A Half Forgotten Song (37 page)

She stared at her softly lit reflection for a long time. She stared into the eyes of a young woman, a beauty, a mistress covered in the gifts of a lover.

“I am Dimity Hatcher,” she said quietly, watching the way her lips moved, how full and soft they looked. She pictured Charles’s lips touching them, imagined how they had felt to him. Her pulse beat between her thighs. “I am Dimity Hatcher,” she said again. Then: “I, Dimity Hatcher.” She paused, pulled the pale scarf a little lower over her brow, like a bride. The silver coins glinted. “I, Dimity Hatcher, take thee, Charles Henry Aubrey . . .” Her throat stung as she said the words aloud, and when she heard them her heart thumped so hard that it shook her. She cleared her throat carefully, and spoke a little louder. “I, Dimity Hatcher, take thee, Charles Henry Aubrey, to be my wedded husband . . .” There was a sharp gasp from behind her, and in dismay Dimity moved her eyes across the mirror and saw the reflection of Celeste, standing in the doorway.

There was a dreadful, electric pause as their eyes met; a frozen moment in which Dimity felt the blood drain from her face. Celeste’s mouth hung a little open; her eyes went so wide that the whites gleamed. “I was only—” Dimity started to say, but Celeste cut her off.

“Take off my things,” she whispered. Her voice was colder than midwinter. “Take them off. Now.” With shaking hands, Dimity struggled to comply, but she was not fast enough. In three quick strides Celeste was upon her, pulling the scarf from her head so roughly that it took a clump of hair with it, fumbling at the clasp of the necklace, tugging at it so that it cut into the skin of Dimity’s neck.

“Celeste, please! Don’t—you’ll break it!” she cried, but Celeste’s face was alight with a fury she had never seen before, and she would not stop until the necklace came free. It snapped and flew apart, the pearls hitting the floor like hailstones.

“How dare you? How
dare
you?” she spat. “
Coucou! Coucou dans le nid!
You are a cuckoo child!”

“I didn’t mean anything by it!” Dimity cried, tears of fear blurring her eyes. Celeste grabbed her by the wrist with a grip like a vise and put her face so close to Dimity’s that she could feel the woman’s breath, feverishly hot.

“Don’t you lie to me, Mitzy Hatcher! Don’t you
dare
lie to me! Have you fucked him?
Have you?
Tell me!”

“No! I promise, I haven’t—” Without warning, Celeste slapped her hard across the face, flat-handed but with the full swing of her arm. Dimity had no time to brace herself and was flung from the stool, which clattered onto its side. She hit her head on the edge of the table and felt an explosion of tingling pain. She put her hands over her face and started sobbing.

“Liar!” Celeste screamed. “Oh, I am a
fool
. How big a fool you must think me! Now, get up. Get up!”

“Leave me alone!” Dimity cried.

“Leave you alone? Leave you to watch him and covet him and tempt him away? Leave you to steal everything that is dear to me? No, I won’t. Get up,” Celeste ordered again, and her voice was so dreadful that Dimity didn’t dare disobey. She scrambled to her feet and backed away from the woman. Celeste was shaking from head to foot; her fists were clenched and her stare was like a thunderstorm.

“Now
go
! Get out of my sight—I cannot look at you! Get out!” she shouted. Blindly, Dimity fled. She stumbled down the stairs, almost falling; wrenched open the huge door and ran away down the dusty street, not daring to look back. In seconds, the city had enveloped her, drawing her onwards, deep into its twisted heart.

CHAPTER NINE

T
here was rain dripping down the chimney, making little puffs in the cold ash piled in the hearth and shiny black splotches on the grate. Rare for that to happen—normally the rain came in off the sea, blown at an angle over the land, and was whisked over the cottage roof. Such straight, resolute, constant rain came only a few times in the year. Dimity stared at the drops as they landed, heard a dull note as each one struck; not a tune but a syllable, she realized. She strained her ears, waited fearfully. Three more came, closer together this time; unmistakable.
Él-o-die.
She held her breath, hoping she was wrong and hadn’t heard it. A single drip fell, all alone, and hope flared in her chest. But then three again.
Él-o-die.
With a cry Dimity turned abruptly away from the hearth, spinning around fast enough to see a shadow against the living room wall. Upside down; doing a handstand.

