Girl in the Attic

by Valerie Mendes

  Nathan bent, took Tiggy in his arms, buried his face in the warmth of glossy fur. He remembered that afternoon when her yellow eyes had first caught sight of him, welcomed him, above the grey stone pond.

  “I’ve never had a cat before. I’d love to take care of Tiggy.” They perched on a stool together. “But she’ll always belong to you. We’ll share her, won’t we?”

  She looked at them both. “We will.”

  Tiggy slithered from his arms, leaving a cool, lonely space on his shoulder.

  “So you’ve gone back to Jake’s flat? You won’t be living with Charlie?”

  “I can’t just abandon Jake, can I? Especially not now, with all his good resolutions lined up for the future. He’s always been Dad to me, looked after me for fourteen years. He’s done his best to love me. I know he adored Mum, would never have harmed a hair of her head. If he can really lay off the booze, I reckon we’re going to get through all this together.”

  “So he doesn’t know you’ve found out about Charlie?”

  “No. I couldn’t find the heart to tell him. He looks so frail and tired. It would kill him.”

  “And what about Charlie’s attic?”

  “I’ll see a lot of Charlie. He says I can work in his studio. He’s going to buy me a desk. I’ve told him about Dad’s drinking. … He knew about it anyway, but now if things get bad again I’ve got someone to turn to. But his attic—”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Mum’s room, isn’t it? Charlie’s and Moira’s. It’s not meant for me.”

  She turned from the table, held out her hand. “Though I want to put something in it. Hang a new painting on the wall. If you’ve got the time. If you don’t mind.”

  His fingers touched hers, cool and damp. “Mind what?”

  “I need a new sketch.”

  “You mean—”

  “Of someone called Nathan Fielding.”

  He laughed. “You want to draw me?”

  “Yes. Give me half an hour. Sit in the attic. In one of those scruffy armchairs.”

  “It’ll cost you …”

  “Oh?” She laughed. “How much?”

  “A thousand kisses.” He blushed at her smile, took her awkwardly in his arms. “Three now. Many more later.”

  They climbed the stairs into the attic. In spite of the sunlight, Nathan shivered.

  Rosalie looked at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Nathan stared at the centre of the room. “It’s just that—”

  “You’re remembering the ghosts.”

  “How did you know?”

  “It’ll be easier now. … Their spirits will be still. Now I’ve found Charlie and I can look at Mum’s work whenever I need to.”

  He gave a sigh of relief. “I thought perhaps the ghosts were warning me off.”

  “No.” She looked at him, her eyes warm, approving. “They’d never have let you see them if they didn’t want you here.”

  She pulled out a sketchbook from a huddle on the desk, busied with charcoal pieces.

  “Sit over there.”

  He slumped into an armchair.

  “Turn sideways … Drop you head a bit. … Relax … Perfect.” She reached for a book. “Here. Read this while I draw.”

  Nathan looked at the cover. “Hey,” he said. “Lord of the Flies. How did you know? I’ve been meaning to read this for ages.”

  “Sure you have.” She settled the sketchbook on her knees. “I can read your mind, Nathan Fielding, so you’d better watch what you’re thinking!”

  He grinned.

  He looked at the graceful slope of her shoulder, the way her hair fell half across her face, her forehead puckered in concentration, her hand as it moved swiftly over the smoothness of paper.

  “Girl in the attic,” he murmured.

  She glanced up at him, her eyes bright, teasing. “Boy in the garden?”

  “You remember that day I first saw you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Remember what you said? About my being too late to do anything?”

  “’Course I remember.”

  “You were wrong. Admit it … I wasn’t too late, was I?”

  In the silence he heard the pounding of his heart; the scrape of her charcoal; gulls calling to each other over the deep blue sea.

  “No,” Rosalie said. She smiled at him. “No, you were just in time.”

  Read an Extract of Coming of Age . . .

