Lily's House

by Cassandra Parkin

  I’m trying hard not to get fond of her, but she’s a dear little thing. Marianne, of course, has already given her heart entirely away. I run my hand down her arched back and up the long, striped length of the tail. Is the cat a witness to a murder as well? Or was she merely Lily’s familiar?

  Perhaps there’s one more way to be sure.

  I go to the pantry, climb the steps and peer onto the very highest shelf. A bottle of sherry. A bottle of rum. A bottle of brandy. At the back of the shelf, the keys to the cellar. Lily always kept the key high and hidden, claiming she was afraid I might go down by myself and fall on the steps.

  Shutting the door in the cat’s face, I run down the stairs and go to the entrance built into the stairwell that leads down to the house’s roots. Four separate households share these cellars, but only Lily ever came down here.

  At the very back of the long damp strip-lit chasm is the door to Lily’s darkroom. The padlock is rusted slightly shut, as if even now Lily doesn’t want me to get in here, but I jiggle the key and tug at the lock until finally it gives way. I shut the door and turn on the red lamp and look around to see what there is.

  Lily’s worktable is as neat as it always was. Here, at last, is her camera, and the neat row of chemicals lined up at the back, against the wall. Above my head, the line of pegs for hanging. The developing trays laid out side by side. One is covered with a sheet of greaseproof paper.

  I lift the sheet and there they are, the dried prickly cases like conker casings, and within the tight-packed seeds that looks like apple pips. Thorn apples.

  I touch one cautiously with my fingertip, and watch the seeds dislodge from their casing, pouring exuberantly out onto the paper. So small and innocent-looking. I wonder what the lethal dose is. Can datura be absorbed through the skin? I must be sure to wash my hands carefully before I eat anything.

  “Lily,” I say out loud, and wonder what my voice might sound like in the cool confinement of the darkroom. “Lily, what did you do?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six – Jen

  My unconscious is trying to warn me of something in a way I haven’t felt since I was pregnant with Marianne. All week I’ve been dreaming of storms and journeys, of strange rooms and lost cats and railway-station partings. For the last three mornings I’ve woken to find myself standing by the front door with my keys in my hand. My bones hum with the awareness that something’s about to change. What will it be? The answer lurks in the dark, but I can’t yet bring it into my consciousness.

  I try to hide all of this from Daniel, but he knows me too well. What’s going on? he demands, and when I answer, I don’t know, it’s just bad dreams, why does it have to mean anything? he accuses me of hiding things from him. He texts me dozens of times a day, growing frantic if I don’t answer immediately. Twice he turns up at the office, allegedly to take me out for a nice lunch, but in fact to make sure I’m not meeting someone else in the only scrap of potential free time he’s unable to account for.

  I’m desperately sorry for the pain I’m causing him, but I can’t seem to stop it. No matter how warm and loving I try to make our partings and greetings, no matter how diligently I respond to his text messages, no matter how much simulated passion I offer, he insists I’m withdrawing, growing distant. I deny all of it, and redouble my efforts. Marianne wakes me multiple times each night, screaming inconsolably in her sleep. My boss takes me to one side and asks me if everything’s all right. When I tell him I’m fine, he looks at me very seriously and says that I don’t need to tell him what’s going on but he’s on my side and he’s got my back and if I need some time, I should take it.

  It comes to a head in the way these things always do for us: an argument that spirals into the inevitable violent confrontation. It’s my fault for provoking him. He’s bought a second-hand amp from a mate in the pub. I know how sensitive he is about money. His self-esteem is worth far more to me than forty-five pounds. But I can’t seem to stop myself. Maybe I even crave it, as a release from the tension that we’re living in. Afterwards he holds me and sobs against my neck, and I stroke his head and tell him it’s all right, we will be all right, we’ll find a way through, it’s only the pressure of being short of cash, but soon everything will come right and then we’ll never have to worry again.

