The Winter Secret

by Lulu Taylor

  No. I’ve started. I’ll be fine. I’m not going to be beaten.

  She got to the gates at the end of the lane and stopped. It was silent. The darkened houses were still with no signs of life. No cars were on the road. The gates were closed, the party over. Buttercup thought about all the times she had driven carelessly through these gates, never thinking about their real purpose. They were merely decorative; and they might shut other people out, but they were always open to her, whenever she chose. They loomed above her, forbidding and grand. The world behind here is exclusive and special, they seemed to say. And it is no longer your world.

  She tapped her code into the keypad, her fingers clumsy with cold, and for a moment she thought they were not going to open. Had Charles changed the code already? But then they began their silent swing inwards, opening in that eerie way as if by themselves, and she walked on through. Ahead was the house, as silent as the rest, and dark too. She realised she had never seen the house this way, all its windows unlit so that the glass reflected the moonlight like hundreds of little diamonds. It had never looked so uninhabited before.

  Charles must be in there all alone. Carol and Steve will be in their cottage.

  For a moment, she felt sorry for him and then sad. All their hope and love had come to this, in the end: alone in a huge, deserted house, without the family it needed, without anything but the memories of all the pain and suffering that had taken place within its walls.

  It’s not going to get me. I’m not going to be a victim too.

  She walked up the driveway, keeping to the shadows. No doubt the security cameras were on, the alarms might be set as well. She would deal with that as she came across it. As it was, she still had her door keys and she still knew the codes. No one would be watching the cameras’ footage and if they saw her at some point in the future, what did it matter?

  I’m not going to think about the future.

  Dark things lay ahead, she knew that. Confrontations, battles, divorce. But for the time being she was going to concentrate on rescuing her treasures, then she would happily . . . what did Gawain say? Shake the dust of the place from my feet. Yes. That was it.

  On reaching the house, she skirted the turning circle at the front, making sure to keep away from the lights that were triggered by motion sensors. She didn’t need them tonight – the moon was shining hard and bright above, making the windows glow with pearly grey adularescence. Everything was quiet.

  Tippi, she thought suddenly. How could I have forgotten her? I hope she doesn’t bark when I come in. And I’ll take her with me. Charles can never look after her on his own, not if Carol and Steve are leaving.

  That thought made her look instinctively in the direction of Carol and Steve’s cottage. It, too, was in darkness, though grey smoke rose wispily from the chimney showing the fire was still lit. But it was half past one at night. They would probably be asleep.

  Buttercup made her way around the side of the house and in through the courtyard gate, the cobbles slippery with frozen snow. She was glad that Milky was safely at the Herberts’ yard. The back door was locked but the bolts were not shot into place and her key opened it. She expected the alarms – usually set at night when everyone had retired – to start beeping and was all ready to tap in her code before they went off, but there was nothing. Tippi woke from her bed in the boot room as Buttercup came in, clambered to her feet and was nuzzling her, tail wagging furiously.

  ‘Good girl, Tippi, good girl. Lovely to see you too,’ whispered Buttercup, rubbing Tippi’s ears. ‘Where’s your master, eh? Has he gone to sleep?’

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom in the kitchen, she saw that it was pristine. The caterers had cleared away all signs of the Christmas party. Everything looked completely normal and, for a moment, she wondered if it had all been a dream.

  The normality of the scene soothed her nerves and renewed her courage.

  ‘Wait here, good girl,’ she said to Tippi and slipped off her wellington boots. In her socks, she moved quietly across to the door and let herself out into the hall. The marble busts looked eerie in the moonlight that fell in grey beams through the windows, more alive than they ever looked in the day. Two Christmas trees stood on opposite sides, dangling with ornaments, their lights off, and swathes of holly and ivy were still festooned about. Buttercup walked carefully across the marble floor, skidding slightly in her socks on the slippery surface, and stood at the bottom of the staircase that rose into the shadows above.

  Where is Charles?

  That was the question. If he was asleep in the bedroom, she would have to tiptoe past him to get her things. If he was awake, he could be anywhere. The thought made her insides flutter nervously and the tips of her fingers prickle.

  Come on. What’s the worst that can happen? A bit of shouting, that’s all. He won’t hurt me, I won’t let him.

  She went quickly up the stairs, soundless on the carpet, and along the corridor to their bedroom. Outside, she stopped and listened, trying to keep her breathing calm although her heart was racing. There was no sound from inside, and slowly, she opened the door as quietly as she could. The room, she saw at once, was empty: the curtains weren’t closed but hung open so that the park lay in dark beauty before her, lit by the frosty moon. To her surprise, a window was open, which explained the chill in the air. The bed was empty, still perfectly made from that morning. Buttercup went swiftly to the window and shut it, closing out the frigid breeze.

  Letting out a sigh of relief, she went to her side of the bed and switched on her reading light. The golden glow was comforting, and she opened her bedside drawer to take out some of her things: bits of jewellery, notebooks, a keepsake or two. She was glad they were still safely there, gathered them quickly up and put them on the bed along with the family photographs in their silver frames that stood on the shelf near the bed. Then she went to the dressing table and opened her jewellery box, taking out her favourite pieces and the sentimental items, leaving the showy gifts that Charles had given her but she hadn’t particularly liked, such as the flashy necklace of diamonds and emeralds that had made her think of trophy wives and slave collars, because it was the sort of present a rich man gave to display his wealth around his woman’s neck.

