Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

A strange wave of misgiving then; not to remember what had happened during the lost time was normal, but there was something else. Juniper was lost within the dark wardrobe of her mind, but although she couldn’t see what lay around her, she was filled with a certainty, a heavy dread, that there was something terrible locked inside there with her.

I can’t remember.

She closed her eyes and strained to hear, cast about for anything that might help. There was none of the bustle of London, the buses, the people on the street below, the murmurs from other flats; but the veins of the house were creaking, the stones were sighing, and there was another persistent noise. Rain – it was light rain on the roof.

Her eyes opened. She remembered rain.

She remembered a bus stopping.

She remembered blood.

Juniper sat up suddenly, too focused on this fact, this small glimmer of light, of remembrance, to mind the pain in her head. She remembered blood.

But whose blood?

The dread shifted, stretched out its legs.

She needed air. The attic was stifling, suddenly; warm and moist and thick.

She placed her feet on the wooden floor. Things, her things lay everywhere, yet she felt disconnected from them. Someone had attempted to clear a space, a passage through the jumble.

She stood. She remembered blood.

What made her look at her hands then? Whatever it was, she recoiled. There was something on them. She brushed quickly on her shirt and the gesture caused a rippling of familiarity beneath her skin. She lifted her palms closer to her face and the marks fled. Shadows. They were only shadows.

Disconcerted, relieved, she went shakily to the window. Pulled aside the blackout curtain and opened the sash. A light cool film of fresh air brushed her cheeks.

The night was moonless, starless too, but Juniper didn’t need light to know what lay beyond. The world of Milderhurst pressed upon her. Unseen animals shivering in the underbrush, Roving Brook laughing in the woods, a faraway bird lamenting. Where did the birds go when it rained?

There was something else, directly below. A small light, she realized, a lamp hanging from a stick. Someone was down there in the rain, working in the pets’ graveyard.

Percy.

Percy holding a shovel.

Digging.

Something lay on the ground behind her. A mound. Large. Still.

Percy stepped aside then and Juniper’s eyes widened. They fired a message to her beleaguered brain, and the light in the dark wardrobe flickered, and she saw clearly, just for a moment, the terrible, terrible thing that was hiding there; the evil that she’d sensed but hadn’t seen, that had filled her with fear. She saw it, she named it, and horror fired every nerve within her body. You’re just like me , Daddy had said, before he confessed his grisly tale-

The circuit blew and the lights went out.

Damned hands.

Percy recovered the dropped cigarette from the kitchen floor, wedged it between her lips and struck the match. She’d been counting on the familiar action to return her some steel, but she’d been too hopeful. Her hand shook like a leaf in the wind. The flame extinguished and she tried again. Concentrated on striking firmly; on holding the bloody thing still as it sizzled and caught, as the flame leaped; of bringing it to meet the end of her cigarette. Closer, closer, closer – something caught her eye, a dark smear on her inner wrist, and, with a start she dropped the box of matches, the flame.

Matchsticks lay spilled across the flagstones and she got down on her knees to pick them up. One by one, side by side, into the box; Percy took her time, disappeared inside the simple task, wrapped it round her shoulders like a cloak and did up all the buttons.

It was mud on her wrist. Only mud. A small mark she’d missed when she came inside; when she’d stood at the sink and scrubbed the mud from her hands, her face, her arms, scrubbed until she thought her skin would bleed.

Percy held a matchstick between her thumb and forefinger. Looked beyond it but saw nothing. It fell again to the ground.

He’d been heavy.

She’d lifted bodies before, she and Dot; they’d rescued people from bomb-blasted houses, loaded them into the ambulance, carried them again at the other end. She knew that the dead weighed more than the friends they left behind. But this had been different. He’d been heavy.

She’d known he was dead as soon as she pulled him from the moat. Whether from the blow itself or the inches of mudded water into which he’d fallen, she couldn’t say. But he was already dead; she knew that. She’d tried to revive him anyway, an instinct born of shock more than hope; she’d tried everything they had taught her in the ambulance brigade. And it had rained and she’d been glad because it meant she could deny the damned tears when they dared to fall.

His face.

She closed her eyes, clenched them tight; saw it still. Knew that she always would.

Her forehead met her knee and the solidity of the contact was a relief. The hardness of her knee-cap, its cool certainty when pressed against her hot and racing head was reassuring; almost like contact with another person, a calmer person than she was, older and wiser and more suited to the tasks that lay ahead.

For things would have to be done. Other things; more than what she’d done already. A letter would have to be written, she supposed, telling his family; though telling them what, she wasn’t sure. Not the truth. Things had gone too far for that. There’d been an instant, a flame’s-tip moment when she might have done things differently, telephoned Inspector Watkins and laid the whole mess out before him, but she hadn’t. What could she have said to make him understand? To make him see that it wasn’t Saffy’s fault? And so a letter must be written to the man’s family. Percy had no instinct for stories, but necessity was the mother of invention and she would think of something.

She heard a noise, and jumped. It was someone on the stairs.

Percy collected herself, swiped her palm across wet cheeks. Angry with herself, with him, the world. Anyone but her twin.

‘I’ve put her back to bed,’ said Saffy, on her way through the door. ‘You were right, she was up again and terribly – Perce?’

‘Over here.’ Her throat ached with tension.

Saffy’s head appeared over the top of the table. ‘What are you doing down – oh, dear. Let me help.’

While her twin crouched beside her, gathering matches, jumbling them into the box, Percy hid behind her unlit cigarette and said, ‘She’s back to bed then?’

‘She is now. She’d got up – the pills mustn’t be as strong as we’d thought. I’ve given her another.’

Percy wiped at the mud smear on her wrist and nodded.

‘She was in quite a state, the poor darling. I’ve done my best to reassure her that all will work out, that the young man’s only been detained and that he’s bound to be along tomorrow. That’s all it is, isn’t it, Percy? He’ll be along? – Perce? What is it? Why do you look that way?’

Percy shook her head.

‘You’re frightening me.’

‘I’m sure he’ll come,’ said Percy, placing a hand on her sister’s arm. ‘You’re right. We just have to be patient.’

Saffy’s relief was evident. She handed over the full box of matches and nodded at the cigarette in Percy’s hand. ‘There you are then; you’ll be needing these if you plan on smoking that.’ She stood, straightening the green dress that was too tight. Percy fought an urge to tear the thing to shreds, to weep and wail and rip. ‘You’re right, of course. We just need to be patient. Juniper will be better in the morning. People always seem to be, don’t they? In the meantime I suppose I should put the table settings away.’