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  Why don’t you come see me soon? You could ask Stephen to book you into the Savoy or somewhere swanky like that if you can’t bear to rough it at the flat. I’m sure he could spare you for a night or two. You could take me out somewhere nice to eat and we can catch up on all the goss.

  I love you Big Sis

  Write soon.

  All my love, Sylvia xxx’

  The second sheet came later:

  ‘My Darling Big Sis.

  Do you remember, you told me that when I met the right man I’d know?

  Well, hallelujah, you were so right!

  I met him last week at a party where they played this really COOL jazz... you would have hated it... no tune at all.... And I fell in love the moment I saw him.

  His name is Per, which is Swedish, and he is BEAUTIFUL... Oh Joyce, I’m hugging myself as I write about him now!

  After the party, we went back to his place and drank Bourbon and smoked m.... and he read Allen Ginsberg to me... My God Joyce, those poems would blow your mind! I’d send you a copy but you’d need to hide it from Stephen and I know you hate to have secrets from him.

  Then we kissed and fell into each other’s arms and made love all night.

  I know you’ll think I’m foolish, giving myself to a man when I’m not married to him, but everyone does it now and anyway, Per doesn’t believe in marriage and all those old outmoded institutions. He tells me that he’s mine though, ‘Mind, Body and Soul’. He says it to me all the time.

  Oh my darling Joyce, I can’t even BEGIN to tell you how in love I am.

  Please come to see us soon.

  Your ever loving sister, Sylvia xxxxxxxxxxx

  ‘Oh shit!’ I stared at the letter, even as I swore about it, remembering the beggar on the Underground and his muttered verses... Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’, I remembered it now. Could picture it on that almost-girlfriend’s coffee table the night I fell asleep so rudely after dessert. The black and white City Lights signed first edition. How reverently she held it as she showed it to me.... read the snippet about CCNY and Dadaism.

  I noticed that my hands were shaking as I put the letters back inside the book. The room seemed to be growing darker by the minute and it was scaring me. I shook myself. ‘Just the sun, passing over the house,’ I said. ‘Just the direction of the light.’

  There was always a rational reason for everything, wasn’t there? Even the things I didn’t understand? Even the things that seemed crazy?

  I’d almost convinced myself. And when I heard the front door opening I felt a rush of relief, thinking that Turner was home already and I wouldn’t have to go on feeling like this.

  I quelled the urge to run out to greet her, my fear of looking uncool winning out as my earlier fears died away. I took a deep breath and walked slowly to the study door, stopping in my tracks as I heard voices in the hallway outside.

  ‘How can you do this to me..? You’re breaking my heart.’ It was a woman’s voice, in an urgent whisper, followed by a sharper, indistinct murmur in reply.

  The floorboards creaked as they passed the study door.

  I waited, holding my breath, for them to get further down the hallway, then very quietly, I turned the door handle and peeped out.

  There was no-one there.

  My heart leapt into my mouth. I forgot to breathe. My ears buzzed and I thought I might pass out.

  Then the phone rang.

  I spun round and stared wildly at it for a moment before lurching back across the room and snatching up the receiver, desperate for someone, anyone, to save me from myself and my bloody over-active imagination.

  It was Turner – sounding so formal I guessed she must be phoning directly under the nose of the estate manager. ‘Hi,’ she said breezily. ‘It’s me. I’m sorry. This is taking longer than I expected. I’ll be home about one, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  I must have been a mistress of disguise. She didn’t seem to hear my terror at all.

  There was a click as the phone went down, then nothing... deadness throughout the house. I wiped my hands on my jeans and listened, my head on one side, trying to quieten down my breathing. Then I went warily to the door and looked out again.

  Still nothing - which, right now, felt like the most frightening thing in the world.

  I sucked in a desperate lungful of air as if I were about to dive under water. Then I bolted for the front door and grabbed the keys that were hanging there beside it, just in case I needed to get back inside before Turner returned home.

