A Kind of Vanishing

Twenty-Seven

On a warm sunny afternoon at the end of August, Kathleen eased open the window in Alice’s bedroom and surveyed the street below. Cars were parked bumper to bumper: there had been a fête on the green that afternoon and the lane was still busy with people – laconic couples, darting children, hot and tired parents were straggling along the pavement leading to the station, most licking ice creams or pecking at toffee apples while lugging spoils and homemade produce from which the magic had already faded.

The curtain brushed against her face as she drew back in, she gathered it up; the material was beginning to wear. Perhaps now she would get new ones.

That morning she had pulled their suitcases down from the top of the wardrobe in the bedroom. After Steve died, Kathleen used the smaller case for her trips but as her Parkinson’s progressed even this was becoming too heavy. She had told Chris she kept it packed with essentials so that she could leave at short notice, as she had done on the morning Steve took her to the hospital to give birth to Alice. He hadn’t stayed for her birth. In those days he was on the docks at Newhaven and lost pay if he didn’t work. Kathleen emptied everything on to her bed and dragged the cases through to Alice’s bedroom.

That morning she had popped next door to the stores to see if Iris had any cardboard boxes. Iris could find only two, including one for toilet rolls for which she apologised, but really no, it didn’t matter what had been in them. What mattered was what she planned to fill them with. Kathleen knew Iris wanted to ask what the boxes were for, and if it had been anyone else Iris would have. Kathleen told her anyway.

‘I have a young friend coming to live with me. Eleanor Ramsay’s girl, Christine. The one that’s been visiting, she’s gone home to get her things.’ Kathleen cheered as the information took on life with the telling.

‘Eleanor Ramsay! There’s a name to conjure with. I always wondered what happened to her. She simply vanis…haven’t seen her for years. Doctor Ramsay never mentioned a little girl.’

‘I’m clearing out… I’m preparing the guest bedroom.’ There, now she had said it.

Iris was trying to fit sweets into the counter display, she was jamming Munchies and Mars Bars into too tight a space and had bent two of the packets, but in her determination to prolong their chat she hadn’t noticed.

‘Didn’t go to her poor Dad’s funeral, which between you and me…’ Iris continued gruffly. She had developed a trick of not finishing sentences, so that other people completed them, giving her more information. Kathleen knew this, but unlike most, preferred to indulge her. Iris Carter meant no harm.

‘Oh, she did go.’ Kathleen gathered up the boxes, fitting one inside the other. ‘Eleanor would do anything for her parents.’ This idea passed like an crossing the sun, the brief lack of light a fleeting insight, a momentary chill. Then she added, ‘Christine’s just the same as her mother. She’s a good girl.’

Kathleen had stayed longer than she intended to show that she was like other customers and could sit on the chair by the rack of postcards nursing a mug of tea and petting the Persian cats with the best of them.

After Jackie had told her about the CCTV footage, explaining in formal tones that had frightened Kathleen before she took in the impact of the words themselves, Kathleen had been shattered. She wouldn’t have believed her. But she had seen the evidence for herself. It had made no sense until now.

As she had made her way unsteadily up to the church, her hands brushing and clutching at any surface for support to keep herself from falling, she knew that Jackie was right. Kathleen had sent Doctor Ramsay to his death. She had broken his trust. Ever mindful of his family’s need for privacy, he had lent her the tapes on the unspoken agreement that she was looking for one thing and would ignore the rest. But she had taken note of everything. Perhaps not literally, but only because her hands refused to write. She had looked out for the woman who was Jackie Masters, not because she looked like Alice, but because she was curious about her. Kathleen had spied on the Ramsays and then acted on her information. But it wasn’t for this indiscretion that she would never be able to forgive herself. It was for all the times she had shut her eyes and ears to the unpleasant in favour of a Wonderland of nice clean hands, lovely manners and unchipped tea things.

Kathleen was glad that at least Steve had not lived to know the truth.

Steve had known all along.

She unlatched the church gate and leaned on it briefly to get her balance. As she shut it behind her and strode without support towards Mark Ramsay’s grave she was clear. She would take Chris home with her. If in any way she had failed her daughter, she did have a chance to save another child’s life.

Now, Kathleen imagined Chris filling the cupboard with her clothes, and the house with her bright chatter. She hadn’t expected to feel so elated at the prospect. Eleanor was unhappy about it, but accepted it. Kathleen had told Chris her mother was not a killer. She had promised Eleanor that for the while, she wouldn’t say more.

People would assume Chris was her substitute for Alice. They would be right. Yet no one would replace Alice. Kathleen had learnt that time was not a healer, it only clarified the loss. Now she knew nothing could bring her cherished little girl back.

She worked quickly, packing the cases and the boxes with the contents of the shelves and most of the toy cupboard. She had already got rid of the new clothes and since the day Chris had first appeared on her doorstep, Kathleen had bought nothing else in Alice’s name. She stuffed the rest in bin bags and stacked the bags and cases on the landing. As she worked, a cacophony of inner voices squawked in protest, disapproving and reproving. The heap of possessions didn’t amount to much. But then nine years was not much of a life.

Chris was coming back at lunchtime the next day. Preparing the room had taken Kathleen over three hours. The sheets were not dirty, but she remade the bed because it must be made for Chris, not for Alice who would never need it. While she had been staying, Chris had insisted on sleeping on the settee in the living room. When she returned it would be different. Kathleen laid a sprig of lavender under her pillow and as a finishing touch placed a vase of wild flowers by her bed – scabious, buttercups and sow-thistle – a taste of real countryside for a girl escaping from London.

A life for a life.

Through the open casement came the twitter and squabble of birds bustling on the guttering, and the jingle of the shop bell. When they had moved in, Kathleen had been so happy and those sounds, which she hadn’t noticed for years, had orchestrated her happiness. Perhaps they would again.

She needed dopamine; sorting out the room had used up her resources. Although Kathleen accommodated the disease, she would not give in to it. In the last few weeks her Parkinson’s had accelerated, flaying her outer layer, exposing raw flesh to the elements and making her anxious about the simplest things. When the effect of the drugs wore off she was engulfed in a terrible sadness and time shrank so that it was only yesterday since Alice had vanished and she had raked through her mind for a clue everyone had missed. Take the ‘c’ out of Alice and replace it with a ‘v’. She had played this spelling swap in the hospital after Alice was born. Then everything had been alive, everything was Alice.

She had stripped the room of Alice’s belongings and of the clothes that had never belonged. Kathleen had so often stood in this room imploring Alice to give her a sign that she was present. Downstairs the telephone began to ring. It would be Jackie Masters. Kathleen hadn’t answered her calls and she wouldn’t today. Through the floor she heard the monotone voice leaving another message. Jackie would not give up, but she dared not sound frustrated.

Kathleen was the blackmailer now.

Just as Kathleen was about to go down to get her supper, she spotted something glinting on the carpet by the bed. She got down on her knees. It was a round lump of green glass, thick as a pebble, smooth on two sides. It looked like a jewel, the deep green enriched by the sunlight. It must have been in the cupboard. She had heard a thud as she hauled out Alice’s skating boots. Kathleen raised herself on to the bed and sat with the glass in her palm. It was cold and weighty. There was one tiny air bubble that only enhanced its perfection. Kathleen didn’t recognise it. As she closed her hand around it she felt her anxiety leave, and more than at any other time she had been in Alice’s bedroom, this was the sign she had asked for. Alice was with her; she would never leave home again.

Kathleen placed the glass on the lace doily spread out on the bedside table, where it looked just right. She would give it to Chris as a welcome present. She knew that Chris would treasure it. She would tell Chris that it would bring her luck.

As she unsteadily descended the stairs it occurred to Kathleen she had kept very little to remind herself of Alice; no school reports, no books, no toys. All that Alice had owned was bagged up on the landing or shoved in the rubbish bin; except for her pink cardigan and some photographs. Kathleen had been ruthless. This made her pause on the last stair. Steve was standing by the barometer, tapping the glass with indirect admonishment. If Alice had stayed, Kathleen wouldn’t have kept all her things. Now Alice would be grown up and living in a house of her own. She would have other possessions, more fitting for a forty-year-old. The room would have been a guestroom for when Alice and her family came to stay. Alice was beside Kathleen, always approving; urging her lovely old Mum onwards.

Once Kathleen was by the front door her feet refused to move. She could hear the tweeting of her tablet timer by the cooker, but she was stuck fast to the floor. At last, only by steadying herself on Alice’s arm, she was able to make big strides and reach the kitchen. As she shakily placed a yellow tablet on her tongue and swallowed water with drainpipe imprecision, Kathleen told Alice she had been thinking about what Chris liked to eat. Alice agreed that Kathleen would have to ask Chris to help her cook, for these days she found it harder to prepare food.

They both wanted Chris to feel entirely at home.

Twenty-Eight

At the end of November, Kathleen told Chris that Eleanor had asked to see her. So far Chris had refused to have anything to do with her mother; but this time Kathleen asked her to meet her. Eleanor turned up on the doorstep in a new fancy wax jacket and swathed in a huge wool scarf, and announced she was taking Chris to the Tide Mills.

They hadn’t seen each other since Chris had gone to live with Kathleen. Eleanor had been shocked by Chris’s hostility. She had hoped that her acquiescence would herald a change of heart. Over the years she had become so used to her Alice-self, that the enormity of her deception was reduced in her mind to mere dressing up. She was Alice, and being Alice hurt no one. Or so she had believed. But Chris refused to link arms or look at Eleanor and stomped up the lane a pace behind her.

Eleanor had been staggered when Chris went to live with Kathleen Howland. It was a terrible punishment. She endured it because she decided it was the punishment. Being Alice was the rehearsal. To atone fully she must lose her own daughter. It was tempting to see it as Kathleen’s revenge, but she knew that Kathleen had not looked for someone to blame. Like Eleanor, she blamed only herself. Kathleen had respected Eleanor’s wishes and said nothing to Chris, so in return Eleanor had to take her advice – give it time – and leave Chris alone.

Eleanor was confounded: Chris had changed completely. She was taller, quieter; a steadfastly separate being who vigorously resisted Eleanor’s feeble attempts to draw her into the Ramsay family. She was prepared, however, to go with her to the Tide Mills.

Trotting and skipping like a young girl, Eleanor led Chris out of the village, scrambling through a hedge when there was a perfectly good gate and running helter-skelter across a stubbly field. Chris was imperturbable as Eleanor leapt over a stile; she followed with deliberate reluctance, determined to provide a sober contrast to her mother’s strangely skittish state. Soon she had no choice but to caper beside her, for Eleanor grasped her hand and Chris was pulled and tugged along over a pot-holed lane that ended at a six-foot-high wall, topped by rounded bricks coated in yellow and white lichen. There were holes where the wall had crumbled, creating windows with a vista of gnarled fruit trees. Assuming the authority of a tour guide, Eleanor explained that the trees were the remains of a pear orchard. This was the garden of the Mill Owner who had run the thriving mill, its hours dictated by the tides, in the mid-nineteenth century. Over a hundred people had once lived here, at one point making flour for the British army during the Napoleonic wars. Most of the houses were demolished during the Second World War to stop the Germans using them for cover, but a whole section of the big house had survived until the late sixties.

‘You must remember me telling you about the crane with the massive metal ball that swung back and forth, smashing into the walls? Like the one we saw from my bedroom when they knocked down the Bricklayer’s Arms station? I saw it here first. The noise was deafening. It was a fantastic sight, but I was devastated when I came back straight after breakfast the next morning and found everything reduced to rubble. I hadn’t stopped to think what would happen in the end.’

‘What’s new?’

Chris snatched away her hand.

Eleanor leaned on the makeshift sill of a hole in the wall, talking fast as she described the row of workers’ cottages beyond the orchard; the blacksmith’s, the carpenter’s shop. In a minute she would show Chris the last remaining millpond and then the railway track that carried the grain away from the Granary to the halt on the main line. They had passed it on their way down, now reduced to a stranded platform, marooned in a thick tangle of nettles and hawthorn. They had waited by the crossing on the branch line. Eleanor had made Chris listen out to be sure there was no train, although the line was grown over and there hadn’t been a train since the 1930s. She had got very excited by an ancient signboard covered in graffiti, and had insisted on spending ages working out the word Bongville behind the staccato scrawl. She said the name had been painted on the sign in the sixties, and that Alice had said it was rude, but Eleanor couldn’t see why. Nor could she now. Chris couldn’t either, but said nothing. So far, she thought coming down here was a waste of time, but Kathleen had pleaded with her to make an effort to get to know her real mother. For once, Chris decided, Kathleen was wrong. Eleanor Ramsay was an embarrassing and pathetic middle-aged woman.

