The Mercer's House (Northern Gothic Book 1) (19 page)

She nodded, and he gave her a hug, then said goodnight and left. Zanna didn’t bother getting undressed, but simply swept the various items she’d left on the bed onto the floor and then crawled under the covers. The people in the street had all dispersed now and the place was silent. Zanna lay awake for a long time, staring into the darkness, her mind a confused jumble of thoughts and sensations. Her hands and knees smarted and her cheek was throbbing, and she had a headache from the crying. Perhaps Garrett was right: perhaps it was best to leave Elsbury and never come back. She’d never see Will again, but he obviously wasn’t good for her in her current mental state, however much she ached for him—especially since there was a possibility he might have been doing his best to frighten the life out of her. She wanted to hate Garrett for pointing out the obvious, but her logical mind was forced to admit that he was right: if she hadn’t been doing all these things herself, then it must have been the Devereuxes trying to scare her off. Will couldn’t have put the seagull on her bed, as he had been with her for most of the afternoon, but it hurt to think he might have been responsible for the emails and the phone calls, and for her terror on the beach.

If she hadn’t been doing all these things herself
. The thought ran round and round in her head, refusing to be pushed away. Garrett couldn’t have known it, but he had tapped into Zanna’s darkest fear: that she was doomed to follow in the footsteps of Helen—Helen, who had lost control of her mind and been taken away against her will, and who had spent most of her youth in institutions, when other people her age were out getting jobs, falling in love, having fun. Helen, who’d had a baby and found happiness at last, only to go missing and never be seen again. Zanna had never spoken of her fear to anyone, but it was there, lurking in the background, every time she swallowed one of her tablets. How could she be sure that what the doctor had called a temporary depression wasn’t something more serious? What if the voices on the beach were more than just a trick of the acoustics under the rocks? What if she really was having delusions that somebody was trying to harm her? What if she was going mad?

The questions hung there in her mind, but no answers came. At that moment she felt terribly alone and half-wished she’d let Garrett stay with her. He would have been only too happy to hold her, comfort her, and there would have been no need to tell him that she wished he were someone else. What was Will doing now, she wondered, back at the Mercer’s House? Was he lying awake, thinking of her as she was thinking of him? Or was he congratulating himself on having driven her away before she could find out his secrets? Either way—whether he was mad or she was—he was out of bounds to her now. She turned over onto her side, and stared unhappily at the dim light that came under the door from the corridor outside until at last she fell into an uncomfortable sleep.

‘S
O DID they know Helen was mentally ill?’ said Garrett. ‘Did they say anything about it?’

Zanna had been staring absently out of the car window at the roadworks, but roused herself at the question.

‘I don’t think they did, you know,’ she said. ‘It was a bit weird. We were all talking about her and you’d think it would have come up in conversation, but they never mentioned it at all.’

‘What, not even a hint?’

‘Well, Janella called her mad—batty, was the word she used—but she didn’t seem to have any basis for saying that. She just said she thought Helen was mentally unstable. She didn’t mention it to Alexander, but she thought he probably didn’t know. And when I talked to Alexander I was listening out for it because obviously I knew about it, but he didn’t say anything that made me think he knew. He just trotted out the story of how Helen said she’d been abused by her family—which she wasn’t. And of course, I didn’t want to mention it because
they
weren’t mentioning it, and I didn’t really know how to introduce the subject. I mean, if she’d been trying to live a normal life it’s possible she never told Alexander when she married him, and it was a pretty big piece of news for me to break all those years later. I mean, what was I supposed to say? “Oh, by the way, you do know your wife was forcibly detained in a mental institution for several years before you met her, don’t you?” It would have been a bit embarrassing if I’d come out with it and they
hadn’t
known.’

‘Yes. And I can see why she mightn’t have told him. It is the kind of thing that might put someone off. You know—finding out your wife-to-be hallucinates googly-eyed monsters in her spare time. They’d be a bit of an unwanted presence at the dinner table.’

‘I’m glad to hear you take mental illness seriously,’ said Zanna tartly, and he grinned.

‘Sorry. I do, really I do. As you can see, the bloke in front of us is quite clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic and in no condition to be in control of a car, so I’m taking it seriously and keeping well back, in case he suddenly decides he’d rather drive in reverse.’

Zanna gave up and turned to look out of the window again.

‘Alison Maudsley knew as well, I think,’ she said after a minute.

‘Yes, she did, didn’t she? She kept it quiet, though,’ said Garrett. ‘I wonder why.’

‘Loyalty, I imagine. Helen was much better, and obviously she didn’t want people to know if she didn’t even tell Alexander, and she tended to turn against people if she thought they’d betrayed her.’

‘It must have been a confused place, the inside of Helen’s head,’ said Garrett. ‘I’m surprised she could cope with a child.’

The same thing had crossed Zanna’s mind many times, but she made no comment.

‘Do you really think they’re dead?’ she said.

Garrett looked across at her.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe I was talking rubbish. I’d had a few drinks last night and I never meant to get into all that stuff. I have no idea what happened to them. Look, if you still want to find them I’ll do some research for you. What with her mental health issues she might have been under the care of a psychiatrist, or at least a GP. I don’t know what the facilities are like in Elsbury, but maybe there’s some record of where she went.’

‘I’m not sure I want you snooping around in her medical records,’ said Zanna. ‘I’m not particularly happy you went looking for her in the first place. These things are supposed to be confidential. It’s not exactly ethical, what you did.’

‘No,’ he conceded. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just in the habit of looking stuff up if I want to know it.’

‘Looking stuff up? By that I presume you mean bribing some spotty sixteen-year-old to hack into the system for you.’

