The Silk Factory (28 page)

The smell grew stronger. There was a tightness in Rosie’s chest; she struggled for breath. Now, mixed with the soot was the smell of burning rotten flesh. Dizzy and sick, she was overtaken by a cold sweat. Rosie put her arm across her nose and mouth as waves of nausea hit. From all around her came the tiniest sound, a continuous soft rustle, like leaves stirred by a breeze. Something touched her face, something light as paper, grazing her cheek as it fell, and then another, tangling in her hair. She felt for it and her fingers met a fluttering shape that she knocked to the ground with a cry. She raised the lamp and looked above her.

The ceiling was covered in a thick creamy layer, in constant swarming motion, as thousands of moths crawled over one another. In places the blanket grew so thick that they hung down in pale stalactites until, grown too heavy, some would drop away and fall to the ground. Directly above her, a swag of soft insect bodies hung, shimmering, wings shivering as they crawled.

The lamp went out. In utter darkness, Rosie stood absolutely still, her heart pounding, not daring to even stir the air around her, terrified of hearing the soft collapse and slide of globs of teeming creatures. Beside her, low down, other noises began, human noises, short gasping breaths and a scratching around on the ground. Closer, so close that she could have reached down and touched them, someone was casting about, feeling across the floor, searching … a hand brushed her foot, clasped and then gripped her.

Rosie dropped the lamp and fled as the room filled with a child’s sobbing and a desperate scrabbling sound. Arms outstretched, she groped wildly towards the stairs and knocked into the lumber, clattering the jam jars in their boxes. Stumbling up the steps on hands and feet, behind her a cry was abruptly cut off and something metal scraped against the brick. As she scrambled for the door, an icy blast hit her back, a freezing cold flowing around her as if the windows had been punched in.

Then she was up, pushing past the bike, not caring that the handlebar caught her hip a jarring blow. She pulled at the front door, crying out as the latch held fast, fumbled to release it and threw the door open, leaving it swinging. She banged with both fists on Tally’s front door and a light came on inside. Tally came to the door, took one look at her face and opened her arms.

Rosie, sitting tensely on the edge of the sofa, warmed her hands round a mug of tea.

‘Better?’ Tally said, sitting down beside her.

‘A bit.’ She could still feel the icy chill inside her and when she took her hand away from the mug it trembled.

Rob came in from next door carrying a torch and bringing her handbag and keys. ‘There’s nothing – just a load of old tat down there.’

‘Did you check the whole house over?’ Tally said.

‘Yes, and I locked up. Everything’s secure.’

‘There was something,’ Rosie said. ‘I know what I saw. I’m not mad, I …’ Her eyes began to fill and Tally glanced at Rob with a meaningful look.

Rob, taking the hint, said, ‘I’d better turn in then. I’m on duty tomorrow.’ He gave Rosie’s shoulder a pat as he passed.

‘I think something awful happened in that house and it’s … I don’t know … somehow still there. Some people think that, don’t they, that horrible events leave something behind, like an electrical charge – well, not electricity but some kind of force field that a susceptible person is able to pick up. I mean, we didn’t know about magnetism or radio waves or bacteria or any of that stuff at one time but they were there waiting to be discovered …’ She trailed off.

Tally squeezed her hand. ‘I think something happened to disturb you down there and I think you’re still a teeny bit in shock.’

‘I think someone died in that house,’ Rosie said stubbornly.

‘Well, I suppose that’s true of every house, isn’t it?’ Tally said mildly. ‘Every house of any age, that is.’

‘You think I’m losing the plot,’ Rosie said miserably. ‘That’s exactly why I haven’t told you about all this before. People will say I’m not coping – like before when I was depressed after having Cara. Josh’ll say I’m just like my mum. He thinks I shouldn’t have the kids.’ She wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand and Tally put her arm around her.

‘Shh, shh, no one’s saying that. You’re a great mum; don’t think that way, not even for a minute.’

‘I’m not losing it! What about the plate? That didn’t just break itself, did it?’

‘Look, you experienced something horrible, I’m not denying that, but there’s got to be some rational explanation. What happened just before all of this started? Tell me what led up to it.’

Rosie looked down into her mug of tea and shrugged.

‘Rosie? Was there something? Something that upset you?’ She hugged her tight. ‘Come on, you’ve been sitting on this ghost thing for months and it’s made you feel awful; if there’s anything else, don’t you think it would be a good idea to get it off your chest?’

Rosie let out a long wavering sigh before beginning to speak. The certificates in the bureau, the newspaper report, the memory of Lily’s death and her part in the tragedy all came out.

‘But it wasn’t your fault! You were tiny!’ Tally exclaimed. ‘Come on, that sort of thing happens all the time between kids. Think of your two, or my girls, always vying for attention. All kids do it.’

