Peering through the keyhole she caught a glimmer of light then a shadow across the gap, blocking it.
‘Who’s there? Is that you, Verity?’
No one answered.
She called out again. ‘Verity, where are you? I’m locked in my room.’
When there was still no answer, she shouted, rattled the knob and peered through the keyhole again. This time the light was completely blocked as if someone stood there. ‘It isn’t funny, Verity.’
Badly frightened now, Meredith backed away from the door. Her heart thudded in her chest and she bit her lip to stop herself from crying out. On the other side of the door she heard a noise, let out a sound that was half gasp and half scream.
‘Meredith?’
‘I’m here. I’m locked in. I can’t find the key.’
‘It’s all right, I’ve got it. Be quiet, you’ll wake Allegra.’
Meredith heard the rasp as the key turned in the lock. Verity stood in the doorway, the light from the moonlit window streaming down the landing behind her, real and substantial, the key in her hand.
‘I found it on the floor. What’s going on?’
Meredith flung herself into her sister’s arms. ‘I don’t know. I woke up and the moths were back and then there was a smell and the horrible cold again.’ She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. ‘The key was there, I swear it was; it’s always there, and then it wasn’t and the door was locked from the outside.’
‘Well, I’m here now and you’re safe. Shush, it’s okay. Quiet now.’ Verity pulled her sister close. ‘Come on, you’re all right. I’m here.’ She led Meredith to the bed, sat her down; stroked her hair. As the worst of Meredith’s fear subsided, she told Verity what had happened.
‘How weird, it doesn’t make sense.’
‘The door was locked, Verity. Don’t pretend it wasn’t.’
‘I’m not. I unlocked it, remember?’
‘It’s her. It’s Angharad. She must be back and she doesn’t want us to leave.’
Verity stroked her sister’s face. ‘Why don’t you sleep with me again tonight? If your dreams are getting bad again, I can wake you up.’
‘It won’t make any difference. I don’t have to be asleep.’
‘Do you actually believe she locked you in your room? That she’s trying to stop you leaving?’
‘She doesn’t want me to go until she’s finished telling her story. She isn’t trying to be horrible, just make sure I hear her. It’s getting harder for her, she’s so tired.’
Verity gazed at the key.
‘She’s still here.’ Meredith’s face was defiant.
‘Well, maybe. You can’t be sure…’
‘I was locked in my room,’ Meredith said. ‘So, no, she hasn’t gone. And in any case, she would have told me.’
Verity sighed. She knew her sister had a point.
‘Being locked up makes you go mad, you know.’
Verity gave a short involuntary cry and all at once, Meredith’s mood changed.
‘Oh Verity, don’t get upset, I’m not talking about me,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to get upset over because in the end, Angharad escaped and for a short time she was as free as the moths.’ Meredith managed a small smile. ‘They’ve come back.’
As if to vindicate her, a single moth fluttered behind her head, aiming for the bedside light.
‘I know what you’re thinking, Verity but a moth doesn’t know it isn’t going to live for long.’ She reached out her hand. The tiny creature skimmed her skin, dived into the shaded light and Meredith caught it and cupped it in her hands. ‘And for a while at least, they couldn’t stop Angharad being a moth either.’ She crossed the room. ‘Look.’
More moths were gathering at the window. Meredith opened it and let the captive go. Confused, caught up in the melee, for a moment it flew in frantic circles before taking off into the darkness. ‘Let’s leave another wish in the net. And I want to sleep in here. Stay with me?’
Curled into her sister’s warmth, Meredith dreamed of the blue garden, the moths and the world between the veil, and that she was finally taken by the Fae. In her place they left a well-behaved changeling child for her mother to take to London.
When she woke, she pinched her arm and knew her wish hadn’t worked.
The only thing remaining was the echoing angry voice of a sad girl driven mad.
Fifty-two
There were many ways a girl made of glass could break: storms and fierce winds, lightning strikes or simply tripping up and falling over.
