The Unseen

10

Hester wakes briefly in the night and stretches out her hand to find Albert’s side of the bed empty. Thinking it must be near morning, she sleeps again, with a shroud of ill-defined hopelessness weighing her down. She feels listless, as if there is little point in her waking up at all. But when the morning comes, and brash sunshine lances between the curtains to wake her again, she sees that Albert’s pillow is smooth and plump, and the sheet on his side of the bed is still pulled taut. He had been sitting up with Robin Durrant, deep in discussion, when she came up to bed the night before. Now it seems that wherever he’s slept, it has not been in his own bed. Hester dresses herself as neatly as she can without calling for Cat to help her. She feels strangely uneasy, after seeing Cat and Robin Durrant talking in the courtyard. He had seemed agitated, pacing up and down. The way he’d stood so close to her, the way he’d gesticulated, all seemed far too familiar. As though they knew each other well, as though they had a relationship of some kind that she knew nothing about. Amelia had called Robin beautiful; perhaps Cat found him so as well.

She pins up her hair, smoothes her cheeks with a little powder and goes downstairs in her morning dress, only to find Albert sitting in the parlour, hands on his knees, staring straight ahead. The hems of his trousers are caked with dust and grime, his shoes encrusted with it. Of Robin Durrant, there is no sign.

‘Albert! Are you all right? Where have you been?’ she asks, standing close to him, taking one of his limp hands in hers. He looks up at her slowly, like an old, old man, and blinks once or twice before seeming to recognise her.

‘Hetty! I was waiting for you. Forgive me. I was too troubled to come up to bed. I thought it best not to disturb you until now…’ he murmurs.

‘Disturb me? Why? What on earth is going on?’ Hester holds his hand tightly. She does not like the way his gaze seems to come from a great distance, the way his voice is soggy with fatigue and bewilderment.

‘I fear there is a pariah in our very midst… a spot of rot and blight to blemish the purity of our home,’ Albert says, grimacing as though his own words taste ill.

‘A spot of rot? Albert, please, you’re not making sense!’

‘The servant girl. The dark-haired one. We must be rid of her at once,’ he says, more decisively.

‘Cat? Why must we? What has happened to her?’ Hester asks anxiously. A spot of rot. She thinks of what Amelia had caught her husband doing, and of the familiarity she had witnessed between Cat and Robin. Her throat goes dry. ‘Is it Mr Durrant?’

‘What? What do you mean? This has nothing to do with Robin! Is he back? Is he back from the meadows?’ Albert half rises from his chair only to slump back again, wearily.

‘I don’t know… Albert, where did you sleep?’

‘No, no. I couldn’t sleep. I can’t sleep. There is too much to think about… The girl must be gone from here… as soon as possible. No wonder! No wonder I have not managed it! Tainted! With debauchery… it taints everything it touches…’ Albert throws up his hands abruptly, face falling into despair.

‘Debauchery? What debauchery?’ Hester struggles to keep up, crouching beside him and trying to read his face. It is closed to her, thoughts she cannot read churning behind his glassy gaze. Without warning, tears spring into her eyes, hot and stinging. ‘Bertie, please. Explain this to me,’ she begs. Albert looks down at her and smiles; a small, sad-looking smile.

‘Of course you don’t understand. You, who are everything a wife should be,’ he says. Hester smiles too, glad at least that the argument following her unwanted caress seems forgotten. ‘I went with the police last night, to a notorious gambling den in Thatcham. I went to try to convince the men to change their ways, to give up such ungodly pastimes… I tried to explain the damage that they do to themselves, to all of us… to the whole of mankind!’

‘But… what has this got to do with Cat?’

‘With Cat? Who is Cat?

‘The maid, Bertie. You said the maid would have to be let go…’

‘Yes! By all means, she must go! She was there, Hetty – she was there, fleeing like one of the rats as the police stormed in and turned out the nest of them… I saw her! I knew her at once!’

‘You must be mistaken, Bertie… why in heaven’s name would Cat be in Thatcham, and gambling, for pity’s sake? It couldn’t have been her – she was upstairs and in bed, I’m sure of it!’

‘No, no, you are not sure. I saw her, Hester. A liar and a gambler and no doubt a lascivious doxy besides…’

‘But you must be mistaken,’ Hester insists.

‘I want her gone. She will be the ruin of us all.’

‘No, Albert! On this you must listen to me – please. You’re mistaken. She’s a good girl! She works hard-’

‘It has come to a fine state of affairs that my own wife should doubt my word,’ Albert says, coldly. ‘Call her up, and ask her. Ask her, then, and let’s see how deep the roots of her dishonesty go!’

Hester finds Cat making up the master bed with fresh linens, the dirty ones twisted into a bundle by the door. Hester steps over it, suddenly finding her feet like lead, and her tongue made of wood. She smiles weakly when Cat looks up, and notices the dark shadows under the girl’s eyes and that, however well brushed they have been, her shoes still look dirty, muddy.

‘Sorry, madam. I won’t be a moment, but I can finish this later if you’d rather?’ Cat says quietly.

‘No, no, Cat. It’s quite all right. There was… actually something else I wanted to talk to you about,’ Hester says reluctantly. Cat throws her arms wide and a clean sheet billows out, falling slowly and with expert aim into just the right position. She twitches it a couple of times, and then stands up, turning to face Hester with a look of such calm resignation that Hester knows the answer before she has asked the question. ‘It’s true then? You were out in Thatcham last night? And gambling? My husband says he saw you there…’ She trails off, surprised by the way her nerves jangle, and to find that she has been hoping it has all been a mistake. Praying it, even.

‘He saw me there, it’s true. But I was not gambling, madam,’ Cat says, looking straight at Hester without flinching; that black, disconcerting stare of hers.

‘Oh, Cat! How could you? How… how on earth did you get there?’

‘I borrowed the vicar’s bicycle. I’ve done it many times before,’ Cat announces, tipping up her chin defiantly, as if daring Hester to rebuke her. Hester stares at her, dumbfounded, for a long moment, until Cat speaks again. ‘I suppose I shall be let go?’ she asks, and though her defiance remains, there is a slight tremor in her voice.

‘I don’t know… I don’t know. If the vicar finds out you took his bicycle… You have done it many times?’ Hester breathes. ‘But, to do what? When do you sleep?’

‘I do not sleep easy, madam. Since I was gaoled I… I do not sleep easy. And you never said I could not go out of the house when the day was over. It was never said that I shouldn’t! All I wanted was to have some taste of life beyond these four walls. Is that a crime?’

‘No, no, it’s not a crime, Cat! But it is not seemly! Those places in Thatcham, and at that hour of the night, unaccompanied… it is no place for a young woman on her own! Anything could have happened to you! People might have thought the very worst of you! It’s just not the done thing, Cat! I never said so explicitly because I never thought it needed saying! And you know I have the right of it!’ Hester cries, her voice rising higher and higher, beyond her control.

‘I was not always unaccompanied,’ Cat mutters.

‘Oh, and who went with you? Not Sophie Bell, I know that for sure…’ Hester falters, as Cat’s meaning becomes clear. ‘You mean… you have a sweetheart?’ she asks. Cat says nothing, but a flicker of emotion kindles in her eyes. ‘I see,’ Hester says, quietly. Was that what she had witnessed, in the courtyard? A lover’s tiff? She looks out of the window, at the far green blur of distant trees. Birds are singing, as they always do. The air is bright and dry, but suddenly the house feels far away, removed. Or perhaps it is she, Hester, who is far away. Disconnected from all the things she thinks she knows. ‘But,’ she gropes weakly for some redeeming feature in it all, ‘but you were not there to gamble? Last night?’

‘No, madam. I was not there to gamble.’ Silence falls in the room, and the dust sent up by the billowing sheets slowly settles, one twinkling mote at a time, onto the polished surfaces of the furniture. Hester weaves her fingers together in front of her and studies them for a time, and she can just about hear Cat breathing, fast and shallow, like some cornered creature, ready to fight. ‘Shall I pack my things then?’ Cat says at last. Hester shakes her head.

‘I must… speak with my husband about it. I believe you are good at heart, Cat; I do believe it. If you are to stay, I must have it from you that you will stop these visits to town. Perhaps you might walk out with your… gentleman friend on a Sunday afternoon, when you have free time. But you must not go to the public houses in town any more, and you must not sneak out in the night. Can I give my husband your word on this?’ Hester asks, her voice shaking. The hardness in Cat’s eyes softens a little, and her mouth thins, pressing into a single line of unhappiness; but her answer, when it comes, is resolute.

‘No, madam. I cannot swear to it.’

