In Her Shadow Page 2

  I tried to smile but my face didn’t feel like smiling.

  ‘Chocolate Bourbon biscuits,’ she said. ‘Those were my daughter’s favourites. Do you like Bourbons, dear?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Don’t forget then. Come back to see me. You will, won’t you? Promise me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said in a very quiet voice. Jago was dragging the rucksack through a large patch of dying nettles by one of its straps. When he reached me, we turned together and walked slowly back to the gates. We waved goodbye to the old lady, and as soon as we were hidden by the wall, we began to run as if our lives depended on it, to the crossroads and then down the hill that led to Cross Hands Lane, where we lived.

  Jago and I amused ourselves for some time afterwards, pretending to be the witch.

  ‘I’m so fond of children,’ Jago used to say in a crackly, creepy voice. ‘Especially … for breakfast!’ And he’d reach out his hands which he’d made into claws and pounce on me. He used to make me cry with laughter and fear.

  I never did go back to see Mrs Withiel, although I passed Thornfield House almost every day. I was too ashamed to look up to the window to see if she was watching, waiting for me, hoping I would go in and talk to her, and I tried not to think of the biscuits she would have bought specially going stale and soft in their packet.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I COULDN’T RECOVER from what I had seen at the museum that afternoon, couldn’t pull myself together, so Rina took me home. Her small car laboured through the city and into Montpelier, pulling up outside the building where I lived. My flat was on the first floor of a house that had been converted for multiple occupancy, squeezed between a trendy flower shop and one that sold second-hand clothes. The pavement to one side was cluttered with clothes-rails hung with brightly coloured dresses and shirts, and on the other with dark green plastic buckets filled with lilies, daffodils and tulips.

  Rina helped me out of the car, put her arm around me and bustled me up the steps to the front door of my house, into the untidy communal hallway and up the narrow, carpeted staircase that led to the first-floor flat.

  I felt better there. Everything was pale, muted, neutral. It was calming. My little grey cat, Lily, wound herself around my ankles and I picked her up and pressed my face into her soft fur.

  ‘Go and lie down while I make you a drink,’ Rina said.

  ‘I’ll be fine now.’

  ‘Do as I say. Let me look after you for a little while.’

  Rina gave me a gentle push towards the bedroom. I drew the curtains, lay on the bed and was immediately overwhelmed with a fatigue so intense it seemed as if a great weight had been placed on my chest. I pulled the duvet over my body, let my heavy head sink into the pillows, felt the mattress absorb my angles. The cat pawed at the duvet, her little feet patting, tugging. I tried to relax but my mind would not stop spinning. When Rina came into the room some minutes later with a glass of camomile tea, my eyes were still wide open.

  ‘Were you very close to this friend of yours?’ Rina asked, leaning over me, stroking my forehead as if she were soothing a child with a temperature. I could taste the mintiness of her exhaled breath.

  ‘We were like sisters. Closer than sisters.’

  ‘It must have been hard when you lost her.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  I turned my head to look towards the window. The top sash was open a foot or so and the cream-coloured curtains lifted softly in the air and then collapsed again, as if they were breathing. Outside were the familiar noises of traffic, children, music, dogs and the clatter of the kitchen being prepared for service in the restaurant down the road.

  ‘What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Ellen Brecht.’

  ‘What happened to her, Hannah?’

  ‘It was an accident. She drowned.’

  ‘Oh, how dreadful. Were you with her?’

  ‘No. I was in Chile. I only found out a long time after.’

  Rina smoothed the bedlinen. ‘So you never had a chance to say goodbye?’

  ‘No.’

  Rina gave a sad sigh. I looked up at her. I wanted her to understand.

  ‘We didn’t part on good terms, Ellen and I,’ I said. ‘The last time I saw her … The last time we spoke …’

  ‘Yes?’

  The memory was like a pain inside me, like a fist clenched around my heart, bleak and cold as winter. I couldn’t put it into words. I couldn’t describe what had happened.

