‘I don’t want to think on’t, love. Not our Mossy, not ’ere.’
‘No, Mum.’ There was a pause. ‘It were just an accident, nowt else …’ and then, ‘I was never quite easy about it, that lass coming t’ live ’ere. It din’t quite feel right.’
‘No, well. We’ll check on ’er, love.’
They fell silent. Emma stepped softly towards the door, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to open it. She didn’t want visitors. She only wanted Charlie back, but if not him, she
wanted to be on her own. And then the door handle turned and the catch opened with a click and she rapidly stepped back into the shadows beneath the stairs. She stared at the door and she didn’t blink. If she could keep them away with her will, they wouldn’t come in: they’d turn and they’d run.
The door opened.
‘It’s open. We’ll ’ave a quick look, then you’ll know she’s all right. That’s the best thing.’ The woman’s face was full of concern beneath the wrinkles. Her hair was white and pulled into a bun, stray hairs surrounding her like static electricity. She put a hand nervously to the mole just next to her lip, and then a man’s hand took her arm and helped her across the threshold. It struck Emma then how colourless they looked, this old woman and the tall, thin man behind her, and yet she could almost sense the warmth they had for each other. She could see it in the gentle way he clasped her arm.
Inside the threshold, they paused and looked around. ‘You was good to that old man, Frank.’
He gave a rueful smile. ‘He weren’t that old,’ he said. ‘You teld me that once, though he were old enough to us. It were a shame, though. I should’ve gone back, after, you know. I never did say I were sorry. But then what happened happened, and it were all too late anyway and I couldn’t take it back, any of it.’ His smile faded as he spoke and his voice cracked and Emma realised that he was close to tears. His gaze was vague, as if he was looking at something a long way away. He still hadn’t noticed her where she stood, pressed back against the wall.
She didn’t quite know why she had hidden. By rights she should declare herself, demand to know what they were doing in her house, but she found she wanted to hear more.
The old woman patted his hand and leaned in towards him. ‘It weren’t your fault. I were punished enough when she took
them
, my brother Will, and—’ She paused. ‘Well, it were enough. I were a part of a future she never got to live, that was all, an’ she couldn’t forgive me for it. I suppose it were worse, leavin’ me to carry on without ’em. ’Course, I thought it were done, after that. I thought it were ower. I never thought— I’d ’ave gone away if I’d suspected for a minute it’d tek our Mossy. Far away, where nowt’d have ’urt the pair o’ you.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
‘Dun’t go gettin’ upset, Mum. P’raps you shouldn’t ’ave come with me.’
‘I’d not see you come ’ere alone, love. If I ’adn’t—’
‘Mum, don’t. Our Mossy – that could ’ave been an accident, nothing more, an’ anyway, we shouldn’t think on’t now. Not ’ere.’
‘You said ’e weren’t scared. He weren’t, were ’e? I’d hate to think of ’im, alone and scared, in the mire, at the end.’
Emma bit her lip.
It took Frank a moment to respond. ‘He – he teld me he weren’t scared of the old man, Mum.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘But he was scared of summat else. Well, he ’ad more sense than any of us, then.’ She put a hand to her face; it was shaking.
‘Mum, it’s all right. Step in ’ere a minute. Have a sit-down. I’m sure t’ young lass wouldn’t mind.’ He opened the door to the drawing room and helped his mother inside.
Emma stepped forward to follow them and then she froze. They would see her; they would wonder why she hadn’t spoken. Somehow she didn’t want to reveal herself just yet. She felt they
had more to say. She edged away from the door just as Frank came out. He paused partway, staring up at the stairs, his eyes wide open and fixed.
‘Go on, love. I’ll be all right. Just you ’ave a quick look, then we can go and we dun’t ever ’ave to come back agin.’
‘All right, Mum. You sit tight, now.’ Frank stepped slowly across the hall, looking down at the black and white tiles. They were smeared with dirt and he picked his way between the footprints as if he didn’t want to disturb them. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and put his hand on the rail and just stayed there, looking upwards. He roused himself and glanced around. Emma caught her breath but he didn’t notice her and then he tilted back his head. ‘Miss? Emma?’ he called. ‘Emma!’
