“What have you done to me?” Sibyl hissed at her friend as the girls scattered and Jemma motioned for the next act to come to the stage.
“Relax, I’ll pick the song, I’ll choreograph the dance moves, you just have to teach them,” Jem assured her then finished. “I’ll help, of course.”
“You better or I’ll make those girls a laughingstock.”
“I’m already thinking of something.” This, Sibyl could believe. Jemma was sharp as a tack and nothing got by her.
As the next act prepared to begin, Sibyl got up.
“Off for your afternoon chat with Meg?” Jemma enquired, sorting through CDs to put the next act’s in the player.
Sibyl spent Bingo Afternoon’s with her favourite pensioner, Meg. Meg was her most favourite oldie (an affectionate term everyone at the Centre had for the members of the Pensioners Club of the Day Centre).
Meg had paper-thin, soft skin, was diabetic but ate with gusto and was at least five stone overweight. Her eyes, nose and mouth collapsed happily into each other whenever she smiled, which was a lot.
Meg was the first oldie to give Sibyl a welcoming, encouraging smile on her first day on the job. Sibyl hadn’t even known she needed that smile but she’d been so homesick Meg’s smile had touched her heart and Sibyl had never forgotten it. She found herself often ensconced in corners with the old lady after their luncheon was done, shooting the breeze in happy companionship. Even though they’d get together often, Meg and Sibyl always set aside Bingo Afternoon to have a chat before Meg took the minibus’s second trip round the estate to her lonely home at the end of the day.
Bertie’s parents had both died before he left England. Mags’s parents had lived long enough to meet and love their grandchildren but not long enough to see them grow and mature into beautiful, young women. Meg was the closest thing to a grandmother Sibyl had. Every time Meg looked at the younger girl, Sibyl felt awash with her love and this wasn’t surprising. When she was younger, Meg told Sibyl she used to take in orphaned babies and children while they were being placed into other homes, raising them from days to months and, on a few occasions, years, before they found a permanent placement. Sibyl had no problem believing this, Meg had a lot of love to go around.
“I just wish, Sibyl my love, that one of them would come to see me now that I’m in my old age. Just one of them,” Meg had said to Sibyl some days before. “So I’ll know they’re all right.”
Without anything to say to make her feel better, Sibyl had just patted Meg’s hand and knew from experience that the babies likely didn’t even know that Meg was a part of their lives. The older ones, Sibyl had no excuses for.
Now, Sibyl smiled at Jemma.
“Yeah, Jem, can’t miss my dose of Meg,” Sibyl told her friend. “See you later.”
Jemma nodded and shouted to the group of boys on stage, “Ready?”
At their affirmative nods, Jemma flipped a switch and rap music filled the air.
Sibyl opened the doors to hear Marianne yelling, “Unlucky for some, number thirteen.”
She found Meg in her corner and watched her older friend’s face collapse in a smile at the sight of Sibyl. The smile stayed where it was as Sibyl recounted Flower, Katie and their friends’ antics in the Hall.
The minibus came shortly after and took the Bingo Club home. After they were all safely away, Sibyl wandered the Hall and Centre, getting prepared to put it to bed until Kyle, the Centre’s volunteer caretaker and resident handyman (not to mention Jemma’s father), opened it up that evening after supper for the recovering Gamblers.
Jemma met her in the Day Centre. They were going to lock up together, as they usually did on a Tuesday night. They were about to leave when Jemma stopped and cocked her head, listening with mother’s ears, then rushed to the restrooms at the back of the Centre.
Annie, another member of the Pensioner’s Club, was locked in one of the stalls. She’d been stuck there for hours and missed the minibus ride back to her home. For some bizarre reason, Annie didn’t pull the emergency cord in the bathroom and couldn’t explain to Sibyl or Jemma why she’d not done so. This was likely because Annie, at the best of times, was a tad bit confused.
