She glanced over her shoulder then crunched across the gravel and up the steps to the front door. The carriage lamp was off so she located her keys in her bag by touch.
A strange pressure on the door made it harder than usual to open, as if someone was pushing against it from the other side. When she turned to close it behind her, a gust of wind seemed to come from within the house and slammed it shut. In the silence, the sound was violent.
She wasn’t imagining it, she thought: the wind was coming from inside the house. There had to be a window open but where? Not at the front, she would have noticed. But why would he open a window at all? It was below freezing outside.
Something had happened. As soon as she thought it, she knew she was right.
‘Hello?’
She put on the light and the hallway materialised around her. The draught, she realised, was coming down the stairs. She stood at the bottom and called up but again there was no answer. The sitting-room door was open and she slapped the light on, went quickly to the fireplace and picked up the poker.
When she reached the landing, fear formed a fist in her stomach. The cold air was coming from the very top floor. The studio. She climbed the final set of stairs with her pulse thrumming in her temples.
In the glow of the moon she saw the chaos of sketches strewn across the worktable and the floor. When she saw the open skylight, the stepladder underneath, the poker dropped to the floor with a heavy clang. The smell of cigarette smoke – he’d come up to smoke. Her hands shook as she started to climb the ladder.
He was waiting for her at the top, perspective making him a colossus, his feet planted wide. The wind snatched at the sheet of paper in his hands but she didn’t need to see it to know what it was. She’d lost him forever; that was clear – his face was closed. Hard. Vengeful.
The paper buckled and cracked, wind-whipped. There was nothing she wouldn’t do, she thought wildly, literally nothing, for it to be torn from his hands and erased from his memory. To go back even one day.
Behind him was the roof-edge. She felt its power, the force field it exerted, the weird push-and-pull. It was so raw, unprotected – a four-storey fall, death almost guaranteed. He saw her looking and stepped to one side.
‘Do it,’ he said.
‘Adam, please, just let me …’
‘What the hell is this?’ He thrust the drawing out in front of him as if it were a shield.
You fool, Rowan. You bloody, bloody fool.
‘How … How did you find it?’ The wind distorted her words, softening them to nothing, then booming them out.
‘How did I find it? That’s your question?’
His voice cut her. Gentle Adam.
‘I put it away. I …’
‘With the sketch Cory made of you. I heard you in my father’s study last night, Rowan. Every step across those fucking boards.’
‘I … I wanted to protect you. Marianne’s gone – I wanted you to remember the person you knew, that Marianne, not the one who …’ She looked at the picture but obliquely, as if she couldn’t bear it.
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘You’re unbelievable – incredible.’
She looked at him, bewildered. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your fight, Rowan – your sheer fight. You never stop. You’re a cockroach – come Armageddon, you’ll be sole survivor.’
‘Adam, just let me …’
‘Did you think,’ he said, ‘for a second, that I’d believe my sister did this?’ He shook the drawing at her; it crackled like fire in the wind. ‘My sister.’
‘But she did! Look, it’s there – you’re holding the evidence.’
He lifted it up and then, in one savage move, he tore it in half. Hearing her cry, he tore it again and again, eyes never leaving her face. Then he cupped the pieces, raised his hands above his head and let go. Paper whirled around them, a storm of sick confetti.
‘My sister might have painted the picture,’ he said, ‘she might have fantasized about Lorna’s death – I did, God knows – but she would never, ever have done anything to make it happen. Do you think you can know someone like I knew her – Marianne, my sister, my family – and not know that?’
‘Please Adam …’
‘It was you, wasn’t it? All this time. You killed Lorna – you, not my sister. And Cory, too – they found his car on Meadow Lane this afternoon, right where Lorna’s boat used to be. You’re asking me to believe it was a coincidence?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I didn’t. It wasn’t me who …’
‘Oh, come on! What have you told me that’s true? One thing.’
The pain – Rowan fought to control the burning anguish in her chest, the urge to throw herself at his feet and beg. ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘that I wanted to see you again. Your family, all of you – I love you all, I always have. I’d do anything for you.’
‘Oh, I know that now.’ The bitterness.
‘But you – especially you, Ad. Please believe me – please give me a chance.’
The moon sailed out from behind the cloud and washed him in icy white light. She looked at him, at the eyes that were Marianne’s, too. She’d loved them both so much.
She took a step towards him and he thought she was going to embrace him. The look of horror on his face – no, not horror: revulsion.
Revulsion.
An explosion of rage more powerful than any she’d felt before. To be rejected again, pushed away a second time by the people she’d loved most – it was too much. She lunged at him. He staggered, almost losing his footing, and behind him, she saw the garden. He caught her arm, twisting it, and she screamed but the pain seemed to make her stronger, and she pushed back against him as hard as she could, heard his feet scrape the asphalt. Come on. Summoning all her strength, she pulled free of his grip, stepped back and threw herself against him, head at his chest.
He moved just in time – half a second later would have been too late – but she had too much momentum, she couldn’t stop herself. He grabbed after her, tried to catch her – she felt his fingers clutch at the fabric of her sleeve.
For a moment she was floating, weightless. The view of the garden stole her breath. The rhododendrons and the birch trees, the roses, the lawn – all of it outlined in silver, like the promise of another world. She was lying awake with Marianne again, the moonlight streaming through the open curtains, and they were talking.
Acknowledgements
In writing this book, I was privileged to have the guidance of several brilliant women: Helen Garnons-Williams, my agent Kathleen Anderson, Alexa von Hirschberg and Rachel Mannheimer. To the exceptional teams at Bloomsbury, especially Ellen Williams, Lynsey Sutherland and Imogen Denny, an enormous thank you.
On a practical level, this would likely not have been possible – and would certainly have been significantly less enjoyable – without the help and support of Mweemba Nchimunya and Polly and Guy Meacock, invaluable partners in crime on our epic Great North Run of 2014 and too many other occasions to count. Gillian Thomas, thanks for the doughnuts!
And Joe and Bridget – without you, it absolutely wouldn’t have been possible or meant half as much.
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http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/lucie-whitehouse
First published in Great Britain 2016
This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Lucie Whitehouse, 2016
Lucie Whitehouse has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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