The Full Legacy Page 12

  ‘I’m afraid Ros is rather smitten with her,’ she continued, smiling. ‘She’s an actress, isn’t she?’

  I nodded, trying to work out how it was that Ros was so consistently taken with the women in my life.

  ‘Is she famous?’

  ‘No, not really. She does a lot of theatre and there’s been a bit of TV work over the years; ‘Doctor Who,’... she played an alien in that... ‘Casualty’... ‘The Bill’... that kind of thing, but always fairly minor roles. She was really pretty when she was younger. I’ve never really been sure whether that helped or not. It landed her a couple of walk on totty parts in ‘Carry On’ films in the 1960’s but I think maybe it stopped her getting taken seriously too.’

  ‘Must have been a strange life. How on earth did she juggle all that with being a mum?’

  ‘She did okay. It wasn’t easy for her. She was just a kid when she had me and then by the time I was six, she was a single parent. My granny used to look after me a lot, but she died when I was eight.’ I didn’t mention that, after that, aside from various dodgy lodgers and babysitters, including the aforementioned ‘Speed Queen’, with their erratic childminding duties, I’d pretty much fended for myself. It had actually suited me better being on my own than coping with the quirks and peculiarities of the grown-ups Mum saw fit to leave in charge of me. I didn’t see why I needed to tell Turner any of that. I always found that I ended up feeling horribly disloyal to my mother when I talked honestly about my childhood.

  ‘What happened to your dad?’

  ‘He left us.’

  I was glad when Turner chose not to pursue that one.

  ‘What’s the fiancé like then?’ she asked. ‘Apart from being a bit on the young side?’

  ‘Ros doesn’t spare any of the details, does she?’

  ‘Course not.’ She adopted a broad Essex accent. ‘Gossip’s no fun unless it’s juicy.’

  It was a brilliant impression. I laughed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never met him. But I’ve been an awful prude about the age thing.’

  ‘Well – that’s what people have kids for, isn’t it – So there’s somebody to disapprove of them in their old age?’

  It was one of the things I loved about Turner, the way she consistently made me feel better about myself.

  I felt guilty about feeling better too. But the further we got from London, the more unreal the last few days began to feel. It was as if at any moment I might wake up and find that it had all been a dream within a dream. I guess Luke might have called that shock, or denial. But it was better than feeling the way I’d felt before.

  And, despite everything, Turner’s presence beside me still unsettled and excited me in just about equal measure. I wondered if this was how addicts felt when their drug of choice was pulsing through their veins. She offered me such freedom from everything that had stifled me for years. I felt drunk and reckless just being with her. It was a feeling I recognised only too well from my early days with Corinne.

  We drove on under a heavily bruised sky. The hedgerows looked as if they’d been colour-washed grey.

  Turner was a long time before she said anything else. Then suddenly she grinned. ‘You do realise you’re being kidnapped, don’t you?’

  I laughed, joining in the game. ‘In that case,’ I said. ‘I suppose I’d better warn you that no-one in my family has any money.’

  ‘Good. I’ll just have to keep you then, won’t I?’

  Suddenly, she looked very serious. I felt a chill run down my spine. I desperately wanted her to make love to me... There and then.... anyway she wanted.

  I hated myself for feeling like that.

  I looked out of the window instead and hoped that the feeling would pass.

  Eventually, we pulled in at a Little Chef, where I could get pancakes with maple syrup.

  Turner looked faintly amused at the peculiarities of my diet.

  ‘Didn’t your mother ever manage to get you onto proper solids?’ she asked.

  I laughed. ‘Too soon, probably, knowing my mum... I’ll have to ask her, but I bet she had me on toast and black coffee by the time I was three months old.’

  I looked out of the window at the darkening car park. ‘The forecast’s for more rain,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll have to think of some indoor entertainment then,’ she murmured, raising an eyebrow suggestively. ‘Or get wet outside.’

