‘I think she likes you,’ she says to the cat.
‘And he’s smitten with the pair of you,’ Emily laughs. Her feathered earrings quiver as she bends down to sweep up the wings. ‘I can only get him to purr by leaving the room. What have you got there?’
‘Fairy tales,’ says Kate quietly. ‘I wonder if it belonged to Violet,’ Emily says. ‘Though it’s odd, isn’t it – that she didn’t take her things with her, when she moved out of the Big House.’
‘Yes,’ Kate says, struggling to reconcile what she knows of Aunt Violet – her love of green dresses, the insect drawings, the strange collection of artefacts under her bed – with dark and horrible Orton Hall. She can’t picture her ever having lived there. ‘Perhaps she left in a hurry?’
Emily brings her a plate of chocolate digestives before heading back to the front of the shop to deal with a customer. Though she desperately wants to, Kate doesn’t dare open the letter in her pocket. She doesn’t want to risk Emily coming back and seeing it. It feels private, somehow. Secret.
At half past three, after they’ve closed up for the day, Emily offers her a lift home.
‘You shouldn’t be carrying heavy things, you know,’ she says. ‘Not now, in your condition.’
Kate looks down at her stomach, swaddled in layers of wool. She eases herself into an old coat of Violet’s, pulls a velvet green beret over her head.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I want to see the snow.’ It’s funny, now, to think of her early walks into the village, back when she’d first arrived at Crows Beck. How she’d flinched at the rustle of leaves, startled by a sparrow. Now, her amble home is something to look forward to; something to savour. She loves noticing the little seasonal changes of the landscape – how now, in winter, the trees reach bare and graceful towards the sky; the hedgerows are jewelled red with rowan berries.
She hoists the box onto her hip and pushes open the door, leaving behind the musty warmth of the bookshop. Outside, she inhales the wintry air, savouring its crispness. The cold prickles her cheeks, and she grins at the sight of the village: the buildings half hidden under great lips of snow; windows glowing orange. Someone has strung Christmas lights from the street-lamps, and as the sun sets pink in the sky, they twinkle into life.
For the first time in years, she has been looking forward to Christmas – her daughter is due a few days before. With only weeks to go, she can feel her body preparing for the birth: her breasts have swelled, and she’s begun to notice streaks of golden fluid on the inside of her bra. Colostrum, Dr Collins calls it.
Even her senses seem to have sharpened: sometimes, she thinks she can hear the most incredible sounds: the click of a beetle’s antennae on the ground; the whirr of a moth’s wings. A bird clamping its beak around a worm. It’s strange, how she feels attuned to things happening at such a great distance, and yet all the while her child’s heartbeat thrums in her ears.
But now, as she walks home, the countryside is still and silent, muffled by snow. It is so still, in a way that unsettles her: she has the sense that the land, and the creatures in it, are waiting for something. As she strides on, the only sounds are her own footsteps crunching in the snow, and the rustle of the letter in her pocket. The letter. Something about it doesn’t feel right. Foreboding creeps across her skin, setting the hairs on end.
When she does get home, she is almost afraid to look at it. She takes her time lighting the fire, boiling water for her tea, chopping vegetables for the stew that she’ll prepare later.
Finally, everything is done. She can no longer put it off.
She sits down at the kitchen table and unfurls the piece of paper.
The note is very yellow, almost translucent in places. Lined, as though it was torn from a school exercise book. There is no date.
Dear Father, Graham, Nanny Metcalfe, Mrs Kirkby and Miss Poole,
I am very sorry about what I have done, especially to whomever it was who found me.
Father, I know that you think taking one’s own life to be a mortal sin, and that you will be shocked – and perhaps ashamed – by what I have done. But please understand that I truly felt I had no other choice after what happened.
I know you all – Father especially – think very highly of my cousin, Frederick Ayres. But please believe me when I tell you that he is not the man you think he is. I know he seems charming and chivalrous – like a knight from a fairy tale, with his dark hair and green eyes. But something has happened – something terrible and wrong. I do not quite have the words for it; just that I am plagued by memories of it, night and day. Perhaps it is my fault; perhaps I should have done something to prevent it, though I do not know what. In any case, I cannot see how I can continue in this fashion.
Graham, I am sorry that I was not a better sister to you. Nanny Metcalfe, I am sorry if I have been a difficult charge. Mrs Kirkby, I am sorry about the time I said your roast beef tasted like a shoe. Miss Poole, I am sorry for all the times I made fun of your singing voice.
My best wishes to you all, and my deepest apologies once again,
Violet
PS. If it isn’t too much trouble, I should like to be buried under the beech tree in the garden. Perhaps you could also ask Dinsdale to plant some flowers above my grave. Something bright and colourful that will attract bees and other insects. Any flowers will do, so long as they aren’t primroses.
Kate reads the letter again.
I am plagued by memories of it.
She shuts her eyes, touches her arm, where the skin is smooth and pink. Sometimes, Kate would wake in the night to Simon’s insistent mouth on her neck; to the feel of him inside her. As if she had forfeited the rights to her own body the day they’d met.
She understands, she thinks, what happened to Aunt Violet.
Obviously, she hadn’t gone through with the suicide attempt – somehow, Violet had left home and found the strength to live the academic, adventurous life that awaited her. To break free from her past.
Kate wonders if Violet ever told anyone, in the end. She knows what it’s like, wanting to tell: to no longer be alone with the awful, secret knowledge, poisoning your cells like a disease. Wanting to speak but being choked into silence by the shame of it.
As she rereads Violet’s words, something else leaps out at her.
His green eyes.
She thinks back to her visit to Orton Hall, to meeting the old viscount. He had green eyes, too. Her spine tingles with revulsion at the memory – his fetid, animal stink; the yellow curls of his nails.
Fingers shaking, she unlocks her phone and taps Frederick Ayres into Google.
The first result is an article from the local paper, dated five years ago.
FLY INFESTATION BUGS VISCOUNT
Local exterminators have struggled to remove thousands of mayflies from Orton Hall, the seat of the Viscount Kendall.
According to residents in nearby Crows Beck, the infestation has plagued the Hall for decades, worsening in recent years.
‘Every pest control company in the valley has had a go,’ said a source. ‘Insecticides, LED traps, the works. But they won’t budge.’
Mayflies are most common in the summer, when the females can lay up to three thousand eggs. The insects normally frequent aquatic environments and rarely infest dwellings.