Bitter Moon

by R. L. Giddings

  “Speaking of problems,” Carlotta inclined her head in the direction of the Land Rover. We walked over together and Carlotta popped the bonnet.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “You’re saying that they’re not my problem but, to be honest, I don’t think that they’re yours either.”

  “What do you mean?” I looked back at the barbecue, everyone was getting ready to eat. I was worried that there wasn’t going to be enough food to go round.

  “They don’t trust you,” Carlotta said.

  “Because they didn’t fancy Norfolk,” I laughed.

  “No, there’s more to it than that. I heard a couple of them talking. They said ‘She’s the one who killed Melissa.’ Is that true?”

  “No, it’s not.” I didn’t like the sound of that. “Was it Paula?”

  “Doesn’t matter who it was. They think you’re part of the problem. If I were you I’d give that boss of yours a ring. Let him sort it out.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “What about Millie? What did she have to say?”

  I said, “You don’t think that we’re safe here. Is that it?”

  “All I’m saying is don’t expect this lot to back you up if anything happens. One thing I’ve learnt: the pack takes care of its own: everyone else can go hang.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I’d known they’d been suspicious of me at the start but after all that had happened I thought that they’d have some trust in me. Seems that I was wrong.

  Carlotta dropped the bonnet back into place and looked straight at me.

  “Now that you’re going to stick around for a bit longer I wondered if you’d consider giving me a hand?”

  “As long as it’s nothing to do with your brother.”

  I couldn’t even bring myself to say his name.

  “It’s just that Sebastian caught up with me while you two were – you know – catching up. Said he’d consider it a personal favour if I would attend tonight’s ball.”

  With oil on her face, unkempt hair and a pair of overalls she hardly looked the part.

  She threw out her arms. “I know. I honestly can’t think of anything worse but if Sebastian is asking then mother must be really struggling.”

  “Struggling?”

  “To fend off the inquiries. Perhaps I wasn’t completely honest with you earlier. Part of the reason why everyone’s here is that they’re going to be expecting an announcement – about my father. It’s been a while since he addressed them as pack leader and a lot has changed since.”

  She assumed that Silas had told me what had happened to their father when, in reality, I knew nothing.

  “I get it,” I said. “You want to support your mother. What do you want me to do?”

  Carlotta bit her lip. “You can’t sew by any chance?”

  “No! I’m useless at that sort of thing.”

  “Only, I need to cannibalise one of my mother’s dresses. But, as you can see, I’m a good deal shorter than she is.”

  And about fifty pounds lighter. I couldn’t see how this was going to work.

  “You need some help picking something out?”

  “Yes, plus, I need some help with my hair.”

  “Okay. Hair and make-up I can do. When do you want to start?”

  Carlotta pulled open the door of the Land Rover.

  “Well, there’s no time like the present.”

  I looked longingly across at the barbecue. “Tell you what: let me just grab a couple of hot-dogs and you’re on.”

  *

  Carlotta parked at the back of the house and I followed her inside. The style of the interior was 1920s or 30s but, at some point everything had been painted an acidic yellow: the staircase, the walls, the skirting board, everything. Carlotta took the stairs two at a time and kept that pace going until we got to the third floor. There was a huge pile of old newspapers standing in one corner and on the window ledge a silver serving tray.

  The house reminded me of a sprawling hotel rather than a family home. For one thing, I couldn’t imagine how you would ever find one another. You’d have to use a bell just to summon one another for meals.

  Carlotta turned left and kept going. I had to keep my wits about me as the landing kept rising and falling without any warning, a problem which was compounded by the sharp contrast of available light, switching at times from bright natural light to near total darkness at points. Carlotta moved rather more quickly than I was comfortable with, though she had been running around the place most of her life. All the time we were on the corridor I was dreading the thought of a door opening to reveal Lady Antonia. I just didn’t know what I would say to the woman; we had so little in common. I didn’t feel comfortable being in her house and couldn’t wait to get back to the safety of the cabins.

  I was so distracted at the thought of seeing her ladyship that I nearly ran into the back of Carlotta when she stopped suddenly. She was standing on the main stairwell but her mind was elsewhere. When I turned to try and see what she was looking at all I saw was a wedge of light streaming through a crack in the doorway.

  “Is this the room?” I asked.

  Carlotta didn’t respond, she was completely transfixed, her hand held to her mouth.

  “Someone’s been in here,” she said.

  I looked again at the door. It was no different from a dozen other doors we’d passed earlier.

  “Should we go inside?”

  “We shouldn’t really,” she said dropping her hand. “It’s normally kept locked.”

  Then I understood. “Your father’s room?”

  She didn’t reply, just pushed the door open.

  There was a large picture window opposite which was half open. Inside was suffused with a sweet smell though there were no flowers in the room.

  “That’s the lime trees,” Carlotta said. “He loved the smell. Always slept with the window open.”

  We were overlooking the rear of the house, the whole estate laid out before us. Off to the right, a river twinkled in the distance. Beyond that, thick forest framed by the muted grey of the mountains.

  “Does your family own all this land?”

