Outside the priest hole, I’d told him to stop. ‘You were always the disappointment,’ he’d said. In the light of my torch, his eyes blinked furiously, leaking water. Not tears, just the seepage of the elderly. He’d leant towards me, wiping his cheek with the nub of a knuckle. ‘It should have been you that died.’

  My hands shook so that I’d dropped the torch, but I’d kept the gun on him while I’d felt across plaster and rough oak, finding the place to press.

  ‘Henry was the one Hawksmoor should have gone to. He would have come to his senses. I would have made sure of it.’ His ruined face sneered. ‘Alice was a fine girl. But you. You had no fighting spirit. No gumption. You’ve made a mess of your life because you’re weak. Always have been.’

  ‘You made me weak,’ I’d told him. ‘You never loved me, never believed in me. But I’m the one who stayed for you. I’ve been loyal.’

  ‘I’ve sold the house,’ he’d said. ‘Sold it for development.’

  ‘Liar,’ I’d said, my heart pounding. ‘You wouldn’t. It’ll be mine when you’re dead.’

  He shook his head, smiling. ‘You’ll never have it. Nobody else wants it. The restoration costs are ruinous. And we are ruined. The debt is bottomless.’

  I’d pointed the rifle towards the priest hole, watching him bow his head, stooping to get onto his knees, crawling clumsily into the dark as I’d pushed the muzzle against his spine. The wall sealed him up. I could walk away, I’d thought. Leave him there forever. But I’d had a better idea. A terrible idea. I’d seen the red notices from the electricity company heaped up in his study. The power was off. I’d already dragged the mantrap to the bottom of the stairs in preparation. He wouldn’t see it in the darkness. The developers would find his body when they came with their wrecking balls.

  He’s too weak to walk now. He’d never make it down the stairs.

  Stop. It doesn’t matter. I pinch my thigh, a little nip of pain to remind myself that I’m not here for that. However cathartic revenge would feel, however much I wanted to see him flailing in the trap, if I killed him, I’d have to pay for it. The punishment for taking the matter into my own mortal hands would be eternal damnation. Alice has saved me from that – her intervention came just in time.

  All I have left are words. I still have so much to tell him. I prod the shape on the floor beside me with my foot, and he stirs, gasping like a drowning man breaking through waves. ‘Alice?’ His voice croaks, eyes wide.

  ‘No, Daddy. It’s me. Cecily.’

  He struggles to get up but can’t even make it onto his knees. Floundering like a landed trout, he manages to prop himself up on one shaking elbow. ‘What are you⁠—’

  ‘I know about your first wife,’ I interrupt, squatting next to him. ‘Mary Baxter. I saw your wedding certificate. Remember Edith Baxter? She came here once to beg you to release her sister.’ I take care to pronounce each word clearly so that he can’t avoid them. ‘I went to see her. You had Mary committed to a mental institution because she couldn’t have children.’

  He blinks at me in confusion. Then the old arrogant look comes into his face, a crafty glint in his eyes. ‘She was insane—’ his voice breaks off as his elbow gives way, his torso slumping onto his front, so that he lies with one cheek against the moth-eaten carpet. ‘The marriage was dissolved,’ he mutters into the dust. ‘There was no need to speak of it.’

  I crouch over him. ‘You wouldn’t let Mummy see her only sister because she was divorced.’

  ‘I told you… no divorce… marriage dissolved…’ His voice is faltering, muffled, breaking apart, and I know time is running out.

  ‘You made me believe I’d made a terrible mistake by marrying Gabriel. I loved him, but you treated me as if I’d committed an unforgivable crime.’

  ‘You can’t blame me for… your bad decision…’ each word gasped. He can’t die yet.

  ‘Marrying Gabriel was the best decision I’ve ever made,’ I get hold of his face with both hands, twisting it on the column of his neck to stare up into mine, needing him to understand. ‘But you ruined my marriage.’

  I let go, and his skull flops back onto the floor. ‘He was… an unbeliever,’ he mutters.

  ‘I thought about killing myself,’ I tell him. ‘Locking us in the priest hole wasn’t God’s will. But you changed me into someone small and afraid and ashamed. I don’t know how to escape the memories. I do bad things to try and block them out.’ The hit of vodka, the stranger pushing himself into me. Pain to kill pain. But I couldn’t let Gabriel sleep with me after that. I couldn’t let him near me. I was corrupted.

