Over his shoulder, I see Angie take the phone instinctively. She stands looking at it in her hand for a long moment.
‘For God’s sake, Angie, call 999!’ George snaps while I am still desperately trying to suck in a breath. ‘Kate needs help!’
‘Kate,’ she repeats, quite quietly at first. ‘Kate, Kate, Kate!’ Her voice rises to a shriek. ‘I’m sick of it!’ And she pulls back her arm and throws the phone over the parapet as hard as she can.
George watches it go, open-mouthed. Angie! What’s got into you?’
‘She doesn’t love you, you know,’ she says to him. ‘She’s going away. You don’t need to go to New Zealand. We can be happy here without her.’ Her smile is somehow grotesque in her battered face. It is the first time I have ever seen her look less than immaculate. I have got in some scratches and slaps of my own and her hair is a mess, but more disturbing by far is the shining insanity in her eyes.
‘I know,’ George says roughly. ‘It’s not about Kate. I just need to get away from Askerby for a while.’
‘But . . . you can’t!’ The last vestige of colour drains from her face. ‘You can’t leave me!’
George looks uneasy. ‘You’ll be fine, Angie. I’m sure the new estate manager will find a job for you, and if not there’ll always be work for you at the Hall.’
A job. Not a family, not a home, not a place to belong.
I see the moment when Angie realizes that it’s over, the moment her dream is kicked out from beneath her. George will not marry her. Felix will not be hers. I will not die.
Instead I will know what she did, or rather, what she didn’t do. I will tell the Vavasours and they will shun her. She’ll have to leave Askerby.
I’d die if I had to leave.
The thought spreads across her face like a drop of ink in water, colouring everything. All she has ever wanted, knocked out of her grasp and shattered.
Desperately, I drag myself up. ‘George,’ I rasp. ‘Stop her!’
But he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t see her walk dreamily over to the parapet. Half blinded by pain, I throw myself towards her. Angie, no!’ I try to cry but it comes out as barely more than a whisper.
She is too quick for me. I clutch hold of the edge of her quilted gilet, but already she is climbing up into the gap, while George is still frozen in place.
‘Angie, don’t!’ I plead, scrabbling for a better grip. ‘We’ll work something out. It’ll be fine.’
I don’t think she hears me. She looks down almost reflectively. ‘I won’t leave,’ she says to the air. ‘This is where I belong. This is where I’m going to stay.’
Then she spreads her arms and steps out into the misty air, leaving the gilet hanging limp and empty in my hands.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Helpless, I slide back down to the lead panels, while George looks blankly around him. ‘I have to get help,’ he says at last, his voice raw with shock.
‘Matt’s coming,’ I manage. I don’t suppose I sound any better. I am still clutching Angie’s gilet and shuddering with reaction. ‘I don’t want Felix to see . . . to see . . .’ I can’t finish.
I don’t want him to see Angie’s body. She had picked out that spot for me, where there were no trees to break her fall. She is lying on the gravel in front of the Hall where she never belonged.
‘No. God. No.’ He rubs a hand over his face. ‘Can you move?’
‘I’m . . . not sure.’ Now that the danger is over, the pain is raging and darkness flickers at the edges of my consciousness. I lay my head back against the parapet. ‘You go. Get help. Stop Matt.’
I think I may pass out then. The next thing I know, I am lying on the roof of the tower and Matt is bending over me, his face ravaged. ‘Kate. Jesus, Kate,’ he keeps saying, over and over again. He strips off his jacket and tucks it around me, and I clutch gratefully at it. I am so cold I cannot imagine ever being warm again. It should be dark, I think, but the sun hasn’t yet given up its struggle to break through the mist, and as a result the light is curiously bright and blank and blurred all at the same time.
‘I’m okay.’ My voice scrapes in my throat and my lips are so dry it is hard to get the words out. ‘Felix?’
‘Felix is fine. George stopped me at the gatehouse and told me what had happened. I took Felix to the Lodge, and Fiona is looking after him. George has called the police and they’re sending an air ambulance.’
‘Is Angie . . . ?’
Matt shakes his head, grim-faced. ‘The air ambulance is for you. I don’t think we can get you down those tower steps.’