They came across a narrow path overshadowed by the high wall, and had to pick their way over the uneven ground, moving branches out of the way to avoid being slashed across the face. They tripped up on the remains of a fire glittering with bent and crushed drinks cans. Later, as they had to avoid twists of shit-stained tissue, Chris could see nothing secret about this place. Despite her intransigence she was disappointed. They emerged into a clearing that Eleanor told her had been the back garden of the Mill Owner’s house and was where she had once planted a secret flowerbed. There was no sign of Eleanor’s garden. All her nasturtiums had gone.

Then the flinty path gave way to a two-foot square section of terracotta tiles surrounded by a tide of coarse grass and moss. Suddenly Eleanor was on the ground scrabbling at the soil, tearing up clumps of turf, ripping away long tresses of ivy to reveal more tiles.

‘This was the kitchen in the big house. I once dissected a dead cat near here. You would’ve been in your element. It was a great place to find dead animals. The entrance hall had these brilliant diamond shaped tiles in a really complicated black and white pattern, oh in fact, like the ones on the ground floor at the White House. I’ll show you.’

‘No way. I’m not going.’

‘They must be somewhere under those bushes over there.’ Eleanor talked in bursts as with the sharp edge of a flint she cut away a section of moss and then buffed the exposed tile with the spit-wetted heel of her palm. Chris lost patience and nudged her shoulder; the task was pointless. Now the tiles would be nicked.

‘No they won’t. No one comes here but me. Help me; who cares about a bit of dirt.’

Chris hung back.

‘Come on! Don’t be like that.’

Chris got down beside Eleanor and sulkily snapped off a couple of blades of grass. Then, making a bit more effort, she lifted off a whole tussock of coarse grass to reveal three tiles at once. Despite herself Chris was triumphant, and grabbing a stone she used it to saw away the moss and sever the thick ivy stems. She had spent most of her life wishing her Mum would do things outside with her and now she was. Soon they had cleared another square foot. It really looked like a floor.

‘This’ll take all afternoon, there’s lots to show you.’ Eleanor flung down her flint: ‘I’ll come another day to finish it. I want you to see my cottage. Where I carved my name.’

Eleanor paused at the bottom of a steep slope. She stroked Chris’s sleeve briefly, but Chris shook her off. ‘I told the police we played near my house and that I last saw Alice in the lane, just before the bend.’

‘So?’

‘We were here. Just over this hill is where she was counting.’

They climbed up a steep incline, helped by steps cut into the chalk. Over time these had lost definition, and it was hard to get a foothold, so that they had to use gorse branches to keep their balance.

‘This goes to the beach.’ Eleanor’s febrile chatter infuriated Chris whose own past had been demolished by a swinging ball. Her mother was only intent on justifying her lies, and crushing Chris’s own memories under the weight of more of her stories. Chris wished she hadn’t come.

They got to the top and were brought up short by a metal fence that ended in jagged spikes exactly like the one at the back of their flat in Bermondsey. They gripped the bars while they got their breath and stared uncomprehending through them to a huge aluminium structure with vast orange and wood panels clamped to its side. A Sainsbury’s Superstore. Chris recognised it as the one she shopped in with Kathleen every Friday morning. A man in a forklift truck, moving with the erratic swivelling of a dodgem car, was unloading a tower of boxes from a lorry. In the distance they could hear smashing glass from the bottle banks in the car park. The discordant sound orchestrated Eleanor’s shock. A landscape had been wiped away. The crumbling flint wall at the bottom of the hill and a few kitchen floor tiles were all that was left of the Tide Mills.

Eleanor clutched the railings.

‘I left Alice counting over there to the left of that doorway. It’s impossible to be sure exactly where.’

‘There’s a salad bar there now.’

The path continued along the side of the fence. The place where Alice had last been seen had vanished too. Alice might never have existed.

‘This is the hill I ran down to hide.’ Eleanor spoke as if in a trance. ‘I hid in those bushes halfway down on the right. I found his handkerchief on the path. I said I got it off the ironing pile. I didn’t tell the police it was Dad’s.’ Eleanor put her hand to her mouth.

Chris felt sick. It was the first time she had referred to the dead professor as ‘Dad’ since she stopped being Alice.

‘You said you lied to the police about where you hid. Why was anyone searching here?’ Chris stared dubiously at the bushes lining the slope down to the sea. A child would be cut to shreds hiding in there. They would risk breaking their neck falling down the sharp drop on to the shingle. She scanned the beach wistfully as a cold sharp wind blew the hair away from her face. On one side the stretch of shingle was enclosed by a chalk outcrop and at the far end by a huge pile of boulders near to which a group of young blokes were playing Frisbee. There had been a girl at her school who had refused to see her Mum after she walked out on her Dad. Chris had thought she could never cut herself off from hers. Now this is what she planned to do. As soon as she could, she would make an excuse and go.

‘Why couldn’t you just tell the truth?’ Chris asked gruffly. No, don’t answer that.

‘I would have got in trouble for coming here. I said we played near the house. Alice hadn’t wanted to. She always did what she was told. But oddly that afternoon she said we could do whatever I wanted. I should have realised she was up to something; she had never been so eager to please before.’

Eleanor stepped off the track and thrust her way through a mass of thick brambles down the steep hill. After a few feet she stopped and looked out towards the sea, behaving like the last surviving explorer on a desert island, scanning the horizon for a rescue ship. Then she turned back to the hillside and indicated the dense shrubland.

‘I hid somewhere over there. It’s so changed. It’s grown so much.’ She wasn’t talking to Chris. ‘I heard footsteps. I didn’t dare look in case I gave myself away.’

‘So where exactly did you kill her and what did you do with her body?’ Chris was humouring her now. She hadn’t worked out which was worse; to have killed someone or be so mad that you thought you had.

‘I can’t remember.’

Chris hated that she still loved her. She had hoped staying with Kathleen would break the suffocating connection. But when Eleanor had arrived at the cottage that morning, Kathleen had been kind to her so Chris had felt obliged to be the same. Kathleen had told Chris a lot about Eleanor. How she had been so much fun as a child, making everyone laugh, and so imaginative. Never a dull moment.

‘I once found myself wishing my Alice would be more like her. She was such a free spirit. But in the end she was fine as she was. I did feel sorry for Eleanor because she was called naughty when really she was just different. I think she meant well.’

Chris marvelled at how Kathleen could be so saintly about a child who had killed her daughter. None of it made sense. Kathleen had stopped Chris going to the police, or even to the doctor’s. Although she had grown very fond of Kathleen in only a short time, Chris was now sure Kathleen too was lying.

There was only one way to find out the truth.

‘Okay, I’ll come to your house.’ She was careful to be casual because her Mum would change her mind if she guessed the real reason. ‘See them all and that…’

Eleanor contemplated the sea. It was tourist brochure blue. A strip of mirrored sand glistened between the straggling strata of wet pebbles and the encroaching water. She would like to have stripped off and dived into it. Closing her eyes as the cold water stopped her heart.

Who was the man in white trousers talking to a little girl? They were too far away for her to see their faces. Eleanor couldn’t get to them that way, because the tide was coming in and would quickly cut her off. Already it had washed away their footprints. Their voices were lost in the crashing waves. They had only been a trick of the light. When she next looked the beach was empty.

‘Did you hear me?’ Chris expected her at least to be grateful.

‘Come for Sunday lunch. I’ll get everyone over. Or is it too…’

‘No, it’s fine. Get them all.’ She would need to observe the whole family.

Chris let Eleanor trail off down the path. Her coat was open, her shirt coming out of her jeans and her hair was sticking up at angles. She hadn’t been taking care of herself. Yet, in the jaunty step, the nimble hopping across ruts and stones, Chris saw again the woman she had glimpsed dancing to David Bowie. Once upon a time she had wished she could have a mother like this woman leaping and jumping through bushes to the beach. Now it was too late.

Eleanor loped over the loose shingle and flopped down at the foot of the cliff. She had been sure she could bring Chris round if she would agree to meet her. Today’s journey had not been wasted. She shut her eyes and listened to the ceaseless whoosh and hush of the incoming tide. That sound had come through the open windows in the evenings as, tucked in by Lizzie and waiting for her Mum to come upstairs and kiss her good night, Eleanor would drift off to sleep lulled by its rhythm. It would still be there when they had all gone home after the holidays. It was there the day Alice went missing.

Isabel hadn’t come. When her Dad crept into the room, Eleanor had pretended to be asleep.

‘I brought you here when you were a baby. Isabel persuaded me to.’

‘What, right here on the beach?’

‘Yes, you and me and my mother. An odd little party. Then my Dad turned up. Isabel had said he was in London. Now I think she was telling the truth. She was as appalled as me. He carried you down to the shoreline to show you the sea.’

‘Did we come by train?’ Did you walk with me in your arms down the quiet road to the church?

‘Yes. Then we left. They didn’t stop me. It was you they wanted. To be touched by innocence.’

‘Was that the last time you saw him?’ Chris went cold. Eleanor was crying. Not in her usual way with sobs and loud sniffs, but silently, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand like a kid. If Chris ran now, she’d have a head start.

But Eleanor would know where to find her. There would be no more hiding.

‘I saw him in London about ten years ago. He was following me. I dodged down an alleyway. He came into the alley, but I was behind a dustbin. He could easily have found me, but he’d never have thought I was hiding from him. So he went away. I didn’t come out of that stinking passage for an hour. After that I never went out.’

‘Did you think he was going to hand you over to the police? After all, he didn’t at the time.’

Eleanor sat up and dried her face with the flat of her hands. She looked tired and beleaguered, yet there was more life in her features than Chris had seen before. She could imagine Eleanor as a young girl rampaging through the countryside bareback on an imaginary horse. Except that she was frightened of horses.

In another life Chris could have been happy here too.

‘As each day went by, you and I were building up a new past.’

‘How could you be so stupid?’ Chris was angry with herself for still wanting to soothe her and stop her crying. ‘I’ve never been real. Even today you only wanted me here to listen to your stories and let you off the hook.’

‘That’s not true.’ But it was. Eleanor had never bothered to find out the second name of the boy in the bathroom, because he meant nothing to her. Yet he was Chris’s father. Now he too had vanished and with him the Renault garage where he had worked, demolished to make way for executive flats while Chris was still a baby. Eleanor had robbed Chris of her own story and substituted only fantasies and phantoms.

‘I have always been me with you.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘I always loved you.’

‘You don’t know what love is. You’re off your head!’

‘Don’t be like this.’ Eleanor got up and came towards her.

Chris backed away and rushed back up the hill. At the top she looked back and saw the silver roof of Sainsbury’s twinkling in the wintery sunshine where the Tide Mills had once been. For a moment Chris thought it possible Eleanor had been real with her. Then she dismissed the idea. Tomorrow she would worm her way into the Ramsay family. Eleanor wasn’t the only one who could play spies.

Chris would do what Eleanor had avoided doing.

She would find Alice.

Twenty-Nine

Chris had stumbled on to the scene of a murder. The body had been removed, but all around the room were signs of a fierce fight for life before it was snuffed out. There were broken toys, half a chair on its side, books flung across the room to land in sprawling heaps, some with torn covers and twisted spines. The contents of a board game were strewn across the floorboards. Then she pulled herself together – two glasses of wine had got the better of her – it was only the rough and tumble of a long abandoned playroom.

The doll’s house was in the centre of the room.

It loomed now, as it had dominated the stories her Mum told her long ago, quietly thrilling with concealed knowledge of past events and vanished inhabitants. Lingering in the doorway, the chatter of her mother’s ‘gas-fire-voices’ jogged Chris’s memory with broken sentences and stifled cries. She felt nauseous, and to recover herself fixed her attention on the two tall chimneys at each end of the roof of the house.

