In Her Shadow

by Douglas, Louise

  ‘Slow down!’ John called. ‘Wait for me!’

  But I didn’t want to wait for him, or anyone. As I ran, my feet skittering on the dry soil, sending pebbles racing down the path before me, I felt the weight of grief and loneliness slip away from me. They disappeared, were gone, like magic; it was as if they had never existed. All the time that spanned the distance between the moment when I read my mother’s letter, sitting on the top bunk in the barn in Chile, to now, contracted to nothing. Ellen was just a few hundred yards away from me. The impossible was going to happen. I was going to see her again.

  I had been given a chance to make things right.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  IT WAS THE day of Ellen’s party. Mum and I went to Thornfield House early. Mum had been enlisted to help clean the house in preparation. When we arrived, the house was a hive of activity. Men were outside erecting a marquee in the garden, caterers were laying out equipment in the kitchen and Mrs Todd was going around the house conscientiously moving anything of value to a safe place.

  Ellen was as jumpy as a prawn on a skillet. She was dreading the party, dreading the thought of taking her mother’s place, standing by her father’s side and welcoming the guests, but at the same time she was racked with excitement about her impending elopement and claiming her inheritance. It was an exhausting combination and she looked terrible, her eyes wide with anxiety, her face a mask. She looked far older than her years. She worried me. She was so nervy that I thought she was almost bound to fight with her father or say something that would jeopardize the escape plan. She might do anything.

  The postman came, but there was no large envelope, no papers for Ellen, nothing from any firm of solicitors.

  ‘That must mean the documents are going to be delivered by hand,’ she said. ‘Somebody will come and give them to me. Perhaps I’ll have to sign for them.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  Mr Brecht prowled around the house, smoking and rubbing his hands together.

  ‘What exactly is going to happen this evening?’ Ellen asked him, and he laughed.

  ‘That would be telling! All you need to know, Schatzi, is that there will be plenty of surprises for you. Oh yes!’

  Ellen frowned. ‘I don’t like surprises, Papa.’

  ‘But life is full of surprises, Ellen. You, for instance, surprise me every day. Your capacity for creativity never ceases to amaze me.’

  Ellen glanced at me from under her fringe. Her eyes were saying: See what I mean? And she was right, her father was behaving as if he knew something she didn’t. He was unsettling me too.

  We went into the front room where Mum was polishing the grand piano to a gleam. Silver candelabras had been positioned around the room and a new rug lay on the floor, covering Adam Tremlett’s bloodstains.

  ‘I think your father must be planning for you to give your guests a recital tonight,’ Mum said to Ellen with a smile.

  ‘I expect so,’ Ellen said. She lifted the piano lid and trickled her fingers along the keys. Then she sighed and replaced the lid. ‘Have you heard anyone mention anything about my German family, Mrs Brown? Do you know if they’ve arrived yet? I thought my grandparents would have come to see me this morning. I hoped Tante Karla, at least, would have come.’

  Mum straightened and stretched, pressing her two hands into the small of her back.

  ‘Nobody’s said anything to me,’ she said. ‘But perhaps they’ve been told not to. Perhaps that’s all part of the surprise.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Ellen. She didn’t sound convinced.

  For the thousandth time she went outside to see if anyone had arrived with her legal papers. Each time a vehicle passed along the lane her face brightened with anticipation, but each time she was disappointed. No cars pulled into the drive.

  Mr Brecht, meanwhile, strode around the house directing the tradespeople in a loud and unnaturally jolly voice, making everyone feel uncomfortable.

  ‘He’s not being normal,’ Ellen said as we pinned bunting in the front garden, which gave us an opportunity to keep an eye out for the solicitor. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  ‘Ellen, your father is never normal. He’s actually trying to do something nice for you for a change. That’s probably all it is.’

  ‘No,’ Ellen shook her head. ‘He keeps looking at me. He knows something. He’s planning something – I know he is.’

  She stood on the step-ladder and peered over the wall. ‘Oh, where is this lawyer?’ she cried. ‘Where is he? Why doesn’t he come?’