  ‘I was going to end it all,’ I whisper. ‘I was going to poison myself.’ The twigs of yew gathered and kept in my pocket, transferred to my locked drawer.

  ‘DIE’, I’d written over my sketchbooks. ‘DIE, DIE, DIE’. The people I loved would be safer and happier without me. But I had a child. I couldn’t leave her.

  ‘You. Fail. At. Everything—’ he wheezes.

  ‘It would’ve made you happy, wouldn’t it, if I’d killed myself? Damned forever. That’s what you wanted. The number of times you told me that I’d go to hell.’ My voice trembles. ‘Only I didn’t kill myself, Daddy. Or you.’ I bend close to his ear. ‘I wanted to. But Alice came.’

  ‘Alice?’ he whispers with a shudder.

  ‘Yes. She came back. She hates you, too. But she escaped, didn’t she? A long time ago. She had the sense to know you for who you really are. And she ran, Daddy. She ran for her life. It’s me that’s the fool. I stayed for you.’

  His eye has closed, his skin bluish in the dim light. I know I should roll him onto his back, open his airwaves, but I can’t touch him again. ‘I’m not going to hell,’ I whisper. ‘But you are.’ I curl into a ball, clutching my knees, rocking back and forth, wishing the child would come, the cavalier, the monk. They always came when I needed them. I need them now.

  A bitter stench of urine fills my nostrils. He is leaking, the vessel of his body giving up, falling apart, the engine running down. His fingers clench against the carpet. I remember them around my throat, wielding a strap, slapping my face with the open span of sinew and bone, the smell of sweat and incense. We do this to please God.

  I want to take all my unspoken words and press them into his mouth, force him to swallow my pain. I want him to know that I can’t stop punishing myself for being the person he’s made me; rotten and guilty.

  Behind me, I hear floorboards groan under the pressure of a foot stepping and releasing. The sound amplifies in my ears. Someone is coming up the stairs.

  I stay still, hoping to melt into the shades of darkness. My heart thumps through the cage of my chest. A blinding light fills the corridor, the beam of a torch bouncing across the floor, searching the space. The circle is dazzling. It lassoes me inside its glare. I cower as I blink up at it, unable to look away. I want it to be Alice, but the shape behind the torch is too large, their step too heavy.

  The torch hovers over me, and the eldritch figure squats, a hand reaching. I’m caught, pulled against the width of a chest. Two arms pin me into stillness. I try to struggle, but he’s too strong for me. I feel the brush of cotton, the rasp of stubble on my skin. I smell orange blossom. ‘Cecily,’ he says. ‘It’s me. Gabriel.’

  He’s holding me, saying things I can’t take in. Relief overwhelms me. I rest my forehead on his shoulder, let it become real. My limbs are stiff, my mind numb. ‘Gabriel.’ I pull back, confused. ‘How did you⁠—?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’ He’s shining the torch onto the shape next to me on the floor. In the flickering light, I see Daddy’s chest rising and falling. ‘Your father,’ Gabriel crawls over to him. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘His heart, I think.’

  Gabriel heaves at Daddy’s shoulder, rolling him onto his back. ‘Edmund, can you hear me? Hang on. We’ll get help.’ He turns to me. ‘We need to call an ambulance,’ he says. ‘Is there a phone in the house?’

  I try to clear the muddle in my head. ‘In his study,’ I manage.

  A sudden gasp of air makes us turn to look at Daddy, and from his chest, the screech of a steel saw against metal. His forehead glistens with sweat, and his hands move, tearing helplessly at his throat. His body starts to twitch, convulsing as if there’s a spirit inside battling to get out. Then, with a ghost cry, he goes slack. ‘Is he dead?’ I whisper.

  Gabriel bends over my father, frowns, and quickly places his mouth over Daddy’s slack lips. I try to block out the sounds – wet suction and huff of air – then with a rip and a bounce of buttons, Gabriel opens Daddy’s shirt and positions the flat of his hands at the centre of Daddy’s sternum. Gabriel kneels up and pushes down hard with straight arms. The pale hoop of my father’s ribs creak and bend, the old, soft fabric of his body inert as dough under the pummelling. Gabriel pants with the effort of trying to force Daddy’s life back into him. The rhythm is sickening, desperate. I want it to stop. Gabriel lowers his face next to Daddy’s, listening. He sits back and picks up a limp hand, feeling for a pulse at the wrist. He turns to me and shakes his head.