  She had a way of looking at me that could turn my insides to jelly. She’d taken her overshirt off and her breasts were rising and falling gently under the thin silk vest as she breathed. I sucked Cola through a straw and tried very hard to turn myself off.

  In the process, I completely forgot about phoning Mum.

  At the next table, a blond haired tot was tackling a huge ice cream sundae. I watched him enviously as he dribbled it down the front of his dinosaur T-shirt. Turner was watching him too. Her eyes grew misty as she caught his eye and smiled. It hadn’t occurred to me before that she’d like kids.

  I asked her about it – whether she would want to have children at some point.

  She hesitated. ‘I would have liked to.’ She took a long drink of coffee. ‘Adam too... strangely enough. I think he had some kind of theory about that being the only way of achieving immortality – passing on your genes to the next generation. Anyway, I guess it wasn’t meant to be. I had a couple of miscarriages, nearly full term. I didn’t really have the heart to try again after that. The marriage was going from bad to worse anyway. Why bring a baby into a mess like that?’

  Over the table, she played with her spoon. From her tone, she could have been talking about anything – the shopping list almost. But I’d come to recognise the tension along her jaw that told me this had been important to her.

  ‘It must have been hard,’ I said.

  ‘Runs in the family,’ she shrugged. ‘My mother lost three babies before she had me... Anyway, have you finished? Let’s get moving before it gets dark.’

  She pulled off the main road just before Lowestoft. It was dark now. We hadn’t been able to beat the night after all. On the country lanes our headlights picked out the hedges; an owl flying low; sudden corners that were obviously familiar to Turner. When we stopped, it was in front of imposing wrought iron gates. She got out in the rain to open them. Then the wheels scrunched on sodden gravel as we pulled in front of a huge house, all in darkness except for one lantern light glowing by the main entrance.

  I stared up at the place. It didn’t look like a hotel. And it didn’t look like anybody was home. In fact, it all looked rather sinister to me.

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Home,’ she said.

  ‘If you’re trying to impress me, it’s working.’

  ‘Good.’

  I gazed up at the place and willed myself to like it.

  ‘I grew up here,’ said Turner. ‘And it’ll be mine one day. It’s pretty special to me. Come on. Let’s get inside.’

  I felt uneasy still. The countryside was hard for me. Despite my dabbling in the garden, I’d always been a city girl at heart. Used to the permanent glow of the London sky, the darkness felt foreign and threatening, and the constant sound of wind and rain in the trees spooked me. Even the smell of the place was intense – a thick, fresh loamy smell being knocked up from the flowerbeds by the rain. I remembered our liaison in the woods and dragged my heels as she headed for the front door. It was just a crazy freak of my imagination of course, but I sensed something grim about the place. All those empty rooms! They gave me the creeps.

  Close to the door, Turner stopped to say something to me and saw my face.

  ‘We can go to a hotel if you’d prefer it,’ she said.

  She looked hurt.

  I made a supreme effort. ‘No, of course not. This is brilliant, truly. I just hadn’t got you down as a Lady of the Manor, that’s all.’

  I took a deep breath as she turned her key in the loc
k and told myself to get a grip.

  Once inside, with the lights on, I felt better anyway. The hallway was big and bright and had a broad sweeping staircase leading up to a long balustraded gallery on the next floor. Plain cream walls and huge watercolours of sea and marsh lightened the effect of the mammoth oak doors leading into the downstairs rooms, and with Turner safely by my side, the place suddenly felt warm and positively welcoming.

  ‘It’s great!’ I said, relieved. ‘Who painted the pictures?’

  I figured they’d be by somebody famous, just as all her stuff in London had been. I didn’t recognise the style though. I guessed it must be someone local. I looked more closely at the one nearest me, trying to find a signature.

