‘That’s good,’ he says calmly, and his hand is firm and warm under my arm. ‘You’re having a panic attack. Just think about breathing slowly. In, out, in, out. That’s it. Attagirl.’
I slow my tattered breathing while I do as he says and focus on him. It is the first time I have let myself look at him so directly, and I am seeing him in extraordinary detail. How strange that the line of his mouth, the creases edging his eyes, that roughness on his jaw, should already be so familiar. And while I am still trying to sort out my breath, a new memory slams into me, sharp as a slap: his hands racing over me, warm and urgent; arching beneath them, clamouring to be touched harder, deeper, everywhere; the delicious slide of skin on skin; that mouth, oh God, that mouth . . .
Shaken, appalled, I step back out of his grasp. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say breathlessly. ‘Sorry, I . . . sorry.’
‘Hey, it’s okay.’ I can feel Matt’s worried gaze on my face, but I can’t look at him.
The blood is pulsing beneath my skin, pushing a warm wash of colour up my neck and into my cheeks. I will it to subside but it only throbs harder. I am furious with myself. Of all the times to remember that night! I am careening crazily between horror, humiliation and lust. I can’t find my balance. Giddy and a bit sick, I clutch my stick so hard my knuckles show white.
‘Kate, this isn’t good,’ Matt says. ‘I think you need help. What if this is what happened before? If Isabel was somehow responsible for you being up on the tower in the first place, what’s to stop her doing it again?’
‘What sort of help? Is there a helpline you can ring if you think you might be haunted?’
Matt isn’t impressed by my facetiousness. ‘I’m serious, Kate. You don’t want to mess with this. You’ve nearly died once. It’s time to call in the Church. There must be a priest in the village.’
‘The vicar.’ I think of Reverend Rolland, the disturbing way he strokes his beard. I cannot imagine confiding in him. I am sure that he would go straight to Fiona and Jasper, no matter what confidences priests are supposed to keep. He adores the Vavasours and is always angling for invitations to lunch at the Hall.
‘I can’t talk to him,’ I say, and when Matt raises sceptical brows: ‘I can’t. He’s big pals with Jasper and Fiona. If they get wind of the fact that I’m talking about being haunted, I know they’ll use it against me. They’ll say I’m an unfit mother or something. They’d love that,’ I say bitterly. ‘They want Felix to stay at Askerby, at least until they can pack him off to boarding school. Forget the fact that Michael was wretched there, that’s what Vavasours do. “It didn’t do me any harm,” Jasper says, but you only have to look at him to know that it did! They’ll do anything to stop me taking Felix away.’
‘If Isabel pushes you off the tower again, they’ll be able to do whatever they like,’ Matt says brutally. ‘You need to stop this somehow, Kate, before it all gets out of control.’
I lie on my bed, my hands over my face. I am trying to think of Kit, trying to remember what it is Isabel wants me to remember, but all I can think about is that night I spent with Matt. The memory rolls through me in wave after breathless wave of lust. I remember the piercing pleasure of flesh on flesh, the easy way he coaxed heat through the blur of grief and sent it soaring into a flame that burnt away thought, memory, everything but the feel of him, the touch of him. I let myself slip, spin out over the edge and fly off into a dazzle of sensation. I let myself forget Michael.
Afterwards, I cried. I couldn’t forgive myself for that. It would have been so much easier if sex with Matt had been terrible, but I couldn’t pretend that. Our bodies had locked together perfectly, clicking into place like a language that is suddenly understood, and it felt like a betrayal.
Matt knew. He told me he understood. ‘You’re not ready,’ he said. ‘I know that. You don’t have to feel bad about it, Kate.’
I am ready now. Perhaps I had to forget them both before I could remember clearly but Matt is right: Michael would not have minded. He would have wanted me to be happy. The realization unlocks something inside me like a sigh, and I lower my hands. I have a sense of the future. It might be with Matt, it might not, but I have been released. I can move forward now.
