by Lulu Taylor
Listening hard, she thinks she hears a sound to her left, and turns down that way. The candle flame flickers and drags in the draught as she strides down the corridor in a little slice of light, the dark pressing close all around her.
Where are they? Panic is rolling around her stomach, making the ends of her fingers prickle and her heart race. This is horrible, horrible. How could they do this to me? She longs for their familiar presence, the safety in numbers. She’s always considered herself a rational person, but she can’t help the power of her imagination, and the nasty pictures it’s feeding in her mind, the legacy of fairy stories, ghostly tales, and horror films.
Why didn’t I turn around when I had the chance? She suddenly sees how stupid it was to go on, and turn off the path she knew. Where am I? She has a horrible feeling that if she goes back the way she came, she might miss the doorway back into the front of the house. A dry sob of fear starts in her throat and she forces herself to be calm. She is still moving forward, still straining for the sound of the others, unable to believe that they really have deserted her like this, or that they are not looking for her.
Another thump, louder this time.
She gasps and stares ahead into the darkness as far as her candle will let her. Now she doesn’t know whether to continue on or turn back. Then footsteps echo in the darkness ahead.
‘There you are!’ she cries, relief flowing over her. ‘This is the most horrible practical joke anyone has ever played on me, I hope you know that!’ Her voice sounds strong in the silence, and she tries to make it normalise the situation. ‘Some thanks for cooking your dinner, I must say!’
There’s no answer. She starts to walk briskly as though by acting as if she isn’t frightened, she won’t be. But soon, she slows. There is silence again. The footsteps have vanished.
Olivia stands still again, the nightmarish feeling returning. For a moment she was able to persuade herself everything was all right, but here she is, still stuck in the horror of being alone at night in a vast and empty house, abandoned by Dan and the others. She looks about, sensing that the house around her has changed: there are no more elaborate panels or carved window shutters. The walls are covered in peeling paint and a couple of large institutional pipes travel along it. The floor is tiled, she realises. Then she sees a faint, glimmering light to her right, the first she has seen that isn’t her own candlelight. She is looking through a door. It’s closed but there is a glass pane in it and the light comes from further in. Half unthinking, she pushes at the door and it opens stiffly. She advances slowly, her candle flame now guttering wildly in the breeze that rushes up the corridor.
Where is that light coming from?
The corridor echoes with her footsteps as she walks on the tiled floor, drawn irresistibly forward by the light. A chamber lies ahead of her, she can see that now, and at the top of it are narrow windows. It’s from them that the light is coming. The moon must be out, and providing the silvery light that floats in through the windows. Now she is standing at the entrance of the huge room, trying to make out what is in its heart of blackness. She starts to move forward, confused by what she can see, as the room seems to be in layers of some kind, with another wall towards the back of it but sunk down below the floor level. She frowns.
What is it? What’s in there?
‘You!’
The booming shout resounds off the walls and makes her shriek, and in her fright, she drops the candle, which hits the floor and fizzles out at once. Olivia spins round to see a figure holding a torch, the dazzling beam trained straight at her, blinding her so that she cannot see who it is.
It shouts, ‘What the blazes are you doing here?’
She screws up her eyes against the glare. ‘Please, I can’t see!’ Fear and confusion whirl through her, but she also knows, at least, that it’s no ghoul beaming a torch in her face and shouting. It’s not the spirit world way.
The light is dipped. She blinks hard to regain her vision and as she does, the figure moves towards her and resolves itself. She knows it.
‘William,’ she says with relief. ‘Thank God.’
‘What are you doing here?’ the old man demands. ‘It’s the middle of the bloody night. You’re all wandering around like a bunch of loonies. I thought there were vandals in the house. I sent them all back to the cottage where they belong.’ He mutters to himself. ‘Half drunk, with a load of candles in my house. Fools.’ He looks up at Olivia again, his face craggy in the shadows produced by the torchlight. ‘They were in a tizz about losing you. I said I’d find you. How did you get yourself here?’
Olivia glances around the room, now less frightening than it appeared when she was alone. ‘What is this place? What’s in the middle?’
