Black Rabbit Hall (30 page)

The last day of the summer holidays

At dawn I crawl into Kitty’s bed, comforted by the plump sweet lump that is Kitty sleeping. Barney joins us, hot-limbed and restless, using my chest as his pillow. The bed is cramped and stinky but preferable to being alone in my room unable to sleep, torturing myself with Toby’s words. Still, by the time the sun shines through the nursery’s flowery curtains, I am convinced that Lucian will not only forget about me at Oxford but go on to marry Belinda Bracewell. Of course he won’t bother returning to Black Rabbit Hall today to say goodbye! I’m quite certain of this until after lunch when I hear the engine spluttering up the drive. I run to my bedroom window.

Heart in my mouth, I watch Peggy – circular seen from above – bustle down the stone steps and open the passenger door. Caroline emerges, turquoise scarf fluttering at her neck. I wait, and wait. Then …

Lucian’s brogue lands on the gravel. It is already more exciting than the man stepping on the moon.

I cannot breathe. I’ve imagined it a million times in the last few hours – running down to greet him, the small secret smile that says, ‘I love you’, the brush of our fingers as we pass in the hall – but now the moment is here I cannot move, paralysed by the knowledge that I will know
immediately what has happened between him and Belinda just from the look in his eyes. If something has, it will be like seeing a body lying dead at the bottom of a pond. So I sit on the edge of my bed, sick with nerves, pinching my cheeks, furiously brushing my hair and desperately wishing I had a pretty dress. After what feels like weeks, my hair brushed out of control, sparking with static, I hear his tread on the stairs, the bump of a bag on the floor.

Three soft raps: our knock.

The moment the wardrobe doors click shut, we fall into the furs, desperate to hold one another. He is so solid, warm, so mine that I cry with relief and happiness. His thigh pushes hard between my legs, breath shredding in my ear. It keeps pushing, a growing, tightening pulse. A seam rips in the crackling heat. I throw my head back and cry out. There are no edges.

We are nuzzling and whispering ourselves back to earth when I hear a snuffling sound, something moving about outside the wardrobe doors. Boris?

‘Ssh …’ I pull back, waiting to hear it again.

‘It’s nothing,’ he says, bending over to kiss me.

It happens so quickly. The bleach of sunlight. Boris barking. Caroline screaming. I grab a fur coat to cover myself, cowering against the hat boxes.

‘You little slut!’ Caroline shrieks, eyes popping red.

‘Christ.’ Lucian tries to pull up his trousers.

‘Come here!’ Before I can do anything, Caroline’s arm shoots out, yanking me up and out of the wardrobe, her rings digging into the flesh of my arm. To my horror, she rips the fur coat away. And I am naked before her, skinless,
raw, trembling so much my teeth start to chatter. ‘Oh, look at you! You stupid, stupid girl.’ She starts to shove me back and forth, so that my breasts hurt, like she is possessed. I start to cry, shocked, burning tears.

‘Stop!’ Lucian shouts, white-faced in the wardrobe, hands gripping the sides, pulling himself out. ‘For God’s sake, stop. Mother, we’re in love.’

‘Love?’ She stops shaking me, but the reprieve feels fragile, as if she might start up again even more fiercely. ‘Stepbrother, stepsister,’ she whispers, upper lip curling. ‘You cannot
love.
Not like this.’

I bow my head, cross my arms to cover my breasts. The pink dressing room starts to spin, like a nightmare carousel. I taste salt in the back of my throat, tears, blood, fear. Without warning, Caroline leans over and slaps me hard on my cheek. It is such a shock that it doesn’t hurt.

Lucian grabs her arm roughly. The room quivers on the edge of violence. ‘Don’t. Ever. Hit. Her.’

Caroline glances down at her son’s hand, back up at him, something changing in her eyes, fury cooling to something more calculated, more deadly. ‘You have betrayed me horribly, Lucian.’

‘I’ve fallen in love, that’s all.’

She pulls her arm away from his hand, closes her eyes, the lids quivering and twitching, as if tiny insects are running beneath the skin. When she opens them again, there is a determined look in them, a strengthened resolve. ‘I’ll have to tell you now, won’t I?’

‘Tell me what?’ asks Lucian, warily. His chest is flushed livid red.

I grab the fur coat off the floor, shakily cover myself
again, hear her voice in the blood-pulse of my head, not registering its meaning.

‘Alfred was not your father, Lucian.’

‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’ Lucian steps backwards. A terrible sadness starts to creep across his beautiful face like a shadow, pulling down the corners of his mouth, bruising the hollows of his eyes.

