The Memory of Midnight Read online

  She had fallen for that twinkle before. She had wanted to believe in the charm, in the protestations of undying love. She had let herself be convinced that she was the unreasonable one.

  No longer, Tess had promised herself.

  Still, it was hard to break the habit of appeasement and Tess had to swallow and force the conciliatory words back down her throat. ‘My solicitor will be in touch with you.’

  It was as if they were having two different conversations. Martin sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, very well. If you’re going to be difficult . . . I’ll come back in a week or so and take you home.’

  ‘No,’ she said, stronger this time, irritated by his certainty. Irritated by how often she had given in, ensuring that he would always get his own way. ‘No, I’m not coming home.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Martin. ‘We’re married. You promised we’d be together forever.’

  God help her, she had. Nobody had forced her to marry him. She had chosen Martin. She had promised: for better, for worse. It was all her own fault, just as he was always telling her.

  But she had Oscar. Tess held onto that. It was worth it all to have her son. She had stayed for Oscar, and now she was leaving for Oscar. She would hold firm for him.

  In the end she had let Martin believe that her stay in York was temporary. It had seemed the easiest way to get him to go, but then he had come in and sat down and had tea while Tess and Oscar sat silently and her mother tried to make amends for Tess’s stupidity by smoothing over any cracks and pretending that they were just an ordinary happy family on a visit home. It had been ghastly.

  Tess had been desperate to move out before Martin came again. Richard’s offer was too good for her not to stay in York, but she knew it would make her easier to find. She stood in the bay window and watched a busker braving the rain in a doorway below while she gnawed at her knuckle, a bad habit Martin had done his best to break her of. What would she do if Martin turned up here?

  When he turned up. ‘I never give up,’ Martin was fond of saying. ‘That’s why other businesses fall by the wayside but Nicholson’s just keeps getting stronger. I ride the bumps and I keep on going. I never, ever give up.’

  Tess had made her mother promise not to tell him where she was, but even if she kept her word, Martin had the resources to track her down. Nicholson Electronics gave him access to some shadowy contacts. He was always boasting about the importance of the company’s government contracts and the secrecy of his negotiations. He had spent some time in the army, he’d told her when they first met.

  ‘I know guys who can get things done,’ he had said and he’d smiled and she, she had been impressed. Tess hated remembering how pathetic and naive she had been.

  Digging her nails into her palm, she turned away from the window. She would never sleep if she started thinking about Martin. She would read one of Richard’s books instead, but even as she reached for a battered paperback lying on an even more battered sideboard her mind was already jumping onto bookshelves and from there careening straight to Luke and the shock of seeing him again. She had thought she’d forgotten him, but one look and the memories had come slamming back – of his hard hands on her flesh, of the heat of his mouth. Of the contemptuous curl of his lip when he had turned and walked away.

  Abandoning the idea of reading as hopeless, Tess let her arm fall and she rubbed it absently. It wasn’t exactly hurting, but it hadn’t felt right since that strange jolt from the beam. She kept jiggling it around to try and find a comfortable position to hold it.

  And that, of course, sent her mind to the place she had refused to let it go all day – the back bedroom and that dreadful roil of anguish she had felt when she stepped inside. She had pushed the memory back down every time it threatened to surface, but there had always been a good excuse not to go in there again. She couldn’t put it off any longer, though. There was a perfectly good bed waiting for her there. She could hardly spend the next year sleeping on the sofa.

  Abruptly she switched off the lamps in the front room and walked back to the bedroom. From the threshold, her eyes darted round the room as if she could see the dread uncoiling in the air, but the room stayed still, almost sullen.

  Tess took a tentative step inside, then another. Nothing happened. She made it to the centre of the room before realizing how ridiculous she must look. Her shoulders unlocked and she laughed. ‘See?’ she said to Ashrafar, who had padded companionably down the passage after her. ‘There’s nothing here.’ She patted the bed, glad of the cat’s warm presence. ‘Come on, puss,’ she said.