‘This is the pool room,’ William says roughly. ‘It’s empty now. It should be left as it is. Don’t come here, do you understand? Don’t let the kiddies come here. Stay away, for God’s sake. It’s not safe.’ He swings the torch beam back to illuminate the way out. ‘Now come on. Let’s get you home.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Francesca feels that quite enough fuss has been made over Olivia. It’s a damp squib end to the evening when they all have to sit waiting in the kitchen while William goes to find her, Dan in an agony of guilt and Jimmy apologising for a prank gone wrong.
‘It was only going to be for a minute,’ he says, suddenly sobered. ‘I wasn’t to know she was going to go haring off.’
Dan can’t sit down; he’s pacing around. Katy is soothing everyone, putting on the kettle for restorative cups of tea while Stevie goes outside for another cigarette, and Alyssa and Dave get their things together. Their cab is waiting in the driveway, the engine having already been idling for twenty minutes.
Francesca sits at the kitchen table and watches, disappointed that the dinner has ended this way. The impact of her house has been lost. They won’t remember the grandeur and the wonderful atmospheric effect of candlelight on old stone. They’ll recall it as a place where Olivia got lost, and feel sheepish about their part in it. ‘Please all come back another time,’ she says loudly. ‘You ought to see it in the daytime to get the full effect.’
‘We’d love to,’ Alyssa says, well wrapped up in her black coat. She leans down to kiss Francesca’s cheek. ‘Amazing house. See you very soon, darling. Let’s meet in London when you’re back there, yes?’
‘Of course.’ She accepts Alyssa’s kiss, then Dave’s. Then they move to Dan to ask him to apologise to Olivia for not waiting, and to give her their love. They leave in a flurry of goodbyes while Katy brings over mugs of tea, putting one down in front of Jimmy with a look of fond scolding.
‘Poor old Olivia,’ she says, sitting down. ‘I think you’ve all been very mean.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Katy,’ Francesca says coldly. ‘No one meant for her to get lost. She should have come back the same way instead of disappearing off into a place she has absolutely no knowledge of.’
Katy raises her eyebrows but stays good-humoured as she lifts her mug to her lips and blows gently across the surface of her tea. ‘All the same,’ she murmurs, ‘I’m glad it wasn’t me.’
The door opens and Stevie comes back in, a smile on his broad face. ‘Look who I’ve found,’ he says, and behind him is Olivia. She is a little breathless but smiling, with only a faint air of reproach. Francesca feels a surge of irritation: here she is, the heroine again. Such a wonderful meal, such a lovely cottage, such beautiful children.
But this is my house. I decorated this cottage, it’s all my work. And those are my children!
She feels something inside herself harden, something that up until now has remained pliable, flexible and feeling. Now she will stop trying. It’s almost a relief.
I’ve had enough of her taking my life.
As the others crowd around Olivia, exclaiming, showering her in apologies and asking how she is, Francesca stays back, still sitting at the table and observing. Olivia has all the attention as usual, revelling i
n it, pretending to be modest.
‘Thank goodness for William,’ she is saying. ‘I was about to walk head first into an empty swimming pool, like an idiot!’
‘Where is he?’ Dan asks. ‘I want to thank him.’
Oh, for crying out loud, don’t bring that old man into the house. I don’t want to see him. Francesca is the only one who knows the extent of the fight to evict William from the estate, and the way he’s steadfastly refused to go, with the power of Preserving England behind him. They seem to think he has some right to be here, because of the service he gave the house in the years when it stood empty. They are of the opinion that he should continue working if he wants to, even though he’s in his seventies at least.
‘He’s just outside,’ Olivia says. But when they look outside the back door, he has gone.
‘What was he doing wandering around at this time of night?’ Francesca says with a laugh. ‘He’s like an old ghost himself.’
‘He thought someone was in the house without permission.’
‘They were,’ says Francesca. ‘Him!’ She laughs again and there is a tiny silence among the others. Then Katy puts a cup of tea into Olivia’s hand.
