Walls of Silence: a stunning historical thriller you won't be able to put down

by Ruth Wade

  ‘I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do. Everything is as clear as a bell in my mind which means the same can be said of yours. Pretence ... what does the Good Doctor call it? Repression, that’s it ... doesn’t suit you. It makes you a lesser person, which of course, without me you are. Shall we start at the beginning and trip up through the years, pushing aside all the stumbling blocks as we go?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Yes, we do. Now, let’s see ... the first life you so ruthlessly disposed of was mine.’

  ‘It was none of my doing; if you believe everything in that filthy journal then I didn’t exist.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’re doubting God’s Honest Truth? Because that’s what our father was for the both of us. The heavens cracked, bolts of lightning flew, and with a wave of His magic wand – or rather a scalpel and a fair degree of imagination – there you were. And there I wasn’t. You have no idea how long I cried for the loss of my little pee-pee. Or perhaps you do because you must have started into being the moment the flames gobbled up my privates. A judicious nip and tuck or two, and, voilà. Welcome, Edith: goodbye, forever, Edward. But God wasn’t as omniscient as He thought and overlooked the fact I might not want to leave. You’ve always known: you’ve always known everything.’

  ‘How could I have done? I was less than three years old.’

  ‘It’s going to get very tiresome if I have to keep correcting you the entire time ... I was less than three years old, you had only just been created. A gleam in our father’s eye, as the saying goes. But as I’ve so amply demonstrated over the past year or so, I do enjoy a little gamesmanship; you’ll never outwit me but I guarantee we’ll have fun while you try. And, truly, I have nothing else better to do. Tell me, I’m curious, what was it like growing up as Edith Potter?’

  ‘I was as happy as could be expected with no mother and all the physical frailties that went with the accident.’

  ‘Can we agree on one thing and not be mealy-mouthed about what went on? If we have to refer to it again – and I’d really prefer if we didn’t – can we use the term butchery?’

  ‘Father and Granny were strict but I got a good education, a thorough grounding in the science disciplines …’

  ‘Displaced attention to make up for the absence of love, no doubt. God Turned Satan regarded you as an experiment – isn’t that what the Good Doctor babbled out amongst the gin fumes? The old woman who was unfortunate enough to give birth to such a travesty of humanity cursed him for being the fruit of her loins. She forgot and called you by my name sometimes, didn’t she? And taught you to treat him with the contempt he deserved.’

  ‘You’re wrong: I revered Father, respected him. He took me to Institute meetings; spent hours drilling me on the fundamentals of mathematics; had me read books by some of the heroes of his own youth – Newton, William Herschel, Leonhard Euler. All in all, he responded to me as if I were his ...’

  ‘Son. Well, well, that’s slip up number one. You sensed something was awry way back then, didn’t you? Don’t deny it. And when he’d proved his point, he cut you adrift. Isn’t that the way it went?’

  ‘He was a busy and eminent man. He had no time for a child’s inane prattle. In time, I learned only to engage in conversation when I had something worthwhile to say.’

  ‘The silence between you was your choice? I don’t think so. It’s a good job I was beginning to emerge from the fog of oblivion about then or there’d be no one left alive to point out the errors of your ways. Why did you murder him, by the way? Was it something he said?’

  ‘That’s an appalling accusation. He was smothered in his bed by an itinerant whilst I was fetching his medicines from Uckfield.’

  ‘All right, I’ll admit it, you have a point there. I was the one made the thought manifest – I must say I rather take to your description of me as a soul with no fixed abode, most apposite. But, of course, that means I have no bodily presence of my own, so you were not, by any stretch of the imagination, absent at the moment of consummation. We spent a fair bit of time in that cottage together, didn’t we? I grew rather fond of the place. Began to quite like your company; you weren’t always so miserable and dreary. I admired your desire to surround us by frivolous things – the boy’s blue knitted jacket was a very nice touch. That you selected it especially made me feel most indulged. Except I don’t want you to go running away with the thought that the good ideas were only ever yours. Putting the notion of a picnic in our head was entirely my own stroke of genius. You invented the first one to inject a little romance into an unlovable young woman’s life; I created the opportunity for the reprise in order to reduce the sting of that quack’s facile condemnation.’

  ‘He said all my physical symptoms could be put down to loneliness.’

  ‘Just goes to show how wrong you can be. Little did he know that Edith Potter was never alone. Not for one single second in all her appropriated life. It did the trick though, didn’t it? Made you realise how much you need me.’

  ‘We were going to go away, travel abroad ...’

  ‘And we would have done too. I meant every word of that. I have never told a falsehood to you, Ede. How could I when that would mean lying to myself and there’s only so much self-denial a being can stomach without leading himself so far astray he begins to doubt his own existence. And then where would we be, eh?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be here or have been locked in a loony bin; I’d have my mind back.’

  ‘None of those things can you lay at my door.’

  ‘You drove me to it.’

  ‘Did what I had to for our own protection. Imagine what would have happened if someone else had read that journal other than ourselves and Dr Maybe-Maybenot. Didn’t you get fed up with his pansy dithering around the subject? Between us we’d laid it all out for him in those séance sessions of his, if only he’d had the wits to see it. Couldn’t have given him more clues if we’d tried. The boy, of course, was unfortunate. Don’t feel badly about it because you had no choice but to do what you did; the little snot-nose would’ve sold a glittering prize like that to the highest bidder – even if he didn’t comprehend the content. And it being written by such a pillar of the medical establishment, it’s clear it would’ve been snapped up by the wrong hands sooner or later. I think we should be grateful we heard the gory details the other night and not read them splashed over the newspapers. Because then they’d have labelled you a freak instead of a madwoman. Perhaps had another go at shooting all that electricity through our head to split our mutually beneficial partnership asunder ...’

  ‘Aren’t those things exactly what will happen now?’

  ‘Far from it. I made a promise to you, Ede, and you should know by now that my word is as good as my bond. We’re going away together. I sorted out everything we need earlier. We’re travelling light. And we’re leaving now. Although, on second thoughts, do us both a favour and change out of that hideous frock, will you? I would hate for the way you look now to be the lasting impression.’

  *

  Edith, dressed in an inappropriately thin silk shirt and moss-green tweed skirt Helen had slipped into her wardrobe to wear at the Hall’s Christmas party, carried the straight-backed chair so often occupied by Stephen Maynard out onto the snow-covered grass. It was Edward who was responsible for the coil of rope.

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