Cornwall, present day
Rachel hadn’t seen the exterior in daylight before. Now, in the bright morning, the house appeared kinder than it had when she arrived, and grander than any showpiece she had ever seen. Its dramatic arches reminded her of Parisian cathedrals, and the high turrets with their tremendous gargoyles brought to mind fortresses buried deep in the Romanian hills. Gleaming stained glass adorned the chapel windows, and crowning the spire was a decorative finial that shone and glittered in the optimistic sun.
It was with some reluctance that she crossed the overgrown parkland to get down to the south gate. She didn’t relish the thought of seeing Jack Wyatt again, much less accepting a favour from him, but she had little choice: the gallery would be wondering what edge of the world she had slipped over, and she’d promised Paul she would stay in touch. Here, she was completely cut off. She hadn’t even checked the news since her arrival in London – a meteorite could have wiped out the whole of the west coast for all she knew. Her boots swished through the long grass and she could hear the gentle tumble of the sea as it washed into shore. Turning back to Winterbourne, she shielded her eyes and watched as a swoop of large black birds descended on its roof. That’s my house, she thought, incredulously. It’s mine.
Then she was down over the next dip and Winterbourne was out of sight. Rachel had underestimated the walk to the perimeter – the estate was huge – and when she arrived at the gate it was quarter past, and she thought she’d missed him.
But there was the Land Rover, with Jack inside it.
‘I saw you coming down the hill,’ he said, releasing the passenger door so she could climb inside. ‘I thought Americans were sticklers for punctuality.’
She ignored him. ‘It’s good of you to give me a ride.’
‘I was a little surprised, to be honest,’ he released the clutch and they moved off, bouncing down a narrow dirt track away from the estate, ‘you taking me up on my offer on day one. Couldn’t you wait to see me again?’
She changed the subject. ‘You have dogs?’
Jack grinned his slightly off-centre grin. It transformed his face, Rachel thought, into something quite warm and compelling. But then he spoke. ‘You really are Sherlock Holmes.’ However, it didn’t take much detective work to attribute the carpet of hairs on the back seat and the array of blankets gathered there to a band of hounds. There was also an earnest, wheaty fragrance that brought to mind cosy November nights and dogs resting by the hearth, not unpleasant, in fact rather cheering.
The inside of the Land Rover was suggestive of more haphazard living. Several bits of material – rags covered in engine oil; chamois leather – were stuffed beneath the handbrake. A stash of old cassette tapes was jammed in her door pocket. A notepad lay discarded in the footwell, a list of some sort, untidily scrawled.
‘I thought I’d spare you the circus,’ he told her. ‘The dogs are a bit too friendly for some people. Especially women.’
‘That’s sexist.’
‘Not really, just an observation.’
‘Based on…?’
‘Most of the women I’ve been out with.’ Jack turned on to the main road. ‘Given the choice they’d rather not be mauled by muddy paws, or have bad breath in their face, or stub their toe on a knackered chew trying to get to the sofa.’
‘And what didn’t they like about the dogs?’
‘Ha.’ But he thought it was funny because his grin reappeared, wider this time, and she noticed the crease in his cheek. ‘They used to hate having the dogs in the house, thought I should tie them up outside in the barn, even in winter when the ground was frozen. I always think if a person is kind to a dog then they’re all right.’
‘I’ve never had a dog.’
‘Well, you’ve missed out.’
Rachel wondered if the de Greys had kept animals. What else had she missed out on in her childhood? What else could her upbringing have contained if she had stayed with her birth mother and been raised at Winterbourne? It was a parallel universe, an impossible one, and yet one that had been at her fingertips from the very start, her fate decided by a woman she had never met. It was difficult to picture herself in that grand castle, running through the corridors as her mother would have, as Constance and her brother would have, playing with the dolls’ houses and rocking horse, clamouring on the piano and climbing the shelves in the library.
Instead, she’d had Maggie and Greg – decent, honest, good-hearted people – in their suburban mainstream home. She hated to sound spoiled, and it wasn’t that, really. It was just hard to consider how that altered background might have changed things at the most innate level: the way Rachel connected with life, the people she met, the chances she had. She might never have met Seth, the man who threw light on her small planet, and she might never have lost him. Sliding doors. Pointless fiction.
