Dark Heart Forever (27 page)

I looked away. ‘Mum … He had children. But … he’s gone … died, or disappeared or something.’ It sounded brutal but there was no other way to say it.

‘Gabriel,’ she whispered, her face so pale all of a sudden. ‘How … ?’

‘Nobody really knows, but they said a broken heart.’

She looked stricken. ‘I never knew.’ She looked anxiously at me. ‘You know you must be careful,’ she said. ‘It’s intoxicating, that world. Everything so intense. You get drawn in, but you will never be accepted …’

‘Mum,’ I pleaded. ‘It is over. I will never see Luca again. And we didn’t fall in love.’

‘Just because you tell yourself that, doesn’t make it real,’ she said. ‘How do you feel about never seeing that boy again? Tell me.’

‘I feel …’ I stopped. ‘I haven’t let myself …’

‘See? You
are
pretending.’

‘I’m not you, Mother,’ I said angrily. ‘This is not your story. It’s mine. And it’s different.’

I backed away towards the door. Towards the sound of my normal little sister and my dad. ‘Just because you messed up, don’t put it on me.’ I turned away from her, not wanting her to see my fear. My panic.

I knew what I had to do.

I ran until I thought my heart would burst through my chest and my lungs hurt. All the way back to the patch of trees. And it was dark – pitch black – except there was the moon, full and bright, looking down benevolently at me standing, hugging myself at the entrance to the thicket. I didn’t feel afraid. I knew now that everything was real. It had been the same for my mother. I couldn’t pretend to myself any more.

I watched the little wood, dark shapes flapping gracefully around the branches. Small birds. I craned my neck to see further in and concentrated on that tall, slender boy with milky skin and moss-green eyes. I had to see him, if only one more time.

When an owl called softly I turned my face up to the sky, gaining strength from it. Tiny, bright stars winked encouragingly – and then I felt the faintest breeze, like sweet breath on my neck, and then, as I stood perfectly still, the breeze became warmer. And closer.

‘Is this the end?’ he whispered.

I didn’t turn, I waited.

He put his hand on my shoulder and the feel of his fingertips was like home. I stretched my own hand up and put it over his, touching the fine hairs on his wrist. Finally I found my voice.

‘That girl …’ I began, faltering, ‘in the notebook … She’s my mother. It was her. She knows about us. Everything. Whatever happened to her … to make her see your world … it has come to me.’

He said nothing, but he rested his chin in the curve of my shoulder. Like a human jigsaw. We felt like the perfect fit.

I took a breath before going on. ‘Luca … It won’t work. How can we be friends? It’s doomed … Just as it was with my mother and Gabriel. I don’t want you to be harmed in any way.’

‘But we are not in love,’ he spoke at last. ‘It’s not the same.’ His words sounded hollow, though, without conviction.

‘I should be with someone whose life does not hinge on the decision I make.’ I hardly believed how mature I sounded.

‘Evan?’ Luca sighed.

I turned to face him. ‘Dalya came. Came to warn me off him, too.’ I smiled wryly. ‘Just what is it about him that worries you?’

He looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘I need to show you … There is something I have found back home. It may be nothing … It may be a coincidence. But I don’t think so.’

‘What?’ I closed my fingers around his wrist. ‘Tell me now.’

‘You need to see it for yourself. You won’t believe me otherwise.’

Back to Nissilum.

‘But I can’t go back,’ I told him. ‘You said—’

‘I know. But there is no other way. We will just need to be careful.’

I looked back up the hill at my house. It must be dinner time. I needed to get back.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ I said, thinking that my mum would be on her guard now. ‘She’s going to be watching my every move.’

‘Jane.’ Luca was firm. ‘She will understand … And I promise you I will get you back here so quickly you will hardly have been gone.’

I still hesitated. Was that just because of my mother? Or was it the thought of what Luca would show me in Nissilum? I couldn’t not go. A part of me wanted to. Wanted to still be connected to it all. And there was only one way to reassure Luca that Evan was a good guy. Not the shady character he was making him out to be.