  “But what if we never do?” he asks. “This isn’t where we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to be rich by now. I was going to make our fortune.”

  “You still will. There’s all the time in the world.”

  “But what if I don’t?”

  I don’t have an answer for that, so instead I comfort him in the way we both know always works. In the wild tenderness that we only find in the aftermath of our periodic storms, we fall asleep in each other’s arms, sated and at peace. I wake the next morning to find Daniel has me by both shoulders and is shaking me so hard my teeth rattle against each other.

  “Wake up, wake up, wake up!” His face is like a marionette’s, set in a single terrifying grimace. “Wake up! Wake up! Stop it! Wake up!”

  “All right, I’m awake, I’m awake, stop it, please. I’m awake.” He lets me go and takes a deep breath. “Shush, you’ll wake Marianne. What’s the matter?”

  “You were crying in your sleep. On and on and on.”

  I touch my face. My cheeks are wet.

  “What were you dreaming? Were you dreaming about leaving me? Is that why you were crying? Who is it?”

  “Of course not! I’d never leave you, you know that.”

  “What else would make you cry like that?”

  “It was just a dream!”

  “Your dreams are never just dreams, you’ve got second sight, you know you have. If you leave me I’ll kill myself, I can’t manage without you. Were you dreaming about me being dead?”

  “No, of course I wasn’t! I… wait—”

  “What? What?” He grips my arm. “Talk to me!”

  It was a dream about death. That sounds familiar. In fact, all of this is familiar. When have I felt like this before? I remember all of it from some other time; the dreams, the discord, like a storm about to break. I remember death and new life; leaving and returning; the heartbreak of a terrible choice. I remember my dream from last night.

  I was in my bed at Lily’s house, half awake in the comforting glow of my bedside lamp. When Lily came in, she was wearing her raincoat and her slick black rain hat. She looked old and tired, but also serene.

  Well, my darling, she said, this is it.

  Are you going out? To the beach? Is it raining?

  Oh yes. The biggest storm you’ve ever seen.

  Can I come with you to watch?

  Not this time. Now, I’ve left everything as tidy as I can, but I’m afraid there are some things I had to leave for you to do. But don’t worry. You’re my clever granddaughter and you’ll know what to do when the time comes. She bends and kisses my cheek. Get some sleep. You’ll have a long journey ahead of you.

  “The phone’s ringing,” I say to Daniel. “You need to answer it.”

  “How do you know the phone’s…? It doesn’t matter, ignore it, the machine can pick it up, we need to talk.”

  “No. You need to answer it, right now. It’s important.” Daniel’s face is white and frightened. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”

  “Who… who is it? What do they want?”

  “I don’t know who it is,” I tell him, “but they’re calling to tell me that Lily has died.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Friday

  It’s evening, and Marianne and I are walking up the hill from the station. She’s holding my hand even though these days she employs all sorts of gentle strategies to avoid this, which tells me that she’s as tired as I am. Her lips are smudged with the scarlet lipstick she loves, and there’s a large ladder in the back of her tights. The street is bathed in the thick light that haunts my dreams, the slow summer evening sunshine of the Cornish coastline, honey-coloured and drowsy-sweet.

  “Only a
bit further,” I tell her, squeezing her hand. She smiles at me and pushes her hair off her face, and I’m struck again by how little she resembles Daniel. For all the years of her life I’ve watched for signs of him, his mother, his father, searching, wondering, always looking, never finding. Now I know why. Tonight I see myself and Lily, traces of both of us in the shape of her eyebrows, her chin, her eyes. “Nearly there, I promise.”

  “Will Lily be waiting for us?”

  “She’s been waiting for us since before you were born.”

  “But isn’t she dead?”

  “That doesn’t matter. She still knows we’re coming.”

  “But what about Dad?”

