The Edge of Dark

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘Karen, what happened? What didn’t they tell me?’

  ‘Your parents didn’t die in an accident. They’d both been married before, did you know that?’

  ‘I knew Emily and Amanda were my half-sisters.’

  ‘That’s right. Your father was widowed when he met Amy, while she’d been married to an abusive man – Sue said he was awful. He had the girls, and she . . . she had a son.’

  ‘Michael,’ said Roz with a sickening sense of certainty.

  ‘Mikey,’ said Karen. ‘They called him Mikey. When Amy and Patrick got married, she and Mikey moved in with Patrick in Millingham Road. Amy loved that house, but Mikey wouldn’t settle. He was an odd little boy, Sue always said, and I suppose it was understandable that he was a bit jealous of Patrick, but nobody ever expected him to do what he did.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He set fire to the house one night, and he killed them all.’

  Roz went hot and then cold. For a moment she couldn’t speak, but hadn’t she been expecting this ever since reading that letter? People didn’t get shut away in secure units for an accident.

  ‘Were they sure it was him?’ Her voice sounded as if it was coming from far away.

  ‘Absolutely sure. Oh, it was terrible! Sue was distraught. She adored Amy and she couldn’t bear to see Mikey again, not knowing what he’d done. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him.’

  Roz was silent, trying to reconcile her memories of her quiet, kind aunt with an implacable resentment. She rubbed her temple where a headache was nagging.

  ‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t I die too?’

  ‘They found you in the garden shed. They think Amy hid you there and then went back to try and rescue the others, so she must have known what Mikey had done. Such a tragedy,’ Karen remembered. ‘I sometimes wonder if Sue ever really got over it.’

  ‘But why don’t I remember any of this?’

  ‘You were very small, Roz. When it was clear that you either didn’t remember or had blocked the memories out somehow, Sue and Keith decided it would be kinder not to burden you with the truth. You didn’t need to know, Sue said, so they told you your parents and sisters had died in a car crash instead, and they moved away from York so that Mikey would never find them – or you.

  ‘I thought it was a mistake,’ said Karen, ‘not telling you once you were old enough to understand. The truth will come back to bite you, I said, and now it has.’ She sighed. ‘Don’t judge Sue too harshly, Roz. She did what she thought was right, and she loved you very much. I think she felt guilty sometimes because she’d always wanted a child, but she didn’t want her sister to die so that she could have you. Be careful what you wish for, she used to say to me.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Nick had said when Roz reported this conversation to him. ‘You’re just going to leave it at that?’

  ‘What more do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Don’t you want to find out why your brother killed your entire family?’

  ‘Understanding why won’t bring them back. I just need to accept it.’

  Nick had disagreed. He wanted her to have counselling. Roz refused. ‘I’m not traumatized,’ she’d said indignantly. ‘How can I be traumatized by something that happened twenty-eight years ago that I don’t even remember?’

  ‘Just because you don’t remember something doesn’t mean it can’t have huge consequences,’ said Nick, and she hadn’t realized what he meant. Not then.

  Now Roz sat in the flat in St Andrewgate, holding the phone long after Nick had said goodbye and cut the connection. She turned it absently in her hands as she thought about what he had said. Was it possible that the horrific dream was some bizarre way of dealing with the accumulated stresses of the past few months?

  She supposed it did make a kind of sense, Roz decided reluctantly at last. Ellen could represent her confusion about her feelings towards her aunt, the mother figure who had turned out to have lied. Roz still found it hard to accept the way her aunt had hidden the truth from her, so yes, there might well be some hidden resentment looking for an outlet. As for the baby . . . Horror roiled in her stomach as she remembered the way its body had dangled lifelessly from Ellen’s hand. She was afraid she knew only too well what the baby signified.

  Daniel.

  It had been one deception too many.

  ‘Of course I was going to tell you,’ Nick had said when she confronted him. He said he hadn’t wanted her to deal with anything else after her aunt’s death. She’d had too much on her plate already, he said, and besides, he was still coming to terms with the shock of becoming a father himself. He was waiting for the right moment to sit Roz down and tell her that he had a fourteen-year-old son.