Hester pauses at the top of the stairs before going back down to Albert. She puts out a hand to grasp the banister, and sees that it is shaking. Her whole body is shaking. Suddenly it seems that the world is a place where nothing is as simple as it had once seemed; a place where she has little understanding, of anything. And she knows that she ought to be outraged by these admissions of Cat’s, but somehow she is not. She is shocked, and she is worried, and she is… not envious, surely? Could that be what is causing the lump in her throat, what is making her long to fly into Albert’s arms? But she is not outraged. She is afraid. Swallowing, she begins her descent, and realises that she had paused for a specific reason. She needed time to think of an argument, to think of a way to persuade Albert to let Cat stay on. Because, suddenly, the thought of her going, of one more familiar thing transforming, of one more failure, is more than she can bear.

But nothing she says has any impact on her husband. She promises him, in spite of what Cat said, that the girl will never go out at night again. She lies, and says she has Cat’s word. She does not mention the bicycle at all, nor Cat’s sweetheart; she swears that Cat had not been gambling, that night or any other, and that she had merely wanted to exercise a little freedom from the constraints of her position, and to explore her new surroundings; something to be expected in one so young, and one who has seen so much trouble in her short lifetime. She even argues that they would not be able to afford to replace her, since a less troublesome girl will command a higher salary. But the vicar is every bit as adamant as Cat. He hardly seems to listen, sitting with an impassive expression on his face, his arms and hands limp in his lap as she speaks, on and on, presenting the same argument in three different ways. When she finishes, and grasps his hand in supplication, he merely pats her hands, absently.

‘You are a good and charitable soul, Hester. But she must go. At once. She is a spot of blight upon this house, at a time when it is utterly crucial that there be no stain here. No pollution. Do you see? Do you see, Hester? Everything depends on this!’ he says, with such a strange light in his eyes that Hester feels a wave of desperation crash through her.

‘Albert, please. Please do listen to me. There is no stain on our house! This theosophy has skewed your thoughts, my darling… Haven’t I always run a good household? Shouldn’t I know best about what servants to keep, and how such things should be done? I must insist that this matter be left in my hands!’

‘Hester, your eyes are blind. You do not have the proper understanding,’ Albert says, resolutely.

‘I have not been… altered, you mean. I am not controlled by the teachings of Robin Durrant!’ she says, her voice a strained whisper.

At this Albert merely smiles. ‘And for that very reason, Hetty, you must do as I say.’

‘Albert, please,’ she implores. Albert pats her hand again, as though she is an unthinking pet of some kind, whose bewilderment is lamentable but to be expected, then rises and goes to his study, shutting the door behind him. Her words are quite lost upon him. In the deceptive calm of the house the clock ticks like a dusty heartbeat, and Cat’s light footsteps, as she makes the bed that Hester will lie in, cause the floorboards to creak.

Hester is still perching on the edge of a chair in the parlour when Robin Durrant returns. She turns at the sound of his lively footsteps, sees him make his way to the door with a purposeful stride, let himself in like a resident, not a guest; and then hears him putting down his camera to hang up his coat and hat, all unconcerned. His buoyant walk makes locks of his hair bounce against his forehead, like a boy’s, and he hums, ever so softly, just under his breath. A tuneless staccato which might have been formless words, bubbling irrepressibly from within him.

‘Albert!’ he calls, as he strides along the hallway. In he crashes, Hester thinks, like a tidal wave, like a blowing wind. His head and shoulders appear around the doorway, grass-stained fingers leaving smears on the cream paint of the panelling. ‘Hester! You’re very quiet in here.’ He smiles warmly.

‘Should a person not sit quietly in their own home?’ she replies, unable to meet his eye. Robin pauses, seems to think, to slow down.

‘Is everything all right? Are you upset?’ He comes into the room and stands with his hands clasped behind his back, arranging himself more formally all of a sudden.

‘I’m not upset,’ she says, but to her chagrin her voice breaks as she says it. Wanting to hide it from Robin Durrant only seems to make the weeping harder to hold.

‘Hester! You poor creature… tell me what the matter is,’ Robin commands. He puts out his hands and moves towards her, as if to offer an embrace, but Hester rises hastily from her chair.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she cries. ‘It’s your doing!’ Her pulse races, makes her fingers shake; but the words are out now, and she cannot take them back.

‘Then you must immediately tell me how I have troubled you, so that I can apologise and be sure never to do so again,’ Robin replies carefully. His words are smooth and unhurried. As seamless as the rest of him.

‘My husband… saw our maid Cat at a tavern last night. It seems she has been keeping late-night trysts with a sweetheart, and now he says she is to go and he will not hear another word on the matter. Such notions of purity he has now, you see.’ She shoots the theosophist an angry glance. ‘Such notions that he has half lost his… sense of proportion, and will brook no argument.’ As Hester speaks she looks up, just briefly, and is shocked by Robin’s expression. It veers here and there between shock and anger and consternation for some seconds before he manages to wrestle it back into his control. Hester catches her breath. ‘Did you know something of this before, Mr Durrant?’

‘I… no, of course not,’ he says, but without conviction. Hester stares at him, her eyes widening. ‘That is, I had seen her, once or twice. Going off in the evening. Just for walks, I assumed.’

‘I see. And you did not think to mention this to Albert or myself?’

‘My apologies, Mrs Canning. I had thought no harm could come of it,’ Robin replies smoothly, and all expression in face and voice is gone, masked behind a careful neutrality.

‘Well, harm has come of it, Mr Durrant. I wonder if that was all you knew about it. I wonder if you might not have some inkling as to the identity of her gentleman friend?’ Hester says quietly, her voice shaking with nerves. Robin Durrant watches her, a new expression forming on his face. One of slight surprise and amusement. One of new understanding. Hester looks away, down at her hands. His eyes are too familiar, suddenly; they seem to laugh at her.

‘Hester, how has your opinion of me changed so much of late that you no longer trust me to speak the truth?’ he asks; a touch of soft menace in the words.

Hester fidgets, twisting her handkerchief tightly one way, then the other. ‘I have seen the two of you… speaking together. In the evenings,’ she stammers.

‘What of it? You don’t mean that I am her mystery man, surely? A few polite words exchanged between guest and maid, over a cigarette, and you have construed an affair from this?’

‘That’s not what I saw. It was not… polite,’ Hester whispers. Robin Durrant crosses the room towards her with a slow, deliberate step, and she fights the urge to back away.

‘You must have been mistaken, I assure you. There is nothing whatsoever between me and your maid,’ he says, standing so close to her that she can feel the warmth of his body, the moist touch of his breath as he speaks. She turns her face away, heart racing in her chest, and endures the silence for a long moment, until she thinks she might scream. ‘Still, if you’d like me to speak to your husband on behalf of the girl, I would be happy to do so. Perhaps I can persuade him to let her stay on, if that is what you wish?’ Robin murmurs, so close now that she can hear his every breath as it rushes gently in, between his parted lips, over teeth and tongue. Her eyes well again, tears splashing messily onto her cheeks. Without hesitation, the theosophist puts out his fingers and brushes them away. Hester is rooted to the spot, too shocked to move.

‘I don’t understand what power you have over my husband,’ she says, her voice so constricted she hardly knows it.

‘Don’t you? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Unbesmirched as you are. Virgo intacta, a lily whiter than white; so kind and clean and innocent,’ he says, his mouth twisting to one side in cruel amusement. Hester’s jaw falls open in shock.

‘How do you…?’ she whispers, inadvertently.

‘Albert told me. One day whilst extolling his own purity to me. He could hardly boast of his own virginity, and not by default proclaim you to be in the same state, could he?’ Robin says, with a lupine grin.

Hester shuts her eyes, her face burning. In the darkness behind her eyelids the room seems to spin, and her thoughts to match it.

‘I think you should leave this house. Leave and not return!’ she says.

‘Hester, Hester. You and I need not trouble one another,’ Robin says calmly. ‘We must not trouble one another,’ he adds, making the statement a command, a warning. The hand that gathered her tears lingers, moving softly over the skin of her cheek, along her jaw and from chin to neck, neck to collarbone, until the air freezes in her lungs and she can neither protest nor move nor turn away. ‘Dear Hetty. I’ll speak to Albert. I’ll convince him. You can keep your maid – a gift from me to you, to make up for whatever I have done to turn you against me,’ he says, his eyes alight and savage. His hand stays a second longer on her skin, his fingers warm, wet from her own salty tears. They seem to burn her, and his light touch is like a yoke of iron, fixing her to the spot. Then he is gone, across the hallway to knock softly on the study door. Released, Hester heaves in great gulps of dizzying air and flees the room with blind, faltering steps.

