Nancy pulled on the handbrake, exhaled, her leg quivered as she eased her foot off the pedal. Cursing under her breath, she gazed up at the view she had been dreading.
Their destination boldly sat on its foundations, solid and tolerant of its surroundings without embracing them. It was doubtful it had ever been one with the landscape. Maybe it had sat at peace in its first incarnation, but no longer. Now it was a building at odds with nature—flora, fauna, and human alike.
Twisted brick chimneys rose like serpents from the grey stone walls and bit at the indifferent sky, while leaded windows stared across the grounds with cataract eyes. They sliced the reflection of the grim steel atmosphere and none more so than the rose window framed by a steep gable. The round stonework framing its silver eye glared with defiance, a statement of how dare you look at me? How dare you be here?
This was Hardacre Priory.
After snaking its course, avoiding dips and holes along the narrow lane, the car came to a stop on the broad stretch of the stoned drive. Filthy, sparse gravel littered with clumped, dead weeds wound towards the vast entrance. No foliage as far as the eye could reach. Instead, bare trees lined the boundaries like skeletal soldiers standing their ground. Whether they guarded the house or those who visited was unclear but stand their ground they did with their fingers outstretched in a warning.
The keys jangled in the ignition as the radio blared from the newly polished Hillman Avenger, its metallic olive paintwork the only green in the landscape. It was modern and out of place against the imposing stone edifice and the vast expanse of unwelcoming nature.
Two small pairs of hands wiped the condensation from the windows as both sets of eyes gawped at the austere exterior. It was bigger than anything they’d ever seen and as gloomy and miserable as their nightmares. Not a cloud in the sky today—their mother had said this as if it were a blessing. Here there was neither summer nor the start of autumn. The icy cold of winter hovered overhead like a beast biding its time until it was ready to strike.
These two didn’t know why they were here, especially now. After all the tears of the last couple of months, after everything they had lost, all they wanted was to go back home. But that was gone now too. Sold to a couple with no children. A couple from London with smart clothes and smart voices, using words these two didn’t understand or cared to. Who would play in the backyard now and talk to old Mr Beardsmore through the broken fence? Who would water the strawberry patch at the bottom near the tree swing? No one—they knew that; hadn’t needed to be told. Their home had gone to the dogs, as Dad would have said.
‘Do not move, do you hear me?’ A deep sigh followed, quickly catching the question before it turned into an order. ‘Please? Do this for me, you two, will you?’ Twin heads nodded. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. Stay here in the car, okay? I need to have a quick word with your… Just stay in the car.’
The engine’s rumble stopped beneath the radio’s blare. The driver’s door shut a little too briskly, sending a judder through the car. Nancy stood a second or two, looking back at everything she had left in the world. That car, as frivolous as it had seemed when she bought it, held all she had left: those boys. And despite the secrets, the pain, the death, and loss, surely, she was doing the right thing.
That fear crept over her shoulders every night when she lay alone thinking about the choice she had made. Now it sat on her shoulder, a dark angel waiting to take her too. It is as it should be. She would rebel against that statement for as long as she breathed, no matter how much she dodged it every step and every choice along the way, and there had been many. To the ends of the earth, she had vowed before they ever set foot here. Yet here they were. And there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it.
Soft, wayward strands of mousy brown hair. Dark eyes that drilled into her heart every time they looked her way. Her boys, her twins, a mirror image of each other, they were two halves of one whole, and as a whole, they were every bit the same as their father. They were just boys; they didn’t deserve this, any of it, yet she knew the worst was still to come. They would be tested, all of them.
‘Curse you, you bastard,’ Nancy muttered, pulling the collar of her red coat about her throat, tugging the belt tight around her waist. ‘May you rot in hell for this.’ She kicked the gravel, settled her leather boot hard on the ground, and marched to the front door.
Elliot sat back. The tan leather creaked as he pushed his feet against the back of the front car seat. He thudded the soles of his new trainers in rhythm with the radio—a determined thud with every word.
His brother hadn’t moved, his face still pressed against the cold glass and his eyes cast high staring back at the round window. Moisture ran down to his chin as Elliot nudged him.
‘Oi.’ Still no movement. ‘Oliver!’ Elliot shouted, jabbing his elbow into his brother’s ribs.
Oliver slowly turned; his moist fringe stuck to his forehead. Rather than respond, he looked past Elliot out of the opposite car window towards the gardens to the trees. To the oak.