  When her mother is killed in a horse-riding accident, nine-year-old Amy is mute and traumatised. She cannot remember what happened, and she is haunted by a nightmare she cannot explain. She becomes obsessed by her father, clinging to their relationship for dear life.

  Six years later, confident that she has passed her school exams with flying colours, and basking in her father’s love, Amy is horrified to discover there is a new woman in his life. Hannah is not only young and attractive but she is a qualified doctor who also threatens to become Amy’s step-mother.

  Reeling from the blow, Amy makes the chance discovery of a postcard written to her mother before her untimely death. Realising with a shock that her older brother will not help her to reveal the truth behind it, Amy abandons a potential love affair to follow the clues the postcard has given her. Mustering all her determination and courage, she travels on her own to Italy, to find a man she has never met before – and never will again.

  Was he her mother’s killer or her lover?

  The threads of everything that has happened lead inexorably back to the present. As she gradually remembers those horrific moments she thought forever buried, Amy is forced to come to terms with the past. Finally – and in more ways than one – a reluctant maid of honour at her father’s wedding, Amy comes of age.

  One

  Amy grips her father’s hand, as hard as her frozen fingers will allow.

  Dad’s hand feels plump and hot and sweaty. Amy looks up at him, noticing for the first time the flutter of grey eating into the thick brown waves of hair above his ears.

  I want to be glued to Dad for ever, so he’ll never leave me. Wherever I go, he’ll be close to me, so nothing can happen to him. Nothing can take him away from me. Or, if it does, I can go with him.

  The January wind bites across the Surrey sky over the graveyard, drifting into Amy’s face a cold sleet that clings to her lips and eyelashes. When she blinks, pale drops splash to her cheeks, her neat, shining chestnut plaits which flick forward over her shoulders, down on to her smart navy Sunday-best coat.

  The coffin bumps and rasps against the sides of the hole, settles on the earth with a dull thud. Sleet finds the wooden surface and licks it shiny wet.

  It’s Mum inside that box. Her eyes are closed, her neck is white with those spidery-thin lines. Her hair, all her lovely dark-red hair, is curling on her shoulders. I wonder what she’s wearing, what they’ve put her in.

  Amy bends forward so she can see past Dad to her brother, Julian. He’s thirteen, four years older than her, and she adores him. He stands stiffly by Dad’s side, his head bent, his hands thrust into his coat pockets. He’d returned to Grayshott yesterday from his Oxford boarding school, driven by one of the masters, a tall, thin man with a red nose and embarrassed eyes who hovered in the hall and then vanished back to his car with obvious relief.

  Julian had looked pale, dry-eyed. He hugged Amy, said, “Hi, sis,” and stared wretchedly into her silent face. Then he ran up to his room and shut the door. Amy followed him and paused outside. She knocked, but got no answer. She hadn’t dared go in. Instead she ran into her bedroom, stood at the window looking out at the garden. Mum’s garden, the one she’d designed and made, cared for so lovingly, now bleak and winter-wet.

  Dad came home from the surgery, rushed up to see Julian. Their voices mumbled on for ages behind the door.

  Now a strange sound breaks from her father’s mouth, a kind of cry, but choked and muffled, as if it had escaped without permission. He clears his throat.

  “Lauren
, my love,” he says.

  Amy blinks and looks around the graveyard. For a wild moment she thinks she can see the dead rising from their graves. Their faces are pale, their clothes drab, their hair flutters in the wind. One of them, a woman dressed in black, carries a baby in her arms. Then the creatures sigh. They dissolve once again into the ground.

  Frightened, Amy grips Dad’s hand tighter still. She tugs at it, makes him look down at her. His eyes, pink around the edges, grey with tiredness, stare at her, but they don’t see her. Sunk in misery, they look back into his own head.

  Amy opens her mouth. She wants to say, “Don’t cry, Dad.” She tries to say, “I promise I’ll remember what happened. One morning, soon, I’ll wake up and I’ll be able to speak again. My voice will sound just the same as before and I’ll tell you what happened, because every minute will have come back to me.”

