“I … I can’t do that.”
“But it’s the only way. We’ll go and find Tom. He might be there, up in his little flat, sitting by the windowsill …”
“Juniper—”
“You said you’d help me.” Her voice was tight, hateful. “Why didn’t you help me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t—”
“You’re supposed to be my friend; you said you’d help me. Why didn’t you come?”
“Juniper, I think you’re confusing me—”
“Oh, Meredith,” she whispered, her breath smoky and ancient. “I’ve done a terrible, terrible thing.”
Meredith.My stomach turned like a rubber glove pulled inside out too fast.
Hurried footsteps and the dog appeared, followed closely by Saffy. “Juniper! Oh, June, there you are.” Her voice was drenched with relief as she reached her sister’s side. She wrapped Juniper in a gentle embrace, drawing back at length to scan her face. “You mustn’t run off like that. I’ve been so worried; I looked everywhere. I didn’t know where you’d got to, my little love.”
Juniper was shaking; I expect I was too.Meredith …The word rang in my ears, sharp and insistent as a mosquito drone. I told myself it was nothing, a coincidence, the meaningless ravings of a sad, mad old woman, but I’m not a good liar and I had no chance of fooling myself.
As Saffy brushed stray hair from Juniper’s forehead, Percy arrived. She stopped abruptly, leaning on her cane for support as she surveyed the scene. The twins exchanged a glance, similar to the one I’d witnessed earlier in the yellow parlor that had so perplexed me: this time, however, it was Saffy who broke away first. She’d managed, somehow, to penetrate the knot of Juniper’s arms and was holding her little sister’s hand tightly in her own. “Thank you for staying with her,” she said to me, voice quavering. “It was kind of you, Edith—”
“E-dith,” Juniper echoed, but she didn’t look my way.
“—she gets confused and wanders sometimes. We watch her closely, but …” Saffy shook her head shortly, the gesture communicating the impossibility of living one’s life for another.
I nodded, unable to find the right words to reply.Meredith.My mother’s name. My thoughts, hundreds of them, swarmed at once against the current of time, picking over the past few months for meaning, until finally they arrived en masse at my parents’ home. A chilly afternoon in February, an uncooked chicken, the arrival of a letter that made Mum cry.
“E-dith,” said Juniper again. “E-dith, E-dith …”
“Yes, darling,” said Saffy, “that’s Edith, isn’t it? She’s come to visit.”
I knew then what I’d suspected all along. Mum had been lying when she told me Juniper’s message was little more than a greeting, just as she’d lied about our visit to Milderhurst. But why? What had happened between Mum and Juniper Blythe? If Juniper was to be believed, Mum had made a promise that she’d failed to keep; something to do with Juniper’s fiancé, with Thomas Cavill. If that was the case, and if the truth really was as dreadful as Juniper suggested, the letter might have been an accusation. Was that it? Was it suppressed guilt that had made my mother cry?
For the first time since I’d arrived at Milderhurst I longed to be free of the house and its old sorrow, to see the sun and feel the wind on my face and smell something other than rancid mud and mothballs. To be alone with this new puzzle, so that I might begin to unpick it.
“I hope she didn’t offend you …” Saffy was still speaking; I could hear her through my own reeling thoughts as though she was far away, on the other side of a thick and heavy door. “Whatever she said, she didn’t mean it. She says things sometimes, funny things, meaningless things …”
Her voice tapered off but the silence left behind it was unsettled. She was watching me, unspoken sentiments in her eyes, and I realized that it wasn’t concern alone that weighted her features. There was something else hiding in her face, particularly when she glanced again at Percy. Fear, I realized. They were frightened, both of them.
I looked at Juniper, hiding behind her own crossed arms. Did I imagine she was standing especially still, listening carefully, waiting to see how I’d answer, what I’d tell them?
I braved a smile, hoping against hope that it might pass for casual. “She didn’t say anything,” I said, then shrugged my shoulders for good measure. “I was just admiring her pretty dress.”
The surrounding air seemed to shift with the force of the twins’ relief. Juniper’s profile registered no change, and I was left with a strange, creeping sensation, the vague awareness that I’d somehow made a mistake. That I ought to have been honest, to have told the twins all that Juniper had said, the cause of her upset. But having failed thus far to mention my mum and her evacuation, I wasn’t sure that I could find the necessary words—
“Marilyn Bird has arrived,” said Percy bluntly.
“Oh, but things do have a habit of happening all at once,” said Saffy.
“She’s come to drive you back to the farmhouse. You’re due in London, she says.”
“Yes,” I said.Thank God.
“Such a shame,” said Saffy. Through sterling effort and, I suppose, many years of practice, she managed to sound completely normal. “We had hoped to offer you tea. We have so few visitors.”
“Next time,” said Percy.
