Only when it loosened did Roz realize just how tight a band had been clamped around her chest. Reaching for Nick’s hand, she curled her fingers around his. ‘I guess we messed them up together,’ she said.
They slid down under the covers and were silent for a while. Nick smoothed a hand over Roz’s arm. ‘I just can’t help thinking that these dreams, hallucinations, whatever you want to call them, must be related to you and the stuff going on in your head,’ he said. ‘I’m not doubting that it seems real to you,’ he went on quickly as Roz began to object. ‘But what if it really is your mind just working things out? Jane lost her sister, you lost your sisters. Jane wanted a baby, you wanted a baby. You’ve got to admit it kind of makes sense.’
‘How do you explain Robert? I don’t recall impotence being a problem you’ve ever suffered from, and your mother’s always been lovely to me.’
Nick made a face. ‘I don’t like to think about it, but maybe Robert represents your dissatisfaction with our marriage.’
‘And Geoffrey? Why is everything related to the Holmwoods?’
‘You saw the portrait of Sir Geoffrey downstairs. You said it made an impression on you. Perhaps it was the first name your subconscious picked out. And you’re working at the Holmwoods’ sixteenth-century house, for the Holmwood Foundation. It’s not surprising that they’d be part of whatever your mind is processing.’
He made it all sound so reasonable. Roz chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘Maybe,’ she said reluctantly.
‘I just think it must all be connected somehow,’ said Nick. ‘I’ll make another appointment with Rita and you can talk it all through with her. I’m sure if you can sort out how you feel about the past, Roz, the present will fall into place too.’
Roz wanted to believe that Nick was right, and as the next few days passed and she stayed firmly in the present, she began to think that he might be. Perhaps it had just been her subconscious working overtime after all, and now that she and Nick had talked properly, the link between Roz’s reality and Jane’s imaginary world had been severed. She wasn’t naive enough to think that one chat would solve all their problems, but she would go and see the hypnotherapist he had suggested, and they would both work harder to talk openly about how they felt. Everything would be fine, she told herself firmly.
She went back to work with renewed optimism and smiled at Helen as she sailed into the office to see if there was any post. It had been good to see Nick, and Roz was feeling fortunate. She should make more of an effort to be nice to Helen, she had decided. The other woman’s unyielding expression was probably a sign of shyness or insecurity.
‘Lovely weekend,’ she said. ‘Everything worked like clockwork. Adrian said it was all down to you, Helen.’
She didn’t need Roz to tell her what Sir Adrian thought. Helen’s lips tightened. Sir Adrian had already thanked her himself. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Helen,’ he had said, and she had blushed with pleasure.
‘You know I’m always happy to help, Sir Adrian,’ she had said, and then – then! – he had put his arm around her and given her a quick squeeze.
‘You’re a marvel,’ he said.
Helen hugged the memory to her as if she could still feel his fingers pressing into her arm. He was so handsome and kind and clever, and he relied on her. He might flirt with the likes of Roz Acclam and the other women who had been his guests, but when it came down to it, she was the one who knew him best, the one he depended upon to make him comfortable. Did Roz know how he took his coffee? That he couldn’t bear untidiness? Helen knew his shirt size – she had checked when taking his clothes to the dry cleaner. She knew his birthday and every year presented him with a tasteful card. ‘Helen, how do you remember?’ he always cried with delight. She knew his favourite biscuits and where he liked to sit on a train. What did Roz know about him in comparison? Nothing, thought Helen with satisfaction.
‘I was sorry you weren’t at the dinner on Saturday,’ Roz went on. ‘I asked Adrian where you were, and he said you preferred to eat on your own.’
‘I was there to work, not to socialize,’ said Helen stiffly.
‘So was I, in a way.’
She hadn’t looked as if she was working. She had made it look easy, swanning in with her husband, fitting right in with her jeans and suede boots and perfectly cut white shirt. Adrian’s friends had all liked her. Helen had seen the men leaning in towards her with fatuous smiles when she served drinks before dinner. By then Roz had changed, of course, into an effortlessly simple shift dress that would have made Helen look like a sack of potatoes.
