The condemned girls ate a hearty meal.
They mounted one last campaign, born of desperation.
Allegra’s voice took on a borrowed authority and as she planned and packed, she glittered and glowed and was interested only in her own future. There was no stopping her.
In Rapunzel’s room they found her picking through canvases.
‘If you’d only talk it over with us,’ Verity said, choosing her words with care. ‘Listen to us?’
Meredith threw caution out with the ashes from the fire and wept, no longer caring if Allegra thought she’d won. ‘Mam, please don’t do this to us. How can you? How can you be so heartless?’
Allegra simply looked pained and carried on, flicking through her paintings, setting one or two aside. ‘Meredith, you aren’t being rational. I told you, it’ll be good for us.’
‘For you! It will be good for you! Except it won’t and you’re too stupid to see it. He’s got you exactly where he wants you, mostly in bed!’
Taken aback, Allegra took in a long, hissing breath. It was Meredith who had spoken, but when she drew her next battle lines it wasn’t her youngest daughter she had in her sights.
Eyes narrowed, she fixed her attention on Verity. ‘So, that’s what this is about. Ha! You’re jealous!’ She moved her head and her long neck stretched even further. ‘What nastiness have you been filling your sister’s head with?’
‘How many times…? I haven’t said anything. And Meri’s not blind. She’s right. You’re disgusting.’
Meredith wailed and said it was true; Verity didn’t need to say anything and they weren’t stupid. They knew exactly what was going on. She hovered in the doorway, shaking with rage. ‘You stink of him.’
If Allegra was shocked she didn’t show it. Instead, she kept her eye firmly on Verity. ‘Why do you hate me so much?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, not this again,’ Verity said. ‘I don’t. It’s like you hate us, Mam. Our feelings obviously don’t mean a thing to you but we’re children, we can’t fight you. It doesn’t mean we have to like what you’re doing.’ She paused. ‘Any of it.’
Meredith held her hands to her mouth. Allegra pushed past her, turned and paused, one hand raised. ‘That’s enough from both of you. I’m done with this. It’s ridiculous. You’ll adapt. It’s what people do.’ She glared at Meredith. ‘And I can’t believe you of all people would behave this way. What’s happened to you, Meredith? We could be so happy – if you’d only open your mind.’
She smiled then and it cut through Verity like a blade. Her mother smiled this way when she wanted to impress people.
‘Stop it!’ Verity snarled and clenched her fists. ‘It won’t work. We don’t want your pathetic, second-hand longings or your pointless promises.’
Allegra looked genuinely bemused and Verity realised, her mother had no idea what she was talking about.
‘You’re delusional,’ she said. ‘Besotted by a man who is so obviously going to leave you.’
Meredith was sobbing bitterly now.
Verity tried to pacify her and was thrown off.
‘You’re right. She does hate us.’ Meredith whirled on her mother. ‘You do, and if we leave here we won’t come back; and I have to be here, at least until I know.’
‘What do you mean? Know what?’
Verity saw her sister’s pain and knew where it came from.
Ghost…
Meredith fled, and curled into one of the giant linen cupboards on the landing, the way she used to when she was a little girl.
It took her sister an hour to find her.
‘Will you read to me?’
She could see Verity was oddly touched by the request.
‘Of course, I will. Your wish is my command.’
Meredith thought about wishes and the only one she would ever make again, and how even her clever sister with her kind heart couldn’t make it so they didn’t have to leave Gull House. She smiled and said thank you, curled up beside Verity and put her wish into a corner of her heart; later she would place it in the fishing net and look for a shooting star.
‘Meredith is in pieces. Her heart is breaking.’
‘Now who’s being dramatic?’ Allegra wrapped random items of crockery in newspaper and threw them into a box. ‘Meredith will be fine and of course we’re coming back.’
They both knew this was a lie.
‘Don’t be so bloody obstructive. I told you, you’re being ridiculous, both of you. I’m not going to discuss it anymore.’
