The Crystal Cage (25 page)

‘What was all that about?’ he demanded the minute the door shut.

‘What?’ I tried the innocent tactic.

‘The moodiness. The rudeness. Don’t you like my sister?’

‘I don’t
dis
like her. What I don’t like is your going behind my back.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘What do you call secretly writing a report on Royde, passing it to your sister in a private email and pocketing the cheque?’

‘That’s unfair. I didn’t write it in secret. You were out all day yesterday looking for work.’

‘And all today,’ I put in viciously.

‘Without any luck,’ he retorted, equally viciously. I suppose I had that coming. ‘At least there
is
a cheque to pocket—the one which you’ve just discarded. It’s there for you to take your share any time.’

He came to the table and started searching for the cheque, which had once again submerged beneath layers of paper. I wasn’t mollified.

‘You didn’t tell me what you were doing. You could have shown me the report last night.’

‘I could, and you would have asked me not to send it. You’d have insisted on carrying on.’

‘I thought you were just as keen.’

‘There’s no point. We’ve found out all that’s necessary for the Society to make their arrangements. That was the aim of the project, after all, and any other information is futile. The Society doesn’t need it, and neither do we.’

I squared up to him and wished, as so many times in the past, that I stood taller than my measly five feet three.

‘I don’t like the “we.” Your motivation may be money, but I have professional pride at stake. I don’t like being beaten and I’m determined to find out as much as I can.’

‘Meanwhile earning sod all.’

‘There’s more to life than money.’

‘Only if you don’t need it. For years you haven’t had to worry about anything as common as money, Oliver no doubt provided. But I have and yes, money matters.’ Now it was for him to turn fiery. ‘Stop acting like a spoilt child!’

‘Spoilt? You have to be joking! You and your fountain!’

‘It’s my parents’ fountain and what has that got to do with anything?’

I wasn’t entirely sure and in response gave an irritable shrug. He saw my hesitation and decided to take the heat down a degree or so.

‘Look,’ he said in what I imagine he thought was his reasonable voice, ‘the Royde Society is happy. They can go ahead with a clear conscience and build their mock Carlyon chapel for the big celebration. That’s all they wanted to do from the first. And if you’re really bitten by the search, you can always carry on in your own time.’

‘What happens when I find something?’ I wasn’t giving up the challenge quite so easily.

‘If, Grace, if. That would be your little bonus. Just don’t find the bloody Exhibition plans, that’s all. I don’t want to have to go back to the Society and make them cry.’

I thought about it. I suppose it made sense. We had some money now to tide us over and if my job hunting continued in similar fashion to the last few wasted days, I’d have plenty of time to fill. It wouldn’t hurt to keep digging; it might even keep me sane.

‘The cheque will give us a breathing space,’ Nick was saying, an echo of my own thoughts. ‘I’ve got this interview tomorrow and who knows, I might get the job and then we’ll be home and dry. Plenty of time for you to get yourself sorted out.’

He probably didn’t mean it to sound condescending, but it did.

‘What’s with the “if”? Surely Lucy will have fixed it,’ I said nastily.

‘Why would you say that?’ He gave me a steady look and I instantly regretted my words, but there was no going back.

‘Isn’t that how your family does things?’

‘No it isn’t, and why are you so sore? You’re not content to ignore my sister, now you’re suggesting that she’s corrupt enough to fix an interview. Not nice, not at all nice.’

I had to agree and could only hazard a guess at why I was behaving so unpleasantly. This evening I’d been granted a small glimpse into Nick’s family, and it had been as distant from me as life on Mars. I just didn’t fit into that scene and never would. I’d thought that he didn’t either. From all he’d said, his family was there to avoid. Yet an hour ago he’d sat a few yards from me, laughing uproariously with his sister and sharing a world that I could never join. He’d not been the person that I’d come to know. That’s why, I suppose, I was sore.

‘The truth is you’ve got a real problem with families.’ He was aggrieved and intent on pursuing his injury.

‘I thought it was a problem for you, too.’

He ignored this and went on, ‘I think you don’t like families because you don’t have one.’

I detest cod psychology and answered him shortly. ‘I have a sister.’

‘In name only. She might as well not exist.’

‘Nevertheless she does.’

‘But you don’t contact her.’

