The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde Read online

  ‘He’s convinced we tried to drown him, not save him. He thinks us murderesses.’

  ‘Gratitude for you,’ says Pam, trying to clear the air. But the silence that follows is heavy.

  I rub my raw eyes with the heels of my hands: colours bloom and splatter on the inside of my eyelids, like paint. I wonder if this is what Harry sees in his right eye, if he sees anything at all.

  ‘Well, Harry can’t stay in the meadow,’ Flora says after a while, her concern about her lover still oddly subdued. I wonder again if her reaction to the night is stalled by shock.

  ‘I doubt he’s there now.’ I lean back against the reassuring solidity of Pam. ‘He said he was going to walk home. Yes, I know. I did offer to get a doctor. He didn’t want it.’ Spoken aloud, the conversation with Harry seems so preposterous, so unreal, I suddenly wonder if I’ve dreamed the whole thing.

  ‘I’ll find Tom. I’ll get Tom to search for him, just to be sure. Tom must have got back to Cornton hours ago, wondering where Harry is.’ Flora grabs her dressing-gown off the back of the bedroom chair.

  ‘Flora, you can’t,’ instructs Pam, sharply, making me think it’s not the first time she’s had to say it. ‘What if someone sees you? We’ve got to look like nothing out of the ordinary happened last night. We have no idea what Harry’s going to do now. He could call the police, anything.’

  I rally myself to tell them about his eye, the proposed pact. ‘And the thing is –’

  ‘But I have to see Tom!’ Flora interrupts tearfully.

  ‘Flora …’ Pam warns. She turns to me, says matter-of-factly, ‘To put you in the picture, Margot, Tom and Flora combusted into high feeling when Harry wandered off looking for you last night.’

  ‘What?’ I turn to Flora, aghast. But her face makes sense of it: a funny light in her eyes, that almost-smile. And it’s perfectly obvious.

  ‘I couldn’t fight it any more,’ Flora says simply.

  ‘And before you try to say anything sympathetic, Margot, I’d gone off Tom by midnight anyway,’ Pam points out tersely. ‘And there are much bigger things to think about right now. Can we please think about them?’

  Dot lets out a sob. I turn to her, so quiet beside me, the still point of this storm, and put my arms around her. Up close, I notice the ghost of her lost spectacles in tan lines, the ghost of the fragile little girl she was yesterday, and is no longer. ‘You okay?’

  She nods, unconvincingly.

  ‘What were you doing in the garden last night?’ I ask.

  Dot rolls the lacy edge of Flora’s pillow between her fingers. It’s a moment or two before she can speak. ‘I felt lonely in the house on my own,’ she says eventually, distressed by recalling it. ‘Moll was already asleep in the kitchen chair. And the rain looked so enticing after the heat. I could see two people running under a tree. I thought it was Flora and Harry. But when I got there … it was you, Margot.’ She lowers her gaze. ‘You and Harry.’

  So it was Dot following us, not my conscience. I shift uncomfortably on the bed, unable to look at Flora.

  ‘I thought he was going to kill you, Margot. I thought –’ Dot’s voice cracks. I take her trembling hand. Tears start to roll down her face. ‘And I saw the paperweight on the deckchair with my book, you know, where I’d forgotten it earlier, the deckchairs on the lawn. And …’ She can’t go on, her shoulders heaving silently.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say.

  ‘You’re a warrior, Dot. Never forget it.’ Pam is unable to keep the respect out of her voice: our little sister has proved herself at last. I feel something in Dot’s hand release then: her sisters’ opinion is the only thing that really matters.

  ‘Was he, Margot?’ asks Flora, urgently. ‘Was Harry trying to kill you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admit.

  A bleach of sunlight moves ominously across the rug, warming the tips of our bare toes, a reminder that the day is coming.

  Flora covers her face with her hands. ‘I just had no idea all that time … all that stuff we did … It makes my skin crawl.’

  I brush my hands over the backs of my knees, thinking how Harry found the most hated, horrible part of my body and kissed it. I wait for it to make my skin crawl too. But it doesn’t.

  ‘Did he force himself on you, Margot?’ Flora stifles a sob, reaches out to touch a small scratch beneath my collarbone.

