Jubilee (22 page)

But, of course, the telephone line always came down in bad storms. This recollection made me want to curl up on the floor beside the dog.

Why aren’t you here now, Evie, I raged silently at her. Why did you leave me? I don’t even know where the candles are kept. See how utterly hopeless I am? Why did I never make a note
of where you kept them?

I rose and walked towards the telephone, just to check it really was dead. When I picked up the receiver the emptiness on the line came as no surprise. I flopped back down at the table, trying
to work out what I should do. Check all the windows were closed, for starters. Which would mean going upstairs. I didn’t want to go upstairs.

Pilot whined and stared up at the ceiling.

An even louder creak made me sit bolt upright in my chair. It wasn’t the wind. Someone was moving up there: it sounded as though they were walking out of one of the bedrooms. The cleaner.
It would be her cleaning upstairs. But I knew full well that today wasn’t one of her afternoons. Now I could hear footsteps. Pilot rose and padded over to the kitchen door. He stood there
looking upstairs, whining gently, tail wagging. I eyed the back door. The sensible course was to pull on my boots and the waxed jacket and run for the village shop, assuming it was still open in
this downpour.

Stop blathering on and get out of here. But I couldn’t. My feet seemed to take root in the stone flags. Whoever was upstairs I would meet in this kitchen, with its creamy-yellow walls and
gingham curtains. Courage seemed to reach me at last and I pulled a knife out of the wooden block on the worktop. ‘Who are you?’ I called.

A long shadow reached down the stairs. Pilot gave a single bark and now his tail was a windmill. ‘Steady, boy,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘I’m coming down now. No need
to be frightened, I’m not a burglar and I won’t hurt you.’

A strong, confident voice with an Australian accent. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I shouted.

Now she was coming into view. A slight, slim woman of about my age with dark hair and grey eyes that met mine without a blink. Her skin was clear but there were lines around the eyes, as though
she’d lived in a warm climate.

I knew this face.

I was going to collapse. My hands flailed around and caught the edge of the table. I clung to the oak, feeling my mouth opening on unspoken words, heart in spasm. Still I
stared at her, half expecting that she would dissolve. I must be imagining this. Thunder crashed overhead; the storm was very close now. I looked down at the table, staring at the grain to reassure
myself that what was happening was real. Then I looked up again. Still she stood in front of me. I was not dreaming this: Jessamy was here.

‘Rachel . . .?’ She sounded scared. ‘Is it really you?’

I nodded my head, incapable of speaking.

‘I’m Jessamy. I’ve come back.’ She was trembling.

The woman who’d gone with Evie in the ambulance. The terracotta pots which someone had tidied. The neatly arranged scarf. All falling into place. Evie, my aunt, my bereaved and stoic aunt,
you died knowing she was still alive. I slumped into a chair, my own weight suddenly too much for me.

She came towards me and I almost shrank from her, part of my subconscious still screaming at me that she must be a phantom. The electric light flashed back on and I heard the reassuring hum of
the refrigerator. ‘You look as though you’re in shock,’ she said. ‘And so am I.’ The light showed me that her arms were thin and beneath the T-shirt her skin was
goose-pimpled. She’d been slight as a girl. That hadn’t changed. She carried a small leather rucksack in one hand.

‘How long have you been here?’ In my disturbed state I could almost imagine that she’d been lying upstairs for the last twenty-five years like the Sleeping Beauty.

‘An hour or so. The car was gone and I thought you’d left. But the door wasn’t locked.’ Old habits. Evie had never locked it so I hadn’t either when I’d gone
shopping.

‘I couldn’t resist coming in to take a look at the house.’

Why shouldn’t she? It was hers now, after all. She was the last of the Winters.

‘I went upstairs to look at my old bedroom again. Sat on the bed in my old room just looking at it, remembering how it had been when I was a child. I must have fallen asleep.’ She
gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I woke up when it thundered. Heard you down here. Wasn’t sure what to do.’ The clipped words made me think that Jessamy, too, was frightened: of me. The
lights flickered off and on once more, showing me Jessamy’s face in illumination, her skin slightly weathered, her eyes sharp.

She took another step towards me and I found myself shrinking from her again. She must have noticed because she came to a halt. ‘This must be a huge shock for you, I’m
sorry.’