Mrs Bell opens each hamper of laundry as it comes back from Mrs Lynchcombe, lifts out each item and checks it off the list, her eyes screwed up with the effort of reading her own cramped handwriting.

‘That should be six pillow slips – did I count six?’ she mutters; this and similar comments. Cat has seen this process many times, and knows she may as well ignore the remarks. Mrs Bell, despite a close and apparently friendly acquaintance with the laundress, seems convinced that the woman will one day conspire to rob the household of a napkin or a nightdress, and cannot be satisfied without checking the hampers herself each time. She blows out her cheeks, wipes her sweaty brow, puts her hands on the vast slabs of her hips and studies a lace-collared blouse, pressed and neatly folded in front of her. Is this the one that was sent away? Or has it been switched with one of lower quality?

‘Your own suspicions must tire you out,’ Cat observes.

‘What’s that? Don’t mumble behind my back, if you please,’ Mrs Bell grumbles.

‘I said you should be commended, for such thoroughness.’ She smiles briefly. Mrs Bell laughs a short bark of a laugh.

‘Ha! You never said that in a month of Sundays!’ She goes back to her examination of the hampers. Cat shrugs. She is breaking up the salt, which comes from the grocer in a large, hard block. She uses a round pick with a smooth wooden handle, so smooth that the effort of keeping her grip on it cramps her hand. The muscles in her forearm burn. She stabs repeatedly at the block, at just the right angle that small, usable chunks are broken off; not big pieces that must be broken again, not small gritty pieces that she will struggle to collect from the worktop. The right-sized pieces are packed into earthenware jars and sealed until they are needed. They will be ground by hand, as the need arises, to fill the silver cruet. There is some satisfaction in the repeated stabbing, the controlled violence of the job. Precise work is needed; blows of the correct weight and speed, over and over again. Cat’s mind clears as she does it; some of the odd, cold rage that has filled her all morning starts to dissipate. An odd rage indeed, hard and numbing. She hardly knows who it is directed at. The vicar, for seeing her? The theosophist, for sending him out on crusade? Hester, for forbidding her to go out again? George, for insisting that she wed him? Or just because her secret has been found out. Because she has no secret any more: the one thing that belonged to her alone, now taken. She stabs, she breaks the block, her muscles burn, and she grows calmer. Cat kicks off her shoes, lets the cool of the flagstones press into her aching feet.

‘I may be gone from here, soon. Tonight, even,’ she says at length, her tone betraying no dismay at the prospect.

‘What are you talking about?’ Sophie Bell asks, finishing her inspection and slumping into a chair. With a sweep of her arm, she pushes away a pile of peas to be podded, so that she can spread her bosom, her mottled arms, across the table top.

‘I think I am dismissed. The vicar’s wife is speaking to him on my behalf, but I doubt she’ll convince him,’ says Cat. The housekeeper gapes.

‘But… what for, for Christ’s sake? What ’ave you done, you minx?’

‘I… go out in the night. I don’t sleep. I go out into Thatcham, and places. And now he has found me out in this. So I am dismissed.’ She shrugs, as if the future were not suddenly an amorphous thing, shapeless and menacing and empty. No reference for a dismissed servant. No further positions for her, with this last chance spent.

‘Cat Morley… Cat Morley…’ Mrs Bell says her name as if it is a very curse to be uttered in disbelief, in extremis. Her sliver eyes are wider than ever before. ‘How could you be so stupid? And you so bright?’ she asks, and this is so far from what Cat expected, so far from the scorn and the derision, that at first she can’t think how to reply.

‘I… I love a man,’ she says at last, pausing with the pick buried deep in the salt, stuck fast there. She jabbed it too hard, drove it too deep. Mrs Bell shakes her head.

‘A man! What good is a man? You had everything here!’ Cat wrestles mutely with the pick. Flies circle the stuffy room, and Mrs Bell seems, for once, to be robbed of words.

‘What everything? Truly? What have I here but every day the same, like I am not a person at all but a machine? And to be told that this is my lot, and I should be happy for it while others have it that they can lie around and… and… press flowers all the livelong day!’ she cries, her voice shaking treacherously.

‘What everything? A bed! In a clean, warm house… three meals a day and an income – employers that don’t beat you, but tolerate your lip when it gets away from you! That’s what everything!’ Mrs Bell says. ‘Is that not enough for you, when countless thousands would wish to be so fortunate?’

‘No,’ Cat tells her solemnly. ‘It is not enough. I can’t abide it. I can’t.’ She waits, and watches; but the housekeeper merely stares ahead, then down at her chapped and ruined hands, and does not speak. Cat takes a slow breath. ‘If I am gone by tonight, I wanted to say I’m sorry about your boy. About you losing him. And I’m sorry you lost your husband too. I’m sorry if I… scorned you, for being a good servant. You are everything you should be. I am the one with no place in any of it, as you’ve been telling me from the start,’ she says, in a measured tone.

‘Don’t give me contrition, girl. It don’t suit you,’ Sophie Bell replies, but the whip-crack tone of her voice has gone slack, has lost all its sting, and wanders instead like her gaze around the room; unravelling like a loose thread from a hem.

Robin emerges just a quarter of an hour later. Hester is in her room, but she hears the study door open and then close with a soft, resolute thump. There had been voices, low and muffled, the entire time the theosophist was in with her husband. Mostly Robin’s, as far as she could tell, with a few loaded pauses; a few hesitant, barely audible words in Albert’s voice. Even through the floor she could sense his uncertainty. And yet she knows, as she hears the theosophist’s footsteps go first into the parlour, and then along the hall to the bottom of the stairs, that he will have got his way. For whatever is Robin’s way is now Albert’s way as well. She sits at her dressing table with her powder puff in her fingertips, poised by her cheek. She had been about to repair the damage her tears had done, but had caught her own eye in the mirror, and halted. Her eyes are puffy, and below them her cheeks seem more sunken and drawn than ever before. Her hair is flat and lifeless, and in the bleak light from the window it has no lustre at all. She is a dull creature indeed, she thinks. No wonder Albert should prefer his fairies, his beautiful theosophist. The powder puff trembles a little, sending a scatter of fine, pale dust down onto the mahogany table top.

Robin’s footsteps on the stairs make her heart jolt. His walk is so instantly recognisable – he makes no effort to be subtle, to tread quietly. He bangs about like a thoughtless child… but no. Hester can no longer think of him as childlike – however unruly his hair, however quick his grin. He knocks respectfully at the door, and she does not answer.

‘Hester? Mrs Canning?’ he calls. She hears the mocking way in which he interchanges these two forms of address, as if it is up to him to choose which one to use, appropriate or no. ‘Hetty? I have good news,’ he says; and though her pulse beats hard inside her head, she still does not reply. In the mirror she sees her lips pinch tightly together, a grim line that makes her even less lovely. There is a long pause, and then he chuckles. ‘I shan’t huff, or puff, or blow your house down… but I have it from Albert that Cat can stay on. There – doesn’t that cheer you up? He has some… conditions to this, which she’s not going to like, but I did my best. At least she’s not to be cast out into the world without means. Hester? Aren’t you going to thank me?’ he asks. No! she cries silently, suddenly sure that whatever the reason he has done this thing, it is in his own interests. ‘Very well. Perhaps you are resting. Perhaps you are sulking. Either way, I shall see you at dinner, Mrs Canning; and thanks to me there will be a maid to serve it to us.’

His footsteps drift idly away, back down the stairs, and Hester breathes again, and tries to be relieved that Cat is not to go. But even this makes her uneasy, because it is his doing and he proclaims it to be on her behalf. Her head is aching, a tight band of pain around her skull. Slowly, she rises, and lies down on the bed. She had meant to think, to plan, but her mind is both full and empty, and she can make no sense of her thoughts, nor find anything in her experience or education to inform her how to act in this alien situation. And neither can she sleep. So she merely lies, in dread of the dinner hour.

Before dinner, and at a crucial point in its preparation, Mrs Bell is summoned under protest to go upstairs and be addressed by the vicar and his wife.

‘Watch those pies, Cat – another five minutes to brown the crusts is all they want,’ she says as she waddles from the room. Cat stares steadily at the doorway once the fat housekeeper has gone through it, and tries to guess what it might mean. The whole house is loaded with tension, paused in anticipation like a clock wound too tight. Perhaps it is only the heat, but perhaps not. Cat watches the pies, and finishes scrubbing the carrots in a bucket of water, and fetches the cream for dessert from the well; and on her return to the kitchen Mrs Bell is back, and will not look her in the eye, and snaps:

‘Never you mind!’ when Cat asks what the summons was about. A while later, she speaks again. ‘You’re to put their food on the dresser when you take it up. Don’t take it to the table – they’ll serve themselves. The vicar… the vicar don’t want you too close to him,’ she says heavily, her voice laden with disapproval as she passes on this injunction.

