by Kirsty Ferry
‘Cheam?’ Simon was confused. ‘Who posed at Cheam?’
‘Lizzie and Daisy,’ said Cori, ‘at John’s studio there. They posed there for the Ophelia picture.’
‘John? You mean Millais? As I understand, the background was painted when he rented that studio at Cheam; but the figure, whoever it was, was painted in Gower Street.’
‘It wasn’t Cheam?’ Cori stared at him. ‘But she said it was Cheam. In the diary.’
‘Then I think she made a mistake,’ said Simon.
‘The diary’s upstairs,’ said Cori. ‘Come with me and we’ll have a look.’
Simon faltered. ‘But …’
‘No! Come with me.’ She seized him by the hand and tried to pull him off the seat to drag him behind her, up the stairs to the second floor.
Simon stood up and followed her. ‘I don’t know what we can prove,’ he said. ‘But, yes, I’ll have a look.’ He felt slightly confused – Cori’s anxiety was manifesting itself in him to a lesser extent, but he had to go with her. Perhaps she would calm down when they had looked in the diary.
‘Will you check outside, just in case?’ asked Cori. ‘I don’t think I had it out there, but who knows? I’ll look around the room.’ She dropped his hand and began pulling things off the shelves, throwing books down and moving papers from one pile to another.
‘Okay. I’ll go and see if it’s out there,’ said Simon, even more confused. He turned the key and pushed the door open to the rooftop. He walked out and stood staring at the broken pots and overgrown tubs, trying to think where she might have read it. There wasn’t really anywhere comfortable to sit, so unless she stood out here … He turned three hundred and sixty degrees, very slowly, but he couldn’t see where she would have been.
As he came back to face the railings, his back to the door, he saw an old tattered piece of paper lying squarely in the middle of the crazy paving centrepiece. He bent down and picked it up. It looked like a page from the diary. So she had been out here.
Then he heard the clash behind him as the door shut. He spun around and saw Cori, way over on the other side of the room. How the hell had she moved so fast?
Then he saw her throw some more papers on the floor, turn and literally run out of the room, heading down the stairs as he battered the door over and over, trying to make her hear, trying to make her come back.
He had shoved the page in his pocket, and tried to open the door; but it wouldn’t budge. He leaned down and saw through the gap between the door and the frame the bar of the lock joining the two pieces of wood firmly together; the bloody thing had locked itself.
So he had thrown his weight against the door, again and again. Eventually, and oddly smoothly, considering the lock should have been holding it together, the old door had suddenly given under Simon’s constant barrage of battering and shaking.
He had tumbled into the room as the thing flew open; and that was the point where he’d caught his toe on the pink rug, fell over a pile of digital art books and took a nosedive towards the vicious looking corner of Cori’s computer desk.
And after that, he didn’t remember much at all.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Simon was sitting up now, on the not-so-comfortable computer chair. He was folding and unfolding the bloodstained flannel into a tiny square. Becky was sitting opposite him, cross-legged on the floor and Jon was leaning against a bookcase.
‘So, yes, I guess it sounds a bit mad,’ Simon said, ‘but that’s all I remember. I don’t know where Cori went afterwards. We spent the night together last night.’ He felt his cheeks colour a little. ‘Have you tried calling her?’ He looked helplessly at Becky, then at Jon. ‘Has she answered her phone?’
‘I don’t think she has,’ said Becky, quietly. ‘You tried, didn’t you?’ She twisted around and Jon nodded.
‘I’ve called her numerous times but she isn’t answering,’ Jon replied. ‘I tried twice when you were out, mate.’
‘You said you thought she had taken a page out of the diary,’ said Becky. ‘Have you still got it?’
Simon nodded and winced a little as he felt his forehead throb with the motion. He pulled the paper out of his pocket and handed it to her.
‘I don’t like it,’ Becky said. ‘There’s some reason for this. Something she was trying to tell us. Otherwise, why take a random page out?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Simon. ‘Perhaps that page meant something. I didn’t get too good a look at it after all that. It was messy, I know that much.’
‘Oh, yes. I remember this one from when I read the diary. I don’t know what it said – I kind of flipped past it. It was just a mess and was giving me a headache.’ Becky frowned, clearly remembering it from before. ‘I thought it was a kind of doodle page.’
