Joanne Harris - Sleep, Pale Sister

Suddenly I could bear it no longer. I leaped to my feet, throwing the door open, reflecting a long ladder of light from my room into the passageway. No-one. The parlour door was ajar-had I left it that way? I couldn’t remember. Compelled by a bleak desire far stronger than fear, I pushed it, allowing it to swing gently open. For a moment I saw her: a girl of leaves with her leaf-cat in her arms, their eyes like mirrors reflecting me, my face pinprick-small in the wells of their pupils…then nothing. Nothing but the reflection of a weeping-willow etched in white against the darkness of a window.

There was no girl. There had never been a girl. I quickly scanned the room: the cake was untouched, the china as I had left it, the folds of the curtain mathematically precise. Not a breath of wind disturbed the candle-flames, not a shadow fell against the wall. Not the slightest scent of lilac. And yet there was something…I frowned, trying to place the change: the cushions were unruffled, the ornaments untouched, the tree…

I froze.

Under the tree, a small triangle of torn wrapping-paper lay on the carpet. Just one. Stupidly, I tried to think where it could have come from. Taking two clumsy steps forward I saw that the topmost present-the peach silk wrap-had slipped from the pile and fallen to one side. Automatically, I bent to straighten it and I saw that the string had been cut and the parcel loosened so that folds of silk and lace showed through the stiff brown wrapping.

The sense of what I had seen refused to connect with any part of my rational mind and while a part of me gibbered and cried, another simply stared calmly at the opened present as a great blankness settled over me. Maybe it was the chloral, but my mind was infinitely slow, moving from the wrap, to the torn paper, to the cut string, back to the wrap with imbecile detachment. There was a huge silence all around as I stood there alone with the wrap in my hands, the torn paper slipping from it and falling with dreamlike slowness to a floor miles below me. The silk in my hands was hypnotic; I could see into it with inhuman accuracy, testing the weft and warp of it, delving the intricacies of scrolled lace, of spirals within spirals…The wrap seemed to fill the whole world so that there was no room for thought, simply awareness, infinite awareness, infinite contemplation…

From my abyss, I realized that I was laughing.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how money disappears? I paid my debts, the ones I could not delay paying, though by no means the whole, and for a few days I began to define the style of living to which I thought I might like to become accustomed. I ate well, drank only the best. As for women, there were more than I could clearly remember, all beauties, all delightfully eager to see the colour of dear Henry’s money. Don’t think I wasn’t grateful to him: I made sure I drank to his health every time I opened a new bottle, and when Beggar Maid ran at Newmarket I made sure I put ten pounds on her-I won too, at fifteen to one. It seemed as if I couldn’t lose at anything.

Not that I didn’t keep a close watch on events from my little hotbed of debauchery. Effie Chester’s disappearance was reported in The Times with the possibility of foul play mentioned-it seemed that she had set off on the morning of Christmas Eve to visit her mother in Cranbourn Alley and had never arrived. The lady was ‘of frail and nervous disposition’ and police were concerned for her safety. I reckoned Henry had played his part well enough; the paper described him as ‘distraught’. But he was unstable, I knew that: chloral and religion in equal quantities had upset the equilibrium of his free will and I guessed that, after the first few weeks of subterfuge, he would very likely sink into a kind of stupid despondency and imagine all kinds of retribution to be heading his way.

I felt that there was a chance of his eventually giving himself in to the police in an ecstasy of remorse-at which time, of course, there would be no more tarts for poor Jack. I supposed that Fanny had intended that from the beginning, though I couldn’t think why. The only logical reason was that she intended Henry to be arrested and ruined-but I still couldn’t understand why she had chosen such an unpredictable method of arranging it. I was safe enough in any case. The chilly reception from the ingrates at Crook Street had convinced me that I had no further obligation towards them ; if Henry tried to accuse me I would tell the truth-as much of it as was needed. Let Fanny explain her own motives and answer the possible kidnapping charge; let Effie explain about Marta. I was well rid of them both. No-one could accuse me of anything more than adultery or possibly blackmail and any attempt to produce the supposed corpse was doomed to ridicule; the ‘corpse’ was at this very moment wandering through Fanny’s house with dyed hair and a bellyful of laudanum.

Fanny! I admit she was still an enigma to me; I’d have liked to pay her a visit, if only to learn what she was doing. But I wasn’t eager to meet that bitch Marta again, or ever. So instead I decided to pay another visit to Henry.

It must have been…let me see…about 30 December. Henry had had nearly a week to deal with his various affairs and I had almost run out of money. So I ambled over to his house and asked to see him. The housekeeper looked down her nose and told me Mr Chester wasn’t at home. Not at home to me, most likely, I thought, and told her I would wait. Well, she ushered me into the parlour and I waited. After a while I grew restless and began to look around: the parlour was still decorated for Christmas and under the tree were a number of parcels, still waiting to be unwrapped by a girl who would never come home. A poignant touch, that, I thought appreciatively-the police would have liked it. Additionally, Henry had covered all the paintings on the wall with dust-covers: the effect was disturbing and I wondered why he had done it. I idled in the parlour for nearly two hours until I realized that the housekeeper was right: Mr Chester wasn’t at home.

I rang the bell for brandy and when she came up with the tray I slipped her a guinea and gave my most winning smile.

‘Now, Mrs…I’m afraid I don’t know your surname.’ I don’t suppose anyone had called her ‘Mrs’ anything for years and she bridled.

‘Gaunt, sir, but Mr and Mrs Chester-’

‘Mrs Gaunt.’ The smile was at its most charming. ‘I am, as you recall, an old friend of Mr Chester. I am aware of the distress he must be suffering at the moment-’

‘Oh sir,’ she broke in, dabbing her eyes, ‘the poor young lady! We’re so worried some man -’ she broke off, visibly moved. I tried not to chuckle.

‘Quite,’ I said soothingly. ‘But if-God preserve us-the worst has happened,’ I continued piously, ‘then our thoughts must be with the living. Mr Chester needs friends to help him through this. I am aware that he may have instructed you to turn away, or otherwise misinform visitors’-I looked at her reproachfully-‘but you and I both know, Mrs Gaunt, that for his own good…’

‘Oh yes, sir,’ she agreed. ‘I know. Poor Mr Chester; he won’t eat, he hardly sleeps, he spends hours in that studio of his, or just walking about the cemetery. He was that fond of the young lady, sir, that he won’t have her mentioned…and you can see that he’s covered up all of his lovely pictures of her: can’t bear to look at them, he says.’

‘So you don’t know where he is today?’

She shook her head.

‘But you won’t prevent me from giving him what comfort I can if I call again?’

‘Oh, sir!’ Her reproach was apparent. ‘If I’d known, sir…but there are people, you know, who wouldn’t be…’