Images from her deserted life swapped in and out like lenses in an eyesight test. Chris saw in quick succession her bedroom window, the shadow of the light shade on the ceiling like a static sundial, the dips and folds of her mother’s duvet, and the hawkish lace-curtain birds that, like everything else, her mother had given names to. When Chris was small, the bedtime stories were punctual, each night at six-thirty, because Eleanor believed structure and routine were all. This had become an enchanted time they both had loved.

Whose memories were they?

Each new lens brought the doll’s house into sharper focus so that it became obvious to Chris that this was the room where she was meant to end up. Her diligent detective work of the last five weeks would end here tonight.

It was 31st December 1999, the last night of the twentieth century, and many months since Chris had discovered the truth about Eleanor and had met her real family, the Ramsays. She was living with Kathleen Howland, sleeping in the room that was once Alice’s but was now hers. Having passed her ‘A’ levels, she had begun a forensic science degree at Sussex University. Doctor Ramsay’s grand-daughter was at her calmest when staying late at the lab examining the different types of insects that feed on corpses. Eleanor was still in their flat, but she would have to move out because she was now a wealthy woman and the housing estate was for tenants on little or no incomes. Besides the flat was no longer home.

Without any explanation, Mark Ramsay had left his youngest child the White House, which Isabel was to hold in trust for her, as well as a share of his estate. He had left Chris the doll’s house; a pecuniary legacy, again with no explanation, to the grand-daughter he had only once held in his arms. Chris was glad he was dead and she didn’t have to deal with him along with the other Ramsays. She wasn’t grateful for his gift. She was suspicious. There must be strings attached that would one day become clear. This was confirmed by the lack of surprise expressed by any of the family, who had been horrified when Eleanor had offered to make the White House over to all of them or pass it to her mother. No one wanted either house. Chris thought her mother might as well have been offering to share blood money with them and, intrigued, stepped up her visits. Eleanor thought Chris was becoming reconciled to her new family after all. This in turn encouraged Eleanor to soften towards them too.

Eleanor spent little time in the flat. After years of being cooped up like a prisoner she could not bear to stay indoors longer than was necessary. She had to be out and she had to keep moving. She left early each morning to tramp miles through London, never returning until the evening. She would cross and re-cross the Thames, pausing on Hammersmith Bridge by a plaque in memory of a man drowned one Christmas in the freezing waters below while rescuing another man. She would climb the steps of Hungerford Bridge and wait in the gloom for a smile without a face that she now saw only in her dreams. Often she veered impulsively down side streets, hurrying as if chased, down alleyways, into subways, cutting corners off palatial Victorian squares to emerge on to busy rushing streets. She strode along the Euston Road, and faltered on Eversholt Street at the point where one day a woman would be killed trying to stop thieves stealing her handbag. She stayed at the kerbside through several traffic light changes on a corner of Wood Lane, where a woman cyclist had been crushed by an articulated lorry. She trudged through the oozing green river mud that slimed the shoreline at the Bell Steps in Hammersmith, where on Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding day a young mother had been murdered and her killer not found. Eleanor stepped on pavements trodden yesterday by people who were dead today or would die tomorrow in a distracted bid to join up the dots and become whole.

Each night she traced the day’s route in her London A to Z with a red biro. Soon she had covered most of the pages with the crouching creature shapes of her journeys, each one a fine thread leading through a dark forest. She would open the book at random and retrace the ink line of a day’s route. As her pen flitted along each high road, detoured around each crescent, or moved with precision down a broad tree-lined avenue, she recalled her walking thoughts: the weather, the passers by. Eleanor’s life was recorded in the London street atlas. It was her secret diary written in a code that was impossible for others to crack. Until one evening, forced into the Underground by a flash storm, Eleanor would accidentally leave it on a westbound District Line train, where it would be found by someone with a mind like her own.

On Fridays, Eleanor would came back early to catch Jane before she left the estate office. Jane made bearable the teeming, screaming traffic along Newington Butts and the urine-scented lift in Wood Green shopping centre. A good genie, there to make the most modest of wishes come true. Jane hadn’t cared if Alice was Eleanor. She liked her whoever she was.

During the day, Eleanor imbued her private London with her unarticulated hopes of their new friendship. After Alice vanished, Eleanor had found it impossible to keep up her existing friendships and, burdened with secrets, made few new ones. When she had absented herself from her old life, she cut off all contact with the people she knew. Now she was terrified she had forgotten how to have a friend of any kind.

As her pen completed the shape of each day and ended back at the Old Kent Road, Eleanor would dare imagine that their cups of coffee in the estate office, and more recently glasses of wine after work in her flat, were inching her back to sanity. She knew Chris had been right. She must be mad.

At weekends Eleanor returned to Isabel at the White House. The two women watched television, cooked elaborate meals and shopped in Brighton. In between, they played end-to-end games of Scrabble and Racing Demon.

After the trip to the Tide Mills, Chris was willing to go to the White House but, to Eleanor’s disappointment, would insist on returning to Kathleen’s cottage at night. To everyone’s astonishment, Chris embarked on riding lessons with Gina. She agreed to learn to drive with Gina’s husband, who her new grandmother called ‘Jon-the-Footrest’ without humour or apology. Chris planned to save for a car and take Kathleen out for day trips. Kathleen no longer searched for Alice. She stopped watching the tapes. Chris knew there was something Kathleen hadn’t told her.

It was only that morning, when Kathleen had brought her a cup of tea and stayed sitting on the side of her bed while she drank it, that Chris had found out what.

Until tonight, despite her secret intention to find out the truth about Alice, Chris had never explored the White House. She had become immersed in university work and when she visited she preferred to stay in the warm kitchen with her Aunt Gina, with whom she had formed a bond that puzzled them both. This was the first proper opportunity Chris had had to examine the room that had been her mother’s childhood sanctuary. Besides, she had tired of the Millennium Eve party her grandmother had impulsively decided to hold and craved some quiet.

She was diminished by the implacable walls of the model house topped with its brutish chimneys. She blanched, with the same sinking feeling as once when she had to wait for the Queen, being driven down Museum Street in a glass-topped car with a crest on the front, preceded by a fanfare of outriders blowing whistles. Chris had stood on the kerb, spare-parted by such significance. The doll’s house was as grand, proud and sure as royalty. And like the Queen, Chris knew its face intimately although she had never seen it before.

She moved in a circle away from the house, edging towards the salt-streaked windows, the back of her neck crawling like sifting sand. As an old woman, when it was too late to change anything, she would think back to this last night of 1999, the detail still sharp, and identify it as the last point when she might have turned back and left everything alone. Then she would remind herself that it was already too late.

It was the largest doll’s house Chris had ever seen, over four feet high and as deep. A mass of boxes jumbled to the brim with toys, wooden bricks, a plastic truncheon, cricket bats, tennis rackets, tennis balls, footballs, straggling dressing-up clothes nudged at the house walls. A bicycle wheel with a flat tyre had been propped against a sagging space hopper with a rip in the side; broken spokes had caught under the eaves of the house, lifting up part of the roof. Circles of plastic from an old Spirograph set littered the floor. A child’s black patent leather court shoe poked toes first from beneath a crate filled with scratched and dented cars, bits of Lego and racing green Meccano. Shelves piled with books and games climbed the alcoves by the fireplace. A tired one-eyed bear with moth-eaten fur had retreated to the top shelf with an Action Man, khaki legs doubled up to his chin, collapsed on the bear’s lap. They were crumpled refugees from a happier land. The broken and tawdry state of the toys and books, sprinkled with a shading of dust and scattered with dead leaves (how did they get there Chris wondered), signalled not a room abandoned by children since grown up, but the debris of a childhood dumped without notice.

Chris felt uneasy. She was sure no one had seen her leave the party, but she was equally convinced she wasn’t alone. She scanned the room, her head pounding with rising panic. There was nowhere to hide. No curtains on the windows. No furniture to creep under. It was the alcohol.

She backed into the windowsill. Daunted by the stillness, she was fearful of making a sound, and from the spurious safety of the wide seat she studied the replica of the White House. The ‘real’ house was her family home, although she wouldn’t admit kinship. Peace after the noise downstairs was like the intense presence of someone holding their breath and keeping very still. Chris wished she hadn’t come upstairs. The doll’s house glared back at her, its sharp lintels and gaping windows arched and callous.

The Ramsays never stopped talking, declaiming their opinions on food and cars, in brash tones, glugging wine into glasses, breaking into songs from musicals – Oliver!, The Sound of Music – with Lucian conducting and Eleanor singing the loudest. They kept conversation going with a myriad of petty subjects; their words leapt and jumped like fish in a net, slippery and shiny, a mass of possibility. It seemed to Chris, armed with the perspicacity of the young adult, that not much moved on: each time she went there they said and did much the same things. At meals she was put next to her mother, yet despite their lavish attentions she remained an outsider. Chris thought it peculiar that neither Mark Ramsay’s death, nor the fact that her mother hadn’t been back there for years, was ever discussed. Mark Ramsay’s inquest had returned a verdict of ‘death by misadventure’, because, coupled with the fact that he had no history of depression, the master cylinder in his Rover had failed and this would have disabled the brakes. Chris dared not say what she thought about it to Eleanor because until today Kathleen wouldn’t discuss it.

Now she knew why.

Chris was fascinated by her Uncle Lucian, who would spring out of his seat and dash away to open wine, shine glasses with a cloth, and clatter around in the cutlery drawer for a bottle opener. Her Aunt Gina was trapped in a loveless marriage, so Chris felt a bit sorry for her. Lucian should be good looking, but he wasn’t, his nose was too large and his chin too prominent, yet he compelled the eye. Jon-the-Footrest, in pink socks and garish bow tie to make him more exciting, actually was attractive, his features even and clear; but Chris found his looks instantly forgettable.

In the Ramsay world Chris was a determined foreigner who had unwillingly picked up the basic language but refused to learn the idioms and colloquialisms to enable her to understand it. She made only feeble bids to decipher signals. She didn’t want to belong. She realised that they must think she fitted in when she observed how the Ramsays were with true outsiders. They closed ranks and despite snapping each other’s heads off and betraying no signs of affection to one another, they did look after each other. It was with solicitous care that Lucian gave Gina a glass of wine or Eleanor followed Isabel into the dining room bearing an enormous dish of mashed potato, a tea towel slung on her shoulder in a way that declared: we do it this way and nothing will stop us.

That night a breeze from the garden had flickered the flames in the giant candle holder at the centre of the table, the low light making the group seem to converge and conferring on them an impression of camp fire camaraderie that found echo in the boisterous chatter. Chris looked askance as they lapsed into votive silence while Isabel plunged her ladle into a steaming cauldron of Boeuf en Daube. Each Ramsay sniffed the air appreciatively as she released the rich smell of herbs and garlic laced with red wine that whirled Chris back to the flat in the Old Kent Road.

Home.

She was sickened. So it was an old family recipe. The rush of love was saturated with betrayal. Her appetite was deadened as she studied her mother brimming with wit and chat that must be further signs of mental illness. Chris had seen only too clearly that Eleanor was more at home here than she had been with her, and hardened her heart. Bit by bit the Ramsays had hauled Eleanor back in. With a stab of jealousy Chris imagined the juices, whose subtle flavours they were all going mad about, slicking the dining room walls and dribbling down the face of the dead Judge and oozing between triangles of shattered china and a smashed existence.

As she chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed, Chris issued a silent warning: when she had finished with them, there would be nothing but bones.

If she gave in and reached out to her Mum, maybe accepted a drink, or asked for more potato, Eleanor would have her back. Sometimes Chris considered it might be worth it if only to prove she was the grand puppeteer nimbly twitching her mother’s strings. But she resisted, knowing it would only make her misery worse.

Now she knew what she had to do.

The Ramsays did not extend their brand of affection to ‘Jon-the-Footrest’. Chris felt oblique sympathy for Gina’s husband, despite the incredibly stupid things he came out with. She winced at his ponderous explanations of boring subjects (load bearing beams, hi-fi speakers, or his earnest and sonorously dull deeds for the Rotary Club). She perceived that despite his ever-busy efforts, Jon would stay an outsider. He talked and laughed as loudly as the Ramsays, but in the wrong places. He fussed around his wife, when it was obvious Gina hated fuss of any kind. He shadowed her with outstretched coats, or staggered after her in garish weekend jackets, weighed down with huge new gifts for the kitchen, when Chris knew Gina hated cooking. He drove too fast up the drive with horn-tooting panache in a churn of gravel, the chrome on his Lexus gleaming. As he whistled his train-signal arrival, the family sighed and braced themselves.