  She found me in the walled garden at the back of the house. I was huddled on a wooden seat, cold without a jacket, shaking inside and trying in vain to get some peace from my surroundings.

  Certainly the garden was very beautiful. Bushes of rich pink roses, Mock Orange, Lady’s Mantle and Campanula provided a lush backdrop to the purple of the lavender edging the worn stone paths. Bees were busily at work, trying to beat the rain that was on its way. When Turner came towards me through the archway from the house, her hand trailing over the top of the lavender, she sent them hovering away out of her reach. She looked calm and sophisticated – not quite so businesslike now that her work was done for the day – just a beautiful woman in a tranquil setting.

  ‘So, here you are,’ she said. ‘I was starting to think you’d run away from me. I’m sorry I took longer than I expected. Andrew doesn’t get to see me as often as he’d like to. I thought I’d never get away.’

  She was smiling at me and I knew that I ought to be smiling back. Unfortunately my face wasn’t getting the message. Her eyes clouded as she saw my expression. She sat down beside me.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  I shook my head. I was still shivering.

  ‘I...’

  Her fingers touched my cheek as she kissed me.

  ‘You’re cold,’ she said, and she sounded like she cared.

  My mind was racing.

  Night terrors shouldn’t happen in the daytime.

  Maybe I was going crazy again.

  If I was going crazy, then it was okay - really, it was. I’d much rather be mad than like my father, which was always my greatest fear of all. And if I was just crazy, maybe, after all, it was okay to take the tablets again and make it go away, like I did last time.

  I wondered if I should confide in Turner.

  I didn’t know.

  I stared at the roses in front of me as they bobbed in the breeze. Then I looked up at the clouds, buffeted by the wind, racing across the sky.

  ‘I phoned Suzanne,’ I said trying to keep the panic out of my voice. ‘And I had a row with Kay – Actually... I’m sorry. I should have asked you if it was okay... I owe you for a phone call.’

  Strangely, there was a kind of temporary relief in thinking of something as mundane as good manners, not taking liberties, being concerned about the phone bill.

  Turner ran her hand down my arm. ‘Don’t be silly, I meant to suggest it. I know how worried you were.’

  I must still have looked agitated. I don’t see how I could have hidden it.

  ‘What was the matter with Kay this time?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh... just the usual – How I’ve changed – How selfish I am now.’ When I spoke I realised how close I was to tears.

  Turner was angry, I could tell. Her hand had clenched involuntarily. Her grip was like a vice on my arm. Her fingers were digging in, hurting me.

  ‘How’s her asthma?’ she muttered.

  I jumped. ‘How on earth did you know about that?’

  ‘What?’ She seemed to shake herself. Steadily her grip loosened.

  ‘She had an attack at Su’s,’ she said. ‘On Thursday night.’

  I was worried instantly.

  ‘It must have been the stress... She didn’t say.’ I felt the frown lines digging themselves into my forehead.

  ‘Well, I guess it didn’t seem terribly important, in the scheme of things... Anyway, if I’m honest, I’m getting bored with Kay’s petty jealousy... If she
wanted you, she should have said so while you were free... How’s Suzanne?’

  I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Okay – As well as can be expected, I suppose. She was disappointed that you haven’t been in touch. I didn’t tell her I was here... with you.’

  I watched Turner carefully, waiting for her response. She seemed concerned, in that distant sort of way she had.

  ‘Probably just as well,’ she said.

  I thought I knew what she meant. I thought she was uncomfortable with how closely Thursday had pushed her centre stage in Suzanne’s life. Now that Su had other people around she probably just wanted to create some distance. It was a matter of boundaries really, and I respected her for it. Even so, it felt hard. Turner had a single-mindedness that I wouldn’t have liked in myself... not even in the new, more selfish me.

  And then, of course, there was the matter of the phone number on the blotter...

  ‘She seemed really worried that you’d be angry with her about the tape,’ I ventured.

  ‘Tape?’

  ‘The recording on the answerphone – whoever it was phoning Mary.’

  Turner didn’t look ruffled. Just like before though, I had a sense that she was hiding something.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That.’

