Black Rabbit Hall (14 page)

The squawk and rise of dozens of tiny brown birds from the bushes make me jump. Something has disturbed them. I pause, heart thumping inside my chest, listening hard. Deer? Badger? Fox?

A cough.

Lucian is standing very still beneath the shadow of a tree, no more than a few yards away, one foot raised on a root, leaning against the trunk, watching me. He is taller than I remember, more menacing. Something of the wood.

‘What are you doing here?’ I fight the urge to step away but refuse to reveal my nerves.

‘Same as you.’ I wonder whether Toby will hear me if I scream. I wonder if I can outrun Lucian. ‘No need to look quite so petrified.’

‘Why would I be petrified of you?’

He shrugs. There is an odd, unquiet moment when neither of us speaks.

He digs into his pocket, pulls out a packet of Embassy cigarettes. ‘Want one?’

‘Not before dinner,’ I say, hoping that this makes sense to someone who smokes. I’ll be damned if I’ll tell him I’ve never smoked a cigarette.

He fights a smile, as if he knows I’m bluffing. I realize at that moment that I haven’t seen him smile, not properly, and that part of me – the bit that refuses to be scared of such an arrogant oaf – wants to make it happen, to wipe the infuriating smug coolness off those crag features. The other part of me just wants to get back to the house, extremely quickly. Kick him in the balls, that’s what Matilda’s sister says. If a bad man comes at you, kick him where it hurts.

‘How old are you?’

‘Fifteen.’ My heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of me.

‘You look younger.’

I curse my slight frame, freckled baby face and stupid Cornish wardrobe that is kept down here in a mothy trunk, always a size too small. ‘How old are
you
?’

He lights a match. The contours of his face flicker gold. ‘How old do you think I am?’

‘Too young to smoke.’

I get it then, the smile, a dazzling split of white that
transforms his face from something scowling and off balance into something … well, something completely else. ‘Seventeen. I’m bloody well seventeen.’ He squats down to the swollen tree roots, puffs white smoke rings into the gloom. ‘Ding dong merrily on high, eh? Is it always this goddamn miserable down here?’

‘Our mother died at Easter,’ I say, unable to resist.

‘This Easter?’ He does not exhibit any of the expected embarrassment or shock, but sucks thoughtfully at his cigarette, gaze sharper, not leaving my face, as if this new fact changes the way he sees me slightly. ‘Mother did tell me she was dead. But I didn’t know it was so recent.’

‘She came off her horse,’ I add, trying to rouse more of a reaction. ‘A few feet from where you’re standing.’

A moment passes. ‘That’s rotten luck.’

I say nothing but am secretly grateful that he’s not trying to dress up the accident as anything other than it is. I hate it when people pretend there was a grand master plan behind it. That she was taken for a reason.

‘And now you’ve got me and Ma for Christmas. No wonder you all look suicidal.’ He throws down the stub of cigarette, half smoked, where it releases one dying flicker before succumbing to the wet cold. ‘Well, I suppose we only have to tolerate each other for another couple of days before we’re released back to London.’

‘If we survive that long,’ I retort, riled by his bad manners, irritated that he isn’t more impressed with Black Rabbit Hall. I feel protective of it in all its gusty dampness. In so many ways it is all we’ve got. ‘But while you’re a guest at our house you could at least make some effort to be polite.’

He flicks a lock of hair from his face. ‘Am I breaking the
etiquette? Used to people bowing before you down here, are you?’

‘You’ve got no idea. We’re not like that.’ My heart is in my ears now, my voice high. ‘We’re not rich.’

He shakes his head at me, as if he’s marvelling at my stupidity. ‘I wasn’t talking about money.’

‘I’m half American,’ I say, because I know he’s implying I’m some snobby upper-class English girl, like so many of the girls at school, and I’m not. I’m different from them. I don’t care if someone says ‘lav’ or ‘toilet’, ‘writing paper’ or ‘notepaper’ or anything like that. Momma taught us that some things don’t matter half as much as anyone thinks.

‘Well, aren’t you exotic?’ The corners of his mouth curl, exposing a glint of shiny pink gum.

‘And you’re an idiot.’ Not wanting to lose the last word, I start to walk backwards, slowly, keeping my eyes trained on him – like you walk away from a dangerous animal – only turning and breaking into a run the moment I’m hidden by trees. Shaky and breathless, I skid up the icy steps, shove my shoulder hard against the front door and barrel into the hall, slap-bang into Caroline.

‘Goodness!’ Her hand leaps to her throat. ‘I’m looking for Lucian. Have you seen him?’

