by Jo Watson
I still remember the first CD I ever got, as if it were yesterday. I’d saved all my pocket money for it. Roxette, Crash! Boom! Bang! (three exclamation marks!!!)—God, I thought they were so cool; her, with her short, white hair, and him . . . my first official celebrity crush. Although, looking back now, I’m not sure what it was that appealed to my ten-year-old self. Mind you, he’s probably one of the least embarrassing celebrity crushes I’ve had in my life. Let’s just say there was a point in time when I thought the guy from Nickelback was quite the catch. I shuddered, just thinking about it. Now, when a Nickelback song came on the radio, I couldn’t wait to turn it off.
I walked into the dark corridor, put my phone torch on and waved it about. This corridor looked old and unused, and I wondered why it had been built in the first place. I wondered what clandestine things had happened in here—I could almost see them, if I closed my eyes. Secret illuminati meetings, mysterious men in long, purple, velvet coats, or women with caldrons and the skulls of small creatures. My imagination started running wild, as it usually did. I finally reached the end of the passage and was just about to knock on the door when I heard a car coming up the driveway. I looked out the small, dusty window, and my blood flash froze.
What the hell was he doing here? Wait, was it even him? Or were my eyes deceiving me? I blinked a few times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. But I wasn’t.
I watched, my jaw dropping in horror, as the police car drove up the driveway and came to a stop. I held my breath, waiting to see who was going to climb out, waiting to see if it was . . .
Yup! Fuck! It was him. Mike. Magic, mystical Mike really knew how to appear out of thin air when you least expected it. I watched as he strode up the driveway towards the house. I moved to get a better look. And—boy, oh boy—did I get a look alright. Ash came out the house, she walked up to him and then . . . they hugged.
Hug. (Verb) Squeeze (someone) tightly in one’s arms, typically to express affection.
“Bastard,” I hissed, under my breath. No wonder he rushed off. No wonder he left me holding the condoms. Clearly, he’d had some kind of last-minute guilt crisis, or needed to rush back to his wife, or girlfriend. My heart thumped and I felt more wounded than I think I should have felt. I took a step backwards, away from the window, and my back crashed into something—a wooden wall. The sound was loud and suddenly I heard Ash’s voice.
“Sam, hang on! I’m coming!”
Shit! I couldn’t let Mike see me here, and so I ran. I bolted up the dark passage. But then it seemed to split. Wait—I hadn’t noticed this before. Which way was I meant to go? I heard the door open behind me and I went right. I went right and I didn’t look back. I raced down the passage and pushed the door open and . . . Cold air?
It took me a second to realize that I was now outside, in the back garden. I looked around, disorientated. A stone fountain, a rose garden and, far behind that, horses’ stables. I’d clearly taken the wrong turn. Typical.
“Sam?” I heard Ash call again.
“Who are you looking for?” It was Mike talking this time.
“I invited one of our guests for dinner. I thought I’d heard her at the door.”
I ran through the garden to the front of the house, grabbing my car keys out of my handbag as quickly as I could. I jumped into my car and pulled off, doing a little wheelspin as I raced out of there.
How was this possible? Out of all the accommodation in the town, what were the chances that I would land up staying at the place where Mike lived, or was visiting? This was too much of a coincidence—or was it more than that? My stomach plummeted, like it had in the elevator. What was going on?
I drove. I didn’t know where I was going, but I just knew I needed to be as far away from that house as possible, as far away from Mike. There were two reasons, really. One: he was going to arrest me if he saw me again. And two: I’m not going to lie, my heart was feeling just as bruised as my ego was to learn that he had a partner. Suddenly, his line about wishing we had met “under different circumstances” took on a whole new meaning.
