Jane sits at the small kitchen table in her flat, arms wrapped around herself. It is the last place she wants to be. She can’t stop seeing Peg’s emptied body, even though the men from Scotland Yard brought the coroner’s wagon and took it away hours ago.
Not it. Her. Peg.
After her mother collected Jane from the station—arriving impossibly, as though summoned by Jane merely wishing her there in an unguarded moment of need—after Jane answered the endless barrage of questions, never once raising her voice to shout, “I don’t know,” as much as she wanted to, there was nowhere else to go but back to the flat. Dusk had smudged the sky when she’d entered the station, but by the time she emerged, her mother gripping Jane’s arm as if she might vanish, it had been full dark. They’d missed the last train to Newark-on-Trent.
“Never mind. There’ll be another train tomorrow morning. I’ll make us supper while you rest.” Her mother had guided Jane to a chair, and set about doing just that.
Even though she had longed for her mother’s presence, for someone else to take care of her, now the constant out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye motion of her mother moving about the flat grates on Jane’s nerves. She wants her mother gone, and at the same time, she can’t bear the thought of being alone.
She can’t quite fathom how her mother is even here. Jane never got the chance to call her; she simply arrived as if sensing Jane’s need. Which means she must have been in London, rather than at home, though she’d never breathed a word of it to Jane.
All through Jane’s childhood, her mother had kept the secret of the time she spent in Neverland, when a boy without a shadow came to her window and stole her and Jane’s uncles away to a magical land. And yet years ago, that same boy had returned and mistaken Jane for her mother, stealing her away. Unlike her mother, Jane hadn’t been given a choice, and in Neverland, Peter had stolen her name, given her drugged tea to keep her complacent, tried to turn her into something she is not.
If her mother had been honest with her from the first, maybe Jane might have protected herself. If her mother had trusted her with the information, rather than assuming what would be best for her—or even worse, simply doing what was best for herself—then Jane might have been prepared, known how to fight back. She wouldn’t have lost so much of herself. Now, all Jane can see in her mother’s unexplained presence here is more secrets, more lies.
Jane clenches her jaw, listening to her mother in the flat’s small kitchen. After her mother had followed Jane to Neverland and brought her home, she’d promised no more secrets. She’d promised Jane she could ask anything, and she would always have the truth. But here it seems her mother is falling back on old habits. Or she never shed them after all.
The thought is a bitter taste in Jane’s mouth. The journey they shared should have brought them closer. After all, how many people have gone to another world entirely and come back again? Only Jane, her mother, and her two uncles, as far as Jane knows.
But where her mother clung to Neverland back then as her shield against the world, Jane has done everything she can over the past eight years to distance herself from that place. She promised herself she would never forget, and she hasn’t, but the life that interests her is ahead of her, not behind. There is so much more she wants to be than simply the girl that Peter stole. She will be a doctor someday, she will help people, she will do good in the world.
Jane thinks again of the open window in Peg’s room, the gap not wide enough for any human to slip through, but what about something inhuman? Could Peter have returned somehow, come looking for Jane and instead found Peg and done something terrible to her? The thought is like a grit of sand, stuck between her clothing and her skin, rubbing her raw. Her mother told her once how all those years she’d held on to the truth of Neverland, she’d always been able to feel it, like a distant whisper of starlight, the sure knowledge of something magical waiting for her on the other side of the sky.
Is it possible her mother felt some hint of Neverland again, and that’s what drew her to London? If she had, would she admit to it? Jane knows her version of Neverland is fundamentally different from her mother’s, but even after everything, after seeing the truth of it, Jane suspects her mother still misses Neverland somehow.
There are times, dark moments, when Jane can’t help thinking it was Neverland itself her mother journeyed for all those years ago, that going back to that place where she’d claimed to have spent the best time of her childhood was more important to her than rescuing Jane. And even now, Jane wonders—for her mother, will one world, this world, the one Jane occupies, ever be enough?
“It’s almost ready.” Even though she’s been listening to her mother move about since they returned, her voice coming from the kitchen still startles Jane.
“What is it?” Something of Jane’s thoughts must echo in her expression as her mother comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, her look one of concern.
Jane shakes her head; she doesn’t have the energy to even try to explain. Her mother’s hand lands awkwardly on Jane’s shoulder, a gesture of comfort, but a skittish one.
