The History Room (8 page)

Dad to leave Letchford. To leave the Cotswold honey-stoned house. And the gardens. The mural. That was a whole different thought from me simply moving on in due course.

‘We could never sell it.’ I sounded furious. ‘Never.’ I found myself sitting very upright on my seat, fists curled, ready for a fight.

‘Think about it.’ Clara sounded weary.

‘I won’t support you in this.’

‘Don’t you think’ – she hesitated – ‘that your reaction to this might be bound up with what’s happened in the last six months? Letchford’s become
very important to you again, understandably.’

I felt like shouting at her not to patronize me, But it was true. The place had become a crutch for me. Unfortunate use of a word.

‘It’s not for us to make decisions for him.’ I pictured my father leaving the house, my mother’s birthplace, her family home for hundreds of years, the gardens still full
of the plants she’d propagated, the curtains she’d made hanging at the windows.

‘It’s something that needs to be discussed with him.’ She sounded almost mechanical now.

‘I don’t think we should make him feel he’s past it.’

‘No.’ She was no longer the law firm partner in the swish office; she was the elder daughter worrying about her family. ‘I know that. And I don’t want to see the place
go, either. I love it as much as you do. It would be weird to think of Letchford not belonging to us, of not being able to come back whenever we wanted. The boys would miss it. They’re so
proud of the house. And the mural, especially.’

‘Dad’s mural,’ I muttered, clutching the phone so hard my knuckles turned white. ‘With Mum in it. How could we leave all that behind?’

‘Do you remember when we scrubbed at the wall?’ She was still talking in the same dreamy way. ‘What we found?’

I did.

‘It was back when there was all that trouble with the bursar.’

I didn’t really remember the business with the bursar, but I did remember the woman I’d uncovered in the mural. Even my father’s tone, angry, clipped and central-European,
couldn’t tear me away. I’d barely heard the clatter of their shoes over the marble flooring.

I was looking at a girl. But what a girl. She might have been a pop star. Her short purple dress fell to just above her knees. She wore knee-high boots. Her lips were wide and full and her hair
fell in an auburn wave to her shoulders. Her large eyes were hazel and seemed to glint with an emotion I couldn’t decipher. She seemed to be begging the viewer not to look away. But at the
same time the hand we had half exposed was held up in a dismissive wave.
Go away, stay here
. I was only ten but I could spot a riddle when I saw it. ‘Who painted over you?’
I’d asked the girl. ‘And why?’

My mother’s hand was on my shoulder, pulling me away. ‘What have you done?’ she said, sounding almost confused. ‘That woman . . .’ She stopped herself. ‘How
could you do this?’

‘Who is she?’ I asked. ‘Why did they paint over her?’

‘Upstairs.’ She pulled me. ‘Now.’

‘I only want to know who she is.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

She was steering me across the hall, my feet slipping on the marble tiles as I tried to resist. A small group of sixth-formers wandered in from the back of the house and stopped to goggle at us.
They’d probably never seen my mother in a state before. I hadn’t often seen her lose her temper, let alone resort to dragging me around. Clara followed. As we climbed the stairs I
turned to catch a glimpse of her face: white. Being good meant a lot to her. I felt a pang for her. Normally I’d almost relish seeing my older sister in trouble.

Mum opened the door to the apartment and pushed me in. Dad appeared behind her. ‘How dare you?’ He spoke so quietly I could barely hear him. ‘How could you do it,
Meredith?’ I thought of telling him that Clara had also had a part in the mural defacement, but remembering my sister’s stricken face, I said nothing.

‘You know how much that mural means to us,’ my mother said.

‘I’m sorry.’ And I was. Not so much because I’d angered my mother and hurt her but because the painted woman I’d exposed had been so disturbing. I didn’t know
why. She was just a girl in a really cool dress, barely older-looking than the girls in the sixth form. But something about that expression on her face bothered me. I needed to go and have another
look at her.

‘Why did you do it?’ Mum was leaning against the wall of the little hall into our apartment now, hand on forehead.

‘We were playing a game.’ I explained how the scooter handle had hit the wall and left a mark, how we’d hoped to rub it off.

‘So it really was an accident. To start with?’ She looked relieved.

I nodded. ‘But once I saw . . .’ Once I’d seen
her
, I meant, but something warned me not to mention that painted woman.

