by Jane Holland
I head upstairs briskly. Lucille will be bringing the car to the front any minute. I need to grab my purse.
It’s ridiculous, but I can’t shake off the feeling that I’m being watched. By the time I reach the top, the feeling is almost unbearable.
There’s nobody in sight, of course. And all the doors are closed.
Except one.
At the far end of the landing, the door to the guest bathroom is slightly ajar.
There’s a light on inside.
Wasn’t the bathroom door closed when I came downstairs earlier with my rucksack and suitcase? I always glance that way on my way down from the attic rooms, a habit I can’t seem to break. And it was shut when I went past this morning.
My first instinct is to ignore the open door and hurry on up to my attic room. Retrieve my purse and get the hell out of the house. Buying flowers for Tamsin seems like such a nice, ordinary activity right now. But it’s too stupid to be scared of a bathroom. I won’t allow myself to be that cowardly.
I turn instead, and force myself to look straight at the door.
There’ll be a perfectly simple and logical explanation. Perhaps Lucille was cleaning in there last night and accidentally left the door open when she went to bed. Yes, I did think the bathroom door was closed when I came downstairs earlier. But I hadn’t switched the lights on and the landing was dim. So my eyes could have deceived me.
‘Aunt Tamsin?’
I take a step towards the bathroom, and the landing creaks underfoot. I jump as though at a gunshot. My heart is hammering now and I’m breathing fast.
‘For God’s sake, Caitlin,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘Forget the bathroom door, let it go.’
Defiant, I open the door to Emily’s old room instead and glance inside. It looks much as it did last time I popped my head round, though less bright and inviting, the shutters closed, the air slightly musty. The bed is unmade though, a bare mattress with a couple of uncovered pillows. The double doors to her vast walnut wardrobe stand open, reflecting the empty room. No clothes inside, only a few hangers. No shoes in the wooden shoe racks. Emily’s dressing table has been dusted and cleared off too.
Except for her jewellery case, I notice.
When I wander across to investigate, I realise that all her silver-backed hair brushes and perfume bottles and make-up cases have been jumbled together in a box on the floor. Ready for removal and storage, I guess. It’s all horribly sad.
The mahogany lid of her velvet-lined jewellery box is standing open.
I peer inside, but there’s no jewellery left.
Perhaps Lucille has already packed it away for safe-keeping. Or perhaps Tamsin took it into her own room after Emily died. Not that she’s mad about jewellery. She’s more interested in designer clothes and shoes. But I know she has a few expensive pieces, diamond rings and necklaces mostly, plus a gorgeous topaz brooch, probably all gifts from generous male admirers over the years.
Some noise out on the landing makes me stiffen. I go back to the open door and listen for a moment. The house is silent. I can smell something though. My aunt’s perfume? Those sweet rotting petals on the table downstairs again?
I glance towards the guest bathroom at the other end of the corridor.
The bathroom door is shut.
Shut.
I jerk backwards and come up against the door frame. My heart stutters, then suddenly races. I feel my face go red with ludicrous panic, I can’t seem to control it.
The door was slightly ajar only a few moments ago.
I saw it.
But I didn’t hear Tamsin coming out of her room. So who’s in the guest bathroom?
For a few terrible seconds, I’m back in that half-dreamt, half-forgotten summer’s night, the bathroom door creaking open, the glare of the light bulb in my eyes, and inside …
I run.
I go stumbling down the main staircase, my lungs snatching at the air, that sweet rotting smell almost overwhelming now. Nearly falling, I only save myself by gripping the banister. I am intent on finding Lucille. On reaching the front door and the outside world.
But as I pass the mezzanine level where Lucille has her private quarters, I see the housekeeper’s bedroom door is open.
Wide open, in fact, as though flung back in a hurry.
Like an invitation to trespass.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
It’s the only room in the house that was always out of bounds to us kids.
I glance up at the empty landing above.
Nothing there.
