(1990) Sweet Heart (36 page)

She slammed the attic door shut, ran over to Ben and pressed the latch of the window, but it was rusted. She put more pressure on it and the lever snapped off. She rammed the glass with her shoulder and it exploded outwards, the rotted frame snapping with it, and she nearly fell. She grabbed the sill, steadying herself, feeling a draught, the air cooling her face. She gulped the fresh air greedily, then coughed; it was thick with smoke. She looked down but the smoke and the darkness and the tears in her eyes made it impossible to see anything.

Ben had his paws up beside her, whining, scratching. She leaned out, cupped her hands over her mouth and screamed: ‘Help! Help! Fire! Help!’ Her voice petered into a hoarse croak drowned by the crackling and splitting roar of the flames below.

The floor lurched and she was thrown off her feet to the boards. They were hot. Plaster and rotted wood rained down from the ceiling.

Out. Got to get out. She scrambled across the
slanting floor to the packing cases, dug inside the one she had opened. A pair of jeans, another. She knotted the legs together, tested them. It was getting hotter. She rummaged for something else, something strong, her old combat jacket, pulled that out, found an arm and tied it to a leg of the jeans.

Ben ran to the doorway, barking. Someone was standing there, just a silhouette through the smoke. It was help. Fire Brigade. She was OK, they were both OK. Relief flooded through her. ‘Over here!’ she shouted. ‘Coming ov —’ The smoke choked her voice, swallowed up the figure.

She dropped the clothes and ran to the door. Then she stopped in stark terror as the smoke cleared enough for her to see that it was a woman standing there, smart, elegant, in riding gear, hatless, her black hair hanging carelessly across her face.

Nancy Delvine.

Smart, elegant, Nancy Delvine.

Ben whined, pawing at the ground as if he was trying to back away but could not. Smoke jetted up around him. As she moved towards him, she felt the floor sagging. ‘Ben!’ she yelled.

There was a loud crack, then the sound of splintering wood. Ben looked at Charley for a brief instant.

‘Ben!’

He lurched, drunkenly, one step towards Charley, then plunged through the floor into a volcano of flame.

Charley threw herself forward. ‘No! Ben!’ The floor dropped several inches. Flames leapt into the rafters, raced along the beams and streaked over her head, showering hot sparks on to her.

The floor rocked, sagged more, as if it were suspended on slender threads. Nancy Delvine was gliding towards her, the flames eating up the floor behind.

Charley yelled out in fury and in agony. ‘My dog. Get my dog, you bitch!’ She pushed herself on her hands and knees away from the flames and thumped into the wall. She scrabbled to her feet, crouched in terror, staring up into Nancy Delvine’s eyes, hard, venomous. Even over the smoke and flames she could smell the sweet musky perfume.

Manifestation. Apparition. You are nothing. Nothing.

Nancy Delvine smiled, came closer.

‘What do you want?’ Charley said.

Closer.

Nancy Delvine spoke. It was the same cold arrogant voice she had heard before, in the doorway of Elmwood, in her regression. ‘You killed my dog.’

Closer.

‘And my husband.’

Closer.

‘You destroyed my life.’

Pins and needles surged over Charley in agonising ripples, worse than the heat, much worse. She gritted her teeth against the pain. ‘It wasn’t me. It was my mother.’

Nancy Delvine came closer. ‘You are your mother.’ She smiled again. Then the flames swallowed her, and she was gone.

The floor tilted, tipping Charley forwards. Frantically she grabbed the window sill, hung from it. Flames stung her flesh like whiplashes.

She heaved herself on to the sill, her eyes bulging in terror at the ground, now lit by the glow of the flames through the smoky darkness. It was a long way down. Her clothes were smouldering. Gripping the sill with her hands, she began lowering herself down the outside, trying to shorten the fall. Her feet dangled, scrabbled, trying to find a hold on the rough walls, but there was
nothing. The sill was hot, crumbling; she closed her eyes. Any moment she would have to do it.

Then a voice yelled. ‘Charley! Wait! Darling! Don’t jump. Hold on!’

Tom’s voice.

Her fingers were slipping, her arms hurt, the pain, the burning, the choking smoke. Easier to let go, to drop, easier to die. Her grip slackened.

She heard the clatter of a ladder and Tom’s voice again. The sill was burning her fingers. The ladder vibrated from his footsteps. She felt his hand on her leg, guiding it across and down, on to the top rung. Flames burst out of the window above her, leaping into the darkness as if they were searching for her, but she did not notice. She could see nothing except Tom’s face in the flaring light.

Alice Hope Witney was born on February 14th. Charley and Tom decided on the middle name Hope because, in a way, her birth had given them both hope for a fresh start.

Alice splashed in the bathtub and gurgled. Charley lifted her out, dried her, and dressed her in her sleep suit. Then she carried her downstairs into the kitchen.

The kitchen was smart, high-tech. Charley had made it as different as possible from the kitchen she had planned for Elmwood. Everything had gone in the fire, every photograph, item of clothing, piece of furniture, book. It was as if her past had been eradicated. She did not mind. In a way, she was glad.

The insurance payout on the fire had been good and they had sold the land to a property developer. Their new home was a large semi-detached house in a tree-lined avenue in Barnes, close to the river. Neither Charley nor Tom had any hankering to live in the country again.

She switched on the television in the living room, sat on the sofa and gave Alice her bottle. Alice had Tom’s hair and his seriousness; at times too serious as if she were already, at eight months old, trying to work everything out. Charley wondered if Alice would ever
one day remember things from the past, the way she herself had.

It was a year now, almost exactly. Some days it seemed a long time ago, just a faded dream; others, it felt like only yesterday. Little things triggered off the memories: the smell of a pipe; a man under the bonnet of a car; the colour of a tie.

