by Emma Snow
He ran his fingers along the bronze castle, something he hadn’t done since he was a child. Then, shaking his head as if to clear away a cobweb or two, he carried on, around the corner and then over the drawbridge.
No trolls today, he thought as he crossed, another childhood memory coming back to him. The longer he spent on and around the site, the more he remembered what he liked about the place. How had he forgotten about the drawbridge? About running over it in fear in case a troll reached up with long hairy arms to grab him and pull him down.
On the far side, he paused, looking across the grass, hoping to spot Martha. There was a family coming out of the underground store room in the corner by the gatehouse. Two children were just heading into the great hall. She was nowhere to be seen. He walked forwards, catching sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Glancing across at the chapel, he saw what it was, the top of Martha’s head visible behind the wall, her hair blowing in the wind.
He walked over, calling her name as he did so. As she came into view he realised something was wrong. She was standing perfectly still, her arms out in front of her as if she was pushing something away. Her neck muscles stood out like cords and she was muttering something, shaking her head slowly, staring past him, then through him as he stopped in front of her. “Martha?” he asked, waving his hand in front of her face, “are you all right?”
She blinked, her eyes focusing on him at last. She looked pale, all the colour drained from her face. “Wh…what?”
“Are you all right?”
She leaned past him, looking down at the ground, squinting as she did so. He turned to see what was holding her attention and noticed something sticking up through the grass. “What is that?” he asked, walking over to it. He bent down and picked it up. It was a tiny little black knight, made out of stone, ivory perhaps, and about an inch tall. “Is this out of the shop?” he asked, holding it in the flat of his hand.
“Put it away,” she blurted out, bursting into tears a second later.
“All right, I’m sorry,” he said, slipping the knight into his trouser pocket. “Hey, come here.” He put an arm around her shoulder and she glared at him as if she was about to push him away. But then she let him lower her onto the wall next to her, the two of them sitting together, his arm resting on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she snapped, wiping her face. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. What’s the matter? Has something happened?”
“I told you, I’m fine. What are you doing out here anyway?”
“I came looking for you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What for?”
“I know you came out here to think but I need the key to the shed.”
“Here,” she said, pulling a keychain out of her pocket. There were no less than twenty keys attached to it but she immediately spotted the one he needed, working it loose before passing it to him. “Leave it in the office when you’re done,” she said, getting to her feet and marching away without another word.
Ben watched her go, bewildered by her behaviour. He didn’t for one moment think it had anything to do with the plastic knight in his pocket. It never occurred to him that something so small and insignificant could trigger that kind of a response.
He felt something in his hand and looked down, seeing the key there and remembering what he was supposed to be doing. He headed out of the chapel and across the grass to the far side of the site.
What everyone who worked there called the shed was in reality the old entrance booth. Made of concrete with a wooden roof, it had served its role for fifty years before the visitor centre was built. Positioned by the old entrance to the castle, where the Lords on horseback would have ridden in, it was no longer in use except as storage.
Ben unlocked the door and flicked on the light, surprised that the bulb still worked. The place was filled to the rafters in place. Directly in front of him was the shuttered window where the owners used to sit and serve the public. Below that was a rusting freezer, he could remember digging ice lollies out of that long ago.
There was a set of metal shelving to his left, each shelf filled with files and boxes. He had to squeeze through the piles of old guidebooks on the floor to get to the shelves. The green file was on the second shelf down and as he reached for it, he caught sight of a painting on the next shelf below. He reached down and picked it up, examining it closely.
It was a painting of the castle on a heavy piece of paper. Not professionally done but completed with love, in watercolours that had faded a little. He remembered the day Zoë painted that. It was the height of summer. She had set up her easel by the great hall, capturing the East Tower and the town beyond, her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth when he found her.
It felt very strange to look at the painting, knowing the person who had completed it was dead. Holding it felt almost like connecting with her, as if he could almost reach out and feel her hand reaching back towards him, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth in concentration. In his head she was ten, painting the castle, not sixteen as she was when she died.
How had the painting ended up in here? It didn’t deserve to be dumped in storage and forgotten. It felt too much like Zoë had been dumped there too.
He carried it and the file out of the shed, locking the door behind him. He would give his father the file but the painting he was keeping for himself. That was going on the wall in his room for as long as he stayed.
He thought about Zoë as he walked back, about how things were back then, how happy the family had been. The rot had set in with her death. Something had broken in their home and it was never fixed. His mother became bitter, his father a workaholic. He was angry too, feeling that he was to blame for her drowning, that he should have been there to stop her, to save her. He still felt that guilt whenever he thought about her, about the girl who liked to paint. He wondered if his mother thought of her, if she cared that what she was doing was an affront to the memory of her daughter.
NINETEEN
Erin Robertson didn’t go by that surname anymore. She had returned to her maiden name of Gulber, a name she hated, the sound of it grating to her ears. Whenever she heard the name used, she thought of her mother, shrieking at her father as she put her hands over her ears to drown out their argument.