Thanking all the goddesses that Jemma had heard Annie (and cursing the minibus driver to perdition for not checking his load, which he was supposed to do), rather than leaving her locked in the bathroom for the night, Jem and Sibyl located the keys to the door and released the old lady. Then Sibyl drove her home. As Annie was blind, Sibyl helped her into her council house. Once she opened the door to Annie’s house, though, she was struck by a rancid smell and immobilised with shock when she saw the utterly hideous state the old woman’s home was in.
“Oh Annie,” she whispered under her breath for once happy that Annie was not only blind but mostly deaf as well.
The house smelled terrible and was absolutely filthy.
“My children take care of me,” Annie said defensively, obviously cottoning on to what Sibyl was seeing (and smelling) and telling the lie she’d been mouthing at the Day Centre for what appeared to be months.
“I know, Annie, but it’s been a bit since they’ve been around. Let me just tidy up. It won’t take a minute.”
It had taken over an hour and Sibyl had to call Jem.
Jemma had turned up on Annie’s doorstep with her two children, her twelve year old boy, Shazzie and fourteen year old girl, Zara. Jemma’s big, kind, chocolate-brown eyes had rounded at the sight of the squalor that was Annie’s abode and that was after Sibyl had already carried three bags of rubbish out to the bins.
In Annie’s foul kitchen while the children were watching television with the old woman, shouting at her to tell her what was happening on a screen she could not see, Jemma stared into the refrigerator.
“She hasn’t a bite of food in here,” Jemma pulled out a carton of milk and gave it a cautious sniff before yanking her head back in horror. “Oh my Lord.”
“Give it to me,” Sibyl told her friend and poured (or, more to the point, shook) the offending milk in the food-encrusted sink. Sibyl watched as Jemma twisted her long, dark brown hair and fastened it more firmly in her ever-present, huge hair clip, ready to engage in war against the vile kitchen. “We’ve got to keep a closer eye on Annie. Do you know if she even has children?” Sibyl asked.
Jemma was pulling on yellow, plastic gloves. “No idea, I’ll call Dad.”
Jemma’s Dad and Mum knew everything about everyone on the council estate. Both of Jemma’s parents worked at the Community Centre with Sibyl. Jemma, her parents and her brothers and sisters all lived on or around the council estate where the Community Centre was located. Jemma’s parents were both young but Kyle had arthritis and her Mum, Tina, endured terrible troubles with her feet, thus they couldn’t work “normal” jobs so they volunteered at the Centre. This caused them to do more than full-time jobs anyway but they could do them in their time, at their pace.
Jem phoned Kyle and then she and Sibyl cleaned, then scrubbed, then vacuumed Annie’s little house while the children entertained the old woman. They left, politely declining Annie’s offer of a chocolate from a box since thrown out. While they were leaving, Kyle shouldered his burly body through the door, his hands filled with bags of groceries.
“Get the kids home,” he ordered his daughter gruffly, as only a father would do to a daughter who spent her afternoon cleaning the home of an old lady she barely knew. “Sibyl, luv, you go home too. Tina and I have this covered,” Sibyl turned her head and caught Tina waving from the passenger seat of Kyle’s beat-up Ford Fiesta.
Sibyl waved back as the kids ran to greet their grandmother.
“Thanks, Jem,” Sibyl said to her friend, not knowing how to express her gratitude at sharing their awful task.
“We must take care of our own,” Jemma muttered, clearly disturbed by what she had seen. She called her kids, blew a kiss to her Mum, gave Sibyl a wave and they walked off in the opposite direction while Sibyl stood for a moment
to watch the clouds forming.
Another storm was coming. It was late February and spring rains had come to Somerset.
Mentally making plans to talk to Social Services the next day about Annie and give a piece of her mind to the minibus driver, Sibyl drove to Brightrose to let Mallory out for his comfort break. She’d wanted to change out of her work clothes to something more comfortable, but she no longer had time. She could wear jeans to the Centre but she took her work seriously and wanted her oldies and the kids to know that she did. Therefore, she dressed for work, not in a suit but well enough that they knew she gave her job her respect.
