The Memory of Midnight (25 page)

The church? Tess turned the idea over in her mind. She had never been a churchgoer, finding more wonder in evidence than blind faith, but weren’t priests always called in to exorcise the
Devil in horror movies? Nell wasn’t the Devil, but she was dead and somehow she was using Tess to live again. Tess faced the idea squarely at last. She could no longer pretend that Nell was
just a trick of the imagination, some forgotten memory embellished into a dream, not after Ralph’s rape. Not with the bruises livid on her flesh and the raw ache inside her. It had been real.
It had happened, and she needed to make sure that it didn’t happen again. It wasn’t safe for Oscar or for her.

Tess’s eyes rested on the great central tower of the Minster thrusting over the rooftops in the distance. If she could find a priest, a vicar, someone who believed in
life after death, and talk about what was happening to her, surely they would help? They could perform some sort of ceremony and make Ralph leave her alone.

Make
Nell
leave her alone, Tess corrected herself.

She needed help. She couldn’t go on drifting in and out of time in the middle of the day. Once the vividness of the experience had been intriguing, but she was frightened now. Nell’s
hold on her was becoming too strong, and her pain too real.

The Minster was right there, but the thought of its soaring glory was intimidating. Its power was unmistakable, but Tess couldn’t imagine shuffling in with all the tourists and demanding
to be exorcised. She needed an ordinary workaday church and a vicar who wouldn’t send her straight to her GP.

An elderly woman walking a wheezy pug gave her directions to a church which she said wasn’t far from the school. Screwing up her eyes against the jagged light, Tess wished that she had
thought to bring some sunglasses. Vanessa had been right about it being a beautiful day, but the sun was peculiarly intense, turning the Victorian terraces into blocks of raw and unfamiliar
angles.

Another headache thudded behind her eyes, and she averted her gaze from the passers-by, all of whom seemed garishly dressed or half-naked, somehow menacing with their uncovered heads and hair
shamefully cropped as if for the pillory, until she stopped and shook herself back to the present with an effort.

Her hands were throbbing again.

Tess set her teeth and walked on.

St Chad’s turned out to be an uninspiring brick building set back from a suburban street. And it was shut. Wincing at the jab of pain in her fingers, Tess tried the handle, and was shaken
by the jumble of relief and despair when she found the door locked.

Well, what had she expected? That the vicar would hang around by the altar just in case someone dropped in wanting a ghost exorcised?

‘Can I help you?’

Tess turned to see an attractive woman of forty or so watching her. She had a helmet of dark, glossy hair and was wearing a black suit that made Tess feel crumpled and scruffy in her cotton
skirt and T-shirt and battered pumps.

She hugged her thin cardigan around her in an unconsciously defensive gesture. ‘I was looking for the vicar.’

‘You’ve found her.’ The woman smiled. ‘I’m Pat French.’

Tess’s jaw sagged. ‘
You’re
the vicar?’ Too late she heard the incredulity in her own voice and she blushed furiously. ‘I mean, I’m not surprised to
find that the vicar is a woman,’ she tried to explain. ‘It’s just I hadn’t expected someone quite so glamorous.’

Pat’s laugh held genuine amusement. ‘That’s very kind of you. I used to be an investment banker, so I still have my old wardrobe, but you’re right: this isn’t
normally a glamorous profession.’ She paused and looked more closely at Tess.

‘Did you want to see inside the church?’

‘No . . . no.’ Tess hesitated. Her knowledge about regression or reincarnation or possession was gleaned from magazine articles and the occasional horror film; from half-remembered
stories told in the pub or on sleepovers when she was a girl.

Ghosts felt uncomfortable in a church, right? Or was she thinking of vampires? Tess chewed her lip. She couldn’t ask Pat French. She seemed too sensible, too practical, too in control. Now
that she was here, she couldn’t imagine telling her about Nell.

But if Nell
was
a ghost, perhaps she would be able to tell if she went into a church.

Pain pulsed warningly in her hands, and she flexed her fingers.

‘Actually, I would like to go in, if it’s not too much trouble,’ she said to Pat, abruptly changing her mind. Doing
something
felt better than just standing there not
knowing what to do. She should feel something in a church, surely?

But when Pat unlocked the door and let her inside, there was nothing but the smell of musty hymn books and the charged silence so peculiar to churches.

‘Do you have a connection with St Chad’s?’ Pat asked after a moment.