I felt an all-too-familiar tug on my ribcage. I recognized that feeling. The same one that comes from hearing those words from your work colleague: But everyone knows he has a girlfriend. He was the editor at the paper where I worked as a junior journalist. Her words came too late, though; I’d already given him my heart on a silver platter after our romantic weekend away in the winelands, where we’d drunk fine wine and made love until noon. He’d happily taken my heart and then deceived me—the young, naïve junior writer with stars in her eyes at the famous, award-winning editor, who’d hired her and taken her under his wing. And then I’d done something I deeply regretted: I’d continued my affair with him, even after I knew about his girlfriend. I can justify this by telling you how many times he told me it was over between them, how many times he told me she meant nothing to him and I meant everything and he was ending it today. But, honestly, there isn’t really a good enough justification for becoming the other woman.
I drove all the way to the outskirts of town and found myself right back at the same gas station I’d been at that morning. I pulled into the parking lot and looked at the time. There was only one thing to do, now. I was officially out of options. I was going to wait here until it was late enough that he and Ash would be asleep, then I would creep back to Sugar Manor, pack my bags and leave. Leave without a book, and just face whatever consequences would come of that.
But, strangely enough, for the first time, the thought actually made me feel relieved. I could finally let go, now. Let go of writing this book that seemed so hard and insurmountable.
I breathed a sigh of relief and suddenly I wanted to cry. All this lying and breaking-and-entering, and plagiarizing wasn’t me, and I could finally let go of it. I looked at the convenience store. The words hot dog flashed at me in neon lights, so I climbed out and grabbed a few. I would sit in my car and stuff my face until it was safe to return, and then I’d get the hell out of this strange little town. And get as far away from Mike as possible.
CHAPTER 32
It was three a.m. when I finally returned to Sugar Manor. All was dark and quiet when I arrived. His car was still in the driveway, so it was official: he was sleeping over. I could imagine them cuddled up together in bed. I felt sorry for Ash—she was so lovely and didn’t deserve a canoodling wandering husband/boyfriend! But that wasn’t my problem, was it? My problem was getting all my things packed and then hightailing it back to Johannesburg. I packed my bag as silently as I could. I was almost done, when one of my shoes fell into the gap between the bed and the wall.
“Damn it.” I tried to grab it, but the space was too tight. I attempted to pull the bed away from the wall, but it was heavy and made a squeaking sound as it went.
“Shit!” I paused and held my breath, hoping that the sound had not traveled to the other side of the house. And when I was sure no one had heard me, I stuck my hand into the gap and felt around for my shoe. I couldn’t find it, so I turned my phone torch on for a better look, and that’s when everything changed.
“What the . . . ?” My breath and the words got stuck in my throat. Impossible! I pulled the bed away more, not caring about the noise this time, and shone my torch on the wall in utter disbelief. I ran my fingers over the lines and white powdery cement came away on my fingertips. My heart started racing in my chest, thumping like the hooves of wild horses. This wasn’t possible. But there it was . . .
I raced over to the letters and started going through them frantically, until I found what I was looking for.
It’s been thirteen days since I saw you. I’ve been making markings in the wall behind my bed, like someone in prison might do. Because that’s what it feels like without you—that I’m trapped in prison.
I rushed back and counted the markings on the wall; thirteen days and more. My mind whizzed around and it started to fill with other images and pictures and words and . . . I ran and grabbed more letters, a
nd frantically paged through them, looking for specific paragraphs.
I’ll meet you in the passage tonight. I’ll be there at midnight. Don’t worry, I won’t be seen. I’ll hide in the stables and wait until it’s dark. I can’t wait to see you.
This was totally, utterly impossible! I dropped on to my hands and knees, so hard that the wooden floorboards shook. I lowered my head to the floor and rested it there, my brain racing and swirling so much that I gave it a little bash against the wood in the hope that it would stop. But, as I did, I heard a noise. I felt something move. I pulled my head up and looked down at the floor. A floorboard seemed loose. I stared at the thing. Instinctively, on some strange subconscious level that I had no understanding of, I knew what was under it. I knew what I was going to find, before I’d even looked. I took a deep breath, then I reached out with trembling fingers and slowly pulled on the panel of wood. It popped out with a click. My heart thumped as I scrambled to find my phone torch. I grabbed it with a very shaky hand and looked inside the hole in the floor. And, as I did . . .