Returning to the name Gulber had not been pleasant but it had been necessary. She had no intention of being associated with the name Robertson after the divorce. She wanted a clean break to start again.
While Ben was thinking about Zoë, Erin was thinking about the castle. She was on the phone to Alex. He was at the office whilst she sat at home, a glass of wine half drunk in front of her. She had spent the morning looking through the contract for the food stalls. If they didn’t get things sorted soon, the deals would fall through and Alex was making sure she hadn’t forgotten that fact.
“He was your husband,” Alex was saying. “You should be able to make him see sense.”
“I was never able to make him see sense,” she replied with a sigh. “It’s not my fault.”
“What the hell happened anyway? I thought he was halfway into a coffin?”
She winced at his choice of language but didn’t let her reaction escape into her tone of voice. “I have no idea but he’s home and we just have to deal with that fact, don’t we?”
“What we have to deal with is that I have spent a fortune lining up investors for this and if we don’t have something solid by the end of the month, we’re both up shit creek.”
“He’ll sell.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because if it’s a choice between selling and giving it to Ben, he’ll sell.”
“I hope you’re right because if you’re not-”
“I know, I know. Just be patient, it’ll all be fine. This time next year, we’ll be millionaires.”
“Or out on the street. Have you any idea what the mortgage is
on my place?”
Erin knew exactly how much was owing on the place. She just wished she’d known before hooking up with Alex. He had come across as richer than Croesus but in reality had been hiding a multitude of financial sins. “Try and relax, Alex. There’s no point being a millionaire if you’re dead of a heart attack before you have a chance to enjoy it.”
They were overstretched, there was no other way of putting it. Bribing council officials for the relevant permissions was not cheap. Alex was in the red for a little over half a million and buying the castle seemed to be their only way out. The money had been borrowed off the back of returns that were almost too good to be true for the investors. They would only become true if Peter, the stubborn bastard, agreed to sell.
Once they had the castle in their hands, they could get the ball rolling. The concession stands, the car park meters, the enlarged shop, turning the great hall into a conference and wedding venue. It was all on hold until he sold.
She had no idea just how stubborn he’d be. Twice she’d rung him since the accident to persuade him to accept the offer, twice she’d been rebuffed as if they had no history together at all. The marriage seemed to count for nothing. Peter point blank refused to deal with her or Alex.
She drained the last of the glass before pouring out another generous measure. She might have sounded calm and reassuring to Alex but inside she felt a cold dread that the alcohol was doing little to thaw.
What happened if it all fell through? Could they recoup enough to at least keep the house? The figures suggested it was very much touch and go. All she could do was wait for the right moment. Something had to come up soon.
After finishing the second glass, she passed through to the lounge, standing in front of the window and looking out into the town.
Their house was situated on top of a hill, high above Helmsley. From where she was, she could just see the castle tower, down in the valley far below her. Should she have confided in Alex? Should she have kept secret that she had sold off a number of the artefacts from the castle? Ones that were officially still in storage? The paperwork said they were there but the objects themselves were in the hands of private collectors only too happy to ask few questions. All that mattered to them was owning items of huge historical significance.
She felt trapped. Alex knew what she’d done. If the sale fell through, she had the horrible feeling the truth might slip out, revenge for her failure to assist in his grand scheme. But then if Peter were to happen to visit the store and find the pieces missing, what then? There was no proof that she had taken them but that didn’t stop her worrying. The guilt was overwhelming at times.
She decided to ring Joanne that evening, see if she could get anything out of her that she could use to her advantage. She might get lucky. Peter might not have been paying his taxes, cooking the books to increase his profits. It wasn’t likely but it was worth a shot.
She didn’t have time to stop and think about Zoë, or to think about the part that her choice of business and life partner had played in her daughter’s death. She was too busy worrying about herself.
TWENTY
Jenny was sitting on one of the many benches dotted around the castle site. She didn’t know it but the one she’d chosen was the one Martha always chose when she had time to spare, the one where she liked to sit and read on sunny days.
It was located on the north side of the grounds, between the great hall and the underground storeroom in the corner. Behind the bench the curtain wall reached almost full height. That meant the wind, so bitter for the last few days, was kept mercifully at bay.
Jenny was doing her best to listen to her Granddad talking about the castle, giving her a potted history of the site. Her mind kept wandering though. She wondered if she could perhaps ask him the question today.
She had wanted to ask Timothy for a long time. Since she was little, she had noticed the scars on both his hands, rippled and darkened flesh that ran up his arms past the elbows. She had asked her mother what they were from but was never able to get a satisfactory answer. She was also warned never to ask Timothy.
“He doesn’t like to talk about it so you just mind your own business, okay?”