Or I could if I were not still tied to Askerby by Isabel’s desperation. I sit up and rub my hair. It is growing longer now. Soon I will look like my old self again.
Find Kit. That is all I need to do now. After that, Isabel can rest, and I can go. I can start to forget all over again. I tell myself that it is only the past that needs to be set right. Now that I am looking to the future, I don’t think about the present, or that voice I thought I heard in hospital: You were supposed to die.
The scanned images for the display have gone off to the printer, and now I’m waiting for poster-sized drafts to come back. In the meantime, I am making a catalogue of the papers to cover my search for Kit. I don’t want the Vavasours to know just why I am so dedicated to their archive. If they get the idea that I am obsessed with looking for someone long dead, they will use it against me. They don’t like the fact that I see Matt so often. He is not welcome at the Hall, they have made that very clear.
I say nothing, but I won’t give up my friendship with him. Since remembering the night we spent together I have felt acutely self-conscious when I am with him, but Matt doesn’t seem to notice and we still walk together almost every day. Walking and talking isn’t much, but for me it is a lifeline, my link to the outside world and to a future where I might be able to do other things: go to a bar, visit an exhibition, see a movie, simple things that presumably I used to take for granted and that now seem unutterably remote.
I will do them again, I promise myself, but first I must find Kit.
I have ploughed through a history written by the local vicar in the fifties, a dry account of when the first Lord Vavasour was given his title and estates in the late fifteenth century. A fortified keep once stood here, until Edmund’s father knocked it down and built the Hall instead. I remember how its windows flashed and glittered, the raw smell of new wood. It wasn’t a beautiful old house then. It was new and ostentatious, flaunting the family’s wealth, caring nothing for heritage or tradition. It was all about showing off. If Edmund’s father were here today, he would raze the Hall to the ground and erect something extraordinary in steel and glass.
The vicar doesn’t mention Kit. He assumes that the Edmund Vavasour who died in 1697 was Edmund’s son.
Find him, Isabel urges me. Find Kit.
I am working my way through the other papers now, reading more carefully the letters, diaries and books that we just skimmed through before.
I find Kit at last on a foggy Monday morning. Outside, the mist is thick and grey and smothers everything, and you can’t see more than a few feet. I was glad of Jasper’s offer to drive Felix to school. The light is so dense that I have to switch on every lamp in the library. It is very quiet. There are no visitors on a Monday; the walls of books create an effective sound barrier on the noisiest of days; and the fog absorbs any sounds from outside.
I curl up in one of the leather chairs near the window and open a packet of letters from an Emily Vavasour to her sister Sophia in 1867. As always, it takes me a little while to get my eye in, but when I do, her handwriting isn’t too hard to read. Emily, it seems, was on an extended visit to cousins in London, and she wrote to her studious sister details that she thought might interest her about the people she had met and the places she had seen.
And then, when I least expect it, the name Christopher jumps out at me. She wrote:
I have seen a great many people of one sort or another. Last night we dined with Mr and Mrs Russell. Mr Russell is a great antiquarian and was most interested to hear about your book. He told me all about one of his ancestors, Sir John Russell, who kept a diary that Mr Russell says is extremely interesting for its observations about daily life at the time. Mr Russell was eager to show me an excerpt dated 1652 relating to the funeral of Christopher, Lord Vavasour
, that he had just been reading about, as he was much struck by the coincidence of meeting me and he wondered if we were the same family. I wished you had been there as you would have been able to answer him so much more intelligently than I did, but I send you an account here as well as I remember it.
My hands are beginning to shake. Could this be it? Could I have found Kit at last? I smooth out the letter on my knee with hands that aren’t quite steady and read on:
Sir John described his great grief and affliction at the death of his friend Christopher Vavasour. It seems that he (Lord Vavasour) died of what was thought to be the plague and was interred in London rather than at his estate. According to Sir John, Lord Christopher’s son, Edmund, was also much afflicted and gave his father a funeral suitable to his quality. The description of the procession and of the mourning rings and gloves was so interesting. Mr Russell told me that Sir John writes later of seeing the funerary stone erected by Lord Christopher’s son and widow that he says marked the great affection and esteem in which he was held. What do you think of that, my dear Sophia? If it is of interest to your history, Mr Russell would be glad to send you a copy of the whole extract as it relates to Lord Christopher, but as your book has already been printed I daresay it may be too late to change it?