  The words ring in her head. They climb up her throat, but something swallows them before they reach her mouth.

  Dad tries to smile at her and Amy tries to speak.

  Both of them fail.

  “Poor little mite.”

  Amy hears the whisperings about her begin as the scrapes of earth crunch on the coffin. Rooks cling and caw insistently among the giant firs; the mourners huddle into groups against the wind.

  “She’s only nine years old, you know . . . Terrible thing to witness . . . She ran for help. Got off her pony and stumbled across Ludshott Common. Flung herself at the door of the nearest house, fainted dead away.”

  “How terrible . . .”

  “When she came round, she couldn’t say a word. Just shook her head and pointed to the Common, crying as if her heart would break but not making a sound. Her dog, Tyler, was with her, barking fit to burst. They followed him and found Lauren lying on the path . . . Nothing they could do to help . . . too late for anything.”

  “And Amy still can’t –”

  “No, not a word. Hasn’t said a word since that dreadful day.”

  “Where was Dr Grant at the time?”

  “Dreadfully ill. Flu epidemic all winter. Hit the village hard. He’s such a lovely man, do anything for anybody – home visits, weekends . . .”

  Restlessly, the mourners begin to shift away from the grave, down the tarmac path shot through with patches of ice and sharp yellow moss, towards Terra Firma, the Grant family’s house.

  Amy feels hands stroking her shoulders. Aunt Charlotte bends to kiss her. She’s older than Mum and not a bit like her – very thin, with beautiful clothes. “Come on, my darling. Let’s get back into the warm.”

  Amy lets go of Dad. She buries her face in the softness of Aunt Charlotte’s coat. It smells of sugared almonds. Wisps of mohair find their way into her mouth.

  Back at Terra Firma, the hall fills with damp coats and the spikes of dripping umbrellas. Tyler skitters up and down, yapping excitedly at the strangers who throng the living room. Bottles chink, glasses fill, sherry scents the air.

  Someone rings a spoon against a glass. The voices hush.

  “I want to thank everyone for making time to come to Lauren’s funeral and for being here with us this afternoon.” Dr William Grant’s voice falters. “Lauren and I were childhood sweethearts. She was my wife and dearly beloved partner for fifteen years . . . For me, she will never die. And I know that many of you here, her good friends and neighbours, whose gardens she designed and helped create, will always have those to remember her by. I hope that by tending them in future, you too will be able to keep her memory alive.”

  His voice almost breaks.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”

  Murmurs of sympathy fill the room.

  “But –” Dr Grant takes a deep breath and perseveres – “Amy and Julian are by my side, and Lauren’s dear sister, Charlotte, will stay with us until we are strong again.”

  He smiles at Charlotte through tearful eyes.

  “And of course my job as your GP will continue. In fact –” he swallows – “my partners and I will work harder than ever to ensure your health and welfare are looked after in the best possible way.”

  Appreciative cluckings.

  “And now,” Dr Grant says, relief in his voice that he has managed the words he had so carefully rehearsed, “please raise your glasses to the memory of Lauren. May she rest in peace.”

  “Lauren!”

  The cry lifts to the ceiling. Tyler barks. Mouths drink.

  Nausea rises from the pit of Amy’s stomach and threatens to engulf her.

  It was all my fault. It must’ve been. Mum fell off Duchess and I must’ve been to blame. Maybe I saw something that frightened me and Mum tried to protect me. Maybe I shouted at something and scared Duchess. Maybe Cadence started to bolt after a rabbit and Duchess threw Mum off her by mistake. Why, oh, why can’t I remember?

  Last night I had that dream again. I’m out on the Common and the sky is black. A strip of lightning shivers silently across it. I can hear the thunder of horses’ hooves, but I don’t know where it’s coming from. I’m terrified. I know something terrible is going to happen and I want to scream. But when I open my mouth, I can’t make a sound. I wake and sit up in bed. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out of it.

  Dad’s arm slides across her shoulders. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  Amy nods.

