The Likeness: A Novel (23 page)

The place was a maze, dozens of single-file lanes twisting their way among hedges and fields and woods from nowhere much to nowhere much else, but it turned out I knew my way around better than I’d expected; I only got lost twice. I was starting to appreciate Frank on a whole new level. When I got hungry I sat on a wall and had my coffee and sandwiches, looking out over the mountainsides and giving the mental finger to the DV squad room and Maher and his halitosis problem. It was a sunny, snappy day, hazy clouds high in a cool blue sky, but I hadn’t seen a single human being, anywhere along the way. Somewhere far off a dog was barking and someone was whistling to him, but that was it. I was developing a theory that Glenskehy had been wiped out by a millennium death ray and no one had noticed.
On my way back I spent a while checking out the Whitethorn House grounds. The Marches might have lost most of their estate, but what was left was still pretty impressive. Stone walls higher than my head, lined with trees—mostly the hawthorns that had given the house its name, but I spotted oak, ash, an apple just going into bloom. A broken-down stable, discreetly out of smelling range of the house, where Daniel and Justin kept their cars. It would have held six horses, way back when; now it was all piles of dusty tools and tarps, but they didn’t look like they’d been touched in a very long time, so I didn’t poke around.
To the back of the house was that great sweep of grass, maybe a hundred yards long, bordered by a thick rim of trees and stone wall and ivy. At the bottom was a rusty iron gate—the gate Lexie had gone through, that night, when she walked out onto the last edge of her life—and, tucked away in a corner, a wide, semi-organized patch of shrubs. I recognized rosemary and bay: the herb garden Abby had mentioned, the evening before. That already seemed like months ago.
From that distance the house looked delicate and remote, something out of an old watercolor. Then a fast little wind rippled down the grass, lifting the long trails of ivy, and the lawn tilted under my feet. By one of the side walls, only twenty or thirty yards from me, there was someone behind the ivy; someone slight and dark as a shadow, sitting on a throne. The hair on the back of my neck rose, a slow wave.
My gun was still taped to the back of Lexie’s bedside table. I bit down hard on my lip and grabbed a heavy fallen branch out of the herb garden without taking my eyes off the ivy, which had dropped innocently back into place—the breeze was gone, the garden was still and sunny as a dream. I walked along the wall, casually but fast, flattened myself against it, got a good grip on my branch and whipped back the ivy in one sharp move.
There was no one there. The tree trunks and overgrown branches and ivy made an alcove against the wall, a little sun-splashed bubble. In it were two stone benches and, between them, a thread of water trickling through a hole in the wall and down shallow steps to a tiny, murky pond; nothing else. Shadows tangled together and for a second I caught the illusion again, the benches turning high-backed and sweeping, that slim figure sitting upright. Then I let the ivy fall and it was gone.
Apparently it wasn’t just the house that had a personality all its own. I got my breath back and checked out the alcove. The seats had traces of moss in the cracks, but most of it had been scrubbed away: someone knew about this place. I considered its potential as a rendezvous point, one way or another, but it was awfully close to the house to be inviting outsiders around, and the mat of leaves and twigs around the pond looked like it hadn’t been disturbed in a while. I brushed at it with the side of my shoe and got wide smooth flagstones. Metal glinted in the dirt and my heart bounced—
knife
—but it was too small. A button: lion and unicorn, battered and dented. Someone, long ago, had been in the British army.
The hole letting the water in through the garden wall was choked with muck. I stuck the button in my pocket, knelt down on the flagstones and used the branch and my hands to clear it out. It took a long time; the wall was thick. When I was finished there was a miniwaterfall, murmuring happily to itself, and my hands smelled of earth and decaying leaves.
I rinsed them off and sat on one of the benches for a while, having a smoke and listening to the water. It was nice in there; warm and still and secret, like an animal’s den or a kid’s hideout. The pond filled up, tiny insects hovering above the surface. The extra water drained away through a tiny gutter into the ground, I picked out floating leaves, and after a while the pond was clear enough that I could see my reflection, rippling.
Lexie’s watch said half-past four. I had made it through twenty-four hours, and probably knocked a good handful of people out of the incident-room sweepstakes. I put my cigarette butt back in the pack, ducked out through the ivy, and went inside to catch up on thesis notes. The front door opened smoothly to my key, the air inside stirred as I came in and it didn’t feel over-intimate any more; it felt like a slight smile and a cool brief touch on the cheek, like a welcome.