‘Well, we’re all jolly glad he was. And now you’re back safe and sound, so that’s all right. Alyssa and Dave had to go – they said thank you and lots of love – and now we have to get on our way too. It’s almost one o’clock in the morning. The hotel will be wondering if we’re ever coming back.’
‘Yes,’ Dan says. ‘I think we could all do with turning in. Children don’t care what time you went to bed. They always want to get up at the same time, no matter what.’
Francesca looks over at him, but he is attentive to Olivia and, she suspects, is determined not to catch her eye. He’s been giving her the cold shoulder ever since she got here. Perhaps he thinks she hasn’t noticed, but she has. He doesn’t flash that smile at her, or ask her opinion on things, or engage in the old banter. He’s making it plain that if she doesn’t behave, he’ll withdraw his affection from her.
Fine. Have it your way. But it’s a dangerous game, Dan. You’ve given me too much power to piss me off. We’ll see what will happen . . .
Francesca sleeps badly, tossing and waking before sinking back into sleep, sometimes too hot and at others too cold. It’s probably the whiskey, she thinks, when she is wide awake at six thirty. She hardly ever drinks spirits and mixing it with wine was not a good idea.
She lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about Olivia. She knows that nothing has so far been said about when she, Francesca, might be leaving. It’s a delicate subject, as this is her house after all.
But they’ll be within their rights to ask soon. And I can’t keep staying on for no reason.
The thought of leaving the children fills her with dread. They have become the twin suns of her existence, almost as though her whole world revolves around them. She thinks of them constantly from the time she wakes until after they are in bed, and she is sure that they are responding to her differently. Something inside them recognises their link to her, she is sure of it. Only yesterday Stan came up crooning at her, ‘Teska, Teska,’ and held up his arms for a lift and a cuddle.
Children just don’t do that with virtual strangers. They can feel the connection. They know it. It’s inevitable.
But Dan stands in her way. Olivia is too stupid to realise the truth, but Dan knows and he isn’t about to let her ease herself into his family unit. He’s made it plain that as far as he’s concerned, she’s going to be excluded. Unless she finds a way to convince him, but at the moment, she can’t think what that might be.
She wriggles under the covers, hot again and searching for a cool place, then she hears a little babble coming from the children’s room.
They’re up. They’re awake.
She slips out of bed and opens the bedroom door, listening. Yes, they are talking quietly to one another in their high voices, a mixture of words and sing-song sounds.
Such good children. Aren’t they wonderful, just amusing themselves until everyone else wakes up?
It can’t do any harm to play with them. Dan and Olivia will appreciate the lie-in after the late night. She tiptoes downstairs and prepares two beakers of milk, warming them quickly in a pan of hot water, then returns. When she opens the nursery door, their little faces turn towards her, eyes wide with curiosity. They are sitting in their cots, Bea playing with a soft toy and Stan with his feet poking out between the bars, watching her.
‘Teska!’ Bea laughs, drops her toy and stands up, holding on to the rail of her cot. She looks adorable in a dotty sleep suit, her soft light hair ruffled into feathery curls, her cheeks pink with just-woken warmth.
Stan hauls himself up and starts to jump up and down. His sleep suit is stripy and his hair stands up on end like a soft brush. He has spotted the beakers in her hand. ‘Milky, milky, milky,’ he chirps and holds out a plump hand for his.
‘Here’s your milk, darlings,’ she says. The residual bad mood from last night disappears and she is filled with a sense of completeness, serenity settling on her and happiness warming her. Everything is right here, with these wonderful little people, these surprising and unexpected gifts. When she made her spur-of-the-moment offer to Dan all that time ago, she didn’t really believe it would work. She didn’t really want it to. She still thought the best outcome was for Dan and Olivia to be denied parenthood. When he actually accepted the offer of her eggs, she thought that was the only triumph she needed. She never expected the whole thing to actually happen.