Verity began to look where she was going. Meredith needed her more than ever. After the incident with the key and the brief interlude of hope when Meredith believed the ghost was back, Angharad vanished.
‘I think she’s gone again. I can’t hear her.’
Meredith was disappearing too. Verity tried to hold onto her sister, enticing her with outings to safe places like the cinema or a walk along the promenade. She tempted her with new stories, the best books the library had to offer.
Meredith no longer cared about books or films, food or dreams. She spoke only if she was spoken to, and if it was her mother, not even then. When Allegra addressed her or asked a question, Meredith stared at her and flinched as if, instead of words, she had thrown stones at her.
‘You can’t ignore me forever.’
Verity knew her mother was wrong.
Meredith had stopped believing in love and happiness; only in the power of fate. She sat in her room, watching for moths, waiting for the voice of Angharad.
When Verity told her the red heart from the grave had gone, and said it must mean the ghost had come back, Meredith’s shoulders sagged.
‘No, Verity, it means a bird took it, or a fox.’
The man finally left, for the final time he said. He would see them in London.
Allegra disappeared for hours on end, and the girls didn’t ask where she’d been because they were no longer interested. When she came back, she often appeared muddled and scattered, as if she no longer had the necessary faith in herself to accomplish the venture.
Verity found her in the conservatory, packing the last of her paints, her hands jittery, unable to choose between one bunch of brushes and another, between this or that tube of paint. It was humid and the steamed-up window panes made the place claustrophobic.
Watching her, Verity realised her mother was about to go on the run, and they would be expected to keep up.
‘This isn’t right,’ she said. ‘You know it isn’t.’
‘Don’t start again, Verity. I don’t have the energy for your craziness.’
‘You don’t have to go, Mam, is what I’m saying. And you don’t want to, do you? It’s him. The rest is a pipe dream.’
‘You don’t know what I want.’ Allegra snatched up a bunch of brushes, folded them into a canvas holder. ‘This place is a prison. I can’t be confined; it’s time to go, escape.’
‘Escape from what? You won’t have any of this in London! The views and the landscape.’
‘I have nothing! Do you hear me? If I stay, I’ll wither away and die. You could make it easy, and what do you do? Sneak behind my back, fill your sister’s head with rubbish.’
Verity’s heart pounded. She took a deep breath, afraid Allegra would hear the lie in her voice. ‘I don’t care what you say to me anymore. And it’s not as if anything Meri or I say will make a difference. You’ve won. Take a bow.’
Allegra’s eyes blazed with triumph, or maybe it was scorn: Verity no longer tried to decipher the difference. Her mother possessed a range of expressions an actor would have died for.
‘What’s the matter,’ Allegra said. ‘Can’t get your own way so throwing a hissy fit?’
The staggering hubris of this struck Verity like a blow and she burst out laughing. Even to herself she sounded a bit hysterical. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? What this place means to us and what it stands for: security and happiness and reason.’ She searched her mothe
r’s eyes.
Allegra looked down, fastened the ties on the paintbrush holder.
‘Don’t start in about Meredith again. Your sister will be fine. She’ll do as I tell her because deep down she knows I only want what’s best for her.’
‘If you say that one more time, I swear…’ Verity took a deep breath. ‘We all do as you tell us. And when have you ever done what’s best for anyone other than yourself? My way or the highway – that’s your stupid, selfish mantra, isn’t it? You don’t see us, our needs or our pain. You don’t see our loneliness, and you never, ever give us credit for accomplishing anything.’
‘Now you’re being pathetic.’ Allegra grabbed a paint easel. ‘Your sister doesn’t know what she wants and I’ll thank you not to fill her head with any more of your sentimental clap-trap and your lies! It’s a house, Verity, just a house. We can live anywhere.’
That’s things, Verity … that’s not the house… This house is special…
‘You are so wrong and if Meredith heard you saying so she’d tell you the same. It’s never been just a house.’
