by Kirsty Ferry
‘There will be no bloody wedding between me and him!’ The cut-glass version of Lissy’s accent shattered the air around her. ‘I’ll tell you that now, darling!’
‘“The lady doth protest too much”,’ said Jon. ‘Sorry – wrong play. That’s Hamlet, I know. But it’s true.’ He leaned over and kissed Lissy, then picked up his camera equipment. ‘See you soon, little sis.’
Lissy watched them disappear across the grounds towards the car and climb in. A few moments later, they were off with a toot of the horn, two hands waving out of the windows as if the car had somehow developed antennae. She raised her hand and waved back, then folded her arms again.
She cast a glance over to the house and sighed. She didn’t want the day to end just yet; she felt too fizzy somehow to go indoors. Down at the cove she saw Stef balanced on a rock, his legs bare and brown from the calves down, the point where his cut-off jeans stopped. His white shirt was open all the way down, flapping around in the breeze and exposing his rather pleasant midriff. Okay, more than pleasant – pretty spectacular actually, Lissy grudgingly acknowledged to herself with a little sigh. She’d loved to run her fingers over it and … No, she wouldn’t think about that now. He lifted his arms up, pointing the camera to the cliffs that surrounded the cove and Lissy got a quick glance of his biceps hardening as he curled his arms up.
The fizziness bubbled over and she realised it was probably nervous energy – and seeing Stef like that didn’t help at all. God, he was beautiful.
So she had two choices – she could go back in and sit in the house by herself and mope and think and do all those horrible things she didn’t want to do; or she could head down to the beach and try to work off some of that nervous energy.
She chose the latter.
‘Cara mia.’ Stef knew she was there, before she had even spoken. He could smell her perfume drifting across the evening and cutting through the salty tang of the ocean.
‘You freak me out, you know that, don’t you?’ she said.
He turned to see her picking her way across the rocks. She had changed out of her shorts after Grace had tipped a bucket of water on her, and was now wearing a little shift dress. The aquamarine material skimmed her knees and had silver and white squiggles all over it.
‘You are truly a mermaid now. Look at your beautiful fishy costume.’
‘You called me a mermaid at Lamorna Cove.’ Her expression was pensive. ‘I can remember.’
‘And as I recall you were not insulted then, were you?’
‘No. I wasn’t.’ She stooped and tugged her flimsy little sandals off, throwing them back onto the beach so they bounced on the sand and landed in a heap.
‘I have bare feet for a reason when I scramble. Come.’ Stef smiled and held out his hand. Lissy hesitated for just a moment then took it. She allowed him to guide her over the rocks and help her onto the one where he stood. He pulled her to him, waiting for the inevitable flinch or step away. But she didn’t move.
It felt good to have her standing next to him, fitting together as they always had done. She stared out to sea, the breeze lifting a tangle of dark hair away from her face and Stef dared to smooth her wayward fringe back, remembering the softness of it even after so long. Of course, it hadn’t had pink and purple streaks in it then, but he ran his finger lightly down the colours and was pleased to feel a little shiver going through Lissy’s body. He didn’t push it though. He moved his hand and let her stand on her own as he raised the camera again.
‘What are you taking a picture of?’ Lissy asked.
‘I see a ruined house over there.’ He nodded to the green and brown tumble of rocks and a little clearing in amongst them. ‘I’m trying to get a close-up picture of it. It looks very interesting. I do not think we can get close to it ourselves, which is a pity.’
‘What – that ruin up there?’ Lissy pointed to the clearing.
‘The very same.’
‘Well of course we can get close to it.’ Lissy sounded surprised. ‘It used to be the main house for this land, until it burned down. That’s Sea Scarr Hall. My cottage is the Dower House. If you want to go there we can. I mean …’
Stef looked sidelong at her. She was red and flustered and he smiled. It was out of character for her to be so un-poised as it were. Yet oddly it made a nice change; like you could be confident she wasn’t going to attack you and claw your eyes out. Or throw things at you.
‘Sssssh. Yes. I accept your offer, Elisabetta.’ He bowed slightly. ‘I would very much like to go there. If you will escort me? Right now? Tonight? It is still warm. We can easily walk there I think, and you will not be too chilly, will you? I know your friend Cori was pleased it had cooled down. She is not handling the heat well, it seems.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens like that sometimes.’
‘What happens like that?’ Lissy’s voice was like a gunshot. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You do not know?’ He widened his eyes. ‘It is blatantly obvious to all. Corisande is pregnant. Surely you knew?’
‘How the bloody hell …’
‘Ah, ah,’ he said, shaking his head and cutting her off. ‘No swearing. Think of Grazia.’
‘Grazia has gone home!’ Then she swore very roundly in Italian. Stef was impressed. ‘How did you know?’ she continued. ‘Did they tell you? They never said anything to me.’
