The Mistletoe Bride(46)

Taking a tin of soup from the larder, I put a saucepan on the stove, cut a couple of slices of bread and buttered them, then put two pieces of cheddar on the side of our plates. All the time, turning over what had happened in my mind. I didn’t come to any firm conclusion either way – had I seen someone at all or just imagined it? – only that I would steer clear of the marshes for the time being.

We ate our meal in silence. The hours crept by. I put on the wireless to keep him company and picked up the novel I’d been reading, Marjorie Morningstar. Set in 1930s America, about a girl who wants to be an actress, I’d liked the sound of it so much I’d bought a copy, rather than waiting for the library to get it in, but tonight it didn’t hold my attention. My stepfather was restless, talking as he drifted in and out of sleep.

As I glanced over at his ruined face, I wondered at how I’d once been so scared of him. He’d been a big man in his day, working at the Anglesey Arms in Halnaker after we’d moved from Fishbourne, until that job, like all the others, fell through. Every time, he called them ‘misunderstandings’, said everyone was out to get him, but the plain truth was he was a drunk. After that last dismissal, he never worked again. He just sat about the house with a bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other, picking fights with any of us stupid enough to get in his way. Now, he hardly knew who he was. Thin as a rake, hardly able to speak or see, too frail to stand unaided.

Only me left now. Only him and me.

At nine o’clock, I began the business of getting him to bed. He slept down here now, to save him the stairs, but it still took a good half-hour to undress him, put him in his pyjamas, get him settled.

Once he was sorted out, I went back to the front room to get things straight for the morning, as if it mattered. Nobody but Mrs Sadler and the vicar ever visited. I turned off the table lamp, then walked through to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Except for the corridor of light coming in through the gap in the curtains, the room was dark. The cold tap spluttered, the pipes complaining, so I let it run a moment.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move in the yard. A shadow, or reflection, I couldn’t say. My stomach lurched. I put down the glass on the draining board, the water slopping over the side, and peered out. Nothing. Not a cat, not a soul about, nothing. I knew I’d locked the back door earlier, but I checked again, just to be sure. The key, which I always left in the lock, was gone.

I crouched down and ran my fingers over the coarse mat and was absurdly relieved when my fingers connected with the cold metal. Silly to get the wind up. I shot the bolts top and bottom, just to be sure. After the events of the day, my nerves were bad. I picked up my glass and headed out into the cold hallway, then stopped dead.

My stepfather was standing in the corridor. Somehow, without making a noise, he’d got himself up and out of bed on his own. My heart sank. It didn’t happen often, but on the odd occasion when he did wake in the night, not knowing where he was, it could take hours to get him settled again.

‘What are you doing up?’ I said, not expecting an answer. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

He was rocking from side to side, old legs that could barely hold him. His hands were balled into fists. I felt a wave of revulsion, though I knew I ought to feel pity. Then I saw his eyes. They were sharp for the first time in years, unclouded, and fixed at a point behind me.

‘She’s here.’

His voice was thin, quavering, but the words were clear.

‘What?’ I blurted out, shocked that he’d spoken at all.

‘She’s here. Come for me.’

‘Who’s here?’

But even as I said it, of course I knew. I could feel the prickling on my skin at the back of my neck, my hands. And the smell of the shore at low tide. Seaweed and sulphur and mist, the foul breath of the grave. I didn’t want to look round, but I couldn’t stop myself. Taking my eyes off him, for a second, slowly I turned. To face the girl I knew was standing behind me. The skin at her wrists, rubbed raw where the wire had cut through. The ragged red seam where his knife had dragged across her throat, left to right. The work of a right-handed man. Not Harry. Harry was left-handed. For all his faults, not Harry.

For an instant, time seemed to stop and I saw her clearly, a terrible melding of both the girl she had been and the girl she now was, a girl fifteen years dead, lying in the churchyard with a headstone at her feet.

I wanted to speak, to reach out to her, but terror had stolen my voice from me. Then, slowly, she began to lift her head, the same steady and deliberate movement as on the path earlier. This time, I held my ground. Saw her brown eyes, determined face, the brown curled hair kissing her chin.