  ‘They’re my mother’s,’ said Turner, and for a second, I thought she looked troubled. ‘She was good, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Was? I thought your mum was still alive?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Yes... she is... but she doesn’t paint anymore. There was this awful family tragedy not long after I was born. Mum’s sister was studying at the RCA. She came down from London for my christening and she was killed by a hit and run driver. Mum had some sort of breakdown over it and she hasn’t picked up a brush since. All that talent and she just gave it up.... sad, eh?’

  ‘Yes, grief does funny things to people.’ I knew that as much as anyone. Even so, it seemed odd to me – especially for a woman engrossed enough in her art to call her child Turner. I’d have expected someone so talented and committed to seek refuge in creativity, not reject it. I looked from the painting to Turner and back, slightly mystified.

  ‘They were very close,’ she said, as if she had read my mind and wanted to answer my question. ‘Mum never would talk about her though... I’ve always felt like it was my fault... It wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for me and my bloody christening. I think Mum blamed me for it too. She spiralled into this deep dark depression and, after all those years of wanting a baby, she never really bonded with me. She still struggles with it. She pretends to love me, but she certainly doesn’t like me. It doesn’t help that, apparently, I’m the spitting image of her sister.... Anyway...’ she looked exhausted suddenly. ‘That’s enough about the tortured psyche of my mother...’

  She swayed slightly. It was as if the stress of the last few days had just hit her like a wrecking ball.

  I reached for her and she sagged into my arms.

  ‘God, I’m so tired of it all,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ I stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head, holding her tight to me as if I could protect her from the world that seemed so intent on falling down around us. ‘I love you,’ I whispered, knowing that she wouldn’t hear me.

  And as she snuggled deeper into me, as if she could have fallen asleep right there, still standing, in my arms, I felt the vulnerability just beneath the surface of her cool facade, and I knew that my heart would be bound to her forever, no matter what the truth about her turned out to be.

  We stood like that for a long time. Then, finally, she stirred. ‘Let’s get straight to bed,’ she said, stepping back and reaching for my hand to lead me up the stairs.

  The Attic

  Around 3am I had to go to the bathroom.

  Reluctantly, I left my warm place curled around my sleeping lover and felt my way into the long corridor outside.

  It was still raining. I could hear it on the window at the end of the corridor, see it in the shadows cast by the half-hearted moon. I could see only dimly. Still... I could see. Swallowing back my fear of the dark, I tried to remember where the bathroom had been when I went earlier, but everything looked different with the lights out and I tried three doors before I hit lucky – two bedrooms and a broom cupboard – everything eerie in the thin, blue light.

  The bathroom was probably museum-worthy. It was Delft tiled and dominated by a huge enamelled bath with massive taps and a mineral stain where the water had dripped for years. The dripping reminded me of a Duke of Edinburgh Award trip from school to a camping barn in Yorkshire where our sadistic gym teachers goaded us up soggy fells with maps and compasses. For a treat, they allowed us a visit to a small pretty town with shops as well as a castle and a river with rowing boats. Some old hermit woman had lived in a cave there, back in the year dot, and she’d made a lot of prophesies, some of which had actually come true. In front of the cave there had been a petrifying well where the salts in the water turned things to stone. I remembered staring up at some of the things left to hang there – old socks and gloves – an ancient top hat – and a whole line of frozen abandoned teddy bears, so cold and unloved looking that I’d felt quite melancholy until Michelle suggested leaving her knickers to petrify and made us all laugh.

  I didn’t turn on the light. I didn’t want to make the dark outside darker when I had to leave.

  And the dripping tap was barely audible now above the rain, pouring from the branches of the trees that jostled and scratched at the window.

  Then I heard the rustle of someone passing along the corridor outside.

  Thinking it must be Turner, I went to the doorway, pulled the door open and looked out down the corridor. At the bottom, a shadowy figure was turning the corner and a chill ran down my spine.