Simon also remembered the page had been covered with extremely closely written text that not only filled the pages but went around the sides and into the margins, wrapping around themselves like a snake and falling into all sorts of designs; it had all been intricately patterned, he recalled, and he hadn’t had a chance to interpret it.
‘Hang on; it’s all about Tolworth,’ said Becky, suddenly. She was holding the page up and running her eyes across the writing, turning it to different angles and twisting it about. ‘Yes – this bit says something about the Hogsmill River. And then she’s done a very convoluted squiggle about … hold on … the Manor House?’ She looked up. ‘Isn’t this where they think Ophelia was painted?’
Simon nodded, then immediately regretted it as the pain shot through his head again.
‘Daisy has repeated it over and over on this page, as if she was trying to remember it. It’s like she was trying to imprint it visually on her brain. Look.’ She thrust the page out to Simon. ‘You said Cori was saying something about Millais and a studio at Cheam, weren’t you? About where it was all painted; the background and the figures and things?’
‘Yes, she was quite insistent about it,’ said Simon.
‘Then I think we need to go there,’ said Becky. She looked straight at Simon. ‘I think that’s where she is. And I think that Cori might be in grave danger.’
It was supposed to take only thirty-five minutes to drive from Kensington to Tolworth. It felt more like a week.
Simon’s car was gone – he hoped that Cori had taken it. Otherwise, it had been stolen from this quiet, upmarket little mews square in Kensington, and that just didn’t seem likely.
Jon had told him it hadn’t been there when they pulled up, and then let him sit in the front of his car, as if that would make it all better. Becky, relegated to the back, sat forward and clutched the edge of the driver’s seat, apparently willing Jon to hurry up.
‘It might have been quicker if I’d driven myself!’ she eventually exploded after yet another red light.
Jon looked at her through the driver’s mirror. ‘And how would you driving have affected the red lights?’ he asked.
‘It’s okay, guys,’ said Simon. ‘Far rather get there safely.’ He looked out of the window as the town gave way to the greener views of Richmond and Kingston and, despite his words, he couldn’t get there fast enough himself. He had the page of the diary stuffed back in his pocket, almost like a talisman. He wondered briefly whether Cori, in a moment of Cori-sanity, had actually ripped it out and left it for someone to find.
‘It’s all my fault,’ said Becky. ‘I should never have given Cori that diary. In fact, I should never have written that damned article! And shut up, Jon. Don’t even try to contradict me. I never thought any of this would happen. The problem is, we just don’t know what the real Daisy was like. I mean, was she confused? Or jealous? Was she a dreamer? A psychopath?’ She shuddered. ‘Jeez, she committed suicide and I think I’ve seen her ghost. It’s not a good combination. Can’t you go any faster, Jon?’
‘She did what?’ burst out Simon. ‘And you saw a ghost?’
‘It might not have been her,’ said Becky, defensively, ‘but in Whitby I think I s
aw Daisy. She looked like Cori. Maybe it was just a trick of the light. But Lissy found out that the real Daisy supposedly committed suicide. That’s a fact. Nobody knows if it was intentional, but she was found by her art tutor and she’d been dead for a while by then. There were comments about a laudanum addiction as well. And I’m reluctant to say this in the present situation, but I actually feel sort of sorry for her. You can read the inquest and make up your own mind but I don’t think she meant to do it.’
Simon opened his mouth to respond, but the words he had planned never came out. ‘There’s the turn off!’ he said instead. He slapped his palm against the window. ‘Jon, it’s there.’
Jon braked suddenly and swerved into a country lane, Becky began swearing as she was thrust almost out of her seat with the force of it.
But Simon was more interested in what he might find by the river. All that remained now was to see if Cori was actually there. And if she wasn’t, God alone knew what they would do.
Part Two
Chapter Thirty-Six
CRANBOURNE ALLEY, LONDON, 1849
It had all started with a bonnet. Daisy had wanted a new one, and demanded that Henry take her into the town to buy it. If she hadn’t been in that shop at that particular time, and if she hadn’t witnessed history being made, then her story may have had quite a different outcome.
