‘I have been giving you wormwood to confuse you for years.’ She laughed at her cleverness. ‘Why do you think all those remedies were so bitter? But you are such a trusting soul, Isabel! You even believed you had tripped when I pushed you down the stairs that day!’ Then the wild laugh dropped from her face like a stone, and she was once more bright-eyed and deadly serious. She held Kit back out over the edge. ‘Now, jump, or I will drop your precious child.’
‘No!’ The cry was torn from my throat and I leapt up onto the stone. ‘Judith, no!’
‘Jump,’ she said, implacable.
‘Edmund,’ I stutter, my mind scrabbling frantically for a way out. ‘If you drop Kit, you will never have him. I will tell him what you did.’
Judith was unimpressed. ‘But who will he believe, you who have killed his son, or me, who has been running his house, sending him letters while you never reply to his?’
‘I have never seen them,’ I said slowly. ‘He does not reply to mine.’
‘If you had ever troubled yourself with the running of your household then you would have known that your letters were never sent, and that Edmund’s to you went straight onto the fire once I had read them. But no, you must ride out and run wild, and this is your reward,’ she said triumphantly. ‘The neighbours will not be surprised, not after they saw how strange you were at your lying-in.
‘Besides,’ she said. ‘Kit would still be dead. I would not have to see you happy. That would be something. Now,’ she went on briskly, ‘my arms are getting quite tired holding the child. I may just drop him anyway.’
‘No.’ This time I could barely manage more than a whimper.
Judith nodded at the gap in the battlements. ‘Up you get then. It is simple – Kit dies or you do.’
‘Judith, I thought we were friends.’ I could not believe that it had come to this. I could not comprehend what she was saying.
‘You wanted a friend so you saw one,’ she said. ‘But I hated you right from the start. Who do you think told on you when you rode out with Edmund that day? I watched your uncle beat you afterwards and I pretended to cry, but I had to hide my smile in my sleeve.’
‘I would have given you anything,’ I said dully.
‘Oh yes, new gowns for Judith, a bed of my own, anything I asked for, and I had to be so grateful. I didn’t want your gowns,’ she said, ‘I wanted your life, and I shall have it. They won’t even be able to bury you in the churchyard, I’m afraid,’ she added with a sly smile. ‘The Devil has been whispering in your ear and you are about to give in to temptation.’ Her voice hardened. ‘Now, jump.’
She let Kit slip in her hands, and he screamed anew.
‘Jump,’ she said again. ‘Jump now, Isabel, or I swear I will drop him.’
What could I do? What could I do? I put my hands on the battlements, one on either side to support myself, and I lifted a foot up. There was a rushing and a roaring in my ears: the wind tugging at my gown, terror chuckling in my head, and Kit, wailing in Judith’s arms.
Meg, I remembered. Meg would care for him. But he had to live. And if he were to live, it seemed I had to die.
‘Go on,’ Judith said in a hard voice.
‘Do you promise me you will not drop him?’ My own voice was reedy with shock. It sounded as though it belonged to someone else.
‘Edmund needs a son for me to care for,’ she said, considering. ‘If you are both gone, who knows what he might take it into his head to do? So, yes, for now I need Kit. When you are dead, at least he has a chance of life, so let that be a comfort to you. Now,’ she said, ‘enough discussion. Kit will never be safe as long as you are alive, so jump. Do it now, Isabel.’
I looked at my son for the last time. ‘Kit, dear one, stay safe, live long.’
Swallowing hard, I lifted my other foot up to stand between the battlements. I was shaking as if with an ague, and the ground below tilted horrifyingly up to meet me. I couldn’t look down. Ahead I could see the moors rolling up and away, and with an odd detached part of my mind I thought of riding up there with my husband, of laughing as the breeze snatched at my hat, of being certain that I was the happiest of women.
‘Edmund,’ I whispered. ‘Edmund, forgive me,’ and I stepped out into nothing.