‘I can’t,’ I said flatly. ‘We don’t speak.’

‘As a matter of interest, when did you last speak to…Verity, wasn’t it?’

He was cursed with a great memory and also annoying tenacity. ‘I don’t remember,’ I lied.

‘You broke with the only known member of your family and you can’t remember when! I don’t buy it.’

I didn’t either, but I was determined not to talk about Verity. That part of my life was well and truly dead, and it was going to stay that way.

‘If you don’t remember when you last spoke, why did you stop speaking? You can’t have forgotten that.’ As I said, an annoying tenacity.

‘There were difficulties.’

‘I imagine so. What?’

I felt immensely tired and knew that I should keep my mouth shut and hope he’d give up eventually. But of course I didn’t.

‘Her boyfriend attacked me, but she accused me of coming on to him,’ I said bluntly.

‘And did you?’

He saw my face and swiftly backtracked. ‘Okay, so there was a misunderstanding between you, but surely not worth such a dramatic split.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Make me.’

‘He was the only boyfriend she ever had.’

‘Why? Was she so bad looking?’ he said crudely. ‘I can’t imagine so with you as a sister.’

‘She was pretty enough—she just didn’t socialise. She always said that she couldn’t go out in the evening because she had me to look after. She worked as a library assistant and the few men around were old or married or both.’

‘But she still got her man!’

‘Just after her birthday—her twenty-fifth—she was asked out by a customer she’d been helping. He kept coming into the library, getting her to find out information, and then finally he asked her for a date. She brought him back to the house after they’d been going out a couple of weeks and from the first he gave me the creeps. But she could see no wrong in him. It was embarrassing. She was all over him.’

‘Another classic case.’

I must have looked fazed.

‘Oliver’s male menopause? You certainly collect them. Sorry, go on.’

I didn’t want to go on. ‘Can we leave it, Nick? It’s not an edifying story.’

‘But it’s your story and that’s why it matters. To me, at least.’

He came and sat beside me and his hand reached for mine and held it fast. His resentment had gone and when I looked across at him the expression in his eyes held a reassuring warmth. I think he realised that my pain was still alive and kicking. A light kiss on the cheek gave me encouragement to keep talking.

When I began to speak, though, my voice was barely above a whisper. ‘One day I came back home early when Verity was still at work.’

He bent his head towards me and stroked my hair. I began again in a much firmer voice. ‘It was the last day of ‘A’ Levels and we’d finished Latin B before lunch. I was thrilled to have finished my exams and I flew home on wings. Before that I’d had a few glasses of cider with friends and that no doubt helped me on my way. When I got in, I turned on the kitchen radio and started singing along with it. I can remember it so well. It was a really hot day and I’d kicked off my shoes and was dancing around the kitchen table to these sad pop songs feeling better than I had for years.’

‘So far, so normal.’

‘Yes, but then Verity’s boyfriend turned up. I couldn’t work out why he’d called—he must have known she was at the library. He was friendly enough to start with and then he began coming on to me. I told him in no uncertain terms to get off and stay off. But he wouldn’t. He pounced on me and by then he’d worked himself into a frenzy. He was like a wild animal and wouldn’t let go. He started tearing at my blouse. It was one of those thin broderie anglaise tops the girls were all wearing that summer, and he wrenched it open at the front. I didn’t have a bra on—I wasn’t very well developed then.’

‘Doing better now, though.’

I pulled my hand away. ‘Are you never serious, Nick?’ I’d repressed this horrible memory for so long and for the first time I’d found the courage to share it. Banter was the last thing I needed.

‘Sorry, sweetheart. Just trying to lighten the atmosphere a little.’

‘There is no light.’ I scolded. ‘I was in a dark place, very dark. The man was going to rape me. I fought back, but he was far too strong. Then Verity came in. She’d been feeling unwell and had excused herself from work. He told her that I’d got drunk after the exams and then come on to him and that he was trying to restrain me. It was ridiculous—he was twice my size—but she believed him, or pretended to. I ran out of the house and didn’t come back for hours.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘I don’t know. I was in such a state. I probably just wandered around until it started getting dark. Then I had to go back to the house. He’d gone, but Verity was there. She’d been crying—loads—and she was very angry in a tight-lipped way. She never once raised her voice, but her words flayed me. She said that she’d lost the only boyfriend she’d ever had or was likely to have and it was all because of me. She said that I couldn’t bear that she had anything of her own and that I’d deliberately set out to wreck her life.’