She bit her lip. She couldn’t bring herself to speak. She hadn’t
asked
him to come here. She didn’t
want
him here. He was an intrusive presence and soon he would leave and she would be alone once more. Then she heard a quiet murmur coming from the drawing room.
Frank tentatively made his way onto the landing, turning the corner, his footsteps moving away. He did not call out again; it didn’t seem as if he really wanted to be heard. Emma glanced upwards to be sure he couldn’t see her before she crossed the hall and pushed open the drawing room door.
The old woman wasn’t seated. She stood with her back to Emma and she was still making that sound, although Emma realised she wasn’t speaking at all; she was humming, one hand twitching at her side, as if she was trying to recall some long-forgotten tune.
‘I never did get to dance,’ she said.
Emma didn’t breathe.
‘I came here once, to a –
soirée
. It were in the war. It were then that I met the children, you know – Arthur, Clarence, Hal and Tom.’ She paused. She must have heard Emma enter the room, but the way she was speaking – she did not appear to be expecting to receive a reply. She must think it was her son standing behind her, though from the sound of her words, she was a hundred miles away, lost somewhere in the past.
‘After what ’appened, I came here often. I ’elped Mrs ’Olling-worth – Antonia – with the cooking and the polishing. I even helped whitewash this room, once. She had no idea what to do, bless her. She came from money and she married money, but it din’t make her happy, for all that. She said she always felt like she were bein’ watched. Perhaps she was.’
Emma shifted uncomfortably.
‘Do you reckon that were why, love? Why she took our Mossy as well as Tom? Because I ’elped his new wife, ’
er
replacement?’
For a moment Emma thought that was all; there wasn’t anything else to come, but then the old woman added, ‘It were all my fault, love, not yours. It were Antonia ’Ollingworth said I should start again, you see. I allus said as ’ow I’d never wed, not after what ’ad ’appened. After Tom – I said I’d never ’ave children, neither. I din’t trust myself with ’em. An’ I din’t wed, not for a long old time, but then I met your dad, an’ when ’e asked me, I remembered – I remembered what she’d said an’ I dared to think I could start ower.’ She let out a sob.
‘I paid,’ she whispered. ‘I paid wi’ our Mossy. Weren’t never your fault, love. Don’t ever think that. It were mine, it were always mine, an’ I’m still paying now. I should ’ave taken you away after Mossy left us, far, far away, but I didn’t ’ave the will left in me. An’ I thought it were all forgot, love, but there’s never
anything forgotten, is there? Not in this place. This place
remembers
. I can feel it, can’t you?’
Her shoulders shook and she sank into herself, burying her face in her hands. Emma took a step forward and then she remembered that the woman was expecting Frank, not her. She would only be frightened if she made herself known.
She paused to glance around the room before stepping quietly away and into the hall, sensing rather than seeing the woman whirling around to look after her. Still, she couldn’t help but hear her next words: ‘But it’s ower, in’t it, love? It’s ower now.’
Emma leaned back against the wall, trying to catch her breath. Something was wrong. The walls of the drawing room had been a soft shade of green. The paint had been fresh. The room looked just the way she had imagined when she’d first seen it, and all that she could think of was that Charlie had painted it. It felt somehow as if the house had betrayed her, as if it had accepted the work of his hands and rejected her own.
She shook the thought away. Then she turned and started up the stairs after Frank.
*
Doors creaked as Emma trod gently on each step, as if to cover the sound of her approach. Frank didn’t call out and she didn’t either. She had thought she knew exactly which room he would have entered first, but he had actually begun at the opposite end of the house, towards the back. As she turned the corner of the landing she saw his thin form emerge from one doorway and enter the next. He was nearing her room. Now she felt, though she could not have said why, that he was leaving it for last.
Emma waited until he emerged again. It was as if she were in a dream, or sleepwalking, somehow aware of it without being quite awake.
There he was, a tall thin man in his colourless jumper, his hair just beginning to grey. He kept his eyes on the floor as he passed her bedroom, trying the one next to it before stepping back onto the landing, only one option remaining to him. Now, finally, he did call out, his voice breaking over the word: ‘Miss?’
