The Distant Hours

ONE

Milderhurst Castle, October 29th, 1941

The storm that had pushed its way in from the North Sea on the afternoon of October 29th, 1941, had rolled and groaned, thickened and furrowed, before settling finally over the tower of Milderhurst Castle. The first reluctant rain drops broke through the clouds at dusk and many more would follow before the night was done. It was a stealthy storm, the sort of rain that eschews clatter in favour of constancy; hour by steady hour fat drops pounded, poured down the roof tiles and sheeted over the castle eaves. Roving Brook began to rise, the dark pool in Cardarker Wood grew darker, and the skirt of soft ground around the castle, a little lower than that beyond, became sodden, collecting water so that a shadow of the long-ago moat appeared in the darkness. But the twins inside knew none of that; they knew only that after hours of anxious waiting a knock had finally come at the castle door.

Saffy got there first, laid a hand on the jamb and drove the brass key into the lock. The fit was tight, it had always been tight, and she struggled for a moment; noticed that her hands were shaking, that her nail polish was chipped, that her skin was looking old; then the mechanism gave way, the door opened, and such thoughts flew away into the dark, wet night, for there was Juniper.

‘Darling girl.’ Saffy could have wept to see her little sister, safe and well and home at last. ‘Thank God! We’ve missed you so!’

‘I lost my key,’ said Juniper. ‘I’m sorry.’

Despite the grown-up raincoat, the grown-up haircut revealed beneath her hat, Juniper looked such a child in the half-light of the doorway that Saffy couldn’t help but take her sister’s face between her hands and plant a kiss upon her forehead as she’d used to do when June was small. ‘Nonsense,’ she said, gesturing at Percy, whose dark mood had retreated into the stones. ‘We’re just so glad to have you home, to see you in one piece. Let me look at you…’ She held her sister at arm’s length and her chest swelled with a wave of gladness and relief she knew would be impossible to express with words; she drew Juniper into an embrace instead. ‘When you were so late we began to worry – ’

‘The bus. We were stopped, there was some kind of… incident.’

‘An incident?’ Saffy stepped back.

‘Something with the bus. A roadblock, I suppose; I’m not exactly sure…’ She smiled and shrugged, let her sentence trail off, but a thread of perplexity tugged briefly at her features. Only a moment’s shift, but it was enough; the unspoken words echoed in the room as clearly as if she’d said them. I can’t remember. Three simple words, innocent when uttered by anyone but Juniper. Unease dropped clean as a sinker through Saffy’s stomach. She glanced at Percy, noticed that same familiar anxiety settling on her too.

‘Well, come on inside,’ said Percy, reviving her smile. ‘There’s no need for us to stand out in the weather.’

‘Yes!’ Saffy matched her twin’s cheer. ‘You poor dear; you’ll catch a chill if we’re not careful – Percy, go downstairs, will you, and fetch a hot water bottle?’

As Percy disappeared along the darkened hall towards the kitchen, Juniper turned to Saffy, took her wrist and said, ‘Tom?’

‘Not yet.’

Her face fell. ‘But it’s late. I’m late.’

‘I know, darling.’

‘What could be keeping him?’

‘The war, darling; the war’s to blame. Come and sit by the fire. I’ll fix you a lovely drink and he’ll be right along, you’ll see.’

They reached the good parlour and Saffy allowed herself a moment’s pleasure at the pretty scene before leading Juniper to the rug by the hearth. She gave the largest log a prod as her sister produced a case of cigarettes from her coat pocket.

The fire sparked and Saffy flinched. She straightened, leaned the poker back where it belonged and dusted her hands, even though there was nothing on them to clean. Juniper struck a match, drew hard. ‘Your hair,’ said Saffy softly.

‘I had it cut.’ Anyone else’s hand might have gone to their neck, but not Juniper’s.

‘Well, I like it.’

They smiled at one another, Juniper a little skittishly, it seemed to Saffy. Though, of course, that made no sense; Juniper did not get nervous. Saffy pretended not to watch as her sister wrapped an arm across her middle and continued to smoke.

London, Saffy wanted to say. You’ve been to London! Tell me about it; paint me pictures with words so that I might see and know everything that you do. Did you dance? Did you sit by the Serpentine? Did you fall in love? The questions lined up, one behind the other, begging to be spoken, and yet she said nothing. She stood instead like a ninny, as the fire warmed her face and the minutes ticked by. It was ridiculous, she knew; Percy would be back at any moment and the opportunity to speak alone with Juniper would be gone. She ought just to leap in, to demand outright: Tell me about him, darling; tell me about Tom, about your plans. This was Juniper, after all, her own, her dearest little sister. There was nothing they couldn’t talk about. And yet. Saffy thought of the journal entry and her cheeks warmed. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘How remiss of me! Let me take your coat.’

She took up position behind her sister like a housemaid might, unthreaded first one arm, then, when Juniper shifted her cigarette, the other; slipped the brown coat from the thin shoulders and took it to the chair beneath the Constable. It wasn’t ideal to let it drip all over the floor, but there wasn’t time to do otherwise. She fussed a bit, straightening the fabric, noting the needlework of the hem, as she wondered at her own reticence. Chastised herself for letting ordinary familial enquiries stale on her tongue, as if the young woman standing by the fire were a stranger. It was Juniper, for God’s sake; home at last, and likely with a rather important secret up her sleeve.

‘Your letter,’ Saffy prompted, smoothing out the coat’s collar; wondering vaguely, in the random fleeting manner of thought, where her sister had acquired such an item. ‘Your most recent letter.’

‘Yes?’

Juniper had crouched before the fire as she’d liked to as a child and didn’t even turn her head. Saffy realized with a thud that her sister was not going make it easy. She hesitated, steeled herself, then the slam of a distant door reminded her that time was of the essence. ‘Please, Juniper,’ she said, hurrying to stand closer. ‘Tell me about Tom; tell me everything, darling.’

‘About Tom?’

‘Only that, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there was something between you – something more serious than you suggested in your letter.’

A pause, silence, as the walls strained to hear.

Then came a small noise from Juniper’s throat, a breath. ‘I wanted to wait,’ she said softly. ‘We decided to wait till we were together.’

‘Wait?’ Saffy’s heart was flickering like a captured bird’s. ‘I’m not sure what you mean, darling?’

‘Tom and I.’ Juniper dragged hard on her cigarette then leaned her cheek against the heel of her hand. On an exhalation: ‘Tom and I are going to be married. He’s asked me and I’ve said yes, and oh, Saffy – ’ for the first time she looked behind to meet her sister’s gaze – ‘I love him. I can’t be without him. I won’t.’

Though the news itself was just as she’d supposed, Saffy was bruised by the force of the confession. The speed of its delivery, its potency, its repercussions. ‘Well,’ she said, heading to the drinks table, remembering to smile. ‘How wonderful, dearest; then tonight is a celebration.’

‘You won’t tell Percy, will you? Not until-’

‘No. No, of course not.’ Saffy eased the stopper from the whisky.

‘I don’t know how she’ll… Will you help me? Help me make her see?’

‘You know I will.’ Saffy concentrated on the drinks that she was pouring. It was true. She would do whatever she could, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for Juniper. But Percy was never going to see. Daddy’s will was clear: if Juniper were to marry, the castle would be lost. Percy’s love, her life, her very reason…

Juniper was frowning at the fire. ‘She’ll come round, won’t she?’

‘Yes,’ Saffy lied, then drained her glass. Topped it up again.

‘I know what it means, I do know that, and I regret it absolutely; I wish that Daddy had never done what he did. I never wanted any of this.’ Juniper gestured at the stone walls. ‘But my heart, Saffy. My heart.’

Saffy held out a glass to Juniper. ‘Here darling, have a – ’ Her other hand clapped against her mouth as her sister stood and turned to take it.

‘What is it?’

She couldn’t speak.

‘Saffy?’

‘Your blouse,’ she managed, ‘it’s – ’

‘It’s new.’