The Ramsays guffawed at jokes that flitted as invisible moths around the room, every word brushed by fluttering wings of private meaning. As Chris spied on Jon over a skyline of wine bottles and candles at the dinner table, she divined with a wash of sadness from the way he sat forward humming ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ under his breath, that he too knew the family would never accept him. She felt his anguish, as she knew full well the Ramsays couldn’t be dismissed as irrelevant.

She worked out that the Ramsays dealt with the big things by devoting themselves to the small things. In this way they had dealt with Mark Ramsay, who although dead was not gone. His presence was more pervasive than that of the Judge. Mark Ramsay wasn’t just in the dining room, he was everywhere. Chris guessed that everything they did was done in the way Mark Ramsay would have approved.

She sat with her knees under her chin on the windowsill in the playroom. It was deep enough to curl up in with a cushion and a book, but solid vertical bars clamped to the outside wall rudely extinguished this idea. She gazed out into the darkness. A thick swirling fog had enveloped the house earlier that evening, turning the newly arrived guests into spectres gliding out of the inky darkness with freezing wispy trails clinging to their clothes. Now she could see nothing except her own ghostly reflection. She remembered watching scary films with her Mum at home. They would be cuddled up on the sofa and protest in fake terror when someone excused themselves from the brightly lit room and went off alone with a candle down a corridor lined with suits of armour and wood panelling. No wonder they ended up strangled in a cupboard or sprawled over a roll top desk with a knife in their back. Her Mum joked that the music always gave it away and the change in tempo should have warned them. Now Chris had done the same. Here she was alone, in a cold dark room at the top of a creaky old mansion. She could have stayed at the party with her Kathleen and her Mum. Perhaps by now she had been missed, perhaps downstairs her Mum was asking where she was.

Beneath her feet a Turkish carpet, ruckled and shredding, was spread over black painted floorboards. Wallpaper, probably once chosen with excitement and optimism, drooped limp and peeling, and was patterned with brown stains edged with lines like the gradient marks on a map. The design of flowers intertwining in vertical rows had all but gone, the original colour was impossible to tell. Between the skirting board and the floor was a gap wide enough for a child to slip its hand in. Chris fleetingly thought it a good place to secrete a diary, letters, private thoughts. She should check it. Puffing out a wistful sigh, she breathed in a smell of damp, and shivered.

She smacked her hands together and marched with ‘coming-to-get-you’ purpose over to the doll’s house.

Getting warm…

She hurled away the bicycle wheel and kicked the space hopper; it flumped on to the rug and with a hiss resumed its exhausted pose. Shoving up her sleeves, she heaved aside crates and boxes, clearing a space on each side of the house. She insinuated herself between the wall and the house, easing the house further out into the room. It snagged on the carpet and there was a ripping sound. She had torn some threads on the Turkish rug. Who would mind?

She grudgingly admired fine detail on the model house, the tiny lion above the porch, and unable to resist, crouched down to peep through the windows into rooms with doorways offering a partial view of dim passages. Cutting through the centre of the house like a spinal cord was a replica of the intricately constructed staircase that wound up to the top of the real house, complete with the banister snaking atop spindly balustrades. Minute gold stair rods gripped thick carpet. Leaning in closer, unwilling to open the front and lose the illusion, Chris saw that the pile on the stair carpet had been flattened by a heavy or constant tread. Eleanor had been right, people really had lived here.

The house was nailed to a sheet of hardboard streaked at the front with scraps of felt that speared between islands of dried glue. This was all that was left of the lawn that Mark Ramsay had accidentally destroyed. A detective verifying personal statements as fact, Chris also noted the missing dining room windowsill. It was all exactly as her Mum had described. Chris had never seriously believed such a house could exist. It was a toy within a toy, reducing her to a doll.

Finger-sized dolls dressed in clumps of velvet and cotton – the material stiffened with globules of glue – lay strewn in the rooms like victims of a gassing. There was one in the dining room and three on a bed in the room that had once been Gina’s. Only the lady doll had ‘died naturally’ and was covered with a blanket in the master bedroom that in real life overlooked the lawn with the willow tree.

Chris went through the house with forensic care. The miniature playroom had the same wallpaper as its life-size counterpart, which turned out to be eggshell blue with pink flowers clustered around dark leaves. This version of the playroom was furnished with only a cradle, three marbles – giant glass spheres – next to the fireplace and a set of crudely made books, each on a different alcove shelf. There was the same number of shelves as in real life. Chris was daunted by the acute replication; she almost expected to see a tiny version of herself. Then it came to her. There was no doll’s house in the tiny playroom. This Judge, who was meant to be so clever, had missed an opportunity.

Eleanor had said the doll’s house was a friend, tucked away at the top of the White House, far from her family. She had hated to leave it behind when she went back to London. Chris frowned as a gust of anger swept up her lost chances, the hours she might have spent here, the games she might have played in this room as a little girl herself. She despaired of ever losing the stomach-fizzing fury at Alice’s deception (she could not consistently think of her as Eleanor).

She didn’t notice swelling and fading of the noise as a door opened and closed two flights below and she jumped as a shadowy figure appeared in the doorway.

‘Kathleen was wondering where you were. She said to come and find you.’

Chris got up from the window seat and brushed herself down. ‘You found me.’

Her mother strode over to the other window and, cupping her hands to cut out the electric light, peered down into the night. She thumped on the bars:

‘These were put in by the Judge’s father in the nineteenth century, well over a hundred years ago.’ She gave the bars a sharp tug as if she might loosen them. ‘His eldest son fell out of this window and crashed down on to those flags when he was only seven.’

‘Did he die?’

‘Oh yes.’ She spoke with the satisfaction of someone who can’t be faulted on their facts, and added: ‘Not immediately.’

Chris went across to her. ‘Listen.’ She shook her arm. ‘I know you didn’t kill her.’

‘The swimming pool wasn’t there then, of course. That’s new.’

‘Did you hear me?’

‘You’re hurting me!’ Eleanor shrugged her off. ‘Just leave it, Chris.’

‘Why? Is that what you’d prefer?’

‘It’s too long ago.’

‘You don’t think you killed her and then forgot. There’s no way you’d be normal, well, quite normal. You’d be mad with guilt and unable to live with yourself or to face Kathleen. Or me.’

‘And you think I’m not.’

The fog thinned for a moment and Chris could just see the flagstones on the broad path along the edge of the lawn. It was a dizzying drop. She thought of the little boy pitching out and somersaulting to his death. ‘So you wanted to kill her. You’ve got imagination and reality mixed up.’

‘I hated her.’

‘Kathleen said there was a tramp. They found him drowned up the road from here…’

‘Stop it.’ Eleanor unscrewed the latch on the window and with all her strength pushed it up about six inches. They were shocked by freezing air and coughed as ribbons of fog drifted into the room, catching their throats. Eleanor squatted down and stuck her nose through the gap, holding on to the bars. The ground floor rooms cast a pale light over the grass. She could just make out Uncle Jack’s willow in the middle of the lawn where they used to have tea. It had grown to the size of a giant umbrella. She had never been clear as a child whether Uncle Jack was actually buried under it. She had not wanted to ask, because she would have been upset if he wasn’t. It had been fantastic to have tea on top of a real live corpse. Gina had remarked that they never sat under Uncle Jack’s tree after Eleanor stopped coming. She had said this to Eleanor like an acquaintance, polite and friendly, not as an admission of affection, it was just how it was once they built the pool.

‘There are no bars on the windows of the playroom in the doll’s house.’

‘What?’ Her mother was like a kid going off in all directions; this happened all the time now she was Eleanor and not Alice.

‘The Judge was anal about making an exact copy of the house. He got hold of the architect’s plans to get dimensions right, and took loads of photos. He drew quite good sketches. He made one mistake. He forgot the bars.’

‘Maybe they weren’t there then.’

‘I told you, they were put in after the Judge’s brother was killed, when he – the Judge – would have been about six. They were close in age. The bars were there.’

Knowing her mother was changing the subject, yet unable to resist verifying the accuracy of what she had said, Chris trooped obediently over to the doll’s house. There were no bars on any of the windows.

‘Dad pointed it out to the Judge; he thought it was the test. There was always a test to pass; everything had to be earned. Instead his father was furious and nearly hit him, Mum told us.’

‘He got cross over some stupid bars?’

‘They were evidence that the Judge wasn’t perfect. Strangely the Judge had made the same mistake as his parents when they turned this room into a playroom. He forgot the bars. Mum always said the missing bars in the doll’s house windows revealed that the Judge wanted his brother dead. He inherited everything including the house. When she wanted to wind Dad up, Mum only had to bring up the playroom bars. She’d say the Judge left them out as his confession of murder.’

‘That’s far fetched.’

‘Most murders are.’

Neither of them spoke.

‘I know who you’re protecting.’

Eleanor gave a hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t give a toss about the Judge.’

‘I’m going to find Alice.’

‘If Scotland Yard couldn’t, how can you?’

‘They didn’t know what to look for.’

Chris snatched a random paperback from one of the shelves and tapped it. ‘The clues are in here, or here, or here.’ She waved at the shelves. ‘Messages and answers are staring us in the face. We know about obvious clues like using plants, chemicals and insects to determine time of death and all that. But what about the other stuff that’s going on in people’s lives, that policemen with rigid ideas and closed minds would never think of? The questions they never asked and the places they never looked in because of their assumptions. Your Mum was right, the bars tell us a story all right. They are absent in the doll’s house for a reason.’

Eleanor took the book from Chris, handling it delicately. She turned it over. She knew what it was: The Young Detectives by R.J. McGregor. She didn’t remember the author although she had read and re-read the book many times. The story was a memory more vivid than life, as for Eleanor most stories had always been.

‘This was brilliant,’ she breathed. ‘Mrs Skoda read it to our class when I was seven, but the summer term finished before she got to the end. I bought it in the holidays with my birthday money and read it tucked up in that chair one rainy afternoon.’ She went over and, as if in illustration of her eight-year-old self, settled down in a dirty brown armchair by the fireplace that Chris hadn’t noticed before.

As she flicked through the dusty yellowed pages it all became clear.

‘There was a secret passage in a window seat, just like those ones under the windows. You had to open and shut the window in a certain way to release the catch on the seat.’ Chris was staring at the doll’s house and didn’t appear to be listening. Eleanor continued to herself:

‘I tried it with these seats, but the lids are stuck fast.’

Eleanor dropped the book on to the floor. The story had got mixed up in her mind with real life.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m tired, that’s all.’ Someone was standing close to Eleanor’s chair but Chris would only repeat that she’d gone mad if she told her. ‘Let’s go, or they’ll be coming to get us. It’s eleven-fifteen already.’

‘Why did he leave me this?’ Chris waved a hand at the doll’s house.

‘I imagine he wanted a child to have it. Even a grownup one.’

‘But Gina might have children.’

Eleanor shook her head. ‘She won’t. He knew that.’

‘Why, is she sterile?’ Chris thought of Gina, who only seemed to cheer up in front of a horse.

‘No.’

Eleanor dragged open the front of the doll’s house. It was coated in thick dust. A bird had got into the playroom, there were splashes of dried droppings along the roof of the house and down its front. She marched her fingers down the top passageway lined with minute oak panels and stopped at the top of the stairs. She could get no further. She had once tried and got her arm stuck. Gina had grazed it as she pulled it out. Eleanor’s face loomed into the bedroom where she and Gina had slept until she had to move because Gina grew older and too grumpy to share.

‘Warmer…’

‘Do you know where Alice is?’ Chris’s voice was harsh behind her.

Eleanor pushed her hand in as far as she could go and tapped the wood panelling on the landing. It made a hollow sound.

‘Hot!’

But then so did all the walls in the doll’s house. Eleanor shut the frontage sharply and got to her feet.

‘You know who killed her, don’t you.’

‘I think so.’

Eleanor was aware of a different kind of silence. There was no bird song, no scratching at the windows or creaking floorboards, only an uncanny quiet, final as death enveloping the dimly lit room. The sense of a presence other than themselves had quietly evaporated. Through the open window came the smell of wood smoke. Cedarwood. Eleanor’s favourite…once upon a time.