  I turned to see Mr Brecht standing behind us. I wondered if he’d overheard and my cheeks flushed. He caught my eye and winked. I looked away again quickly.

  ‘Who are you waiting for, Ellen?’ he asked.

  ‘Nobody, Papa.’

  He was holding a large white envelope. He tapped it against his thigh.

  ‘I think you’re lying, Schatzi. I think you’re lying to me again.’

  Ellen climbed down the step-ladder. She was trying to look relaxed, but failing. Mr Brecht fanned his face with the envelope.

  ‘Is that for me?’ she asked, holding out her hand. Mr Brecht moved the envelope out of her reach.

  ‘It has your name on it.’

  ‘Please, Papa. Please give it to me.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mr Brecht. He looked at the envelope and then back at his daughter. ‘You were expecting some papers today, weren’t you, Ellen? But you didn’t say anything to me. Why not?’

  Ellen made a grab for the envelope. He moved it again. He laughed.

  ‘Why didn’t you talk to me about your inheritance, Schatzi? Why didn’t you confide in me? Did you think I didn’t know? Of course I knew! I’ve known you were the beneficiary of your grandmother’s will ever since we returned to England! Your mother and I met the solicitor and he explained everything. It was one of the first things we did.’ He laughed nastily. ‘The silly old woman had tried to arrange things so that I couldn’t get my hands on her money. She should have tried harder.’

  A knot of worry began to tie itself in my guts.

  Ellen stiffened. ‘I didn’t talk to you, Papa, because Mama told me not to. She told me not to trust you.’

  ‘Ellen …’ I said, reaching out for her. She shrugged me off.

  Mr Brecht’s face had tightened and his eyes had narrowed. He and Ellen stared at one another.

  ‘Your mother was the sole trustee of your grandmother’s will, Ellen,’ he said. ‘And before she died, she signed the trusteeship over to me.’

  Ellen was leaning forward, trembling.

  ‘Mama would never have done that. She told me! She said she’d never let you get your hands on my fortune!’

  Mr Brecht smiled and shook his head. ‘She shouldn’t have cheated on me,’ he said. ‘I was loyal to her, I loved her, I looked after her and she … she lied and cheated and made a mockery of our marriage. She was the one who broke the trust between us, Schatzi. My crime was nothing compared to hers. I didn’t even want the money.’

  ‘What did you do to her?’

  ‘Nothing. I gave her the pen and showed her where to sign her name. She thought she was giving her consent for you to go on a school trip, but in fact she was making me trustee of your fortune. She should have been more careful, Ellen. Those who deceive can’t afford to be complacent.’ He sighed. ‘It’s such a pity,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to suffer, Schatzi, but I had to make her pay for her infidelity, one way or another.’

  ‘You’re a fool,’ Ellen said. ‘How was that making her pay? She didn’t even know you’d tricked her into making you a trustee. It didn’t hurt her!’

  Mr Brecht took a deep breath. He rubbed his chin.

  ‘She did know,’ he said. ‘I told her when it was too late for her to do anything about it.’

  I remembered him sitting by the bed where Anne Brecht lay dying. I remembered how he held her hand in his, how close his face had been to hers, so close she must have breathed in his exhaled breath, how he had
whispered to her and how I thought he had been comforting her. I remembered how she had turned her face from him. She had been too weak to speak but I had seen the look in her eyes.

  ‘Oh God!’ I cried, in horror.

  Mr Brecht looked at me, surprised, as if he had forgotten I was there.

  ‘I had to tell her what I’d done, Hannah,’ he said. ‘Because if she didn’t know, if she didn’t spend the last hours of her life thinking about what she’d done, what was the point?’

  Beside me, I could feel Ellen’s distress pricking through the air like electricity. I willed her to stay composed.

  Mr Brecht reached out his hand and Ellen took the envelope from him.

  ‘It’s all in there,’ he said. ‘You’re eighteen now. It’s all yours. Have a good read.’

  He turned and walked back into the house. His step was light and easy.