But now, as she holds Bea’s hand and watches her suck on the beaker of milk, and as she ruffles Stan’s swan’s down of hair, she realises that Dan has actually given her peace. When she’s with these children, she’s happy, as though she’s seen the reason for her own existence, the thing she fought for so hard her entire life. It was for these small people that she abandoned her family, worked so hard and got to Cambridge. It was for them that she changed everything about herself and created a new person. It was for them that she stayed true to her love for Dan, despite everything he did to her.
Because in the end, these two little people are the mingling of us, and look . . . look what we made.
She has a fierce impulse to run to him in his bed, to ignore Olivia, and shake him, shouting, ‘Look what we made! It’s come late, we’ve wasted so much time, but look what we’ve got now!’
Surely he’d start to understand then.
This place and these tiny people are all that’s real and good. Geneva and her life there, the other family . . . it all seems as though that is a dream, a fleeting process she had to go through to get here, to where she was supposed to be all along.
It’s taken so long. But it’s here now.
Francesca spends a happy hour with the children, taking them out of their cots, getting them dressed and going down with them to the kitchen. She buckles both into their booster seats and makes their breakfasts, mixing up their oaty porridge and adding banana slices and a drizzle of honey. They eat obediently while she makes herself a cup of coffee. It’s all perfectly innocent but she can’t help getting an illicit thrill from it, as though she is doing something forbidden. She has never gone quite this far before, taking over the morning routine from Olivia. But she is helping. Olivia cooked for them all last night and this is a little thank you. To make her point, Francesca unloads the dishwasher and tidies away all the dinner things, returning the clean glasses to their cupboard and putting away the serving dishes on the dresser.
All too soon, she hears pattering feet on the staircase and Olivia enters in her nightdress, her expression questioning before her eyes fall on the children with a look of relief. ‘There you all are!’ She goes over to kiss the children. ‘Has Cheska made your breakfast? How nice of her! Delicious banana porridge, yum yum . . .’ She looks over at Francesca, her smile a little stiff. ‘What time did they wake up? I didn’t hear a thing! We both slept a bit late, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s fine.’ Francesca smiles back beatifically. ‘They woke quite early but I was already awake myself, so I got them up. I hope you don’t mind. They’ve been terrifically good.’
‘Of course I don’t mind. It’s very kind. You didn’t have to—’
‘It’s my pleasure. Coffee?’ She goes to the jug still warm on the counter and pours a mug for Olivia. When she hands it to her, she sees that Olivia is regarding the children’s clothes.
‘Thank you. Just what I need,’ Olivia says brightly. ‘How nice. You’ve dressed the children in the clothes you brought them. They look very smart.’
‘Don’t they,’ Francesca agrees. She’d noticed that the lovely things she brought from Geneva were carefully put away and not touched. Saved for good, she supposed. But on a whim, she took them out: a pale yellow dungaree dress over white tights for Bea, and for Stan a blue and white striped top with navy blue dungarees. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Of course not. They’re very lucky to have such nice things. I just hope they don’t make a mess of them, that’s all.’
‘Better that than never wearing them at all,’ remarks Francesca and sips her coffee. There’s a small silence which is filled by the sudden ring of her mobile phone, startling them both. She looks down and sees Walt’s name on the screen. ‘Oh, excuse me, I’d better answer this.’
Getting up, she takes the phone and wanders out into the hall, glad of her slippers against the cold limestone slabs. ‘Hello, darling.’
‘Frankie? When are you coming home?’
That’s like Walt. Direct and no nonsense.
‘Soon, soon. I’m being kept very busy over here. Olivia is struggling a bit all on her own. She needs me and I’m very happy to help out with the twins. They are so sweet, Walt, you wouldn’t believe! Both as bright as buttons and incredibly active.’
‘I’m sure they are, Frankie, but we also need you here. Marie-Chantelle keeps coming to Anastasia for orders about how to run the house, and Anastasia has no idea how to do things and nor do I. As for the children, they’ve been asking why you haven’t been around to Skype them as usual, and Olympia is inundating me with requests for things I have no idea what she’s talking about . . . and I miss you, you’re not here when I get home. You’ve been gone for too long. We’ve got some dinner parties and engagements coming up, and are you coming back for those, or what?’