Saffy nodded. It was a trick of the light, nothing more. She took her sister by the hand and pulled her swiftly towards the lamp.

Then buckled.

It was unmistakable. Blood. Saffy urged herself not to panic; told herself there was nothing to fear, not yet, that they had to remain calm. She searched for suitable words to say as much, but before she found them Juniper had followed her gaze.

She pulled at the fabric of her shirt, frowned an instant, then she screamed. Brushed frantically at her blouse. Stepped back as if the horror might that way be escaped.

‘Shh,’ said Saffy, flapping her hand. ‘There now, dearest. Don’t be frightened.’ She could taste her own panic, though, her shadow companion. ‘Let me take a look at you. Let Saffy take a look.’

Juniper stood inert and Saffy undid the buttons, fingers shaking. She opened the blouse, ran her fingertips over her sister’s smooth skin – shades of tending Juniper as a child – scanning her chest, her sides, her stomach for wounds. Breathed a great sigh of relief when none was found. ‘You’re all right.’

‘But whose?’ said Juniper. ‘Whose?’ She was shivering. ‘Where did it come from, Saffy?’

‘You don’t remember?’

Juniper shook her head.

‘Nothing at all?’

Juniper’s teeth were chattering; she shook her head again.

Saffy spoke calmly, softly, as if to a child. ‘Dearest, do you think you might have lost some time?’

Fear lit Juniper’s eyes.

‘Is your head aching? Your fingers – are they tingling?’

Juniper nodded slowly.

‘All right.’ Saffy smiled as best she could; helped Juniper out of the spoiled blouse then draped her arm around her sister’s shoulders, almost wept with fear and love and anguish when she felt the narrow bones beneath her arm. They should have gone to London, Percy should have gone and brought June back. ‘It’s all right,’ she said firmly, ‘you’re home now. Everything’s going to be all right.’

Juniper said nothing; her face had glazed over.

Saffy glanced at the door; Percy would know what to do. Percy always knew what to do. ‘Shh,’ she said, ‘shh,’ but more for herself than for Juniper, who was no longer listening.

They sat together on the end of the chaise longue and waited. Fire cackled in the grate, wind scurried along the stones, and rain lashed the windows. It felt as if a hundred years had passed. Then Percy appeared at the door. She’d been running and held the hot-water bottle in her hand. ‘I thought I heard a scream – ’ She stopped; registered Juniper’s state of undress. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

Saffy gestured towards the bloodstained blouse and said, with ghastly cheer, ‘Come and help me, Perce. Juniper’s travelled all day and I thought we might draw her a lovely warm bath.’

Percy nodded grimly and, one on either side, they helped their little sister towards the door.

The room settled around their absence; the stones began to whisper.

The loose shutter fell off its hinge, but nobody saw it slip.

‘Is she sleeping?’

‘Yes.’

Percy exhaled relief and stepped further into the attic room to observe their little sister where she lay. She stopped beside Saffy’s chair. ‘Did she tell you anything?’

‘Not a lot. She remembered being on the train and then the bus, that it stopped and she was crouched down on the roadside; next thing she knew she was on her way up the drive, almost at the door, her limbs all tingly. The way they get – you know, afterwards.’

Percy knew. She reached to run the backs of two fingers down Juniper’s hairline towards her cheek. Their little sister looked so small, so helpless and harmless, when she was sleeping.

‘Don’t wake her.’

‘Not much chance of that.’ Percy indicated the bottle of Daddy’s pills beside the bed.

‘You’ve changed your clothes,’ said Saffy, tugging lightly on Percy’s trouser leg.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re going out.’

Percy nodded shortly. If Juniper had left the bus but still found her way home, it meant, presumably, that whatever it was that had caused her to lose time, that was responsible for the blood on her clothing, had happened close to home. Which meant that Percy had to check immediately; take the torch, walk down the drive and see what she could find. She refused to speculate as to what that might be; knew only that it was her duty to remove it. In truth, she was grateful for the task. A solid purpose with a clear objective would help keep the fears at bay, stop her imagination from running ahead unchecked. The situation was troubling enough without that. She looked down at Saffy’s head, the pretty curls, and frowned. ‘Promise me you’ll do something while I’m gone,’ she said, ‘something other than sitting here, worrying.’

‘But Perce-’

‘I mean it, Saffy. She’ll be out for hours. Go downstairs; do some writing. Keep your mind busy. We don’t need a panic.’

Saffy reached up to knit fingers with Percy. ‘And you look out for Mr Potts. Keep your torchlight low. You know what he’s like about the blackout.’

‘I will.’

‘Germans too, Perce. Be careful.’

Percy took her hand back for herself; softened the fact by driving both inside her pockets and answering wryly, ‘On a night like this? Any brains and they’re all at home tucked up warm in bed.’

Saffy attempted a smile, but couldn’t quite complete it. And who could blame her? The room was hanging with old ghosts. Percy stymied a shiver and headed for the door, saying, ‘Right, well I’ll-’

‘Do you remember when we slept up here, Perce?’

Percy paused; felt for the cigarette she’d rolled earlier. ‘Distantly.’

‘It was nice, wasn’t it? The two of us.’

‘As I remember it, you couldn’t wait to get downstairs.’

Saffy did smile then, but it was full of sadness. She avoided Percy’s gaze; kept her eyes on Juniper. ‘I was always in a hurry. To grow up. To get away.’

Percy’s chest ached. She steeled herself against the pull of sentiment. She didn’t want to remember the girl her twin had been, back before Daddy broke her, when she’d had talent and dreams and every chance of fulfilling them. Not now. Not ever, if she could help it. It hurt too much.

In her trouser pocket were the scraps of paper she’d found quite by chance in the kitchen while preparing the hot-water bottle. She’d been hunting for matches, had lifted a saucepan lid on the bench, and there they’d been: the torn pieces of Emily’s letter. Thank God she’d found them. The last thing they needed was to lose Saffy to old despair. Percy would take them downstairs now, burn them on her way outside. ‘I’m going now, Saff-’

‘I think Juniper will leave us.’

‘What?’

‘I think she plans to fly away.’

What would make her twin say such a thing? And why now? Why tonight? Percy’s pulse began to race. ‘You asked her about him?’

Saffy’s hesitation was long enough for Percy to know that she had.

‘She intends to marry?’

‘She says she’s in love.’ Saffy spoke on a sigh.

‘But she’s not.’

‘She believes that she is, Perce.’

‘You’re wrong.’ Percy set her chin. ‘She wouldn’t marry. She won’t. She knows what Daddy did, what it would mean.’

Saffy smiled sadly. ‘Love makes people do cruel things.’

Percy’s matchbox slipped from her fingers and she reached to collect it from the floor. When she straightened, she saw that Saffy was watching her with an odd expression on her face, almost as if she were trying to communicate a complex idea, or find the solution to a plaguing puzzle. ‘Is he coming, Percy?’

Percy lit her cigarette and started down the stairs. ‘Really, Saffy,’ she said. ‘How am I supposed to know?’

The possibility had crept up on Saffy softly. Her twin’s glowering mood all evening had been unfortunate but not without precedent, thus she’d given it little thought other than to attempt its management so the dinner event wouldn’t be spoiled. But then there’d been the lengthy disappearance down to the kitchen, ostensibly to obtain aspirin, the return with a marked dress and a story about noises outside. The blank expression when Saffy asked her whether she’d found the aspirin, as if she’d quite forgotten having needed it in the first place… Now, Percy’s determination, her insistence almost, that Juniper would not be marrying -

But no.

Stop.

Percy could be hard, she could even be unkind, but she wasn’t capable of that. Saffy would never believe such a thing. Her twin loved the castle with a passion, but never at the expense of her own humanity. Percy was brave and decent and honourable; she climbed into bomb craters to save lives. Besides, it wasn’t Percy who’d been covered in someone else’s blood…

Saffy trembled; stood suddenly. Percy was right: there was little to be gained by keeping silent vigil while Juniper slept. It had taken three of Daddy’s pills to calm her into slumber, poor lamb, and there was little chance she’d surface now for hours.