‘OK.’ I sighed, with resignation. ‘Let’s go.’

Luca didn’t return my smile. The anxiety in his eyes was still there. He took hold of my arms and pressed his forehead to mine.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Know that.’

I frowned, not understanding. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘You’re just looking out for me.’

We arrived, oddly, in a place I didn’t recognise at first. I had expected the soothing river of the Water Path, and had also expected night-time. But it was daylight still, and we were crouched by a pale stone wall.

‘I had to use all my willpower and it is a little rusty,’ whispered Luca. He made a gesture for me to keep silent and got cautiously to his feet, gripping the wall and peering over it.

He looked down and gave me his hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We are at the palace. It has been in my thoughts, lately, and so I suppose that’s why I have brought myself – us – here.’

I stood too, and looked over the wall to see the palace gleaming in the sunlight. A myriad of colourful roses packed the flowerbeds. Immaculate garden furniture was positioned in the middle of the well-kept lawn.

I looked questioningly at Luca.

‘We need to get into the palace.’ He looked me up and down. ‘But you can’t go in like that … Dalya is bringing you something to wear.’

I looked down at my clothes. Scruffy jeans with a giant hole in one knee and an
I Heart NY
T-shirt Grandma Ellen had brought me back from a holiday in America a couple of years ago. I would stick out like the veritable sore thumb.

As if on cue, Dalya appeared through a gate in the wall further down. Seeing me, she gave me an
I knew you’d be back
kind of look and swung a canvas bag back and forth as she walked quickly towards us. When she reached Luca, she dropped it at his feet.

‘I took a uniform,’ she said, shrugging at him. ‘One of Amelia’s. It will be a little big,’ she said, staring blatantly at my chest, ‘but it will do. And some slippers for her.’

‘Thank you.’ Luca smiled at her. ‘You are a good sister.’

‘Hmmm.’ Dalya gave me a sidelong look, but her eyes were friendly. ‘Well, be careful. You know Lowe is having sport with his gruesome friends. You’d better be quick.’

Luca glanced at me. ‘She’s right.’ He rubbed my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. It will be all right. You just need to get dressed.’

I looked around me for somewhere more private to change. But there was nothing except acres of fields. The palace land stretched out for miles in front of us.

‘I’ll turn my back.’ Luca nodded at Dalya. ‘And you’d better go home. Tell Henora I will be back in time for the evening meal.’

A flicker of concern passed over Dalya’s normally confident expression, but she touched his arm lightly and turned to walk back to the gate.

‘She will go back through the palace,’ Luca said, his back to me. ‘She’s friendly with the servants. No one will think anything of it.’

I picked up the canvas bag and lifted out the heavy, white uniform. ‘But won’t the servants know I’m an imposter?’

‘They will all be in the kitchen,’ Luca said. ‘Cooking, idling, joking. They will be busy in there for an hour at least.’

I quickly took off my plimsolls and jeans, though I kept my T-shirt on. I’d need the extra padding from the looks of the dress. I pulled it up and buttoned it, feeling it loose and unflattering on me.

‘Don’t you dare laugh at me,’ I said, pushing the slippers on to my feet. ‘I look hideous.’

Luca turned, his lips twitching. ‘That is not possible,’ he said, catching hold of my hair, which hung loose. ‘But you need to put this up. I’ll help you.’

Before I could protest I felt him gently gather up my hair and twist it into a knot at my neck. His fingers brushing my skin made me close my eyes as I tingled at his touch.

‘There,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s better.’ As I turned to face him, I had the urge to hold him and never let go. But the sooner this was done, the sooner the drama would be over.

I was convinced that whatever Luca felt compelled to show me would turn out to be insignificant. I couldn’t think what it would be. But it was surely not anything to do with Evan.

I felt almost completely sure of that.

I stuffed my own clothes into the canvas bag.

‘Here.’ He took the bag from me and pushed it into a convenient enclave in the wall. ‘It’ll be safe here.’