  It was Daniel who had tracked him down on Facebook. His mother, Ruth, had always been open about the fact that he hadn’t been fathered by the man she had married. She’d made the decision not to tell Nick that she was pregnant after their brief fling. They had only got together while she was on the rebound from Tony, Nick said. According to Ruth, she and Tony had agreed to take a break, but when they got back together and she realized that she was pregnant, Tony had been happy to bring Daniel up as his own. All had been well until Daniel had reached adolescence and had started kicking over the traces. Demanding to know about his biological father, he had tracked Nick down, and Nick, faced with a boy who looked exactly as he had done at fourteen, had found himself plunged into fatherhood at exactly the same moment as Roz was coping with the shock of Sue’s sudden death.

  ‘I didn’t want a child,’ Nick said to Roz, ‘but now that I’ve got one . . . I can’t explain it, but it changes everything. Tony’s always going to be Daniel’s father, but I want to be part of Daniel’s life.’

  Roz had tried to understand, but she was hurt by the way Nick had kept the truth from her. She’d only found out about Daniel when he had posted a photo of himself and Nick on Nick’s Facebook page. Me and my dad. Roz remembered reading the words again and again, unable to make any sense of them. Nick wasn’t a dad. But it was unmistakably him, and his face changed the moment she mentioned Facebook, so she knew without him saying any more that it was true.

  Nothing had been the same since then. Nick had lied to her. Her aunt had lied to her. It felt as if the two people she loved most had turned on her, and Roz couldn’t find a way to push through the resentment that blocked every way she turned. She tried pretending that everything was okay, that she understood, but it was an effort to squeeze the words past the great lump in her throat, and Nick knew that she didn’t mean it.

  The distance between them that had opened while Roz had been preoccupied, first by her aunt’s death and then by the discovery of her true history, had widened steadily. Standing on one side of the abyss, Roz looked yearningly at Nick, but she didn’t know how to reach him any more. It felt as if they had been going through the motions for too long. But surely it meant something that she’d been feeling so homesick since she arrived in York? It was still Nick she wanted to talk to at the end of the day.

  So perhaps that horrifying dream about the baby was her subconscious trying to shock her into getting past her resentment at the way she’d found out about Daniel. He might not be a baby any more, but he was still a child, and he couldn’t be disposed of in a convenient water trough.

  If she wanted to save her marriage, she would have to be prepared to cope with Nick’s child. Was that what the dream was all about?

  Roz tested the idea gingerly, turning it over in her mind. It seemed to work.

  But why dress it all up in costume? an insistent voice at the back of her mind countered. What was that supposed to symbolize?

  Well, there was no point in trying to rationalize a dream, Roz told herself firmly. It was enough that she had an explanation that satisfied her. She could forget about it now, and let the dream fade the way dreams were meant to do.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ Juliana pulled petulantly at her bottom lip, as she watched Jane walk
ing up and down the table, adjusting a glass here, straightening a trencher there, moving the pepper box a little to the right.

  The table was covered with the best damask cloth and the silver chafing dishes gleamed in the candlelight. A basin and a ewer sat at either end of the table, with a towel neatly folded beside each. In the kitchen, Mary was keeping an eye on the roast meats and putting the finishing touches to the salads. Jane wished that she could be there to oversee the sending forth of the first course, but for once her father had insisted that she be there to greet their guests.

  For tonight was her betrothal supper.

  Henry Birkby had called her into his closet three days before. He had been in an uncharacteristically jovial mood. ‘Well, daughter,’ he had said, rubbing his palms together. ‘You are to be a lady and live in a fine house in Micklegate. How do you like that?’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘I have made an excellent match for you,’ he boasted. ‘They laughed at me when I swore my grandchildren would be gentry, but now let them laugh on the other side of their faces!’

  ‘I am to be married?’ asked Jane cautiously, and he scowled.

