Watch for Me by Twilight

by Kirsty Ferry

  ‘French hand-printed silk.’ Aidan smiled wryly. ‘Birthday gift from the lovely Petra. She has no idea about what’s best for bike-riding. I only wear it to humour her. Never mind. I’m sure it’ll wash.’

  ‘No. I can’t.’ Cassie tugged her arm away and tried to unfasten the knot. But it was pretty tight and he’d tied it in such a way that it was too awkward to undo. She shook her arm in frustration. ‘Aidan!’

  ‘See, it’s staying there. Now, how does it feel?’

  ‘It’s fine.’ It was only a little lie. It was still stinging and throbbing, and deep down she could feel a tiny piece of her closing up. A girl. It was a gift from a girl. A ‘lovely’ girl. Typical. She deliberately pushed thoughts of listening to his wonderful voice longer-term out of her head and turned back to the woods. ‘Look – I think we’re almost there anyway. Yes. Here we are. And well – what do you know. There’s a window out the back.’

  ‘And …’ Aidan took a step forward into some lethal looking Jurassic ferns and cupped his hands around his face to see through the green-tinted, lichen-covered window, ‘… it looks as if there’s a room behind it. I can see something that looks like a chair in the corner. We just need to work out how we get inside.’

  Aidan moved away from the window and looked around him. It was well hidden out here, that was for sure.

  Cassie slid in front of him and it was her turn to peer through the window. ‘It’s a very secret little room. I didn’t even know it was here. Do you think it was for the pool attendant? Did they have pool attendants in those days?’

  Aidan laughed. ‘Well, I don’t think he would have seen much of the pool from there if it was. But somebody used that room for something.’

  ‘Whatever it was for – wow.’ Her voice was muffled as she copied his stance from moments before, the bright blue and white scarf around her wrist rather nastily stained with red now.

  Aidan studied the back of the building, trying to think with a professional head on his shoulders. If he was going to create a secret entrance to a secret room, where would he hide it? In plain sight, perhaps?

  His gaze travelled downwards and along the wall to a small, square wooden door, about half way down again. ‘Look.’ He pointed at it.

  Cassie followed his finger and her eyes lit up. ‘Shall we? Do you think it’s worth a shot?’

  Aidan grinned. ‘We’ll see when we get into it.’ He pushed at the old wooden boards gently and felt them give under his touch. ‘They seem pretty rotten. One good shove and we would be through them. I could try to find a way to open it in a more traditional manner, of course.’ His expert fingers moved across the wood and travelled down the side opposite the hinges.

  ‘Like most of the Hartsford Hall girls before me, I don’t really care for tradition.’ Cassie moved swiftly in and pushed her weight against the door, seeming to care little as well for the fact she had a nasty gouge down her wrist.

  Aidan stood back and watched her give it two, three more pushes. He saw the hinges give a little, the wooden slats bow slightly – then he launched himself forward and threw his weight against the door as well.

  Cassie let out a shriek as she tumbled forward, and Aidan, managing to balance himself, grabbed her before she ended up face first in the void.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Aidan set her upright, part of him wanting to hold her just a little longer.

  Cassie nursed her wrist. It must have jarred when she fell. ‘Yes, thanks. I’m fine. But look. It’s just facing onto a brick wall here!’ She leaned forward to look inside. ‘See?’ She pointed at it. ‘How annoying. It’s just a storage cupboard or something.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not really.’ Aidan peered into the gloom. He could see there was a brick wall facing him – that wasn’t to be disputed – but he could also see a weird greenish light coming in from the side. He allowed himself a small smile, then stepped a little further in, reaching his hand out to the right. ‘I say. How very clever. A fake wall. Makes it look like a proper room, but if we go in a bit more and turn to the right … like this, I think we’ll find we can get through it. May I?’

  ‘Please.’ Cassie nodded, her eyes round. ‘Be my guest.’

