by Emily Gunnis
‘Yes,’ said Richard, ‘just for a couple of days with my son.’
He absent-mindedly twisted the ring on his wedding finger with his left thumb, and Kitty pictured him and his devoted offspring sitting in a picturesque town square, smiling occasionally at one another as they watched the world go by. Richard would have done such a good job raising the boy that there was an understanding between them and they wouldn’t have the need for constant conversation. Maybe the odd reference to how much his wife would have loved the place in which they sat.
‘Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you, Kitty?’
Kitty tugged at a piece of fluff on her coat. The radiator behind her was belting out heat and making her skin throb. She felt her cheeks flush red as she undid her buttons and pulled the coat open.
Richard rested his hand on his knee. ‘How did your dinner go?’
Kitty shifted in her seat and sighed. ‘Fine. Aside from the fact that I felt invisible.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Why did you feel invisible?’
She started to pick at the skin around her nails. ‘Because of all those people I respect looking past me and not at me. They used to watch me, stop conversations to listen to me. I don’t know when it started happening, but last night, they didn’t do that. They looked at people younger than me, more attractive, with their whole lives ahead of them. I felt as if a light in me was going out and they no longer saw me as I was.’
She traced a circle on the leg of her trousers with the tip of her finger, round and round.
Richard paused for a moment, waiting for her to go on. ‘Perhaps that’s just how you saw it; perhaps they very much still see the light in you, as you put it.’
Kitty looked up at the clock, its hands seemingly slowing to a stop. ‘When I left, alone, I felt as if I was leaving my own funeral. I knew none of them would really miss me. It’s different for you, Richard. What you have, you’ve got it right. You have experienced true love, you’ve pursued the right things in life, you treasure your family. Your work comes second.’
‘It is dangerous to compare yourself to others, Kitty. We can only truly know what is going on in our own lives.’
‘Come, come, don’t do yourself a disservice. I’m in your home, I can feel the happiness, the contentment. I’m merely speaking the truth and I mean it as a compliment. I am jealous of what you have. My work is all I’ve got, and now that is fading to black.’
Richard cleared his throat. ‘You say your work is all you’ve got, but you went to a party full of people wanting to show their love and admiration for you.’
Kitty glared at him, shaking her head. ‘They were there for themselves.’
‘I think you are being very hard on yourself. Could it be the other way around: that they no longer hold your interest or love? That you are angry at them for not being what you want them to be?’
‘Because they don’t love me for who I really am? It’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?’ She looked away and stood up, pulling off her coat as she walked over to the balcony doors which overlooked a small, beautifully kept garden.
‘No, it’s not a cliché to want to feel loved for who you really are. But if you don’t show them the real you, how can they love you? Perhaps this work of yours provides you with a mask that you are scared to take off for fear of rejection. Perhaps you are tired of pretending. Do you have someone you can really talk to, Kitty? Other than me, I mean. A friend? A soulmate?’
‘I did once,’ said Kitty, crossing her arms and looking away.
‘What happened?’ said Richard.
‘I lost her,’ Kitty said quietly.
‘What do you mean by “lost”?’ He shifted slowly in his chair, wincing as he did so, his back or joints clearly hurting him.
Kitty fell silent. Eventually she walked back to her own chair, folded her coat and threw it on the floor next to her bag. Then she sat down, sighing.
‘You’re right, I am tired. It would help if I could get some bloody sleep. The temazepam you prescribed knocks me out, but then I’m awake two or three hours later. It’s enough to make anyone crazy.’
‘And what is waking you?’ said Richard.
Kitty watched a black cat chase a squirrel across the lawn and up a large sycamore.
Richard pressed her. ‘Is it a recurring dream? Or a nightmare perhaps?’
Kitty examined the bracelet on her wrist, twisting and turning each charm between her fingers. ‘I’m running through the tunnel she escaped through, but I can never reach the light at the end. I keep on going, but it never gets any closer.’
