The Woman In the Mirror

by Rebecca James

  On a night in November – I know not which one – I retire to bed early. I pause a while, as I always do, in front of Laura de Grey’s mirror. I enjoy how it makes me look, an altered version. If I wear my hair loose (which I do more now: Constance likes to comb it; she says it reminds her of her mother and I embrace the flattery like a child), and the light is subtle, I can imagine I see somebody else. If I concentrate, I can turn that woman into Laura de Grey, for Laura captured her husband’s heart; Laura hadn’t been a one-night affair; Laura had been enough to bewitch him…

  Laura, Laura, Laura…

  I don’t want to be me any more. My life as Alice has ended. I long instead to become this woman in the mirror, with her storm-black eyes and her pale, rising chest. I have taken to wearing long sleeves and a high collar to conceal the marks that have overtaken my body. I know not how they came to be. There are too many and they are too far spreading to be the product of any one impact. I notice the dark patches under my fingernails, as if I am the one who has drawn blood. Perhaps I am ill: they say the worst infections begin with bruises. Yet I have never felt so well, the strength of my obsession bringing colour to my cheeks and vigour to my heart.

  My bed is cold. I think I will never sleep in this cold but then suddenly I am awake, hours later, my candle gone out and the room swamped in darkness. I hear a steady, soft pattering, like moths against a light, and when I climb from the bed and pull the curtains I see large plumes of snow drifting and spitting against the windowpanes. Snow falls heavily, more heavily than I have seen, the night alive and flickering white. Everything is impossibly quiet, like a held breath.

  The little painting appears alive in the uncertain light. The girl has moved again. I knew she would. Now she is closer, close to stepping out of the frame.

  She seems to grow as I inspect her, as if she is coming closer still. I am frightened but I cannot let her see my fright. Stop daydreaming, Alice; you’re imagining things, Alice… Why does she observe me? What do I have that she wants?

  ‘Go back,’ I whisper to her. But when I peer in at the paint, the girl is as still and lifeless as could be, and I see the dashes of oil that have been used to create her.

  A voice calls. Only I cannot make sense of what it says.

  It comes from the hallway. Then I hear my own name, sharp and sudden.

  Alice.

  I light a candle and open the door, knowing what to expect – and sure enough there she is, my child, my love, in the spot in the hall that she always occupies. Constance is sleeping, her hands at her sides, her head raised to the ceiling, the frill of her nightdress brushing her bare toes. How cold she must be! I rush to her – only this time, unlike the other times, her eyes are not glazed but focused.

  ‘It was here,’ Constance murmurs to me. ‘It happened here…’

  Twenty-five minutes to three, the dead of night. It is Laura’s time.

  This is the first occasion she has spoken in such a state. I gather her to me. She looks so lucid, so present, that I have the absurd notion of being afraid. ‘Come along, darling,’ I tell her, gently guiding her down the passage, up the stairs and back to bed.

  In the twins’ room, Edmund is soundless beneath his covers, unusually soundless for one in deep sleep. As I tuck the girl back in, I wonder if he is listening to me – the words I croon that are meant for her ears only. It is with relief that I leave their chamber and return to my own. When I climb into bed, facing the open curtains and the dreamlike snow, my back to the forest on the wall that beckons me, curling its finger, come in, come in, but by turns needing to face the painting that horrifies me, the little girl watching, I wonder who is awake and who is asleep, and which I am, or what is between, and the thought is so tiring that I lose my grip and then it is morning.

  *

  After breakfast, the children are squealing to be let out in the snow. The stuff has settled foot-deep on the parkland and the gardens look enchanted glimpsed through Winterbourne’s frosted windows. Tree boughs hang heavy under ice and the blanket covering the lawns is pristine. ‘May we, Alice, may we play?’ Constance, having no memory of her nighttime excursion, tugs my hand, while Edmund pulls on his boots.

  ‘Wait for me,’ I tell them. ‘I must first ask your father.’

  But I have another motive in speaking with Jonathan. I find him in the library, sitting in a chair by the window. His leg is on a footstool and there is a cigar between his lips. His hair spills over the collar of his coat. It is early for him to be smoking and I wonder that he passed a bad night, as I did. Has he been thinking of me? Was he tempted to venture to my bed? The thought makes me hollow with longing.

