Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

There had been a dress on the table too, she remembered, which meant there was a pile of laundry somewhere. How difficult could that be to find? More difficult, certainly, than if she had the vaguest notion how laundry was done, but unfortunately Percy had never paid much attention to Saffy’s housekeeping routine, an oversight she promised silently to amend just as soon as the letter was safely in her possession. She began with the baskets on the shelf beneath the table, rummaging through tea towels and baking trays, saucepans and rolling pins, one ear trained on the stairs in case Saffy should come searching. Which was unlikely, surely? With Juniper already late, Saffy would be loath to venture far from the front door. Percy wanted to get back there herself: as soon as Juniper arrived she intended to ask plainly about Mrs Potts’s rumour.

For although Percy had gone along with her twin’s certainty that Juniper, if engaged, would have told them the news, in reality she had no such confidence. It was the sort of thing that people did tell one another, that was true enough, but Juniper wasn’t like other people: she was beloved but she was also undeniably singular. And it wasn’t only the lost time, the episodes: this was the little girl who’d comforted herself by rubbing objects on her naked eyeball – smooth stones, the end of Cook’s rolling pin, Daddy’s favourite fountain pen; who’d driven away countless nannies with her incurable obstinacy and refusal to abandon imaginary cohorts; who, on the rare occasions she was induced to wear shoes, insisted on wearing them wrong-footed.

Oddness, of itself, was of no concern to Percy: as the family argument went, which person of value didn’t have a good pinch of strangeness in them? Daddy had his ghosts, Saffy had her panics, Percy herself made no claims on the pedestrian. No, oddness was neither here nor there; Percy cared only about doing her duty: protecting Juniper from herself. Daddy had given her the task. Juniper was special, he’d said, and it was up to all of them to keep her safe. And they had, so far, they had. They’d become expert at recognizing occasions when the very aspects that fuelled her talent were at risk of tipping over into fearsome rage. Daddy, when he was alive, had allowed her to rampage without restraint: ‘It’s passion,’ he’d said, admiration burnishing his voice, ‘unaffected, unbridled passion.’ But he’d made sure to talk to his lawyers. Percy had been surprised when she’d first discovered what he’d done; her immediate reaction had been the heat of betrayal, the sibling’s mantra of ‘It isn’t fair!’, but she’d soon enough come to heel. She’d understood that Daddy was right, that what he proposed would work out best for all of them. And she adored Juniper, they all did. There was nothing Percy wouldn’t do for her baby sister.

A noise from upstairs and Percy froze, scrutinizing the ceiling. The castle was full of noises so it was a matter of sorting through the usual suspects. Too loud for the caretakers, surely? There it was again. Footsteps, she figured; but were they getting closer? Was Saffy coming downstairs? A long, breath-held moment in which Percy remained absolutely still; motionless until she was satisfied, finally, that the footsteps were moving away.

She stood up then, carefully, and scanned the kitchen with rather more desperation than she had before; still no sign of the bloody laundry. Brooms and a mop in the corner, wellington boots by the back door, the sink containing nothing more than soaking bowls, and on the stovetop a saucepan and a pot-

A pot! Of course. Surely she’d heard Saffy talking before about pots and washing, right before the topic turned to immovable stains and a lecture on Percy’s own lack of care. Percy hurried to the stove, peered inside the large steel container, and bingo! What relief – the trousers.

With a grin, she heaved out the sodden uniform, twisted it back and forth to find the collapsed pockets and squirrelled her hand into first one, then the other…

Blood drained instantly from her face: the pockets were empty. The letter was gone.

More noise from upstairs: footsteps again; Saffy pacing. Percy swore under her breath, berated herself again for her stupidity, then shut the hell up as she tracked her sister’s whereabouts.

The footsteps were coming nearer. Then there was a banging sound. The footsteps changed direction. Percy strained harder. Was someone at the door?

Silence. In particular, no urgent call from Saffy. Which meant no one had knocked, for one thing was certain – Percy’s absence would not be tolerated once guests arrived.

Perhaps it was the shutter again; she’d only tapped it lightly back into place with the small wrench – without a tool set handy there’d been little else she could do – and it was still blowing a gale outside. Add that to the list of things to mend tomorrow.

Percy took a deep breath and let out a dispirited sigh. She watched the trousers sink back into the pot. It was after eight o’clock, Juniper was already late, the letter could be anywhere. Maybe – her spirits lifted – Saffy had taken it for rubbish? It was torn, after all; perhaps the letter had already been burned, and was little more now than ashes in the Aga.

Short of running a fine-tooth comb over the entire house, or asking Saffy directly what had become of it – Percy winced just to imagine that conversation – she couldn’t see that there was anything more she could do. Which meant she might as well go back upstairs and wait for Juniper.

A great crash of thunder then, loud enough that even in the bowels of the house Percy shivered. In its wake, another, softer noise, closer. Outside perhaps, almost like someone scratching along the wall, hammering periodically, looking for the back door.

Juniper’s guest was due about now.

It was possible, Percy supposed, that a person unfamiliar with the castle, approaching it by night, during the blackout, in the midst of a great rain storm, might find themselves seeking entrance elsewhere than the front door. Slim though the possibility was, once she’d considered it Percy knew she had to check. She couldn’t jolly well leave him floundering out there.

Stitching her lips tight, she took a last glance about the kitchen – dry pantry goods ready for use on the bench, a scrunched tea towel, a saucepan lid: nothing even resembling a stack of torn paper – then she dug the battery torch from the emergency kit, pulled a mackintosh over her dress, and opened the back door.

Juniper was almost two hours late and Saffy was officially worried. Oh, she knew it was bound to be a delay on the train line, a punctured bus tyre, a roadblock, something ordinary, and certainly there’d be no enemy planes complicating matters on a sodden night like this; nonetheless, sensible reasoning had no place in the worries of a big sister. Until Juniper walked through that front door, life and limbs intact, a significant part of Saffy’s mind would remain encased by fear.

And what news, she wondered with a nibble on her bottom lip, would her baby sister bring with her when she did, finally, spill across the threshold? Saffy had believed it when she’d reassured Percy that Juniper wasn’t engaged to be married, she really had, but in the time since Percy had disappeared so abruptly, leaving her alone in the good parlour, she’d grown less and less certain. The doubts had started when she’d joked about the dubious spectacle of Juniper in white lace. Even as Percy was nodding agreement, the frou-frou image that had flashed into Saffy’s mind was undergoing transmutation – a reflection in rippling water – into another, far less unlikely vision. One Saffy already held within her imagination and had done since she’d started work on the dress upstairs.