Chapter 6 #3
Tom felt bad for her. There would be no miracle. “Xanthe is marrying Duncan’s son, Connor,” he explained to Amelia, as he stashed the mop and wine bottle in the cupboard, “so she’s pretty much family.”
“Ha, the poor cousin, if so! Remember me when you’re living it up on the Riviera,” Xanthe said, walking out. “Only thing I own is my van, and I owe money on that.”
“She doesn’t believe me when I tell her how skint the family is,” Tom said to Amelia, when Xanthe was out of earshot.
“People think I’m about to pocket millions of pounds and skive off to the Med.
Let’s decamp to the library until they’ve passed through.
It’s the only room with air con, which means heat.
I need to split more kindling before I can light the other fires. ”
They crossed the entrance hall into the library, where he found the heat pump remote and switched it on.
“We got a grant for the heat pump from a heritage fund, though I’ve all but given up using the thing.
I’d rather spend what little money we have on wages than electricity to keep documents and photos… ” He trailed off, looking around.
“Tom?”
“Now, that’s strange. Things have been moved around in here.”
Amelia looked around, though she no doubt wasn’t seeing what he was. Documents piled in different places on the walnut desk. A filing cabinet left open. Disturbed dust in the bookcase. “Is that a concern?”
“Probably just the valuers. Though I was in here with them, and they just documented the furniture and art and left.”
“Maybe they came back to look for tax receipts from 1750.”
“Maybe,” Tom said, unconvinced. Maybe it was just paranoia after last night.
Once you started looking for tears in the fabric of your existence, you tended to find them.
Even if it was true that there was no body, he still felt a creeping dread that something wasn’t right. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“This is your family?” Amelia said, staring up at the family tree mural on the wall.
“The chosen ones, yes.”
“The what?”
“Something look odd to you?”
She studied it, tilting her head. “The children’s names. They’re all male. The girls didn’t count?”
“Not unless their sons succeeded. They do now—my father changed that rule. Or they would, if there were any.”
“And it’s only the line on the left of the tree.”
“The earls and their heirs. The lottery of birth. I’d add everyone else—fill the wall, fill the room—but it’s all about to be smashed down, earls and all.
Out with the old, in with the tech bro. That’s not the only family record, of course.
There’s a book in here that traces me all the way back to Adam and Eve, if that’s what you believe.
Through William the Conqueror, Charlemagne…
” He scanned the bookshelf. “I can’t see it.
I should pack it away. The local historical society is coming to salvage the rest of the archive.
Not that the book matters anymore. It’s mostly about the rules of succession and inheritance. ”
“Still, being able to see exactly where you came from…”
“You’d probably be able to trace back the same links. They reckon anyone with a drop of European blood can trace their ancestry to Charlemagne. The tricky part is to follow the lines back along the right route.”
“Not me.”
“It’s probably easier than you think these days, with the internet.”
“I don’t have much of a starting point, and it’s … awkward. My mom was adopted and has no idea who her birth parents were. And my father was an anonymous sperm donor—Mom had me when she was thirty-nine and the right man hadn’t come along. So, I can’t go further back than my mother, genetically.”
He stood there blinking at her like an idiot. He’d spent his life feeling like the blood in his veins wasn’t his own, like every name on the wall was peering over his shoulder, critiquing his every step. Legacy. Family. Inheritance.
“Which is all fine,” she added hurriedly, evidently noting his shocked expression. “My mom and my grandparents—her adoptive parents—are the best.”
“You’re not tempted to use one of those DNA websites?”
“I feel like that’s Mom’s decision, not mine. She’s on a reunion registry, where you can find your birth parents, but if they’re out there they don’t want to be found. And my sperm father would have donated with the expectation that his child would never find him.”
“Your sperm father?”
She grinned. “Can he be my ‘birth’ father when he wasn’t at the birth? He wouldn’t have foreseen this DIY DNA craze. Connecting with him or his family on a genealogy website would feel like a sneak attack.” She laughed at Tom’s open-mouthed expression. “You’re having trouble computing.”
“No, it sounds almost … liberating. It’s like you’re brand new.
Free to be whomever you choose, shape your own fate.
Not that I should project my hangups onto you.
” He scanned the bookshelves again. “This book really is not here. I know it was a year ago because I added my father’s date of death to it.
Right here.” He tapped a gap between Debrett’s Correct Form and Burke’s Landed Gentry.
“Amelia, are you feeling paranoid today?”
“I feel paranoid every day. I can’t believe I chose last night, of all nights, to not be paranoid.”
“But do you still feel like you’re tripping? Do you really think we hallucinated that body? I know logic suggests we did, and I want to believe it, but I also can’t shake the image of the anglerfish, and it feels real.” He shook his head, as if that would loosen the sticky thoughts.
Her teeth toyed with her lower lip. “It still feels like it happened. But I would also swear they were cyclopses. And I know for sure I heard them arguing but why can’t I remember it? And I keep thinking about the bumps and things I heard in the night.”
“And Duncan not having turned up. And little things, like this missing book, the noise in the servants’ corridor, the jangling.
I remember thinking as we lay in bed that the jangling was unusual, trying to pinpoint what it could be, deciding it was coming from the lower floors, but I didn’t want to get up.
” Because he was way too warm and comfortable curled up around her.
“I can’t believe these words are about to come out of my mouth, but do you think we might have seen a ghost?”
“I do not. I’ve lived here nearly all my life and I’ve never seen a ghost, and believe me, I’ve looked—except for my dog.”
“You have a ghost dog?”
“No, but Basil died a few months ago and I still subconsciously look out for him, or I’ll glimpse him in the corners. But of course when I look straight at him it’s always a cushion or a shadow or whatever.”
“Oh. That’s sad.”
“He had a good innings. He was old and arthritic.”
“Still sad.”
“No point getting another dog now. I might well end up in a bedsit in a dodgy part of London you don’t want to go walking about in the dark.
Anyway, my point is that the abbey is a grumpy old lady and she moans and clinks and groans, but I assure you the noises are all structural or plumbing-related. ”
She looked up at a puddled water stain on the ceiling. “Not all that reassuring, but okay.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to live in a house like this without fancying you catch a glimpse of something now and then, but no, I don’t believe in ghosts.
If they existed and were living among us and visible, we’d all know about it.
They’d be on talk shows, dancing in the streets, living their best lives. ”
“So to speak.”
“Do you know, there’s supposed to be something like fifteen dead people for every living one? They would be inescapable to the point of being annoying.”
“Also not as reassuring as you might think.”
“Wait! The jangling!”
“What about it?”
There was a knock. Xanthe was standing in the doorway, hands on hips, staring at Tom expectantly.
“Bollocks. Sorry, Amelia, I’m late for my spiel.” He held up a pointer finger. “But I know where your keys are. Back in a minute.” He followed Xanthe out.
And once he’d retrieved Amelia’s keys, she’d have no more reason to linger. Yesterday morning he hadn’t known she existed, and now the prospect of never seeing her again made him feel like he was about to lose the very thing he hadn’t known he needed.