  She added her bits and pieces to the pile on the bed, then opened up the small bag she’d packed earlier and put in all her keepsakes. She grabbed her wash-bag from the bathroom and filled it with her toothbrush and face creams. When she’d collected everything she thought she might need in the next few days, she stuffed it into the bag, then looked around at the room. So much still remained but she couldn’t carry much.

  I’ll get it all later. Carol will pack it up for me, I’m sure.

  Then she stepped quietly out into the hall, dark after the moonlit bedroom, looking up and down for any signs of Charles. It was silent apart from the tick of the grandfather clock, and she wondered where he was. Had he made a sudden trip to London, perhaps? Maybe he and Elaine were deep in conference somewhere to work out their next move.

  Never mind them. Best get on with the other thing I came here to do.

  She walked lightly down the hall, her bag strap over her shoulder, and as she passed the Redmain room, she noticed that the door was ajar and a light was on inside. Gasping, she pressed herself against the wall, thinking that Charles must be in there, but as she waited, frozen, her heart pounding with fear, she could hear nothing from inside and eventually she dared to edge to the door and peep through the gap.

  There was no one in the room, but someone had been in there. The carefully curated display cases were smashed; the contents, along with shards of glass, were scattered all over the room. The commemorative chair had been knocked off its dais and lay on its side on the floor. The plates and everything else mounted on the wall had been ripped off, broken or discarded. The bust of Captain Redmain was on the floor, its nose broken off and the edges of his tricorn hat shattered. Charles’s private museum had been comprehensively wreck
ed.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ breathed Buttercup, taking it all in. ‘Oh, Charles.’

  She felt a rush of real fear. If Charles had destroyed this, his most precious collection, what else might he be in the mood to destroy?

  Maybe he feels as though Captain Redmain has betrayed him, after everything he’s done for him – rebuilding his house, taking his name, tending to his possessions . . .

  She shivered with fear. Where is he?

  Buttercup turned and headed back down the corridor to the next door, Charles’s study. Listening hard at the door and seeing no light around it, she opened it slowly and found it also empty, also with a window open, letting in the icy air from outside. She went over and closed it, before turning to Charles’s desk. He had told her that he had Ingrid’s family albums in his study, and the desk was the most obvious place. Would he have locked the drawers? She stood behind it, in front of the chair, and realised that she had never been on this side of the desk before. In fact, she had hardly ever come into this room. Here was where Charles worked, and she had no knowledge of that side of his life. He kept it private. He assumed she had no interest.

  She switched on the lamp, bent down and pulled at a drawer. It opened smoothly. Inside it was neatly arranged: pens, pencils, a stapler, a charger . . . everything perfectly laid out.

  Typical Charles.

  It was his obsession with order and tidiness that made what had happened in the Redmain room so disturbing. It was hard to believe that anyone who loathed chaos and mess the way Charles did could have left the room in that state.

  Pulling open a few more drawers, she inspected the contents as well as she could without moving anything. In the bottom right-hand drawer she found what she was looking for: a small pile of three albums, one extremely old, another less so and a modern one. She knew what they were as soon as she saw them, but she opened one anyway to check. The first thing she saw was a wedding photo and she realised to her surprise that it was Charles, young and fair, smiling broadly with a young Ingrid on his arm in her long white dress and long trailing veil. They looked so happy and certain of themselves as they gazed into the camera, unaware of the rancour and grief ahead.

  Buttercup snapped it shut, pushed the albums into her bag and switched off the lamp, blinking in the sudden darkness.

  I’ll go back downstairs, get Tippi and we’ll be off.

  The end of all this was finally in sight.

  She heard a distant bang, like a muffled explosion, and instantly froze, listening for more. Nothing came. The house was silent, except for the ticking of clocks and a faint buzz – the electrical system, probably. Wondering if she’d imagined the bang, she headed back into the hallway. She was hurrying down the stairs when she heard another sound, similar to the first but much closer. It was a menacing sound: the pop of an explosion but somehow soft. Not like a firework but like the whoosh of a hot-air balloon or something igniting . . .

  Buttercup felt a sudden, instinctive certainty that something was very wrong. Why were the windows open and the alarms off? Why was Charles not here?

  The sound had come from near the kitchen, where a doorway led down stone steps to the cellar. She padded towards it, her eyes wide with apprehension. The door was open and she could hear a sinister sound from below, like a threatening whisper with accompanying cracks and creaks. The cellar was where the boilers were housed, so it always gave off a musty warmth, but the heat coming from below was more intense than usual.

  Is there something wrong with the boiler?

  She dropped her bag at the entrance and went cautiously down the stairs, turning on the light in the first underground room as she went past the switch. It looked quite normal. She moved on into the next room. The temperature was rising, the blowing whisper growing louder. As she turned the corner to the next room, she saw it in the room beyond that, registering the implications in one appalled instant.

