The Memory of Midnight (29 page)

Aware of his eyes devouring her for the least sign of weakness, Nell decided to risk it. He wanted her to moan and cry at the thought of Tom, but there would be chance enough for that. For now,
there was another day and night to get through.

‘I am sorry for your disappointment,’ she said to Ralph, ‘but perhaps I can give you better news, sir.’

Ralph wasn’t expecting that. He frowned. ‘Better news?’

‘I have reason to believe I may be with child,’ she said carefully.

‘A child!’ She could see his mind going round, trying to work out the advantages and disadvantages. ‘A child,’ he said again, tasting the word in his mouth. ‘A
son.’

‘If God wills,’ said Nell and she added, ‘and if we are careful.’

‘Careful?’

‘It may damage the babe if you are too rough with me,’ she said bluntly.

His face worked. It was clear that he was puffed up at the thought of a son of his own, but the prospect of months without being able to beat her the way he liked was less pleasing.

Nell bowed her head. ‘It will be as you desire, of course, husband.’

She had said enough. It would be wise to leave the choice to him.

Tess came round to find herself staring at the screen saver spiralling endlessly in mesmerizing patterns. She had a hand on her stomach, and she was trembling with longing.

Please let me have the baby. Please, God. Please, please, please.

Hope. It was extraordinary how uplifting it could be. Tess wasn’t even dismayed by the fact that Nell had taken control of her again so soon. She simmered with an odd exhilaration. Nell
might have a baby, a baby that might change everything.

And perhaps, then, she might leave Tess to her own child.

Oscar. She had her son, Tess reminded herself. She had a job; she had somewhere to live. Her mind flickered to Luke. She had someone who believed her. She would not let herself be derailed by a
cutlery drawer. She was strong enough to cope with anything Martin might do.

Hope was better than sleep. The tiredness and distress of the night before were forgotten, and she worked on the records all afternoon, barely stumbling over the familiarity of some names. Her
step was light and newly energized as she headed out to Vanessa’s house soon after five.

‘Thank you so much for picking Oscar up, Van.’ Tess breezed past Vanessa when she opened the door, not registering the set face or tight lips. ‘I got so much done with that
extra hour or so. I feel a million times better!’

‘Oscar’s outside with Rosie and Sam.’

‘I hope he’s been behaving himself.’ Tess followed Vanessa into the kitchen. French windows at the back opened onto a garden where Oscar and Rosie were shrieking and running
round in circles, their arms spread wide like aeroplanes. Oscar’s face was pink, his hair rumpled, and the back of his shirt was flapping free of his trousers.

Tess warmed at the sight of him. Her baby. Only a few weeks ago, when she had first brought him to York, Oscar had been pale and withdrawn, prone to obsessing over details and struggling to make
friendships.

If Nell had a baby to love as much as she loved Oscar, she would be happy, Tess was certain of it.

She turned back to Vanessa with a smile. ‘It’s been so good for Oscar to spend time with Rosie and Sam. It’s been wonderful for him to have them as friends.’

Vanessa didn’t say anything. She was stacking the dishwasher in a very tense way. The kitchen was huge compared to the cramped space in the flat and always looked to Tess as if it was
posing for an advert for kitchen design. There was an island with willow baskets underneath, a gleaming hood over the high-tech hob and a retro larder fridge.

She had had a kitchen like this in London, stocked with every gadget she could possibly desire so that she could produce immaculate, soulless dinner parties for Martin’s acquaintances. It
had always felt like a prison to Tess.

Vanessa and Martin were alike in some ways. The thought flickered through her mind before Tess could stop it, and she pushed it away uncomfortably.

Perhaps Vanessa could be a little bossy sometimes, but she meant well. The last thing Tess wanted was to alienate her. Oscar would be devastated if he could no longer come and play with Rosie
and Sam. Vanessa was kind, and she was helpful.

Like Martin could be kind and helpful? Tess pushed that thought aside too. Oscar was happy here, that was what mattered.

Her smile faltered a little in the face of Vanessa’s silence. ‘I’m really grateful to you, Vanessa,’ she added after a moment, belatedly noticing the frigid atmosphere,
and doing her best to warm it.

It was clearly the wrong thing to say.

