Chapter Twelve
TWELVE
ARABELLA AND I spend most evenings together in the drawing room these days, discussing our plans for the manor or just sitting in companionable silence, enjoying each other’s drowsy company.
I find the stuffed animals in here less unnerving, almost homely, as the firelight plays over their pelts – with the exception of Miss Moppet whose bug-eyed, vacant stare will never be anything but demonic.
It’s a wonder nobody’s ever ‘accidentally’ placed her too close to the open flames.
Sometimes we play cards together – games for two people: cribbage, German whist, Truc.
Other nights, I read whichever books I can safely salvage from the death-trap that is Harfold’s library, while Arabella writes in her diary or works on a new needlepoint design.
Her current project is much more ambitious than the little scraps she’s shared with me before – a winter view from the front lawn of the manor and gardens.
Between the yew hedges, chalk lines represent where Tom, Mrs Allen, Reacher and Mutton will eventually be sewn in.
Beyond them, in the front doorway, two women already stand close together, almost touching.
Reacher doesn’t normally sit with us, perhaps feeling like a spare wheel now Arabella and I are so tight-knit.
One evening, however, he unexpectedly asks me to join him in the study for a drink.
I try to tell myself it’s just a friendly invitation, yet I can’t help leaping to the worst possible conclusions: that it’s about Mam and Dad, about the Reeses.
But I shouldn’t work myself into a panic until I know for sure, I try to tell myself as I follow him into the room, stepping carefully around the copper bathtub of seashells that still stands pointlessly in the doorway.
Reacher gestures for me to pull up a collapsing damask armchair opposite the desk.
The space is lit low by a single lamp, and the dark wood panels absorb the light in a way that makes it look somehow both smaller and larger than it really is.
Cave-like. The curtains haven’t been drawn, and the two of us are reflected back in the black windowpanes, the play of light and shade like a chiaroscuro painting.
Since Arabella and I gave it a tidy, the place has remained looking neat enough, papers still held in their smart bushels on the shelves.
For all Reacher’s fuss over our interference, even he must mark the improvement.
‘Scotch?’ asks Reacher, heading for the drinks cabinet.
‘Or I could make highballs. Do you like ginger ale?’ Now that I look at him properly, he doesn’t seem quite well.
The pinch of stress around his eyes, skin washed in a chalky grey.
Roots of his hair showing where he hasn’t applied henna of late. I wonder what’s weighing on him.
‘Lovely,’ I say, relaxing back into the chair in an effort to put myself at ease.
Reacher fusses about with ice from a bucket, then dashes out the measures very roughly.
No wedge of lemon. Maybe I should try growing them in the greenhouse.
‘Here,’ he says, plonking the glass down in front of me, before crossing to take his seat at the other side of the desk.
He’s brought the whisky decanter with him and, as it catches the light, I see it’s been engraved with a set of initials: HL.
Catching my gaze, Reacher looks down at the scratched letters as well.
‘Uncle Henry,’ he says. ‘This used to be his study, of course. Before …’ Doesn’t finish the sentence.
I let the silence stretch out, taking a sip of my drink. Heavy on the Scotch. The ice-cooled glass nips at my fingertips.
‘Harfold is the only real home I’ve ever had,’ Reacher says, the honesty of his tone taking me by surprise. ‘My mother moved us around a lot, but every summer we would return here.’
‘I suppose Arabella was like a sister to you, was she?’
Reacher snorts. ‘No. She always made it very clear that I was an interloper. A sort of charity case. Not really family at all.’
‘That surprises me.’
‘Does it?’ He lifts his eyebrows. A scar still there on his forehead from the thrown teacup.
‘Maybe not.’
‘She used to pretend she couldn’t see or hear me.
You know, childish games. “Did anyone hear that? No? Just the wind” – that sort of thing.
And there was one time when I was maybe eight or nine, she shut me in the ice house for about fourteen hours.
The cold … I was completely blue by the time they found me.
And I had pissed myself, of course.’ He taps a thumb against his own glass.
For a moment, I can see back through the years to the little spectacled boy in the family photo.
‘She still brings that up, you know. “Don’t wet yourself, Morry.”’
‘God.’ I don’t know what else to say.
His eyes flick over me, running something through his mind – I can see the decision in progress.
At last, he sighs and knocks back a swig of his cocktail.
