Boxing Day, a day that always seems to stretch on forever. That day was no different, reminding me of the Boxing Days I had spent as a child when the adults seemed to spend the whole day napping and produced few interesting meals, and I longed for it to pass. Running on less than no sleep, I was raiding the children’s Christmas stash and using their supply of sugar to stay awake. Much to Sophia’s horror, I had already consumed almost half her tin of Quality Street, and despite my promises to replace it, she watched beadily as the pile of colored cellophane wrappers steadily grew.
If only my thousands of followers could see me now, existing on sugar and starch, my body crying out for some fibrous greens and my left eye constantly twitching from a lack of magnesium. I knew what my body needed, but for the first time in years I was ignoring it, piling on the pounds and ignoring the low-level anxiety accompanying them. It felt great.
The children had loads of things to keep them occupied—a small consolation, as most required either my participation or my guidance. After countless games of Twister with Agatha spinning while the three of us writhed on the mat, I had finally declared it time for a movie. We sat together and watched the Christmas movies repeating on television, some that I had seen and some more traditional ones that, much to the children’s disgust, I had not. All the while the notebook called to me from the drawer upstairs. I had cast it aside in frustration, but after Elizabeth’s phone call, I was certain there was something important in there. A clue to Daphne’s disappearance.
We had just started on The Sound of Music—not a Christmas movie but voted for on grounds of family tradition—when Robbie spoke. “Dad used to watch this with us every year, usually in bed. We would spend the whole day in bed on Boxing Day. Mum would sleep, and Dad would pull the curtains shut and pass the chocolates around.” I kept my eyes on Captain Von Trapp—no great hardship—to disguise my interest in this latest titbit about Daphne.
“Your mum would sleep all day?” I asked.
“She was usually tired after all the Christmas parties, and cooking for us at Christmas.” There was no sadness in his voice, only acceptance.
“And the karaoke on Christmas Night,” Sophia added drily.
We had leftovers for supper and kept an eye on the phone. Robbie brought the handset in and placed it on the coffee table, and without directly mentioning it, we all expected it to ring and for the caller to be Max. It didn’t. Eventually, yawns overtook conversation, and even Sophia looked sleepy. The last couple of days had taken as much of a toll on the children as they had on me. “Time for bed, guys,” I said, looking at my watch conspicuously. “It’s late.”
“It’s not, really, not for holidays,” Sophia said, and the other two joined her in a chorus of support.
“It’s been a long day. I’m going to bed too.” The prospect of what lay ahead energised me despite the onset of a post-sugar slump.
“Just a little bit longer?” Agatha raised her head from the cushion just long enough to mutter the words.
“No.” I switched off the television and dragged myself off the sofa. The children reluctantly followed.
The wind started to bang at the window frames. It seemed to have a particular sense of timing; every night once the children were in their beds it would build from a rustle to a roar, sending the overhanging branches crashing into each other and scratching at the windows.
Mrs. Mins was on my mind that night. Every rush of wind in the trees disguised her approach; every stick cracking underfoot was her creeping between the gnarled trees. Even the owls and vixens seemed to be howling her name. She was everywhere: lurking in the kitchen garden at dawn; concealed outside the office window in the darkness; sleeping and bathing in the east wing. For someone whose main remit was to run the hotel, she seemed to be running much more. I felt sure she had something to do with Daphne’s disappearance.
Robbie, in particular, was upset that night. Our early-morning adventure had affected him in ways he had adeptly concealed. These children were experts in camouflage, in hiding both themselves and their emotions. Even as I grew closer to them, I could sense them retreating.
It took some time to settle Robbie, not in the way you might settle a baby, through tenderness and human touch, but through distraction and common sense. I knew better than to openly mention the ghost walk that morning but instead drew his attention to other books in his Christmas pile; there was an adventure story and a graphic novel, and I hoped reading them would give his active mind some relief. Could a boy that young make the connection between the ghost story and what Mrs. Mins was saying—that his own grandmother had tried to drown his father? My anger at Mrs. Mins swirled, growing every moment I thought about it.
Finally they were all asleep; even Sophia had drifted off, I Capture the Castle open on the pillow next to her. I carefully placed the bookmark on her page and made sure to close all their doors firmly. I whistled softly to Thomas, and when he came, I moved his bed from Max’s room onto the landing, right at the top of the stairs, so that anyone trying to get through would have the loyal Thomas to deal with.
