because she had upset the precious equilibrium he had painstakingly established, in the year following Nina’s fall. By asking her questions.
Acting all weird. Looking for things in the house.
From nowhere, David felt, for the very first time, a flux of fierce resentment at his young wife. He’d given her everything, a new life, a new home, a new family, a new start – all the money in the world – and now, maybe, she was beginning to fuck everything up.
It was possible he had made the most stupid mistake.
What if Rachel continued her prying, like the damn therapists, investigating the accident at the mineshaft? Asking about Jamie’s involvement? By inviting her into the house, David realized, now and too late, he had taken a grievous risk, and made a potentially fatal error. Perhaps, after all, Rachel wasn’t any kind of replacement for Nina. Beautiful, impulsive, arrogant Nina: willing to do anything for love. No one compared to her.
David stood up, and walked to the windows, sipping his whisky. The laughing students had disappeared. Only one girl remained, standing at a bus stop, checking her phone, which shone an uplight on her fine young cheekbones. She was helplessly beautiful. Yet her beauty made David sad, the feeling of something faraway and forever receding, but never disappearing.
He had once thought that the cure for desire was death itself. But now he wondered. Maybe nothing could extinguish the yearning of human love; maybe it travelled on for ever, through the darkness. Like the light from dead stars.
77 Days Before Christmas
Evening
‘You will have blood on your hands. There will be lights in the Old Hall.’ The phrases revolve in my mind, like objects of great importance spotlit behind glass. Yet exuding a faint menace, as well.
It is more than three weeks since the flames were found in the Old Hall and we have all reached a halfway satisfying conclusion that Jamie did it, but a penumbra of mystery still surrounds the event, like the circular haze of pain before a migraine.
Why
did he do it? Perhaps it really was a stunt aimed at me, for replacing his lost mother, the lovely Nina Kerthen. Something designed to frighten me. Or was it aimed at someone else entirely?
I look up from my thoughts.
David and I are alone in the Yellow Drawing Room, as the autumn evening dies. He’s got a long weekend off, as his company upgrades the office, and he is clearly relaxing.
I am not. I can’t stay quiet. One more heave.
‘David, about the fire in the Old Hall.’
He flashes me a hard stare. Irritated perhaps.
Oh God, not this subject again.
‘Please. Indulge me, one more time, then I promise I will shut the hell up, for ever.’
He smiles. Sort of. ‘Fine. Go ahead.’
‘I accept what you say, that he was doing what his mother did, repeating that thing, that lovely trick she played on his birthday.’
‘So?’
‘I’m still not wholly convinced he did it all by himself. How? How could he have set it all up? He had no time. He was barely back from school.’
‘We’ve discussed this, already, Rachel.’ His words are brisk. ‘He could have prepared it in the morning, easily. No one goes in the Old Hall, only Nina went there; she was obsessed with the Old Hall, how one day she might restore it.’ His lawyerly explanation calms me – even as it annoys me. ‘Then when Jamie came back from school, he had time to light them. To do his little ritual, summoning his mother home. It’s not difficult: a can of lighter fuel, squirted from a bottle.’ David sighs, curtly, ‘There’s no risk. Nothing can catch fire in the Hall, there’s nothing but stone and glass. And he probably intended no one to see it. The flames would have burned out in a few minutes, his magic spell would have been completed, in total secret.’
I shake my head. ‘But, to do it so quickly, to write the words on the floor, without being seen, mightn’t someone have helped him? Cassie? Juliet?’
‘Of course
Acting all weird. Looking for things in the house.
From nowhere, David felt, for the very first time, a flux of fierce resentment at his young wife. He’d given her everything, a new life, a new home, a new family, a new start – all the money in the world – and now, maybe, she was beginning to fuck everything up.
It was possible he had made the most stupid mistake.
What if Rachel continued her prying, like the damn therapists, investigating the accident at the mineshaft? Asking about Jamie’s involvement? By inviting her into the house, David realized, now and too late, he had taken a grievous risk, and made a potentially fatal error. Perhaps, after all, Rachel wasn’t any kind of replacement for Nina. Beautiful, impulsive, arrogant Nina: willing to do anything for love. No one compared to her.
David stood up, and walked to the windows, sipping his whisky. The laughing students had disappeared. Only one girl remained, standing at a bus stop, checking her phone, which shone an uplight on her fine young cheekbones. She was helplessly beautiful. Yet her beauty made David sad, the feeling of something faraway and forever receding, but never disappearing.
He had once thought that the cure for desire was death itself. But now he wondered. Maybe nothing could extinguish the yearning of human love; maybe it travelled on for ever, through the darkness. Like the light from dead stars.
77 Days Before Christmas
Evening
‘You will have blood on your hands. There will be lights in the Old Hall.’ The phrases revolve in my mind, like objects of great importance spotlit behind glass. Yet exuding a faint menace, as well.
It is more than three weeks since the flames were found in the Old Hall and we have all reached a halfway satisfying conclusion that Jamie did it, but a penumbra of mystery still surrounds the event, like the circular haze of pain before a migraine.
Why
did he do it? Perhaps it really was a stunt aimed at me, for replacing his lost mother, the lovely Nina Kerthen. Something designed to frighten me. Or was it aimed at someone else entirely?
I look up from my thoughts.
David and I are alone in the Yellow Drawing Room, as the autumn evening dies. He’s got a long weekend off, as his company upgrades the office, and he is clearly relaxing.
I am not. I can’t stay quiet. One more heave.
‘David, about the fire in the Old Hall.’
He flashes me a hard stare. Irritated perhaps.
Oh God, not this subject again.
‘Please. Indulge me, one more time, then I promise I will shut the hell up, for ever.’
He smiles. Sort of. ‘Fine. Go ahead.’
‘I accept what you say, that he was doing what his mother did, repeating that thing, that lovely trick she played on his birthday.’
‘So?’
‘I’m still not wholly convinced he did it all by himself. How? How could he have set it all up? He had no time. He was barely back from school.’
‘We’ve discussed this, already, Rachel.’ His words are brisk. ‘He could have prepared it in the morning, easily. No one goes in the Old Hall, only Nina went there; she was obsessed with the Old Hall, how one day she might restore it.’ His lawyerly explanation calms me – even as it annoys me. ‘Then when Jamie came back from school, he had time to light them. To do his little ritual, summoning his mother home. It’s not difficult: a can of lighter fuel, squirted from a bottle.’ David sighs, curtly, ‘There’s no risk. Nothing can catch fire in the Hall, there’s nothing but stone and glass. And he probably intended no one to see it. The flames would have burned out in a few minutes, his magic spell would have been completed, in total secret.’
I shake my head. ‘But, to do it so quickly, to write the words on the floor, without being seen, mightn’t someone have helped him? Cassie? Juliet?’
‘Of course
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