It had caught him on the drive up the lane, hooked his thoughts with its long-reaching branches. It wasn’t the size of the tree that had caught his attention, even though it was the biggest he’d ever seen. Of course, they had trees in town—the park had lots—but this was more than that. Mother had braked hard as she turned onto the narrow lane where the tree dominated the crossroads. He didn’t know why, but she had pulled the handbrake, her white hands gripping the steering wheel. Oliver had felt it: the great lumbering boughs of the oak twisting and creaking towards the car. Its long, pointy branches had peered through his window as if it winked at him.
Mark me, it said. Mark me, boy.
It knew him, and he knew it.
†
Nancy pushed on the door; it creaked with a low groan, not so much a protest as an enticement. It was large and dominating, like the building it lay admission to. This door had hung as the entrance to the Priory for centuries since the beginning. It had borne witness to every visitor, friend, or foe. Now it was dark, riddled with the sin of all the hands that had touched its iron ring handle.
And it was pulling her in.
She wouldn’t succumb to the bait, but it had hit her as soon as she turned off the village road and onto the lane: their arrival had been noted.
Nancy wrapped her fingers around the edge of the door and took a tentative step inside onto the black-and-white tiled floor. Wintry light filtered into the area before her. She winced.
A tall male figure stood to one side; his hand swept the way before her. ‘Welcome, Mrs Hardacre. Lady Hardacre is waiting in the drawing-room. Would you like to go through?’
Nancy flipped her hair over her shoulder as she glanced back to look at the car. The boys were still in there. They hadn’t moved. The music was still blaring, the car juddering with its rhythm.
‘Be thankful for small mercies,’ she breathed and pushed the door just a touch. ‘My boys are out there. I don’t want to leave them outside too long.’ The fleeting thought of them all camping in the car was pleasing. She could find a quiet country spot. They could hide. No one would know.
Ludicrous. She scorned herself for the notion.
‘I thought it best to settle things first.’ She stared into the shadows as she waited.
‘Through into the drawing-room, madam.’
Nancy turned from the tall shadow figure and followed his gesture towards the heavy carved door.
‘So, you are all here.’ The voice came from inside.
‘Not all of us.’ Deep sadness slipped from those words in hot tears, yet Nancy sniffed them back and stood fierce.
‘No, not all of you.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course. You have always been welcome here, my dear.’
That was a lie.
‘Let Dawson get your things.’
‘No.’ She caught her breath before an extra wave of panic rode in. ‘No, it’s okay. The boys are still in the car.’
‘Whenever you are ready, my dear; however, you won’t let them sit out there getting cold now, will you?’
Nancy stepped over the threshold and left all her confidence behind her. A shuffle bought the voice and face she had been dreading to see clearer.
‘I remember the day you left. I never thought I would see you set foot on the grounds again, let alone through these doors. Your arrival has been quite a sensation in these halls,’ Lady Hardacre stated.
‘I’d no choice, really, did I?’ The hot retort came far too easy. ‘You saw to that.’
It needed no reply. Lady Hardacre’s expression spoke of abandonment, of lost promises and grief. Then the face turned from hers. ‘Come on then, let us get you settled in. This place has no time for regrets, yours or mine. They get lost between the cracks in the floorboards.’
Nancy followed her farther in. Her heart was pounding, resisting all that felt natural and good. She turned back to check the door was still ajar and watched it a moment.
For God’s sake, keep it together.
She had done nothing but curse the air blue for these past weeks. How could he have done this to her? It wasn’t her own pity that made her angry but the thought of her boys having to go through the inevitable, which she had done her damndest to avoid for almost a decade. They had vowed that this was the last place the boys would go, no matter how it turned out. He had promised her. After everything, the past had come back to haunt them all, had taken him away and left her to ramble alone through the mire that would be her future.
Nancy followed the old woman deeper into the drawing-room. Lady Estelle Hardacre hadn’t aged in the past ten years; Nancy saw no change at all. She even wore the same rose-pink floral tea-dress she had worn to welcome her that first day so awfully long ago. The slow gait of her stride was as weak as ever yet hadn’t deteriorated as Nancy had expected. What had she presumed to find? An older and more withered Estelle, perhaps.
Estelle gazed over her shoulder a moment, her blonde hair scrolled in coils like always, her eyes just as sharp.
Nancy paced the room. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Estelle’s face—it made her skin bristle. There was guilt there, although the repulsion was too intense. It was, after all, a mark of this house and the way it crippled its occupants. Nancy kept her eyes down, regarding every scratch and scuff on her brown leather boots, each abrasion a reflection of the scars her heart bore. She was a woman in pieces.
‘Will you please sit down?’ Estelle insisted. ‘Pacing the floorboards won’t help. You will wear out the Persian.’