  She stood up. ‘How about some sea air? I reckon we both need some cobwebs blowing away.’

  The Dark Lady

  By 2pm we were outside a small wooden café close to a duney beach, eating cheese sandwiches in white bread and scowling up into the darkening sky, trying to decide if it was going to rain.

  ‘I think it is,’ I said.

  ‘Probably.’

  It was very windy. Clouds were scudding along the horizon like yachts at Cowes. The ‘Walls’ flag outside the café fluttered wildly. Then it fell off its pole. We looked at each other and giggled like schoolgirls. For a moment I could almost pretend to myself that everything was alright.

  Turner knew it wasn’t though. She squeezed my hand. ‘Let’s walk,’ she suggested. And I knew that soon I would have to tell her what was going on in my mind.

  It felt okay to link arms as we got clear of the beach huts. The only people braving the ragged dunes that afternoon seemed to be dog walkers, and they had a determined air about them, trying to get home before the deluge, striding out, heads down, dogs struggling to keep up as the wind feathered and parted their fur.

  It was a strange windswept landscape. I could smell the sea, but I couldn’t see it. From an overburdened sky, the rain began to spit.

  ‘Turner,’ I said tentatively. ‘Would you be scared if you thought I was nuts?’

  She glanced at me, startled for a moment. Then she laughed. ‘We’re all nuts,’ she said. ‘We wouldn’t live such crazy lives if we weren’t.’

  I took her point... But this was more than everyday human insanity. ‘Yeah, but – I mean – like seeing things and hearing things and stuff.’

  We were drawing close to the quay at the edge of the dunes. When we reached the railings Turner leaned against them and held her head back to let the wind blast through her hair. Her clothes were pressed against her as if by an unseen hand. She drank in lungfuls of ozone-heavy air. ‘You see her don’t you?... I know you do.’

  She knew?!

  ‘I... I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘The dark lady. The one who comes to me in my dreams.’

  ‘Feel me watching over you my sweet one..’

  I glanced at Turner suddenly, unnerved.

  She was staring out over the dunes, in the direction of the sea.

  ‘Feel me drawing ever nearer.’

  ‘She’s getting closer all the time,’ said Turner, quite calm. ‘Isn’t she?’

  A scream of utter terror rose and jammed in my throat. Tiny hairs prickled over my whole body. I felt like a hysterical child, beside myself with fear.

  At the sea edge, a lone figure stood, watching us.

  ‘Is she there now?’ asked Turner. ‘Can you see her?’

  I didn’t know. I was half blinded by panic. I recognised Turner’s determination though. Her total faith. She was like someone who was in the dark but utterly trusting. Feeling her way slowly towards something she needed to know.

  ‘Yes.’ My voice didn’t sound as if it belonged to me anymore. ‘I think so.’

  Turner nodded. ‘She’s been there all my life,’ she said. ‘Always, in my dreams... and in the daytime, just out of sight. But she’s stronger now. Much stronger. She’s reaching out to me through you.’

  She sounded so sure. It didn’t occur to me not to believe her. I felt the pull on me, into the icy darkness of my nightmares. I glanced away. And when I looked up again, the woman was gone.

  Turner looked like someone who had been swept off her feet and put down again in a different place.

  I hugged my arms around myself to try to take the chill away. If Turner knew, then was this why she had brought me here?

  ‘How long have you known?’ Something shook at the edge of my fear. It felt like anger.

  She seemed to sense the changing of my mood. She made no move to defuse it.

  ‘I couldn’t be sure until you told me,’ she said.

  ‘But you’ve suspected it from the start... Haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, right from the very first night in the woods.’

  I stared at her, shaking, remembering all she’d let me go through since then. ‘You should have told me,’ I stammered. ‘You should have warned me.’

  She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t risk that. It might have scared you away.’

