Grunting, I heaved myself up out of the antique four-poster bed that had been in the family for over a century. This bed was meant to bring me comfort, with its age and stability, being as much a part of the fabric of the house as the mortuary and bodies within it. Yet for years, now – decades, in fact – I hadn’t experienced a full, peaceful night’s sleep. The only human beings sleeping well in Crowthorne House were the dead downstairs, and sometimes, I envied them.
I was 41 years old with the spinal constitution of an elderly grave digger. The pain was maddening. It prevented sleep and gave me more time to dwell on the regrets and mistakes of the past, until any semblance of rest was impossible.
All I could do to ease my suffering was swallow another painkiller. That, and pace up and down, muttering like my adoptive father was known to do in the night.
I wrapped my dressing gown around myself as I stepped out onto the balcony, bathing my tired facein the cold night air. I wondered what time it was. It had to be the early hours. I knew Margaret would be sleeping. Waking her for a tea service was out of the question, but it crossed my mind that if she knew I was awake, she’d do it, as she had once or twice before. She knew a simple tray of tea and biscuits comforted me on these awful nights, when the past plagued me. Midnight snacks had worked a charm for me when I was a little boy, suffering from night terrors – and Margaret had known me since I was three years old. Like a mother, she had a natural sense for these things.
Sometimes, when my obligations with the business and my private woes overwhelmed me, I longed to be that boy again. The boy with no responsibilities, except to study hard and eat my meals on a tray that Maggie brought me. Spoiled, pampered, and with none of my brother’s expectations for the family business on my shoulders. If only I’d been as care-free as I’d seemed on the surface, riding around the halls on my little trike.
The full moon was glowing, and it was a crisp night. I was alone with my thoughts. There was nobody to trouble me now. I took a deep breath and watched it escape me in a cloud which floated out over the mature shrubs and flowers asleep for the autumn and coming winter. The wrought iron gates, interwoven with ivy and Virginia Creeper, creaked faithfully in the breeze.
I flinched, my heart leaping as my eyes fixed on a strange movement by the lock. A hand – a pale white, slender hand – was curling around a twist of iron. I blinked rapidly and leaned over the balustrade to get a closer look, sure that I had to be seeing things. The old balcony groaned beneath my shifting weight. Could it be that I’dtaken one too many painkillers, and they were making me hallucinate?
No, there was a wrist, too! A thin, long wrist as slender as the hand it was attached to, and now the cuff of a blouse. More movement, now, as a figure pulled themselves up and placed another hand on the wrought-iron gate. Their face emerged between the swirling iron designs, ghostly-pale, glancing up at the house.
I stepped back, briefly, as I realised they’d be able to see me, although only a small bedside lamp illuminated my bedroom. Who could possibly be waiting at the gate in the middle of the night?
Sighing, I realised, of course, exactly who might be waiting. Some poor patron who had lost someone dear to them, who needed to make arrangements, and couldn’t wait at home alone for morning to come. I knew that feeling far, far too well; the sensation that some action had to be taken rightnow, or else something even more dreadful was going to happen. Something they couldn’t imagine.
Action, of any kind, was better than inaction when it came to grief. It was preferable to being alone at home, stuck with the voices in your mind.
“Wait there. I’m coming down,” I called out, making the eyes of the pale face divert swiftly up toward me. Both hands were holding the wrought iron gates as if in pleading from a jail cell.
I pitied them already, but I knew I could be of service. It’d be a tight squeeze with my schedule, and four bodies already waiting – two prepared – but I would find a way. Anybody waiting at the gates in the middle of the nightdeserved that much. I made my way downstairs, brushing the unruly hair from my forehead and clearing my throat as I went. I unlocked the front door and could see, at the end of the garden path, the pale face waiting faithfully.
I stepped out in my slippers, the gravel crunching underfoot – and stopped, stricken, as my eyes focused on the person awaiting me.
She was young. Very, very young – and impossibly pale, like an angel, or a spirit. Her face was forlorn as I’d expected, her doe-eyes almost black and framed with pale eyelashes which matched her snowy-white-blonde hair. She was small, and slender, like a child...and painfully familiar to me.
“Louisa?” I asked into the darkness, my breath evaporating into the night.
My heart pounded so fast I felt almost weakened by it.
The meek figure called something unintelligible back to me. I stayed, rooted to the spot, paralysed with indecision.
“Speak up,” I said, instead.
“My name is Grace,” she called back, in a soft voice that sounded nothing like Louisa, not a bit. My pounding heart sobered.
I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose, telling myself to get a damn grip. How could it possibly be Louisa, looking as she did back then, at twenty-one years old?
“Patrons usually use the side entrance over the gravel,” I said, approaching the gate with the keys in my hands. I found the right one and unlocked it, pulling it open over the wild flowers and long grass. It looked unkempt at firstglance, but it was an organised wildness. As a funeral director, my ethos was to embrace nature where possible, and keep in touch with the earth.
“Come in, please,” I said.
The young woman hesitated, as if surprised at my offer. She bent and lifted two heavy bags; one holdall and an over-stuffed suitcase, which she dragged along behind her.
I couldn’t imagine what she’d brought with her, but grieving people often did peculiar things – like turning up in the middle of the night. I would ask once we were comfortably inside.
“Let me help you with those,” I said.
Her relief was obvious. She was bundled up tight in a woollen coat with a scarf, blouse, and skirt beneath, from what I could see – covered from top-to-toe in smart but aged clothes, as if they belonged to somebody else, like an elderly relative. They were definitely not the kind of clothes I'd usually see on a woman so young.
“Have you come far?” I asked, as I took the bag from her slight hand and took the suitcase similarly. “Have you been waiting long?”
The bags were heavy, laden down with only god knew what. Clothes for the deceased, perhaps. I couldn’t imagine she’d brought them across London on the tube.
“I’ve come from the Yorkshire Dales – I’ve a small farm, Heather House,” she said, in a soft northern accent. She was breathless, and no wonder. “I’d been here maybe an hour or two, when I saw your light come on. I planned to knock the moment it was sociable to, once morning came.”
