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She beamed. ‘You deserve so much more, Vince,’ she continued. ‘You’re a nice young man.’

‘I don’t think so…’ he said sheepishly.

‘Yes you do, and yes you are. I think you’re wonderful.’

Silence slammed in like someone had dropped a heavy weight onto the room. ‘Me?’ he asked tentatively.

She lowered her gaze. ‘Yes, you. I‘ve always thought you were wonderful, ever since I first met you. And I think people have been so, so unkind to you and you don’t deserve that one jot. I’m glad Laura Leach found herself another man, because that means your mind won’t be on her all the time, and perhaps now you might look at me every once in a while…’

He was stunned, his mouth hanging open. ‘Edith, I don’t understand…’

‘I love you!’ she said in a rush. ‘There, I’ve said it!’ and she dashed immediately from the room.

Vince sank back into the chair, the wind knocked completely from his sails. Then Edith came back in, sheepishly reaching up to the wall.

‘Keys,’ she said, avoiding looking at him. She ran out of the office.

*  *  *  *

The rain
came down hard and relentless, the sky
a broiling mass of angry cloud
smothering the tiniest patch of blue, the wind tearing across the flat land, thrashing and denuding the trees that sat in a dour land brown and shrivelled. Winter seemed to be lurking just beyond the horizon, crawling inevitably towards them. Laura could smell its presen
ce in the air and its cold breath
snapped at her exposed cheeks.

The wind buffeted her as she bent down to the headstone
and pulled up weeds from her mother’s grave.
Devereux
Towers
had its own private graveyard, surrounded by a rusted iron fence, leaning in places as if it too had been tumbled by the wind. It was the last resting place of many a previous occupant. It should have been the last resting place of her father, beside her mother and two sisters, but Laura had refused him his one last wish. The plot he’d reserved next to his wife remained empty.

The graves of her mother and sisters were lined up in the same order as the photographs on her father’s desk. He’d been very careful with the placement. There was no room for Laura’s grave; she would have been edged out, as she’d been edged out of their life when they were alive. He didn’t want her buried here amongst them, next to him.

She rose on hearing the faint sound of a car round the front. Laura wiped her muddy hands down her skirt, brushed back her wind-ruffled hair and painted a dirty smudge on her forehead in the process. She listened nervously, the wind at her back eager to push her towards the sound. She went around the side of the house to check.

Parked out front was a police car. She felt her legs buckle and her stomach screw itself into a tight ball. As she approached, two police officers got out of the car, putting on their caps and screwing their eyes up against the rain.

‘Laura Leach?’ one of them asked.

‘That’s correct. Is there anything wrong?’

‘Nothing wrong, Miss Leach. We’d like to ask you a few questions, is all.’

For a sickening moment she froze to the spot, unsure what to do.

‘Are you feeling alright, Miss Leach?’ said the other officer.

‘Yes, yes, perfectly well. I suppose you had better come inside, out of the rain.’

She led them into the entrance hall and closed the door on the worsening weather. ‘This is some place you have here,’ Miss Leach, the officer said, looking about him, genuinely enthralled. ‘Reminds me of some kind of movie set.’

‘I think it’s what father intended,’ she said flatly. ‘How can I help you?’

‘We believe you knew Monica Andrews.’

Laura thought about it for a moment. ‘You mean Monica the cleaner?’

‘That’s right. We understand she used to do work for the family.’

‘For my father, yes, when he became too ill to clean for himself. Before he went into a home. He kept her on whilst he was away from
Devereux
Towers
, and she was here after his funeral. I kept her on for a little while but then I fired her.’

‘Why was she fired?’

‘She wasn’t doing the job properly and she wasn’t a nice person to have around. I also prefer not to have strangers in the place. Why do you ask all this?’

‘Are you aware that Monica has gone missing?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve had nothing to do with her since she left, nearly two years ago. I wasn’t aware she’d gone missing. What has that got to do with me?’

‘We’re chasing up any leads we can. Did she mention any other places she worked, any friends or contacts? Please think carefully – any shred of information might prove crucial in finding her.’

‘We never talked. I knew nothing about her, nothing at all. I can’t help you there, officer, I’m sorry.’ She stared at him. ‘Is that all you’ve come for?’

The officer glanced at his colleague. Raindrops glistened like little pearls on the dark material of their uniforms. ‘You said she wasn’t a nice person to have around – what did you mean by that?’

‘Just that. She wasn’t nice to talk to. She had a way about her that I didn’t take to.’

‘You live here all alone, Miss?’ said the other officer.

‘What has that to do with anything?’

‘Nothing,
Miss.
An observation. Have you noticed any strange people hanging around recently?’

‘Strange? Define strange.’

‘Strangers, should I say. People new to the area, perhaps.’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t see anyone much. I don’t go out that often. Practically everyone in Langbridge is a stranger to me, officer.’

The officer smiled. ‘Thanks for your help, Miss Leach. Sorry to bother you; we’ll leave you alone now. If you do think of anything else…’

‘I’ll call,’ she said.

She let them out of the door. The wind and the rain saw them hurry to the police car. She closed the door but watched the car through the window, all the way down the track till it was obscured by trees.

Letting out a long-held breath she put a hand to her stomach and doubled-up, wanting to be sick. She choked it back, but not before it burnt her mouth. When she looked at her hands she was horrified at how they shook and she could do nothing to stop them save clasp them together.

She didn’t leave the window till night fell; till she was certain the police weren’t coming back.

‘Is it so wrong, to want to be loved, to want to love?’ she said to herself, and recoiled in alarm, because that
is exactly what she’d said to N
urse Bradshaw in Bartholomew Place.