  I shake my head, knowing that I must tell Flora what really happened, how I kissed Harry, lost myself in his arms. But there is something more pressing, something they need to know, a decision to be made. And I’m ordering the difficult words on my tongue when Pam sighs out, ‘Oh, Margot,’ and pulls me to her chest so that I can feel her heart’s gallop. Then Dot and Flora join us and we are all entangled together on the bed, a scrum of nighties, frenzied heartbeat and hair. And it feels so good, so safe, the place I’ve missed so much, and I realize in that moment how far I’ve drifted from them all, lost in Audrey’s world, desires, secrets within secrets. I want never to leave the sisterly fold again.

  ‘Nothing can hold us back now, can it?’ murmurs Flora, articulating something that I’m feeling too, struggling to accept, that the realization we could actually kill a man if we had to – and share responsibility for that killing – brings with it a new sense of possibility, an awareness of a ruthless female power we didn’t know we had. Surely if we can do that, we can do anything, change shape, pull down our destinies from the skies. We are not English girls waiting to be married any more. Not alone, like poor Audrey either. Sisters. Survivors. Like cats. Nine lives. Maybe we always were, just didn’t know it.

  ‘Nothing,’ Pam sighs.

  ‘Thank God it’s all over,’ says Flora.

  ‘Not quite,’ I say.

  The world starts to announce itself loudly through the open window – the rattle of a cart down the lane, a farm dog barking, the squeak of Billy’s bicycle brakes – shattering the sense that we are somehow suspended over events, can remain untouchable for much longer. Time is running out. Fighting sleep, we try to resolve the irresolvable in rambling, unfinished sentences. My sisters make me describe his eye in detail again; how Harry remembers seeing Dot, the moment before she cracked the paperweight on his head, and thinks we tried to drown him; our moral obligation to expose him against the need to protect ourselves.

  We talk in muddled circles, slowly moving towards a centre, like an old tractor in a field. Pam lies down on her belly, ripping at her nails with her teeth. Dot lays her head in my lap, fighting sleep. Flora sits up on the pillows, biting a hank of her hair.

  ‘Okay, listen,’ Pam says, after a while, rubbing her eyes so hard they squeak. ‘The fact is if we do tell Aunt Sybil and Uncle Perry, we’re dealing them torturous knowledge that can’t be proved, since Audrey’s body was swept away years ago and Harry will deny it.’

  ‘Just when they’re recovering their old selves, and Aunt Sybil so much happier,’ Flora murmurs quietly, her eyelids heavy, almost shut. ‘She’ll simply die of grief.’

  ‘Uncle Perry will hunt Harry down with his shotgun,’ adds Pam. ‘And if he doesn’t, we’ve all had it because Harry will be out for our blood.’

  ‘But it is the truth,’ I say.

  ‘No. It’s what Harry told you, drunk,’ corrects Pam, glancing at Dot in my lap. ‘Oh, look, our warrior’s asleep.’

  I gently lift Dot’s head on to a pillow, cover her with a sheet. She stretches out one leg, dangling the foot off the edge of the bed, just like she always did in our bedroom in London.

  ‘But the pact will never end,’ I whisper. ‘We will be connected to him for ever. And we don’t know what effect it –’

  ‘Margot,’ says Pam, wearily. ‘How can any of us predict our future years from now? I can’t even predict how today’s going to turn out.’

  ‘My brain aches. I just can’t think any more.’ Flora collapses back on the pillow next to Dot, closing her eyes. ‘I’m so, so tired.’

  Pam lowers her head to her arms, her voi
ce slurring. ‘I think we’ll know for certain what to do, Margot, when we see Aunt Sybil. Then it will all become clear.’ Her words trail off into a snore.

  I have no recollection of dozing off myself but when I awake Pam’s elbow is in my nostril, my sisters still asleep. I hear the deep rumble of Perry’s voice downstairs. Everything is almost normal, for two or three seconds. Then I remember.

  I stumble to the window and peer out at the garden. It’s unsettling, the way it looks so peaceful, like a river must after a person has sunk. Bright sunshine now. A morning in full swing. Billy is crouched in one of the flowerbeds, planting. And on the other side of the garden wall, the nose of Perry’s black Daimler in the drive gleams, like a bullet.

