Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
About The Author
Copyright
About The Publisher
All the way to London, the woman’s words circled round my head like carrion crows. She’d hung up before I could ask more; that silky voice echoing down the years, a voice I was sure I knew and yet couldn’t quite place. One more piece from the nightmare jigsaw the last year had become; one more piece nearly slotted back in.
Off the motorway, the traffic snaked back solid to the Blackfriars interchange. Frantically I watched the clock, creeping forward incrementally, until I could bear it no longer. Abandoning the car on a broken meter, I sprinted through the rush-hour fumes, dodging swearing cyclists and the motorbikes that sneaked down the middle, stumbling over the kerb on Ludgate Hill, until I was falling in panic, unable to right myself. A double-decker bore down on me, horn blaring; a builder in a yellow hard hat snatched me from its path in the nick of time, his warm calloused hand on mine. I was too stunned to do much more than blink at him and run on.
They were closing St Paul’s Cathedral to sightseers as I finally reached the great stone stairs. For too long now my life hadn’t made any sense; I had to know the truth. Someone, somewhere, had to know the truth.
Inside, the internal gate was shut.
‘Please,’ I gasped at the curate closing up. ‘Please, I have to – I’ve come so far.’
That someone might be here.
‘You look pretty desperate,’ the jolly curate relented, waving me through with his walkie-talkie. ‘Last one in. This one’s on God.’
‘How do I get up to the Whispering Gallery?’ I wheezed gratefully, leaning on the barrier for a moment to catch my breath.
It took me ten minutes to climb up, and my heart was banging so hard by the time I’d reached the gallery in the huge dome that I had to sit down as soon as I got there. I’d passed a gaggle of Italian tourists coming down the stairs, but otherwise the space was empty. I thought he hadn’t come, the anonymous writer – and I heard my name said softly, and I turned and saw him.
They say that when you’re drowning your whole life flashes before your eyes – though it seems unlikely that anyone could confirm it. True or not, I felt like I was falling backwards now, splashing messily through my own life.
He walked towards me, thin and no longer elegant, wiry-limbed and crop-haired instead.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he said, and I tried to find my voice.
‘I thought,’ it came at last, ‘I thought that you were dead.’
Chapter One GLOUCESTERSHIRE, SPRING 2008
It wasn’t turning out to be one of the good mornings. Fred had been up three times in the night simply seeking company, so my eyes now stung with tiredness. Alicia was in a foul mood because Effie had scribbled all over her new birthday sketchbook in purple felt-tip. Effie had insisted sweetly that she was dying for porridge until finally I caved in, and spent ten minutes stirring it like an automaton, whereupon she spat the first mouthful dramatically all over the floor and refused even one more try, citing the ‘yucky bits’.
‘Put your other slipper on, Freddie. The floor’s freezing.’
‘It’s lost,’ he announced dramatically.
‘It’s not lost. It’s on the radiator there.’
He turned earnest eyes on me. ‘Superheroes don’t wear slippers, Mummy.’
‘Well super-heroes are going to have horribly cold feet then, aren’t they?’
I wondered plaintively for the three hundred and sixty-fourth consecutive day why James couldn’t get up just once and make the struggle with plaits, porridge and a three-year-old’s tantrums at least partly his own.
‘I want my milk warm, Mummy,’ Effie puffed, abandoning the cornflakes and dragging the milk bottle towards her across the table.
‘Just have it cold, Ef, OK?’
‘I want it warm,’ she pouted and promptly upended the entire pint over the flowery tablecloth.
‘For God’s sake, Effie,’ my restraint deserted me. ‘I told you not to do that, you silly child.’
‘Shut up, Mummy,’ she shouted back. ‘You’re rubbish.’ Her little red mouth was wobbling.
A Ready Brek-encrusted Fred looked in wonderment at the raised voices and cross faces; Effie and I glaring at one another, me wavering between laughter and annoyance until Alicia turned Radio One up loudly. My pounding head pounded harder as Alicia pronounced, ‘This is Fred’s favourite song,’ and jiggled so alarmingly at him that he fell backwards and promptly burst into tears. Finishing a complicated riff about some girl not knowing her name, she whacked her arm on the chair and burst into dramatic sobs that equalled her brother’s. Soggy J-cloth in hand, I gazed at them, weighing up my options: opening the gin or joining them.
Into this chaos walked Mrs McCready, never more welcome, unbuttoning the shiny old coat that hid her ill-fitting velour tracksuit, a choice baby blue today. (‘I think she sleeps in them,’ James remarked at least once a week.) She took one look at Fred’s furious red face and swept him off the floor.
‘Come here, my precious,’ she crooned, clutching his plump little body to her huge chest, his head half the size of one of her bosoms. ‘I’ll go and get him dressed,’ she said. ‘Won’t I, precious? Come on, Effie.’
I turned the radio down, tossing the cloth towards the sink. It hit the floor with a soggy thwack, narrowly missing the cat. I kissed Alicia’s arm better until her sobs eventually subsided, and retied her red ribbons before dispatching her to piano practice whilst I made a desultory attempt to clear up.
Waiting for the kettle to boil again, I gazed out of the mullioned windows at the cold March morning. It was crisp and clear now, the last tendrils of dawn mist dissipating under a slow-climbing sun. Two robins took a quick dip in the stone birdbath, flicking each other with something like affection. Below them a blackbird bounced along a lawn glistening with dew, hopefully pecking for a worm. It was chocolate-box perfect.
The kettle snapped off as I caught my reflection in the glass. I am in a stupor, I thought, I have been in a stupor for months. Not
