by Victoria Fox
I remember the noises I heard up there, the dragging sounds and the darkness.
When I pressed my wide eye to the keyhole, the emptiness slammed back at me. I never before thought of emptiness as something solid, but up there, up there…
I look at the clock: 3:12 a.m.
I’m thirsty. At least that’s the reason I give myself as I sit up in bed, pull off the sticky sheets and lower my feet to the cold floor. Then I’m in the corridor, down the staircase, into the glowing marble atrium, running the taps and filling a glass with water. Not wanting to return to bed, I open the door and greet the night, black and absolute, just the tips of those dozen cypress trees spearheaded towards the stars.
I slip on a pair of sandals and go out on to the gravel. As always, I keep my head turned from the stone fountain – it gives me the shivers, that bloated fish with its dried-up mouth, trapped in the eternal pursuit of thirst. I don’t know where I’m going and it occurs to me I might be sleepwalking, but I feel awake. The house is reflected in the shallow pool and forces me to look. Why don’t they demolish the thing?
At the trees, I turn to face the building, my eyes wandering up, up, up, and there’s a cool breeze on the back of my neck, scented with lemons and silence.
Don’t look. Look. Don’t look. Look.
I see the attic window, and a black shape flits past the pane. A flame leaps in my chest. It’s a bat, that’s all. Nothing else – nothing solid, or living, or dead. Not a person. Not anything. I recall the voice saying my name inside the ballroom.
Lucy.
Afraid, I hurry back inside. Max’s face fills my mind.
The way my aunt begged me… I can’t describe it…
Barefoot, I mount the stairs, blindfolded portraits tracking my every step, and behind one of them is the man in the red blazer, lit like fire against the forest. He must be, or have been, Vivien’s husband. So you found out about the sister.
I don’t know what makes me change my mind and turn back down. Leading off the atrium, the ballroom door is ajar. I slip through, amazed at my soundless footsteps and how lightly I am able to tread. The house is slumbering deep.
If Adalina woke and found me here, it would be instant dismissal. But I’m not in my right mind. It’s as if someone else is guiding me, forcing my hand to reach out, pale and strange, those fingers not mine but another woman’s, a mad woman’s, and I follow them towards the fireplace like a candle in the dark.
At least this way, I’ll know. If there’s nothing there, I can forget about Max.
Carefully, with stealth I never knew I possessed, I slip my fingers beneath the hood. I don’t know what I’m hoping for. Then I feel it.
My grip tightens around an unmistakeable shape. The key.
So easy… It’s cold in my palm, but carrying the weight and burning sensation of something significant. Out in the hall, my heart is beating fast and strong. I feel as if I could run a marathon. My senses are alert, my hearing fine-tuned, my eyes trained into the night, my muscles ready to spring. I know where I am going.
I take the steps, one flight, two, three, up towards the attic, padding quiet as a cat, my mind more focused than it’s ever been. It is freezing up here, my bare soles padding on the stone but the chill doesn’t bother me. The key seems alive in my hand, like a butterfly I caught on a buddleia in Mum’s garden when I was eight. It’s as if it wants to be taken, wants to be used; it wants to show me the power it has.
It fits in the lock as if it’s waited its whole life to be returned there.
There’s a rusty click and the key turns. I expect a creak, but there is nothing.
I am met by a gust of loneliness, an age-steeped draught of abandonment, and it smells of years and years of stillness. It is like walking on someone’s grave, but still I walk. I feel as if there is a presence at my back, urging me forward, encouraging me to explore. As my eyes adjust to my surroundings, blooming shades of white where the moon peers in, I make out a candle on a shelf, half exhausted, its wax splurging over its brim. Beside it is a box of matches. I strike one.
The attic shivers to light. Here is the window I was moments ago looking up at from outside. I remember the black shape and a cool funnel scuttles up my spine; I expect to see Vivien in the doorway, or Adalina, but there is no one.
The floor is bare and coarse, splintered beneath my tender soles, like bruised apricots on a wooden board, about to be stoned. There is a single bed, right in the centre, and its position is intimidating, erect somehow, as if it is alert, animated.