Dad’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done, Meredith.’

‘Who is she?’ I was no longer able to hold back the question.

‘Nobody.’ He moved past me. ‘I’ll see you later.’ I heard the apartment door close behind him.

‘Mum?’ I thought she wasn’t going to answer.

‘I really don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘Probably someone he made up.’

‘Why don’t we ask Dad who she is?’

‘No,’ she mumbled. ‘He’s distracted enough as it is.’

‘What do you mean?’

She blinked, seeming to return from a place far away. Her eyes flashed again. ‘Don’t think you can distract me away from punishing you. You two can wait in your bedroom until your
father’s finished with the parents. Then we’ll decide what to do with you.’

The girl was only a painted image but she’d changed everything.

Clara and I finished our telephone call. She seemed softer by the end of the conversation, as though talking about the mural had reminded her of how much the house meant to
us.

‘You took all the rap for that incident,’ she said, sounding sad. ‘Mum and Dad were so angry. They seemed to blame you more than me. I felt bad about that.’

They’d come down harder on me. That’s how it had seemed, at least. Perhaps Clara had simply been a better-behaved child.

‘Don’t worry. I probably made your life hell for weeks after,’ I told her. After promising to call her again soon I hung up. I found the lead and fastened it to the dog’s
collar, my mind still on the woman beneath the mural. But as we walked I came alive again, the exercise shaking the past out of me. The air smelled of bonfires this morning and leaves dropped round
us as we approached the woods.

Usually when I took Samson out I felt alone. This morning I felt eyes on my back. Once or twice I turned, seeing only oozing dank mist. The world looked as though it had been printed off on a
printer that was running out of coloured ink. I shivered. The dog felt the presence of someone, too. He stopped, whined briefly and wagged his tail before continuing his pursuit of rabbits.

Pupils sometimes talked about ghosts at Letchford. I’d never seen any myself. For much of its four- or five-hundred-year history the house seemed to have lived under a blanket of
anonymity. The families who’d inherited the house over the centuries seemed to have kept their heads during times of tumult. Even the loyal Simon was finding it hard to dig up anything truly
sensational for his history of Letchford. And my mother herself, well, she’d never have wanted to make me feel jittery or uneasy either in life or afterlife. If she’d come back as a
ghost it would have been as a most considerate one, hanging around the gardens in full light and rustling a bush in gentle greeting. Thinking about that girl hidden under the paintwork in the front
hall had put me on edge, I decided.

I hadn’t thought about her for years, that personification of my father’s lost life in Central Europe. He’d never told us who she was and my mother had stuck to her story about
not knowing.

‘She wore nice clothes,’ Clara said.

‘Very striking.’ Mum’s voice was flat.

Clara had nudged me after Mum had left the room. ‘She was Dad’s old girlfriend. Before he came over here.’

My eyes had widened. I couldn’t imagine Dad with someone who wasn’t Mum. ‘How do you know, Clara?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s obvious. That’s why he’s been so quick to paint over her again.’ It was true. The repair job had been done that same day, as soon as school had
finished. The house had smelled of white spirit and paint. By morning Mum had been restored.

I still felt I was being observed. A twig cracked and I jumped. ‘Let’s go back,’ I told the dog.

Don’t be a wuss
, I heard my husband tell me in his mocking tones.

‘Shut up,’ I told him, silently. ‘I don’t want to hear your voice in my head any more.’

I wished I could hear the distant and reassuring shouts of a hockey lesson out on the fields.

I’d reached the iron gate leading to the rose garden when Samson whined again and turned round. This time I felt the hairs rise on the back of my own neck. From the corner of my eye I
observed a slight figure step out from behind a bush.

‘What are you doing?’ I sounded sharp. ‘This is out of bounds for you.’ First Emily and now a kid. Nowhere was private.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cordingley.’ The girl spoke quietly, her head bowed. I couldn’t think of her name. She was a second-year I didn’t teach. ‘I didn’t know
how else I could see you alone.’

‘You should be at lessons.’

‘I didn’t feel well. I came out for fresh air.’

‘What did you want to see me about?’ I still sounded sharp. The first person she ought to have gone to was Cathy, the school nurse.

