Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

Meredith’s ears burned with the thrilling wickedness of what she’d done. There’d be repercussions, she knew, but she’d had no other option. She’d run and she’d run until she could run no further, and when her breath was finally caught, she’d scaled the tree, alive with the strange, humming energy of having acted impetuously for the very first time in her life.

At the top of the driveway, Mum’s shoulders sagged and Meredith thought for a moment she was crying; then her arms flew out to the side, hands like startled starfish. Dad flinched backwards and Meredith knew that Mum was shouting. She didn’t need to hear what Mum was saying to know that she was in big trouble.

Meanwhile, still standing in the castle yard, Percy Blythe was smoking, one hand on her hip as she watched the woods, and Meredith felt a whisper of doubt grow wings within her stomach. She had presumed she’d be welcome to stay on at the castle, but what if she weren’t? What if the twins were so shocked by her disobedience that they refused to look after her any longer? What if following her own desires had led her into terrible trouble? As Percy Blythe finished her cigarette and turned back towards the castle, Meredith felt suddenly very alone.

Movement drew her gaze to the castle roof and Meredith’s heart turned like a catherine wheel. Someone in a white summer dress was climbing there. Juniper . Finished at last! Back in the outside world. As Meredith watched, she reached the flattened edge and sat, long legs dangling over the side. She’d be lighting a cigarette now, Meredith knew, leaning back, looking up at the sky.

But she didn’t. She stopped abruptly instead, and looked towards the woods. Meredith held tightly to the branch; excitement had brought on a funny sort of laugh which caught in her throat. It was almost as if Juniper had heard her, as if the older girl had somehow sensed her presence. If anyone could do such a thing, Meredith knew, it was Juniper.

She couldn’t go back to London. She wouldn’t. Not now, not yet.

Meredith watched her mum and dad walk down the drive away from the castle, Mum’s arms folded over her middle, Dad’s limp by his sides. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered under her breath, ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

The water was tepid and shallow, but Saffy didn’t mind. A long soak in a hot bath was a pleasure of the past, and it was enough just to be alone with Percy’s ghastly betrayal. She eased her bottom forward so she could lie flat on her back, knees bent towards the ceiling, head submerged, and ears underwater. Her hair floated like seaweed around the island of her face and she listened to the eddies and gurgles of the water, the clanking of the plug chain against the enamel, and other strange languages of the watery world.

For their entire adult life, Saffy had known herself to be the weaker twin. Percy liked to pooh-pooh such talk, insisting there was no such thing, not with them: that there was only a sunlight and a shadow position, between which they alternated so that things were always in perfect balance. Which was kind of her, but no more accurate for being well intentioned. Quite simply, Saffy knew that the things for which she had a superior talent were those that did not matter. She wrote well, she was a fine dressmaker, she could cook (passably) and lately even clean; but what use were such skills when she remained enslaved? Worse, a willing slave. Because for the most part, it shamed her to admit, Saffy didn’t mind the role. There was an ease, after all, that came with being subordinate, a release of burden. And yet, there were times, like today, when she resented the expectation that she ought to fall into line without argument, no matter her own preference.

Saffy lifted her body and leaned against the tub’s smooth end, swiped the wet flannel against her anger-warmed face. The enamel was cool on her back and she arranged the flannel like a shrunken blanket across her breasts and stomach, watched it tighten and release with her breaths, a second skin; then she closed her eyes. How dare Percy presume to speak for her? To make decisions on Saffy’s behalf, to determine her future without consultation?

But Percy did, just as she always had, and today, as ever, there’d been no arguing with her.

Saffy exhaled, long and slow, in an attempt to control her anger. The sigh caught on a sob. She supposed she should be pleased, flattered even, that Percy needed her so fiercely. And she was. But she was tired, too, of being powerless; more than that, she was sick at heart. For as long as she could remember, Saffy had been stuck in a life that ran parallel to the one of which she’d dreamed, the one she’d had every reasonable expectation to believe would be hers.

This time, however, there was one little thing she could do – Saffy brushed each cheek, enlivened by the creep of determination – a small way in which she might exercise her own feeble power against Percy. It would be a strike of omission rather than commission; Percy would never even know the blow had been struck. The only spoil of war would be a slight return of Saffy’s self-respect. But that was enough.

Saffy was going to keep something to herself, something that Percy would prefer to know: all about the unexpected visitor who’d arrived at the castle that day. While Percy was at Lucy’s wedding, Juniper was in the attic and Meredith was stalking the estate, Daddy’s solicitor, Mr Banks, had arrived in his black motorcar, accompanied by two dour little women in plain suits. Saffy, who’d been making adjustments to the tea table outside, had first considered hiding, pretending there was no one at home – she didn’t particularly like Mr Banks, and she certainly didn’t like answering the door to unexpected callers – but the old man had been known to her since she was a small girl, he was a friend to Daddy, and therefore she’d been bound in some way she couldn’t easily explain.

She’d run through the kitchen entrance, straightened herself in the oval mirror by the larder, then hurried upstairs, just in time to greet him at the front door. He’d been surprised, almost displeased, when he saw her, wondering aloud what times were coming to when somewhere as grand as Milderhurst was without a proper housekeeper, then instructing her to take him to her father. For all that Saffy longed to embrace society’s changing mores, she harboured an old-fashioned reverence for the law and its officers, so she’d done precisely as he said. He was a man of few words (that is, he was a man not disposed to making idle chitchat with the daughters of his clients); their climb was silent, and for that she’d been glad; men like Mr Banks always made her tongue-tied. When they finally reached the top of the winding staircase, he’d given her a curt nod before showing himself and his two officious companions through the doorway and into Daddy’s tower room.

Saffy’s intention hadn’t been to snoop; indeed, she’d resented the intrusion on her time almost as much as she resented any task which took her up to the ghastly tower with its smell of impending death, the monstrous framed print on the wall. If the tortured struggle of a butterfly trapped in a web between the banisters hadn’t caught her eye, she’d no doubt have been halfway down the stairs and well out of earshot. But she had and she wasn’t and so, while she carefully unthreaded the insect, she heard Daddy say: ‘That’s why I called you, Banks. Damned nuisance, death. Have you made the amendments?’

‘I have. I’ve brought them to be signed and witnessed, along with a copy for your records, of course.’

The details thereafter Saffy hadn’t heard, nor had she wanted to. She was the second daughter of an old-fashioned man, a spinster in her middle years: the masculine world of property and finance neither interested nor concerned her. She wanted only to free the weakened butterfly and get away from the tower, to leave the stale air and stifling memories behind her. She hadn’t been inside the little room for over twenty years, she intended never to set foot inside again, ever. And as she hurried down and away, she’d tried to elude the cloud of memories that pressed upon her as she went.