The Edge of Dark

by Pamela Hartshorne

  She didn’t cry. What would be the point? She just turned on her side and curled herself tight like a cat. She refused to let herself think. She just listened to herself breathing and concentrated on lying very, very still.

  ‘So, you’ll have alarms on every floor, all controlled by a panel here.’ The fire risk assessment officer was a quiet-faced man called Alan Martin. He tapped the floor plan spread on Roz’s desk. ‘It’ll be linked directly through to the station and if there’s any suggestion of fire, they’ll be alerted. For a historic building like this, they’ll respond instantly and send out a minimum of three fire appliances.’ He smiled reassuringly at Roz. ‘You’ll be well covered.’

  Roz just hoped he was right. Alan had spent the morning going round Holmwood House with her and together they had drawn up a fire plan. There was something steadying about his calm presence and it made it easier to go into the rooms she remembered so clearly as Jane.

  Jane’s discovery of the perverted relationship between Margaret and Robert was still disturbingly vivid in her mind, and she had been wary of going back to Holmwood House that morning. The wretchedness and disgust that swirled in her head had lasted all of Sunday and lingered still as she had walked over Ouse Bridge and up Micklegate.

  ‘Come home,’ Nick had said when she rang him.

  Roz had told him about seeing the shed, and experiencing her first glimmer of memory. She’d told him that she was having strange dreams, too, but not about wandering around the streets without being aware of who she was. Not that she was afraid that Jane was real, that she had a hold on Roz that was tightening inexorably every day. She wanted to tell him – she would tell him – but she didn’t know how to begin explaining over the phone, how to make him understand the strange mixture of horror and fascination that Jane’s life held for her.

  She would tell him when she saw him, Roz promised herself. She wasn’t a fool. Whatever was happening to her, it was clear that she couldn’t deal with it by herself, but she wasn’t ready to let Jane derail all her plans. She’d come to York to do a job.

  Stubborn, Nick called her, usually with a sigh. Stubborn, wilful, pig-headed.

  But she was the one who had compromised, Roz always thought, resentment scraping at her however much she tried to keep it at bay. She had accepted that Nick wasn’t ready for a family. She had agreed that they would carry on as they were: no ties, no responsibilities, no broken nights or dirty nappies for them. ‘We’re free to do whatever we want,’ Nick had said persuasively. ‘Let’s enjoy it while we can. When we do have kids we’ll be glad we made the most of having money and time to ourselves.’

  So Roz had thrown herself into making a career for herself instead. And now she had a chance to make the leap into a successful freelance business, suddenly Nick wanted her to give it all up and go home, because he had a son now and had realized that he was a family man after all.

  Her shoulders were hunched up to her ears, her knuckles white around the phone. Roz made herself relax her grip and lowered her shoulders with an effort. She had enough to worry about without picking away at old scabs.

  ‘Nick, you know I can’t come home yet,’ she said, unable to prevent the impatience feathering her voice. ‘This is my career. I can’t just give it up because of a few bad dreams.’

  At the other end of the phone, Nick sighed. ‘You sound strung out,’ he said bluntly. ‘I don’t like it. I think going back to York is getting to you. If you’re starting to remember, it could be more stressful than you realize, Roz. I think you should consider some therapy.’

  ‘You make it sound like I’m losing my mind!’ Roz wriggled her shoulders, which were tensing up again. What if Nick was right? What if she was having some kind of breakdown? Somewhere she had a brother who was a sociopath or schizophrenic, depending on which report Nick had been reading. Who was to say there wasn’t a strain of instability in her family?

  ‘I’m just talking about someone to help you deal with the reality of what happened in the past,’ said Nick patiently. ‘I told you about Rita before. She’ll help you recover the memories you lost and come to terms with them. I think it would help you, Roz, I really do.’

  Roz rubbed her forehead. She was tired and her head ached. She’d been unable to get back to sleep after waking in the middle of the night, curled in a foetal position, just as Jane had lain in the great chamber.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll try it. But I can’t drop everything and come down for that,’ she warned before Nick could start making appointments. ‘I’ll come home this weekend as we agreed, and I could probably come back a bit later on Monday. Find out if there’s any chance of me seeing her on Monday morning.’

