by Kate Morton
So it was, back in May, I was preparing to leave forever the flat that Jamie and I had shared, to turn the final, blank page of our story and begin a new one, all of my own. I had my work, I had my health, I had an awful lot of books; I just needed to be brave, to face up to the grey, lonely days that stretched on indefinitely.
All things considered, I think I was doing rather well: only occasionally did I allow myself to slip deep inside the pool of my most maudlin imaginings. I’d find a quiet, dark corner—all the better to give myself over fully to the fantasy—and picture in great detail those bland future days when I would walk along our street, stop at our building, gaze up at the windowsill on which I used to grow my herbs and see someone else’s silhouette fall across the glass. Glimpse the shadowy barrier between the past and the present, and know keenly the physical ache of being unable ever to go back …
I was a daydreamer when I was small, and a source of constant frustration to my poor mother. She used to shake her head when I walked right through the middle of a muddy puddle, or had to be wrenched back from the gutter, having stepped out in front of the number 209 bus, and say things like: ‘You have to be more careful,’ or ‘It’s dangerous to get lost inside one’s own head,’ or ‘You won’t be able to see what’s really going on around you—that’s when accidents happen, Edie.’
Which was easy for her to say; never had a more sensible, pragmatic woman walked the earth. And I didn’t stop daydreaming, of course, I merely got better at hiding the fact. But she was right, in a way, for it was my preoccupation with imagining my pale, lifeless, post-Jamie future that left me so utterly unprepared for what happened next.
In May, we received a phone call at the office from a self-styled ghost-whisperer who wanted to publish a manuscript about his other-worldly encounters on Romney Marsh. When a prospective new client makes contact, we do whatever we can to keep them happy, which is why I found myself driving Mr Billing’s rather ancient Peugeot hatchback out to Essex for a meet, greet and, hopefully, woo. I don’t drive often and I loathe the motorway when it’s busy, so I left at the crack of dawn, figuring it gave me a clearer run at getting out of London unscathed.
I was there by nine, the meeting itself went very well—wooing was done, contracts were signed—and I was back on the road again by midday. A much busier road by then, and one to which Mr Billing’s car, incapable of going faster than fifty miles per hour without serious risk of tyre-loss, was decidedly unequal. I planted myself in the slow lane but still managed to attract a lot of frustrated horn-honking and head-shaking. It is not good for the soul being cast as a nuisance, particularly when one has no choice in the matter, so I left the motorway at Ashford and took the back roads and laneways instead. My sense of direction is quite dreadful, but there was an AA book in the glove compartment and I was resigned to pulling over regularly to consult it.
It took me a good half hour to become well and truly lost. I still don’t know how it happened, but I suspect the map’s vintage played some small part. That, and the fact that I’d been enjoying the view—fields speckled with cowslips; wildflowers decorating the ditches by the side of the road—when I probably should have been paying attention to the road itself. Whatever the case, I’d lost my spot on the map, and was driving along a narrow laneway over which great bowed trees were arched, with no idea whether I was heading north, south, east or west.
I wasn’t worried though, not then. As far as I could see, if I just continued on my way, sooner or later I was bound to reach a juncture, a landmark, maybe even a farm-stall where someone might be kind enough to draw a big red ‘X’ on my map. I wasn’t due back at work that afternoon; roads didn’t continue on forever; I just needed to keep my eyes peeled. Which I did.
And that’s how I saw it. Poking up from the middle of a rather aggressive mound of ivy. One of those old white posts with the letters carved into arrowed pieces of wood and the names of local villages pointing in each direction. Milderhurst, it read, 3 miles.
Do you believe that a place can draw you to it? That the soil, the trees, the very air might quiver silently around a buried secret, waiting for the right time, the right person to come along, so that they might toss forth their invisible tendrils, woven like a net by time, and catch her?
I’m not sure I do either, and perhaps that’s not what happened. Maybe it was all just an odd coincidence. Those happen, you know. It might have been a series of unrelated events rendered uncanny simply because I’d only recently learned the word ‘Milderhurst’ and it was still floating, in all its gothic glory, at the top of my memory. Perhaps, if I hadn’t been there when my mum received the letter, I would still have taken the same route back from Romney Marsh, got myself lost, and been scanning for any geographical marker I could find. The name on the signpost would have meant nothing to me, though, other than giving me a reference point on my map, and I’d have continued on towards London, none the wiser.
But I had been with Mum when the letter arrived, and I did recognise the name, which is how I managed to drive Mr Billing’s little car into the ditch in shock. Luckily, when one is travelling at five miles per hour there’s not much chance of doing serious damage to either vehicle or driver, and I decided it was as good a place to park as any.
I turned off the ignition and read the signpost again, hairs beginning to quiver on the back of my neck. An odd sixth sense overcame me and the hazy memory resurrected itself, the same that I’d been struggling to bring into focus ever since Mum’s lost letter arrived in February. I climbed out of the car, as if in a dream, and followed where the signpost led. I felt like I was watching myself from the outside, almost as if I knew what I was going to find. And perhaps I did.
For there they were, half a mile along the road, right where I’d imagined they might be. Rising out of the brambles, a set of tall iron gates, once grand but listing now at odd angles. Leaning, one towards the other, as if to share a weighty burden. A sign was hanging on the small wooden gatehouse, a rusted sign that read, ‘Milderhurst Castle’.
My heart beat fast and hard against my rib cage and I crossed the road towards the gates. I gripped a post with each hand, cold, rough, rusting iron beneath my palms. Slowly I brought my face, my forehead, to lean against them, and I followed with my eyes the gravel driveway that curved away from me, up the hill, until it crossed a bridge and disappeared behind a thick patch of woods.
It was beautiful and overgrown and melancholy, but it wasn’t the view that stole my breath. It was the thudding realisation, the absolute certainty, that I had been here before. That I had stood at these gates and peered between the posts and watched the birds flying like scraps of night-time sky above the thick, dark woods at the top of the hill.
Details shimmered into place around me and I felt as if I’d stepped into the fabric of a dream; as if I were occupying, once again, the very same temporal and geographical space as my long-ago self. I tightened my fingers around the bars and somewhere, deep within my body, I recognised the gesture. I’d done the same thing before. The skin of my palms remembered. I remembered. A sunny day, a warm breeze playing with the rim of my dress, my best dress, the shadow of my mother, tall on my peripheral vision.
I glanced sideways to where she stood, watching her as she watched the castle, the dark and distant shape on the horizon. I was thirsty, I was hot, I wanted to go swimming in the lake that I could see through the gates. Swimming with the ducks and ibis, and the dragonflies making stabbing movements among the reeds along the banks.
‘Mum,’ I remember saying, but she hadn’t replied. ‘Mum?’ Her head turned and a split second passed in which not a spark of recognition lit her features. Instead, an expression held them hostage that I didn’t understand. She was a stranger to me, a grown-up lady whose eyes masked secret things. I have words to describe that odd amalgam now: regret, fondness, sorrow, nostalgia; but back then I was clueless. Even more so when she said, ‘I’ve made a mistake. I should never have come. It’s too late.’
I don’t t
hink I answered her, not then. I had no idea what she meant and before I could ask she’d gripped my hand and pulled so hard my shoulder hurt, dragging me back across the road to where our car was parked. I’d smelled her perfume, mixed with the day’s warm air, the country smells. And she’d started the car, and we’d been driving, and I was watching a pair of sparrows through the window when I heard it. The same ghastly sobbing sound she’d made when the lost letter arrived from Juniper Blythe.