The Room Beyond (30 page)

‘Didn’t I tell you people to go away?’

‘No, please hear me out. I’m not a journalist...’

‘I don’t care who you are, goodbye.’

‘Please, I’m only asking for a few minutes of your time. I work for
the Hartreves; I’m actually employed as their nanny. Here, this is my contract
of employment with them.’

I prodded the piece of paper through the letterbox with my finger.

There was a moment of silence, then the rustling sound of my
contract being snatched up.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve... I’ve come to tell you something. And also to find out
anything you might know about the family. I know you were once good friends. I’ve
become involved with one of them you see... and there’s something I need to
tell you. But you have nothing to worry about, really. I have no more interest
in speaking to the press than you do.’

The door creaked open and a lined, once handsome face, looked me up
and down.

‘Come on in then if you must. But only for a minute or two.’

Lady Burnside’s conservatory looked out onto the river. It was
furnished with large wicker chairs, their cushions faded by too much sun. She
sat opposite me, bolt upright, with her fingers firmly interlocked in her lap.

‘So which of the family members are you sleeping with then, not
Edward surely?’

‘No.’ I wanted to shrink back into the cushions. ‘It’s Sebastian,
Sebastian White.’

She raised her eyebrows so that they nearly disappeared into her
helmet of sprayed hair. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘Really? He’s a close friend of the Hartreve children, practically
grew up with them I think.’

‘Well clearly not in my presence then! I would have known him, we
were often in the house.’

‘Oh...’

‘Look,’ she said, with an agitated shake of the head. ‘I don’t
believe in small talk. You came here for a reason, which you have so far failed
to explain, and I will not permit you to waste too much of my time discussing
those people.’

I felt myself getting smaller and smaller in my chair. ‘Of course. This
is all very awkward for me but I suppose I came to tell you that I don’t
believe your husband is the father of Eva Hartreve’s child.’

She seemed to freeze, stock still, so noiseless that my thumping
heart echoed even louder and then she threw back her head and unleashed a
shrill laugh.

‘Is that all?’ she cried out. ‘I could have told you that my dear. Martin
only left the country because he’d swindled one too many people out of their
life savings. And besides, he was too busy bedding Arabella at the time even to
notice her precocious pain of a daughter. You seem shocked, didn’t you know? Oh
yes, Arabella Hartreve was so bored and frustrated by her marriage that she
must have slept with half the House of Lords by the time that ghastly little
Russian academic came along.’

‘Sasha?’

‘Yes! That was his name. He seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect
over her, goodness knows why. We called him her Rasputin.’

‘Did she ever explain why she let him into their home, what he was
doing there, apart from... well, you know?’

‘Only once, although it was a load of old rubbish if you ask me.’

‘No, please tell me. I desperately want to know.’

Lady Burnside drew her brows together. Her face was softer now,
tired-looking, as if just the mere effort of talking about the Hartreves
exhausted her.

‘Oh...’ she shook her head. ‘If you must know, but then you really
should leave.’

‘Of course I will. I promise.’

She clenched her hands back together again.

‘Arabella had had too much to drink one night. We’d been playing
cards and she’d lost badly, which never went down well with her. I took her off
to bed but she kept on calling out for the man, Sasha.

‘“Be quiet, Edward will hear!” I kept telling her.

‘But she didn’t seem to care less: “Sasha’s going to take the ghosts
away,” she kept saying. “He’s going to heal us!”

‘Oh the gibberish that came out of that woman’s mouth! All sorts
about how she could never be mistress of her own home, that it was destroying
their lives... I don’t know. But what I do know is that that man, Sasha, was a
nasty piece of work who had no intention of helping Arabella Hartreve with
whatever her problems were. He had ambition stamped all across his face that fellow.
Ugh, covers me with goose bumps just to think of him.’

She stopped talking. I felt her eyes on me but I couldn’t meet them.
Beyond her shoulder through the conservatory windows the river pondered on,
slowly heaving itself towards London. The seagulls had abandoned it now; there
wasn’t even a boat in sight.

‘I know that look. They’ve got under your skin, haven’t they?’ she
said quietly and her gaze drifted somewhere far away. ‘They’re a cruel bunch. Edward
helped Martin, but for what price? All that money, just to prop their crumbling
old house up... And still they keep that rumour about the child alive without
him being around to defend himself! Martin might have been a crook and an
adulterer, but he would never have touched a young girl like that. A word of
advice: get out of that house before things turn nasty.’

The tears filled my eyes and the looping river suddenly sprung up
into a tight concertina.

‘Ah yes, I forgot! Lover boy. What was his name again?’

‘Sebastian White,’ I whispered.

By the time I got back from Richmond it was early evening and a haze
of drizzle met me outside the tube station. I turned my collar up and ploughed
on through it. Close to Marguerite Avenue an area of the pavement had been
cordoned off with yellow tape. There were flashing lights and several policemen
stepping gingerly through smashed glass on a shop floor.

It was a small antiques shop that sold old maps and globes. The
frazzled looking owner was standing in the middle of it all, wringing his
hands, shaking his head, trying to answer the policeman’s questions. I fled to
the other side of the road, my pulse beating time to my quickened pace.

‘Hey, I was beginning to get worried about you. Where
have
you been?’ Seb pulled my coat off as soon as I got inside, brushing the rain
from my cheeks with his hands. ‘Guess who’s here.’

‘Raphael?’

‘Yes! How did you know?’

‘Oh, just a hunch.’

