The Twilight Hour Read online

  Nicci Gerrard

  THE TWILIGHT HOUR

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE TWILIGHT HOUR

  Nicci Gerrard is the co-author, with Sean French, of the bestselling Nicci French thrillers. Her novels Things We Knew Were True, Solace, The Moment You Were Gone, The Winter House and Missing Persons are all published by Penguin and received rave reviews.

  To Michael, friend in all seasons

  1

  Eleanor woke to what was not there. Outside, the wind still roared, dashing pellets of rain against the windows; inside it was too silent, not a breath or a heartbeat save hers. The darkness felt uninhabited. Before she reached out her hand, groping past the water jug and the vase of dying flowers to touch the bed and find it empty, the blanket thrown back and the pillow dislodged, she knew she was alone. She let fear seep through her, into every space in her body. She could taste the muddy, metal ache of it in her mouth; feel it in the palms of her hands and the base of her spine and in her throat like a rippling, oily snake; she could smell it on her skin, sour as spoilt milk.

  She was awkwardly curled up in a chair and her left foot was numb, her cheek creased from where it had rested against the wood. When she moved, her skirt rustled and she remembered that she had not undressed the night before, only loosened her hair and kicked off her shoes. Too tired and full of confusion, she had sat down in this chair in the darkness and let sleep end the dreadful day.

  For a few seconds, she stayed quite still, listening to the erratic thump of her heart, waiting to know what she should do, and then she pushed herself out of the chair with a violence that made her stumble. Her cramped foot caught against a mug and tipped it and she felt her ankle give; she heard herself let out a whimper of pain. She could barely remember the shape of the room and held her hands out blindly to find her way to the door, knocking against the end of the bed, the corner of the chest of drawers, feeling around for the door knob, the banisters that would lead her down the narrow, creaking stairs. Pitch darkness everywhere, however much she strained her eyes to catch a chink of light through the blackout curtains, until she stumbled into the kitchen and saw the dull glow of the dying embers in the hearth.

  There was a pair of boots by the settle, and she fumbled her feet into them and opened the front door. The wind met her full on, slapping her wetly in the face, whipping her hair around her cheeks, taking her breath away. Even from the shelter of the porch, the sound of hundreds of thousands of leaves in rippling motion was extraordinary, like a sea in a storm or a train bearing down on her. No one should be out on such a night as this, not a stray dog or a flung bird. She didn’t give herself time to consider, but stepped out into the streaming wildness and clumsily started to run. The boots were much too big for her; she could feel their thick rubber chafing her shins. The wind gusted against her as if trying to force her back. Lifted twigs scraped her skin and out on the lane a branch bounced past her, then a dustbin lid in a hurtling clatter. She was soon soaked to the skin, her shirt clinging to her ribs and her damp skirt tangling in her legs. She tried to call out, but the wind snatched the name from her mouth before it made a sound and gulped it up.

  The houses on either side of her were unlit, huddled shapes. She ran on. There was a pain in her side, and her ankle where she had turned it sent pinches of pain up her leg; her toes slammed against the end of the boots. She had painted her toenails red two nights before, while he watched her. Burning eyes. She could feel the bruise he had left on her arm; the love bite she had wrapped a scarf around to conceal throbbed on her neck. He had pressed his fingers into her flesh and ground his mouth against hers until she tasted blood, and he had said that she could never leave him. Not now. They had gone too far.

  She sensed rather than saw the path and turned off the road. Overhanging branches clawed at her hair; there were brambles in the hedgerow that tore at her wet clothes. The wind thundered. There was a smell of ploughed earth and wet bracken. Then she was out on to the open meadow and running down the slope. The sound of the rushing waters met the sound of the leaves and the rupturing sky. At last she came to a halt and stared wildly around, making out the massed shapes of trees, the brown surge of foam. A blind certainty had impelled her here, and now what?

  Even as she stood there, at a loss, the rain stopped and the moon flew clear out from the clouds for an instant – and in that instant she saw, she thought she saw, a face. A white face in the dark waters, like a petal, like a broken reflection of the light. Then the moon was swallowed back into the clouds and the face, or the phantom, was gone and all that remained was the roiling blackness.

  Eleanor kicked off the boots and then pulled off her skirt, feeling it rip. Even now, at this moment of extremity, she recollected how he had unhooked it, very slowly, crouching at her feet, his hand between her legs, his eyes fixed on her, looking into her. Memories have their own pace; they exist in their own world where the rules of time do not operate. For as she ran downstream and then – arms spread wide and hair streaming out behind her in a banner – as she jumped high and wide towards the water, she found herself remembering the first time she had laid eyes on him and it was as if she was seeing him again with that stab of terrible desire. And she found herself thinking, almost with rueful amusement, that this was really a very stupid thing to do. She wondered if she was about to die, but felt no fear, only a sense that she had not had the life she had planned. What would people think? What would they say? Shaking their heads: poor them. Who would have thought, who would have guessed, how did it all come to this?