  Returning to my room to dress, I glance at Audrey’s door, noticing that for the first time this summer I don’t feel its pull. I have no desire to sit on her sleigh bed and pretend it’s mine. I want to wear my Chelsea-black trousers, the ones I haven’t worn since the day we arrived. They’re at the very back of my drawer. I have to suck in my tummy to do up the last button, my figure filled out by Moll’s cooking. The trousers feel hot and clingy after weeks of loose dresses but good. I’m a London girl. Myself again.

  ‘Morning, young lady.’ Perry winks at me. He’s bent over, touching his toes in the drawing room. It occurs to me that I really could turn my uncle’s world upside down with just a few words about last night. ‘Look, I can almost do it.’

  ‘Like an acrobat, Uncle.’

  ‘Never say never, Margot.’ He straightens with a low groan, and rubs his back. ‘You look ghastly. Just as well we let you all sleep in. I take it last night was a success then?’

  I nod, and try to keep my face free of inflection. ‘I hope you had a nice time too.’

  He pulls on his ear lobe and grins. ‘Yes, it was – fun in fact. And a fine play, a very fine play.’ There is a moment of embarrassment, as if I’ve stumbled into his bedroom without asking and found him in his underwear.

  ‘I was looking for Aunt Sybil.’

  ‘Oh, the garden somewhere.’ He scratches the back of his neck. ‘You know your aunt.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, because I do.

  Outside, the air is like water, the hazy bake of dust and seeds gone, washed away by last night’s rain. I weave through the lushness, still not knowing for sure what we should do, if the moral duty to tell Sybil the truth overrides everything else. It will become clear when I see her, I tell myself, just as Pam says. But I still can’t see Sybil.

  At the edge of the Wilderness, I’m about to turn back, investigate the kitchen garden, when I hear the distinct sound of splashing from behind the yew hedge. Not quite believing my ears I peer around the gate, hiding in a cloud of clematis.

  A green dress, thrown over a deckchair with un-Sybil-like abandon. A beige elastic girdle. A bra, like something Grandma wore. Brown sandals kicked off in different directions. Then, rising from the water in a sinuous curve, a rainbow of fine droplets, the unbelievable sight of Sybil herself, flipping her hair off her face, her shoulders, revealing the white shock of bare breasts, stubby red nipples. I suck in my breath, not daring to move, and watch, transfixed, as my aunt rests her head back against the pool’s edge and closes her eyes, face dappled by the sun reflecting off the water. The decision makes itself then. Retreating slowly, silently, I leave my aunt in her fragile newfound peace.

  ‘Miss Wilde?’ As I cross the terrace, Billy approaches, rubbing his hands clean on dirty trousers. He pulls something out of the leather tool pocket slung around his waist and smiles, his teeth very white in his tanned face. ‘I found this. I think it might belong to you.’

  My whole body jolts. There is no blood on the paperweight now – washed away by the rain, or buffed by Billy’s leather pocket – yet it seems to me like a crystal ball, something that anyone might peer into and, in the right light, at the right angle, see exactly what happened, four sisters dragging a body across the grass, tipping it into the pool.

  ‘It’s pretty,’ he says, and something about the simple way he says it, the way he’s looking at my mouth as he speaks, makes me feel very strange. ‘Here.’

  I take it, the hard, cold heart of the night before. ‘Dot’s lost her specs too, if you happen to see them.’ I sound almost normal.

  ‘I’ll look, Miss Wilde.’

  There is an honesty and sweetness about Billy that is like a balm this morning. I hover. For some reason, I don’t want to leave his side.

  We stand there in silence, smiling shyly up at one another, and I wonder if Billy understands far more than he’s letting on. Something, a feeling, a word I don’t have, flows between us. But it’s shattered by a motor-car roaring down the lane, screeching into the drive behind the wall, the slam of a door.

  I don’t so much panic as drain of blood, rooted to the spot, my reactions too slow, too late, to be of any use at all. There are no moves left in me, no strategies. All I know for certain is that it is the police, coming to take us away, that I have failed to protect my little sister and, yes, there was a black spot, like a hole, waiting in the corner of the summer sky, and we are all about to fall into it.

  ‘You quite all right, Miss Wilde?’ Billy puts a hand on my arm. It seems to me to be my last anchor to the earth. I take hold of it tightly. ‘Miss Wilde?’

