Shadows on the Nile (2 page)

‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’ she demanded.

Her mother looked at her oddly. There was anger around her mouth and Jessica felt the weight of her scrutiny.

‘Jessica, don’t make trouble.’

‘Where have you sent him?’

Don’t shout, don’t shout at Mummy or
… She didn’t let herself think of what came after the
or
.

She made her voice small. ‘Where is Georgie?’

‘He’s gone. You have a new brother now called Timothy. I want you to love him just as much as …’ A pause. Her mother’s slender fingers wrapped around the cup for warmth. ‘… as much as your father and I will.’

No
, Jessica wanted to shout across the kitchen but she hid the word behind her lips. ‘Where did you find him?’

‘We didn’t
find
him. We chose Timothy from among many other children in an orphanage.’

‘Where is
my
Georgie?’

‘He’s not
your
Georgie. He’s gone. We will never speak of him again.’

‘No!’ This time the word escaped. Jessica gripped the back of the wooden chair in front of her to stop her hands clawing at her mother’s face. ‘No, Mummy, please, please. Bring him back.’ Tears were flowing down her cheeks and she was ashamed of them because she knew her mother despised what she
called histrionics. ‘I’ll look after him better, Mummy. I’ll teach him to behave, please, please, please …’ Her voice was beseeching.

She saw her mother look away.

‘Mummy, I promise I can make Georgie stop annoying you so much and—’

‘Stop it, Jessica.’

‘But I love him. And he loves me. He needs me to …’

Her mother’s beautiful blue eyes turned on her, flat and weary, dulled by sadness. ‘Don’t fool yourself, Jessica.’ She shook her head. ‘That boy is incapable of love.’

‘No, no, when I read him stories, he loves me, I know he does.’

‘He’s sick. Sick in the head.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. He’s gone to a place where he will be properly cared for by people who know what’s best for him. He will be happier there, I assure you, and will forget about us before the week is over.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. He’s selfish like that.’ For a brief moment she leaned forward across the table, her gaze fixed on her daughter’s face, and her tone became unexpectedly gentle. ‘In your heart you know it’s true. I’m sorry, very sorry, because I know you care for him even though he is impossible to live with, but now we must accept that he has gone from our lives for ever.’ She sat upright once more, pulling back her shoulders and printing a smile on her mouth. ‘From now on we will all love your new little brother.’

‘Can I visit him?’

‘Who?’

‘Georgie.’

Her mother rose to her feet. ‘No.’ She expelled the word in a harsh gust. ‘Forget that boy. He doesn’t want you. He no longer exists for us.’

The silence stretched for ever. Jessica’s breath was racing in and out of her throat. She wanted to howl Georgie’s name but instead she stood rigid, fists clenched tight at her
sides, in bleak isolation.

‘Mummy,’ she whispered, ‘if I am good and love my new brother, will you let Georgie come home?’

Her mother sighed. ‘Oh, Jessica, you’re so stubborn. You’re not listening to me.’

*

Jessica hid behind the door. The moment her father’s key pushed into the lock she swung it open and stood in front of him.

‘Papa, I must talk to you.’

He had not even stepped over the threshold. He took one look at her and his expression seemed to retreat from her, though his body didn’t move. He was an average-looking man, of average build in an average grey suit, with light brown hair parted neatly on one side. He wore spectacles which he hated because he saw them as a weakness, and her father was not a man to tolerate weakness. Only his intense blue eyes gave any sign of the fierce intelligence that drove him to seek out perfection – in himself and in others. Jessica always found him daunting.

She moved back into the hall, took his hat and placed it carefully on the hall table. He shut the door behind him but didn’t hurry to remove his overcoat.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How is your mother?’

‘She’s in the drawing room. With my new brother.’

‘How is Timothy?’

‘Playing with Georgie’s train set.’

Her father’s eyes lit up. ‘Is he, indeed?’

Georgie never played with it. He just took the engines apart.

‘Papa, I have written a letter.’ She pulled a small blue envelope from her skirt pocket. ‘To say goodbye to Georgie.’