  Time stopped and she hung in the air like a great bird. The rain had ceased, the wind was dying down, the wildness blowing itself out and leaving a ruined landscape behind. Too late, too late. She saw herself suspended there, looking down at the dislocated face of the moon, and then she saw herself fall.

  She hit the water and became her flailing, desperate body again, no thoughts or memories left. The current buffeted and rolled her, sucked her under. Her lungs were bursting and there were bright spots exploding behind her eyes. Something – a rock, a log – scraped at her thigh; she felt her skin split. She imagined blood clouding in her wake. Then suddenly she surfaced, exploding into the wind again, sobbing air in, howling it out. Down once more into the liquid rush of grit and pebbles and mud, river weeds wrapping her, but for a shorter time and the next time she came up she drew in a deeper and more sustaining breath and managed a few strokes, carrying her with the filthy flow of the water. She flung her hand out to clutch at an overhanging branch and felt it burn along her palm, and her fingers closed on air. Everything was too fast, a grainy rush of sensations: rocks and stones and trees and the roar of water and the faintest flicker of the half-moon that occasionally nudged out from behind the clouds.

  She hit a rock and pain needled through her; her body was thrown sideways like any other piece of river garbage. This time she managed to grasp a root and hold on to it, he
r body swirling sideways. And then, as if in a dream, she saw the face once more – or was it? – just upstream and surging towards her, tipped up to the moonlight; like a sleeping child, she thought, like a water lily peaceful in the floods. She reached out with a howl and clutched, found hair that slid through her fingers, found a handful of cloth that she tugged on. And the body followed like a great fish, pale and glinting under the water, until it was there beside her, rubbery waterlogged flesh and closed eyes, all stoppered up with mud and slime.

  ‘You fool,’ she said above the noise of the river. She heard her voice, almost conversational, matter-of-fact. ‘You will not. You will not.’

  Eleanor took the upper arm and pulled again and now they were in the slipping shallows, protected by the embrace of the roots while the river rushed past. A bit further up, she saw that the bank dipped right down, and she heaved and bumped the weight until she reached it. Holding on to one wrist, she clambered backwards on to the bank. The body started to slide from her.

  ‘No,’ she said, as though words could stop it escaping. ‘I’m not going to let you go.’

  And she hauled at the arm until she thought she would pull it from its socket, and now she could put her hands under both armpits and she pulled with all her strength, feet sliding in the muddy grass and her spine crackling with effort. She let out gasps with each tug. It sounded like sex, she thought. Like a ferocious climb towards climax.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Please come on. Please.’

  With agonizing slowness, the weight shifted, moved towards her until, with a lurch that made her topple backwards, it was out of the shallows and lying on the grass on top of her. For a moment, she lay quite still, staring up at the soft bowl of darkness above her, holding the moon and the white sprinkle of stars, and looking at the dim pattern made by the branches of the trees. Nothing cared about these two bodies spread out on the wet earth; nothing saw. Then she scrambled from under the weight and knelt beside it, leaning down to put her warm lips on the cold ones, blowing breath steadily into the mouth the way she had been taught. Breathe in, blow out, breathe in, blow out. My life into yours. My life for yours. My love. Selves dissolve. Pump the chest. Again, then again. Like a machine. Like bellows. A memory of being a child and watching the fire puffed into life. And at last there was a gasp, a groan, a gush of watery bile escaping the mouth. Eleanor stopped. She lay back down again on the bank and closed her eyes. She could feel the earth turning beneath her. Her body was seized by a violent shivering; every muscle was jolted by cold and grief. Hot tears seeped out from under her muddy lids.

  ‘I will never forgive you,’ she said. ‘Can you hear me? Never.’

  She opened her eyes and stared up at the great black sky hanging over her, blazing now with stars. It was over.

  2

  Eleanor Lee stood in the library that smelt of things that were musty and decaying. The wind rattled at the loose panes and curled its way in down the chimney. It had been many weeks since she had set foot in here. Dim shapes had become even dimmer; objects melted back into the shadows. Darkness was setting in, and she had waited too long and come too late to hide the past from the present.

  She pointed her cane in front of her, feeling for the edges of chairs, stray items on the floor. Brushing against the old rocking horse, she set it moving, cantering on the spot, white eyes staring wildly. Her stick met an object and she bent to touch it: it must be the dolls’ house that her children and then her children’s children had played with, yes, with a roof that lifted up to reveal a miniature, orderly world. A pile of books toppled as she passed. A silk scarf that someone had left was lying there like the discarded skin of a snake. She lifted it, rubbed it thoughtfully, and hung it round her own neck. Her feet moved softly through the debris; her long skirt swished; the bangles on her wrists chinked. She reached the pair of tall steel cabinets standing side by side against the far wall and slid the top drawer of the taller one open. Her fingers scrabbled over the contents, feeling the tightly packed cardboard and plastic folders, the stray papers underneath. Where could they be? She pulled out a random folder and held it in front of her for a moment, squinting her eyes as if suddenly everything would become clear again, just for an instant. It was quite hopeless of course. There was drawer after drawer of filed papers and then she knew, without seeing, that there were boxes on the floor as well, and she couldn’t even remember now where she had put what she had come to find. She should never have kept them all these years.