At the sight of his hand on the door handle of her room, anger rose; then it dissipated. After hearing his mother and the talk of their loss she was not sure why it came as a surprise to realise that he was afraid.
He turned the handle and went inside and then there was silence. Emma softly followed. She wanted to see what he would do. He hadn’t closed the door behind him and she slipped through the gap he had left.
Frank was standing in the middle of the room, looking towards the door that let into the narrow cupboard. She only dimly registered that her room was a mess, her clothes strewn across the bed, her things piled all over the floor, when she realised that she too was standing in full view. At any moment he would turn and see her. He would surely be horrified to be discovered there. He turned his head; he looked straight towards her and then he turned back to the narrow door, just as if he hadn’t seen her at all.
Emma’s throat was suddenly dry. She watched as he stepped forward, his movements stilted, and reached out one shaking hand towards the door. She put out her own hand to stop him. She opened her mouth to speak. She forgot about needing to be silent and wanting to be alone and everything else. She only
wanted to stop him from opening the door. She didn’t want to see, didn’t want
him
to see. She didn’t want to know anything else about this place; she only wanted for him to go and for her to lie down and sleep for a very long time.
She was cold, right through. It felt as if something were waiting for her on the other side of the door. She was suddenly certain it would be the old man who had stood at the foot of her bed in the middle of the night; the old man’s
ghost
. He would be searching for his suit. He would know that she had been the one to throw it away. He would be angry with her. She could sense his anger, could almost
smell
it. It was sour and ripe and stuck in her throat. At the same time she wanted only to run, as hard and as fast as she could, even as far as the mire, to that empty place.
And she realised that Frank hadn’t opened the door after all. He had turned the handle but he hadn’t opened it and relief flooded her. Then she looked at him, really looked at him, and she followed his gaze. He was staring at the floor. He was looking at the things that had been stacked against the wall; at the things that had fallen in front of the door, preventing it from being opened.
He bent and started to push them away. A clothes rail had slipped behind a pile of boxes. She watched as he moved them, methodically, one by one. She couldn’t see his face. He hadn’t turned and he hadn’t looked at her again. She couldn’t move and she couldn’t breathe; it felt as if time had stopped and it would only start again when he opened the door and she wanted, more than anything, that he would not do that. That he’d put back her things and turn around and walk away, take his mother by the arm, and that they would both go. But instead he finished clearing the things from in front of the door, the one
place left that he hadn’t looked, and she moved behind him as he turned the handle once more and pulled and this time the door swung open.
She caught only the merest glimpse of what lay inside before Frank whirled around. His face was white. He pressed his hand to his mouth as he staggered away and started gagging, as if he was going to be sick. A moment later she caught the stench that was flooding into the room.
Frank didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at her as he fell to his knees, retching, then he pushed himself up, batting at the air in front of his face, as if he could expel the thing he had seen, as if he could rid himself of that
smell
. Emma didn’t turn as he stumbled past her. She heard him, though, as he left the room, the door slamming, the irregular sound of footsteps moving away down the corridor.
For a long time, she didn’t hear anything at all. She only looked.
She saw the dark and the thing that was slumped against the wall, the thing that had once been her. Her body looked small, shrunken somehow, and her hands were bent into claws, as if she was scratching her way out through the walls. Her face was greyed and blotched and mercifully in shadow. There was an overturned bowl at her side, the faint tang of bleach doing nothing to stifle the stench of rot, and an old man’s pipe, splintered and broken at the stem, clutched tightly between her fingers. The holes it had made in her skin were no longer bleeding; the dark pool it had left at her feet had long since dried.
At first she thought the smell of her own decay would choke her, but after a while she found it did not, and later she did not notice it any longer. On returning to the house she had been alone and had not wanted it to be any different, but now she did not merely
know
that to be true: she
felt
it in her bones. There would be no one to take her by the hand and lead her away, and so she stayed. There was no one to comfort her, and so she would not be comforted. She simply stood there and she did not look away.