Nicola Upson - Angel with Two Faces

In the distance, Harry could hear the sound of a car engine. Quickly, he pulled Morwenna into one of the stables next to the house, out of sight of the road. The threat of the outside world seemed to renew his sense of urgency. ‘Because I couldn’t let you die believing that of me,’ he said, and now it was his turn to force her to look at him. ‘It isn’t true. Whatever you think and no matter why you believe it, I’ve never loved anybody but you. Loveday’s a child, for God’s sake – she’s our little sister. How could you ever think I’d hurt either of you like that?’ She tried to pull away, but he refused to let her. ‘You know me. The most intimate moments of my life have all been spent with you. Every physical and emotional instinct I have has been shaped and guided by you. Is that honestly what you think you’ve created? A monster?’

‘You’re lying, Harry – otherwise, you’d have denied it straight away. Has it taken you all this time to think of a convincing story? Well, don’t waste your breath. I’ve had enough.’

‘How did you expect me to react? You’d just accused me of never loving you and fucking our sister, who we’ve brought up like our own daughter since she was six years old.’ She flinched as though he’d struck her again, and he tried to stay calm. ‘I was angry when you told me – angry and frightened and dazed, and I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I hit you, and suddenly I no longer trusted myself to be near you. I had to get out before I really hurt you.’

‘But what about later – at the boathouse? You were calm enough then.’ There was a long silence as Harry wondered how to go on, and he sensed a change in Morwenna: for the first time, she wanted to believe him. ‘Don’t play with me, Harry,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Loveday reminds me of everything I hate most – the thrill of you, the knowledge that I can’t have you – and I know what it means to fear the violence in yourself. You’re lucky I didn’t kill you both back there.’

He risked a smile. ‘You can’t kill a ghost.’

‘If you knew how often I’d died since you left, you would never say that.’ She sat down on a bale of straw, and asked him again. ‘Why didn’t you even try to convince me the last time I saw you? Weren’t we worth saving?’

He pretended not to have heard the past tense. ‘Of course we’re worth saving – that’s all I’ve ever tried to do. But something happened that night after I left you, Morwenna, something I never planned. By the time I saw you again at the boathouse, things were different. I’d done something I couldn’t undo, no matter how badly I wanted to.’

‘Could there really be anything worse than what I was already thinking, Harry?’ she asked sadly. ‘You’re right, though – I do need to understand.’

‘I met him on the coastal path,’ Morveth said, and she spoke so quietly that Josephine had to lean forward to hear. ‘It was one of those nights when the mist comes in from the sea more quickly than you’d think possible. I’d been up late, talking to Beth Jacks while her husband was out looking for poachers, and by the time I got to the edge of the lake, I was beginning to wish I’d taken the road through the village home – I could hardly see a step in front of me and the torch I had was next to no good. But it seemed such a long way to go back and I was already tired, so I pressed on as quickly as I could. I thought the mist would be better away from the Bar, but I was wrong – it was tenacious, so bad that even the sea sounded a long way away. I heard the horse before I saw Harry – just a quiet nicker, nothing more than that, a warning to his master, I suppose – but it seemed so loud in the stillness that I stopped, just in case someone was about to run me down. Nothing happened, so I carried on for a bit and there he was, sitting by the side of the path. I didn’t know it was him straight away, of course – all I could make out was a man’s figure – but I recognised Shilling, and then it was obvious. I said his name and he looked up, but he barely seemed to know what he was doing. When I got close enough, I could see how terrible he looked. At first, I thought he’d had an accident – come off Shilling in the mist or something – and it might be my imagination playing tricks on me now, but I could smell the blood on him. When I looked harder in the torchlight, I could see he’d been fighting; his left eye was badly swollen and there was a nasty cut on his lip, and more, I guessed, that I couldn’t see. I made him come back to the cottage with me. He didn’t want to but I insisted, and he was in no state to argue – he looked as though all the fight had been knocked out of him at last. I think holding on to that horse’s reins was the only thing that kept him upright along the last bit of path. When we got in, I sat him down by the range, bathed his cuts and tried to sponge the worst of the blood off his shirt, and all the time he was crying.

‘When I’d done the best I could, I tried to find out what had happened to him. As I thought, he’d been at the Commercial Inn all night. He’d had a terrible row with Morwenna earlier in the evening – I could guess what about, but I didn’t say anything – and he’d tried to drink himself into oblivion. It was a trick he’d learned from Caplin and his friends just lately, but that night it got out of hand. There was a group of young men from up country at the bar, all office workers down here on holiday, and you know what it’s like – they have a week’s worth of drink in one night and think they’re invincible. Anyway, there was a fight – not just Harry, a lot of the local lads got stuck in – and they were all thrown out. Harry thought that was that, and he started to walk home with Shilling – he was too drunk to ride – but one of the visitors went after him. Before he got far along the path, he heard footsteps behind him and somebody tried to wrestle him to the ground. He pushed him away easily enough – Harry was so strong – but the lad wouldn’t let it go. He followed him, goading him a bit – pointless, infantile stuff, really, and nothing Harry couldn’t handle, but then the man started hitting Shilling. Well, that was it. Harry was close to breaking point anyway, but you know how he loved that horse. He said he couldn’t explain what happened next; it was like he was standing outside his own body, while this person he didn’t recognise picked up a rock and started hitting the stranger with it, over and over again, until he stopped struggling. When the anger subsided and he came to his senses, Harry knew he’d killed the man – he literally beat him to death. He was sickened by what he’d done and horrified at the thought of what might happen to him. His first instinct was to get as far away as possible and he started to walk away, but he knew in his heart there was nowhere left to run. That’s how I found him – lost, scared and hurt.

‘He asked me what he should do, and I told him there was only one option left open to him. His first instinct was right – he had to leave, and go for good. I know it was wrong of me, but I couldn’t tell him to give himself up – not when there was so much at stake, and not when Morwenna was already sick with grief for what he’d done to her. I couldn’t put her through watching him hang – it would have put a rope around her neck, too. And I saw a chance to give her some peace, so I took it. I knew the only way she’d ever break this hold that Harry had over her was if she thought he’d deserted her, so I told him that if he valued his own life and hers, he’d get as far away from the Loe estate as possible and never come back. He argued, of course – said he couldn’t leave like that without a word, but I managed to persuade him that it was for the best. He left in the early hours of the morning. I didn’t know he intended to see Morwenna one last time to tell her what he was going to do; if I had, I’d have advised him not to in case it weakened his resolve. But as it turned out, he knew he couldn’t stay. Things had gone too far for that. But that’s what happened in between. When he went back to Morwenna, he had another man’s blood on his hands.’