Philippa doesn’t pretend not to understand. She is bent over the steering wheel, poking the key into the lock. ‘George was always jealous of Michael,’ she says. ‘Whatever Michael had, George wanted.’
I’m silent as she swings the Land Rover out of the stable yard and we go bowling up the avenue towards the Hall. I hope Philippa drives more cautiously on public roads. As it is, I have to hang onto the door and the engine is too loud for conversation, anyway. She squeals to a stop outside the gatehouse and yanks on the handbrake.
‘Does Angie know?’ I ask, and Philippa’s mouth twists in a sardonic smile. She knows what I mean.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ she says. ‘Angie knows all Askerby’s secrets.’
I’ve walked too far. It is only when I drag myself up to my room that I realize how tired I am. Angie is right, I shouldn’t try to push myself too hard too soon.
Shakily, I take off my boots and collapse onto the bed. I should really go and find Felix but I don’t seem to be able to move. Exhaustion pins me to the mattress. I will just close my eyes for a moment.
My eyelids seem to clang shut, dislodging another memory from the impenetrable blankness in my brain. It spills free without warning, painfully vivid. I remember lying like this on a different bed in the great chamber, nailed down by misery. The loss of the babe felled me like a tree, and I, who had always been so restless, so quick, could now barely face the effort of opening my eyes.
There was a weight on my chest that made it hard to breathe, a pain in my belly, rawness around my heart. If it had not been for Judith I would never have got up at all. She dealt with everything. She brought me decoctions to help me sleep, and little dishes to tempt my appetite. She sat with me and bathed my face and brushed my hair. She held me and she told me to cry, but I dared not. If I let myself cry, I would let myself feel, and the pain would be too great to endure.
And she wrote to Edmund. She coaxed me as far as a chair by the window one day, but all I could do was sit, my hands limp in my lap. I was vacantly watching a fly beat frantically against the glass when I heard the click of the latch behind me. The effort of turning, of seeing who had come in, was too much, but something in the quality of the footsteps, firm on the wooden floor, did make me lift my head, and there was my husband, his blue eyes dark with sorrow.
‘Isabel,’ he said, crouching by my chair. ‘Dearest wife.’
‘Edmund.’ I yearned for him, but guilt dragged at me, and I could not look at him straight. My mouth began to tremble. ‘Edmund, I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.’
‘Hush now.’ He plucked me up from the chair and carried me over to the window seat so that he could sit and cradle me on his lap like the child I had lost. ‘Hush now, dear one.’
Now that I had started to cry, the tears came in torrents, and I shook with the great, wrenching sobs that tore from my throat as apology after apology tumbled from my lips.
‘Isabel, it was not your fault. Judith told me it was an accident.’
‘It was my fault,’ I wept. ‘I was running. I was thoughtless. Judith is right. I am too impetuous, too headstrong. Oh, Edmund, how I wish I had done as she advised! I am a bad, unruly wife. You should have chosen someone like Judith,’ I told him, my eyes so swollen with tears I could scarcely see. ‘Then you would not have had a moment’s care.’
‘Or a moment’s joy,’ Edmund said, twining his hand in my hair and kissing me softly. ‘I do not want Judith,’ he said. ‘I want you.’ His hand slid to cup my cheek, tilting it until I had no choice but to look up into his eyes. ‘Only you, Isabel,’ he said, and the warmth in his face smoothed like honey over the rawness inside me.
‘Welcome back, Edmund.’ Judith’s quiet voice broke into our absorption in each other. ‘I am glad to see you. Shall I send for some wine?
There was no telling whether she had heard what Edmund said, but still, there was a tiny, uncomfortable silence before Edmund lifted me to the cushions and got to his feet.
‘Judith,’ he said, and his voice was heartier than it would normally be as he went towards her with both hands outstretched. ‘Judith, how can I thank you for the care you have given Isabel?’
She dipped a curtsey before taking his hands. ‘You do not need to thank me, Edmund. Isabel is my friend. I care for her as for myself.’
‘You are a good friend indeed,’ Edmund said.