  And with that, I feel horror creeping up on me, and I know we have to run, towards sanctuary, towards the safe place, because Daniel is coming for us. He’s coming for us and when he catches us, he’ll kill us both. If we can just get to Lily’s house, we’ll be able to shut the door and keep him out. If we can just get to Lily’s house, everything will be fine. But the hill is steep and our legs have turned to jelly and we can’t run fast enough, and I realise this is a dream, I’m dreaming again, and no matter how hard I try, I’ll never get away from this dream, just as I’ll never get away from Daniel, because he’ll follow me everywhere, anywhere, to the ends of the earth, until I die, until we’re both dead, until it’s over.

  I wake up on the sofa with a crick in my neck and Lily’s camera on the floor. Perhaps it was the camera falling that woke me, the vibration in the floorboards as it landed, the leap of the cat as she jumped away in protest. I can feel the warmth where she was snuggled against me, the chill now she’s gone. I’ve only been asleep for a few minutes; the bar of late sunshine slanting across the sofa has hardly moved. I pick up the camera tenderly.

  Tomorrow I will bake a cake, I think. Lily, my grandmother, loving and ruthless. Once she was on your side, she was on your side for ever. Did James know what she was going to do? No, Lily was too clever for that. She would have made many other cakes first, small gifts from one woman to another, a token between neighbours, establishing a habit so that when the time came, James would be able to look the doctor in the eye and say, No, nothing different. Nothing different at all. Did anyone ever suspect? Of course not. Why would they? Ramona was an alcoholic, and the symptoms of datura poisoning resemble those of alcohol withdrawal. No one would have questioned what they were seeing. How did James feel, watching his wife struggle and die in her hospital bed? I can’t begin to imagine.

  Of course you can imagine, Lily says. You can imagine very well. How would you feel if it was Daniel?

  But it never will be Daniel, or at least not until we’re both old, too old to bother with anything more than what shall we have for dinner and do you want to watch this now or later? Daniel’s vice is not drink but delusion, and delusion kills only those around you.

  Imagine anyway, Lily says. Imagine that he’s dying. Imagine he’s in front of you right now, dying, or maybe even dead. Imagine he’s gone out of your life for ever. Imagine you’re free. Now, what would you do to make that happen?

  Well, what can I do to make that happen? I ask. I see my hands moving in the reflection in the mirror over the mantelpiece and feel ridiculous, then frightened. What am I contemplating?

  It was easier for Lily because her victim was old, old and ill with the kind of illness no one wants to look at too closely. Her death would have been described as a merciful release. Daniel’s young and strong, healthy and good-looking, presenting the perfect picture of a devoted father and a loving husband. Strong young men with health and good looks aren’t expected to get sick and die. People take notice. Questions are asked. Especially when their spouse has recently inherited a property hundreds of miles away and promptly decamped to live in it, along with their only child. I could hardly look more suspicious if I tried.

  So what wouldn’t look suspicious?

  I don’t know. I don’t know!

  Then you need to think. Keep trying, my darling. You’re clever enough to solve this.

  I scoop the cat up and tuck her against my chest, feeling the vibration as she purrs. If I’m going to be a witch, I might as well have a familiar. We go into Lily’s bedroom and sit down at the dressing table. The cat wriggles free and sits at the end of the table, tall and elegant, blinking slowly at me as I slide Lily’s rings onto my fingers, one by one. I open Lily’s powder compact, hold it to my nose and am instantly engulfed by her presence, encoded deep in the scent of her face powder. Her little bottle of violet scent sits at the back against the mirror. I dab a spot behind each ear, and follow it with the pearl-drop earrings.

  Next, my hair. Lily’s hair grips live in an old-fashioned pot that I think may have originally been made to hold hatpins. I twist my hair into a pile on the top of my head and jab it ruthlessly into position with pin after pin after pin, feeling a breeze against my neck like a caress, or maybe a kiss, or maybe the touch of Lily’s ghostly fingers as she hovers behind me, watching.

