Weyward(14)

But with her voluntary confinement still in effect, there was not much for Violet to do other than to go up to bed. On her way to the staircase, she passed the library. Perhaps she would try to read in her room. She went inside, and from the very bottom shelf in the corner, she picked up a book with a red leather jacket, the front cover embossed with gold script: Children’s and Household Tales by The Brothers Grimm.

She tucked it under one arm and continued upstairs to her bedroom, where she saw there was a little glass jar on her coverlet, glinting in the evening sun. Something was moving inside it.

It was a damselfly. Whoever had put it there had poked holes in the lid of the jar. A note had been fastened to the lid with a green ribbon tied in a clumsy bow. Violet opened the note and saw that it was from Graham.

Dear Violet, he had written in neat, Harrovian script. Get well soon. Best wishes, your brother Graham. She smiled to herself. It was like something the old Graham would have done.

She opened the jar, hoping the insect would come to rest on her hand. Instead, it flew towards the window, fast, like it was afraid of her. It seemed to Violet to make barely a sound. She opened the window to let it out, quickly shutting it again. The fleeting happiness brought by Graham’s gift evaporated.

She drew the black-out curtains, blocking out the view of the pink setting sun, turned on the bedside lamp and got into bed.

Dust fell from the pages when she opened them, at random, at the story of ‘The Robber Bridegroom’.

It was a grisly story – much grislier than she had remembered. A man was so desperate to marry off his daughter that he had her betrothed to a murderer. The only saving grace was that the girl managed to outsmart him, with the help of an old witch. In the end, the bridegroom was put to death, along with his band of robbers. Serves them right, she thought.

Abandoning the book, she took off her necklace, reaching over to put it on the bedside cabinet. She sighed at the clink and rustle of it slipping onto the floor. Violet peered over the edge of the bed but couldn’t see its gold glint; perhaps it had rolled underneath. Cursing, she climbed out from the covers and crouched on the floor, groping for the necklace. Her fingers came away empty, grimed with dust. Had it fallen behind the cabinet, somehow? She should have been paying closer attention. A chill gripped her heart at the thought of losing the necklace. It was true – as Nanny Metcalfe had commented more than once – that it was ugly; misshapen and blackened with age. But it was all she had of her mother.

Violet grunted with effort as she moved the cabinet, wincing at the sound of it scraping across the floorboards. Her pulse slowed when she spotted the necklace, the links of its chain threaded through with great ropes of dust. She couldn’t recall the last time her room had been properly cleaned: Penny, the maid, only seemed to give it a cursory mop once a week. Guilt tugged at her stomach. She knew Penny was a little afraid of her, ever since Violet had convinced her to peer into Goldie’s hatbox. She’d only wanted to show Penny the pretty gold stripes on his legs. She couldn’t have known that the maid – who, it transpired, had a horror of spiders – would faint clean away.

Violet bent down to retrieve the necklace and was just about to move the cabinet back again when she noticed something. There was a letter, scratched into the white paint of the wainscoting, half hidden by a spool of fluff. It was a W – the same letter engraved on the pendant she gripped in her hand. Gently brushing away the dust, she uncovered more letters, which looked as if they had been painstakingly etched with a pin, or – she shuddered – a fingernail. Together, the letters formed a word which was somehow familiar, like a long-lost friend, though she had no recollection of ever seeing it before.

Weyward.





9


KATE


Kate grabs her bag and runs to the car.

In the rear-view mirror, she sees that the birds – crows, she thinks – are still ascending, higher than the bone-yellow moon, the night shimmering with their cries.

‘Don’t look, don’t look,’ she says to herself, her breath misting in the chill air of the car. Her palms are slippery with sweat and she wipes them on her jeans so that she can turn the key in the ignition. The engine jolts into life and she reverses onto the road, heart pounding.

There are no streetlights, and she flicks on the high beams as she speeds down the winding lanes. Her breathing is shallow, her fingers tense as claws on the steering wheel. She half expects the headlights to reveal something menacing and otherworldly lurking around each corner.

She makes it to the slip road. If she keeps driving, she could be back in London by morning. But then, where would she go? Back to the flat? Staring down the barrel of the motorway, she remembers what happened the first time.

The first time she tried to leave.

It had been soon after they’d started living together. Another argument about her job in children’s publishing – he’d wanted her to quit, said she couldn’t deal with the stress. She’d had a panic attack at work, during the weekly acquisition meeting. Simon had picked her up and brought her home, then sat across from her in their living room with its glittering view, haloed by the sun like some terrible angel. His words crashed over her – she couldn’t cope, he didn’t have time to deal with this, there was no point in her working when he earned so much. It was a useless job, anyway – what was the value in a bunch of women nattering about made-up stories for children? Besides, she obviously wasn’t very good at it – after all, she barely brought home a quarter of his salary.