  She could see a curtain of bright, burning yellow and sheets of jagged, rolling flame whipping up the walls of the furthest cellar.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she shouted. Her eyes fell on a saucer with a candle in it, sitting right in front of her in the middle of the room. The candle was almost burned out, the flame feeding on the wick gyrating wildly as it reached the end. Around the candle was a strangely reflective substance, like dark, rainbowed glass, shining in the candlelight. Buttercup pulled in a horrified gasp as she realised that she was looking at a plateful of petrol and a flame about to meet it. Just as she understood what it was, the last bit of wax collapsed and the burning wick fell into the liquid. A massive sheet of flame whoomped upwards and outwards all at the same time, filling half the room with fire.

  Buttercup turned and ran as fast as she could, full of the energy of panic. She put everything she had into reaching the stairs and running up, and yet time seemed to be moving painfully slowly, her legs going at half speed while the ravening flame chased her up and out of the cellar. Panting, her chest burning, she reached the top, pushed herself up and out of the door, and slammed it behind her. The house, she realised, was full of open windows, draughts to feed flames and draw them upwards. The air of the hall was icy and moving, the ornaments on the Christmas trees swaying eerily in the breeze.

  I have to get out, get help, the house is going to burn down! The alarms must be off! I bet the whole thing has been disabled – the sprinklers, the alert to the fire service. Oh my God, it’s going to burn! I have to dial 999.

  Her hands went to her pocket. The mobile phone wasn’t there and she had an instant picture of it lying by the bedside in Ingrid’s house.

  Shit.

  She picked up her bag, slung the strap over her head and headed for the landline in the drawing room, running as fast as she could across the marble floor. Then to her horror, the floor seemed to disappear from under her as her slippery socks lost their grip. She felt everything turn the wrong way, her head went down, crashed on the marble floor and she sensed the world vanishing as she disappeared into darkness.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Xenia woke with a start, gasping suddenly as if for air after a period under water. She blinked into the darkness, feeling her shock subside. Something had disturbed her.

  She had, she realised, fallen asleep on top of the covers of her bed, in her clothes. She groaned slightly as she moved herself, feeling the stiffness in her limbs as she tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed. As she sat on the bedside, waiting for the feeling to return to her shoulders, she became aware of a strange light in the room. Turning, she saw to her horror the awful sight of flames in the corner of her bedroom, sharp and crisp as they flickered upwards, licking the walls and the curtains.

  She went to scream, a trembling croak coming out of her dry throat, but then realised that the flames were not actually burning anything. The wall and the curtains were untouched even though the red and yellow fire was burning hard against them. No heat emanated from them.

  It’s a hallucination. I don’t need to be afraid. It’s a mirage.

  And yet, they looked so real, so terrifyingly present – a fire, in her room.

  I must stay calm, she thought. Lately she had begun to notice strange lights in her vision: sparks, flashes, waving lights. This must be an extension of that; another marker of her age and the degeneration of her body, something else to torment her, another challenge to deal with. You’re only imagining them. They will disappear, she told herself, fighting to keep control of her fear.

  The hallucination grew stronger, the flame wall larger and more menacing. Though she knew that the fire wasn’t real, she couldn’t keep the panic from building in her chest. She got off the bed and stumbled to the window, not wanting to look at the false fire any longer. There, far away, over the wall and across the park, was Charcombe, its dark chimneys reaching up into the air, its many windows reflecting the white of the moon.

  Except . . .

  She squinted. There was something strange about the house.

  Oh, m
y eyes. I don’t know what I’m seeing any more.

  There was more light at the upper windows than the reflection of the moon, and it was gold and orange, coming from deep within the house.

  What on earth is it?

  She felt a clammy sensation of fear creeping over her. She knew that something was wrong.

  No. It’s a mirage. More illusory fire. Nothing.

  She turned her back on it and walked away.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, she decided to make a cup of tea to calm her nerves and give her something ordinary and everyday to do. When she returned to her bedroom, she was sure that the hallucination would be gone. The fire would have disappeared.

  The kettle on the stove began to hiss as the water within started to heat. She couldn’t shake the morbid feeling that the fire had brought to her. She wasn’t sure if she could stand tormenting visions like these. She would have to talk to the doctor about them. The strangeness of the house, though. The problems with her sight were always in her immediate vision, not far away like that. She could still focus quite well on the remote distance.

  Impelled by a need she couldn’t identify, Xenia walked out of the kitchen, along the hall and to the front door. Picking up her coat and scarf and slipping on her boots, she opened the door and went out into the bitterly cold darkness. It was slippery and she went carefully, placing one foot slowly ahead of the other until she’d reached the end of the path. On the lane, she walked in the middle where it was least icy, making her way up towards the gates of the house. They were shut, high and forbidding, barring the way to Charcombe Park.

  Xenia stood outside them, screwing up her eyes to try and see more clearly. Then, squinting, she made out a dark cloud of smoke in the distance, a red slash across the top of the house. It was not a vision after all.

  She gasped and turned, trying to hurry on the lane but fearful of tripping over the potholes and stones on the surface of the road. She couldn’t go fast. Her heart pounded and her breath came in short, urgent pants.