To leave her as she lay like this, small and vulnerable, went against every maternal instinct Saffy had, and yet. To remain, she knew, was to invite descent into abject panic. Already her mind was addled by ugly possibilities: Juniper didn’t lose time unless she’d suffered trauma of some sort, unless she’d seen or done something to excite her senses, something to set her heart racing faster than it should. Combined with the blood on her blouse, the general air of unease that had followed her into the house -

No.

Stop.

Saffy pressed the heels of her hands hard against her chest. Tried to ease the knot that fear was tying there. Now was not the time to succumb to one of her panics. She had to stay calm. So much was still unknown, yet one thing was certain. She would be of little use to Juniper if she couldn’t keep her own jagged fears in check.

She would go downstairs and she would write her novel, just as Percy had suggested. An hour or so in Adele’s lovely company was just the thing. Juniper was safe, Percy would find whatever there was to be found, and Saffy Would. Not. Panic.

She must not.

Resolved, she straightened the blanket and smoothed it gently across Juniper’s front. Her little sister didn’t flinch. She was sleeping so still: like a child, spent from a day beneath the sun; the clear, blue sky; a day beside the sea.

Such a special child she’d been. A memory came, instant and complete, a flash: Juniper as a girl, matchstick legs with white hairs shining in the sunlight. Crouching so her haunches supported her, knees with scabs, bare feet flat and dusty on the scorched summer earth. Perched above an old drain, scrabbling in the dirt with a stick, looking for the perfect stone to drop through the grille -

A sheet of rain slid across the window, and the girl, the sun, the smell of dry earth turned to smoke and blew away. Only the dim, musty attic remained. The attic where Saffy and Percy had been children together; within whose walls they’d grown from mewling babies into moody young ladies. Little evidence of their tenure remained, the sort that could be seen. Only the bed, the ink stain on the floor, the bookcase by the window that she’d -

No!

Stop!

Saffy clenched her fists. She noticed the bottle of Daddy’s pills. Considered a moment, then unscrewed the lid and shook one into her hand. It would take the edge off, help her to relax.

She left the door ajar and crept carefully down the narrow stairs.

Behind her in the attic room the curtains sighed.

Juniper flinched.

A long dress shimmered against the wardrobe like a pale, forgotten ghost.

It was moonless, it was wet, and despite her raincoat and boots, Percy was drenched. To make matters worse, the torch was being temperamental. She planted her feet on the muddied drive and gave the torch a whack against her palm; the battery rattled, light flickered and hope rose. Then it died. All of it.

Percy swore beneath her breath and swiped with her wrist at the hair that clung to her forehead. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to find, only that she’d hoped to have found it by now. The longer it took, the further from the castle she travelled, the less likely it was that the matter could be contained. And it must be contained.

She squinted through the rain, trying to make out what she could.

The brook was running high; she could hear it somersaulting, roaring on its way towards the wood. At this rate, the bridge would be out by morning.

She turned her head a little more to the left, sensed the glowering battalions of Cardarker Wood. Heard the wind skulking in the treetops.

Percy gave the torch another try. Damned thing ignored her still. She kept walking in the direction of the road, slowly, cautiously, scanning the way ahead as best she could.

A shard of lightning and the world was white; the sodden fields rolling away from her, the woods recoiling, the castle, its arms crossed in disappointment. A frozen moment in which Percy felt entirely alone, the cold, wet, white within as well as without.

She saw it as the light’s last echo died. A shape on the drive beyond. Something lying very still.

Dear God: the size, the shape, of a man.

TWO

Tom had brought flowers from London, a small bunch of orchids. They’d been hard to find, fiendishly expensive, and as day had dragged into night he’d come to regret the decision. They looked rather the worse for wear, and he’d started to wonder whether Juniper’s sisters would like shop-bought flowers any more than she did. He’d brought the birthday jam, too. Christ, he was nervous.

He checked his watch, then resolved not to do so again. He was beyond late. It couldn’t be helped: the train had been stopped, then he’d needed to find another bus and the only one heading east had gone from a nearby town so he’d had to run cross-country for miles only to find it was out of service that afternoon. This bus had come along three hours later to replace it, just as he was about to set out on foot and see if he could hitch himself a ride.

He’d worn his uniform; he was heading back to the Front in a few days and besides he was used to it now, but his nerves made him stiff and the jacket caught on his shoulders in a way that was unfamiliar. He’d worn his medal, too, the one they’d given him for the business on the Escaut Canal. Tom wasn’t sure how he felt about receiving it – he couldn’t feel it there against his chest without remembering the boys they’d lost as they scrambled madly out of hell, but it seemed to matter to others, his mother, for one, and seeing as it was his first time meeting Juniper’s family, he supposed it was best.

He wanted them to like him, for everything to go as well as possible. For her sake more than his; her ambivalence confused him. She’d spoken of her sisters and her childhood often, and always with affection. Listening to her, and recalling what he could of his own glimpse of the castle, Tom had begun to envisage an idyll, a rural fantasy; more than that, a fairy tale of sorts. And yet, for a long time she hadn’t wanted him to visit, had been almost wary if he so much as hinted at the possibility.

Then, not two weeks before – with characteristic suddenness – Juniper had changed her mind. While Tom was still reeling from the shock of her having accepted his proposal, she’d announced that they must visit her sisters and break the news together. Of course they must. So here he was. And he knew he must be getting close because they’d stopped a number of times already and he was one of the only passengers remaining. It had been overcast when he left London, a mask of white cloud covering the sky, gathering more darkly in the corners as he approached Kent, but now it was raining hard and the windscreen wipers were shushing in a way that would have made him sleepy if he wasn’t so nervous.

‘Going home then, are you?’

Tom searched the dark for the person attached to the voice, saw a woman sitting across the aisle. Fifty or so years old – it was difficult to know for sure – a kind enough face, the way his mother might have looked if her life had been an easier one. ‘Visiting a friend,’ he answered. ‘She lives on the Tenterden Road.’

‘She, eh?’ The woman wore a knowing smile. ‘A sweetheart, I think?’

He smiled because it was true, then let it drop again because it also wasn’t. He was going to marry Juniper Blythe, but she was not his sweetheart. ‘Sweetheart’ was the girl a fellow met when he was home between postings, the pretty girl with the pout and the legs and the empty promises of letters at the Front; the girl with a taste for gin and dancing and late-night groping.

Juniper Blythe was none of those things. She was going to be his wife, he would be her husband, but Tom knew, even as he clutched at absolutes, that she would never belong to him. Keats had known women like Juniper. When he wrote of his lady in the meads, the beautiful faery’s child with the long hair, the light foot, and the wild, wild eyes, he might have been describing Juniper Blythe.

The woman across the aisle was still awaiting confirmation, and Tom smiled. ‘Fiancé,’ he said, enjoying the word’s pregnant expectation of solidity, even as he cringed beneath its unsuitability.

‘Well now. Isn’t that lovely. So nice to hear happy stories at a time like this. Meet around here, did you?’

‘No – well, yes, but not properly. London, that’s where we met.’

‘London.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘I go up to visit my friend sometimes, and when I last hopped off at Charing Cross…’ She shook her head. ‘Brave old London. Terrible, what’s happened. Any damage to you or yours?’

‘We’ve been lucky. So far.’

‘Taken you long to get here?’

‘I left on the nine twelve. It’s been a comedy of errors since.’

She was shaking her head. ‘The stopping and starting. The overcrowding. The identity checks – still, you’re here now. Almost at the end of your journey. Pity about the weather. Hope you’ve got an umbrella with you.’

He hadn’t, but he nodded and smiled and went back to thinking his own thoughts.

Saffy took her writing journal to the good parlour. Its fire was the only one they’d lit that evening and, despite everything, the room’s delicate arrangement still gave her some small pleasure. She didn’t like to feel enclosed, so she eschewed the armchairs in favour of the table. Cleared away one place setting. She did it neatly, careful not to disturb the other three – it was mad, she knew, but a tiny part of her still clung to the hope that they might yet dine, the four of them together.