  ‘It was a misunderstanding,’ I said, although that statement was nowhere near significant enough to describe what had happened between Ellen and me. ‘I thought we’d be able to put things right, I thought there’d be plenty of time – but there wasn’t.’

  Rina sighed. ‘These things happen. Young girls can be very passionate.’

  The palm of her hand was flat on the bed.

  ‘Did something happen today to remind you of Ellen?’ she asked.

  ‘I dreamed of her last night.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  It wasn’t unusual for me to dream of Ellen, though. I dreamed of her, and Thornfield House, most nights. The previous night I’d dreamed the big old house was derelict, burned-out, the roof caved in, the window-glass broken, the curtains grey and torn blowing through the shards, the trees and plants in the garden black and skeletal, cobwebbed, covered in ash. I was inside, searching the empty rooms, withered flowers scattered on bloodstained floorboards, looking for Ellen. I knew she was there somewhere – I could hear her crying in the distance – but in my dream, I couldn’t remember where I was supposed to look. I was walking blood through the house; it was wet on the soles of my bare feet; my hands were covered with it – each time I touched a wall I left behind a red smear. All the time the piano music was playing, winding round me like a mist; it was a requiem. And then the music faded and all that remained was the sound of Ellen crying as if her heart was breaking. ‘Ellen!’ I called. ‘Where are you? Ellen?’

  She did not answer.

  Rina said: ‘Hannah, shhh, it’s all right now,’ and I realized I must have cried out.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.

  Rina looked concerned.

  ‘Perhaps you should have a break,’ she said. ‘You work so hard, dear, and I don’t remember the last time you had a holiday. Why don’t you take a few days off?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right. Maybe I will.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Rina said. ‘Think of somewhere nice you can go. The countryside maybe? The coast?’

  I lay warm and comfortable in the bed and allowed myself to be calmed by Rina’s presence. I knew I would eventually sleep. Lily crept up onto the pillow beside me, turned several circles and tucked herself up. I watched the gentle billow and lift of the curtain at the window and remembered the first time I saw Ellen, how it had been a bright, sunny day, how it was the day when everything began, and began to end, for both of us.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS A long time ago, but not so far back as before; nearly two years after Jago and I spoke to Mrs Withiel. The memories are clearer now, sharp in my mind, the snapshots organized, if a little faded around the edges. It was the school summer holidays. I was ten and Jago was twelve. Jago still lived next door to me with his uncle and aunt, Caleb and Manda Cardell, and we were still the only children in Trethene village. Mrs Withiel had been dead for some time and Thornfield House had been boarded up and abandoned – left to go to pot, my father said. It had been sliding towards dereliction.

  There had been a fight at the Cardells’ the night before. Dad had been out, working a late shift at RNAS Culdrose. Mum and I were at home, stoically trying not to listen to what was going on next door. Perhaps if we had had a phone Mum would have called for help, but none of the local authority-owned cottages in Cross Hands Lane had telephones in those days. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. People in Trethene didn’t interfere in other people’s business.

  When something, or
someone, crashed into the wall that divided the Cardells’ cottage from ours with such force that the pictures on our side had jumped on their hooks and fallen crooked, Mum said, ‘I can’t listen to this any longer,’ and put on her coat with some unspecified plan in mind – but then the shouting had stopped. Mum and I had gone upstairs to look out of my bedroom window and we saw Mrs Cardell in the back yard, all blue and silver in the moonlight, shivering in a thin cardigan and slippers and smoking a cigarette. Mr Cardell had come out and the dog had hidden under the rabbit hutch. Mr Cardell had put both his arms round his skinny wife and held her tight and kissed her frizzy yellow hair. The two of them stood together, rocking. I could see the red light at the end of the cigarette that Mrs Cardell had dropped, winking up at her through the night.

  After fights like this, Mrs Cardell wouldn’t come out of the house for a few days. She’d send Jago to fetch her packets of Embassy from the village stores.

