She opened her eyes again to find him smiling at her, his face handsome in the moonlight.
“Go inside,” he said softly, “or you’ll freeze.”
Martha smiled back briefly before stopping herself. “Bye, Dan,” she said quietly and turned to go back in. She heard him take a deep breath of the winter air.
“Oh and Martha,” he added, pausing as she turned back to face him, one hand on the door frame. Dan looked around him at the garden and waved his hand around. “It’s a beautiful home you’ve got here,” he said. “Narnia’s just right for it.”
Martha said nothing. It felt odd, but she was somehow touched that he had remembered the lamppost, not to mention that he had been kind about it – he hadn’t always been. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, and went inside, pulling the door closed behind her.
With a deep breath, and her arms still crossed, she walked across the hall and back into the kitchen where Will was washing the saucepan that he had been stirring so vigorously. Martha paused for a moment and gazed at him. The muscles moving under his blue shirt as he scrubbed, his hair just skimming the collar. A wave of love ran through her, followed by a wave of regret.
“I’m so sorry, Will,” she said softly.
Will stopped what he was doing and looked over his shoulder at her, pausing as if to contemplate whether or not to say anything. Martha was relieved to see him turn fully, leaning back against the counter top as he did so. He reached for a tea towel to dry his hands and looked at her for a while, studied her tired face, her hair which hung limp over her ears.
“He’s right,” he said, nodding in the direction of the front door. “You do look done in.”
Martha responded by shrugging and returning to her seat at the kitchen table. Her whole body ached. She ran her fingers through her hair and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “I am, a bit,” she replied. “It’s been a really long day. And I don’t feel well.”
“I got a fright,” said Will, soft but stern. “I come home early to cook us a meal – to try to spend an evening together. I’ve taken what you said on board, you know.” He paused for a moment. “And then the doorbell rings and there’s this stranger outside asking if this is Martha Armstrong’s residence. I was taken aback at first but then it hit me that that something had to have happened to you . . . and, for a second, I thought you were in hospital or . . . worse . . . and that Dan was a policeman or someone come to tell me. And then he used my name and finally I recognised him. From your wedding photos – the ones I forced you to show me.”
“I’m so sorry, Will. For not telling you he was here in Edinburgh and that I’d seen him . . . and . . .” She felt a wobble in her voice and stopped to try to rein the tears in.
Will threw the tea towel on the counter top behind him and crossed the room quickly. “Martha, it’s okay! Jesus, I’m not angry with you. I was just so worried. I just got a fright – I was so delighted to see you when you got home but the whole thing was so weird. Your ex sitting like that at the kitchen table – after everything you’ve told me about your marriage. He was only here for a few minutes before you got home – thankfully!” Will’s expression was sincere as he sat down opposite Martha at the table and reached out for her hands.
“It’s just that you’re angry – quite often lately,” sobbed Martha, a combination of relief and exhaustion making the tears hard to stop. “And we haven’t been spending time together and then this happens – I mean, Dan here in our kitchen . . .”
Will squeezed her hands tighter. “I know, I know,” he said, his voice reassuring. “I know that I haven’t been easy to live with but the last week or so . . . I want to change that. Get back to how we should be – how we used to be, for heaven’s sakes! Since I fell out with Gabriel I just . . . lost the run of myself. I got completely absorbed in work because, I dunno, I had to prove to him I could do it without him or something. Does that sound really stupid?”
Will mirrored the teary smile that Martha offered him. She shook her head and sniffed. “No,” she laughed. “Just very . . . like a stereotypical man.”
Will squeezed her hands again. then reached out and ran a hand down the length of her cheek. “Dan said he’d been in town for a while, that you’d met him?” he probed.
Martha nodded. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you – I was going to on the night that Gabriel came round so I couldn’t then – and after that it just never seemed like the right time. And I was scared that you’d blow a fuse and then – you know what I’m like – I put things off sometimes, pretend they’re not happening . . .”
Will laughed. “Boy, do I know that one!” he said and Martha made a sheepish face.
“He hasn’t been paying his maintenance money either,” she said. “I should have told you that too but I thought he’d cough up – he’s never been unreliable before so I didn’t want to . . .”
“Didn’t want to face up to it,” interrupted Will, his voice more serious now. He brushed Martha’s hair behind her ear. “Why didn’t you mention that to me? That has to have worried you?”
Martha shrugged. “I suppose I didn’t want another quarrel,” she said quietly. “I should have told you but you’ve been so . . . preoccupied . . .” Her voice trailed off. As honest as they were being, she didn’t want to make any sort of an accusation that could turn into a row.
Will bowed his head and withdrew his hand from her hair to rub it across his face. “I know I have. Look, I can’t say I’m happy about Dan rocking up here like that, but I have to acknowledge that my recent behaviour has been to blame for . . . why you didn’t tell me anything.”
“I never intended for him to come here. I just . . . hoped he’d go away. I don’t want him having anything to do with us . . . but the horrible truth is that he’s got rights . . .”
“And for some reason he wants to use them?” added Will.
Martha nodded.
Will thought for a moment. “Then what we have to do is keep our noses absolutely clean around him,” he said decisively.