Tess shook her head. ‘No, not really.’ Deliberately, she walked towards the altar, testing Nell to react in some way. ‘When was the church built?’

‘Oh, not until the late nineteenth century. Until then, there were very few people living out here. This was York’s market garden area.’

It was on the tip of Tess’s tongue to say ‘I know’, but she swallowed the words. She didn’t want to get into a discussion with Pat French about what she knew of
York’s history, or how she knew it.

‘You seem troubled,’ said Pat after a moment. ‘Would you like to talk?’

No!
The voice rang so loudly in Tess’s mind that she actually took a step back. So Nell was there after all.

Her mouth was dry and it was an effort to swallow. The sensation of Nell in her head was so strong that she had to fight to remember where she was, and all at once the pain in her hands was
agonizing.

‘I’m . . .’ She stopped. Inside her head Nell was shouting
No! No! No!
And she was right, Tess realized. This felt all wrong.

‘That’s kind of you, but I’m fine. Really,’ she added when Pat looked unconvinced. She made a show of looking at her watch. ‘I should be going. I . . . I need to
get to work.’ She couldn’t wait to get away from the church and from Pat French’s shrewd gaze.

‘All right,’ said Pat slowly. She dug in her pocket and pulled out a business card. ‘Call me at any time if you change your mind. You’re always welcome here.’

‘Thank you,’ Tess managed over the noise of Nell chanting
No! No! No!
in her brain. Gritting her teeth against it, she took the card and resisted Nell’s impulse to
throw it away. She stuffed it in her bag instead as she backed away towards the door. ‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘I’d . . . better go.’

It felt like an escape and she practically ran down the street. Only when she had turned the corner did Nell loosen the grip on her mind and fade away as suddenly and completely as she had
arrived. Tess sagged against a wall, so drained that her legs wouldn’t support her. The pain in her hands had gone.

Now what was she going to do?

The Minster shimmered in the distance, challenging her. Perhaps it had been a mistake to try a little church, Tess thought, still shaken by how completely Nell had seized control of her. Perhaps
she would only be matched by the power of a great cathedral.

Or perhaps she should leave well alone.

Was that her thinking or Nell? Tess was no longer sure. She began walking again, heading slowly back into the city through Monk Bar. It was a route she had walked so often she barely noticed her
surroundings most of the time, but today the buildings roared at her with their unfamiliarity and the tarmac pavements felt strange beneath her feet. The light hurt her eyes and the air seemed to
scrape against her tender flesh. It was as if an outer layer of her had been ripped off, leaving her raw and vulnerable.

The drilling ache in her fingertips started up again as Tess hesitated outside the Minster. Tourists milled around and she stood with them, comforted by the babble of voices, by the ordinariness
of cameras pointed and smiling poses. Nobody else seemed overpowered by the sheer size of the cathedral looming above them, a threatening mass of stone and glass that made Tess’s head spin as
she looked up. It commanded and repelled her at the same time, pinioning her with dread and startled awe.

Had the Minster always been that enormous? Had it always been that powerful? Tess wanted to go in, but she didn’t dare move. She felt tiny, precariously situated in time and space, and the
world around her was wavering. The slightest ripple in the air might pitch her back to the sixteenth century. Back to Ralph. Every muscle tensed to keep her in place.

‘Hey, Tess . . .
Tess
!’

It took Tess a moment to realize that it was her name being called. Very cautiously she turned her head without moving the rest of her body.

‘Oh . . . Luke,’ she said, letting out a ragged breath as she saw him lower his camera. He was lean and dark and unshaven, wearing a battered leather jacket, but the sight of him was
unaccountably steadying.

‘You were in another world,’ he said, hoisting the camera bag on his shoulder and coming over to her.

Tess smiled weakly.
You have no idea
.

‘I got some good shots of you dreaming in front of the Minster.’ He scrolled through the pictures on the camera screen, frowning slightly. ‘That one, I think.’ He showed
it to Tess. ‘Like it?’

Tess studied her image. He’d caught her as she stood alone, gazing up at the cathedral. Her arms were tight around her, and the tendons in her neck stood out, but there was something
ethereal about her profile against the massive stone, something about the angles of her face and the contrast of lights and textures that made the picture beautiful and oddly powerful.

‘I don’t look very happy,’ she said.

