‘Cousin Marion bids you come back to the house,’ she said, her face upturned to mine.
‘Come up and see the kittens first,’ I said. ‘See, there’s the ladder.’
‘I do not think I should. Cousin Marion would not like it.’
‘Do not think of my aunt,’ I assured her. ‘She will not expect you to find me immediately.’
Judith hesitated, eyeing the ladder. It was rough hewn, but sturdy enough. ‘It doesn’t look safe.’
‘You will not fall,’ I promised. ‘Come up one rung at a time. I will help you.’
She bit her lip but took hold of the ladder, and with my encouragement hauled herself up rung by rung.
I beamed at her as her head appeared through the hole in the floor at last, and I held out a hand to help her up into the hayloft.
‘Welcome,’ I said, smiling. ‘I am Isabel.’
‘I am Isabel,’ I repeat jubilantly to Oliver when I have finished telling him everything I remember. ‘You see? I knew Kate wasn’t my real name! I knew it!’ I am shaky with relief at having remembered who I am at last. It’s hard to explain how untethered I have felt not knowing, and now a blessed certainty seeps through me. Now I can connect the fragments swirling around in my head and start to put myself together again.
Oliver seems less excited at my breakthrough. ‘You were using Kate before the accident,’ he reminds me.
‘My name is Isabel,’ I insist, setting my jaw stubbornly.
Still he doesn’t seem convinced. He scratches his cheek. ‘Does anything strike you as strange about that memory?’ he asks after a moment, and I can tell he is picking his words with care.
‘Strange?’ Disquiet pricks the bubble of my elation. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You said your parents were dead,’ Oliver points out.
I have forgotten that in the excitement of the memory. ‘Well . . . maybe I was making that up,’ I offer a little lamely. ‘Maybe I was cross with my parents for sending me to stay with my aunt and uncle, and I was punishing them. Kids do that sometimes, don’t they? They don’t want to admit that something is true, so they invent a different story to explain what’s happening.’
‘And not just children,’ Oliver agrees. ‘It’s called confabulation. Creating a story that the mind can accept.’
‘There you go.’
‘It’s interesting that you mention Crabbersett, too. It’s a tiny village not that far from Harrogate. Given your lack of memory, your parents-in-law told me something of your background, and they mentioned that you spent most of your childhood overseas or with your grandmother in the south. In fact, one of their reservations about Michael’s marriage was that you had never been to Yorkshire. If you haven’t gathered yet, they’re a very proud Yorkshire family,’ he adds with a ghost of a smile.
The sense of unease is growing, elbowing aside my giddy excitement and setting up fine vibrations at the back of my skull, like a distant warning shrill.
‘What are you trying to say? Do you think I’m lying?’ In spite of myself, my voice rises.
‘Of course I don’t think you’re lying.’ Oliver tries to calm me. ‘I think you believe that you’ve remembered a scene from your childhood, but how do you explain the goods being delivered by a horse and cart or the servants harvesting? You said you were wearing a bodice, too – would you really have been wearing one of those in the eighties?’
My face freezes as his words hit me like stones. Perhaps it is odd, but this is the first time the strangeness of it has occurred to me. As I remember the scene, it was all perfectly normal. I didn’t even think about the cart with its barrels of salt fish, or what I was wearing, but now . . .
I picture again my aunt bustling out of the front door. Her hair was covered by a French hood, her sleeves were puffed and ended in small ruffs that echoed the stiff linen collar at her throat. Her skirts were stiff but not extravagantly wide, and protected from the dust and mud of the courtyard by the guards at the hem. She had seemed to me dressed quite as usual, just as my own bodice, laced tightly over my smock and pinned to my long skirts, was just what I took for granted.
They were clothes worn by Tudor ladies, I realize now, and nothing like those Philippa or Fiona wear, or those I saw in the magazine Angie left for me.
‘Kate? Are you all right?’ Oliver has been watching my face and I wonder in a detached, distant way whether I have gone white. A sense that something is badly out of kilter is churning in the pit of my stomach and sending belches of a fluttery, panicky feeling through me.
