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‘I have to do this, Aaron,’ she said. ‘And frankly I don’t care what you think.’
He nodded. She waited. But the day Aaron Grewal apologised would be the day the sky fell in. ‘Let’s have tonight together, OK?’ he said instead.
She kissed him, an answer he seemed to accept. The future vibrated with nothing and everything, an empty, fearsome space, yet its promise was the closest she had held to her heart in as long as she could remember. Winterbourne would relinquish its secrets. And if it fought her, if it dared make her wait longer than she already had, she would force its mysteries to the surface through sheer dark grit. She was good at that.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_b75b4b73-3748-5758-9acc-3452be06a0ca)
Cornwall, present day
Rachel didn’t like to delay once her mind was set. Twenty-four hours later she was boarding a train at Paddington, the key to Winterbourne safe in her pocket. She kept touching it, running her fingers over its ancient contours. It looked like a key that could open another world, the key to a trapdoor in the ground, beyond which strange creatures roamed and slept, and the sun rose at dusk and the moon rose at dawn.
A woman sat opposite her with a young girl. The girl was applying nail stickers, her focus entire. The woman flipped out a magazine, its cover detailing minor celebrities on vacation, with the headline SKINNY AND MISERABLE!
The train eased from its platform and a voice announced: ‘Welcome to this South West Trains service to Penzance, calling at…’ Rachel reached for her tablet and checked her mail, but it was no good, she couldn’t focus. Instead she looked through the window. It took a while to chug out of London, past the terraces under their drab grey sky, and the motion of the train made her tired. She hadn’t slept on the plane, had barely rested or stopped since she’d opened the letter, and she put her head back now and tried to relax. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw the faces of the two solicitors at Quakers Oatley, sitting opposite her, their expressions by turns fascinated and grave. She had been Alice in Wonderland, tumbling down the rabbit hole, and they were as captivated by her as she was by them. These gatekeepers were about to change her life, everything she had ever thought about herself, every presumption overturned. Her instinct about their being keen to move the case on had been right. Rachel had the impression that Winterbourne was an albatross for them and they welcomed the chance to get rid of its legacy. ‘We weren’t sure we’d be able to find you,’ the woman had said, adjusting her papers in the prim, efficient manner of one pleased at their own good luck, ‘or, if we did, what your reaction would be.’
The man had run through what they knew. Rachel craved more, each answer insufficient, each explanation scattered with holes. She yearned for the names of her mother and father but was left wanting. Her grandfather was identified as a Captain Jonathan de Grey, making Constance, as the letter made clear, Rachel’s aunt. But there was no grandmother. ‘What about the captain’s wife?’ she’d asked, scouring the scant family tree as the solicitors looked apologetically on. ‘That was her, right?’ But the man shook his head. ‘Your mother,’ he said gently, ‘had different parentage…’
It was his way of saying that Captain de Grey had gone elsewhere, and that Rachel’s mother had been born a bastard as a result of his affair. But who had she been? Who was the poor woman who had given birth to Rachel in a London hospital, looked into her baby’s eyes and decided to give her up? Allegedly Constance had been the only person who knew about Rachel, and about this American orphan’s connection to her family. Why hadn’t Constance sought to find her? Why hadn’t she spoken out? Rachel tried not to feel bruised, but it was hard. All her life she had felt fundamentally rejected, and even at the threshold of this incredible discovery that same rejection snapped at her heels. Her aunt had known of her and done nothing, content to let Rachel unearth whatever truths were left behind after she’d died. It didn’t make sense. More questions, more uncertainties: it seemed the more Rachel learned, the more clueless she grew.
When she asked about Constance, the glance the solicitors exchanged implied that she hadn’t been an easy woman. Rachel told herself that, for all the romance and surprise of Winterbourne just falling into her life like a first drift of January snow, she couldn’t for a moment imagine a fairy-tale ending. All her life she had invented pictures that made sense to her – that her birth mother had been unable to cope, or that Rachel had been taken against her will, or that someone had forced her mother to give her up – and there was safety in those knowable limits. Now, every version she’d held dear exploded. It all came to this: this house, this family, and these doubts she might never be able to assuage. Quakers Oatley had dealt with the de Greys for years, but they didn’t know how Rachel fitted in – only that Constance, on her deathbed, had made an assertion that turned out to be true.
It seemed alarmingly easy to inherit one of the country’s grandest estates. Rachel signed documents, provided identification and settled a fee.
In return: a key.
‘The only one,’ said the woman, before letting it go, and Rachel felt the sheer weight of it in her hand and wondered how many had held it in years gone by. It occurred to her that the key was the only thing she had ever touched that her mother, too, might also have touched – apart from herself, of course: her own skin.
