The Villa(20)

But on that bright June afternoon in 1974, Mari just basks in the promise that here, in this beautiful place, things might finally be different.

Victoria hadn’t actually wanted to come to Surrey.

She’d liked their house in London. There was smog, yes, but she even liked that. And she enjoyed the bustle of city life. It made her feel like she was part of something, a single cell in a bigger organism.

In the country, she worried that she might feel her solitude more. Under skies so wide, so clear of anything save clouds, it might be easier to remember that, in fact, she was quite alone. Even within her own family.

It had always been that way.

But as she got out of the car on that bright summer morning and faced Somerton House for the first time, she felt her spirits lift. On a rainy, cold day, the kind that characterized English autumns and winters, she might not have been so enthused.

The house was old, for one thing. Her stepfather had said that the original bits—a kitchen no one used, one of the outbuildings—dated from the 1300s. The rest of the house had grown up around those parts like a snail’s shell, curling around itself.

A main staircase built in 1508.

Drawing rooms from the 1700s.

A series of turrets and fanciful stonework added sometime in the early reign of the queen Victoria for which the style had been named.

It was a dark house, a place that seemed not to sit upon a hill so much as crouch on it, but Victoria loved it all the same, from the moment she emerged from the backseat of her mother’s Renault.

Tall grass scratched against her calves. There had been a gravel drive once. She could still make out the pebbles and a kind of rough, semicircular shape. But nature had taken it back over the years, and that was another thing Victoria loved about Somerton House. It was wild.

“Lord, it’s ghastly,” her mother said, tilting her head back to look up at the place, and Victoria made a sharp tsk-tsk sound.

“Mama,” she chided. “You’ll hurt its feelings.”

Her mother only shook her head, an indulgent smile crinkling her eyes. “You are an odd girl, my Vicky.”

She hated that name and had chosen the much more sophisticated “Victoria” three years ago, when she turned thirteen, but she didn’t want to start another argument, not today.

Instead, she ran ahead of her mother and her stepfather, who was just now getting out from behind the wheel of the car. He hated the Renault, probably because it had belonged to Victoria’s father, and he hated most everything that had ever been Frank Stuart’s.

Including Victoria herself.

“Slow down,” he called to her, but she didn’t listen.

The steps leading up to the grand front door were wide, covered in patches of green and gray, and she made a game of skipping over them, her sneakers slapping on the stone.

And then the front door was before her.

Scarred and looking older than the stone that surrounded it, the massive oak entrance had a lion’s head for a knocker, and wide knobs made of a dark metal.

If only, she will think a thousand times after. If only we had never come here, if only we had stayed in London, if only I had never walked through that door …

But ifs are pointless.

She did come there, they had not stayed in London.

She had walked through that door.

—Lilith Rising, Mari Godwick, 1976





CHAPTER FIVE





I wake up the next morning with the mother of all headaches, just like I’d feared.

The wine that had tasted like peaches and honey on my tongue last night tastes like furry garbage this morning, and I wince as I get out of bed. I’d stumbled up here sometime way past midnight, drunk and giddy and too exhausted to even appreciate how comfortable the bed was, how the sheets smelled like flowers and sunshine. I vow to myself that it was just a First Night Celebration thing, and I’ll be more careful with the wine—and the limoncello—for the rest of the trip. I mean, I just got back to feeling relatively normal, the last thing I want is to wake up like this every morning.

The hottest shower in the world and some very intense teeth-brushing helps get rid of the worst hangover symptoms, and by the time I’m dressed and heading downstairs in search of coffee, I feel slightly more human again.

“Chess?” I call out, keeping my voice pitched fairly low in case she’s still sleeping it off. But the rooms downstairs are quiet, and when I make my way into the kitchen, I see that it’s already almost noon.

Thankfully, the house comes equipped with one of those fancy pod coffee machines, and I make myself a cup, drifting over to the kitchen table where I see there’s a note from Chess scrawled on a pink legal pad.

Going to run some errands and try to get whatever fucking goblin is currently hammering inside my brain out of there. Giulia left sandwich stuff in the fridge XOXO Infinity!

I’m still not quite up to Sandwich Level, so I take my coffee into the back sitting room. It’s a bit more modern than where we hung out last night, the floors shining, the sofa a little newer, and I sit down with a grateful sigh, propping my bare feet on the coffee table.

I tilt my head back as a soft breeze blows in through the open French doors. I should probably open my laptop today, give Petal and Dex at least an hour of my time, but for now, I’m happy to just sit in the quiet.

My phone beeps in my pocket.