‘This is your sister? The tunnel your sister escaped through?’ said Richard.
Kitty nodded.
‘Dreams are unresolved issues trying to process themselves in your brain while you sleep. They will keep recurring until you can work out what they are trying to tell you.’ He watched Kitty carefully.
‘I never asked my father why my sister died. She was alive when I went to get help,’ Kitty said quietly. She could feel her mouth becoming dry. ‘I knew he had been lied to, and so did he.’ She began to pick again at the skin around her nails, drawing blood and flinching with the pain.
‘Lied to by whom? What do you think happened to her?’ said Richard.
‘I think they found her and punished her for escaping,’ said Kitty, staring into his eyes for the first time.
‘Escaping from where?’ Richard slowly uncrossed his legs and leant towards her. ‘Was she in some kind of institution, do you know?’
Kitty felt every muscle in her body tighten. ‘She was living in a place called St Margaret’s; it was a mother-and-baby home in Sussex.’
Richard was staring at her intently. All the colour had drained from his face and the hand resting on his knee was now white from gripping it.
‘They made a mistake,’ continued Kitty. ‘They didn’t know she’d found me after I came out of church – I was on my own, you see, without my parents. She signalled to me from the graveyard. They knew she was missing, but they didn’t know she’d found me and that I went to get help.’ She paused and looked up at Richard, who was breathing very slowly and deeply.
‘How old were you when all this happened, Kitty?’ he said finally.
‘Eight. I was only eight years old.’ She looked at Richard’s hands, which were shaking.
‘Will you excuse me?’ he said, before slowly easing himself out of the chair, letting out a dull groan as he did so. He staggered slightly as he walked towards the door.
‘Are you all right, Richard?’ said Kitty.
‘Yes, I’m just tired from the trip. I’ll only be a second.’
Kitty looked up at the clock: thirty minutes to go.
After two minutes had ticked by, Richard came back into the room with a glass of water in his hand. ‘Please excuse me for leaving you like that. I would never normally walk out on a patient. It’s been rather a difficult time of late. Let’s get back to what we were talking about. Why did you go to church on your own that day?’
Kitty stood and walked over to the bookcase, picking up a snow globe that sat on one of the shelves and shaking it. Snow started falling over the tiny village inside.
‘My father had been at the hospital all day. I knew my mother was seriously ill. I’d gone to church every Sunday my whole life – if Father was working, Mother and I would catch the bus. I knew which bus to get, I knew what to do. I had been at home on my own all day, pacing, thinking about Mother in the hospital, desperate to get out, to do something, anything to help. I’d missed the morning service, but I knew there was also an afternoon service because Mother sometimes went to it on her own.’
She walked back to her chair and sat down with the globe on her lap. The snow had settled now, and she pictured her eight-year-old self inside it, in her best red coat, standing outside the church.
‘I so nearly didn’t go that day. That decision changed the whole course of my life. I just wanted to pray to God to save my mother. I’ll never f
orget how cold it was. The ice crunching under my feet was louder than the church bells.’ Kitty looked over at Richard as her mind darted back to the bus that had trundled through the ice-covered country lanes of East Sussex, bringing her sister and her together for the first time in their lives.
Chapter Seven
Sunday 15 February 1959
Kitty tugged at the toggles on her new red duffel coat as the bus made its way through the winding lanes towards the village of Preston. Ice-glazed hedges lined the road before opening up into snow-dappled fields. She had climbed onto the bus alone, handed over the change she had taken from her father’s bedside table, and sat down next to the window before being joined by an elderly lady she recognised from church. Her breath had made a circle of fog on the window, which she periodically wiped away with her black woollen gloves. As she gazed out, she could see nuns scattered in the fields, peering behind hedges and bent over ditches, their breath condensing in the freezing air.