Estelle moved slowly, shivering in the cold air from the windowpane as Nancy approached. They stood and gazed out into the white vista, timeless and bleak. The stark reality of the shiny green car and the two boys, the last Hardacre generation, stared back.
‘I won’t let you have them,’ Nancy said.
‘I have no intention of doing such a thing. They are my blood too.’
‘You won’t have that either.’
‘This is their home, Nancy. It’s where they belong, you know that. Always so melodramatic. You have not changed, have you? Grief has not mellowed you; I see.’
‘Mellowed me? How bloody dare you.’
The instinct to run was tangible, but Estelle gripped her hand and pressed Nancy’s palm to the stone windowsill, keeping her put.
‘I have never been particularly good at apologising,’ Estelle said. ‘Please remember that they are not always my words.’
Nancy knew it was true, no matter how much she resisted.
‘It will be as it always has been,’ Estelle said. ‘You know I have no control over matters.’
There was a pacifying residue to those last words. Nancy doubted it was genuine regret or remorse for the old wound. If she allowed herself to think on it, she knew that this old and frail woman had no way of altering what was to come any more than she could change generations and centuries of history. To think on that fact for too long only bought other emotions. Nancy wasn’t ready to dampen her anger, mollify herself to a more temperate mood. Maybe she liked the rage. It kept grief away from her door along with the wolf.
‘I’ll arrange some tea,’ Estelle announced. ‘Some hot chocolate for the boys—all little boys like hot chocolate. Are they coming in?’
‘They don’t like it.’
‘Don’t be silly. Every boy loves a mug of cocoa. Just like their father.’
‘Oh, dear God. Don’t even think about it. How dare you? You know nothing about them. They are mine; do you hear me?’
Nancy felt it bubble inside her chest. She pressed her hand to her throat. The walls were folding in on her as they had that first visit. The very skeleton of the house heard and recognised every one of her emotions. It had leaked into her skin that first day, and she’d done her damndest to cleanse herself of it ever since.
‘Fuck you…’ Nancy scanned the walls. ‘And your curses.’
‘Oh, my dear. This will not help, will it? Now, we had best calm down.’
‘How can I be calm?’ Nancy’s hands whitened at the knuckles. Her fingers gripped the top of the ornate radiator. The old paint peeled off the metal ridges, and shards dug up under her nails. Tiny beads of blood pooled at the ends of her fingers. She lifted her hands as scarlet drops hit the windowsill and the floor. ‘It’s so cold. The whole damned house is always so bloody cold.’
Estelle sighed so audibly Nancy felt the rafters rattle in disgust at her arrival. The Priory hated her as much as she hated it, and that was what she feared the most—that deep down, far more than oak and plaster lay within these walls.
‘Look.’ Estelle’s grip was tight.
Nancy edged a little farther into the stone casement window.
‘You go fetch the boys in. Get all your cases from the car while I get Lizzie to warm the pot. Tea will help.’
‘You really don’t get it, do you?’
‘Or perhaps something a little stronger? I will drop a little in yours.’ Estelle eyed her, cautious at first until it weighed Nancy down. ‘I know why you are so angry. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. You know that.’
‘Your own son,’ Nancy spat.
‘I cannot leave the Priory.’
‘Not even to say goodbye? Your only son lies rotting in the earth, and you didn’t even have enough heart to be there.’
‘There is no place for me out there. Not now. My time has passed.’ Estelle stared out far beyond the boundary of the grounds. Her gaze reached into the past, where the ghosts of all who had gone before her hovered.
‘I needed you,’ Nancy said. ‘We all needed you.’
‘It wouldn’t allow me to leave.’
‘It’s a house, Estelle! Just a bloody-goddamned house that’s fit for nothing more than the bonfire.’
Nancy stamped her foot on the floorboards. The sole of her boots smeared the beads of blood into the woodgrain. She slapped the stone window frame, let the unnatural cold seep into her palm until it scorched.
‘I’ll burn the place to the ground before I end up like the others.’ Nancy searched every corner and shadow. ‘I shall destroy you just as you have destroyed everything I love. I will watch you burn.’ Nancy’s heart pounded, her fists by her side. She closed her eyes and breathed deep to stop the pain in her chest. Grief hammered to get out.
‘Calm, now.’ Estelle put her hand on the wall. Her long fingers gently tapped the muted plasterwork the colour of soft putty.
