Chapter 18
THE PRESENT
It was the buzz of her phone that woke Jenna from a restless doze.
The clock on the tower of St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Wantage had been striking midnight the previous night when she had finally parked her car behind the shop and made her weary way down Angel Walk and through the iron gate that led to the back door of the flat.
Her eyes had been gritty and sore and her throat felt rough.
There had been a hard wedge of misery lodged in her chest which she suspected would not dissipate any time soon.
She had not cried in the car on the way home because crying and driving at the same time was never a good idea, but when she reached the haven of the flat, despite the pinkness of her eyes and the pain in her heart, it felt as though the moment had somehow passed.
Instead, she had dropped her clothes on the floor and stepped into the shower, not really caring that it was cold.
Her pyjamas were comforting brushed cotton.
She had gulped down a glass of water and got into bed, not even bothering to close the curtains.
She knew she wasn’t going to sleep much anyway, and she had been right.
Now she rolled over and groped for the phone, screwing up her sore eyes against the brightness of the screen. It was six o’clock. A pale lightening of the sky outside suggested that sunrise was coming.
There were several messages from Bree. The first one read:
Next time I say run, run.
That was followed by:
Call me
And then:
Call me, please.
There were also several messages from Owen and two missed calls, the last one of which had woken her. Jenna hesitated, ignored them. She was about to put the phone down again when it vibrated with yet another incoming text. This one was from an unknown number. It read:
I have something that you want. Meet me at the grave in the priory ruins at seven. Come alone.
There was nothing else, no name, no details, but Jenna knew who had sent it. Bree was not the only drama queen in the family.
She got up slowly, took another shower, warm this time, and went to a lot of trouble with her appearance.
It felt important for what she sensed would be the final showdown.
The streets were still quiet as she let herself out of the flat.
She felt simultaneously exhausted and hyped-up, on edge.
Whatever happened next was unlikely to affect her arrest or, more importantly, her relationship with Owen which, she felt certain, was sunk beyond salvage.
It was important though; the culmination of a 500-year-old secret that might either be saved or blown apart within minutes.
Jenna’s hands shook a little on the steering wheel as she took the road from Wantage that led over the Downs towards Winterhill.
There was no sign of Molly’s pink sports car in the priory car park but when Jenna let herself through the footpath gate and approached the lady chapel, she saw her sister sitting on the low wall in a bright red coat and black stiletto-heeled boots.
The sun had risen now and was gilding the ruins in golden early-morning light.
No one else was about other than a dog-walker far away across the park.
The ticket office was shuttered. The windows of the hall blankly reflected the sun.
Molly turned at the sound of Jenna’s footsteps in the grass, got to her feet and gave her a vivid smile. Beside her on the wall was a square-shaped item shrouded in what looked like a rotting piece of cloth.
Queen Anna’s box. Jenna’s heart started to race.
‘Surprise,’ Molly said.
‘Not really,’ Jenna replied. She kept her voice steady. ‘Why all the drama, Moll? The unidentified number, the secret meeting? Couldn’t we just have met up for coffee and a chat in town?’
Molly smiled again, looking round at the stark ruin, all jagged edges and vast emptiness. ‘I thought it would be fun to go back to where this all started,’ she said.
‘Well, here I am,’ Jenna said. ‘So, it was you who had the box? I wasn’t aware you knew anything about it.’
‘I didn’t,’ Molly said. ‘I still don’t know anything about it, other than that it’s very important to you.
’ Her smile was malicious. ‘That makes me very curious about it, Jen. Very curious indeed. Evidently, it’s so special to you that you were arrested last night trying to find it, weren’t you? Only someone else had got to it first.’
Jenna refused to rise to the provocation. She reminded herself to breathe deeply and keep calm.
‘How did you get hold of it?’ she asked. She knew that Rose had never been a part of the plan that Marris and Bridget had concocted to keep Queen Anna’s box safe. After the way in which Rose had betrayed them, it would have been out of the question. So how did Molly know about it now?
‘It was all thanks to Peter,’ Molly said. Then, at Jenna’s blank look: ‘Peter Cox, one of the curators at Winterhill Hall. He and I are together. He’s the intellectual type I told you I was dating.’
‘I remember,’ Jenna said. She’d never met Peter Cox but she knew of him as the project manager for the archaeological excavation.