As it was, she was admiring a beautiful, rich green, velvet creation and was turning it around in her hands, insisting on several extra flowers beneath the rim and perhaps the addition of a sweeping veil to hang from the crown; all to be ready for that afternoon.
‘I’m sure we can try to achieve that for you, Miss Ashford,’ the woman behind the counter told her. ‘Let me just check with my assistant. Then we should be able to advise you.’
‘Very well,’ Daisy said. ‘I can’t see there being a problem. Can you?’ She had fixed greenish-blue eyes on the woman in a silent challenge.
‘No, Miss Ashford,’ replied the milliner. ‘Please excuse me for just one moment.’
Daisy nodded and turned away from the woman. She walked towards a display of cloaks and fabrics, all ready for the new season. She fingered some of the soft, woollen merino and cast her glance over the whole range. She decided to return in a few days and buy a selection of fabric to have made up into some clothing to see her through the winter.
‘Where is she then?’ A man’s voice broke through the silence in the shop. ‘You promised me the redhead would be here today.’
Daisy flushed and turned around, ready to berate the man for his rudeness. And how had he known she would be here anyway? It was a last minute decision this very morning.
The young man was standing in front of the counter, leaning in towards the back of the shop. ‘Where is she?’ he repeated. ‘Art won’t wait for idle hands.’
‘Yet the Devil makes work for them,’ said Daisy, loudly.
The man turned around and Daisy saw that he was very young and pale, with neatly brushed dark hair parted on one side and a rather foppish taste in clothing.
He looked at Daisy and seemed to take in her red-gold curls and tall, slim figure approvingly. ‘Ah, you, young lady, will do just as well. The name is Walter Deverell. I’m very pleased to meet you. I’m an artist, you see, and I’m missing a model. My friend, Mr Rossetti, is waiting outside. I’m afraid the wonderful owner of this shop dislikes us bothering her staff. But I do declare that we are absolutely fixated on her assistant. She—’
‘Mr Deverell!’ The milliner marched out of the back room, clutching Daisy’s bonnet. Daisy frowned, fearing the velvet would be irrevocably crushed beneath the woman’s grasp. ‘What have I told you? Miss Siddal is not interested in your so-called art, it is—’
‘It is perfectly all right, Mrs Tozer,’ said a girl, drifting out of the room behind Mrs Tozer. The girl was holding a piece of flimsy veil material in her hands, and Daisy felt sure it was the piece that had been destined to attach to the very bonnet which Mrs Tozer now wrung fretfully between her hands. ‘I shall talk to Mr Deverell; and perhaps to his friend Mr Rossetti as well. I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement. Isn’t that so, sir?’
There was a hint of flirtatiousness in the girl’s voice, but that was not what arrested Daisy’s attention. The girl, Miss Siddal, was even taller and slimmer than Daisy and had hair the exact same colour; but whereas Daisy’s hair was neatly coiled on the top of her head, with an array of sausage-like curls bouncing stiffly on her shoulders, Miss Siddal’s was loose and flowing like an auburn waterfall, right down her back. Daisy felt a little stab of envy. How had she been allowed to wear her hair like that? She was surely of a similar age to Daisy herself. And at nineteen, one was expected to look and act as a young lady.
The bell above the shop door went and Daisy noticed another young man hovering in the doorway. She caught her breath – he was beautiful. There was no other word for it. He had longer, darker hair than Mr Deverell, which fell almost to his shoulders in waves, and bright, slightly drooping blue-grey eyes, which were full of mischief and promises. For a moment, he turned those eyes on Daisy. She was half-hidden in the shadows and he perhaps looked at her longer than strictly necessary, a smile hovering on his sensuously full, slightly pouting lips. He took a step forward, then stopped, as if he realised she was not the woman he thought he had spotted.
‘Mr Rossetti!’ Miss Siddal called his name and the man turned away from Daisy. Miss Siddal bobbed a tiny curtsey and nodded to him. ‘I hear you and Mr Deverell are short of a model.’
‘We are indeed, Miss Siddal. Or may I call you Lizzie?’ He moved forward and took hold of the girl’s hand, leaning over and kissing it. The girl giggled. Daisy thought it was more of a simper, if she was brutally honest.
