Colin wasn’t listening to him, he was thinking of Sibyl, who she was and what she’d done.
Sibyl had sold her body for a minibus for old-age pensioners.
Not only that, she’d quit her job (before she could be fired) at the domestic violence charity because she’d been found sitting on the porch of a client training her father’s shotgun on an abuser who had dared to approach his estranged wife’s house in the middle of the night.
And what had Robert said about what she did to the people who brought in the dog who’d been burned by cigarette butts?
He didn’t want to think, couldn’t think, all he could remember was her staring at the money in the briefcase and saying, “Thank you,” like it was the answer to her prayers.
Clearly it was the answer to a prayer, a prayer for a bunch of old people to whom she was not related, who simply came to her Centre. People who were in the hands of a thoughtless driver who wasn’t responsible for them but should have had enough feeling to at least take note and some care, and didn’t.
So, Sibyl did.
“Christ,” he said under his breath.
“What’s that?” Robert asked him.
A memory came to Colin and his tight chest seized.
“What was the date of the accident with the woman who broke her hip?” Robert looked at him curiously and told him the date, a date Colin remembered very well. He remembered Sibyl talking earnestly to her friend Kyle, her body stiff and jerky as she walked back to her house, her mind consumed with something unpleasant.
The date he’d made her his whore.
“Christ,” he clipped viciously, shook his head and found when he looked down at his hands on his desk they were shaking.
He clenched them into fists.
This woman, his woman, walked into his home innocently for a tour and he’d treated her like a common criminal.
Then she’d sold her body to him to make a group of old people safe.
And he’d made her feel like a whore so she could do it.
Money was scarce in the voluntary sector, he knew that, his company received dozens of requests a week for donations and he, personally, was asked to become a benefactor on a regular basis.
It would likely take a small community centre on a deprived council estate years to raise the funds to buy a bus.
Sibyl had seen her chance and grabbed it.
“You should know you have two tails.” Robert was continuing. “The woman out there…” He jerked his head to the door of Colin’s office. “And I think someone else, though can’t get a lock on them. Both have been watching you and Miss Godwin pretty closely. Do you want me to find out why?”
Colin was reeling with the information he’d learned, the fact that Beatrice Godwin, reincarnated had finally walked into his life and he could barely process any more.
“Look into the other one,” he ordered distractedly. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Byrne and I’ll phone you if I need anything further.”
Robert put the file on his desk and stood. “Can I say, Mr. Morgan…?”
Colin was staring at the file, knowing Sibyl’s remarkable life was inside.
He opened it randomly somewhere in the middle. He saw a copy of a newspaper clipping announcing, “Local Girl Wins Volunteer of the Year Award.” A younger Sibyl was shown in the photograph, holding up a plaque and smiling at the camera with her dazzling smile.
“Mr. Morgan?”
Colin’s head came up sharply. “What is it?”
His voice was impatient. He had things to do.
He calculated the time.
Colin’s mother and sister were at Lacybourne now, meddling and needling him about the American woman named Godwin. A woman he had not expected, three weeks ago, that they would ever meet.
Now, he knew, they most definitely would considering they’d be grandmother and aunt to that woman’s children.
Robert continued. “I know it isn’t my place to say but your Sibyl, she’s a bit… well, she’s got her heart in the right place but sometimes…” He stopped and then repeated himself, obviously uncomfortable. “It isn’t my place but you should keep an eye on her. She gets herself into trouble sometimes. Well… a good bit of the time.”
Colin nodded distractedly. That, as well as many other things about Sibyl, was now stunningly clear.
“Please send Mrs. Byrne in on your way out,” Colin ordered.
Dismissed, Robert left and Colin sifted through the file on his desk, watching Sibyl’s life pass by. On the last page there was a picture of her with four young girls aged around ten or eleven. They were staring at her with rapt attention as if she was the centre of the universe and she was smiling at them, her arms in full gesture, almost like she was dancing.
They needed me, she’d said.
“Jesus,” he growled.
“Mr. Morgan?”
He looked at Mrs. Byrne who was walking into his office.
“Please have a seat, Mrs. Byrne,” Colin invited, firmly controlling his thoughts, all of which damned him to hell, and he closed the file carefully.
She was watching him but she sat in a chair opposite his desk.
“Before you tell me what’s so urgent you’re here first thing in the morning, could I ask you one question?” he enquired politely.
“Certainly, Mr. Morgan,” she replied agreeably.
“Your story, about Sibyl, you met her the night before she came to my home, is that true?”
She watched him for a moment and then she nodded. “I told you, I know you may not believe me –” she began.
“Oh, I believe you,” Colin said smoothly.
This announcement startled her but she recovered quickly.
“But the reason I’m here is to tell you what my part is in all of this,” Mrs. Byrne explained.
“All of what?”
“You, Sibyl and Royce and Beatrice Morgan,” she announced.
He did not show any reaction to this.
Colin had a great deal to do and did not have the patience to sit through this interview. Considering she was just a meddling National Trust volunteer who had very clumsily, not to mention with the addition of with unneeded mystery, instigated a meeting with him and an American woman who looked like the portrait of Beatrice Godwin, Colin lost interest in her.
“Do you know of Esmeralda Crane?” Mrs. Byrne asked.
That got his attention and his eyes focussed on her.
Of course he knew Esmeralda Crane. Anyone with any knowledge of the legend of Royce and Beatrice knew it was Esmeralda Crane, the local midwife rumoured to be a witch who discovered the bodies of the newlyweds. She was also rumoured to be the one who cast the spell on them, linking their souls for eternity.
He sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows but did not respond.
She inclined her head. “I’m her great, great… let’s just say, many ‘greats’ granddaughter.”
Colin decided the old woman sitting across from him was clearly unbalanced.
“You are?” he asked out of politeness because he was not at all interested in her tale and was trying to figure out a way to get rid of her.
Quickly.
“Yes, Mr. Morgan. And I, like my mother and her mother and so on, back to Granny Esmeralda, am a witch.”
Yes, Colin decided, clearly unbalanced.
He lost his patience but held onto his good manners.
Barely.
“Mrs. Byrne –”
She interrupted him. “Did anything unusual happen to you yesterday, Mr. Morgan?”
Colin froze.
She was watching him knowingly. What she saw while regarding him answered her question.