FOUR
Elsewhere that night, in a neighbouring village, a woman held her hours-old baby close, running her thumb against the tiny child’s peachy cheek. Her husband would arrive home many hours later, tired from his night-watch duties, and the woman, still dazed from the unexpected and traumatic birth, would recount the details over tea, the way she’d gone into labour on the bus, the pain, the sudden, plunging pain, the bleeding and the savage fear that her baby would die, that she would die, that she would never hold her newborn son; and then she’d smile wearily, devotedly, and pause to press the tears that warmed her face, and she’d tell him about the angel who’d appeared beside her on the roadside, knelt at her knees and saved her baby’s life.
And it would become a family story, retold, passed down, resurrected on rainy nights by the fire, invoked as a means to quell disputes, recited at family events. And time would gallop on, month by year by decade, until on that baby’s fiftieth birthday his widowed mother would watch from her cushioned chair at the end of the restaurant table, as his children made a toast, reciting the family story of the angel who’d saved their father’s life, and without whom none of them would exist.
Thomas Cavill didn’t go with his regiment when they headed into the slaughter of North Africa. He was already dead by then. Dead and buried, cold beneath the ground of Milderhurst Castle. He died because the night was wet. Because a shutter was loose. Because he wanted to make a good impression. He died because many years before a jealous husband had found his wife with another man.
For a long time, though, nobody knew. The storm cleared, the floodwater receded, and the protective wings of Cardarker Wood spread out around Milderhurst Castle. The world forgot about Thomas Cavill, and any questions of his fate were lost beneath the destruction and debris of war.
Percy sent her letter, the final, rotten untruth that would plague her all her life; Saffy wrote to decline the governess position – Juniper needed her, what else could she have done? Planes flew overhead, war ended, the sky peeled back to reveal one new year after another. The Sisters Blythe grew old; they became objects of quaint curiosity in the village, the subjects of myth. Until one day, a young woman came to visit. She had ties to another who had come before and the castle stones began to whisper with recognition. Percy Blythe saw that it was time. That after fifty years of carrying her burden, she could finally take it from her shoulders and return to Thomas Cavill his closing date. The story could come to an end.
So she did, and she charged the girl to do the right thing with it.
Which left only one remaining task.
She gathered her sisters, her beloved sisters, and made sure they were fast asleep and dreaming. And then she struck a match, in the library where it had all begun.
Epilogue
For decades the attic has been used as storage. Nothing but boxes and old chairs and superseded printing materials. The building itself is home to a publishing house, and the faint smell of paper and ink has impregnated the walls and floors. It is rather pleasant, if you like that sort of thing.
It is 1993; the renovation has taken months but it is finally complete. The clutter has been cleared, the wall that someone, sometime, erected so that one draughty attic might become two, is gone, and for the first time in fifty years, the attic at the top of Herbert Billing’s Victorian house in Notting Hill has a new tenant.
A knock at the door and a young woman skips across the floor from the windowsill. It’s a particularly wide sill, perfect for perching, which is just what she’s been doing. The girl is drawn to the window. The flat faces south so there is always sun, particularly in July. She likes to look out across the garden, along the street, and to feed the sparrows who have started to visit her for breadcrumbs. She wonders too at the strange dark patches on the sill, almost like cherry stains, that refuse to remain hidden beneath the coat of fresh white paint.
Edie Burchill opens the door and is surprised and pleased to see her mother standing there. Meredith hands her a sprig of honeysuckle and says, ‘I saw it growing on a fence and couldn’t resist bringing you some. Nothing brightens a room quite like honeysuckle, don’t you think? Have you a vase?’
Edie hasn’t, not yet, but she does have an idea. A glass jar, the sort that might once have been used to hold jam, was turned up during the renovation and is sitting now by the basin. Edie fills it with water and puts the sprig inside, pops it on the windowsill where it will catch some sun. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she says. ‘He didn’t come with you today?’
‘He’s discovered Dickens.
‘Ah, well then,’ says Edie. ‘I’m afraid you’ve really lost him now.’
Meredith reaches inside her bag and pulls a pile of paper from within, shakes it above her head.
‘You’ve finished it!’ says Edie, clapping her hands.
‘I have.’
‘And this is my copy?’
‘I’ve had it bound especially.’
Edie grins and takes the manuscript from her mother. ‘Congratulations – what a feat!’
‘I was going to wait until we saw you tomorrow,’ Meredith says, flushing, ‘but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted you to be the first to read it.’
‘I should think so! What time’s your class?’
‘Three.’
‘I’ll walk with you,’ says Edie. ‘I’m on my way to visit Theo.’
Edie opens the door and holds it for her mother. She’s about to follow when she remembers something. She’s meeting Adam Gilbert later for a drink to celebrate the publication of Pippin Books’
She turns quickly, and for a split second sees two figures on the sill. A man and a woman, close enough that their foreheads might be touching. She blinks and they’re gone. Nothing left to see but the spill of sunlight across the sill.
It is not the first time. It happens occasionally, the shift on her peripheral vision. She knows it’s just the play of sunshine on the whitewashed walls but Edie is fanciful and lets herself imagine that it’s something more. That once upon a time, a happy couple lived together in the flat that is now hers. That they were the ones who left the cherry stains on her sill. That it was their happiness that soaked into the walls of the flat.
For everyone who visits says the same thing, that the room has a good feeling about it. And it’s true. Edie can’t explain it, but there is a good feeling in the attic; it is a happy place.
‘Are you coming, Edie?’
It’s Meredith, poking her head around the door, anxious not to be late for the writing class she loves so much.
‘Coming.’ Edie snatches up
The door closes behind her, leaving the ghostly lovers alone once more in the quiet and the warm.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to everyone who read and commented on early drafts of