‘Nobody told me. It’s obvious. Just watch her. Look at the way she moves so carefully like it is a chore; the way she droops around, the way her hand hovers around her stomach when she does not realise. Her face – it’s all pale and drawn. No. She does not bloom, poor woman. But she will.’ He nodded sagely. ‘My cousin has four children, my sisters have a brood each, I know the signs. I would say she is having a girl – that makes the mothers more sickly in the beginning. But fortunately, the Cameron pictures that Jon is emulating have miserable models on as well. They had to hold a miserable face, you know, due to the exposure time. So she is perfect. Her hair looks wild as well. Knotty. It is so obvious. Well – obvious to me, anyway. What? What’s wrong?’
‘Well that explains it then.’ Lissy sat down on the rock and put her chin in her hands. She sighed, her temper blazing and subsiding as usual. ‘I thought you were looking far too interested in her. That was it, wasn’t it? You were looking out for her.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Stef with a grin. ‘There was that, but then there was also her beautiful hair, and some very nice curves. You said yourself that she had put weight on. I would say, as an outside observer, that she has put it on in the right places. Are you upset that you did not guess? I don’t think they’re ready to tell anyone yet.’
Lissy nodded. ‘Yep. Yes. I am upset. God that is so me. I’m so wrapped up in everything else going on, I’m missing the most obvious signals. I should have known. I bet they’re off to tell her granny and then we’ll find out later. Incredible.’
‘Missing signals, hmm? Well now. Some you just choose to ignore. That is how I see it.’
‘I know very well what signals you’re hinting at.’
‘Seven years is a long time,’ Stef pointed out. ‘People deserve a chance to admit how much of a mistake they made, all that time ago. I’d like to clear the air, talk to you properly.’
Lissy stood up and brushed the sand and seaweed away from her skirt. ‘I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. One step at a time. Do you want to go to the ruin then? Or not.’
‘I do.’ Stef looked at her and tilted his head on one side. ‘Just wait there. I will go from the rocks first. I would like to take a photograph of you.’
‘Oh, God, what vision do you have of me this time?’ asked Lissy, scowling.
‘Well, if you are nice you can be Miranda. And if you continue to scowl, you can be the wicked Circe, poisoning the sea for the sake of jealous love. Your choice.’
They both knew there was an undercurrent there that had nothing to do with Waterhouse’s seaside art. There was a brief stand-off, where they stared each other out. Locking h
orns was a good phrase to use at that moment. It felt as if they were exactly doing that.
Then Lissy eventually looked away. ‘Miranda,’ was all she said. It was a start.
‘Thank you,’ said Stef. And he took the photograph.
Despite the fact that she was only wearing her flimsy sandals – having put them back on – the path leading up to the ruin was quite easy to walk on. It had obviously once been a long, wide driveway, and even though there were weeds growing through the cracks in the paving stones and what used to be neat borders were well overgrown, it was more or less even – so that was a bonus.
Sea Scarr Hall, which faced the sea side on, was like something out of a Gothic horror movie when they got up to it, though.
‘All we need is a thunderstorm,’ said Lissy, looking at the place, ‘and a couple of vampires floating around.’ She moved closer to Stef, as she stared around her. It felt safer, somehow.
‘There is a skeleton in Italy which has a brick jammed between its teeth.’ Stef waited for her and took her hand before picking his way across some piles of rubble, long overgrown with ivy. She didn’t pull away. She entwined her fingers in his and let him guide her through what was probably some sort of formal garden. ‘It was thought to be a shroud-eater – one of your vampires – and they put a brick there to stop it feeding and feasting on the plague victims of Venice, in 1576. I know that date is so, because the very talented artist known as Titian died in the plague. Very sad.’
‘That is disgusting!’ Lissy stumbled on some fallen stonework. She looked incredulously at Stef, so serene in the face of such vile thoughts. ‘A brick!’
‘Not very pleasant but the woman was dead. What did it matter to her? So!’ They were eventually standing in front of the house. ‘This is the place. I am astounded.’
‘It was rather grand in its heyday. They were important landowners with a suggestion of smuggling and rumoured links to legal piracy – vehemently denied, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Stef. ‘Yet a very grand house.’
‘Ideally situated for smuggling. You see the window on the second floor, just where the balcony is?’
Stef nodded. He let go of her hand and raised his camera. He snapped a picture and Lissy wondered if he’d take her hand again afterwards. He didn’t.
‘They say a light used to burn in that window on stormy nights.’ She tried not to think about how empty her hand felt now. ‘It was meant to guide the smugglers through to the cove. There was a light supposed to burn in the Dower House as well. The skilled sailors knew they could aim between the two lights and they would be safe. There’s a folder in the Dower House with some information inside it and some old plans as well. It’s all very interesting.’
‘Fascinating. Do you think we can go inside?’ Stef walked over to the staircase at the front of the house and stared up at the doorway. A few planks of blackened, charred wood rested against the stone archway; Lissy saw there was enough space for her, at least, to squeeze past them and get inside the hall. She wasn’t too sure about Stef and his camera making it through the gap though. She strategically ignored a lopsided sign with hand-painted words on it that may or may not have said Keep Out.
‘I’ll go first,’ she said. ‘If there’s anything interesting, I’ll tell you.’
‘When you go inside, bella, there will be something very interesting in there.’