‘What does he think – that I’ll infect him with something?’ Cat asks, incredulously.

‘How should I know what the man thinks? Just mind what he says and be thankful you’re still here!’ says Mrs Bell.

So Cat serves dinner with a feeling of angry suspicion to make her hands clumsy. She glares at them as she puts each dish on the dresser, but only Robin Durrant will look at her, and he smiles and thanks her with ostentatious ease. Hester’s eyes are fixed with a kind of desperation at the precise centre of the white tablecloth, and the vicar gazes around him with a serenity that seems wholly out of place, wholly disconnected from the room. Afterwards, when all is cleared away and she has been out for a cigarette, keeping close to the eaves of the house as a few bloated raindrops begin to fall, Cat returns to the kitchen to find Mrs Bell standing with her hands in the pockets of her apron and a look on her face that Cat has never seen before. She pulls up short. Something in that look tells her to run, but she ignores it.

‘What is it?’ she asks, warily. Mrs Bell is breathing hard, her nostrils flaring whitely. She almost looks afraid.

‘I’m to accompany you to your room. To make sure you go into it,’ she says at last, the words clipped.

‘Ah, so you’re to be my warden now? They have pitted us against each other.’ Cat smiles resignedly.

‘I may not like it, but that is what I am instructed to do. To see to it you go to bed at the end of the day, and not out to any dens of iniquity…’

‘The vicar’s words?’

‘The very same.’

‘And I suppose nobody will take my word on this any more?’

‘I think you’ve done that to yourself, Cat,’ Mrs Bell replies; and Cat smiles again, just fleetingly.

‘Very well then. Let us go up.’

Walking ahead of the housekeeper on angry feet, Cat is up both flights of stairs and outside her room, arms folded defiantly, by the time Mrs Bells puffs her way laboriously along behind her.

‘Well then, here I am. All ready to be tucked in,’ Cat says.

‘I’m to see you inside your room, and ready for bed.’ Cat steps over the threshold, walks to the bed and sits upon it.

‘Will this do? Or must I strip off and get beneath the sheet?’

‘I don’t like it much, Cat. But you’ve brung it on yourself,’ Mrs Bell replies. She reaches out, takes the door handle and begins to close the door.

‘Wait! I never close it all the way… I can’t stand it. Leave it ajar, if you please,’ Cat says. Mrs Bell hesitates, her face falling even more, a troubled frown making deep folds between her brows. Her spare hand fiddles with something in her pocket, and then she reaches for the door handle again, and her other hand emerges from her apron, and Cat sees a glint of metal in it, a warning flash of reflected light that she has no time to react to.

‘I’m sorry about it, girl,’ Mrs Bell mutters; and then the door is shut and there is a telltale click in the lock.

Cat is on her feet in an instant, and flies to the door.

‘No, no, no!’ she shouts, twisting and heaving at the handle, which creaks in protest but does not yield. Behind it, Mrs Bell’s weighty footsteps recede as hastily as they may along the corridor. With sudden violence Cat doubles up, her stomach lurches, and a thin string of bitter mucus drips from her mouth to the floor. When the spasm passes she finds the walls pressing in around her, her heart squeezing as if it will burst, and black shadows of panic swelling up inside her head. The floor seems to lurch beneath her feet, rolling like deep water. She throws her arms out for balance, such a buzzing in her ears that she can’t even hear her own voice as she shouts for Sophie to come back. She hurls herself at the door, scrabbling at the wood, heedless of the splinters that drive themselves beneath her fingernails. She pounds her fists against it, feels the shock of each blow rattle her bones. But the door does not yield.

Hester, on the floor below, lies sleepless and alone in her bed. Albert retired to his study after dinner, and shows no sign of emerging. So Hester lies and listens to Cat’s shouts, her sobbing and swearing and the way she begs, until she can hardly bear it a second longer. The girl calls for Sophie for a long time, then she pauses, and Hester pictures her catching her breath.

‘Mrs Canning! Mrs Canning! Please let me out! I can’t be locked in! I can’t!’ Cat’s ragged voice comes clearly through the ceiling. Hester goes cold. She holds her breath, prays she will hear no more. ‘Please… I won’t run off! I won’t! Please, let me out!’ On and on it goes. Hester shuts her eyes and puts the pillow over her head, but she can’t block out the girl’s distress completely. She has no choice but to hear it, and finds in it, as the night progresses, an echo of feelings deep inside her own heart.

2011

Leah stormed back to her car, climbed in and slammed the door. In the sudden quiet she caught her breath, and the wind whipped a scattering of damp yellow tree blossoms onto the windscreen. Her scarf was too tight around her neck, her gloves were making her clumsy. The car was stuffy, the air stale, and Leah felt a huge irritation boiling up inside her. She groped in her bag for her mobile, and dialled Mark’s number.

‘Yes?’ he answered with a bark; his default setting of suspicion and barely contained hostility.

‘It’s me,’ she replied, just as shortly.

‘Oh, hello… how did you get on?’

‘I’m at the library now – well, I’m in the car park. Apparently you have to book an appointment to use the microfiche machines, and the local papers from 1911 aren’t online yet, and the machines are booked up all day. The earliest I could get one was tomorrow. How ridiculous is that?’

‘Steady on, Leah – it’s not long to wait. You’re not in London any more,’ Mark said, sounding amused.

‘I know. It’s just really frustrating to get held up like this… perhaps I should go back up to London for the day, and look in the national press?’

‘What’s the rush? The guy’s not going to get any less dead. Or any deader, for that matter. Are you always this impatient?’ he asked, slightly too quickly.

‘Yes! Probably. With a story, anyway.’ She took a deep breath and let it go. ‘How did you get on with the schools?’

‘Stroke of luck there, actually. I rang most of the schools in the area and was getting nowhere – several of them weren’t even founded until the fifties and sixties – but then the headmaster of the last one, a primary school, by some miracle wasn’t too busy to talk to me, and happened to be a local history buff. I told him what Hester said in the letters, and he thought it pretty unlikely that a vicar’s wife would have worked full-time as a teacher – it just wasn’t really the done thing once a woman was married. He says it’s more likely she was volunteering a little time each week – perhaps for Sunday school classes, or cookery – and he suggested we check out The Bluecoat School.’

‘The Bluecoat School? Where’s that?’

‘It’s in Thatcham. It’s not a school any more, but it’s still known by that name. I’m standing right outside the building now, as it happens,’ Mark said.

‘You’re there? Without me? Where exactly?’ Leah demanded, starting the car.

‘Relax – it’s not going anywhere. Come along the A₄ into Thatcham and you’ll see me.’

As Leah drove the sun began to break through widening cracks in the clouds – dazzling shards of light that hurt her eyes. She waited impatiently at traffic lights, fingers drumming on the wheel, and was almost out the other side of Thatcham before she saw Mark, hunched into his raincoat. He pulled one hand from a pocket and waved to her, and she swerved into the kerb, the car behind giving her a loud blast of its horn. She waved vaguely in apology as it sped past, and wound down the window.

‘I almost drove right by you! This is the main road – are you sure this is the right place?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. It’s probably best if you pull off here – there’s parking just a little way up that street,’ Mark said as a lorry squeezed past, narrowly missing her rear bumper.

‘OK, hang on a second.’ She pulled back out into the traffic, got more angry gestures and honks, and followed Mark’s instructions.

As she walked back to where he was waiting, she studied the building that had been The Bluecoat School. Now she came to look at it closely, it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was clearly ancient. A tiny, ancient building with ochre plastered walls and a steeply pitched roof, its shape echoed by the porch over the main door. The stone mullion windows were boarded up, the glass blank; a door in the side wall was barely five feet high, and there were several vacant niches around the walls.

‘But – this must be a chapel, surely?’ Leah asked, as she came to stand next to Mark.

‘Correct. A very old one – almost certainly the oldest building in Thatcham, possibly one of the oldest in Berkshire. Originally the chapel of St Thomas, it was used as an auxiliary school building for years, and then as an antiques shop. Now the council own it, have fixed it up and are wondering what to do with it,’ he said. Leah glanced at him and smiled.

‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

‘That headmaster pointed me to the website,’ Mark admitted.

‘And he thought this was where she would have taught?’