I felt in a dreamlike state. As though I was preparing to act in a period drama. This whole place, the Celestial Palace, was like one of those stately homes plumped in the middle of the English countryside. At any moment a busy-body in a bonnet would appear.

‘Jane.’ Luca cut into my thoughts. ‘This won’t take long. You’ll be back home before you know it.’

‘Yes.’ I felt the finality in his words. ‘I know.’

He took my hand and we walked casually to the gate.

‘Keep a few paces behind me,’ he instructed, as he turned the metal handle to walk through to the garden. ‘Look as though you have some purpose.’

‘Yes, sir.’ I smiled. ‘Whatever you say, sir.’

He grinned, then stepped ahead of me and we walked through the tranquil space in front of the house, where I spotted a familiar door. It was where we had left last time. After Luca had turned.

I shivered, remembering Vanya. I hoped she was nowhere in the vicinity.

Quietly we moved inside the palace. Down the dark corridor and through to the hall. Ahead of us was the grand staircase, flanked by the family portrait paintings.

‘Up here,’ Luca whispered. ‘If we come across anyone, keep your eyes down.’

Two steps at a time we climbed up, and up, finally stepping inside the spectacular grand room at the top, with its imposing window and the view of endless green fields that seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth. Which perhaps they did.

Inside the room, Luca went quickly to the dark wood chest on top of which was the abundance of photographs. He opened a drawer on the left hand side, and bent down, riffling as quietly as he could through the contents.

I stood by the door, listening for footsteps outside. I watched as he drew out a large book. It looked like one of the scrapbooks I played with when I was little. Newspaper clippings jutted from the pages.

Luca glanced at the anonymous-looking cover before tucking it under his arm and closing the drawer. He looked over at me.

‘We have to get out of here,’ he said. ‘Back the way we came.’

As we hurried down the stairs, a shape flitted across the hall and Luca stopped, drawing me back behind him. The figure carried on, not noticing us where we stood with our hearts in our mouths, and disappeared through the door we were headed for.

Luca frowned. ‘We’ll have to go out of the front,’ he said. ‘It’s very quiet. Celeste and Cadmium will be sitting in their private rooms. No one will take any notice of us.’

I followed him out through the hall and, to my relief, saw that the door was already open. We moved through it, towards the guarded gates.

Luca went ahead and spoke to the man waiting there, who glanced at me before nodding and gesturing for us to go through.

Finally, when we were some way from the gates and out of sight of the palace itself, I released my breath and stopped.

‘That was an experience I never want to repeat,’ I said. I glanced at the scrapbook, which Luca still had under his arm. ‘Is this the incriminating evidence?’

He looked down at it. ‘Let’s go back and collect your clothes. And then I will show you.’

Once we had collected the canvas bag, we walked to the Water Path, and only when I had changed back into my clothes and we were perched on the rocks, the water gurgling beside us, did Luca place the book on his lap.

It looked so nondescript. I couldn’t believe it could contain anything shocking. Luca opened it to some blank card pages, until he came to the middle where a few newspaper cuttings where stuck, higgledy-piggledy.

‘You have newspapers?’ I said, twisting my head to look at one of the cuttings.

Luca put his arm over it, obscuring my view. He looked up at me.

‘We don’t,’ he said. ‘Which is sort of the point.’

‘Luca! Stop talking in riddles.’

Luca held my gaze for seconds longer before he drew his arm away and looked down.

‘Celeste found this … I heard her talking to one of the servants when I was here yesterday. She thought it belonged to her … She’d found it on Raphael’s bed. Just lying there …’

I raised an eyebrow and he went on quickly. ‘I was curious. So when Etta – the maid – was cleaning the hall, I asked her about it. And after some persuasion she told me she had no idea what it was, but that she had put it in a drawer in the room at the top of the stairs until she could have a proper look at it.’ He grimaced. ‘I immediately went to look myself, and when I started reading these reports, it all fell into place.’