‘This jealousy is becoming a real thing, isn’t it?’ Allegra unscrewed the wingnuts on the easel. ‘You think you know her, but your sister isn’t a bit like you. She’s sensitive and vulnerable. You’ve always had a hard edge and it’s horribly unattractive.’
‘Is that what he says?’
Allegra’s face stilled, only her eyes giving anything away. Lying in the folds of her mother’s spite Verity saw uncertainty and confusion. She could see her own eyes looking back at her and held Allegra’s gaze, the meaning behind her mother’s words becoming clearer.
‘Unbelievable. No one else exists, do they? And don’t pretend you care about Meredith. You’ve been vile to her these past weeks, and she can’t bear to be near you.’ A line of sweat ran down her back. ‘Why do you do this, Allegra? And why do we let ourselves be manipulated? How can you not know what an evil, scheming bitch you are?’
‘How clever-clever you sound.’ Allegra said it slowly and Verity felt a quiver of unease.
She stood her ground. ‘Maybe I am clever; have you ever considered I might be more intelligent than I seem? To you or to me? Maybe if I’d been allowed to find out we might both have been surprised.’
As soon as the words were out they became true.
The heat in the conservatory overwhelmed her.
‘Whatever else happens,’ she said. ‘I swear this – I’ll show you I can be somebody.’
Verity turned to leave. Allegra grabbed her arm and Verity’s heart sank. It was like being in a falling lift shaft. She watched her mother’s face as it gave the rest away. Like an actor attempting to convey wretchedness, she clung to Verity, her grip claw-like and desperate. Verity realised she was no longer intimidated by Allegra’s drama.
‘What?’ Allegra’s voice trembled and her grip on Verity’s arm relaxed.
Verity shook her head. ‘You’re absurd. And there’s more than one kind of prison, Mam.’
Was she speaking out loud? Her heart felt so high in her throat, if she swallowed, she knew she would choke on it. Although her mother’s voice levelled, her eyes still glittered and it was only a lull. Verity guessed Allegra was gathering herself for the tipping point.
Be careful what you say now … so careful.
‘What’s the matter, Verity? Cat got your tongue?’
‘Well, she sure as sugar hasn’t got yours.’ Glaring at her arm, at her mother’s hand, Verity willed it away. ‘Look at you, Mam, scrunched up in misery trying to control everything, floundering like a fool because in spite of you; in spite of this chaos and whatever you try and make us do, eventually he’ll leave you. We’ll end up happy and you’ll be on your own.’
It was only half true. Whatever the future had in store for Verity, right then she knew her sister’s heart really was breaking.
‘What a prospect, eh, mother dear?’
Allegra faltered, as if she had run out of words.
From up in the roof, a bird neither of them had noticed flew down and Allegra ducked as if expecting an attack.
‘It won’t hurt you, Allegra, only don’t imagine you can hide. The birds listen and see and they know everything.’
Of all my prisons, the old hut was the least confining.
Here I could come and go as I pleased. Even so, the wood and the sky marked the boundary of my world and I dared not venture further for fear of discovery. Each day I expected to be discovered. Thanks to a God I no longer believed in, no one found me.
I was too filled with hate to die – not then – and at first barely noticed my hunger. Once it began to gnaw at me, I wandered the woods looking for things to eat. Ashamed at first, I stole birds’ eggs and stilled my conscience by taking only a single one from each nest I came across. I couldn’t bring myself to kill an animal; I did find a dead rabbit and made a fair job of skinning and cooking it. I foraged for the rest of my food, for mushrooms, ransoms and nuts.
Somehow I survived.
Lacking possessions and with only the clothes I wore and the stolen cloak, I made do with impersonal, less tangible things: the scent of morning, the air on my face, birdsong and the half-glimpsed faces of otherworld creatures.
I became a thing of skin and bone and revenge grew in my shrivelled heart.