Roz’s husband hadn’t been what Helen had expected. Not a banker at all, it turned out, but a freelance journalist, one of those thin, intelligent men with a mobile face and a dry voice that meant you could never tell if they were laughing at you or not. He didn’t possess a dinner jacket, he’d said coolly, not sounding in the least embarrassed about it. Helen had heard Sir Adrian telling someone that he suspected Nick was ‘a bit of a lefty’, but even he fit in better than she did, Helen recognized bitterly.
While they were all at dinner, Helen had slipped up to their room. It smelt of Roz’s perfume: subtle, expensive. Helen fingered her suede jacket, the silky blouse. She picked up the cashmere cardigan draped over the back of a chair and held its softness enviously against her cheek. That smelt of Roz too, and she dropped it back with a scowl. In the en suite bathroom she unscrewed the top off a pot of moisturizer and sniffed at it before dipping her finger into the pale pink cream. Leaning into the mirror, she rubbed it into her cheek. She looked at her reflection, and for a moment it seemed as if she was looking at someone else entirely, as if she had stepped out of herself and felt appalled at what she was doing. She had been brought up in a decent house, where you didn’t go through other people’s things like a thief.
But the thought had barely shocked her before it was barrelled aside by a rush of gleeful satisfaction that she could do whatever she liked. It was all Roz’s fault, anyway. Helen wouldn’t have dreamed of behaving like this before, but something about Roz had flipped a switch, sending an insidious bitterness and loathing slithering through her, intensifying her feelings for Sir Adrian. Ever since Roz had arrived Helen had felt raw, as if all her skin was peeled back, leaving every emotion exposed. She had been looking forward to getting away to the country, but she felt even worse here at Holme Hall. Helen wasn’t an imaginative woman, but sometimes it seemed to her that the very air in the house was vibrating with frustration.
And with fear.
She finished creaming her face, and smoothed the top of the moisturizer to disguise the dent of her finger. Roz was so careless with her things, she thought disapprovingly. Look at the cosmetics scattered by the basin, the jewellery she had been wearing earlier left in a gleaming tumble. Helen poked at the pile. Roz had had some kind of Middle Eastern thing going on, obviously. There was a necklace of beaten silver, the bangles she usually wore, the dull gleam of earrings set with red stones and trembling with tiny silver balls.
Helen’s fingers hovered over the jewellery. A bangle or an earring? An earring was more easily lost, she decided. Roz might not even notice for a while if one of the bangles was missing. Delicately she picked up one of the earrings and held it to the light. It was quirky, interesting, unlike the plain gold studs she wore in her own ears. Helen’s fingers closed around it and she smiled grimly. She would take that.
Now she rebuffed Roz’s attempts to chat about the weekend and flipped her notebook open. ‘Since you’re here, Roz, does the name Charles Denton mean anything to you?’
For once Roz looked discomposed. ‘Oh, yes . . . I forgot about that,’ she said, making a face.
‘He says he’s going to do – and I quote – “a psychic reading” in the hall on Thursday.’ Helen didn’t bother to conceal her distaste. ‘Does Sir Adrian know about this? I can’t believe he’d give permission for anything quite so silly.’
Roz’s expression cooled. ‘Adria
n understands that we’ve got to do something different to attract visitors across the river. If nothing else, it would make a good marketing story. I’ll call him when I get back.’
‘Are you out for coffee again?’ Helen got a perverse satisfaction from seeing Roz’s jaw tighten.
‘I’m interviewing caterers all morning,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping I might get a demonstration lunch. If Adrian asks, I’ll be back this afternoon. Oh, by the way,’ she remembered as she turned to go, ‘I don’t suppose anyone found an earring at the Hall, did they?’
‘No.’ Helen widened her eyes innocently and thought of the earring tucked away with the button from Roz’s coat in her drawer. ‘What did it look like?’
‘Arabian silver, dangly, with a red garnet, I think.’
‘I’ll ask the housekeeper, but nobody mentioned finding an earring.’
Roz pulled down the corner of her mouth. ‘I can’t understand where I would have lost it. It was my favourite pair, too. Nick bought them for me on our honeymoon in Morocco.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Helen. ‘What a shame.’
By the time Roz made it to the fourth caterer on her list of recommended companies she was stuffed with homemade biscuits and sloshing with tea.
