The Memory of Midnight (3 page)

Tom was beaten too. He set his mouth and he didn’t say a word, but Nell could see how it hurt him. Her hands throbbed in sympathy.

This was her fault. Guilt made it too hard to look any more and she shifted her gaze to Ralph instead. She watched him watching his brother. Something ran over his face whenever Tom flinched,
something convulsive and unpleasant that she couldn’t put a name to, but which made her shudder, and when he glanced her way and smiled again, she could tell that he knew she had understood
his expression and he didn’t care. For who would ever believe her? And what could she say anyway?
I don’t like the way he looked when Tom was being beaten
? She was a girl, and
he was sixteen, the elder son of the house, and his father’s favourite. Ralph was always being held up as a model for Tom to follow.

At last it was done, and Tom’s hands were as red and painful as her own. ‘I’ve had enough of trying to tame you,’ Henry Maskewe told his son. ‘You are eight now.
Old enough to put off childish games like this. It’s time you had other things on your mind. I spoke to William Todd the other day. He is willing to take you as his apprentice. Perhaps when
you have work to do, you will be less trouble.’

Nell was taken home in disgrace.

Their house lay across the street in Stonegate. Nell was desolate. Her hands hurt, but worse was the thought that Tom would be her playmate no more. He was happy at the thought of going to Mr
Todd’s, she knew. William Todd was a merchant adventurer and did business overseas. If Tom did well, he could go on a ship, just as he had always wanted to do.

And she would be left alone.

Nell couldn’t remember a time when Tom wasn’t there. They knew the back ways into each other’s houses, how to slip in and out without being seen and given a job to do.
Together, they had run out through the bar or over the crumbling city walls to the crofts and the common beyond. They had jumped over gutters and splashed in the river and listened wide-eyed to the
stories of the mariners down on the staithes. To Nell, they had played and fought together forever, and even though Tom was a stupid boy at times, she could not conceive of life without him.

But now, it seemed, she must.

Everything was changing, she thought, scuffing her shoes miserably against the cobbles and earning herself a cuff of reprimand from Anne. After her mother’s death, her father had been too
stricken with grief to care what she did and Nell had got used to running free. But a year ago, he remarried, and her stepmother made it her business to take both her husband and his daughter in
hand. Nell had no objection to her stepmother as such, except that Anne was set on curbing her freedoms. She talked endlessly of proper behaviour, and reputation. She wanted Nell to sit still and
silent, not run and jump as she was wont to do with Tom.

Now Anne was increasing. Her father hoped for a son, and Nell hoped that it would take her stepmother’s mind off her, but today she had succeeded in capturing her attention once more.

‘Your father has been too indulgent with you,’ Anne chided as they crossed the street. Stonegate was divided into blocks of light and shade, with a narrow strip of sunlight laid
between the gutters. When Nell looked up, she could see a thin slice of fierce blue between the jostling gables, and she screwed up her eyes, blinded by the contrast of dazzling light and the deep
shade beneath the overhanging jetties. Normally the shade would be cool, but it had been hot for so long that the heat had crept into the darkest corners and there was no relief anywhere.

Splatters of horse dung had dried to crisp trenchers on the street. Clouds of flies hovered over a dead pigeon and, without rain for so long, the gutters were clogged with weeds and dead leaves,
with nettles and filthy straw and other ramell that rotted with the rubbish, their combined stench mingling with the stink of the festering cesspits. The inhabitants of Stonegate prided themselves
on their street, but the heat had been so wearisome for so long that each complained about the state of their neighbours’ doors without rousing themselves to clear their own.

‘Something should be done about it.’ Nell had heard her stepmother grumbling to her father. ‘You must speak to the chamberlains again. What if the sickness comes?’

Nell didn’t care about the pestilence or about the smell. She wished only to be out of her stiff skirts and scratchy cap. If only she could strip down to her shift and paddle in the river
the way Tom did sometimes.

The thought of Tom reminded her of that day’s news and her heart sank. Her stepmother was still talking, her hands spread against her hips to support her swollen belly.