The eaves slope sharply above my head, so it’s only possible to stand in the highest point of the triangle. An old chest and a writing desk occupy one corner, on which a mottled glass lamp is covered in fly carcasses; on it is a stack of books, which I flick through, hardbacks written in Italian. Against the far wall leans a portrait of a young girl, its canvas thick with dust. She has blonde pigtails and wears a frilled white dress, and there is a man standing at her shoulder. Her bright blue eyes are sharp with fear and that fear is older than her years. Her eyes follow me around the room. I nudge the window, trying to force it open, but it’s stuck fast. The atmosphere is cloying, saturated with heavy accusation. I’m being stared at, pointed at; the candle has disturbed something that has long been sleeping. All at once, I’m numb with cold. The wick flickers and spits.
The impulse to get out is so strong that I almost leave without seeing the chest. It is draped in a sheet and tucked in a nook, each end tied with rope like a barrel containing something dreadful that’s about to be tossed into a deep sea never to be returned. I go to it, kneel, and begin to work on the ropes. I have no time to question it; I only know I have to get inside. The rope is frayed and comes apart easily.
It’s a dark-wood box, its metal buckles rusted. I push hard, trying to snap them open, then place my hands either side of the crate and lift the lid. I spend a long time absorbing its contents: a cotton soldier wearing a blazer, cap and blank smile; a toy rocking horse, its leather rein split; a musical carousel, which I wind up, tiny steeds limping round a once lively circuit, the chimes ringing sickening slow. There is a blanket, unbearably soft, and beneath it a folded piece of paper. I open it.
He’ll never be yours. He’ll always be mine.
The words grin up at me, ink blotched and dark, desperately, raggedly scrawled, as if this has been written by someone who has lost control of their mind.
Psychotic. Obsessive. Possessed.
The candle sputters a final time, before dying. Without knowing why, I tuck the note into the sleeve of my nightdress, close the lid and replace the sheet and ties.
It isn’t hard to return the key to where I found it. The castillo is still sleeping soundly, as if nothing has happened, as if I could step back and reclaim the last ten minutes and still be safe in my bedroom, without that note knifing my mind’s eye.
Only when I’m back in bed do I realise that, in my haste, I neglected to lock the attic door. I lie awake, fretting, until at five in the morning, just as dawn cracks over the surrounding fields, I drift towards sleep, finally letting go of all I’ve seen and reassured by the fact that everything in there is long dead anyway.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Vivien, Los Angeles, 1978
Gio chased her down the drive. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t bear to look at him; his treachery was too much, too shocking. The car shook in her vision. Somehow she managed to unlock the vehicle, before Gio’s hand landed on the door, keeping it shut.
‘Vivien, listen. Listen to me!’
‘Nothing you say can make this better.’
‘You don’t understand—’
‘Damn right I don’t.’
‘Look at me.’
The quiet command in his voice compelled her. Instantly, she wished she hadn’t. She should have hated him in this moment, but couldn’t. What is wrong with me? she thought wretchedly. Why can’t I be happy? Why does it turn to dust?
‘There is no other woman,’ he s
aid, so simply and plainly that she knew it was the truth. ‘She’s my sister.’
There was a long moment. Vivien stepped back. ‘What?’
‘I have a sister, Viv. She lives with me. Here. Her name is Isabella. I never told you because… it’s complicated.’
‘Tell me now.’
Gio exhaled. He looked about him, as if this wasn’t the place, as if all this had caught up with him too fast, as if he didn’t know where to start.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ he said.
‘Try the truth.’
Gio’s head bowed, and for a time she thought he wouldn’t speak. This was where it ended, then, this huge roadblock of a lie. But then he lifted his chin and those magical eyes met hers, and in them was a resolve she hadn’t seen before. He took Vivien’s hands in his. She ought to have snatched them away. She didn’t.
‘Our parents died when we were children,’ said Gio, ‘back in Sicily. I’m an orphan too, Vivien. It’s part of the reason I fell in love with you. You know what that feels like. I’ve never met anyone else who understands. Only you.’
Vivien’s mouth went dry. She remembered the mystery she had always seen in him: the part she couldn’t reach.