She poured herself another whisky then sat and opened her notebook to the most recent page; read it through, reacquainting herself with Adele’s tragic love story. She sighed as the secret world of her book stretched out its arms to welcome her home.

A tremendous clap of thunder made Saffy jump and reminded her that she’d wanted to see about rewriting the scene in which William broke off his engagement to Adele.

Poor, dear Adele. Of course her world should be broken apart during a storm in which the heavens themselves seemed likely to be rent asunder! It was only right. All life’s tragic moments should be granted such elemental emphasis.

It ought to have stormed when Matthew broke off his engagement to Saffy, but it hadn’t. They’d been seated, side by side, in the loveseat by the library’s French doors, sunlight streaming across their laps. Twelve months since the ghastly trip to London, the play’s premiere, the dark theatre, the hideous creature emerging from the moat, climbing up the wall, bellowing with hideous pain… Saffy had just poured tea for two when Matthew spoke.

‘I believe the best thing now would be for us to release one another.’

‘To release…? But I don’t…?’ She blinked. ‘You no longer love me?’

‘I’ll always love you, Saffy.’

‘Then… why?’ She’d changed into the sapphire-blue dress when she knew that he was coming. It was her best: it was the one she’d worn to London; she’d wanted him to admire her, to covet her, to want her as he had that day by the lake. She felt foolish. ‘Why?’ she said again, despising the weakness in her voice.

‘We can’t marry; you know that as well as I. How can we live as man and wife when you refuse to leave the castle?’

‘Not refuse; I don’t refuse, I long to leave-’

‘Then come, come with me now-’

‘I can’t…’ She stood. ‘I’ve told you.’

A change came upon him then, a bitter knife twisting his features. ‘Of course you can. If you loved me, you would come. You’d climb into my motorcar and we’d drive away from this ghastly, mildewed place.’ He stood beside her, implored her. ‘Come on, Saffy,’ he said, all trace of resentment dropping away. He gestured with his hat to the top of the drive where his car was parked. ‘Let’s go. Let’s drive away this instant, the two of us together.’

She’d wanted to say again, ‘I can’t,’ to beg him to understand, to be patient, to wait for her; but she hadn’t. A moment of clarity, a struck match, and she’d known that there was nothing she could say or do to make him comprehend. The crippling panic that crept upon her if she tried to leave the castle; the black and groundless fear that dug its claws into her, wrapped her in its wings and made her lungs constrict, her vision blur that kept her prisoner in this cold, dark place, as weak and helpless as a child.

‘Come,’ he said again, reaching for her hand. ‘Come.’ He said it so tenderly that, sitting in the castle’s good parlour sixteen years later, Saffy would feel its echo trickling down her spine and settling warm beneath her skirt.

She’d smiled, she hadn’t been able to help it, even though she’d known herself to be standing at the top of a great cliff, dark water swirling beneath her, the man she loved urging her to let him save her, unaware that she couldn’t be saved, that his adversary was so much stronger than he was.

‘You were right,’ she’d said, leaping from the cliff, falling away from him. ‘The best thing for us both would be to release each other.’

She’d never seen Matthew again, nor her cousin Emily, who’d been lurking in the wings, waiting for her chance; always coveting that which Saffy wanted…

A log. Nothing but a piece of driftwood, washed downstream by the fast-rising current. Percy pulled it off the drive, cursing the weight, the branch that snagged her shoulder, and wondering whether she was relieved or dismayed that the search must now continue. She was about to press on down the drive when something stopped her. A strange sense, not a presentiment exactly, rather one of those odd, twin things. A swirl of misgiving. She wondered whether Saffy had taken her advice and found some occupation.

Percy stood in the rain, undecided, looked down the hill towards the road, then back at the blackened castle.

The not completely blackened castle.

There was a light, small but bright, shining from one of the windows. The good parlour.

The bloody shutter. If she’d only fixed it properly in the first place.

It was the shutter that decided her absolutely. The last thing they needed tonight was the attention of Mr Potts and his Home Guard platoon.

With a last backward look at the Tenterden Road, Percy turned and headed for the castle.

The bus stopped at the side of the road and Tom hopped out. It was raining hard and his flowers lost their valiant bid for life the moment he disembarked; he debated for a second, whether ruined flowers were better than no flowers at all, before tossing the stems into the overflowing ditch. The mark of a good soldier was knowing when to call retreat, and he still had the jam, after all.

Through the dense, wet night he glimpsed a set of iron gates and laid his hand on one, pushing it open. As it gave way with a shriek beneath his weight, he tilted his face towards the black, black sky. He closed his eyes and let the rain slide clean across his cheeks; it was a bugger, but without a raincoat or umbrella, he had little choice but to surrender. He was late, he was wet, but he was here.

He closed the gate behind him, hoisted his duffel bag over his shoulder and started up the drive. By God, it was dark. The blackout was one thing in London, but in the country, and with foul weather having switched off all the stars, it was like walking through pitch. There was a looming mass to his right, blacker somehow than the rest, that he knew must be Cardarker Wood. The wind had picked up and the treetops gnashed their teeth as he watched. He shivered and turned away, thought of Juniper, waiting for him in the warm, dry castle.

One drenched foot after another, he kept on. He rounded a bend, crossed a bridge, water gushing fast beneath it, and still the drive wound on ahead.

A flash of jagged lightning then, and Tom stopped in wonder. It was magnificent. The world was drenched in silvery white light – a great heaving wrangle of trees, a pale stone castle on the hill, the winding driveway carving on ahead through shivering fields – before falling unevenly back to black. Imprints of the lit-up image remained, like a photographic negative, and that’s how Tom knew he was not alone in the dark and the wet. Someone else, a thin but mannish figure, was making its way up the driveway ahead of him.

Tom wondered idly why anyone else would venture out in such a night; whether perhaps there was another guest expected at the castle, someone else as late as he was, also caught in the rain. His spirits rose on the back of such a notion, and he considered calling out – it was better, surely, to arrive in tandem with another tardy fellow? – but the clap of murderous thunder decided him against trying. He pressed on, eyeing the spot in the darkness where he knew the castle stood.

Tom saw it only when he drew near; a tiny relief in the darkness. He frowned, then blinked; realized he wasn’t imagining things. There was a small patch of golden light ahead, a chink in the fortress wall. He pictured it as Juniper waiting for him, like a mermaid in one of the old stories, holding out a lantern to bring her lover in from the storm. Filled with ardent determination, he walked towards it.

As Percy and Tom climb through the rain, deep within Milderhurst Castle all is still. High in the attic room, Juniper is darkly dreaming; down in the good parlour, her sister Saffy reclines on the chaise longue, drifting on the verge of sleep. Behind her, a room with a crackling fire; before her, a door opening onto a picnic by the lake. A perfect day in the late spring of 1922, warmer perhaps than expected, the sky as blue as fine Venetian glass. People have been swimming and are sitting now on blankets, drinking cocktails and eating dainty sandwiches.

A few young people break away and the dreaming Saffy follows; watches in particular the young pair at the back, the boy called Matthew and a pretty girl of sixteen whose name is Seraphina. They have known one another since they were children, he is a family friend of her strange cousins from the north and has thus been deemed acceptable by Daddy; over the years they have chased one another through countless fields, fished generations of trout from the brook, sat wide-eyed by annual harvest bonfires; something, though, has changed between them. She has found herself on this visit tongue-tied in his presence; has caught him watching her, eyes heavy with something like intent; has felt her own cheeks warming in response. They haven’t exchanged more than three words since he arrived.

The group the pair are trailing stop; blankets are spread with an extravagant lack of care beneath the trees, a ukulele is produced, cigarettes and banter lit; he and she remain on the fringe. They neither speak nor look at one another. Each sits, pretending interest in the sky, the birds, the sunlight playing on the leaves, while thinking only of the inch between her knee and his thigh. The pulse of electricity that fills the space. Wind whispers, leaves spiral, a starling calls…

She gasps. Covers her mouth lest anyone else should notice.