‘What does Nain say?’
‘Mared doesn’t care. She wants us to be happy.’
She wants us to be safe.
‘It’ll be an adventure.’
If she says it enough; she’ll believe it.
When Verity telephoned, Mared tried her best to reassure her. ‘It’s a whim, lovely. You know what she’s like. And it will be so good to have you here for a while. I know it’ll be a squash and you girls will have to share but we’ll manage.’
It wasn’t a whim. Verity knew exactly what her mother was up to. Her grandmother knew it too.
‘Why can’t we stay here, Nain? We’d be all right.’
‘Oh sweetheart, you know that’s not possible. You’re far too young.’
‘I’m almost sixteen.’ It was a forlorn hope and died as quickly as it was born. ‘What will happen to the house?’
‘The house will be fine. It’ll be closed up for the time being. And when your mother’s got this nonsense out of her system, then you’ll go home.’
As it became apparent there would be no reprieve, the endeavour turned into a full-scale panic – a scramble to salvage the things they valued and desired.
Meredith refused to pack so much as a sock. Whereas before she had been angry and vocal, now she was diminished. In her head what was happening wasn’t possible. The plans Allegra made were for another family, a family with different names. They would wake up at some point in the same house; get on with their familiar lives, everything they knew in its rightful place. The other family with other names would be the ones to leave.
As if the horror of the last argument hadn’t happened, Allegra became elated.
‘It’s an adventure and that’s the only way to look at it,’ she insisted. ‘Look forward and wait and see what happens next!’
Verity and Meredith knew they would never be ready for what happened next.
‘I know you’re sad, Meri.’
‘The word doesn’t exist for how I am.’
It was late and, too wretched to read, they lay in Meredith’s bed. She wanted to see if the moths would come back if she slept in her own room. She didn’t want to sleep by herself unless they did and had persuaded Verity to move in with her. In her clenched fist she held the red flannel heart.
‘All the words have gone,’ she said. ‘Like the birds and the ghost. And the moths.’
‘Try and sleep.’ Verity stroked her sister’s arm, buried her face in the mass of her hair. It smelled of chamomile and bewilderment.
Meredith sighed and closed her eyes. Not expecting to dream, she did and the ghost’s voice filled her mind again, this time with a mixture of hope and horror.
Shaking her sister awake, she whispered in her ear.
‘She’s back. She was braver than us,’ Meredith said. ‘She ran away.’
I inhabited my own world because why would I choose to be in theirs?
In order to draw as little attention to myself as possible, I learned to breathe quietly. I was practically mute and they thought me harmless. It isn’t possible to become completely invisible; the trick is to fade, to think yourself unremarkable. After a while I was no longer considered a liability and they became complacent.
With each passing day the memory made from the brush of a finger and the faint beat of her heart imprinted on mine. My heartache became an anger stinging like a thousand wasps.
They thought I had forgotten. They were wrong. I remembered everything and althoug
h I had put my mother from my mind, I still occasionally dreamed of her, wondered what could have caused her to abandon me. Even knowing how making fallen women invisible was a social imperative, it still felt like a thin excuse and unworthy of any mother.
I hadn’t fallen; I had been pushed aside and then discarded.
As plans go, mine was rudimentary. If I was patient, I believed an opportunity would present itself. I made no trouble and as the weeks turned into months, I became unremarkable. My watcher was a drunkard: brutalised and occasionally brutal but mostly lazy. When the time came it wasn’t difficult to give her the slip.
One night a storm came in from the north. I knew these storms well and how this one was likely to play out. It was fierce, full of menace and although it didn’t last long, while it did it was a blessing. Distracted by the thunder and lightning, afraid and taking to her bottle, my watcher took her eye off me long enough for me to see my chance and seize it.
A set of keys, a stolen cloak and like a ghost I was gone – through unlit night corridors, out through a side door.
