making stuff up.’

  ‘And you’re a complete idiot.’ Meredith flicked her hand at Verity’s book, caught the edge and it fell to the floor, landing upside-down. ‘You don’t know anything.’

  ‘You little bitch!’

  ‘If I’m a bitch then you’re a cow; a nasty, stupid, fat cow.’

  Furious, Verity lashed out and slapped her sister’s hand. ‘That’s for ruining my book!’

  Meredith shrieked. ‘You do hate me.’ She broke into sobs and instantly, Verity tried to pull her into an embrace.

  ‘I’m sorry, Meri, I didn’t mean it.’ Meredith struggled. Verity wouldn’t let her go. ‘Well, I did, about the book – I’m sorry I slapped you.’ She felt her sister slump, took hold of her hand. ‘Here, let me see.’

  And Meredith did and it wasn’t as bad as it looked or, Verity suspected, felt.

  ‘I’m sorry, truly, I am,’ Verity said stroking her sister’s hand, ‘only you can’t do things like that. It’s a library book.’

  ‘Be all right if it wasn’t then?’

  Verity drew Meredith closer. ‘No, it’s never all right to mistreat a book.’

  ‘And it’s never all right to not believe me either.’

  ‘And it’s never all right to call me a nasty fat cow.’

  ‘I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I know. All right, I’ll listen. Shall we go for a walk? Get out of here for a bit?’

  ‘Can we go to the ruin?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Not the beach?’

  ‘Not the beach.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like the beach.’

  ‘I know,’ Verity said.

  You want to feel safe and you’ve always been a bit scared of the water.

  ‘We’ll go to the beach next time.’

  I was rarely allowed out alone and must always have a chaperone to protect me from imagined influences, occasionally a housemaid, more often the despised governess who accompanied me on dull walks through the lanes.

  Other than the walled garden my only sanctuary was the wood. I employed a level
of stealth to fashion my small freedoms, telling Mama I needed specimens for my botany lessons or some quiet time to learn the set poetry which I must have by heart.

  The wood was silent and concealing.

  One day I came across a stone dwelling – some sort of gamekeeper’s hut, abandoned for years, the last man let go by my grandfather. A low door hung off its hinges and threadbare leaves as old as the year skittered across the earth floor. When I first came across it, it was a squalid place; a single room with a small fireplace in which soot and the remains of a rooks nest lay. Although several tiles were missing from the roof, and when it rained they leaked, the walls were largely intact.

  Over time I made the place habitable. I stole a tinderbox from the kitchen and learned to make fire. From the pantry I helped myself to a cup, a dish, a pan and a knife. I filched bread and apples, the occasional egg and slice of cake. Later, I smuggled an old blanket out of the house. I took a few of my favourite books too and in the quiet of my retreat, snatched an hour here and there where I could be alone and at peace.

  No one ever found me.

  The hut was my sanctuary and I believed myself protected there. The woodland creatures began to trust me. I made friends with a fox and the birds began to eat out of my hand.

  Eighteen

  Had Verity not been patient, the earlier argument with her sister might well have continued into the evening.

  Meredith was quite capable of extending even the briefest of rows into hours of sulking resentment.

  ‘If you don’t like me, there’s no one else. Only Nain.’

  ‘Oh, Meri, of course I like you.’

  ‘Liking and loving isn’t the same thing.’

  I don’t think it’s as simple as like or dislike or even love… Your mother is damaged…

  ‘You think I don’t love you? We all love you. And Mam adores you.’

  Meredith strode ahead of her sister. ‘It’s still not the same.’ She walked by the hen house, waving and calling to the chickens, past the fruit cage, making for the trees.

  Behind Gull House the wood stretched for miles. They’d played in it their whole lives and no one had dissuaded them from exploring.

  ‘You mind yourselves,’ was all Mared ever said. ‘And don’t eat anything you aren’t sure of.’

  They created a secret path – complex and winding, a mystery to the uninitiated and deliberately so – they looked upon it as their personal right of way. Small signposts marked the way: a hummock, a fallen branch; a lump of stone thrown up in the past.

  ‘Second stone on the right,’ Meredith said, as they walked in, ‘and straight on ’til morning.’

  Peter Pan was one of her favourite stories. (It wasn’t only boys who ended up lost.)

  Once, years before, they had ventured to the other side of the wood and found a view of the hills, the sky like a magic carpet unrolling into the faraway. It looked to them like another country. They didn’t go again. Deep in the wood they knew they belonged and it was enough.

  It was still cold. Far too cold for April although the sun shone brightly, catching on the moist new green creating an illusion of otherworld magic.

  Meredith always came prepared. On their way out she’d raided the pantry, found some cake; sneaked a couple of biscuits. She left the cake in the cleft of a thin twisted oak, taking the biscuits to the ruined hut.

  ‘The Other are everywhere,’ she said, her voice suitably solemn. ‘Nain says they aren’t the same as garden fairies. They’re more important, so better safe than sorry and always bring a gift.’

  If the stories Nain conjured for them were straightforward, Meredith imagined tales of a very different kind, perfect for the deep dark wood. She invented creatures with names: a good witch called Mrs Belladonna and her animal children: a fox called Roux, a hedgehog named Pin. Birds sang to Mrs Belladonna as she attended to her children and her chores.

  ‘There are bad spirits too,’ Meredith insisted. ‘Their leader is Stinky Minky, he has eyes made from holly berries and he ties up his boots with deadly nightshade roots.’