  ‘Yes, Miss Miller?’ He greets me formally.

  After securing his permission to venture outside, I say:

  ‘I wish to talk to you about Constance.’

  ‘What about her?’

  I close the library door, wait for him to invite me to sit but he doesn’t.

  ‘You must be aware of her sleepwalking,’ I say. ‘It used to be infrequent but it is happening now several times a week. I am concerned for her well-being.’

  He draws hard on the cigar. The tip glows orange.

  ‘Constance is perfectly well,’ he says.

  ‘She cannot be expected to concentrate in lessons if she’s barely had any rest.’

  ‘Does she appear tired to you this morning?’ Out in the hall, we hear the twins exclaiming at the snow, and Constance’s enthusiastic laughter.

  ‘No—’

  ‘Nor does she to me. Is that all, Miss Miller?’

  I turn to go, then change my mind.

  ‘Constance spoke to me last night, Captain. Normally she is quiet, caught up in her trance. But last night she said, “It happened here.” What did she mean?’

  ‘She was sleeping, Miss Miller. Her talk is the stuff of dreams. Have you never dreamed a dream that made no sense?’

  I dream of you, I yearn to say. And it makes all the sense in the world.

  ‘She seemed convinced,’ I tell him.

  ‘I’m sure she did.’

  ‘And she always stops in the same place, in the hallway outside my bedroom, to look up at the beams. Don’t you think it odd?’

  Jonathan turns his chair to face me. He takes the cigar from his mouth and grinds it out in an ashtray, taking his time, blowing out smoke. How could the burns to his face repel anyone? How could he imagine they did? I cannot picture him without them, his scars as much a part of his handsomeness as his untidy hair and his strong hands and his sharp light eyes, the eyes of a wolf.

  ‘She is disturbing you, then,’ he says. ‘This is about you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not. Really, Captain, I don’t mind.’

  ‘I’ll have you moved to another room.’

  ‘No!’ For some reason I cannot bear the thought. The painting and the mural, Laura’s clock, her mirror, those things belong to me; they hold me in thrall; I am as addicted to them as I am to the captain! The idea of shutting them away is wrong, like shutting away a living creature in need of light. I am afraid of turning my back, as if in doing so I am turning against myself, the soft tricks of my mind that creep back to claim me and I cannot resist them or they will punish me for it. I could have asked to move when I learned of my predecessor’s fate, but I did not; instead the room brought me closer to that unfortunate woman, knowing she had lain where I lay, between my sheets; she had stood at the window as I did and felt desperate for him, as I did. Had she held Laura’s clock to her at night and felt its dead heart against her own?

  I clarify: ‘I mean to say, Captain, that I am happy where I am. It is Constance’s welfare that concerns me, not my own.’

  ‘You need have no concern,’ the captain says coldly, turning back to the view. Strange words to emerge from a man whose expression could only be described as concerned. He knows about the sleepwalking. He knows about the hallway. He knows why his daughter stops there. What he doesn’t know is how to stop me finding out.

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nbsp; *

  When I return to the porch, I am surprised to find the children gone. Their coats and boots are vanished from the usual place. ‘Constance?’ I call. ‘Edmund?’

  I pull my own coat on and step outside. The air is unbelievably still; the day is patient and pure, white within white within white. Even the sea is hushed: I have to strain to hear it. The twins’ footprints are a giveaway, the only disturbance to the immaculate snow save for the occasional twitch and jump of a bird.

  I follow their steps, two alongside two, until at the frozen lake they diverge. One set follows the lake round; the other heads off to the bluff. At the centre of the ice-smothered lake is a hole where someone has thrown in a rock. I picture Edmund, cajoling his sister on, though I cannot detect whose footprints are whose, and I start to feel troubled. I turn, thinking I hear a child’s cry, but there is no sign of life. No birds, no movement, no sound. Just Winterbourne, its arched windows blankly watching.

  I stare down at my hands, the skin cracked, ravaged with cold.

  ‘Edmund!’ I call, louder this time.

