“Very poorly indeed,” Will joked.
They left a comfortable silence, each thinking of how they would miss the other but not having the words to express it.
“We’ll talk soon,” Will said.
“Yes, we will,” Aila said.
“Now, any young lady must know about opera,” Horace said, placing a dusty book in front of Aila. He had chosen an old wing of the castle usually used for storing boxes of books, old clothes and toys, for their studies and it was freezing. While Matilda had utilised the outdoors and allowed Aila to write on a notebook on her lap, Horace had moved an old desk and chair into the classroom and insisted that Aila learn shorthand to take her notes.
Opera was not the first subject he had spent time on that day; he had started at 7am with Latin, medieval warfare at 8am and onto opera at 9am. Each subject blurred into the other as his teaching style mostly consisted of talking to no one in particular.
Aila found her eyes starting to unfocus, her gaze drifting aimlessly to the window and out to the fields. She imagined herself walking by the river, learning Latin verbs and plant names, practising violin in the orchard, memorising historical dates by the warm fireside downstairs.
Her reverie was cut short as pain stung through her cheeks, her eyes spinning as she looked for the source.
Horace was looming over her, the back of his hand extended threateningly. She realised he had hit her around the face. She started up at him in shock, mouth hanging open.
“Pay attention,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t want to have to do that again, do I?”
Aila didn’t say anything, still trying to comprehend what had happened. No one had ever hit her before, not even her father. He could be cold, cruel even, but he had never been violent towards her.
“Do I?” Horace said, raising his hand higher to prompt a response.
“No!” Aila said.
“Good,” he said, lowering his hand, “Let’s continue.”
Angels cry you know
Angels feel your pain
You know when an Angel cries
It falls down from heaven as rain
~ John F Connor
Chapter Ten
July 1992
“Be good, study hard,” Aila’s father said as he dipped into the back of the taxi to the airport, not meeting her eyes or even waving.
Aila was too upset to cry, not at the prospect of another summer without her father, but in reaction to Horace’s hand, which was now firmly placed on her left shoulder, a fatherly gesture that had an entirely different meaning. It was a threat and a promise – a promise of things to come.
Fenella and Iona had flown out first, John staying for an extra day to organise estate tours with Edmund. Horace had volunteered to stay behind to babysit and tutor Aila for the summer, and idea that John had jumped at given her grades.
“Just you and me now, bairn,” Horace chuckled as he ushered Aila back into the castle.
Each day was a new and uninteresting topic – this time, Victorian history.
Horace insisted that this lesson needed to be conducted in the rose garden, an idea Aila would have loved if Matilda had suggested it, but Horace was an entirely different teacher.
“These bricks were imported,” Horace started, rambling for nearly an hour about Victorian stone works and masonry before turning back to Aila, “Have you been writing this down?” he asked, looking at her piece of paper.
She had been fervently scribbling, knowing he would be furious if she missed anything.
He approached to examine her piece of paper and she grimaced involuntarily, raising her arm to her face slightly in anticipation of his raised hand.
“What are you doing?” He asked.
“What do you mean, sir?” She asked. He had insisted on the ‘sir’, hitting her with his belt if she forgot.
“Holding your hand up like that.”
“I…”
“Did you think I was going to hit you?” He asked, a slight hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
“Uh…” she didn’t know how to reply to appease him – he had already made it clear on several occasions that he abhorred lying, but she didn’t want to anger him. In the end, she whispered, “Yes.”
“Ridiculous,” he said, coming closer to where she was sat cross-legged on the floor, “Stand up.”
She obeyed, leaving her notes and pen on the grass.
“Turn around,” he said. Aila’s heart raced in her ears as he grew closer to her. She felt her spine tingle in fear as she smelt the whiskey on his breath and his damp, unwashed scent. He disgusted her and terrified her in equal measure.
“Lift up your skirt,” he said hoarsely, and she could hear glee at the edge of his words. She hesitated and he smacked her around the back of the head, “Now!”
She lifted her skirt. She heard him take off his belt and she urged herself to run, to get away from him, but she was frozen in fear.
Time passed slowly, each painful second drawn out into years. She closed off her mind from the pain, staring forward to the angel statue at the end of the garden, its eyes watching over her, but no divine intervention came.
She silently begged for its help, for anyone’s help.
Horace left her, returning inside, either bored with her or needing to attend to something else. He didn’t say a word as he left, leaving her crumpled against the grass, skirt still lifted.
She lay crying against the ground for an eternity, flies buzzing over her face and shadows moving across her line of sight.
Soon, night started to fall and she thought about moving.
Just then she heard footsteps approaching and she scrambled to look up, expecting to see Horace returning to torture her further.
It was Edmund, his thick boots crunching across the gravel of the garden path as he approached her.
He didn’t seem to see her at first, but when he did, he stopped in his tracks. Aila could see from the way he looked her that he knew what had happened. She had never seen such horror in his eyes before.