  But this was the next day, the morning after. I was pushing my bike up the lane when Jago fell into step beside me. He started to act out the plot of a film he’d seen on television. He shot at imaginary adversaries concealed in the rambling rhododendron bushes that lined the lane, swaggered and blew the smoke from the barrels of his finger-guns. I held onto the handlebars of my bike and watched.

  ‘You’re a nutter,’ I said.

  He laughed. He was happy because after a big fight, things were often better at the Cardells’ – for a while.

  At the top of the hill, we turned left and I leaned, panting, over the handlebars. I was proud of my bike. It was a BMX my father had bought from a man in the Royal Naval Air Station. I rang the bell a couple of times with my thumb but Jago didn’t take any notice.

  ‘Have you got any money?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You should have. We could have got an ice cream.’

  I pulled a face at him and then we stopped together. We’d reached the entrance to Thornfield House and for the first time in months it looked different.

  After Mrs Withiel’s death, planks had been nailed over the windows, and the gates had been propped up and padlocked. Wisteria grew rampantly over the walls and the garden became so overgrown that it was impossible to make out the features that had once been there, the lawn, the path, the drive.

  But that day, the gates had been removed and the shutters taken away from the windows; some of them were open. Nettles, brambles and saplings had been cut down and piled high in one corner of the garden, and the flagstone path that led to the front door had been cleared.

  Jago and I exchanged glances. He scratched behind his ear.

  ‘We ought to go and have a look,’ he said. ‘To make sure nobody’s inside, thieving.’

  His face was serious, one eyebrow slightly raised, and his thumbs were tucked into the sides of his jeans. He was pretending to be somebody from a film. Jago was always pretending to be somebody he wasn’t.

  ‘What if there is someone inside?’

  ‘Then we’ll tie them up and get a reward.’

  I propped my bike against the wall.

  ‘I don’t think we should go in,’ I said. ‘We’ll be trespassing.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jago said. ‘I’ll go first.’

  He crept forward, light as a cat in his tatty old trainers. I followed at a distance. The garden around the drive was so green and dense with overhanging branches and plant-life that I had the impression of falling into water. Bees buzzed in the heat and the air was heavy with the scents of flowers.

  Jago pushed at the front door. It creaked beneath the palm of his hand and when he pulled it away, flakes of old green paint were stuck to his skin. He wiped his hand on the side of his jeans.

  ‘Hello?’ he called softly, then more confidently: ‘Hello-o!’ but there was no answer. He looked at me over his shoulder, beckoning with his eyes. He went into the house and I followed.

  It took me a few moments to accustom myself to the gloom of the interior. The hall floor was tiled, the walls were tall and elegant with ceiling roses and fancy cornices. The air that had been trapped inside for so long smelled stale but a faint, summery draught was breezing through, chasing away the mustiness. A fly corkscrewed through the hall, and Jago and I stepped carefully forward, looking into each of the abandoned rooms. The odd piece of furniture remained shrouded in dust-sheets, casting shadows in the huge oblong shafts of mote-filled sunlight that fell through the windows. An enormous grand piano had been uncovered and stood proud in the centre of the front room.

  I knew Mrs Withiel had lain dead in the house for three weeks before her body was discovered, and wondered where exactly she had been and if I would recognize the spot when I saw it by the aura of unquiet that must hover over it. The thought of the old woman lying there, alone in the dark, sent a chill of horror through me. I knew I’d walked past Thornfield House many times when she had been inside, dead, and the knowledge frightened me. What if I’d looked up and seen her ghost watching through the upstairs window? I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.

  ‘Come on!’ Jago called under his breath. He ran upstairs and I followed him into one of the large front rooms. The walls were covered with floral pink-and-green paper, the pattern mostly faded but still strong in the places where the furniture had protected it from the sun. Jago dropped to his hands and knees and peered into a mouse-hole in the skirting board. I went to the window. Wisteria blooms hung like paper garlands, framing the view. A lorry slowly passed by on the lane beyond, and stopped. I could see the top third of it over the wall. And then I sensed, rather than heard, somebody come into the room, and I turned and there was a girl: Ellen.