Eleanor was afraid. Her daughter had an expression on her face that Eleanor couldn’t fathom, that she had only ever seen once before on a human being. That time she had managed to get away. She wouldn’t get a second chance.

She had no more lives left.

‘So, who was it?’ She would make her Mum say the name.

‘It’s a long story. Some of it may not be true.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

‘It starts that Tuesday afternoon in the main street of the Tide Mills. I took you there. It’s where the Sainsbury’s…’

‘Yes, yes, go on.’ Chris leaned against the space hopper and shut her eyes, the way she had always done when her Mum told one of her stories. It made them more real.

Thirty

It seemed to Alice that her voice was fading away. When she spoke, each number came out soft and flutey, and she imagined herself as a distant pigeon and not a girl at all. The heat was making her feel queasy and as she squinted in the direction in which Eleanor had rushed off, she seemed to float above the chalky path for it heaved and swelled at her feet.

‘One… two… three… four… five…’

Everything went black.

Enormous hands clamped over her eyes, and soft firm fingers pressed into her eye sockets making the darkness fleck with bright red arrows. As Alice tried to scream, one hand moved down her face to her mouth shutting it. This meant she could see again.

‘It’s okay, Alice. It’s me.’ Hot words whispered in her ear and the hands turned her to face him. Even with her eyes open, Alice still saw dancing darts, like sparklers. He had his back to the sun so she couldn’t see his face. But by now she was relaxed. She knew who he was.

Doctor Ramsay crouched down to Alice’s level, one knee on the stony path that had once been the Tide Mill’s busy main street, resting his elbow on his other knee. For a moment Alice imagined he was going to propose like the prince in Cinderella. She flinched as he stretched out and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, whipped out his handkerchief, and went through the motions of dusting her down. She tried to stand stock still throughout; it annoyed her Mum when she wriggled during hair brushing.

‘Did I frighten you?’

‘Not really. Perhaps at first, until I saw it was you.’ She grinned. She was pleased to see him. He spidered around on his haunches so that the sun shone properly on his face. Now Alice could see fine drops of water on his forehead and she wanted to reach and wipe them away in return. The sun was beating down on their heads, no wonder he was sweating. But just as this idea was forming, Doctor Ramsay did it himself, mopping his hankie across his face as if in a hurry.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I wanted to catch you before you finished counting and dashed off. I suppose you’ve been roped into playing hide and seek again, have you?’ The doctor looked quickly back up the path towards the outhouses and the last remaining cottage. There was no movement from the remains of the Mill Owner’s house, the ruins were choked by ivy and nettles. Tall straggling blackberry bushes had obliterated the once flourishing pear orchard. Alice knew Eleanor wasn’t hiding there. She nearly told Doctor Ramsay this, but she was grateful for his help. She had guessed he understood how horrible it was playing games with Eleanor.

‘It’s my turn to look. I don’t know where to start, Eleanor has so many secret places. And really we’re not supposed to be here anyway.’

Instantly Alice knew she shouldn’t have pointed this out, she was assuming too much too soon. Doctor Ramsay might not really be her friend. Eleanor might have sent him as a spy to test whether Alice was a traitor. Eleanor had made it clear that treachery was a terrible crime.

‘You’re quite right, it is dangerous here. What if one of you fell and hurt yourself? Who would be there to help? People tend not to come here, the locals think it’s haunted.’ He guffawed, his head going back, so that Alice could see down his throat.

Doctor Ramsay thought ghosts were stupid. This changed everything. Alice’s Mum insisted that their old cottage was haunted and had kept on at her Dad to ask the Post Office to find them another place to live. He had stayed up one night in the living room with all the lights off to prove to her it wasn’t. No ghost had appeared, but she had said ghosts didn’t show themselves to everyone. Now Alice laughed loudly too. Of course ghosts were stupid.

Only stupid people believed in ghosts.

‘This is Eleanor’s best place.’ Now he would know she was a traitor. She flushed, already she had broken the morning’s resolution to be ’specially nice to Eleanor.

‘It would be. It’s full of insects, dead animals, hazardous places to climb and fall out of and secret hidey-holes. But what do you think, or didn’t you get a say?’

‘I think it’s a bit scary. My Mum says you get all sorts these days.’

‘Your Mum is right. You do indeed. Come on, I’ll take you away from here.’

These were the words that Alice had been dreaming of hearing Doctor Ramsay say. She had relived their encounter in the lane two days before, picturing his long brown arm resting along the sill of the car door with his fingers only inches from her nose while his other hand tapped on the steering wheel. The fantasy always ended with his suggestion that she come for a ride in his gleaming new car. The narrative had developed at quite a pace over a short time, from being a simple offer to drive Alice the short distance to her parents’ cottage to a more ambitious journey. Doctor Ramsay would whisk her to London: they would visit the Zoo and then go on to Madame Tussaud’s, where they had waxworks of the Royal Family and the Beatles. After a short while she would be his wife and make him happier than Mrs Ramsay did, who she had heard her Mum describe as a trial.

Her friend Jean at the Newhaven school had said the waxworks were like actual people. She had told Alice that she had asked a policeman in the entrance what time it closed and he hadn’t answered because he was made of wax. Alice had known that she would never be fooled as to whether a man was real or not.

Or maybe Doctor Ramsay would show her the big house he had in London. Alice had never known anyone with two houses. Her Mum had said the Ramsays were very important in London and had parties full of famous people that got reported in the papers. Eleanor was dismissive when Alice quizzed her. She preferred to talk about crane flies, cats and marbles. So Alice had been none the wiser. Doctor Ramsay would take her on a tour of all the sights. There was nothing she wanted more than to run away with him and leave Eleanor behind. Alice had to face facts; he would only take her home. She dared not hope for more.

For the first time since playing with Eleanor, Alice didn’t want to go home. The little cottage next to the post office was no longer a safe haven. Cracks and doubts had appeared on its perfect surface. Now the thought of her Mum and Dad and the way they lived made Alice uncomfortable.

‘I’m supposed to be with Eleanor. I’m not expected back until tea time.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He stuck out his lower lip and shrugged his shoulders. It was all up to Alice. Only she could take away his disappointment.

Alice was dumbfounded. She had never been in charge of a grownup before. The experience was terrifying and exhilarating. What should she do? She must not let this chance slip away. It was like Eleanor’s complicated rules. Alice had three lives and after saying ‘no’ to Doctor Ramsay a second time, she would have one life left. Perhaps she might not get a third go. He might not ask her again. His rules might be stricter than Eleanor’s and include fewer lives. She would never go with him to London, they would never see the glasshouses in Kew Gardens or the River Thames at the bottom of his road. Doctor Ramsay was going to leave her alone on this boiling hot path in the middle of nowhere searching for his daughter forever. Or worse he would dump her outside her boring house and never see her again. Alice made a snap decision:

‘Maybe it wouldn’t matter if we did go. Eleanor usually goes off by herself when she does hiding anyway. She has a lot of dens, and forgets we’re playing.’ She didn’t want to sound cross with Eleanor so quickly added: ‘I don’t mind. She has a lot to do.’ Alice didn’t pause to consider that Eleanor had never actually abandoned her during a game of hide and seek.

‘I’m afraid that’s the nature of the beast.’ Doctor Ramsay had cheered up. ‘Okay, let’s not give her another thought. She’ll make her own way home when she’s ready. Let’s give her a dose of her own medicine and hide too. I bet we can hide even better.’ Doctor Ramsay had become like Lucian, boyish and excitable. Alice watched in amazement…

‘I know a secret place that Eleanor has never seen. It’s ages until tea, shall I show you?’

‘But Eleanor knows all the secret holes.’

‘Not this one, she doesn’t. I promise you.’ Doctor Ramsay put out his hand to her. ‘Cross my heart?’

Without hesitation, and by now brimming over with joy, Alice grasped it. She couldn’t believe how things had turned out. She had made the doctor better.

‘Now, the quickest way is down here, but it’s very steep with lots of loose bits of chalk, so keep your eyes peeled. We’ll be very quiet in case Madam is spying. Stay close to me.’

‘But this is the way Eleanor went.’ Too late Alice remembered that she wasn’t supposed to know. ‘I think.’

‘Be very quiet. We don’t want her to hear us,’ he whispered. ‘And I mean, if she appears, I’m only taking you home. She can’t be cross.’

Mark Ramsay and Alice descended sideways down the steep winding track between the thick bushes of gorse and blackberry. They passed only a few feet from where Eleanor was crouching, deep in the undergrowth. As she heard their footsteps she shut her eyes and held her breath. But as they went by, she dared to lift a branch to see where Alice was going. What she saw made no sense.

She slumped back against a bush, settling into its armchair comfort, shifting until the springy branches finally stopped poking into her back. She didn’t know what to do now.

One, two, one, two.

She told herself the steps had surely been one person walking, and this is what she would later tell the policeman. She also said she had kept her eyes tight shut so she hadn’t actually seen Alice. If Detective Inspector Hall had realised that Eleanor was lying to him about hiding in a hedge by the lane, he might have guessed she was making up other things too. As it was, although he didn’t trust the scruffy little girl who was more like a boy, he had nothing concrete to go on.

Eleanor’s ears were pounding and to stop the sound she scrubbed at her hair and shifted about. After a few moments it dawned on her that there was no point in hiding. Alice wasn’t looking for her any more. That much had been clear. She came to her senses; there was no time to waste.

Thrusting aside brambles, she slithered along the floor of the leafy tunnel on her stomach until she reached the path. She stood for a moment, unsure whether to go down or up. Either way she risked being seen. Did it matter?

Then movement to her left caught her eye. There was a white shape like a giant flower on one of the bushes some yards back up the path to the Tide Mills. As she got nearer she saw it was a giant butterfly fluttering hopelessly in dying throes, too weak to disentangle itself from the blackberry thorns. Eleanor stumbled towards it, tripping on chips of chalk and nearly falling; her feet had pins and needles from sitting for so long.

The butterfly was a white handkerchief. She pulled it off and put it to her nose. The familiar sharp tang turned her stomach. There was embroidery on one corner, and Eleanor knew without looking what the letters were. The handkerchief might have been a coded instruction because it galvanised her into action. She knew what she had to do. In Eleanor’s mind she was doing it to save her mother’s life. In reality Isabel, at that moment curled in a light doze on her bed, was in no danger.

Eleanor plunged back into the dense bushes on her hands and knees, pushing deep through the small tunnels in the undergrowth. To prevent herself from hurtling down the steep slope, she held tight to the stronger branches and skidded downwards. Eleanor was reckless as thorns ripped at her skin. Soon bright beads of blood dotted the scratches. After a few minutes of shoving along, with her face close to the dry baked earth, she came out into blinding sunlight. She was yards from a sheer drop of about six feet down to the beach. Efficiently she scootered backwards on her bottom, then rolled on to her stomach and inched over the edge feet first, feeling for toeholds. There was one, but as she trusted her weight to it and searched for the next one, it gave way in a spray of chalk. She shot down and crash-landed on to the shingle, bruising her knee and jarring her ankles.

She heaved herself into a sitting position, relishing the pain as part of the massive task of slaying the monster. Her palms were stinging. She fought the urge to cry without being able to articulate what had made her miserable. It was what had always made her miserable. At the time, she thought she was alone with her pain, but over thirty years later she would see, without words being exchanged, that Gina had also suffered. What might have unified the sisters, drove a wedge between them. They stopped inviting friends to stay if the friends had not already stopped wanting to come. Eleanor had always thought Gina was okay; she had her horses.

She wiped her forehead with the handkerchief and frantically cast around as she tried to recapture the heady feeling of one of her imaginative games. But she could not. This game was real.

The beach was enclosed by a chalky outcrop at one end and a pile of rocks at the other, that few people ever climbed. When the policeman asked her to recall details of that day, Eleanor had assured him the beach was empty. A rusting boat, slouching dark and sulky against the sky, interrupted a stretch of pebbles that dropped in terraces to a thin slip of wet sand at the shoreline. She told him that it was a cloudless day full of colours – yellow, blue and red – and didn’t mention seeing anyone. But by then she had said they had been playing hide and seek in the lane, so it would have made no sense to mention the beach. Eleanor would say she’d gone to the Tide Mills after Alice had been missing for about an hour. She told the police she had decided to look everywhere since Alice wasn’t in the usual places.