  Trying not to think about how quiet it was, she opened her suitcase. Unpacking didn’t take long. She had brought hardly anything from London, where Martin had bought her the frilly, feminine clothes he liked her to wear. Most of her T-shirts and tops were ones she had left at home when she first moved to London. They could be quickly shoved in the chest of drawers rather than hung up or immaculately folded as Martin insisted.

  When she had finished, Tess pushed the bottom drawer closed and stood with an armful of sheets to make up the bed. It was only then that she noticed Ashrafar. The cat hadn’t followed her into the room. She was crouched at the open door, tail twitching, and the fur slowly stiffening on her back.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Tess clutched the sheets to her chest. Her voice sounded thin and high in the silent room. ‘It’s fine. You were in here before.’ What was she doing, trying to reason with a cat? ‘Come here, puss.’

  But Ashrafar only backed away, cautiously at first, and then with a sudden burst of speed turned and bolted down the passage. ‘Be like that,’ Tess shouted after her childishly. ‘See if I care.’ A few seconds later, she heard the clatter of the cat flap.

  There was nothing wrong with the room. Nothing. Tess kept telling herself that as she lay rigidly under the duvet, her ears straining into the silence, her scalp prickling. She didn’t know what she was listening for. The builders had long gone from next door, and back here there were none of the muted sounds from the street you could hear in the front room.

  Come to think of it, there ought to be sounds in an old building like this, surely? Tess would have been glad to hear the comforting click of pipes, the creak of timber settling, or even the hum of a fridge, but the silence was oddly thick, broken only by the uneven sound of her breathing.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  Out of nowhere, the noise rasped through the darkness and Tess sat bolt upright in bed, her hands clutching the duvet, her heart banging high in her throat.

  Thud, thud, thud.

  ‘Stop it,’ she whispered, not sure who she was talking to.

  It was a horrible sound, a scrabbling, scratching, clawing sound alternating with a pounding, with such a desperate undercurrent to it that Tess whimpered and covered her ears to block it out. She sat like that, her hands clamped to her head and her eyes squeezed shut, praying that it would stop, until a picture of herself cowering in the bed filtered into her brain. This was what she did when she didn’t like what was happening, wasn’t it? She closed down and pretended that it wasn’t happening at all. It was what she had done with Martin, and it was what she was doing now she was on her own. When had she become so pathetic?

  Slowly, Tess dropped her hands. She couldn’t just sit here being frightened. Reaching out, she switched on the bedside light. The sudden glare made her screw up her eyes.

  Scrape, thud, scrape, scrape.

  It was more of a scratching sound now, and the answer hit Tess so suddenly that she slumped back against her pillow with relief.

  Rats. Of course. It must be rats. Didn’t they say that no one in a city was more than six feet from a rat at any time? Rats would have been breeding in these old roofs and drains for centuries.

  Did they live in walls? Tess sat up again and looked at the fireplace. She was sure the sound was coming from there. They must be behind the plaster. First thing in the morning, she was going to contact the pesticide people. Oscar was onl
y five. They would have to do something.

  Scratch, scrape, scrape. Scrape, scrape, SCRAPE.

  Feeling a little embarrassed by her fear now, Tess got out of bed, stomped across to the fireplace and banged on the plaster.

  ‘Stop it!’ she shouted, but not loud enough to wake up Oscar. ‘Go away!’

  The noise stopped.

  ‘OK.’ Oddly deflated by her success, Tess climbed back into bed and huddled into the duvet. May or not, she was going to get a radiator the next day. The room was so damp she could almost smell the river. Her face above the duvet felt clammy, and she fell asleep at last with the air clinging to it like fog.

  Nell groped her way down Water Lane towards the staithe. She could barely see a few feet in front of her. All day the fog had hung dense and low, muffling the city in an eerie light. The air was thick, white, clammy. It wrapped itself around her face, stifling her, pressing against her nose and mouth. It made Nell think about the way the darkness had squeezed around her in the kist that day in Mr Maskewe’s closet, and remembered panic squirmed in her belly, making her breath stutter.

  Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she made herself breathe in and out, the way she had learnt to do.