‘Grateful?’ Vanessa snapped off the word. ‘
Really
?’

If anything, the temperature had dropped even further. Tess frowned. ‘What’s the matter, Van? You seem upset.’

‘Upset? What would I possibly have to be upset about?’ Vanessa shoved plates into the dishwasher racks with such savage force that Tess was afraid that she was going to break
them.

‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’

Slamming the dishwasher closed, Vanessa wiped her hands on her Lycra gym shorts and smacked the kettle on. ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked in a brittle voice. ‘Oh, no, you prefer
coffee, don’t you?’

This was said so viciously that Tess could only stare blankly at her. ‘Coffee?’

‘You remember Sally Beckwith?’

Thrown by the abrupt change of subject, Tess searched her memory. Sally Beckwith . . . hadn’t she been one of the cool girls when she was at school in York? ‘Vaguely,’ she
said.

‘She’s at the same gym as me.’

‘Right . . .’ said Tess carefully. She had no idea where Vanessa was going with this conversation.

‘I saw her this morning. She was a bit late getting to the gym because she’d been in town. She had to pick up something in Goodramgate.’

‘Okay,’ said Tess, none the wiser.

‘And guess who she saw there? None other than my best friend going into a coffee shop with Luke Hutton!’ Vanessa clattered mugs together as she pulled them from a cupboard.
‘You should have remembered that you’re back in York, Tess. Somebody’s always going to see you, wherever you are.’

Irritation flicked at Tess. In the anonymity of London, the smallness and nosiness of York, the sense that everybody knew your business, had been a charming memory. She had indeed forgotten that
it had also been the reason she couldn’t wait to get away.

‘Having coffee isn’t against the law yet, is it?’

Vanessa pressed her lips together as she threw teabags into the mugs. ‘You didn’t have to lie to me!’ she burst out, and Tess stared at her in exasperation.

‘I didn’t
lie
to you!’

‘I asked if you wanted coffee this morning, and you said you needed to get on with some work! If you had a date with Luke, you just had to say.’ Her voice trembled with emotion. She
seemed so upset that Tess had to bite back a sharp retort.

‘It wasn’t a date,’ she said. ‘I bumped into him outside the Minster.’

‘And suddenly decided that you had time for coffee after all?’

‘I was worried about something. He seemed like a good person to talk to.’

‘You could have talked to me! I asked you if you were all right, and you said that you were.’

Vanessa poured boiling water into the mugs and began jabbing at the teabags, while Tess pinched the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t sure what was going on. If she didn’t know better,
she would have said that Vanessa was jealous, but what reason did she have to be jealous of Tess, whose life was a mess?

‘I’m sorry, Van,’ she said in a conciliatory tone. ‘It’s just . . . things have been very strange recently.’

Vanessa seemed to relax at her apology. She handed Tess a mug of tea. ‘I’m sorry too,’ she said with a lightning-quick change of mood that reminded Tess disquietingly of Martin
once more. ‘I’ve been snappy myself. I told you my sister’s having another baby? Her third!’

Baby
. The word set up a warning reverberation deep inside Tess. Tightening her fingers around her mug, she did her best to ignore it as she smiled back at Vanessa, relieved to see her
restored to good humour.

‘Julie? No! I can’t believe she’s got two already. That’s great news!’

‘I think it’s really irresponsible of her, to tell you the truth,’ said Vanessa, purse-lipped. ‘They can’t afford another child at the moment. She’ll have to
go back to work, and who’s going to look after it? She thinks because I don’t have a job I can drop everything and pick up the pieces every time anything goes wrong.’

Baby
. The air itself was shimmering with the word. Tess forced herself to focus.

‘They say there’s never a good time to ha –’ Tess broke off with a gasp as an abyss seemed to yawn in front of her without warning. There was a rushing in her ears and
she threw up her hands to ward off the past, but it was too late. She saw Vanessa’s mouth drop open in shock, saw the tea spraying through the air in slow motion, and then she was falling
too, down, down, down, like the mug as it smashed onto the floor.

The latch clattered, and a gust of wet wind blustered into the kitchen. Janet came in with it, stamping the wet from her clogs. ‘Ee, it’s dreich out there,’
she grumbled.

