Chapter Fifteen #3
I glanced uneasily at Nick, who had gone the colour of chalk.
“You’re not going to be Mrs Crowthorne, Grace. The name’s taken.” Tom pulled away the hood of the hunched figure’s raincoat, exposing their face to us all.
A pained woman’s face was revealed; her eyes closed, lashes fluttering against the sudden light.
She seemed to be floating somewhere far away from us, coasting on a drug-induced sea.
Her skin was like wrinkled crepe paper on one side, and like smooth, barely crazed marble on the other.
Part of her head on the left side was bald, the skin twisted, while a tangled mane of white-blonde hair tumbled down like a bunch of wet weeds from the other.
She swayed under the harsh foyer light, as if closing her eyes against the sun, half-asleep.
“Nick, he’s hurt her – ”
“No, no,” said Tom, holding up a hand as Maggie made to rush forward. “I can assure you she’s been quite safe with me. I’ve every intention of taking her back to the loony bin where you put her, once Grace has finally got the picture. Or perhaps you’d like that honour, Nicholas?”
“Give her to me,” said Nick, his teeth bared. “Give her over this instant.”
The woman groaned as she swayed, her lips dry, her fingers emerging from her coat sleeves and touching her fingertips to the empty space before her eyes.
My heart and head were pounding. A vile sickness consumed me. I knew who she was. It was unmistakable who she was.
“She was never dead,” I whispered, as the first tears fell. They came and came as I took in her pitiful image. “She’s your wife.”
Nick was deaf to me as he took Louisa from Tom’s grasp and clutched her to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her in a protective embrace while a sob escaped me.
Margaret’s hand reached for mine, squeezing it, before abruptly letting it go again.
From her scolding heart, she found some pity for me.
“I am sorry that it’s come to this,” she said.
Louisa let out a low, agonised groan against Nick’s chest. He rocked her, smoothing down her hair, whispering reassurances, kind words, against her ear.
Tom’s smirk increased as he watched the horror unfold on my face.
“You not seen her wandering around the grounds, Grace? Have you not seen that she finds her way in as she pleases, wanders the halls, sometimes, at night? I found her, outside, when I came here looking for you. I thought she was you. She comes here, wondering why she knows her way around a home that isn’t hers any more.
She wonders who that woman is, who looks like her, sleeping in her lovely pink bed.
” Tom raised his voice, louder and louder, as he spoke.
I was too broken to answer. My world came down, shattering like the glass roof of the orangery, showering down over Louisa’s angelic statue. Wasps swarmed the rotten figs in my mind, agitated, working themselves into a fury. They fought against one another to eat away at my flesh.
It was her, Louisa, who had entered my room. Opened my blinds and shutters, moved my things. It was Louisa I had seen in the library, watching me through the window, a stranger in her house.
“It’s not her fault,” said Nick, his voice stern but solemn. “It’s my fault. Entirely my fault. I should have protected you.” He whispered the last part into her hair, sounding broken.
It was killing me to see him so close to her, cherishing her, his precious secret.
“Nice job you’ve made of that so far. The poor mite’s confused, Nicholas.
Her drugs wear off and she forgets who she is or where she is.
She sneaks out into the night, all alone, and there’s only one place she knows to come to,” said Tom, his tone pious and admonishing.
He looked at me. “And here you are, about to announce your engagement to a married man.”
“She hasn’t the capacity to consent to a divorce,” said Nick over the crown of Louisa’s fragile head. I noticed how even now, he cupped her ears against his words.
“These things take time. I tried, Grace. I had hoped the lawyers would move things along...that I would have time to set things right, but I risked losing you.”
Tears were flowing freely now, streaming down my face. A hand touched my shoulder. It was Eugenie, dressed for the evening, carrying a large makeup box meant for me. Her hair was drenched, her makeup running.
“What’s all this?” she asked timidly, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and hugging me to her. “Grace?”
“She was the woman at the church,” I said, my voice breaking as I realised. “You go and see her, don’t you? You take her to a church service, you...you spend time with her every Monday.”
“Of course I do,” Nick snapped. “I can’t leave her all alone. She’s not well.”
It seemed so horribly unfair that I almost couldn’t speak. How could he take that tone with me, as if I should have known, as if I should have accepted the ugly truth that had been staring me in the face all along?
“You said you loved me.”
Nick flinched, still holding Louisa against him, as if terrified that she might fall from his grasp and shatter into thousands of pieces. Like a fragile bird in his palm, he kept her safe, just as he had intended to for the last twenty years. She was his beloved wife.
“It’s more complicated than you could ever know,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry.”
“But what about the fire?” asked Eugenie, looking confused. She comforted me, holding me in her arms just as Nick held Louisa. “Your partner died in the house fire. Everyone knows the story.”
“I managed to save her,” said Nick, his voice breaking again as he struggled to maintain control of his emotions.
“Louisa started the fire. She...she had a fascination with them, with the flames. I’d find fires she’d set all over the house, the grounds, scorch marks, matches.
..she had a compulsion that I couldn’t contain.
She wasn’t like that when we first married.
It developed over the course of the year, getting worse with her moods.
When she remembered painful things, her relative comfort made it unbearable, and she developed a desire for destruction.
She wanted to set her new, perfect world ablaze to feel some normality.
“One night, she set a fire outside my brother’s room.
It was worse than anything I’d ever seen before.
It took over rapidly. I found her, I...I dragged her out.
They put her into an induced coma, but the smoke had done its damage to her brain.
She was never the same. I lost her that night.
I put her in a place where I could look after her, but she spends her days oscillating between sedation and confusion. Please, don’t blame her.”
