The Woman In the Mirror

by Rebecca James

  Oh, but that is a most peculiar thing.

  The painting on the wall has changed. I move closer, to make sure, and when I see what has happened I gasp, blood rising in my chest. The last time I saw the girl in the picture, she was most definitely inside the farmhouse. Now, she is outside.

  It cannot be.

  Alarmed, I take a step back. Something horrible is caught in my throat. I must be seeing things – or else this is a different picture, swapped without my knowledge, without my being here, but then by whom? I cannot move, dread pinning me to the spot, and it is not so much my dread at the image itself coming alive as it is at the possibility that I am the one moving: that my mind has moved her, somehow. That I am not as well as I think I have been. That my mind is failing me again.

  You’re perfectly fine, Alice, I tell myself. Stop daydreaming.

  Gently I touch the girl’s portrait with my finger, expecting what I do not know – warmth, breath, for the tip of my finger to penetrate its surface? It is cool, the oils decades old and rippled with age, and when I peer in I see that she is not looking to me at all, but instead to the mirror at my back, as if stepping near to see herself in it.

  *

  It is with difficulty that we pass the morning in study, for I cannot prevent my mind from wandering away from the drawing room, upstairs to the mirror and the impossible painting, or else down to the cellar and towards Laura’s belongings. The cellar seems to call to me, pulsing with promise, seducing me with secrets it has yet to reveal. Laura is the key. If I could just find out what happened to her…

  At lunchtime, with the twins playing outside, Mrs Yarrow is pale, her eyes rimmed. ‘Oh, miss,’ she says wearily, ‘the time has come. I cannot bear it any more.’

  ‘You cannot bear what?’

  ‘Here. Winterbourne. The children. Danger is coming.’

  I turn to her. ‘Mrs Yarrow?’

  The cook folds a heap of towels in order to avoid looking at me. ‘When I said before about moving on, miss, I meant it. My sister works for a house up in Norfolk. There’s an opening there in the kitchen, the pay is good and the family fair—’

  ‘Winterbourne needs you,’ I object. ‘You can’t leave.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ she says, ‘to begin with. But Winterbourne has never been right, miss; it wasn’t right with Madam, and I dare say it wasn’t right before.’

  I scoff. ‘Mrs Yarrow, this is lunacy.’

  ‘No,’ she cuts me off, ‘I’ll tell you what is lunacy. That boy and that girl. They’re lunacy. Haven’t you seen the way they look at you?’

  I push my plate away. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

  ‘They’re laughing at you. Don’t you see? They used to laugh at me, but now they have you to play with. You can think what you like, miss, about why they are the way they are, you can think of the excuses you want. But I know the truth.’

  ‘Then speak it!’

  ‘They’re wrong, those children. They’ve put a spell on this place – or else it’s put a spell on them. I’ve pretended long enough that I can stand it. But Winterbourne is slipping away, miss: the old Winterbourne, the Winterbourne I knew. It belongs to the twins now, and there’s nothing you or I or anyone can do about it.’

  ‘It’s their home, Mrs Yarrow,’ I say tightly.

  ‘Indeed. But I used to have a home here too. I used to run this house, but now the twins run everything: their father, Tom, you. All that business with Edmund running away in the mist, their feigning illness, their disobedience, then today the mirror! Oh, miss, surely you see, with the mirror—’

  ‘Mrs Yarrow, I will not hear it.’ I stand and turn to leave, unable to hear her poisonous words. ‘If you believe such lies then perhaps it is best if you go.’

  ‘It was better, before they were born,’ blathers the cook, her fingers shaking so that she buries them in her apron, but still her voice quavers. ‘They made their mother sick – sick in the head! Madam told me she could not stand to touch them!’

  ‘Mrs Yarrow!’

  ‘Madam died and then the other woman died. I will not let it happen to me—’

  I strike my fist on the table. How dare Mrs Yarrow cast such aspersions on the cherubs who play on the lawn? Through the window I see the twins frolicking on the grass, Edmund’s copper curls like a harp of gold and Constance’s skirts bouncing as she leaps. I will not give the cook audience. She has already tempted me towards doubting the children once and I will not let her again. I know better now. It is a pity she does not. ‘Enough,’ I say evenly. ‘I ought to report your words to the captain.’