  She was close to me in age and about the same height, but that was where the similarities ended. She had dark hair, a fringe, dark eyes. She was slightly built, long-legged, wearing denim shorts and a sleeveless green T-shirt and although her feet were bare, her toenails had been painted bright green. I was pink and fair, big-boned, round with puppy fat, sticky with sweat and dressed in a pastel-striped T-shirt and towelling shorts.

  I had never seen anyone my age as self-composed as this girl and felt childlike in comparison. I tugged at the legs of my stupid, babyish shorts. The elastic was tight around my tummy. I wished I hadn’t put my blonde hair into pink bobbles that morning. I wished I wasn’t so hot.

  Jago scuttled to his feet, brushed himself down and cleared his throat. He licked his lips, anticipating trouble. Adult voices rose up from outside and the rumble of a heavy-duty engine. ‘Left hand down!’ someone called. ‘Mind the wall!’

  ‘Who are you?’ the girl asked. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her accent was strange and attractive, her words more precisely enunciated than ours.

  ‘We’re just checking everything’s OK,’ Jago said in a formal voice. He was pretending to be older than he was. He was trying to impress the girl. I frowned at him. ‘What about you?’ he asked casually. ‘Why are you here?’

  The girl laughed a little artificially and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. She was showing off too. ‘I’m Ellen Brecht. This was my grandmother’s house but now we’re going to live here.’

  ‘The old lady was your grandma?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She told us about you.’

  Ellen’s eyes widened. ‘Did she?’

  ‘She said you never visited.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’ Ellen wandered over to the window. She held back the net, accidentally replicating the exact pose her grandmother used when she looked out. ‘My mama worried about Grandma all the time. I told her she would be all right. She was, wasn’t she? She wasn’t lonely?’

  Jago and I exchanged glances. Jago scratched the eczema on the inside of his elbow. Was it possible Ellen did not know the circumstances of her grandmother’s death?

  ‘She looked fine last time we saw her,’ Jago said. ‘Only … she said some weird things.’

  Ellen dropped the net. ‘What things?’

  Jago gazed round the roo
m. ‘I dunno. About the devil keeping you away from her … and stuff.’

  ‘That’s silly! We couldn’t come and see her because we were living in Germany, that’s all.’

  I felt embarrassed. I frowned at Jago. He pulled a face back.

  ‘What are your names?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘I’m Jago and she’s Spanner.’

  ‘Hannah,’ I said, and I pushed his arm.

  ‘Are you her brother?’

  ‘No. We live next door.’

  Ellen examined us for a while, as if to get the measure of us. Then she said: ‘Come and meet Mama.’ She looked at Jago. ‘Only don’t tell her about the devil stuff.’

  We followed Ellen downstairs, where her mother, slight and glamorous, was leaning on a stick, and her father, who looked to me like a film star in skinny black jeans and a black shirt, was waving a cigarette around and directing the removal men as to where to place the chaise longue with which they were struggling.

  Ellen’s mama was about as different from my mother as it was possible for another woman to be. She was young, slight and beautiful. Shiny hair slip-slid down her back, falling in lovely brown curls over a dress the colour of terracotta. She wore cherry-coloured lipstick and her teeth were small and straight and white.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Who have we here?’

  ‘This is Jago and Hannah,’ Ellen said. ‘They were friends with Grandma.’

  ‘You knew my mother?’ Ellen’s mama asked, and without waiting for a reply she stepped forward and embraced me, and then Jago, sweetly and tenderly. She smelled exotic and her skin was soft as silk against my cheek. She stepped back and looked at us with her head slightly to one side. Her sunglasses were pushed up onto her forehead, holding back her hair. She wore gold hoops in her ears and a chain with a treble clef charm around her slender neck, and she would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for the joints of her fingers and wrists, which were badly misshapen.