I fled into the night, enclosed by the kindness of a storm.
Knowing unless I went to ground quickly, I would soon be found, I ran. I knew I couldn’t go far and also that I wasn’t far from Gull House. Over the course of two days, I walked by night and slept in the shadows during the day, until eventually I found myself in the familiar wood and at the old hut.
The sun shone through the trees making patterns on the woodland floor. Inside the hut the light changed, the shadows lengthened and I was finally safe.
It was colder even than the desolate chill of the asylum and at first I struggled to keep warm. Night sounds were different from day ones and frightened me. There was an intensity to the air at night; the wind bit deep and hurt my skin.
A few basic things remained: the tinder box, a cup, a dish and a knife. Tea leaves in a rusty canister. I risked a fire, boiled water I collected from a stream, and although it was stale the tea tasted delicious and warmed my shivering body.
The blankets were damp and mouldy. I hung them out and although they took days to dry out, they were enough.
What mattered was I was free. My old hurt mind squeezed closed and another new version of my psyche took hold.
Present
Returning to the house, I shiver, knowing I must finish what I’ve begun.
My sandals tap on the wooden floor. The stairs are bare, the carpet taken up and stored. I place one foot on the first step. On the bannister, my hand feels sweaty, sticks on the smooth wood.
I walk past Allegra’s room. I have no interest in it. There was always something helpless about the chaos my mother surrounded herself with, as if she was waiting for someone else to bring order. When the man arrived, and she allowed him to stay, we heard them: the bed creaking, her small cries which we closed our ears to.
Taking a deep breath I open the door to my bedroom. It is almost more than I can bear. Memory floods my mind and I see myself, packing my things, choosing randomly because Allegra was screaming and there was no time.
A blanket of dust lies undisturbed: a layer of grief, like lost hope and once more I’m close to tears. My clothes are gone of course, and most of the books too, although not all of them. A line, slanted and tired, still sits on the windowsill. I fear they will be spoiled, and so it proves: all but one are curled and slightly swollen.
In the end, Gull House has been no match for twenty years of Welsh damp.
The exception is the Dodie Smith, my own copy; I took the other one back.
You have good taste … good girl, no fines…
Would Miss Jenkins have been pleased with me? Would it have made her happy that I had claimed my right to an education, read the books? (I have become quite an authority on feminist theory.)
My bed remains, still facing the window and the sea. It is a child’s bed and looks small and lost. The silence is unnerving, I can’t stand it and walk out. Hovering on the landing, I touch the solid wood of my sister’s bedroom door. The grain looks deeper, the door smaller. In the central panel I can see the letter ‘M’ etched into the wood.
When had she done this, for it must surely be Meredith’s handiwork?
Trembling, my hand hovers on the brass doorknob. Closing my eyes, for a moment I’m tempted to run. Back to London, to Carla, abandon Gull House and consign it to memory.
There was nothing for me …I said there wouldn’t be…
It would be easy to make her believe me – it wouldn’t occur to Carla I would lie to her.
Hesitating, I understand why I’m so reluctant to go into her room. Once I take Meredith out of the house, the garden or the beach or the wood, I have to place her in London and spoil her happiness; remove the magic from both our lives. I’m not sure I can face having the sweetness of her cobwebbed by the passage of time.
Fifty
Allegra was high as a kite, the packing deranged and nothing made sense.
She was wilful in her unreasoning haste and they left in such a hurry, precious things were abandoned.
‘Please, Mam, you have to let me.’ Meredith wailed her despair at being told there was no time to dismantle Mared’s doll house.
‘There’s no room in Gethin’s flat,’ Allegra said. ‘Don’t be selfish.’
The days were an endless succession of catastrophes. One day the chickens disappeared and Meredith’s anguish when she discovered her mother had sold them to a neighbour boiled over into fury. She flew at Allegra, clawing her face and Verity had to drag her off.
