The Stepmother(61)

 

I move the Queen Anne chair from the corner of the landing and stand on it to reach up and pull the attic stairs down.

 

As I clamber up into the darkness, emerging into the dim light, dust motes swirling in the weak beams of sun that fall from one tiny skylight, I remember Judy’s drunken ramblings, back in November, and I think: She was right. There is a mad woman in the attic…

 

Only the mad woman is me.

 

I nearly laugh aloud – except it would only prove my own fear: ‘the gambols of a demon’ as Mr Rochester noted of his first wife.

 

Now I’m up here, I can see it’s pointless – there’s nothing in the attic. A few racks of old clothes, boxes of books and some photograph albums I can’t bear to look at.

 

I run my hand across the clothes, wondering who they belonged to – and something whirls up from the corner.

 

I spring back, emitting a higher-pitched scream than I ever thought I could make.

 

It’s a bird, I realise shakily; a bird is in the attic with me – flapping furiously against the roof slats, making an unearthly sound – and oh God I want to get out too…

 

Running back to the ladder, I stumble against a stack of paintings and the top one falls: a cracked old print of the nursery rhyme ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’.

 

I climb down again, sweaty palms sliding on the ladder rails.

 

The walls haven’t whispered for a while; they might be silent today – but the house is definitely haunted. I think of the Grey Lady who died here. I think of Scarlett’s projection. I think of my terror.

 

Is that just me too?

 

On the landing, I perch on the Queen Anne chair and try to calm my breathing. The bird will have to stay there until either Frank or Matthew get home. Sorry, bird, but I’m not feeling brave any more.

 

I stare down at the spring garden. It’s starting to burst with life – unlike me.

 

How has my life turned into this… uselessness? There’s no point to me; I’m like some odd 1950s housewife, like someone out of Mad Men. I just need a pristine apron, a gold cigarette case and a vodka-martini habit and I’ll be set…

 

Outside Matthew’s study I turn my back on the laptop burning into my retinas and force myself downstairs. Today the sun has actually shown its face, and I need fresh air before I suffocate.

 

I’ll tackle the deadwood in the huge garden, I decide. It’s a beautiful space, a bit dark at the end maybe, and I’ve not really explored out since I’ve been here.

 

In the garage I root around for gardening equipment. The gardener has left the mower and the big spades and forks very neatly in the wooden rack, but I need the smaller stuff. There’s a long, thin cabinet that’s locked, but I can’t find any keys to it.

 

Eventually I do find a box of gardening stuff. Choosing the sharpest-looking secateurs and some thick gloves, I walk through the garage and down to the back of the garden, past the jolly daffodils, towards the big trees at the end where primroses cluster shyly at the foot of their trunks.

 

I’ll start here and work my way up towards the house.

 

Savagely I cut back brambles and old rose vines until my skin above the gloves is scratched and bleeding. I’m out of breath but enjoying it – feeling alive for the first time in days. Weeks.

 

I stop at months.

 

Standing beneath the two great trees, I pull and I pull at rogue tendrils snaking around each other, up the trees, over the old brick wall until I’m panting with exertion, until I can taste the salt on my lip, until I stumble and overbalance, smashing my knee on something in the undergrowth…

 

Bending, I see it’s a headstone, some kind of grave; covered in moss, but properly engraved.

 

I step closer, and the toe of my boot meets something else with a bang.

 

A whole group of small graves – at least four or five. More, maybe, under the spreading ivy.

 

Heart thudding, I crouch down and scratch off the moss on the first headstone. The sun’s gone in, and it suddenly feels very dark and gloomy out here.

 

The headstone reads:

 

Millie, much loved, barking in heaven

 

 

 

 

 

Relief makes me laugh out loud. Animal graves! They must all be. But there are so many – too many really for a house that no longer has pets. Only two pets, I distinctly remember Matthew saying.

 

I think of poor little Justin, the Pomeranian puppy.

 

I stand again, and as I move to have a look at the next one, to see if a dog called Daisy is buried here, I knock against something else. Something that wobbles before toppling heavily.

 

I’m too slow. I don’t move fast enough, and it falls straight onto my left foot.

 

‘Ouch! Oh God…’