  He was fully inside now. Ahead of him, he could see the gloom of the little room behind the fountain, and feel a cold draught swirling around. He shivered. There had to be another source of air, another opening somewhere – he had felt the draught when he looked behind the fountain – but no way was that breeze coming in from the doorway they had just located, or the window, which, old as it was, wasn’t broken or loosely fitted.

  ‘Where are you?’ came Cassie’s voice. ‘Where have you gone?’ There was a pause. ‘Come on – I can’t be losing civil engineers on my property. That’s not in the regulations.’

  Aidan grinned and raised his voice. ‘I’m not lost. Come on in. I’ve found the entrance to your secret room.’

  1940

  Stella ripped open the envelope. She recognised the handwriting and was prepared for yet another proposal, another idea he had come up with to make some extra money or win over her father. It had become the pattern of their communication and she normally read his letters with a smile on her lips, but today she was still shaken from the latest angry encounter with her father about her relationship.

  Since Dunkirk and the ongoing Battle of Britain, things had changed. The world had become a little more desperate and a lot more scary. She eyed the unpaid bills on her dressing table and scanned the pots of make-up and dainty little perfume bottles that lay in a jumble there.

  Irrelevant. The whole lot seemed so irrelevant when you looked at what was going on in Europe. She wished Rob had a reserved occupation, then he’d be safe. God knew she didn’t want him out there fighting. Her father had fought for his country, what, twenty-odd years ago? He was angry that her brother couldn’t uphold the family honour, thanks to his weak heart, but had managed to get him a desk job somewhere.

  All her father kept telling her was he had done it to give her a future and she wasn’t going to throw that future away on a louche Bohemian idiot like Rob Edwards. Would Rob Edwards, he asked, stand on a beach, shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Allies and be strafed with gunfire? Or would he spout some pretty words and hope the enemies’ hearts melted?

  The latest argument replayed in Stella’s mind and hot tears pricked the back of her eyes.

  ‘Does he have a title?’

  ‘No. But he’ll be famous one day. His poems—’

  ‘Damn his poems to Hell. Damn and blasted bloody poems. I repeat, does he have a title?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘No buts.’

  ‘He has a little money and he has sold some work. And he—’

  ‘I don’t care. The man does not have a title. You do.’

  ‘Papa, no one cares about that these days!’

  But he wasn’t listening. ‘No. It’s out of the question. Don’t ask me again, Estella. You are the daughter of an earl. You are Lady Estella Amelia Aldrich. You are not marrying him.’

  ‘You only call me Estella when you’re cross with me.’

  ‘I’m outraged with you, not just cross. Get out of my sight child. Now!’

  Stella pulled the single sheet of paper out of the envelope. It was folded around another, sturdier rectangle. She shook the rectangle free and a photograph dropped into her palm.

  It was the picture she’d taken of Rob at Cambridge, that day she’d jumped on the train with her bicycle to surprise him. The image she’d captured was imprinted on her heart. She didn’t need to look at it, not really, to know what he looked like that day. Yet her heart gave a funny, jiggly little beat as she gave in and studied his mischievous smile and almond-shaped eyes. She knew the exact navy-blue colour of them, the exact dark blonde of his hair.

  Stella studied his floppy, side-parted hair, much longer and much more untidy than her father approved of. She looked at the crumpled tweedy-looking suit and open-necked shirt. She knew the feel o
f that scratchy tweed against her cheek, the warmth that she would find if she snuck her fingertips beneath the collar of that shirt and the way Rob would shudder and shiver in such an exaggerated fashion before he grabbed her hand away and raised it to his lips. She knew how that mischievous smile felt against her own unruly copper curls, how his kiss felt against her skin …

  But Rob, her dear, sweet Rob, her constant shadow, had been insistent about this bloody war and she half-dreaded reading his letter.

  ‘If the country wants me, it can have me. I love our three chaps, but not enough to follow them into the army. No. It’ll be the RAF for me.’

  His words still haunted her – spoken as she lay on her back, her head in the crook of his neck, an empty champagne bottle on its side. The tiny room was cosy with the fire and the candlelight and they had laughed.