‘Without those spotty sixteen-year-olds we’d never break any important stories,’ he said. ‘People doing naughty things would be able to keep on doing naughty things without being found out. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re right. As a matter of fact I
had
been thinking of doing what I told you not to, and asking Corbin whether he knew where Helen had gone, but I forgot.’

‘That’s a pity. Still, as you said, if he’s kept the secret for twenty-five years he’s hardly likely to give it away now, is he? Especially if he’s the one who killed her.’

Zanna gave Garrett a reproachful look.

‘He’s not well,’ she said.

‘There was nothing wrong with him twenty-five years ago,’ he said. ‘You can’t let pity get in the way of these things.’

‘No, but I don’t like it. To be honest, I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t started all this. All I wanted to do was find my aunt, but nothing good’s come of it so far. I should have left well alone. It’s not like my dad will ever know.’

‘But she’s important to you,’ said Garrett. ‘OK, then, let’s start from the beginning. The Devereuxes have been no help, so let’s forget them and try something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, I don’t know. There are lots of things we could do. Give me a day or two to think. If nothing else, we can do a bit more digging online to see if they did go to Canada. Or somewhere else, even.’

‘I hope they did,’ said Zanna quietly. It was better than the alternative.

They sat in silence for a while, then Garrett said:

‘By the way, what did whatshisface say about the gallery thing?’

‘Will? He said they’d probably get back to me next week.’

‘Did they seem keen?’

‘It’s difficult to tell. I suppose they must have been, or Lou wouldn’t have come down to Elsbury to meet me. But I don’t know whether I made a good impression—and besides, she said they prefer local artists, and four hundred miles away is hardly that, is it?’

‘Will you accept if they offer you representation?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Zanna, surprised. ‘It’s a really good opportunity, and it’s not like the Tate are knocking down my door, is it?’

‘Even if they want you to move to Edinburgh?’

‘That’s a big if.’

‘But would you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘You know it wouldn’t be a good idea, don’t you?’ he said, throwing her a significant look.

‘If you’re talking about the whole emails thing, you needn’t bother. If the purpose of all those tricks was to frighten me off, then Will is hardly going to want to show my paintings in his gallery, is he? He’ll want me to stay as far away from him as possible in case I start asking questions about Helen again, in which case the issue of me moving to Edinburgh doesn’t arise.’

‘True,’ he said. They were silent for a few minutes, then he said, ‘I spoke to Adam yesterday, by the way. He was asking after you.’

‘Was he?’ said Zanna. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘I said you were fine, of course. But after that I couldn’t get a word in, because he was rabbiting on about Ellie and the pregnancy and everything. I think he’s got baby brain.’

‘I take it he’s excited, then.’

‘Excited? You’d think he was the first man ever to get his wife up the duff. He’s stopped buying car magazines and started obsessively reading pushchair reviews instead. I swear he spent five minutes talking about dual suspension and automatic braking systems in the context of something called a Dinky Ladybird.’

‘I should give Ellie a call,’ said Zanna dully, although the idea didn’t appeal. After the first few ugly weeks when Adam had confessed what had been going on, she’d been too proud to continue making a fuss, and had metaphorically shaken hands with Ellie and admitted gracious defeat, then gone away to lick her wounds. But the friendship hadn’t lasted—couldn’t have lasted under the circumstances—and now they were reduced to bright, cheery conversations about nothing at all whenever they met, and awkward promises to meet up for a girlie night out soon, which would never happen. Zanna was over the breakup with Adam now—had been for months, she realized—but she was still upset at how it had come between her and Ellie. They’d been friends since the first day of primary school, and even though they’d gone to different colleges and followed very different career paths, still they’d stayed in contact, and had shared a flat together when they both found themselves working in London. Ellie had been the quiet one with the steady job, while Zanna was the one with the chaotic, messy life, who was going to be a famous artist one day. But then Zanna met Adam and suddenly everything changed, and within months they were planning their wedding, and Zanna was looking forward to settling down, right up until the day Adam had come home and told her that he was in love with Ellie and the wedding was off.

The whole thing had shaken her confidence badly, and now, just when she’d started to feel better, and as if she had something to look forward to, her confidence had been knocked again by what had happened in Elsbury. Garrett was right: the sooner she got back home to the familiar surroundings of London, the better. She had friends there, people who would look out for her. Everywhere else was frightening and unknown, and she needed a few days to decide whether she was ready for it.

6th August, 1989

I
CAN’T
take it any more. Rowan and I have to leave before it all gets out of control. Will got the gun today and threatened Rowan with it. He denied it afterwards, and said he’d just been playing and wanted to show it to Rowan, but I saw it with my own eyes—saw him take the old flintlock rifle that Jonas Humble used to kill his wife and her lover, and point it at Rowan. I was dusting the hall while they were playing in the living-room, when I heard Rowan giggling and saying ‘I want it,’ and I turned to see that Will had the gun levelled at him. He looked up, and I saw there was a red light in his eyes, and I heard the rasping voice saying again that we weren’t wanted, and that Rowan would be dead soon, and then the voice went away and Will said, ‘Bang!’—just like that, in his normal voice, and laughed. I ran in and snatched the gun off him and he immediately turned sullen again and stamped off to his room, and I dropped the gun and gave Rowan the biggest hug, and promised we’d get away from all this. He didn’t understand, of course. He said, ‘Are we going away, Mummy? But will we come back again?’ He’s happy enough, it’s clear. He hasn’t had to live with the voices torturing him for months, like I have. If only I can get away from the Mercer’s House, then the voices will leave me alone, I know it.