Weyward(47)

‘We’ll let these two catch up on their beauty sleep,’ said Frederick, steering her away.





24


KATE


Kate was right.

She is having a girl. The female GP, Dr Collins, confirmed it today, at her twenty-week scan. She gave Kate a printout of the sonogram: her daughter, cocooned safe inside her womb, iridescent fingers curled into fists.

‘She looks like a fighter, this one,’ Dr Collins said.

Now, Kate sits on Aunt Violet’s bed, caressing the photograph. The window is open and outside, a wood pigeon coos, the gentle notes carrying on the breeze. There’s something she needs to do.

Her mother answers on the second ring.

‘Kate?’

Her voice is muffled, concern driving away traces of sleep. What time is it there? The early hours of the morning. She should have checked. She is forgetting things, these days – lying down for a nap after putting on the kettle, waking with a start to its anguished whine. The tiredness makes her feel as if her bones have been sucked of their marrow.

‘Are you OK? You haven’t been returning my calls.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘Sorry – I’ve been a bit distracted. Settling in, you know.’

Her mother sighs into the phone.

‘I’ve been so worried about you. I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.’

The saliva leaves her mouth.

‘I need to …’

‘Need to what?’

Her pulse beats a frenzied rhythm in her ears. She can’t do it.

‘I need to ask you something. About Dad’s family.’

‘What is it?’

‘Do you know who lives in Orton Hall now? Someone in the village said something about a viscount, but I don’t know if he’s related to us.’

‘Hmm. I think your father said he was a distant relative. There was that scandal, the disinheritance – but I don’t really remember the details.’

‘So you don’t know why they were disinherited? What the scandal actually was?’

‘No, love. I’m sorry. I’m not even sure your father knew.’

‘That’s OK. Um – one more thing …’ She pauses, licks her lips. ‘Did Dad ever say anything about one of his ancestors being accused of witchcraft?’

‘Witchcraft? No. Who told you that?’

‘Just something I overheard,’ she says. ‘They seem to have had some funny ideas about Aunt Violet around here.’

‘Well, she was a bit of a strange woman,’ her mother says, but Kate can hear the smile in her voice.

Kate looks around her, at Violet’s things. The shelves of books, the framed centipede glimmering on the wall. She thinks of the cape in the wardrobe, the dark glitter of its beads. Violet wouldn’t be afraid, the way Kate is now.

She would tell the truth.

‘Actually, Mum, I do have to tell you something.’ She takes a breath. The next words, when they leave her mouth, sound as if they’ve been spoken by someone else. ‘I’m pregnant.’

‘Oh my God.’ For a moment there is silence. ‘Does Simon know?’

‘No.’

‘OK, that’s good. And have you … decided what you’re going to do?’

She knows about Simon, Kate realises. She’s always known.

The pain in her mother’s voice sends a jolt of nausea to her gut. Sun flares bright through the window, blinding her.

She knows.

For a moment, she thinks she might be sick. Her eyes sting.

But she won’t cry. Not today. She looks down at the sonogram, grips it tighter in her hand.

‘I’m having it. Her. It’s a girl, I found out today.’

‘A girl! Kate!’

She can hear her mother crying into the phone.

‘Mum? Are you OK?’

‘Sorry,’ her mother says. ‘I just – I wish we hadn’t left, Kate. I should have stayed. And then maybe you wouldn’t have met him … I should have been there.’

‘Mum. It’s OK. It’s not your fault.’

But it’s too late, the words are tumbling from her mother’s mouth, as if she can undo the years of silence between them. ‘No, I knew something wasn’t right. Quitting your job, losing touch with your friends … it was like you were becoming someone else. But he was always in the room, whenever we spoke on the phone … and then I didn’t know if he was reading your messages, your emails … I didn’t know what to do.’

Kate can’t bear this, her mother’s guilt. It burns, like acid on her skin. She remembers the night she met Simon. The way she’d been pulled towards him, a moth kissing a flame.

Can’t her mother see? It is no one’s fault but her own.

‘There was nothing you could have done, Mum.’

‘I’m your mother,’ she says. ‘I sensed it. I should have found a way.’

For a moment, neither of them speak. The line crackles with distance.

‘But I am happy,’ her mother says eventually, in a soft voice. ‘About the baby. As long as it’s what you want.’

Kate touches the photograph, tracing the bright bulb of her daughter’s shape.