Seth…
Rachel focused on the here and now, on what she could see and feel, as she had trained herself to since the accident: Jack’s hands on the steering wheel, his paint-splashed trousers, the road rushing past. Except it hadn’t been an accident, had it?
There were only so many words that would do. Event. Incident. Tragedy. And the worst of them: atrocity. Sometimes she could abide only the vaguest of references, simply what happened, or that day, or the phone call. That last one seemed the easiest to use, the most anodyne, as if Paul had been ringing to discuss the next day’s schedule. Still, it had the power to wind her. It’s over. You’re here. He’s gone.
‘Are you OK?’ Jack asked. ‘Is my driving making you sick?’
‘I’m fine,’ she managed, though his driving was haywire. They undertook a truck and then ducked on to a slip road, which looped back towards the sea.
‘Here we are,’ said Jack. ‘Welcome to civilisation.’
The word for Rachel conjured her Manhattan skyline, sushi bars and late-night bistros, subways that ran all night. Polcreath was a fishing town, pretty and compact, with a pub, high street, a church, a waterfront restaurant and a modest settlement that constituted the population. She discovered this as Jack’s car wound down through the centre and emerged all too quickly at the harbour, prompting her to ask: ‘Was that it?’
He laughed. ‘What were you expecting?’
They parked illegally (Jack didn’t seem bothered about road signs) and walked up to the high street. ‘That’s your best bet,’ said Jack, pointing out a café. ‘I’ll see you back at the car at eleven.’ She wanted to say she’d need longer than that, but before she could he was stalking away in the opposite direction.
Rachel crossed to the café and opened the door. Neat floral-print tablecloths were laid with vintage tea sets, and there was pretty bunting strung up over the counter. ‘Hello, excuse me,’ she approached the girl, ‘do you have Wi-Fi?’
The girl slid the code across and took her order for a flat white. Moments later she was online. Her email account was bursting and she fielded as many as she could, cutting and pasting an outline as to her whereabouts and how the gallery was operating without her. It seemed to be operating very well. Paul had been in touch with a report and had run interviews for her, explaining that she’d been called abroad on business and that that was the price to pay for swift and sudden success. She replied, explaining her lack of connection at the house and promising to be available once a day. ‘I owe you,’ she wrote, ‘for having my back. Thank you.’
A young man came into the café. He and Rachel exchanged a smile before the man took an adjacent table. He flipped a magazine out of his bag and Rachel had to do a double take, as she saw on its cover a shot of Aaron Grewal, impeccably suited, arms folded, above the banner BUSINESS HAS NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD.
It was weird seeing Aaron, this polished, renowned entrepreneur who was a galaxy away from a tiny teashop at the foot of the UK, where all you could hear was the gentle tap of a spoon on a saucer or the steady slow wash of the sea. She wondered what he was doing, if he was with someone else (they had never agreed on exclusivity) and whether that mattered. Rachel found her heart intact. It always had been, since Seth: losing him had been enough to make her lock it away for good.
Several of her emails were from him. A glance at her phone revealed more attempts at contact. She was surprised by the attention. They’d always kept it casual, and while she’d expected Aaron to be in touch to check she’d arrived, and that the inheritance had gone as planned, she didn’t expect the devotions of, well, a boyfriend.
The most recent email, sent late last night, his time, surprised her. It read:
Hey again, elusive R. It hasn’t been long but I’m going crazy here without you. I get that things could take a while your end, so why don’t I come to you? I’m worried about you, dealing with this. I hate to imagine you on your own. I know you said I didn’t get it, but I do. I’ve been thinking a lot about us, Rachel, and I want to be part of it. I can help, even if it’s just taking you for dinner or bringing you coffee in the morning. I can get away this weekend; I’ll fly over and we can spend it together. Let me know.
Can’t wait.
