The Winter Folly (37 page)

An awful silent scream filled her head as it did hundreds of times a day when she thought of that moment. It took all her strength to endure that terrible wail, the one no one else could hear,
as it ripped through her, breaking her heart afresh every time. It thrust a picture into her mind that she feared and dreaded, one that she did not think she could bear to see again but which was
constantly torturing her by whatever demons insisted on pressing it before her eyes. ‘Look at this,’ they seemed to be saying. ‘Look, look, look. You can’t escape what
you’ve done, look again.’

She saw over and over that instant when she’d flown over the hill, far too fast, in the grip of her terror and confusion, and seen her . . . Elaine.

‘Here she is, your angel,’ hissed the demons. ‘She’s on her little pink bike trying so hard to ride it even though her feet don’t touch the ground. But here you
are, in your car, shut in your deadly metal box, taking it towards her with all its crushing weight and unstoppable turning wheels. Look at the way she’s wobbling, her hair whipped up in her
face by the wind, her eyes wide open. Look, she’s staring at you, trusting you to help her, to protect her. But you can’t stop, can you?’

Then she would see the small pink and purple shape vanish beneath her bonnet, feel it beneath the wheels, hear the sickening crunch of the bicycle as it was crushed under them, then feel the
lift and fall of the car as it rolled over the obstacle. Then, always, she would see Nanny, her horrified expression with her mouth open, her eyes stretched, her hands out in a desperate, helpless
gesture to stop the car.

Then she would scream herself in agony, to drown out the demons and make them stop their torment, but she knew that they were inside her. She was going to spend the rest of her existence
torturing herself and it was all she deserved. She had been stupid to think she could ever be happy or provide happiness. She was born under a curse, and, like the Lady of Shalott, love had brought
it down on her head.

Everything was over now, she knew that. Her marriage, her motherhood . . . it was all at an end. She had no idea how she could carry on existing. Nicky came to see her, but she turned away and
would not look at him or talk to him. He wept and asked her to speak. He tried to talk about their daughter and absolve her of blame, but it was no good. He didn’t understand that it
wasn’t in his power. The sin was deeper and darker than he could ever imagine. Besides, her love for him, which had been her rock and which had always given her courage to go on, was a wicked
thing now. He could no longer help her, nor she him. They must part just when they needed each other like never before.

But she couldn’t tell him this. It had to be a burden she carried alone. So she refused to speak or look at him and when the nurses whispered to him that she would eventually relent, she
did not say that she never would or could.

There was no day or night, just an endless ongoing despair, but they opened the curtains and revealed that it was day outside. They brought out a suit, a matching coat and
dress in black wool, and made her bathe and put it on. Who were these people? They seemed to know her but she had no idea who they were. Then she was taken to the car and driven to the church.
Nicky was there – she knew it was him even though he looked like a grotesque version of himself, with his faced lined and etched by grief, his eyes full of agony. They went together into the
church and she heard hymns, prayers and poems and then they stood in the churchyard by the yew tree at the back, near a hole in the ground that made her dizzy with horror. They brought the little
white box and as it passed her, she reached out a hand and took one of the white flowers on the top. Then she watched as they put the box into the hole – so far down in the dirty darkness
– and began to cover it. She said nothing out loud but that was because she was being deafened, shaken and possessed by the vast and frightful noise within her, the howl of the Furies
pursuing her. They shrieked her child’s name at her, pelting her with it, demanding to know why she had decided to consign her daughter to the world of the dead, to stamp out her life and
toss her into this hole.

Somewhere she knew she was going mad. But she had no strength to resist it, and anyway, what was the point of resisting? What could there be beyond this suffering but more suffering? A life of
endless suffering? What was the point of anything at all?

They took her home again and put her back into the bed, leaving her alone with the voices and the torment. But she knew they would be back.