  He puts his arm around my shoulder. ‘I’m going to call for an ambulance,’ he says. ‘Are you alright? Can you stay here?’

  I don’t have the strength to move. He disappears into the darkness, the bobbing light of the torch going with him. Then I remember what I did. ‘Gabriel!’ I shout after him. ‘Be careful. There’s mantrap at the bottom of the main stairs.’

  ‘What?’ His voice rises out of shadows.

  I repeat myself. ‘Use the torch. Go slowly,’ I add, sinking onto the floor next to Daddy. I lie beside him, my hand finding his, entwining our fingers. I want to feel the warmth draining out of him, and the cold creeping inside his veins like the slow freezing over of water. His hand in mine is harmless. It’s just me in the darkness again. The child and I used to sing in the hole to keep the terror away, her voice whispering words for me, so that she became me, and I became her. I begin to hum.

  42

  CECILY

  Heavy footsteps. Voices. Lights bounce into my face. I squint away from the glare. The comfort of professionals enters the corridor, the practical actions of people who know what they’re doing, ‘Are you alright, love?’ one of them asks me, as his companion kneels over my father. Paramedics. I have a jolt of fear. Will they try to bring him back to life? My heart thumps erratically against my sternum.

  Gabriel is talking to them. ‘I arrived at just gone midnight,’ he’s saying. ‘He blacked out then. I’m guessing he’s been dead for at least thirty minutes.’

  They bend over Daddy’s body. I look away.

  One of them takes my wrist between thumb and fingers. ‘I’m fine,’ I tell him.

  ‘You’re in shock,’ he says. ‘Hot sweet tea. You need to sit somewhere quiet. Take it easy for a while.’

  They lift Daddy’s body onto a stretcher, strapping him on, talking all the time as they work out how to get the stretcher through the house to the ambulance. I don’t look at him again or say goodbye. And then they’re gone, manoeuvring the stretcher down the narrow stairs. Their friendly voices disappear with the reassurance they gave. The hallucinatory feeling returns. Shock, I suppose. I am shivering as if I’m swimming in ice water.

  Gabriel crouches beside me. ‘Cecily,’ he murmurs. ‘I’m so sorry about your father.’

  I close my eyes, fighting the swimmy feeling, fighting the grip of the cold.

  ‘Hey,’ he says gently. ‘You’re shivering.’ He helps me to my feet, his grasp warm and firm.

  ‘Please hold me,’ I say through chattering teeth.

  His arms go around me, and I resist the pull into nothingness. I want to stay inside Gabriel’s arms. It’s over. I don’t need to run any more.

  ‘Cecily,’ he says. ‘What’s going on? What happened here?’

  I shake my head. I can’t explain. I don’t have the energy.

  He holds me to his chest, his mouth in my hair. ‘It’s alright,’ he says. ‘We can talk about it later. Let’s get out of here.’ He steps away. ‘Can you manage the stairs?’

  I stand taller, strength running into the bones of my legs. I take a step and another, and wince as my right knee buckles.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  I nod. It feels as if my knee has been whacked with something hard. But I limp on, with Gabriel supporting my elbow.

  We go through the deserted house. On the first-floor landing, there’s enough moonlight to see by, and he clicks off the torch as we walk slowly down the main staircase. ‘There wasn’t anything at the bottom of the stairs,’ he says in a puzzled voice. ‘No mantrap.’

  ‘She must have moved it,’ I say.

  ‘She?’ His voice is sharp. ‘There’s someone else here?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. He gives me a puzzled glance but doesn’t ask more questions. We’ve walked past the place where I’d left the trap, and he’s leading me towards the front door. I stop as if I’ve hit an invisible forcefield. ‘I can’t leave,’ I say. ‘Not without her.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says, turning slowly. ‘This… woman. Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘If she’s hiding, we’ll never find her.’ I sense disbelief in his voice. ‘Too many rooms. Shall we shout?’ he looks at me. ‘What’s her name?’

  I shake my head.

  Gabriel rubs his chin, looking puzzled. ‘Well, we can stay for a while. Perhaps she’ll find us. The electricity seems to be off. But I have matches, so if we can find a candle⁠—’

  ‘The kitchen,’ I say.