My bloody imagination working overtime again. I need therapy, seeing menace in every shadow. Too many horror films as a child, that’s what it is.
Yet the door is still open.
I get my breath back, then tiptoe towards the housekeeper’s private room.
I don’t entirely know what to expect. Lucille is such a trim character in her habitual white and dark grey uniform, so organised and neat, barely a hair out of place. Somehow I’ve always imagined her room would look the same as its occupant: tidy, unostentatious, even nun-like. It would not have shocked me to find cold bare floors, a crucifix high on the wall above her narrow bed, perhaps even iron bars at the window.
But, as I noticed earlier, glancing over her shoulder while we talked, her bedroom is surprisingly messy.
The floor is polished wooden boards partly covered with a thick red Persian rug. The rug is littered with document folders and file boxes, papers sprawling across the red fibres. There’s also a large document chest at the foot of the bed, its lid thrown open, its broad base filled with yet more file boxes, apparently as yet unexplored.
Crouching, I pick up a loose paper at random and glance over its contents.
It’s not addressed to anyone, just a sheet of standard information, some unintelligible legalese about how a trust fund works. Another is an old bank statement in her name, listing a range of payments in and out of her account. It’s dated ten years ago. Glancing at the other sheets, I can see dozens more statements, as well as solicitors’ letters and stacks of yet more sheets stapled together.
I put down the bank statement and straighten up, feeling awkward about snooping through her personal things. It looks like Lucille must have been kneeling there for hours, riffling through all these documents in search of something.
But what?
And why on earth has she left everything in this state?
Several of the drawers in her dressing table have been left open, as though my knock interrupted her while searching through them. It’s an old-fashioned piece of furniture, rather like the one in Emily’s room, and the drawers are deep, and appear to be crammed full of objects.
I hesitate, then walk quickly across and glance into one of the drawers.
And catch my breath.
On top of the other objects, is a small book, lying open.
I recognise the handwriting at once, that sloping scribble in soft pencil, complete with marginal notes and occasional sardonic drawings …
It’s my diary.
I’m shocked, and then abruptly outraged. This is mine. It’s my personal journal. I left it under the floor in my attic room when I was sent packing so unexpectedly. So what the hell is it doing in Lucille’s room, in the drawer of her dressing table?
I lean closer to read the untidy lines at the bottom of the page.
I love him so much. I want to tell him too. After last night, I need him to know how I feel. But oh God, it’s impossible. What if he laughs in my face? What if he tells me he’s in love with Ems instead? I’d shrivel up and die inside. Or kill someone. I’d kill Emily. Then Robin. Then myself. I can’t tell him.
The next line takes up a whole line on its own, all huge capitals.
CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T
I trace the uneven words. That seems to be my handwriting. But it was so long ago, practically another lifetime. How can I be sure what I did or didn’t put in my diary as a teenager?
I flick over the p
age, but it’s clean. Nothing more.
No dates in this diary. I either wrote them in at the top of each page or left them off, according to my mood or my hurry. But this is the last entry, so presumably this was my last day.
Flicking through the bare pages, I spot more writing ahead. Erratic, hurriedly penned in the middle of the page, it’s barely legible in places.
WE DID IT. WE FUCKING DID IT. AT LAST, AT LAST. I feel like I’m floating. Writing this in the dark because …
I can’t make out the next few words. They’re too smudged and untidy.
Emily just came to see me. She was pissed. I think she suspects. She’s going to fucking HATE ME when she finds out. But you can’t help who you fall in love with. And Robin …
Another massive smudge. Plus, some heavy crossing out.
OH MY GOD. The most horrible thing just happened. I think I’m going to be SICK. Poor Aunty Tam, she’s never going to get over it. There was this screaming, and I went down to see what was going on, and it was her cat, Cleopatra. Oh God, it was DISGUSTING. There was blood and fur everywhere.