Her face grew dark. “Can’t we just tell him to sod off?” she said in a low voice.
Will leaned back in his chair. “I’d bloody love to,” he smiled. “But for now we need to play along. See what he wants, and don’t give him any cause to – I dunno, get worked up about things.”
“You mean go to the courts? For access or something?”
Will looked at her with kindness in his eyes, sensing the growing panic that she felt. “I genuinely don’t know,” he said. “I don’t really understand how all of that stuff works but all I do know is that I don’t want him upsetting our little apple-cart, our little family.” He nodded in the direction of the living room, from where they could hear a loud and tuneless rendition of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. “On the upside, this property thing is interesting. Do you think it’s genuine?”
Martha’s eyes widened. “Christ, who knows with Dan? I suppose I have to give him the benefit of the doubt if there’s the slightest chance it’s going to benefit Ruby – maybe he genuinely is making amends. God, Will, why does it all have to be so complicated?”
Martha’s thoughts turned inwards as she moved on to the logistics of the upcoming Friday in her head. “Friday’s going to be a nightmare now – I’ve told the childminder she can have the day off, and the chances are that I won’t get out of that meeting till three . . .”
“Look,” said Will, in a businesslike fashion, “why don’t you skip all the stress and wait till Saturday to come up to Dubhglas?”
He stood from the table and Martha watched as he crossed back to the cooker and peered inside. It struck her suddenly that she could smell roast beef and she realised she was starving. “Did you make Yorkshires to go with that?” she demanded suddenly.
Will laughed. “You and your Yorkshires,” he giggled. “Look, logically, it makes a lot more sense to just pick Sue up from the airport here in Edinburgh on Saturday morning, no? She gets in early enough – and then the thr
ee of you travel together, in daylight. Think about it – that appointment could take longer than expected and, if it gets frosty on Friday evening, then I really wouldn’t be happy about you and Rubes travelling in the dark on your own – this place sounds pretty remote and I’d rather have you on the road accompanied by someone with a sense of direction.”
Martha looked around for something to throw and found a table mat to hand which she launched at Will across the kitchen. He laughed again as he deftly dodged the missile.
“I have a perfectly good sense of direction,” she retorted, smiling as she watched him crumple his nose in disagreement. She mirrored the gesture. “You’re right,” she giggled. “I don’t.” They laughed together for a moment, until Martha stood and crossed the kitchen into Will’s open embrace. She sighed at the familiar smell of him, the comfort that came from him. He was right, she thought. They shouldn’t do anything to upset this apple-cart, as he called it. This life that they were building for themselves.
“You know it makes sense.” Will’s voice was muffled where her left ear was pressed against his chest. “And besides which, it gives me and Gabriel the chance to have a little snoop around on the Friday night without freaking you out and then maybe we might just enjoy this party on Saturday? We’re due a good knees-up, you know.”
Martha nodded vehemently. It had been a long time since they’d gone out together. She thought to herself that she’d prefer an intimate restaurant somewhere – not a castle in the back of beyond, milling with locals, and whatever ‘significant activity’ Gabriel’s butler friend had referred to. But it was something. And it meant that for a couple of days she could be away from Edinburgh. From the now-constant presence of Dan.
“I know you’d rather not stay in the castle,” said Will, out of the blue.
Martha drew her head back and looked up at him. “Have you stolen Gabriel’s powers?” she asked. “Is that where they’re gone?”
Will was smiling as he looked fondly down at her face. “It’s just that I thought we all need a bit of a break – I thought this might be nice until we have time to get away properly, in the New Year, maybe. And Gabriel says it’s a really amazing place.”
Martha rested her head back against his chest. “Amazingly bleak and haunted, more like,” she offered.
Will chuckled and she felt his lips touch against her hair. “A bit,” he agreed, and squeezed her to him. “It’ll be fine,” he said softly, and Martha knew that he didn’t just mean the weekend in a draughty old castle.
She smiled broadly as her daughter came pelting into the room as fast as her legs could carry her, clutching a doll whose hair had been sucked into a permanently upright position.
“Dolly!” she offered and Martha swept her up into her arms, making their hug into a family one. She pressed a firm kiss on Ruby’s cheek and felt Will’s arms encircle the two of them. He was right, she knew. It was going to be fine.
CHAPTER 24
1963
Claire’s first summer at Dubhglas Castle stretched into a haze of long, warm days but she was too busy to notice. She spent every hour that she could with Mrs Turnbull in the kitchens, learning how to cook every dish that was served at the castle, from Mr Calvert’s favourite roast lamb, to sherry trifle for Laurence. For the most part she adored rolling her sleeves up and taking on each task as though it were the most important of her life. Whatever job she was given she embraced fully – from selecting vegetables or herbs from the kitchen garden, to crumbing bread for stuffing, to painstakingly shelling peas.
The one fly in the ointment, however, was the constant presence of Uncle Jack. The man terrified her. Large, powerful, unpredictable – she’d lived her whole life under the shadow of men like that. The more she saw of him, the more she feared him.
