17
The attendant wakes me less than an hour before landing. I change back into my clothes, wipe myself with a hot towel, brush my teeth in the bathroom, and down a coffee.
Two Rolls-Royces are waiting for us on the tarmac.
I’m ushered into the car—and, like the jet, the old has been pushed out for the new.
The rear of the car is still four creamy leather seats opposite one another, surrounded by privacy screens and tinted windows, but there isn’t a scuff on any part of the leather.
Like the previous Royces, it’s probably custom made.
Oliver and Father take the seats backed against the privacy screen. They settle and buckle in.
Father doesn’t look at me, and I’m starting to wonder if he can’t bring himself to.
That leaves the chair beside me open.
Dray takes it.
I guess the henchmen take the other car.
I settle in for the afternoon drive.
I’m still a little tired but the brew worked a charm; it gave me a solid sleep without any tossing and turning.
So, I feel at least rested as the Royce comes off the highway, and the sky is starting to darken into twilight.
I glance at Dray’s watch as we’re driving past Stonehenge, and being almost eight o’clock, I’m not surprised my stomach is rumbling.
After my sleep on the plane, my mind is tricked into thinking it’s time for breakfast. But it’s way past dinnertime in England. If anything, it’s suppertime—that light meal before bed.
The sky is only just now turning into the pinks and purples of twilight. Summer in England means the sun sets late, between 9PM and 10PM, and so I’m hoping I’ll be given some supper before…
Before what?
Father might banish me straight to my room and lock me away and toss the key into the Thames.
Mother might take one look at me, decide I’m too fat and immediately impose the strictest diet on me possible.
I have no idea what to expect at Elcott Abbey.
No clue of what I’m walking into.
Mother might hate me, now.
She might ignore me, banish me, disown me.
What if she accepts me home, but never looks at me again—and Father?
He hasn’t looked at me, not since the carpark behind the loft.
My stomach doesn’t just rumble anymore.
It churns.
The closer we get, the more I squirm on the seat, even though we’re moving through the nostalgia of the village, with cobblestone and mossy stone walls and the smell of rich fields seeping into the car, and villagers out for twilight walks with their dogs and families.
Again, I feel home.
I feel like I’m going back to where I belong.
But my fingers are tangling on my lap.
My fingernails cut into my skin, and I watch the village fade into free-to-roam fields.
The red post box passes by the window first, then the bus stop a few moments after, and I startle at the sight of them.
Those were a huge part of a whole other life.
In that other life, I chased Eric Harling to the altar. I snuck off to that post box in the rain to mail letters in secret, because I was sure my correspondence was being read at home.
And the bus stop was my escape hatch.
But it was a hatch that opened to nothing beyond a steel wall.
Because I knew that each time I ran off to that bus stop, Mother would come and make me feel better, make me feel loved, then she would convince me to come home.
Except the last time, she wasn’t warm, and she did not make me feel better at all.
I saw Mother without her mask.
I wonder what face she will wear for my return home, if it will be tolerant or true or false.
My hands press to my gut, as though I can soothe the coiling in there, and the car pulls onto the estate’s private road.
The gates are open and waiting for us, and once we’re through, they shut behind us.
Tyres roll over packed dirt—and the noise is so familiar, so overpowering, that it’s a blow to the gut.
Such a simple thing.
But it almost unravels me.
The panic lurches through me.
I fold over and bury my face in my hands.
My fingers thread through my scraggly hair, attacked by a comb in the jet bathroom, but still not smooth.
Mother will notice.
She will notice everything wrong with me now.
The way I move, the way I speak, the way I act.
I’ve been among the krums too long. In small towns, doing hard labour for work—
Oh gods.
I hope she doesn’t find out I had a job!
Panic is ice-cold in my chest. It’s spreading, tingling, reaching even my fingertips.
I flex my fingers, once, twice, and fall back to slump in the seat.
I flatten a hand to my chest, as if to soothe the cold anxiety, to steady the uneven thuds of my heart.
It does nothing.
And instead, I find myself staring at Father’s cheek, turned to me, and he watches the lush, green land in twilight pass through the window.
Moonlight cascades over everything, the ponds, the barns, the sheds, the cottages.
The driveway is both impossibly long and terribly short.
Before I know it, before I’m ready, but also after the longest ride of my life, Elcott Abbey looms against the moonlight.
The stone facade and long stained-glass windows stretch all the way up to the sky with a grandness I missed, a grandiosity I yearned for.
A stone courtyard is now fixed in front of the entrance, pushing back the driveway and offering some stone arches above. It’s now a private little spot for those who come and go.