His fingertips have grazed the very edge of her hand. So lightly she mightn’t have felt them had her attention not been focused with mathematical precision on the distance between them, his breath-stopping proximity… At this moment, the dreamer merges with her young self. She no longer watches the lovers from afar, but sits cross-legged on the blanket, arm stretched out behind her, heart pounding in her chest with all the unblemished joy and expectation of youth.

Saffy doesn’t dare look at Matthew. She glances quickly around the group, shocked that no one else appears to have noticed what is happening; that the world has swung on its pendulum and everything is different, yet nothing around them seems to have been altered.

She lets her gaze drop then, lets it skim down the length of her arm, past her wrist, and onto her supporting hand. There. His fingertips. His skin on hers.

She is gathering the courage to lift her eyes, to cross the bridge he’s made between them and allow her gaze to complete its journey, to trace its way along his hand, across his wrist and all the way up his arm to where she knows his eyes will be waiting to meet her own, when something else catches her attention. A darkness on the hill behind them.

Her father, always protective, has followed and is watching now from the crest. She feels his eyes on her, knows that he is watching her especially; knows, too, that he has seen Matthew’s fingers move against her own. She lets her gaze drop; her cheeks flare and something moves deep and low within her belly. Somehow, though she’s not at all sure why, Daddy’s expression, his presence on the hill, bring her recent feelings into sharp focus. She realizes that her love for Matthew, for that, of course, is what she feels – love – is curiously similar to her passion for Daddy; the desire to be treasured, to captivate, the fierce need to be thought amusing and clever…

Saffy was fast asleep on the chaise longue by the fire, an empty glass on her lap, a small, sleepy smile on her lips, and Percy breathed a sigh of relief. That was something; the shutter was hanging loose, there’d been no sign yet of whatever it was that had caused Juniper to lose time, but all was at least quiet on the domestic front.

She climbed down from the window ledge and jumped the final distance off the capping stones, bracing for the sodden landing, the old moat, drenched through and rising fast, well over her ankles already. It was as she’d thought; she would need the correct tools to secure the shutter properly.

Percy trudged around the side of the castle to the kitchen door, heaved it open and fell through, out of the rain. The contrast was breathtaking. The warm, dry kitchen with its meaty steam, its humming electric light, was a picture of such easy domesticity that she was almost winded by a desire to shed her soaked clothing, the gumboots and slimy socks, and curl up on the mat by the stove, leaving all that had to be done, undone. To sleep with the childlike certainty of knowing that there was someone else to do them.

She smiled, catching such serpentine thoughts by the tail and tossing them aside. This was no time to be fantasizing about sleep and certainly not about curling up on the kitchen floor. She blinked widely as drips rolled down her face, and started for the toolbox. She’d hammer the shutter closed tonight and make proper repairs by daylight.

Saffy’s dream has twisted like a ribbon; the place, the time, have changed but the central image remains, like a dark shape on the retina when one’s eyes are closed against the sun.

Daddy.

Saffy is younger now, a girl of twelve. She is climbing a set of stairs, stone walls rise on either side of her, and she is glancing over her shoulder because Daddy has told her that the nurses will stop the visits if they find out. It is 1917 and there’s a war on; Daddy has been away but now he’s back from the Front and also, as they’ve been told by countless nurses, from the brink of death. Saffy is walking up the stairs because she and Daddy have a new game. A secret game in which she tells him things that frighten her when she’s alone but that make his eyes light up with glee. They’ve been playing it for five days now.

Suddenly, within the dream, it is days before. Saffy is no longer climbing the cold stone stairs, but lying in her bed. She wakes with a start. Alone and afraid. She reaches for her twin, as she always does when the nightmare comes, but the sheet beside her is bare and cold. She spends the morning drifting through the corridors trying to fill days that have lost all shape and meaning, trying to escape the nightmare.

And now she sits with her back against the wall in the chamber beneath the spiral stairs. It is the only place where she feels safe. Sounds waft down from the tower, the stones sigh and sing, and as she closes her eyes she hears it. A voice, whispering her name.

For a single joyous instant she thinks it is her twin returned. Then, through the haze, she sees him. Sitting on a wooden bench by the far window, a cane across his lap. Daddy, though, much changed, no longer the strong young man who went away to war three years ago.

He beckons her and she is helpless to refuse.

She goes slowly, wary of him and his new shadows.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he says as she reaches his side. And something in his voice is so familiar that all the longing she’s bottled up while he was gone begins to swell. ‘Sit beside me,’ he says, ‘and tell me why it is you look so scared.’

And she does. She tells him everything. All about the dream, the man who is coming for her, the fearsome man who lives in the mud.

Finally, Tom reached the castle and saw that it wasn’t a lamp at all. The glow he had been following, the beacon bringing sailors safely home, was actually electric light, spilling from a window in one of the castle’s rooms. A shutter, he noticed, was hanging loose, breaking the blackout.

He’d offer to fix it when he went inside. Juniper had told him that her sisters were keeping the whole place running themselves, having lost what little help they’d had to the war. Tom wasn’t much when it came to mechanics, but he knew his way around a hammer and nails.

Feeling a little brighter, he waded across a patch of water in the low-lying land around the castle and climbed the front stairs. Stood a moment by the entrance taking stock. His hair, his clothes, his feet could not be wetter had he swum the Channel to get there; but get there he had. He slid his duffel bag off his shoulder and dug inside, looking for the jam. There it was. Tom pulled the glass jar clear and held it close, ran his fingers over it to check there’d been no breakage.

It felt perfect. Perhaps his luck was on the rise. With a smile, Tom ran a palm across his hair in an attempt to order it; knocked on the door, and waited, jam in hand.

Percy cursed and brought her palm down hard on the toolbox lid. For the love of God, where was the bloody hammer? She racked her brain, trying to remember the last time she’d used it. There’d been the repair work on Saffy’s chicken run; the boards that had come loose on the sill in the yellow parlour; the balustrade on the tower staircase… She didn’t have a clear memory of returning the hammer to the box, but Percy was sure she must have. She was mindful of that sort of thing.

Damn it.

Percy felt her sides, fiddled a path between the buttons of her raincoat to dig inside her trouser pocket; clutched the pouch of tobacco with relief. She stood and smoothed out a cigarette paper, held it clear of the drips that were falling still from her sleeves, her hair, her nose. She sprinkled tobacco along its crease, then licked and sealed it; rolled the cylinder between her fingers. She struck a match and drew hard. Breathed in glorious tobacco, breathed out frustration.

A missing hammer was the last thing she needed tonight. On top of Juniper’s return, the mysterious blood all over her shirt, the news that she intended marriage, not to mention the afternoon’s encounter with Lucy…

Percy drew again, wiped something from her eye as she exhaled. Saffy didn’t mean it, she knew nothing of what had happened with Lucy, of the love and the loss that Percy had endured. Percy had been careful about that. It was always possible, she supposed, that her twin had heard or seen or somehow intuited that which she should not, but even so. Saffy surely wasn’t one to rub Percy’s nose in her misery. She, of all people, knew how it felt to be robbed of one’s love.

A noise and Percy drew breath, listened hard. Heard nothing more. She had an image of Saffy, asleep in the chair, the empty whisky glass precarious on her lap. She’d moved, perhaps, and it had fallen to the ground. Percy scanned the ceiling, waited another half a minute, then decided that was all it had been.

Regardless, there was no time to be standing around lamenting what had been and gone. Cigarette clamped between her lips, she returned to digging through the tools.

Tom knocked again, and set the jar down by the door so he could rub his hands together. It was a big place, he supposed; who knew how long it might take a person to get from top to bottom? A minute or so passed and he turned away from the door, watching the rain tumble over the eaves, wondering at the odd fact that one might feel colder being wet and sheltered than when one was standing beneath the rain’s full force.