More smudges, more crossing out. And a vile little sketch of a cat in the margin, in a dark pool of what is clearly supposed to be blood.
The cat was DEAD. In the bath tub. With her throat cut. And J-L was there, saying nothing, just staring at us like the wacko he is.
My heart is thudding unnaturally fast like I’ve been running again. I don’t want to read on but can’t help myself.
I think J-L did it. He’s fucking sick in the head. Someone ought to take him out and shoot him. I started to scream at him, but he ran away. Then the WORST THING. Aunty Tam came out and saw the dead cat. She went totally mad. She knew I’d been drinking. She thought I did it because Cleopatra scratched me the other day. I tried to explain about J-L but she wouldn’t listen. Then Lucille turned up in her nightie, and SHE called me a liar and a drunk. I HATE HER.
My hands tremble as I scan the rest, reading the last few lines several times.
I love Robin. He’s my whole life. And I bet they won’t let me see him again. AND IT’S NOT EVEN MY FAULT.
More crossing out.
Then, right at the end, in a wild pencil scrawl …
But maybe I did kill the cat. Maybe I hate Tante Tamsin and wanted to hurt her. Maybe I’m a mad bitch.
I feel like someone’s slapped me in the face.
‘No,’ I whisper, staring.
I close the book and throw it aside, breathing hard.
I remember the dead cat now.
Cleopatra.
Perhaps I always knew. But my head wouldn’t let me access that memory, perhaps because it was so truly appalling, followed by the shame of my expulsion from my beloved aunt’s house, that I couldn’t bear to remember it. Not even after I’d grown up. Not even when I found that tiny, overgrown headstone on the path to the beach. Not even when Jacques told me that Emily used to visit the grave, and sometimes left a fish head …
I shudder, trying to block out the memory of that poor limp corpse in the bath tub, white fur matted with blood.
‘What are you doing in my room?’
The strident voice brings me round, so startled that I almost drop the diary.
It’s Lucille.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The housekeeper is standing in the doorway, her arms rigid by her sides. She stares across at me with furious accusation.
‘This is my bedroom, my private space. You are not permitted to invade it. Not even Madame is allowed in here without my special permission. God knows I have little else to call my own in this house.’ Her French is rapid and hoarse. ‘Is that understood?’
A memory comes back to me. Lucille, wide-eyed and shiny in the dark, glaring at me in the corridor outside the guest bathroom. Shrieking at me to get back to bed, to stop lying, telling Tamsin that she could smell alcohol on my breath …
I hold up the diary. ‘I understand that this is mine, Lucille. My private journal. And I found it in one of your drawers. Explain that.’
Lucille sucks in a sharp breath and holds it. She stares at the diary in sudden consternation. She says nothing.
‘Well?’
‘I … I found it.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘Then let me jog your memory. It was hidden under the floorboards in my room, up in the attics.’ I raise my eyebrows, angry as well now. ‘So how did you know it was there? Do you have X-ray vision, perhaps? Or are you claiming to be psychic?’
Lucille begins to stammer something inaudible. I’m not sure my French is particularly accurate, but neither is her fumbling attempt at an explanation.
I interrupt her. ‘Someone told you where to find it, didn’t they?’
Her face is flushed now. ‘Non, non.’
‘Was it Robin?’
She looks shocked. ‘Of course not. That man … No, absolutely not.’
‘Emily, then?’
Her eyes fill with tears. ‘Not Miss Emily.’ Her voice becomes uneven. ‘Emily had nothing to do with … How can you even suggest …?’
‘Then who?’
But her lips clamp together, and she merely shakes her head.
‘Someone else has written entries in my diary.’ I flick swiftly through to the offending page, and turn the book towards her. ‘Look here … and here. This isn’t my handwriting, though it’s close. I don’t know why the hell anyone would do that. To pretend to be me, I suppose. To falsify my memories, though I have no idea why.’ I pause, and ask rather more brutally than intended, ‘Was it you, Lucille?’