Maggie’s Catering was based in a unit on an industrial estate. When Roz pushed open the door, a neat woman in her fifties was standing behind the reception desk leafing through invoices. She looked up at the sound of the door, though, and Roz saw shock race across her face.
‘Hi. I’m Roz Acclam.’ Her professional smile faltered at the other woman’s expression. ‘I’ve got a meeting with Maggie Wray.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. I’m Maggie.’ Obviously flustered, Maggie came round to shake hands with Roz. ‘I’m sorry I was staring,’ she said, spreading a hand and patting her chest as if to calm palpitations. ‘I feel like I’ve seen a ghost!’
A tingle zipped down Roz’s spine. ‘A ghost?’
‘I wondered when I saw the name Acclam, but I never expected . . .’ Maggie shook her head and laughed a little shakily. ‘You must be Amy’s little girl. You look so like her!’
Her aunt had said the same thing, but peering at fuzzy snaps from the seventies and eighties, Roz had never been able to see it herself. Amy Acclam had been dark-haired and pale-eyed like Roz herself, but Roz hadn’t realized that they looked quite that alike. It gave her a strange, light-headed feeling, as if she were as insubstantial as the ghost Maggie had thought her.
‘You knew my mother?’
‘Oh yes. We were all in Millingham Road together. You know what it’s like when your kids are small,’ she said, and Roz nodded, although she didn’t. ‘You end up making friends with other women that are in the same position just to stop yourself going mad! But here, come and sit down.’ She ushered Roz over to the functional sofas in the reception area. ‘My goodness, I haven’t seen you since you were this high,’ she said, gesturing vaguely to her knee. ‘Roz . . . Rosalind . . . I should have realized, but when you came in, it gave me such a turn! It could have been Amy walking through that door!’
Her expression sobered. ‘That was such a terrible thing that happened to your poor parents,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘What a tragedy. I remember how shocked we all were. You just don’t think that kind of thing happens to people you know, do you?’
‘No,’ said Roz with feeling. She had certainly never thought it would happen to her. She put her briefcase on the floor beside her. It seemed the wrong moment to bring out costings and menu options. ‘I’ve never met anyone who knew my parents before,’ she said, smoothing her skirt over her thighs and realizing that she felt oddly nervous. ‘Well, my aunt and uncle, of course, but they were different. It’s funny meeting someone who knew them in York.’ She looked at Maggie. ‘What were they like?’ she heard herself asking.
‘Oh, they were a lovely family. Lovely. Patrick – your father – was such a nice man. Always had a smile and a nice word, and he was devoted to his little girls, you and Emily and . . . oh, what was the other one called?’
‘Amanda.’
‘Yes, Amanda. A pretty little thing.’ Maggie shook her head sadly at the memory.
‘And my mother?’
‘Well, I always thought there was something rather mysterious about Amy.’ Maggie settled herself onto the opposite sofa. ‘She was very pretty – like you, with dark hair and your lovely silvery eyes – and she was always very nice, but there was a wariness about her too, like she was braced for a blow. I’m not one for gossip,’ Maggie said comfortably, ‘but I did hear her first husband was, you know, handy with his fists. I think she had a hard time before she met Patrick.’
She smiled at Roz. ‘But she was so happy when she had you. I remember her saying how she felt like she’d stumbled into paradise. Stumbled into paradise,’ Maggie repeated, turning the words around in her mouth with pleasure. ‘She had such a lovely way of putting things sometimes. And to think what happened . . .’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I still can’t believe that boy could have killed them all.’
From the kitchen, Roz could hear the clatter of pans and cheerful voices tossing abuse over the sound of the radio. ‘You must have known Mikey. My brother.’ She said it deliberately. Her brother, the killer.
‘Of course.’ Maggie fished out a tissue from behind her bra strap and dabbed at her eyes. ‘People said afterwards that they always knew there was something funny about him, but I didn’t. Not at first. He was a quiet little boy, who didn’t mix much with the other kids. I think he and Amy had been living in Selby before they came to Millingham Road, and I suppose it was a bit of a shock starting at a new school, moving in with a whole new family. Patrick tried so hard with him, but Mikey was jealous. He didn’t want to share his mum. Well, you can understand it, can’t you?’
