I go through the village, driving along country lanes onto the moors. I look in my rear-view mirror every few minutes to reassure myself I’m not being followed. The sky is an upturned bowl of silver. Fast-moving clouds coil and uncoil like ribbons in a stream. I don’t know where to go or what to do. I park on the verge. Once out of the car, the wind grabs at my hair, whipping it across my face. I can breathe more easily in all this space, and I lean into the push of air, walking across scrubby hillside, hands in my pockets, chin tucked into my chest. I come across a herd of wild ponies. The small, sturdy animals ignore me, tearing grass, broad rumps against the weather, coarse tails whipping at their hocks. I sit on the ground, lying back against springy heather. High above, a kestrel balances inside vaulted hollows, wings holding it against an invisible force, amber eyes hooking its prey.

  Why the hell was Ambrose Stone tailing me? Perhaps it wasn’t him. Whoever it was, I’ve lost them. I’m safe.

  And I’m starving. I go back to the car and root inside the glove compartment, hoping Gabriel might have left some food amongst the clutter. I’m in luck. There’s a chocolate bar. God knows how old it is, but I don’t care. My mouth waters as I sit behind the wheel, unwrapping the snack, wolfing down stale wafers covered in old chocolate, licking the inside of the wrapper for scraps.

  I need to get home. Make sure that Gabriel and Bea are alright. I’ve known for a while now, that Hollyhocks Cottage is my real home. For the first time, I belong somewhere, and have people who belong to me. I’m sick of being a wanderer, homeless, rootless. I have nowhere to go, except there – all my instincts driving me to return to the two people and the one place I’ve come to love.

  I start the car and turn in the direction of Exeter. Once I’m on the motorway, I put my foot down, and miles rush past as I grip the steering wheel, staring ahead, my vision blurry with exhaustion. As I drive, I have a strong sense that despite my desperation to get back, I’m doing the wrong thing, that I’m missing something, forgetting something – but I fight the feeling. I need to see Gabriel, feel his arms around me.

  When I’m close to Bristol, I pull into a service station to fill up with petrol. I buy a sandwich and black coffee, stirring in three little sachets of sugar, and sit in the car. The caffeine and sugar help to revive me. My mind returns to the problem of Cecily. She must have wanted me to see Edith, to hear the truth. Cecily already knew the story about Mary, the lie we’ve been told all our life. Our father, the hypocrite. I sip my drink and close my eyes, trying to enter Cecily’s mind. What would she do with that information? What effect would it have on her?

  She’s the one who worshipped him, the puppet who did his bidding without question, the one who believed everything he said and everything he stood for.

  ‘DIE’, she’d written in her sketchbooks. ‘DIE’, she’d scribbled on the mirror.

  My eyes snap open. I have a sudden conviction. It wasn’t Gabriel she was talking about. It was our father.

  I put the coffee down, breathless with urgency as I take the road map from the pocket in the door and spread it across the steering wheel. I estimate that I’m roughly four hours away from Hawksmoor. Retracing my journey is the last thing I want to do, but I must find her. I’m not afraid any more. Whatever she’s done, she’s still my sister. She needs my help. I can’t let her murder our father. If that’s what she’s planning, I must stop her.

  And I want to tell her the truth about me and Gabriel, tell her that this swap is permanent – she can have her freedom. But in return, I will take her life. Her home and family are mine now.

  I gulp the rest of my drink and start the car. Driving away from Exeter, I enter the other side of the motorway, following signs for the North.

  40

  ALICE

  It’s late and the main street is empty of people, houses subdued under a purpling sky, a faint smell of wood smoke drifting in the air, a few windows lit with gold. I pass the primary school where Cecily and I spent our time as outcasts, and the Anglican church that our father despises.

  I drive out of the village down a road that narrows into a lane; my headlights showing a dense hedge on one side of me, the fissures of a drystone wall on the other. I sense, rather than see, the spread of the dale beyond the wall, and the black cloak of the hills rising into the higher fells. Granite outcrops and ridges stand as witnesses to my homecoming. I imagine what they see from their lofty positions: a small car with twin beams of light tunnelling through darkness. Perhaps they can make out the human sitting inside the moving tin box, see how she clasps the wheel with trembling fingers. They have witnessed armies on the march, looked down on gibbets hung with the dead, and farmers guiding tired sheep home. I am nothing to them.

