The Night Visitor

by Lucy Atkins

  ‘In what diary?’

  ‘In Annabel’s diary, from 1898, her murder confession?’

  Lady Burley shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen any diary.’

  ‘You inherited it from Uncle Quentin?’

  Lady Burley’s hand hovered at her chest. ‘I don’t know what Vivian’s been telling you.’

  ‘But you … Vivian has it at Ileford. I’ve studied it – extensively. It’s been verified by a friend of mine at the British Library. It’s the entire basis for this book …’ She pointed at the glossy hardback between them.

  ‘Well, I don’t remember any diary.’ Lady Burley’s hand fluttered to her throat. She looked perturbed and suspicious, as if Olivia might be lying to her.

  Olivia felt suddenly very cold. She wanted to reach over and shake Lady Burley, make her remember. It made no sense that she wouldn’t know about the diary. She really must have dementia. She remembered how protective Vivian was of the elderly lady’s emotional state – perhaps this was why.

  ‘Never mind.’ She tried to drink her tea. She couldn’t quite work out what had just happened. She put the cup back down. It was fine, this was just forgetfulness, the confusion of the elderly. Lady Burley must be on a lot of medication for the cancer too. Vivian said that affected her. In a moment, she’d remember the diary, of course she would.

  ‘I suppose Vivian’s told you about the Ileford ghost?’ Lady Burley clearly wanted to change the subject.

  ‘Violet walking her wolfhound in the mist?’

  ‘I’ve seen her myself, many times, vanishing under the elms on early October mornings. Elms are such sinister trees, I don’t know what all the fuss is about with preserving them. If they weren’t protected by the council I’d have had them all cut down. They drop their branches, you see. You know the saying, “Elm hateth man, and waiteth.”’

  But Olivia couldn’t just leave it like this. She picked up Annabel and opened the middle section, finding an image of a diary entry. ‘Look,’ she said, gently. ‘This is Annabel’s diary.’

  Lady Burley fumbled with her glasses again, got them onto her nose, squinted at it. Then she sat back. ‘My eyes are no good, I’m afraid, even with these.’

  ‘Oh. OK. It’s just that the diary, the confession, is definitely real. My friend at the British Library has even dated the ink and paper.’

  Lady Burley looked very flustered. She lifted the glasses off again with trembling hands.

  Olivia closed the book. It felt cruel to press her like this. ‘Actually, Lady Burley, I came here partly to ask you about Vivian.’

  ‘Oh, poor darling Vivi.’ Lady Burley gave a wistful smile. ‘She has her own ghost, of course.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘We call it her night visitor. It’s terrifying for her. She wakes up to find the ghost of her badly injured mother sitting on her chest, trying to suffocate her. She’s totally paralysed when it happens. It’s probably something to do with trauma – what do they call it – PT … D?’

  ‘PTSD? Post-traumatic stress disorder?’

  ‘That’s right. It all stems, they think, from Vivi’s childhood trauma, losing her mother in such a violent fashion. She’s had it since childhood. A child can take on such guilt when a parent dies.’

  ‘Really? I knew her mother died, but she’s never told me much about it. Do you mind me asking what happened?’

  Lady Burley patted her cream blouse. ‘Well, it was a car accident. Poor Dottie. Here, pass me that … that.’ She waved at an ornate wooden box on the side table.

  Vivian had been so upset when she’d asked about her mother that night in the Farmhouse. This must be why. Olivia reached for the inlaid walnut box. It was quite heavy. She held it open on her knees and watched Lady Burley fiddle yet again to get her glasses on.

  ‘I had Zuska bring this down today so I could show you some of my Annabel treasures but I think I’ve also got … in here … somewhere … a picture of Dottie.’ Lady Burley rifled through the letters, photographs and scraps of ribbon and extracted a black and white photo. ‘We were great chums.’ She sounded immensely sad, suddenly, as if the years had concertinaed.

  The photo was of two young women, standing side by side. One was slim, tall and pretty, with blonde hair, as long as Jess’s used to be, wearing a well-cut 1950s style dress. The other was shorter and square-faced, much less pretty, but with bright, friendly eyes beneath a straight fringe. She was wearing a tweedy, bulky suit. Lady Burley peered at it. ‘Yes, that’s it. That’s me with the long hair. I could sit on it in those days. I was considered quite a beauty. And that’s Dottie, next to me.’

