Weyward(68)

I know you all – Father especially – think very highly of my cousin, Frederick Ayres. But please believe me when I tell you that he is not the man you think he is. I know he seems charming and chivalrous – like a knight from a fairy tale, with his dark hair and green eyes. But something has happened – something terrible and wrong. I do not quite have the words for it; just that I am plagued by memories of it, night and day. Perhaps it is my fault; perhaps I should have done something to prevent it, though I do not know what. In any case, I cannot see how I can continue in this fashion.

Graham, I am sorry that I was not a better sister to you. Nanny Metcalfe, I am sorry if I have been a difficult charge. Mrs Kirkby, I am sorry about the time I said your roast beef tasted like a shoe. Miss Poole, I am sorry for all the times I made fun of your singing voice.

My best wishes to you all, and my deepest apologies once again,

Violet

PS. If it isn’t too much trouble, I should like to be buried under the beech tree in the garden. Perhaps you could also ask Dinsdale to plant some flowers above my grave. Something bright and colourful that will attract bees and other insects. Any flowers will do, so long as they aren’t primroses.

Kate reads the letter again.

I am plagued by memories of it.

She shuts her eyes, touches her arm, where the skin is smooth and pink. Sometimes, Kate would wake in the night to Simon’s insistent mouth on her neck; to the feel of him inside her. As if she had forfeited the rights to her own body the day they’d met.

She understands, she thinks, what happened to Aunt Violet.

Obviously, she hadn’t gone through with the suicide attempt – somehow, Violet had left home and found the strength to live the academic, adventurous life that awaited her. To break free from her past.

Kate wonders if Violet ever told anyone, in the end. She knows what it’s like, wanting to tell: to no longer be alone with the awful, secret knowledge, poisoning your cells like a disease. Wanting to speak but being choked into silence by the shame of it.

As she rereads Violet’s words, something else leaps out at her.

His green eyes.

She thinks back to her visit to Orton Hall, to meeting the old viscount. He had green eyes, too. Her spine tingles with revulsion at the memory – his fetid, animal stink; the yellow curls of his nails.

Fingers shaking, she unlocks her phone and taps Frederick Ayres into Google.

The first result is an article from the local paper, dated five years ago.

FLY INFESTATION BUGS VISCOUNT

Local exterminators have struggled to remove thousands of mayflies from Orton Hall, the seat of the Viscount Kendall.

According to residents in nearby Crows Beck, the infestation has plagued the Hall for decades, worsening in recent years.

‘Every pest control company in the valley has had a go,’ said a source. ‘Insecticides, LED traps, the works. But they won’t budge.’

Mayflies are most common in the summer, when the females can lay up to three thousand eggs. The insects normally frequent aquatic environments and rarely infest dwellings.

Lord Frederick Ayres, the Tenth Viscount Kendall, has lived in Orton Hall since succeeding his uncle to the title in the 1940s. He served as an officer in the Eighth Army in World War II and saw action in North Africa.

Viscount Kendall has not been seen in public for some years and could not be reached for comment.

Her stomach drops.

There’s a photograph with the article. A young man in military uniform, handsome features blurred by time. But she can see him there – just – in the firm line of the jaw, the deep-set eyes. It is the same stooped, haunted man she met at the Hall.

Frederick is the viscount.

What kind of father would disinherit his children in favour of a man who had raped one of them? Surely he couldn’t have known. For a moment, Kate allows herself to consider a worse possibility: that Violet had told her father about the rape, and that he simply … hadn’t believed her.

Outside, an owl hoots mournfully. Kate feels a surge of sadness for her great-aunt, this woman she can barely remember. They’d had more in common than she realised.

She goes to the sink for a glass of water, gulping it down as if it can flush away her memories. She stays there for a moment, looking out at the snowy garden, flaming with sunset. Violet’s garden.

Despite everything that happened to her, her great-aunt had built an independent life for herself. She may have never married and had a family of her own, but she had her cottage, her garden. Her career.

Now Kate, too, has built her own life.

And she won’t let anyone take it away from her.





34


ALTHA


Grace and I stood looking at each other for a long time before she spoke. It was the first time she had looked at me directly in seven years. Since we were thirteen, I had only ever seen her from afar: in church, or shopping on market day. She had always passed her eyes over me as if I were not there.

‘Will you not invite me in?’ she asked.

‘Prithee, wait,’ I said, before shutting the door. Hurrying, I herded the goat into the garden, my mother’s warning ringing in my ears.

When this was done, I opened the door and moved aside to let Grace through. I noticed she walked slowly, as if she were a much older woman. She sat heavily at the table. She kept her cloak on, even though it was soaked from the gale outside.