‘You really think so?’

‘I know so.’

‘But if I hadn’t knocked her hand, if I hadn’t been showing off …’

‘You might just as well say if Maria hadn’t bought you the toys, if she hadn’t taken you on the jetty or if it had been less windy … on a different day … in a different year … It was an
accident
. Come on, you’ve got to stop blaming yourself, OK?’ Tally took both of her hands and leant forward to look into her face.

At length, Rosie nodded. ‘OK. But it doesn’t really change anything. I can never get her back.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘No,’ Tally said softly. ‘You’ll never get her back. There’s nothing anyone can do to change the past, but you
can
do plenty about the future.’ She rubbed the knuckles of Rosie’s clenched hand. ‘What I think would do you the most good, now, would be to concentrate on your stake in the future. I think you need your kids with you.’

‘What do you mean?’ Rosie said dully. ‘Josh has got them until tomorrow night.’ She seemed to shrink back into herself as she said it.

‘Rosie?’ Tally said. ‘How do you feel about that? Honestly?’

Rosie thought about it. ‘Bitter.’

‘Then you shouldn’t put up with it. Go down there! Fetch them back!’ Tally said, desperate to put some fire back in Rosie’s belly.

A glow of colour rose to Rosie’s cheeks and her shoulders straightened. ‘Right, right! I’ll go now.’ She started unwinding herself from the duvet. ‘Josh pulled the “weekend” card on me – well, he’s had his weekend.’

Tally, alarmed at the thought of her striding into her in-laws’ house like a madwoman, said, ‘Hang on a mo. It’s still the middle of the night. Maybe better wait until the morning?’

‘Is it? Oh, yeah, of course it is.’ Rosie pushed her hand through her hair. ‘I’ll go first thing tomorrow.’ She rooted through her bag for her phone and set an alarm.

Tally went to find her some pyjamas, a towel and a toothbrush. When she came back, she said, ‘Would you like me to come with you?’

Rosie hesitated. She couldn’t really believe what she was planning to do. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thanks, but this is between me and Josh. I think I have to do it on my own.’

Rosie got up while it was still dark. She pulled on her jeans, sweatshirt, and the old grey canvas shoes, had a quick chat with Rob as he left for his shift, and then left a note for Tally, who was still sleeping. Outside, the streetlamps showed a world transformed by a fresh snowfall. The snow stood inches thick like a cap on cars and fence posts and muffled hedges and shrubs, rounding sharp angles to indistinct softness. Her house was in darkness, lights off and the curtains all closed, its expression blank and secret. Rosie shivered as she passed the front door and went straight to the car.

She edged tentatively backwards and forwards to get out of the tight parking space and crawled along the snowy street. Once she was out of the village and on to A roads and then motorway, the journey to Hertfordshire was straightforward; the roads had been gritted overnight, but as she returned to countryside at the other end of the journey the lanes were treacherous and she was glad it was now light, the trees casting long blue shadows over the fields. She passed the little station where her father-in-law, Gareth, caught the commuter train to his job as an actuary in the City; it was closed and deserted, the empty car park a carpet of white.

Sandra and Gareth lived a mile outside the village and as she turned along the sunken track that led down to their barn conversion, the back wheels of her little Fiat slewed to the right and almost put her in the ditch. Carefully, she pulled off again, straightening up, and made slippery progress in the wide tyre tracks of more practical vehicles that had compacted and printed the snow. Gareth’s four-by-four no doubt made light work of this weather. She emerged into open fields and ahead of her the huge windows that had replaced the original barn doors flashed out, catching the sun and making her blink. She’d not been here for a couple of years and had forgotten quite how spectacular it was, the original building gutted and re-formed with cantilevered ceilings and green glass stairs up to mezzanine floors.

She swung the car round on a sweep of gravel. As she pulled up beside the garage block she saw that the house had been extended still further. From a long, low building, a vent exhaled a steady stream of steam. A pool-house, she thought, Gareth must still be doing well for himself. Then, almost immediately: Had the children been in the pool? Sam had never mentioned it.

In the garden stood the broad tubular structure of the new trampoline, its blue netting showing through the snow, and beyond it, the humped shapes of a slide and a climbing frame with a pirate deck. There are whole worlds in my kids’ lives that I know nothing about, she thought. She sat for a moment with her hand on the ignition, then took a deep breath and got out, the snow soaking instantly through her canvas shoes.

Josh answered the door. He was dressed in a white cotton shirt, navy chinos and leather flip-flops. He had a piece of toast in his hand and he looked a bit the worse for wear. ‘What the fuck!’ he said when he saw her.

‘Happy Christmas to you too,’ Rosie said.