  Olivia stared at the picture. Vivian had never mentioned this connection. She’d always talked as if she was merely Lady Burley’s employee. Then again, there were clearly a lot of things that Vivian had not mentioned. She wanted to ask Lady Burley about the beetles in Vivian’s study but Lady Burley started to speak again.

  ‘We were in the Village am dram society together. Dear Dottie, such a treasure. We got on like a house on fire.’ She sighed. ‘Some things fade as you age, but the guilt doesn’t. No one tells you that. The guilt only gets worse.’

  ‘Why do you feel guilty?’

  ‘Well, it was such a shameful business.’ Lady Burley blinked. She’d forgotten to take her glasses off and her eyes were huge and viscous.

  ‘What was?’ Olivia said, gently. ‘Sorry – Vivian hasn’t …’

  ‘My unfortunate dalliance with Vivi’s father, and then Dottie’s accident.’

  Olivia wondered if she’d heard Lady Burley right. She sounded matter of fact, as if she was talking about her penchant for Tunnock’s, rather than for Vivian’s father. ‘You and Vivian’s father were … lovers?’ she said, tentatively.

  ‘Not lovers, really, there was nothing romantic about it. Vivian’s father was the estate manager for my first husband. I think of it as my Lady Chatterley moment.’

  Olivia could imagine the aristocratic Lady Burley in her twenties, frivolous and bored, with all that long blonde hair.

  ‘The problem was we were married off so young in those days. Dottie was only twenty when she had Vivian and I was twenty-one when I married Ronnie. I moved into his ghastly big house. Dottie was my helper. We were both terribly unhappy. Ronnie was a rotter, but the irony was I didn’t even like Victor. Dottie was terribly cut up when she found us. It was a filthy night, she just took off.’ Lady Burley pronounced ‘off’ as ‘orf’.

  ‘She found you with her husband, then ran away?’

  ‘Yes. And poor Vivi, so traumatic for her, she was only five or six years old. I suspect she still blames herself even now for it.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Well, you see, she remembers howling in the back seat. Dottie turned to tell her to be quiet and lost control of the car. It hit a tree.’

  ‘Vivian was in the car that night?’

  ‘Oh yes. Physically unharmed, but terribly traumatised when they got her out. I don’t think she spoke for a year afterwards. Then of course she had a sort of nervous breakdown in her teens. I’ve always told her she must see a psychotherapist but she won’t. I did try to support her, you know. Vic wasn’t a kind father, he didn’t know what to do with a little girl. He drank. He was rather brutal to her, I suspect. I’d have her to stay with me, sometimes, in the school holidays. I don’t have children of my own and I always felt a great responsibility to Dottie.’ Lady Burley’s blue eyes were inflated and watery, her voice wavered. ‘So silly of me, but you know, I almost feel worse about it now than I did at the time.’

  ‘But this is awful. How long was Vivian trapped in the car?’

  ‘Overnight, I’m afraid. The postman found her.’

  ‘She was stuck in a car all night with her dying mother?’

  ‘They think Dottie probably died on impact, or soon after.’

  It was a horrifying thought. It was impossible to imagine the effect that sort of trauma would have on a child, or the scars it might leave on you as
an adult. Vivian’s brittleness, her formality, her prickliness and rigidity suddenly made more sense. Her personality was underpinned by this gruesome childhood experience. She might or might not be on some spectrum or other, but that wasn’t her real problem. It was her family history that made her vulnerable, and although she’d clearly evolved a protective shell, it wasn’t working because the true threat was inside her. It was this damage that made her unpredictable and unreadable.

  ‘She had her little dog with her, at least,’ Lady Burley said, in a brighter voice. ‘He kept her company that night, and afterwards, too.’

  Olivia imagined a little girl clinging to her dog in the back seat with her dead mother slumped over the steering wheel.

  ‘He went on for a long time, died of old age, dear old Thoby. The doctors said that his death probably led to her breakdown in her teens. She went up to Beachy Head, but fortunately a rambler stopped her.’

