Watch for Me by Twilight

by Kirsty Ferry

  The mere fact she hadn’t really done anything else with them was incidental. She still hadn’t read the risk assessment, although she was willing to bet that was where Elodie got that information for the squash court steps from. She obviously knew more than Cassie had given her credit for. Cassie blushed again, then thanked the Lord her sister-in-law was kind of watching out for her quietly.

  ‘That’s it. It’s open. In you go.’ She stood back. Aidan grinned and walked past her. And good grief, this place was even worse than the squash courts. She didn’t think it had been properly opened and aired in the last twenty years, apart from when they had the wasps’ nest.

  Cassie could only remember coming into this building once or twice before that – it was just somewhere they didn’t venture. Plus, her father always had it locked up so they knew it was pointless even trying to get inside. Alex had worked at the window putty at the front for a little while one summer, then given up, and they hadn’t tried again.

  There were piles of broken, wooden furniture stacked up and the floor was pretty dodgy in places. Rotten curtains hung from some of the cubicles and Cassie felt rather sick as they crunched through a layer of dead insects and desiccated leaves that must have blown in under the door.

  ‘It’s got potential.’ Aidan tugged at one of the curtains and the whole thing came down in a cloud of dust.

  He swore loudly. Then: ‘Sorry about that!’ after they had finished coughing and wafting the stuff away from their faces.

  ‘That’s fine. They need to come down anyway. It’s in my project plan.’

  Aidan looked at her quickly and she looked at him, and she must have looked as guilty as she felt – and then for some reason, they both started laughing.

  ‘Really. It’s okay.’ Cassie grabbed hold of another curtain and yanked it down. Then he did one, and so they went on until all the cubicles were exposed and they stood looking at six cupboard-sized spaces, three on one side of a big carved urn that maybe once was a drinking fountain of sorts, and three on the other.

  ‘Ladies and Gents. And a water fountain that probably didn’t deliver much in the way of water. There’s a family story that they filled the bowl with punch and had some very jolly japes here.’

  ‘Really?’ Aidan looked intrigued. He walked over and ran his fingertips over the carved stone. Cassie wondered if he was imagining Robert filling a glass from the punch bowl, knocking the alcohol back and running, semi-clad, into the pool. Robert running out there, straight onto the diving board and then bouncing and dive-bombing into the pool, a cry of triumph on his lips as the water splashed up and swallowed him. Robert being pursued by the girl in the sketch, her long hair flying behind her and a forest-green tinted swimsuit perfectly sculpting her curves …

  Cassie blinked. She knew that she wasn’t imagining the next scene. Just as if someone had switched an old projector on and pointed it at the wall, she saw them, clear as day. It was almost as though they had been hiding in the cubicles, ready to come out and play.

  The silent film ran through its reels – the man, young, good-looking and possibly quite drunk – was darting around, playing tag in the changing rooms with a copper-haired girl. Her legs, long and tanned, covered the distance between them easily as they danced around each other, choreographed perfectly, as if it was a dance they had done a thousand times.

  Cassie didn’t get a close look at the girl’s face. She wouldn’t stay still long enough, but she knew she was laughing and she knew it was Stella. The young man rounded on her and suddenly ducked down beneath her arms. Stella tried to move, but her ankle turned slightly and she stumbled. The man scooped her up into his arms and ran outside, with her flailing and wriggling in his grip.

  Fascinated, Cassie rushed to the window, in time to see the man take a flying leap off the poolside, still clutching the girl. They landed in the pool and the water rose up in a great tidal wave, soaking a group of other people by the poolside. One young man sat placidly and simply raised his glass, trying to protect it from the water. One young woman buried her head in the chest of another young man. There were others there too; hazy shapes that Cassie didn’t concentrate on, but an impression of fun and joy exuded from them all.

  Then the images faded and she found she was staring at a disused swimming pool and a weedy mess and crumbling steps that led down into nothing.