I nodded. ‘I’ll be all right in a moment.’ I took another deep breath and forced control onto myself. ‘Jessamy, won’t you sit down?’

Bit presumptuous, really, as the house belonged to her.

She perched on a chair diagonally opposite me as though she expected me to interrogate her. But all the questions I had built up inside myself for the last quarter-century seemed to muddle
themselves up into something so huge it couldn’t be expressed. ‘It is really you, Jess, isn’t it?’ I said at last. ‘I’m not dreaming this?’ I blinked
several times.

She nodded. ‘I didn’t know you were still here when I came back this afternoon. I would never have done this to you. Oh God, Rachel, I didn’t want to frighten you.’ She
dropped her head in a gesture of despair which I certainly didn’t remember in the bold girl she’d once been.

I got up and filled the already full kettle and put it on the range not because I had any desire for a hot drink but because I had to do something with my hands. ‘I kept feeling there was
someone around,’ I said.

‘I was staying at a B&B in the next village but I kept coming back here. Couldn’t keep away. I let myself into the garden a few days ago and tidied up some of the terracotta pots
in the garden.’ A note of apology in her voice. ‘I’m a plantswoman by trade, run a nursery just outside Sydney.’

Her love of plants would have been inherited from her mother.

I was taking my time about finding mugs and teaspoons and milk, in part because I was so distracted and in part deliberately. I needed to keep my hands busy. For years I’d dreamed
she’d come back. Now here she was. And I couldn’t talk to her. I found the teapot and Evie’s tea caddy but when I went to spoon the leaves into the pot my hand shook so much they
spilled all over the worktop. I abandoned my efforts and sat down again. She was still there, my cousin. I stared at her, tracing the child’s features in the woman’s face. She was still
dark-haired and her eyes were the same shade. Her skin was slightly wrinkled. ‘Oh, Jess.’ My eyes filled. ‘Oh, Jess. I . . .’ I shook my head, not even sure what I wanted to
say.

‘Are you all right?’ Her eyes swept my face anxiously.

‘I’m fine.’ I rubbed my hand over my eyes and smiled at her. ‘It’s just the surprise. You must think I’m behaving really oddly.’ I put out my hand and
touched hers. She felt warm. She clutched at my fingers. Excitement started to fizz through me. My cousin was back. Jessamy was back.

‘Where did you go?’ The question burst from my lips. ‘We looked everywhere for you, all over the village. ‘Who took you, Jess? And why? Why?’ Tears started to pour
from my eyes. ‘Did they hurt you? What happened?’

I bit my lip to prevent more questions rushing out. I didn’t even know which one I needed to her to answer first. I was worried I’d scare her off.

‘I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything. But first – ’ she stroked my fingers – ‘I need to know that you’re really all right, that you’ve
recovered from the shock. That I haven’t . . . hurt you by reappearing so suddenly.’

At first I wasn’t sure what she meant. But then it hit me with the force of a train. I moved my hand. ‘You were here with Evie that morning when her heart gave up, weren’t
you?’

She nodded. ‘I killed my own mother, Rachel.’

Jessamy

A week earlier, 2003

Jessamy drove into Craven and everything started to come into focus. She thought she might actually throw up. She remembered the village shop where surely she’d once
bought lollies – sweets they were called in England, she corrected herself.

Instinct abandoned her. She had no idea which way to drive so headed towards the church tower ahead of her. The church and the school looked tiny, as though they’d shrunk in the
intervening years, but were still recognizable. She’d played British bulldog with the boys in the playground and hide-and-seek among the gravestones in the churchyard.

She felt suddenly panicky again and had to resist turning the car and driving back to London. Anxiety had made her slow down. Two women walking along the pavement glanced her way. Suppose she
wound down the window and told them who she was? Would they even remember Jessamy Winter so long gone?

She tried not to let herself think too much about the exact location of the house. Her instinct would guide her. All she had to do was trust. But the village seemed altered from what she
remembered from childhood, not quite real; a film-set version of what she’d built up in her memory.