She often wondered in quiet moments like now, as night fell outside and the television flickered, what had really happened and how much more there was inside her, locked away, that a hypnotist could get out. But it would have to stay there. Where once she had been so curious to know, now she must try hard to forget.

Some nights she awoke from a nightmare screaming, reliving a part of the horror. Ernest Gibbon might be sitting at the end of the bed, holding Viola Letters’s yellow sou’wester in his hand. Or Hugh, in his sawn-off tie, with an agonised expression on his blackened face. Or Ben padding towards her and, as she reached out, he would plunge through the floorboards into an inferno. Sometimes she saw Nancy Delvine through flames, and as the fire engines roared down the drive, she would clutch Tom and scream, ‘Don’t let them! You mustn’t let them. Leave it; let it burn down!’

The inquests had been the worst part: Viola Letters’s and then Hugh’s. The same coroner both times. Viola Letters’s death he had concluded was an accident. On Hugh’s he had been less positive and recorded an open verdict.

Alice finished her milk and burped, then lay sleepily in her arms. Charley carried her upstairs and tucked her up in her cot. Alice woke up and stretched her hands towards the mobile that hung out of reach above her, plastic bumble bees and butterflies. Charley gave it a twirl and Alice watched the pieces swinging, light
glinting off them. She was fascinated by anything that sparkled.

Charley switched on the pink night light and the baby alarm, and went downstairs to make supper. Tom would be home soon. She took some lamb chops out of the fridge and put a knob of butter in the frying pan. There was a crackle of static through the receiver of the baby alarm, a gurgle, then Alice’s breathing, steady, rhythmic. Asleep.

The garden lit up suddenly. Harsh bright light. The intruder sensor. Charley’s eyes scanned the lawn, the neat flower beds, the greenhouse. A startled cat jumped the fence at the bottom, and she smiled in relief. Butter sizzled in the pan and wisps of steam rose. She glanced out at the garden again; the light was still on, and she felt strangely comforted by the ordinariness of their garden. Normality. Elmwood had never felt normal and maybe that was part of it.

She wondered whether she had really seen the ghost of Commander Letters that day, and the ghost of Nancy Delvine in the burning house, or whether they had been trace memories of people her own mother had seen, that had been passed on to her. This had been Hugh Boxer’s theory, and there had been an article in the press Tom had cut out for her, with a programme on television on the same subject. Science, it seemed, was favouring that same argument.

And yet. You never knew in life; you never really knew. She had been to a couple of libraries and read all she could find on reincarnation. But the more you searched, she began to realise, the larger the riddle became.

Forget it, Tom had said, and that was the right advice. Maybe nature was helping her in its own way. Life had been good the past year. The balance; always a balance. Positive and negative. Yin and Yang. The good
seemed to have followed the bad. Tom was doing well in the partnership. Their marriage had survived, although Hugh had been right when he said that a broken marriage was like a broken glass: you could stick the pieces back together, but you would forever see the cracks.

Laura was getting married again. Their friendship had never recovered. They had exchanged Christmas cards with Julian and Zoe and Zoe had scribbled a note inside saying she would give them a call in the New Year and invite them down for dinner. She never did. Charley was quietly relieved to have had the last link with Elmwood severed.

There was another crackle of static through the alarm, then a sharp clatter, as if someone had given the mobile a push. Except that it was out of Alice’s reach; safely out of reach.

There was a splintering crack. Alice cried.

Charley sprinted out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and into Alice’s room, snapping on the main light. The mobile had broken and was dangling down into the cot. Alice was screaming, panicky, windmilling her arms which were tangled in the cotton threads and tiny opaque shapes.

As Charley leaned over the cot saying, ‘OK! It’s OK, Mummy’s here,’ Alice’s right arm jerked straight up in the air. Charley felt a searing pain in her face and pressed her hand to her cheek, startled. She took it away and saw that her fingertips were smeared with blood.

Alice was motionless in her cot, staring at her. For one fleeting moment Charley saw something in those eyes that terrified her. It was in the blackness of the tiny pupils. As if they carried in them an evil that had come down generations, that had travelled through all time and had brought with it a cunning and a hatred and a sense of victory.

The room went cold as if the baby had drawn all the heat into herself. Claws spiked Charley’s skin; someone stood behind her, pushing her forwards, to the cot. To the thing that was inside it.

‘No. Let me go!’ she screamed, turning.

There was no one. Just the wall. Perspiration fell from her skin as if from slabs of melting ice. Alice’s eyes closed and her head lolled to one side; her tiny balled fist opened and a shard of splintered plastic fell on to the sheet, marking it with blood.

Fear held Charley’s throat and she stood for a moment before she was able to move, to reach down and touch her baby. Then she took Alice’s hand, terrified it might reach out and grab her like a claw. She examined it carefully, but it was unmarked. She picked up the shard, disentangled the remains of the mobile and pulled it free. Alice was sleeping again as if nothing had happened, her breathing settling back into a steady rhythm.

Charley went through to the bathroom and dumped the bits in the waste bin. In the mirror she saw a ribbon of blood trailing down her face. And she saw the fear that was in her own eyes. The disbelief.

She had imagined it.

Tony Ross had said the shock would go on, would manifest itself in odd ways, and strange symptoms, for years to come.

Imagined it.

She pressed a towel against her cheek and went back into the bedroom. Alice was sleeping, her lips curled into a Contented smile. There was a calmness and serenity about her. As Charley watched, her expression altered, then again, her eyes blinking busily, her tiny mouth changing from a smile to a frown to a question, her face like an ever-revolving kaleidoscope, as if she was reacting to things going on deep inside her mind.

Trace memories in her genes. That was all.

Charley hoped.

Dreamer
£
6.99

P
ETER
J
AMES

978-0-7528-7678-8