‘He said it was the most likely candidate. It was used as a kind of overflow classroom for the local charitable school, which would have been the most likely to need volunteers like the vicar’s wife to fill in teaching gaps.’

‘But… what about the main school buildings? Couldn’t she just as easily have taught there?’

‘Yes. But this place has one crucial advantage.’

‘Which is?’

‘It’s still standing. The rest of the old school buildings were pulled down to make way for new housing between the wars.’

‘Bugger.’

‘Quite. But at least there’s a chance that this is the place she was talking about – where she hid whatever incriminating evidence it was she’d found.’ He shrugged.

‘I suppose so. Can we go inside?’

‘It’s locked,’ Mark said, with a shake of his head. ‘The caretaker should be here any minute – he’s agreed to show us around. I told him we’re researching a book on ancient chapels, so make sure you act like a scholar.’

‘What did you tell him that for? You could have just told the truth.’

‘I thought this would sound better. And I didn’t want to say we might want to pull up the floorboards and look underneath them. Besides… it’s more fun this way,’ Mark grinned.

‘You really have been living quietly lately, haven’t you?’ Leah said, wryly. Mark shrugged amiably. ‘Pulling up the floor might be a tricky one. We’ll have to think of a way to see if there are any loose boards… perhaps I could ask for a tour of the outside and leave you inside to check it out, or something?’ she suggested.

‘Excellent! It’s like we’re going undercover,’ Mark said.

‘I think you might be getting a bit carried away.’

‘Possibly. This is probably him now – the caretaker. Don’t forget, you’re a scholar and an expert on ancient chapels.’

‘Got it.’

As she spoke, a thin man in a dark blue cagoule appeared, walking briskly around the corner, slumped into a kind of apologetic cringe. He came towards them with his hand extended in front of him like a white flag on a pole. The caretaker’s name was Kevin Knoll; younger than Leah had expected, and blinking like a mole in the spring sunshine. His light brown eyes watered behind thick pebble glasses. His mouth was small, his nose pointed. His whole face and body appeared gripped by some terrible anxiety, but he smiled readily enough as they introduced themselves.

‘Well, I’m sure you’re itching to get inside. It’s such a joy to meet people who still care about these places,’ he said, glancing rapidly to and fro between them. ‘Chapels like this are so quint-essentially English, to me. They represent so much of our history.’

‘Oh, I… couldn’t agree more,’ Leah said, as she followed Kevin to the front door of the building and waited impatiently as he fumbled with the keys. ‘So, I imagine you know a great deal about the history of this building? Its uses over the years?’ she asked. The key clunked in the lock, and the door swung open.

‘In we go. Yes, I suppose I know as much as anybody. Not that I’m an architectural historian like yourselves, of course,’ he said, in modest qualification. Leah shot Mark a quick look, and he winked.

‘Our, uh, research tells us that the building was used as part of a school, about a hundred years ago – is that right?’

‘Yes, that’s right. The local charity school for the children of the poor. Once that closed another local school used it – for their home economics classes, I think it was.’

‘I don’t suppose you have any information about what was taught here? And by whom, back in the days of the charity school?’

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Kevin said, and did look a little afraid not to have the answer. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I don’t know where you’d even look to find that out. I doubt that records survive, if there ever were records… I admit, I rather thought you’d be more interested in the fabric of the building itself?’

‘Oh, we are. It’s just always nice to get a bit of colour into the history,’ Mark said, clearing his throat. ‘It makes a book so much more accessible to readers.’

They walked into the centre of the single room inside the chapel. Pale daylight was streaming through a Gothic arched window in the east-facing wall, reflecting brightly from the whitewashed walls. The incandescence was surprising. Leah had been expecting darkness and gloom, age-old shadows. The windows facing the road were blocked off, as was the tiny side door, but still it felt open, alive. The breeze had followed them in and circled the floor, sending a few bundles of dust to scud around their feet.

‘I’ve always liked to imagine that window in its prime, full of beautiful stained glass…’ said Kevin, looking at them expectantly.

‘Oh, yes – it almost certainly would have had… a truly magnificent piece of artwork in place; before the Reformation,’ Mark agreed hastily. There were empty stone niches here and there inside, but little else to see. No plaques, no tombs. ‘And… er… I understand the building is being used as community space now? And there are plans to extend it?’ he floundered on. But Leah wasn’t listening. She was staring at the floor in abject disappointment. She walked to the far end of the room and turned to face the empty space, bathing herself in white light. Was this where Hester Canning had stood? I know what lies beneath my feet… Leah looked down again. So there it stays, beneath the floor. But this was not the floor Hester Canning had walked. Not the floor she could possibly have hidden anything beneath. Leah took a deep breath, filling with frustration. The floor was made of fresh oak boards. Entirely even, flat and secure; entirely modern.

‘When was the floor replaced?’ she asked, interrupting Kevin as he told Mark about the plans for the building.

‘Oh… fairly recently. Just last year. It was one of the first things we had to do in order to make the space usable, you see; grade one listing or not. The old boards were quite lovely, but entirely eaten away by wet rot and woodworm. They were loose and uneven. They just crumbled around the nails as they were lifted, I understand. We couldn’t even reuse them for anything. They were ruined,’ Kevin told her. Mark was looking down now, following the line of one board with his toe, and frowning.

‘Did they find anything underneath them?’ Leah asked. Kevin gave her a puzzled look. ‘It’s just, you know – with buildings this old you can often make… archaeological discoveries, just by doing something as simple as lifting the floor. Sometimes the original craftsmen have left something behind, something that can give an insight into the time of construction… that kind of thing…’

‘Yes, I see – or superstitious offerings, perhaps?’ Kevin said. ‘Children’s shoes are quite common, aren’t they?’

‘Probably. So, did you find anything?’

‘I’m afraid not. That is, not that I heard about. I wasn’t here every day, of course, while they were doing it, but I’m sure the builders would have mentioned it if they’d found anything…’ Kevin looked at her crestfallen expression and smiled nervously. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you…’

‘Oh, no… it’s just, these incidental finds are a particular passion of mine,’ Leah said, woodenly.

‘Would you like to take some pictures? For your book?’ Kevin asked.

‘Great, thank you,’ said Mark.

A short while later they stepped back out into the cold daylight; Kevin Knoll locked the chapel and took his leave. Leah and Mark walked slowly back to where they had parked their cars. Leah had the tantalising feeling she was beginning to get somewhere, was beginning to track down the story behind the soldier’s letters, and the thought of losing momentum again was almost unbearable. While she had the ball rolling, she had a purpose. When it stopped all the vagueness, the limbo state of her life became obvious again. A heavy feeling of pointlessness; the needle of her inner compass swaying drunkenly to and fro. If Hester Canning had got locked into just such a state – if her life had got stuck on one particular thorn of a problem, never to be worked free, then perhaps it was fate that, in working it free, Leah could unlock her own life at the same time. And she wanted to be able to hand a complete report to Ryan when she saw him next. She wanted to succeed, and give him a name.

As if reading her mind, Mark spoke. ‘Shame. I thought we were really starting to get somewhere then. So, have you got a deadline for this investigation?’

‘Not exactly… the sooner the better. I… my contact at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is here in the UK in about ten days’ time. I said I’d meet him and hand over whatever I’d found out.’ Leah kept her eyes to the front as she said this, and was trying so hard not to give herself away that she felt self-conscious, as if her every inner thought was written large across her face. To her dismay, she felt heat in her cheeks, and sensed Mark’s gaze, thoughtfully taking all of this in.

‘Your contact?’ he echoed, and left the question hanging between them. Leah sniffed. The breeze and bright light were making her eyes water and her nose run. She thought about changing the subject, and about saying nothing. Neither seemed appropriate, somehow.

‘My ex. He got in touch a few weeks back, for the first time in ages. He’s been working over in Belgium, near Ypres, and they found the body – the soldier’s body. When he found Hester’s letters, he called me in to investigate.’

‘Your ex? An ex, or the ex?’

‘Oh, quite definitely the ex. My friends are furious with me for going over there. But it’s the story I’m interested in. Truly. I’ve been so blocked since… well, for a while. Having something to work on again is… just what I needed,’ Leah said, quite truthfully.

They stood in silence for a while, by the parked cars. Mark was frowning, thinking.

‘It’s meant to be the same process as grieving, you know. Breaking up with a long-term partner. You supposedly go through all the same phases – shock, denial, anger, depression, acceptance…’

‘Really? I’m not so sure. When somebody dies, they can’t butt back into your life half a year later and kick you off that neat trajectory, after all.’ She shook her head.

