Rebecca James - The Woman In The Mirror - A haunting gothic story of obsession, tinged with suspense

REBECCA JAMESwas born in 1983. She worked in publishing for several years before leaving to write full-time, and is now the author of eight previous novels written under a pseudonym. Her favourite things are autumn walks, Argentinean red wine and curling up in the winter with a good old-fashioned ghost story. She lives in Bristol with her husband and two daughters.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Rebecca James 2018

Rebecca James asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9781474073172

For the little soul

who wrote this book with me.

Shade of a shadow in the glass,

O set the crystal surface free!

Pass – as the fairer visions pass –

Nor ever more return, to be

The ghost of a distracted hour,

That heard me whisper, ‘I am she!’

MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Prologue

Cornwall, winter 1806

Listen! Can you hear it?

There, right there. Listen. You are not listening. Listen hard.

Listen harder.

I hear them before I see them. Their shouts come from across the hill, calling my name, calling me Witch. They come with their spikes and flames, their red mouths and their black intent. They say I am the one to fear, but the fear is with them. Fear is in them. It has no need of me. Their fear will catch them at the final hour.

Shadows crawl over the moors, spreading dark against dark. Their torches dance, lit from the fire at the barn. Burn her! Drown her! Smoke her from her hole!

Witch.

It is not safe for me here. They will touch their fires to my home and I will perish inside. So I escape into the night, their steps bleeding close on the wind like a dread gallop. Down the cliffs, low to the ground, the sky watches, patient and indifferent. Stars are frozen. Moon observes. I cannot turn back: my home is lost.

At the end I will put myself there again, sitting by my hearth and staring at the painting on the wall. It is the painting I did for him but never gave him, a likeness of my house for he had admired it so; he had said what a perfect spot it held, high on the cliffs, a sweet little cottage circled by hay and firs. Oh, for those first days of innocence! For those days of blind hope, before he turned me away. On the night I planned to bestow the painting on him, he broke my heart. The gift I had meant for him remained with me, just as did every other part I imagined I would share.

I never thought I would be a woman for love, or a woman to be loved.

A woman should always trust herself.

What will remain at my home, after I am gone? What will he keep and what will he burn? I fear for my looking glass, my beloved mirror. I pray that it survives, for I wonder if a piece of me, however small, might survive with it.

Ivan. My love. How could you?

I shall never know. I will never understand. What is the point, now, in any case? Ivan de Grey betrayed me. I believed that he worshipped me, I swallowed his deceits and oh, it hurts, it hurts, to think of his arms around me…

Now they have built their case against me. They have shaped their fight and honed their resolve. There is nothing I can say or do; to protest confirms my fate.

I spill down the cliff path. I know it well enough in the dark. Brambles tear my skin and eyes; blood tastes sour in my mouth. I stumble, holding mud and air. My head hits a rock, sharp, hard, and I fall until a pain pulls me back, my hair caught on a stalk. For a moment, I lie still. Thunder, thunder, thunder . I gaze up at the night, the cool white pearl of the moon. I wish I were an animal. I wish I were a wolf. I wish I would transform, and be waiting for them when they come over the edge. I would leap at them with my jaws thrown wide.

But I am a woman. Not a wolf. Perhaps I am something in between.

Run.

I meet the sea, which has swallowed the sand completely. It foams around my ankles and I wade through it, salt burning the cuts on my legs. Ivan long ago decided I was marked. He saw the red on my body and the rest was easy. He told his friends and those friends told their enemies, and all are united in the crusade. Witch.

All he had to do was to make her believe in his love.

Love.

Rotten, stinking, hated love. Love is for fools, bound for hell.

I detest its creeping treacheries. I resent the shell it made of me. My weakness to be wanted, my pathetic, throbbing heart…

There is comfort in knowing that while I die, my hatred lives on. My hatred remains here, on this coast, in this sea and under this sky. My hatred remains.

I trust it with my vengeance, for vengeance I will take.

The water pulls me to my knees, black and thrashing and soaking my dress.

I turn to shore. High on the hill is a bright, living blaze. The men stride towards me, stride through the sea. I will not go with them. I will go on my own, willingly. I will swim to the deep and deeper still. I will picture my home as I drown.

I crawl into the wild dark.

A hand grabs my ankle and pulls me down.

Chapter 1

London, 1947

‘Alice Miller – for heaven’s sake, wake up.’

It might be Mrs Wilson’s uppity remark that jolts me out of my eleven o’clock reverie, or else it’s the warm muzzle of the Quakers Oatley & Sons’ resident Red Setter as it nudges hotly against my lap, for it’s hard to know which happens first.

‘I’m awake,’ I tell her, finding the dog’s warm ears under my desk and working them through my fingers; Jasper breathes contentedly through his nose and his tail bangs on the floor. ‘Can’t you see my eyes are open?’