His attention fell to the ground and he noticed the way water was gathering deeper round the castle rim than it was further out. One day in London, when they were lying in bed together and he was asking all about the castle, Juniper had told him there had once been a moat at Milderhurst, that their father had ordered it filled in after his first wife died.

‘It must have been grief,’ Tom had said, well able to understand when he looked across at Juniper, allowed himself to imagine the gaping horror of her loss, what such an absence might drive a man to do.

‘Not grief,’ she’d replied, threading the end of her hair through her fingers. ‘More like guilt.’

He’d wondered what she’d meant, but she’d smiled and swivelled to sit on the side of the bed, her naked back smooth and just begging him to stroke it, and his questions had fallen away. It hadn’t occurred to him again until now. Guilt – for what? He made a mental note to ask her later; when he’d met the sisters, when Juniper and he had broken their news, when they were together, alone.

A triangle of light caught Tom’s attention then, shining on the watery surface. It was coming from the window with the broken shutter. Tom wondered whether the repair might be a simple matter of hooking it up on an existing catch, and whether he ought to attempt it now.

The window wasn’t high. He could be up and down in no time. It would save him coming out again once he was clean and dry, and it might just win the sisters’ hearts.

With a grin, Tom set his bag down by the door and headed back out into the rain.

Since the moment she’d turned her back on the crackling fire of the good parlour, Saffy has been dreaming her way inwards along the ripples of her mind’s pool. Now she reaches its centre. The place of stillness from which all dreams flow; to which all return. The site of her old familiar.

She has dreamed it countless times before, has been dreaming it since she was a child. It never changes; like an old piece of film footage, the spool rewound, ready to play again. And no matter that she’s been there before, the dream is always fresh, the terror as raw as ever.

The dream begins with her waking; thinking that she’s woken to the real world, then noticing the strange quality of silence that surrounds her. It is cold and Saffy is alone; she slides across the white sheet and puts her feet on the wooden floor. Her nurse is sleeping in the little room nearby, slow, steady breaths that should suggest safety but in this world signal only unbridgeable distance.

Saffy walks slowly to the window. She is drawn there.

She climbs atop the bookcase; gathers her nightdress round her legs against a sudden deathly chill. Lifts a hand to touch the misted glass and peers out into the night…

Percy found the hammer. It took much hunting and a fair amount of cursing, but finally her hand closed round the smooth wooden handle that years of varied use had rubbed clean of splinters. With a huff of jubilant frustration, she yanked it from amongst the spanners and screwdrivers and laid it on the floor beside her. Opened the glass jar of nails and shook a dozen or so into her hand. She held one up against the light, studied it, and figured two and a half inches in length had to be enough to do the trick, at least for the night. She tucked the clutch of nails inside the pocket of her raincoat, snatched up the hammer and stalked back across the kitchen to the door.

He hadn’t got off to the best of starts and that was a fact. Misjudging a stone and slipping back into the muddy moat had been a rude shock and certainly not part of the plan, but after swearing like a soldier – which, of course, he was – Tom had picked himself up, dragged the back of his wrist across his eyes so he could see, and attacked the wall with more determination than ever.

Never say die, as his commanding officer had shouted at them when they were fighting their way across France. Never say die.

Now, finally, he’d reached the window ledge. By happy chance, there was a groove between two stones where mortar had long since dropped away, leaving the perfect cavity for him to wedge his boots. The light from the room was a blessing and it didn’t take long for Tom to see that the shutter was going to need more than he could offer it right now.

He’d been so intent on the shutter, that he’d paid no attention to the room inside. But now, he looked through the window and saw that the scene was one of quintessential warmth and comfort. A pretty woman, asleep by the fire. He thought at first that it was Juniper.

The woman flinched, though, and her features tightened, and he knew then that it wasn’t Juniper but one of the sisters: Saffy, he guessed, based on the stories Juniper had told him; the maternal one, the twin who Juniper said had stepped in when her mother died to raise her; the one who suffered with panic and wasn’t able to leave the castle.

She opened her eyes as he watched, a sudden movement, and he almost lost his grip with surprise. She turned her head towards the window and their gaze met.

Percy saw the man at the window as soon as she turned the corner. The light from the window illuminated him; a dark figure, like a gorilla, climbing the wall, clinging to the stones, peering into the good parlour. The room in which Saffy was sleeping. Something inside Percy began to pulse; all her life she had known it her duty to protect her sisters, and her hand tightened around the hammer’s wooden handle. Nerves on fire, she began to run through the rain towards the man.

To appear like a mud-bathed peeping Tom at the window was about as far from the impression he’d hoped to make on Juniper’s sisters as was possible.

But Tom had been seen now. He couldn’t just jump down and hide, pretend it hadn’t happened. He smiled tentatively; lifted a hand to wave, to signal good intentions, but dropped it again when he realized it was coated in mud.

Oh God. She was standing and she wasn’t smiling.

She was coming towards him.

A small part of him could see beyond the mortification, could glimpse that by sheer virtue of its preposterousness, this moment was destined to become a favourite anecdote. Remember the night we met Tom? He appeared at the window covered in mud and waved hello?

But not yet. For now, he had little choice but to watch as she walked towards him, slowly, almost as if in a dream, shaking a little, as if she were as icy cold as he had been in the rain.

She reached to unlatch the window, he searched for words to explain, and then she picked something up from the sill.

Percy stopped dead. The man was gone. Right before her eyes, he’d toppled and fallen to the ground. She glanced up at the window and saw Saffy, shaking, the wrench held tightly in her hands.

A sharp crack, and he wondered what it was. Movement, his own, sudden and surprising.

Falling.

Something cold against his face, wet.

Noises, birds perhaps, crying, shrieking. He flinched and tasted mud. Where was he? Where was Juniper?

Rain drops pounded his head, he felt each one separately, like music, strings being plucked, a complex tune being played. They were beautiful, and he wondered why he’d never known that before. Individual drops, perfect, each one of them. Falling to earth and soaking into the ground, so that rivers could form, and oceans could fill, and people, animals, plants might have water to drink – it was all so simple.

He remembered a rainstorm when he was a boy, when his father was still alive. Tom had been frightened. It was dark and loud and he’d hidden under the table in the kitchen. He’d cried and screwed shut his eyes and his fists. He’d been crying so hard, his own sorrow so loud in his ears that he hadn’t noticed when his father came into the room. The first he’d known was when the great bear scooped him up and lifted him into his big, broad arms and held him close; and then he told Tom that everything was all right, and the sweet, sour lovely smell of tobacco on his breath had made it so. On his father’s lips those words had been an incantation. A promise. And Tom had not been frightened any more…

Where had he put the jam?

The jam was important. The man in the basement flat had said it was his best batch yet; that he’d gathered the blackberries himself and used months of rationed sugar. But Tom couldn’t remember where he’d put it. He’d had it, he knew that. He’d brought it from London in his bag, but then he’d taken it out and put it down. Had he left it under the table? When he hid from the rain, had he taken the jam jar with him? He supposed he should get up and look for it, and he would. He had to, the jam was a gift. He’d go and find it in just a minute, and then he’d laugh that he could have lost it at all. He’d just take a little rest first.

He felt tired. So tired. It had been such a long journey. The stormy night, the trudge up the drive, the day of trains and buses and near misses, but more than that, the journey that had led him to her. He’d walked so far; he’d read and taught and dreamed and wished and hoped so much. It was natural that he should need to rest, that he might just close his eyes now and take a moment; just rest a little, so that when he saw her again, he would be ready…

Tom closed his eyes and there were millions of tiny stars, twinkling, shifting, and they were so beautiful and he wanted only to watch them. It seemed to him that there was nothing he wanted more in the world than to lie there and watch those stars. So he did, he watched them as they drifted and sifted, he wondered if he might even be able to reach them, to hold out a finger and catch one on it, and then finally he saw there was something hiding amongst them. A face, Juniper’s face. His heart shook its wings. She had arrived then, after all. She was close by, leaning to lay her hand on his shoulder, to speak softly against his ear. Words that described it all so perfectly that when he tried to clutch them, to repeat them to himself, they turned to water in his hands, and there were stars in her eyes and stars on her lips and little shimmery lights hanging in her hair; and he couldn’t hear her any more, even though her lips were moving and the stars were winking, because she was fading now, turning into black; and he was fading too.