I cannot speak. I cannot believe my eyes. The hall suddenly seems very, very dark, the cape’s diamanté clasp blinking at me, an enraged cat’s eye.

‘Amber, what’s wrong? What in Heaven’s name is the matter?’

Lorna

Lorna swings the torchlight over the plywood floor of the attic, starts at the sight of a lone clumpy-heeled court shoe of her mother’s lying forlornly on its side. She shivers. What is it about shoes? More than a dress, a coat or anything else, a shoe somehow moulds itself to its wearer: the swell of a bunion, the ballet arch of an instep, a sole thinned on unknown pavements in runs for the bus, walks with a lover. It’s for this reason that she doesn’t buy vintage shoes: they are never truly yours. She reaches out and gently rights her mother’s shoe, the patent leather hard and crackly against her fingers. Then she quickly throws the torchlight to the other side of the eaves.

More boxes. Shadows. A thin cut of sunlight at the edges of the roof tiles. No wonder she had nightmares about this attic as a child, imagining all sorts of ghouls crouched up here, waiting, ready to prowl her dreams at night. While the rest of the house – bar the chaos of the garage – was ruled by their mother, this was the one place only her dad ever went, carrying up bulging storage boxes, teetering unnervingly on his creaking metal ladder until his head, body, tartan slippers were swallowed into the chasm. She would wait anxiously for him from the safety of the carpeted landing, breath held until he returned to her,
grinning, jumping the last few rungs, feathered in the tiny yellow insulation fibres that her mother said caused cancer.

The ghouls have long gone now. But the attic still feels as if it might hide other things, family secrets buried in the damp, mildewed boxes – labelled and taped shut by her mother’s busy, determined fingers – waiting to be brought into the light.

Since returning from Black Rabbit Hall ten days ago, she’s been desperate to have a rummage. And here is the box she’s after, labelled ‘Pix’ in her mother’s neat, hard-slanted handwriting, thankfully not too far from the hatch. She carries it down, rests it on the landing carpet, noticing the caterpillars of dust on the skirting board, which her mother would never have tolerated. Just one more sign that she has gone and they are living in a different era, messier, less tightly controlled.

Cocooned in the fussy florals and tasselled swagging of the lounge – her mother’s take on stately home furnishings – Lorna lies on the rug, chatting to Louise on speakerphone while riffling through holiday snaps that are both horrifying and hilarious in equal measure. Why did no one tell her that her teenage ‘highlights’ were green? Who knew that her mother had once looked so hot in a bikini?

‘If you came with me this weekend you could make up for all those hours I endured in historic lavender gardens while you licked 99s on the beach,’ she shouts at the phone, slipping a sheaf of photos from one pile to another.

Louise laughs. She has one of those short, snorty laughs, the sound of something bubbling over. ‘I could never make that up to you.’

‘But you need a break, Lou.’ She starts to flick through a stack of black-and-whites of her as a toddler, before Louise was born. She was actually quite a cute toddler, she decides, cherub-cheeked, raven-curled, always straining in her mother’s arms, trying to dart out of the frame to something more interesting.

‘Lorna, I’ve got no childcare and Chloë’s got rampant impetigo so if you want a lifetime ban from ever visiting Black Rabbit Hall again, let alone getting married there, I’m your woman.’

It’s true that Louise has got her hands full: Mia, aged nine, Chloë, aged eight, and her youngest, Alf, a six-year-old with Down’s. Lorna has no idea how she copes, let alone with such good humour. ‘Couldn’t Will take them this weekend?’

‘It’s not his weekend.’

‘Can’t he be a
bit
flexible?’

‘I’m not sure we’re at the flexible stage yet,’ Louise says, with a heaviness that pulls at Lorna’s heart. Will and Louise divorced last year. It’s not been one of those functional divorces you read about. A twenty-nine-year-old secretary called Bethany is involved. ‘But we’re getting there.’

‘Hang on, can’t Dad take them?’

‘It would kill him off too.’

‘Sacrifice for a good cause? I reckon you’ll love Black Rabbit Hall, Lou.’

‘Are there spa facilities?’

Lorna snorts.

‘Why’s that so funny?’

‘When you see it you’ll understand. We can swim in the sea, though.’

‘I don’t swim in the sea north of Brittany. Point of principle.’

‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’

‘Left somewhere in the labour ward. Why can’t Jon go again?’

‘I’ve lost him to another project. Some tower of super-deluxe flats in Bow that each cost trillions, interior-decorated to death. The usual.’ Lorna doesn’t mention that Jon wouldn’t have wanted to go, his reservations about the place growing since they got back. She starts flicking through a different stack of photos. ‘I wish you could see these pics, Louise. Mum and Dad look so young.’