A shudder struck them both. Tiny fragments of stone fractured and fell onto the windowsill, rattling the leaded windowpanes. A crack, fine as hair, appeared in the ceiling. It rose at the base of the grand chandelier, which hung with wisps of grey cobwebs. A slow meandering course of fractious veins spread until they stopped. Nancy took two steps from the radiator, searching Estelle’s features for a response. Estelle closed her eyes and placed her hand on her cheek. Nancy strode a few feet farther into the room. She turned on her heels a few times, almost spinning on the spot, but her eyes never left the ceiling.
‘Can you see that?’ she asked. ‘Tell me you see that too.’
‘I shall arrange that tea,’ Estelle softened. ‘We need to warm up. Go fetch the boys in, my dear.’
‘What? Stop it, Estelle!’
Estelle left the room, closing the door behind her. Nancy glanced to the car, her twins still inside. At least they were out there.
The house didn’t allow her attention to sit elsewhere for more than that moment. It called her back, her eyes fixed on the cracked plaster.
Above her head, high in the once ornate moulded plasterwork, a web of cracks teased her. She had always known its game, even when the Hardacres of true blood pretended they did not. She had felt it from the moment she took her first step onto the grounds as a young, naive teen, in love and afraid of losing the boy she wanted. The house had felt her and she it. She knew its game, and it never played fair.
Nancy raised her hand above her head; squeezing one eye shut, she pointed, tracing the fractured lines with a forefinger.
It wasn’t a crack. It was a warning.
†
‘Don’t put your feet on the furniture, don’t talk with your mouth full, and do exactly as you’re told. Can you both do that for me, please?’
Nancy followed her boys through the enormous open door, the white daylight giving way to the gloomy shadows of Hardacre Priory. She heaved three leather suitcases over the threshold. The heel of her boot caught the stone step and sent her a few feet into the hall, where she landed on the cases. Breath caught in her chest. She held back the tears and grit her teeth with a careful look at her right palm. A long abrasion, the breadth of the inside of her hand, glared red. It traced the length of her lifeline. She laughed at the irony.
‘Mum?’ Oliver scrambled over the heaped cases and caught his mother’s hand in his. ‘You all right?’ His nose creased. The edge of his lip quivered at the sight of the blood.
‘I’m fine, love, just a scratch.’ Nancy rose to her feet and slowly twisted her ankle to check movement. She grimaced at the pain. ‘Please be careful too. This place is old.’
Two heads nodded, though only one pair of eyes met their mother’s—Oliver watched her, his forehead wrinkled. All she saw was their father. But not the Andrew who’d loved and laughed, but the one he became that last day. Her eyes fixed on his for a few moments until his little head nodded and his unruly mop of mousy hair flopped over one eye. She smiled. Maybe the first genuine smile she’d been able to conjure for months. Then, as soon as it arrived, it disappeared with the image of that morning.
‘Elliot?’ Her eyes flicked to her eldest. He was older only by thirteen minutes, but it may as well have been months, he held a maturity, a defiance to him that his sibling didn’t. ‘Did you hear what I said? I mean it.’
‘I heard you.’ His eyes, darker and sharper than his twins, had wandered to every wall, nook, and dusty corner of the entrance hall, right towards the wide-sweeping upper gallery landing.
The house was larger than anywhere they’d ever been. With black-and-white Victorian tiles, the entrance hall had an expanse greater than their whole house back in town. A myriad of carved wooden doors spurred off from all sides. The smaller one, which lay in shadows near the sweeping staircase, caused the hairs on the back of his neck to prickle.
Nancy felt the questions seeping from their skins. There was nothing like the curiosity of a seven-year-old, and her two had it in bounds. From the moment they could mumble nonsensical sentences, they had flourished, feeding off each other and all they met. They both bore a vast vat of curiosity forever needing to be filled. Now here they were with more than a lifetime’s worth, and yet, silence.
She had made assumptions; it was true. How could she not have? Their young lives had been halted by the loss of a parent. She related to them with her own grief. Although she had lost her parents in her teens, the pain was still raw, an open wound that never healed. To reason such pain was easier for a grown-up to comprehend. But, in truth, the more her mind wandered to that early spring morning, the less she found a reason. Her precious boys had no real understanding of what had occurred.
‘They may revert inwards to hide for the need for self-healing,’ the therapist had said. She had sat in her high-back, tan-leather chair, swivelling on its shiny chrome base while tapping the top of her notepad with her pencil. She had nodded with pursed lips at regular intervals with no real help offered. Nancy had had no time for her; the sessions had ceased as quickly as the spring rain. They were her boys. She knew what was best…
And it wasn’t hiding from their grief that brought on their silence. In this house, it was something else. They were at the mercy of this place, its history and all that came with it.
All because Andrew had been too weak to deal with it.