‘True, true. Better not to see them again, I suppose, until you’ve been through it all, and come out the other side,’ he said carefully.

‘Now you sound like Sam. My best friend,’ Leah said. She stared along the busy Bath Road for a few seconds, squinting at the cars pushing impatiently by. ‘But that’s just life, I suppose.’ She shrugged. ‘The best-laid plans, and all that.’

‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’ Mark looked away and pulled his car keys out of his jacket.

‘It’s OK,’ Leah said. She changed the subject. ‘Mark, about what your dad said – do you really think there was a murder at The Rectory?’

He raised his eyebrows, the sun making his grey eyes pale, as glossy and hard as polished granite. ‘If there was, I never heard anything about it.’

‘But he did say it was some big family secret.’

‘He also thought you were Mandy Rice-Davies.’

‘Yes, but what if there was? That would be bad enough for Hester to write those letters about, wouldn’t it? She keeps mentioning guilt and a crime and her silence making her complicit, doesn’t she? And finding something in the library?’

‘It would be bad enough, for sure. But it’s equally possible that Dad was remembering an episode of Inspector Morse…’

‘I don’t think so. He seemed… really convinced. Excited, just like a child would be if they overheard the grown-ups talking about something like that.’

‘Well, who do you think was murdered?’

‘I’ve no idea. But I mean to find out.’

‘Shall we walk somewhere for a while? I feel like some fresh air,’ he said.

They made their way south along The Broadway, over the railway crossing at the station, and down onto the towpath beside the canal. The cloudy green water slid silently by, flat and smooth. The path was busy with cyclists and joggers, dog walkers and young mothers. They walked eastwards by unspoken consensus, back towards Cold Ash Holt. The sun blanched the water-coloured sky and soaked the landscape with a sudden warmth that made the air muggy with moisture. Leah stripped off her jumper and tied it around her waist, only for Mark to pull it free again, throw it over his shoulder.

‘You’ll ruin it that way. The sleeves will stretch,’ he said, absently.

‘Sorry,’ Leah said, bemused. A few narrowboats were moored near town, but they soon left them behind to walk between high banks of vegetation. Trees to the north of the water, fields of spindly brown stalks, as high as their shoulders, to the south. Yellow catkins gyrated in the breeze, and each and every twig ended in a shiny bud; waxy, ready to split. The horse chestnut blossoms were almost out – tall candelabras of fresh green stems, the white flowers still furled, waiting. A breeze scudded westward along the water’s surface, so that it felt as though they were moving faster than in reality.

About a mile out of town they turned south across one of the fields near the village, where the stream had been marshalled into neat, manmade cuts between the gravel pit lakes. They watched the water birds, squinting as the sunlight shone from the water’s surface. There was nobody else in sight now, and no noise.

‘It’s strange to think how much this has all changed since your great-grandmother was here. None of these lakes. The A₄ still just the London Road, with hardly anything on it that wasn’t pulled by a horse,’ Leah said. She felt so close to the woman, when she read her letters. Could almost hear her voice. Then she looked around and found herself a hundred years, a whole world, away. ‘And The Bluecoat School, full of children, full of life. It looked kind of sad today, didn’t it? Sitting there with all that traffic thundering past it.’

‘Well, that’s what the council is trying to change. There’s a charitable trust now as well, raising money to extend it and use it as community space,’ said Mark distractedly, snatching up a long stem of grass and picking last year’s dry seeds from it, a thumbnail full at a time. High above their heads two buzzards circled, their faint cries carried down on the wind for a split second, and then blown away.

‘Are there any pictures of Hester? Or Albert? Back at the house?’ Leah asked suddenly.

‘I don’t think so. Sorry. I think I remember some from when I was a child, but… I haven’t seen them for years. It’s possible Dad got rid of them. When the dementia started he did some odd things. We could look, if you like?’ he offered. Leah nodded. She was putting her piece together already, though there were more blanks to fill in than filled. A long article, with pictures, and extracts from the letters. Laying it all bare, making it all clear. And without thinking about it explicitly, Leah felt she would be doing this for Hester Canning; a favour for a long-dead stranger.

‘How did it start? His dementia?’ she asked gently.

Mark took a slow, deep breath. ‘So gradually. Around about the time I went up to university, I suppose. That’s the last time I remember him just how he used to be. And Mum was still alive – they were so chuffed. Nobody ever thought I’d make it through A-levels.’ He smiled, wryly.

‘Why, were you a tearaway at school?’

‘No, I was as meek as anything. But I’m dyslexic, and the school I was at didn’t believe in dyslexia.’

‘Oh, I see. Forward thinking of them.’

‘Quite. But numbers – numbers I can deal with. So I did maths, and then went into investments… it all worked out better than anyone had predicted, and they were so happy for me. By the time I graduated, Dad was starting to forget words. He’d get halfway through a sentence and get stuck, trying to find the next word. Not difficult words either. “Car”, or “then”, or “February”. Random little words that just sneaked away from him. We all laughed about it for the first couple of years,’ he said, bleakly. Leah had no idea what to say.

‘At least,’ she began, hesitantly, ‘at least the care home seems nice. You hear such horror stories… at least you’ve found him a clean, friendly place where they look after him,’ she ventured.

‘Sometimes I think it’d be better if he’d died,’ Mark said, bleakly.

‘Don’t say that.’ Leah frowned. ‘You don’t know what he’s thinking – it’s quite possible that a lot of the time he’s quite content.’

‘Do you really think so?’ he asked, with an edge of desperation in his voice. They stopped walking, and turned to face one another.

‘Yes, I do. Wrong to call it a blessing, of course, but at least with dementia the person suffering from it is unaware of it. At least, most of the time,’ she said gently.

‘Very wrong to call it a blessing,’ Mark said sadly. ‘I just… whenever I go and see Dad I get into a spiral of… rotten thoughts. Why him? Why so young? What did he ever do to deserve this?’

‘I don’t think it works that way. Not unless you believe in karma. Which I don’t,’ Leah added, firmly. Mark nodded slowly, his face so stricken that Leah’s heart ached in sudden sympathy, and she touched his hand briefly, running her thumb across his knuckles. ‘Come on. Let’s go and look for photos,’ she said.

They walked back to their cars in Thatcham and drove to The Old Rectory, made coffee and started to search the house for family photographs. Leah thought of the boxes in the attic rooms, but after a fruitless hour she had searched barely a fraction of them, and her nose and eyes were streaming. She gave up and went downstairs, her jeans smeared with dust, her fingers grimy. In the library, they shamelessly rifled through the many drawers of the vast desk, but to no avail.

‘Here’s something,’ Mark said, climbing down the rickety ladder that ran along a rail around the room, giving access to the highest shelves.

‘What have you found?’

‘Nothing that exciting – it’s Thomas, my grandfather. When he was still a young man.’ Mark passed her the dusty photo in a crumbling leather frame, and Leah took it eagerly.

‘So this is Hester’s son. The one she talks about in the letters,’ she said, wiping the dust from the glass and studying the image closely. A solid, oblong face with mid-brown hair, combed back from his forehead; deep brown eyes and the trace of a smile. His skin was completely smooth and unlined. ‘Quite handsome,’ she remarked. ‘Do you think he took after Hester?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid. I honestly can’t remember what the photos of my great-grandparents looked like,’ Mark said with a shrug.

‘Still, at least this is something. Can I make a scan of it at some point? It’d be great to include it in my article, especially since she mentions him in both letters.’

‘Of course you can.’

As the sky began to darken outside, they stopped searching and, by unspoken agreement, settled into opposite armchairs to read. Leah went through the vicar’s pamphlet for the second time. The prose was flowery, and the praise glowing, to say the least. The vicar’s excited rapture over these elementals, as he called them, shone from every page, as did his admiration for Robin Durrant, the ‘eminent and learned theosophist’ who had unveiled them to the world. He wrote as if a host of shining angels had descended upon him, rather than a handful of sketchy photographs of a girl in a white dress. She peered closely at the supposed elemental again, trying to pick features out of the grainy smear of her face. The more she studied them, the more she thought she could see, in the dancing picture, a thin, dark line along the edge of the figure’s forehead.

‘It’s a wig!’ she announced, glancing up at Mark to show him what she’d spotted. He was fast asleep, his head tipped sideways onto the wing of the armchair, mouth clamped shut, brows drawn down severely. Leah watched him for a while, noticing the grey in the stubble along his jaw and at his temples; the gaunt shadows under his cheekbones; a slight cleft in his chin. His bony knees were drawn up, and his arms wrapped around them like a child playing hide and seek. From behind the chair, you wouldn’t have known he was in it. There were holes in the toes of his socks. His breathing was slow and deep, as regular as Leah’s own heartbeat. There was something deeply calming, deeply pleasing, in watching him sleep. Leah smiled to herself, and scribbled a note for him, leaving it on the arm of his chair. I’ll be back for dinner – not omelettes, thanks. She got up quietly and let herself out.

