The Forgotten Sister

by Nicola Cornick

  To begin with all I had wanted was to be a good wife to Robert, the mother of a growing family, the chatelaine of a home. That would have been sufficient for me – a grand scheme indeed – but it had been denied to me. Since then I had been railing against a fate that had thwarted me and against a husband who had scorned me, palming me off onto one of his servants like some unwanted chattel. That resentment ate away at me; it did no harm to Robert or indeed to the Princess Elizabeth. I was the only one who suffered for it.

  It was time to seize my own future. I could see a glimmer of light to guide me on the path ahead. It was time to take back what was mine; my life, my freedom. I dug my heels into the mare’s side and she was so startled that she leaped into a canter, leaving the grooms with their mouths open and far behind.

  Chapter 17

  Lizzie: Present Day

  It was a strange, suspended existence in police custody. Time ceased to have much meaning and Lizzie quickly lost track of the hours. The world outside the one small interview room seemed an irrelevance. There was no light and dark, no peace, no sleep, nothing but endless questions, about her relationship with Dudley, about Johnny, where he was, when she had last seen him, what had happened between them on the Embankment. Lizzie felt sick and confused and she had seldom been so frightened.

  Eventually they told her that there was CCTV footage of her with Johnny the previous night. They showed it to her and Lizzie, tired and emotional, almost cried when she saw the fuzzy images of herself and Johnny emerging from the flats and taking the alleyway down to the river. The film switched to another camera and then another. The quality was grainy but she recognised their two figures walking along the Embankment, chatting, stopping to look out across the river.

  ‘The second camera on Paul’s Walk wasn’t working,’ one of the police officers said. Cook was a gaunt detective inspector who looked as though he spent too much time indoors staring at computer screens or possibly cadavers. He treated Lizzie with respect and utter courtesy which somehow scared her all the more. ‘However, there’s another one here—’ he stopped the tape and pointed to the screen, ‘which picked up some images. They aren’t as clear as we would like but they’re interesting.’ He pressed ‘play’ again. ‘Could you tell us what you were doing here?’

  Lizzie watched her own image as she and Johnny stopped in front of the blue plaque that marked the site of Baynard’s Castle.

  ‘I’ve already told you about this,’ she said, as patiently as she was able. ‘Johnny had told me that my flats were built on the site of a medieval palace. He wanted to show me where it had been.’

  ‘It looks as though you’re reaching out for something,’ DI Cook said.

  ‘I was touching the plaque that commemorates the site,’ Lizzie said.

  She leaned in closer, her heart suddenly beating hard in her throat. She had no idea what the camera was going to show. Both she and Johnny were in the frame, their figures close together, blurry but distinct enough to see.

  The jerky black and white images seemed to freeze for a moment and then there was a flash of bright white light with a darker tinge around the edges, like a firework exploding. Lizzie caught her breath.

  DI Cook froze the image. ‘What happened there?’ he said, with deceptive quietness.

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember anything—’ She stopped as she caught sight of the fleeting expression of scepticism on DI Cook’s face.

  ‘You hadn’t fainted at this point,’ he said, pointing to her figure on the screen, ‘yet you don’t remember?’

  ‘No,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘If my client says she doesn’t remember,’ the lawyer put in, ‘then she doesn’t.’

  For a moment Lizzie met DI Cook’s eyes and they were both united in a shared exasperation. He restarted the film. The bright white light expanded, blanking out everything else in the image for a few seconds, and then it died away. Neither Lizzie nor Johnny were visible in the picture anymore. The frame was empty.

  Without commenting, DI Cook changed screens to another camera. ‘This is from the corner of White Lion Hill, where you were found. It’s about twenty yards away and this is just over three minutes later.’

  Lizzie could see herself lying on the bench. People started to come towards her. She sat up. The tape stopped.

  ‘Three minutes,’ she repeated. She looked at him. ‘And Johnny?’

  DI Cook looked at her for the longest time. ‘There is no further footage of him,’ he said. ‘Not on the Embankment, not at Blackfriars station, not anywhere else we have found.’ He waited, and when Lizzie said nothing, he sighed.

