Elinor wakes up to find he is gone. She rolls onto his side of the bed and breathes in his familiar scent. Her heart is already hammering. She hates when he leaves. Especially when he doesn’t tell her he’s going. The too-fast buzzing in her chest, like a hive of livid bees, makes her feel sick. At seventeen, she knows she should cope better with being alone for a few hours, Heath has told her so, but she doesn’t. The bees won’t stop stinging. She wants to claw them from her chest. Instead, she screams into her pillow. No one will hear her anguish. Ledbury Hall is miles from anywhere. A twenty-minute walk to the closest residence and a half-hour drive to the nearest town.
She breathes deeply, telling herself that Heath will return. Naked, she sits up in bed. Without his body warming her own, the winter chill bites at her skin. She wraps the duvet around her shoulders and gazes sullenly at the heavy curtains across the room. It takes her another ten minutes to muster the energy to rise from her bed and open them. The weak, blue light from the watery, winter sun trickles lazily across the hardwood floor. Her bedroom overlooks the garden with the large pond. Though it’s more of a lake than a pond. At its centre is a little island with a stone statue of two entwined lovers. The man is kissing his way up the girls throat, his hands moving around her bare stomach to cup her breasts.
Heath swims in the pond every summer and always tries to coax Elinor to join him. She doesn’t. She’s not sure she even knows how to swim. When she was little Uncle Robert tried to teach her, but the second she stepped into the water, she imagined drowning, just as her parents had. She could feel murky water rushing down her throat and filling her lungs until she couldn’t breathe. Her heart would beat so furiously, she was sure her ribs would crack and splinter. Sometimes, she dreams of her parents’ yacht, sees it bobbing in the middle of the ocean, in the centre of all that vast, empty space. Adrift. That’s how she feels in Ledbury Hall without Heath.
She showers and dresses, but by noon he still isn’t back. Tomorrow, Uncle Robert is due to return – she dreads his weekend visits and his ability to make the vast, Georgian manor house feel the size of a matchbox. She’s fretting, worrying the skin around her fingernails. Only three of the seven bedrooms have fresh linen. Heath was supposed to change them; without him here, she will have to do it alone, because even though Uncle Robert fired the housekeepers years ago, he still expects Ledbury Hall to be spotless. Elinor and Heath started cleaning last night, but they’d grown bored, allowed themselves to become distracted, liberating a bottle of wine or two from the cellar. Elinor wonders if the reason Heath has ventured out is to replace the bottles. Uncle Robert counts the bourbon he keeps in what used to be her father’s study, and sometimes, he will venture down into the cellar too.
Once the beds are made and the library is dusted, she allows herself to sit down and read to pass the time. Though she has read Little Women before, she reaches for it again. Secretly, she longs for a sister and believes that maybe, in a past life, she had one. Perhaps a writer like Jo or an artist like Amy. Soon, though, Elinor abandons her book and finds herself in the foyer, staring at the grandfather clock. It’s four in the afternoon and still she is alone. She starts to catastrophise. She imagines Heath’s car skidding across the icy road and into oncoming traffic. She can see in great, clear detail the wreckage. Heath trapped inside. Crushed ribs, splintered like matchsticks, blood pouring from his temple, his wide, unseeing eyes. She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the image. She knows she is being irrational … but what if she isn’t? Her heart races and her breath comes too fast. She cannot banish the image of Heath’s broken body. She paces the front room. He is late. Why is he late? Heath told her before that they are the kind of people who will always only have each other. If he never returns, there will be no end to her loneliness.
Fear bleeds into anger. He should be back by now. He could have at least told her where he was going or how long he’d be. She takes hold of that anger and digs her fingernails into it so it cannot escape. It is better to be angry than it is to be abandoned. She goes to the window again and again, hoping to see his headlights coming up the drive. Each time, she is disappointed. She sneaks another bottle of wine from the cellar, deciding a drink will calm her nerves. She sits on his bed and takes slow, medicinal sips until the room blurs. Until she is sucked into the dark.
When she wakes, it is late evening. Never, in her seventeen years, has she been alone this long. Without Heath, she feels as though she is being carved up, piece by piece.
Her world was once made up of four, and in an instant it shrank by half. It could shrink by half again if something has happened to him. Without Heath, where would she be? What would she be? This fear that he is gone forever may be irrational, but it is as real to her as the cold floor pressed against her hot cheek. She searches again for that anger. But, like a tide returning to shore, so too does the terror. It is a forceful tsunami that washes over her and fills her ears and her eyes and her lungs until she cannot hear or see or breathe.
Then there are hands around her wrists and she is being pulled to her feet.