Then I retrieved the notebook from its hiding place and settled into the comfortable chair in my room, set beside an unused fireplace so that it had a clear view of the door, which I’d left open so that I could hear the constant reassuring sound of Thomas snoring. Within seconds, despite the weather outside, I was back in the throes of those sultry summer days.
Years later Meryl, with no regard for the fact that Beatrice was Max’s mother, described what she saw to him that afternoon in great detail. He was upset when he told me, and my hatred of Meryl began at that moment. I could see how she had manipulated my Max his whole life, and somehow gained enormous power over not only his emotions but also his psychological state.
Meryl was stuck in some sort of limbo between the two generations, and not being the obvious age match for either of them, eventually made a play for both. When it failed with Maximilian, she bided her time for a number of years and then moved on to my Max. In the absence of his mother, he was vulnerable, and she became everything to him.
Everything.
I don’t think this will come as a shock to you.
It did to me.
Of course I had suspected this. I had watched as Max disappeared to the Mins cottage on “hotel business” night after night, leaving his fragile children in my care. I had felt the territorial gaze of Mrs. Mins upon me as I moved through the estate. But to think that the relationship had started when Max was barely an adult and under the care of Mrs. Mins was disturbing.
I turned back a few pages in the notebook. If Mrs. Mins was fourteen and Max was two when she came to Barnsley, then by the time Max was eighteen—and I really hoped he was eighteen—Mrs. Mins would have been thirty. I assumed the age difference was similar between Mrs. Mins and my grandfather. After our encounter with Mrs. Mins in the east wing when she had casually mentioned Robbie’s grandmother’s death in front of him, I suspected she had no scruples. Now I was sure.
There must have been some knock-on effect to my mother and Elizabeth as well. Yet again, I felt sorry for my mother and the childhood she’d missed out on.
So that afternoon, the final afternoon of the festival, Meryl was bathing. She had told Max’s father, Maximilian, of her plan and had anticipated him coming down to watch her. To my mind, this was a setup by Meryl—she knew what was going on, and she drew your father down to the cove. She wanted him to see what Beatrice was up to. My Max never agreed with me on this. Either he doesn’t understand how manipulative teenage girls can be, or he underestimates Meryl.
Suddenly the door to the boathouse flung open. Beatrice and Peregrine emerged. Meryl did an elegant duck dive under the water and swam under cover so that she was partially concealed by the jetty. Meryl had never seen Beatrice looking so unkempt. Her hair, normally pinned up in a loose chignon at her neck, was messy, and she was pulling on a silk kimono with one hand, the bottle of champagne in the other making it difficult.
They were fighting, and Meryl listened carefully, wishing that the waves would stop pushing up against the jetty so loudly. She struggled to hear everything, but the gist of it was that Peregrine was going back to London, and Beatrice didn’t want him to.
It was a summer fling for Peregrine, but for Beatrice it had been more. She saw him as her ticket back to London. He knew the right people, had a lovely little house in Chelsea, and most importantly, at his age, he didn’t want any more children. Beatrice lived in terror of having another child.
Meryl watched as Beatrice tried everything in her power to make him stay. By this point, they were right above her and she could hear through the gaps in the boards. Their feet moved back and forwards. Peregrine was trying to climb aboard his boat, and Beatrice had hold of his arm.
“I don’t love Maximilian. You know that.” Her voice was pleading, and Peregrine’s voice when he answered was calm and indifferent. Even the teenage Meryl could see that it was a losing battle and Beatrice was going about it the wrong way. Just let him go! she thought, even though every part of her was hoping Peregrine would give in and let Beatrice climb aboard with him, leaving Maximilian all for her. She hoped he was still up on the hill, watching this.
“You’re married. You’re gorgeous—” There was a pause as he kissed her, and the sunlight coming through the gaps diminished as they came together in an embrace. “But we’ve had our time. I really can’t take advantage of Maximilian’s hospitality any longer.”
“I’m not married!” Beatrice shouted. “Not anymore!”