Christopher. Kit.
My hands are shaking. I turn the letter over, but there is no more about Mr Russell or Sir John. Emily moves on to news of their brother and an unenthusiastic description of his betrothed. Clearly she feels she has indulged Sophia’s interest enough.
Could it be? 1652 . . . I am trying to calculate in my head. Kit was born in 1598, which would make him fifty-four when he died. He lived, and he loved. He had a wife, a son, a friend who grieved for him. My throat closes.
‘Kit,’ I whisper, and Emily’s writing blurs as the world rocks around me with a mixture of remembered loss and relief. I have found Kit at last.
Now, perhaps, Isabel can rest. I will ask the Vavasours if her bones can be buried in the church next to Edmund, and then, surely, she will let me go?
Chapter Thirty-four
I can’t wait to tell Matt. ‘I’ve found Kit!’ I gabble the story of Emily’s letter down the phone to him. He probably doesn’t understand what on earth I’m talking about, but I am too elated to slow down. ‘You know what this means, don’t you? I don’t need to call in a priest. I’m free of Isabel now.’
‘Are you sure?’ I can hear him frowning dubiously, and I pat myself all over as if to prove to myself that Isabel has really gone.
‘I’m sure. She wanted me to find Kit and I have.’ I am fizzing with relief. It is only now that I realize how Isabel’s memories have oppressed me. The constant insistence on remembering has worn away at me, rubbing at my sense of self until it is frayed, but now that it has gone, I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. Cut loose without warning, I feel as if I could easily float away if I don’t grab at something, and I curl my fingers more tightly around the phone.
‘Then that’s great.’ Matt’s voice is warm in my ear. ‘It’s good to hear you sounding so upbeat again, Kate.’
‘I’m so happy,’ I tell him. ‘It’s like this great weight has been lifted off me and I can move on. It feels wonderful.’
I have been released, and a whole world of opportunities is about to unfurl in front of me. How long is it since I felt anything like this giddy exhilaration? Not since I stood on top of the tower with Edmund, I think, and then I shake myself. I am supposed to be losing Isabel’s memories now. She can’t have any more use for me now that I have found Kit for her . . . can she?
The thought of the tower punctures my elation, a pin stabbed into a balloon. Not everything is resolved, I remember. There is still the blank square in the centre of my mind, the void where the memory of what caused my fall lies, and the giddiness whooshes out of me as I realize what I have to do. It isn’t over, not yet. I don’t want to remember what happened on the tower roof, but I must.
‘What is it?’ asks Matt when I fall silent.
‘I’m thinking about the tower,’ I say slowly. ‘I still don’t know what happened up there.’
‘You said the doctors warned you that you might never remember what happened immediately before the accident.’
‘I know. It just feels that this is the last piece of the puzzle. What was I doing up there?’
‘What happened to moving on?’
‘I need to know, Matt. I need to remember, and I think the only way to do that is to go back up there myself.’
There’s a silence at the other end of the phone. ‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Matt says at last. ‘You might not know why, but you know what happened last time you climbed the tower. Don’t do this, Kate,’ he says, but there is resignation in his voice, as if he knows it’s pointless arguing. He sighs. ‘You’re like the character who knows there’s an axe murderer on the loose and waits until she’s alone in the house before she investigates the noise in the dark cellar.’
I bridle. ‘I’m not that stupid, Matt. I wasn’t thinking of going up alone. I don’t think I’d dare, to be honest.’ I hesitate. ‘Actually, I was wondering if you would come with me,’ I say. ‘Would you mind?’
There’s a long pause and, too late, I remember Matt’s telling me about climbing the tower before and the horror and grief he sensed up there.