Aaron x
Rachel absorbed the message with mounting apprehension. She should have found it sweet, kind, romantic, and it was all of those things – but instead alarm bells sounded. Worry wasn’t a word she had thought to associate with Aaron Grewal. He was composed and unflappable, and he definitely didn’t spend his time ‘thinking about us’: that was what couples did, couples who bore secrets and resentments, couples at crossroads. Not them. She didn’t want him coming over. It was impossible to picture him at Winterbourne. He’d never occupied a less than five-star dwelling in his life and she could imagine his dismay at the state of the property. Already it felt precious and private to her, something she must keep close to her heart.
It was odd watching the man at the next table read all about her lover while Rachel was mere feet away in a pair of muddy wellington boots, her hair dragged into a scruffy ponytail, trying to think up how best to reply to him.
She composed a message and quickly pressed Send:
Dear Aaron, Sorry for my radio silence. Turns out Winterbourne’s well and truly off grid – who’d have guessed? Anyway, no need to come; I’ll be leaving in a few days and will look you up when I’m back.
Hope all’s well with you. Rachel x
Feeling better at having touched the outside world, she logged off, drained her coffee and set off to explore her ancestors’ town.
*
Jack found her at a bike stall. ‘You’re late,’ he said.
‘I’m not. I’ve got five minutes.’
‘Exactly. It’s at least seven to the car.’
‘Not if I’m on one of these.’
Jack put his hands in his pockets, watching the bicycle stall with disdain. ‘Waste of money,’ he declared. ‘I’ve got an old thing in the garage you can use if you want a bike, give it a bit of grease, she’ll be good as new.’
The storekeeper came out. ‘Ten per cent discount if you buy before midday,’ he said, passing Rachel a leaflet. Jack snorted. He was unbelievably rude.
Perhaps it was Jack’s rudeness that she felt she had to compensate for, or perhaps it was the sheer fact of his disapproval, but Rachel bought the shiny red bike she’d been looking at with a ten per cent discount and felt mightily pleased with herself as she wheeled it away over the cobbles. No, it wasn’t strictly necessary for the sake of a few days – but she couldn’t bear to ask Jack for another favour (she couldn’t bear to see him again at all, as it went), and if she was going to keep her promise to Paul then she had to have her own way of getting in. Besides, being stranded up at the house with no means of escape wasn’t a feeling she enjoyed. The bike was better than nothing, and doubly satisfying for the look on Jack’s face.
‘Actually, I think I’ll cycle back,’ she said when they reached the Land Rover, and Jack opened the tailgate to load it in.
‘Really? It looks like rain.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Clearly you haven’t been out in a Polcreath wind.’
Rachel disliked that he imagined her to be an uninitiated city girl who would wither at the first spot of drizzle. She remembered how he’d been sent by the others at the Landogger Inn to rescue her, and turned her back and mounted the bike.
‘Do you want my number?’ he said as he was opening the driver’s door.
She raised an eyebrow.
‘Very funny,’ he said, and it wasn’t clear – nor was it clear to her when she thought about it later that night – what the joke was. ‘I mean if you need anything at Winterbourne. Right now you’ve got your boyfriend in America and that’s about it.’
‘Excuse me? You don’t know the first thing about my private life.’
‘Well, he won’t be much good over there, will he?’
‘I don’t have a signal, remember?’
‘You will where I picked you up – maybe even before. It’s the house that’s the black hole.’ He scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it to her; she tucked it in her pocket. Then he climbed in and gunned the engine, escaping in a cloud of gravel.
All the way back to Winterbourne, Rachel considered Jack’s description of the house as a ‘black hole’. He meant of connectivity, of course, but the words seemed laden with another, more serious, meaning. Winterbourne was its own rock, cut off from civilisation as much as it was from time. It could be a house in any era, belonging to any family, which in a way was how Rachel had arrived at it.
She’d been wrong about the rain. It started steadily and then settled into a lashing, determined stride, slicing at her from the sea and blasting her cheeks with freezing cold. As she chugged up the hill towards Winterbourne, lungs burning and calves straining, she cursed herself for turning down Jack’s ride for nothing more than pride, and now she was soaked from head to toe and everywhere in between. At points she had to close her eyes because the downpour was blinding, catching the road beneath her in staccato frames that made progress slow and unstable. Her knuckles whitened on the handlebars, the clouds above her looming and dark, and when she saw the south gate come into view she almost cried with relief.
