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I Spy
Claire Kendal
Copyright (#uf4e780a2-8b4c-5fb4-85dc-5c4a015474b1)
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Claire Kendal 2019
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019 Cover photograph © John Cooper/Arcangel Images (https://www.arcangel.com/creative-stock-photography)
Claire Kendal asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008256838
Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008256852
Version: 2019-05-23
Dedication (#uf4e780a2-8b4c-5fb4-85dc-5c4a015474b1)
For my brother Robert
Contents
Cover (#u4adba48e-8baa-57d5-94bc-c4b42b1ba37e)
Title Page (#ub36e3e95-7cb3-5604-993b-115d17249c24)
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue An Interview
Now A Discovery
Then Black Star Sapphire
Now The Girl with the Two-Coloured Eye
Then Human Asset
Now The Two Tunnels
Then The Plague Pit
Now The Backwards House
Then The Forgotten Things
Now The Woman in the Room
Then A Quarrel
Now The Excursion
Then Provocations
Now Further Warnings
Then Eavesdropping
Now Persistence
Then Concealment
Now The Robin
Then Startling Intelligence
Now The Visit
Then A Meeting
Now An Assault
Then April Fool
Now An Ambush
Then The Handkerchief Tree
Now The Doors With No Knobs
Then A Misadventure
Now A Misdemeanour
Then The Studio
Now Further Intelligence
Then The Spin Out
Now Illegal Entry
Then The Memory Box
Now The Choice
Then The Drowning Place
Now Thorpe Hall
Now The Miniature
Now The Present
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
For those affected by the issues in this novel
About the Author
Also by Claire Kendal
About the Publisher
Epigraph (#uf4e780a2-8b4c-5fb4-85dc-5c4a015474b1)
‘You have almost completed your painting,’ said I, approaching to observe it more closely, and surveying it with a greater degree of admiration and delight than I cared to express. ‘A few more touches in the foreground will finish it I should think.—But why have you called it Fernley Manor, Cumberland, instead of Wildfell Hall, —shire?’ I asked, alluding to the name she had traced in small characters at the bottom of the canvass.
But immediately I was sensible of having committed an act of impertinence in so doing; for she coloured and hesitated; but after a moment’s pause, with a kind of desperate frankness, she replied,—
‘Because I have friends—acquaintances at least—in the world, from whom I desire my present abode to be concealed; and as they might see the picture, and might possibly recognize the style in spite of the false initials I have put in the corner, I take the precaution to give a false name to the place also, in order to put them on a wrong scent, if they should attempt to trace me out by it.’
Anne Brontë,
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,
Chapter V, ‘The Studio’
Prologue An Interview (#uf4e780a2-8b4c-5fb4-85dc-5c4a015474b1)
London, April 2013
The clear glass table meant that I had to work extra hard to stop my knee from jerking up and down. It was not a time to show nervousness. Maxine was on one side of the table. I was on the other.
‘You are twenty-one, Holly. Correct?’ She started simply, but her use of my first name was a warning. She had only ever called me by my surname.
‘Correct.’
‘Do you have many friends?’
‘A few good ones.’
She nodded. I had never seen her nod before. Nodding is a gesture that suggests interest, and that wasn’t something she normally allowed herself to show.
‘It’s good to be selective.’ She smiled. I hadn’t seen her do that before either.
‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘And your grandmother raised you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s sad about your parents. What a thing to happen.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘You were two?’
She’d got it wrong on purpose. I was certain of it. ‘Three.’ Was I right to correct her? Should I have let it go? What was the best response? I needed to quit second-guessing what she wanted to hear and just say what was true.
‘It was a car crash?’ Maxine didn’t have any notes. She didn’t need any notes. She was in command of my ‘facts’ without having to write them down.
‘Yes.’ It was crucial to keep it brief.
‘I apologise for the personal nature of some of the questions I have to ask you.’ Had she really used the word ‘apologise’? Maxine?
The lights in the room were unnaturally bright. The wall behind me was extremely white. But the wall behind Maxine, which I was facing, was a mirror of glass. It was a safe bet that it was one-way glass, and my performance was being assessed from the other side of it, in a darkened room. I imagined Maxine’s boss, Martin, behind the glass, enjoying the peep show but appearing bored.
‘You’ve known the Hargrave family for how long?’
‘Since I was four. Most of my life.’ I felt my lips trembling. My body was not under my control. I was losing it. Why did this woman scare me so much?
‘Tell me about them.’ Maxine settled in her chair, ready to be entertained.
‘Peggy is the mother, James is the father. They have a daughter.’
There was that smile again. The indulgent kind you give to a difficult child. ‘And the daughter has a name, I presume?’