I gasped and dropped the phone as the hairs on the back of my neck prickled again, just as they had when I’d first walked into the house. This house. This house that, on some level, I’d felt I recognized. This house, this room, this bed, these floorboards . . .
“Oh my God, oh my God.” I scrambled to my feet and looked down at the hole in the floor, almost too afraid to reach in and take it, to acknowledge what was there. But I had to. I slowly crouched back down and lowered my hand into the hole . . .
CHAPTER 33
I reached in and my fingers immediately touched it. I paused—another deep breath—gripped it and then pulled it out. The smell hit me first: dusty, musty and burnt. I sat back against the wall and flipped the bedside light on. I looked down at my hands; I was cradling what was clearly a diary, but one that had been burned. It looked like it had been pulled out of the flames at the very last moment, just before it disintegrated. I opened the first page and recognized the writing immediately. It was her—Edith.
I opened it gently. It was so damaged and fragile that bits of burnt paper fluttered out of it like dead butterfly wings. I tried to pick them up, but they disintegrated in my fingers—disappearing along with their words and secrets. An entire page fell out and I picked it up and looked at it. A tear came to my eye the moment I started reading it.
Dear Diary,
I sat at my desk today for hours, just staring at the river and thinking about A. I kept looking at the river and wondering where it came from. I know it runs into the sea, but where does it start? I bet it starts somewhere exotic. Somewhere better than here—mind you, anywhere is better than here. Maybe it starts all the way up at the top of Africa, by the pyramids of Giza. Maybe it travels through tangled jungles, large, open savannas, hot, sandy deserts and over great mountain ranges, just to get here.
If only A and I could build a boat and sail away together, right back up that river. Sail as far away from this place as possible. We could find a little spot together, somewhere on its banks, away from the world, and we could live there like castaways. It would certainly be an adventure.
I stood up slowly, clutching the diary to my chest, and walked over to the window. How could this be? The coincidence seemed too great and I wondered if I wasn’t grasping at straws, here, making associations where there were none to be made. Maybe I was so desperate that I was seeing what I wanted to see? Or maybe this was a dream, a hallucination?
I opened the diary again to a random page, but it was too badly burnt to read, so I carefully flipped to the next page, and the next, until I was able to see handwriting.
Dear Diary,
I couldn’t sleep again last night. I lay in bed, staring up at the crack in my ceiling—the crack that runs the entire length of it, dividing it into two separate halves. When I looked at it, I couldn’t stop thinking about A and me. How we are so separated. How a crack runs a line through the middle of our lives and pushes us apart, forces us into two separate parts. Him on his side, me on my side, and never the twain shall meet. Well, we did meet. I can’t ever unmeet him, and nor do I want to. But we can’t be together, either, and it is tearing me apart. Ripping me in two . . .
Slowly, I looked up, and the same crack that she’d looked up at stared down at me. My fingers loosened. The diary fell from my hand and cascaded to the floor, burnt pages falling out like brown autumn leaves dropping from the trees. My heart raced, adrenalin making me nauseous and dizzy as it ripped through my veins like a speedboat cutting through the surf. I shook my head in utter disbelief. This could not be happening. But it was. How was this even possible? And who the hell was Ashley? If this house had been in her family for 200 years . . . I stifled a gasp as it started to dawn on me, like wiping the condensation off a window and being able to look outside again and see the bigger picture. Was she Edith’s granddaughter?
I sat down on the bed. There was no way I could leave now. This was a sign, if ever I’d seen one. I had to stay here and find out more. It was as if someone was handing me a gift on a shiny, silver platter. But something also gnawed at me, something in the back of my mind, reminding me that silver also tarnishes. It goes black and its sheen disappears; it doesn’t last forever. And, before you know it, you’re scrubbing the damage away until your hands bleed.