‘June – ’ he whispered, as the last little lights began to tremble, to switch off one by one, as thick mud filled his throat and his nose and his mouth, as the rain beat down on his head, as his lungs were finally starved of air; he smiled as her breath caressed his neck…

THREE

Juniper woke with a start to a throbbing headache and the muddy mouth of unnatural sleep. The surface of her eyes felt grazed. Where was she? It was dark, night-time, but a faint light crept in from somewhere. She blinked and registered a ceiling high above her. Its marks, its rafters, were familiar, and yet it wasn’t right somehow. It didn’t fit. What had happened?

Something, she knew that; she could feel it. But what?

I can’t remember.

She turned her head – slowly – letting the clutter of loose, nameless objects inside tumble over. She scanned the space beside her for clues; saw nothing but an empty sheet, a jumbled shelf beyond, the merest strip of light spilling in from a door that was ajar.

Juniper knew this place. This was the attic at Milderhurst. She was lying in her own bed. She hadn’t been here in a long time. There had been another attic, a sunny place, not like this at all.

I can’t remember.

She was alone. The thought came to her as solidly as if she’d read it, in black text on white paper, and the absence was a pain, an aching wound. She’d expected there to be someone else with her. A man, she realized. She’d expected a man.

A strange wave of misgiving then; not to remember what had happened during the lost time was normal, but there was something else. Juniper was lost within the dark wardrobe of her mind, but although she couldn’t see what lay around her, she was filled with a certainty, a heavy dread, that there was something terrible locked inside there with her.

I can’t remember.

She closed her eyes and strained to hear, cast about for anything that might help. There was none of the bustle of London, the buses, the people on the street below, the murmurs from other flats; but the veins of the house were creaking, the stones were sighing, and there was another persistent noise. Rain – it was light rain on the roof.

Her eyes opened. She remembered rain.

She remembered a bus stopping.

She remembered blood.

Juniper sat up suddenly, too focused on this fact, this small glimmer of light, of remembrance, to mind the pain in her head. She remembered blood.

But whose blood?

The dread shifted, stretched out its legs.

She needed air. The attic was stifling, suddenly; warm and moist and thick.

She placed her feet on the wooden floor. Things, her things lay everywhere, yet she felt disconnected from them. Someone had attempted to clear a space, a passage through the jumble.

She stood. She remembered blood.

What made her look at her hands then? Whatever it was, she recoiled. There was something on them. She brushed quickly on her shirt and the gesture caused a rippling of familiarity beneath her skin. She lifted her palms closer to her face and the marks fled. Shadows. They were only shadows.

Disconcerted, relieved, she went shakily to the window. Pulled aside the blackout curtain and opened the sash. A light cool film of fresh air brushed her cheeks.

The night was moonless, starless too, but Juniper didn’t need light to know what lay beyond. The world of Milderhurst pressed upon her. Unseen animals shivering in the underbrush, Roving Brook laughing in the woods, a faraway bird lamenting. Where did the birds go when it rained?

There was something else, directly below. A small light, she realized, a lamp hanging from a stick. Someone was down there in the rain, working in the pets’ graveyard.

Percy.

Percy holding a shovel.

Digging.

Something lay on the ground behind her. A mound. Large. Still.

Percy stepped aside then and Juniper’s eyes widened. They fired a message to her beleaguered brain, and the light in the dark wardrobe flickered, and she saw clearly, just for a moment, the terrible, terrible thing that was hiding there; the evil that she’d sensed but hadn’t seen, that had filled her with fear. She saw it, she named it, and horror fired every nerve within her body. You’re just like me, Daddy had said, before he confessed his grisly tale-

The circuit blew and the lights went out.

Damned hands.

Percy recovered the dropped cigarette from the kitchen floor, wedged it between her lips and struck the match. She’d been counting on the familiar action to return her some steel, but she’d been too hopeful. Her hand shook like a leaf in the wind. The flame extinguished and she tried again. Concentrated on striking firmly; on holding the bloody thing still as it sizzled and caught, as the flame leaped; of bringing it to meet the end of her cigarette. Closer, closer, closer – something caught her eye, a dark smear on her inner wrist, and, with a start she dropped the box of matches, the flame.

Matchsticks lay spilled across the flagstones and she got down on her knees to pick them up. One by one, side by side, into the box; Percy took her time, disappeared inside the simple task, wrapped it round her shoulders like a cloak and did up all the buttons.

It was mud on her wrist. Only mud. A small mark she’d missed when she came inside; when she’d stood at the sink and scrubbed the mud from her hands, her face, her arms, scrubbed until she thought her skin would bleed.

Percy held a matchstick between her thumb and forefinger. Looked beyond it but saw nothing. It fell again to the ground.

He’d been heavy.

She’d lifted bodies before, she and Dot; they’d rescued people from bomb-blasted houses, loaded them into the ambulance, carried them again at the other end. She knew that the dead weighed more than the friends they left behind. But this had been different. He’d been heavy.

She’d known he was dead as soon as she pulled him from the moat. Whether from the blow itself or the inches of mudded water into which he’d fallen, she couldn’t say. But he was already dead; she knew that. She’d tried to revive him anyway, an instinct born of shock more than hope; she’d tried everything they had taught her in the ambulance brigade. And it had rained and she’d been glad because it meant she could deny the damned tears when they dared to fall.

His face.

She closed her eyes, clenched them tight; saw it still. Knew that she always would.

Her forehead met her knee and the solidity of the contact was a relief. The hardness of her knee-cap, its cool certainty when pressed against her hot and racing head was reassuring; almost like contact with another person, a calmer person than she was, older and wiser and more suited to the tasks that lay ahead.

For things would have to be done. Other things; more than what she’d done already. A letter would have to be written, she supposed, telling his family; though telling them what, she wasn’t sure. Not the truth. Things had gone too far for that. There’d been an instant, a flame’s-tip moment when she might have done things differently, telephoned Inspector Watkins and laid the whole mess out before him, but she hadn’t. What could she have said to make him understand? To make him see that it wasn’t Saffy’s fault? And so a letter must be written to the man’s family. Percy had no instinct for stories, but necessity was the mother of invention and she would think of something.

She heard a noise, and jumped. It was someone on the stairs.

Percy collected herself, swiped her palm across wet cheeks. Angry with herself, with him, the world. Anyone but her twin.

‘I’ve put her back to bed,’ said Saffy, on her way through the door. ‘You were right, she was up again and terribly – Perce?’

‘Over here.’ Her throat ached with tension.

Saffy’s head appeared over the top of the table. ‘What are you doing down – oh, dear. Let me help.’

While her twin crouched beside her, gathering matches, jumbling them into the box, Percy hid behind her unlit cigarette and said, ‘She’s back to bed then?’

‘She is now. She’d got up – the pills mustn’t be as strong as we’d thought. I’ve given her another.’

Percy wiped at the mud smear on her wrist and nodded.

‘She was in quite a state, the poor darling. I’ve done my best to reassure her that all will work out, that the young man’s only been detained and that he’s bound to be along tomorrow. That’s all it is, isn’t it, Percy? He’ll be along? – Perce? What is it? Why do you look that way?’

Percy shook her head.

‘You’re frightening me.’

‘I’m sure he’ll come,’ said Percy, placing a hand on her sister’s arm. ‘You’re right. We just have to be patient.’

Saffy’s relief was evident. She handed over the full box of matches and nodded at the cigarette in Percy’s hand. ‘There you are then; you’ll be needing these if you plan on smoking that.’ She stood, straightening the green dress that was too tight. Percy fought an urge to tear the thing to shreds, to weep and wail and rip. ‘You’re right, of course. We just need to be patient. Juniper will be better in the morning. People always seem to be, don’t they? In the meantime I suppose I should put the table settings away.’