  I had forgotten the way this landscape is soaked in history, an ancient stage carved out of volcano fire and melted ice. I had forgotten how lonely it can feel to travel at night, weaving half-blindly across the face of the earth under a fathomless sky.

  The gates of Hawksmoor appear on my left, rotted husks of metal standing open. I drive through slowly, the pit of my stomach clenching in anticipation. Bushes burgeon out of the shadows, hydrangeas and dogwood gone wild, their twigs scratching the sides of my car with awful squeals. I can make out the tops of tall grasses, arrow-head fringes glinting in my headlights. The battlements and tower appear out of a scrawl of trees, and I pull over in front of the old coach house and kill the engine. I sit for a moment, collecting my nerve, as the car ticks into silence. Something prevents me from driving up to the entrance, an instinct for stealth, a fear of the past, of him.

  I never thought I’d find the courage to come back, never thought I’d have to face him again. My hands are shaking. Is Cecily here? If I’m right, she’s already in the house. I hope I’m in time to intervene, to stop her from committing a crime. To stop him hurting her.

  I stretch across to the glove compartment and pull out the torch I’d found when I was looking for food. I press the button and the beam comes on. Thank you, Gabriel, I think, as I close the car door as softly as possible and follow the verge, walking across the unkempt lawn, avoiding the noise of the gravel, towards the front door. The whole building is in darkness. The Volvo is parked at an odd angle in the middle of the drive. In the moonlight, I notice flat tires and a lacing of rust around wheel arches, weeds growing against its sides. I suppose it’s been abandoned without my mother to drive it.

  As I reach the lions, blood pounds in my ears. I can’t breathe. It’s been seventeen years. Terror grips me. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to walk through that door. I sink down on the cold step, crouching with my forehead pressed against a stone flank. Give me courage, I ask silently. I remember how Cecily and I sat on the lions while we waited for Henry at the start of the holidays. A pang of loss shoots through me. The air is suddenly cold and I’m shivering, nauseous. I close my eyes.

  When I open them, my legs are stiff and aching, and I stand, swaying, on the top step. In the distance, the bells of St Mary’s toll nine times. My hand reaches out to push the heavy door. It gives with a creak. Hesitantly, I slip through into deeper darkness. I keep still, hardly breathing, waiting for my eyes to become accustomed to the lack of light, listening intently. I can hear nothing but the rush of breath through my body, but I know I’m not alone.

  I edge along the outer wall, the big tapestry brushing my shoulder as I feel my way past the Italian clock, past the walnut tables where the Chinese vases used to stand. It’s odd not to have the dogs here, tails wagging, hot breath on my ankles, their welcoming barks. The house is cold. The air damp and claggy in my mouth, stale and unused. I make my way past the dining room down the passage to our father’s study. I knock softly; there’s no answer, so I press the handle, and it swings open. My fingers fumble along the wall for the light switch. But the bulb doesn’t ignite. I inch forwards over to where his big, leather-bound desk crouches, a massive shape in the darkness, and find the Anglepoise lamp, but that doesn’t come on either. The electricity must be off. I click the torch on and shine the beam around me, lighting up the painting above the desk. Gurning devils’ faces leer down at me, pitchforks in hands. I touch the desk, gritty with dust, littered with papers in my father’s hectic scrawl, ink blots like blood splatters. Unopened bills and final reminders slide through my fingers. Something rustles underfoot. The torch picks out more papers, scattered as if they’ve been thrown to the floor.

  I make my way along the rest of the passage, down the stairs to the basement, sloping flagstones uneven under my feet. I shine light into the gaping mouth of the scullery, the buttery, the vast, empty kitchen. It’s cold. The range must be out. My flickering beam shows a mess of opened tins on the old oak table. I go over and look at empty containers of baked beans, tuna fish and anchovy, sharp lids peeled back like lethal tongues. There’s the rank stink of old fish. A half-eaten loaf of bread speckled with mould is surrounded by stale breadcrumbs, a knife smeared with butter. The air is bitter with rot. Something moves in the corner, a scrape of claws against stone, and I step back, expecting a rat, but it’s one of the feral cats slinking away.

