21. Clara
21
Clara sat in the middle of her bed with Audrey’s diary on one side, the paper bearing numbers written by her grandmother on the other, and the ancient dictionary found in Audrey’s room on her lap.
There had to be some link between all three – she could feel it in her bones – but she couldn’t, for the life of her, work it out.
She leafed through the dictionary again, being careful not to damage its pages that had become fragile with age. She shouldn’t have brought the book home with her, after rescuing it from the coat cupboard when her mother wasn’t looking. But, then again, she should never have removed it from the drawer next to Audrey’s bed in the first place.
As for breaking into the manor’s ‘ghost floor’…Did using a key constitute breaking in? she wondered. Especially if the son of the man who owned the house – for the time being, at least – was with her.
She smiled at the thought of River exploring the forbidden rooms too. For a while, it had been just like the old days, and she’d felt safer with him beside her.
In her mind’s eye, she saw him turning towards her, his body silhouetted in the soft light falling through Audrey’s bedroom window. In some ways he was so familiar and yet, after so many years away, he was a stranger too.
Their friendship was broken, so why had he bothered to look out Audrey and Edwin’s marriage certificate for her? It was kind of him, which was why she hadn’t revealed that she’d already found the certificate online, along with Audrey’s birth certificate. They had revealed that Audrey’s maiden name was Greene, but a search for that name had yielded few facts, and none of them useful. Audrey seemed to have had no close living family left by the time she walked into the sea so there were no descendants to track down. It was another potential avenue of information that could be crossed off.
But the old photographs that River had given her were perhaps a different matter. The stiff poses of husband and wife hinted at a marriage less than happy, but maybe Clara was reading too much into a formal photo taken so long ago.
Clara rubbed her eyes, yawned and focused again on the dictionary lying nearby. This might be her last chance to work out the truth about Audrey and she wasn’t about to give up.
Twenty minutes later, Clara was ready to renege on her ‘no giving up’ resolution. She’d tried various ways to make sense of the numbers but they remained just that – numbers whose meanings were lost in time. Perhaps they didn’t mean anything at all. Unless…
Clara looked at the first hyphenated figure written on the piece of paper by her grandmother: 49-6. She turned to page 49 in the dictionary and ran her finger down the first few words described. The sixth one was ‘boat’, which she jotted down.
That word seemed random but she did the same with the next figure, more in desperation than hope. It led to the word ‘off’, and the third was ‘headland’.
Clara’s heart began to hammer as she continued with the remaining figures, and then she sat back against the pillows and looked at the phrase she’d jotted down. It read: Boat off headland point at seven on Tuesday.
On what day of the week had Audrey disappeared? Clara reached for her laptop, googled the information and her jaw dropped. Audrey Brellasham walked into the sea on the seventeenth of September 1957, and that happened to be a Tuesday.
She’d cracked the code! Violet had written a note to Audrey, telling her there would be a boat waiting for her. Clara had an urge to rush up to the manor house and find River, but she didn’t yet have enough to tell him. Because if Audrey did go into the sea in the hope of reaching a boat that stormy night – a boat Violet had helped her arrange – the most pressing question of all remained: why?
Clara began to decipher the numerals that littered Audrey’s diary and soon she had her answer. Audrey was frightened of her husband’s explosive temper and the physical abuse he had begun to mete out.
At first, references to his abusive behaviour were infrequent and brief: More bruises to hide, she wrote in March; he hit me again, in April. But she began to elaborate as the year went on and his behaviour seemingly escalated: In May, Not allowed to leave manor on my own or speak alone with house staff, and, three days later: I feel like a prisoner. I am so unhappy.
Poor Audrey. Clara continued deciphering the cries for help of a woman whose privileged, comfortable life had not been what it seemed. Even being openly honest in her own diary had felt impossible, and she’d been compelled to outline the truth about Edwin in code. No wonder she’d been overjoyed when he’d allowed a ball at the manor. The dance would have brought joy and company into her home. But what had happened to spark her flight so soon after the dance was over?
As Clara carried on deciphering the numbers with the help of the dictionary, Audrey’s secrets continued to reveal themselves.
Two days after the fateful ball, the bottom of one diary page was covered in scrawled numerals: Jealous. Held me around throat and promised to kill me. I believe him. No one will believe me. I am alone.
Clara paused, feeling overwhelming sorrow for Audrey, who had suffered such abuse and fear. But fortunately she’d been wrong in thinking that she was alone. Violet, Clara’s grandmother, had been on her side and had sent her the coded note which offered her a way out.
Turning the pages, Clara reached Tuesday, September the seventeenth, the fateful day that Audrey had disappeared. There was another line of numbers scrawled across the centre of the paper. But these, when decoded, made no sense at all: Can a flower bloom in the snow? Only time will tell.
Clara gave up trying to work out its meaning and closed the diary, her mind buzzing with what she’d just learned.
People assumed that Audrey had wanted to end her life that night she’d walked into the sea, and they were right. But it was only her life as Edwin’s wife that she’d been so desperate to bring to a close. She planned to swim to the boat organised for her by Violet, but did she make it that night or did the sea claim her?
Clara slid off the bed and walked to her window. Tonight the sea was calm and lit by a full moon, but it still looked foreboding, with depths riven by currents and scattered with sharp rocks. And the headland, where a boat had been waiting, was a long way from the cove.
How good a swimmer was Audrey? Clara wondered. And how had she and Violet become so close that her grandmother had aided her escape?
Clara watched as moonlight cast a silvery sheen over the waves. She knew now why Audrey had chosen to walk into the sea at that time on that particular night. But, after finding out about Edwin’s abuse and the planned escape, one huge question remained: did Audrey live or die?