‘That baby.’ She corrected herself. ‘The reborn doll. The one they found in Mr Radcliffe’s room.’

‘You know something about that? Why didn’t you say something at the time?’

She hung her head. ‘Perhaps I should have. But I heard it was wearing the white gown and cap.’ Word would have spread quickly. ‘I’ve seen those clothes before.’

‘Are you in the play?’

‘
The Crucible
? Yes, I’ve got a small part.’

‘So you saw the costumes hanging up in the drama department when you had lessons up there.’ I sounded impatient. My empty stomach growled and reminded me that, for all the lugging of
laden trays from kitchen to hall earlier on, I still hadn’t had my own breakfast yet. A bowl of porridge would have been good, but there wouldn’t be time for much more than a quick
coffee.

She shook her head. ‘I saw the clothes in Tracey Johnson’s bag. In the kitchen.’

‘What?’

She blushed. ‘I know we’re not allowed in there but I have to have gluten-free bread.’

She tugged at the sleeves of her shapeless school jumper. I wondered how anyone could make a piece of uniform look quite so baggy so early in the academic year. She certainly looked like the
kind of child who would need a special diet. I shouldn’t be judgemental.

‘Sometimes they forget to leave it out. So I just get it myself quickly if they’re busy.’

She had very wide hazel eyes. I ought to have told her off for entering the prohibited zone of the kitchen but I couldn’t bring myself to do this. The girl had only wanted to grab a slice
of bread from the pantry when everyone was too occupied to help her.

‘Tracey brings in that basket of hers every day. The baby’s outfit was folded up on the top in a bag. A see-through bag.’

‘When was this?’

‘Last Tuesday.’

The day before the reborn doll had been discovered in Simon’s room.

‘Thank you for telling me this.’

She nodded and looked as though she was going to scuttle off around the side of the wall.

‘Hang on, just one other thing . . . Why did you come to me and not your housemistress or tutor?’

She shrugged and raised a hand to her mouth. The nails were bitten to the quick.

‘It’s OK, you’ve done the right thing.’ I tried to keep my voice level, only mildly interested. ‘I’m just curious.’

She looked down at her scuffed outdoor shoes. ‘Don’t know. You just seem . . .’

‘What?’

‘Different.’ She raised her hazel eyes. ‘Not like the other teachers.’

Different because of what had happened to Hugh and my mother, perhaps. I probably wore it on my face, marking me out from the ranks of proper grown-ups.

‘I’ll go back now.’ She nodded a farewell.

I watched her as she ran off. My memory managed to fish out a name for her. Olivia Fenton. Her form teacher was Deidre. Deidre had mentioned having a highly strung girl who was finding adapting
to boarding school a strain. She was a termly boarder, which was probably just as well, Deidre said, because her family didn’t seem to be around most of the time. I felt the unease that
occasionally overcame me about the boarders, even these days, when Letchford was apparently such a good example of modern boarding. Some youngsters would simply never be happy away from home and
Olivia could well be one of them. Deidre would do her best, as would the housemistress, but they could never really replace Olivia’s parents.

But, I reminded myself, Olivia’s parents were possibly no longer around. That might be why she had a guardian.

Tracey would be clearing up after breakfast. I could catch her before she went home for the morning. If she’d been on breakfast duty she wouldn’t be back at lunchtime because the
rota ran dinner – breakfast for three or four days at a time.

I changed into what I thought of as my schoolmarm uniform: black tailored trousers and a smart plum-coloured silk shirt with a steel-grey tank top over it.
You can correct my work any time
you want.
Again I heard Hugh’s voice in my head. He’d always liked me in work clothes. And in casual weekend clothes. And, most of all, in no clothes at all. Perhaps nobody else
would ever look at my naked body. Except the dog, on the occasions when he burst into my bedroom to hurry me out for a walk.

I dropped the dog back to my flat and walked over to the school. A clump of rosemary brushed my leg and its aroma was strong. Rosemary for remembrance. I’d had sprigs of Letchford rosemary
in my wedding bouquet. My mother had it in hers, too.

Tracey was still in her chef’s whites, taking an inventory of the contents of one of the huge refrigerators. A notepad sat on the table. My mother had always said that Tracey was one of
the most thorough members of staff.
Of staff.
Mum had never seen Tracey as beneath her notice.