‘It would be best.’

‘Of course. There’s nothing so sad as a table set for a dinner party that never was – oh my!’ She was by the door now, looking down on the mess there. ‘What’s happened here?’

‘I was careless.’

‘Why…’ Saffy went closer. ‘That looks like jam, a whole jar. Oh, what a shame!’

Percy had found it by the front door when she was returning with the shovel. The worst of the storm had passed by then, clouds had begun to blow themselves apart, and a few eager stars had broken sharply through the sheet of night. She’d seen his duffel bag first, then the glass jar beside it.

‘If you’re hungry, Perce, I could fetch you some rabbit?’ Saffy was bent over cleaning up the shards of glass.

‘I’m not hungry.’

She’d come inside and sat at the kitchen table, put the jam and the bag on top and stared at them. An age had passed before the message had made it from brain to hand, telling her to open the bag and see to whom it belonged. She’d known, of course, that it had to be him she’d buried, but it was as well to be sure. Fingers trembling, heart thumping like a wet dog’s tail, she’d reached for it, knocking the jam jar to the floor. A waste, such a waste.

There hadn’t been much inside the bag. A change of underclothes, a wallet with very little money and no address, a leather notebook. It was inside that notebook that she’d found the letters. One from Juniper, which she could never bring herself to open, another from a fellow called Theo, a brother, she’d gathered as she read.

For she did read that one. She let herself sink inside the ghastly fact of reading a dead man’s letter, of learning more than she ever wanted to about his family – the mother who was a widow, the sisters and their babies, the brother who was simple and loved especially. She forced herself to read every word twice; a half-formed notion that in such a way, by punishing herself thus, she might somehow make amends. A stupid notion. There would be no atoning now for what had happened. Except, perhaps, by way of honesty.

But was there any way she could write and tell them the truth? Any chance that they might be made to understand how it had happened; that it was an accident, a terrible accident, and not Saffy’s fault at all? That Saffy, poor Saffy, was the person on earth least capable of desiring or doing harm to someone else. That she’d been blighted, too; that despite her fantasies of London, the elaborate dreams of leaving the castle (she thought Percy didn’t know), she’d been unable ever to breach the boundaries of Milderhurst, not since that first attack of hysteria in the theatre; that if anyone were to blame for the young man’s death, it was their father, Raymond Blythe-

No. No one else could be expected to look at things that way. They couldn’t know what it was to grow up in the shadows of that book. Percy felt great bitterness as she thought about the ghastly legacy of the Mud Man. This – what had happened tonight, the damage poor Saffy had unwittingly caused – this was the legacy of what he’d done. He used to read Milton to them when they were small – Evil on itself shall back recoil – and Milton had been right, for they were paying still for Daddy’s evil act.

No. There would be no honesty. She would write something else to the family, to this address she’d found in the bag, Henshaw Street, London. The bag itself she would destroy; if not destroy, then hide. The muniment room, perhaps, would be the best place for it – what a sentimental fool she was: to bury a man but be unable to throw away his personal items – the truth, and her defiance of it, would be Percy’s burden to carry. Whatever else Daddy had done, he was right in one thing: it was her responsibility to look after the others. And she would make sure they all three stuck together.

‘Are you coming upstairs soon, Perce?’ Saffy had cleaned up the jam and was standing with a jug of water in her hands.

‘Just a few more things to take care of down here. The torch needs batteries…’

‘I’ll take this up to Juniper then. The poor love’s thirsty. See you soon?’

‘I’ll look in on my way up.’

‘Don’t be too long, Perce.’

‘I won’t. I’ll be with you soon.’

Saffy hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, turned back to Percy and smiled softly, a little nervously. ‘The three of us together,’ she said. ‘That’s something, isn’t it, Perce? The three of us back together again?’

Thereafter, Saffy stayed all night on the chair in Juniper’s room. Her neck grew stiff and she was cold despite the blanket draped across her knees. She didn’t leave, though; she wasn’t tempted by her own warm bed downstairs, not when she was needed here. Saffy sometimes thought that the happiest moments of her life had been when she was tending Juniper. She’d have liked children of her own. She’d have liked that very much indeed.

Juniper stirred and Saffy stood up immediately, stroked her little sister’s damp forehead and wondered at the mists and demons that were swarming there.

The blood on her shirt.

Now that was a worry, but Saffy refused to think too much upon it. Not now. Percy would make it right. Thank God for Percy. Percy the fixer, who always knew just what to do.

Juniper had settled again, she was breathing deeply, and Saffy sat down. Her legs ached with the day’s tension and she felt unusually tired. Still, she didn’t want to sleep: it had been a night of odd imaginings. She should never have taken that pill of Daddy’s; she’d had the most ghastly dream when she dozed off in the parlour. She’d been having the very same one since she was small, but it had been so vivid this time. It was the pill, of course, and the whisky, the upset of the evening, the storm outside. She’d been a girl again, alone in the attic. Something had woken her, in the dream, a noise by the window, and she’d gone to take a look. The man clinging to the stones outside had been as black as sealing wax, like someone charred by fire. A flash of lightning and Saffy had seen his face. The graceful, dashing youth beneath the Mud Man’s wicked mask. A look of surprise, a smile beginning on his lips. It was just as she had dreamed when she was young, just as Daddy had written. The Mud Man’s gift was his face. She’d lifted something, she couldn’t remember what, and she’d brought it down hard upon his head. His eyes had widened with surprise and then he’d fallen. Slid against the stone and down, finally down, into the moat where he belonged.

FOUR

Elsewhere that night, in a neighbouring village, a woman held her hours-old baby close, running her thumb against the tiny child’s peachy cheek. Her husband would arrive home many hours later, tired from his night-watch duties, and the woman, still dazed from the unexpected and traumatic birth, would recount the details over tea, the way she’d gone into labour on the bus, the pain, the sudden, plunging pain, the bleeding and the savage fear that her baby would die, that she would die, that she would never hold her newborn son; and then she’d smile wearily, devotedly, and pause to press the tears that warmed her face, and she’d tell him about the angel who’d appeared beside her on the roadside, knelt at her knees and saved her baby’s life.

And it would become a family story, retold, passed down, resurrected on rainy nights by the fire, invoked as a means to quell disputes, recited at family events. And time would gallop on, month by year by decade, until on that baby’s fiftieth birthday his widowed mother would watch from her cushioned chair at the end of the restaurant table, as his children made a toast, reciting the family story of the angel who’d saved their father’s life, and without whom none of them would exist.

Thomas Cavill didn’t go with his regiment when they headed into the slaughter of North Africa. He was already dead by then. Dead and buried, cold beneath the ground of Milderhurst Castle. He died because the night was wet. Because a shutter was loose. Because he wanted to make a good impression. He died because many years before a jealous husband had found his wife with another man.

For a long time, though, nobody knew. The storm cleared, the floodwater receded, and the protective wings of Cardarker Wood spread out around Milderhurst Castle. The world forgot about Thomas Cavill, and any questions of his fate were lost beneath the destruction and debris of war.

Percy sent her letter, the final, rotten untruth that would plague her all her life; Saffy wrote to decline the governess position – Juniper needed her, what else could she have done? Planes flew overhead, war ended, the sky peeled back to reveal one new year after another. The Sisters Blythe grew old; they became objects of quaint curiosity in the village, the subjects of myth. Until one day, a young woman came to visit. She had ties to another who had come before and the castle stones began to whisper with recognition. Percy Blythe saw that it was time. That after fifty years of carrying her burden, she could finally take it from her shoulders and return to Thomas Cavill his closing date. The story could come to an end.

So she did, and she charged the girl to do the right thing with it.

Which left only one remaining task.

She gathered her sisters, her beloved sisters, and made sure they were fast asleep and dreaming. And then she struck a match, in the library where it had all begun.