One night, a strange calm descended on her. She woke from a sleep that she knew had been torrid and full of the awful images that would never leave her. The voices were quiet
at last. She had the sense of a revelation, and even though she didn’t know what it was, it was like the blessing of a cool drink with a fevered thirst. She had longed for some peace so that
she could think again and here it was at last. With it came a delicious numbness that enabled her at last to move and act. The pain was shut somewhere far away, as though it was confined inside a
house and she had managed to climb out on the roof and get away from it, just for a while. Although, of course, she could always decide not to go back in at all.

She climbed out of bed where she now slept alone – perhaps Nicky was in the gold room down the hall – and walked over to the window. Pulling back the heavy curtain, she saw that it
was a clear night, the moon like a huge gilded pendant suspended in the sky, the stars arching overhead in their constellations. She must go outside. She had a sense of things ordained, a ritual
that she must carry out. It was almost as though she could hear a long-forgotten but familiar voice calling her name, summoning her, and she had no choice but to follow. She went to the bedroom
door and opened it. The house was in darkness, a lamp here and there casting a shallow golden glow. She walked out into the hall.

This feeling was rather pleasant, she decided as she went downstairs. The floating sensation that made it feel as if she were so light that only holding onto the banister as she went down kept
her from rising up into the air. She felt so empty, as if she were made of nothing. When she reached the large hallway beneath, she saw that the door to the estate office was open and a light shone
inside. She looked in. There he was, the man she loved but could no longer live with as a wife. He was slumped on his desk, asleep on one folded arm, a half-empty bottle of whisky by his side. So
that was how he was managing. He hadn’t learned, as she had, that it was possible to be like this – far above everything and looking down upon it, untouched by the grief and despair. Of
course, there was a price to pay for this freedom. It meant that certain things must be done. And they would be done.

She left the office and went to the front door. It was bolted and locked and she was too weak to use the great keys or pull back the iron bolts. She drifted instead to the back of the house. On
her way, she passed a small pair of boots and remembered the boy. Where was the boy? When had she last seen him? She had no memory of that at all. He had been at school and she had not seen him
since. Was he in the house? Did he ever come back from school? Had anyone told him what had happened? She felt a stab of concern for him, and then relaxed. What she was doing now was the best
possible thing, the last act of her motherly love for him. She was setting him free to live a life without the fear and pain that she would inevitably bring him, saving him by leaving him. After
all, if she could kill her precious girl, what might she do to him?

She let herself outside and began to walk. She knew exactly where she was going. There were the gates, open as usual, despite her instructions. There was the path. Once, a long time ago, someone
had told her to tell Nicky to knock the folly down. She never had. It had seemed far too powerful for that. Now she realised why it had that power over her and why she was unable to resist its
siren call. It had seemed like a craggy thing, a cold, dank place of danger and destruction. But now she saw it for what it was: a gateway. Through it, she could see the past. Through it, she would
find her future. Like her mother had. Perhaps hers was the sweet voice she could hear, summoning her and promising her peace.

It was strange to be in the woods and not be afraid. Nothing could hurt her now and that gave her an almost gleeful sense of freedom. What on earth had she been so scared of all that time? It
had turned out that the thing she had to be most afraid of was herself. There had been no monsters. She had been the instrument of destruction, and now she could see very plainly that she was what
must be removed. Whatever dark knowledge she held would end with her.

She kept going through the darkness, careless of the undergrowth and the stony path until she came out into the clearing where the folly stood on the hill. Staring at it, she sighed. She had
seen all this before and she knew her part as well as anything she had ever done in her life. It was all inevitable. There was no fear; she simply craved an end to the pain, and if there was any
way to see Elaine again, to hold her in her arms and press her face into her hair, breath in her sweet scent and feel her soft skin, then this was surely it. She yearned for that more than
anything, and that made all of this so easy. If there was no meeting to be had, if all there was after death was nothing, then that made it easier still.