  There was nothing to fear. She was not shut in a chest. She could breathe.

  Above, the sun was a bright disc trying to break through the blanket of fog. Nell kept her eyes fixed on it. There was a blankness to everything that day. The familiar sounds of the city, the bangings and shoutings and clatterings and clangings of everyday life, had been swallowed up by the mist and even the birds were silent. One of her clogs skidded on the damp cobbles and she thrust out a hand to the warehouse wall to steady herself while the basket in her other hand swung wildly. Her heart was beating high in her throat.

  She couldn’t see the river, but she could smell it: dank and rank, all fish and slimy mud.

  On King’s Staithe, the keelboats loomed ghostly in the mist. They were drawn up against the quayside, waiting for the tide, watched over by a lone seagull hunched beadily on a post. The staithe, normally bustling, was quiet. The mariners had taken refuge from the damp in the alehouse, and only Jack Brown, beaten to the colour of his name by the sea winds, was sitting on an upright barrel, a clay pipe clamped between his teeth, watching Tom wrestle with a rope.

  The tight band around Nell’s chest loosened at the sight of Tom. The air seemed less dense, less threatening, and she breathed easily again. Tom knew that she was afraid of dark, tight places, but he never teased her. When a loutish apprentice had tried to push her into an empty barrel for his amusement and she had screamed and screamed and screamed, Tom had leapt at him with his fists even though the apprentice was twice his size. The boy had ended up with a black eye and cut lip and a thrashing from his master, but Nell had been able to wriggle free.

  She was safe as long as Tom was there.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The fog forgotten, Nell stepped over a pile of fish guts and peered at the rope in Tom’s hands. He was twisting the cord carefully around itself.

  ‘Tying a monkey’s fist.’ Tom was used to the way she appeared without warning and he barely glanced up.

  Nell didn’t mind. She liked watching his frown of concentration. When Tom wanted to learn something, he was fierce with focus. The bright eyes would narrow and his smiling mouth would set in a firm line, the restless energy that was so much part of him directed at the task in hand.

  ‘Look.’ He held up the rope with its misshapen lump to show her when he had finished. ‘What do you think of that?’

  She took it and weighed it in her hands. It was heavier than she expected. ‘What is it for?’

  ‘It gives weight to the heaving line,’ said Tom importantly. He liked to impress her with his knowledge of the ships that plied between Hull and the great ports of the Low Countries. Taking the rope back, he swung it around his shoulder and made as if to throw it from a deck to a quay. ‘See?’

  Five years had passed since Nell had shut herself in the chest, and now she too was in service. At eleven she had joined the Harrison household, and since then she had been learning to wash and to brew and to bake, to dress meat and to cast accounts, but Mrs Harrison was an indolent mistress, unlike Anne Appleby, and it was easy for Nell to slip away when she was supposed to be running errands.

  It had been strange at first to leave home and her two small brothers, but she knew she was fortunate. Mr Harrison was a rich draper, although his wealth could not compare to Mr Maskewe’s, and the house was much more comfortable than Nell’s father’s. There were two other maids to giggle with and, best of all, the Harrisons lived in Ousegate near William Todd’s house, so she saw Tom nearly every day. Nell was well content with her lot.

  She had known she would find Tom at the staithe. Even when he had nothing to do in Mr Todd’s warehouses, Tom would be hanging around by the river, as if by wishing hard enough he could magic up a ship. For years now, Tom had yearned to go to sea, but so far his master had only taken him to Hull on the riverboats. Still, it was further than Nell had been.

  Tom showed the rope to Jack, and at his brusque nod of approval began to loosen the knot with deft fingers so that he could start again.

  ‘Got anything to eat in there?’ he asked Nell, nodding at her basket. Tom was always hungry.

  ‘No,’ she said regretfully. She was always hungry too. ‘My mistress just sent me for some pins and thread and . . . oh, Tom, I heard hard news at the pinner’s,’ she said, remembering the reason she had come to find him. ‘Do you remember your mother’s little maid, Joan?’