This meant of course that Eleanor couldn’t tell the policeman that the beach was the last place she had seen Alice alive, nor could she tell him that Alice had not been alone.

Doctor Ramsay took Alice along the sand where it was wet but the ground was firm. The seawater frothed up close to their feet. She wanted to suggest they go higher up where the sand was dry and there was no chance of getting wet. But he knew what he was doing. Glancing back she noticed that the sea was already where they had been walking, and the lapping water had washed away their footprints.

He told her that soon the tide would come in and the old ship they had passed, with its hull stuck deep in the shingle, would vanish because water would pour in through the portholes and engulf it. He said they were getting out just in time. Alice hoped that Eleanor hadn’t chosen to hide inside and this made her enquire:

‘What about Eleanor?’ She was worried. It was wonderful to be free of playing daft games, but even Doctor Ramsay had said the Tide Mills was dangerous and so although Eleanor could swim in pyjamas she might not be safe.

‘Oh, she’ll be fine. It’s you I’m concerned about.’ He let go of her hand for a moment to stroke the back of her neck. His fingers were warm and they tickled up and down the way the nice post office lady’s did. Her Dad would have been rougher. Once again, Alice unconsciously compared her parents with the Ramsays and was frustrated with her Mum and Dad for falling far short of them.

They reached the steep mountain of rocks at the far end of the beach and Alice was dismayed at the prospect of climbing them. Jagged boulders with sharp corners and few places to hold on to piled high against the sky. Doctor Ramsay would expect her to be as nimble as his daughter. Her mouth was parched and the hot sun pressed down on her head, burning the back of her neck where his hand had been.

‘This is where I carry you. Let yourself go limp.’

Doctor Ramsay came towards her and, putting his hands underneath her armpits and clasping her tightly, he hoisted Alice up easily into the air like a rag doll. She hung over his shoulder, her head dangling downwards, her arms swinging, nervous of touching him. She could only think of her skirt riding up and blush at the awkwardness of being so close to him as his hand gripped her thigh.

‘Hold on to me, it’ll be easier then,’ he gasped.

Alice dared to place her arms around his neck and then to clasp his hips with her knees. She began to relax as it became clear that he wouldn’t drop her on to the rocks and let her get hurt. He jumped quickly and easily back and forth as he found a way up that wasn’t obvious from the beach. When they got near to the top she dared to lift her head and look around.

In the distance, on the bushy hillside that led to the Tide Mills, just where there was a chalky ridge that dropped to the beach, she was sure she saw a figure. It was hard to focus and the person melted into the background when she tried to make it out.

‘Don’t move, we’ll lose balance,’ Doctor Ramsay gasped.

She held him tighter. If the movement on the hill had been Eleanor watching, then this was Alice’s moment of triumph.

Once they were on the other side of the rocks, he lowered Alice down with great care, making sure that her skirt was straight and that her hair was spread out around her shoulders.

‘Not far now. But we must make sure no one sees us, so be ready to hide if I tell you and keep very, very quiet.’ Alice was overjoyed. This game, although similar to most of Eleanor’s as it involved spies and hiding, was much more fun.

They made their way along a track beside the flint wall that marked the northern boundary of the Tide Mills village and was parallel to the railway line. Most of the wall had crumbled away and was only about a foot high, but in stretches it was still the original six feet, topped with rounded terracotta bricks. With the tall brambles on the other side of the track, at these points they were in a cool damp tunnel. They had to walk in single file because the foliage had encroached up on the path to the wall. Doctor Ramsay went in front and every now and then he would pause to hitch branches up, so that they didn’t flick in Alice’s face or lash her knees the way they had when she had been out with Eleanor. Her Mum was right. He was kind and thoughtful.

If the wall had been lower, they would have seen the tramp before he saw them. As it was, ducking around a tangle of branches they almost fell over him.

He was worse than in Eleanor’s descriptions of him, which at the time Alice had assumed she’d invented. He was exactly like one of Eleanor’s monsters. He was taller than Doctor Ramsay, with clothes so filthy and ragged that Alice couldn’t make out where they began or ended or what colour they had ever been. His head and face were covered in matted hair: long grey straggling strands fuzzed around his shoulders and were draped over a bald patch on his head, not like hair at all. He was blocking their path, with his flies undone, peeing against the wall. Alice had only ever seen a man doing this once before when she had accidentally gone into the toilet when her Dad was there. But he had had his back to her and they had never talked about it. The tramp was practically facing them and Alice stared at the arc of bright yellow liquid splashing against the flints and running in a rapid stream over the ground towards their feet.

‘What the Hell do you think you’re doing?’ Doctor Ramsay’s voice was no longer kind. Alice shrank back as the two men confronted each other. The tramp didn’t move until he had finished, his eyes on Alice throughout. Alice had expected him to be frightened but he started to laugh, his cracked lips curling back over blackened stumps.

‘Get out of the way, you bastard.’

When Alice’s Dad got really cross he went red, which until this minute Alice had thought was the most frightening it was possible to be. To her dismay, the tramp carried on wheezing. He turned from the wall, shaking something in his hand as he advanced on them, all the while talking in a long growl that didn’t make sense. Doctor Ramsay gave him a shove in the chest that sent him reeling against the wall and he sank in a heap into the nasty liquid puddling at their feet. He didn’t move or speak. Grasping Alice’s hand in his, Doctor Ramsay guided her past what now looked like an old Guy waiting for a bonfire. Alice noticed with relief as she stepped around him that he had stopped smiling. Soon they had left the tramp behind, and there was no one but them on the path.

‘Are you all right, Alice?’ Doctor Ramsay was irritated and not so nice.

‘Ye-es.’

‘Now we do really have to be careful that no one else sees us. We don’t want that happening again, do we?’ Alice presumed from this that the tramp had been her fault and nodded firmly. She didn’t know what else to do to make amends except to go on being herself, which he had seemed to like before.

Mark Ramsay was leading Alice back to Charbury along a route that few people had used because it went only to the White House. Because of this, it would be a couple of days before the police got round to searching it. By the time they did, the tramp had gone.

Ahead they could see the high garden wall of the White House. Then Doctor Ramsay stepped off the path and pushed his way through some bushes.

‘Come this way.’

He brought her to a rusting gate in the garden wall. It was cloaked in tangles of thick green ivy. Alice was astonished. As she came nearer, she saw that the wrought iron depicted an idyllic rural scene with all the animals of the countryside. At the base of a spreading tree she spotted a badger, and a hedgehog, while up in its branches was a tiny wren and a goldfinch. Doctor Ramsay bent down to her and made her follow very carefully the direction of his pointing finger.

‘No, up a bit, D’you see? To the right of the butterfly.’

Right at the top, looking out at the hills that formed the curve of the gate was a little man crouched over an easel.

‘He’s fixed forever painting the landscape. Look carefully. What he is painting hasn’t changed over the last two hundred years.’ Doctor Ramsay straightened up. ‘Let me show you properly.’ Very gently, making sure her dress was straight, he lifted her high up, past the level of the gate, past his shoulders so that she was looking down on to the top of his head. Then she looked beyond the gate, at the thick canopy of the trees. There was a hole not much bigger than a dinner plate through which Alice could see the downs veined with white streaks of chalk exactly like the shapes wrought into the gate. Sloping light green grass was spotted with darker green blobs for trees. Doctor Ramsay lowered Alice back to the ground.

‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ She sighed. Invested with Eleanor’s imaginative powers, Alice knew the gate was the entrance to a magic land visible only to those with the password. Doctor Ramsay’s next words proved her right:

‘This is the secret way into my garden. I have the only key.’

He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and brandished a bright silver key. Alice came closer to him as, still smiling into her eyes, he inserted it in the lock. It turned easily and the gate swung open. He ushered Alice through. They were in a small clearing, sheltered from the blazing sunlight by the tall trees growing around the edges of the garden. It was cool and damp and quiet except for the occasional echoing chirrup of a blackbird far above them. There was a rustle – a baby rabbit broke cover and hopped quickly off into the undergrowth. Alice was overjoyed; she had stepped into Bambi. Doctor Ramsay had transformed her life.

‘I’d like to live here for ever and ever,’ she confided to him.

‘Be as quiet as a mouse. I know you can.’ He was being nice again.

They tiptoed around the tree trunks following a zig-zag route. Beneath their feet the ground was soft. It was carpeted with pine needles, chips of bark and spongy moss all draped in snaking tendrils of ivy that had crawled around the base of the trees.

A heavy scent made Alice drowsy and filled her with a rush of optimism. She gave in to a succession of happy associations: building a snowman with her Mum and Dad; piggy backs on her Dad’s shoulders; making fairy cakes with her Mum on a cold winter afternoon. And most of all: the flower expedition with Doctor Ramsay.

Then she saw it. It was the most exquisite rose she had ever seen. A brilliant white, it reminded her of a giant snowball. Even her Dad didn’t grow such big ones. Doctor Ramsay pulled the branch with the rose down towards her and standing on her toes, Alice buried her face deep into it.

‘Boule de neige,’ he murmured in her ear.

‘Snowball,’ Alice returned promptly. She had come top in French last year. Suddenly she knew she wasn’t a bad girl after all. She closed her eyes. The rose’s petals were cool and firm on her cheeks like a cat’s ear. She filled her lungs with the insistent smell as she imagined it really was a snowball, cold and thirst quenching on this boiling hot day.

As she opened her eyes, she gasped. There were roses all around them, great nodding white flowers like beacons in the dark, secret place where Alice was positive that Eleanor had never been. Their branches intertwined with the ivy to form an impenetrable wall of foliage; untrimmed and untamed. This was a proper garden.

Alice saw where they were. Up until now, being with Doctor Ramsay had shed a different light over everything, rendering it strange and exciting. Now Alice recognised the Ramsays’ lawn, although she had never seen it from this angle before. To their right was the willow tree where she had sat through several horrible tea times, and beyond that the gate to the river where Lucian tried in vain to catch fish. The house was on their left, and now Alice could acknowledge its close resemblance to Eleanor’s dirty old doll’s house. Now that she had Doctor Ramsay, Alice could admit to herself that she was jealous of the doll’s house. She had never seen anything so magnificent. So when Eleanor had proudly explained that it was exactly the same as the real White House, Alice had assumed an air of indifference. So she had never fully appreciated that it was indeed a precise replica. Now as she stared up at the solid grand house, three floors high not including the attics above, standing proudly on a sprawling lawn, it seemed less forbidding. With Doctor Ramsay there beside her, the White House was nothing but a toy.

‘Thank you very much for bringing me to your secret place. It’s the best I’ve ever been to.’

‘Oh, this isn’t it. Just wait and see. There’s more.’

Alice gazed up at the windows. Apart from the ones on the top floor with the bars, which she knew were the playroom, all the windows were open. Then Alice saw that the middle window on the second floor was shut, with the curtains closed. Alice guessed this was Mrs Ramsay’s bedroom and assumed she must be having one of her lie-downs. As they were about to venture out across the lawn, Doctor Ramsay put his hand on Alice’s shoulder, keeping her still. Not that she would have gone anywhere without him. Lucian was running out of the back door and was struggling across the lawn hampered by all his fishing equipment. The Ramsays were always in a hurry.

Not all of them.

Lucian’s rod caught between his ankles. He tripped and fell headlong on to the grass. Alice heard him swear as he picked himself up and readjusted his knapsack and her cheeks went red. She marvelled that she could ever have wanted to marry him. His face was pink from sitting out on the riverbank in the sun all day and he had untidy hair sticking up like Eleanor’s. If she had been with him when they met the tramp he wouldn’t have saved her. Because this occurred to her, Alice resisted going over to him when he fell.

Instead, Alice crept closer to Doctor Ramsay, breathing in his lovely smelling aftershave and clean clothes mixed in with rose petals.

‘Okay, the coast’s clear.’

As they skirted the lawn, following a path made of red bricks like the ones at the Tide Mills, Alice was sure she saw the curtains of Mrs Ramsay’s window move. She didn’t want to have to be polite to Mrs Ramsay and for the game to be over so she pretended not to have seen it.