  I go as quietly as I can through the long gallery returning to the entrance hall. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Is Cecily here? My father? I stop in the hall, shining the narrow light around. It catches on something at the foot of the stairs, a bristle of spikes, an elongated metal lozenge, wide as a shark’s grin. It takes a second before I understand what I’m looking at. The mantrap. The adrenaline in my body accelerates into a cold rush of fear, as I understand how easily I could have trodden on it. I can’t leave it there. I stuff the torch in the waistband of my jeans, and cautiously pick up one end of the trap. It’s long and heavy. I drag it back backwards through the corridor, my arms straining with the weight. Its edges catch against wood and stone, making a scraping noise, a siren squeal announcing my presence to anyone who’s lurking upstairs.

  Wedging the armoury door open with one shoulder, I heave it through. I’m trembling. If I hadn’t caught the mantrap in the torch light – Jesus – I take a breath, trying to steady myself. Did my father leave it there for me? But he didn’t know I was coming. How could he? I go up the backstairs, shining the light on every step, to be sure there are no more devices left to catch me. I feel my way along the corridor of the first floor, creeping past gaping doorways, past my own bedroom. I don’t go in. There’s a sour smell of tom cat competing with the aroma of damp. The curtains are open on all the windows, and moonlight filters in, milky between darker pools of ink. I think of shouting out, calling for Cecily. I know she’s close. I sense her panic, her fear.

  I feel the sudden gathering of energy, the disturbance of air, before I am hit by a rush of bone and sinew. A thump of muscle against my shin. I stagger under the blow, heavy as the fist of an angry man, and the torch falls from my fingers. Pain stabs through my right knee. I look up to see the outline of an animal disappearing along the corridor, tail up, fur on end. Bloody cats. I rub my knee, flexing it cautiously. Nothing seems to be broken, but it throbs like hell.

  Where is Cecily? Has he done something with her? An old terror squeezes my throat. His face looms close, his mouth a wet hole of need. Lips twisting with frustration. I raise my hands to my neck, trying to prise his fingers away. You will be cast down, Alice, into the fiery furnace.

  I can’t breathe. I lean against the wall, shutting my eyes, lungs burning. My mouth gasps at oxygen. Flashes ignite like sparks of electricity behind my vision. Darkness pulls me in. The syrupy blackness of the past. A mire of grief and anguish.

  My eyelids snap open. I’m not leaning against the wall any more; I’m sitting on a step. I don’t know how I got here or where I am in the house. The faint glow from the moonlight has been extinguished. I fumble for the torch, before remembering I dropped it. I put my hand against a bare surface next to me, then down to touch the rough texture of the step below. No carpet. The width is mean. I’m sitting on the stairs to the attic. I hear a noise and cock my head, ears straining. A rumble of muffled knocks, like distant thunder. The sound is coming from higher up, towards the eaves. I get to my feet and go slowly up the steps, feeling my way with my hands, trying to avoid making the joists creak. I’m in the narrow corridor of the old servants’ quarters. A trickle of starlight comes through bare windows, casting patterns on the floor. The sound has gone. I wonder if I imagined it. As I creep forwards, shadows jump at my shoulders.

  The noise starts again, a soft, insistent scrabbling to my right, the rustle of long tails, the scratching of sharp claws, rats behind the brickwork. I realise I’m outside the priest hole and understand the sounds are human nails working against crumbling plaster. There’s a muffled thump behind the wall – the impact of a foot or fist perhaps. My eye is caught by a long, thin shape next to me. A walking stick? My heart judders as I realise it’s a gun. My father’s shooting rifle is propped against the wall.

  I put my ear to the plaster. ‘Cecily?’ I whisper as loudly as I dare. ‘Cecily. It’s me. I’m here.’ The scrabbling intensifies. ‘Wait. I’ll let you out,’ I say, feeling across the beam for the secret lever. My toe catches on something, and I bend down, finding a torch at my feet and click it on, shining it over the beam to find the hidden mechanism.