At the entrance she paused and looked up, and then made her way inside, stepping over the dangerous spikes and fallen masonry, picking her way delicately to the broken stairs and there she found
her footing, confident on the slippery boards, climbing lightly upwards towards the glowing blue night sky above. She reached the top floor of the tower and went to stand at the broken wall,
looking out over the nightscape below. One more step and she would be free. A single step forward, a plummet and blackness. Peace. Sleep. Those voices would never come back.

She prepared herself, remembering that she knew exactly how this should be done. Her nightdress fluttered around her in the night breeze. She was ready.

Present day

The night had been disturbed by John’s bad dreams. Delilah woke several times to hear him panting in panic, a stifled moaning in his throat that meant he must be howling
in his dreams. Her arms around him calmed him, sending him back to sleep until the next one, but she had only managed fitful rest herself. It worried her that he was still tormented by nightmares
when things were now out in the open, but perhaps talking about the past had brought it all back, agitating whatever was inside his head.

Over breakfast, John was pallid and red-eyed, barely able to speak. She wondered if she looked just as bad. Eventually he glanced up from his toast and said, ‘Delilah, I’ve been
thinking. I need to get away from here for a few days. An old school friend of mine – one of the few I can still tolerate – has asked me if I want to go fishing with him. You
haven’t met Ralph but he’s a good sort, and I think I should go. Dad’s much better and estate business can wait for a while.’

‘All right. It sounds fun. You need some time away from here, something to enjoy.’ She smiled at him and hoped she was concealing the sting of hurt she felt. After a moment she said,
‘But if you go away, you’ll be missing my fertile time this month.’

He shrugged lightly. ‘It’s not as though we’re exactly hard at it, is it? Missing one month won’t matter.’

She tried not to wince. ‘All right. If that’s what you want.’

‘I do. I think we should have a break from each other for a bit. It will be good for us.’

‘When will you go?’ she asked miserably. A break from her? So her hopes had been misplaced, it seemed. It wasn’t a new beginning after all.

‘I’ll go after breakfast.’

She was startled by the suddenness. ‘And when will you be back?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll be away four days or so, I should think. We’ll go up to Scotland and make a trip of it. Up in the hills with no computers, or email or phone signals.
Proper peace.’

‘Sounds very nice.’

He put the last piece of toast in his mouth and got up, wiping his hands and tossing his napkin on the table. ‘I’ll go and pack now then. I should think you’ll enjoy a bit of
time without me here.’

She was suddenly aware of the danger in being here alone with Ben because of the feelings that were growing between them and wanted to jump up and shout, ‘Don’t be so stupid, you
mustn’t leave me – not now!’ Instead she said as breezily as she could, ‘I’ll keep busy, I expect.’

‘Good. I’ll come and say goodbye before I go.’

John left within half an hour, the car racing up the drive and away as though pursued by something. Delilah watched him go, depression sinking down on her. She was still
staring at the empty drive when she saw a flash of red and the Royal Mail van came trundling over the horizon and down towards the house, later than usual. She went out of the front door and down
the steps to meet it.

‘Hello,’ said the postman cheerily as he pulled to a stop in front of the house, leaving the engine running. ‘Apologies for my tardiness – got held up at the depot
today.’ He climbed out of the van with a stack of letters bound with an elastic band and handed it over to her. He glanced at the top of the pile. ‘Looks like there’s one for you
there,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ Delilah said, looking down at the long stiff white envelope, franked and stamped with the name of a company she didn’t recognise.

‘No worries.’ The postman got back in the van and said, ‘Give my regards to his lordship. Have a good day!’ He drove off over the crunching gravel.

Delilah did not watch him go. Her attention was on the envelope and the name on the front. It was addressed to Lady Northmoor.

‘Lady Northmoor?’ she said out loud. There had been no Lady Northmoor at Fort Stirling for years. She pulled it out from under the elastic band and turned it over. There were no
clues on the back and the flap remained resolutely stuck down. It was a fresh letter – it had certainly not been stuck in the postal system for forty years, like those postcards the
newspapers sometimes reported had arrived at their destination decades after being sent. The black type on the front was strong and confident. This letter knew who it wanted to reach.