  On an impulse, Eleanor plunged her hands into the drawer and drew out folders, scattering them around her, swishing at them violently with her cane before bringing out the next handful until there was nothing left. She yanked open the second drawer, but suddenly stopped and gave a deep sigh.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she said out loud, in a soft, cracked voice. ‘Think.’

  She made up her mind and tapped her way out of the room, moving more quickly once she was in the familiar hallway and then the living room where a fire crackled in the hearth and a bottle of wine stood open on the side table. There was a piano near the door, its polished wood gleaming in the soft light and on its top a copper bowl brimming over with its own rich, shifting colour. Eleanor felt around on the mantelpiece for the box of matches, which she took back with her into the library, shutting the door behind her. She moved with purpose towards the two filing cabinets, her cane zig-zagging swiftly in front of her, and when she got there pulled open the bottom drawers, feeling to make sure there were folders stored in each of them. She struck a match, felt it flare, and dropped it into the first waiting space; then she prepared to strike the next.

  She had thought that a metal drawer would be the perfect receptacle to hold its own small and self-contained bonfire. She could burn the contents of the drawers quite safely, one by one, leaving only a soft dissolving heap of ashes. She was wrong. Almost immediately, the flames shot out of the first drawer, tall and orange, and caught the bottom of the velvet curtain. They started to gobble up the material, greedy and bright. Eleanor stood for a moment, transfixed; the shapes of the flames printed on her eyelids, the acrid smell in her nostrils and throat. Then the heat hit her and she stumbled backwards, tripping against the dolls’ house. She took the thick embroidered shawl that Gil had given her years ago from her shoulders and tried to drop it over the drawer of fire to stifle it, but it simply fed the flames, which had taken on a life of their own, leaping away from the cabinet of secrets and running up the wood of the windows. Sparks flew at her and she felt a myriad of tiny blisters bubble on her skin. It was like being stung, she thought, maddened wasps darting from the furnace.

  As she backed out of the room that was full of flickering lights and a busy crackle of destruction, it occurred to her that this would be a brutal and grandiose way to die – sending the old, beloved house up in a mighty bonfire simply in order to conceal secrets from seventy years ago. But at least no one would ever know. Destroy the building but keep the self hidden away and safe.

  She came to slowly. She could smell something burning and then realized she was smelling herself. Burnt hair and burnt skin. A pillow under her aching head, stiff sheets. She lifted her arm and found it was wrapped in a thick bandage. She opened her blind eyes and caught the artificial brightness of strip lighting.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘What the fuck were you doing?’ a voice boomed into her. She wished she was deaf as well as blind, so she didn’t have to hear them all telling her, asking her, scolding her as if she was so old now that she had become a child once more.

  ‘Hello, Leon. I’m in hospital, I take it?’

  ‘Of course you’re in hospital. You’re very lucky you’re not in a morgue. How could you have been so stupid, putting a match to the house?’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Of course it was an accident! What else would it be? You could have died.’

  ‘But I didn’t. I’m quite all right, Leon. Just a few burns. Do I look a fright?’ />
  ‘What?’

  ‘Hello, Gran,’ said a voice on her other side.

  She moved her head cautiously, feeling the muzzy pain in her skull. Her mouth tasted of ashes.

  ‘Jonah!’ She smiled towards him. ‘You’re here too.’

  ‘I am. You don’t look a fright. Just a bit smudged and a few patches are missing from your eyebrows and some of your hair’s a bit frizzy. How are you feeling?’

  ‘I don’t know really. What happened?’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ Leon was pacing back and forward now; three steps took him to the curtain and then he swivelled round on his heel and charged off in the other direction. Back and forward, pushing his hands into his pockets then pulling them out again. Like a smouldering fire himself, thought Eleanor, as she watched his bulky shape pass by at the bottom of her bed. Jonah, by contrast, sat placidly on the moulded plastic chair. She could smell his aftershave and when she put out a hand, could feel the softness of his overcoat.

  ‘I remember the fire starting,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Luckily for you, Adrian’s son was up playing some computer game,’ said Leon. His shoes squeaked as he spun round. ‘He saw the fire out of the window and came running and put it out. He called us once he’d called the ambulance.’

  ‘Was much destroyed?’

  ‘Hardly anything, apparently. The curtains and some of the window frames. It’ll be a mess of course.’

  ‘What about the filing cabinets?’

  ‘Those steel things? I’ve no idea, but I imagine they’re built to withstand a bomb. Don’t worry. All your papers and letters will still be there.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Leon sat down at last.

  ‘Listen now, what would have happened if Adrian’s son hadn’t been awake and seen the blaze from their house and come running?’

  ‘But he did see it. And if he hadn’t, I would have rung the emergency services and they would have put the fire out.’