‘Have you not wondered where you get your gypsy dark hair? Your height? Your good looks?’

‘There is Indian blood on Daddy’s side.’

Caroline shakes her head slowly, holding us – the room, time itself – in sickened thrall. ‘Hugo is your real father. Hugo
Alton
.’

I hear my own gasp as if it were someone else’s. See my father’s bloodied name hanging in the knifed hush. Lucian, white, frozen, his lips parted with a silent scream.

‘You’re lying,’ he manages, voice a husk. ‘You’re lying, Ma.’

‘I didn’t know I was pregnant when Hugo left me for Nancy all those years ago, my darling.’

‘No.’ Lucian is fiercely shaking his head, trying to dislodge the words from his ears.

‘I married Alfred, and the dear man brought you up as his own. He never knew. No one knew, Lucian.’ She lowers her eyes and voice, humbly, a woman in church. ‘But now you do.’

A strange noise comes from the back of Lucian’s throat. I reach over to clutch his arm, but he doesn’t react, seems to look right through me. And I can feel his great spirit shrinking, his heart folding upon itself, smaller and smaller, until it no longer meets my own.

‘It’s not true, Lucian!’ I cry. ‘Don’t believe her.’

Caroline leans close to her son, pouring her poison into his ear. ‘Lucian, you are the rightful heir to Pencraw. And
that
little whore is your sister.’

A crash outside the dressing-room door. The sound of scuffling, heavy breathing. Boris. Let it be Boris.

‘Who is it?’ Caroline bolts upright, vein pulsing on her forehead. ‘I say, who is there?’

Caroline tosses Lucian’s guitar on to the back seat of the car with his bag of clothes. ‘Go!’ she shouts, banging the bumper. ‘
Now
. You cannot remain here another minute. I swear Toby will kill you. Please. Leave now, I beg you, Lucian.’

Lucian looks up at me pressed to the bedroom window. I nod.
Go.

The car speeds down the drive, roars through the trees. I stand there looking at those trees for some time after he’s gone, numb, unable to make sense of what we’ve been told, knowing only two things for certain: I can’t go back and undo my love for Lucian any more than I can go back through time and stop Momma falling off her horse; I must find Toby.

Yes, that’s what I’ll do. Find Toby. Explain everything. Explain everything so he understands, which is what I should have done weeks ago. If Toby understands, he’ll forgive. I’m almost sure of it. And he will not think Caroline’s lie true for a moment. So what if Lucian is as dark as Daddy? If there is a similarity in their height and build? We are all fair or redheaded and we are certainly Daddy’s children.

Summoning all my courage – I can only imagine the white heat of Toby’s fury – I splash water on my face, straighten my messy hair with my fingers and take an
unsteady breath, anxious about what awaits me downstairs. Will Caroline have told everyone? Will Peggy know? Oh, please, don’t let Peggy know.

But downstairs is unsettlingly ordinary, the world as it was an hour ago. The faint squeak and grind of Annie’s mangle. The ginger cat crossing the hall, tail piped. Caroline is nowhere to be seen. Nor Bartlett.

Click click click.

I follow the faint sound of knitting needles to the sunroom. Kitty is contentedly slumped on Peggy’s knee, pouring water from a toy teapot into a plastic dolly cup, while Peggy’s small, strong fingers twist and tug green yarn over her needles.

‘Have you seen Toby?’ My voice sounds almost normal. Like it hasn’t caught up yet.

Peggy shakes her head, watching the wool knit. ‘Dare say he’ll be back soon. Rain’s on its way. I can feel it. When you do find him, Amber, tell him the blanket for his tree house is coming along nicely, will you?’ She holds it up, half finished, in different shades of green: moss, river, leaves. ‘He’ll be able to use it during the Christmas holidays at least. He won’t freeze in the branches.’

Christmas: how will we ever get that far? Even tomorrow feels terrifyingly uncharted now. Like I’ve fallen off the edge of the map.

Peggy puts the knitting down in her lap, frowns. ‘You’re pale as curd. What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ I mumble, leaving Peggy wondering, rushing away from further questions.

Outside, the clouds are swollen, the air heavy and damp. I
stop beside the falcons, wondering where to look first. The woods, obviously. Toby will be in the woods. I try to run. But my legs won’t work properly, my feet leaden as diver’s boots.

Soon the rain starts to fall, splashy warm teardrops, drenching me in seconds. I plough on for a few more minutes, dress sticking unpleasantly to my thighs, before being hit by a bone-aching exhaustion, unable to see through the rain, unable to go on.