  ‘Have I not just told you so? The Holmwoods have barely two farthings to scratch together, but they are a gentry family, and not so nice that they will turn their noses up at a butcher’s brass.

  ‘Old Hugh Holmwood must be turning in his grave,’ Henry went on with satisfaction. ‘It took him long enough to sire a son, and when he did, it didn’t take him long to get the measure of him. A fine, finicky gentleman young Holmwood might be, but he don’t have an ounce of business sense. He’d have squandered it all if Hugh hadn’t been canny enough to truss him up and skip a generation. The estate’s invested in a son, which is why yon Holmwood’s so eager for a bride.’

  He gave a crack of laughter. ‘I don’t say they like the smell of the Shambles overmuch, but the smell of money is sweeter. Aye, a fat dowry did the trick. Not that I’ll be played for a fool, mind,’ he added. ‘I’ll not have hard-earned brass tossed away on idleness and fancies. Your dowry’s tied up tight so he can’t put you off and if you die, it will revert to me.’

  Henry paused, evidently waiting for Jane to congratulate him on his far-sightedness. ‘Thank you, Father,’ she murmured, keeping her eyes downcast so that he wouldn’t read the irony in her expression.

  Her feelings were mixed. It might grate to be disposed of in marriage without so much as a by-your-leave to a man whose father hadn’t trusted him to manage his own affairs, but she was fortunate, Jane knew, to have the option of marriage at all. She had always assumed that Juliana’s beauty would mean that she would be married first, and Jane had resigned herself to the bleak prospect of keeping house for her father.

  But now it seemed she was not only to be married, but to a gentleman. Henry’s aspirations were a poorly kept secret in the parish. Jane knew that their neighbours laughed behind their hands at him. Henry Birkby might be wealthy, but he was a butcher and a butcher’s son. He would never be the equal of the merchants and mercers who arranged matters in the city to suit themselves.

  ‘They have asked for me?’ she said carefully, just to check. Dowry or not, a butcher’s plain daughter would not be much of a match for a gentry family.

  ‘They’d heard about Juliana’s beauty, but you’re the eldest,’ her father said largely. ‘I make a gentlewoman out of you, and there’s no saying how high I might look for my pretty Juliana. I might wed her to a nobleman, and then let my Lord Mayor look down his long nose at me!’

  His doublet, already straining over his substantial stomach, expanded perilously as he puffed up with satisfaction at the prospect.

  ‘And Juliana?’ said Jane.

  Henry Birkby didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. ‘Aye, her nose will be out of joint, I don’t doubt, little puss that she is,’ he said indulgently. ‘But she is so fair I will have little trouble in finding her a fine husband. I had to drive a harder bargain for you.’

  Chapter Five

  He ran a critical eye over his elder daughter. Jane had ever been the plain one. Oh, she was well enough. She had no cast in her eye or warts on her face like some, but she was thin and sallow-skinned and quiet-faced, just like her mother had been, and you could never tell what she was thinking, not like Juliana. Henry’s mouth softened at the thought of his pet, a daughter so beautiful he could only marvel that she had sprung from his loins. Jane was harder to read. She never gave him cause to chastise her, but there were times, like now, when her expression held a gleam of humour that he didn’t understand, and he would find himself blustering under her cool gaze.

  ‘The Holmwoods will come for the handfasting on Friday next,’ he said. ‘We’ll have witnesses so all is tied up tight, and then do you serve a noble feast with everything of the best for your betrothal dinner.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Jane. ‘May I ask who I am to marry?’

  Henry scowled. ‘I’ve been telling you!’

  ‘I just wondered if I might know his name,’ she said.

  That was just like Jane, Henry reflected. She looked right at you and there was nothing in her words or demeanour to suggest that she was anything less than respectful, but somehow he found himself pulling uncomfortably at his girdle.

  ‘Robert. Robert Holmwood. He won’t expect much of you,’ he added. ‘I’ve told him you’re no beauty. She sets a good table, though, I said to him, and you won’t find a better housekeeper.’

