Cornwall, present day
Rachel returned to Winterbourne in the early evening. She was surprised to see Aaron’s Porsche parked on the drive, and when she opened the door he was waiting for her by the fire, his head in his hands. When he heard her, he turned.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. It struck her that his appearance was changed: he looked worried, his face drawn. ‘What’s happened?’
As Aaron explained that he hadn’t been able to leave, in the end, not without her, she was only half listening. She had greater matters on her mind. Everywhere she turned, Winterbourne was tainted, every wall, every hanging, every chair and table, all of it steeped in wretched history, somehow bigger than the death of Mary Catherine Sinnett, somehow more sinister and widespread than just that. She had felt the bad thing. She’d felt it when she found the bats. She’d felt it down in the cellar.
‘Fine,’ she said, ‘we leave tomorrow. But I need your help first.’
Rachel went straight to it now – the monstrosity in the hall.
‘What’s going on?’ Aaron followed.
They stopped in front of the mirror.
‘What are you doing—?’ he asked, as she tried to lift the frame on her own. The glass was turned away, mercifully, for she could not bear to meet herself in it.
‘I’m getting rid of it,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Just trust me. Help me carry it, would you?’
‘What are you going to do?’
She considered the ways in which she could destroy the damned mirror – because she knew, intrinsically, that it had to be destroyed. It could not survive at Winterbourne. It could not be taken by anyone else; it could not be hung or admired or even hidden underground because it was dangerous, it was insidious; it would always find a way out. It had belonged to someone else, once, and no matter Rachel’s beliefs in things unseen, she could not abide the thought of it in the world any longer.
It had to be returned. She might burn it. She might throw it from the cliffs.
Returned.
She looked out of the window. The sky was losing light. But they had enough time, maybe, to do it. ‘We’re going out to sea,’ she said.
*
Among the junk in the stables was an upturned rowing boat, splintered and debatably seaworthy – but it was their only option. It took an hour to get both things down to the beach. ‘Careful,’ Rachel urged in the growing dark, as their muscles strained beneath the weight of the mirror, ‘don’t drop it.’ Aaron asked why she cared if she wanted it demolished anyway. ‘We can’t break it,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t.’
The water was scattered purple, the sky pinpricked with the gloaming’s first stars. At first Aaron had argued about waiting until dawn: it was safer, surely, than this misguided outing by torchlight. But Rachel would not be deterred.
‘Nothing happens until it’s done,’ she said. ‘We don’t sleep, we don’t eat; we don’t leave Winterbourne. Nothing happens until it’s gone.’
It was uncertain as to whether the boat could support the weight of the mirror. They heaved it in first, water splashing round Rachel’s ankles, chased by the occasional shiver of seaweed. She squinted at the pale beach and hulking rock, and was amazed at how much she could pick out in the swollen night, details heightened through her determination to see them, not to be blind, and as she glanced up the way they’d come she thought of Mary Catherine being pursued down the cliffs. Had she come this way? Had she turned to the sea and thought, This is the end?
Rachel climbed in. Aaron followed with the torch.
‘We don’t need to go far,’ said Rachel, thinking about how far Mary Catherine had got before she surrendered to the waves. The water was calm, ripples lapping the prow as Aaron churned ahead. Below was ink. White glimmered where the moonlight caught the surface, and the glass in the mirror shone like a desolate lake, throwing the stars back to where they’d started. ‘Almost there,’ said Rachel, shivering but warmed by her will, as the pastel line of the shore inched further from sight.
She grabbed the oars and took over. They’d be two hundred metres out now, at least. Mary Catherine’s mirror would sink and never be seen again. It would never wash up and never be found. She thought of the quiet of the deep, quiet and still, miles and miles of it beneath her, more mysterious than space. And in between those two things, the above and below, their little boat danced insignificantly and alone.
‘Here,’ said Rachel, throwing down the oars. ‘Are you ready?’
They heaved the mirror with difficulty, trying not to capsize because with every movement the boat tipped perilously. The mirror’s ornate frame, those grasping loops and swirls, seemed to hold her wrists and arms as tightly as she held them, and she was gripped momentarily by the panic that it had her now, like a terrible weed, and she would never be able to shake it off. But then, with a final upsurge, the hulk of it flipped over and dropped into the water with an almighty splash.
The glass drifted down as gently as snow, illuminated by the constant moon. Rachel saw her reflection in it, her lips parted, her hand reaching out, her eyes searching, until the reflection and its host was engulfed by the dark.
The water was still. How quickly and quietly the mirror was swallowed, the surface calm again, just a gentle slop and slurp against the flanks of their boat.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and strangely she felt the urge to weep. Lightness surrounded her; the fog in her head cleared. ‘We can go now.’
But Aaron was regarding her strangely.
He didn’t blink, didn’t answer. She touched his knee, and this seemed to prompt him to focus on her. ‘Aaron, I said we can go.’
By the dim torchlight she saw his distorted features.
‘No,’ he said, ‘we can’t.’
A strange feeling crept over her. ‘Aaron…?’
‘I tried, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I did try. I tried to make you see. But you still don’t see, do you?’
There was a horrible quiet, leaden with some meaning she could not decipher. Rachel thought of the mirror sinking down, down, to its final, lonely bed.
‘Why couldn’t you have made it easier?’ he said, in a weird, disembodied voice. ‘I came to Winterbourne to find you. I tried everything. I gave you so many chances, but you didn’t take them.’
‘Aaron,’ she managed, ‘you’re not making sense.’