  ‘Can you feel it too?’ Aidan’s soft voice broke into her thoughts and dragged her back to the present. ‘The echoes of the past? It would have been wonderful, wouldn’t it?’ He was still staring around him. He could have no idea of what Cassie had just seen, but his eyes lighted on Cassie and he smiled.

  In the warm, enveloping silence of the musty old changing rooms Cassie simply nodded, her mind somewhere else. The mould and the blueish-green coloured rusty deposits on the drain covers didn’t exist. The place was full of bright young things shouting and laughing; the ladies tipsy, the men roaring drunk.

  They deserved their fun – the Second World War would have stripped all that away from them. How many of them had lost their lives in the conflict? How many of them had lost their lovers? Had any of these people she’d just seen suffered?

  ‘It’s rather sad,’ Cassie said eventually, ‘that we don’t really know if he ever came back here afterwards.’

  ‘I know.’ Aidan looked out of the window, his eyes focussing on something for a moment as his brows drew together. Then he turned away, his attention back on his notebook.

  Although he was here in a professional capacity now – as he had to keep reminding himself every time he glanced at Cassie – and should have moved on from Robert’s lost youth, he still had the feeling that Hartsford hadn’t really let go of Robert Edwards.

  He’d almost certainly heard a shriek of laughter, a cry of ‘Rob!’ from outside just now and there were prickles of unease on the back of his neck. All the hairs on his forearms stood on end and there was an icy draught swirling past him. Then everything settled and went back to normal.

  He’d worked in strange places before – abandoned buildings that people swore were haunted – although he’d never experienced anything first hand. But Hartsford was different, somehow. There definitely seemed to be something of his great-great-uncle left here, even if it was just a memory seared into the old bricks.

  Robert was a little too late to be classed as part of Hemmingway’s so-called “Lost Generation” – the young men who had come of age during World War 1 and the early twenties – but Aidan thought the term was equally applicable to the people who would have partied here in the years in between the wars. The idea that he was standing in perhaps the same building that Robert had stood in all those years ago – with a girl from that very same family, if indeed Robert’s nameless, faceless muse had been a daughter of Hartsford Hall – was a little bit surreal.

  He shook the thoughts away and reminded himself again that he was here on business, in good faith, to assist a client in a renovation project – even though he suspected the actual project chart was probably more mythical than realistic. But still, he owed it to Cassie to be professional, and he owed it to Robert to bring the place back to life. Robert. Or Rob, as he understood he’d been called by his close friends and family. Yes. Rob. He felt a sense of closeness now to this intriguing relative of his, and hoped he wouldn’t mind it if he referred to him by his nickname.

  Aidan cleared his throat and wrote something that meant nothing in his notebook. ‘Right. I need to get some more measurements.’ He was glad to hear the words coming out firmly. ‘Then we can sort out an action plan for here as well.’ He looked up and cast a skilled eye over the interior of the changing rooms and made a few more notes. Then he frowned. ‘Is there anything behind the fountain?’ Aidan walked over towards it, peered at it and pointed out a pile of bricks that had tumbled into what looked like a void behind it.

  There was a strange, brackish, cloudy light coming from the gap, and as Aidan leaned in towards it to move some bricks out of the void
, he felt a breath of wind on his face. A smell of damp earth and another small draught wove around him and he stood up. ‘This is odd. Come over here.’ At least that breeze might have explained the weird draught earlier.

  Cassie, who had been staring at the cubicles, apparently in a little world of her own, started and looked at him. ‘Sorry? I was miles away. Or perhaps years away. Just thinking, you know?’

  ‘I know. But look at this!’ He indicated the hole in the wall and Cassie came over to stand next to him.

  She bent down and peered in. ‘It doesn’t smell very nice.’ She wrinkled her nose.

  ‘No, but I’m wondering if we’ve got a window behind there. Do you know? There’s no other explanation for the light coming through.’

  ‘Holes in the brickwork outside?’ Cassie turned to him. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever noticed anything. It’s a place I rarely visit. Shall we pop out the back and see? It’s a bit overgrown – you might get scratched or nettled.’ She glanced at his bare forearms. ‘Are you all right with that?’