  ‘All that business with Madam’s mirror, don’t you see their trick?’

  ‘They miss their mother. They should be comforted, not chastised.’

  ‘That were Madam’s mirror but it turned against her in the end. She did not like herself in it by the time she died.’

  ‘Was she sick? Her appearance changed?’

  Mrs Yarrow says no, not quite, perhaps, in a way.

  ‘The children sense it,’ she says. ‘They can’t have known it, they were young, but they sense it. I saw how they dragged that thing out from its den. Didn’t you hear their laughter, miss, down in the cellar? They want you to have the mirror. Or else something in this house told them to give it to you.’

  ‘I will not listen!’

  ‘Ask yourself why, miss. Why did they give it to you?’

  ‘Because they love me, Mrs Yarrow!’

  That succeeds in quieting her, though I wish I hadn’t said it. It is a private wish, close to a belief, and I am not ready to share it.

  ‘You are a fool, if that is what you suppose.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I suppose it? You speak gibberish; that mirror is a piece of glass and nothing more: a gift, and a striking one, from them to me. Don’t you see that I am the closest thing they have to a mother now? I dote on them, never doubt it, and never doubt that I will defend those children with my life if the occasion arises.’

  Mrs Yarrow turns from me, her hands braced on the rim of the sink.

  ‘You are not their mother,’ she says warningly. ‘You are not the mistress of Winterbourne. You must never imagine yourself to be such. This house will not have it. That was the mistake the woman before you made.’

  ‘She can’t have made it,’ I say tightly. ‘Or she would never have left them.’

  The cook remains where she is. So do I.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Yarrow,’ I say, and head out to find the children.

  *

  We finish lessons early. I see the strain the day’s activities have taken on Edmund and Constance, and find myself longing to get out of the house. That’s the way with Winterbourne: its atmosphere changes as fast as the breeze on the Landogger Bluff.

  ‘To your room, darlings; you can finish your work there.’

  The children do as they’re told and I seize my coat from the hall.

  ‘Are you heading out, miss?’ asks Tom, as we pass each other in the porch. ‘There’s heavy rain coming in, be warned.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom.’

  But I pay no heed to a spot of rain, and instead walk out over the parkland, through the tall grasses and towards the cliffs. I position myself in the windswept spot where I saw the dark-dressed woman and let my gaze fall to the beach, half hoping I will find her there, a staggering black shape, crawling, crawling towards the sea…

  But the sand is empty. Gloomy clouds heap on the horizon. I wonder how close their last governess stood before she stepped over the brink. Did she put one toe over first? Did she brace herself like a diver, or tumble like a ragdoll? Was she afraid?

  It makes me envious to imagine her with the children, with the captain, playing at the role I now hold dear. Mrs Yarrow knows not of what she speaks. I am different. Winterbourne knows I am different. This house is my salvation.

  I have been too focused on the dead and not focused enough on the living. Inside Winterbourne is a living, breathing man – it mak
es me shudder to think of him – and two children who need my love. Henry Marsh asked if I believed in ghosts. No, I do not. I cannot. I would already have been hunted to my grave.

  I turn from the sea to head back to the house, but then I spy the low line of the stables and am drawn in that direction instead. The rain has started to spit, stinging my cheeks. I gather my coat. Above, thunder rolls across the darkening sky.

  Storm is sheltering in the warm enclosure. I stroke her ears and mane and a light in her eyes catches mine. Before I can think better of it – because given another minute, surely I would – I unbolt the door and locate the reins, long unused, suspended in a tangle from a rafter. There is no saddle but I prefer it that way.

  ‘She wants to be ridden. She hasn’t been ridden in years…’

  I loop the reins around Storm’s neck and she accepts them gratefully, dancing her hooves with anticipation. My heart beats wildly; my throat is dry.

  ‘Mummy would have liked you to. Mummy would ask you, if only she could…’

  ‘Come along, girl,’ I say. ‘Come along, Storm.’