Her eyes widen at the question. A single tear rolls down her cheek to the corner of her mouth. But again she shakes her head.
I glance down into the drawer where I found the journal.
There’s a silver photograph frame there, lying upside-down in the untidy jumble.
Some instinct makes me seize the frame.
‘What’s this?’
I turn it the right way up, ignoring Lucille’s sudden movement forward as though to stop me.
The photograph is old. Black and white. Slightly faded and yellowed by the sun. It must have been standing on her dresser a long time. But for some reason, she has now hidden it away in this drawer.
The photograph is of a dark-haired young boy. Maybe eleven or twelve years old. The boy is half-grinning, half-scowling at the camera, sitting on someone’s lap, a pair of slim-fingered hands clamped round his waist as though to stop him wriggling about.
Thick brows, square chin, that direct look from soulful eyes …
I know his face. Don’t I?
‘Please,’ Lucille says huskily, and holds out her hand, which I notice is shaking. ‘That’s mine. Please don’t touch it. Give it back.’
Confused, I study the photo again. The vaguely familiar face.
‘I don’t understand. Who is this?’
‘I told you, it’s mine.’ Angrily, Lucille snatches the silver photo frame from my hand and takes a few steps back, out of my reach. ‘Not yours.’ Running a finger slowly down the glass-covered photograph, Lucille studies the boy’s face for a moment. Her mouth moves silently as though in prayer. Then she adds, with a touch of defiance, ‘It’s none of your business. So you can get out of here. I don’t have to answer your questions.’
‘Fair enough, but this is mine and I’m taking this back,’ I say sharply, and walk past her with the diary tucked safely under my arm. ‘And I still need to buy some flowers. I’ll get my purse, then I’d be grateful if you could drive me to the shops.’
‘I have to make your aunt’s breakfast. She asked for it early.’
‘After that, then.’
Lucille makes no reply. But nor does she attempt to stop me taking the diary away.
Still breathing fast, I hurry back up to the first floor landing, the diary still under my arm. I feel ludicrously guilty, all the same, despite my important discovery.
Lucille was right.
&nb
sp; Door open or not, I shouldn’t have sneaked into her bedroom like that without permission. Nor looked through her private papers and drawers. It was trespass. Not to mention an unforgiveable intrusion.
She did take my diary though, I tell myself. And didn’t hand it back when I returned to France.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, my dad would have said.
And he would have been right.
I decide to apologise. Even if Lucille isn’t going to.
Glancing up the staircase, I falter, a little alarmed to see the first floor is no longer brightly lit. Someone has turned the chandeliers off.
Lucille?
On reaching the top of the stairs, I hear a tiny sound and turn my head towards the guest bathroom.
Pure instinct.
It feels like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I gasp involuntarily, shaking my head in disbelief.
Someone is there, walking towards me, hand outstretched.
A pale, floating figure in white …
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I stagger backwards, almost falling down the stairs in my panic. But in the same instant, I recognise the ‘ghost’ as my own flesh-and-blood. It’s not Emily come back from the dead to haunt the chateau. It’s merely a barefoot Aunt Tamsin, pale and ethereal in a white cap and lacy night gown.
‘Aunt Tamsin, you startled me.’ My voice is deep with shock. I force myself to laugh. ‘I thought for a minute you were a –’
‘Emily?’ Tamsin interrupts me. Her voice is shaking as she asks plaintively, ‘My darling, is that you at last?’
‘No, it’s Caitlin.’ I feel awful now, even though I just made a similar mistake. ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Tamsin.’ I shake my head, dazed. ‘Did you really think I was Emily?’
She stares, her mouth open. Then blinks and seems to recover herself. ‘Caitlin? Your voice … The way you ran up the stairs …’
Then she covers her face, and I realise Tamsin is crying. I lean in to give her a hug, awkward in my embarrassment and trying not to tread on her bare feet. But she backs off at once, waving me away.