I lay down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling again. I wondered if she’d ever thought of giving up on her love for him, whether she’d considered just walking away from the man she loved. It would have been so much easier, after all; it would have been legal, too. But she hadn’t. From what I’d read so far, she had stayed strong, right up to the very end. This idea both humbled and crippled me. How could someone so young have been so brave in the face of so much? She’d clung on, despite what the whole world around her had thought about her and the relationship! I wasn’t like that at all. She was ten times the woman I was, or would probably ever be.
Some barely-there voice in my head seemed to call out to me. I tried to listen to it, but couldn’t quite hear it clearly. I climbed off the bed and walked back over to the diary. I started picking the pages up gently and slotting them back into the book as carefully as I could, not to cause any more damage. One of the pages caught my attention; it had been decorated with intricate patterns and hearts, and, in the middle of the page, four words . . .
This is my story . . .
And then I heard what the voice in my head was trying to say. “Tell it,” it said to me.
I stood up and looked at the ceiling, and something inside told me what I needed to do.
CHAPTER 34
I awoke that next morning with a renewed sense of purpose. Awoke isn’t really the right word, since I’d barely slept. I’d spent what was left of the night combing through the letters—and now the diary, too—looking to fill in the gaps in the story, looking for more clues that would lead me to more places. There were a few references to a small room under the stage at the town hall where the two of them had met. And, today, I was going there.
But there was something else on my agenda first. I had to think of some excuse about last night and apologize to Ash, because I wanted to find out as much as I could about this house and Edith, who I now suspected was her relative.
I made sure that Mike had left before I walked round to the front of the house. I didn’t go through the passage this time; I didn’t want to surprise her. I walked up to the front door and stopped. It was grand: an old stained-glass door with a big brass bell hanging from it. I rang the bell and waited. I still hadn’t quite worked out my excuse yet. I was toying with three in my head and I was sure the right one would pop out of my mouth when I saw her, now that I was such a bloody seasoned liar.
The door swung open and Ash was standing there, paint-stained as ever.
“Hey,” I said, and then launched right into it. “I’m so sorry about last night. I was just—”
“No worries!” she cut me off quickly.
�
�No worries?”
“Yeah, it was a very casual thing. No worries if you couldn’t make it; you can come round another time,” she said, with a smile.
Well, that was easy.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling relieved that she had spared me my bullshit explanation, but I decided to add one anyway, just in case she thought something bad about me. “Stomach thing. I had to go to the chemist.”
She nodded. “Nasty. You okay now?”
“Much better.”
“You want to come in?” She opened the door even wider.
“Do you mind?” I said innocently. But of course I wanted to come in.
“Sure.” She walked back inside and I followed her into another grand entrance hall with big, golden chandeliers and black and white tiles. Dark grey, velvety-looking walls made the pristine, white, pressed ceiling pop. Antique chairs, covered in dark green damask, lined one of the walls; they looked like they’d been put there because they had nowhere else to go.
“I was just busy painting,” she said, walking through the huge hall. I followed close behind her. The walls here were covered in old oil paintings, all set in ornate gold frames. I stopped and looked at one.
“Oh, those are my great-great-grandparents and their family.” She came up behind me and said, “This was in the 1940s.”
“Wow—that’s amazing.” I scanned the picture, looking at the faces of the children. One of these could be Edith. But which one?
“He had four daughters,” she said, behind me. “In those days, it was a tragedy not to have sons. My grandmother said that her father was very strict. Dictated who they married, dictated their lives.” She shook her head. “Women really had it hard then.”
I nodded. “They did.” I wondered if she knew just how hard one of these four daughters had it. “Are any of them alive today?” I asked, still scanning their faces. I was trying to see inside them, to look past their painted eyes to the person within, who may have written that diary.