  I can barely breathe, every cell of my body braced for the sound of a heavy boot on the gravel, a heavy-knuckled knock. Billy moves protectively closer, picking up on my sense of threat, my apprehension now his. We listen together. But suddenly the sounds don’t quite make sense, the light sharp footsteps, less a boot than a heel picking its way along the gravel. The brisk rat-a-tat-tat at the door. A woman’s voice, a yearned-for long-lost voice. ‘Peregrine, you old rascal, where have you hidden my darling girls?’

  15

  Shadows move inside the tent – lit up like a lantern in the trees – as the police complete their grim work. Jessie shivers, thinking of all the times she and Romy have innocently rambled past the little stone well the tent now hides, never realizing they were brushing up against a tomb, that the rising water table was pulling something terrible to the surface.

  Jessie didn’t look down into that hole for long. But she knows she’ll see it for ever, the greenish bone sticking up from the lens of ice. She’s glad of the barrier of the police tape now, the way it makes everything more unreal, like a TV show, all those serious figures in white-paper suits, plain-clothes police taking photographs, mumbling into radios, churning the pristine snow into slush with their heavy feet.

  It is a bitterly cold Monday afternoon when the first reporters start to ring the doorbell. On Will’s advice Jessie politely says nothing, tells them to talk to the police directly. She confides in her mother and Lou, then makes the mistake of letting it slip to a garrulous London friend. Soon her mobile is flashing with incoming messages, people they haven’t heard from in months digging for gossip, marvelling quietly at the irony of moving out of the crime-ridden capital for the safety of the sticks.

  Will doesn’t head for London, refusing to leave Jessie marooned. Romy waves to the police, tries to pet sniffer dogs, the subdued mood that followed her fall into the pool replaced by a confused excitement. But Bella merely grows quieter and quieter, harder to reach, absorbed in thoughts that she refuses to share. Will and Jessie worry at this self-containment. They worry about everything. With the lack of information, everything feels suspended. Not even the snow will melt.

  When Bella returns from school, batting her way through the reporters with dismissive aplomb, Jessie makes the girls creamy hot chocolate, pillowy with marshmallows, trying to provide comfort in the sugar and warm milk. Bella eyes the treat suspiciously. Will and Jessie hover around her, feeling out of their depth. Does the discovery make her feel threatened? they ask. Bella shakes her head. Scared? Of course not. Would she like to board in the dorms at school this week? No, thanks. No, really. After that Bella avoids both of them, the adult questions that come loaded with
instructions for how she should feel and react, and retreats – regresses – into building a Lego farm with Romy. Outside the window, the snow still falls.

  At any other time such a sight – the sisters playing! Snow falling at the window! – would have made Jessie giddy with happiness. Instead, she feels a crush of guilt that the girls have been brought together by a near drowning, and now this. Mandy would be justifiably horrified, she decides, after all Bella’s been through already, all she’s lost. Jessie remembers their first viewing, standing in the orangery on that January afternoon, imagining she could force her family to ripen with happiness, like a fruit. She was naive then. She isn’t now. She knows what they must do.

  When Will returns from talking to the inspector in the garden, conveying the lack of further enlightenment with a shrug, she pulls him to the side of the kitchen dresser and whispers that they must put Applecote on the market. To her surprise, he doesn’t immediately agree with her. ‘Let’s see,’ he says, holding her face in his cold hands, snow melting off his boots on to the kitchen floor.

  Jessie knows he’s clinging to the hope that the bones will turn out to belong to some kind of animal, not human at all. Or, if not, then some unfortunate farmhand who lived hundreds of years ago, picked clean of meaning by time, something archaeological.

  Later that evening, Jessie is stacking plates in the cupboard, trying to occupy her unsettled mind with the domestic, when she hears a gentle knock at the front door.

  ‘Hello, Jessie.’

  And there she is, taller than Jessie remembers, wearing a long deep-black coat, a scattering of snow on its fur collar. Red lipstick. It takes Jessie a moment to collect herself. There is so much she wants to ask Margot, but this is not the time. This is the worst time. ‘Excuse me. It’s madness here. I –’ She stops. ‘You’ve heard the news?’

  ‘Do you know any more yet?’ Margot asks, looking past Jessie into the house.

  Jessie shakes her head. ‘No one tells us anything. Although the police did say it looks historic. They’ve been at it for hours. Sorry, I’ve forgotten my manners,’ she says, flustered. ‘Do – do you want to come in?’