‘I’m here.’ The deep timbre of her Heath’s voice forces the tidal wave back. ‘Have you been drinking?’
She nods. The buzzing, stinging wasps that were in her chest this morning have migrated to her head. Immediately, she feels ridiculous. She is ridiculous. But more than that, she is relieved. All that coiled tension drains from her and she becomes soft, like candlewax, in his hands.
Heath runs her a bath. She undresses and gets in. He sits on the edge of the tub as she soaks. They are quiet. But it’s the good kind of quiet. Comfortable and smooth.
‘Where were you all day?’ she whispers, staring down at the water that ripples with her breath.
‘Went into town for supplies. The roads were icy so I waited for them to thaw a little before coming home.’
She doesn’t believe him. Knows he is lying. Can smell another woman’s floral perfume on him.
‘I was alone all day, Heath.’
Silence. Then, ‘I can’t take you everywhere, Ellie.’
‘I know,’ she says, even though she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t leave Ledbury Hall without him. He doesn’t like her to. They are always together, until Heath decides they are not. She wants to tell him how unfair it is, but she is glad he is home and doesn’t want to ruin it.
‘You need to learn to be alone sometimes. To make decisions by yourself.’ At his patronising tone, indignation gathers like a dense fog between her eyes. She rubs at her forehead, trying to disperse it, because she doesn’t want to drive him away again. ‘Robert is coming back this evening,’ he says tightly. ‘He called early this morning.’
Her stomach knots. ‘But it’s Thursday.’
He shrugs.
She gets out of the bath and wraps herself in a thick, white towel. She hoped she’d have one more night alone with Heath, a chance to ask who the perfume belongs to, before Uncle Robert invaded Ledbury Hall again.
She busies herself, brushing her hair, but she can feel Heath’s eyes on her. She glances over her shoulder. He stands behind her, his expression penetrating. She turns back to her reflection. He comes closer. He takes the brush from her hand and stars to comb her hair. In the mirror, their eyes lock. When her hair is a sleek, golden waterfall, he puts the brush down and runs his fingers through it. It feels good. She tilts her head back, leaning into him. Her entire body tingles, from the wine in her blood and the feel of his fingers in her hair, and the heat of his body against her bare back.
She shivers.
Downstairs, keys jingle in the front door lock. Uncle Robert is home.
Heath’s hands linger on her hair and then slide to her shoulders. He kisses the back of her neck, just like the lovers in the garden.
‘Don’t go down without me,’ he instructs before quietly leaving the bathroom. Her skin is still singing as his footsteps fade down the hall.
She dresses hastily. Uncle Robert bellows their names. She hovers at the top of the stairs and glances towards Heath’s closed bedroom door.
‘Elinor!’ Uncle Robert shouts, angry now.
She can’t wait for Heath any longer, she rushes down to the foyer to greet her uncle. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting. But the irritation on his face quickly shifts into something else. A kind of sad longing. ‘You look more and more like your mother every time I see you,’ he tells her.
Elinor has the feeling Uncle Robert was far too fond of his brother’s wife.
She lowers her gaze and smooths her hands over the hem of her dress. She feels him watching her.
He clears his throat. ‘And where’s that conniving brother of yours?’
‘Good to have you home, dear Uncle.’ Heath’s voice rolls down the stairs and Elinor can taste the insincerity in it. Uncle Robert can, too. His eyes narrow. Her brother takes his time joining them, which only serves to further irritate Uncle Robert.
The tension between them is immediate. Heath says their uncle is a murderer but, while he’s in charge of their inheritance, they must do as he says or risk their silent understanding: as long as they spend the weekends pretending to be the perfect family, Uncle Robert allows them to live their lives undisturbed during the week.
Their uncle takes a threatening step towards Heath. He isn’t a small man, but Heath isn’t a child anymore. At twenty years old, he is taller and broader than their uncle. Where Heath was once a sapling, he is now a great oak. Uncle Robert frowns and Elinor is sure he is thinking the same thing. ‘I collected supper from a restaurant in town,’ he announces. ‘Bring it in from the car and warm it up. You’ll serve it in the dining room.’
Heath bows in an exaggerated show of servitude.
Uncle Robert’s hand flexes and Elinor holds her breath. But then he turns on his heel and walks away, his expensive leather shoes tapping against the hard wood.
‘Why must you bait him?’ she whispers.
Heath’s gaze finds hers. ‘I told you not to come down without me.’
‘But why?’
He places his thumb beneath her chin and tilts her face up to his. ‘Because he wants what he can’t have.’
She feels her pulse in her lips. ‘And what’s that?’
‘You.’