‘I was ten and Bella was seven. The boat she was on with my parents got caught in a storm and capsized. Our parents drowned. She was with them the whole time.’ Gio’s expression was grave, regretful, etched with pain. ‘I’d been a brat that day, a sulky kid – said I wasn’t going anywhere. Stayed home wasting time, and, you know, that’s the worst part, I can’t even remember what I was doing, what was so important that I couldn’t go with them. But it should have been me, Viv – it shouldn’t have been her. She shouldn’t have gone through that. I thought I’d lost them all, my whole family wiped out. But Bella was found days later, half dead. She was clinging on to the hull of the boat with one arm, my father’s body with the other.’
Vivien was stunned. A thousand comforts sprang to her lips but every one escaped her. It was awful. She couldn’t imagine it – that poor girl. Poor Gio.
Gio looked up at the house, at the window where Vivien had glimpsed the woman’s figure. No lover. Only his younger, damaged sister. Isabella.
‘Two whole days,’ he said, ‘alone on the sea. Only God knows what she suffered. They brought her home, but she was never the same. How could she be?’ His confession was like glass, easily shattered: prick it and you’d bleed. ‘I vowed to look after her from that day on. But no matter what I do, I’ll never forgive myself for not going. I could have changed things. I could have stopped it.’
Vivien moved to object, and he seemed to anticipate this because he took his hands from hers and held one of them up. It was what he had decided. The accident had been his fault. His parents had died, and Isabella had suffered, because of him.
‘Bella didn’t speak,’ Gio said, ‘from that point on. She hasn’t spoken to this day. I know it’s all in there, bottled up, but she won’t share it. She stopped eating. Stopped reading. Every little thing she’d taken pleasure in, killed. A part of her died with them on the boat – it was only a ghost that was left. Bella lost years and years to the disaster, locked away in her room, neglecting her friends, opting out of life…’
Turmoil boiled in his eyes, flashing black and green as the raging sea. Emotions crashed in on Vivien – confusion at having had her assumptions reversed in a heartbeat; amazement at Gio’s brutal, tragic story; guilt at having deceived him about her own situation, for to lie about her orphan status when his was searingly true was despicable; and some other, shapeless fear she could not pin down, a fear that the tide was ready to change and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She scarcely recognised the man before her. This wasn’t her Gio, the man who had saved her life; it was a stranger, eaten up by regret and guilt and a childhood destroyed by calamity, a ferociousness of feeling that bordered on possession.
‘I didn’t tell you because I was afraid it would be too much,’ he said hollowly. ‘It’s why it took so long for me to find you, after you left hospital. I kept talking myself out of it. I thought I would lose you when you found out about my responsibilities – because Bella is my responsibility, Viv. I’ve tried everything to help her. My sister has gone to every psychiatrist going, every shrink, but nothing has made any difference, no drugs or medication or therapy.’
Vivien watched the door of his house. To find out so much about a person before meeting them, their darkest, most painful truths, was eerie. She wished that Gio had told her sooner. She wished he had been upfront about Isabella from the start.
‘She’s buried it so deep no one can find it,’ he confessed, ‘and if we can’t find it, we can’t help. That’s why I went into medicine. I thought if I could rescue just one person it would make me feel better about letting Bella down. But it didn’t. It still happened. It can never be undone. I have to live with that.’
‘You rescued me,’ Vivien said, touching his face.
He flinched from her. ‘It isn’t enough.’
She felt as if she’d been slapped. It wasn’t enough… or she wasn’t enough?
Don’t be selfish, she chastised herself. This isn’t about you.
It was about Isabella.
And so, Vivien was about to learn, was a great deal else.
*
It was months before Vivien got to meet her properly.
‘It will take time,’ Gio warned, holding her close and looking deep into her eyes. She could see his devotion, never doubted it for a second. It was such a relief to know that he hadn’t been cheating that she went along with it, accepted Gio’s word that his sister was a complex woman and that the campaign to introduce Vivien into their lives would have to be a careful one. ‘Isabella isn’t… normal,’ he told her.
‘I don’t care what she is,’ said Vivien. ‘She’s part of you, so she’s important.’