Then I was flying at last, spinning, tumbling, not elegantly but awkwardly, my heavy skirts flapping, and all I felt was disbelief that this was really happening. I could not end that way, I remember thinking that. No, I was dreaming, and I would wake with Edmund beside me and Kit in his cradle, and my dear friend Judith in the next chamber. I had time to think all of that as stone walls and green fields and the sky lurched around me, and then the ground rushed up to grab me and there was a great white flash and then nothing.
My hands are crossed at my throat in horror. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, it was Judith!’ I feel sick and giddy, as if I am falling still. Staggering over to the stone step, I sink down onto it and drop my head between my knees. My mind is ringing with shock, and that blazing, brilliant flash burns still behind my eyes. I can’t seem to catch my breath. My chest heaves but I can’t suck in enough air, so I am gasping and gulping in panic.
Slow, slow down, I tell myself. Breathe in, breathe out. Slow.
Gradually, the dreadful tightness around my chest eases, and my galloping heart slows, although an echo of its fearful hoof beats still thuds in my ears. When I lift my head from my knees at last, I realize that I am crying and I swipe at my cheeks with the back of my hand. ‘Isabel,’ I murmur. ‘Oh, Isabel.’
Her last terrible moments are playing on a hideous loop inside my head and I’m not sure how long I sit there staring blankly ahead before some quality in the silence brings me back to the present. My eyes focus on a dark figure outlined against the strange colourless sun. I can’t make out its features, and my heart jerks as I scramble instinctively to my feet. ‘Judith!’
Then she moves and I see who it is. ‘Oh . . . Angie, thank God!’ I sit shakily once more, patting my pounding heart back into place. ‘Jesus, I’ve just remembered something terrifying . . .’ I trail off because I am remembering something else, too. I’m remembering being up on the roof another time. It’s not Isabel’s memory, it’s mine.
‘You were here, too,’ I tell Angie slowly. ‘I remember you.’
She lets out a long, long sigh. ‘I was afraid you would. I begged you not to come up here, but you wouldn’t listen, would you? You never listen.’
‘But—’ I stop. My memories are getting muddled. Angie was there, I remember that, but she kept merging into Judith. I remember the jolt of terror when she bent to kiss my cheek in hospital. I’m your friend, she said.
Just as Judith had been Isabel’s friend.
I have been so terrified by what happened to Isabel that I haven’t realized that there is a new and very different danger right in front of me.
‘Was it you?’ I ask. My tongue feels too big for my mouth and I can hardly get the words out. ‘Did you push me?’
‘No, I didn’t push you. You jumped all by yourself.’ Oddly relaxed, Angie wanders over to the gap in the battlements where Isabel once stood. ‘Right here,’ she says, pointing, and turns back to face me. ‘I didn’t know what was going on at first. You made me come up here with you that day. You’d been acting strangely ever since those bones were discovered. We all thought you were having a breakdown, so when you insisted on coming up here, I thought I should probably play along. I didn’t know what you were going to do, though. I swear I didn’t.’
I moisten my lips carefully. ‘So what happened?’
‘You were babbling about somebody called Kit and a woman called Eliza, but I couldn’t follow most of it. Then when we got here, you started going on and on about a Judith,’ she tells me. ‘It was crazy. You kept jumping up on the step there, and then you got up on the battlements.’
I had been reliving Isabel’s life, and her death, I realize. That time, though, I survived the terrible fall, and I have only been remembering. I am
not ‘strange’ or ‘mad’ now. Now I know exactly what happened.
‘It was really creepy,’ Angie says. ‘I tried to talk to you, but I couldn’t get through, and then . . .’ Her voice cracks a little and she spreads her hands. ‘And then you . . . you jumped. One minute you were there and the next you were gone.’
Gone. I remember tumbling through the air, the terror and the disbelief.
‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’
‘I thought you were dead,’ she says. ‘No one saw me come up, and no one saw me go down, so there didn’t seem any point in saying anything. I did have a few bad moments when I realized you’d survived,’ she confesses, ‘but then you lost your memory, and I realized that even if you did remember, nobody would believe you, especially after you’d been behaving so weirdly.’
And now? I think. Who would believe me now?
