- •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.
I don't like to think that he is homesick.
Dr. Clifton came to my father's shop-he happened to be visiting the town, he said, and remembering that my father had a bookshop here, he thought it worthwhile to call in, though it was something of a long shot, to see if we had a particular volume on eighteenth-century medicine he was interested in. As it happened, we did have one, and he and my father chatted amiably about it at length, until well after closing time. To make up for keeping us so late he invited us out for a meal. It was very pleasant, and since he was still in town for another night, my father invited him the next evening for a meal with the family. In the kitchen my mother told me he was "a very nice man, Margaret. Very nice." The next afternoon was his last. We went for a walk by the river, but this time it was just the two of us, Father being too busy writing letters to be able to accompany us. I told him the story of the ghost of Angelfield. He listened closely, and when I had finished, we continued to walk, slowly and in silence.
"I remember seeing that treasure box," he said eventually. "How did it come to escape the fire?" I stopped in my tracks, wondering. "You know, I never thought to ask."
"You'll never know now, will you?"
He took my arm and we walked on.
Anyway, returning to my subject, which is Shadow and his homesickness, when Dr. Clifton visited my father's shop and saw the cat's sadness he proposed to give Shadow a home with him. Shadow would be very happy back in Yorkshire, I have no doubt. But this offer, kind as it is, has plunged me into a state of painful perplexity. For I am not sure I can bear to be parted from him. He, I am sure, would bear my absence with the same composure with which he accepts Miss Winter's disappearance, for he is a cat; but being human, I have grown fond of him and would prefer if at all possible to keep him near me.
In a letter I betrayed something of these thoughts to Dr. Clifton; he replies that perhaps we might both go and stay, Shadow and I, for a holiday. He invites us for a month, in the spring. Anything, he says, may happen in a month, and by the end of it he thinks it possible that we may have thought of some way out of the dilemma that suits us all. I cannot help but think Shadow will get his happy ending yet.
And that is all.
Postscriptum
Or nearly all. One thinks something is finished, and then suddenly it isn't, quite.
I have had a visitor.
It was Shadow who was first to notice. I was humming as I packed for our holiday, suitcase open on the bed. Shadow was stepping in and out of it, toying with the idea of making himself a nest on my socks and cardigans, when suddenly he stopped, all intent, and stared toward the door behind me.
She came not as a golden angel, nor as the cloaked specter of death. She was like me: a tallish, thin, brown-haired woman you would not notice if she passed you in the street.
There were a hundred, a thousand things I thought I would want to ask her, but I was so overcome I could hardly even speak her name. She stepped toward me, put her arms around me and pressed me to her side.
"Moira," I managed to whisper, "I was beginning to think you weren't real."
But she was real. Her cheek against mine, her arm across my shoulders, my hand at her waist. Scar to scar we touched, and all my questions faded as I felt her blood flow with mine, her heart beat with mine. It was a moment of wonderment, great and calm; and I knew that I remembered this feeling. It had been locked in me, closed away, and now she had come and released it. This blissful circuitry. This oneness that had once been ordinary and was today, now that I had recovered it, miraculous.
She came and we were together.
I understood that she had come to say good-bye. That next time we met it would be me who went to her. But this next meeting wouldn't be for a very long time. There was no rush. She could wait and so could I.
I felt the touch of her fingers on my face as I brushed away her tears, then, in joy, our fingers found each other and entwined. Her breath on my cheek, her face in my hair, I buried my nose in the crook of her neck and inhaled her sweetness.
Such joy.
No matter that she could not stay. She had come. She had come.
I'm not sure how or when she left. I simply realized that she was no longer there. I sat on the bed, quite calm, quite happy. I felt the curious sensation of my blood rerouting itself, of my heart recalibrating its beat for me alone. Touching my scar, she had brought it alive; now, gradually, it cooled until it felt no different from the rest of my body.
She had come and she had gone. I would not see her again this side of the grave. My life was my own.
In the suitcase, Shadow was asleep. I put out my hand to stroke him. He opened a cool green eye, regarded me for a moment, then closed it again.
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Jo Anson, Gaia Banks, Martyn Bedford, Emily Bestler, Paula Catley, Ross and Colin Catley, Jim Crace, Penny Dolan, Marianne Downie, Mandy Franklin, Anna and Nathan Franklin, Vivien Green, Douglas Gurr, Jenny Jacobs, Caroline le Maréchal, Pauline and Jeffrey Setterfield, Christina Shingler, Janet and Bill Whittall, John Wilkes and Jane Wood.
With special thanks to Owen Staley, who has been a friend to this book from the very beginning, and Peter Whittall, to whom The Thirteenth Tale owes its title and a good deal more besides.