I look up at the vines that coil around the arches, and the ivy growing up the stone face of the home, and I smile.
The car pulls into the courtyard beneath the arches and rolls to a slow stop.
The moment it does pause, and it idles for a mere heartbeat, my smile fades—and the nerves are quick to overthrow me again.
Father doesn’t wait for Mr Younge or any servant to open the door.
He exits the car with a brisk, stiff haste.
Dray steps out after him.
But Oliver lingers for a moment, taking his time with the seatbelt, then once the others are out, he reaches for my wrist on my lap.
He gives a gentle squeeze. “You’ll be fine.”
I nod.
He gets out of the car.
With the doors wide open, the tepid evening breeze snakes inside and tries to push me out.
Slowly, I unbuckle my seatbelt, then scoot over to the door.
I peer outside—and flinch.
The front doors of the abbey whip open so violently that they crash into the stone walls, and the noise is thunder over the courtyard.
But then a cluster of silhouettes come rushing into the light. The forked black lampposts circle the driveway and illuminate the courtyard.
Some of the silhouettes will be servants sticking to the shadows. But one, at least, is Mother.
I’m certain she is among the two that are running across the driveway in my direction.
I stumble out of the car.
And I’m barely a step away from the door before the force of a body slams me right back into it.
Something screams up the length of my spine.
My cry is hollow—and crushed immediately.
Mother has barrelled into me, wedged me between her frantic embrace and the edge of the car door.
Her arms might be thin, but they are strong, and I’m enveloped by them, crushed, and another hollow sound ribbons out from me.
“Door—” My voice croaks out the word with a wince. “The door—the door!”
Mother doesn’t hear me.
Or she doesn’t care.
She makes me suffer.
I grit my teeth against the pain, a grimace that’s hidden by her loose dark hair.
I endure it.
I wrap my arms around Mother’s slender frame. So thin compared to my own body.
I feel like a whale in her arms.
But she’s the one blubbering.
I feel it before I hear it.
The jolt of her chest, the tears on my cheek.
She utters a tangled mess of sounds, whines and guttural words I can’t make out.
And, after a moment, I shut my eyes.
I hold her tighter.
I melt into my mother’s arms.
My face twists against her shoulder.
The courtyard is not silent for our reunion. Murmurs ripple through the night air, the gardens are chirping with grasshoppers, and the sound of expensive dress shoes coming down on pavers is all around me.
Mother still doesn’t let me go.
And I don’t let her go, not for a long while of murmurs and movements, until all I can hear are the grasshoppers.
I relax my arms around Mother.
I soften the hug and, finally, open my eyes.
Right behind Mother is a dainty woman in creamy silk, whose skin is marble and eyes are glass.
Amelia Sinclair.
She hovers an arm’s reach from us, her watery gaze flicking between me and Mother, like she’s searching for a way in.
She wants to move for me, to pull me into her arms, too.
But Mother monopolises me.
Her arms are solid around me, and I don’t think I could get out of her hold if I tried. Slender, but strong.
I look up at the open doorway.
The fireplace in the foyer must be lit, because a warm orange light cascades over the stone steps, and licks over the edges of Oliver’s shoes.
He stands there by the door with Father and Dray. Mr Younge is nowhere in sight, and neither are the other henchmen.
It’s just us out here.
Family.
Even the Sinclairs. Amelia, especially.
I loosen a soft breath, relaxed by the slackening hold of Mother’s arms as she starts to release me.
Slowly.
And wetly.
Her tears have soaked the shoulder of my thin, flimsy sweater. The material clings to my skin, and it’s uncomfortable.
But, as Mother draws back an inch, I see that it’s not just tears that she got all over me. Her nose glistens and I have the sudden urge to jump into a scalding bath.
I’ve never seen her like this before.
Unrefined. Unpolished.
Unravelled.
Her hands tremble as she reaches for my face.
Still, just behind her, Amelia hovers—not taking a step in either direction, just watching, waiting for a clear path to reach me.
Mother’s hands firm on my cheeks, pulling my gaze back to her, and she holds me so tightly that it’s as though she’s afraid to let go, because then I might run away again.
A pang strikes my heart.
I swallow, thick, as she looks into my eyes.
The guilt hits me like a blow to the gut.
My cheeks roar with shame, and I can’t hold her gaze another second.
I look down at her lovely, delicate diamond necklace.
Mother considers me.
And that turns into an inspection.
I know it when she says, “Nothing a little Botox can’t fix.”