The evening was crisp and clear, the sky turning the palest turquoise after sunset, with a tiny high moon like a silver fingernail. In spite of the chill, the scent on the air was soft and damp. A green smell, slowly rising from the grey and brown smells of winter. Leah went to The Old Rectory on foot, having checked the route across fields from the towpath on a map. Her boots were soaked with dew, and her torch beam wobbled in front of her along the ground. From a distance, the lights inside the house made it clearly visible, standing alone on the lane at the edge of the village. She paused, slightly breathless after the brisk walk. Did Hester Canning ever see this view? Or Robin Durrant? Possibly not. It probably wasn’t normal to wander the fields after dark if you were an Edwardian vicar’s wife, or guest. But nevertheless Leah stood for a while and gazed, and with little effort could imagine herself back in time. Opening the door to find the house warm and alive; clean, bright. A piano playing, perhaps, and voices from behind the parlour door; ghosts of laughter echoing up the kitchen stairs. But she stopped herself. This was not how Hester Canning last knew the house, after all. She wrote of its shadows and secrets. She wrote as if it were her prison, as if she were afraid of it; of something within it. Leah shivered slightly and walked the last stretch quickly, watching her feet in the darkness.

Mark opened the door with the usual brute force, smiling as a wave of cooking smells rushed out around him.

‘I really must put a bulb in this light fitting,’ he said, by way of greeting.

‘Something smells good. Doesn’t smell like burnt omelette,’ said Leah.

‘I’ll let you in on a secret – I’m actually a bloody good cook. I was just… not really trying before.’

‘I had my suspicions.’ Leah smiled.

‘Well, I admit I was a bit surprised that you invited yourself for dinner, after the last debacle.’

‘Sorry. That probably was quite rude. But I did bring wine.’ She handed him the bottle as they went through to the kitchen. With the hotplates open and a fan heater whizzing in the corner, the room was warm and almost cosy. Mark had lit some candles and set them around the room.

‘As much for heat as for atmosphere,’ he said, with a slightly awkward smile. ‘Just as well – you look frozen.’

‘I walked here,’ Leah explained, stripping off several layers of clothing.

‘Really? Why?’

‘I just fancied it. And it really is a lot shorter as the crow flies. And I wanted to be able to have some of the wine,’ she said. Mark took it, and peered at the label. ‘Oh, no – you don’t know about wine, do you? It’s only plonk.’ She winced.

‘I do know a bit about wine. And this is not a bad plonk at all. There’s a corkscrew in the top drawer, if you can get it open, that is.’ He went back to the stove as Leah opened the wine. His hair was still damp from washing, and his face looked a little less drawn, a little less hard.

‘So how was your nap?’ she asked.

‘Not bad. Too long. I woke up with a horrendous crick in my neck, and my legs completely numb. You should have woken me.’

‘No way. You looked much too cute, tucked up in that chair. Like a dormouse.’

‘Great. I feel so manly,’ Mark said ruefully, and Leah smiled. ‘How do you like your steak?’

They soon finished the bottle of wine Leah had brought, and Mark disappeared into the cupboard under the stairs to fetch more. They ate and talked until late about their lives before, and about Hester Canning and the fairy photographs, and Mark’s family history. Leah took her cue from him, not mentioning his brother or his father until he did; and not mentioning Ryan at all. And she might have been imagining it, but she thought she could feel Ryan in the room, feel them stepping carefully around the subject of him, and of what had happened between them. As if Mark’s curiosity was a thing she could see or touch, spreading out to probe the room. His gaze was so keen that she felt it penetrate her thoughts if she held it too long, felt that she gave secrets away without saying a word.

‘That was delicious. All memory of the omelette has been wiped from my mind.’

‘I’m very glad,’ Mark said, refilling her glass. Leah took a sip and felt the alcohol warming her, making her languid.

‘So what will you do next? Once you’ve… finished here?’ Leah asked, to break a silence between them that was becoming loaded.

‘Once I’ve finished skulking, and licking my wounds, you mean?’ He lifted one eyebrow.

‘Skulking was your word, not mine.’

‘I really… don’t know. Job hunting, I guess. Once it’s all died down.’

‘It kind of has, you know. I know it hasn’t for you, but I honestly had no idea who you were, when you first told me your name. Other than being excited that I’d found a Canning, that is.’

‘Yes, but I get the impression you’ve been out of it yourself, lately. Out of the loop, I mean. No offence,’ Mark said, holding up one long hand in apology. Leah glanced at him, annoyed for a second that she should be so transparent again.

‘How could you possibly know that?’

‘Takes one to know one.’ He shrugged. ‘But perhaps you’re right. I’m sure my flash in the pan is over with. It just… doesn’t feel like it. But I’m going to sell the house. That I have decided.’

‘Oh,’ Leah said, with a pull of sadness inside, though she couldn’t think what possible right she had to feel anything about it.

‘Will you tell me about it? Your war wound – what it is that makes your face drop like a stone sometimes?’ he asked softly, intently.

‘Does it?’ she said airily, looking away across the room.

‘You know it does. Come on, Leah.’ He tilted his head to catch her eye.

Leah sighed, shrugged. ‘There’s really nothing to tell. Split up with boyfriend last year. Slight broken heart. Not quite ditched the emotional baggage, blah blah blah…’

‘Did he sleep with someone else?’

‘I really don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, more sharply than she’d meant to. For some reason, discussing Ryan with Mark was intolerable. It made her want to jump up from the table and run, to hide her head in her hands. But what did she have to be ashamed of? Why should she be the one who felt like curling up in shadows somewhere, where nobody could ever see her or touch her again? Because I didn’t guess. Because I’m a bloody, bloody idiot, she answered her own question. Because I still love him.

‘There, see? Not easy, is it. People are supposed to be able to talk their way through anything these days,’ Mark murmured, watching her closely.

Leah looked at him, frowning, and considered her answer carefully. ‘I talked about it to all and sundry right after it happened. And yes, he did sleep with somebody else, but it was far, far worse than that simple phrase makes it sound. A while back I couldn’t stop talking about it, as if I could… argue my way out of the situation I was in. But now… now I think there’s not much more to say about it. And when I do say something it… infuriates me,’ she said, struggling to explain. Mark said nothing. Their hands, on the table between them, rested two inches apart; fingers curled. ‘What about you? Have you… talked through what happened to your brother?’ As soon as she spoke, Leah regretted it. At the mention of his brother, Mark recoiled as if she’d slapped him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It’s… a completely different thing, I know.’

‘How do you know?’ he said; sadly, not unkindly. ‘How can anybody know about something like that? I had no idea, until I lived through it.’

‘You’re right. I don’t know,’ Leah said in contrition. She gulped her wine uncomfortably.

‘I haven’t talked about it to anyone. Who could I talk to? Dad?’

‘A friend?’

‘They disappeared, a lot of them. It was… too huge,’ he said, pouring more wine. ‘It made them uncomfortable.’ In the pause after he spoke, the candles bobbed in the many draughts creeping into the kitchen, dancing merrily to a private tune.

‘You can… tell me. If you want,’ Leah said.

‘But you know already, don’t you?’ Mark said, abruptly.

‘I know what the papers wrote. I don’t know the truth. I don’t know what it was like.’

‘And do you want to know?’

‘If you want to tell me,’ she said. Mark looked away, at the black window glass and his own dim reflection in it. Leah saw the muscle begin to twitch beneath his eye, and his jaw clench spasmodically. A physical reaction to even the thought of speaking about it. She put out her hand instinctively, and squeezed his arm. Beneath the layers of his clothes, the flesh was hard and unyielding. Skin over sinew and bone, and tension in every fibre of it.

‘You don’t have to,’ she said.

