The Winter Folly
Authors: Lulu Taylor
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Psychological, #Thrillers, #Contemporary Women, #General, #Suspense, #Gothic, #Sagas
To Ophelia Field
Prologue
A strange, ghostly figure moved silently through the darkness, its white gown billowing out behind as it trod lightly along the stony path, never looking down but drifting
onwards as easily as though it were a sunny afternoon and not the dead of night.
A large cold white moon shone hard above, casting a chill light and making the inky night sky around it glow navy. Stars glittered like scattered ice and beneath them the world had been leached
of colour, leaving only gradations of grey and black.
The figure skirted the lawns of the big house where the grass was the colour of granite, and drifted past the walled kitchen garden. It went down the yew walk where the shadows were thick and
huge hedges loomed on either side, then passed through the old wrought-iron gates that never closed, the ones flanked by high pillars with stone owls sitting on top. It walked out onto the bridle
path and on into the woods. There were hoots and flurries in the high branches of trees, and brushings and shakings in the undergrowth, the snapping of twigs and rustling of dead leaves. A pair of
eyes flashed eerie green and yellow, and there was the dark outline of a fox. The woman in white went on, moving without haste but with utter determination.
She turned off the bridle path and into the thicker darkness of the woods where the beams of the moon could not penetrate, then came out again into a clearing where a large dark form stood on
the brow of a low hill – the ruins of an old tower that still reached high into the sky. The woman walked towards it, through its empty doorway and into the darkness beyond. She ascended the
rickety broken staircase that wound upwards against the ruined walls, going slowly but surely, taking one careful step after another until she reached the highest point of the folly, where a few
floorboards remained, blackened, sodden and slippery. The woman paused and then walked slowly over what was left of the floor to where a missing wall had created a gaping hole in the side of the
tower. She stood there, luminous in the dark, her white expressionless face turned outwards, gazing over the trees, her hands still clutching the sides of her nightgown, which lifted and billowed
gently against the night sky.
She seemed to stand there for an age. Then she turned her face up to the stars, her chin lifted with something that was either defiance or surrender. She looked outwards again, her eyes blank.
Slowly, deliberately, she took one step out into the void and then plummeted, her nightgown fluttering like a flag, her hair spreading upwards. Her arms flew out, her fingers splayed, her mouth
opened but no sound came out. Then she vanished, swallowed by the shadows at the base of the tower and there was a hard thud and a crack, sharp as a whiplash.
A deep and dreadful silence followed.
ART
O
NE
Chapter One
1969
Alexandra called out: ‘John! John! Come back here!’
John turned to glance at her, his eyes sparkling as he giggled. Then he carried on running, his fair hair bright against the dark foliage. He was fast, considering he was only two years old, and
the excitement of the chase only made him dash on more quickly.
She couldn’t help smiling at his merry little face; his soft plump cheeks, button nose and round blue eyes that were gradually changing to grey always softened her heart. All she wanted to
do was pick him up and smother that sweet peachy skin with kisses. But she ought to be stern with him if he was going to learn to obey her. ‘John, do as you’re told!’ she said
firmly. ‘Be a good boy for Mummy.’ She walked quickly after him, wishing she’d worn something sturdier than her smart square-toed buckle-fronted leather pumps, which were pretty
but not at all designed for speed. They’d only come out to wander about the lawn, John on his new plastic tractor, but he’d climbed off and started exploring. After a time, he’d
trotted off down the yew walk, stopping to inspect anything that took his interest, while she followed. Whenever she got near, he would straighten up and set off again, his pace surprisingly fast
considering his short legs and little feet. At the end of the walk, those blasted gates were open, of course, the old wrought-iron ones flanked by high pillars with stone owls sitting on top.
Alexandra had asked for them to be replaced and given orders that until then they were to be kept shut, but the gamekeeper claimed that they had rusted into place and could not be closed.
‘Can’t you oil them?’ she’d demanded, exasperated. ‘It’s dangerous with a small child running about.’
But the gamekeeper had simply looked at her with an expression that seemed to imply the child would be better off for being able to escape her smothering and run away into the freedom of the
woods. Her orders still carried little weight, even now.
‘Don’t go through the gates, darling!’ she called, but he ignored her and wandered out between them, singing to himself. Alexandra upped her pace, picking her way along the
muddy walk as quickly as she could. She didn’t like him being on the bridle path alone. Once she was through the gates, she could see him further on, quite a way down it already. He was
probably remembering the way from walks with his father, perhaps when they’d taken his bucket and spade down to the river to dig up mud and pebbles, which he loved doing. He was far too young
to fish yet and Alexandra had forbidden him being taken out on the river in the row boat. She herself hadn’t been down to the river for a very long time. Not even the swimming expeditions in
the summer, when it was cool and refreshing, could tempt her. She stayed up by the pool near the house instead, perfectly happy to swim in the turquoise chlorinated and overwarm water, and sunbathe
on a lounger on the concrete surround, like a tourist at a hotel. The gamekeeper thought she was afraid of the woods, like some of the old men in the village who claimed that ghosts of Roman
soldiers were clanking around in there. Somebody’s legions had marched through and the Saxons had ambushed them and cut them to ribbons. They were supposed to be on the march still, homesick,
bloodied and bent on revenge. But she didn’t believe all that, of course. Ghosts were absurd, and the wails and screeches that came from the woods at night were those of unfortunate rabbits,
caught by a fox or in the metal teeth of those awful traps the keeper put out. The stories had no doubt been spread to scare away poachers.
