“Maybe. Though her husband, who died a few years ago, was undistinguished. But she could have been a sleeper asset, someone they waited to use until they needed her. This is why I want to know more about her. Eight months before her death, she left her family home very abruptly and went to live alone on this remote island. Her son and daughter-in-law were living with her, and the move shocked them because it was very out of character. They’d recently had a baby, her first grandchild, who she loved. But more important than any of that, and the reason I wanted to meet you here, is that shortly before she left for Scotland, a much-loved but incomplete piece of embroidery disappeared from the home of a woman Eleanor had befriended and cared for in the last weeks of her life. It was about the size and shape of the missing piece from the Everly embroidery.”
The security guard appeared again, pacing in the other direction, giving them a long glance as she passed.
“We should leave,” Lillian whispered. “They have eyes and ears everywhere.” She stood abruptly and left the gallery. The museum was busier now. Clio followed her downstairs and outside.
They emerged beneath the shelter of the stately columns holding up the museum’s grand portico. Clio noted Lillian scanning the crowds outside. It was raining hard and umbrellas and hoods were up everywhere, making it hard to see people’s faces.
In the gloomy daylight, Lillian looked more troubled than Clio had ever seen her. “Don’t underestimate these women. I lost a colleague to them; she was also a dear friend. And don’t mention this to anyone on the team. You must be very careful.”
Clio had to stand close to hear Lillian over the rain. She found herself staring at her mentor, trying to figure out whether she really knew her at all. The Lillian she’d been used to was measured and calm; she rarely showed fear, never got dramatic. This felt far from normal.
The rain intensified, coming down so hard that the black cabs on Great Russell Street slowed to a crawl, and even so, their tires sent up arcs of water and their brake lights strobed brightly; red light refracted into fragments in the spray, and was reflected in the pooled water on the road.
“I’ll be in touch,” Lillian said.
Clio’s phone rang. “Wait,” she said. She needed to see who was calling because she was supposed to be in the office, but she wanted to ask one more thing. Lillian didn’t hear or didn’t care. She hurried down the steps as Clio took the call. As she spoke to a colleague, Clio watched Lillian run through the rain across the area in front of the museum and out through the wrought-iron gates. A few seconds later she heard the squeal of brakes, a thud, a scream, raised voices. The world seemed to stop. Clio instinctively held her breath, unable to move until her body forced out a lungful of air, then she ran after Lillian.
A black cab was parked at an angle across the street. Bystanders were gathering. Lillian lay in the middle of the road, unmoving, eyes wide open, staring at the sky. Blood seeped from a wound at the back of her head. A channel of rushing rainwater swept it away. Time slowed for Clio.
She knelt beside her friend. A drop of rain landed on Lillian’s eyeball and rolled away, sliding down her temple, just like a tear, but Lillian didn’t blink or flinch. Clio choked back a sob as she tried her best to staunch the head wound, but even before she heard sirens, she knew there was no saving her. Lillian was dead, and Clio couldn’t help wondering if it was something to do with what she’d just been told.
Anya
Two weeks after my interview with Professor Diana Cornish, Sid and I took a predawn flight to Edinburgh and white-knuckled thedrive north to St. Andrews under sheets of rain that slicked the roads and drenched the countryside, glazing it inky green.
Mum was better, back at home, though frail and still upset about my talking to St. Andrews. She’d thought Yale was a done deal and that it was best for me. I tried to reassure her that her illness had nothing to do with my decision to interview more widely, but she switched tack, accusing me of wanting to stay in the UK because of Sid.
Never, ever make a life decision based on a man, Anya. Promise me you won’t! If there’s one thing I’ve learned from what your father did to us...
I was tired of hearing that. It made me sad and angry that my father had treated her so badly, but I resented her assumption that I was destined to repeat her mistakes, and that Sid might not be a good man. For now, I decided not to tell her about the trip to Scotland. I didn’t want her more agitated than she already was.
As we reached St. Andrews, the rain stopped. We parked and entered the town through the old medieval gate. It was a small, stolid place, predominantly low buildings built from gray sandstone, hewn into rough rectangular blocks, some tinged with variants of the color of rust, and every sill, corner, and carving weather worn and time softened so there wasn’t a sharp edge to be seen, yet there was also the sense that this place could never be cowed by its wild location.
In place of Oxford’s multiple, ethereal spires, St. Andrews had just four, and they were stark in silhouette against an unforgiving sky that had hardened from slate to granite as we’d traveled north. If any of Oxford’s marshy air had lingered in our lungs, the north wind scoured it out in moments, with harsh gusts of fresh, salty air that we could taste.
Like the simplest line drawing of an arrowhead, three main roads led from one end of town to the other, converging on theheadland, funneling visitors toward the remains of an extensive medieval holy complex, as they had done for centuries.
We took a meandering dogleg path, weaving through alleyways that connected those roads, some no wider than a person. These spaces between the streets, at the backs of houses, shops, and pubs, all of them accessible only on foot, felt like the true heart of the place. They were full of life, developed haphazardly over time. Behind thick walls and through open gates and doorways we caught glimpses of gardens, greenhouses, buildings that extended back in unexpected ways, courtyards with communal washing lines, staircases crawling up the rear of buildings, balconies, picture windows, secretive and private exits and entrances. It felt as if the way people lived back there might not have changed much for centuries.
But all roads led to the headland in the end, and it was spectacular. The sea was wild and loud, the wind stiff. Waves rushed from horizon to shore and broke violently over rocky outcrops and the harbor wall. We stood on the cliff top beneath the old walls of the cathedral complex and its ruins. The remaining structures were skeletal, but the spires and towers still stood proud and tall. Shipping must have used them to navigate for centuries. A sign informed us that St. Andrews had once been the “Jerusalem of the North,” and I could believe it. The grandeur of the place hadn’t been chastened by ruination.
“Imagine the storms they must get up here,” Sid said. “It’s like we’re standing at the edge of the world.”
He wasn’t wrong. By comparison Oxford suddenly felt far too precious a place, far too self-absorbed. The idea of St. Andrews’s potential and its possibilities began to grow in me. It was a smaller town, but you could be a bigger person here, with a wider mind, I thought.
We drank coffee and ate pancakes and bacon at a café just yards from cathedral ruins. A sign in the window boasted that PrinceWilliam used to meet up there with his girlfriend, Kate. We emerged in time to make the short walk to South Court, where the Institute of Manuscript Studies was based.
The entrance was via a short, low tunnel that cut through a building fronting South Street. Sid wished me luck and left me there. To settle my nerves, I focused on the sound of my footsteps, which scraped and echoed as I walked through the tunnel.
It opened out onto a small, enclosed courtyard, no bigger than half a tennis court. Part paved and part cobbled, it was surrounded by white-rendered buildings whose windows overlooked the small space blankly. A gnarled tree grew in one corner of the yard on a patch of earth, its canopy wide and low enough to make a man stoop; a smattering of yellowed leaves had fallen below it.
I climbed a set of stone steps. The Institute was marked by a discreet plaque, and I pushed the buzzer beside it. Diana Cornish opened the door almost immediately.
“You made it!” she said. “Welcome! Come in!”
The interior was gorgeous. Medieval-scale rooms with uneven, lime-washed walls, floors made from wide planks of oak or flagstone, an ancient fireplace that had pride of place. Everything was beautifully restored and simply decorated to showcase the building’s age, simplicity, and quirkiness.
Cornish indicated the foot of a narrow staircase that disappeared behind a wall. “We each have an office upstairs,” she said. “They have lovely views, which I’ll show you later, but first come and meet everyone. We’re so excited you’re here.”
