‘If Edward’s lawyer was preparing a court case for Louis, he’ll know you have a motive to shoot him. Whether he lives ordies, they’ll make sure the blame is on you. Either way, you’ve got to go.’
Dorothea heard her own rapid breath, felt herself observing this moment from outside. Edward was going to take Louis. It wasunthinkable.
Cricket stepped into the doorway, her freckles stark against her pale skin and girlish features. She held Louis in her arms. Dorothea felt her mind splitting with the strange sight. Cricket held out the baby to Dorothea. ‘Take him and go. You need to go. I’ll say nothing. I’ll tell the lawyers a different story.’
‘You hold him a bit longer, m’lady,’ instructed Edith. ‘Change him and get him ready.’ She took Dorothea by the arm. ‘Go and shower. We’ll put them clothes in the incinerator. I’ll light it. And I’ll move his body to give you extra time.’
‘But—’
‘Take the keys to his Land Rover. Drive somewhere you can hide until you work out how to get out of the country. We’ll say we haven’t seen his Lordship, that he’s likely in London with Clive, and that usually you would be here for Francis and I don’t know where you are. It’s strange. When I call the police later on, I’ll tell them the last time I saw you, there was mention of a walk into the village. It was after lunch. You’ve been missing a few hours.’
Dorothea’s world was spinning. She looked down at the blood on her hands, her arms and legs and stomach. She was covered in sticky red blood.
‘Wipe your hands, now.’ Mrs Wilson handed her a cloth and opened up a large garbage bag. ‘Put it in here. And all your clothes. Don’t touch anything with his blood.’
The baby began to cry. Dorothea gave a panicked look towards Cricket.
‘Leave him with us until you’re cleaned up,’ said Edith. ‘And don’t say goodbye to Francis. I gave him a good slug of brandy for the shock, so he’ll be sleeping. You best get gone. Just grab a small bag, take the baby and off you go.’
Dorothea began towards the stairs.
‘Stop.’
Mrs Wilson bent down and undid Dorothea’s boots. She saw now they were dirty, blood spattered. She lifted her feet obediently. Around her, the house seemed to be disappearing. She watched the stairs, the banisters receding as she mounted the staircase in her socks. Was this a nightmare? She was leaving. She must take Louis and run. But how could she abandon her other son?
55
PHYLLIDA
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
There are little things that sometimes plague Phyllida. Fragments that crumble, whispers she can’t quite hear. A theatre of irreconcilable moments that run through her mind. Did they happen? Does she exist?
Scenes come to Phyllida as her mind floats: the bruises Cricket showed her on the day she fled. Phyllida wants to reach out and mend Cricket’s heart, to heal her wounds; she should have realised.Should have known.She’d awoken with those same fingerprint marks the year before, when her frightening new reality had seeped into her drug-addled brain.Bleddesley House was not safe. She had stumbled from her bed, morning light driving through her window, head pounding, mouth thick with acid. She ached as if she had been dragged through a minefield.
The last thing she remembered from the night before was agreeing to have a drink in the library with Edward, despiteher intuition sounding warning sirens. Edward had never once offered her a drink, but, she reminded her better self, perhaps he wanted to talk about Francis. It might be her chance to urge fatherly kindness.
Cricket—only partially in residence before their wedding—was staying with her parents; Clive had been called home on a family emergency; and it was a weekend, so Mrs Wilson was at her mother’s. Francis was sleeping. As she vomited her fear and pain the next morning, she realised the house had been empty of anyone who might have borne witness to his monstrous act. Dorothea had tried to convince herself she was going mad, that nothing could have been done to her, but when her monthly didn’t arrive two weeks later, the terror set in all over again.
Phyllida now acknowledges that distant terror, but she has long ago forgiven her younger self. She ignored her intuition that night, but Louis David was the outcome, and she would not change that.
Now, she hears the beeping of a machine. Slow and regular. She struggles to sit up, but manages to do so. She would very much like a glass of water. Her stomach feels hollow. There are voices, and footsteps and a bell that has a familiar repetitive tingle—it rings then fades.
It stirs further memories from long ago. The bookshop with its blue paint and timber packing cases with wood shavings spilling out as they unpacked. The odd, reclusive book buyer, Mr Eversham, who would send a note about a book he needed, and she would cycle through the village in the rain or snow and take the parcel to his tumbledown house behind the marsh. He had a daughter. What was her name? It’s onthe tip of Phyllida’s tongue, though her tongue feels thick and dry.
The memories keep coming, and she lets herselfbein the bookshop. The pain is still there, but she welcomes it as she would an old companion. When you’re nineteen you should be carefree. You should be out exploring the world, not huddled in a darkened shop, planning furtive ways to rearrange reality so you can keep face. She began to write things down that summer; accounts of what happened.
She often thinks of Adeline Fitzhenry and her pretty car. British racing green, they called it. Their friendship began in earnest that summer, after James had left for America. Adeline was quite the catch in the friendship department. But if she hadn’t become friends with Adeline, she might have had a very different life. A normal sort of life, where she wasn’t forced into hiding. She would have turned twenty with the lightness of an innocent; well, all the lightness that the daughter of a maverick, money-laundering bookmaker could rustle up. She might have travelled to Portugal, worn a bikini, climbed a mountain. Instead, she was tethered to that shop. To that village. To that grand, cold house. Until she had to go.
It wasn’t Adeline’s fault, of course; she was a victim as much as Phyllida. Still, nobody wants to feel sorry for the wealthy or the pretty, do they? People would have said Adeline was crying crocodile tears if she’d told her story. Look what they said about poor Princess Di when she complained about there being three in her marriage. Turns out she was right, but it was too late to apologise to her then, wasn’t it? People feel the need to leave a mark, to pierce your skin.
She moves her fingers, her hand. There are piercings here too. A sticky tube into her arm. Her finger is clamped with something. She is attached to machines. The thought is exhausting. Oh, for the energy of youth.
She lived for the days Adeline would come into the bookshop and say, ‘Dorothea! How wonderful to see you. What treasures do you have for me today?’ In hindsight, she should have known what she was walking into when they hatched their plan. But she was young. She was only nineteen.
56
FRANCIS
