Chapter Seven #2
I stood and tossed my wrapper and bottle into the bins and continued my walk, watching the trees swaying across the green, their leaves fast turning brown as Autumn crept in.
A figure made me stop, a pain ripping through my chest. A figure in shabby denim and a brown woollen coat, and a flat-cap over a stern, humourless face.
He was some distance away, and seemed like a figment of my imagination.
He walked out from behind a tree and paused, watching me, standing stock-still.
I gasped and turned away from it, terror coursing through me, until I almost threw up my lunch.
When I dared a glance back over my shoulder, the figure was gone.
“Tom,” I said out-loud in my shattered voice, almost too terrified to make another sound.
My imagination was running wild in response to all the excitement.
Too many changes, all at once, could devastate a sheltered person.
I hugged my shapeless coat around me, drew up my parasol, and carried on walking, willing the terrible thoughts away.
..only they wouldn’t go. In the distance I could hear a faint knocking, knocking, knocking, just like the woodpecker I’d seen from the balcony.
Only I knew it wasn’t a woodpecker, not really.
When my eyes fell on a dead grasshopper on the pavement, teaming with ants, I wanted to scream.
Some presence was following me, terrorising me, and now I was seeing hallucinations of Tom, too.
I wondered if I should go back to the doctor, beg her to see me again, and tell her that I was going crazy.
I lost myself in shopping instead, willing myself to ignore what I’d seen.
I walked briskly until I came across a shopping mall and bought myself pieces I’d seen on the young girls walking in the park.
I bought dark jeans and casual shirts and boho dresses, and hair grips to go with them in flower and butterfly designs, and sneakers and sandals and a pair of stilettos that I’d never be able to walk in.
My pulse was racing at the choices now available to me; rails upon rails of things I had never been able to buy before in the Dales, when I was cooped up with my mother.
I browsed a more formal section and found cocktail dresses, simple and elegant.
I chose a white dress to match my hair, with one bare shoulder cut at an angle.
It was a dress I’d only ever seen on women in adverts, never in person – and it was something I had only ever dreamed of wearing before now.
My recent past was trying to catch up with me, to follow me to London and make me know I couldn’t escape it so easily. But it wasn’t going to win.
I would throw my old clothes into the fire at Crowthorne House and pray that my past disintegrated with them.
By the time I arrived back at the house, I felt I had transformed.
Laden with bags of my new clothes and shoes, I looked about me for a way to get in. I’d been so comfortable remaining inside the house that it had slipped my mind to even ask Nick for a key.
The house looked so grand and foreboding in the pale light of day.
It stood three storeys above ground, and one more beneath.
It was Victorian and stately and, in parts, more ivy than brick.
Nick’s attic room with the balcony drew my eyes towards it.
I wondered if he was in there right now, pacing, looking down at me from the window.
There was a thick rope hanging from a bell above my head. I hadn’t noticed it on the night I arrived, because it had been far too dark to see it. I pulled it now, letting it ring out. A man appeared from beside the house, wearing thick gardening gloves and holding a large pair of shears.
He smiled when he saw me, as if he knew me, although I didn’t recognise him.
“Not to worry, Ms Lockett – I’ve got the gate for you,” he said, quickening his pace to meet me. He propped the shears up against the right-hand gate and unlocked the left-hand one, stepping aside to let me through. “Do you need help with your bags?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, wondering how he knew my name.
He was a fairly short man, middle-aged, with closely clipped hair and a flat-cap. His eyes were grey and twinkly, and he seemed harmless. He wore overalls and working boots.
“I do the yard-work around here, and I look after the horses. Have you seen them yet?”
I recalled my view from the balcony yesterday morning.
“I saw you guiding one of them along, yes,” I said, remembering the sleek, gleaming black coat of the horse and its delicate step.
He smiled. “My names’s Marcus. I’ve worked for the Crowthornes for thirty-eight years. Nick told me all about you. Says you’re to train as a funeral director?”
“That’s right,” I said, trying to hide my thrill at learning that Nick had spoken about me. Between Marcus and Maggie, it appeared Nick was good at choosing long-term staff. I hoped this would be the beginning of a long and fruitful career for me, too.
We walked together towards the grand entrance beneath the ornate gabled porch, the lantern flicking on even though it was still light outside.
“It was nice to meet you, Marcus,” I said, as he unlocked the front door for me.
“And you too, Ms Lockett.”
I didn’t correct him to call me Grace, which I knew put me a little above my station...but it felt so good to be respected. To be treated like a lady in this grand Victorian funeral home.
The hall was silent but for the ticking of the grandfather clock as I stepped in.
I made my way up to my room to try on my clothes, and to get a look at my new hair.
I’d stumbled upon a hairdressing shop who had time for a trim.
The hairdresser had remarked on the icy tone of my blonde hair, as many often did, and layered it up to give it more dimension.
She even added a few wisps around my face, and a lazy fringe that feminised my sharp nose and jutting cheekbones.
Before leaving, she’d given it a curl with a hot iron, so that it bounced around my shoulders when I moved.
Desire throbbed in my chest at the thought of Nick seeing me now. I threw the bags down on the bed and dressed immediately in a long, flowing white bohemian dress, decorated with embroidered flowers and long off-the-shoulder sleeves that ballooned out at the forearms and came in again at the cuffs.
I looked at myself in the mirror and was astonished at the ethereal woman I saw looking back at me; her pale face now blushing, with a healthy new bounce to her white locks of hair.
The dress hugged my slight bosom, which was slowly becoming more ample with my new diet, and dare I say it. ..I enjoyed what I saw.
I heard a faint clattering. The sound of someone entering the hallway. I drew in a deep breath and hurried to the stairway, running my hand along the bannister as I made my way down the stairs.
