She moves amongst the jumble of furniture – a marble dining table here, a few gramophone cabinets there – considering in which of her several hiding places she’ll place the box this time. Not satisfied, she makes an abrupt turn and leaves the vast space in darkness once again.
A low, moaning wind is whipping up, foretelling a cold night. As she passes the kitchen table she grabs the letter and then takes the box upstairs to her office. Just as she sets it down on her desk, she hears the harsh melody of keys at the front door. Quickly now she retrieves a screwdriver from her desk drawer and kneels down to an unused electrical socket, which she unscrews. The phials are gleaming more brilliantly with light than before: the liquid appears alive, as if it’s moving up and down in the glass. Clovis breathes more deeply as she places each phial into the specially padded space in the wall behind the socket. She keeps a cautious eye on the door while her fingers probe. Her lips part as she reaches deep into the recess of the wall until all twenty-one phials are secure. After she replaces the fixture, the empty box is stored in a small Burmese chest beneath her desk. There’s a knock at her office door.
‘I’m home,’ Willa announces through the door.
‘Good. Light a fire downstairs.’
‘Yes. I will as soon as I …’
‘Now.’
Behind the door, the girl closes her eyes for a moment before she speaks again.
‘All right.’
Clovis sends two texts, each with the same message:
Come home. Urgent.
CHAPTER THREE
A gormless drunk sleeps it off in St Martin’s Gardens, oblivious to how many bones he lounges upon. His head rests against one of the tree-eating gravestones that cluster around the north wall in the green space that was once Camden Town’s cemetery.
The sun that never appeared is setting now somewhere behind a wall of cloud. It was either going to be the sisters’ brightest day of the year, or the darkest. Constance blows into her hands and stamps her feet in a futile effort to create warmth. Verity stands frozen. Hidden behind her dark glasses, her eyes are further deadened by the realization that another year’s mountain of hope has evaporated, just like that.
It takes exactly four minutes to walk the paved path that marks the perimeter of the gardens. Sometimes they walk it together, but more often Verity begins at the Camden Street gate and Constance at the Pratt Street entrance where the black iron fencing encloses a few graves. Chest tombs covered in moss rise above the ground and stand surrounded by long grass and overgrowth.
Constance strolls past the almshouses that once offered shelter to forty-two poor women of the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Verity walks in the opposite direction of her sister by the north wall. She is familiar with each gravestone, many so worn and old that the inscriptions have faded completely away, as if erased by a severe hand.
The sisters wait. For an hour they pace, they sit on the edge of the bench and feel their hearts in their throats whenever anyone enters the gardens. They perch, ready to fly to him. They search the faces each time in such earnest, and each time they are deflated when in return they are dismissed and ignored.
Another half hour passes. With moist eyes and handkerchiefs, veils of dull undisguised grief cover their faces and accompany their slow steps back to the gates. They had entered them so hopefully, but now they lumber.
Their heads remain lowered until they reach the edge of the gardens where the gravestones look as if they recede into the brick wall. Constance removes a bundle from her bag. She places a small bunch of wild Scottish December heather, tied together with a black tartan bow, at the base of the stone that reads: In Loving Memory of Beatrice ‘Bertie’ MacFarlane. Died 1844. The wild heather’s purple blush against the pale, grey stone brings warmth to the lonely corner.
‘Dear Bertie,’ Constance says.
Verity crosses herself.
Dusk is finished; it is fully dark. Verity pulls her sister away, towards the gates, but Constance looks back once more. She notices a movement in the dark, a man, and for an instant her breath quickens and she reaches for Verity. But no, it is only the awakened drunk who comes towards them, looking stunned that he’s still alive.
In Camden Town’s evening rush hour, the snaking cars bounce light on the eclectic mix of architecture. Drivers poke their heads out of their windows with impatience, buses groan with the weight of their passengers. The sisters bend to the mighty power of London’s workforce in a silent daze, each inhabiting their disappointment and the knowledge that they will fret through the coming year.
A bitter wind carries the scent of a cocktail of restaurant foods. The music of a violin rises above the traffic. The sisters reach the corner, where at Camden Town Station, the DJ with the disconcerting plastic grandpa mask has been replaced by a group of professional carollers. The haunting words and melody of ‘Coventry Carol’ and the dark voice of the violin cuts through the sisters today like no other.
Constance feels Verity begin to crumble beside her. She clasps her arm firmly and pulls her up.
‘Hold up, sister, hold up. We’re almost home.’
Verity regains her balance and steps quickly away from the music; she can bear no more.
Their blue and lavender capes sweep around the corner, leaving the road that curves towards the Regent’s Park and its beautiful landscape, which tonight seems miles away instead of a few metres. They pass the pub and the