She must have dozed because the next thing she knew they were rolling through unbroken countryside and the sun was setting over the hills. The woman opposite and her daughter had gone. Rachel’s carriage was empty.
‘Excuse me,’ she asked a steward on his way past, ‘where are we?’
‘Next stop Polcreath,’ he told her.
She sat back and watched the blackening landscape.
*
Dusk was nearly complete by the time they pulled into the station. The platform was empty apart from a man on a bench, his head tucked into the collar of his coat, and a couple of passengers who had disembarked with her. A sign read TAXI and Rachel followed it out to the road, where a car was parked with its headlights on. She went to the window and named her destination. The driver seemed surprised.
‘You sure?’ he said. ‘I thought it was derelict. No one’s lived there in years.’
‘My aunt lived there.’ It felt wonderful to say it. My.
‘Climb in, then.’
She was hoping he wouldn’t talk. But: ‘You American?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Where from?’
‘New York.’
‘So what brings you here? Winterbourne Hall’s not much of a tourist destination.’
‘Like I said, I have family here. Had. My aunt died recently.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Rachel sat back, handling the key once more in her pocket. It felt warm, as if radiant, shimmering in anticipation of reaching home.
‘I expect you’ve got lots to sort out, then,’ said the driver, folding a stick of gum into his mouth. He looked at her in the rear-view mirror.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, family affairs and the like. After someone dies. You know.’
‘Yes. Yes, I have.’
‘You’ll be staying a while?’
‘As long as it takes.’
‘There’re people round here that can show you around, if you like.’
‘I’ll be fine. But thank you.’
‘Always friendly faces in Polcreath, you’ll see. And if you’re really short on company, I’m in the Landogger Inn most nights.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ But he’d said it with a twist of humour, which she returned. ‘The Landogger – that’s an unusual name.’
‘Named after the cliffs,’ he said, ‘right by Winterbourne. They’ll surround you. Lethal they are, too: a sudden drop. The house is right on the Landogger Bluff.’
‘You seem to know a lot about Winterbourne.’
‘Not much. Just that for those of us who’ve been in Polcreath all our lives, it’s the stuff of legends. Always there, you know, there on the hill, but no one ever goes.’
‘You must remember my family.’ It was a difficult thought, the idea that this man, friendly though he was, had been closer to her ancestors than she would ever be – that he might have seen them, heard their voices, and maybe even met them. She didn’t know how to feel as the cab drew closer to Winterbourne. A ripple of frustrated anger obscured any sense of homecoming. She wanted to know why she’d been dismissed and forgotten about: why her whole family, it seemed, had cast her aside.
‘I never met them,’ the driver said. ‘They were, and I don’t mean no offence by this, curious. Liked to keep themselves to themselves. I’m going way back now, to the sixties, when I was a boy.’ Rachel could tell by his voice that he liked the memory. ‘The de Grey children… Well, isn’t that a posh name? They weren’t children any more by the sixties, of course, but they stayed on at Winterbourne, a lad and a woman, coming up for thirty, they were. People said there was something funny about the lad, that he was gone in the head. I always thought it was odd, even then, that they should have remained at the house, unmarried, with no families of their own. It was as if they were married to each other. But listen to me, just an idle gossip, talking about your people like I knew them myself.’
He met her gaze in the mirror and she was thankful night was falling. She didn’t want him to see the naked truth: that these were mysteries she could not yet answer. That he, an ‘idle gossip’, knew more about her family than she did.
‘Are we close?’ Rachel said.
‘Not far now,’ he replied. ‘Not far at all.’
*
It was, in fact, another half an hour, and by the time they reached the Winterbourne gates the night outside was pitch black. They’d left the last settlement many miles ago, and the house was so alone and remote that not one light of civilisation could be seen anywhere across the black, boundless moors. The only glow was the glow of the moon, which hung above them like a marble, throwing the sea into glittering grey.
As Rachel stepped out of the cab, glad of its reassuring interior bulbs and the familiar hum of its engine, she looked above at the sky. The stars were immense. Stars like this didn’t exist above New York. Exotic words surfaced in her mind – Cassiopeia, Betelgeuse, Europa. She must have learned them long ago and forgotten, or else had little reason to remember, but here, beneath the vast beauty of space, the stars appeared to her as jewels, unfathomably rare and precious.
‘You sure you’ll be all right?’ The driver leaned over as she got out. ‘There’s a warm bed at the Landogger, I’ll bet. I can always take you back there.’