There was another reason altogether why she never went there.
‘John!’ she called. ‘Come here, darling! Wait for me!’
He laughed again, his short legs moving even faster. He turned off the bridle path and began to follow a track. His
red dungarees and white jumper were vivid among the dull wintery colours of the dead bracken, the black-leafed brambles and bare branches, and she saw his fair hair in bright flashes as he ran. She
stepped in a patch of mud and slipped, catching her balance just in time to stop herself falling. Her snakeskin pumps and their gold buckles were spattered with black. She should have slipped on
her boots and usually would have but they’d come out of the French windows instead of through the boot room. If they’d done that, they’d be wearing coats as well. She shivered.
Her cardigan was too thin against the winter wind, and John didn’t have enough on, he ought to be inside. They ought right now to be climbing the stairs to the nursery, where the fire would
be burning and Nanny would have set out his tea: boiled eggs probably, and golden-brown toast shiny with melted butter.
‘John! Come back!’ She began to make larger strides to catch up with him but he sensed her approach and put on another burst of speed. ‘Now, don’t be naughty, I shall be
cross with you!’
But it was a game to him, she could tell. He had an innocent recklessness; he could run and climb easily enough but had no idea of danger or hurting himself. Only the other day, someone had left
the picket gate by the pool unlatched and she’d found John about to take a step onto the tarpaulin that covered the swimming pool, unaware that it would give under his weight.
Now here she was in the woods, the place she disliked so much. Her skin prickled and goosebumped. The undergrowth seemed to be crowding in on her, reaching out to grab her with hundreds of long
thorny fingers. She shrank away from it as she went down the path that was mushy under her feet from the recent rain, and gasped out loud when she felt something pluck at her. Turning, she saw
she’d snagged her cardigan on a spike of a branch and she fumbled with it until she’d freed herself. When she looked back, John had gone.
‘John, John!’ She began to hurry along the path, fearing that if he turned off it and scrambled away into the undergrowth, he could be lost, disappearing in a moment into the
thickets and bracken. She could see him at once, hiding for fun at first, curled up in a little nest beneath a bush like a dormouse, waiting to be found; then, as the cold grew greater and the
darkness came down, he would whimper for her, sobbing out that he wanted Mummy as the animals of the night began to sniff around him. ‘John! Where are you?’ Her voice quavered but she
tried to inject into it as much command as she could. ‘Come back at once, do you hear?’
She emerged suddenly into a clearing and stopped short, staring wide-eyed at what she saw before her: a folly, half in ruins, but still imposing, reaching into the afternoon sky. It had once
been a high, handsome tower with arched windows and battlements, like a place where Rapunzel might have lived, but now it was mouldering and decayed, swathed in ivy, the few remaining battlements
like jagged broken teeth. Most of the front of the tower had fallen away, and old masonry lay in heaps and hillocks, overgrown now, about its foot. It was possible to see that there had once been
five floors, the bottom two now vanished but remnants of the others remaining, the fifth being mostly intact, though the old boards were no doubt soft and mushy with years of rainfall, frost and
mildew. An old staircase twisted up the inside of the tower, treacherous with its broken and missing treads, perilous where the wall had fallen away. It was dark without and within, dank and cold,
the breath of decay all around it, its stones thick with moss.
Horrible, rotten old thing!
she thought, filled with a fearful revulsion.
I wish they would knock it down!
The sight of the old ruin repelled her, and she was overcome with a sense of suffocation that made her want to run away. She saw it often in her dreams, a recurring nightmare in which she was
forced to climb it in order to stop something dreadful happening, but she was never able to reach the top in time to prevent it. She hated seeing it in her dreams. The festering reality made her
shudder.
She saw a flash of red from inside. John was in there.
At once a horror possessed her, the one she knew from her nightmares: choking panic and a desperate urgency to stop something terrible taking place. She began to run towards the tower. She heard
his laugh again, and saw through the gap in the wall that he was climbing the staircase. She knew those stairs from childhood games when she’d been made to go inside: in some places they were
as brittle and fragile as a thin layer of ice, ready to snap at any moment, and in others damp, turned spongy and yielding in the centre. A foot could sink down as easily as in wet sand, only below
it was nothing at all. She wanted to scream and yell but her heart was pounding in her chest as she gained the interior of the tower. She looked up. It was open to the sky, which showed blue
through the remains of the upper floors. Ivy swagged and hung from the old boards and joists, and branches crisscrossed where they had penetrated from outside. It smelt of sodden wood, wet stone
and the bitterness of mould.