  ‘Wait – what name did you just say?’ Olivia felt as if the walls of the room had inched closer.

  ‘Beachy Head?’

  ‘No. Not the place. The dog, Vivian’s childhood dog – his name.’

  ‘Thoby?’ Lady Burley looked surprised. ‘Darling little thing. Just a mutt, but he kept her going for a good ten years after the accident. She adored him. He was her best friend in the world.’ Lady Burley nodded and smiled. ‘Dear Vivi, she does love her dogs.’

  Olivia

  East Sussex, a lay-by

  The chaos in her head was overwhelming as she hung up the phone and drove away from Three Elms. She’d left a message on Vivian’s phone but she knew she wouldn’t respond. She couldn’t make the facts line up. Could it be a coincidence that Vivian’s childhood dog had the same name as Annabel’s terrier? Surely not. It couldn’t be.

  Then there was Lady Burley’s insistence that there was no diary. But Lady Burley was a bit confused, elderly and unwell. She’d muddled Violet’s name with her own mother’s. She couldn’t be relied on, surely.

  She felt shaky, chilly and sick, as if she were coming down with the flu. She felt as if she might have to pull over and throw up. She had to calm down. Lady Burley was on heavy medication, possibly suffering from mild dementia. This confusion didn’t mean anything. The diary had been tested and verified by a leading expert in Victorian documents.

  But she knew that these tests were not definitive. History was littered with hoaxes. The Hitler diaries had been examined by manuscript specialists who’d all believed them to be authentic before they were proven to be forged. The Ripper diary, too, had confounded the experts; complex forensic testing of the handwriting, ink and paper had all proved contradictory and inconclusive. When it came to verifying historical sources, even the experts could disintegrate in confusion and argument.

  And she’d only taken it to one person. She’d been so completely convinced that it was real; it looked, sounded, felt and smelled authentic. She’d never really questioned it properly. Somehow, perhaps because she could see what a great book she could write, she’d convinced herself that a hoax was not a possibility.

  But a forgery made no sense. Vivian had no reason to invent a Victorian diary. Nor did she have the skills to fake something so convincingly. She was just a housekeeper, an extraordinarily bright, fanatical, detail-orientated housekeeper, but one with absolutely no training in historical documents.

  She said she’d found the diary among Uncle Quentin’s papers. Was it possible that Uncle Quentin had made it up? Could Quentin have met Vivian, known Vivian’s childhood dog? Olivia racked her memory for dates. Quentin Burley had died in the early sixties. If Vivian was visiting Lady Burley in the school holidays as a child, then she could have been taken to visit Quentin at Ileford in the sixties. He might have met Thoby the dog on one of those visits too. And he might therefore have used its name if he was inventing a diary.

  Everyone said Uncle Quentin was an eccentric prankster. And he’d had every motivation to smear the reputation of the stepmother he hated.

  But if it was Quentin Burley who’d faked the diary, then Vivian must surely have known. She’d have recognized the name of her childhood dog and realized that it couldn’t be a coincidence. But why would Vivian not have told her? Why would Vivian allow her to write a book if she suspected the diary wasn’t real?

  She wanted to scream. Her hands, on the wheel, were shaking violently as she pulled over onto a grass verge, redialled Vivian’s number and left a hysterical message. ‘CALL ME BACK!’ she yelled at the end, and hung up. Then she emailed her too.

  She had to calm down. She had to think rationally. It was possible that Lady Burley had simply forgotten about the diary. Or maybe she had never looked through Uncle Quentin’s papers. She’d been about to go into the care home when Vivian found the document. That must have been a difficult time for her. Maybe Vivian had never told her about the diary. But that too would be odd. Then again, Vivian was odd. Unhinged. She withheld things. She told lies.

  But she knew in her gut that this explanation was wrong. Lady Burley might be fragile, but she really did seem compos mentis and she’d have known about the diary, unless Vivian had concealed it from her, and Vivian would only do that if she knew it to be a fake.

  She’d started to drive again and was nearing the M23 when her phone rang. Her first thought was Vivian. She grabbed it from the passenger seat but Chloe’s name was flashing up.