“Élodie?” she whispered, pulling her eyes from left to right, searching every corner of the room. Quick, sharp, clever Élodie. A wonder she hadn’t come back before; a wonder she’d never found a way, until now. The charm in a chimney stack was no match for a determined child, one not easily fooled. A frown on a young, soft forehead, a daisy tucked into black hair. A pouting lower lip, a will to fight, to argue, to challenge.

Dimity fled from her. The shadow kicked its legs away from the wall, righted itself, came after her on light, careless feet. “It wasn’t me!” Dimity said, hurrying into the kitchen, casting the words over her shoulder. She was certain of this, and yet not. The words sounded right, sounded true, but underneath them Valentina was laughing, and there was a knowing look in her eye. And worse than that, far worse: a look of something like respect. A grudging, unvoiced respect.
But it wasn’t me!
She flicked the switch on the kitchen wall, but the darkness stayed; the bulb, covered in dust and spider dirt, was wholly lifeless at the end of its wire. Dimity caught her breath, fear shaking her fingers, turning her gut to water.

There she stood, in darkness, pressed up against the kitchen countertop with nowhere else to go, except outside. But out there, the storm and the cliffs and the sea were waiting. She stared out through the window at a night as dark as Élodie’s hair. Faint white streaks of troubled water along the shore; rain clouds smothering the moon and stars. She saw headlights lancing down to Southern Farm, saw lights come on inside the house and then, not long afterwards, saw the car leave again. There were people close by, there was life, but it was another world, one where she did not belong. Outsiders always wanted to come farther in than you invited them. They wanted to come all the way in, see everything, know everything. Spreading themselves into every corner like a smell. Like Zach, who’d brought memories of Charles with him. She’d risked everything to revel in them for a while, but that world was not hers anymore. She’d left it a long time ago, for a prison of her own making—The Watch. But that prison had been a haven, for a very long time. A place filled with love, once Valentina had gone.
You’re so stupid, Dimity!
said Élodie, using the patter of rain on the window for a voice.
It wasn’t me,
Dimity told her silently. A half-forgotten song crept into her throat, from a time and a place a lifetime ago. One she did not understand, one she never had; the tune as elusive as a warm desert breeze.
Allahu akbar . . . Allahu akbar . . .
This waking dream kept hold of her, all through the night.

Z
ach set off for the watch slowly. He had been doing everything slowly since his visit to Annie Langton, from driving to eating to thinking, because everything was smothered, half asphyxiated, by what he now knew. That Hannah was the one who had been selling the pictures of Dennis; that she had known about them all along, and lied to him. He thought of the sheep pictures of hers that he’d seen in her tiny, bare shop. They were good, but the Dennis portraits were something else. Was she good enough to pass a drawing off as an Aubrey? He shook his head impatiently. But what, then? Where was she getting them? With a seasick feeling inside, he thought about James Horne, and the boat Hannah had been watching; her knowledge of the coastline and its waters. Something occurred to him then, as he thought about the payment he’d seen Hannah making to James the same day she’d settled up her bar tab with Pete Murray. He took out his phone and checked the date, then stopped walking before he’d descended any farther towards the sea, where mobile phone signal disappeared entirely. The Christie’s sale had been four days ago. He texted Paul Gibbons at the auction house.

Did Dennis sell? Mind telling me how much for? Funds all paid and cleared without hitch?
He waited impatiently for a reply, sitting on a bench that looked out over the cliffs and listening to his thoughts churn like the distant waves. Ten minutes later, his phone beeped.
V curious about all the sudden interest. Yes, sold—six point five. Buyer in Wales, all funds cleared. Paul
. Six and a half thousand pounds. Zach wanted to feel angry with her, because she had played him for a fool. But instead he felt betrayed. He had thought that he knew her. He had been falling for her. Now everything had changed, and it cut him to the quick.

Dimity Hatcher seemed too distracted to notice his distress, however. She was so agitated that he made the tea himself again, while she paced and sat and rose again, her skinny elbows waving as her fingers fiddled constantly, picking dirt from under her nails, picking at dead skin, scratching. In the end, even lost in thought, Zach couldn’t ignore it.

“Dimity, are you all right? What’s wrong? You seem . . . nervous today.”

“Nervous? Maybe, maybe,” she muttered. “Check that hearth charm, would you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The one you hung up for me . . . I can’t check it. I can’t touch it—it was you that hung it, you that cast it. Just see if it’s still there, see that it’s safe,” she pleaded.

