Linus had shivered in the maze all night before Mother finally convinced Father to send Davies in after him.
It took a week before Linus’s ankle healed, but every day for a fortnight thereafter, Father marched Linus back to the maze. Set him to finding his way through, then berated him for his inevitable failure. Linus began to dream of the maze and when he was awake drew maps from memory. He worked at it like a mathematical problem, for he knew there must be a solution. If he were worth his salt he’d find it.
After two weeks, Father gave up. On the fifteenth morning, when Linus appeared for his daily test, he didn’t even lower his newspaper. ‘You’re a great disappointment,’ he said. ‘A fool of a boy who will never amount to anything.’ He turned a page, shook the paper straight and scanned for headlines of note. ‘Remove yourself from my room.’
Linus had never gone near the maze again. Unable to bring himself to blame Father and Mother for his shameful failings—they were right, after all, what kind of a boy couldn’t find his way through a maze?—he blamed the garden. He took to breaking the stems of plants, removing flowers, stepping on new shoots.
All are shaped by things beyond their control, traits inherited, traits learned. For Linus, the piece of his leg bone that had refused to lengthen defined him. As he grew, lameness begot shyness, shyness begot a stammer, and thus Linus grew into an unlikeable little boy who discovered that attention came his way only when he behaved badly. He refused to go outside, so his skin grew pallid and his good leg thin. He put insects in his mother’s tea, thorns in his father’s slippers, and gladly took whatever punishment came his way. And thus, in such predictable form, Linus’s life continued.
Then, when he was ten years old, a baby sister was born.
Linus despised her on sight. So soft and fair and bonny. And, as Linus discovered when he peered beneath her long lacy frock, perfectly formed. Both legs the same length. Dear little feet, not a useless, wizened piece of flesh among them.
Worse than her physical perfection, though, was her happiness. Her pink smile, her musical laugh. What business did she have being so happy when he, Linus, was miserable?
Linus determined to do something about it. Whenever he could get away from his governess, he would sneak into the nursery and kneel by the edge of the bassinette. If the baby slept, he would make a sudden noise to startle her. If she reached for a toy, he would move it away. If she held out her arms, he would cross his own. If she smiled, he would arrange his features into a mask of appalling horror.
Yet she remained unaffected. Nothing Linus did could make her cry, nothing dinted her sunny disposition. It perplexed him, and he set his mind to inventing sly and singular punishments for his little sister.
As Linus grew into his teens, became even more awkward, with long gangly arms and odd ginger hairs sprouting from his spotty chin, Georgiana blossomed into a beautiful child, beloved of all on the estate. She brought a smile to the face of even the most hardened tenants, farmers who hadn’t had a kind word for the Mountrachet family in years would send baskets of apples to the kitchen for Miss Georgiana to enjoy.
Then one day Linus was sitting on the window ledge in the library, using his treasured new magnifying glass to turn ants to ash, when he slipped and fell. He was unharmed, but his precious glass shattered into a hundred tiny pieces. So cherished was his new toy, so used to disappointing himself was he, that despite his thirteen years Linus burst into tears of rage, great hulking sobs. He reproached himself for having fallen in such a clumsy way, for not being clever enough, for having no friends, for being unlovable, for being born imperfect.
His tears were so blinding that Linus didn’t realise his fall had been observed. Not until he felt the tap against his arm. He looked up and saw his little sister standing there, holding something towards him. It was Claudine, her favourite dolly.
‘Linus sad,’ she said. ‘Poor Linus. Claudine make Linus happy.’
Linus had been speechless, had taken the doll, still staring at his little sister as she sat beside him.
With an uncertain sneer he pushed one of Claudine’s eyelids so that it was dented. Looked to see what effect his vandalism had had on his little sister.
She was sucking her thumb, watching him, big blue eyes full of empathy. After a moment she reached out and dented Claudine’s other lid.