The man appeared briefly, with a van, and although he was polite to them, Verity sensed his underlying hostility. She took to following them again; listening at doors for hints because her instinct told her that this man, unlike the others, had an agenda. On the terrace outside the sitting room she slid her body into the embrace of the wisteria’s great trunk.
‘It’s better this way.’ His voice was smooth. ‘Why stay with your mother when she’s clearly so set against us? The girls will be fine with her, until we find something more suitable. The place I’ve found for us is perfect. Wait until you see it.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘There’s enough light?’
‘As much light as you need. You’re going to do your best work in London, I know it.’ He lowered his voice and Verity held her breath.
‘And about the other thing … it’s not as if you’re attached to this place … not as if you’ll need it … once you make your name … imagine what you could do with the money…’
It was all Verity could do not to burst into the room and confront him.
He hung around, helped with the smaller pieces of furniture Allegra insisted on taking; sorted her painting things, took them – and the new canvases – away with him.
When he left he kissed her too lightly and when her mother clung to him, Verity thought she saw a look of irritation cross his face.
‘Call me?’
He nodded, extracted himself and Verity felt her blood run cold.
‘What makes you think you’ll be allowed to sell my grandmother’s house behind her back?’
‘What are you talking about?’
Her mother dragged laundry off the wooden rack.
‘I heard you.’
‘Listening at doors again, Verity. You know what they say about eavesdroppers.’ Allegra threw clothes and pillowslips and underwear onto one of the cane chairs; began folding things, randomly without noticing what she was doing, her back to Verity.
‘It wasn’t about me though, was it? It was about you.’ Verity came closer. ‘Can’t you see? He’s not interested in you. He wants the house, or the money he thinks it’ll make.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m not – you are. Nain will never sell Gull House. She promised us when we were little girls. I remember, she said it would be over her dead body.’
Her mother’s face had paled to a ghost’s pallo
r. ‘Shut up.’ Her voice was low, yet still with a shrill edge, and behind it Verity heard panic. ‘I’ve warned you before, Verity, about undermining me. You will not wreck my life. I won’t allow it.’
‘No, but you’re perfectly happy to wreck ours. And by the look of things, you’re making a pretty good job of destroying your own.’
‘Enough.’ Allegra banged her hands on the back of the chair and the pile of clothes wobbled; a slip slid to the ground in slow motion, landing in a pool on the floor.
Allegra stared at it and without lifting her head, said, ‘Pack the rest of your things today, and make sure your sister does the same.’
Verity saw nothing she wanted to take with her. Her things belonged here. Beaten by her mother’s refusal to face the truth, she threw a few clothes into a suitcase.
It was different for Meredith.
In her indignation at what she saw as Verity’s defection, she screamed at her. ‘You’re supposed to be on my side. Why are you packing?’
‘There is no side, Meri. There’s no choice either. We’re children.’
‘Stop saying that! As if being children makes us incapable…’
Verity shook her head. ‘That’s just it. It does. What is it you think we can do?’
‘Stop her.’
‘We’ve tried. You know we have. I don’t know what else there is.’
Outside, the sky darkened, and fierce clouds swallowed the day.
Fifty-one
Meredith lay in bed with moonlight on her eyelids and moths haloed round her hair.
Convinced they didn’t know where she was, determined to be brave, she’d started sleeping in her own bedroom by herself.
For a sweet second, their return delighted her.
Wrinkling her nose, she breathed in. The air gave off a sour smell. The cold struck her face and she snatched at it, thinking a web brushed against her skin. A draught crept from somewhere. This was a dependable, sturdy house with no gaps and no ill-fitting windows. Where did the draught come from?
The room had turned icy again, the way it had been a few weeks before.
As she climbed out of bed, the moths scattered. Crossing to the door she ran her hand round the frame feeling for a draught. She reached for the doorknob. It refused to turn. She tried it again, the door held fast and she noticed the key was missing.
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