10

I heard the sound in the dead of night.

A tiny shriek of metal on metal. It was enough to bring me swimming up from the depths of deep sleep to the shallows of wakefulness.

It stopped, and I turned on my pillow.

Then it started again.

I opened my eyes. I was facing the door and I saw the handle begin to turn, a tiny, tiny amount at a time, so slowly I wondered if I was seeing things. I sat up silently, heart thumping, feeling like the hapless heroine of Rebecca or something equally Gothic. I watched, wide-eyed with dread. It was definitely moving. Then the door opened slightly, creating a slice of light from the passageway, widening to a slab. A figure, silhouetted against the brightness, slid into my room.

It was Lady de Warlencourt.

I hunched back against my pillows, pulling the bedclothes up under my chin as if that would somehow protect me. What did she want with me? Did she want to talk about Henry, because I didn’t think I could stand that. She closed the door nearly all the way behind her, just leaving enough light to illuminate the room.

I wasn’t having that, so I clicked on the bedside light. Bad enough being trapped in a room with a woman you hardly knew, without also being trapped in a room with a woman you could hardly see. In the light of the lamp I could see she was wearing a white nightie and dressing gown, and her usually neatly dressed pale hair was everywhere. To add to her ghostly appearance, her skin had a grey sheen to it, and she was mouthing words that sounded like, and meant, nothing. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of that speech. I couldn’t understand a single syllable of it. She seemed to have constructed a whole new language. It sounded almost like an incantation, and I found myself thinking about The Isle of Dogs and the enchantress who could raise the dead. But Lady de Warlencourt’s face was kind of benign and calm, and seemed to be at peace.

Then I understood.

She was asleep.

Emboldened, I sat up and waved my hand before her face. She didn’t flinch and didn’t stop mouthing the unintelligible words. She came over to the bedside table and put her hands on the silver-backed monogrammed brushes, rearranging them neatly since Nel and I had disturbed them. Once they were regular as soldiers, she left them alone and turned to the bed. I shrank back on the pillows, watching, waiting. Then something extraordinary happened. She bent and, before I could flinch out of the way, kissed me tenderly on the forehead, lifting my fringe so she could plant her lips there. This was plain weird, and certainly over and above what you’d expect from a hostess. Chocolate on the pillow, fine, but a kiss? Then, and only then, as if the kiss had given her the power of speech, or me the power of understanding, I got what she was saying.

‘I’ll save you, darling,’ she said. ‘I’ll save you.’

It was the creepiest thing ever. She was looking right at me, telling me that she would save me, like some weird negative of the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but dressed in white, not black, and a woman instead of a man. Then I corrected myself. She was looking in my direction, but she wasn’t looking at me, she was looking through me.

She was, very definitely, talking to Henry.

As she glided out of the room and noiselessly closed the door, I could hardly hear my thoughts over the thumping of my rabbit’s heart. The goodnight kiss had been for him. The tiptoe visit, the door left open just a chink so the light wouldn’t wake her sleeping child, the kiss on the forehead and the stroke of the hair – it must have been a nightly ritual when Henry was sleeping here.

I’ll save you, darling. The terrible words meant, I knew, that she would catch Henry when he fell. Wasn’t that what a mother should do? Always be there for her child, to pick them up when they fell down, to wipe away tears, to kiss grazed knees, to console and support and cheerlead? I wondered then, with a stab of longing, what it was to have a mother who loved you, who truly loved you, and always wanted to be there for you. I couldn’t decide at that moment if I felt sorrier for Henry or myself. My mother had chosen to live her life away from me, but he’d had a mother who’d considered him the centre of the universe. But a love that intense had a flip-side now he was gone. What was left was a mother hollowed out by loss and regret. She hadn’t been able to save him. She hadn’t been there to catch him when he did fall. When it mattered, she’d failed him.

And that, in the moment, was the saddest thing in the world.