‘Shut the door, Janet!’ said Nell sharply as the other maids set up a chorus of complaint. The kitchen was the warmest place in the house these days and Nell spent as much time in
there as possible. Autumn had been long and grey, day after day of rain runnelling against the windows and turning the streets to a quagmire.

Janet huffed and rolled her eyes, but she kicked the door to and set her basket on the table, swinging the two rabbits that hung from her other hand down beside it so that she could shake the
rain from her cloak.

‘What news from the market?’ Nell asked as she picked out leeks, turnips, a pat of butter, a wedge of cheese. There was a tired-looking cabbage too. She inspected it without
enthusiasm. Ever since she had been carrying a child, she had been craving the tartness of strawberries, but it would be a long time before they were in the market again. She was sick of winter
vegetables, sick of salt fish and salt meat and the constant dampness that clung to her clothes and spangled her skin and made the air smell mouldy and stale. They put up their shutters when the
wind drove the rain down the streets, whipping it on like a furious carter, hurling it against the houses and thrusting it through the fissures in the walls. The wet pooled under the doors and
between the cracks in the windows. It dripped from the roofs and dug out the cobbles and turned her garden to mud.

Yet Nell was content. In the months since she had told Ralph she was with child, he had not touched her once. His frustration was clear, but Nell kept her eyes downcast and concealed her
jubilation as best she could. At night, Ralph turned away from her in the great bed, his expression surly. If he couldn’t hurt her, it seemed he did not want her at all. Nell suspected some
whore was suffering in her place, and she was sorry for it, but she would not risk her babe by encouraging his blows.

Janet hung up her cloak and held out her hands to the kitchen fire where a savoury broth simmered. ‘They say there’s another harlot found dead in’t river,’ she said.

Nell looked up, startled by the way Janet seemed to have picked up on her thoughts. ‘Another?’ she said, dismayed.

‘Three since Michaelmas,’ Janet confirmed.

‘And still no one cares what is happening!’ Nell dropped the cabbage back in the basket. ‘Anyone would think they were no better than dogs, to be beaten and left to die in the
street!’

‘They’re not much better than dogs,’ said Janet, unimpressed. ‘Rogues and vagabonds. Nowt but trouble.’ Just in time she remembered that Nell didn’t like her
to spit on the floor. ‘One whore less to spread her legs against a wall is no loss to us.’

Janet was not alone in thinking thus, but it left Nell feeling uneasy. From all accounts, the dead girls were all vagrants, all young. She guessed that they had little choice but to lurk in the
back alleys behind the ale houses and pull up their skirts for a farthing. It seemed they were all beaten too, so battered and bruised when they were found that no one would have recognized them
even if anyone had cared to look for them. Nell knew what it felt like to have a fist slam under her ribs, to have her arm twisted until she whimpered, to have her wrists tied to the bedpost and
her back lashed until it bled; to feel her husband’s big teeth biting into her breast. All that saved her from the dead girls’ fate was Ralph’s care for his reputation. He never
touched her face. The marks of his desire lay hidden beneath her shift, tucked away by the starched ruffs at her wrists and at her collar.

She was better off than the vagrant girls at least. Her husband took pleasure from hurting her, but he wouldn’t kill her. Where else would he find a woman he could beat with impunity, and
without paying a farthing?

As if her thoughts had summoned him, there came the sound of Ralph shouting for wine to be brought to him in his closet.

Instinctively, Nell flinched but Janet turned from hanging up her cloak, her face alight. ‘Shall I go, Mistress?’ she asked eagerly.

Nell had been glad of Janet’s experience when she was first mistress of the great house in Stonegate. Already thirty, Janet knew what needed to be done, and she was capable and loyal. Nell
often wondered why she had not married. She was whey-faced and sandy-featured, with a thin, questing nose like a vole and pale lashes, but she was not so old or so plain that she wouldn’t
make some man a good wife. Eliza and Mary teased her about John Scott, the glazier, who came to the door sometimes to mumble inarticulately and take Janet for a walk, but Janet seemed content with
her place in the Maskewe house. She considered Ralph the best of masters, and couldn’t understand why Nell was not dizzy with the pleasure of being his wife. Nell had seen the way Janet
stroked Nell’s gowns when she brushed them, the way she glowed at the most careless word of thanks from Ralph.