In Her Shadow (3 page)

After fights like this, Mrs Cardell wouldn’t come out of the house for a few days. She’d send Jago to fetch her packets of Embassy from the village stores.

But this was the next day, the morning after. I was pushing my bike up the lane when Jago fell into step beside me. He started to act out the plot of a film he’d seen on television. He shot at imaginary adversaries concealed in the rambling rhododendron bushes that lined the lane, swaggered and blew the smoke from the barrels of his finger-guns. I held onto the handlebars of my bike and watched.

‘You’re a nutter,’ I said.

He laughed. He was happy because after a big fight, things were often better at the Cardells’ – for a while.

At the top of the hill, we turned left and I leaned, panting, over the handlebars. I was proud of my bike. It was a BMX my father had bought from a man in the Royal Naval Air Station. I rang the bell a couple of times with my thumb but Jago didn’t take any notice.

‘Have you got any money?’ he asked.

‘Nope.’

‘You should have. We could have got an ice cream.’

I pulled a face at him and then we stopped together. We’d reached the entrance to Thornfield House and for the first time in months it looked different.

After Mrs Withiel’s death, planks had been nailed over the windows, and the gates had been propped up and padlocked. Wisteria grew rampantly over the walls and the garden became so overgrown that it was impossible to make out the features that had once been there, the lawn, the path, the drive.

But that day, the gates had been removed and the shutters taken away from the windows; some of them were open. Nettles, brambles and saplings had been cut down and piled high in one corner of the garden, and the flagstone path that led to the front door had been cleared.

Jago and I exchanged glances. He scratched behind his ear.

‘We ought to go and have a look,’ he said. ‘To make sure nobody’s inside, thieving.’

His face was serious, one eyebrow slightly raised, and his thumbs were tucked into the sides of his jeans. He was pretending to be somebody from a film. Jago was always pretending to be somebody he wasn’t.

‘What if there
is
someone inside?’

‘Then we’ll tie them up and get a reward.’

I propped my bike against the wall.

‘I don’t think we should go in,’ I said. ‘We’ll be trespassing.’

‘It’s OK,’ Jago said. ‘I’ll go first.’

He crept forward, light as a cat in his tatty old trainers. I followed at a distance. The garden around the drive was so green and dense with overhanging branches and plant-life that I had the impression of falling into water. Bees buzzed in the heat and the air was heavy with the scents of flowers.

Jago pushed at the front door. It creaked beneath the palm of his hand and when he pulled it away, flakes of old green
paint were stuck to his skin. He wiped his hand on the side of his jeans.

‘Hello?’ he called softly, then more confidently: ‘
Hello-o!
’ but there was no answer. He looked at me over his shoulder, beckoning with his eyes. He went into the house and I followed.

It took me a few moments to accustom myself to the gloom of the interior. The hall floor was tiled, the walls were tall and elegant with ceiling roses and fancy cornices. The air that had been trapped inside for so long smelled stale but a faint, summery draught was breezing through, chasing away the mustiness. A fly corkscrewed through the hall, and Jago and I stepped carefully forward, looking into each of the abandoned rooms. The odd piece of furniture remained shrouded in dust-sheets, casting shadows in the huge oblong shafts of mote-filled sunlight that fell through the windows. An enormous grand piano had been uncovered and stood proud in the centre of the front room.

I knew Mrs Withiel had lain dead in the house for three weeks before her body was discovered, and wondered where exactly she had been and if I would recognize the spot when I saw it by the aura of unquiet that must hover over it. The thought of the old woman lying there, alone in the dark, sent a chill of horror through me. I knew I’d walked past Thornfield House many times when she had been inside, dead, and the knowledge frightened me. What if I’d looked up and seen her ghost watching through the upstairs window? I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.

‘Come on!’ Jago called under his breath. He ran upstairs and I followed him into one of the large front rooms. The walls were covered with floral pink-and-green paper, the pattern mostly faded but still strong in the places where the furniture had protected it from the sun. Jago dropped to his hands and knees and peered into a
mouse-hole in the skirting board. I went to the window. Wisteria blooms hung like paper garlands, framing the view. A lorry slowly passed by on the lane beyond, and stopped. I could see the top third of it over the wall. And then I sensed, rather than heard, somebody come into the room, and I turned and there was a girl: Ellen.