  ‘The clumsy one?’ Tom grunted, intent once more on the rope in his hands. It was five years since he had lived in the house on Stonegate. The Todd house on Pavement was home to him now. ‘What’s she broken now?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Nell. ‘She’s dead.’ Distress puckered her face. ‘They’re saying that she killed herself last night, God rest her soul.’

  ‘What?’ Tom’s head jerked up in shock. Death could come calling at any time, but to kill oneself was a mortal sin. ‘Why?’

  ‘Who knows why anyone does such a thing?’

  Jack took the pipe from his mouth. He hawked and spat, and the seagull flapped its wings as if affronted. ‘’Tis common enough,’ he said. ‘There’s many a servant as doesn’t like the way life is.’

  Nell and Tom knew that. They had had their share of beatings, but they had families behind them. Girls like Joan had no one to speak for them, and some masters were harsher than others. All the same, Nell had never known anyone to kill themselves before.

  ‘They say she threw herself in the Ouse and drowned.’

  Nell shivered as she looked at the river. It lay oily and still under the weight of the fog, and out of nowhere horror flapped in her face like a great black bird, making her reel back with a gasp and grope for the wall.

  Tom didn’t notice. He was staring down at the rope, pulling it between his hands, a muscle in his cheek working convulsively. ‘Joan,’ he muttered. He didn’t know what else to say. ‘She never did anyone any hurt except herself.’

  With difficulty, Nell nodded. The feeling had lifted and she could breathe again, but her heart was still galloping. She remembered the last time she had seen Joan. The Maskewes’ maid had been scuttling down Stonegate with her basket. She was a pale, timid girl with protuberant eyes that slid away from you when you talked to her. Nell wouldn’t have said that she was unhappy, but what did she know?

  Something had made Joan walk into the implacable grip of the Ouse. Its stillness was deceptive. Only the night before it had been running high after the recent rains, and once the current took her, Joan would have had little chance. Did she change her mind as the cold brown waters closed round her? Nell wondered. Did she try to go back? Or had she been seduced by the Devil and condemned herself to haunt the riverside forever?

  Nell swallowed and crossed herself surreptitiously at the thought. They wouldn’t bury Joan in the churchyard now.
They would take her out to a crossroads at midnight and drive a stake tipped with iron through her heart to stop her rising again. Nell tried to imagine Joan with a stake embedded in her, but she couldn’t do it.

  She couldn’t imagine feeling such despair. True, there were times when work was hard, times when life was cruel and uncertain, but for Nell there were more times when it was good. When the rooftops rimed with glassy frost glittered in the winter sunlight, or one of her small brothers squealed with delight as she swung him round and round. When there was laughter in the market, or Tom to meet down by the river, and her blood ran quick and eager.

  True, the Maskewe house must have been a dull place since Tom’s mother died with his little brother. Mother and babe had succumbed to the fever barely a week after Nell had been shut in the chest, and Mr Maskewe had not married again. He was comfortable enough with Fat Peg to run the house, and with no mistress to harry her, Joan’s day couldn’t have been so hard, could it? Nell herself could think of lots of things she would do if her mistress wasn’t waiting for her to come home. Indolent as she was, even Mistress Harrison would notice if Nell spent all day there on the staithe with Tom.

  Abandoning his knot, Tom sighed and brushed his hands on his breeches. Nell wished she could wear breeches too. She would much rather be a boy. As a girl she had to be clean and neat. She had to lower her eyes and walk slowly. She had to wear stiff skirts and lace a bodice across her flat chest.

  She would have to stay home, while Tom went adventuring. One day before too long he would go, and she would be left behind.

  She wouldn’t think of it. Not yet.

  ‘I’d better go and see my father,’ said Tom. ‘And Ralph, too, I suppose,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘It is a poor homecoming for him.’

  Ralph had been in Antwerp for the past two years on his father’s business, but the English had fallen into a great quarrel with the Spaniards, and Mr Maskewe had summoned him back to York until the merchants of England could find a more certain home where the Spanish presence wasn’t so strong.