  I elect to follow the prints to the bluff, the chill air stealing the breath from my lungs. My coat is thin and my boots are poor. I think of Laura, tramping pink-cheeked through these conditions, her boots fur-lined and her shawl made of velvet. I think of blood on snow, red lips on a pale face, and shudder as the sea comes close.

  ‘Constance!’ I’m reminded of my first week here, that horrible morning I lost the boy and Tom had to come to our rescue. The weather steals them. The mists come in and the snow comes in, and the weather takes them away.

  ‘Edmund!’

  I’m reminded of the woman I saw on the cliff, and the shape I saw on the beach, creeping and crawling away from me, or towards me. I think of that same woman climbing into the mural in my bedroom and she fits exactly, coating herself in the vines that kiss and cradle her form. Is this where she lives? Does she come to the cliff in the day, and creep back to the forest at night?

  I stop at the drop. So do the child’s footprints. I peer over the edge to the foaming sea and I don’t know what I expect to see, but for a reckless moment I can draw in fine detail the broken body of a child. I gasp, drawing back from the edge, shocked at my vision! Then I see more prints. Only it can’t be; it surely isn’t possible that the child’s prints continue alongside another set, a larger one belonging without doubt to an adult… I peer closer, presuming the size and grain of Tom’s boots but no, these are slighter, the prints of a woman. I put my own next to hers and draw away to compare the impressions. One is a direct copy of the other.

  For a frenzied moment I expect to see myself up at the house, entering with Edmund at my side. Who, then, is the person looking on? Who, then, am I?

  Unsteadily I walk on, tracking the prints, those larger ones alongside a child’s, close enough to be holding hands. And then, up by the topiary, a third set joins them, what can only be the other twin’s, and the whole arrangement seems horrific, as if this is a grown-up the children know, falling so easily into step alongside her.

  Who is she? Who has my children?

  ‘Constance! Edmund!’

  The prints lead me to the stables and then they vanish. I turn about, searching the indifferent white but it relinquishes nothing. Storm comes to the door and I put my head over, thinking the twins have perhaps taken shelter – but it is empty. Panic fills my throat. What will I tell the captain? There must be some clue: people don’t evaporate into thin air. It occurs to me that a car might have taken them, but I have heard no car. They have to be on the estate, still. I will find them. I must!

  But the snow renders my world unfamiliar. The stone steps and ancient trees, the dips and curves and corners of the parkland I have grown accustomed to appear changed, absent, not right. Every familiarity is concealed. I hurry back to the house, opening and closing the door behind me, leaning back against it to close my eyes and catch my breath. How I wish Mrs Yarrow were here! Or else the doctor, Henry Marsh, any person who could catch me and call me back, for I am falling again. Silly Alice, stupid Alice! Tom is nowhere to be seen. I dash between the windows, scanning the bleached landscape but too frightened to become part of it. Whyever did I let them out of my sight? I must never let them out of my sight, ever again! There is somebody here, a trespasser: an intruder who means to harm my darlings. She has tempted them with a devilish offering and they, weak children, have fallen for her charms! She must have sneaked in overnight, masked in her hiding place. She waited. She waited.

  I wait now, but no one comes. I pace the floor, I listen for cries; I wring my hands and hold them in prayer. Please, I beg, please bring my children home. And all the while I am watching his study, terrified that his door will open and the captain will emerge and my sins will be spread for all to see. Jonathan will order me to leave Winterbourne for good. No! I think. It cannot happen! I cannot contemplate never seeing him again, or the children, or this house, and just as I am opening the door to stride outside there is a battering of tiny fists on the kitchen window. I rush in through the scullery. There, beyond the glass, are Edmund and Constance. They are crying, both the children are crying, and I cry too, sobbing with relief.

  ‘I’m coming!’ I splutter. ‘My darlings, I’m coming!’

  When I return to the door they are there on the other side.

  ‘My darlings!’ The twins rush in, shivering, teeth chattering. ‘Oh, my loves!’

  They are freezing. I try to warm their hands in mine but they resist; I try to draw them to me to heat them up but they pull away. The poor mites are in shock.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I ask, forgetting my anger, forgetting, even, the woman who took them, for the sheer reassurance that they are well.

