Chapter Eight
EIGHT
IT TAKES ME a couple of weeks to master the floorplan of the main house, the way that everything cobwebs out from the central hall. It’s far too easy to get turned around, and I’ve blundered into my share of cupboards since moving in.
On the one hand, this is the grandest place I’ve ever lived.
Such high ceilings; such tall, bright windows.
Glorious views over my gardens. A home built for lords and ladies.
But despite this grandeur, these sheer dimensions, the place is a ruin.
I hadn’t realized until now quite how much Harfold is falling apart.
Rising damp, moss on the windowpanes, mouse droppings, cobwebs, silverfish scattering in every opened drawer, freckles of mould if you move a piece of furniture out of place.
Not to mention the relentless, inescapable clutter.
I can’t take a step without almost knocking something over.
When I finally ask Tom about this, wondering if he’ll have a different explanation to the one Reacher gave me, he says it’s all from the closed west wing.
Beyond the room with the genealogy, this is the one part of the house I’ve not had the opportunity to explore, painting it with the glamour of mystery in my mind.
When they shut it off, Tom says, Arabella couldn’t bear to part with all the treasures that were kept there, and insisted on having it all moved into the main house.
But that only explains the objects of value.
What about the broken ornaments? The stacks of newspapers?
The rubbish strewn carelessly on the floor?
Arabella must not have thrown a single thing out in years.
More than a decade, even: Reacher had said it started not long after her parents’ deaths.
And Arabella, of course, is in such close proximity.
There to say good morning and goodnight.
Inviting me to share her meals at the dining table, to ‘give the Allens their privacy’, she says.
But I keep catching myself thinking there’s more to it than this.
The way she looks at me every so often …
I can’t deny that this new thought of Arabella’s admiration is flattering.
The chest-tightening thrill of possibility.
This feeling of anticipation whenever I see her, a crackling charge that races through my body.
I have to remind myself of Penarth – the danger in believing you’re more than just an employee.
How, after three years of service and supposed friendship, the Reeses threw Dad out without so much as a by-your-leave.
All because a dinner guest had accused him of giving a ‘filthy glance’.
Even though the Reeses knew Dad’s squint was permanent, a memento from whatever he faced in prison.
I write to Mam and Dad regularly. To Dad, detailed letters about the garden, knowing how much he must miss the time spent outside, surrounded by greenery.
He’s not a man made to be cooped up indoors.
He must ache for the feel of soil under his nails.
With Mam, I mostly share any gossip I’ve heard from Tom.
No matter that Mam knows none of the people involved; she loves nothing more than snooping into strangers’ lives.
However, I haven’t told either about the change in my living arrangements.
Nor have I mentioned Arabella much, not since those first couple of months. I don’t want them to worry about me.
I’m carrying fresh letters for Mam and Dad up the track one December morning when a deluge of grey fur and canine stink shoots past me. Moments later, Mutton loops back to block my path, dropping to the floor. He wriggles about with his belly up, mouth gasping out hot breaths that cloud in the air.
‘What do you want, Mutters?’ I ask.
He flops his head to one side and pushes his chest out further.
‘You want a scratch, do you?’ I evaluate the matted fur on his underbelly, the clinging scraps of mud and grass. Poke the toe of one boot at him. Mutton wiggles with delight. Then, after a few seconds, he twists away and is back on four legs, cantering ahead.
Despite his speed, there’s no danger of losing him: every so often he doubles back to make sure I’m still following, runs in loops around me and sometimes gives a yip, before heading off again.
I find the moment of return charming – the feeling of my company being wanted by this large creature, who could just as easily complete his route alone and in half the time if I wasn’t there.
But here he is, running back to check on me.
The track is full mud at this time of year, so deep it threatens to overflow the top of my wellies, and I have to hop from clod to clod.
Mutton ploughs through indiscriminately: air, water, muck; it’s all the same to him.
I stop to breathe in the cold, fresh day, the smell of cows and woodsmoke.
There’s a swathe of it rising from over by the village, glimpsed through bare tree branches – someone starting a bonfire, I guess.