Looks at me again. ‘And let me tell you the irony of it all: I really am her brother. Biologically, that is.’ He waves a hand, as if he expects me to protest the matter.
‘My mother never admitted it, nor Uncle Henry, but Auntie Caroline told me once she thought I was old enough. The secret of her husband’s infidelity. ’
‘With her own sister, you mean?’ I remember the genealogy upstairs, Arabella telling me to check back over the dates. Only three months after the husband had died.
‘Bellsy has never accepted it,’ Reacher goes on. ‘She doesn’t want to admit that Uncle Henry would have done such a thing. But why would Auntie Caroline have told me, unless it was true? It would be some lie to tell.’
I’ve allowed myself to be caught up in the gossip, but now I come back to myself. ‘Sorry, Mr Reacher,’ I say, sitting up straight, ‘but why are you telling me this?’
Reacher squares his shoulders. ‘My point is that, despite her flaws, Bellsy is the only family I have left. Her wellbeing is a concern to me, as is the future of Harfold.’ A challenging lift of the chin.
‘Therefore, you can imagine how worrying it is for me to hear that you have convinced her that she needs to—’ He breaks off, frowning.
Clears his throat. ‘To sign the manor over to you.’
It all becomes suddenly clear. I straighten up even further. ‘Now, wait just a minute, sir: that’s not what’s happening here. I don’t know what Arabella’s told you—’
‘She wouldn’t have told me anything if she’d had her way, but I found the contract she had written up at your request.’
‘It was her who asked me!’ I can hear my voice climbing in volume. Try to reel it back in. Stay calm, Vee. ‘She had an idea about it being only for show, just to help you get a loan to fix this place up. And I already told her no. It’s a daft plan – it makes no sense.’
‘But where did Arabella get the idea? You really want me to believe that you weren’t the one who put it into her head?’
‘No! I mean yes. What am I, on trial now? Fucking hell!’ I’m sweating, angry prickles forming in my armpits. Can feel my temper getting away from me.
Reacher scowls at my language. ‘I didn’t want to accuse you of anything, Miss Morgan, but you must appreciate that you look rather like a cuckoo in the nest. You cannot blame me for feeling suspicion as to your motivations.
Then, to compound matters, you have always been markedly silent about why you left your position in Cardiff.
It makes me wonder if this isn’t a habit of yours, and you got caught out in something similar there … ’
He wants to get a rise out of me, but he’s chosen the wrong thing to say.
Revealed how little he knows. A calm confidence washes over me.
‘No,’ I say. ‘You know that’s not the case, sir: you had my references, didn’t you?
I came here for the job, plain and simple.
I was hardly expecting to start anything with Arabella. That’s just how it turned out.’
‘So you expect me to believe you actually care for her?’
‘I do.’
His tone until now has been firm, almost condescending, but now a meaner edge appears.
‘Well, I am sorry, but she doesn’t give a rat’s shit about you.
’ I smile, all polite. This is the same behaviour I saw that night of the card game: Reacher’s friendship extended only until the moment his position in the social order is threatened.
‘I have evidence to suggest otherwise.’
Reacher claps his hands at this, the noise almost loud enough to make me jump.
‘Ha! Well, if it really wasn’t your idea, then I suspect that she is playing you right back!
Do you really believe this is about clearing a debt?
’ He pulls a face of mock pity. ‘I know you are from a poor background, Miss Morgan, but even you must know that’s not how property law works. ’
The same thing Arabella said, now from the other side.
I turn from him for a moment, eyes falling on a knot of cobwebs under the desk.
A spindle-legged spider lurks at their centre.
‘Oh, I see what this is about all right,’ I say.
‘You want her all to yourself, don’t you?
I’ve always known you were jealous. You can’t bear that she’d want to spend her time with someone like me. ’
‘No, that’s not—’ Alarm in his face.
Another flickering realization comes then.
‘Wait, I get it: it’s Harfold, too. You think you’re the rightful inheritor.
Next brother in line. It should have gone to you, not to Arabella.
Is that it? God, you must be pissing yourself at the possibility it could be mine before it’s yours!
’ Reacher’s expression darkens when he hears me twist his earlier vulnerability against him.
‘You’re just worried you won’t be able to leech off her any longer,’ I go on.
‘If anyone’s a fucking cuckoo, Reacher, it’s you. ’