  ‘The footage of the explosion – if that is what it was – has been analysed,’ DI Cook said. ‘They think it was a type of calcium and strontium.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said. ‘I never studied chemistry.’

  ‘Simply put,’ DI Cook said, ‘they use it in fireworks. It’s very volatile.’ He got up and stretched. ‘There was no firework residue found at the scene, however, and none of the witnesses reported a smell of sulphur or anything else unusual.’ He leaned on the desk close to Lizzie. ‘It’s a mystery, isn’t it?’ he said pleasantly. ‘An explosion you say you have no memory of, with a substance that seems untraceable and a companion who’s missing.’ He glanced across at the lawyer. ‘We’ve got some further questions but I’d like Ms Kingdom to have a bit of time to think about this first.’

  ‘You have to tell me what’s going on,’ the lawyer, who was called Rebecca, hissed at Lizzie as they stood in front of the sink in the ladies’ room. Lizzie caught sight of her reflection in the harshly lit mirror and winced.

  ‘I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me,’ Rebecca went on. ‘All this silence isn’t helpful.’

  ‘I’m silent because I can’t explain,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ve told everything I know.’

  The lawyer looked baffled and angry. ‘That can’t be true. None of this makes any sense.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Lizzie said tiredly.

  It all began again. They told her that they had found Johnny’s phone in her flat. Lizzie couldn’t understand how it had got there. Johnny had told her he had must have dropped the phone in the car on his way to see her. She told the police this; they asked her whose car he had been in. Lizzie could not answer, did not know. Johnny had not said. She puzzled over it for hours; the only people who had been in the flat after Johnny were Arthur and Anna. Had one of them deliberately planted the phone there and if so why? Did either – or both – of them hate her so much because of Amelia that they would want to deliberately throw suspicion on her? Anna barely knew her. Could she really be motivated by such hatred for someone she had met only once, as a child? Lizzie supposed it was possible if Anna had been as protective of Amelia as she seemed to be of Johnny. It was Arthur, though, who troubled her more. He’s tricked you, said the traitorous voice at the back of her mind, the demon that so often planted its barbs when she felt at her most vulnerable. She knew Arthur hated Dudley. She had felt the depth of that visceral hatred. She also knew Arthur’s feelings towards her were equivocal at best. When it came to a war between logic and instinct was it foolish of her to trust in an affinity she had never sought? She didn’t know. It felt as though there wasn’t much that she did know any more and it was easy to become paranoid in those long, lonely hours.

  She dismissed the lawyers that Bill had engaged for her after they advised her to leave and she was promptly arrested in the full glare of publicity.

  ‘Bill engineered that,’ she said furiously. ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re supposed to give me good legal advice not conspire with him to plaster me all over the papers.’

  The police were appalled and refused to interview her further without legal representation present so she told them they should send for her cousin Juliet Carey. She had no idea whether anyone would act on the suggestion. She waited.

  Then, at some point, the door opened and Jules was there. Lizzie, w
ho had held it all together the whole time, promptly burst into tears.

  ‘Hey.’ Jules grabbed her and gave her a fierce hug, sharp suit notwithstanding. ‘You’re released on bail pending further inquiries,’ she said grimly, adding, ‘Come on, we’re leaving. Don’t say anything until we’re out of here.’

  ‘I owe you,’ Lizzie said, impatiently brushing her tears away as her cousin marched her down the brightly lit corridor towards the reception. ‘How on earth did you swing that?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in the car,’ Jules said. She stopped and gave Lizzie another hug. ‘Get a grip, Lizzie,’ she added, not unkindly. ‘We’ll be out of here soon.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Lizzie sniffed. ‘It’s just… I felt pretty lonely, you know?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jules’s mouth twisted. ‘You’ve had a crap time. But you’re not alone. You’ve got me now.’ She gave Lizzie a grin. ‘You do know how expensive my legal fees are? I’m right out of your league.’

  ‘I’ll take out another mortgage,’ Lizzie said, smiling back, her spirits lifting. ‘Who put up the bail money? Bill, I suppose.’ She sighed. ‘I hate feeling indebted to him.’