7

T
hat night I went for my walk. I needed to phone Sam, and anyway, Frank and I had decided that I was better off getting Lexie back into her normal routine as fast as possible, not playing the trauma card too hard, at least not yet. There were bound to be little differences anyway, and with any luck people would use the stabbing to explain those away; the more I pushed it, the more likely it was that someone would think,
Gee, Lexie’s a completely different person now.
We were in the sitting room, after dinner. Daniel and Justin and I were reading; Rafe was playing piano, a lazy Mozart fantasia, breaking off now and then to repeat a phrase he liked or had messed up the first time; Abby was making her doll a new petticoat out of old
broderie anglaise,
head bent over stitches so tiny they were almost invisible. I didn’t think the doll was creepy, exactly—she wasn’t one of the ones that look like puffy, deformed adults; she had a long dark plait and a wistful, dreamy face, with a tip-tilted nose and tranquil brown eyes—but I could see the guys’ point, all the same. Those big sad eyes, staring at me from an undignified position on Abby’s lap, made me feel guilty in a nonspecific way, and there was something disturbing about the fresh, springy curl of her hair.
Around eleven I went out to the coat closet for my runners—I had wriggled into my supersexy girdle and tucked my phone in there before dinner, so I wouldn’t have to break routine by going up to my room; Frank would be proud of me. I did a wince and a little under-my-breath “Ow” as I sat down on the hearth rug, and Justin’s head snapped up. “Are you all right? Do you need your painkillers?”
“Nah,” I said, disentangling my shoelace. “I just sat down funny.”
“Walk?” Abby asked, glancing up from the doll.
“Yep,” I said, pulling on one of the runners. It had the shape of Lexie’s foot, a fraction narrower than mine, printed on the insole.
That tiny suspension all through the room again, like a caught breath. Rafe’s hands left a chord hanging in the air. “Is that wise?” Daniel inquired, putting a finger in his book to mark his page.
“I feel fine,” I said. “The stitches don’t hurt unless I twist sideways; walking isn’t going to burst them or anything.”
“That’s hardly what I had in mind,” Daniel said. “You’re not concerned?”
They were all looking at me, that unreadable quadruple gaze with the force of a tractor beam. I shrugged, pulling at a shoelace. “No.”
“Why not? If I may ask.”
Rafe moved, threw a taut little trill somewhere in the piano’s upper octaves. Justin flinched.
“’Cause,” I said. “I’m not.”
“Shouldn’t you be? After all, if you have no idea—”
“Daniel,” Rafe said, almost under his breath. “Leave her alone.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go out there,” Justin said. He looked like his stomach hurt. “I really do.”
“We’re worried, Lex,” Abby said quietly. “Even if you’re not.”
The trill was still going, on and on like an alarm bell.
“Rafe,”
Justin said, pressing a hand to his ear. “Stop.”
Rafe ignored him. “Like she’s not enough of a drama queen without you three encouraging her—”
Daniel didn’t seem to notice. “Do you blame us?” he asked me.
“So you’ll just have to worry,” I said, shoving my other foot into its shoe. “I don’t care. If I get all jumpy now, I’ll be jumpy forever, and I’m not doing that.”
“Well, congratulations,” Rafe said, ending the trill with a neat chord. “Take your torch. See you later.” He turned back to the piano and started flipping pages.
“And your phone,” Justin said. “In case you feel faint, or . . .” His voice trailed off.
“It doesn’t seem to be raining any more,” Daniel said, peering at the window, “but it might be chilly. Are you going to wear the jacket?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. This walk seemed to be turning into something at the organization level of Operation Desert Storm. “I’ll be fine,” I said.
“Hmm,” Daniel said, considering me. “Maybe I should go with you.”
“No,” Rafe said, abruptly. “I’ll go. You’re working.” He banged the piano lid down and stood up.
“Bloody hell!” I snapped, throwing my hands up and giving the four of them an outraged glare. “It’s a
walk.
I do it all the
time.
I’m not taking protective clothing, I’m not taking emergency flares and I’m definitely not taking a bodyguard. Is that OK with everyone?” The thought of a private chat with Rafe or Daniel was interesting, but I could get those some other time. If someone was waiting for me out in the lanes, the last thing I wanted was to scare him off.
“That’s my girl,” said Justin, giving me a faint smile. “You’ll be fine, won’t you?”
“At the very least,” Daniel said, unperturbed, “you should take a different route from the one you took the other night. Will you do that?”
He was watching me blandly, one finger still caught between the pages of his book. There was nothing in his face except mild concern. “I’d love to,” I said, “if I
remembered
which way I went. Since I don’t have the first clue, I’ll just have to take my chances, won’t I?”
“Ah,” Daniel said. “Of course. I’m sorry. Ring if you want one of us to come meet you.” He went back to his book. Rafe thumped down onto the piano stool and crashed into the Rondo alla Turca.