  Ellen waited until he had disappeared inside Thornfield House before she started shaking. She was in shock. She was beyond tears. I put my arms round her and I kept whispering to her, reassuring her, telling her that everything would be all right, that she would be fine.

  We went into the corner of the garden where we could hide beneath the willow tree. We sat together in the long grass and she ripped open the envelope, tearing into it with her teeth and fingers, scattering papers around the grass.

  She took out a letter, read it quickly and passed it to me. It was from a Falmouth-based firm of solicitors, just a covering letter that said all the documents pertaining to Ellen’s inheritance were enclosed and asking her to confirm receipt by return.

  ‘Is there a cheque?’ I asked. She shook her head.

  She picked up one of the documents, read it, and tossed it aside. She picked up the next.

  ‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘Everything he said was true. Mama did make him trustee.’

  I picked up a sheaf of papers, clipped together, which were the deeds to Thornfield House.

  ‘Your grandma left the house to you, Ellen,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want the house. I hate the house. What good is it to me?’

  ‘You could sell it.’

  ‘But that takes ages, doesn’t it? Jago and I need the money now! How can I sell the house if I’m in America?’ Her voice was panicky, verging on hysterical. ‘What else is there?’

  We looked through the other documents: several remortgages, loans taken out against the house, records of shares sold, deposit accounts emptied, overdraft agreements, credit bills.

  I had a pain inside me. I felt sick. Ellen was white as a sheet.

  ‘What is all this?’ Ellen asked. ‘What does it mean?’

  I read a snippet of a document: the charge taken out against Thornfield House to the value of £40,000 … as yet unpaid … further interest … fees incurred.

  ‘I don’t know what it means,’ I said, although I did know, it was obvious. ‘You’ll have to ask someone who understands these things.’

  Ellen frowned. She bit her knuckles.

  ‘None of these papers says anything about any money coming to me.’

  ‘No.’

  Ellen stared up at me. She looked very young, a child who has just understood something important about the world.

  ‘There is no fortune, is there, Hannah?’ she asked. ‘There is no money. Even if I sold the house, there would be nothing. It’s all debt. He’s taken it all.’

  I reached out my hand and touched her shoulder. She flinched away.

  ‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘What are we going to do? What will Jago say? I’ve been telling him all this time that we were going to have thousands of pounds, and now … I don’t want us to end up in some poky little apartment.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Jago doesn’t care about the money. He doesn’t! Just keep calm, Ellen. Don’t let your father see you’re upset. As long as you keep your head, you can still go away. Nothing has really changed.’

  ‘But—’

  Mrs Todd called us from the front door.

  ‘Just act normal,’ I said. ‘Don’t do anything to rile him. Just get through this party and it will all be over. You’ll be away. OK?’

  Ellen nodded. She had been completely wrongfooted. She had thought she was directing the last scene in the last act of the story of her life there at Thornfield House, but suddenly the rules had been changed. She was looking to me for direction. Ellen Brecht had lost control entirely.

  We went into the house and said goodbye to my mother, who had finished her cleaning. I ate some cold meat and salad Mrs Todd had prepared for lunch, although Ellen said her mouth was too dry to eat, and after that, for a while, I sat beside Ellen as she lay on her bed. She was exhausted but she would not sleep; she stared at the light from the sun reflected on the ceiling and her eyes were glassy and, for the first time ever, without passion.

  ‘Just a few more hours,’ I told her again. ‘Just keep going for a few more hours, Ellen, and you’ll be away from here. Don’t give in now.’

  As the afternoon wore on, Mrs Todd called us into the back garden to help decorate the marquee. Trestle tables had been laid along the back edge, and a smaller round table, which I thought must be for a cake, stood in the centre.

  ‘Are we having a buffet?’ I asked.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ Ellen said, and I thought, Everything is wrong. She bit her nails and looked around her. ‘Something’s terribly wrong!’ she said again, and her voice was distressed. I took a step towards her and, at that moment, the canvas flap that was the door to the marquee flew back and Mr Brecht appeared with his arms full of white ribbons and yellow roses and lilies.