‘He has let you run wild like a heathen, and what is the result? Mr Maskewe is angered, who must be kept sweet. Your father already owes him too much,’ Anne fretted, pushing Nell
before her, past the shop with its stall and tattered pentice and down the narrow passage to the yard.

‘I will be confined soon, and there will be no one to mind you again. You will have to help with your new brother or sister, and then you will go into service like Tom. Your father will
find a family where you can learn how to go on when I do not have the time to teach you.’

Nell brightened. ‘Can I go to Mr Todd’s too and be in service with Tom?’ She wouldn’t mind that.

Anne sighed. ‘You must learn to live without Tom, Eleanor.’

‘But he is my friend!’

‘You will have other friends. Maids like yourself. You’ll soon forget Tom when you don’t see him every day.’

Nell’s face darkened. ‘I won’t!’

‘We all have to do things we don’t want to do,’ snapped Anne, impatient with her stepdaughter’s show of temper. ‘Even you, Eleanor.’

‘I’ll never forget Tom.’ Nell set her chin and shook her head stubbornly. ‘Never, never, never!’ She looked at her stepmother and her green eyes were bright with
defiance. ‘Never,’ she said.

York, present day

‘I can’t believe you’re going to live here!’ Vanessa stood in the doorway of the kitchen and looked around her with distaste. ‘It’s a
horrible flat. Dark and poky and dingy. Ugh.’

‘It’s characterful,’ said Tess, determinedly unpacking pasta and milk and not looking at the stained sink or grubby tiles.

‘It’s dirty!’

‘Then I’ll clean it.’ Tess kept her voice even, the way she had learnt to do when she was talking to Martin. The thought of him snagged in her mind, caught on the barbed wire
of memory, and she shook it free. She didn’t need to be careful now. She could say what she thought. The realization still caught her unawares sometimes, making her giddy with a strange
combination of relief and apprehension. It was so long since she had been able to open her mouth without thinking that she wasn’t quite sure what to do with her newly found freedom.

No more gauging a mood before she spoke. No more quick readjustment of her opinions in response to a drawing together of Martin’s brows. The slightest tightening of his lips could set her
mind scrambling for a way out of the conversation without provoking him further.

‘I like it,’ she told Vanessa for the thrill of disagreeing, although the truth was that she had been dismayed when she unlocked the door at the top of the narrow stairs and let
herself in. The flat felt different without Richard’s cheerfully chaotic presence. Before, it had seemed cosy and comfortable, the perfect refuge, but now the air smelt stale, sour, and the
warm tranquillity she had liked so much when Richard showed her round had evaporated into an uneasy silence.

It wouldn’t be silent when Oscar was here, she reminded herself. All it needed was a good airing. It would be fine. She
would
like it.

Vanessa pulled the scrunchie from her hair, bent over, shook her head and then tied the glossy mass back in a ponytail, all in one practised move. She had the intimidating glow of an exercise
addict and was as slim and sparklingly pretty as she had been when they were at school. Next to her, Tess always felt drab and limp, and although she was glad to have a friend again, it was
impossible not to feel suffocated sometimes by Vanessa’s insistence on helping her do everything.

Tess wanted to manage by herself. Nobody seemed to think that she would be able to, and how could she prove them wrong when Vanessa kept sweeping in and taking over?

‘Seriously, Tess, I think you’re making a mistake,’ Vanessa said now as she smoothed the last strands back from her face. ‘Stonegate is no place to live with a child. It
might be picturesque, but it’s noisy and there are tourists everywhere and you won’t have proper neighbours and there’s nowhere to park.’

‘I don’t have a car.’ Frustration feathered Tess’s voice, but Vanessa didn’t notice.

‘Yes, and look what a hassle it’s been just bringing some shopping in,’ she said. ‘I’d never live on a pedestrianized street like this. You’ve got to wait
until cars are allowed in, sit for hours behind delivery vans, park on the pavement . . .’

A sense of despair, all too familiar, began to wash over Tess but she brushed it aside. She was grateful to her friend, of course she was, but she could have got a taxi from her mother’s
as planned. It was Vanessa who had insisted on helping her move in, and in the end, it had been easier just to give in than to argue.

As it had always been with Martin.