  Dad bends to whisper in her ear. “Soon they’ll be gone. These kind people who’ve come to pay their respects. They’ll all go home. Then you and me and Jules and Aunt Charlotte – we can have a quiet time around the fire, just the four of us.”

  Amy can smell alcohol on Dad’s breath. Just the four of us doesn’t mean with Mum any more. It can never mean that again.

  The room becomes jumpy with noise. Tyler has found a fur hat on the pile. Amy is sure it belongs to Frances, their vicar. She’s been so kind to them since Mum died. The hat looks damp and bedraggled. Tyler is joyfully tugging it through the clusters of legs.

  I can’t even say “Bad dog!” to him.

  She looks at the faces peering down at her, their pitying watery eyes, their wagging chins. She can’t bear them a minute longer.

  She ducks under Dad’s arm, pushes against the bodies, crashes on all fours up the stairs into the silence of her room.

  Tyler comes bounding after her.

  She flings herself on her bed, face down. She remembers how she used to fling herself across Cadence to ride her, pulling at her solid, welcoming warmth, feeling the soft fall of her silvery mane.

  Cadence.

  She’d never ride her again. Not now. Not ever again.

  Tyler jumps on to Amy’s bed. He nuzzles at her ear. When there is no response, he sighs. He settles himself across Amy’s back to guard her through the night.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t come yesterday,” Mary says.

  She kneels on the floor, beside the fire where Amy is crouching, and takes her hands. The wonderful scent of horses drifts from Mary’s clothes.

  “Ballard’s been off her feed all week. The vet got delayed and I had to deal with it myself.”

  Amy wants to say, “Is Ballard going to be OK?” but the words rattle in her head instead of coming out.

  “She’ll be fine.” Mary strokes the flop of Amy’s hair away from her face. “I thought about you all day. Everybody did . . . You know that, don’t you?”

  Amy nods.

  “Look.” Mary swallows. She turns her face towards the gentle flicker of fire. “I’ve come with the van and I’ll take Duchess away. Of course I will. And your dad’s wonderful Marathon.” Her voice hardens. “I know it’s what Dr Grant wants.”

  Amy nods more vigorously. The flames dance into energetic life.

  “Duchess and Marathon can join the other thoroughbreds in my fields. They’ll have a marvellous life. I’ll look after them for as long as you want . . .”

  Rigid as a stone, Amy stares at Mary.

  “For as long as your dad wants . . .”

  Amy thinks,
Oh, God, I know what’s coming.

  “But your beloved Cadence. Are you quite sure you want me to take her too?”

  Amy freezes. Her head will no longer even nod.

  “I mean, you two have grown up together.” Mary smiles, except her eyes don’t match her mouth. “Remember when I taught you to ride?”

  Amy’s hands, locked between Mary’s, feel cold and hard as the ice she used to break on Cadence’s water trough early on a winter’s morning.

  “You were only three.” Mary’s eyes begin to flicker in the firelight. “Remember?”

  How could I forget?

  “The moment I saw you on Cadence, I knew you were going to be a beautiful little rider.”

  I couldn’t get out of Mum’s car fast enough . . .

  “I thought, That little Welsh pony and that Amy, they’re made for each other.”

  I raced into the stable yard to find Mary, to find the new pony she’d bought for me. Mum laughed. That wonderful trill, like a bird singing. I heard her call, “Not so fast, young lady! Wait for me!”

  “And now,” Mary said, “you really want me to take Cadence away?”

  Amy wrenches her hands out of Mary’s. She stands up, steps backwards like a dancer, very carefully. One, back; two, back. She pulls out of her pocket a crumpled piece of paper. She throws it on the floor, as if it stings her skin. It flutters on to Mary’s knees.

  PLEASE, says the paper, TAKE CADENCE AWAY.

  Mary reaches for the message. She smoothes out the crumples, but her hands are shaking. Her eyes flick, flick, pause, flick over the words. She looks up at Amy.

  “I understand.”

  She throws the paper on the fire. It flares yellow and sooty black.