  ‘Who the hell would want you?’ she had teased, deliberately not mentioning the RAF part of it. She couldn’t bear that thought, she absolutely couldn’t.

  ‘You, for a start!’

  She had shouted with laughter as he wrestled her beneath him and they made love as if the world could never touch them.

  But that was before the argument with her father. Stella shook her head and turned the photograph over. In Rob’s slightly loopy, untidy script, was written eight simple words:

  Reach for the Star. Dance until we die.

  Stella smoothed the letter out and read it. In the same script, as she had suspected, Rob asked her to marry him. Again. But this letter became much, much worse.

  Stella, my darling love. You know that things will have to change now. We won’t always have tomorrow; we won’t always be like this – young and silly and wild. One day, we have to grow up and become sensible and I think that time is now. I’ve been giving it a great deal of thought, and, as I told you, it’s the RAF for me. I can’t sit back and just let things happen around me. I have to do my duty to my country, and shall be joining up as soon as I possibly can, and that is why this letter is so important and so urgent for me to write.

  You, my darling, my one sweet love, you are the one thing that is pure and simple and beautiful in all this dreadful agony, the one thing I can cling on to. You, my darling, are the woman I want to marry. And I want to marry you before I go. I fall at your feet.

  Please say yes.

  Please.

  ‘Oh, Rob!’ Stella grabbed the photograph and flipped it over, face down, so his beautiful face was hidden. She couldn’t think straight if she looked at his face. She couldn’t make any rational decisions if his navy-blue eyes were looking into hers.

  What the hell did he mean about dancing until they died? She hated it — hated that phrase. It implied an end to everything. An end to all the fun and happiness. An end to their carefree youth.

  And she couldn’t marry him. Not yet. Not now. Not under those circumstances. Perhaps if she refused and told him she would, if he reconsidered his silly decision to fly bloody planes into danger right now, right at this moment in time? He could do it later. Much later. But then she still had her father to consider. He was determined Stella should marry someone with a title, someone of his choosing.

  Her father understood money and power and business, and had connections all over. He could make things awfully, awfully difficult for them. He didn’t understand art and poetry and fun. He didn’t understand Stella’s attitude at all. One of the many things he complained about was that the lads nowadays were like pampered kittens and there was nothing noble or courageous about the younger generation, sitting around and not lifting a finger for the country.

  He was mollified slightly when Leo told him some of Stella’s friends had joined up; and then he snidely commented that he had more respect for young men who served their country than others who thought a fancy lifestyle like bloody Byron’s was the only way to live. And if Estella took a good look at Byron’s life, Lord Byron, if she pleased, she would see that, despite an independent income, even he had fought for a noble cause, although it wasn’t a British one, more fool him …

  But dear Lord, she loved Rob so much it hurt. It ripped her heart open like a physical pain. And it was useless, all so useless. So useless for Lady Stella Aldrich to love a man like Rob Edwards.

  Which was why Rob Edwards; sometime-poet, sometime-artist, constant Bright Young Thing, had to wait for her. They couldn’t be together. Not yet. Not if he was going to join the RAF. She knew he would have to go, that he would want to go, but why did he have to go so soon? She wanted, more than anything, to marry him and be with him. But he might never come back, and then what would have been the point in upsetting her father and turning him against them both even more? She would wait until he came back. That was the only thing she could do, even though it was absolute agony being apart from him. She would wait until he was safe.

  It was a worse agony, however, to imagine him flying into danger, and she didn’t know if she could actually bear the reality of any of that.

  She opened up her writing case and pulled a sheet of paper out.

  Rob.

  No ‘Dear’. No ‘Darling’. She bit her lip, hard. She tasted blood, but she had to be blunt. She had to think about things – think about how she could persuade her father that she had a future with Rob, and think about persuading Rob to wait until after the war and marry her then, when they would all be safe and she could be in his arms properly for the rest of her life.