Humiliation bloomed under Tess’s skin, and she felt herself redden as she turned away to put the milk in the fridge.

How many times do I have to tell you? The milk should be kept in the door of the fridge, Theresa, with the label facing the front. It’s simple enough. Even you should be able to
remember that.

Why hadn’t she laughed at Martin when he insisted on something so petty? Surely a new wife should have been able to tease her husband out of a mood? But it hadn’t seemed to matter
much at first. Tess didn’t care which way round the milk faced, but if it was important to Martin, why not do as he asked?

Besides, she had adored him. She had wanted to make him happy. He was so attractive, so tender, so loving. He told her she was beautiful. He made her
feel
beautiful. He made her feel
safe. For a while it had been lovely to be cossetted. He said he wanted to look after her and that they would be together forever. Overlooking a few foibles about the arrangement of the fridge
hadn’t seemed too much to ask of her in return.

But the fridge had been just the beginning.

Defiantly, Tess put the pints of milk on the shelf and turned them to face in different directions.
What a rebel
, she thought to herself.

‘I don’t need a car,’ she told Vanessa.

‘What about Oscar?’

‘People managed to get around perfectly well before cars were invented, Vanessa,’ she said, trying not to show her annoyance. ‘Oscar is quite capable of walking to school.
It’ll be good for him.’

‘It’s not just school. It’s after-school clubs and swimming and music lessons and football practice and sleepovers . . . Believe me, I’ve been through all this with Sam.
You’ve got no idea!’

Tess pulled a packet of cereal out of the carrier bag and set it on the counter, only just managing to stop herself straightening it. Vanessa had never liked being argued with, she remembered.
Even at school it had been easier just to let her have her own way. Tess had been grateful for her friendship then, scarcely able to believe that the coolest girl in the class would take a shy,
gawky girl like Tess under her wing.

Until Luke. Vanessa hadn’t been pleased when Tess refused to listen to sense and it had taken Tess’s ignominious return to York more than a decade later for all to be forgiven.
Proved right about Luke as about so much else, it again seemed that there was nothing Vanessa wouldn’t do for her.

As long as Tess did it Vanessa’s way.

Tess had only just escaped from doing it Martin’s way. This time, she wanted to do it her own way.

Vanessa had been a huge help since her return, Tess couldn’t deny that. She had helped sort out a school, a doctor, all the red tape of moving and claiming child support. She looked after
Oscar whenever Tess needed time on her own and he was always happy to play with her two children, Sam and Rosie. She made Tess feel welcome and wanted, and took her away from the disappointment
that simmered in the air in Tess’s own mother’s house.

Tess hated feeling ungrateful, hated the creeping guilt of it and the familiar, awful doubt as to whether
she
was the one being unreasonable. Martin had been very good at making her
feel that until the resentment that built up inside her corroded everything. She didn’t want to feel the same about her old friend.

Frowning a little, not liking the way her thoughts were going, Tess carried on unpacking. Peanut butter, jam, bread. Eggs and cheese. There would be time enough to try and get some fresh
vegetables down Oscar. For now it would be enough for the two of them to be alone, away from her baffled mother’s resentment.

Away from Martin.

Doing it her own way.

‘Oscar’s only five,’ she pointed out at last. ‘I don’t need to think about any of that just yet.’

‘Well, I think you’re mad!’

A wry smile touched the corner of Tess’s mouth. ‘Funny, that’s exactly what Mum says.’

Her mother couldn’t understand it. ‘I don’t know how you can leave Martin,’ she complained at least once a day. ‘A charming husband who adores you . . . plenty of
money . . . a lovely house in London . . . what more could you possibly want, Theresa?’

Tess had tried to explain, but Susan Frankland would not be consoled over the humiliating return of the daughter whose wealthy and successful husband she had boasted so much about over the
years. She took Tess’s new status as a single mother with a failed marriage as a personal affront. It had been a long two weeks before Richard Landrow went off on research leave and handed
over the key to his flat.

Now Tess looked down at the empty carrier bags that she was automatically folding into neat squares, and deliberately scrumpled them up into a ball so that she could toss them in the bin.
Drawing a breath, she turned back to Vanessa.