They hurried down some slippery mossy steps at the side of the house that were also new to Alice, who was beginning to realise she had seen very little of the White House until now. Eleanor clearly didn’t know as many secret places as her father. Eleanor’s power to upset Alice was diminishing. Abandoning all her good intentions, Alice imagined scoffing at all Eleanor’s games and suggestions. Alice could hardly wait to see Eleanor so that she could tell her about all the things and places she didn’t know. But then she knew she would keep quiet. This adventure would be a secret she shared with Doctor Ramsay.

The steps led to a dark basement. The door had been open and they ended up in a small room with shelves packed with boxes with dates written on them. Alice could make out the words on one box as they went past: ‘Edith Barwick Murder 1931’ was printed in thick black lettering.

She shivered, and Doctor Ramsay noticed. He noticed everything.

‘Are you cold?’

‘Not really. It’s not very nice in here. Is this your secret place?’

‘No. Everyone knows about this, it’s where my father’s files are stored. These are the transcripts of trials and all the related papers for his cases. Gory reading. Not for you, Alice.’

‘Was it your father who was the Judge in the dining room?’

‘Well done. That’s right. He taught me a lot.’

They were in a paved tunnel with a curving brick ceiling. His voice sounded hollow. There were doors all along the walls on both sides. Alice thought how if they hid down here, no one would ever find them. One of the doors was open and she caught a glimpse of a long low freezer and vaguely remembered Lizzie, the Ramsays’ housekeeper, warning Eleanor never to think of hiding in the freezer or she would end up as stiff as a board.

Doctor Ramsay was whispering again, ‘We’re going to go upstairs, if we meet anyone, you must say you felt ill and that I found you in the road and brought you back, okay?’

‘But Eleanor knows we were at the Tide Mills.’ Alice knew as soon as she had spoken that she shouldn’t have pointed out to Doctor Ramsay that he was asking her to lie. But he wasn’t. It was part of the game, and in games it was all right to make things up. He read her thoughts.

‘We have a secret to keep, don’t we?’

‘Yes,’ she replied and nodded.

‘It’s you I’m thinking of. It would be a shame to have things spoiled.’

He eased open the basement door and pulled a face as it creaked noisily. They waited. The only sound was the dull click-click of the grandfather clock near the front door. Alice could see the black and white tiles on the floor that had reminded her of the chessboard in her favourite book. Gina’s riding boots were missing from the rack by the front door. Alice was disappointed because Gina was the one person she was prepared to share Doctor Ramsay with. In fact Gina would make it even more fun. Turning to her left, Alice saw that they were outside the downstairs toilet where Eleanor had made her look stupid by talking about poo. The door was open and she could see the big box of matches on the windowsill. The memory of that afternoon made her cheeks tingle with a horrid mixture of dread and shame. No wonder she hadn’t noticed the basement door before. Now she was glad they had left Eleanor to whatever terrible dangers the Tide Mills had in store for her. Alice held her breath as, step for step, she walked beside Doctor Ramsay up the wide staircase. He put one hand on her back to stop her falling backwards the way she had once seen him do with Mrs Ramsay.

They reached the landing. There was a settee on it, perhaps for people who got tired while climbing the stairs. Alice had previously thought how she would like to sit on it when she had been trailing after Eleanor on the way to the playroom. She would have preferred to stay here unnoticed noting the comings and goings in the house. This wish applied to most things. Alice dreamed of simply observing without having to take part and to always come top.

The second floor was much darker because the walls were panelled with wood almost black with age. There were two corridors, one going off to the left and the other to the right, and more stairs going on up to the floor with the playroom and finally to the attics where the maids had slept long ago. Alice would have been disappointed had they been going to the playroom. He must know there was nothing secret about it. But she felt a swoop of joy as Doctor Ramsay, his finger on his lips, guided her over to the closed door that Eleanor had told her was his study. It had always been locked before. Alice knew that Eleanor didn’t have a key as she had once tried the door, although she also knew that Eleanor had been in there. But this time would be different. Alice would be entering at Doctor Ramsay’s invitation. Her heart pounded in her thin chest as he produced yet another key from his magic trouser pocket and quietly opened the door.

Alice’s first impression was that the room was extremely bright. After the dark landing, the sunlight hurt her eyes. She hovered by the door, unsure what to do. The room was as daunting to her as Doctor Ramsay had once been. It was the private territory of an important and imposing person, even if that person had become less awe-inspiring and pulled faces like a little boy. An enormous desk stood at an angle near the window. Taking a few steps further into the room, Alice was delighted to see the book with the names of flowers that Doctor Ramsay had used for their flower pressing expedition two days earlier. It lay open on the blotting paper pad. Doctor Ramsay might be planning another expedition. Perhaps they could plan it together now.

Apart from Newhaven Library, Alice had never seen so many books in one room. The alcove to the left of the fireplace was filled with books as was the wall opposite this. There were even books on a shelf above the door. Lots had leather covers and gold or silver writing on the spines like in the reference library. Alice was used to the odd paperback and magazines stacked in neat piles on the sideboard.

‘I like reading too,’ she offered brightly.

‘I’m sure you do, you’re exceptional in many ways. Come and sit down.’

Facing the window was a very big brown leather settee with studded buttons. Alice had seen it before. There was one in the doll’s house just like it. This excited her. Alice’s oblique familiarity with the exact copy of this room in miniature contributed to her impression of everything being enormous. She fleetingly imagined telling her Mum later how she had been like the other Alice. She would say she had been in Wonderland and was small enough to fit in the palm of a hand and be held up for Doctor Ramsay’s inspection. Doctor Ramsay indicated the settee and with trepidation Alice perched on the edge.

‘There, are you comfortable?’ The leather was cool and smooth on her bare legs.

‘This is a nice place.’ She didn’t want to hurt him by telling him his study wasn’t at all secret. Eleanor had been inside lots of times to get books. Thinking of Eleanor brought Alice down to earth and she began to fret about the time. She couldn’t see a clock and Doctor Ramsay wasn’t wearing a watch. She didn’t want to be late home, not after the bad behaviour with Eleanor’s special tea the afternoon before, and now having left Eleanor on her own. She could see no way to broach the subject of going, since she had just got there. She put on a smiling face and pointedly looked about her.

‘Welcome to my lair!’

He sat beside her, pushing himself into the other corner so that he could look at her properly. One leg was crooked on the settee, his knee nudging hers.

‘I hide in here to escape the chaos. It’s nice to have your company. I don’t really like being on my own. You’re a beautiful girl, Alice. Rather special, so it’s a pleasure to have you.’ He talked in the hushed voice he had on when reciting the Latin names of flowers. Alice’s skin was getting itchy from where his trousers were rubbing up against her, but she dared not move. Doctor Ramsay craned forward and once again stroked her hair away from her face. It made Alice apologetic. She was mortified to think she needed tidying up and that Doctor Ramsay had noticed and minded. She sat up, shifting away from him, causing him to do the same.

‘What’s the matter?’ He was concerned, perhaps even nervous, which Alice thought strange. Maybe he wished she would leave and didn’t know how to suggest it.

‘I ought to be going. Thank you for having me. It’s a lovely secret hidey-hole. I like it very much.’ When Alice had imagined being with Doctor Ramsay, she had pictured herself having loads of interesting things to tell him and original comments to make about anything he showed her. Instead, here she was, like one of Eleanor’s abandoned dolls plonked on a huge settee, her feet only just reaching the carpet, with nothing to say. She was prickling with heat and unable to see properly because the hot sun flooding through the open window shone full in her face.

Eleanor would still be searching for her at the Tide Mills. Her Mum would be worrying about where Alice had got to. Doctor Ramsay had seemed an escape from playing with Eleanor, but he wasn’t. Tomorrow he would go back to being a doctor and Alice would have to see Eleanor for three more days. She wanted to go home. Even Doctor Ramsay was disappointing. He had promised a secret but there was no secret. Alice saw with a perception beyond her years that Doctor Ramsay was ordinary. She had been right all along. There were no real magic places. There was no Wonderland.

She would have to lie and say she had been ill and Doctor Ramsay had taken her to his study. She had never lied to her Mum. Maybe Doctor Ramsay himself already judged that Alice was a bad girl for agreeing to come with him and leaving Eleanor. Perhaps he had been doing the Traitor Test after all. Alice slid off the settee and stood up, tugging at her dress. Doctor Ramsay had locked the door when they came in. She would have to ask him to open it.

‘Oh, you can’t go. I haven’t shown you my secret place.’ He stood in front of her, his hands on his hips. He was frowning now, his eyes looking at something behind her, above her head.

‘I thought this was it,’ Alice retorted. In the distance she heard the grandfather clock strike four times. Four o’clock. The time she had told her Mum she would come home.

‘Oh no wonder you’re cross with me!’

‘I’m not cro…’

‘What I have to show you is far more special.’ Doctor Ramsay didn’t move. They might have been the waxworks Alice had hoped he would take her to see.

Alice was astonished by his expression. He was looking directly at her. He was frightened. Alice took a step nearer to the door.

‘If I’m late my Mum will kill me.’ The words tumbled out.‘I want to go home.’

He had her by the hand, strong fingers closed down on her thin wrist, not like before, which she had liked, but squeezing so tight that it made her eyes smart as he pulled her over to him. He began to shake her arm as if it didn’t belong to her while staring wildly at the thin flapping thing.

‘Just do as I say.’ Alice had heard him speak like that to Eleanor during the flower picking expedition and she had refused to pay proper attention. Eleanor had ignored him and gone running off by herself. There was nowhere for Alice to run. He was blocking the way to the locked door. He grasped her shoulders and spun her around to face the fireplace. All Alice could think in those last moments was that there would be bruises on her arms and that she would have to lie about them too.

They were walking towards the wood-panelled wall, keeping close together, the way her father used to march with Alice standing on top of his big black postman shoes.

Clump. Clump. Clump. Moving without moving.

She was going to bang straight into the wall. Then he leaned over her head and gave the carved wooden rose by the side of the fireplace a thump with the flat of his palm. This action made no sense to Alice, but then nor did what happened next.

The panelling began to slide. It swung inwards, like a revolving door. Then it shuddered to a halt leaving a low doorway through which came a guff of chill air that smelled like the tramp.

Doctor Ramsay pushed Alice through the dark entrance. Once inside he pushed the wall back the way it had come. At the same moment as it clicked back into place, a dusty bulb dangling from the ceiling on a long wire came on so that they were just able to see.

It was a very small space, about six feet square with a lower ceiling than the room they had left behind. In one corner was an old lumpy armchair. Beside the chair was a pile of notebooks and paper. A bottle of whiskey stood next to a glass that had fallen on its side. It was much like Eleanor’s den in the hedge but not as homely. Alice had no wish to make this den into a proper home.

As she got used to the dull light, Alice saw that a bundle in the far right-hand corner was a pile of clothes that looked like someone had got undressed quickly without hanging anything up. It made her think of the tramp after Doctor Ramsay had knocked him over. She staggered slightly as Doctor Ramsay loosened his grip on her and let her go. She leaned on the wall to stop herself falling.

Then she saw her cardigan.

She had been sure she had left it at the White House, but when she asked, no one had seen it. Doctor Ramsay had even said he would make sure to keep a special eye out for it and she had been pleased. He had offered to lend her his jacket for the flower expedition. Alice had suspected that Eleanor had stolen it. She knew she was lying when she said she didn’t know where it was. She had looked guilty. Afterwards Alice had felt bad for making it obvious she suspected Eleanor because she knew her Mum would be ashamed of her for even thinking such a bad thing of a new friend. Especially one of the Ramsays. But once again her Mum was wrong. The Ramsays did steal things. ‘I don’t like it here.’ Something prevented Alice from mentioning the cardigan.

‘No one knows about my den.’

‘I want to go home.’

‘You’ve only just got here. You wanted to come. It was your idea.’ He had the little boy’s voice again, but this time Alice didn’t want to make him better.

‘That’s not true.’ Alice pulled away as he tried to take her hand. She caught the whiskey bottle which tipped over. The top hadn’t been screwed on and liquid welled out over the floor, soaking the clothes. She dived forward and snatched up her cardigan.

Then as her eyes grew accustomed to the light Alice saw the passage beyond the bundle of clothes. It was beyond the darkest part of the chamber. There was another way out.