From that day forth, they were a team. Without complaint, without so much as a frown, she weathered her brother’s rages, his cruel humour, all the things that rejection had wrought in him. She let him fight her, and berate her and, later, cuddle her.
If only they’d been left alone everything would have turned out well. But Mother and Father couldn’t bear that someone loved him. He heard them speaking in low voices—too much time together, not proper, not healthy—and within a matter of months he was packed off to boarding school.
His grades were appalling, Linus made sure of that, but Father had once hunted with the Master of Balliol College and thus a place was found for him at Oxford. The only positive thing to come out of his university days was his discovery of photography. A sensitive young English tutor had allowed him use of his camera, then advised him on his own purchase.
And finally, when he was twenty-three, Linus returned to Blackhurst. How his poupee had grown! Thirteen and so tall. The longest red hair he had ever seen. For a time he was shy of her: she was so changed, he had to learn her again. But one day, when he was photographing near the cove, she had appeared in his viewfinder. Sitting on top of the black rock, facing out to sea. The salty breeze was weaving through her hair, her arms were wrapped around her knees, and her legs, her legs were bare.
Linus could hardly breathe. He blinked, continued to watch as she turned her head slowly, looked directly at him. Where other subjects couldn’t conceal the knowingness in their eyes, Georgiana was completely unselfconscious. She seemed to be looking beyond the camera directly into his eyes. Hers were the same empathetic eyes that had watched him crying all those years before. Without thinking, he squeezed the camera button. Her face, her perfect face, was his to capture.
Carefully Linus pulled the photographic print from his coat pocket. He was gentle, for it was old now, rough around the edges. The last of the sun’s light was almost gone, but if he held it at the right angle . . .
How many times had he sat like this and gazed upon it, pored over it after she disappeared? It was the only print he had, for when Georgiana left, someone—Mother? Adeline? one of their minions?—had sneaked into his darkroom and removed his negatives. Only this one remained, spared because Linus carried it always on his person.
But now, a second chance, and this one Linus wouldn’t lose. He was no longer a child, but master of Blackhurst. Mother and Father were both in their graves. Only that tiresome wife of his and her sickly daughter remained, and who were they to stand in Linus’s way? He had courted Adeline to punish his parents for Georgiana’s flight, and the engagement had delivered such a final, brutal blow that the woman’s accommodation in his house had seemed a small price to pay. And so it had been. So would it continue to be. She was easily ignored. He was master, and what he wanted he would have.
Eliza. He allowed the sound of it to escape across his lips, lodge within the curls of his beard. His lips were trembling and his skin had cooled.
He was going to make a gift to her. Something to inspire gratitude. Something he knew she’d love, for how could she not when her mother had loved it so before her?
32
Cliff Cottage, 2005
Cassandra stepped through the gate and was struck once more by the strange, heavy silence that lay general around the cottage. There was something else, too, something she felt but couldn’t name. An odd sense of collusion. As if by entering the gates she was agreeing to a pact whose rules she did not know.
It was earlier in the day than the last time she’d come and flecks of sunlight flickered in the garden. The landscaper wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes so Cassandra put th
e key back in her pocket and decided to explore a little.
A narrow stone path, almost obscured by lichen, wound along the front before disappearing around the corner. The weeds at the side of the house were tall and thick and she had to pull them away from the wall before stepping through.
There was something about the garden that reminded her of Nell’s backyard in Brisbane. Not the plants so much as the mood. As long as Cassandra could remember, Nell’s yard had been a jumble of cottage plants, herbs and brightly coloured annuals. Little concrete paths winding their way through the growth. So different from the other suburban backyards, with their stretches of sunburned grass and the occasional thirsty rose bushes inside white-painted car tyres.
Cassandra reached the back of the cottage and stopped. A dense tangle of thorny brambles, at least three metres high, had grown across the path. She stepped closer and craned to see over the top. The shape was uniform, linear, almost as if the plants themselves had formed a wall.