  A faint smile touched Jane’s mouth. ‘Why, thank you for the compliment, Father.’

  Juliana was furious when she was told. ‘Why should you be married and not I? I am seventeen.’ Tears trembled in her eyes. ‘I am old enough to be wed!’

  ‘Our father explained it all,’ Jane said patiently. ‘You are so beautiful, he must get me off his hands first.’

  Juliana was not to be consoled. ‘A gentleman is wasted on you,’ she said sullenly. ‘You will never make a lady. You will put on your apron and spend your days in the kitchen with the servants instead!’

  ‘Indeed, I am sure you are right,’ said Jane, smiling faintly.

  ‘You do not take anything seriously.’ Juliana flounced over to the window and hunched a pettish shoulder. ‘I hope your fine husband is fat and looks like a toad,’ she added spitefully.

  Jane said nothing. She didn’t want to admit that she was wondering what her betrothed would look like. Not that it would make a difference. The marriage would go ahead no matter how toad-like her bridegroom. And after all, she told herself briskly, she was no beauty, so she could hardly complain if her husband was less than handsome. But oh, she hoped he would not be a toad! She would have to sleep in his bed, and let him do what he would with her. Jane’s knowledge of what that involved was hazy as yet. She had seen couples out under the hedgerows, grunting and bucking, and once had come across her father’s servant hard at work with one of the maids under the stairs. They had been so intent on each other that they hadn’t noticed Jane, and her face had burned when she had realized just what they were doing. Now she would be firm enough to chastise them both soundly, but then she had been very young still, and rather than say anything she had turned on her heel and tiptoed away, as if she was the one who was in the wrong.

  She was going to be married. The truth of it hit Jane all at once and her stomach hollowed as if at a blow. She would be stripped to her shift and put into bed with the faceless Robert and she would learn just what they all did. Jane didn’t know if the thought of it excited or terrified her, and she put her fingers to her lips, wondering what it would be like, how it would feel. Her blood set up a slow pounding and there was a roaring in her ears and a disturbing, squirming sensation in her privy parts.

  She might have a child. A babe of her own. It was a thought that filled Jane with hope and longing, mixed with guilt. For she could not see a baby still without thinking of that terrible day in the stable. Jane looked down at her hands, where the scars remained pink and puckered seven years on
.

  She hadn’t thought when she leapt forward and reached into the fire for the baby. She had just acted, and the pain had been so intense that she had been unable to prevent a scream, which had brought the neighbours running, the busybody Eliza Dawson at the front of the mob. They had seen Jane sobbing over the charred baby, seen Ellen grim-faced, and they had sent for the constable, who took Ellen away to prison to await the assize courts.

  When he heard what Jane had done, Henry Birkby had roared at her for a simpleton and a busybody worse than Eliza. He called Ellen a whore and ordered Jane to tell him exactly what Ellen had done and said, and he had beaten her until she confessed. Yes, it was Ellen’s babe, she admitted at last, weeping from the pain in her shoulders where her father’s belt had laid great raised welts. No, Ellen hadn’t said who the father was, Jane lied. She’d hoped her father might be moved to help Ellen if he believed that she had kept their secret, but she might have spared herself the untruth. Henry could not wash his hands of Ellen quickly enough.

  For Jane, it was a bitter lesson. She tried to visit Ellen in prison, but she had no money to bribe the gaoler. She took baskets of food instead – some bread, some cheese, some ale, a pie – but had no way of knowing if they ever reached Ellen.

  They tried Ellen in the assize courts. They said that she had given birth to a child which she threw onto the fire in the kitchen of her master’s house. They did not ask who had got her with child, or what she was to have done if she had been turned out.

  They sent her to hang.

  You must promise that you won’t tell anyone, Ellen had said, her eyes burning into Jane’s. You must swear on your life.

  But Jane had told, in the end, and Ellen had died. She had broken her promise, and her belly tightened painfully whenever she remembered what she had done. She did not forgive herself for being but a little maid. She knew only that she had promised, and then she had told, and the shame of it sickened her.