  For the rest of the Sunday, Roz had stayed in the flat in St Andrewgate. She had her laptop, and plenty of work to catch up on, but she kept stopping to lift her head and listen, or look hard around the room, waiting to see if the world would shift, if she would find herself wrenched into another time, another life. Sometimes she could have sworn the air bent strangely, like a voile billowing in a gust of breeze, so that she almost, almost, caught a glimpse of a different world. A darker, dirtier, more intense world. Jane’s world.

  Roz had always thought of the past in linear terms, something that had happened and was over, but now she wasn’t so sure. Now it felt as if time was looped, knotted, as if the sixteenth century was just the other side of an invisible veil, as if all it would take was a tiny rip, the smallest tear in time, and the past would be there, waiting, more present than the present Roz had always taken for granted before she came to York.

  By the time Monday morning came round, Roz wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that Jane hadn’t reappeared. She was tense with waiting for things to change, just as Jane had been, and she was glad of the distraction of showing Alan Martin around Holmwood House. His was a blessedly sane, solid presence. His calm blue gaze didn’t flicker in the great chamber. He didn’t mention the dragging, desperate atmosphere in the hall, or the faint, rickety sound of an electric train rattling around a miniature track. He didn’t comment on the lingering smell of smoke in the attics.

  To Alan, it was just a house. Roz watched him carefully, but it was clear he felt there was nothing amiss. He couldn’t feel Jane, accompanying them, pressing close. Roz went to the loo before Alan arrived, and when she washed her hands, for all her bravery and insistence on staying in York, she couldn’t bring herself to look in the mirror. Jane was there behind her. Roz could feel her, but the thought of raising her eyes and seeing her reflected, or worse, seeing Jane’s face in place of her own, made the skin on Roz’s skull shrink. She kept her gaze firmly lowered and concentrated fiercely on lathering her hands. On rinsing them under the tap. On trying not to notice the faint tremor.

  Now she summoned a smile for Alan. It would take more than a fire plan to reassure her, but she couldn’t tell him that. ‘There’ll be no problem about getting everything set up before the launch?’

  ‘We’ll get it all sorted in good time,’ he promised as he got to his feet. He held out a hand. ‘It was nice to meet you, Roz.’

  ‘And you.’ Roz shook his hand and found a better smile this time. ‘I’ll show you out.’

  She led him down the staircases, marvelling that he couldn’t see the smoke that hung in the air like a fine gauze, or smell the bitter stink that drifted, faint but unmistakable, after them.

  ‘Strange place,’ Alan commented as they walked past the great chamber. He had no idea, Roz thought. ‘What’s it like working here?’

  ‘It’s certainly different,’ she said. ‘I was working for an art gallery in London before I went freelance.’

  ‘You’re not from York then?’

  Roz ducked that one. ‘I grew up in London.’

  ‘It’s just that Acclam’s an unusual name. I’ve only come across it once before, a long time ago now, when I was in the service.’

  ‘The service?’

  ‘The fire service. I was a f
ireman – firefighter, I should say.’ He caught himself with a downward turn of his mouth. ‘For twenty-odd years.’

  Roz stopped with her hand on the door and looked at him. ‘In 1986?’

  ‘Yes, I was – ’ He broke off. ‘You’re the little girl I found in the shed,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Yes.’ It felt like a confession. The word shuddered out of her on a long, falling breath. ‘So you remember that fire?’

  ‘It’s hard to forget the bad ones.’ His expression sobered, remembering. ‘I carried one of your sisters out of the house that night.’

  Roz could imagine him in uniform, his face grim and grimy with smoke, the limp body of a little girl in his arms. Had it been Amanda or Emily? Her throat felt tight and she swallowed. She hadn’t wanted to know any more about the way her sisters had died, but Alan was a tangible link to a past that seemed to be drawing closer whatever she decided.

  ‘Would you tell me about it?’

