Happily Ever After
Chapter 1
1
MANDERLEY – REBECCA, DAPHNE DU MAURIER
‘Are you sure this is right? Only this is Lady Dawe’s place, and she’s bonkers.’
The taxi driver had an admirable grasp of geography, as the slightly scary drive through the rugged Yorkshire hills from the station had proved, but was clearly not au fait with current medical terms and disability discrimination.
‘It’s where I was told to come. I’m here for an interview,’ I said, trying not to sound proud of myself. ‘For a job,’ I added as the taxi turned between two ancient brick pillars which were sagging beneath the weight of disintegrating urns filled with stone pineapples and now looked more like a bad case of hairy haemorrhoids. ‘Cataloguing Lady Dawe’s library,’ I continued, with a trifle less pride and a touch of uncertainty, the taxi bouncing along an uneven gravelled surface composed equally of potholes and molehills between elegant bushes and curving flowerbeds.
‘If you say so,’ the driver muttered. ‘She’s bloody barking though. You take care, lass.’
The bushes parted and gave a glimpse of the house, lying distant below us amid smooth acres of grass and carefully shaped drifts of flower-filled borders. A fountain twinkled falling water into a pond bigger than a swimming pool, beyond which the house lay golden as a slab of butter in the afternoon sun. Behind it, the Yorkshire acres rolled on in swathes of green towards distant woodland and purple-tinted moors etched against the sky. The house looked like Pemberley or Brideshead to my literary-attuned eyes; its stuccoed exterior stretched long and low, mimicking the soft hills on the horizon.
The library would be glorious. Oak shelves, dusty leather, gilt edging and that wonderful smell of thousands of books full of as-yet unknown treasures…
‘Aye, totally loony,’ the driver went on, clearly on a search for synonyms. ‘Proper howling.’
The nerves I’d been keeping well-clamped down made a spirited attempt to kick my adrenal glands. But going back was not an option, so I clasped my shaking hands between my knees, which transferred the sweat from my palms onto my linen skirt, and kept my eyes fixed on the glorious scenery opening in front of me to give a clearer view of the house as we jolted down the drive. Templewood Hall was old, with sixteenth-century origins, the internet had told me. The stucco had fallen off in places to give glimpses of brick beneath; chimneys stuck up without even a nod to symmetry and various crenellations jutted randomly from around the silhouette. With the saggy roof in the middle, the whole place bore an astonishing resemblance to a ribby old piebald horse ambling off into the sunset. Less Pemberley now and more Manderley, after the fire.
I wondered if it were haunted. It looked haunted. Or condemned. Two of the windows were askew in their frames, the front door seemed to consist of sheets of metal propped across the gap and a balcony that jutted from beneath an upper floor window had parted company with the stonework on one side. This leant the frontage a slightly threatening air, like half a frown.
It looked as though Downton Abbey had fallen on very hard times and an explosive device.
‘Are you sure , love?’ The taxi crunched to a halt outside the tin door, and the driver turned to look at me. ‘The whole family’s a bit weird, so they say down in the village, but Lady Dawe’s the worst.’
Well, I wanted to say, it’s either this or hashtag Vanlife, hashtag Freedom, hashtag BloodyPeeingInABucketAndSleepingOnARolloutMattressOnATabletop. But I didn’t. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine,’ I said instead, pulling my skirt down to try to cover my knees and noticing the big sweaty handprints I’d left on the now creased and crumpled fabric. ‘Honestly.’
‘All right, if you say so.’ The driver muttered his way around the cab and fetched my case from the boot. ‘But if you gets chopped into pieces and buried in the woods up there, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘I promise I won’t,’ I said faintly.
‘You won’t be able to.’ The driver dropped my bag at my feet. ‘On account of you being minced an’ all.’
The background tinkling of the fountain suddenly sounded sinister, like the piano music in a horror film. No birds sang and there wasn’t even the prosaic sound of voices or a dog barking; everything else was silent. As the taxi drove away, the heat of the Yorkshire late summer settled back over the gardens and the building like a huge pillow dropping over the face of the day. I’m not scared , I told myself, wiping my hands down my skirt again. People do this sort of thing every day. It’s going to be great. Stately home, big library, welcoming family…
‘You have to knock.’ A voice behind my shoulder made me jump, rattling the gravel at my feet and filling my shoes with shingle as I turned around quickly to see a man standing on the immaculate grass near the fountain. He had a huge pair of shears in his hand, which I eyed suspiciously as they came closer, the point waving in my direction. ‘They won’t know you’re here otherwise.’
The man crunched a few steps towards me over the gravel. He was dark haired and scruffy, and wearing a T-shirt which was so baggy that it moved with a life of its own as he advanced, giving me unwanted glimpses of chest hair. He raised the shears above his head and I took a couple of steps back, letting out a tiny squeak of alarm and wondering whether I could hide behind this blue flowering bush thing until he went away, or whether he’d just chase me around the garden with his giant scissors, like a Benny Hill sketch only with more blood.
The man gave a small smile, not directed at me, and brought the handle of the shears down on the metal surface of the door repeatedly, whilst yelling, ‘You’ve got a visitor!’ Then he gave me a quick nod, turned, and backed into the nearby bush, sending up a cloud of small insects as he vanished amid the greenery, leaving me with the echoes of his assault on the door fading behind the fountain’s now irritating tinkle.
‘Oh God,’ I muttered. ‘I’ve fallen into a Stephen King novel.’
A movement from an upstairs window made me glance up. At the balcony window, behind the tilted and precarious ironwork that clung to the stone by a few jagged screws, was a face. It was too high for me to ascertain much detail, other than that it was a woman, with long blonde hair, wearing an off-the-shoulder floral dress. For a second she seemed to look down on me, and her face was pale and immobile, yet wearing a look of immeasurable terror, eyes wide and her mouth stretched into a grimace of fear. I gave another little squeak and turned, feet dragged down by the paralysis of sudden dread, took two steps backwards in a feeble attempt at a run – and the metal door creaked, shimmered, and began to open.