Her father jabbed his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose and quickly hung his coat on the coat-stand. She could tell he wanted to move away from her, but she placed herself between him and the drawing room door and smiled.

‘I like my new brother.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say his name.

‘Excellent.’

‘But I need Georgie’s new address to write on the envelope.’ She kept smiling. ‘Then I can forget about Georgie.’

He sighed. A long sour sound.

‘Oh, Jessica, I know how clever you
are.’ He held his hand out for the letter. ‘I will address and post it for you.’

She didn’t argue. Just handed it over. Knowing it would burn on the fire.

‘Papa, Georgie is clever too. He can read almost as well as I can. Ask Miss Miller.’ Miss Miller was the most recent in a long line of nannies who had come and gone.

Her father lifted her chin, tilting her head back, and studied her keenly, examining the lines and contours of her face. She felt like one of the spaniels that her Uncle Gus judged at dog shows.

‘Jessica, the ugly truth is that George is an extremely difficult human being who cannot live with normal people. Hush, don’t start denying it. You know it is true and you have to accept it.’

‘Papa, if I am bad will you send me to the same place?’

He released her chin. ‘No. So don’t try that.’

‘Would you send me somewhere else?’

For a moment he didn’t speak and a nerve twitched at the side of his mouth. She realised he was struggling not to shout at her, so she put her smile back on.

‘Don’t be foolish, Jessica,’ he said briskly. ‘The past is over and done with. It’s finished. Forget about it. This is a brave new start for us all, including young Timothy.’

He stepped around her, avoiding her, and opened the drawing-room door with a wide smile spreading across his face as he looked inside. ‘So how is my fine boy?’ He vanished into the warmth.

Jessica remained in the empty hall, struck
dumb with sorrow.

London, England 1932

Twenty years later

A fox barked. The eerie sound of a feral creature wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night made Jessie Kenton’s hand pause as she checked that the window catch was securely closed. The animal barked again, its voice echoing as lonely as a lunatic’s across the gardens of Putney.

Jessie backed away from the window. The flat was on the first floor and her bedroom looked out onto the street where a lamp-post further up the road stood patiently, watching out for her like a friend. Its yellow light pushed its way every night through the wide gap between her curtains, so that she could move from room to room without turning on the
lights. It was better that way. She didn’t want to give any sign that she couldn’t sleep. That she might be nervous.

Anyway, she didn’t want to disturb Tabitha.

She moved on silent feet into the living room. It was darker here, the curtains drawn fully closed, and she felt her heart-rate pick up a notch. But she could steer her way around each chair and table even with her eyes closed, so reached the broad bay window with no mishap. There were three catches. She slipped her hand behind the curtain and tested each one. All locked. Her heart rewarded her by climbing back down the scale, and she smiled, shaking her head at herself. She was tucking the curtains back into place when the yellow light outside wavered and her breath stalled in her throat. She made herself look again.

Nothing moved. The light had settled, but something – or someone – had crossed its path. From behind the swathe of curtain she examined the quiet residential road with care, inspected each solid pouch of darkness and scoured the black outlines of the shadows.

I can wait.

I can wait longer than you can
.

‘Oh, Jessie, what on earth are you doing up at this hour?’

Tabitha flipped the switch and Jessie blinked in the sudden flood of light that swept through the room. She stepped quickly away from the window.

‘Just restless,’ she shrugged. ‘Can’t sleep. Too much wine last night.’

‘I love it when you come to the club to hear us. I always play better.’

Jessie laughed.

Tabitha Mornay had shared the flat with her for the past three years. She possessed straight black hair that hung halfway down her back, and very white skin. That may have been because she lived her life the wrong way round – she slept much of the day and emerged only when the sun went down, full of energy and passionate about her music. She was a saxophonist in a jazz band called The Jack Rabbits, which played a smoky London club every night. Though nearly thirty years old, she looked no more than nineteen.

Tabitha twined her hair into a sleek snake over
one shoulder. ‘Who was that good-looking man you were dancing with at the end of the evening?’

‘No one particular.’

‘Hah! I wish I had a “no one” like that.’