  Now I look like Lily, like Lily in a way I never saw her, as a powerful younger woman, sure and certain in her own mind, doing what it took to defend her sister from a violent husband, creating a new life for them both with a handful of wildflowers and the strength of her own will. Was my father Lily’s child, or Margaret’s? I’ll never know now.

  It doesn’t matter, Lily tells me. Concentrate on what you’re doing.

  What am I doing? I’m not sure myself. An act of necromancy. I’m trying to conjure the beloved dead, to help me escape the living. I’m transforming myself into the likeness of the woman who tried, in her own way, to save me. The woman who is still trying to save me now. I open the drawer and pull out one of her nightgowns. Another minute and my clothes are in a puddle around my feet and the nightgown falls around me in soft lavender-scented folds.

  What do I have of Daniel’s? The basic principle of magic is that you have to have something of the other person’s essence. Marianne, the child he thinks is his, sleeps soundly down the hallway, but she’s a cuckoo child, and whatever I can steal from her person will do me no good at all. We had sex the night before I left, but that was over a week ago and I’ve bathed many times since. I brought nothing of his with me when I came here.

  Something vibrates against my foot. My mobile phone. It’s Daniel. Of course it’s Daniel. I’ve been ignoring his messages all evening.

  Where are you Jen? Come on, this isn’t fair. You’re late. Xxxxxx

  His words. I have his words.

  Jen, for God’s sake, I hate it when you do this. You know how much it worries me. We swore you’d stay in contact the whole time so I know you’re both okay. You promised. Remember? Now where the hell are you? Xxxxx

  My heart is like a drum in my chest and my hands shake. My pulse throbs through my temples. I used to think this was a sign of our enduring mutual passion. Now I recognise that what I really feel is cold terror. I’m terrified even though he’s hundreds of miles away. I’m terrified of what he’s going to do when I tell him.

  I don’t want to feel like this any more. I want the feeling of peace I had when I woke up here that first morning. I want to go to work, to come home, to cook, to clean, to care for my daughter, without the impossible pressure of also trying to hide what I do, terrified I’ll injure Daniel’s self-esteem by reminding him of his own weakness and failure. I want to know he’ll never hurt me again.

  I want this to be the last time I ever speak to him.

  I’m here

  THANK GOD

  WHERE THE ACTUAL FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN

  I know. I haven’t been checking my phone

  What’s the matter with you? How could you possibly forget?

  I didn’t forget, Daniel, I

  No. Not yet. Take it slowly. Lily was careful. I need to be careful too. Delete. Start again.

  I’m sorry. I’ve been busy

  What were you doing?

  Oh, this and that. How about you? What are you up to?

&n
bsp; What do you think I’ve been doing? Worrying. Sending you messages that don’t get answered. Drinking beer. Trying to keep calm

  How many beers? Have you had dinner?

  No I haven’t had bloody dinner, I’ve been too worried. And I don’t know how many beers. Don’t get all sanctimonious with me

  He’s been drinking. He’s been drinking. He’s been drinking. How can I use this? How?

  Daniel, we need to talk

  I agree. You need to come home Jen. This is getting ridiculous. It’s well over a week now. Get the bloody place cleared and on the market and come home. And we can start making plans for the money

  I think it’s best if I don’t come home actually

  I try to picture his face as he reads these words. Will he believe them straight away? Will he be bewildered? Or will he jump straight to rage? If I was there, I know exactly what he’d do. But I’m not there. I feel as if I am but I’m not. I don’t need to cringe. I force myself to breathe deeply, to move normally and stand up tall.

  Don’t be stupid. I can’t move down to the back of beyond, you know that. We’re on the verge of breaking through. The festival gig’s the start of big things. I’ve waited for years for this, I put everything on hold for Marianne and now it’s time to concentrate on my career

  And anyway, you can’t exactly commute to the office from there, can you?

  How typical of Daniel, the dreamer, the impractical one, putting his own fantasy of fame ahead of the job that actually pays for everything.