  Rob,

  I shall just have to be honest. I can’t marry you right now. It’s as simple as that. What’s the point? If I married you, then it would tear my family apart. And what do we stand to gain from that at the moment? You will go off to war regardless, and if you die, I’m left with nothing – no family, and only your name. Nothing else – not even you.

  I could bear my father’s temper if I had you. But I can’t bear any of this without you beside me. I have to say no, Rob. If you’re going to join the RAF now, it has to be no, because I can’t see a future for us.

  I know, I do honestly, truly know, that our friends are serving their country. They are facing the enemy every single day to keep us safe and I understand that you will want to do the same. But does it have to be so soon?

  I certainly don’t want to marry you beforehand and become a war widow.

  I’m so very sorry, Rob, but the answer is no.

  She didn’t even sign it.

  She tossed his letter into the fire, wrapped the photograph up in her own letter and sealed the envelope.

  Taking it downstairs, Stella dropped it in the bowl they filled with ready-to-send post. Then she kept walking, through the hallway, out of the door, and continuing until she reached the Faerie Bridge.

  She sat on the bridge and thought of the words she had written, and thought of him flying planes and dropping bombs and being shot at, and thought she might die of a broken heart, and wished it would come soon.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Present Day

  Cassie only stood outside for a few minutes, but it seemed like an age. Aidan disappeared into the wall somewhere and left her wondering where he was.

  She stuck her head in, but all she could see was the back wall. ‘Aidan? Where on earth are you?’ she cried.

  ‘Turn right,’ shouted Aidan. He sounded quite near. ‘It seems like a wall, but if you look, you’ll see you can actually get behind it.’

  ‘Ohhh, I see it!’ She felt her way along, and found the gap between the walls. It was a reasonably sized entrance – anybody could get in quite easily. They just needed to turn sharply back on themselves, a bit like going around a corner in a maze. ‘Bloody clever feat of engineering. Hold on.’ She popped out in the hidden room and blinked in astonishment.

  Her clothes must have been as filthy and dusty as Aidan’s were, but that was secondary to her wonderment at standing in this little room, tucked away behind the fountain.

  It must have been about three metres wide by three metres long. There was no furniture in it except the chair �
�� an old wicker thing – and some polished floorboards. On the side wall was a small fireplace, and now she looked at it, Cassie could see that the cupola on the roof outside was directly above the flue. The wall where the fountain was had indeed, as Aidan suspected, a small pile of bricks spilling into the room.

  The fireplace itself held a 1920s style ParkRay stove, which could easily have used wood or coal to burn within it. A brass bin was next to it, which must have been where the fuel had been kept. Apart from that, the room had two coat hooks on the wall and a brass rail at waist height.

  ‘Elodie mustn’t have found anything about this in her archives,’ Cassie said. ‘She would have told me all about it and she would have been in here herself.’

  ‘Well I think it’s been designed this way to be honest, so there are probably plans somewhere. You don’t go to all the bother of putting a stove in if the room is never going to be used.’

  ‘More than likely, but the good thing is we are the first people to discover it in quite a few years.’

  ‘You’re right, Cassie. How exciting.’ He smiled at her, then his expression became curious. ‘Hey, what’s this?’ Aidan knelt down in front of the chair and poked around underneath it. ‘Yes. I knew there was a draught coming from somewhere. It’s here, coming up through the floor.’

  Cassie knelt down beside him. ‘It’s probably a broken floorboard and it’s the draught from the space beneath it.’

  ‘You’re partially right.’ Aidan sat back on his heels and raised his arms to the chair. He grabbed hold of the legs and dragged it to the side. It made a horrible creaky, squeaky, chalk-on-a-blackboard sort of noise, but Cassie was slightly distracted by the muscles that tightened under the skin on his forearms as he moved the chair. She looked away quickly, and focussed her attention back on the chair.

  Cassie cleared her throat. ‘So. What’s there then?’

  ‘There’s definitely a broken floorboard or two – but see? I don’t know any floors that have squares cut out of them and a brass ring attached to the square, unless there’s something underneath that you need easy access to.’