‘Isabel will be well now that you are home.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘And it is time I thought about returning to Crabbersett, perhaps.’
‘You cannot leave us!’ I protested, shocked.
‘You do not need me,’ she said, ‘and I fear some of my ways are not yours.’
‘Not in any way that matters.’ I hitched up my gown and went towards her. Edmund’s return and the release of my tears had restored me to a sense of myself, and now the prospect of Judith leaving shocked me out of my lethargy. Only then did I realize just how much I had come to depend on her. ‘I thought you would make your home with us, Judith. How would I have managed without you these past few weeks? Edmund, tell Judith that she must stay.’
There was a pause so tiny that afterwards I thought I must have imagined it, and then Edmund was smiling at Judith.
‘No one will force you to do anything you do not want to do, Judith, but it would make Isabel happy if you would stay. You are welcome in my household for as long as you will.’
It seemed to me that his tone lacked a little warmth, so I seized Judith’s hands between my own. ‘Promise you won’t go, Judith,’ I begged her, and she smiled mistily and squeezed my fingers.
‘Dear Isabel, of course I will stay,’ she said. ‘I will stay forever if that is what you want.’
‘It is,’ I said, grateful at having been able to persuade her so easily. ‘That is exactly what I want.’
My hands are twisted in the covers as I lie on top of the bed. There is no use pretending any more that these memories are some weirdly vivid psychological phenomenon. Isabel is – was – real. Somehow her memories are lodged in my head, swamping out my own, and I can’t get rid of them.
I am possessed.
I turn the idea around, inspecting it for flaws. It is illogical, completely irrational. I’d like to find a reason it can’t be true, but there isn’t one, or not that I can see. Oliver Raine may talk all he likes about transference and confabulation but I know these memories are real. They are inside me, part of me. The truth of them is seared into my mind.
What I don’t know is what I am supposed to do about it. What does Isabel want with me? What is it that she needs me to do?
Remember, remember.
I haven’t remembered what she needs me to yet.
I am vaguely surprised at how easily I have accepted the notion of possession. Perhaps before I lost my memory I was the sort of person who believed in ghoulies and ghosties? I don’t feel as though I was, but it’s possible.
Oddly, the idea isn’t as frightening as it should be. It’s not as if she’s making me do anything, I reason. My head is not spinning on my neck; I am not projectile vomiting or making weird googly eyes or talking in a sepulchral voice. Nobody need know that I remember things I shouldn’t remember, that my memories belong to a woman who must have died over four hundred years ago.
What are you supposed to do when you’re possessed? Exorcism is out; I have already decided that I can’t tell anyone what’s happening to me. If I try to explain about Isabel, they won’t understand. They’ll think I am making it up, that I’m losing it. I’m depressed, I’m stressed, I’m traumatized. I can hear all the explanations now. Or, worse, I’m unstable.
Say it: mad.
It would be so easy for the Vavasours to decide that I am not fit to look after Felix on my own. No, I must keep Isabel to myself.
So it’s not frightening, but it is lonely, living with someone else in my head. For now I must keep my memories to myself, and carry on treading a precarious line between two identities, two realities.
You w
ere supposed to die.
The memory of the press of malice, that voice flickering in my ear, that sense of hatred, makes me shudder. That is frightening. Which reality does it belong to? I am no longer sure. I cannot think of anyone who would want me dead – Edmund loved me, Judith was my dear friend – and the Vavasours might not approve of me, but they don’t hate me . . . do they?
I wish Philippa hadn’t told me how George feels about me. Now that I know, it is obvious, and his inarticulate devotion makes me very uncomfortable. I hope I never encouraged him. I feel awkward whenever I meet Angie, too. I am sure she cares for George more than she wants to admit. It must be horrible to see the one you love obsessed with someone else. I’d like to shake George and make him see Angie instead of me, but the last thing I want to do is acknowledge his feelings. I just have to hope that if I don’t offer any encouragement, George will lose interest. When I’ve gone, it will be easier for everyone. Perhaps George will come to his senses then. In the meantime, all I can do is to keep building up my strength.
