The music stopped and in the darkness I could see that the piano lid was closed. The room was empty.
Rule 4: Always observe your fellow guests. Listen very carefully to what everyone says and be aware of all movements.
SUGGESTIONS FOR THE SUGGESTIBLE
I’m standing in the garden, Dad lying just in front of me. Smoke drifts in grey clouds between us and I can’t see him properly. A flint-eyed rook sails in on the breeze and lands silently next to him. Dad’s face is all crumpled with anguish. There the bird sits, watching. And then it begins with its busy pecking of his kind eyes.
Peck.
Peck.
Peck.
I open my mouth to scream but it is his voice I hear.
‘Don’t let them, Ursula. I can’t see her. I can’t see.’
Peck.
‘I can’t see her. I can’t—’
And this is how I woke in the early hours of the morning, shouting. I couldn’t breathe in those first seconds of limbo, the breath wedged in my throat as if a wet cloth had been stuffed down there. The thick darkness confused me and I had no recollection of where I was. The bed was shaking and it took me a moment to realize it was me shaking it. I touched my face and it was slick with sweat. The salt of it mixed freely with my tears, stinging my eyes, but I didn’t try to close them. I never do in those moments, otherwise I sink straight back to the garden. Once or twice I have and all I’ve found is his body, with one black feather beside him that always blows silently away before I get to him.
I waited, like a child making sure there was nothing moving in the darkness, before I reached for the lamp and fumbled with the switch. The acid flare burned my eyes and I could hear the blood drumming around in my ears. My hands were clammy and my fingers trembled as I reached into the bedside drawer and brought out Dad’s Bible. I placed it carefully on my lap and opened it. Inside was the familiar square shape he’d cut into the pages. Dad’s little secret, now mine, a hip flask filled with brandy that he’d secreted inside the Bible. ‘Spirit of the Lord,’ he’d laugh and, with a wink, take a long sip. I don’t know why he’d decided on Bible brandy, presumably because that was one place Mother would never look. I put it to my mouth, my hands still shaking, and felt the cold lip of it jitter against my skin. And I drank. I drank it like poison until it burned all the way down to the core of me, scalding every inch it travelled. Then I sat clutching it to me. The tears fell unchecked until exhaustion and the brandy took over.
I drifted in and out of dreams but there’d been just enough of a window of sleep for my old bed fellow, the Night Terror, to stalk back in and lie across the rest of the night. He squatted on my belly and then he stretched out his long, thin fingers until all his fear covered my face and sunk into my dreams.
I’ve tried keeping myself awake many times to avoid the tormenting little demon, but then it infects every waking moment. I once managed three nights of deprivation. It was bliss but sleep inevitably snared me and the beast just came back roaring. The only answer I have is that it’s better to give in to it.
When I’d roused myself enough to dress, I hid myself in the sitting room, drifting on the noxious waves of stale brandy that still washed over me. It seemed like a good place to avoid breakfast. My head was heavy and my arms weak. I couldn’t help staring at the undisturbed thin film of dust on the piano lid. My head was lousy from my near sleepless night.
I could hear Mother and Mirabelle as they came down the stairs, deep in suspicious mutterings about Aunt Charlotte, the house, the food and anything else they could hate.
‘Breakfast. Now, Ursula,’ Mother rasped, as she passed the door to the sitting room. She paused and frowned. ‘You need to eat,’ she said, pointedly. Somehow, she had an unnerving radar where I was concerned. She always knew exactly where I was and invariably what I’d been doing.
Breakfast was another sordid meal served in the stultifying splendour of the dining room. Aunt Charlotte in her usual boisterous voice and tweeds had some complaint about an English man serving his own breakfast. Most of Aunt Charlotte’s etiquette comes from Julian Fellowes’ movies so has a touch of the melodramatic and insane about it.
‘And why is the bloody dog here again?’ she barked.
Bridget stiffened. ‘Mr Bojangles is entitled to eat too, isn’t he?’
‘Elsewhere.’
‘Well, I paid extra for him to have bed and breakfast.’ She fed the small animal another sausage. ‘So he has every right to be here, don’t you, my baby?’
Aunt Charlotte shook her head slowly.
‘You people need to relax,’ Less commented in her smooth judgemental voice.
She had cultivated a smug expression that she had mistaken for serene. She informed everyone that she had completed an hour of yogalates before any of us had even woken up, making me wish even more that I hadn’t.
Angel entered with another basket of stale bread rolls and placed them on the dining table, much to the disgust of Aunt Charlotte. Fellowes must have had a position on bread rolls at some point.
‘What is this?’ Mother demanded.
‘Bread, Madam.’
‘I realize that, but it’s hardly the wholesome array of spectacular local food and foraged artisan produce we were promised.’
Angel stared with empty eyes that could easily have been misinterpreted as the look of a man who didn’t care.
‘Where are the sausages?’ Aunt Charlotte frowned.
‘Oh,’ Bridget smiled, ‘I think Mr Bojangles just had the last one.’
‘Good Lord, Angel, what do you and Mrs Angel eat? Surely not stale loaves and slippery fish, unless you really are as devout as you appear.’
Angel closed his eyes slowly. ‘Mrs Angel is partial to an omelette, Madam. I use fresh farm eggs, onions, plenty of wild mushrooms, cheese, a grind of black pepper and a good sprinkle of salt. Every morning. For thirty years.’ There was a tarnished edge to his words.
We stared at our meagre basket of hardened rolls.
‘If I’d wanted a recipe, I’d have asked for one, man,’ Mother sighed. ‘Look, I was promised artisanal, foraged food—’
‘I used to forage with my sister’s family in the woods in France,’ Mirabelle reminisced. She often did this. I suspected it was lies. ‘Just by the farmhouse they converted. Well, before it fell down. We went truffle hunting . . .’
‘Like pigs?’ I offered.
Mother issued The Look.
‘You find the real food when you’ve foraged for it yourself,’ Less began in her sanctimonious voice. ‘My yoga instructor runs a retreat—’
‘Is this the same sort of retreat as the weed farm you went to?’ Aunt Charlotte laughed. ‘Bunch of hippies getting stoned.’
‘How dare you? That was a spiritual centre for enlightened mindfulness. Something you should think about!’
Angel coughed, was ignored, so coughed again, this time as if he had swallowed something and was choking.
‘What is it?’ Mother asked with her usual joie de vivre.
‘Excuse the interruption, Madam, but Mrs Angel—’
‘Where exactly is Mrs Angel, Angel?’ Mother asked, irritably.
‘Performing her duties, Madam.’