It also didn’t help that Martin, in some odd attempt to alleviate the shadow that Jack Ball cast over the castle, had developed a habit of playing practical jokes on her, sneaking into the kitchen behind her back and hiding things that he seemed to know instinctively that she needed. “Whatever do you mean that I hid it?” he’d respond, wide-eyed with feigned innocence as she demanded futilely to know the whereabouts of the cheese grater, or the pudding bowl, or the potato masher or the vegetable knife. The jokes made her flustered and stressed. She couldn’t bear to be teased or taunted in any way. It reminded her of being back at school, always the butt of the joke. He always seemed to be at his worst just when Uncle Jack was in one of his black moods, or when Mrs Turnbull was on her day off.
Laurence had a particular fondness for sponge cakes and Claire had recently been assigned the duty of making them as a treat, on Mr Calvert’s instructions no less. It was imperative that she get them right, she knew. So important.
Which was why it made her so frustrated that she couldn’t find the whisk one Sunday when Mr Calvert had taken Laurence out for the day and Martin was bored and petulant in the kitchen. He’d been hanging around since lunchtime, watching Claire, and his very presence distracted and irritated her. Every now and again he’d stand up and begin to mooch around in his boredom, lifting pan-lids here, pulling things from drawers and examining them, all the while humming a tuneless dirge. Claire longed for Mrs Turnbull to come back and give him her habitual smack and order him away to do something useful.
“Martin,” she sighed eventually, “what have you done with the whisk?”
He didn’t look up, but continued to spin the bottle of vanilla essence around and around on the kitchen table. Claire waited for a response, received none, and bit her lip as best she could.
“Martin,” she tried again, sweetly. Catching more flies with honey, Mrs Turnbull called it.
“Martin, have you got the whisk hidden on me?”
She tried her best to add a playful tone to her voice but she couldn’t quite manage it.
Again, he spun the bottle around and around. It thrummed in circle after circle, shooting suddenly across the table as well as rotating. It was all Claire could do to slam her hand on it before it rolled right off the table.
That did it. Mrs Turnbull’s vanilla essence was something that she had been warned to use sparingly. And here was Martin, sitting at her table, hiding her things, humming his stupid tune, about to break it and waste the lot.
“Martin!”
Claire had meant to shout at Martin, to snap at him and speak in the tone that Mrs Turnbull used when she meant action. Instead she burst into tears right there at the kitchen table, managing only to wail his name as the crying completely stole her speech. Martin looked up at her with a start.
She didn’t know where the tears had come from, or why they wouldn’t stop but by the time they finally began to dry up, she felt as though she had been crying for hours. She felt helpless. She should never cry. Never. That showed weakness and made the beatings worse, made the hand over her mouth clamp firmer. Then why was she crying now, over a stupid whisk?
Martin stared at her, mouth open, across the kitchen table. Every few moments he would try to find a word but to no avail. He’d never seen anything like this before. And he was clueless as to what to do. His old ma never cried, and if the girls on the road cried when he pulled their pigtails, well, that was all part of the game, wasn’t it? Only meant you liked them, after all.
He stared at her as the sobbing became more sporadic and the tears began to dry. Eventually Claire’s face looked a little more like itself and she lifted a floury white hand to wipe an eye. A speck of flour caught on one of her eyelashes and it was that which spurred Martin into action.
“Hanky!” he blurted. He scrabbled in his pockets, retrieving a piece of red cotton that had seen better days. He hesitated in handing it to her, noticing as he held it out how dirty it was, but he found himself too far into the action to stop.
As it happened, Claire didn’t even look at the rag but just accepted it being pressed into her palm. She wiped her eyes, the tiny piece of flour catching in the cloth, and blew her nose loudly.
&n
bsp; “It’s on the top shelf in the pantry,” murmured Martin quietly.
Claire opened first one eye and then the other, a puzzled look across her red and puffy features.
“What is?” she managed to ask
“The whisk,” came the reply. “I was going to get it for you, I promise. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
At once, Claire felt ridiculous. She hung her head, resisted the urge to pull her hair down over her eye as had been her habit for as long as she could remember. She smiled apologetically at Martin, who regarded her now with a face filled with confusion and uncertainty. Claire found her heart grow soft and shrugged in helpless laughter as he continued to stare at her.
“Thanks,” she managed, before laughing again.
Martin joined her, giggling softly at – at what, he wondered? What were they laughing at? He didn’t care. He just joined in, happy and relieved to see her lift her head so that a shaft of light from the high windows caught her features suddenly. Her eyes glistened from the tears and her nose was red, but her smile was so beautiful.
“You must think I’m terribly stupid,” she said softly, sniffing, unable to catch his eye. “My father always told me I was stupid so I expect I must be and this just goes to show . . .”
“I don’t think you’re stupid, Drum,” said Martin suddenly, his laughter ceasing abruptly. Again, he looked at her, puzzled.
“I don’t think you’re stupid at all. Did your old man really call you stupid?”
Claire continued to stare at the window. She was silent for a few moments, her mind acting against her will, forcing her to think of something that she didn’t want to. She frowned and Martin was sure that the tears would start again but she stopped herself in time. She looked down at the mixing bowl before her, took a deep breath, and waved her floury hand in the direction of her face.
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