Lorna Cook - The Forbidden Promise

‘Now there is a teensy issue with you arriving early. But it’s nothing I can’t factor in I’m sure. Only he might fly off the handle at first but his bark is far worse than his bite.’

Kate blinked as Liz handed her a drink. ‘Your husband?’

‘Heavens, no. My poor husband passed away a year ago. No, my son. But don’t worry, because I’m sure he’ll come round to it.’

‘Your son?’

Liz nodded and sat on the opposite sofa. Suspecting Liz wasn’t going to offer more information, Kate probed further.

‘Come round to what?’

‘To you, of course.’

‘Me? What about me? Me being a day early?’

Liz chuckled, but it was a nervous laugh and her eyes darted to the hallway as they both heard the front door bang shut.

‘To you being here at all.’

Kate stiffened as Liz continued. ‘You see, I hadn’t quite had a chance to tell him that I’d hired you. I was rather hoping to do it tonight, over dinner.’ Footsteps sounded on the tiled hallway floor, getting closer to the library. Liz sped up. ‘We were in desperate need of help and he flat-out refused to entertain thoughts of hiring someone. Says we can’t afford it, which is piffle. You’re an investment, of course. But he will rather blow a gasket at you being here. Terrible manners. Well … you’ll see.’

Kate heard the footsteps stop.

‘Thought I could hear voices,’ a man’s voice sounded from the doorway to the library.

Kate froze.

Liz spoke. ‘James, I’d like to introduce you to Kate.’

Kate stood and turned slowly towards the newcomer. Before she’d even seen him, she just knew who he was. As Kate faced him, a polite but nervous smile on her face, she watched recognition pass over his expression before his smile slipped. His hand, outstretched to shake hers, dropped.

‘Kate is here to—’ Liz started.

‘Finish me off?’ James interrupted her.

Liz looked between the two of them, clearly confused. Kate wanted to die.

‘We’ve met,’ James continued. ‘About an hour ago. I think it’s fair to say Kate can’t drive.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Kate spluttered. ‘You were on the wrong side of the road. You were in the road.’

‘I bloody wasn’t in the road. And pedestrians are supposed to face oncoming traffic.’

She was silenced.

‘And you were texting,’ James finished for good measure.

‘I wasn’t texting.’ Kate was earnest.

‘Oh Christ,’ James flared up again. ‘Is that why you’re here? Did you follow me? To see where I live? Hoping to get some kind of payout, accusing me of … what … exactly? Well, I warn you we haven’t got two pennies to rub together, so don’t bother.’

‘James.’ His mother put her hand on his arm to silence him. ‘Enough please. Kate is not here about that. Kate is here because we have employed her. I have employed her.’

James turned slowly and looked at his mother. ‘You have done what ?’ His voice was dark, but Kate was relieved to find Liz maintaining her son’s gaze, clearly used to holding her own in a standoff.

‘I think this is best discussed outside, don’t you?’ The question was clearly rhetorical as Liz walked purposefully from the room. James looked at Kate and she smiled weakly with embarrassment. He shook his head in disbelief and followed his mother from the room, closing the door to the library behind him.

Kate’s whole body was stiff. She couldn’t believe it. She’d been hired, although not on a contract admittedly. She’d sub-let her flat to her brother, for Christ’s sake. She couldn’t go back to London now, tail between her legs on day one of her new job. What if James overruled Liz and sent her packing, which he was clearly about to try? Where would she go at this time of night? There was a pub down the road. Maybe they had rooms, although out here in the middle of nowhere Kate doubted there was need for a pub with rooms to rent. She slumped back down awkwardly on the overstuffed sofa and tried not to listen to the muffled argument on the other side of the door.

The phrases she could pick out were in James’s thunderous tones. ‘ No money … can’t afford her … don’t need any help … can do it on my own.’

She exhaled loudly as she listened to James not handle the situation at all well. There was nothing she could do. She just had to await her fate. Kate looked around the walls at some surprisingly modern artwork and then spied a large book open on a table in front of one of the bookshelves. She wandered over, more for something to direct her nervous energy towards than out of any actual interest. It was an old Bible, the pages wafer thin beneath her fingers. She’d never been particularly religious and after reading the first few lines of the open page she gently closed the hefty book to look at its front cover. The title lettering had faded but she could tell it had once been gold. The black leather cover was crumbling in a few places, particularly the spine, its threads showing bare. She looked around – threadbare appeared to be a running theme in this room. Kate opened the cover slowly and carefully turned a few pages until she reached a page showing the Family Record. Trying to forget the argument outside, she became engrossed in what must be the Langley-McLay family Bible.

The names of the family members varied in colour, the ink of the earlier ones now faded sepia, the more recent names still black. The dates started in the early 1800s and the italic looped and swirled handwriting changed as each new family member’s name was recorded with his or her birth date.

Kate thought of the generations of children who had come and gone, grown old, married and moved away, gone to war and died, lived and inherited before passing it on to the next in line. She glanced at the second page of the Bible, as the dates moved into the First World War. One child was born soon after the war: Constance Amelia Rose McLay, born August 1919.

But what struck her about this name over all the others was the black fountain pen mark that had been scored through her entire name. Whoever had crossed her entry through had done so with such forceful intention that the nib had gone through several of the sheets underneath.

Kate’s first thought was that someone might have done this when Constance had died. But there was no date of death for anyone listed in the Bible – only births – and none of the other entries had been scored through.

Constance Amelia Rose McLay stood alone in having been deleted. Kate shuddered suddenly and looked around. She suddenly wished she was anywhere else but here. With Liz talking in clipped tones to her son outside the door Kate looked back down at the name.

She ran her finger slowly over the deep slice that the pen had made and wondered what kind of crime Constance McLay could possibly have committed that would see her name so meaningfully and forcefully removed from her family history.