It was a memory. I hold onto that thought. How could it be anything else when I can picture it so clearly? I can still smell the hay and the horses, still feel that tickle of straw stuck in my bodice. And Judith, with her pale gold hair and that rosebud mouth flattened with determination as she took hold of the ladder. She had been real. Surely she had been real?
I know what Oliver is going to say. I’m not remembering at all, but recycling a scene from a film I’ve seen, a book I’ve read. But it doesn’t feel like that. I was there. I know I was.
But then I think about the clothes, the carter, the way I’ve been told that my parents are not dead but working somewhere in Africa, and the world tilts and sways again. I could swear I had remembered an incident from my own childhood, but I must be wrong. I must have taken a story I have seen or read somewhere and made it my own.
What other explanation could there be?
Chapter Five
‘You don’t look so good today.’ Angie pulls down her mouth in sympathy as she studies me.
‘I’m okay.’ I shift in the bed, suppressing a wince as my broken ribs protest. In truth, I am feeling wretched. The doctors aren’t unduly concerned, but everything is hurting at once and a vicious headache is stabbing in my skull. It feels as if I have climbed a mountain only to slither down to the rocks and gravel at the bottom again.
It’s been like this ever since I remembered Judith and Crabbersett. I can’t get the memory out of my mind. It circles endlessly, twisting and flickering, taunting me with its clarity. At one level, I know Oliver Raine is right and that it can’t be a real memory, but at the same time the truth of it pulses along my veins with every beat of my heart: I am Isabel, I was there. It is now that does not make sense, not then.
Remember. You must remember. The need is still jangling in my head. I have remembered, I want to say, but it is not the right memory, or it is only part of it. There’s something else I have to do, something to do with my son. Not the one whose photo they have shown me, but my real son, the son I can’t picture but whose absence is a constant chill shivering in my belly. Lying in this bed in the half-darkness that is a hospital night, I stare up at the ceiling while foreboding steals through me. I am afraid. I don’t know why, or of what, but I am, and I can’t tell anyone because I can’t remember.
At night especially, when there is no one to distract me, no physios to manipulate my limbs, no nurses to take my blood pressure or tick off charts, no Vavasours making their duty visits, I realize that I am trapped as effectively as my mother was when she was bound to that bed. In my memory, her face is blank, but I can recall everything else in viciously clear detail: the taut tendons in her neck as they stretched in a scream, the raw red scrapes at her wrists where she struggled against the bindings, the madness in her wildly rolling eyes, the stench of piss and fear. All night long the images bombarded me, zooming around at the back of my mind until one or other would dive to the front, streaking through my memory of Judith and the hayloft, and jar me awake to find my skin clammy with sweat.
‘I didn’t have a good night,’ I tell Angie when she looks unconvinced by my automatic ‘okay’.
‘Poor you,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to come back another time?’
Her eyes are a warm, bright brown, her nose is pert, and there’s a tiny dimple by her mouth when she smiles. Her hair swings shinily to her jaw. She looks clean and wholesome and blessedly normal, and such a contrast to the murky
confusion churning in my head that I want to grab onto her, to anchor myself to her cheerful competence.
‘No, no, stay.’ I squeeze a smile past the pounding in my head. ‘I could do with the distraction, honestly. But only if you’ve got the time,’ I add, seeing the briefcase that she’s carrying.
‘I’ve been to the printer,’ she says, settling herself in the nearest chair. ‘We need some new leaflets for the summer season, so it was a good excuse to come to York and see you at the same time.’ She’s pin neat again today in a houndstooth skirt and a short-sleeved jumper in a buttery yellow that makes her skin glow. I don’t know, but I get the feeling I’m a scruffier dresser.
Angie smiles at me as she pats the briefcase on her lap. ‘Lord and Lady Vavasour know where I am and they can get hold of me if they need me, but they were very insistent that I spend some time with you. They know we’re friends. And George told me to take the whole afternoon if I needed. Felix is with Lady Vavasour, so he’s in good hands,’ she assures me.
As always when Felix’s name comes up, I shift uneasily, letting Angie think my involuntary grimace is just a twinge of pain.