‘Yes, well something that isn’t me that’s interesting.’ Lissy ducked her head and fought against a smile. He had always been a charmer. Nothing had changed there. But now was not the time. That ship had sailed with a naked blonde at the prow, and perhaps if she kept telling herself that, she might believe it. Regardless, she walked up the stone steps, marvelling at how they dipped in the centre through three hundred or so years of use, and squeezed through the gap in the doorway.
Once inside the hall, she stood on what had clearly been a grand, chequer-board patterned hallway and looked around her. The tiles on the floor were dirty and cracked, but she could envisage what they had looked like when they were cared for. Standing here, in this cold, blank house, she shivered. She understood now what Becky had meant, when she said she had a sense of the past all around her the first time she had visited Carrick Park – a hotel out on the moors she had discovered just before she met Jon.
Lissy imagined that, if she closed her eyes, the sounds of parties and laughter and glasses clinking would come from that room to the back of the hallway, which she knew had once been the grand dining room. Beyond that, was a terrace leading down to what had been a walled garden.
She walked over to the dining room and looked down the corridor. Just along there was a cantilevered staircase that looked horribly dangerous; some of the banisters were missing and she wondered whether the things would hold her weight, never mind Stef’s. But she had a terrible urge to go upstairs and poke around up there – try to see the room where the candle had burned in the window for the smugglers and look out of the window to see what the view was like and whether you could see the small vessels coming in and heading towards the cove.
She peered along the corridor a little more and saw rows and rows of rooms, some with their doors shut, some with no doors at all. She wished she had brought a torch – it might not have illuminated much, but it would have enabled her to see into some of the dark corners.
There was a creak and a bang behind her and she swung around; just in time to see Stef emerge from a cloud of dust and tread across the doorway plank he had obviously managed to break down. She was awfully glad to see him.
‘It is the maid’s day off,’ he announced. ‘Quite so.’
‘Maid’s century off! This place has been abandoned since 1905.’
‘Is that when the fire was?’
‘Yes,’ said Lissy. ‘I don’t think many people would have come here after that. Well, not legally, anyway.’
‘It is definitely off the beaten track.’
Lissy nodded. ‘The only people really to have access would be people from the Dower House. And as that’s only been restored and used as a holiday let for the last few months, it’s still quite a hidden gem. I don’t suppose that there’s much to do here once you’ve seen it.’
‘Unless they creep in like you and I have.’ Stef grinned. ‘Are we criminals?’
‘Possibly. But you know what?’ Lissy found herself turning to Stef and smiling. ‘I quite like the idea of trespassing in here. Don’t you?’
‘I do. What’s upstairs?’ Stef came over to her. ‘Shall we?’ He offered his arm, in a very gentlemanly fashion.
Lissy surprised herself by taking it without hesitation. It felt right, and not just because she’d loved being so close to him outside. She frowned as a bizarre image of the two of them walking up the stairs took a strange turn in her imagination and she had a fleeting image of them hurrying up the stairs and entering a bed chamber at twilight.
She caught her breath and looked at Stef. As their bodies connected and their eyes met, he made the same sort of noise and they stared at each other, surprise registering on his face. Her own face, she knew, would be mirroring his.
‘If only,’ said Stef quietly.
Lissy kept staring at him, wondering quite how much of the image they had shared.
She had a feeling it would have been quite a lot.
‘It’s creepy,’ was her response. Stef merely nodded.
The stairs now seemed to take on a different aspect – instead of the blackened stonework, Lissy blinked and saw them as sturdy and pale and smooth, a red carpet running up the middle of them. She knew for a fact they would take her weight. They would take both their weights.
‘Come with me,’ she said to Stef. Her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else, but he didn’t seem to think it sounded unusual.
‘As you wish,’ he replied.
And they walked forward, linked together, towards the staircase.
Chapter Seventeen
Sea Scarr Hall, 1905
She would never see him again, would she? She had terrified him into leaving and he was as disgusted by her past as Walter was. Julian would be gone by the time she trailed down to the cove tomorrow night and she’d just be another pathetic lonely person who had nobody; only she would be the wretched one trying to cling onto the past by clutching a dated satin dress. Well. On the bright side, the thing was probably heavy enough to drown her á la Ophelia, if nothing else. It was a possibility, anyway.
The idea of what Julian might think of her made her ashamed of who she was and what she had done in her Other Life. Why was it one rule for men and another for women? Oh, if she could only have met Julian MacDonald Cooper at that exhibition. How different her life might have been. He would have been a kind husband, and he might – just might – have forgiven her for her past transgressions. But what was the point of dreams and wishes? No point at all.
She went back upstairs when she finally realised that Julian had been completely swallowed up by the evening; and, despite herself, she sent a little prayer up that he had reached the Dower House safely. It was still bad out there, but the storm seemed to be passing over and moving inland.
She sat in her sitting room for a few minutes trying to collect her thoughts. If she closed her eyes, she could still see him leaning against the windowsill as if he belonged there. She could still feel his lips on her hand, albeit that the sensation had lasted only briefly, and she could sense the contact between their bodies as their fingers touched …
Oh, dear Lord.