  They found a coffee shop and sat on stools at the high bar, looking out at the street. Now that she was there, Roz didn’t know where to begin. She watched Alan’s capable fingers ripping open a packet of sugar and emptying it into his coffee. ‘What do you remember?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t even know about the fire until a few months ago. I was adopted by my aunt, who told me my family had been killed in a car accident.’

  His brows rose. ‘You don’t remember anything?’

  ‘No . . .’ But she was thinking about looking at the shed, and the sense of confusion and fear that had crashed over her. ‘Not really.’

  ‘It must have been a shock when you found out the truth.’

  ‘You could say that.’ Roz cradled her hands around her cup. ‘Mostly I felt stupid,’ she confessed. ‘I mean, I should have realized something was odd before. When I look back, there are all sorts of things my aunt did and said that make sense now, but I never queried them at the time. Like, if my entire family had been killed in a car crash, why wasn’t I in the car with them? It never occurred to me to wonder why I didn’t remember anything from when I was small. I was five, after all. You’d think I’d remember something about the fire. You’d think I’d remember you.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Your brain probably dealt with the trauma by wiping out all memories of the night. It’s quite a common reaction, I’ve heard. But the memories are probably still there,’ said Alan. ‘There are people who could help you recover them if you wanted.’

  It was what Nick was suggesting. ‘I’m not sure I really want to remember,’ said Roz, sipping her coffee. ‘I’d like to know what happened without necessarily reliving it.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ he said. ‘A fire is a terrible thing.’

  For a second, terror twisted her stomach as the wild snap and crack of flames filled her head, the foul belch of smoke, and coffee sloshed into her saucer as she put her cup down unsteadily.

  ‘I think it must be.’ She drew a breath. ‘Tell me what you remember.’

  ‘When we arrived at the fireground that night, the fire was already well established on the top floor. Piecing it together afterwards the fire investigation officer thought the fire had been laid in a wastepaper basket or something similar – probably some paper drenched with petrol from a lawnmower – and then a trail laid to outside the bedroom door.’

  ‘So it was definitely deliberate? There’s no chance Mikey started the fire by accident and then was too frightened to tell anyone what had happened?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. It must have been carefully planned. He’d have had to get hold of the petrol and take it up to his bedroom. It was a very unsophisticated fire, but then he was only eleven, and there was no Google in those days. But by all accounts he was a smart lad. He’d have worked out how to start the fire and lay a trail.’ Alan shook his head. ‘He was probably disappointed that it didn’t take hold faster.’

  Roz was still mopping up the mess in her saucer. She was trying to imagine having a brother, a boy who had calmly laid a trail of petrol and lit a match. Who was disappointed when the fire he’d built so carefully didn’t burst into spectacular flames.

  ‘If it was slow to get going, why didn’t everyone get out?’ It had puzzled her, why her parents hadn’t stamped the fire out, carried them all to safety.

  ‘Once the initial fire burned out, the room would have filled with smoke.’ Alan picked his words carefully, pedantically, as if he were giving evidence in a court. ‘We found your mother at the top of the stairs, where she’d collapsed on her way to the bedrooms. The fire inspector surmised that she’d been woken by the smoke, and run to you first of all. Instead of calling 999, she carried you out and hid you in the shed, and then she seems to have tried to rescue the others, but by then the heat from the fire would have broken the window, creating a backdraught and . . . boom!’ His mouth turned down and he shook his head regretfully again. ‘There wouldn’t have been anything she could have done. The fire exploded and consumed the whole of the top floor.

  ‘I was on the lead appliance, on the BA team – breathing apparatus,’ he added when Roz looked puzzled. ‘That meant we were first inside. The neighbours who called in the fire said there was a family of six in the house, so we headed up to the bedrooms at the back. We found your mother first, then your father, who had tried to get to his daughters, and last of all we found the little girls. They were huddled in the wardrobe, poor kids.’

  Roz flinched at the image of the two terrified children, clinging together in the dark and smoke. ‘Why the wardrobe?’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, but who expects kids to be thinking sensibly? It’s a natural instinct to hide when you sense danger, so they must have been woken by the smoke and decided that they would be safe if they hid.’ Alan looked at Roz’s face. ‘They wouldn’t have known about the fire. They would have been asphyxiated by the smoke long before the flames got to them.’