Mary is pleased with my progress. Once I can walk to the stables and back without collapsing, I extend my range. For now I am still confined to even surfaces, so I walk down the avenue, a little bit further every day: to a sweet chestnut, to a cattle grid, to a clump of cranesbill where the road curves.
Fiona likes to spend some time with Felix after breakfast, so I go out once they are happily occupied. The summer mornings are fresh and the air smells rinsed, new. The grass grows thickly on either side of the road, bending under the weight of the dew. I walk as steadily as I can, and choose the next day’s target before I turn back towards the house. Even on the softest of mornings the Hall crouches furtively against its backdrop of the moors, and the windows watch me, as if waiting for me to make a run for it. There is always a point when I wish I could just keep on walking, but Felix is there and I can’t leave him alone. I have to go back, for now.
Now that I’m more mobile, there is no need for Angie to sleep at the Hall any longer. I feel bad when she moves back to the Lodge. I know how much she likes living at the Hall, but she only laughs when I stumble through an apology.
‘Don’t be silly! I’ve had a lovely time,’ she says. ‘I’m just glad you’re better, Kate.’
It’s not as if we don’t see her still. She always seems to be at the Hall anyway, running up and down the stairs, popping into the kitchen with requests for Margaret, or bustling between the guides with a clipboard. Felix loves to see her. He squeals with laughter when she sweeps him up into a hug, and I try not to feel jealous of their closeness. I’m still not strong enough to pick him up.
I’m still not sure he’d let me.
After the stables, my next major goal is the car park and the Visitor Centre, which is set just off the avenue. The Visitor Centre is a stylish wooden building with a soaring roof and glass walls looking out towards the moors. The car park is screened from the avenue by discreet planting, and the first time I follow the road round and see the Visitor Centre, it feels like walking into a wall of sadness. I stop dead, one hand gripping my stick, the other pressed to my chest while I struggle to breathe through the waves of misery.
This is where they found the body. The memory, once so insubstantial, is clear now: the pile of bones, brown and stained; the excavator with its bucket lowered; the needle-fine rain. I can feel it still, and when I put my fingers to my face, my cheeks are wet. I am weeping.
You were obsessed. Philippa said that. She said I thought the bones belonged to an early Lady Vavasour. I insisted that the body so ignominiously dug up belonged to Isabel. I don’t remember thinking that, but now that I am here, I can feel it. This is where Isabel was buried – but why here and not in the churchyard?
And as I stand there in the middle of the car park, oblivious to the cars around me, I am remembering once more.
Flying, soaring over Askerby and out to the moors. The breathless joy of being free. Edmund, Edmund should be here, I remember thinking that. He should know how this feels. But like a dream, the joy snaps in a blink into terror and I am falling, falling, ungainly and awkward. My skirts flopping over my face, suffocating me. I flail at them, but it is too late. I’m toppling and turning, over and under and round and round, and the terror blazes white around me and then there is nothing, a terrible blankness, that is all.
Chapter Nineteen
The beeping of a horn behind me jerks me into now, and I step aside, hastily knuckling the tears away. As I lift a hand in clumsy apology, the car slows and the driver’s window slides down. It is Angie.
‘You were miles away!’ she tells me. ‘You didn’t hear the car even when I was right behind you.’
‘Sorry. I was . . . thinking.’ I summon a smile. ‘Lucky you don’t drive like Philippa!’
Angie laughs merrily. ‘She’s a terror on the roads, isn’t she?’ She looks round me. ‘Where’s Felix?’
I am instantly on the defence. I know Angie doesn’t mean to, but she always makes me feel inadequate as a mother, as if I don’t appreciate how lucky I am to have Felix. Perhaps, without a child of her own, that’s how it seems to her.
‘He’s spending the morning with Fiona,’ I say. However cool Fiona might be with me, there is no doubt that she adores her grandson and I know Felix loves her, too. He likes being with her, and I think it’s good for them to have a separate relationship. There is no reason for me to feel guilty at having some time to myself. Still, I can hear a slight edge in my voice as I tell Angie: ‘He’s fine.’
She doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Come in and have a coffee at the Visitor Centre,’ she says. ‘It’s ages since we sat down for a proper chat.’
I hesitate. I’m repelled by the sadness of the place. I don’t think I want to go in. ‘I should probably be getting back.’
‘Oh, go on. You haven’t made it to the Visitor Centre yet, have you? You should have a look round. It might bring back some memories.’
I can’t tell her that is what I’m afraid of. On this sunny morning, I have blundered into a dark and dangerous place, and my head is jangling with alarm. I don’t want to think about the linen shroud wrapped over my face, about the cold earth falling onto me, blocking out the sunlight forever. The air feels jagged and precarious, and panic clogs my lungs, making my breath choppy.
Angie’s shrewd brown eyes rest on my face. ‘You look as if you could do with a sit-down, anyway,’ she says.
I don’t want to stay here, but Angie is right: I need a rest. So I summon a smile and walk very carefully across to the Visitor Centre while Angie parks her car neatly and gets out, retrieving a box from the back seat and tucking it under her arm. ‘Leaflets,’ she says as she nods down at it.
The sick feeling that an unwary step could send me tumbling into terror only intensifies as I step into the centre. It has been beautifully designed, and the feeling of light and space is striking after the secretive gloom of the Hall, but the smell of wet earth is almost suffocating.
Angie doesn’t seem to notice. She leads me through the atrium, waving a cheery hello to the women behind the information desk, and past a gift shop stocking the usual array of flowery china, glossy cards, fridge magnets and tins of shortbread, to the cafe.
It should be inviting. It is bright and clean, with big windows looking out over the moors, and it hums with chatter and the chink of crockery.
Angie takes charge. ‘You sit down,’ she says. ‘I’ll get you a latte. What about a cake or a scone?’ she adds temptingly.
There’s no way I can force a cake past the horrifying sensation of earth crumbling in the back of my throat. ‘Just coffee, please.’
‘Oh, come on. They’re really good here – and it’s not like you need to watch your weight.’ She wags a finger at me. ‘You’re still far too thin.’
‘Really, coffee’s fine.’
Breathing through my mouth to block out the smell of earth, I limp past the framed photos to find a table. There are stunning shots of the great hall,
the long gallery, the parlour, the great chamber and the other rooms open to the public, interspersed with details of a carving or a tile, a flower from the walled garden and a face from a portrait that hangs in the great hall. My heart lurches into my throat when I read the label to one side: Edmund, Lord Vavasour, d. 1697. Detail from portrait attributed to Sir Godfrey Kneller.
But it’s not Edmund. It doesn’t look like Edmund and besides, Edmund could not possibly have lived until 1697. I’m not sure how I know this, but I do. This must be his son – no, his grandson. My grandson? I find myself thinking. I stare at the face intently, waiting for a spark of recognition, but there is nothing.
In spite of the smell, I am glad to rest my leg as I sink down at a table by one of the great windows. Through the glass I can see the moors rolling golden under the ever-changing sky. I can almost feel the wind that tatters the clouds and chases them to the horizon. It is a beautiful view.
That’s why Edmund buried Isabel here, I realize. He laid her here where she could see the moors, where she wouldn’t feel closed in, and I feel a sudden, fierce gladness at the idea. But what about the tomb he had promised, where we would hold hands for eternity?
And why does horror still seep through the walls of this bright, new building?
‘Here we go. One latte.’ I start as Angie sets a cup and saucer before me. ‘Are you all right, Kate?’ she asks, frowning in concern.
I muster a smile, although I suspect it’s a ghastly one. ‘I’m just tired, I think. You were right. I needed a rest.’
Angie settles opposite me. ‘Are you sure that’s all?’ she asks, looking at me closely as she stirs her cappuccino. ‘You’re really pale.’
The temptation to talk to someone is overwhelming. Angie is my friend. I can tell her, surely, about what’s happening to me? I moisten my lips.
House of Shadows Page 18