A child’s screech. ‘I’ve got to go. Listen, Lorna, I’m pleased you found somewhere to get married at last. It sounds
très
posh. And I’m sure Mum would have loved it, especially if it’s got wooden toilet seats.’

‘Wooden toilet seats a go-go.’

‘Good. I was beginning to think you’d never find anywhere you liked.’

‘I was looking for Black Rabbit Hall,’ says Lorna, the words forming as she thinks them.

‘Alf, we’re about to have our tea. Put the rice cakes down. Sorry, you were saying?’

‘Black Rabbit Hall was the blueprint in my head. Nothing matched up to it. I only realize that now. That’s why I couldn’t settle on anything else.’

‘Really? Weird.’ The sound of a scuffle in the background. ‘Well, it’s been a funny old year to plan a wedding, I suppose. Mia, no more telly I said. Alf, leave the rice cakes.’ A child’s indignant sob. ‘Sorry, Lor. It’s witching hour. What was I trying to say? I can’t hold a thought in my
head for more than thirty seconds. Oh, yeah, that I got married young and you, free spirit that you are –’

‘Had commitment issues? Always went for the wrong men?’ Lorna jokes, a little too close to the bone. She’s kissed a lot of frogs.

‘
No
, that’s not what I meant. I meant you travelled, lived a bit …’

‘I didn’t know what I wanted after dropping out of uni, Lou.’ She remembers the spiking highs and lows of that time, working on the vintage-clothes stall in Portobello market, freezing hands in fingerless gloves, selling old furs and cowboy boots to fashion stylists, the waitressing jobs, bar work, teaching English as a foreign language in Barcelona. ‘Permanent state of existential crisis, I think.’

‘Until you met Jon.’

‘Well …’ She smiles but is reluctant to admit it. ‘It wasn’t just that.’

‘True. You got yourself to teacher-training college and now have a proper career, unlike me, which you just happen to be completely brilliant at. Lest we forget, you also have a pension! My cool big sister with a
pension
.’

‘Cool? Oh, the cool’s long gone, Louise.’ Lorna flips up the lip of a brown envelope with a fingernail.

‘Baby next, Lor.’

‘Stop it.’ She laughs.

‘Jon clearly wants a huge brood, like now.’

She loves that about him. It also scares her slightly. What sort of mother will she make? Will she be a natural like Louise? Pushing those questions away, she shakes out a photograph: black-and-white, one corner torn, her mother pulling her awkward photo smile, clutching her
beloved boxy Margaret Thatcher handbag. Next to her, a willowy girl in patchwork dungarees. Behind them, trees. A white enamelled sign.

Doug shakes the biscuit barrel next to his large red ear. ‘My biscuits appear to have mastered the art of cupboard travel, or I’ve got a poltergeist. Sorry, love. I’m out.’

‘Dad, I don’t care about biscuits. Will you just look? Black Rabbit Hall!’

‘One sec.’ Doug’s belt buckle clinks against the counter as he leans forward, pushing the biscuit tin back on to the shelf.

‘Not one photo, but three! More or less the same spot. Same sign, only I’m different ages in the pictures. I start off looking about four. End up about seven or eight. Gosh, I wonder if there are more in a box somewhere.’

‘Right. Where are my bloody glasses?’ Maddeningly, they spend the next five minutes searching for them. Eventually she finds them in the cutlery drawer, getting scratched by a potato peeler. ‘The sign …’ he mutters, sounding thrown. ‘Pencraw Hall?’

‘Yes, stupid of me, I should have said. That’s the house’s official name.’

He is silent for a few moments, stroking an invisible beard with his fingers. ‘Blimey.’

‘So you’ve heard of it?’ Lorna’s words trip with excitement.

‘I’m not sure. No, no, I don’t think so,’ he says, correcting himself. Looking a bit taken aback, he carries the steaming teapot to the table and sits down, spreading his hairy dad hands on the delicacy of the lacy tablecloth.
Lorna is touched that it is the white one that her mother always kept spotless ‘for special occasions’ (this did not include her daughters’ visits) but is now a rather dirty shade of grey, on account of her father’s struggles with the concept of a white wash.

She spreads the photos, like a deck of playing cards. ‘Why did we keep going back?’

Doug pours, not taking his eyes off the rope of dark stewed tea. His glasses start to slide down a thin skim of sweat on his nose. ‘Your mother always did have her favourite spots.’