In the kitchen they were singing along to a song on the radio, voices raised raucously. Maggie looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry about the noise.’
‘It’s okay.’ Roz mustered a smile. ‘It’s nice to hear people enjoying themselves at work.’ She paused. ‘So you never thought Mikey would do anything like set fire to the house?’
‘Not then,’ said Maggie. ‘But after you were born, he got obsessed with making models: planes, cars, boats, everything. He used to spend all his time in that shop in Micklegate . . . oh, what was it called now? Well, it doesn’t matter, but he definitely changed. Amy wondered if he’d met another boy there who was influencing him. He’d been shy before, but now he was mean. Sam, my eldest, he said Mikey was bullying Emily and Amanda, and there were stories about things being broken, things going missing . . . nasty stuff . . . but it’s hard for adults sometimes to know what’s really going on. Children don’t always tell you everything.
‘All I knew was that Amy was worried about the girls,’ Maggie said. ‘I remember saying to her, it’s just a phase. He’ll settle down.’ Sighing, she tucked the tissue back inside her bra strap. ‘But he never did, did he?’
‘No,’ said Roz slowly, thinking about the model shop that had been built over the original hall in Holmwood House. Thinking about the whirring, rattling echo of an electric train circling endlessly along its track. About the way the past and present seemed to overlap in the house and what that might have done to a small boy. ‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Anyway, it’s good to see you back in York,’ said Maggie with a smile. ‘It’s quite brought it all back! But you’re here to talk about our catering service, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’ Glad of the shift to professionalism, Roz bent and pulled out a brochure and plan of Holmwood House. ‘Let me show you the kind of events we have in mind.’
‘Can you all make sure your mobiles are turned off?’ Charles Denton looked around the great hall with an assessing eye. He was not what Roz had expected. Not that she had had a clear idea of what a psychic might look like, but Charles certainly wasn’t it. He might have been an accountant with his sober face and faintly shiny suit and tie.
On his
instructions they had laid a white cloth over a circular oak table that Lucy had sourced the week before. A bowl of water and some salt were set in the centre of the table with a feather, seven candles burning around them. There had been some discussion about whether or not they should have real candles.
‘It’s a fire risk,’ Roz had said dubiously, but Adrian, who had proved surprisingly enthusiastic about the idea and insisted on taking part, overruled her.
‘We can’t have a séance without candles,’ he said, and Charles had agreed.
‘The séance will work better with the four magic elements in place,’ he said, and touched the salt, the feather and the dish of water in turn. ‘Earth, air, water . . .’ He passed a hand through a candle flame, making it duck and weave. ‘And fire.’
Now they took their places around the table. Adrian and Helen, Lucy and Mark, Jeff and Roz. ‘Three men, three women – that is good.’ Charles nodded approvingly. ‘That will create energy for the spirits. I sense that some of you are sceptical,’ he went on, ‘but I would ask that you be respectful of the spirits we invite here tonight. A séance should be taken very seriously, whether you are a believer or not. I sense that there are strong spirits here, and some psychically gifted people around this table.’ His gaze travelled round them, and Roz kept her face as blank and puzzled as everyone else’s. He nodded as if satisfied. ‘Now, join hands and we will make a sacred circle.’
Roz was sitting between Jeff and Mark. Her heart was thudding uncomfortably. Charles had set out bowls of cinnamon and sandalwood which he had claimed would help create a relaxed atmosphere but to Roz the smell of them was having the opposite effect. The air seemed charged with expectancy and in spite of the inevitable jokes when they had all gathered that evening, their faces in the candlelight were solemn.
It’s a marketing exercise, Roz told herself again as she linked hands with Mark. She hadn’t slipped back to Jane’s life since the night at Holme Hall, and she was beginning to think that Nick might be right after all and that her experiences as Jane were just some bizarre psychological episode. She might even have been tempted to cancel the séance if Helen hadn’t been so sniffy about it, but it wasn’t a bad idea and she noticed that Helen had tagged along with Adrian anyway and was sitting across the table looking deeply uncomfortable.
The Edge of Dark Page 20