The roof feels very cold all of a sudden. I’m glad I’m sitting down. I am still horrified by Isabel’s death and I have been jolted from that into an equally horrifying present. There is a buzzing, high and white, in my head, and my mind is slipping and sliding, scrabbling desperately for a grip. I can hardly comprehend what Angie is telling me so calmly.
‘I don’t understand. If you were here, if you saw me about to jump, why didn’t you stop me?’
Her eyes slide away from mine. ‘You don’t know what it was like before then. You were like some crazy person, Kate, rambling on and on about the past the whole time. I tried to talk to you about the effect you were having on Felix, we all did, but you wouldn’t listen. It was like you’d been taken over or something.’
‘But that’s exactly what had happened,’ I say bitterly. ‘I was possessed by Isabel, so possessed that I relived her life, and then I relived her death, and you didn’t lift a finger to stop me.’
‘Possessed?’ Angie sounds irritated rather than guilty. ‘You weren’t possessed!’
‘Then how do you explain the fact that I jumped at all?’
‘You were upset when the American left, and instead of getting a grip, you let yourself go,’ she says. ‘You worked yourself into a breakdown but if anyone suggested that you talk to someone, oh no! You weren’t going to do that. You weren’t depressed, and you didn’t need help. Admitting you were depressed would be much too ordinary for you, wouldn’t it, Kate?’
I’m shaken by the dislike in her voice. Were all those protestations of friendship a lie? Has Angie hated me all along?
‘Whatever you thought, you didn’t have to let me jump,’ I say as levelly as I can. I don’t want her to know how upset I am. How frightened.
‘It wasn’t like that.’ Angie twists her hands fretfully together. ‘It all happened so fast. You’ve got to remember that I was terrified, and keeping as far away from you as possible. I didn’t know what you were going to do.’
‘So you just stood there and let it happen?’
‘All right, yes, I did!’ Goaded, she shouts before struggling to get herself back under control. ‘You’ve got no idea how difficult you’d been,’ she said more calmly. ‘Poor darling Felix was frightened and confused, and everyone else was worried sick. It wasn’t like you were being a good mother. It wasn’t like you were happy.’ Her voice thickens with resentment in spite of herself. ‘You had Felix, you had a home at Askerby, you had everything I’ve ever wanted, but did you appreciate it? No! You have to get involved with Americans, and you talk about leaving and you start carrying on about dead people and . . . I don’t know . . . when you got up there on the battlements, I just thought how much easier it would be if you just jumped and put us all out of our misery.’ She swallows. ‘I didn’t push you, Kate, but yes, I wished you would jump and then you did.’ She lifts her face from her hands, and her expression is half dazed, as if remembering that moment of disbelief. ‘I couldn’t believe it.’
I can’t help myself. ‘I thought we were friends,’ I say bleakly. Just as Isabel thought Judith was her friend.
‘You had everything,’ Angie says in reply. ‘Ever since I can remember, I’ve longed to be a Vavasour, to be part of the family and to live at the Hall. It’s not like I wouldn’t belong,’ she says. ‘My grandfather was a count, but nobody ever wanted to know that. I was just the girl at the Lodge, good old reliable Angie.’ Her mouth twists.
I find myself wanting to reassure her that it isn’t how the Vavasours think of her, but I can’t. That is exactly what they think.
‘When I was little girl I wanted to marry Michael so I could be Lady Vavasour,’ she goes on after a moment, ‘but Michael always had such funny ideas, it wouldn’t have worked. Anyway, I preferred George. We’ve got so much in common, more than he knows,’ she says, her face softening. ‘I dreamt of marrying him, of having a family to fill up the Hall, and we’d look after Askerby together. We’d have made a great team. I didn’t mind not being Lady Vavasour if I could have George and stay at Askerby. I made a point of being around to help him in the estate office. I was there for whatever he needed. I was sure he would look at me one day and see me, and realize that we were meant to be together.’
And did he?’
Her gaze grows distant. ‘I thought so. We were clearing up after a Christmas party for the estate workers in the old Visitor Centre, just the two of us. Someone had put up some mistletoe from the West Woods, and he kissed me.’ Lost in the memory of that moment, Angie smiles, and I feel a pang of pity for her. ‘We ended up making love right there in the Visitor Centre,’ she tells me. ‘It was my first time, but I didn’t regret it. I wanted it to be George. I wanted him to know that he was special, that it was only ever going to be him.’