‘I didn’t like his skinny moustache. Like a bootlace.’

‘His moustache was elegant. He had style. You’re too picky for your own good, my girl.’

Jessie rolled her blue eyes. ‘Next time I’ll stick his head down your saxophone and you can play his moustache your tune.’

Tabitha chuckled, yawned, wrapped her horrible pink satin robe more tightly around her waist and slunk off into the kitchen. Immediately Jessie darted into Tabitha’s bedroom and checked the window catch. This side of the house faced out onto the back garden and she peered closely but nothing was moving in the blackness, except the branches of the lilac tree. For the room of a smoke-hardened jazz player, it was eerily neat and tidy. She returned to her own bedroom but paced back and forth across the yellow slash of light until she heard Tabitha’s door close, and only then did she emerge again. She quietly tested the window catch in the kitchen and although it was definitely locked, she tightened it further. Then in the dark she stood with her cheek pressed against the front door, listening.

I can wait.

I can wait longer than you.

Timothy Kenton inspected his companions
at the round table with an interest that he kept carefully veiled. But his quick eyes spotted the small movements of their fingers where they lay splayed out on the gold cloth in front of them, tiny twitches of tension. He heard their breath, rising and falling in unison. He saw hope staring blatantly out of their eyes and he wondered if they saw the same in his. The room into which they had been ushered was high-ceilinged and ornate, with its tall windows covered in heavy purple drapes that failed miserably to keep out the piercing draughts. He wished he’d kept his overcoat on. It was as cold as a blasted sepulchre in here and it gave off a distinct odour of bad drains that the scented candles did little to disguise.

Timothy counted six clients at the table, including himself: four other men and a woman of about forty who had wisely chosen to wear a fur coat. Obviously she had been before. She wore heavy make-up but her lips were pale, almost bloodless, and she chewed on them incessantly. Six clients or sometimes nine – that was the usual number, always divisible by three. Only two of the men did he recognise: Fabian Rawlings and the Right Honourable Phillip Hyde-Mason. Like himself they were both in their twenties and both old hands at this game. He nodded a brief greeting to them across the table but no one spoke. You only spoke when Madame Anastasia invited you to do so.

She was seated on Timothy’s right, magnificent in a purple and gold feathered headdress that made her dramatically taller than anyone else in the room. She was a middle-aged woman with strong hawkish features and tonight she was encased in a stiff purple gown, a figure as intimidating to her clients as she must be to her spirit guide. She sat now with her hands flat on the table in front of her, palms down, eyes closed, murmuring strange words under her breath while her clients waited. Timothy always found the waiting hard, impatient for the action to start. Spittle gathered in his mouth and each time he swallowed, it took an effort. He always had the odd sensation at these sessions that one of the spirits was hovering behind him, its fingers around his throat. But that was something he kept firmly to himself. Didn’t want to sound a complete dunce. What would Rawlings and Hyde-Mason make of such nonsense?

Such nonsense?

Was the need to get in touch with those who have
passed over
nothing more than pathetic human frailty? Superstition? Just nonsense?

He frowned, irritated by his sceptical mood, and stared down at Madame Anastasia’s hands. Her fingers were stretched out wide on the table next to his own. She had good
hands, elegant and expressive. Free of all rings and without that odd grasping hunch to them that afflicted many of the mediums he had encountered, as though they were readying themselves to snatch the spirits from the air around them, as well as the money from his pocket before either had time to blink.

A chill wind suddenly whistled through the gloom. It seemed to swirl around the ceiling cornices and made the hairs rise on the back of Timothy’s neck. However many times it happened and however many times he told himself it was trickery, it still set his guts churning. The candles near the windows flickered and died, steeping much of the room into darkness, except for the three candles that formed a triangle at the centre of the table. They cast shadows on the eager faces, turning them into skulls.

‘They are here,’ Madame Anastasia intoned and opened her eyes.

Timothy felt the familiar tug in his chest. Always it was the same. Something seemed to shift position inside him, realigning itself, edging itself forward. Elbowing its slippery way to the surface. Something that cried out for a voice.