“Everybody blamed you,” said Eugenie, in almost a whisper.
Nick stroked Louisa’s remaining hair, holding her close to him like a newborn baby.
“I couldn’t let anyone know it was her. They would never understand. It isn’t her fault that she’s like this. She’s a product of terrible things beyond her control, things that were done to her since she was a little girl, for heaven’s sake,” he said.
“I still don’t understand,” said Eugenie.
But I could. Nicholas protected her, the way he would protect me. The knowledge of it left me seething with jealousy. She was stealing him from me, even though he’d never been mine to have.
“My competitors, the other funeral directors, they knew something was wrong. They suspected my dishonesty and I lost their respect. There was no death certificate for her. She simply vanished from society,” said Nick.
Louisa’s groans turned into a wail. She thrashed in Nick’s arms, despite his whispers and reassurances, as if she’d lost her mind; lost in a dark void none of us could see or understand.
Was that what he saw in me, too? A troubled little girl, who needed looking after? Who needed protecting from herself?
“He lied to you. This isn’t love,” said Tom, watching my crestfallen face. “You don’t belong here, Grace. I told you. Tried to explain it to you, plain and simple, but you wouldn’t listen.”
I didn’t know what I believed any more. Everything I thought I knew had been torn away from me.
A life that I thought was mine was nothing but an illusion.
I was the apprentice, nothing more. I was a placeholder for the woman Nick had always truly wanted; who had succumbed to an illness and been burned by her own flames, leaving her husband to take the fall.
He’d covered for her, taken the blame, the rumours, to spare her the humiliation.
Because he loved her. And that’s what I couldn’t stand.
“Let me get her upstairs. We’ll call the infirmary right away,” said Margaret, her expression steeped in fear and concern.
Louisa thrashed all the more in Nick’s arms as Margaret attempted to guide her towards the stairs. She broke free, her stricken face turning to me. She screamed, as if she’d seen a monster. Her voice came hoarse and shrill, her eyes wide and horrified.
“It’s all right, darling,” Nick cooed, stroking her hair, her face, attempting to turn her head to look at him. “It’s all right, my little love. We’ll get you to bed.”
My bed, in my room. The room that was never my room at all. The room that was always Louisa’s.
The room with her rocking horse and her doll house and all her trinkets and dusky pink to remind her of a time when she was small, and safe, and unharmed. The haven that Nick created for her, so he could keep her, like his little doll.
And me, her replica.
Nick paused at the end of the hall, glancing briefly over his shoulder towards me.
“I can explain everything, Grace, if you’ll let me,” he said.
I couldn’t look at him. His sad eyes sent daggers through me.
I only watched, dismayed, as he and Maggie walked Louisa toward the elevator. The doors closed them in, and they were gone.
I was a fraud. A stupid, love-sick girl who had believed in a fantasy.
That my world would open up like the pages of a fairytale after a lifetime of horror, with a man who saw who I was and loved me.
The mortuary, the house, Nick, none of them were mine.
I felt suddenly ashamed, a prize fool, just for standing in his hallway.
I was an imposter in Crowthorne House. I was a sham. I was the ghost who needed to be banished.
My skin crawled just to be within its walls. Even the clothes I wore were not mine, only leant to me, borrowed from a life I didn’t own. All that remained was my flesh, my own good purse in my coat pocket, and the key to Heather House.
“You don’t have to wait for him to come downstairs and give you his excuses, you know,” said Tom. “You can come back with me, right now. Show him you don’t need him.”
He looked every bit the devil, with his anger-filled eyes and his heavy shoulders and his stance that spoke of a yearning for control, but he was the devil I knew. He was my only link to the Dales, to Heather House. To my home.
Desperation struggled with my conscience and won. I found myself nodding, helplessly nodding.
“Wait, Grace, wait a moment. Don’t go with him.” Eugenie was desperate to turn me to face her, her eyes searching to make a link with mine, but I wouldn’t see her. She didn’t belong to me, either. “I’m sure Nick will explain everything – ”
“Don’t listen to her, Grace. She’s another rich rotter from his world. None of them know what you need, what’s best for you. They’ve not an honourable bone in their bodies,” said Tom, his voice steady and matter-of-fact.
“Who the hell are you, except the piece of crap friend who grabbed her by the hair and told her she belonged to you?” Eugenie spat her venom at him, her eyes wild. “You’re not taking her anywhere!”
I didn’t care where I went, as long as it was far from here.
Returning to my black hole in the Dales, amidst the ghosts of my past, sounded good enough to me.
At least the bed that I would crawl into would be mine.
The sheet I would pull over my head and blot out the sun with would be mine.
The black pool of despair that I clawed my way into would belong to me, entirely.
I would shed this false skin and go home again.
What other choice did I have? What else did I have that was really, truly mine?
“Grace, you can come and stay with me,” said Eugenie, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Wouldn’t that be fun? Me and you, us girls. You don’t have to go anywhere with him.”
“You’ve done enough damage,” said Tom, eyeing Eugenie like she was filth on his boot.
Eugenie never broke eye contact with me, pleading with me, her face an inch from mine.
“Stay with me,” she said.
I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Not any more. I was already far, far away from her.
“I don’t belong here,” I said, on another sob, and shoved her aside. I felt a sham of a person, undeserving of her friendship, of the kindness in her eyes.
And besides, she didn’t know me, not really. She knew only what I wanted her to see. Like Nicholas, she had no idea what I was capable of. She didn’t know what I liked to do.
Her urgent pleas followed me, but I wouldn’t hear them.
Tom’s aggressive hand led me out into the rain, dragging me into his dark field, a lame horse destined for the bullet.