She was close to me in age and about the same height, but that was where the similarities ended. She had dark hair, a fringe, dark eyes. She was slightly built, long-legged, wearing denim shorts and a sleeveless green T-shirt and although her feet were bare, her toenails had been painted bright green. I was pink and fair, big-boned, round with puppy fat, sticky with sweat and dressed in a pastel-striped T-shirt and towelling shorts.

I had never seen anyone my age as self-composed as this girl and felt childlike in comparison. I tugged at the legs of my stupid, babyish shorts. The elastic was tight around my tummy. I wished I hadn’t put my blonde hair into pink bobbles that morning. I wished I wasn’t so hot.

Jago scuttled to his feet, brushed himself down and cleared his throat. He licked his lips, anticipating trouble. Adult voices rose up from outside and the rumble of a heavy-duty engine. ‘
Left hand down!
’ someone called. ‘
Mind the wall!
’

‘Who are you?’ the girl asked. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her accent was strange and attractive, her words more precisely enunciated than ours.

‘We’re just checking everything’s OK,’ Jago said in a formal voice. He was pretending to be older than he was. He was trying to impress the girl. I frowned at him. ‘What about you?’ he asked casually. ‘Why are
you
here?’

The girl laughed a little artificially and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. She was showing off too. ‘I’m Ellen Brecht. This was my grandmother’s house but now we’re going to live here.’

‘The old lady was your grandma?’

‘Yes.’

‘She told us about you.’

Ellen’s eyes widened. ‘Did she?’

‘She said you never visited.’

‘I couldn’t.’ Ellen wandered over to the window. She held back the net, accidentally replicating the exact pose her grandmother used when she looked out. ‘My mama worried about Grandma all the time. I told her she would be all right. She was, wasn’t she? She wasn’t lonely?’

Jago and I exchanged glances. Jago scratched the eczema on the inside of his elbow. Was it possible Ellen did not know the circumstances of her grandmother’s death?

‘She looked fine last time we saw her,’ Jago said. ‘Only … she said some weird things.’

Ellen dropped the net. ‘What things?’

Jago gazed round the room. ‘I dunno. About the devil keeping you away from her … and stuff.’

‘That’s silly! We couldn’t come and see her because we were living in Germany, that’s all.’

I felt embarrassed. I frowned at Jago. He pulled a face back.

‘What are your names?’ Ellen asked.

‘I’m Jago and she’s Spanner.’

‘Hannah,’ I said, and I pushed his arm.

‘Are you her brother?’

‘No. We live next door.’

Ellen examined us for a while, as if to get the measure of us. Then she said: ‘Come and meet Mama.’ She looked at Jago. ‘Only don’t tell her about the devil stuff.’

We followed Ellen downstairs, where her mother, slight and glamorous, was leaning on a stick, and her father, who looked to me like a film star in skinny black jeans and a black shirt, was waving a cigarette around and directing the
removal men as to where to place the chaise longue with which they were struggling.

Ellen’s mama was about as different from my mother as it was possible for another woman to be. She was young, slight and beautiful. Shiny hair slip-slid down her back, falling in lovely brown curls over a dress the colour of terracotta. She wore cherry-coloured lipstick and her teeth were small and straight and white.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Who have we here?’

‘This is Jago and Hannah,’ Ellen said. ‘They were friends with Grandma.’

‘You knew my mother?’ Ellen’s mama asked, and without waiting for a reply she stepped forward and embraced me, and then Jago, sweetly and tenderly. She smelled exotic and her skin was soft as silk against my cheek. She stepped back and looked at us with her head slightly to one side. Her sunglasses were pushed up onto her forehead, holding back her hair. She wore gold hoops in her ears and a chain with a treble clef charm around her slender neck, and she would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for the joints of her fingers and wrists, which were badly misshapen.

‘I hated the thought of my mother being in this monstrous house on her own,’ she said, straightening her back with difficulty and making the bangles on her arm chink. ‘I didn’t know she had young friends. And you,’ she looked at me and smiled a smile that warmed me inside, ‘
you
must have reminded her of Ellen, mustn’t she, Pieter! How perfect that you were there to look after her!’

Ellen’s father gave a little mock bow and graced me with a smile so devastating that my stomach flipped and my cheeks burned. I had never met anyone like him in my whole life. Never.