  ‘You locked us out!’ Edmund cries. His curls are frosted and his lips grey with cold. Constance grips his hand, and I see not relief in her eyes but fear.

  ‘My sweethearts – how could you think such a thing?’

  ‘We couldn’t get in!’ Constance weeps. ‘We tried and tried!’

  ‘I’ve been here,’ I say; ‘I was listening for you. It isn’t possible.’

  ‘You locked the door!’ says Edmund. ‘You locked us out!’

  I did lock the door. I was afraid of that woman. But I would have heard them; I would, if they had come knocking! I heard them at the kitchen, didn’t I?

  ‘Who were you with?’ I demand. But they are bewildered. Nobody, they tell me, they were with me the whole time. We went out together and we looked at the cliffs and then we went to the stables to visit Storm; on the way back they stopped to throw snow and I returned on my own. I bolted the door behind me, shutting them out. ‘Who was she?’ I ask, wanting to shake them. ‘Who was that woman?’

  ‘What woman? We were with you. Alice, you’re scaring us!’

  Somehow I command them to go to their room, and promise to bring up warm towels and cocoa. Alone, I steady myself. My mind is spinning. My heart is thumping. Nobody, the twins had said, wide-eyed and sincere. Just you.

  It cannot be. I am well. I haven’t been ill in a long time.

  I venture back out to the snow. I will know when I see the prints. I will know and then I’ll show them and then I will drag out the truth. But all I see is a zigzag reflection of my hunt, here and there and all around, the trails of a madwoman, back and forth and back and forth, so many prints there is scarcely a space between them.

  Chapter 28

  Mrs Rackstile arrives at Winterbourne like a witch. That is how she appears to me, having travelled overnight through the slowly thawing snow that might have thwarted one in possession of a less determined disposition. By the neat brim of her hat and the shine on her shoes she could have journeyed door to door by first-class train. She is unmarried, in her fifties, has a narrow, angular face, a sweep of greying hair clipped back at the neck and a pursed, joyless mouth. She presents an instant threat, not least because the children flock ecstatically to her as they did when I first arrived, embra
cing her, bringing her drawings, treating her to their sweetest smiles. I believe they are punishing me for yesterday. I begged them not to inform their father of what happened and they agreed. Now they would serve me, it seems, a separate penalty.

  ‘Captain de Grey.’ Mrs Rackstile shakes his hand matterof-factly; and of course she should greet him first, he is her employer, but still I stand overlooked like a girl on the fringes at a party. This is my house! I long to cry. He is my captain!

  ‘I shall have this place in hand before you know it,’ she tells him, with a smile. Jonathan returns it and his smile wounds me. I wish I could eradicate every breathing soul at Winterbourne apart from us, alone, alone here for ever. I hate her already, without reason. I hate that she is deemed necessary. I hate that she disrupts our family: that she threatens to take the children from me, and Jonathan, and this house. She has no business here. She wants rid of me so she can claim it for herself.

  ‘And this is Alice Miller,’ says Jonathan, ‘the children’s governess.’

  I meet Mrs Rackstile’s hand and consider adding that I have been with him; it would be so simple to utter the words, to see what would happen. But of course I do not. Instead Tom shows the housekeeper to her quarters and I resume my demotion, as when Mrs Yarrow was here. It seems I am always third – third with my parents, third with the twins, third with Jonathan and his beautiful, dead wife. Never can I occupy that elusive first tier. For an instant he and I are alone and I wish he would give me assurance of my place, my priority, but no: he returns down the corridor without meeting my eye. Why should he, in any case? I am the governess, just as he said. I am nobody else, nobody important. I am nothing. I am invisible.

  *

  Mrs Rackstile’s approach to Winterbourne is to make her mark by taking away every one of my own. Every routine I have established, she unpicks. Every preference of mine, swept away. I can tell she deems me frivolous, a silly London girl employed to fill the children’s heads with lofty ideas that have no practical use in the real world. She possesses the kind of military conduct that reminds me of my father and of the instructresses at Burstead. After a lifetime serving the gentry, Mrs Rackstile has her way of doing things and neither hell nor high water will dissuade her from her path.