Gio was grateful for her understanding. Vivien wished that her unselfishness came from a more genuine place. Instead, she had the impression she was pretending, just telling Gio what he needed to hear for fear of putting distance between them. To her, family belonged in the past – a burden and, ultimately, a necessary sacrifice. She longed to begin afresh with Gio, but instinct told her this would not be easy.
Then, one day, he called her. ‘She’s ready.’
Gio picked her up that evening; he wore an expectant, hopeful smile that flipped Vivien’s stomach. It was vital that she got on with Isabella: her relationship hinged on it. She swallowed her nerves, pulling down the hem of her emerald halter gown. She had spent ages getting dressed, discarding outfit after outfit in search of something better, sexier, classier, more sophisticated, and she wondered why she felt there was some competition here, as if she had to look more beautiful and intriguing than Isabella, had to snag Gio’s attention and always be the centre of it.
Gio’s line was that Isabella was sensitive. It had been the two of them for so long now that introducing another woman could set her back. Another woman…
Vivien had to bite her tongue. How had she ended up being another woman?
‘She’s seen how happy you make me,’ said Gio. ‘We’re as protective as each other. She’ll want to meet the person who’s stolen my heart.’ It was a strange use of the word, as if Gio’s heart had been Isabella’s to begin with.
Indeed, over time, the sister had morphed in Vivien’s mind into some terrifying empress, the couple of years in age she had over her a yawning gulf of presumed authority. No wonder Gio had shied from moving in together. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to bring her back to the house. No wonder he’d resisted whenever she’d suggested going away for the weekend. Since Vivien had learned of Isabella, these subjects had become taboo, too complicated to approach, let alone discuss. Vivien felt that by even asking him, she was being disrespectful, insulting a clear and defined arrangement that had been in evidence long before she arrived on the scene.
Vivien was a late arrival to her o
wn relationship. But she loved Gio, and knew that Gio loved her back. He was a decent, honourable man – that was why he still cared for his sister. It was precisely why Vivien had fallen for him in the first place.
She focused on the positives. Isabella could be a companion to her: they could be like the girls at Boudoir Lalique, heading to the beach to eat cheeseburgers and laugh till their stomachs hurt. They could be like sisters: the sister Vivien had longed for all through her childhood. Isabella could be wonderful. Isabella could be perfect.
‘You look gorgeous, bellissima,’ said Gio, as they turned on to his street. ‘She’s going to love you as much as I do.’
It was the first time Vivien had been back to the house since the night of the discovery, in part Gio’s reluctance to summon her and in part her own imagination of Isabella holding fort, peering from her upstairs aperture, ever watchful. Did she cook for Gio? Did she send him off to work with a kiss? Did she wash his clothes, hold his shirts up to her nostrils and inhale his scent? Don’t be absurd. She’s his sister.
Vivien took a breath as they stepped on to Gio’s porch. Her palms felt clammy and her heart was racing. She had been through so much in her life, thought nothing could ever faze her again, but here, now, waiting for that door to open, on the other side of which she sensed a dark, malevolent force like thunderclouds rolling blackly across a winter’s sky, she felt just as she had in her bedroom in Claremont, anticipating the swipe of her father’s belt. More than trepidation. Inevitability.
Gio stood back to let her through. She had expected to see Isabella right away, but the sister was nowhere. It seemed like a snub before they had even met. Vivien wasn’t important enough to greet; she was a guest to be abided.
Quickly, she took in her surroundings. It was a homely set-up, and not what she had anticipated. Gio was so powerful at work, she had envisaged some of the same masculine authority here: clean lines, maybe some expensive art. Instead, it was a family home. Photographs adorned the walls, black and white framed prints of a smiling pair she guessed to be his parents. The furniture was haphazard, mismatched. The fridge was covered in scraps of paper, on one of which Gio had scribbled something in Italian, ending in a series of kisses. Vivien had the impression she had been invited to dine with a couple. She had been wrong about Isabella cooking – it was Gio who’d had a Bolognese simmering on the stove all afternoon, filling the house with the scent of rich tomato and sharp green basil. The table was set for three.