‘Calm down.’ Mark Ramsay wasn’t calm. He kept wiping his hands on his trousers. He appeared unable to make sense of how things had turned out and keen to make friends again. Once again he tried to touch her. It was obvious he only meant to calm Alice down while he found the catch to open the wall. He was sure there was still time to explain the mistake and take her home. That was definitely still possible.

But unexpectedly Alice made a lunge for the passage and Mark knew she could escape that way. At the end of the passage was another secret door. This only opened from the inside on to the landing. It was cleverly constructed to form part of the wooden panelling. Only Mark Ramsay knew it was there. All Alice would have to do was turn the knob and she would be free. It dawned on Mark what he had done. Alice running away from him was the worst thing she could do. He grappled fiercely with her. He held her. But she slipped away leaving only her cardigan. The whiskey-soaked wool that only last night he had clutched to his face with thoughts of such tenderness spelled his doom. He flew after her and halfway down the passage caught her and dragged her back by her lovely hair into the priest’s hole.

Alice stared up into his face uncomprehending as he smiled weakly at her. Her last impression was that he was trying to ask her a question but she couldn’t speak. As Doctor Ramsay’s hands closed around her neck, it seemed to Alice that the light bulb in the ceiling went out.

Thirty-One

The playroom had become bitterly cold. Wind rustled the trees and bushes in the garden and rattled the window frames. The centre light flickered, in time to these sudden gusts. Far away, downstairs in the hall, the grandfather clock chimed three-quarters of the hour – fifteen minutes to go before midnight.

‘How long have you known?’ Chris cleared her throat.

‘Until tonight, not properly. Or maybe I’ve always known.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My friends never said anything. But they would giggle or blush if he was near, or far worse, I saw their fear. In the end they didn’t come. So there was only Alice. It was the same for Gina, although we never acknowledged it. In those days there was no word for it. Now I’ve come back they don’t mention I was away.’

‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’

‘Report my own father? For doing what? No one would have believed me. I didn’t believe it.’

‘Couldn’t you tell your Mum, or your brother and sister?’

‘They don’t want the truth. They want just to get through life relatively unscathed. I couldn’t destroy my family’s fragile existence on the basis of vague hints and imaginings. His terrible act had threatened to do that. My mother made sure we all got back to normal. She was a great believer in structure and routine.’

‘You lied to me.’

‘I tried to keep you out of it. Stupid. I had relied on you never finding out. When you did, I said what came into my head. I took the blame like I always had. I had to keep my mother safe too. That’s all we’ve ever done. He did too. Until the end when he couldn’t face her. Isabel’s an old woman now. It’s too late for her.’

‘Do you think she knows?’

‘She doesn’t want to know. But it might explain the headaches.’ Eleanor got off the window seat. ‘Besides if the truth had come out imagine what it would’ve done to Kathleen? She worshipped him. She’s a sick woman.’

‘You know nothing about Kath. How could all of you let her suffer all these years? For the sake of the reputation of the Ramsay family, you let another family be destroyed.’

‘I was a child remember?’ Eleanor went across to the doll’s house and stood beside it in the wavering lamplight, dwarfed by its magnitude.

‘So that lets you off?’

‘No. Of course it doesn’t. That’s why I became Alice. It was all I could think to do. Crazy, I know. But none of this bloody mess is sane.’

Suddenly Chris understood her Mum’s bizarre behaviour. After all she hadn’t gone to the police when her Mum had confessed to a murder. It wasn’t that simple.

‘I knew he had taken her. I saw them through the bushes. Then I glimpsed them way off in the distance on the beach. I tried to catch up. If I had, he wouldn’t have been able to say anything. He would’ve had to take us both home. I could have stopped him.’

‘Probably not. He would have pretended to be furious with you about taking Alice to the Tide Mills. He would have said you couldn’t be trusted and sent you packing. In front of Alice you would have had to do as you were told. He was your Dad.’ Chris found she didn’t hate her Mum any more. Not for being trapped in a flat with fake agoraphobia, not for being Alice; for lying to her daughter. Not for protecting a murderer. All of it made sense. She might have done the same.

‘I couldn’t get down to the beach. The tide was coming in. So I rushed back up the path and through the Tide Mills village. Halfway down the street I collided with an old man. The Bobby Charlton tramp. He caught hold of me and dragged me towards the workman’s cottage: my secret den. He was bleeding from the nose and shouting at me, but it was hard to make him out. Something about being attacked by a madman. I screamed and he let me go and staggered off. No one heard. All I thought was that Alice and my Dad had left me to die. Alice had been happy to leave me there by myself.’

‘She had no choice. If he said it was okay, then how could she argue?’

‘I wanted to have one friend who dared stand up to him.’ Eleanor dragged her foot over the rug, kicking out the wrinkles. ‘When I got back to the house, my Mum was asleep. I belted along the passage to my Dad’s study. The door was open but the room was empty. Dad and Alice were nowhere to be seen. I decided I had made the whole thing up. I couldn’t say about the tramp as I wasn’t supposed to be at the Tide Mills. I wanted to. I still hoped that if my Dad knew what had happened he would have felt guilty for leaving me.’ She turned to the doll’s house and slowly eased open the great frontage. It creaked on its hinges. ‘So I showed the police his handkerchief. I said I had got it off the ironing pile. I had used it to wipe the blood from the bramble scratches on my leg. The handkerchief told Dad that I knew.’

‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’ Chris bent down and addressed the bars:

‘That reporter, Jackie Masters, asked to do an interview with Doctor Ramsay last year. She was drinking, she wasn’t getting any work. She needed money. It was going to be an anniversary piece, looking at where people in the case were now. He told her to get lost. Without him, she wouldn’t have been able to get others to co-operate, especially Kath. She decided to have revenge. She found out he’d never been interviewed by the police. At the time, the press had assumed Doctor Ramsay had an alibi. In fact the police had considered him above suspicion because he was a highly respected doctor. People like him wouldn’t kidnap children. She went through the evidence files and the cuttings. It didn’t take her long to find what she needed.’ Chris shut the window and sat down on the window seat, facing Eleanor:

‘Doctor Ramsay had handed in Alice’s cardigan. He claimed to have found it in the lane near to Eleanor’s den. This played a big part in falsely placing Alice there at the time of her disappearance. It backed up your story.’

‘Alice was convinced I had stolen that cardigan.’

‘Jackie checked the accounts of what Alice was wearing that day. There was no mention of a pink cardigan. It was too hot. She had on a yellow dress. She also knew that Kathleen would never have put pink and yellow together. You had said in one of your interviews that Alice had left her cardigan behind in the dining room after drawing one afternoon. She hadn’t worn it since. Richard Hall didn’t pick up on this. He was focusing on you because he found you weird. No one suspected Doctor Ramsay.’ Chris sighed. ‘If only they had.’

She came over to the doll’s house; both women knelt in front of it, like children solemnly preparing to play.

‘Jackie wasn’t thinking of a good story by this time. She had a better plan. She began to blackmail Doctor Ramsay. He was easy. The cardigan stuff wouldn’t have been enough, but he was guilty and scared. It seems all she had to do was lie and say she had a witness who had seen him with Alice and he caved in. So every week she went to that old shed in the garden at the White House and collected a parcel of money hidden under the ivy at the back. He knew it was the one place the family never went. No one saw her. If they had, it wouldn’t have mattered; they had agreed Jackie would say she worked with him. Nothing he did was questioned. Nothing was questioned. He could at least depend on that. Besides it didn’t matter what Isabel thought. She would never do anything. They forgot the CCTV. Or rather that the only person who watched those films was someone who would recognise Jackie Masters and wonder what she was doing there.’

Chris watched her mother’s fingers begin the walk up the carpeted stairs from the hall to the first landing. She continued in a lower voice:

‘It took time for Kathleen to place the woman she saw on the film. Then one day she did. On the Saturday when he came to swap the tapes she plucked up her courage and told Doctor Ramsay. She didn’t like to admit she noticed what went on at the White House. She was so grateful that he gave her the chance to look for Alice by seeing the tapes. When he said he didn’t know anything about Jackie Masters she accepted what he told her. After that Doctor Ramsay changed the meeting place with Jackie, but this didn’t help him. He must have brooded all that last week. It was harder to face Kathleen. He was caught between these two women, one so innocent and the other as corrupt as himself. Isabel always there at home keeping an eye. That Saturday lunchtime he took the coward’s way out.’

‘Why hasn’t this Jackie said anything?’ Eleanor reached past the tiny roll top desk and ran a finger lightly along the cushions on the miniature sofa at the back of the room that was Doctor Ramsay’s study.

‘Kath has said that if she writes anything, she will tell the police Jackie was blackmailing Doctor Ramsay. When the truth comes out, it won’t benefit Jackie Masters. That’s the deal. Jackie was so sure Kathleen would be pleased she had made him suffer and hounded him to death.’ Chris gave a wry smile. ‘Kath’s not like that.’

Eleanor was a small girl again, caught up in the magic of her game. There were no dolls in the replica study. The husband doll was missing. She jogged the desk with her wrist as her hand delved deeper into the book-lined aperture. She felt along the painted panels to the right of the fireplace. Their heads touched as they both leaned closer in towards the tiny room. Eleanor pressed the little carved Tudor rose that formed part of a series ranged along the wall at picture rail height. The partition wall slid to one side.

They could only just see into the cavity they had revealed.

There was someone in there.

Eleanor squeezed her thumb and forefinger into the tiny gap and tenderly lifted out the little doll. She cradled her in her palm. Together they examined her in the lamplight. At the same moment they gave a start. Someone had knotted a strip of cotton around the doll’s head. She had been gagged and blindfolded.

‘He’s been here,’ Chris whispered.

‘Yes.’ Eleanor breathed deeply to stop herself vomiting.‘He must have wanted to be found out. But after that summer no one played up here again.’

Eleanor slipped the thin band of material off the doll’s eyes and held her upright, gently turning her around, showing her the room.

‘You know we have to tell, don’t you?’ Eleanor chose the words Alice would have used. Alice, who always said and did the right thing. ‘We know where she is now. Kathleen is all that matters.’

‘What shall we do?’ Chris longed to be small again with her mother in charge.

‘Let Isabel have one last party.’

Eleanor rearranged the furniture in one of the bedrooms on the right hand side of the house. This had been Gina’s bedroom. Alice loved her room. She hauled the bed over to the window where the sun would shine in on Alice’s pillows first thing in the morning. Then she fetched the counterpane from the master bedroom. The initials E.I.R. were embroidered on one of the small squares.

‘Isabel made these bed spreads for me one afternoon when it was just us in the house. She didn’t often do things with me. At the time it meant a lot.’ She folded the quilt over so that it would fit the small bed in the room she had prepared. Very slowly, because no one likes to be whizzed through the air before they can get their breath, she carried the little doll over and enveloped her in the quilt. They shuffled backwards so that Chris could close the giant frontage.

Eleanor crouched close to the window of the room where Alice was tucked up in her bed. The window was open so she could hear the soft repetitive sound of the waves on the shore as she slept. Eleanor recited from her favourite book in a lullaby voice that Chris could hardly hear:

‘…Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:

Thus slowly, one by one,

Its quaint events were hammered out

And now the tale is done,

And home we steer, a merry crew,

Beneath the setting sun…’

They paused on the dark landing. Chris drew close to her Mum and, taking hold of her hand, put into it the rounded lump of glass that Kathleen had given her when she moved into Alice’s bedroom.

‘Here, have this. It’s for luck.’

‘Where did you get it?’ Eleanor saw Mrs Jackson’s overheated flat, Jaffa cakes heaped on a plate and she felt the warm weight of Crawford nestling on her lap.

‘Kathleen gave it to me. I don’t need luck. I’m going to be fine.’

‘And you reckon I need every bit I can get!’

‘I imagined you’d like it. It looks precious, although I don’t expect it’s worth anything.’

‘It is worth a lot to me. Thank you,’ Eleanor murmured.

Chris checked the time on her watch in the light from a shaft of moonlight slanting through the window. The fog had cleared. The century was about to end.

She knew that the Ramsays would survive. There would be more parties. She had studied them for weeks. They had given her lots of opportunities to. After all she was a Ramsay too.

The two women interlocked fingers and together they descended the stairs. The countdown for the year 2000 began:

‘…ten… nine… eight… seven… six…’