I’ll wait for Toby in the drawing room, I decide wearily, intercept him the moment he walks into the hall.

So that is what I do, sinking to the rug beside the globe, pushing it with a cold fingertip, spinning it until I can see New York, circled in happier times. And I keep spinning it, searching for the comfort of its honeybee hum. But the globe sounds different today. Less honeybee hive, more a wasps’ nest stirring.

‘Seen Old Harry?’ I look up to see Barney, lolly lump in his cheek, white tennis ball at his bare foot, letting some kind of bug ladder from the finger of one hand to the other. ‘I left him running around the hall and he’s scarpered. I want to try him in his new travel basket.’

‘He never goes far,’ I manage, struggling to care about a rabbit on such a day. ‘Maybe Kitty’s put him in her pram.’

‘No. I looked.’ He walks towards me, lightly tapping the ball. ‘Want to see?’ He holds up his hand. The beetle is jewel-purple, like one of Grandma Esme’s brooches on the move.

‘Pretty.’

‘Duh. He’s a boy!’

‘Fearsome?’

‘Yes. Fearsome.’ He laughs, flicking the beetle off his wrist into his cupped palm. ‘Will you help me look for Old Harry?’

‘I can’t right this minute. Sorry.’

‘When, then?’

‘Not now, Barns.’ I sigh. ‘I’ve got to … to find Toby.’

‘The rabbit’s more important. I won’t go to London without him.’ Barney sticks his lolly back into his mouth and dribbles the tennis ball out of the room. Shortly afterwards, I hear the front door slam. Although I know it’s probably Barney going out, there’s also a small chance it may be Toby coming in, so I pull myself up.

The hall is empty, cooled by a gust of rainy air from the just-opened door. I look up the stairs: nothing. Strain to hear footsteps: nothing. I glance at Big Bertie: almost four. I’ll wait a little longer. I still feel so tired, so strange, so heavy. Back in the drawing room, I grab a cushion off a chair, throw it to the rug and lie down, unable to stop the black velvet of my eyelids closing like curtains.

‘Anyone for the beach?’

Her voice wakes me, clear as a bell. I rub my gluey eyes. And there she is, feet away: Momma in her green silk dress, perched grasshopper-light on the edge of the pink velvet chair, head cocked, smiling through her copper waves.

‘Momma?’ Disoriented by joy and sleep, I scrabble across the rug towards her on my knees like a baby, reach up for the hem of the dress. My fingers close and it becomes the tasselled edge of a green cushion. The chair is empty, and yet she is there, outline dispersing slowly, like aeroplane trails in the sky.

I don’t know how long I stare at that chair, numb with pins and needles, waiting for Momma to reappear, knowing I must have been half asleep and imagined her, equally certain she was completely real.
Anyone for the beach?
I know what I must do.

‘Oh, hello, young lady! I wondered where you’d got to.’ Peggy intercepts me in the hall, cradling the fat kitchen cat in the crook of her arms. ‘You look half asleep.’

‘I … I dozed off.’

‘That’s not like you. You must be coming down with something. You still look terribly pale.’

There’s a pause. A breeze swings restlessly over the black and white tiles. How long before she knows? I wonder again. Sees me as someone else entirely, someone shocking and shameful?

Peggy nuzzles the cat’s head with her chin, nods at the closed drawing-room door. ‘Are the monkeys in there, then?’

‘No.’ The cat starts to purr loudly. ‘I haven’t found Toby yet. Barney went off looking for Old Harry.’

‘Up hill and down dale after that silly creature! Today of all days. I want Barney and Toby to sit down and get some half-decent food in their bellies before the journey.
I
’ll be cooking it. Mrs Alton has a terrible migraine and doesn’t want to be disturbed. Sent Bartlett home early she did, saying her services weren’t needed.’ She can’t hide her pleasure at this. ‘I should grab Barney. We still need to locate his left shoe and wash bag. Where did he go?’

‘Don’t know, sorry.’

‘When did he leave?’

‘Um. About four.’

‘Oh, not long, then. I’ll give him a little more time.’

I am already through the front door when she calls, ‘And where are you off to, looking so furtive?’

‘The beach. I think Toby might be there. I’ll bring him back.’

‘Not if you’re poorly, Amber.’

‘I was just tired. I’m fine now.’

She looks unconvinced. ‘Sure you’re packed for tomorrow? You all need to be at the station first thing, you know. No dilly-dallying.’

I dart to the door.

‘Be careful,’ she calls after me. ‘High tide. Don’t go and get yourself cut off or anything daft. And you can tell the others it’ll be stargazy pie served in the kitchen. Just like old times.’