  ‘You suppose wrong,’ Jules said. She signed for Lizzie’s belongings at the front desk and pushed a pair of dark glasses onto her nose. ‘Arthur Robsart posted bail for you,’ she said. ‘You can imagine what the press made of that, and the police, for that matter. It was Arthur who contacted me to let me know what was going on. Keep moving,’ she added, as Lizzie stopped dead, staring at her. ‘We’ve got to get you out of here without too much hoopla.’

  There was an enormous crowd of people outside. ‘Shit,’ Jules grumbled, ‘how do the press always find out about these things? The car’s over here—’ She steered Lizzie over to the kerb and flicked the automatic locks. ‘Hop in. You don’t get a limo anymore.’

  Jules slid into the driver’s seat next to her and drew out into the traffic, scattering onlookers like pigeons. ‘Here’s the plan,’ she said, checking the mirrors to make sure they were clear of the crowds. ‘You need a bath,’ her nose wrinkled delicately, ‘but you’re going to have to wait until you get to The High. I don’t want to take you back to the flat. I’ve packed up all your stuff—’ She gestured at the overflowing rear seat. ‘Didn’t know what you wanted so I brought everything. God, you have a lot of stuff.’

  Lizzie turned up the heating. She wasn’t sure how cold the day actually was but she was racked by little shivers. ‘Is there any news of Johnny?’ she asked. She’d wanted to know from the moment Jules had stepped into her cell. ‘They wouldn’t tell me anything in there. I spent hours wondering whether he had been found or—’

  ‘Johnny’s still missing,’ Jules said. ‘That’s why they arrested you when those useless lawyers told you to walk out.’ She shot Lizzie a look. ‘They are trying to connect Johnny’s disappearance to Amelia’s death. You were the last person to see him, and with the CCTV footage, it looks pretty bad for you. In the end, though, they had to agree to bail because there was nothing – nothing forensic, anyway – that suggested that a crime had been committed.’

  Lizzie’s shudders were increasing. Whether it was relief or shock or some sort of fear, she wasn’t sure. Fear for Johnny, fear for herself…

  ‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain any of it.’

  Jules didn’t answer immediately and Lizzie sensed there was a lot more she hadn’t told her. ‘They’re planning to dredge the river,’ Jules said. ‘They think that there was an argument between you and Johnny, and that you attacked him with something and then pushed him over the Embankment. That explosion—’ She glanced at Lizzie again, her face troubled. ‘What the hell was that? Do you really not remember?’

  ‘No,’ Lizzie said. ‘I don’t remember that and I don’t remember what happened in the three minutes before the CCTV picked me up on the bench.’ She knew she would need to tell Jules about the psychometry at some point but now wasn’t the time. She was so tired she could hardly think straight and she wanted to get clear in her own mind first what part the psychometry might have played.

  She looked out of the window. The crawl of traffic out of the city had been slow. Now they were passing endless rows of suburban houses and grey acres of concrete and tarmac in the equally grey afternoon. She was still feeling a sense of disconnection from normality. ‘I certainly didn’t attack Johnny or push him into the river,’ she said. ‘I know that. And I don’t think he’s dead. In fact, I’m certain of it. I have a sense…’

  ‘Arthur doesn’t think so either.’ Jules still looked troubled. ‘I don’t know how you guys can be so sure. I’m all for optimism but you have to face the fact that you might just be hoping for the best. I suppose he could have run away—’ She sighed. ‘But Arthur said he wouldn’t vanish without getting in touch.’

  ‘I wish I knew who the other person was who saw Johnny that night,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘What?’ Jules frowned at her.

  ‘Someone else saw Johnny that night,’ Lizzie said. ‘Someone gave him a lift to my flat. He said he had dropped his phone in their car. I know they found the phone in my flat—’ she ignored Jules’s attempt to interrupt, ‘so either Johnny was lying to me, or he left the phone there deliberately, or someone else put it there later.’

  ‘You mean Arthur?’ Jules said. She frowned. ‘That doesn’t seem likely. Arthur got in touch with me as soon as you were arrested. He’s withholding stuff from the police for your sake, you know.’ At Lizzie’s sharp sideways glance, she smiled. ‘Yeah, he told me all about the notebook and about your weird psychic visions. I wish you’d told me yourself, Lizzie. I can’t help if I don’t know everything, you know.’