He smiled, tenderly pressing his fingers against the base of my
spine to urge me towards the drawing room.

The lights in there were dim, the carpet warm and soft against my
feet after the harsh winter pavement. Raphael was stretched in one of the
sofas, a glass of whisky cupped in his hand, and Beth was curled up as usual in
her favourite chair, like a small cat.

‘Hello you, have a good day?’ he asked. His tone was so familiar. It
was as if I’d seen him just that morning, maybe shared a pot of coffee and read
the morning papers over the kitchen table. But his face told another story. It
was full of secrets, our secrets.

‘Umm, sort of,’ I replied.

‘Serena guessed you were back,’ said Seb.

‘Really? How did you do that?’

‘It wasn’t hard. You left your calling card.’

His dark eyes seemed to hesitate on my face. ‘Where?’

‘At that small antiques shop down the road.’

‘Right, she’s clearly lost it,’ laughed Seb. ‘Come on Beth, there’s
nothing for it but to tickle the insanity out of her!’

The two of them pounced on me, tickling until I fell squirming under
them onto the carpet. Raphael looked on with a faint smile, but something that
looked like fear tugged at the corners of his face and I saw that familiar
tension tighten in his eyes.

I ate in the kitchen as usual that evening with Gladys. When Beth
finally came in from the family meal she scrambled onto my lap, yawning loudly.

‘I’ll put her to bed tonight,’ I said.

‘Are you sure, it’s your day off isn’t it?’

‘I don’t mind. You must be exhausted and they’re all so excited
about Raphael coming back.’

The laughing voices were echoing all the way to us in the kitchen.

‘They’re setting up a card game already,’ she tutted.

She rested her little head against me on our way up the stairs and I
wound my arm around her. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes. I’ve just been bothered a lot today.’

‘By what?’

‘Voices. They’ve given me a headache. You see that lady?’ she came
to a halt. ‘She lived here once.’

‘What lady?’

‘That one there, can’t you see her face?’

Her finger was pointing high up into the cornices, just beneath the
place where the wall met the hallway ceiling, and a moulded bust peered back at
us with a disdainful smile that I’d have recognized anywhere.

‘That’s Lucinda Hartreve, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, although she became Lucinda Eden. Her husband’s face is over
there.’

In the cornice behind us another bust gazed down. He had a large,
avuncular face, almost broken in two by his widespread grin.

‘He left her alone here,’ continued Beth. ‘She’s the one I hear
crying sometimes.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘You need some sleep young lady.’

I ruffled my fingers through her blonde mop, half dragging her up
the rest of the way.

Why hadn’t I noticed the faces before? Lucinda had been smirking
down at me the entire time and I’d never even thought to look up to find her
there. They were everywhere I went, those two women: Lucinda and Miranda. Almost
as if they were barely dead at all. Ghosts.

By the time I got back down the card game was in full swing and the
drawing room thick with smoke.

‘Come on boy!’ hollered Edward, poking Robert in the ribs with the
mouthpiece of his pipe. ‘A three? Surely you can do better than that!’ The
brandy he was drinking slurred in his voice.

Seb wasn’t there, but Sasha was. He cornered me instantly.

‘We haven’t had our conversation yet,’ he murmured hotly in my ear.

‘We have nothing to say to each other.’

‘You will speak to me or...’

‘Or what? Are you going to start threatening me too, as you do with
this family? I know all your dirty tricks, just to serve your own interests. Walter
Balanchine’s dead and buried, just leave it alone.’

He gaped at me with surprise.

‘You know about Balanchine? You, the nanny?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, my blood rising with a sudden urge to hit this
man where it really hurt. ‘I found a book of his at Druid Manor. Something
about disappearance and hypnosis.’

‘You found this?’

‘Yes I did.’

He brushed some beads of sweat from his brow. The fine veins in the
whites of his eyes throbbed with excitement.

‘I have spent much of my professional life studying this man,’ he
whispered hurriedly. ‘He was a genius, you have been very fortunate to come
across this book. Nevertheless, I cannot believe that you just found it.’

‘Sasha!’ It was Arabella. ‘Come and help me out darling, I’m losing
miserably!’

‘Yes my dear!’ He rearranged his features into a smile and offered
her a small salute across the room. ‘Here is my card,’ he whispered hurriedly.
‘Come to my office. I’ll make it worth your time.’

‘Sasha!’

The whole table had stopped playing now. They were all staring at
us.

‘I am coming! Ah yes, I see you are in a lot of trouble.’

It was impossible to sleep that night. Instead I listened to the
soft whispering of Seb’s breath and watched on as old memories flooded towards
me through the darkness; bolder and brighter and larger than ever before.

She was there almost every time I closed my eyes: her curved back,
straining beneath the old T-shirt, her hands so busy patting down fresh black
soil.

‘Mum!’

She’d pause, begin to turn, just a hint of a profile coming into
view and then the image would start to crack up, blurring the colours until
they ran in muddy, stinging streaks.

Long after midnight a sudden beam of light came rushing in from
under my bedroom door: it was the single lamp that lit the narrow staircase up
to my room. Beth most probably, wandering around half asleep and looking for
some company. I crept downstairs, but she was safely huddled up in her bed, her
face still and tranquil in the throes of sleep.

‘Hello.’

I jumped, my hands flying to my mouth. Raphael was standing right
behind me.

‘I’m sorry; you didn’t hear me coming?’

‘Oh my God, you scared the life out of me! How could I have heard
you coming when you don’t make any noise at all?’