The Dream House (43 page)

Dan got to his feet. ‘Of course. The bathroom’s at the top of the stairs.’

Upstairs was tiny – two bedrooms and a bathroom that might once have been a boxroom. Some toy building bricks spilled out across the doorway of the smaller bedroom, but the door to what must be Dan’s room was almost closed. In the bathroom Kate dashed water over her hot face and rubbed at the flakes of mascara under her eyes with a damp tissue. The bathroom was as untidy as the rest of the little house, though at least it was clean. The tiles over the bath were hand-painted with fishes and seahorses and seaweed, and a plastic duck resting on its side looked dolefully up at her. The line-up of masculine toiletries was pitiful next to the clump of feminine bottles and jars that filled the shelves and the windowsill. Kate felt confused. Why had Linda not taken them with her? Or Dan not swept them away? She supposed because it was so difficult often to say a relationship was definitely over, that there was no bridge back, even if neither party actually wanted to cross it. She knew things were definitely over with Simon – she had decided that, the evening on the beach at Dunwich, and the lawyer’s letter had nailed the lid on the coffin. But at the same time, so much of her wanted Simon back – desperately. How long would it take for this longing to pass? Months? Years? This was just the beginning for her and for Sam and Daisy – the start of a rocky path that twisted on up, out of sight. She could only hazard one step at a time and hope she wouldn’t slip.

She dabbed her face dry with the corner of a towel and carefully descended the steep staircase. Dan stood watching as she picked up her handbag from the floor of the hall.

‘Bye,’ she said, her smile stronger this time. ‘And thank you. I’ll see you at the house later in the week, won’t I?’ Dan was due to assist with the valuation, to move pictures and furniture as required.

‘Thursday, yes,’ he said, and reached forward to flick back the door-latch. As she moved past him to the door, she felt his hand on her arm.

‘Come and see me anytime,’ he said simply, his eyes gentle. ‘I’m here for you.’

It was the second day of the valuation when Kate recovered the final exercise book containing Agnes’s diary. Robin, Farrell’s book expert, a large ponderous man with a voice trained to a whisper by long service in the silence of the country’s great libraries, had pulled out the Oxfordshire volume of the
Domesday Book
to find the the red notebook caught between its pages.

‘Could this item be of any interest to you?’ he asked Kate as she appeared with some coffee for him. ‘It appears to be of an – ah – personal nature.’

She gave him the coffee in exchange for the book, and as he returned to his task, she sank into Agnes’s chair, almost shivering with excitement. Even before opening it, she knew what the little book must be. How had it got there? Possibly it had got left out of the safe by accident and Agnes had found it and slipped it onto the shelf, meaning to add it to the others next time she opened the safe.

She turned to the first page. The volume started in August, 1928. Kate tried to remember. It must be a month after the previous volume had left off – after Agnes had first met Harry, and Raven had left home.

‘Hi.’ Max appeared in the doorway, a sheaf of papers in one hand. ‘Do we have keys for the display case behind the door of the morning room?’ He had been helping Ursula as she listed the porcelain and the silver. Kate pushed the diary under the cushion and jumped up to go and search for further caches of keys.

The rest of the day she had no time to do more than fit the red book into her handbag. Then, when she got back at tea-time to relieve Michelle, who had been looking after the children all day, she remembered that ages ago she had beaten the tourists and booked tickets to see the latest Harry Potter film at the tiny cinema in Southwold that evening.

Daisy was dancing around in excitement. ‘We had a picnic with Coca Cola. And I lost my tooth, Mummy. The wobbly one. It finally finally came out without me doing anything. We’ve put it under my pillow already.’

Michelle, who was picking up her little pink handbag to go home, put it down again and said, ‘And we found some treasure, didn’t we, Daisy? I almost forgot.’ Daisy nodded but stopped dancing and looked sheepish.

Kate followed Michelle into the kitchen and saw her take something off the dresser. Something on a silver chain. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘My locket. Where on earth . . . ?’ She turned it over in her hands, blowing dust off the photograph, which was so faded she wouldn’t have taken it for Agnes, even now. Relief coursed through her. She looked up at Michelle who read her look of delight.

‘It
is
yours, then. Daisy said it was but I thought it might be the other Mrs Hutchinson’s.’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘When Daisy’s tooth come out she went up and put it under her pillow straight away, but then she come down saying she had lost it, so I went up with her. We couldn’t see it, so I lifted the mattress and it had fallen down onto the wooden bit. Then I saw the necklace.’

After Michelle had gone, Kate asked Daisy, ‘What was it doing in your bed then?’

The little girl hung her head and said, ‘It was ages and ages ago, in your bedroom. I only wanted to look at it. You’re not cross, are you?’

‘Daisy, you must have known I was looking for it.’

But Daisy merely made big round innocent eyes and shook her head. ‘It wasn’t really lost, was it? I mean, it was there all the time, but I forgot about it.’

‘I am a bit cross, actually, Daisy. It is something special of mine, and it’s to do with Aunt Agnes who’s died. You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place and you should certainly have given it back or said you’d had it.’

‘I knew you’d be cross, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you when I couldn’t find it,’ Daisy wailed, and Kate sighed heavily. She wasn’t really cross, just glad to have the locket back, especially now that she knew its origin – Harry had given it to Agnes. But why had it been torn in half? Suddenly she longed to stay at home and read the diary and find out, but she couldn’t disappoint the children. She felt so sorry for them at the moment. They hadn’t taken in what Simon’s absence actually meant. She supposed they would when she delivered them to their father in London, whenever that might be. She hadn’t heard anything since receiving his solicitor’s letter – probably he was too scared to ring. And he was right to feel scared; she was furious with him.