‘They’ve taken the dogs for a walk,’ Angie chatters on, oblivious to my discomfort. ‘Felix loves doing that with his granny. He adores the dogs, doesn’t he?’ Clearly she has forgotten that I don’t know anything about my son. ‘He’s had a bit of a sniffle the last few days, but he’s fine now – you know how quickly kids bounce back! – and we had no trouble getting him to gobble up his lunch today. I asked Jo – the cook,’ she adds in belated recognition of my memory loss, ‘if she’d make him macaroni cheese as a treat as it’s his favourite and he’s been so good lately.’
I realize my hands are tight on the arms of the chair and I force myself to relax my fingers as I manage a strained smile.
‘I’m glad he’s behaving,’ I say, while inside a voice is screaming: Don’t tell me about Felix! Tell me where my son is!
‘He’s an absolute poppet,’ Angie says, her expression soft. ‘Of course, he can be a bit naughty sometimes, but I don’t let him get away with it. Children need boundaries, I think, so I’m a teeny bit firmer than you sometimes, but I honestly think it makes him feel safer,’ she explains earnestly, ‘especially since everything has been so unsettled. Oh, you mustn’t think I’m too strict with him,’ she hurries on, clearly misunderstanding my discomfort. ‘We have lots of cuddles, too. Felix knows he’s loved.’
Just not by his mother, obviously.
A pain is jabbing behind my eyes. ‘Did you bring any photos?’ I ask, desperate to change the subject.
‘I did.’ Angie pulls out an iPad and sets the briefcase back on the floor. ‘George and Felix and I spent ages choosing a selection for you.’ The dimple appears by her mouth. ‘We had a lovely time. I love looking through old photographs, don’t you?’
I don’t know. Do I? I don’t say that, though.
After a bit of fiddling around to set up a slideshow, Angie hands the iPad to me. ‘Here you go.’
How is it that I remember exactly how to use an iPad but not my own child? I stroke my fingers across the screen to bring up one picture after another. The first photo is of a grand house, and something in me jumps at the sight of it, a tiny jolt that has zipped through me and gone before I can decide whether it is recognition or fear.
Angie doesn’t notice. ‘That’s Askerby Hall,’ she says reverently as she cranes her head to see what I’m looking at. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
I don’t answer immediately. I study the photo. It’s a professional shot, taken from a plane or a balloon, I’d guess, and showing the Hall set back behind a courtyard framed by a handsome gatehouse and other brick buildings, and against a backdrop of gardens and woods, with the moors looming bleak and brown beyond.
The house itself is built of mellow brick. It stands four storeys high and is harmoniously balanced with five bay windows on either side of a great door and a higher hexagonal tower at each end, behind which two wings stretch to form a giant, square ‘C’. A chill trembles through my heart as my eyes rest on the tower on the right. I don’t want to ask Angie, but I am sure that this is where I fell.
The pounding in my head has become a sharp, stabbing pain, making me half close my eyes and squint at the screen. Yes, Askerby Hall is beautiful, but its beauty strikes me as vaguely repellent. The facade is too perfectly balanced, too symmetrical between those two towers, and a slyness seems to lurk behind the black sheen of its windows.
I shake myself. I’m being fanciful, but there is something about the house that is catching at me. Emotions are blowing through me like a tumble of leaves in a breeze, twisting and turning, skittering out of my grasp before I can tell if they are joy or grief, shock or familiarity, love or horror. My stomach hollows, and I can feel my blood beating thick and slow, thudding in my ears.
‘I honestly think it’s the most beautiful house in England,’ Angie says. ‘I love living there.’
I force my attention from the picture. ‘I thought you said you lived at the Lodge with your grandmother?’
Just for a moment her pretty face freezes before the dimple pops out again. ‘I do. I’m just at the Hall until you’re well enough to look after Felix yourself.’
‘What about your grandmother?’
‘Oh, she’s fine,’ Angie says with a careless wave of her hand. ‘She knows Felix is the priority, and it’s not as if she’s been abandoned,’ she adds, registering my doubtful expression. ‘Felix and I pop in and see her every day.’
