“Lovely place,” begins Rowan, bur Mrs Hawkins cuts him off.
“You have no books to sell, is that right? Well I suppose that’s something. One does sometimes feel that these authors turn up just to turn one’s home into a market stall.”
Rowan gives her a sympathetic look. “One does indeed.” Behind him, Serendipity lets out a tiny laugh. Mrs Hawkins chooses to ignore it.
“We have some fine writers,” says Mrs Hawkins. “Very fine. If you’ve planned to give some kind of lecture I must warn you that it may be a case of preaching to the converted. We’re all writers together here, this isn’t a tutor and pupil scenario.” She draws herself up and Rowan smells dusky floral perfume and a whiff of dry vermouth. “Before my marriage I was a teacher of English Literature at a very fine school in Leatherhead….,”
The door bangs open as Catherine, arms full of rubbish, pushes her way inside. Her face is pale as milk and her fronds of tangled black hair cling to her skin, her collar, her steamed-up spectacles.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh Mrs Hawkins I tried to phone but there was such poor signal and Terence does like to listen to Radio Three when we’re on the road so I had to whisper when I left the message so you might just have a recording of some garbled words and a lot of Mahler …,”
Rowan finds himself smiling at her. She strikes him at once as a sort of pleasing disaster: a whirlwind of good intentions haplessly executed. He’s met her, or those a lot like her, countless times before: scatter-brained and stressed to the point of aneurysm, terrified of causing offence or upsetting anybody. Her voice is soft and breathy and fast and Rowan gets the impression that if she were to receive one word of kindness or a squeeze of the shoulder, she would burst into tears and disintegrate. With her arms full, her elbows stick out like wings.
“I’m Catherine, well, Kitty – actually, that’s a pet name, so not everybody knows me as that, so Catherine’s fine…,” her eyes dart from one to the other, all nervous energy. Raindrops fall from her coat onto the burgundy wool of an expensive rug. “We’ve met, I think,” she says to Serendipity. And this is your daughter, I presume. Snowdrop, yes? What a lovely name. And what a lovely young girl. She and Imogen here are going to be such friends, I’m sure.”
Beside her, Imogen is stuffing a plump damp hand into a large bag of Monster Munch, eating them methodically, joylessly: crumbs on the front of her school jumper. Snowdrop gives Rowan a look that says ‘I tried, but look what I’m working with’.
“I haven’t missed it, have I?” gasps Catherine, looking worried. “I heard there was a writer …,”
Rowan can’t seem to help himself. He gives a little flicked salute, scouts-honour, two fingers toughed to his forehead. She clocks the driving gloves. Colours, as she makes the connection.
“I’m Rowan,” he says, warmly. “Kitty, was it? And no, you haven’t missed it. I’m it – or if you ask my sister here, I’ve always thought I am. You take a moment to get yourself situated.” He twinkles a little: one of his better smiles. “I was only killing time until you arrived.”
Mrs Hawkins coughs, pointedly. “We are assembled in the Orangery,” she says, haughtily, and Rowan is delighted to hear Snowdrop laugh out loud.
“Orangery!” she repeats. “Ha! Is there an Appley? Do we get there by walking down a Lemony Snicket? Orangery – that’s funny …,”
Rowan screws up his face, suddenly very tired, and very nervous. He doesn’t know what to say to these people. Doesn’t know who he is or what he’s for or what sort of piss-poor excuse for a life he’s going to be living by the New Year. He feels Serendipity move closer to him and squeeze his forearm. “You’ll be great,” she says. “if nothing else, you’ve stolen this old cow’s thunder for an evening. That’s a win, if nothing else.”
“Do you mind if we sit with you?” asks Catherine, breathily. “I always used to come with my friend but she’s off on her travels and if I’m honest I sometimes fell a bit, well, on my own …,”
Up close, Rowan realises that she’s actually classically pretty. Green eyes in an almond-shaped face, a nice smile and skin so soft and pale it looks like warm alabaster. She certainly doesn’t act like somebody aware of their own attractiveness. She reminds Rowan of the uncool crowd at school – the sweet kids who would blush tomato-red if smiled at or spoken to by one of the sporty boys. He leans towards her, sharing a secret.
“You have to promise me that even if I’m dreadful, you’ll talk to me afterwards,” says Rowan. “Don’t run screaming for the hills. And if you’re asleep, you have to give me permission to wake you, okay? I don’t need accusations of inappropriate touching.”
Catherine colours, hiding a smile behind her hand. “I promise.”
27
Saturday, November 2, 1991
Seascale Vicarage
11.06pm
Violet dreams, her body stiff as death. From here, face down in the damp bracken, the girl across the clearing could be mistaken for a marionette. She drifts through the darkened forest in boneless, liquid half-steps: a fleshy white poppet trailed on invisible strings. Her arms are raised, yet her hands dangle down at the wrist, so that from elbow to fingertip both limbs take on the likeness of murdered swans.
Occasionally, eyes shut, she pats at the air.
“Catherine,” she says, in the clutch of the dream. “Catherine, don’t …,”
Her bare feet catch on tree roots; risen from the muddy ground like swollen veins. Sharp pebbles puncture her skin: the sting eclipsed a moment later by the sensuous suck and pull of warm mud and dew-moistened grass. She is only dimly aware of these sensations. Could not speak if she wanted to. Her throat is afire: her tongue swollen; the taste of rotten bark filling her mouth and nose.
“You have been chosen,” comes a voice: an icicle melting in the centre of her skull. “You will be reborn ….,”
Violet is adrift in delirium, her thoughts a jumbled mass. She is at once herself, and another. She feels like a skin-suit, stitched tight over more entities than she can contain. She sees him. The man with the green toenails. He had given them something to drink. Something sweet and sticky. He had taken them somewhere at once foreign and familiar. She had seen things. Been things. Done things, had she not? She remembers a voice, right in the centre of her head. And something dark. Something animal. She remembers fear.
The senses fade. For a moment she is back within the dream. She sees her friend, dressed in a long white nightdress. The hems are torn and the delicate embroidery is obscured beneath splashes of mud. In places, the material clings to her skin. She’s plump and pink. There are patterns on her flesh; serpentine sigils and jagged circles, daubed in sticky fingerprints on the ripe fruit of her skin. She has motherly hips, rounded ankles. There is nothing in her eyes.
Violet tries to remember. To see clearly. He had sung to them in a language they did not understand. And there had been a man, reduced to sticks and scraps of skin. She has a memory of coming to. Of being face down above a slithering, crawling mass of sticks and leaves and twisting serpents. She had turned her head and in the darkness seen the flame-red of Freya’s hair, clashing the pale whiteness of her freckled skin as the man daubed symbols upon her flesh. Had it been at the same moment? Was she both beside her and beneath. And Catherine. Where was Catherine?