‘That’s crazy. She would have met someone else. In any case this bloke sounds a complete loser.
Did
she meet someone else?’

‘No. I don’t know. After that, I didn’t stay around to find out. She never said another word about the incident, but she blamed me. It was always there in the background. I’d catch her looking at me and her face would be twisted with all the anger bubbling inside.’

‘And you never had it out with her, never tried to convince her that she was wrong?’

‘I suppose I believed that in a way she was right, that it was my fault. Just as my parents’ death had been my fault.’

‘You were just a kid. She should have realised the damage she was doing in heaping you with blame. It was her job to protect you from the louse, not the other way round.’

‘That’s what hurt the most. She didn’t protect me, instead she believed his lies—and they weren’t even clever lies. I couldn’t wait to get away. A few weeks later I finished college and moved out. I went to stay with a girlfriend for the summer and then left for uni in the autumn.’

‘And then found your way to Oliver.’

I turned to face him. ‘Are you trying to say something? More psychobabble?’ It was everywhere these days and seemingly even Nick wasn’t immune.

‘Common sense, Grace. You ran to him for protection. What happened made you scared of life. That’s why you don’t often show your claws. You’re scared that you’ll get hurt again.’

‘Let’s have another drink.’ This was way too heavy for me. He’d hit the nail on the head, of course. Avoiding conflict, going with the flow, living a kind of half life: that was what I’d done ever since I was ten years old and my parents stormed out of the house quarrelling over me. I poured a very large measure of wine, but Nick refused the glass I held out to him.

‘Can’t do. I’ve got to be on top form tomorrow if I’ve got any chance of this job—unless of course Lucy really has fixed the interview.’

‘I’m sorry, Nick. I’ve been a cow.’

‘That just about sums it up, but I forgive you.’

I nestled back into his arms. ‘Do you want to practice?’

‘Do I need to? I thought we were doing pretty well.’

I poked him in the ribs. ‘Practice for the job interview.’

‘Oh that. No, but I wouldn’t mind an early bedtime. I’m sure we can find a few rough edges to perfect.’ And he kissed me long and deep.

Chapter Thirteen

He was showered, shaved and dressed at an unbearably early time the next morning. When I managed to prise my eyelids open, I looked at him amazed and not just because he was up and dressed before the clock had struck a bleary seven. In his borrowed clothes, he looked polished and assured and for a moment I experienced the same sinking feeling as last night, the feeling that he wasn’t the same person that I’d grown to know. But then he made some stupid joke over the cornflakes and I chided myself that he was no different. What was inside the covering was important, not the covering, and that was just the same. At least I hoped so. I wished him luck and meant it. The interview was a phenomenal opportunity and though I wasn’t confident of his success, I knew it was what he wanted more than anything, and so I wanted it, too.

As soon as he’d sprung up the basement steps and I’d washed the few breakfast dishes, I switched on my laptop. A lot seemed to have happened since my visit to Silver Street, but the uncanny experience I’d had there continued to play and replay itself in my mind. I couldn’t quite believe the physical reaction I’d had, the prickling, the breathlessness. But it was the scent of jasmine that haunted me most, so much so that I’d stopped wearing the perfume. Job hunting could wait a while, I decided; I would finish the work for Leo Merrick and put Silver Street out of my mind for good.

I logged into the Colindale site and searched their records for 1863, choosing
The Daily News
as my first port of call. It had been a campaigning journal, concerned with the poor and likely to contain news coming out of the East End. The search proved almost too easy. A subdued paragraph told me that the Misses Villiers, sisters who had been in joint charge of the girls’ elementary school in Silver Street, had been found dead in the schoolroom by a caretaker on his evening rounds, that their family was unknown and that the funeral had been attended by a representative from the School Board. That explained their short tenure and the abrupt change to a male teaching staff. But what a truly dreadful end for two such young lives. No wonder I’d felt disquiet in Silver Street. Even now sitting here, I could feel my body starting to relive the memory, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t shake myself free. It was too vivid. I jumped up and walked into the kitchen, back to the mundane, back to life. But it was several cups of coffee later before I felt able to return to the laptop.