He ran to the final paces to her, crouching down at her side and putting his coat over her lower half to cover her.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, laying down next to her, “It’s going to be okay.”
Chapter Eleven
November 1994
“Many happy returns, darling,” John Douglas said, toasting Aila with a glass of champagne across the dinner table. She didn’t return the gesture, but Fenella tapped her glass against his and added her congratulations, along with Iona who had apple juice in her glass.
Aila remained slumped in her chair, not saying anything, starting forward past her father’s head. She was thinking about Will. About how she had barely seen him over the past few years, once her closest friend. It was on her, she knew that. He had tried to come around, called her multiple times a week initially.
She couldn’t face him. So much had happened to her at the hands of her tutor, she didn’t feel she could return to the feeling of carefree childhood that she had experienced with Will. He was part of a different time.
A time when Matilda had been alive.
A time before Horace’s ‘lessons’.
She thought about how he would be turning fifteen in a few months as well. She thought about the first edition of Conan Doyle.
The next morning Horace woke her by bursting into her bedroom as he often did – he enjoyed unnerving her at any opportunity and waking her was the best way to do this. She had taken to sleeping fully clothed, but that didn’t deter him.
“Time to go to the club,” Horace said, pulling off her bedsheets.
“Fine,” Aila replied, grabbing a clean jumper and heading to the bathroom, which had a lock.
She could hear him breathing just outside the door as she brushes her hair, and her blood started to boil with fury.
Edmund had pleaded with John on her behalf a few years earlier after he had found her in the rose garden, but her father was either h
appy to let it happen or in denial about his friend and ex-brother in-law’s actions. Horace remained her tutor, continuing his abuse over the following years.
She had self-harmed. Run away. Stolen her father’s car and driven it, without any prior lessons, to the next village on before she crashed it.
She had tried everything to get away and had finally resigned herself to it. But she didn’t intend to allow it to go on forever.
The ‘club’ – Horace’s lunch club, a seedy place full of rich men and their sons eating fancy food and smoking cigars – was Aila’s only contact with the outside world.
She had started dating a boy, Sean, who was around her age, sneaking into the bathroom with him any opportunity she could. She didn’t care much for him, he was just an escape, a thing to channel her anger and passion into.
Something that Horace didn’t have control over.
“Hiya,” he said, sweeping a lock of brown hair upwards into a slight quiff. She had given him the usual nod, a sign to meet her in the bathroom of the club.
She didn’t reply, simply sinking into a kiss as a reply.
“Woah, steady,” he said, pulling back from her.
She tutted, and unlocked the bathroom door, returning to the rabble of the lunch club. The lounge of the club was cluttered with old, fat and balding men. The scene was archaic, a time capsule from the 40s or 50s preserved to this day by the rich and pompous.
The only women the club ever saw were the waitresses, snaking between the men trying to avoid their grabbing hands, stony looks on all of their faces.
Aila often wondered who owned the club; it had to be someone rich, someone powerful and someone who despised modernisation.
Aila started to weave through the crowds, scowling at any teenage boy who whistled at her or trying to touch her arm. She felt an arm around her waist and turned to confront her assailant, coming face to face with Sean again.
“Get off of me,” she said, some embarrassment at his public display of affection, but she also saw Horace eyeing her from a stool at the bar. There was jealously in his eyes, and lust, something she knew would shape the course of the rest of her day.
Anger filled her and she pushed Sean hard in the chest.
“Stop it,” she said, his grip on her waist loosening and she slipped away through the sea of men.
She reached the end of the lounge and tried the fire exit door, hoping she could slip through the gardens and walk home, away from Horace.
A hand grabbed her wrist and she pulled it upwards violently, hoping to shake it free.
“Behave,” the sinister voice made her fingertips tingle in dread as she looked up into Horace’s face. “It’s time to go home,” he added.
The car ride was silent, but she had endured enough of his abuse to know what was coming.
When the estate was in sight, he parked along a country lane, pulling her by the arm over a stile that lead towards the river.
Tears started to stream down Aila’s cheeks in anticipation of the act she knew was coming, as soon as Horace found a spot he deemed suitable.
She prayed that Edmund would round the corner with his springer spaniel, or even her father, anyone.
Horace continued to yank her arm, pulling her up and over a wooden bridge, no wider than a few feet and twenty-foot-long, which stretched over a wide and fast flowing part of the river.
“Here,” Horace said, pulling her round by the arm so hard that the skin on her wrist was rubbed red and sore. “Take off your trousers,” he said.
Aila stemmed the flow of tears and pulled herself out of her own mind, performing the action automatically.
He approached her, grabbing her hair and pulling it backwards.
“You’re just as beautiful as your mother was,” he said with a smile.
The words rang in her ears as she came back to herself.
“My mother?” she said, anger hissing into her mind.
He leaned forward to grab her bare legs, but she walked backwards towards the edge of the bridge.