‘We didn’t exactly look after her,’ I said.

‘Of course you did!’ said Ellen’s father.

Just then, a shorter, stocky, older woman, dressed in dark clothes, came through from the back of the house. She was carrying a box of ornaments, wrapped in news paper, which she placed on the small table beside the telephone. Ellen’s father backed away from the woman, like a snail retracting from salt. He moved into the shadows and watched from under his hair, rubbing his chin.

‘Are these children bothering you, Anne?’ the woman asked Ellen’s mama.

‘Not at all.’

‘You should sit down. You’re overdoing it – you need to rest.’

‘I’m fine, thank you, Mrs Todd,’ said Ellen’s mother.

‘Your mother needs some peace and quiet,’ Mrs Todd said to Ellen. ‘Go and play somewhere else.’

From behind Mrs Todd, Ellen’s father rolled his eyes. I put my hand over my mouth to contain a giggle. Then he beckoned me over to him. He took a wallet out of his pocket and removed a five-pound note, which he gave to me. He closed my fingers around the money. ‘It’s for sharing,’ he said, enclosing my hand in his fist and giving it a squeeze, and then he leaned down and whispered, ‘But you, adorable Miss Hannah, must be responsible for it.’

‘Thank you,’ I whispered. He winked at me. I held the note very tight in my hand. Nobody had ever called me ‘adorable’ before.

Outside, Jago, Ellen and I were tongue-tied. We walked along the lane in silence for a while. I kept looking at the money to make sure I hadn’t lost it.

‘Your parents are very nice,’ I said eventually.

‘Mmm.’

‘Who’s the other lady?’

‘Mrs Todd? Oh, she’s our housekeeper.’

‘Is she a servant?’ Jago asked.

‘Kind of. She does the cleaning and cooking and looks after Mama.’

‘Hannah’s mum’s a cleaner too,’ Jago said.

It was true but I wished Jago hadn’t said anything. It took all the shine away from the morning. I didn’t want Ellen knowing that my mum wore a housecoat and spent her days scrubbing floors and toilets and that her fingers were rough and her arms meaty and that she smelled of bleach. I wanted her to think we were the same.

Ellen looked at me in a curious way but I turned my head and didn’t elaborate.

We bought iced lollies at the garage and then walked to the church and sat on the wall looking out over the sparkling sea beyond the fields. Ellen peeled the paper from her Fab fastidiously, and dropped it behind her, into the graveyard.

‘Where do you two live?’ she asked.

‘Down there.’ Jago pointed. You couldn’t see Cross Hands Lane from where we were, or the pebble-dashed cottages, only the slate-grey colour of the roof-tiles way below in between the leaves of the trees.

‘Our houses are semi-detached,’ Jago said.

‘Joined together,’ I explained.

Ellen was impressed by this. I licked the bottom of my lolly, which was melting down my hand, and smiled at Jago. He smiled back. Ellen was watching. I moved my leg a little closer to his, scraping my thighs on the wall.

‘Tell me about your families,’ Ellen said.

‘My mum is dead of cancer and my dad is gone away,’ Jago said without looking up. ‘I live with my uncle and aunt. He’s a bastard and she’s a bitch.’

‘Oh,’ said Ellen, her eyes widening. ‘That’s so sad!’

Jago shrugged.

Ellen sat for a moment, swinging her legs and processing this information. ‘I never met anyone whose mother
was dead before.’ She turned to me. ‘What about you?’

‘Nothing really. Boring. One mum, one dad, that’s all.’

‘Same as me,’ said Ellen. She smiled at me then and it was a friendly smile. This was something we had in common. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. It was enough.

CHAPTER FIVE

DARKNESS WAS SWIRLING
around my legs like fog and my bare feet were cold. I was hiding in the back garden at Thornfield House. It was dusk, or dawn perhaps, and the sky was bruise-coloured. Trees and bushes were illuminated by the shadowy light of candles flickering in jars made of barbed wire hanging from the branches. We were playing Murder in the Dark and Ellen was the killer. She’d already found Jago and her father and Mrs Brecht. Only I was left, pressed against the trunk of an old willow tree hidden in the swaying umbrella of its long fronds. ‘
I’m coming, Hannah!
’ Ellen called softly. ‘
I’m coming to get you!
’