‘I’m—’ A scream as I try to move my leg cuts off my attempt to assure him that I am fine.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Matt says.
There isn’t room to land the helicopter on the tower roof, so a paramedic is lowered with a stretcher. Matt holds my hand as I am strapped on.
‘You’re going to be okay,’ he says, and I believe him.
The paramedic tells me jokes to distract me from the fact that I am dangling in mid-air as we are winched up to the helicopter. The door is barely closed before the chopper lifts and swings away into the eerie light. Below, through the glass panel, I see Askerby Hall grow smaller and smaller, and Matt, a tiny, lonely figure on top of the tower, watching me go through the mist.
They keep me in hospital overnight for observation, but I am only badly bruised and shocked. I am fine until Matt arrives, and then, to my shame, I burst into tears. He spends the night by my bed, and I fall asleep at last holding his hand. He is still there when I wake in the morning.
He drives me back to Askerby. I think of the last time I drove that road with Fiona and Jasper, and when we crest the hill, I remember again how wet Isabel was when she rode to Askerby for the first time with Edmund after her wedding. This time, though, it doesn’t feel like my memory.
I try to explain it to Matt. ‘It’s as if Isabel isn’t part of me any more. I can remember, but it’s like a film I’ve seen now, not like something that happened to me.’
‘Maybe now you know what happened to her, and to her son, she can rest at last,’ he says. ‘She doesn’t need you any more.’
‘I hope so.’
Just like before, we turn in past the Lodge and I think about Angie, growing up there on the boundary of the estate, dreaming about living in the big house, about belonging. We drive up the avenue, around the curve in the road, and there is the gatehouse again and, beyond it, the Hall. Matt stops the car outside the great carved doorway and I look up at the house through the windscreen. I don’t see the darkness now, I see the warm brickwork. The windows are no longer watchful, they are just old, and while the tower makes me wince at the memory, it doesn’t seem to be reaching for me. It is just a house.
I can’t help my eyes going to the patch of gravel where Angie must have landed. It has been brushed over, the police tape removed. There is no trace that she was ever there at all. She is part of Askerby’s past now.
I am frowning slightly until I realize what is missing. ‘Where are all the visitors?’
‘The house is closed today. “Due to unforeseen circumstances.”’ Matt hooks his fingers in the air. ‘Even the Vavasours couldn’t carry on as if it was business as usual today.’ He glances at me. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes.’ I take a deep breath. I remember it all now. I can face anything.
Matt helps me out of his car. I wince as I move my battered leg around but I am distracted by the door opening. Felix stands there, framed in the carved doorway, his expression alight with anticipation. He stops at the sight of me, as if he is uncertain, and I brace myself for the guard to drop over his eyes, but then he hurtles towards me, down the steps and across the gravel.
‘Mummy!’ he cries, throwing his arms around my thighs. ‘Mummy!’
His small sturdy body knocks me off balance and back against Matt’s car. My ribs shriek in protest, but never has a pain been more welcome. I wrap my arms around my son and press his head against my stom
ach. ‘Felix.’ My throat is so tight, it is all I can say. ‘Felix.’
I look over his head at Matt, who smiles and nods down at my feet. Pippin has followed Felix and is squirming and pawing at my ankles, wagging her tail, whimpering with joy. ‘It’s over,’ he says softly. ‘Welcome home.’
Angie’s death has hit the Vavasours hard, harder than I expected, and George most of all. I tell them the truth in the end. It seems to me there have been enough secrets and evasions.
‘I didn’t know,’ George says dully. ‘I had no idea she thought of me as anything other than a boss.’
‘Didn’t you?’ I ask. ‘Angie seemed to think that you and she were on the verge of getting it together before Michael and I came back to live here.’
A flush deepens the ruddiness in his cheeks. ‘Once. When we’d had too much to drink one night. But it didn’t mean anything,’ he says. ‘I never really thought of her that way.’
That was the problem, I think.
‘It meant something to Angie,’ I say. ‘All she ever wanted was to belong here. She wanted to be part of a family.’ I look at Margaret. ‘Even one that thinks nothing of getting rid of an inconvenient child.’