Slowly the last remnants of winter passed and I was marginally warmer, but the hut was barely habitable; it was a damp, desperate, exposed existence. Before long, gloom and mildew began to surround me. Outside the door, impossibly tall nettles and deadly nightshade loomed, when it rained the dripping woods filled me with despair.
Weeks passed – maybe months – I had no way of telling, no energy to try to work it out. And I could not forget my child or the cruelty done to me. I spent my days sleeping, my nights roaming, searching for my child’s resting place.
Hunger still gnawed until after a while I became immune.
I had the blanket they caught her in. I feared the scent of her would fade, instead it grew stronger; the smell of her tiny finger and her heartbeat clung to it with the tenacity of love. It settled under my skin, made of the moment before they took her, before she could turn her face to me and I could commit it to memory.
I never saw her face…
Time slipped through the folds of my mind. I had space only for my child, for the brief, ephemeral warmth of her. The part of me still holding any meaning and which had had no chance to grow: a child conceived in hate; the best of her born in love. For I loved her more than I could say, the only human I ever had.
If I thought about my parents, it was with a heart turned to stone. I no longer cared or thought about what might have happened to them.
As for my brother – I wished him in Hell.
Present
In this room my sister encountered a ghost who at first I didn’t believe in.
We were children and my sister’s ability to draw me into her fantasies was a thing, however hard I tried, I was unable to resist. Whatever the truth, I’m now convinced Meredith felt accountable to Angharad. Somehow, by becoming privy to her story, she took on the mantle of responsibility.
I turn the doorknob and to my surprise, the door doesn’t creak or shudder. Inside the silence belies any notions of a ghost. And yet I can’t shake off the sense that what happened in nineteen seventy-nine was real, the London years made up and meaningless.
More dust, thick as blankets, covers everything. Like the ones in my room, the books she’d been forced to leave behind lie on a shelf at angles alongside a collection of Bunty annuals. Hanging on the wardrobe door is a solitary frock, a small, limp relic.
It strikes me as unutterably sad.
‘Where are you?’ My whispered question echoes in the silent, dust-laden air.
In the corner, the doll’s house stands, lonely and deserted.
Moving round the room, I begin opening vacated drawers, peering inside empty cupboards, searching for something tangible that might take me bac
k to the real past. This version has stopped in a slip of time, folded away between the pleats of our abandoned belongings and the nonsense of ghosts.
Because she always believed we would come back, our grandmother chose to leave some things as they were. Nothing moved or tidied. Our bedrooms with their abandoned belongings resemble shrines.
I sniff; there is an odd smell and it isn’t damp. It’s the scent of a cigarette and I wake from my reverie, furious at the idea that the caretaker has been inside the house after all.
‘Is there anyone there?’
I sound like an extra from a B-movie. The cane table next to the bed is bare and dusty. I stare. There are fresh fingerprints in the dust.
My breath leaves my body so slowly I can hear it.
I sit heavily on the bed. Under my hand the slippery eiderdown is like water. Turning away from the fingerprints I place my hand on the pillow, still wearing a case traced with faded yellow roses.
My grandmother teased Meredith about the things she kept under her pillow – shells and feathers, wild flowers and books.
My hand slips underneath the sad flatness of the pillow, an act of unconscious connection and I’m surprised when my fingers find something. Not a book or a forgotten feather. Sliding my hand back and forth, I feel for the note Meredith wrote to the house before we left, a last act of love.
It isn’t there.
The envelope is. It’s ripped, the edge ragged as if someone has opened it in a hurry, or in anger. Something pale detaches itself from the pillowcase and settles on my hand. It’s a moth and even in death it is perfect.
I remember believing my bones were made of glass, and I sit perfectly still, afraid I might break.
Fifty-three
A silken dawn broke over Gull House.
Inside the tension mounted, as if the fabric of the house was becoming agitated. Doors stuck, ceilings creaked, the boiler clanked and rattled. Outside, cunning winds shook windows, found gaps that before hadn’t existed.
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