He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger. I came to try and put things right.’
‘But you started off assuming this shit was the truth. Like you could trust Johnny Thorpe ahead of me, just because he’s one of the boys.’
‘My father said it made sense to him. You have to admit, Cat, you and Ellie are very affectionate with each other. Always hugging and stuff.’
‘That’s just how girls are, Henry. I don’t have any guilty secrets. The people with the guilty secrets are your family.’ The words were out before she could stop herself. She had never been so angry, and her judgement had disappeared with her equilibrium.
He gave her a look of contempt. ‘You’re not still banging on about my father being the secret slayer of the west wing?’
‘You know what, Henry? For the longest time I thought you were vampires. The way you all avoid the sunlight. The way you all look young for your years. The fact that none of you looks like the woman you call your mother. The food you eat – rare steaks and liver, all that blood. But you Tilneys are a different kind of bloodsucker. It’s money you’re interested in, not blood.’
Henry stopped in his tracks, his mouth open, his expression bewildered. ‘Vampires? You mean, like in those books and films? With all that misogyny and oppression and werewolves and shit?’
‘Exactly. Because what is your father if he’s not oppressive and misogynist? Treating me like dirt, and all because he believed Johnny Thorpe. Even if he’d been telling the truth, what sort of excuse is that for throwing somebody out of your house in the middle of the night? So what if I was a lesbian – which, by the way, I am definitely not. So what if Ellie is a lesbian? Though God help her if she is. So yes, I think your family is riddled with secrets. I found the Bible, Henry. I found the Bible.’
Henry cast around histrionically, as if looking for an escape route from this madwoman. ‘You found the Bible?’ he said in tones of exaggerated calm. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘The family Bible. With the births and marriages, but not many deaths. Where all the boys called Henry Tilney seem to live to adulthood, which is unheard of back when loads and loads of babies and young children died.’
‘We’re not a family that has ever celebrated death, Cat. It’s a tradition.’
‘Oh, bollocks, Henry. You’re a family that has your own chapel and graveyard. You’re not exactly, “death where is thy sting”, are you? But more than that—’
‘Wait a minute, is this the Bible with the bullet hole?’
Cat was taken aback at his willingness to own something of her argument. ‘Yes.’
‘And that proves what, exactly?’
Cat hesitated. She hadn’t taken the opportunity to ask her father what he thought about the Bible with the bullet hole. ‘Well, only a creature steeped in evil would shoot a Bible.’ She was floundering and she knew it, but she wasn’t giving ground.
‘That’s a bit racist, Cat.’ He couldn’t restrain a wry smile, and she felt her resistance challenged.
‘What do you mean, racist?’
‘That bullet came from a German gun. And that Bible is the reason I’m here today.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘My great-great grandfather was an officer in the First World War. He carried his Bible inside his tunic and it took a bullet for him on the Somme. If not for the Bible, he would have been killed, and I wouldn’t have been born. Cat, we’re not vampires. That’s crazy. Vampires don’t exist in the real world. Any more than the zombie apocalypse is just round the corner.’
Hands on hips, she stared him down. ‘Prove it.’
He burst out laughing. ‘You can’t prove a negative. I can’t prove there are no such things as vampires any more than you can prove you’re not a lesbian. You’re a vicar’s daughter, Cat – surely you of all people understand there’s a point where you have to have faith? Take people on trust?’
They stood staring at each other, neither willing to capitulate. Then Henry made an impatient gesture. ‘This is stupid, Cat. I came here to apologise for my father, that’s true. But that’s only part of the reason. I came because ever since I met you at Fiona Alexander’s dance class I’ve been falling in love with you.’
Her mouth suddenly dry, Cat took a step backwards. ‘No.’
He looked stricken. ‘You don’t feel the same?’
At last, Cat composed herself and spoke sense. ‘Oh, Henry, I’m completely crazy about you.’ And she threw her arms round the startled young man, who quickly recovered himself and gathered her into a warm embrace. Finally, Cat knew the kiss she’d dreamed of since that first dance. They stood locked together in the orchard, oblivious to anything but each other, as young lovers are inclined to be.
It was some time before they reached the Allens’ house and afterwards, neither would have been able to give any sort of account of the conversation that took place there. By the time they returned to the vicarage, the matter was sealed. Henry explained to the Morlands that he had argued so fiercely with his father that he feared there could be no reconciliation. ‘But I have a profession,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fully qualified by the end of the year. I can support myself without taking a penny from him. I’ll be fine. Straightening things out with Cat has been worth much more than any amount of money.’
The two young lovers looked at each other. ‘Vampire,’ she said.
‘Lesbian,’ he replied.
And to the astonishment of the Morlands, they burst into helpless laughter.
Epilogue
Four years later
Henry had never looked more handsome, Cat thought as she walked down the aisle of the parish church at Farleigh Piddle on her father’s arm. Her husband-to-be had the perfect figure for full morning dress, and the pearl grey of his cut-away coat emphasised the golden glow of his tanned skin and the sun-bleached highlights in his dark blond hair. There wasn’t a more handsome man in the church. Probably not in the whole Piddle Valley, she reckoned.
In the four years that had passed since her enforced flight from Northanger Abbey, our cast of characters had undergone a bewildering kaleidoscope of changes. Cat herself had pursued her mother’s suggestion of training as a nanny. Once qualified, Henry had found her part-time work with one of his colleagues, so their two-year commute between Newcastle and Edinburgh was finally ended. They’d lived together quite happily in the little flat in the Lawnmarket, but Henry’s growing success meant they were considering a move to something more spacious. ‘Something with a nursery,’ Cat had confided to her mother the night before the wedding. ‘Not right away. Don’t get the wrong idea. But down the line.’
Spurred on by Henry’s confrontation with her father, Ellie had also taken her life into her own hands. She accepted a place at the Edinburgh School of Art to pursue a course in design, funding herself by selling some of the jewellery her mother had left her. ‘I only sold the ugly pieces,’ she told Cat. ‘Big stones in clumsy settings. I’ve kept the antiques. But my father really does have dreadful taste in jewellery. I’m not sorry to see the back of most of it.’ Of her romantic life, she never spoke, perhaps with good reason.
Ellie and Cat had continued with their children’s book project. They’d collected a raft of rejections, but finally an indie publisher in Edinburgh had bought the first two books in a series of comedy vampire stories. ‘Because of our family experience,’ Ellie had said with a giggle when they finally met their editor. Cat kicked her under the table. Not everyone could be expected to share their sense of humour.