  ‘And . . . Mikey?’ It was an effort to say his name.

  ‘It wasn’t until we’d been through the house with another BA team that we realized there were two children unaccounted for. At that point we instituted a search and that’s when we found you in the shed. I’ll never forget your huge eyes,’ said Alan. ‘You weren’t hiding, you were just standing there. You were just a little thing,’ he remembered. ‘You were sucking your thumb, and clutching a toy dog. I asked you if you would give him to me so I could pick you up, but you wouldn’t let go.’

  A memory was struggling to the surface, flailing, dim but unmistakable. A dog, battered and soft, the smell of it on her pillow. The comfort of burying her face in its fur. ‘Pook.’ The name emerged as if out of nowhere, so clear that she couldn’t believe she had forgotten it.

  ‘Is that what you called it? You wouldn’t let go of it. In the end I had to pick you up together. I carried you both out of there myself, and you didn’t say a thing.’

  Roz’s smile was crooked. ‘Maybe I can say thank you now. I must have been glad to see someone.’

  ‘It’s hard to tell. It was a cold night and you were chilled and obviously traumatized. I’m not that surprised you don’t remember, to be honest. It must have been a terrifying experience for a small child.’

  ‘But why did my mother hide me?’ asked Roz in frustration. ‘Why didn’t she just call the fire brigade and get everyone out?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Alan sighed and stirred his coffee. ‘Nobody knows.’

  Another image blew through her – a figure slumped despairingly in a doorway – and then it was gone, leaving only a fragmentary echo in Roz’s head: What have you done? She put a hand uncertainly to her forehead, and Alan looked at her in concern.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes, I . . . I thought I remembered something, but it’s gone. I’m not sure.’ She shook her head, trying to dislodge the memory, but it had vanished, except for those four lingering words. What have you done? She glanced at Alan. ‘Did you see Mikey that night?’

  ‘I did. I did
n’t know who he was at first,’ he said. ‘We were looking for him, but we thought he might be hiding. I was carrying you up from the shed when I saw a boy standing in the middle of the garden, watching the house. He was fully dressed, and I thought he’d come to rubberneck.

  ‘You see it quite a lot in boys that age,’ Alan told Roz, who was twisting the spoon between her fingers, wanting but not wanting to know at the same time. ‘Eleven to fourteen is typical. They’re fascinated by fire, and usually they grow out of it, but there was something eerie about Mikey’s expression. He wasn’t just rapt in the flames, he was . . .’ He paused, searching for the right word. ‘Gloating, I suppose,’ he decided in the end. But it was more than that.

  ‘I’m not sure how to describe it.’ Alan scratched his head, puzzling over the memory. ‘It sounds a bit melodramatic, but that was the closest I’ve ever come to seeing evil,’ he said, and a quick, uncontrollable shiver jerked down Roz’s spine.

  Evil. Such a powerful word, and out of place in this ordinary coffee shop, where the two women behind her were discussing a mutual friend’s relationship crisis, and a young man was slouched low in an armchair, scrolling through his phone. A mother manoeuvred a pushchair through the door, which was held open by an elderly man with a kindly smile. The baristas were cheerful and efficient, and the hum of conversation was punctuated by the hiss and grind of the coffee machines. It was all so normal, so ordinary. It was no place to be talking about evil.

  ‘I don’t mind telling you, it gave me the creeps,’ Alan went on. ‘I jerked my head at my mate to get him away, and that’s when he turned and saw me with you in my arms. His face changed completely. It was weird. One minute he had this inhuman expression, and the next he just seemed confused. He looked at you, and he just said, “Boo”. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to be funny or what.’

  Roz smiled painfully. ‘Boo was my nickname in the family, apparently.’

  ‘Ah.’ She saw him digest that information and file it away before carrying on with his story. ‘Right then, I could have sworn that he was just a lost little boy, but I remember how you looked back at him and shrank into me, and the next second it was like a hand had wiped all the expression off his face. He turned back to the fire. “It’s burning,” he said, and he smiled.’