‘I drove and drove and I thought about it so hard,’ he said. ‘And I even thought I should end it there, be killed on the road because it would easier, then, wouldn’t it? It would be revealed afterwards, of course, but there I am: a coward to the last. I wouldn’t be around to see it. I wouldn’t have to endure it.’ His eyes shone in the dark. ‘But then I saw that I could still have it, Rachel. I didn’t have to go home without what I came for, after all. It could still be mine. And I was going to get it some other way, back at the house, make it look like an accident… but this is better. Out at sea, where no one can find us. Terrible things happen at sea, you know.’
A knot of fear tightened in Rachel’s windpipe.
‘You’re scaring me,’ she said.
‘You’re my solution, that’s how it is. Or, rather, Winterbourne is. When you first told me about it, I had no idea what it was worth. But I know now.’
The marble in her throat started to roll. Their boat bobbed its lonely dance. No one knew they were here, alone…
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, her voice thick.
‘I’m in trouble,’ he said.
‘What kind of trouble?’
Stall him, was all she could think. Buy yourself time.
‘My life is over.’ There was that quiet again, like a vibrating string. ‘I’ve run my company into the ground, Rachel. The business I’ve worked to build over twenty years – it’s over. I’ve lost it all. There’s nothing left. We’re so far in debt I can’t see daylight any more.’ Suddenly he laughed. It was thin, cold, entirely without humour. ‘Nobody knows. The people who work for me, they think everything’s fine.’
Rachel was trembling now, cold and afraid. This wasn’t Aaron. This was somebody else, a dangerous stranger. She questioned if the person she’d known over the past two years had been real at all. Aaron had only ever shown her one version of himself, in business or on dates or on weekends away – not the real, everyday vulnerability of an ordinary human being. They’d never known each other like that.
‘I’ve built a career on knowing how to multiply zeros,’ he said. ‘But these last months I lost my touch. A couple of negative investments…then everything I went for crumbled. Time and again it went wrong, and the more it went wrong, the more I had to make it right; and the more I failed, the deeper in I got. I’ve always been a fraud, haven’t I? Just stolen from other people, that’s been my trade. But I was good at this, Rachel, once upon a time. Good at gambling, because that’s what it’s been, the destruction, the addiction, the impulse to keep putting your hand in the fire even though you know you’ll get burned. The higher the stakes, the better.’
Rachel fought to twist her head around his admission. Aaron was a billionaire. His family had houses in the Hamptons and LA and Texas. He was from one of the finest dynasties in America and stood as one of the richest men in New York. But he couldn’t go to his family: a man like him would never admit defeat.
She touched his arm. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she forced out.
It was the wrong thing to say.
‘How?’ Aaron rasped; he was possessed by anger, a wild anger that knew no reason. ‘Aren’t you listening? If this comes out I’m as good as dead. What will people say? What will they think? I’ll be the joke of the century. I’ll go to prison for what I’ve done: I’ve done things I can’t tell you, things I’d never tell a soul. I won’t do it, Rachel. I won’t let it happen to me. I’m better than that. That’s where you come in.’
‘I’m here for you,’ she told him. ‘We’ll face this together.’
But Aaron shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s not enough.’
Then time seemed to creep out of kilter, for the next few moments slipped and slid over each other so that she couldn’t be sure what happened first or by whom. She went to take the oars but Aaron beat her to it. One toppled into the water and the other he clasped in his hands, raising it like a batsman ready to take a swing. Idiotically Rachel felt for the sides of the boat, as if such a thing would save her, and she thought, No. Not now. Not this. He said: ‘Oh, Rachel, I’m sorry. I really am.’
‘Aaron—’
‘It’s too late,’ he said, clutching the oar with frightening determination. ‘With you gone, I can sell on my own. I’ve talked with my people. You signed the document giving me power of attorney.’ He smiled at her incredulous expression. ‘Don’t you remember all that paperwork? By the end you didn’t know what you were looking at, or what you were signing. You trusted me with everything. It was easy.’
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. It couldn’t be true.
‘Winterbourne might not solve everything,’ he said, ‘but it’ll start me off. It’ll be the injection I need to keep my head above water.’ He looked down at the glinting sea. ‘Which, I’m afraid, will be more than can be said for you. And I’ll be depressed because of what happened, won’t I? That’ll work in my favour, buy some time and get some sympathy. And I will be sad, Rachel, you know. I will miss you. We’ve had fun and for a while I did have feelings for you; I thought you could be it for me.’
‘I still can, Aaron,’ she pleaded, ‘if you give me a chance.’
‘Sorry. I’ve given you enough chances.’
Before he could act, she lunged for him, thinking if she could just kick him off balance she could grab the oar and knock him out with it. But it didn’t happen that way. The boat rocked; she struck him to his knees and for an instant they were both going into the water, surely they were, but then something hard hit Rachel’s head, a cracking, solid blow that sent her crashing to the deck, choking freezing air. Warm liquid trickled into her ear. She couldn’t see. Then his arms were round her, cradling her, and she felt like a beached fish, all flesh and wetness, slippery, and just like that she hit the wetness of the water as he flipped her over the side and the depths consumed her whole. She was under for a moment before her legs dragged up a last vestige of strength and propelled her to the surface. She gulped air. It was bitter in her mouth, compact as ice. A hand pushed her down. All was black and green, roaring in her ears and eyes and throat, her body blazing with the effort of survival. She flailed and gasped, grasped at nothing and inhaled everything, salt, water, weed filling her lungs and every part of her. Her muscles drained. She was dizzy, and tired, so tired…
She thought of Seth, smiling at her over the breakfast table on the last day she’d known him. She thought of Jack Wyatt, his big hands and the grey above his ears. She thought of his dogs snoozing in his farmhouse, on rugs that smelled of corn.
She opened her eyes underwater, and let go.
A green-eyed woman took her hands and pulled her down.