“What happened to your friend, to Margaret wasn’t—”
She twists around in her chair to look at her mother’s face, waiting to see what she’ll say. It wasn’t Jane’s fault? It wasn’t anything to do with Neverland? Jane wonders which lie her mother will choose, then wonders why she’s so certain her mother is lying. Is she being unfair? Her mother is here, and the flat feels too large without Peg, too empty, haunted. Jane should be grateful. But whatever she was about to say, her mother changes direction.
“I only meant that if you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
Her mother retreats to the kitchen, almost meek, which is not a word Jane would have thought to apply to her mother before, and guilt prickles in the place of fear. She reminds herself again that her mother is only here to help. The sound of her mother moving about the kitchen resumes, but it’s not enough to override the strange quality to the air. There’s too much darkness gathered in the corners, a sense of someone standing just out of her line of sight.
Peg is still here. She almost blurts the words aloud, clamping down on them at the last minute.
It’s an irrational, childish thought. Jane doesn’t believe in ghosts, she can’t. She’s seen flayed corpses in her anatomy labs, studied detailed medical illustrations of organs and bones. She knows life doesn’t continue after death, not in the way most people mean at least. The human body is a machine, capable of breaking down as sure as a loom or a printing press or a car’s engine. After a person dies, their body breaks down, it feeds other creatures, flies and worms. The energy of their life might carry on in the insects that eat from them, but nothing of what they were continues except the memories other people carry.
So she must carry Peg’s memory, and not do her the dishonor of anything as silly as letting herself think for even a moment that some part of her might literally remain to haunt their flat. The image of the scant opening in Peg’s window returns to Jane’s mind, as sure as any haunting, more insistent each time she tries to banish it. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, but before Neverland, she hadn’t believed a person could fly either. As a woman of science, if she’s seen evidence of something impossible with her own eyes, shouldn’t she leave room to believe that something impossible might occur again? That Peg might…?
Her breath catches; the thought hurts too much. It isn’t fair that her time in Neverland should even give her this sliver of hope. She’s sick of believing in impossible things. She wants the world to be rational, easily categorized the way it was before Peter stole her away. As a child, she’d collected rocks and butterflies and leaves and labeled them in glass cases and believed that if she tried hard enough the answer to just about any question could be found through study, experimentation, and observation. And now? Her mother’s presence only makes it worse, growing the deep ache behind Jane’s eyes. With her mother here, she can’t forget Neverland or set it aside its promises, as much as she wishes she could.
When they’d returned from the police station, Jane had tried closing Peg’s door, as if she could shut out the memory of finding Peg’s body. With the door closed, though, she couldn’t shake the sense of something lurking just on the other side. But with the door all the way open, she’d felt Peg’s empty bed staring at her accusingly. In a way, this is the same. She can’t bear having her mother here, and she can’t bear the thought of being alone. Neverland is a comfort and a curse, a promise and torture. She can’t properly mourn Peg with the terrible hope looming over her that she isn’t fully gone.
A sharp memory rises in Jane’s mind of her and Peg bundled in their coats, hands tucked into their sleeves against the cold as they’d hurried from class to get back home. Even when Peg transferred programs, they still met up every day—even if one of them finished earlier than the other—so neither of them would have to walk home alone.
“I don’t know how you stand it, Jane, I really don’t.” Peg’s nose had been red above her scarf, the sliver of her cheeks still visible was similarly red and wind-chapped. “It’s bad enough in my classes, and there are five of us girls altogether. How do you manage being the only one?”
“It’s at least partly spite.” Jane had allowed herself to grin behind her scarf. “I know some of the professors would rather I was gone, so I just dig in harder to annoy them.”
“You’re awful.” Peg had bumped her shoulder against Jane’s nearly sending them both tumbling into the snow.
In that moment, Jane remembered thinking of Peter and his boys, being the only girl among them, and so being told it was her job to cook and tell stories and take care of them all. It had seemed ridiculous to her even as a child. And now, so many of the men at the college are just the same, as though it’s never occurred to them that a woman could be a person too, and want things of her own.
It’s not only her fellow students, it’s the professors too, and sometimes they’re even worse. There are those who think themselves well-meaning, as though they’re looking out for her, sincerely believing women simply don’t have the constitution to be doctors. There are others who outright resent her presence, and she imagines they would refuse to teach her if they could.
Instead, they resort to subtler methods to drive her away. They ask her if she’s in the wrong lecture hall. They loudly declare their expectations that she will faint at the sight of blood and ask if she would like to be excused. When they aren’t questioning her knowledge and trying to make her doubt herself, they’re refusing to call on her, hoping she’ll quit. It’s exhausting.