‘But why are we standing at the bottom of the drive like a right pair of lemons?’

He pushes his glasses up his nose with his thumb. ‘Lorna, love, let me explain something to you.’

Lorna groans inwardly, fearing exactly what starts to come.

‘Men think with the brain’s grey matter, which is full of active neurons.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘Women ponder the world with their brain’s white matter, which consists of connections
between
the neurons.’

Normally at this point her mother would step in and say, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, do be quiet, Doug.’ Lorna wishes she could do the same.

‘I suppose what I’m trying to explain is that I had no idea what was going through your mother’s pretty skull half the time,’ he says, scratching his neck.

But Lorna is not satisfied. A neck scratch is normally a sign that her dad is slightly nervous. It occurs to her that he’s not telling her everything. And if not, why not?

Also, the photographs are wonky, tilted at an angle. The smudge of a photographer’s finger on one. In another, their heads sliced off at the top. Not the sort of photographs you’d keep for posterity. ‘Who took the pictures, do you reckon?’

‘Oh, your mother was never shy of asking a stranger to wield the Pentax.’

‘This one.’ She slides a photo to the top of the pile, watching him carefully. ‘Can you date it?’

He leans in closer, nudging his glasses back up his nose. ‘Summer, judging by all the leaves on the trees. You look about eight, I’d say. Late seventies.’

‘Could those awful dungarees have come from any other decade?’

‘Oh, you
loved
them.’ His eyes grow distant behind his steam-milked specs and Lorna gets the feeling he is no longer seeing her – aged thirty-two, white T-shirt, denim skirt, silver Converse – but the little girl she was, wriggly in hot dungarees and T-bar leather sandals. ‘Had very strong opinions about clothes from the year dot you did. It was like dressing Marie Antoinette every morning.’

A rush of memories starts to flow over the table then, swirling in powerful eddies around the photographs, like water around a rock. Doug stares at his hands, laced, thumbs circling each other. Resignedly, Lorna slides the photos back into the envelope. She’s clearly not going to get any answers here.

Only then does Doug relax, leaning back in his chair, hands interlaced on his stomach. ‘What were you two girls nattering about, then?’

‘Oh, I was trying to persuade Lou to come with me to Black Rabbit Hall this weekend.’ She almost asks him directly if he’ll look after Louise’s kids, but it occurs to her that he’ll say yes and that Lou might feel uneasy about leaving them – Alf is a handful – imposing on Dad, so she just says, ‘But she’s got the kids.’

He doesn’t take the bait, stirs sugar cubes into his tea with a grubby spoon. Back up to three. No one to nag him about it now. ‘Sure Jon can’t get this weekend off and go with you? I’d feel better about it if you went with Jon.’

‘Big job on.’

He looks up at her, eyebrows exploding above his glasses, one of those looks that precede a probing, slightly personal question. ‘Things okay between you two?’

‘Of course.’ She folds her arms across her chest. ‘Why?’

‘I sensed some discombobulation at our pub lunch on Sunday. Not like you two lovebirds.’

‘Oh, that,’ she says, trying to make light of it to herself as much as to her father. She couples the salt and pepper together in the centre of the table with the palms of her hands. ‘He’s not sure I should stay at Black Rabbit Hall. Thinks it’s a hard sell.’

‘Well, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe. Okay, it is. But we don’t have to sign up for anything in blood. I mean if Jon really doesn’t want to …’

‘You’ll just roll over and agree?’ He laughs, belly rising and falling, pressing against the table. ‘Come on, Lorna. We all know you better than that. You set your mind on something and that’s it.’

‘But it’s such a beautiful house!’

He studies her over the rim of his cup, more serious. ‘I
have to say I’m with Jon. Not sure I like this invitation from the duchess …’

‘She’s not a duchess. Mrs Alton is just a bit of a character holed up in a big old house and fancies some company.’ This isn’t entirely true – there is something a little more damaged about Caroline Alton, a little odder about the set-up with the nervous Dill, the invitation to stay – but she knows better than to expand on it right now. The main thing is that the school summer holidays are whizzing past at an alarming rate. In September she’ll go back to catching lice, panicking about Ofsted inspections and freaking out about not having sorted the wedding.

‘Another brew?’

‘Thanks. But I should go.’ This keeps happening: she looks forward to visiting Dad, then, once she’s in the family home, she feels so sorry for him and so unsettled by the absence of her mother – and the person she was in her mother’s company – that she yearns to step back into her own grown-up life. ‘Otherwise I’m hitting rush-hour,’ she over-explains, picking up her bag.