‘It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to,’ I say hastily, but he interrupts me.
‘No, if you’re going to do this, I’ll come,’ he says. ‘But I’d feel better if a priest came with us as well.’
‘Isabel’s not the problem now,’ I say confidently. ‘I’m the problem. I’ve got this one block left, and I have to get past it somehow. I don’t think a priest is going to help. I’d rather it was just the two of us.’
Matt is reluctant, but he agrees in the end. We arrange that he will pick Felix up from school and drive him back to the Hall, which will give him an excuse to be here if necessary.
‘But be very careful, Kate,’ Matt says. ‘Promise me you won’t do anything silly.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Tell me you won’t even think of going up there alone.’
‘I promise,’ I say.
The day drags. By the early afternoon, the fog has heaved itself off the ground and the sun is doing its best to burn through, but it is no more than a fierce white circle in the sky. The light is luminous, uncanny. It trembles with anticipation, although that may be me projecting. I am restless all day.
Now that I have made up my mind to face the tower, I am longing to get it over with it. One last hurdle and I will be free. That’s how it feels, anyway. All I need is to understand what happened, and then I’ll be able to leave Askerby. Felix and I will go to York, I think, or Leeds. Somewhere I can get a job. I won’t be able to afford much. There will be no ancestral portraits hanging on the wall, no crested silver cutlery, no long gallery to run in on rainy days, but there will be no shadows either, no oppressive sense of the past pressing down on everything.
For the first time in ages, I think of my parents in Africa. They would say that we will be lucky to have shelter at all. A flat, however small, will have a roof. It will have running water and electricity. It will be enough.
The house doesn’t like my plans for the future. I can feel it. The air is jagged one minute, smothering the next. Inside, my earlier happiness has crumbled and I am edgy and uneasy. I can’t settle. I keep going outside, even though I know it is too early for school to be out. At least outside I can breathe. I shield my eyes from the sun and crane my neck to look up at the tower.
It looms above me, and I can almost hear it taunting me: Dare you know the truth? My heart bangs in my chest. I wish Matt would come. We’ll climb the tower together and at the top I will hold onto him and I will remember. I wish it was over, though. I know I need to do it, but I am frightened of what awaits me up there.
The sound of tyres on gravel makes me turn sharply, only to almo
st stumble over Pippin, who has followed me outside, and her hackles rise as she backs away from me.
‘Pippin, it’s me,’ I say, part pleading, part exasperated, but she only growls.
Sighing, I turn back to the car that is parking neatly to one side. To my disappointment, it’s not Matt. It’s Angie.
She raises her brows at me as she hops out from behind the steering wheel. ‘What on earth are you doing out here, Kate?’ she asks, reaching back into the car to pull out a pair of boots and a plastic folder. ‘You must be freezing.’
Now that she mentions it, I am cold. I hug my arms together self-consciously. ‘I’m . . . waiting,’ I say.
Angie looks at her watch. ‘Are you going to collect Felix from school?’
‘Not today. Matt’s picking him up.’
‘Oh. I see.’ As always, Angie’s face goes carefully blank whenever Matt’s name is mentioned, and there’s an awkward pause.
‘Whose boots are those?’ I ask to change the subject.
‘Lord Vavasour’s. He asked if I could get them re-heeled for him. I need to discuss possible menus for the guide dogs reception at the end of November with Lady Vavasour, so I thought I’d drop the boots off at the same time.’ She pushes the car door shut with her hip and heads for the door, her feet crunching on the gravel. ‘Are you coming in?’
‘Not just yet.’ My eyes have gone back to the tower. It’s beckoning me, drawing me in.
Angie follows my gaze and stops. ‘Kate? You’re not thinking of going up there, are you?’
‘It’s the only way I’m going to remember,’ I say. ‘I feel it.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ Her arms full of boots, Angie regards me worriedly. She’s wearing trousers and a pale pink shirt with a padded gilet, and even on a day like this when the mist leaches all the colour from the world, her hair looks shiny and her eyes bright. ‘I really don’t.’
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