‘What’re you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to fetch the kids home.’

He ignored that and said, as if she were a tradesman who had turned up at an inconvenient moment, ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it? For dropping in out of the blue?’

‘It’s after nine, Josh. It’s hardly the crack of dawn.’

Josh glanced behind him down the hallway towards the kitchen door, as if checking whether anyone could hear. Rosie had the distinct impression that what he’d really like to do was to shut the door on her. ‘Look,’ he said, as though he was reasoning with an idiot, ‘I said I’d bring them back tonight. This isn’t what we arranged.’ He glared at her.

‘I can save you the trouble,’ Rosie said stolidly.

Gareth came out of the kitchen, saying, ‘What is it? You’re letting in an awful draught …’ Then: ‘Rosie! What a nice surprise!’ In the same old corduroy trousers and baggy oatmeal sweater that Rosie remembered him jokingly calling his ‘leisurewear’, he slopped along the hallway in his slippers towards her and Josh had to step aside. Gareth enfolded her in a bear hug and rocked her to and fro, his stubbly chin rasping against her face. ‘Come on in, come on in!’ He led the way to the kitchen where, over his shoulder, Sandra and Tania were sitting at a round oak table. The two chairs that Josh and Gareth had left vacant sat in front of plates full of congealing fried breakfasts. Tania, dressed in taupe trousers and a matching cobweb knit jumper, was leafing through a glossy magazine with nothing in front of her but black coffee. Sandra was in the middle of helping herself to scrambled eggs and muffins, her grey bobbed hair with its stylish streak of white at the front tucked back behind her ears.

Gareth took her hand and drew her into the room. She felt everyone’s eyes on her and was acutely conscious of the snow she had tramped in with her, melting in little pools around her feet, and the dark water-stained canvas of her cheap pumps. Their relaxed demeanour in their casually expensive clothes, clearly at home in the designer kitchen with its range of fancy appliances, breathed entitlement. In her baggy sweatshirt with its dangling toggles and drooping hood, her usual wisps of hair escaping from its scrunchy, she felt faded, threadbare, a person with no definite outline.

‘We’ve missed you,’ Gareth was saying. ‘Why don’t you come and see us? Bring the kids?’

Tania visibly winced. She glanced at Josh accusingly.

‘Rosie and I seem to have got our wires crossed,’ Josh said disingenuously. ‘I’ve been telling her that we’ve got all the cousins coming back for lunch today so the kids won’t want to go yet. I’m sure she understands.’

Rosie opened her mouth to disagree but Sandra, seeing Rosie’s tense, white face and sensing that all her preparations for a perfect Christmas might be about to go up in smoke, said smoothly, ‘Perhaps Rosie would like to stay and join us for lunch?’

There was a silence while everyone considered the prospect of awful awkwardness
that
would entail.

‘Thank you, but no. We need to be getting back,’ Rosie said, mustering her reserves of politeness.

‘It’s out of the question,’ Josh said. ‘We had an arrangement.’

Sandra and Gareth exchanged a glance. ‘The children would be very disappointed,’ Sandra said. ‘They’ve all been getting on
so
well. Let me pour you a coffee while you think about it.’ She reached for the pot and then let her hand fall as they all realised that there was nowhere for Rosie to sit.

Gareth said, ‘Well, never mind all this tea and coffee lark. I think it’s time for a real drink. Rosie? Sherry with your old dad-in-law?’ He held the kitchen door open for her to pass through. Before it swung shut behind her, she distinctly heard Tania saying, ‘If you start giving in to her now, she’ll take you to the cleaners when we get to court.’

Gareth led her into the lounge opposite, with its massive windows extending the whole height of the building. A fire roared in a wood-burning stove and a huge Christmas tree stood decked with white fairy lights and shiny white ceramic hearts and icicles. ‘Do you like the tree?’ he asked mildly. ‘Sandra’s idea: to use the height we’ve got here. You can’t get one that size in most houses. You know Sandra, she goes in for Christmas in a big way.’ He sighed.

Rosie nodded. ‘I bet the kids really loved it. Where are they, by the way?’ She tried to sound casual although all she really wanted to do was to tuck them one under each arm and run.

Gareth put a glass of sherry into her hand and beckoned her to follow him. He pushed open the door of the snug where Sam and Cara were both fast asleep on the sofa in front of the TV, a cartoon running with the sound turned right down. They withdrew, Gareth saying, ‘We let them come to midnight mass on Christmas Eve and then they were up at six on Christmas morning. I think it’s finally caught up with them.’

They sat down on sofas opposite each other.

Gareth looked awkward. ‘The thing is, Rosie, love, Sandra’s gone to a lot of trouble. She wanted to get everyone together.’