She glanced at the woman next to her. She was dressed smartly, her hair scraped back in a bun that Kitty imagined took several attempts to get right. She wore a black glass brooch on her thick brown coat, which looked to Kitty as if it were made of carpet. The lady jolted as the bus struggled on the icy road, but her eyes stayed fixed ahead and she clutched the handbag in her lap. Kitty longed to ask her what she thought the nuns were searching for in the fields, but the woman hadn’t looked at her once since they’d boarded the bus together, and her jaw was clenched tight as if she had no wish to talk.
Kitty bit down hard on her lip as they stopped at a junction. She fixed her eyes on the road sign ahead, which read Preston Lane. They turned into the lane, passing the deep shadow of Preston Manor and heading out towards the South Downs, where a Victorian mansion came into view on the horizon. For as long as she could remember, the four-storey double-fronted building had captivated her. From a distance, it looked to her like a neglected doll’s house sitting empty and unused in a dusty loft. Ten dull-looking windows across each of the four floors, with never any light in them; a beige facade with ivy creeping up it. As they drew nearer, its bland colour appeared to drain away entirely and turn a shade of grey as its angles hardened. Large crosses rose from every section of the house, and there were turrets that reminded Kitty of the story of the imprisoned Rapunzel that her father sometimes read to her.
The gravel drive up to the house was surrounded by woodland, and as they slowly bumped along it, they reached a clearing where the bus stopped. The doors hissed open and a young woman struggled down the aisle with a suitcase in her hand. Her large, rounded stomach was pressing against the suitcase, and as she heaved it down the steps of the bus, Kitty heard the old lady next to her tut in disapproval.
In the shadow of the trees, dressed in black from head to toe save for the white band around his neck, stood Father Benjamin, who Kitty recognised as the priest from Preston church. She looked around to see several girls walking up and down in a ditch that ran around the perimeter of the woods. They were wearing brown overalls and two nuns in full habits were standing over them. Kitty examined the girl nearest to her intently. Her hair was as short as a boy’s and her skin as grey as the snow-covered ground beside her.
One of the nuns signalled the girl over, and Kitty watched as she pulled herself up out of the ditch. She wobbled for a moment, then managed to steady herself before slowly straightening up and pressing her hand into the small of her back, revealing a huge stomach.
As the bus pulled away, the girl looked up and stared directly at Kitty, her piercing eyes as black as coal. Kitty pushed herself back into her seat, but she was unable to peel her gaze away, until the nun snapped at the girl in the snow to move on.
Kitty huddled into her seat, biting frantically at the skin around her nails. At home she had felt she had to get out, to do something, but now that she was here on the bus, alone for the first time without her parents, she began to panic. Though the engine was running and the heater was on, she felt the cold seeping under the concertina door and rectangular windows, trying to get to her. Her breathing grew erratic as they pulled up outside the church and everyone started to get off.
It was only three in the afternoon, but as the icy February wind blew, the winter light was beginning to fade. Being careful not to slip in her best patent shoes, Kitty started to climb off the bus.
‘Are you all right, miss?’ said the driver as he wrenched the vehicle into gear, ready to move off.
‘Yes, I’m meeting my father at the church,’ said Kitty, reciting the lie she had prepared in her head whilst getting ready earlier.
‘Right you are. Well, be careful on the ice.’
The doors clunked shut behind her and she stood alone, watching the congregation bustling into the small church. She wished her father really was there beside her, his large hand wrapped around hers. As she moved forward, feet crunching on the ice, she could picture his shoes next to hers; imagined herself taking two or three steps to keep up with his long stride.
As she walked through the gate, past the snow-speckled gravestones and towards the entrance to the church, she paused briefly and looked around. The chatter of the group ahead of her had disappeared into the building, and the only noise left was the cawing crows, two of which stared at her from the bare branches overhanging the path.
Slowly they too fell silent and she became acutely aware that someone was watching her.
As she stood staring at the rows of headstones, something moved in the distance. The crows launched themselves into the sky, unsettling the snow from the branches on which they’d perched, causing a flurry to fall onto Kitty’s hair and down the back of her new red coat.