  I lead her out and she follows on unsteady legs, head flicking against the rain. The white in her mane reminds me she is old but seeing her out of the stable, against the roll of the Cornish moors, she strikes me as a new animal. The muscles in her legs and flanks are ready to work, eager to run. Out of sight of the house, I mount her. Her coat is quickly soaked. The rain falls torrentially now, huge drops that hang from my eyelashes and nose. My coat is drenched and my hat seeping so I throw it on to the grass. With my thighs I grip the horse’s sides, clasping the leather straps in my hand.

  ‘Yah!’ I shout, kicking back my heels. The beast springs from under me. I have never flown but I imagine that this is how it feels to fly. Storm seems to know the terrain, as well she might, and together we soar across the heath, the rain whirling and spinning from the sky. I kick harder, keeping her speed, and we move so fast it seems entirely plausible that we are ready to step up into the heavens… It is too fast, I know, and to come across a ditch or rut would throw me clean over the edge, but I don’t care. I am free. I am flying. I am wetted through and it makes me alive. I am not sure if I have ever felt alive, not like this. I can leave it all behind, my childhood, my crime, my doomed romance and the future I lost. Those were the things that brought me here, to Winterbourne. This house has shown me I can have it yet: I too can be happy. I too can know love. I too can claim my chance. Nothing can catch me now, not riding Storm in the driving rain, the rhythm of our bodies working against the other, the horse’s hooves churning the ground and our hearts racing in tandem.

  I could be her, I think. Laura de Grey of Winterbourne.

  And, for a moment, I am.

  I am Laura.

  The thought sends such a primitive thrill through me that I have to tug the reins to bring Storm to a slower pace. The horse wheezes and chuffs but she is as exhilarated as I, her chest pumping and her muscles straining for more.

  We turn back to the house, now an outline in the distance. I recall Mrs Yarrow’s words to me when I first arrived at Winterbourne, when she first told me of her intended departure:

  ‘You’ll be the woman of this house next, miss. And you’ll like it.’

  I tilt my face to the sky and allow the rain to take me. I open my mouth and let it come inside. For an instant the arc above me illuminates in a flash of lightning, white and shocking, then there is the answering call of thunder.

  I twitch the reins and we move off, galloping back towards the house.

  *

  Storm is returned to the stables and I am walking, dripping, to Winterbourne when I stop. I see a silhouette in the chapel’s arched window. It is the captain.

  ‘Miss Miller.’ He steps out. The pouring rain slices across my vision, blurring his edges, smoothing his features, so his burns are scarcely visible. He looks at me with those cool blue eyes, his black hair soaked in moments. ‘Come.’

  I am reminded of a story I read as a child. He is the wolf. I am the flesh he wishes to bite. Inside, the rebuke I am expecting both thrills and dismays me.

  ‘I saw you,’ he says quietly, ‘out with Storm.’ The rolling sky echoes his displeasure. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

  ‘Captain, I…’ But there is no justification for what I did. I wanted to be caught. I wanted this. I wanted him, and me, and to feel the force of his rage.

  ‘I granted you acquittal over the mirror,’ he says, ‘but this? Taking my dead wife’s horse, when you are aware of how much she means to me?’ It isn’t clear whether he means Laura or the animal. I suppose it makes no difference.

  ‘I’m sorry. I saw Storm and I wanted her to run—’

  ‘You had no right!’ The captain turns to the chapel altar and for a wild second I believe he is going to drop to his knees, before he whirls back round to face me. His features are contorted, his eyes savage. I have never been so attracted to a man before in my life. ‘Nothing you say can make this better. There are no excuses.’

  Your daughter told me to. I could say it. Just as I could say that Edmund lured me out that day in the mist. Just as I could say that they depicted me as Jonathan’s bride, so he would see me that way and imagine us together. Just as they wanted me to have their mother’s mirror, so I could be more like her, so I could assume my place as mistress of Winterbourne. That the children are, it would seem, moving us together like a pawn and a king in a game of chess. They want it. They have plotted it since the moment I entered the house. It is they I can thank for these intimate encounters, they who have stoked the fire of their father’s passion and placed me in front to feel its warmth. They wish for him to capture me, and now I am but one square away.