She made her way along the hedge, trailing her fingers lightly over jagged ivy leaves. It was slow going, the undergrowth was as high as her knees and threatened to trip her at each step. Midway along she noticed a gap in the brambles, a small gap but enough to see that no light shone through, that there was something solid behind it. Careful not to be pricked by the thorns, Cassandra reached a hand in and leaned closer as the hedge devoured her arm, all the way to her shoulder. Her fingers scraped against something hard and cold.
A wall, a stone wall, coated with moss if the damp green smears on her fingertips were anything to go by. Cassandra wiped her hand on her jeans and pulled the title deeds from her back pocket, turned to the property map. The cottage was clearly marked, a small square towards the front of the block. According to the map, though, the rear property line extended quite a way beyond. Cassandra refolded the map and tucked it away. If the map was correct, this wall was part of Nell’s property, not its boundary. It belonged to Cliff Cottage, as did whatever was on the other side.
Cassandra continued her obstacle course along the wall, hoping to find a gate or a door, anything permitting entry. The sun was rising in the sky and the birds had relaxed their singing. The air was heavy with the sweet, swooning perfume of a climbing rose. Although it was autumn, Cassandra was becoming hot. To think she had once imagined England a cold country to which the sun was a stranger. She stopped to wipe sweat from her brow and bumped her head on something low hanging.
The gnarled bough of a tree reached armlike over the wall. An apple tree, Cassandra realised when she saw that the branch bore fruit, shiny, golden apples. They were so ripe, so deliciously fragrant, that she couldn’t resist picking one.
Cassandra checked her watch and, with a longing glance at the bramble hedge, started back the way she’d come. She could continue her search for a door later, didn’t want to risk missing the gardener. Such was the odd sense of dense seclusion surrounding the cottage, Cassandra had the feeling she might not hear him from back here, even if he called out.
She unlocked the front door and went inside.
The house seemed to be listening, waiting to see what she would do. She ran her hand lightly along the inside wall. ‘My house,’ she said softly. ‘This is my house.’
The words pressed dully into the walls. How strange it was, how unexpected. She wandered through the kitchen, past the spinning wheel and into the little sitting room at the very front. The house felt different now that she was alone. Familiar somehow, like a place she’d visited long ago.
She eased herself into an old rocker. Cassandra was comfortable enough with antique furniture to know that the chair wasn’t about to collapse, and yet she felt wary. As if the chair’s rightful owner was somewhere nearby and might return at any time to find an intruder in their place.
As she polished the apple on her shirt, Cassandra turned her head to look through the dusty window. Creepers had plaited themselves together across the glass, but she could still see enough to make out the rambling garden beyond. There was a little statue she hadn’t noticed before, a child, a boy, perched on a stone, staring at the house with wide open eyes.
Cassandra lifted the apple to her lips. The sunny scent was strong as she bit into it. An apple, from a tree in her very own garden, a tree planted many years before that still produced fruit. Year in, year out. It was sweet, were apples always so sweet?
She yawned. The sun had made her very drowsy. She would sit, just for a little while longer, until the gardener arrived. She took another bite of the apple. The room felt warmer than it had before. As if the range had suddenly begun to work, as if someone else had joined her in the cottage and was beginning to make lunch. Her lids were heavy and she closed her eyes. A bird somewhere sang, a lovely, lonely tune; breeze-blown leaves tapped against the window, and in the distance the ocean breathed steadily, in and out, in and out, in and out . . .
. . . in and out of her head all day. She paced again across the kitchen, stopped at the window but forbade herself another glance outside. She looked at her little mantel clock instead. He was late. He had said half past the hour. She wondered whether his tardiness meant anything of consequence, whether he’d been caught up, fallen victim to second thoughts. Whether he was still coming.
Her cheeks were warm. It was very warm in here. She went back to the range and turned the damper to slow the burning. Wondered whether she should have prepared some sort of meal.
A noise outside.