One professor had even outright told her that all she was doing was taking the space from a man and denying him the chance to study. He’d confidently told her it was only a matter of time before she got married and had children. A medical education would be wasted on her.
Jane had been so furious she’d nearly slapped him. And if she had, she would have been labeled hysterical, difficult, her actions proof that women’s tempers were too hot (even as they were assumed to be too retiring and weak) to cope with the stresses of the medical profession. She’d spent more hours than she cares to admit fantasizing about ways to get her revenge—from idiotic things like filling his desk with frogs from one of the biology laboratories, to pushing him down the stairs and watching him tumble end over end with his academic gown flying over his head.
She’d done none of those things, of course. She’d simply continued showing up to his classes every day, sitting in the front row whenever possible, smiling at him for all she’s worth, and working twice as hard as any of the boys. Through it all though, there had been Peg—to commiserate with her, to encourage her. Jane cannot count the number of times they’d saved each other.
Late nights, sitting up together with a pot of tea, complaining about their classes, quizzing each other before exams, proofreading each other’s papers. For all her voracious reading, Peg had been atrocious when it came to spelling. She always claimed it was because her mind moved too fast for her hand and her letters got all jumbled up. Jane had teased her mercilessly about it.
An ache presses against the back of Jane’s eyes. Not the threat of tears, but the vast weight of the hole left by Peg’s absence. Whatever will Jane do without her? The thought makes her feel selfish. She should be thinking of Peg’s family, not herself. Peg’s other friends. Simon. The thought strikes her, another blade-like twist of guilt—does he know yet? Will she have to be the one to tell him?
A faint smile touches Jane’s lips, bittersweet; when Simon had first shown interest in Peg, Peg had been furious.
“I didn’t come to school to catch a husband!” She’d stamped around their flat, throwing her hands in the air and letting them flutter about like birds. It was all Jane could do to keep from laughing.
As annoyed as Peg acted, Jane had seen the way she’d blushed at the mere mention of Simon’s name, the way a smile inevitably crept onto her lips even as she vehemently denied that any of his interest might be reciprocated.
“It’s not like I’m suggesting you drop everything and marry him,” Jane had told her, bringing a fresh blush to Peg’s cheeks. “All I’m saying is that he’s nice and he clearly likes you, so why not give him a chance? After all, you can’t study all the time.”
How could someone as full of life as Peg possibly be gone? And now it’s as though shadows are continually seeping through the gap between the door to Peg’s room and the frame. Jane feels them winding around her ankles, a physical thing she wants to jump up and kick away.
“I’m sorry. It isn’t much.” Her mother sets a plate down in front of her, and Jane startles again, looking up.
Mistaking her expression, her mother offers Jane a pained smile—sympathetic but uncertain—though she stops short of touching Jane’s shoulder or any gesture of comfort. She takes the seat across from Jane, awkward smile still in place.
“Your father does most of the cooking when he’s home, and I’ve never stopped being rubbish at it.”
“I’m not hungry.” Jane stops short of pushing the plate away. Other words crowd her tongue and she keeps them trapped behind her teeth. We have to go back to Neverland, you have to show me how.
There’s a door somewhere, and she can feel Peg standing on the other side of it. Something from Neverland slipped into Peg’s room and stole the essence of her away, and if Jane could just…
She feels her mother’s concern, her expectant watching. What can Jane say? She feels as though she’s two people, being torn apart by conflicting truths held inside her skin. It hurts, physically, and she blinks rapidly against tears stinging behind her eyes.
“Jane?” Her mother’s voice sounds muffled and Jane shakes her head as if to dislodge water from her ears.
Even with her mother still and sitting in front of her, Jane continues to see the shadow-presence at the corner of her eye—Peg, moving around the room. Two worlds overlapping, one containing Jane and her mother, one containing Peg, her dark hair in its sleek bob curling in to frame her round cheeks, a mystery novel in hand, pausing every now and then to read Jane a particularly delicious passage aloud.
“I can’t.” The words emerge in a gasp.
Jane stands so quickly her chair tips over backward, crashing to the floor. Her mother is on her feet immediately as well.
“Jane? What is it?”
“What happened to Peg, it’s something to do with Neverland, isn’t it?” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but the words are on her tongue, bitter and demanding to be spit out.