She presses her clenched fists to her chest, remembering that moment. ‘I was so happy afterwards. I was so sure that was it, and we’d be together forever.’
Poor Angie, so desperate for a place in George’s life that she could mistake a drunken fumble at a Christmas party for true love.
The almost exalted expression in her face fades. ‘But the very next day Michael came back for Christmas, and he brought you, and George took one look at you and wanted you instead,’ she says dully. ‘He told me what had happened had been a mistake. He even apologized.’
‘Oh, Angie.’ In spite of knowing that she let me jump, I am desperately sorry for her.
‘He said he hoped we could both forget about it.’ Her mouth trembles. ‘How could I forget it when he was there every day?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘You know I never encouraged George, don’t you, Angie? Not once.’
She doesn’t seem to hear me. ‘I hoped that he would forget about you after you left, but he never kissed me again, and then Michael got sick and you came back and that was that. You even had a baby,’ she says bitterly. ‘You had no idea how lucky you were.’
‘Michael died,’ I remind her.
‘You’ve still got Felix. I love him.’
‘I know you do,’ I say carefully. ‘You’re brilliant with kids, Angie. You should have some of your own.’
Her face contorts. ‘How is that ever going to happen while you’re around?’
‘I’ll leave.’
‘But then you’ll take Felix away, and I don’t think I could bear that. I couldn’t love him more if he was mine, and I know he loves me, too.’
‘Yes, he does.’ I feel sick. Angie sounds so reasonable.
‘So you see, when you jumped, I was horrified, but there was a bit of me that was glad, too,’ she confides. ‘As I ran down the tower, I was already thinking about Felix, and George, and how we could comfort each other and be a little family. Four-year-olds forget pretty quickly, and I’d been more of a mother to him than you had those past few weeks. I didn’t think it would be too long before he was calling me Mummy. I mean, he won’t even call you Mummy now, will he?’ she says with a glint of malice. ‘I’ve noticed that. I’m sure it wouldn’t take him long to forget you altogether and think of me as his mother.’
My fingers curl into fists. Take my place wi
th Felix? Over my dead body, I think, and then I catch myself. My dead body was exactly what Angie was counting on. My pity for her evaporates. I’m sorry that she has been deluded by her dreams about George, but she is not having Felix.
‘How disappointing for you that I survived,’ I manage through clenched teeth.
Angie doesn’t even bother to deny it. ‘You were supposed to die, but you didn’t. You came back to Askerby and you’re living here again, and George is in love with you again and you don’t even care!’ She gestures wildly in frustration. ‘It’s so unfair. And now George is talking about going to New Zealand. Everything’s gone wrong, and it’s all your fault! Now what am I supposed to do?’
Chapter Thirty-six
‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘but let’s talk about it downstairs, where it’s warm.’ As we’ve been talking, the air has chilled and the fog has drifted down from the moors to blanket the gardens in a ghostly blur.
Angie frowns. ‘We can’t go back now, Kate,’ she says.
‘Yes, we can.’ With an effort I keep my voice even. ‘We can sort this out.’
‘No.’ She shakes her head so that her hair swings. ‘It’s too late for that. Everything’s spoilt now.’
‘Angie, you said you didn’t push me and I believe you. No one’s going to arrest you for attempted manslaughter.’
‘You’d tell the Vavasours what happened, and they would send me away.’
I try to laugh. ‘They’d never get rid of you, Angie. They rely on you too much.’
‘For errands, perhaps,’ she says bitterly, ‘but George will still be gone. He won’t stay if you’re here.’
‘Then I’ll go,’ I say, surreptitiously calculating how long it would take me to get to the stairs. Unfortunately, Angie is standing between me and them, and I am so slow. I can’t run properly on my leg. The only thing to do is to wait until somebody comes. Until then I will pretend that we are having a normal conversation and that the glitter in her eyes doesn’t freeze the marrow in my bones.
‘But you’ll take Felix with you.’
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