Two spots of hectic colour burn in Margaret’s cheeks. ‘What would you have done if you had given birth to a monster?’ she demands. ‘Things were different in those days. If the child had been obviously mentally disabled, we could have changed the entail, but there was no sign of that.’
‘He just wasn’t pretty enough for you,’ I say coldly.
‘It was all Ralph’s fault,’ she spits out. ‘He was supposed to take it away, not bring it back. We told everyone my baby had been stillborn, but it was always there! That vile man, Adam Kaczka, he never let me forget it! We had to pay and pay and pay! Ralph was besotted with that Polish woman. “We owe her,” he kept saying. Anyone could see that she was in love with him. That’s why she wanted to come back here. Ralph said she swore not to tell the truth, but I might have known she would babble in the end.’
‘She kept your secret a long time,’ I say. ‘She’s ninety-five, and she gets confused. It wasn’t hard for Angie to work out the truth.’
Margaret’s mouth works. Her lipstick, I see, is bleeding into her upper lip. ‘Ralph blamed me,’ she said. ‘He wanted an heir, and I gave him one. There was nothing wrong with Jasper or Joanna, but he could never forget the first child. Once Jasper was born, he couldn’t bring himself to touch me.’ Her eyes are dark with memory. ‘But I didn’t complain. I knew my duty. I did what I had to do. If Ralph wanted that . . . that thing . . . as his heir, he could have said, couldn’t he?’
She’s right, I think. Ralph didn’t have to hide Peter away. He didn’t have to fall in with Margaret’s plan. Had it, in the end, been no more for him than an excuse to get Dosia back to Askerby?
Margaret is eighty-seven. She is not going to be punished. What would they charge her with? Being unfeeling? I suspect the Vavasours are not the only family who have got rid of unwanted children, one way or another.
Fiona is staring at Margaret. ‘How have you lived with yourself all these years? If I could have Michael back for five minutes, I would do it. I can’t imagine giving my son away . . . !’
‘You’ve done all right, haven’t you?’ Margaret snaps. ‘You’ve been happy to be Lady Vavasour, and Askerby is still here, isn’t it? It still has its traditions, the way it always has. The family is here, and the Hall will be passed on to the next generation and then the next. That’s how I live with myself. It is the family that matters, not the individual. But you,’ she says, fixing me with her cold green glare, ‘you care nothing about the Vavasours. You don’t care about Askerby. All you care about is Felix.’
‘That’s right,’ I say. I’m not going to be ashamed about that. ‘Felix is always going to be my priority.’
‘What will happen to Askerby when Jasper dies?’
Jasper shifts uneasily in his chair. ‘Felix will inherit Askerby, of course.’
‘That will be Felix’s decision to make,’ I say. ‘For now, he’s just a little boy. He doesn’t need to be burdened with the expectations of the Vavasours just yet.’
‘So you’re taking him away?’ Fiona’s mouth trembles. Felix is all she has of Michael now, I remember.
‘We’ll come back,’ I say. ‘You’ll see Felix for holidays, for visits. But for now we need to make a life of our own. When he’s older, he can decide for himself whether he wants to take on Askerby or not.’
Fiona nods, swallows. And you? Are you going to America?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I’m not ready to make that kind of decision yet.’ First, I need to remember what it’s like to live an ordinary life. Now that my memory has come back, I can work, and Matt will be here for another few months . . . ‘We’ll see,’ I say.
I worry about what will happen to Dosia now, but Jasper and Fiona are paying for a carer to look after her. When I go to see her, I’m not sure if she will really understand what happened to her granddaughter, but it turns out that she knows more than we think. She is not confused about Angie, much as she might wish to be. Sometimes not remembering is a blessing: that was what she said to me when I first went to see her.
I take Dosia’s fragile hand. ‘I’m so sorry about Angie,’ I say, and she sighs tremulously.
‘Poor Angelika,’ she says sadly. ‘How was she ever going to be happy? She never understood that you can’t always have everything you want.’ Dosia sighs again and shakes her old head. ‘I blame myself,’ she says. ‘Her mother abandoned her, her father died, she had nothing but this Lodge and her old grandmother . . . perhaps if I hadn’t wanted to stay here so much, she would have found something else she wanted besides the house she could never have and a family who would never accept her.’