  ‘OK,’ Lizzie said after a moment. ‘I’m sorry. I just haven’t had a chance to think everything through and I didn’t want you to decide I was mad.’

  Jules laughed. ‘I’ve known about it for years,’ she said. ‘I’ve known you were psychic since we were kids.’

  ‘What?’ Lizzie was so surprised she sat bolt upright. ‘How?’

  Jules shot her an exasperated look. ‘Oh God, Lizzie, don’t you remember my costumed doll, the one from Italy? You picked it up and started to tell me all about how Grandad had found it on a market stall in Sorrento and how he’d haggled over the price with the stallholder. You described it all so vividly and there was no way you could have known all that stuff. There were other things too…’ The car increased speed as they joined the M40 slipping into the traffic. ‘I’ve always known,’ Jules finished with a shrug.

  ‘You never said.’ Lizzie stared at her.

  ‘Well, you never gave the impression you wanted to talk about it,’ Jules said. ‘So I respected that. Anyway, Arthur told me everything – or I assume it was everything.’ She glanced at Lizzie. ‘Plus, whilst we’re on the subject of you and Arthur,’ she said, ‘don’t forget he posted bail for you. That’s a huge amount of money, Lizzie, so don’t go running off or you’ll ruin him. But I reckon that suggests he trusts you.’ She gave Lizzie a sly smile. ‘Kind of against his better judgement, but still…’

  ‘That just about sums up our relationship,’ Lizzie said. She felt too tired to process anything and Jules could clearly see that because she touched her hand.

  ‘Don’t worry about any of this now,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you to The High and you can have a bath and a sleep, then we’ll talk properly. Arthur’s going to call you tomorrow and arrange to come to see you when you’ve had a bit of time to settle in.’

  ‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to see me like this.’ Lizzie had caught a waft of the unpleasantly fusty smell of her clothes and Jules smiled.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ she said. She squeezed Lizzie’s hand. ‘Please don’t worry, Lizzie,’ she repeated. ‘They can’t pin Amelia’s murder on you anyway, or even that you conspired with Dudley to murder her, because there’s no strong evidence that it was murder. In the same way they can’t find any proof that anyth
ing suspicious has happened to Johnny. We’ll find out what happened.’

  Lizzie nodded. She closed her eyes as Jules pulled out to overtake a lorry and dozed as the countryside flashed past like speeded-up film. When she woke up, they were turning off the A40, down Burford Hill. The old houses lined the street, mellow even in the dull afternoon. It felt surprisingly familiar and reassuring given that she hadn’t been there for years. Another right turn and then a left, bumping along tiny narrow roads now, and suddenly the traffic and noise was left behind and there were the gates to The High standing open and Jules swung the car onto the drive and came to a halt. Lizzie scrambled out, looking up at the house.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said blankly.

  Virginia creeper cloaked the entire building, choking the stone, smothering the windows. The drive was thick with dandelion and rosebay willow herb, poppies, convolvulus and ground elder, rioting in violent triumph. The lawn evidently hadn’t seen a mower in years.

  ‘I didn’t have the chance to check it out before we came,’ Jules said, scrambling out after her. She was looking shocked. ‘Bill said it was empty, which I took to mean the most recent tenant had vacated it rather than that it was actually derelict. Look, let’s find you a hotel instead.’

  ‘No,’ Lizzie said. The thought of checking in to a hotel, of having to speak to people, to have so little privacy, was impossible just now. She needed some quiet time. She started to laugh. If ever there was a metaphor for the state of her life, it was standing right in front of her in dire need of some attention.

  ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘It’s about time I sorted myself out and I can start here. The High is my home. I’m staying.’

  Chapter 18

  Amy: Throcking Manor, November 1558

  So empty had my life become in the autumn of 1558 that I lived for the letters I received all too rarely. Most highly prized were those from my brother Arthur in Norfolk, where he had bought a number of estates and turned a tidy profit from the wool revenues. Not even William Hyde had the temerity to open and read my correspondence from Arthur even though he reported to Robert on all my activities. Arthur was generous with both news and gifts although when I asked for money, he did reprove me.