Sometime later, Iris jerked awake. Her heavy head was resting on the open pages of her journal and the ink was smudged in a pool of water. Her eyes had been watering again. Another side effect of age. Having never been one for crying it was particularly galling to be let down in this manner, with her tear ducts leaking away at every breath of wind, particle of dust or, as now, while resting. Iris swiped at her face and carried the ruined notebook upstairs. She left it open on the radiator in the bedroom to dry before lowering herself cautiously into bed. In her mind’s eye, she ran up the stairs and flung herself upon the mattress, but the reality took far longer. Plenty of time to reflect on the strange girl, Bex Adams, and the flurry of emotion her visit had awakened.
You are too old for this nonsense, Iris told herself, but the young Iris, the girl who still lived in her heart and head, ignored that and went on thinking, remembering, anyway. James Farrier. Iris hadn’t thought his name in many years. She had been seventeen years old when she’d fallen in love for the first and only time in her life. At eighteen, she’d very nearly married that same love, but her affliction (as her mother called it) had changed everything.
It was better, of course. Not only did she know that James Farrier was not the kind-hearted man he had appeared as he courted her, but being a Harper in this small town was a responsibility more easily borne alone. Yes, it would be pleasant, especially now in her dwindling years, to have another pair of hands around the place, but people told secrets more easily to a woman alone. Iris wrote things down, of course, but anyone who knew about her journals trusted that they were in safe hands. If there were a husband in the picture, people might start to worry what was being discussed over the breakfast table, what secrets were swapped in the marital bed. In short, being married would have made Iris more flesh and blood and that would have made people uneasy. Everyone knew that nothing corrupted more quickly.
When Iris called off the wedding, her parents assumed that James had discovered Iris’s affliction and had, as any reasonable man would, changed his mind. ‘It’s the curse,’ her mother had wept. ‘I’m sorry, my darling. If only I could have spared you this.’ It didn’t matter how many times Iris protested that it had been her decision, that her affliction was a gift which had opened her eyes to the true character of her groom-in-waiting.
It didn’t help, of course, that her mother’s gift was getting stronger and more difficult to bear. Every time someone threw something of emotional value away, it reappeared like the proverbial bad penny. No wonder she couldn’t see it as anything other than a curse.
Iris’s abiding memory of her mother was of her holding a white handkerchief in front of her mouth to disguise whatever item was emerging. Sometimes she’d cough violently, the watch or ring or coin lodged in her throat for a frightening moment, and sometimes you’d just see a minute change of expression before the handkerchief was raised and whatever had appeared was swiftly relocated to a pocket. The physical repulsion paled in comparison to the humiliation. Iris’s mother was a proper lady and this messy and unnatural behaviour was mortifying.
When Iris’s gift showed itself and she began to feel wicked compulsions, such as the intense need to give away her best dress, she wasn’t entirely surprised. While part of her was relieved that she wasn’t gagging on fob watches and cast-away love notes, she wished it was something she could keep to herself. Iris couldn’t hide her compulsions behind a lacy handkerchief. She would feel the need to give somebody an item as an itch in her mind and that feeling would spread over her skin, driving her to distraction, until she fulfilled her task.
She’d loved James Farrier, though. No matter what the truth of him turned out to be, her body and soul called out for him and it took many years for the longing to fade. She’d witnessed him committing an act of breathtaking cruelty, one which her rational self could not deny or excuse. It didn’t stop her irrational weakness from trying, though. ‘It really had just been a game gone wrong,’ her irrational soul said. ‘He didn’t mean it.’ Worse yet, ‘He’d never do it again. He learned his lesson.’
Iris liked to pretend that she would’ve kept an eye on