She gasped, brushing away the flakes of ice, just as a man in a long black coat began closing the church doors.
‘Wait!’ she called out as she scuttled towards the shelter of the building, trying not to slip on the ice. She glanced back once at the graveyard, a trickle of goose bumps crawling up her arm, then stepped inside, the doors closing behind her.
Chapter Eight
Sunday 5 February 2017
It was still early when Sam pulled up outside St Margaret’s. Leaving Nana and Emma warm in their beds, she’d crept out into the freezing dawn, where her Vauxhall Nova waited to take her through the winding lanes of Preston and out into the foggy Sussex countryside.
The Gothic mansion stabbing the skyline ahead of her was much bigger than she’d anticipated, with rows of narrow arched windows beneath a steeply pitched roof dominated by crucifixes. Nature had already reclaimed the place, with thick damp climbing up its walls and ivy covering the exterior so profusely that it was hard to make out where the house ended and the ground began. It stood completely alone in a huge expanse of land, and the preparations to tear it down were clearly under way. Diggers and great heaps of builders’ sand dotted the foreground, and a hundred-foot crane leant into the house, the wrecking ball poised as if counting down to its imminent task.
Pulling her coat tightly around her, Sam stood at the steel fence that surrounded the site, imagining the girls who must have stood here all those years ago, one hand on their kicking bump, the other clutching a small bag of belongings; abandoned by everyone they loved, with no inkling of what lay ahead.
She checked out the two heavy padlocks keeping the site entrance steadfastly shut, then stepped back to take in all the signage:
Notice of Intended Demolition
Warning Construction Site: Keep Out
Unauthorised Entry Strictly Forbidden
A large architect’s impression of seven detached family homes stood on stilts by her side:
Award-winning luxury new homes: Slade Homes blends the traditional elegance of classical architecture with 21st-century interior design, situated close to the secluded village of Preston in the heart of the Sussex countryside.
In huge blood-red letters, the words ALL SOLD dominated the blurb.
Sam turned and began walking around the perimeter of t
he site, running her gloved hand along the fencing. There were no signs of life, but she could hear a dog barking in the distance, and as she got closer, she noticed a Portakabin with a light on. She made her way towards it, stumbling twice on the frozen mud under her heeled boots, and as she passed in front of the house, a German Shepherd tethered to the ground reared up, barking frantically. Sam instinctively stopped, despite the fact that it was on a leash and there was a steel fence between them her heart was hammering in her chest.
‘Max!’ a male voice shouted. ‘Shut up.’ The light from inside the cabin showed the outline of a ponytailed man moving towards the door. ‘What is it?’
Sam could see that he was tall, with a thick neck and broad shoulders. He was wearing only a wrinkled grey T-shirt despite the freezing temperature. His black biker boots were unlaced and he had a sovereign ring on his left hand, in which he clutched a tin cup with steam rising from it. After pausing to look around, he came down the steps to see what was bothering the dog who was still snapping and snarling at Sam.
She had run through all the scenarios of what she’d find at St Margaret’s: best case would have been loose fencing around the site, no one around and a broken window in the old Victorian house that she could climb through. Failing that, bored secretaries were usually a safe bet, and she figured that if there was a marketing office for the posh new development, she might be able to convince them she was interested in one of the properties, then wangle a tour before making her excuses. Even a security guard she could probably have charmed or slipped past, but she hadn’t anticipated a burly site manager living on the premises, with a werewolf for a pet.
‘Hi!’ she sang, waving merrily. ‘So sorry, I didn’t mean to startle your dog.’
He turned towards her, squinting in the sunshine, his thick goatee catching the light as the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth drifted up into his eyes. Sam registered the slogan on his T-shirt – Blow me, it’s my birthday – and attempted a smile, which he didn’t return. He stared at her for an uncomfortably long time. The dog started to bark again and the man finally dropped his eyes, kicking the dog so hard it yelped.