Weyward(2)

Quickly, she changes out of her red dress into dark jeans and a tight pink top. Her fingers tremble as she unclasps the necklace. She leaves it on the bed, coiled like a noose. Next to her iPhone with its gold case: the one Simon pays for, knows the passcode to. The one he can track.

She rummages through the jewellery box on her bedside table, fingers closing around the gold bee-shaped brooch she’s had since childhood. She pockets it and pauses, looking around the bedroom: the cream duvet and curtains, the sharp angles of the Scandi-style furniture. There should be other things to pack, shouldn’t there? She had loads of stuff, once – piles and piles of dog-eared books, art prints, mugs. Now, everything belongs to him.

In the lift, adrenalin crackles in her blood. What if he comes back, intercepts her as she’s leaving? She presses the button for the basement garage but the lift jerks to a stop at the ground floor, the doors creaking open. Her heart pounds. The doorman’s broad back is turned: he’s talking to another resident. Barely breathing, Kate presses herself small into the lift, exhaling only when no one else appears and the doors judder shut.

In the garage, she unlocks the Honda, which she bought before they met and is registered in her name. He can’t – surely – ask the police to put a call out if she’s driving her own car? She’s watched enough crime shows. Left of her own volition, they’ll say.

Volition is a nice word. It makes her think of flying.

She turns the key in the ignition, then taps her great-aunt’s address into Google Maps. For months, she’s repeated the words in her head like a mantra.

Weyward Cottage, Crows Beck. Cumbria.





2


VIOLET


1942


Violet hated Graham. She absolutely loathed him. Why did he get to study interesting things all day, like science and Latin and someone called Pythagoras, while she was supposed to be content sticking needles through a canvas? The worst part, she reflected as her wool skirt itched against her legs, was that he got to do all this in trousers.

She ran down the main staircase as quietly as she could, to avoid the wrath of Father, who thoroughly disapproved of female exertion (and, it often seemed, of Violet). She stifled a giggle at the sound of Graham puffing behind her. Even in her stuffy clothes she could outrun him easily.

And to think that only last night he’d boasted about wanting to go to war! Pigs had a greater chance of flying. And anyway, he was only fifteen – a year younger than Violet – and therefore far too young. It was for the best, really. Nearly all the men in the village had gone, and half of them had died (or so Violet had overheard), along with the butler, the footman, and both the under-gardeners. Besides, Graham was her brother. She didn’t want him to die. She supposed.

‘Give it here!’ Graham hissed.

Turning around, she saw that his round face was pink with effort and fury. He was angry because she’d stolen his Latin workbook and told him that he’d declined all his feminine nouns incorrectly.

‘Shan’t,’ she hissed back, clutching the workbook to her chest. ‘You don’t deserve it. You’ve put amor instead of arbor, for heaven’s sake.’

At the bottom of the staircase, she scowled at one of the many portraits of Father that hung in the hall, then turned left, weaving through the wood-panelled corridors before bursting into the kitchens.

‘What are ye playing at?’ barked Mrs Kirkby, gripping a meat cleaver in one hand and the pearly carcass of a rabbit in the other. ‘Could’ve chopped me finger off!’

‘Sorry!’ Violet shouted as she wrenched open the French windows, Graham panting behind her. They ran through the kitchen gardens, heady with the scent of mint and rosemary, and then they were in her favourite place in the world: the grounds. She turned around and grinned at Graham. Now that they were outside, he had no chance of catching up with her if she didn’t want him to. He opened his mouth and sneezed. He had terrible hay fever.

‘Aw,’ she said. ‘Do you need a hanky?’

‘Shut up,’ he said, reaching for the book. She skipped neatly away. He stood there for a moment, heaving. It was a particularly warm day: a layer of gauzy cloud had trapped the heat and stiffened the air. Sweat trickled in Violet’s armpits, and the skirt itched dreadfully, but she no longer cared.

She had reached her special tree: a silver beech that Dinsdale, the gardener, said was hundreds of years old. Violet could hear it humming with life behind her: the weevils searching for its cool sap; the ladybirds trembling on its leaves; the damselflies, moths and finches flitting through its branches. She held out her hand and a damselfly came to rest on her palm, its wings glittering in the sunlight. Golden warmth spread through her.

‘Ugh,’ said Graham, who had finally caught her up. ‘How can you let that thing touch you like that? Squash it!’

‘I’m not going to squash it, Graham,’ said Violet. ‘It has as much right to exist as you or I do. And look, it’s so pretty. The wings are rather like crystals, don’t you think?’

‘You’re … not normal,’ said Graham, backing away. ‘With your insect obsession. Father doesn’t think so, either.’

‘I don’t care a fig what Father thinks,’ Violet lied. ‘And I certainly don’t care what you think, though judging by your workbook, you should spend less time thinking about my insect obsession and more time thinking about Latin nouns.’