Mutton’s caught a scent and scrambles up the track’s bank, nose low to the ground, letting out huffed growls.
‘What’ve you found, Mutts?’ I call up to him. A sudden flurry of feathers, and a pheasant comes billowing out of the depths, clicking in alarm. Plain brown feathers: a female. Mutton’s after it like a shot. ‘Leave it!’ I shout. ‘No, leave it!’
Mutton loses it in another hedge, the growth too close for him to push through. He whimpers and looks back at me.
‘I know, boy,’ I say. ‘You almost had the bastard.’
At the top of the track, I’m just pausing to blow my nose when Reacher’s Singer Ten rumbles around the corner. He’s been out in town this morning – an early meeting, Arabella had said. I give him a wave, and he toots on the horn in response, before pulling up on the verge.
‘Morning, Mr Reacher.’
‘Quite, quite.’ Reacher climbs out of the car, stepping gingerly into the mud. He’s wearing an ostentatious fur coat, its hem brushing the tops of his boots. High colour in his cheeks from the cold air. ‘Are you off to the village?’
I shake my head in the direction of the post box, thirty feet or so further along the main lane.
‘Posting letters.’ I lift my hand to show them.
The envelopes are heavier than normal, each one containing a handful of dried chrysanthemums, gathered just before the flowers died off.
This used to be a favourite craft of Mam’s, and the two of us would collude on our choice of blossoms from the garden, before picking them to press between the pages of the family Bible.
A month later, they’d be ready to mount in glass and hang on the wall. A little colour to brighten the home.
Reacher gives a wink. ‘Ooh, not love letters, are they?’
‘No.’ I think suddenly, for some reason, of Arabella’s needlepoints. ‘My parents. For Christmas, you know.’
‘Pooh!’ Mutton chooses this moment to push past me, shoving his face into Reacher’s midriff. But as the dog knocks against me, my hold on the envelopes slips and they fly from my hand, spiralling down into a swampy puddle.
‘You beast, Mutton!’ scolds Reacher. ‘Here, let me.’
‘Oh, there’s no need to—’
But Reacher is already squatting, and – before I can stop him – he beats me to picking them up.
‘Thank you, sir. Here, let me—’
Reacher ignores my outstretched hand. Holds the letters to the daylight.
‘Not too much harm done, I don’t think.’ A pause.
He is reading the addresses, I realize. Spike of panic in my chest. I shouldn’t have said parents.
A stupid mistake to make! ‘HMP Cardiff and HMP Aylesbury,’ Reacher reads out loud, before raising one eyebrow at me. ‘Prison wardens, are they?’
‘Cleaners,’ I say. ‘My mam, that is. Dad’s a gardener.’ No: wrong thing to say. My throat is closing up.
‘I wasn’t aware that prisons normally had much in the way of a garden,’ Reacher says flatly. It’s clear he’s caught me in the lie. ‘Mr and Mrs G. Owens. Not Morgan, then?’
‘Morgan was Mam’s maiden name. I … prefer it.’
‘Do you, now?’
He knows I’m hiding something, but he has no way of finding out what.
It’s been years since the newspaper reports, if the story even made its way as far as Wiltshire.
My parents’ names mean nothing here … I take a deep breath.
‘May I have those back, Mr Reacher?’ I ask, with the most confidence I can muster. ‘I’d like to catch the morning post.’
Reacher looks at me a moment longer, then smiles knowingly. ‘Of course, Miss Morgan.’
It takes all I have not to snatch the letters out of his hand. Instead, I accept them with an attempt at composure, and walk sedately to the post box. A wash of relief as I watch them tumble into its empty maw.
When I turn back, Reacher places a finger to his lips. Miming the promise to keep my secret.
These late December nights at Harfold are so long it feels that they’ll never end.
Back in Cardiff, there was always something to do of an evening – the cinema, the dance hall, the pub down the road.
True, I’ve avoided all of these in recent times, opting to sit at home as my friends headed out in their finery: Gladys with her paste pearls and scandalous lipstick; Lou’s hair freshly shingled.
Both of them looking back at me in pity.
But there had at least been the feeling of having the option – that I could have gone out, if I wanted.