  ‘The decorations have arrived,’ he said. ‘Aren’t they beautiful!’

  ‘But, Papa, we never have flowers.’

  ‘It’s your birthday! Every girl deserves flowers on her special day. Now don’t turn your nose up at them, Ellen, they cost a fortune. I had to pay by credit card, but hey, what’s a few more pounds in the red between family?’

  He laid the flowers down on one of the tables.

  ‘There are lanterns too,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘And candles. Make the garden beautiful, Ellen. Turn it into a backdrop that nobody who’s here tonight will ever forget.’

  Ellen’s arms hung at her side.

  ‘A backdrop for what, Papa?’ she asked, without raising her eyes.

  ‘Your birthday, of course!’

  The roses were strongly scented, almost garish in colour against the pristine white of the tablecloth, and already the lilies were staining it with their brown pollen. I went into the house and returned with as many glass vases as I could carry in my arms. Inside I was panicking, but all I could think was that we had to carry on acting normally. It was the only way to make sure Ellen got away.

  Ellen was quiet, biting at her lip.

  ‘What now?’ I asked. It seemed to me that things could hardly be any worse than they already were.

  ‘Lilies are funeral flowers and yellow roses mean betrayal,’ she said.

  ‘They’re only flowers.’

  ‘He didn’t choose them by accident, Hannah. Don’t you see? Nothing he does is accidental. He’s planning to kill someone!’

  I tried to reassure her, but she wouldn’t be reassured, and as the afternoon faded into evening her edginess began to infect me too. Neither of us knew what Mr Brecht was planning. We were afraid.

  By late afternoon the garden and house were decorated, the caterers were busy in the food tent, the wine was chilling. Mr Brecht clapped his hands and told Ellen to go and change while Mrs Todd lit the candles and the lanterns.

  Ellen’s silver-grey evening dress, the one her father had given her the previous year, was hanging from the picture rail in her bedroom. The two of us went upstairs and I looked out of the window.

  ‘Nobody’s arrived yet.’

  ‘I don’t know what time he told them to come.’

  ‘Maybe they’re all going to come together in one great big convoy.’

  ‘Or they might
have hired a coach. Don’t look.’

  I turned my back while Ellen changed. When she was ready, I noticed how the dress clung to her. She had filled out, grown up. She did not look like a coltish young girl any longer. She looked like a woman. I helped her fasten her hair up and then she reached out and took hold of my hands.

  ‘This is our last evening together,’ she said. ‘This is the end of you and me.’

  ‘It’s not the end,’ I said. ‘It’s the beginning of a new phase.’

  ‘I’ll never have another friend like you, Hannah.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  We smiled at one another.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ we both said at exactly the same time, and I don’t think either of us quite understood why we were apologizing, or why we were both so close to tears.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ I said, and it was true.

  ‘I hate this dress.’

  ‘You’ll never have to wear it again.’

  ‘I suppose we ought to go down,’ she said, ‘before any of the guests arrive.’

  Outside, the light of day was fading and the candles were twinkling in their jars.

  Mrs Todd, who had been given the evening off, kissed Ellen goodbye, and I told Ellen to stand in the rose bower so I could take her picture.

  After that, we wandered around the garden. The smells coming from the kitchen were mouthwatering. Music coiled from the marquee. Piano music. I recognized it, with a shudder, as the Raindrop Prelude, Mrs Brecht’s death music.

  Ellen looked around.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ she asked. She laughed nervously. ‘Where are all my guests?’

  ‘Perhaps they’re hiding in the marquee?’

  We crossed the lawn, the grass already dampening with dew. Ellen opened the canvas flap, and I followed her inside.

  The air in the marquee was heady with the scent of the lilies and citronella candles. Flowers and ribbons and yellow and white balloons were strung from its canvas walls. A huge banner said: Happy Birthday Ellen. A pile of presents, all wrapped in gold paper and ribbon, was heaped on the trestle tables at the back and the music was being piped from somewhere. It filled the space; it was all around.