“All right.” He ducked into the inglenook and peered up the flue, where the misshapen heart was hanging. He wrinkled his nose. “It doesn’t smell too good, but it’s there.”

“That don’t matter, the smoke’ll see to that before long. Just as long as it’s there?”

“It’s there.”

Dimity frowned and chewed her lip for a moment. “Then . . . she can’t mean me no harm, can she?” she said quietly, sounding puzzled. “She can’t have come in anger, or that’d keep her out, wouldn’t it?”

“Who can’t have come, Dimity?” said Zach.

“The little one. She came back. She was here . . .”

“The little one?” Zach tried to think who she might mean. “Do you mean Élodie?” At the mention of her name, Dimity froze. She stared at Zach with an intense expression that made him suddenly uneasy. “I’ll get the tea, shall I?” he said. He tried to walk past her to the kitchen, but she caught his hands in hers, digging her thumbnails into the palms of his hands. He could feel the stiff, filthy wool of her red mittens, and his skin crawled away from them. A long strand of white hair fell across her eyes, but she ignored it.

“She’d dead. Élodie’s dead,” she whispered. Zach swallowed, and for a second, he almost thought he heard a question in the words, a plea for confirmation.

“Yes. I know,” he said. Dimity nodded quickly, and seemed to shrink back from him. She let go of his hand, and let both of her own fall lifelessly to her sides.

Zach escaped into the kitchen and took a deep, steadying breath as he poured the tea into two mugs. For the first time, he had the unsettling feeling that Dimity Hatcher was not quite in the same room as him. Not quite in the same world. There had been other times, earlier on, that he’d been sure she was lying to him. Just now, he’d also begun to doubt the things she clearly believed to be true. He shook the feeling off. Finding out about Hannah’s duplicity had made him doubt everything and everyone in Blacknowle. He tried to smile as he went back into the sitting room.

“We’d have wed, if that little girl hadn’t died. We’d have wed if she’d lived, I know it,” Dimity said, ignoring the tea he put beside her.

“Élodie’s death . . . put everything on hold, did it? It must have been a very hard time for Charles . . . From what you’ve told me, and from what I’ve read, he was a devoted father. Loving, if slightly absent at times. Was it simply because of Élodie’s death that he went off to war, in the end?” There was a long silence after Zach spoke, and then he thought he could hear a faint tune, the quietest of hummed songs, a wordless lament, coming from Dimity. “It must have been . . . very upsetting,” he said. “I know I’ve read somewhere how she died . . . was it flu? I can’t remember now. Did children still die of flu in the 1930s?” he muttered, almost to himself, since Dimity’s attention was still elsewhere.

“Flu?” she said, turning back towards him. “No, it was . . .” She shut her mouth abruptly, moistened her lips with a quick flick of her tongue. “Flu. Yes. That was it. Her stomach—gastric flu. Poor girl, poor girl; carried off . . .” She shook her head in dismay and sat still for a moment. “She was sometimes cruel to me, was Élodie. She didn’t like the fact that her father loved me. She was a jealous child, very jealous,” she said. “Celeste’s favorite, oh yes. A mother shouldn’t have one, but she did. She did. Élodie took after her, you see. She was the spitting image of her mother. She would have been very beautiful, if she’d lived . . .” Dimity’s voice trailed into the faintest of whispers, and Zach had to lean forwards to hear her.

“Is that why Celeste disappeared, after her death? Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows. She blew away, on the breeze . . . he asked me, too; thought I might know. But I didn’t—I don’t. I
don’t
!”

“All right, it’s all right,” Zach said soothingly. Dimity’s eyes roamed the room, her mouth made the shape of unspoken words. Zach paused before speaking. “How did Delphine cope? Were they close, the two sisters?” Dimity’s eyes came to rest upon him, and they were awash with tears.

“Close?” she said hoarsely. “Close as only sisters can be.”

They were both silent for a long moment, and Zach pictured his portrait of Delphine, hanging next to her mother and Mitzy on the wall of his gallery. He had found one of the three alive and well, but the other two were still lost in the past, vanished like mist. He sighed. Blacknowle suddenly seemed deep and distant and full of secrets, and however much he wanted to solve its riddles, it didn’t seem fair to harry an old lady to do so.