Meryl felt sure Maximilian would have heard. There was silence, and then something small whizzed past Meryl’s head, landing in the water with a delicate splash. Instinctively she reached out and caught the object, so tiny it seemed a miracle her fingers had wrapped around it at all. The ring. Meryl had admired it on Beatrice, the sapphire so large in comparison to her tiny fingers, and she wedged it quickly on her own pudgy ring finger, forcing it down, worried that an ill-timed wave would wash it away at the moment when it had finally become hers. For it was hers now, she could see that immediately. Maximilian could never take Beatrice back after what he had seen that afternoon, and he would finally be hers. That she had rescued the precious family sapphire would be icing on the cake.
At that moment, Maximilian, horrified to see his family heirloom disappearing into the waters, and unable to take another second of his wife humiliating herself—and by extension, him—let out an almighty shout. He came charging through the shrubbery, emerging onto the rocks like a crazed warrior.
“Beatrice!” he called, in a stern voice. “Don’t you dare get on that boat.”
Beatrice protested, of course, but the combined force of Maximilian and Peregrine was too much for her. They were in cahoots, and she was powerless to take either of them on. Peregrine took advantage of the confusion to cast away from the jetty, farewelling Maximilian with sympathy in his voice, as if they had just had a rather competitive game of tennis, and one of them had to be the loser.
Beatrice ran off in the direction of the house, where the festival was in full swing, refusing to look at Max, her kimono flapping open behind, her sobs audible even after she had disappeared up the path. Meryl saw her chance and emerged from the water, aware that she was fully naked but not caring, not now that she would be the mistress of Barnsley. She climbed up the ladder, and Maximilian, who had been watching Peregrine’s boat recede into the distance, was shocked to see her. He had forgotten she was even there.
I have taken the liberty of inventing most of the conversations reported in this notebook, going by what Meryl told Max and what my Max has told me, but this next conversation is quoted exactly. My Max said Meryl was quite adamant about it, as she has never forgotten the words spoken to her on the pier that day. Perhaps if she had, things might have turned out differently, but Max’s words that afternoon cut her deeply, searing into her soul and changing her forever. (I’m assuming she wasn’t born a psychopath!) “Maximilian,” she said, “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t reply. Instead he shook his head slightly, as if trying to deter a pesky fly. His face was red, his eyes wild, and he turned his body away in disgust at Meryl’s nudity.
Meryl came up behind him, and, careful not to reveal the ring on her finger, not yet, she wrapped her arms around him, pressing her body against his, feeling the heat of him through his shirt and hoping he could feel the coolness of her body in the same way. There had been moments during that summer when she had snuck into his dressing room, smelled the shirts he had discarded on a chair, spritzed his aftershave on her own wrists, but nothing compared to this; the familiar fragrance heightened by sweat, by warmth, by a living, breathing human. She inhaled deeply, buried her face in his back, waited for him to relax into the embrace.
“What are you doing, you silly child?” The rejection was abrupt, and she almost fell on the splintered boards.
“Don’t worry about her now,” she said. “She’s gone. We can be together.”
Maximilian turned around, his eyes cold. Meryl felt them travel up and down her body, coolly assessing what they saw, lingering on her full breasts, his lip lifting in disgust.
“Put some clothes on,” he sneered.
Meryl panicked. The power she had held over him was shriveling away, and she became the same woman Beatrice was, in the exact same place, only moments before. “I love you, Maximilian,” she cried. And she did, she really loved him. My Max denies it, but a woman knows. The love you feel for someone as a teenager is no less powerful than what you feel as an adult; in fact, in most cases it is stronger. I think her love for Maximilian was at the root of everything that came later. You know what I’m talking about.
“I don’t love you. You’re making a fool of yourself.” He turned to walk off, the shape of her body imprinted damply on his back, a reminder of how close they had seemed only moments before.
“But Beatrice—” Meryl was crying now, wondering how this had all gone so wrong.
Maximilian turned around sharply, looking about him to see if there was anyone watching. “Beatrice what?” he asked coolly. “Beatrice is an adult. Which means she’ll be back at the house getting ready for the final dinner tonight. She’ll come down and entertain our guests, and she will sit at the dinner table as if nothing has happened. We will have wine, and when the meal is over, she’ll wink at me in recognition of another evening having gone well, and later I’ll bring her down here myself, if she likes it so much. If you have any sense, you’ll make yourself scarce.”
Poor Meryl was never the same after that day.