‘She could have been happy with what she had,’ I say, remembering what Isabel said to Judith. ‘Yes, it must have been hard to be abandoned by her mother, but Peter was rejected by his, too.’
‘He didn’t know that,’ Dosia points out.
‘He spent his life with a terrible disfigurement, but in all the photos I’ve seen of him, he was smiling,’ I say, and she nods, a wavery bob of her head, and taps her frail heart.
‘He was the child of my heart,’ she tells me, her eyes filling with tears.
‘He was lucky to have you as a mother,’ I say. ‘He must have known that.’
‘I loved him,’ she agrees. ‘Not just for himself, but because he was Ralph’s. Adam never forgave me for agreeing to the deception, but how could I not take the baby? What would have happened to him otherwise? But Marek, he was Adam’s son. He never understood why Peter was so special to me.’
And Ralph?’ I ask. ‘Did he know his son?’
‘Ralph did his duty.’ Dosia lets out a long, regretful breath. ‘He was Lord Vavasour. He did what was expected of him. You know, we never slept together, not once.’
She looks so sad that I squeeze her hand. ‘But you loved him, anyway.’
‘Yes.’ Her old face softens. ‘Yes, I loved him. He wanted us to go away, but I said no. How could we do that to Margaret, to Adam? To Marek and Joanna and Jasper? And to Peter most of all. What would have happened to him without us? Our families were more important than what we felt for each other.’
Dosia falls silent, and I wonder if she is sleeping, but she is thinking. ‘That was something Angelika never understood,’ she says. ‘She thought a family was a thing you can have. Poor child.’ Her voice quavers with sadness. ‘She didn’t understand that a family isn’t something you’re entitled to. It’s about what you do, and who you care for, and what you’re prepared to give.’
George is still going to New Zealand. He is shocked by Angie’s death but he isn’t grieving for her. He says he needs a change and to do something for himself, and I think he is right. Philippa is going to manage Askerby in his stead. Margaret hates the idea, of course – a woman managing the estate! Whoever heard of such a thing? – b
ut I think Philippa is looking forward to it.
‘Like love,’ I say.
‘Yes, like love.’ Dosia nods. ‘Angelika didn’t know how to give. She only knew how to envy and to want.’ She looks at me with her wise old eyes. ‘But you, you have love to give, I think?’
I smile. ‘I am lucky. I have a son.’ I look down at Pippin, who has settled with her head resting possessively on my foot so that she will know the instant I move. ‘And a dog!’
And a lover?’ She laughs at my expression. ‘You young people, you think you invented sex. Remember,’ she says, ‘love isn’t just about giving. Sometimes it’s about taking, too, and sometimes that is harder to do. I wouldn’t take it from Ralph,’ she remembers sadly. ‘I thought it was wrong. We chose to put our families first, and that was the right thing to do, yes, but now he is dead and I am old and alone, and I cannot help sometimes thinking about what it would have been like if I had been brave enough to accept being loved by him, if I had been brave enough to change, to take a second chance. I wonder if our families could have changed with us.’
Dosia sighs, a long, wistful sigh. ‘So remember, dear child,’ she says to me. ‘Remember to look forward. Remember to take as well as to give. Promise me that if you have the chance to love again, you will take it.’
I think about Michael and how much I loved him, and then I think about Matt, about how safe and settled I feel knowing that he is there. There is so much that we haven’t discussed, so much that is still uncertain, but I know how my heart swells at the thought of him. I know how he makes me laugh, and how Felix shouts with pleasure at the sight of him, and how the touch of his hand makes my blood hum, low and insistent.
I smile at Dosia. ‘I’ll remember,’ I say. ‘I promise.’
We lay Isabel to rest on a blustery spring day. I have persuaded the Vavasours to have the bones DNA-tested at last, and once you get past all the scientific humming and hawing, there seems little doubt that the bones found under the Visitor Centre belong to an ancestor. Fiona and Jasper are still hoping that Felix and I won’t move too far away. They have made arrangements to have Edmund’s tomb opened, and Reverend Rolland holds a special service in the church at Askerby.
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