  The great wooden limb rises slowly, releasing a foul stench, the contaminated air from centuries-old terror, dust impregnated with pigeon and rat droppings, mould spores, the prayers of the dying. There is a spurt of coughing, and one long, thin leg appears, shoulders squeezing out sideways. A torso eases through, a head appears, and my father tumbles like a broken doll onto the patched carpet.

  I step back with a cry. The torch falls from my fingers.

  My father looks up at me and scrabbles for purchase with his hands, long fingers clawing. He manages to rock onto his knees and then lurches forward, his forehead touching the floor, as if in prayer. He is shockingly old, thin hair pasted to his balding skull; his cheeks hollow under the drape of skin.

  ‘Where’s Cecily?’ I can hardly speak, my words squeezed out in gasps. ‘What have you done with her?’

  I pick up the gun. It’s heavy and the muzzle points towards him. He rolls onto his back and the moonlight picks out his cadaver’s face, the gaping mouth. His eyes are dark holes. For a second, my finger trembles against the trigger. But I turn away and fling the rifle from me, sending it clattering into the priest hole. I feel along the plaster to find the place to press, and the oak limb slowly closes, slotting into place with a soft click.

  I wonder how long he was in there. Not long enough to kill him, at any rate. Something grips my ankle. My father’s long fingers are wrapped around me like a shackle. He’s shuffled forward on his elbows, and now he’s hanging on to me, nails digging in. ‘Cecily,’ he pants.

  Fear and disgust rise like bile. I yank my foot away with a shudder. He’s too weak resist. ‘I’m not her.’ I bend over him. ‘I’m Alice.’

  He stares up, mouth falling open in disbelief. Then his lips twist, and rage distorts his expression. With a grunt of effort, he swipes for me again, fingers outstretched, but I move back. He begins to drag himself on his belly towards me. I keep just out of reach.

  ‘Liar, liar.’ His rasping breath cuts through the darkness. ‘There is no Alice.’

  Nausea crashes through me, a vortex of confusion. The corridor swells, the floor pitches, rearing up and crashing down like a boat in a storm. I turn and stumble away from him, arms out, lurching blindly from one wall to the other.

  41

  CECILY

  I’ve fallen to my knees in a narrow corridor. I get to my feet, squinting into the moonlit space. The ceiling is low, the sides sloped under the eaves. I’m at the top of the house in the old servants’ quarters and the air around me quivers with a malignant presence. I’m not alone. Someone breathes in the darkness nearby. With a crashing heart, I follow the ragged sounds towards a shape lying prone on the floor. I inch forward carefully over the thin carpet. When I’m close enough to see who it is, I rear back. Daddy. Someone’s let him out. It must have been Alice. She’s here in the house. I knew it the moment I walked through the front door – I can smell her, sense her. She hasn’t deserted me. I glance towards the priest hole. The entrance is sealed up, the beam in place. She’s the only other person who knows the secret mechanism. The gun has gone too. She must have taken it.

  Daddy lies motionless on his front, legs bent as if he was in the act of crawling. He’s moved some way from the priest hole, and it looks as though he’s collapsed. He’s unconscious, his lungs pulling in shallow, staccato breaths. I stand over him, thinking how easily I could close off his oxygen. I’d only need to place both my palms across his mouth and nose and apply some pressure. It would take moments.

  I sink onto the floor beside him, but turn away and pull my knees up, making a cave for myself, like I used to in the priest hole. I cover my eyes, trying to think. Alice is here somewhere. She’s answered my prayer – she’s come to save me from committing irredeemable sin.

  I wasn’t going to keep him in there for ever. I was going to let him out after an hour or two. But first, I’d wanted him to suffer, to know how we’d felt, locked inside that place. It had been easier than I’d imagined making him obey me, the heft of the barrel at my hip as I walked him up the stairs towards the attic. One step, then another. His stooping frame ahead of me, his faltering feet in slippers. It had been hard to balance the gun in one hand and keep the torch steady in the other, but he’d submitted silently. It had felt like a dream, as if I was following a pattern that had been laid down for me since the beginning, that for the whole of my life, I’d been heading for this moment in the darkness, on the stairs, a gun pointed at my father’s back.