Nick was home. I watched him drop his keys into a dish on the console table, talking away into his earpiece – something about beams and rafters, and pointing, and replacing rotten wood.
I knew he had to be talking about Heather House.
He glanced up and saw me, pausing, before he muttered something softly and ended the call.
“Grace,” he said, pausing as if I’d taken his breath away.
I felt as if I was glowing.
Nick ran a hand through his tangle of dark hair. He seemed choked up about something, his dark eyes following the line of my body.
“I can’t believe my eyes. Look at you. You’re an angel.”
I held out my skirt and let it fall, showcasing the beautiful drape of it against my legs. Nick made my heart stop as he climbed the stairs and took my hand.
“Let me show you something,” he said, guiding me back up to the first floor. We went down the long red-carpeted hallway, past doors I had never entered, and turned right. We entered a room at the end of a dark passageway.
It was far too dark to see at first. Then soft beams of daylight flooded in as Nick opened up the shutters.
I gazed around in wonder to see a library wink to life before my eyes; a two-storey library with elaborate mahogany bookcases wall-to-wall, and a short spiral staircase with a gold bannister to take me to the next floor.
“How many books are there?” I asked breathlessly.
“Thousands, collected over decades. They all need to be treated regularly to ensure they don’t degrade.
” Nick came to my side, and put his hand at the small of my back, making my breathing falter.
He pointed to the floor above the gold staircase.
“Up there is our area of interest. Hundreds of books about anatomy, biology – well, the process, you know. I regularly update and restock them. This will be your study room when you start the course in January.”
“This...this whole room?”
Two floors to myself. A whole library.
“This whole room, Grace, just for you,” he said softly, as if knowing how much that would mean to me. “And me, from time to time, if you wouldn’t mind sharing.”
The little smile that teased the corners of his mouth momentarily made my heart flutter.
I looked at his carved jaw, his stern brow, his slightly crooked nose, and no longer saw coldness or any hint of cruelty.
My eyes fell on his lips, willing me to draw him closer to me, just to feel them against mine for a moment.
I felt emboldened by my new look. I imagined for a moment that I was somebody else.
I allowed my hand to reach out and touch his crow brooch, and then his silk tie, before moving up his lapel towards his neck.
“Grace...” said Nick, his dark eyes watching my hand.
He took it suddenly, exposing my wrist, and paused. He looked at my pale skin, as if unsure whether to kiss it or bite into it. Some indecision made his brow wrinkle.
“I’m not a child, you know,” I said, my voice quivering. Every sensitive part of my body was alive, pulsing, aching, longing to be touched. The way he looked at me, the way he touched the small of my back...it was chaos to this secret part of me, this fire that had been ignited.
I felt Nick’s chin with my fingertips, his hand still holding my wrist. He turned his head, pausing.
I could tell he was contemplating kissing them.
The breath from his nostrils heated my palm.
I let the pad of my thumb touch his lip, before he pulled my hand away entirely.
He took me by the shoulders, staring down at our feet.
“But you are to me,” he said firmly. Though I detected a hint of regret in his tone, he’d said it. He couldn’t take it back now.
Tears prickled my eyes. I’d made a fool of myself. My shoulders began to shake as the shame crept over me.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” I said. “I should never have – ”
“It’s all right,” he soothed, massaging my shoulders. “Think about the weekend. Think about Dorian, dashing sod that he is, and all the fun you’re going to have at the charity gig. He’s got lots of friends. He’ll look after you.”
“Not like you look after me,” I said solemnly. “I could never thank you enough.”
“You can thank me by doing your job, Grace, and by becoming the funeral director you were clearly born to be. That is all you need to do. And if you change your mind, and want to leave here, you’re free to go. Free to go and be whomever you choose to be. I don’t own you, and you owe me nothing.”
I could see a weight lifting from him. He’d been waiting to say this to me.
“You will have my loyalty for all of my life, Nick,” I said, forcing him to meet my eyes. I looked at him earnestly, knowing I meant it with all of my heart. Fool or no fool, he had me.
“You don’t need to say that,” he replied.
But there was something I desperately needed to say. A question I needed to be answered.
“Are you doing this because...because I look like her?”
Nick closed his eyes, as if I’d said something painful.
“No,” he said firmly, with an edge to his voice that told me he was battling some emotion. “It’s because you look like you. Because you are you, you demented girl.”
I laughed, and Nick smiled, his dark eyes twinkling.
I looped my arm through his, and walked with him around the library.
He guided and pointed and described the room’s history, how grateful he’d been when it was spared in the fire.
In a small nook beneath the stairs, he showed me his record collection and a record player that used to be his birth-mother’s.
“She particularly loved this guy,” he said, holding up an album with a man in a suit and hat on the front. “They used to refer to him back in the day as Ol' Blue Eyes.”
I recognised the artist with a shiver. My father used to listen to Frank Sinatra on a record player, just like the one Nick had. Fortunately, my father’s music was one of the few things I enjoyed at home.
“There’s a particular song I always liked,” said Nick, removing the record from its sleeve and placing it down on the turntable. He adjusted the needle and stood beside me, waiting, as the music crackled to life.
“I love this one,” I said, surprising him. “It was always my favourite song. My father used to play his records.”
“Wow,” said Nick, shaking his head. “How about that.”
We stood beside each other and listened as the first notes of Fairy Tale played, and Sinatra’s crooning voice drifted out.
I stole glances at Nick's profile, enjoyed his deep voice as he made comments about the song. We stood so close that I breathed in the scent of him and wished I could bury myself in the safety of his clothes. I knew beyond any doubt that I was falling in love with him.
If only he knew all that I was afraid of. All that I was running from.
Maybe his love in return could save me.