‘I know. But I can’t feel any worse, and maybe I might feel better… I don’t know how much you’ve read in the papers, so I’ll just tell it from the start. My older brother James was my hero when we were kids. He was just the archetypal best big brother. He helped me build my model aeroplanes, taught me how to bowl a cricket ball, how to actually hit something with my air gun. How to chat up girls – very badly, I must say. I suppose the age gap between us was big enough that we didn’t compete for things. We didn’t fight much. He was five years older than me. Anyway. I loved him very much. We stayed close even once we’d grown up and left home. I loved his wife Karen, too, when they got married fifteen years ago. He’d always been a bit of a cad with women, I suppose. He didn’t mean to… he just seemed to attract them, and had a hard time resisting them. He had a long string of girlfriends and sometimes they overlapped more than they ought to have; but Karen was different. She sussed him out straight away, and let him know she wasn’t going to put up with any of his nonsense. She’s Catholic, so they got married before anything else, and I can honestly say he’d never been happier. His job was going great – he was a lawyer, making good money. They were muttering about making him partner. The kids came along, everything was fine. Domestic bliss. I went there every Christmas – Mum and Dad too. He loved it – lording it up, showering us with hospitality.

‘Then he got ill. He started to lose his balance – worse some days than others. He was moody and distracted – which was a sure sign something was wrong. James was always cheerful. Why wouldn’t he be? He led a charmed life.’ Mark paused, turning his glass around in front of him. Slowly, slowly; anticlockwise. The foot of it vibrated against the table top, sending shivers down Leah’s spine. ‘He had unexplained pains, stiff joints. He couldn’t grip things any more. He got clumsy, kept tripping over. He choked a lot on his food, and… sometimes when he wasn’t even eating. Just watching TV… choked on his own saliva. Then his speech started to slur. So eventually he went to the doctor’s. Put it off as long as he could, like a typical man. A man who’d never taken a sick day from work in his life. They sent him for a raft of tests and I was expecting him to come out and say it was an inner ear infection, or something up with his circulation. A nasty, lingering virus at worst. It was motor neurone disease. The diagnosis floored him – floored us all. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to be exact. Life expectancy three to five years. James was in a wheelchair within nine months of the diagnosis. This for a guy who won the tennis club tournament four years running, and had three kids under the age of twelve.’ Mark looked up at Leah. She had stopped fiddling with her own wine glass and was listening in mute agony. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do. She felt like a prisoner at the table, trapped in the inevitability of his story.

‘And he knew… he knew how he was going to end up. Incontinent. Unable to speak, to feed himself, to do anything. Slowly dying. He was wasting away right in front of our eyes… every time I saw him…’ Mark shook his head, swallowed convulsively. ‘I knew what he was going to ask us to do. He called Karen and me into the room one afternoon; sent the kids outside. And told us, the two people who loved him most in the world, that he wanted to die. Karen went crazy. She called him a coward, and worse – that he didn’t want to fight it, that he was giving up. Accused him of abandoning her and the kids. God, she said some terrible things! I thought she was just… wild with grief. I thought she’d come around. Because I was willing from the start. I didn’t want to lose him – I’d have done anything to keep him. But there was no keeping him – he knew it and I knew it. And I’d have done anything to stop him suffering. I thought Karen would accept it eventually, but… she didn’t. She was adamant. Suicide was not acceptable to her, and of course neither was murder. That’s what she called me, when I tried to persuade her. A murderer.

‘Another six months of this went by, and even though we didn’t talk about it much it was there. Every time I went to visit. Every time I saw Karen, she had this look in her eye – this awful, angry, admonishing look. Daring me to mention it. Warning me not to. And every time I was alone with James, he begged me to help him. He couldn’t even get himself in and out of his chair by then. They had carers coming to the house four times a day. His worst nightmare was coming true.’ Mark paused again, put his hand over his mouth for a second, as if to stop the words from coming out. ‘I wrote letters for him saying it was what he wanted and that I was only doing what he’d begged me to do. He signed them as best he could. One morning he gave the kids an extra thorough goodbye before they went to school. Then while Karen was taking them there, I gave him sleeping pills. As many as he could swallow. I bought them on the internet… God knows what was in them. But they worked. He… died. He died.’

‘Mark, I’m so sorry…’

‘You haven’t heard the best part yet. Karen reacted… as was to be expected, I suppose. And more so. She tore up the letters when I showed them to her. My own stupid fault – I should have made copies. She destroyed them and went straight to the police to report his murder. I just don’t know… I don’t know why she did that! I still don’t understand… that she could be so deeply in denial, and not know in her heart that this was what James wanted. That it was the best and kindest thing anybody could have done for him. Then his will was read and he’d left all that money to me – money to keep Dad in the home for a bit longer, without having to sell the house. Once the press got hold of that they tore me to pieces.’

‘But the trial was over in no time… everybody could see you’d acted from compassion. The judge even said it should never have gone to court…’

‘Tell that to Karen and the kids. And to the journalists with their bloody “Cain and Abel” headlines. She’s told the kids terrible things, Leah. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see them again. If they’ll ever forgive me.’

‘But… did they know he was dying? Did they know that?’

‘I’m not sure. I never spoke to them about it… Karen told me she was handling it. So I don’t know. I don’t know.’

‘But… once they’re older, once they can find out for themselves how ill he was… I’m sure they’ll want to see you,’ she tried.

‘Well. I suppose only time will tell. So now it’s just me and Dad. He’s the only family I’ve got left. That’s willing to speak to me, anyway. Some of the time.’

‘That’s terrible. Mark, I… I really don’t know what to say,’ Leah said, helplessly.

‘There’s nothing to say. But now you know; and I wish I could say I feel better, telling you about it. But I really don’t.’ He took a deep breath, released a long, shuddering sigh.

‘It’s far too soon for you to be thinking you ought to feel better,’ she told him carefully. ‘You lost your brother, and all the shit afterwards meant you didn’t have a chance to mourn him.’

‘Well, I’ve got time now, haven’t I? Work fired me, of course. So much for innocent until proven guilty. They said my work had been falling below par for some time and it had nothing to do with the impending trial. Which is bollocks.’

‘We could take them to a tribunal,’ Leah said. We. How unexpectedly that word had slipped from her tongue. Her stomach gave a tiny jolt, but Mark didn’t seem to notice.

‘What’s the point? I don’t want any of it back. Any of that old life. How can you go back to things, anyway? When everything is torn apart? You just have to start all over. Might as well be in a new place. A new job,’ Mark said, finally sipping his wine.

‘You do have to start all over,’ Leah agreed. The lines on his face had faded away, smoothed out of relief by the candles’ glow. She took his hands across the table top, meaning only to hold them briefly, to give strength through the touch of human skin. But Mark gripped her fingers tightly, and didn’t let go. Leah met his gaze, as the pain she felt for him changed, became something like fear.

‘Stay tonight,’ he said. Leah opened her mouth but no words came out, and her heart lurched into her throat to choke her. The silence stretched and Mark let go of her hands. ‘There’re plenty of bedrooms, after all,’ he said, awkwardly.

Leah took a steadying breath. ‘I can walk back to the pub. It really isn’t far,’ she said.

Mark’s mouth twitched into the slightest of smiles. ‘Of course,’ he said.

In the morning, Leah rose early and drank a coffee standing at the window of her room at The Swing Bridge, where the glass panes were misted by a night of her own damp exhalations, and the day outside was tentatively bright. Her head was heavy and tender after the wine of the night before, and she couldn’t marshal a clear thought about Mark or what he had said to her. Downstairs there were sounds of movement from the kitchen, metal pans and cutlery rattling. The smell of bacon wafted up the stairs and under her door, and her stomach rumbled; but she didn’t have time for breakfast.

Leah was at the library for when the doors opened at half past nine. She was shown the microfiche collection, and how to use the machines, and was soon scrolling through the local papers from a century ago with her heart speeding in anticipation. Following a hunch, she started with the year that Robin Durrant’s discredited photographs were taken, and taking the hints from Hester’s letters, she started with the summer months. Not even halfway into August 1911, she caught her breath, clapping her hand over her mouth inadvertently. There it all was, just like that; the story stretching out for a few weeks, into the autumn of that year. She read, and read again, and tried to scribble a few key facts into her notebook, but her handwriting had gone wild and erratic, barely legible. Smiling, she gave up and pulled out her phone, ignoring the glare and tutting of the person using the machine next to her as she dialled Mark’s number.

‘Leah? Found something?’ he answered, and in his clipped tone she read something of the same ambiguity she herself had felt that morning. Storing this fact away for now, she took a deep breath.

‘I’ve found everything, Mark. It’s all here! And pictures… wonderful photos of Hester and Albert, and of the theosophist… Everything!’

‘You mean, something did happen? When?’

‘That summer – the summer Hester was talking about. The summer of 1911,’ Leah said, her voice tight with excitement. ‘And I think… I think I know why our soldier kept those two particular letters of Hester’s…’

‘Leah – tell me what happened! Was it a murder?’

‘Oh yes, there was a murder. A dreadful and violent one.’

‘Well, who was it? Who was killed? And by whom?’ Mark pressed.