‘No.’ Luke took the camera back, looked at the image again with a frown. ‘You look lonely.’ He glanced up at her, his grey eyes uncomfortably keen.

In spite of herself, Tess flushed. Why did loneliness always feel so humiliating?

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, avoiding his unspoken question.

He patted his camera. ‘I’ve got a job later. Taking pictures of some civic party at the Guildhall. I’ve only got a few more books to put back in Richard’s study, but
I’ll do that tomorrow. I’m just killing time for now. This is the morning Dad’s carers come, and he likes to grumble to them about me, so I clear out whether I’ve got a job
or not . . . Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

Caught unawares by his abrupt question, Tess opened her mouth to tell him that he was talking nonsense and that she was absolutely fine. She meant to say that. She was quite sure that she was
going to say that, that the words were already formed on her tongue, but instead she heard herself say, ‘I’m scared.’

Luke didn’t tell her that she was being silly, or chivvy her into cheering up the way Vanessa would have done. His eyes were fixed on her face. ‘What of?’ he asked.

‘Something’s happening to me.’ Tess couldn’t look at him. She kept her gaze fixed on the carved stonework behind his shoulder. Part of her was appalled that she had
admitted her fear, but it was a relief to be able to tell someone the truth, and Luke felt safe. He had listened before, and he would listen again. ‘Something I don’t understand and I
don’t seem to be able to control. I don’t know what to do. I’m scared,’ she said again.

‘Let’s go and have a coffee,’ said Luke, touching her arm. ‘There’s a quiet place just round the corner. You can tell me about it there.’

‘All right.’ Anything was better than going back to the flat where Nell – or Ralph – might be waiting for her.

‘We’ll go upstairs,’ Luke said when they got to the coffee shop in Goodramgate. ‘It’ll be quieter up there.’

Tess climbed the narrow stairs, already regretting that she had told Luke as much as she had. What if he thought she was crazy? But she could hardly turn round and run out. He really would think
she was crazy then.

She sat at a table and reached for the menu to disguise her discomfort, sucking in a sharp breath at the white-hot searing sensation in her fingers as they closed around the laminated sheet.
Luke swung his camera bag to the floor and pulled out the chair opposite. ‘I often come here,’ he said. ‘The coffee’s good and they do great bacon butties.’

An oppressive sense of familiarity was beginning to nag at Tess’s senses. ‘I’ve been here before,’ she said.

‘Really? I don’t remember what was here before. I don’t think it was a cafe.’

‘It was a parlour,’ Tess said and it felt as if the words were being dragged out of her mouth. ‘Elizabeth Hutchinson’s parlour.’

Luke pursed his lips. ‘Elizabeth Hutchinson? I don’t remember her.’

‘It was panelled.’ Without realizing it, Tess’s voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘There are new painted cloths on the wall. Elizabeth is very proud of them. Ralph imported
them from Italy, no less, and made the Hutchinsons a gift of them. Elizabeth thinks Ralph is so generous.’

She saw Elizabeth looking at her taffeta doublet and her slashed sleeves. A roll at her hips set her skirts fashionably wide. Her rebato ruff was dyed blue and sat stiffly up from her collar,
while a purse of red silk and a crystal looking glass hung from her girdle. A necklace glimmered at her throat and jewels trembled in her ears.

‘She thinks I am the luckiest woman in York.’

‘Who does?’

The voice was unfamiliar, distant. She didn’t answer. She was looking beyond him now, at the embroidered cushions on the window seat, at the little table, at the carpet on the wainscot
chest . . . oh, sweet Jesù, the chest! It was not as big as the chest in the great chamber she shared with Ralph, but terror crouched inside it anyway.

She jerked her eyes away but it was too late. Ralph had seen her notice the chest. His gaze flicked between it and her face, and he smiled, showing his teeth. Elizabeth looked on enviously. She
wished her husband would treat her the way Ralph Maskewe treated Nell.

It did not take Ralph long to discover what Nell feared the most. He had found the perfect punishment for her, and it pleased him. In public he was the most doting of husbands. He showered Nell
with jewels and gifts, and boasted of her beauty. In private he corrected her for the slightest transgression. Sometimes she smiled too widely; sometimes not widely enough. Sometimes he chastised
her for turning her head away so that she didn’t have to meet his eyes; sometimes for staring at him. The slightest hesitation could provoke him to a fury. Choosing to wear one of the
presents he had given her rather than another could make his eyes blank with rage.