I didn’t know where Mrs Wiggs was, she could have been anywhere in the house, so I opted for the fastest exit: the front door was mere feet away from the bottom of the stairs, and from there it would only take a minute to reach the end of the road.
As I ran down the stairs, I made the mistake of glancing into the front dining room. Thomas’s black medical bag was on the table. He might come home at any second, but the pragmatist in me said there could be money in his bag. I had no plan for how I would get to Reading, and no money for the train. I would rummage through his bag and give myself to the count of five; if nothing came of it, I would go.
I reached into his bag and straightaway put my hand on something damp in the bottom corner. When I withdrew my fingers, they were wet and red with blood. I delved back in, disgusted but curious, and pulled out a parcel wrapped in bleeding wet newspaper. Inside it was a white cloth, seeping blood. I unwrapped it and into the palm of my hand fell what looked like a soft muscle. It seemed to me very much like a human organ. Was there more in the bag? I felt inside it once again, and nearly sliced my thumb on the thin, sharp blade of a long knife. I laid the knife on the table alongside the bloody package and looked up towards the door. Standing there was Mrs Wiggs. I had forgotten to count to five.
She had blocked the doorway with her body, and her hands were resting on either side of the doorframe. ‘Susannah,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper. We’d been getting on so much better, but you really should be in bed.’
‘You have to let me leave,’ I said. There might have been the ticking of a clock, or it might have been inside my head; it might have been an alarm that was telling me to run and push past her now, because I knew, as she did, she would never let me go.
‘Thomas will be home shortly with your physician. Dr Shivershev wants to see you for himself, he wants to see how ill you are. You have to go back to bed. Upstairs, now!’
‘I’m not going back up there.’
‘Thomas gave clear instructions—’
‘Oh, stop it! I can’t bear it any more. I know what you are. You are a murderer, and Thomas is nothing but a fraud and a criminal. You have lied for long enough. It is you who are his mother, not Lady Lancaster. You let me go now, and I will keep your dirty little secrets. That is the deal I will make with you.’
She held me in her owl stare. There was a drumming, a dull thud. I could not tell if it was my own heart I could hear beating, or hers. I looked at the organ in the bloodstained cloth on the table and picked up the silver knife lying beside it.
‘I could ask what your son is doing with human organs, and no doubt the police will have their own theories on that. I will keep this to myself as well, only let me go.’
‘Oh, you’re wrong!’ She rushed forward, and I backed away.
I held the knife up with the point towards her. She came to a stop with her hands on the back of a chair.
‘Thomas is not a criminal! He is a loving boy. You don’t know anything!’ She stepped forward again and I moved back, the knife in front of me, pointed at her chest, inches between us.
‘Let me go,’ I said.
She shook her head and I knew we were both prepared to hurt the other. Mrs Wiggs would never let me go; she could never let Thomas down.
She rushed at me and I waved the knife; she tried to block it with her hand and I slashed her with it. It was a strange thing to find myself instinctively behaving as a criminal would. A second’s action, a quick flash, a little swipe and the willingness to do anything, and I was changed for ever.
We both gasped. She stared at the blood dripping down from her palm and onto the carpet, held it with her other hand and turned to me, seemingly not in any pain.
‘You know, this behaviour of yours will only further strengthen Thomas’s plan,’ she said. ‘Dr Shivershev will be sure to agree now. You are only proving that you really are dangerous.’
‘And when I tell whoever will listen that you murdered the Lancaster boy and replaced him with your own? You can’t hide being colour-blind – what will you do if they test you both? I can’t be the only one to have had doubts, to have noticed things. What if Helen has had the same suspicions all these years? Imagine. I’m sure she’ll be keen to inherit everything.’
I was close to the door to the hallway and I had only the front door to get to.
‘If you were a mother, you would understand,’ she said, creeping towards me.
‘No, I would never hurt a baby.’
‘I have never harmed a child in my life!’ she shouted, tears filling her eyes.
‘But you must have.’
‘I never could! The little boy was ailing – they are not robust people, the Lancasters, you only have to look at them to see that money doesn’t buy strength. Helen, the little girl, was well enough, but the boy was sickly from birth. I found him in his crib one morning, blue, already dead. I was so frightened. I was twenty-two years old – a girl! I had left my own boy with the baby farmer. I couldn’t feed both of us any other way. My child’s