Twenty minutes later, she was drying off by the fire. Never had the heat and light of a few burning logs been the source of such bliss, and Rachel wrapped herself in a sweater, poured a big mug of coffee, pulled a chair up to the flames and warmed her hands. She could hear the ongoing lash of the rain against the windows, amplified by Winterbourne’s lofty vaults and giant panes of stained glass.
Next she knew she was awake, the rain had stopped and the sky outside was darkening. The fire had reduced to blushing embers, which she stoked until they sparked encouragement, then she threw on more wood, which quickly caught. Rachel wasn’t the sort to sleep during the day, as a rule she didn’t just ‘nod off’, so it was surprising to discover that several hours had passed since she’d returned.
She switched on a few lights – enough to make a home of the small region of Winterbourne she preferred to reside in – and cooked herself a light supper. Afterwards, she headed to the study to try and find a landline: yesterday she’d poked her head round the door and seen a pile of boxes, which she hoped contained a point of contact with the outside world. It was all very well Jack Wyatt giving her his number, but she’d rather not have to venture half a mile away in order to use it. Not that she would be using it – but anyway.
There was a cluster of candles on the windowsill, which she met with a match. The room shivered to half-life, half awake and part of the world she knew, half asleep and belonging to some other, distant state beyond her reach.
It took the best part of an hour to find it, an antiquated contraption with an old-fashioned number dial and heavy receiver. When Rachel at last located the wall socket, she didn’t for a moment expect it to work, but after a few uncertain pips she detected the reassuring monotone of a connection. She fished Jack’s number out of her pocket and put it next to the phone. For some reason, she felt better with it there.
Night was encroaching on the windows, capturing her in its cloak. Shadows lengthened and deepened. Rachel wondered, when the time came to part with Winterbourne, what the new buyers would make of it. Doubtless they would waste no time in modernising, gutting the bedrooms for lush en suites and demolishing walls for open-plan living. The thought made her sad but she pushed sentimentality away. There was no option but to sell. She couldn’t stay here for ever, closeted away like Rapunzel in the tower with only Jack and his crowd at the Landogger Inn for company. She had to return to America and real life, her career, her home.
Even so, the thought of letting Winterbourne go filled her with grief. The house was in her blood, yes, but it was more than that. Already it had cast her under a rich and heady spell, as if it had been waiting for her, as if it had been calling to her, whispering at night of secrets yet to be found, caressing her skin as she slept, tapping on the glass to be let in, and the more time she spent here the deeper she fell…
As a habit Rachel didn’t like to become attached. It was all the more reason to move as quickly as she could, and her email exchange with Aaron had been the prompt she needed. Tomorrow she would set the ball rolling. Get someone out to value Winterbourne and its contents, and then pass it into their safekeeping until a sale was agreed. It would be good to return to New York. Rachel thought of her gleaming desk at home and the view of Manhattan from her window. Soon she would be back, and for the first time she would know her roots, the place she came from, the people who were her family. Finally, she had done it: she had found the missing piece. And if all Winterbourne could give her was what it had already given – its dusty shelves, its creaky beds, its ancient floorboards – then that was enough. She could fill in the rest, in the years to come. She could imagine it.
As Rachel was closing the last box, something caught her eye. Perhaps it was the single loop of red string around the letter – it was romantic, like an ancient scroll sealed with candle wax. She lifted it out and unfurled it. The letter was written in a ragged hand, so ragged, in fact, it was alarming, a bloodcurdling scrawl blotched with ink, the paper spiked where the pen had driven through it, and was addressed to Captain Jonathan de Grey of Winterbourne Hall, Polcreath. It was signed by a name she hadn’t heard before: Alice Miller. Rachel read it, her unease rising.
How could you send me away? the letter read. You know the truth about me. You know the secret I carry. How could you, Jonathan – how could you?