- •I make tea all the same and put a cup next to him on the desk.
- •I toyed with the idea of going round to Mrs. Robb's. But no. There was a better place. I crawled under my father's bed.
- •I rang the bell. Its clang was oddly muted in the damp air. While I waited I watched the sky. Cold crept through the soles of my shoes, and I rang the bell again. Still no one came to the door.
- •I sat down. "I don't accuse you of anything," I began mildly, but immediately she interrupted me.
- •I noted it down.
- •I waited, and she drew in her breath like a chess player who finds his key piece cornered.
- •Isabelle Angelfield was odd. Isabelle Angelfield was born during a rainstorm. It is impossible to know whether or not these facts are connected.
- •Isabelle 's sharp eyes did not once leave the face of the older girl, and the moment the girl's eyelids gave the first hint of a flicker, she drew her hand away.
- •In the meantime he had to vent his feelings somehow.
- •I copied out the story and scanned headlines in the following issues in case there were updates but, finding nothing, I put the papers away and turned to the other boxes.
- •I closed the last newspaper and folded it neatly in its box.
- •I was at a loss to explain to myself the bitterness of my disappointment.
- •I nodded. I was none the wiser.
- •It was John-the-dig who realized in the silence of the days that something had happened.
- •I nodded, and Aurelius went on.
- •I held up my work and she was right. "Well, I'm blowed," I said.
- •Isabelle had gone. Hester had gone. Charlie had gone. Now Miss Winter told me of further losses.
- •I took her hand. "Come on," I said. "It's no use looking up there." I led her away, and she followed me like a little child. "I'll put her to bed," I told John.
- •I stood, listening, until it faded completely away. Then, realizing that my feet and hands were freezing, I turned back to the house.
- •I put the letter away in a drawer, then pulled on my coat and gloves. "Come on, then," I said to Shadow.
- •I said yes.
- •I reached for the prescription. In a vigorous scrawl, he had inked: Sir
- •I have been so busy organising the house that I have had little time for my diary lately, but I must make the time, for it is chiefly in writing that I record and develop my methods.
- •I am content with my work on Emmeline.
- •It is done. The experiment has begun.
- •Isabelle gave birth to her twins in a London hospital. Two girls with nothing of their mother's husband about them. Copper hair-just like their uncle. Green eyes-just like their uncle.
- •I thought about it all for a while in silence. The ghost child. No mother. No name. The child whose very existence was a secret. It was impossible not to feel compassion. And yet…
- •I could have shaken her.
- •I can't answer, can't feel myself, can't move.
- •I attended three funerals in as many days.
- •In the rest of the story, Cinderella gives birth to a girl, raises her in poverty and filth, abandons her after a few years in the grounds of the house owned by her violator. The story ends abruptly.
- •I don't like to think that he is homesick.
In the rest of the story, Cinderella gives birth to a girl, raises her in poverty and filth, abandons her after a few years in the grounds of the house owned by her violator. The story ends abruptly.
Halfway along a path in a garden she has never been to before, cold and hungry, the child suddenly realises she is alone. Behind her is the garden door that leads into the forest. It remains ajar. Is her mother behind it still? Ahead of her is a shed that, to her child's mind, has the look of a little house. A place she might shelter. Who knows, there might even be something to eat.
The garden door? Or the little house?
Door? Or house?
The child hesitates.
She hesitates...
And the story ends there.
Miss Winter's earliest memory? Or just a story? The story invented by an imaginative child to fill the space where her mother ought to have been?
The thirteenth tale. The final, the famous, the unfinished story.
I read the story and grieved.
Gradually my thoughts turned away from Miss Winter and to myself. She might not be perfect, but at least I had a mother. Was it too late to make something of ourselves? But that was another story. I put the envelope in my bag, stood up and brushed the bark dust from my trousers before heading back to the road.
I was engaged to write the story of Miss Winter's life, and I have done it. There is really nothing more I need do in order to fulfill the terms of the contract. One copy of this document is to be deposited with Mr. Lomax, who will store it in a bank vault and then arrange for a large amount of money to be paid to me. Apparently he doesn't even have to check that the pages I give him are not blank.
"She trusted you," he told me.
Clearly she did trust me. Her intentions in the contract that I never read or signed are quite unmistakable. She wanted to tell me the story before she died; she wanted me to make a record of it. What I did with it after that was my business. I have told the solicitor about my intentions regarding Tom and Emma, and we have made an appointment to formalize my wishes in a will just in case. And that ought to be the end of it.
But I don't feel I am quite done. I don't know who or how many people will eventually read this, but no matter how few they are, no matter how distant in time from this moment, I feel a responsibility toward them. And although I have told them all there is to know about Adeline and Emmeline and the ghost-child, I realize that for some that will not be quite enough. I know what it is like to finish a book and find oneself wondering, a day or a week later, what happened to the butcher or who got the diamonds, or whether or not the dowager was ever reconciled with her niece. I can imagine readers pondering what became of Judith and Maurice, whether anyone kept up the glorious garden, who came to live in the house.
And so, in case you are wondering, let me tell you. Judith and Maurice stayed on. The house was not sold; provision had been made in Miss Winter's will for the house and garden to be converted into a kind of literary museum. Of course it is the garden that has real value ("an unsuspected gem," an early horticultural review has called it), but Miss Winter realized that it was her reputation for storytelling more than her gardening skill that would draw the crowds. And so there are to be tours of the rooms, a teashop, and a bookshop. Coaches that bring tourists to the Brontë museum can come afterward to "Vida Winter's Secret Garden." Judith will continue as housekeeper, and Maurice as head gardener. Their first job, before the conversion can begin, is to clear Emmeline's rooms. These will not be visited, for there will be nothing to see.
And Hester. Now, this will surprise you; it certainly surprised me. I had a letter from Emmanuel Drake. To tell you the truth, I'd forgotten all about him. Slowly and methodically he continued his searches, and against all odds, late in the day, he found her. "It was the Italian connection that threw me off track," his letter explained, "when your governess had gone the other way entirely-to America!" For three years Hester had worked as clerical assistant to an academic neurologist, and when the time was up, guess who came to join her? Dr. Maudsley! His wife died (nothing more sinister than the flu, I did check), and within days of the funeral he was on the boat. It was love. They are both deceased now, but after a long and happy life together. They had four children, one of whom has written to me, and I have sent the original of his mother's diary to him to keep. I doubt he will be able to make out much more than one word in ten; if he asks me for elucidation, I will tell him that his mother knew his father here in England, during the time of his father's first marriage, but if he does not ask, I will keep my silence. In his letter to me, he enclosed a list of his parents' joint publications. They researched and wrote dozens of highly regarded articles (none on twins, I think they knew when to call it a day) and published them jointly: Dr.
E. and Mrs. H. J. Maudsley.
H. J.? Hester had a middle name: Josephine.
What else will you want to know? Who looked after the cat? Well, Shadow came to live with me at the bookshop. He sits on the shelves, anywhere he can find a space between the books, and when customers come across him there, he returns their stares with placid equanimity. From time to time he will sit in the window, but not for long. He is baffled by the street, the vehicles, the passersby, the buildings opposite. I have shown him the shortcut via the alley to the river, but he scorns to use it.
"What do you expect?" my father says. "A river is no use to a Yorkshire cat. It is the moors he is looking for." I think he is right. Full of expectation, Shadow jumps up to the window, looks out, then turns on me a long, disappointed stare.