Rachel shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Winterbourne was hers, after all. Staying here alone might be a foreboding prospect, but she felt as if the house and its ghosts had thrown her a challenge. She had been held back for too many years, against her will, ignorant of its existence, robbed of her choice, letting the years drain out like bath water. She had a choice now, and she’d never find answers if she ran away.
She paid the driver and watched his tail lights disappear into the night. She turned to the mansion, her eyes travelling up its enormous façade, whose shape, in the darkness, she could barely decipher. It loomed, shadow-like, amorphous and huge, a lake of black except where the moonlight caught it and a detail could be glimpsed, like the snap of glass in a window or the gnarled arm of a tree. She regretted her decision – although it hadn’t been conscious, just the way things had worked out – to arrive so late. It’ll be better in the morning, she told herself, bracing herself against the long night ahead. Wait for the daylight. She could hear the roar of the sea against the Landogger cliffs, the foam and spit of it as it churned against rocks.
She took the key from her pocket and let herself in.
Chapter 10 (#ulink_7f5bc4fc-90cb-5987-b3b6-bb92c2628895)
Cornwall, 1947
My first week passes in a contented haze. Being around the children is a constant tonic, their smiles and laughter warming me utterly and their sweet enquiries occupying my mind in a way it hasn’t known in years. I realise that I was merely treading water back in London: working at the solicitors’ office was a way to earn money but it was also a way to let time pass, to allow my life to wash past me in a flat tide. Here, at Winterbourne, with Constance hanging off my arm and Edmund running ahead, I feel hopeful and alive. There is nothing to be afraid of any longer.
Why my predecessor absconded I shall never understand. If a matter should arise of such urgency that I should be called away, that would be very well, but to disappear completely from my charges’ lives? I cannot imagine turning my back on the twins, accepting that I would never see them again. Already, and these are early days, Constance and Edmund have become part of me. Simply, I adore them. Each morning I wait for the sound of running footsteps on the landing above, the excitement of their squeals and their smiles lit up across the breakfast table. I was deeply touched on the afternoon they sketched me in the clearing; I should have known by their furtive whispers that they were planning a surprise, but when I saw the finished portraits I couldn’t help but gasp. They had drawn me all in white, in a sumptuous wedding dress with a full skirt and pretty sleeves, just as I had always dreamed of for myself, and just as I might have had, had I not lost the only man I ever loved. My love, my dearest love… For a fleeting moment the sun disappeared and I had simply stared, wondering how intuitive these angels could be to sense what had happened to me – the happiness that now remained for ever beyond my reach – and the heady mix of irony and sweet enticement their drawings provoked…before their laughter drew me from my reverie and reminded me it was children’s folly, nothing more. ‘You’d make a beautiful bride,’ Constance said, kissing my cheek. That the previous nurse could have left such heavenly companions in her wake astonishes me.
I spoke to Mrs Yarrow on Friday:
‘Isn’t it odd that the last governess sent no word of her whereabouts?’
‘It was a family matter,’ Mrs Yarrow replied.
‘Yes, Tom explained. But, knowing the children as I do, I find it strange to say the least. The captain hasn’t heard from her since?’
‘No one has.’
‘Did she have friends here? In the village?’
‘I wouldn’t know the first thing about her private life, miss.’
‘Of course not. Forgive me.’
Since our exchange, I have tried not to think too deeply about it. Just because I have found an intense connection with Edmund and Constance does not mean every woman would. I can only praise the governess, whoever she was, for the work she completed before her departure. Her students are courteous, inspired, loving and tender. I dote on them as I would my own. But I am training myself away from such fancies, for the children are my wards and there it ends.
Captain de Grey seems pleased with the arrangement, as far as it is possible to tell. I have only encountered my employer twice since that first day, and one of those encounters constituted barely a passing nod on his part. The second was while selecting books in the library for our afternoon study, when I caught him watching me from the door. ‘Are you finding everything you need?’ he asked, but I knew when I turned that he had been standing there longer than was necessary, and longer than an ordinary man would were he hoping to ask such a pedestrian question as that. I replied that I was, thank you, and he retreated to whatever preoccupation holds him in thrall from day to day in his study. Still, even after he’d gone, I felt his eyes on my back and I wondered for how long he had waited, unseen, behind me, before he spoke. It ought to have unnerved me but instead I found it a thrill. I find him a thrill. The surprise of him, appearing as if from nowhere, dangerously quiet and dangerously handsome…
Alice Miller – for heaven’s sake, wake up!
Mrs Wilson’s admonition at Quakers Oatley: I am dreaming again. I am imagining. Always prone to such things, or so I am told.