  They walked in single file, the path as narrow as a rabbit trail, until they emerged at a small clearing. What had once been some sort of gamekeeper’s bolthole was no more than a shell, a ruin of moss-covered stones, the remaining walls barely supporting a rotted doorframe and skeleton chimney. Inside, several ash trees had taken root in the rubble.

  ‘Do you suppose Angharad ever came here?’ Meredith pushed aside a curtain of ivy obscuring the doorway.

  ‘She lived in the house; she might have found her way here.’

  ‘And if she was lonely and had no friends, she would have wanted somewhere for herself.’ Meredith crumbled the biscuits and sprinkled them on the stone hearth. ‘Perhaps she pretended to give parties, with musicians, and her guests danced the night away.’ She turned and took hold of Verity’s hand. ‘Are you sure you aren’t still cross with me?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘And you don’t think I’m making it up; about the ghost?’

  Verity smiled. ‘I’m not sure about that. You’ll have to convince me, and make a good job of it too.’ She patted the mossy stone of the broken wall. ‘So come on then, tell me about your ghost.’

  Verity wasn’t particularly brave, neither was she a coward. She wasn’t afraid of the wood although she knew it would be a mistake to venture into it in the middle of the night, or during a storm. Wary and respectful of foxes, she guessed that, like the birds, they were clever and smart and understood things humans had no inkling of. She was practical to her core. Although she half-believed in fairies, and that the moths Meredith told her aboutsoothed her sister’s dreams, what she had never believed in was ghosts.

  Sitting on the ruined wall with the afternoon shadows gathering, listening to Meredith, she discovered she was frightened.

  ‘I trust my heart far more than my head,’ Meredith said, her voice full of wonder. ‘I do believe what Nain told me about the Other but the stuff I make up about fairy creatures is for fun.’ She took a deep breath. ‘This is different. It’s tragic. It comes in waves, like she’s putting the words in my head and I try and remember and write them down, only I can’t keep up.’ She hadn’t taken her eyes off her sister. ‘Do you want me to tell you what she’s said so far?’

  Verity didn’t.

  Except I’m beginning to have a sneaking feeling it might be true.

  She knew when her sister was lying. This wasn’t one of those times.

  ‘Have you actually seen anything?’ The trees rustled and Verity shivered and it wasn’t only because it was far too cold for April.

  Meredith picked at the moss on the wall. ‘People always want to know if you’ve seen a ghost when the question is, have you heard one.’

  ‘Well, have you?’

  ‘Yes, Verity. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

  Nineteen

  Back at the house, Meredith dragged Verity up to her bedroom.

  ‘Can’t you feel it? How cold it is? It’s really, really freezing.’

  It was; even for Verity, who hardly ever felt the cold. ‘And you honestly believe it’s because of a ghost?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘And yet you say you can’t see her?’ Verity stood by the open window, watching the mist settle on the sea not wanting her sister to see how anxious she was. Meredith’s infatuations, normally a pain, were beginning to seriously concern her. Fantastical though Angharad’s story sounded, a whisper at the back of her mind told Verity it was true, and that a ghost was talking to her sister.

  Meredith made a groaning noise.

  ‘You still aren’t listening to me properly.’

  ‘I am. I promise.’

  All at once the idea of a ghost in her grandmother’s house felt like a violation. The only magic Verity trusted was the benign sort. A ghost was another kind altogether and suggested something far more malevolent than fairies and woodland guardians.

  She turned away
from the window. ‘And you think it’s her – Angharad? In the house?’

  Meredith nodded her head, making her tangled curls bounce like burnished dandelion clocks. ‘I’m almost sure.’ She paused. ‘I’m pretty sure I can hear her, only what if it is my imagination and I’m as mad as they said Angharad was?’ Meredith looked up. ‘She was here before, I swear; this morning.’

  Verity shivered. ‘It is very cold in here, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘But you still don’t want to believe me.’

  I know when she’s lying … this isn’t one of those times…

  Playing for time, Verity said, ‘Meri, are you sure you believe you?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Anyway, I do. And so long as I don’t fall asleep and it’s dark, I can hear her.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘Not saying exactly, whispering. I don’t know. Sometimes I can hardly hear a thing. Then it’s as clear a bell and she’s saying how the house looked and how her brother was cruel and her father wouldn’t let her go to school. She was afraid of the sea too – the way I am.’

  Verity frowned. ‘And you can hear her saying this?’

  ‘She asked me if I was brave enough to hear her story and says she’s telling me so she’ll be remembered.’

  ‘You’re sure you aren’t imagining it?’

  ‘I’m dreaming some of it and I don’t like those bits. She sounds different; angrier and I can’t understand her.’ Meredith hesitated. ‘When I’m not asleep she makes more sense, so I pinch myself and try to stay awake.’ She swallowed and rubbed her arm.

  ‘You pinch yourself to stay awake?’ Verity was appalled. ‘Meri, that’s awful.’

  Taking hold of her sister’s arm she pushed up the sleeve of her cardigan. There were small bruises on the inside of her forearm.

  Verity stared at them. ‘You did this to yourself?’

  Meredith whimpered. ‘Don’t be cross.’

  ‘You pinch yourself because the ghost of a girl who died a hundred years ago is trying to talk to you in your dreams and it scares you?’

  Meredith tried to pull her arm away. ‘It’s not her fault. And I’m not scared.’