‘You’ve got a lot on,’ I say dubiously. ‘Felix, your grandmother, and presumably trying to do your job, too.’
‘I told you, the Vavasours understand, and it’s brilliant for me. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than be with Felix.’ She leans towards me, her eyes twinkling disarmingly. ‘To be honest with you, I’ve always wanted to live at the Hall. I never told anyone this before, but when I was little I used to pretend that I was Lady Vavasour,’ she confesses. ‘Babcia had a pair of court shoes with heels that I thought were the last word in sophistication. When I was little, I used to borrow them and a string of beads, and stand in front of the mirror practising shaking hands and saying, “How do you do?”.’ She puts on a gracious voice that is, in fact, remarkably like Fiona’s. ‘“Thank you so much for coming.” “It’s been so nice to meet you.”’ She pulls a face, and I’m not sure whether the embarrassment is real or feigned. ‘You must promise not to tell, though,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘I’d just die if any of the Vavasours knew!’
‘You were just a little girl,’ I say. I can picture her tottering over to the mirror in her grandmother’s shoes so clearly that I wonder if I did the same when I was small. Although from the little I’ve gleaned about my mother, she doesn’t sound like the type of woman to wear heels.
‘Still,’ Angie says. ‘It’s our secret. Promise?’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ I agree, and out of nowhere a cold breath on my neck makes me shiver.
‘Honestly, Kate, I’m so happy at the moment,’ Angie tells me. ‘I get a little frisson just waking up in the Hall every morning. They’ve given me a huge bedroom next to Felix. It’s amazing! There’s no cooking or cleaning, and Lord and Lady Vavasour have been so kind and appreciative. They’ve made me really welcome.’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘I’m not sure I’d want to eat breakfast with my bosses every day.’
‘Oh, I don’t eat with the family. Felix and I have our meals in the little dining room by the kitchen – but, of course, you don’t remember it!’ She pulls a face. ‘It suits me perfectly, anyway. I’m on hand if anybody wants me, and I don’t have to trek down to the estate office to see George—’ A faint wash of colour warms her cheeks. ‘I mean, to see if he wants me to do anything,’ she amends.
Tactfully, I hide my smile and look away to give her time for that tell-tale blush to fade. My suspicion that Angie is in love with George has deepened. Frankly, I don�
��t understand why she doesn’t object to being shunted off to the servants’ quarters, but she is clearly loving it. In fact, it would probably suit Angie very well if I stayed in hospital forever, I think wryly. I even open my mouth to tease her about it, but it seems ungracious after all she is doing for me.
‘Well, as long as you really don’t mind,’ I say instead.
‘Of course I don’t.’ She beams at me. ‘What are friends for? It’s really disappointing you don’t recognize the Hall, though. George and I had a little bet about it, and now I’ll have to tell him he won.’
She pretends to pout, but her mouth curves when she says his name. Yep, I think to myself, she’s definitely in love with George. I can’t quite get his appeal myself, but each to her own. I just hope he has some feelings for her, too. George is so stolid that it’s hard to tell what he feels about anything. He clearly doesn’t care enough about Angie to insist that she eats with the family instead of being banished below stairs, but then, what do I know?
Nothing. I know nothing.
With an inner sigh I turn my attention back to the iPad.
‘Maybe some family pictures will jog your memory?’ Angie leans across me to move the slideshow on, and once again I find myself hissing in a breath and shrinking back into my chair. Angie can’t help but notice. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says cheerfully, ‘I’m being very careful not to knock you this time!’
‘Sorry,’ I mutter.
Ah, bless. It doesn’t matter at all. Now, what about this one?’ she asks as a photo of a young family appears on the screen. The man is attractive with a thin, intelligent face and the Vavasour hair gleaming gold and ruffled by the wind. His smile is warm and he is holding a baby who is reaching for its mother, a slight, vivid woman with straight, dark hair blowing about her face. She’s not exactly pretty, but her expression is lively and there’s an offbeat charm about her. She’s wearing a beret and laughing back at the baby. It’s a charming picture. They’re on a beach somewhere. You can just make out the sea behind, and the photo seems to sparkle with ozone and happiness.
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