Her mother stops, arms halfway raised as if she’d been about the fold Jane into a hug. Her eyes widen enough that Jane sees the flicker of guilt there before her mother can school her expression.
“Oh, I don’t—”
Before her mother can get any further, Jane cuts her off, a wild surge of anger rising to sweep away her grief.
“Why were you in the city today? How did you know to come find me before I could even call you?” Jane clenches her hands by her sides, her body trembling with adrenaline, exhaustion, unprocessed emotion.
Her mother’s cheeks pale, her mouth snapping shut. It’s as good as a confession, Jane’s earlier suspicion confirmed. After all, what else would draw her mother here, like a preternatural summons? And what else but something belonging to another world could empty Peg out so completely?
“Jane...” Her mother reaches for her, and Jane pulls away.
“I’d like to sleep now. It’s been a very long day.” She’s too tired to hold back the sharpness in her words and finds she doesn’t want to hold it back anyway.
The pain needs to go somewhere, and she can’t lash out at Neverland, but her mother is right here—the next best thing. Her mother’s expression falls and Jane isn’t quick enough to look away. The vindication she wants to feel isn’t there, nor the relief. She only feels worse, spreading the pain around instead of lessening it. What’s wrong with her? But she lifts her chin, unable to make herself take the words back either.
“I set clean linens on the sofa,” Jane says.
“Thank you.” The wound is in her mother’s voice too; it makes her sound small, fragile, on the edge of crumbling.
Jane wavers. The apology is there. She’s on the point of offering to help with the linens, or even offering her mother her own bed, saying she’ll sleep on the sofa herself. But her mother’s next words drive all thoughts of charity from her mind, ice water drenching her spine.
“Don’t worry if I’m not here when you wake in the morning. I’ll be back in time to catch our train, but there’s some business I need to take care of first.” There’s a clipped coldness to her mother’s words, the vulnerability of a moment ago replaced with fresh armor, meeting Jane’s stubbornness with her own.
Business. If Jane had any doubts left before, they are gone now. Jane knows, she knows that whatever her mother’s “business” is, it’s to do with Neverland as well.
“Fine,” Jane says, her tone mirroring her mother’s. “But I won’t wait for you if you aren’t here on time.”
She holds her head up, her spine straight as she steps past her mother, even though all she wants is melt into a boneless puddle on the floor. Her steps don’t falter until she finds they’ve carried her to Peg’s door, as if she could just pop her head in and say goodnight before going to bed, and then Jane freezes.
Her breath lodges painfully in her lungs, but she doesn’t turn away. The space between the door and the frame shows a slice of the dresser and Peg’s narrow bed. She places her fingertips against the wood and peers through the crack.
There’s an almost astringent scent to the air, too clean, as though the men from Scotland Yard finished the job started by whoever murdered Peg, scrubbing all traces of her from existence. Jane pushes the door open the rest of the way.
She has the sudden overwhelming urge to find one of Peg’s books, its pages dog-eared. She wants to hear Peg in her head, assigning voices to the characters, snatching Jane’s own study books from beneath her nose and forcing her to listen.
Peg’s hairbrush and a small bottle of perfume, a birthday gift from Peg’s mother, are lined up neatly against the mirror. A pair of stockings drape over the back of the chair, while all the rest of her clothing is tucked carefully in drawers. On top of the dresser sits a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, spine cracked open to hold Peg’s page. Everything as it should be, as if at any moment Peg will return and resume her life as though nothing happened.
Despite wishing for it, Jane can’t bring herself to even touch the book. Peg must have read it three times at least, but this time, she’ll never reach the end. Jane moves to the bed, her knees bumping against it. The covers are tucked crisply beneath the pillow, all evidence of Peg’s body smoothed away. There should be something to mark that she was here. Jane runs her hand over the top blanket. Is it her imagination, or is the fabric slightly darker here? Like a water stain, but not that at all.
She peels the top layer back. The mark is more distinct, not on the sheet, but underneath it.
Her hands shake as she strips the bed clean, revealing the mattress and the breath goes out of her. A shadow, ragged at the edges like spilled ink staining the fabric. Even as she looks, it seems to grow darker, more distinct, like watching a photograph developing in a chemical bath. The shape is unmistakable—human.
Jane’s hand flies to cover her mouth, catching back the sob too late. Now, finally, when she hasn’t cried for Peg all day, tears spill forth.
It’s like Peg’s shadow was ripped from her body, left behind to soak into her mattress like blood. This is all of Peg that remains.