She was wearing a long, cocoa-coloured corduroy skirt, a pair of red cowboy boots, a long sleeved, fitted, v-necked, red t-shirt and a deep magenta, twill, tailored jacket. She had a strap of brown leather tied as a choker around her throat and from it hung a small silver disc with the tiny word “Peace” placed subtly and artfully on it in bits of battered bronze (this, a beloved gift from her mother). And she had heavy, dangling, ornate earrings of garnets and silver dripping from her ears. Her long, heavy hair hung in a mess about her shoulders.
She only had time to pull a brush through her hair and spray herself with a perfume of her own styling scented with bergamot, musk and lilies of the valley.
She allowed Mallory into the garden when Bran, unusually, darted out the front door.
She had a cat door in the bottom half of the split farm door that led from the kitchen to the back garden where Bran liked to hang about and spend his hours in the sun. Bran rarely ventured out front, for some bizarre cat reason, always keeping close to the house in the back. Off he went through the front, though, quickly becoming a shadow in the dark night.
There was nothing for it, she was already late. Bran would have to brave the unknown wilds of the front garden and wood until she came home and Sibyl had to trust that her clever cat would survive (though she had little doubt he would). Sibyl trudged back to the car, Mallory, as ever, loping hot on her heels. She opened the car door to retrieve Mallory’s treats that she’d bought that morning (he always received a treat if he did well on his comfort breaks and got himself a little exercise, or, because of her soft heart, even when he didn’t which was far more often). But, upon opening the door to the car, Mallory shifted his enormous bulk into the passenger seat and sat, staring forward, obviously thinking it was time to take a joyride.
She was about to order him out, when, to her astonishment, Bran, who hated the car and anywhere Sibyl might take him in it, darted into the car and curled up on the driver’s side floor.
Any effort she made to pull out the recalcitrant dog met with loud, angry “woofs” and the cat sunk his claws into the carpet and would simply not let go.
“Okay!” she gave up with ill grace after what she considered a valiant struggle. “You’ll come with me, but you have to be good. I’m already outside of visiting hours as it is. Whoever owns Lacybourne Manor does not want a big mutt and a crazy feline traipsing around his graceful estate.”
Mallory was beside himself with glee at this turn of events and drooled happily on the car’s battered upholstery. Bran shifted to the floor of the passenger side while Sibyl forced the reluctant car to do what it was told, all the while muttering dire threats and foul curses at her animals.
Luckily, with only five minutes to get there, it took only ten minutes to arrive. She didn’t want to disappoint the strangely intense Mrs. Byrne (who had shared her name after Sibyl had shared her own). The woman had gone out of her way to arrange this tour and, as was her style, Sibyl didn’t want to disappoint her.
Unluckily, when she arrived in Clevedon proper the wind had whipped up and a fierce thunderstorm had rolled in.
By the time she made it through the gate of Lacybourne, lightning was flashing through the sky and her dratted dog and damned cat were practically jumping out of their skins.
“This is not a good idea,” she told the animals. “I’m just going to have to tell Mrs. Byrne that I have you in the car and thank her…” she stopped, realising she was talking to her pets.
She gave a brief thought to the idea that maybe she should listen to her mother, maybe she did need a man. She had been reduced to talking to her animals as if they could not only understand but respond.
She halted the car in the drive just before a small copse of trees. She fully intended to explain the situation to the older woman, thank the owner (if he was there) and get her pets home. She opened her door to get out and the moment she cleared the frame, Bran flashed out of the driver’s side door and Mallory, very inelegantly, trundled out right behind him.
“Bran! Mallory! Get back here!” she shouted and as the wind whipped her hair around her face her animals disappeared into the night. She pulled her hair back angrily with her hand, narrowing her eyes to peer through the darkness. “Damn it, you crazy beasts!” she yelled, “Get your behinds back in this car!”
Many of the lights were lit in Lacybourne upon her arrival and there were several cars in the drive. Sibyl noted with a bit of panic and rising despair that now even more lights were coming on in the house.
“When I catch you fiends, I’m going to tan your hides. Bran! Mallory!” she shouted.