  Behind the captain, the crucifixion bears down. Even in dark daylight, the stained glass of the chapel windows glows with punishment. I shiver, the rain coursing now off my chin and the ends of my hair, snaking down my neck.

  ‘Do you know the worst part?’ It is almost a groan, heavy with regret and an attempt to restrain some other feeling, harder for me to pinpoint. ‘You looked just like her.’ The captain steps towards me; instinctively, I step back. I say nothing. ‘Out there on the moors,’ he says, ‘it was like seeing Laura again. As if you were her ghost.’

  My skin is freezing. Goosebumps prickle my back. Yet there is heat within me too, and heat seems to come off the captain, and still I am unable to speak.

  There are no words to defend my actions and besides I do not wish to defend them. I wish to be Laura, just as he described me. The chapel flashes with lightning.

  ‘You devilish creature,’ he rasps – and then he comes towards me and takes my chin in his hands; and I go to speak his name but before I can, he kisses me.

  Chapter 22

  Cornwall, present day

  Rachel rode her bike into town. Jack had offered her a ride but she refused. She’d been short with him – in her anger at the estate agent’s visit, the brief ceasefire they’d shared had been called off. He was back to his condescending self.

  ‘Rachel,’ he’d said before she turned him out, ‘who cares about that woman? So what if she wants to sell Winterbourne, it’s your house. What you say goes.’

  So what? She should have expected his lackadaisical response. Then he had dared to tell her to calm down; he would drive her to Polcreath because she was in no fit state to go on her own. What Jack didn’t realise was that Rachel had always gone on her own, all through her life; it was how she did things and she did them well. She would have slapped him had she not had more pressing issues on her mind.

  In Polcreath, the day was bright and clear. Seagulls flapped on the low seawall and gossamer clouds drifted across the sky. Rachel headed straight for the café and resumed her usual table. In moments her suspicions were confirmed. An email from Aaron told her in noble terms that he had found a representative for Winterbourne: Rachel would be absolved of the ‘pressure’ of selling in no time, realising the fortune that w
as hers to inherit, and that ‘Winterfield’ would soon be a thing of the past. She wasn’t sure what was the worst part – that Aaron imagined all she cared about was money or that he had no clue what the place meant to her, despite the things she had told him. She realised that he didn’t understand her at all. How could he have imagined he had the right to take such action without consulting her first? Clearly he figured he was doing her a favour, but the fact remained it was none of his business.

  She composed her message:

  Aaron, you shouldn’t have done this. It was a breach of my trust, and something only I, given the circumstances, should have arranged. I would have arranged it when I was ready.

  Rachel sat back and chewed her thumb. She thought of the nights they had spent together, the kisses and the comfort he had given her. She thought of his smile, the ambition she’d been attracted to. It had been nice to have someone on her side.

  I’d have preferred not to do this by email but I feel you’ve left me no choice. It’s over, Aaron. It was never meant to be serious between us so I hope you will accept this easily. Take care and good luck. Rachel x

  Tucking her tablet into her bag, she downed her coffee and left the shop.

  In time she would sell Winterbourne and its land – but not yet. Not until she had revealed its story. She owed it to her mother and her grandmother. Rachel felt the women waiting for her, watching her, their eyes in the walls and their breath on the windows, willing her to uncover the truth that had buried them.

  *

  Winterbourne was transformed in the sunshine. Its walls blazed peach in the afternoon and its turrets and towers appeared classically romantic against the sky. The glass in the hothouses bounced light instead of swallowing it, and the crumbling stone frame of the orangery resembled an Italianate villa, nestled in the Tuscan hills. Rachel decided that, should she have been here in Winterbourne’s prime, the orangery would have been her favourite place. Yes, it had fallen to rack and ruin like the rest of the estate, yet it retained a timeless elegance and sense of peace that was lacking in other parts of the house. She took a walk down to the cliffs, and when she turned back to the building it seemed to regard her in a new way, gratefully, as if relieved at having been kept hold of.