It wasn’t until after ten that she hauled herself shivering out of the bath, where she’d lain thinking about Simon until the water had gone cold, and retired to bed to read.

She was weary with grief, aching after the long day of shifting boxes and books. Her nose was blocked from the dust, while her head still jangled from the Harry Potter film with its whooshing magic brooms and nightmare encounters with celluloid evil spirits. But when the diary fell open halfway at a crumpled page and she read the first words scrawled there, she forgot everything else.

I can hardly bear to consign my thoughts to paper,
Agnes had written
. The black ink on the white page is solid, undeniable. It makes what has happened to me real . . .

Kate turned back to the first page and began to read.

April 1929

Agnes waited in the front seat of the Bentley as Lister lifted their cases out of the boot and Jane Selcott struggled to unlock the door to Seddington House. Apart from the soft light burning over the porch, it was pitch black on this moonless night, and cloud cover denied even the pale comfort of stars. Never before, thought Agnes, had home seemed so unfamiliar, so unwelcoming. She winced and clasped a hand to her swollen abdomen as the child within gave a sudden squirm, scraping against her spine. Even Mrs Duncan had gone home for the night; the house had been shut up for most of the last six months, and the cook was living in semi-retirement with her ailing maiden sister in the village.

Lister took the cases inside and Miss Selcott came back to the car to help Agnes out. The governess tried to take the girl’s arm going up the few steps to the house, but Agnes shook her off and, one hand pulling her coat round her against the chilly night breeze, she staggered up by herself.

Lister refused to meet her eye as she stepped into the hall, as he had ever since meeting them off the last train just now, but his offer of hot milk was civil, though equally civilly refused.

‘I’ll go straight up to bed,’ said Agnes. ‘Bring my case up, please.’ She was exhausted by the journey, by the advanced stage of her pregnancy. Moreover, she felt queasy and on edge – her skin crawled.

Halfway up the stairs she sank against the banister as another wave of tightness curled its way across her abdomen. It passed, leaving her breathless. Aware of the two servants watching her below, she recovered herself quickly and dragged herself up the remaining flight.

Later, alone in her room, she threw off her travel-stained clothes, pulled a nightdress over her head and slipped into bed where she lay on her side, grateful to be sinking into the coolness, alone with her thoughts at last.

The train journey with Miss Selcott had been an unpleasant interlude. Agnes’s father had been supposed to accompany them, but at the last moment some business crisis had presented itself, and Gerald had said he must stay; he would follow them down to Seddington as soon as he could.

Miss Selcott had ordered the station porter to find them an empty compartment – no great task at this time in the evening – and as the train jolted and swayed its way down to Suffolk, Agnes bracing herself against each movement, the governess had pulled down the blinds and addressed her captive audience in a non-stop monologue.

‘Your father is so brave. I don’t know how he’s survived everything you and your brother have done to him. To say nothing of that good-for-nothing wife of his. After the terrible sufferings he had already been through, poor man, all he’s done for his children, just for you to throw it back in his face. And so shaming. I don’t know where he’s found the strength to raise his head in all this disgraceful, sordid affair.’ She opened her bag and, drawing out a handkerchief, dabbed at the corners of her eyes before replacing it in her bag and closing it with a disapproving click. ‘The sooner we get you down to that nursing home and finish your sorry part in the business, Miss, the better, if you ask me.’

As if anybody did ask you, you shrivelled old cow, thought Agnes, but she couldn’t be bothered to say it. Since she had been forced by her father to spend so much time in Miss Selcott’s chaperonage over the last few months she’d learned that the only way she could survive it was by ignoring the tiresome woman. So now she said nothing, instead snapping open the window blind and wiping the condensation from the window so she could peer out on the dark countryside flashing past. If only she could shut out the preaching voice.

Now, as she lay in the familiar darkness of her bedroom, memories of the last nine months crowded in.

It had been on a warm afternoon in the middle of August that Agnes had pulled shut the door of Harry’s apartment and started down the stairs. When she reached the first landing, the door there opened and the woman, Susan Herbert, holding a fat rasping pug dog, came out and leaned against the lintel.

‘Hello,’ said Agnes uncertainly, as the woman looked her up and down, coolly. The dog struggled in her arms, so she let it down and it waddled back into the flat.

‘I expect it doesn’t like the heat,’ Agnes said.

Mrs Herbert ignored her comment and said instead, ‘Who are you?’

‘Agnes Melton,’ said Agnes, a little taken aback by the woman’s rudeness.

Mrs Herbert thought for a moment and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t know any Meltons,’ she said. Then, ‘Where are you from?’

Agnes started to explain, but the woman cut her short, saying, as if to herself, ‘Just as I thought.’ To Agnes she said – was that a glint of sympathy in her eyes or was the woman just toying with her, ‘You’re very young, aren’t you? What can your mother be thinking of? It’s a shame someone doesn’t take you in hand.’ She looked up the staircase and listened a moment, whilst Agnes tried to frame a response. Then she looked directly at Agnes and said, cruelly, ‘He’s told you he’s married, hasn’t he?’

There was a silence. Agnes felt the blood suddenly pound in her veins. She opened her mouth but no sound came.

‘No, I can see he hasn’t. Wretched man. Yes, married. Of course, they’re separated, but she won’t be able to divorce him. There’s no hope of that. They’re Roman Catholics. The families would be appalled.’

Agnes still couldn’t bring herself to speak. It couldn’t be true. Susan Herbert was playing with her.

‘You’re lying,’ she whispered. ‘You’re just jealous. You’re lying.’

A look halfway between contempt and pity crossed the other woman’s face. ‘Well, you would think that, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘Poor thing. I’m sorry for you. But men are all the same, you see. Pity you’ve had to learn the hard way.’

And with that, she went inside her flat and closed the door.