‘Peter’s local,’ Molly said. ‘He used to hang out with Bree years ago. They were at school together and he even went to her first-year art show. There was a painting of two nuns burying a box here in the lady chapel, which made a particular impression on him because it was so creepy. Anyway, he’d forgotten all about it, but when the discussion started about excavating the priory he remembered it and told me about it.
As soon as he mentioned the two nuns, I knew it must be you – or rather, Marris and Bridget. ’
‘Because you remembered our past lives,’ Jenna said, ‘even though you’ve always pretended not to.’
‘Right,’ Molly said. ‘It made me curious. I told Peter we should dig up the grave and see if you had hidden something there.’ She laughed.
‘He thought I was a bit mad, but he wasn’t laughing when we found this.
’ She gestured to the box. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it, when it’s not wrapped in a manky old cloth. ’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Jenna agreed. She kept her voice very casual. ‘Did you open it?’
‘There was no key.’ Molly looked annoyed. ‘And Peter wouldn’t let me force it open. He knew it was very old and he didn’t want to risk damaging the box or the contents in case there was something valuable inside.’ She cocked her head. ‘Is there?’
‘No,’ Jenna lied. ‘Only some old papers.’ She could not tell from Molly’s face whether or not her sister believed her. ‘It has sentimental value for me,’ she added, ‘because Queen Anna gave it to me.’
Something shifted in Molly’s expression: envy and bitterness and greed. ‘Peter thinks you must have the key,’ she said. ‘Do you?’
‘No,’ Jenna said truthfully. ‘I do not.’ She had forgotten that Will had hidden the key when Marris had hidden the box.
Molly’s suspicious gaze scanned her face, then she gave a sigh. ‘The thing about you, Jen,’ she said, ‘is that you’re always so honest. Just like Marris was. You couldn’t lie to save your life, could you?’
Jenna thought of Marris and the enormous secrets she had kept. ‘No,’ she said, hoping she sounded sincere. ‘It’s never been one of my – our – skills.’
Molly had turned away and was looking out across the priory grounds, her hands in her pockets.
Jenna edged a little closer to where the box sat on the chapel wall.
She wondered if she could grab it and run.
She wasn’t sure yet where this was going but she was fairly certain Molly wouldn’t simply give the box to her, not without something in return.
Keep her talking… Distract her…
‘Tell me about the pearls you stole from the hall,’ Jenna said.
Molly’s gaze snapped back to her. She laughed. ‘I knew you recognised them! You didn’t buy my story about the bracelet coming from a souk in Dubai, then.’
‘You never thought I would,’ Jenna said. ‘You wanted me to see the pearls and know what they were.’
Molly shrugged again. ‘It was just a little tease,’ she said.
‘I saw the pearl necklace when Peter showed me round the hall – there were a couple of other trinkets I remembered that had once belonged to Queen Anna.’ Her smile was malicious.
‘Peter… well, he’d already been siphoning off some funds from the Swan Power Foundation, so what was a little extra larceny?
Queen Anna never gave me anything in that life, so it felt fair. ’
‘You always had a unique sense of morality,’ Jenna observed.
Molly’s face fell into bitter lines again. ‘How else could I get ahead?’ she asked. ‘I learned that back in my last life, and then Dad proved it to me in this one. He was no saint, was he? He told me you have to make your own chances and take what you want in order to win. So, I do.’
Jenna winced. Both she and Bree had always known that Molly was their father’s favourite but it was stark to hear his twisted philosophy repeated by her.
Not for the first time, Jenna wondered how honest her business dealings were.
But Molly had evidently construed her shock as disapproval because she was talking again, defiance in her eyes: ‘I’d expect you, of all people, to understand, Jen,’ she said.
‘That Tudor life was no picnic, was it? All those years, I was pushed around as an insignificant woman in a man’s world, controlled by a father, promised as a nun, given to a husband who demanded sex whether I wanted it or not, who only chose me because I was pretty and well-connected, who insisted I carry his brats and stay out of his way whilst he consorted with the whores of court…
’ Suddenly her eyes were full of tears. ‘That’s why I never spoke of my memories of being Rose – why would I want to remember it?
It was vile. I had no money, no real place in the world and no freedom…
’ She scrubbed fiercely at her tears. ‘All I want is to forget it and to have some autonomy in this world.’