  God knows why I followed, feeling like I did. Maybe I was still trying to make sense of my fear... Anyway, I did follow, finding myself climbing a narrow flight of wooden stairs into what must once have been the servants’ quarters. Ahead of me was total darkness. I ran my hand along the door frames, counting – one – two - three. Then a door creaked open, square in the middle of the corridor, spilling a pool of blue over my feet, and dazed and adrenalin-drunk by then, I went in.

  Once I got my bearings, I realised that I was in a huge loft, like the studios artists inhabit in American books and films. It had sloping walls with massive windows swooping right across one side, taking up almost all of the space between vertex and floor. A thin ultramarine light flooded in and the sound of the rain, battering down onto the glass, was like fistfuls of impatient fingers tapping.

  When I finally located her, I barely recognised her at all. She was standing so still and staring at me so strangely. She was like the woman I’d been holding in my arms only moments before, and yet, so unlike her...

  Sick with uncertainty, I tried to say her name, but I couldn’t, I was too filled with a sense of the eeriness of the room and too unnerved by the presence of this strange version of my girlfriend. I began to wonder if I was truly awake. There was a dreamlike quality about her now. It may have been a trick of the light and the shadows cast by the raindrops on the glass, but even the air about her seemed to be shimmering. She took a step towards me and panic pulsed through my entire body. For a moment I tried to reason with myself. Then fear got the better of me and I almost fell over myself backing out of the room, staggering backwards, breaking into an almost run as I got out into the corridor and skidded, scrambling for a foothold down the stairs.

  I don’t know how I managed to find my way back to our room again, but some kind of homing instinct took me there.

  Once inside, I pressed myself against the cool silk of Turner’s dressing gown hanging behind the door. I was gasping for breath. I kept telling myself that it was all okay. Turner had every right to walk around her own house if she wanted to. I must have given her a real fright following after her in the dark like that. In fact, she was probably up there right now, thinking she’d brought some crazy woman home with her. We’d have a really good laugh about all this when she came back downstairs.

  I’d just about convinced myself when I slid back into bed and turned over... and she was there.

  I wondered how long she’d been watching me.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked quietly, reaching for me in the dark.

  ‘Oh, nowhere... Just the bathroom,’ I lied, trying to stop myself from shaking.

  ‘You were ages.’

  ‘Yeah, I got a bit lost.’

&nbs
p; ‘Mm... I missed you.’

  She was drifting back into sleep. I forced myself to steady my breathing, feeling her warmth against me. I wished she would stay awake and keep holding me, but her arm grew limp and eventually I turned away from her, curling myself into a tiny ball, cool, at the edge of the bed.

  I kept thinking of that stupid Ouija board all those years ago – still not knowing if Corinne had rigged that up with her friends, just for a laugh at my expense. She’d had that kind of edge to her, that ability to exploit people’s weakness for fun.

  I wondered if Turner was like that too.

  I’d felt so alone then and I felt it now.

  It was almost dawn before I dared to close my eyes.

  The Study

  By the morning, I’d convinced myself that I’d imagined the whole thing.

  No wonder I’d scared myself, I thought, still half asleep but already rationalising like mad. What did I expect? Wandering round a spooky old house in the middle of the night when my nerves were already shot from Mary dying and psychic messages and shadowed photographs and goodness-knows-what after effects from Ros’s bloody vol-au-vents.

  I opened my eyes warily though, still half afraid of what I might see.

  Everything looked normal enough to me.

  Sickly grey sunlight filtered through Sanderson drapes.

  Turner was leaning on one elbow, gazing down at me. She didn’t look like somebody who’d been zooming around on different astral planes. She looked gorgeous in fact – tousled and a bit sleepy.

  ‘You look like butter wouldn’t melt when you’re asleep,’ she said.

  ‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ I replied.

  And didn’t I just know it?

  Bemused at how much I’d scared myself, I reached out for her under the sheets and let my hand rest lightly on her hip, curving my thumb round to stroke a path over her skin. Her sigh of appreciation came deep.