‘Th
ere is nothing wrong in that,’ N
urse Bradshaw had replied. ‘But it is what you have done in the name of love that is so wrong.’

‘I did not plan it,’ Laura said tearfully. ‘It just happened.’

‘Nothing simply happens. You played a wilful part in things, Laura.’

‘Please let me out of here, N
urse Bradshaw. I don’t like it here and I am not like the others in this place.’

‘It is not within my power to grant.’

‘D
o you think I am a bad person, N
urse Bradshaw?’

She thought hard upon it, and then said, ‘My opinions do not matter.’

‘They do to me!’ She made as if to grab the nurse’s arm but she pulled away from Laura. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a bad person.’

‘I have to go,’ she said. She turned at the door. ‘Don’t fight things, Laura, that’s my advice. And I don’t think you are a bad person, but I do pity you.’ She lowered her head. ‘I can’t do anything for you, so please stop pestering me or I will have to avoid seeing you. You don’t want that, do you?’

Laura gave a rapid shake to her head. ‘Where is Alex?’ she asked quietly. ‘No one will tell me.’

Nurse Bradshaw’s face hardened. ‘You mustn’t mention that name ever again. You must forget all about Alex. You will have to resign yourself to the fact that you will never see Alex again.’

Laura remembered screaming till she felt as if her throat had been cut by scissors, yet she ignored the pain and did not stop till they restrained her with leather belts and jabbed another needle into her arm; till her brain felt as if it had turned to thick sludge inside her skull and she didn’t know why she was trying to scream or who she was screaming for. They tried for years to erase Alex from her mind, and in the end she pretended they had succeeded and stored the name deep inside that far corner of her head where they or their insidious treatments could not reach.

Laura listened to the rain. It intruded on her thoughts, washed away the sad memories. She could not remember the last time she ate. She should feel hungry but she did not. In any case, what was that tiny emptiness compared to the emptiness of her very soul?

Neither did she feel the cold. It was as if her body were turning itself off by degrees and soon all that would be left of it would be the smouldering embers of her tortured mind. One day, even that must burn out, use up its limited store of energy like a star in the cold vastness of space, collapsing in on itself, feeble, exhausted, dying.

She wandered aimlessly though the rooms of Devereux Towers, imagining she heard the voices of her mother and sisters, her father, feeling their presence filling up the place with life again. But now they were only sad echoes only she could hear, reverberating through her mind, fading into the silence of the grave.

Her father’s study. Cloaked in darkness. The twisted, angry masks staring at her from the walls. The array of tribal weapons silently mocked her and dared her come closer.

She tore herself away and went to the tower – Laura’s Tower – taking the stairs and pausing outside the blue door. She lifted the key that hung around her waist and shed a tear for all that could have been. But she did not enter, for she felt too weak. So she went to her bedroom and lay on the bed without undressing. She could not sleep. The rain hit the glass and made a sound like tearing calico.

Must I be punished forever, she thought? Have I really been so bad that you send me even worse torment to endure?

Yes, she thought; you must take whatever is sent, whatever pain is thrust upon you, because that is the price of sin. Her father had decreed it and so she heard his voice say it still.

Laura did not know how long she had been asleep, but she awoke with a start. She thought she heard a noise coming from downstairs. She strained to hear more through the hiss of silence. The house made all manner of queer noises at night, she told herself. But this was a thump loud enough to penetrate her light sleep and wake her.

She heard it again. Someone was downstairs.

She slid off the bed and padded silently to the light-switch, flicking it on. The bright glare caused her to squint, but instead of making her feel better it only accentuated how exposed she felt, and emphasised the dark void on the other side of the bedroom door. The spiral staircase leading downwards was in almost complete darkness.

Laura crept silently down the stairs, finding the light switch at the bottom. The entrance hall was lit up brightly. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary here. She picked up her father’s walking stick – the very same she’d beaten Katherine with – and moved quietly towards the dark archway that led to her father’s study. She froze on hearing a faint noise emanating from it.

‘Who is that?’ she said, her voice uncomfortably loud. ‘I’m armed!’

She didn’t move for a full minute, but heard nothing more except the rain at the windows. Cautiously she went to the study door, turned the handle and pushed at the solid oak. The room was in complete darkness. Her hand crept around the doorframe and found the light-switch. She flicked it on.

Nothing. There wasn’t anyone here.

The curtains billowed a little and she went over to the sash window. It was open by a fraction of an inch and the wind puffing through the tiny gap was cold on her hand. She slammed it shut and drew the curtains against the night, her own reflection in the glass looking like a spirit standing out on the gravel.

A chill embraced her. She looked about her. ‘Father, is that you?’ she said in a whisper. ‘Have you come to haunt me?’ She was greeted by silence and she rubbed her shoulder to keep warm. ‘Well you can go to hell!’ she said.

As she turned to leave she paused by the collection of war clubs, straightening them. She ran her hand over one of them and felt its hardness, imagining the severe pain it had possibly inflicted.

There was nothing to be afraid of, she thought. It was just the wind taunting her. She took a war club from off the wall, carried it up to her bedroom and laid it on the bed beside her, listening to the driving rain outside.

*  *  *  *

It was mid-afternoon and yet the light was as dull as dusk. It had been raining heavily all day, and had not let up once. Today it had reached monsoon proportions, or what Leonard Kimble presumed must resemble a monsoon as he’d never actually seen one, never been further than
Somerset
.
He wanted that ignorance to change. One day he’d see the world, finally escape this dead hole of a place with its small minds and petty, provincial ambitions. Never more so than on a day like today, when the wind whipped off the levels and drove on unchecked through Langbridge, its cramped streets awash, the fields hereabouts sodden.