But her mother wasn’t around. She was alone with Granddad and he seemed in a pretty good mood. He was enthusiastically talking about the destruction of the East Tower, how the wall had been pulled down by the grappling hooks of Cromwell’s army.
“Imagine the noise of it,” he said, glancing at her before looking back at the tower. “Standing for four hundred years and brought down in moments, forever uninhabitable.”
Jenny nodded.
“I’m sorry, I’m rambling,” Timothy said.
“It’s fine,” Jenny replied, looking at his hands again. “Granddad, can I ask you something?”
“Of course you can.” His eyes tracked a man in a red raincoat walking slowly past, the man had an audiotour glued to his ear.
“How did you get those scars?”
She regretted asking him as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The half smile that had been on his lips vanished in an instant. His eyes narrowed and he suddenly looked incredibly sad. He shifted in his seat, twisting his hips so he was facing her better. “Did your mother never tell you?”
Jenny shook her head. “She told me not to ask you about it.”
“I suppose she had her reasons. You’d only just been born when it happened.” He looked intensely at her, examining her for a moment. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“I do.”
“There was a fire at the place where I used to work. It was a care home, do you know what one of those is?”
“Sure, like Tracy Beaker.”
“Exactly like that. Well, at this one some of the children who were there got trapped inside during the fire. I had to break a door down to get into the room where they were. I managed to get two of them out but I…I couldn’t save them all.” His voice faded into nothing.
“So you burned your arms rescuing them?”
He nodded slowly, looking into the distance. “I didn’t rescue them all.”
“What were their names, the ones you managed to save.”
“Martha and Lisa.”
Jenny didn’t say it out loud but she knew the name Martha. Where from? Then she remembered. The woman in the visitor centre. It was on her name badge. Was that the same woman? Surely it was just a coincidence.
“What caused the fire?”
He was silent for a moment. “Someone started it.”
“Who? Was it one of the kids?”
“No, it was someone who worked there.”
“How did you find out who did it?”
“Let’s go get something to eat, we’ve been sitting here long enough.”
He was up and walking across the grass before Jenny knew what was happening. She got up and jogged after him, catching up as he reached the side of the chapel. She slipped her hand into his. He looked down at her, his eyes wet. Then he looked away again.
TWENTY-ONE
Ben saw Jenny and Timothy walking across the grass towards him, hand in hand. The sight made him smile.
He had his sister’s painting in one hand and the green file in the other. He was on his way back to the house but had stopped by the drawbridge for a moment. From where he stood, he could see where Zoë had sat down to paint the picture. Close his eyes and he could imagine she was there at that very moment, tongue out, brush in hand, the sun high in the sky above her.
Back when he’d been in primary school, Zoë had been the only one who’d been able to stop Alex from bullying him. It was strange to think how much things changed in a few short years. When he was thirteen, he was in a fight with Alex, the first proper fight they’d had in a while. It was outside the Portacabins that served as extra classrooms. The school had expanded beyond it’s ability to house all the pupils enrolled. About twenty years earlier, Portacabins had been built on the edge of the field, the plan being for them
to serve while money was raised for new school buildings to be constructed.
The money was never found and the Portacabins had lasted long beyond their supposed five year lifespan. By the time Ben was there, they were damp and mouldy. They also had dead space between them, dead space where Ben would try and hide during break times, keeping away from Alex as best he could.
He was there on his own when Alex found him. “All right, Billy no mates,” Alex said, walking towards him with a grin on his face, giving him a shove backwards into the splintery wooden wall behind him.
Ben saw red. He had no idea why after so long of putting up with the abuse. But that day, for whatever reason, something inside him snapped and he lunged at Alex, lashing out with one ineffectual punch after another. None of the blows were particularly strong but Alex was surprised enough to stagger back, tripping over the paving slab behind him as he reached the path. He fell back just as Zoë appeared from the door of the canteen, walking up the steps towards them.
Ben could picture the sequence of events as if they had just happened yesterday. Him and Alex trading blows, his sister coming running up, telling them to stop, getting caught in between them. Then time slowing down as one of Alex’s fists caught her on the jaw. She spun away, skidding back down the steps, landing on her side.
Then events sped up again. The memories blurring. Alex told everyone who’d listen that Ben had hit his own sister. He had expected her to tell the truth, to correct the lies, to back him up when he tried to explain what had really happened.
But of course she was dating Alex by then. She never even thought about it. Never hesitated, defended her love, not her sibling. From that day on, everyone thought he’d punched his own sister, sent her sprawling down a flight of stairs, given her a swollen jaw. Their parents were furious, choosing to believe Zoë over him.
He sometimes thought that was why they considered him responsible for what happened on the night that she died. That he was enacting some kind of bizarre revenge for getting a temporary exclusion five years earlier, as if he was capable of that level of spite, as if he could ignore his own sister while she was drowning. He loved her. Despite her lies, despite her dating his mortal enemy, the boy who made his life a misery. He still loved her.