  Aidan, in his turn, allowed his gaze to travel down to her cropped trousers and the elegant lower calves that appeared below the fabric. She had, he noticed, a tiny tattoo of a dragonfly on her ankle. ‘I don’t have bare ankles, so I’m willing if you’re willing.’

  ‘I do love a good family mystery.’ A smile suddenly broke across Cassie’s face. ‘Let’s see if we’ve got one here. A mysterious window in an old building. Brilliant!’

  ‘It might be a hole in the brickwork though. I wouldn’t get too excited yet.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know this family and this house.’ Cassie unhooked an elastic band from her wrist, then reached up and dragged her hair back into a ponytail, twisting it up into a complicated knot system at the nape of her neck. She shook her head as if to make sure the hair wouldn’t come loose, then smiled. ‘Let’s go. I’ll lead the way.’

  1940

  Stella didn’t think she’d ever forget the hysterical phone call from Helen.

  ‘They’ve done it. They’ve bloody done it!’ Helen sounded drunk, which wasn’t at all like her. She could knock champagne back like the best of them, but she was always sensible until at least lunchtime. ‘Oh, God, I feel sick to my stomach, I do, I feel sick.’

  ‘What? Who’s done what?’ Stella thought she knew the answer, but she crossed her fingers and her legs and attempted to cross her toes inside her tennis shoes in the hope that she was wrong. Rob was waiting on the front lawn, all dressed in his tennis whites and looking divine, but a maid had come hurrying to find her before she’d even descended the stairs.

  ‘Anthony. And Stephen. And Oscar. Oh, God, they’ll die. They will. They’ll die! They’ve joined up. The three of them. The army.’ Helen took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘They did it together. Pulled strings. God knows what. They’re going to go through the whole thing in the same battalion or whatever the hell they call it. Officers. They say they’ll be officers soon, like they wanted to be. They’ve gone for a drink to celebrate. I can’t believe it! If I didn’t love Anthony so much, I’d hate him for this. I would. I do. I do hate him. God, Stella!’ Her voice rose to a feverish crescendo, then, almost more frighteningly, it dropped so her next words were no more than a pathetic little whisper. ‘I love him. What am I going to do, Stella? What the hell will I do?’

  Stella’s eyes filled with tears and she clutched the receiver tightly to stop herself from shaking or dropping the phone or collapsing or something. She looked over her shoulder to the window where Rob was practising his swing. He must have sensed her looking at him as he turned and waved confidently at her, then went back to his practising. Her silk scarf was tied around his neck like a cravat and looked incongruous against his white clothes, but she knew what they’d done with that scarf and it made her giggle when he flaunted it at the most embarrassing moments.

  ‘I don’t know Helen. I don’t know.’ Her gaze followed Rob as he lifted the racquet and looked for all the world like a Wimbledon champion. She could see the strength in his arms, sense the muscles in his back contracting as he drew back and followed through the swing. What if it was her? What if Rob joined up?

  Stella shook her head helplessly. ‘I simply don’t know.’

  When Stella eventually came out of the Hall, her face was tear-stained and white.

  Rob took one look and raced over to her. ‘Stella! My love, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, Rob. It’s the boys. Helen just telephoned me. They’ve all decided to join the army.’

  ‘What?’ Rob’s heart flipped. ‘That’s sheer madness. Why the hell did they do that?’

  ‘To be heroes? To be noble and courageous? Because they think they’re bloody immortal?’

  Rob pushed his fingers through his hair and shook his head. ‘We’re none of us immortal. Do they even understand what they’re getting themselves into?’ He had a horrible image of the three of them marching off to an unknown destination, laughing and roistering and looking dashing. However, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t imagine the three of them coming back as a trio. ‘God.’

  ‘Rob, don’t ever join the army.’

  ‘I won’t. I promised you that.’ He tried a laugh but it came out strangled. ‘I told you I’d prefer to fly a plane. Much more exciting and civilised.’

  ‘Oh, don’t even joke about it.’ She squashed herself right up to his body and he could smell the lingering scent of lavender on her clothes. ‘Hold me. Please.’