It is a fine September day, unusually warm for the onset of autumn. This afternoon, the children and I head across the parkland to a promised lake. Part of my concern is to ensure the twins’ physical exercise, and their favourite pastime is swimming. It seemed to me we would be spoiled for water, with the sea surrounding us, but Mrs Yarrow was quick to extinguish that notion. ‘Oh no,’ she said quickly. ‘Absolutely not, miss. The captain would never allow it. The sea is off limits.’
‘We wouldn’t go far. Mere paddling.’
‘No, miss. Captain de Grey forbids it. No child of his will ever set foot in that water. You mustn’t think of it. Swear to me you won’t.’
Of course, I had no option but to swear, and the children accommodated my embargo with their usual charm and gentleness, directing me instead to a pool in a sheltered glade. It is an almost precise circle, bordered by reeds and the fat, happy heads of bulrushes. A dragonfly hovers over the still, blue surface.
‘Geronimo!’ Edmund leaps in in his shirt and shorts, splashing like a dog.
‘Edmund,’ Constance cries, ‘you’re not in your bathing suit!’
‘I know! Isn’t it splendid?’
I ought to chide the boy but the sheer ebullience of his performance brings a smile to my face, after which my scolding would be pointless. ‘Just for today,’ I tell him, sitting with my hands looped round my knees, enjoying the warm breeze as it teases my skirt. Constance obediently changes into her swimming suit and lowers herself gingerly into the water. Edmund promptly splashes her.
‘No! I don’t like to get my hair wet!’
‘Don’t be such a girl.’
‘I am a girl.’
I watch them frolic with childish abandon, the water spraying over their arms and heads in bursts of silver. I find their courage and resilience admirable – the courage and resilience of all children, I suppose. They scarcely knew their mother before she died; they will hardly have a mind picture of her. And yet they carry no bitterness, no sullenness, simply a love of life. I think back to my own childhood and try to pinpoint a moment at which things seemed straightforward, but it’s difficult. When I think of bathing, I think of the dank green bathroom at my parents’ house in Surrey, of the crust of mould around the bathroom taps and the cracked soap in a tray on the sink. I think of the water, cooling around my ten-year-old body, the wrinkled skin on my toes and fingertips but I still didn’t want to climb out. I could hear my parents arguing downstairs, a slammed door then the angry stomp of footsteps on the stairs. My father’s fist would pound on the door. ‘Are you still in there, girl?’
Or I think of the baths at Burstead, those harsh iron troughs, a naked bulb swinging above my head and the shrieks and yelps of girls in the yard outside. When I first arrived at boarding school, I cried in the bath. I cried because I was lonely, and I hadn’t any friends, and I wanted my parents even though I hated them and I wanted my home even though I hated it, and everything was confusing. A girl called Ginny Pettifer had found me crying, and brought her friends to look in at me and laugh. I close my eyes, pushing down the dreadful memories. Of that miserable bath, yes, and of Ginny’s gleeful face at the door – but then of years later, and more water, much more, blooming the most perfect shade of red like a lover’s rose, and a tangle of hair and two panicked, swollen eyes, a hand reaching for mine and grasping air…
My parents had imagined that Burstead was the answer to their problems. I spent seven years at that school and the first five were miserable. Then, all of a sudden, Burstead stopped answering their problems, and started answering mine.
‘Alice, Alice, look!’ Constance’s cry brings me back to the present. She is on the rim of the pond, ready to jump. ‘I’m going to jump! Look, look!’
‘I’m looking!’
With a splash, she’s back in the water. Edmund complains at the impact, splashing her back. For a moment I let myself become part of the joyful scene, really part of it, as if I were one of the children here, a long time ago. No mistakes made, no loss, no suffering. Stop daydreaming, Alice. Daydreaming is for fools.
When the time comes for them to get out, I reach in and offer my arm. Constance takes it first, warm and definite, full of trust, then the boy.
The twins giggle as they dry off in the sun.
See? I think. I did the right thing. This time, I did.
*
Later that day, while the children are taking their supper, I hear a motor car approach the house and then the sound of a slamming door.
‘Are we expecting anyone, Mrs Yarrow?’
‘Only the captain’s doctor.’
I go to greet him. The man on the doorstep is a little older than me, with a mop of brown hair and a neat moustache. He carries a doctor’s bag and there is a wire-haired pointer at his heels. ‘You must be Alice Miller,’ he says, amiably.
‘How do you do.’
The man nods his cap, removes it. ‘Henry Marsh, the captain’s physician.’
‘So I understand. Won’t you come in.’