  “Everything but Glen Eighe. No one owns that.”

  It was a wonderful room: high ceilinged and spacious but the wallpaper had lost much of its colour over the years. There was little in the room to suggest that we weren’t still in the 30s. No TV, no radio alarm clock, no modern lighting. The bulb in the light fitting was grey black. I doubted that it even worked. The bed was a solid oak four poster though of a plain farm-house design, the bed made up with thick green blankets. Over by the window was a writing desk and beside that the only other piece of furniture in the room: a huge stand-alone wardrobe with a jacket draped over the handle as though its owner had hung it there temporarily and had never come back.

  Carlotta headed straight for it. She raised a sleeve as though afraid it might disintegrate. She pressed the cuff to her face and inhaled.

  “You don’t come in here much?”

  She shook her head, “Never. Mother keeps it locked normally.”

  I was uncertain how to continue, this was clearly as difficult for Carlotta as it was for me. I checked the door, anxious that we shouldn’t be disturbed.

  “Must be nice,” I said. “To have his things to remind you.”

  Carlotta stretched her features into a sad smile.

  “It still has his smell. Silly, I know.”

  “Oh, not at all. Do you have the ability to follow a scent? Like Silas?”

  “Not anymore. It’s one of those things we girls lose when we hit puberty.” She frowned, “I still miss it.”

  “I can imagine.” It sometimes happens to young witches. They initially show great potential and then – nothing.

  Carlotta let go of the sleeve but then couldn’t resist smoothing it back down. A flush of pleasure warmed her face.

  She caught me watching and tensed, looking about as though she couldn’t
remember what she’d come in for.

  “We’d better be going. Got a lot still to do.”

  *

  After closing the door behind us we went through a series of corridors until we found ourselves at the end of a cul-de-sac with three doors facing off. The only light came through the transom windows.

  “Whose rooms are these?” I asked.

  “They’re where my mother keeps her dresses.”

  “She has three rooms just for dresses?”

  Carlotta raised an eyebrow. “And a separate dressing room.”

  “She takes her dresses very seriously.”

  Carlotta failed to detect the tone in my voice.

  “She certainly did when she was younger. She was a proper debutante. But she hasn’t worn most of these for years. I once suggested that she donate some of them to charity. She didn’t like the sound of that.” She indicated each door in turn. “Pick a door, any door.”

  I picked the one in the middle.

  The wardrobe space ran right around the walls, even managing to obscure the one remaining window.

  “Sunlight robs them of their colour.”

  Carlotta pulled at a drawstring and a harsh fluorescent light blinked into life. There were literally hundreds of dresses.

  “She’s worn all of these?”

  “Well, most of them. She was a real belle of the ball. Before she ruined her figure in childbirth.”

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow but Carlotta just laughed. “Her words, not mine. And there is some truth in it. Giving birth to a werewolf is particularly bad for the waist-line.”

  I went over to one of the rails and pulled out a gorgeous midnight blue dress.

  “What about this one?”

  *

  We spent the afternoon trying on dresses. We had a lot of fun. There were some that had worn better than others, both in terms of quality but also in terms of fashion. It was difficult getting my head around the idea that they all belonged to one woman. It felt ridiculously self-indulgent. I couldn’t imagine having enough occasions to warrant owning so many dresses. She must have spent half of her life having them fitted.

  There were a lot of summer dresses which we dismissed almost immediately as being unsuitable but that still left us a lot of other dresses to consider. You could tell which were the older dresses often by the feel of the material but also by how tightly fitted they were. Lady Antonia must have started off with a tiny waist but then, as the years took their toll her figure had filled out. Some of the dresses had little labels on. One said “State Opening of Parliament’. I couldn’t help but be impressed.

  Carlotta’s initial summing up of the situation had been fairly accurate. If we could find a dress which would fit her in the bodice it was, invariably, much too long for her in the skirt.

  I tried a number of dresses on and they fitted me a lot better than they did her. I could see that Carlotta was becoming more and more anxious as the time went on. I’m not particularly tall but Carlotta is tiny. She could easily pass as a schoolgirl and was currently draping herself in a black taffeta dress which billowed out across her back. I was wearing a pale blue dress with a white yolk which would have looked great if I had been just a few pounds lighter.

  “Nah,” Carlotta blew out her lips. “This isn’t going to work. But hey, you look great!”

  I looked down at the dress. There was a definite roll of fat around the waistline and I pinched it.

  Carlotta slapped my hand away. “No, really. These waists are really tiny. If we could get you into a corset, you’d be fine.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Only, I’m not the one going to the ball.”

  She grabbed my arm. “Please, you’ve got to come. I can’t do this on my own.”

  “No!” I was laughing but I was adamant. “I’m not going. I can’t dance and, besides… what about Silas?”

  “You don’t need to dance when you look as good as this.”

  She started pushing my flesh in at the back as she attempted to close the zipper. “Carlotta, no! We’re supposed to be looking for you.”

  She pushed me in the direction of the one of the room’s full-length mirrors, making a herculean effort to pull the back of the dress closed. Eventually she succeeded.