  ‘Marry me, Stella.’ The words surprised even him, although they did, admittedly, come out quite flippantly. ‘Then when I do go, I’ll go as the happiest pilot in the world.’

  ‘Rob, no!’ She pulled away. Looking up at him, she half-smiled through her tears. ‘Not yet. You certainly shouldn’t ask me under these circumstances. I believe it’s what they call a knee-jerk reaction.’

  ‘Knee-jerk. Yes. Perhaps.’ He smiled down at her. ‘One day you’ll say yes, won’t you?’

  ‘I will. One day.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Present Day

  Cassie led the way as they headed out of the changing room building and towards the undergrowth that spread out around the back of it. Brambles were tangled with wild roses, and there were some evil looking nettles as well – just as she had warned Aidan.

  ‘I suggest we go very carefully,’ she told him. ‘I’m not sure how dense it might get.’

  ‘Sounds sensible to me.’ He smiled. ‘There was nothing I liked better as a boy than a bit of exploring, especially in the Lake District. Wonderful place. You climb those mountains and you stand on the top and it’s as if you’re touching the sky.’ His smile became rueful and he shrugged. ‘I guess every time I climbed a mountain, I was trying somehow to see what Robert must have felt when he flew those planes. He was always a bit of an adventurer, so my grandfather told me. Robert was his heroic uncle, the one who couldn’t settle to anything. I don’t think anyone was surprised when it was the RAF he chose.’

  ‘Exciting, yet terrifying.’ Cassie shuddered, imagining all that space beneath the pilot and the ground, and the bombs flying around. She chased the thoughts out of her mind quickly. ‘Do you think Robert would have been one of those guys who are into extreme sports nowadays?’ She was happy to take her time tracing out the old footpath, so long as Aidan was talking. She could listen to that voice forever. The thought made her blush and she was pleased she was in front of him, so he couldn’t see her burning cheeks.

  ‘Maybe. He was very athletic, very sporty – but he was a dreamer as well. I guess I’m like him, in some ways. I like to imagine projects finished, like to think of what the buildings might be used for, the history they had before we moved in, you know? But I do love my bike. It’s fast, it’s dangerous, but if you can control it when you’re speeding along, it’s the best feeling in the world. There’s not many things that are legal you can compare that sort of adrenalin rush to.’

  It all sounded a little like falling hopelessly and suddenl
y in love. Or at least that’s what the books had led Cassie to believe.

  ‘Hmm.’ She had no experience of that sort of love. She had had some very short and very sweet relationships – nothing had ever lasted, and she’d certainly never felt that adrenalin rush with anyone. She’d watched Alex and Elodie get together, but let’s face it, that had been a slow burner since they were children. Did that sort of sudden, heady love really happen? Did it feel like speeding along on an open road with your breath being ripped out of you and all your senses alive?

  ‘Just “hmm”?’ Aidan interrupted her thoughts. ‘Come on – as a fellow biker you must know what I’m saying!’

  ‘Yes. As a biker I do.’ She turned to see where he was and caught her wrist on a devil of a thorn, which kindly decided to rip into her and leave a mark at least five centimetres long.

  Cassie swore, and within milliseconds – after that moment where your body is sort of startled into wondering why the hell it’s been slashed to the vein like that and there’s no evidence of blood at all – the red stuff was at the surface of the cut and gushing warmly down her arm.

  ‘Nasty!’ Aidan closed the gap between them. ‘Raise your arm above your head – that’s it – get it above the heart. Have you got anything to press on it? A handkerchief or anything?’

  Cassie shook her head, biting back more swear words at the fact it was stinging and throbbing pretty badly now.

  ‘Okay, not a problem.’ Aidan dug his hand into his pocket and came out with a neckerchief – one of the types so beloved by bikers to pull up over their chins and keep the wind off their faces.

  ‘You can’t use that!’ She watched as he pulled her arm gently towards him and wrapped the fabric tightly around her wrist. She stared at the beautiful cerulean blue and white fabric as it slowly turned red where the cut was. ‘It’s silk!’