  She couldn’t talk to Chloe right now. She threw it back on the passenger seat and let it go to voicemail. She saw that there were previous missed calls from Chloe on the screen and unread texts. It rang again, almost immediately. She slammed her foot on the brake, jerked the wheel and bumped up onto a verge, plunging the wheels into the coarse, overgrown grass, almost hitting a hedgerow.

  She picked up just before it went to voicemail.

  ‘Liv?’

  ‘Hi, Chlo. Look, I’m driving … I’m a bit—’

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day – I have to see you. Could I come over? Where are you? Are you at home?’

  ‘No, I’m driving. I’m in Sussex.’

  ‘But it’s the launch tomorrow.’

  ‘I know – I’m on my way back now, Chlo. I can’t really talk.’

  ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘In about an hour. What is it? What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

  ‘Can we meet tonight?’

  ‘I can’t really. I’ve got to write my speech and get ready.’

  ‘I don’t want to do this over the phone.’

  ‘Do what? Look, you have no idea what sort of a day I’ve just had. Whatever it is, just tell me!’

  There was a pause. ‘I’m so sorry, Liv. I’m so sorry.’ Chloe’s voice sounded very odd suddenly, shaky and ominous.

  ‘What it is? Has something happened? Is it the children?’

  ‘No! No. The children are fine. It’s David.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ She felt her stomach drop.

  ‘No – he’s OK. But I think he’s having an affair.’

  She gripped the phone. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, Liv, darling, I’m so sorry, but I think David’s sleeping with your au pair.’

  Olivia sat very still. The drizzle ran down the windscreen. Everything felt curiously far away.

  ‘Liv? Are you there? Did you hear me?’

  ‘He’s not sleeping with Marta.’

  ‘I’ve seen them together. Twice.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous …’

  ‘Wait, just listen to me, OK? The first time was about a week before we went to France. I was out running and they were in Ravenscourt Park. David saw me and he came after me, he said it wasn’t what I thought. You know what he’s like, how persuasive he is, he talked me out of it.’

  ‘This was three months ago?’

  ‘No. Yes. Listen, he persuaded me it was nothing, but I was going to tell you anyway because it felt wrong not to say something about it and I tried to get you to meet me before w
e went to France, but you were too busy. When we were in France, I tried to talk to you. We were on the sun loungers, remember? But you started telling me what he’d done with the money and I just couldn’t do it to you … You were so stressed and upset, trying to deal with all that, I didn’t want to make things worse and I wasn’t even that sure what I’d seen. And then the boys interrupted us. Remember? Ben’s foot? The scorpion that was a splinter? Then there was the thing with Jess’s hair and we all left.’

  ‘OK. I don’t understand. What did you see in the park? What were they doing?’

  ‘It’s hard to describe. Not that much. It was … I think he was touching her face. It just felt wrong, you know. But the thing is, this morning was different.’

  ‘You saw them together today?’ There was suddenly too little oxygen in the car.

  She opened the door and out of nowhere a racing bike appeared, swerving to avoid her door. The cyclist let out a bark of protest that faded with him down the road.

  The air was damp, she could hear rumbling lorries and smell the exhaust fumes from the M23.

  Chloe’s voice sounded curiously distant. ‘I was dropping off the Harlequin vase to a client in Brackenbury Road and I walked past them. They were in his car and they were definitely together. He didn’t see me. I rang him afterwards and told him if he didn’t tell you then I would. He says he doesn’t want you tell you because of the book launch but I just … I didn’t know what to do. I thought about waiting, I really did, but I just can’t come and stand at your party tomorrow knowing this, Liv, I can’t do that to you.’ Her voice broke. ‘It would feel like a betrayal. I can’t lie to you like that. I’m so sorry, my love. The timing is so, so shit. I’m really sorry …’

  Olivia put her free hand on the wheel, elbow straight. She felt very formal suddenly. ‘What exactly did you see today?’

  ‘They were kissing. I was right next to the car, I saw them very clearly.’

  She felt as if something was pressing so hard on her chest that it might cave in.

  ‘Liv? Are you OK?’ Chloe’s voice wavered. ‘Do you want me to drive down there and get you?’