  “It really suits you. We’ll pull your hair off your face and you’ll look astonishing.”

  As she tried to fix my hair into a bun I shrugged her away. I’d gotten a glimpse of myself in the mirror and it had unnerved me. It was a beautiful dress but I was in no condition to wear it to a ball. Maybe after six months of dieting.

  “You’ve got to come,” Carlotta was pleading now. “I’ve been to these things before when I was younger. Now I’m older there’s going to be all kinds of idiots making a move on me. It’s going to be awful.”

  “So, you need some moral support?”

  “Support? No, I need a bodyguard.”

  “But look,” I said, unzipping her. “We haven’t found you a dress yet.”

  Carlotta turned, grabbing both my hands in hers and dropped to her knees. When she looked up at me she had mischief in her eyes.

  “I did a bad thing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told a little white lie.”

  I pulled my hands away from her. “Is this to do with Silas?”

  “No,” she grabbed my hands again. “Nothing like that. It’s about the dress.”

  “Which dress?”

  “My dress. I’ve already got a dress. My mother had it made just in case.” She looked at me askance. “Do you forgive me?”

  I indicated all the dresses lying about the place.

  “So all this: trying on all these dresses? This was just a ruse.”

  “I thought if I could get you try on something nice then you might come with me. I didn’t realise you’d look this good otherwise I’d never have considered it.”

  I let out a long sigh. Was being manipulative some kind of inherited family trait?

  “I’ve told you: I can’t dance.”

  “That won’t stop the men asking, though. Look, I just need a bit of back-up, I wouldn’t ask normally.”

  It would have been easy to have said ‘No.’ It really would. But then I thought back to what had happened at the university. If Carlotta hadn’t been there to drive the coach then it could have all been so very different. She’d driven all day across-country and then, at the end of it, had arranged lodgings for us all. She had been so good to me. How could I refuse her now?

  “Okay!” I said. “I’ll come to the ball.”

  Carlotta tried to hug me but I kept her at arm’s length.

  “I’ll agree on one condition.”

  She clapped her hands together. “Anything. Just name it.”

  “You help me lose seven pounds before tonight.”

  I went back to the mirror and apprised myself from the back.

  “I should never have eaten that hot-dog.”

  *

  Carlotta had her own room with an en-suite which was as big as my whole flat back in London. Unlike her father’s room, it had all been completely re-modelled with discrete mood lighting. I took the opportunity to take a shower and shave my legs. I felt a lot better after that.

  While I worked on my eyebrows, I contemplated what I was letting myself in for. I had only ever been to one proper ball before and that had been for my graduation. I had spent months choosing my dress and organising a series of treatments to make myself look and feel better. Needless to say that the whole evening had been a disaster. I got very drunk and ended up snogging someone in the band. Hardly my finest hour.

  It seems that I never learn though because when Carlotta turned up with a tray of vodka shots I didn’t hesitate to join her. Though I did start to relax a little. Probably not the cleverest thing I’d ever done but, without it, I’d never have been able to summon up the courage to go downstairs and face Lady Antonia. I didn’t know what it was about that woman but she terrified me.

&nb
sp; “What’s happening with Silas,” I asked, finally.

  “What about him?”

  “Isn’t it going to be a bit awkward for him? Me being here?”

  I was pinning Carlotta’s hair back at the time.

  “Trust me, he’s going to have enough to worry about tonight without having to think about you. And besides, you didn’t sleep with him.”

  I pushed myself away from her.

  “And how would you know?”

  “My brother is a werewolf. If you’d slept together you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off him. Trust me – I know.”

  While I attempted to get my head around that, I decided to change the subject.

  “Is there going to be any trouble tonight? You said yourself that there are going to be a lot of young guys about.”

  “Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of testosterone in the air but you needn’t worry: Silas can handle himself.”

  “Even in a wheelchair?”

  “Even in a wheelchair.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  By the time we’d finished getting ready it was dark outside and we were both feeling giddy. It didn’t help that we had graduated on to drinking champagne.

  “We’re going to have to go down,” Carlotta said checking the time.

  “Just one more glass,” I was going to need all the Dutch courage I could get if I was going to face Lady Antonia.

  “We can’t put it off any longer,” Carlotta went over and retrieved her phone from her dressing table. “Come on, let’s get a photo.”

  We took a number of selfies together. Carlotta looked stunning in the off-the-shoulder dress her mother had had made for her.

  Then we made our way downstairs, careful not to trip. A woman in a maid’s uniform was coming up carrying a stack of cardboard boxes. When she saw us she stood to one side to let us pass. It would have been difficult enough negotiating the stairs when sober but by this time we’d had quite a bit to drink.

  When we reached the ground floor the place was thronging with staff many of whom nodded as we passed. For some reason, that made me feel a lot more confident. Carlotta led me into a small side room that was filled with boxes of wine and spirits and out through a concealed door which I wouldn’t have noticed in a million years. The sound of music grew louder as soon as we stepped into the corridor. There was a door at the far end and beyond that the ballroom.