She reached the very centre of the copse of trees when out of nowhere Bran shot toward her, leaping gracefully into her arms. Mallory, much less gracefully, hurtled out of the darkness, skidding to a halt at her side. The big dog sat down beside her like he often wiled away his hours, relaxing calmly at her side, the wind whipping at him, the lightning tearing through the skies.
She put her hand on top of the dog’s head in order to slide it down to his neck and find his collar when she heard…
“What in bloody hell?”
She lifted her head and at that very moment, lightning arced down behind her, the longest flash of lightning she’d ever endured in her life. Not just a scant second but entire, long, breathless moments.
And holding Bran in one arm, her other hand resting on Mallory’s head and the wind whipping her hair while a faltering smile (and, for Sibyl, even a faltering smile came out as dazzling, much to her parents’ dismay) formed on her lips, she saw, illuminated in the lightning right in front of her, the tall, handsome form of the murdered lover from her dream.
There he was, right before her, not four feet away, in real life.
The man of her dreams.
It was then that Sibyl Jezebel Godwin did something she had never done in her entire life.
She fainted.
Unfortunately, when she did so, her head smashed rather painfully against a jagged rock.
Chapter Four
Misunderstanding
“Call the doctor!”
Colin shouted this order to Tamara and Mrs. Byrne who were both crowding around him while he carried into the house the unconscious, unbelievable woman he’d encountered outside moments ago.
The very vision of Beatrice Godwin.
Except blonde.
Like the woman in his dream.
Not only were Tamara and Mrs. Byrne crowding him but an enormous, beige beast with a black face and black floppy ears was following closely at his heels, barking ferociously and a fluffy, black cat was darting in and out of his legs, nearly tripping him.
“Oh my goodness! What happened?” Mrs. Byrne queried, her voice filled with concern.
“Call the damned doctor!” Colin answered, striding swiftly through the Great Hall and into the library, carrying his burden.
Tamara peeled off the scene hopefully to phone a medic. Mrs. Byrne stayed with him as he carefully deposited the woman onto the leather of a burgundy couch in the library and she leaned forward to arrange the woman’s long legs in a comfortable position.
Then she looked at the woman.
“She’s bleeding!” Mrs. Byrne exclaimed.
“Get a towel, the bathroom –” Colin started to explain but Mrs. Byrne was already rushing towards the bathroom (rather agilely for a woman of her age). He
realised with a delayed reaction that in her role as a volunteer at Lacybourne, she probably knew the house better than he.
The dog was still barking and the cat had leapt up to walk daintily the length of the woman’s body.
“Quiet!” he ordered the dog and, to his surprise, the dog ceased barking immediately and sat down in a slouch where most of his body reclined against the side of his couch. He then inclined his neck forward and licked Colin’s hand. Not quite finished, he turned his massive head and sniffed his mistress’s hair before sloppily licking the entire side of her face with one long lash of his exorbitantly wet, enormous tongue.
“Down,” Colin commanded and the dog settled onto the floor and, with a loud groan, rested his head on his front paws.
Colin had laid her on her back and now, gently, he leaned forward and pulled the soft, heavy hair away from her face.
Then he saw her, as he’d seen her outside, except now she wasn’t exactly mimicking the pose from the portrait.
Beatrice’s double, right here in Lacybourne Manor.
She was the woman in his dream.
Albeit, without a slit throat but with a bleeding head wound.
“Good Christ,” he muttered, his body frozen, his eyes staring into her pale, familiar face, his mind unable to process anything but the incredible vision of her.
The cat had decided to settle smack in the middle of her chest, curling into himself and licking one of his paws.
Colin stared at her as finally Colin’s mind again started working and he thought of Mrs. Byrne arriving not ten minutes ago to explain that she had, because of her extreme age and faltering memory, forgotten to call the American to tell her not to arrive for her tour.
Then they’d all heard the frustrated, shouting woman’s voice rising above the storm outside.
Then Colin had gone out to investigate.
Then in the unbelievably long flash of lightning, he’d seen her standing amongst the trees in a perfect rendition of the pose of Beatrice Godwin.
Lacybourne Manor Page 4