The floors of her composure dissolved. He was here.
She opened the door and wordlessly he came inside.
He seemed so large in the narrow hall, and though she knew him well by now, she was shy, couldn’t meet his eyes.
He was nervous, too; she could see that, though he did his best to conceal it.
They sat opposite one another at the kitchen table and the lamplight quivered between them. A strange place to sit on such a night, but that was as it was. She looked at her hands, wondered how to proceed. It had all seemed so simple at first. But now the way forward seemed criss-crossed by threads just waiting to trip them up. Perhaps such meetings were always thus.
He reached out.
She drew breath as he caught a long thread of her hair between two fingers. Looked at it for what seemed an age. Looked not at the hair so much as the strange fact of her hair in his fingers.
Finally, his gaze lifted and met her own. His hand came to rest lightly on her cheek. He smiled then, and so did she. Sighed with relief and something else. He opened his mouth and said—
‘Hello?’ A loud rapping sound. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’
Cassandra’s eyes flicked open. The apple in her hand dropped to the floor.
Heavy footsteps and then a man was standing in the doorway, a tall, solidly built man in his mid-forties. Dark hair, dark eyes, wide smile.
‘Hello there,’ he said, holding his hands in an attitude of surrender. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘You frightened me,’ said Cassandra defensively, pulling herself out of the chair.
‘Sorry.’ He stepped forward. ‘The door was open. Didn’t realise you were having a kip.’
‘I wasn’t. I mean, I was, but I didn’t mean to. I only meant to sit for a while but . . .’ Cassandra’s explanation trailed off as her mind returned to the dream. It had been a long time since she’d dreamed anything even remotely erotic, a long time since she’d done anything remotely erotic. Not since Nick. Well, not so that it counted, not so that she wanted to remember. Where on earth had it come from?
The man grinned and extended his hand. ‘I’m Michael Blake, landscaper extraordinaire. You must be Cassandra.’
‘That’s right.’ She blushed as he closed his large, warm hand around hers.
He shook his head slightly, smiling. ‘My mate told me Australian girls were the prettiest but I never believed him. Now I know he was telling the truth.’
Cassandra didn’t know where to look, settled for a spot just beyond his le
ft shoulder. Such open flirtation made her uncomfortable at the best of times, but her dream had left her doubly unsettled. She could still sense it, lingering in the room’s corners.
‘I hear you’ve got a problem with a tree?’
‘Yes.’ Cassandra blinked and nodded as she pushed the dream aside. ‘Yes, I have. Thanks for coming.’
‘Never could resist a damsel in distress.’ He smiled again, a broad, easy smile.
She pulled her cardigan a little tighter round her middle. Tried to smile back but managed only to feel prim. ‘It’s over this way. On the stairs.’
Michael followed her along the hall, leaned to see around the curve of the stairwell. He whistled. ‘One of the old pines. Looks like she’s been lying here a while. Probably came down in the big storm of ninety-five.’
‘Can you move it?’
‘Course we can.’ Michael looked over his shoulder, past Cassandra. ‘Get the chainsaw will you, Chris?’
Cassandra turned; she hadn’t been aware there was anyone else in the room with them. Another man stood behind her, leaner than the first, a little younger. Sandy brown hair curled roughly around his neck. Olive skin, brown eyes. ‘Christian,’ he said, nodding slightly. He extended his hand a little, hesitated, then wiped it on his jeans. Held it out again.
Cassandra reached to meet it.
‘Chainsaw, Chris,’ said Michael. ‘Come on, speed it up.’
Michael raised his eyebrows at Cassandra as Christian left. ‘I’m due at the hotel in a half-hour or so, but never fear, I’ll get the main work done and leave my trusty sidekick to finish up.’ He smiled at Cassandra with the sort of direct gaze she found impossible to hold. ‘So this is your place. I’ve lived in the village my whole life and never thought it was owned by anyone.’ ‘I’m still getting used to the idea myself.’