“Stay still,” Horace commanded, approaching her again.
“My mother…” Aila whispered furiously, Horace reaching for her hair again.
She dashed sideways as he did, and the force of his action leant him over the rail of the bridge. His trousers were around his ankles in preparation for the act, causing him to lose his balance.
His other hand grabbed the railing, but it was old and rotten and snapped under his falling weight.
He threw his hand out towards Aila, and she clasped it automatically. In the split second that she held his hand, she made up her mind.
She pushed against his arm with all of her strength, sending him forwards so that his midriff tumbled against the broken railing.
It gave way completely and he started to fall. Rage filled her chest, burning her heart so that nothing of her compassion remained.
With one final push against his back, Horace sailed over the bridge, tumbling into the deep and fast water below.
He started to swim, and Aila watched in horror as he made his way towards the bank, worried she had made a fatal mistake; he wouldn’t let this one go.
The riverbank was curved, and where the water became shallower, the current grew faster, and as he neared the bank, the rapids pulled him under again.
Several minutes passed as he struggled against the fast water, his head bobbing above the white foam to call to her for help.
As he battled against the current, Aila grew more confident of his fate. She walked back to where she had dropped her trousers, pulling them up and walking to the riverbank.
He popped up again for a final time, eyes full of terror watching her standing over him, just as he had with her so many times before.
She didn’t offer to help him. She simply watched as the current overtook him, his body tiring with every moment, until eventually the water carried his lifeless body downstream.
Chapter Twelve
November 1994
“Thank you for your assistance officers,” Fenella said sleepily, holding a distraught Iona against her shoulder as she saw the police out of the house, “We’ll let you know if we hear anything.”
Horace had been missing for five days. His car had been found on the lane, but no body had been recovered.
Aila was surprised at this, remembering her mother’s death, but she hoped he had been pulled further along and out of the estate. A network of rivers and lakes covered the countryside beyond Dunmistle, and the chance of his body turning up was slim.
She felt a mix of relief and fear as the police searched for him. She pleased that they hadn’t found anything, and was glad to be free of him, but the threat of his body turning up, or worse him returning alive, loomed over her.
John refused to find a new tutor, initially adamant that Horace was alive and well and would return, and then as his disappearance appeared more permanent, he relented and allowed Aila to return to school.
By Christmas, Horace was presumed dead and the police had little to go on. Given the opinions of Fenella, Iona and John all described a well-liked family man, they couldn’t piece together a motive for murder, nor could they rule it a suicide.
The case was left cold, and with every passing day Aila grew more and more at peace.
Horace’s absence was joyous in itself, but her return to school was even more so.
As she walked into her new classroom, she saw Will, matured and taller, but still with the same curly hair and wry smile, sat at the back with a group of boys.
He noticed her immediately and his face fell. Aila knew she should have called. She should have told him everything, apologised for her failure as a friend.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
She walked slowly to the back of the class and stood over his table, the other boys regarding her with confused looks on their faces.
“Hi,” she said quietly.
“Hi,” he replied, some resentment sprinkling into his ton
e.
“Are you pleased to see me?” she asked, trying to lighten the tone.
He didn’t reply but stood up and walked a few paces closer before sitting on a nearby table.
“I’m sorry, Will,” Aila said eventually.
He still didn’t reply, but his face softened a little as he looked down at the floor.
“Please,” Aila whispered.
“Okay,” Will said, “But no disappearing this time.”
“I promise,” Aila said.
Their friendship was easy to re-boot. Their love of books was amplified by the extra years of reading, Aila having caught up to Will during her years of isolation; one thing Horace hadn’t restricted was access to her father’s study, which was filled with classic literature.
They spent weekends walking the grounds, although Aila avoided the river for fear that their strolls would be interrupted by a dead body.
“Aila?” Will said as they lay side by side in the frosty grass of one of the hay fields to the east of the castle.
“Yes?” Aila replied.
“Do you like me?” he said.
They had rekindled their friendships some months earlier, but the question caught Aila off guard.
“What’s that supposed to mean – of course,” Aila said, adding, “You’re my best friend.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Will said slowly, “I meant… do you like me.”
“Oh,” Aila said, growing pink as she tried to think of her answer to the question. It wasn’t something she had ever thought about before.
Will was the best person she knew. She loved his company. He was quick-witted, easy-going and caring.
“Yes,” Aila said, the realisation occurring at the same time as the word, “Yes, I like you.”
She expected Will to give her a quick reply, something astute and mocking, but he was silent for a moment.
Then he rolled onto his side, and gently cupped her face with his right hand.
He leaned down, and gently kissed her.
Chapter Thirteen
July 1995
Aila prepared for another summer at Dunmistle Castle without her family, but with two gleeful thoughts encapsulating her mind: firstly, she was free of Horace, and secondly, she had Will to keep her company.
The Three Lives of Aila Douglas Book 2 Page 4