  In the cavernous room, Gabriel lights a stub of candle and I slump into a chair at the table. He moves around looking for things on the surfaces, and then exclaims as he manages to get a gas ring to light. ‘It’s a little camping stove,’ he says. ‘Your father’s been cooking on it. Now, if I can find some tea…’

  There’s the sound of water filling a kettle, the hiss of flame, the clink of cups being placed on a surface. I stare at the blue, gold flicker of the candle. Daddy is dead. Henry is dead. But where’s Alice? I feel her close. She’s in the house. She wants me to find her.

  Gabriel puts a cup in front of me and pulls a chair over, sitting down beside me. ‘There’s a lot of things I don’t understand,’ he says. He gets something out of his pocket. In the candlelight I look at a photograph of me and Alice. We have long plaits. Alice is frowning. I touch the picture and notice a stain. It’s crumpled as if it’s been carried around in a pocket for a long time.

  ‘This is mine,’ I say slowly. ‘I took it when I left home to go to university.’ I frown. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘It was on my songbook.’ He flips the picture over. Someone has written ‘HELP ME’ in big, spiky letters on the back. Did I write that? ‘Who’s the girl with you?’ he asks. ‘She looks like your twin?’

  I nod. ‘Alice.’

  ‘Your identical twin,’ he lets out a breath. ‘And she’s here, now?’

  I clasp the warm cup with both hands. ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Did you come to Hawksmoor together?’

  I try to lift the cup to my lips, but my hands are shaking and hot liquid spills onto the table, splashing my lap. My thighs sting and throb. Did we come together? I can’t remember. Ever since I drove through the rusted gates, I’ve been confused, losing time. I think she was here first. She was the one who locked Daddy in the hole.

  Gabriel finds an old tea towel, wets it with cold and mops at my damp legs. He takes the cup away from me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘You’re in shock. You don’t need to tell me anything yet.’

  ‘No,’ I whisper. ‘I want to tell you – but I don’t know if I can. It’s all a muddle. She came here with me – because she’s always with me – except she’s far away at the same time.’

  ‘This sounds like a riddle,’ he murmurs.

  A sob breaks from my chest. We sit in silence. Gabriel takes my hand in his and squeezes.

  ‘I need to see her,’ I say, as certainty settles inside me. ‘I know where she is – will you come with me?’

  ‘Alright,’ he says, standing up. ‘But let’s take it slowly.’

  I lean into his supporting hand. At the main hall, we turn right down the long gallery, shuffling past the boot room, down more steps into the cellar. I stop outside the studded, oak door of the secret chapel, and clasp the heavy iron ring of the handle with both hands. It opens. I walk ahead of him over the smooth, polished floor towards the altar, her voice whispering in my ear, What have you done?

  It snowed in the days after Henry’s funeral. The grounds were thick with blown powder. Bushes and plants looked cowed, misshapen with white swellings and tumours. The fells had ceased to exist, erased by mist. It wrapped our eyes like wet gauze as Alice and I crunched through crystals. Cold reached into my lungs, scouring them clean. The inside of my nostrils stung.

  ‘We need to talk,’ she’d said. ‘Let’s go outside. Walls have ears.’

  The yew was bent under its frozen burden, and clumps fell with a dull thump as we passed it. Before us, the scratched hieroglyphics of bird feet and animal tracks led us through a white wasteland, disappearing into silver haze. We walked to the tarn. A layer of ice imprisoned the dark water, and I thought of the eels and crayfish tucked into the mud far below, their hearts slowed to near death to survive.

  ‘It’s all arranged, Cecily,’ she said, stopping at the edge of the bank. She blew on her hands. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow. I’ve already packed my stuff in Henry’s rucksack.’

  ‘We can’t go,’ I said. ‘It’s dangerous there. We can’t leave home. Not now that Henry’s dead.’

  ‘This isn’t a home,’ she said. ‘It’s a prison. And Henry would want us to keep to his plan.’ She looked at me through eyes fringed with frost.

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’ her voice rose. ‘I don’t understand.’ Her pupils contracted, and my reflection, curled inside them, shrank. ‘What Daddy does. You know it’s wrong,’ she said quietly. ‘If you stay here, he’ll destroy you.’