* * *

It was a bright night, the moon high in a clear cold sky, flicking chips of white off the dark hawthorn leaves; I buttoned Lexie’s suede jacket up to my neck. The torch beam lit up a narrow bar of dirt path and the invisible fields felt suddenly huge around me. The torch made me feel very vulnerable and not very smart, but I kept it on. If anyone was lurking out there, he needed to know where to find me.
No one came. Something shifted off to one side, something heavy, but when I whipped the torch around it was a cow, staring back at me with wide, sorrowful eyes. I kept walking, nice and slow like a good little target, and thought about that exchange back in the sitting room. I wondered what Frank had made of it. Daniel could have been simply trying to jog my memory loose, or he could have had very good reasons for wanting to check whether the amnesia was real, and I had no idea which it was.
I didn’t realize I was heading for the ruined cottage until it rose up in front of me, a smudge of thicker dark against the sky, stars flickering like altar lights in the windows. I switched off the torch: I could find my way across the field without it, and a light in the cottage was likely to make the neighbors very antsy, possibly even antsy enough to come investigating. The long grass swished, a soft steady sound, around my ankles. I reached up and touched the stone lintel, like a salute, before I went through the doorway.
The quality of the silence was different inside: deeper, and so thick I could feel it pressing softly around me. A slip of moonlight caught the crooked stone of the hearth in the inner room.
One wall sloped jaggedly down from the corner where Lexie had curled up to die, and I pulled myself up onto it and settled my back against the gable end. The place should probably have freaked me out—I was so close to her dying, I could have leaned down across ten days and touched her hair—but it didn’t. The cottage had a century and a half of its own stillness stored up, she had taken only an eyeblink; it had already absorbed her and closed over the place where she had been.
I thought about her differently, that night. Before, she had been an invader or a dare, always something that set my back stiffening and my adrenalin racing. But I was the one who had flashed into her life out of nowhere, with Sticky Vicky for a pawn and a wild why-not chance dangling from my fingertips; I was the dare she had taken, years before the flip side of the coin landed in front of me. The moon spun slowly across the sky and I thought of my face blue-gray and empty on steel in the morgue, the long rush and clang of the drawer shutting her into the dark, alone. I imagined her sitting on this same bit of wall on other, lost nights, and I felt so warm and so solid, firm moving flesh overlaid on her faint silvery imprint, it almost broke my heart. I wanted to tell her things she should have known, how her tutorial group had coped with
Beowulf
and what the guys had made for dinner, what the sky looked like tonight; things I was keeping for her.
In the first few months after Operation Vestal I thought a lot about leaving. It seemed, paradoxically, like the only way I could ever feel like me again: pack my passport and a change of clothes, scribble a note (“Dear everyone, I’m off. Love, Cassie”) and catch the next flight to anywhere, leave behind everything that had changed me into someone I didn’t recognize. Somewhere in there, I never knew the exact moment, my life had slipped through my hands and smashed to smithereens. Everything I had—my job, my friends, my flat, my clothes, my reflection in the mirror—felt like it belonged to someone else, some clear-eyed straight-backed girl I could never find again. I was a wrecked thing smeared over with dark finger marks and stuck with shards of nightmare, and I had no right there any more. I moved through my lost life like a ghost, trying not to touch anything with my bleeding hands, and dreamed of learning to sail in a warm place, Bermuda or Bondi, and telling people sweet soft lies about my past.
I don’t know why I stayed. Probably Sam would have called it courage—he always goes for the best angle—and Rob would have called it pure stubbornness, but I don’t flatter myself that it was either one. You can’t take credit for what you do when your back is against the wall. That’s nothing more than instinct, falling back on what you know best. I think I stayed because running seemed too strange and too complicated. All I knew was how to fall back, find a patch of solid ground, and then dig my heels in and fight to start over.