‘You should really call me Miss Siddal until we know each other better,’ the girl said.
Daisy coughed loudly and they all turned and looked at her in surprise as she stepped out of the shadows. Her gaze rested on the man with long hair – Rossetti. She rolled the name around her head, liking how it sounded. She flicked her eyes over to the girl, Lizzie.
‘I’m terribly sorry to interrupt,’ Daisy said, stiffly, ‘but will my bonnet be ready for this afternoon or not?’ Although her voice was measured and calm, deep inside she was furious. How dare that girl interrupt Mr Rossetti when he had clearly been about to approach her? She needed to be reminded of her place immediately.
There was a leaden silence, then the girl choked on a tiny laugh. Daisy felt herself colour in embarrassment and annoyance.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Miss Ashford,’ said the girl, still, Daisy noticed, holding Mr Rossetti’s hand. The veil was forgotten, abandoned on the counter. ‘It depends if Mrs Tozer has time to do it.’ Lizzie looked slyly at Mr Rossetti, then at Mrs Tozer. ‘Suddenly, I don’t feel very well. I think I need to go home.’ She coughed, and tapped her chest. ‘Dearie me. I’m so sorry, Mrs Tozer. I had better go before I infect the customers.’ She had tugged on Mr Rossetti’s hand, and cast a glance up at Mr Deverell from beneath her sultry, heavily-hooded eyelids. ‘You’d better come as well, Walter,’ she said. ‘I need two escorts. I’m liable to faint in the road.’
And with that, she laughed and, pulling Rossetti out of the door, ran lightly into the street.
Daisy stared after her. With those two words, the customers, that girl had turned the tables on her. She had belittled her, Daisy Ashford, in front of those gentlemen. It was unacceptable. And her bonnet would never get done today now. Not since she had walked out without finishing it.
‘I thought they were going to approach me,’ said Daisy, looking at Mrs Tozer. ‘Not your assistant.’ She stopped herself from adding ‘a mere shop girl’ at the end of her sentence. She compressed her lips and stared at the door. ‘They saw me first, didn’t they? I felt sure Mr Rossetti was about to speak to me. How rude. How very rude.’
Mrs Tozer was also staring at the door, shaking her head and clearly misinterpreting Daisy’s a
nnoyance. ‘Then you were, as you suggest, very lucky, Miss Ashford,’ she said. ‘Lizzie has made a huge mistake. No good will come of it. Those young men are untrustworthy and wild; not the sort of young men I would recommend any girl to enter a dialogue with. Lizzie will be back with her tail between her legs and I shall have words with her, you see if I don’t.’
But Daisy didn’t think herself lucky at all. Mrs Tozer had obviously missed the point; Deverell had said she could be his model, and Mr Rossetti had been about to speak to her when that girl appeared. The young men, the artists, no less, had seen her first and for a moment she had felt flattered and wanted. And if they were ever famous – well. It should have been her who appeared on their canvases. She would never forget that. Lizzie Siddal had stolen her place. And she had stolen Mr Rossetti’s attention away from Daisy; and that was simply unforgiveable.
And that was basically how it all started. Or, more precisely it started when Daisy Ashford returned home, went into her bedroom, pulled out her journal and began to write.
Today I met Mr Rossetti in a millinery shop in Cranbourne Alley, London. Mr Deverell, Mr Rossetti’s friend and fellow artist, told me that I was to be his next model …
Daisy lived in one of the most exclusive areas of London. Or, to be more specific, her father owned a property there. The true family home was further south, nearer the coast. Daisy hated the coast. Her father hated London. It worked well for them to be separated. Daisy’s father hated almost everything – including Daisy.
So Daisy lived in London surrounded by a small retinue of servants and in the care of nobody. It wasn’t the ‘done thing’. It just wasn’t seemly for a young lady to live alone in such a fashion; but Daisy didn’t care and her father didn’t care either. She was nineteen; she was, as far as anyone was concerned, of age. Heavens, she could have been married two years ago and nobody would have blinked an eyelid. The only person who might have cared that Daisy was alone, and who had cared for Daisy for longer than he thought he should have done and in ways in which he felt he probably shouldn’t care for her, was Henry Dawson, Daisy’s art tutor.