Her first attempt to find the house drew her up a deadend. She turned the car. Surely she should just go into the shop and say who she was and ask for help? That would be the reasonable thing to
do? Damn it. How stupid it was not to know where her own home was. She glanced at the speedometer and saw that she was now breaking the speed limit and took her foot off the accelerator.

Yet again she asked herself what she was doing here. Her mother must surely have believed her dead by now. Otherwise she’d have tracked her down to the ends of the earth. Wasn’t that
what a parent would do? Wasn’t that what she herself would do if one of her own children went missing? Misery had made Jessamy blind to the route she had chosen up a gently climbing lane.
Something thumped in her chest. A large chestnut tree, a garden gate to her right. A tall house built of creamy stone, with soft red bricks picking out the door frames and windows.

Winter’s Copse. Jessamy clutched at the steering wheel for support, concentrating on the pale walls of the house, then moving her gaze to the garden, to the apple tree in the corner, which
she’d climbed as a child.

She wished she could take the Jubilee mug out of her rucksack and hold it up like a talisman in front of her.

She parked the car on the verge, reminding herself that today’s excursion was for reconnaissance purposes only. But her hand stole towards the door handle and she found herself getting out
of the car and walking to the garden gate. Just a quick look at the house; she wouldn’t knock on the door. As she pushed open the gate a huge black dog ran to meet her, tail wagging. She
prayed he wouldn’t bark. He reminded her of the dog they’d had at the time of her disappearance. He let her come up the garden path to the front door.

Home. She touched the wood. Time to go back to the car and drive away. Find somewhere quiet to park up and phone her mother and try to break the news gently. Or, even more sensibly, write a
letter to her or attempt to find an email address or something. But her finger stole towards the bell. Nobody came. Jessamy’s legs screamed at her to leave. She thought she might actually be
sick. Yet something made her push the door open, curiosity perhaps. They’d never locked the doors in her childhood. Usually people went round to the back door, though. Interesting that
she’d chosen to come to the front like a stranger instead of making her way round to the back door opening into the farmyard. Still nobody came.

Even if her mother wasn’t in the house, she could at least have a look at her old home. She was standing inside the hallway before she could stop herself. It seemed smaller than she
remembered but otherwise unchanged. Possibly Evie had painted the walls a darker shade of green, but that might just have been her memory.

‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice came from the kitchen and Jessamy stiffened. ‘Is someone there?’ the voice asked, more sharply. Jessamy opened and closed her mouth, her
leg muscles trying to force her into flight, her heart too stunned to allow this to happen.

A shadow fell on the parquet floor. Too late to run away now. Jessamy was trembling. ‘Who is it?’ The woman was speaking more softly now. She came into view, carrying a basket of
laundry. She must have been taking it in from the washing line. In her early seventies. Evie had always favoured fresh air for drying clothes, even at the end of winter. She stood very straight,
her figure still slender. Her face was wrinkled, the face of a countrywoman, but there was no mistaking those still beautiful features: that straight nose, those well-shaped lips.

‘Mum?’ Jessamy said. ‘It’s . . .’ And the words rose in her throat and choked her. ‘I . . .’

‘Jessamy?’ Jessamy could hardly hear her. The woman seemed to shrink back against the banisters, looking suddenly smaller and frailer. The laundry basket fell from her arms.

Jessamy found herself stooping to retrieve blouses and towels. She tried to pick up a drying-up cloth and it fell out of her fingers so she stood up. ‘I’m not normally like
this,’ she burbled. ‘I’m not clumsy.’ As though it mattered. The blood was rushing to her head now and for a second she thought she might fall over. She screwed up her
fists, holding on to an invisible wire to support herself. Now the woman was coming forward, taking her by the arm. ‘My Jessamy?’ She still sounded doubtful.

‘It is me.’ Jessamy thought of the childhood nightmare she’d had many times in Australia: that she’d somehow managed to return to the mother who was dead only for Evie to
doubt her, to send her away.
You are not my daughter.
‘It’s me,’ she said again, feeling the hysteria rising inside her. ‘I went off at the party. I’m back
now.’ She laughed, a harsh sound. It was so funny to say it like that: as though she’d merely ambled off for an hour or so. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she went on, still in
her ten-year-old persona. ‘For everything. I . . .’ Her throat had tightened, making further speech impossible.