  Suddenly a different fear flooded through me. I was shocked at the strength of it. ‘Is this the only reason you’ve kept seeing me?’ I demanded. ‘Is this what I am? Just a channel for... her...?’ My heart was pounding. I was furious with myself. For what? For being stupid enough to imagine that someone like Turner could ever have really cared for me?

  I jumped as she reached for me, swinging me round, gripping my arms tightly, pulling me to her and holding me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve lived so much of my life in the dark. I’ve tried not to think about it. Loving you was never part of the plan. I thought I didn’t know how to love. I’m still not sure I do. Not really.’

  It was more than I’d hoped for.

  Maybe it was more than she’d hoped for too.

  I looked into her eyes and they were clouded by so many years of pain.

  ‘I can’t do this without you,’ she said quietly. ‘I feel like the end is very near now. Please, tell me you’ll stay.’

  She seemed determined to show me her countryside, and certainly it was beautiful... Narrow, winding roads, hedgerows glowing with poppies, coltsfoot and cow parsley, fields of flax, stretching pale blue amidst acres of plump, golden, ripening grain.

  Then the coastline again – the landscape changing with dizzying speed as we headed into Norfolk. We talked as we drove. Turner told me of her dreams, her sense of being watched over, her belief that there was something waiting to be known. I told her about my nightmares, the photographs, the figure I’d seen in the attic. I was still scared, but I understood Turner’s compulsion and I knew that I loved her enough to stick around and try to figure it out with her. I didn’t even notice that she hadn’t explained about the tape. And still we drove, through quaint harbour towns surrounded by cliffs that fell away to salt marsh, stretching out endlessly to an invisible sea.

  Finally, in a car park looking out over the marshes, we kissed. Rain poured down the windscreen. I felt safe there barricaded in the car by the weather.

  ‘I love this area,’ said Turner, pulling away from me as a party of bedraggled walkers came into view. ‘Dad used to bring me here when I was a kid. We’d take the boat out, or we’d just come bird watching. He could sit in the same position for hours, staring through a pair of binoculars watching for some rare bird or other. Mum thought he was mad, particularly when the next day he could go out and slaughter pheasants by t
he score just for the ‘sport’ of it. Mum never really got all the contradictions in him. He wasn’t very good with people but I loved him very much.’

  She shook her head, unexpected tears welling in her eyes. I put my arm round her shoulders, staring straight ahead, out of the windscreen, into the rain.

  ‘How did they meet?’ I asked. They seemed like an unlikely couple somehow, this English country gentleman and his American artist bride.

  Turner smiled bitterly – ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It was all very Mills and Boon... initially, at least. I think I told you Mum came over to England to study. She was at the Slade. She wanted a really rigorous, traditional grounding to her art. During the summer vacation she and some friends rented the lodge on the estate. Dad came upon her one morning, painting the dawn like someone possessed, trying to capture it before it faded. He told me he’d never set eyes on anyone more beautiful. My grandmother was still alive then and I think she was very scathing about Dad’s musical ambitions. Mum was much more encouraging, of course – in all sorts of ways, I’m sure. And she totally swept Dad off his feet. They were married that year and they had the upstairs loft area converted into a studio while they were away on honeymoon. It was Dad’s coming home present to her. He never did make it with the music, of course. He was much too nervous playing in front of an audience.’

  I could identify with that. I nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Of course,’ said Turner. ‘Happy endings depend on when you finish the story. Mum needed a strong man to support her through the miscarriages and then through her sister’s death, and Dad never hacked it with any of that. He needed too much support himself. By the time I was old enough to notice, they were like two strangers sharing the same house. They lived separate lives, barely spoke. I couldn’t really fathom out why Mum stayed in the marriage. She certainly wasn’t sticking around out of any love for me and I’m sure Dad would have made sure she was well provided for if she’d gone. But they stuck it out. Maybe they didn’t feel like they could break their marriage vows, but it felt more like they were bound by some sort of secret curse. And then, in the last few years, when he was dying with the cancer, Mum was wonderful with him.... patient, kind, loving... nursed him right to the end, and it was as if they’d come home to each other and were just like those two young lovers again.’