Barbara Erskine - Kingdom of Shadows

‘Clare.’ He bent forward and kissed her cheek. ‘I’m sorry to call so late. If you’d rather, I’ll go away at once. Only Paul asked me to look in on my way home and see that you were all right. He has met up with a client, I gather, and he’ll be a bit late back – you know how it is.’ Paul hadn’t asked him to do anything of the sort.

Clare bit her lip. She looked tired and strained in the harsh light of the hall.

‘That was good of you, Henry. You’d better come in.’ She backed away from the door.

He followed her into the living room and he found himself looking at the rug where she had been sitting. There was no sign now of the remains of the candle, but he thought he could smell it, mixed with her subtle perfume in the air.

‘You’re sure you’re not too tired, Clare? Paul told me you weren’t feeling very well.’

‘No, I’m fine. Come on down and talk to me while I make us both some coffee. The lift at Coleman Street got stuck with me in it and I made a bit of a fool of myself, that’s all. I’m afraid it will be all around the bank tomorrow.’ She smiled wanly.

‘Oh Clare, how terrible.’ He followed her down the steep flight of steps.

‘I’ve been claustrophobic since I was a child. So silly really.’ She busied herself filling the kettle and plugging it in whilst he sat down on a stool watching her, his long legs folded under the breakfast bar.

‘Clare, I couldn’t help seeing, through the curtains, upstairs. What were you doing with that candle?’ He hadn’t meant to ask; hadn’t meant to admit to spying on her.

She glanced up at him sharply, but she smiled.

‘Meditating.’

‘You mean like praying?’ He looked embarrassed.

‘Perhaps, a little. Although, not the way I do it.’ She was playing with her sapphire engagement ring, twisting it around her finger so that the facets caught the light. ‘It’s very strange, Henry. Something I started doing to help me unwind a bit.’ Suddenly she found she wanted to tell someone about it. ‘When I was a child I had a sort of imaginary playmate – I think a lot of children do. She was called Isobel.’ She paused for such a long time that he wondered if she had forgotten he was there.

‘Go on,’ he said at last.

‘My brother was four years younger than me, and we never got on, really. We still don’t –’ she smiled wistfully. ‘So, I was a lonely child.’ Isobel’s brother was four years younger and a posthumous child, like James. She had stopped speaking and was staring into space, recognising the strangeness of the coincidence for the first time. With a little shake of the head she went on. ‘I suppose that’s how children always react to loneliness: an imaginary friend.’ She paused again.

Henry said nothing, afraid to interrupt her train of thought.

‘She was a real person,’ she went on, at last. ‘An ancestress of ours. My great aunt used to tell us stories about her. Long, involved, exciting stories. I don’t know where they came from, if they were true, or if she made them up, but they caught my imagination. I would act them out again and again in my head or in my games. Sometimes Isobel was my friend. Sometimes she was me and I was her …’ Her voice trailed away. Behind her the kettle boiled and switched itself off. Henry didn’t move.

‘I hadn’t thought about her for years – not until I went to Duncairn again in June. Now she has come back. Not to play with’ – she laughed, embarrassed – ‘not like when I was a child, but when I meditate. It is as if I am opening a door, and she is there waiting … She is much more real than before. No longer my creation. It is as if she has a life of her own.’

Henry could feel the skin prickling slightly on the back of his neck. He cleared his throat. ‘I expect the meditation technique allows your imagination a free hand,’ he said slowly. ‘But if it upsets you, you should stop.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t upset me. I enjoy it. It’s so much more exciting than –’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I was going to say than real life, but that sounds so awful.’

Henry grinned. ‘It’s not awful at all. It’s quite understandable. Real life is – well – real. Your Isobel presumably has more fun in her life.’

Clare smiled. She was thinking of Robert’s kiss. ‘Indeed she does. Do you think I’m quite mad?’

‘Only marginally.’ He was relieved to see the strain leaving her face.

‘Please don’t tell Paul. I don’t think he’d understand. I know this isn’t exactly a world-enhancing pastime, but in a sense it’s a serious exercise, and it’s better than TV.’ She smiled disarmingly. ‘Paul thinks I should be happy pottering about like Gillian and Chloe or your partners’ wives, organising NSPCC coffee mornings and church jumble sales and discussing fashion and make-up, but I’m not like that. I need something more; something different to them. The trouble is, whenever I try to explain to him that I would like to get a job, or do some really serious studying, we get back to babies.’ Her jaw tightened.

‘Babies?’ Unobtrusively Henry leaned forward for the jar of instant coffee and drew the empty mugs towards him.

‘Paul wants me to have babies.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘Oh, I’d love to have one; I sometimes think I can’t live without one; I look into people’s prams and things.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘But then I get depressed about it and all I want to do is forget about babies altogether.’ She paused for a moment thinking again of Paul’s phone call earlier that day. The tests were OK and yet suddenly he’d changed his mind. Now he too wanted to forget about babies. She bit her lip. Somehow it didn’t ring true, but that was something she could worry about later. She smiled at Henry. ‘That’s when I’d like to do something positive; something to take my mind off children altogether. I wish Paul really could forget about babies for a bit. In fact I wish the whole Royland family weren’t so obsessed with procreation.’

Henry laughed. ‘Tough. Tell him you’re on the pill, taking a degree in Oriental studies and about to rebuild your fairy-tale castle with your own hands once you’ve finished your brick-laying apprenticeship, and there will be no babies until you’re forty at least. I gather motherhood late in life is all the rage these days. That should fix him.’

She giggled delightedly. ‘Oh Henry, I’m so glad you came round. You put everything in perspective. Bless you.’

Henry picked up the kettle. Suddenly he felt ridiculously happy.

James was surprised Paul agreed to meet him so quickly. Perhaps it was something in the suppressed excitement of his voice which had prompted his brother-in-law to suggest lunch that day. They met in the foyer of the bank after James had walked through from the Westlake Pierce dealing room in the new building.

‘So,’ Paul looked at the younger man with some curiosity as they made their way briskly along Coleman Street, ‘what is all this about?’ James was very like Clare to look at. Roughly the same height, which was fairly short for a man, slim, dark-haired, the same large grey eyes; but curiously, the features didn’t make him look feminine at all. On him they were rugged and handsome. Handsome enough to pull women in droves according to his sister, even before he had inherited his fortune.

‘I wanted to know how Clare is.’ James looked him straight in the eye.

‘She’s fine. That was a stupid incident last night. She has to learn to be less neurotic, that’s all.’

‘Last night?’ James raised an eyebrow. ‘What happened last night?’

‘She was trapped in a lift for a minute or two and it shook her up. Isn’t that what you meant?’ Paul said mildly.

‘No.’ For a moment James looked uncomfortable, then with a slight shrug, he went on. ‘No, I was talking about this man teaching her to cope with mental stress or whatever it is. Why is she so stressed?’