Page 15 of Happily Ever After
As soon as I got back, I changed out of the dress, back into my usual workwear of jeans and a T-shirt, and had my hand on the door to the library, when Lady Tanith opened it from the inside and stood framed by blackness in the doorway, like a movie vampire.
‘Andromeda,’ she said. ‘Can you explain…this?’
She was still wearing her memorial clothes, a smart dark navy dress with jacket, although she’d taken the hat off. I instantly felt like a downstairs maid who’d been caught not polishing the brass.
‘What?’ I asked faintly.
Lady Tanith led the way over to the computer. Having been interrupted by Hugo and having had to change, I’d left it switched on and displaying the book catalogue spreadsheet. My randomly filled cells, with their collection of meaningless letters, occupied the screen.
‘This.’ Lady Tanith pointed at the computer, as though I’d left a small turd on the keyboard. ‘This… nonsense.’
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I didn’t think that ‘I was revenge-typing’ would cut it with Lady Tanith, who seemed to haveretributionclose-printed on her soul.
‘I hope you haven’t been occupying your time by typing this complete rubbish every day,’ Lady Tanith went on, still with her arm held out to indicate the screen. ‘I feel I have been lax, allowing you to continue in your own time. In future, I shall be supervising your work more closely.’
I thought about Lady Tanith sitting opposite me while I worked every day, her eyes fixed on my every movement unless she was staring mistily up at Oswald’s portrait glaring down on us, and opened my mouth again. Still no excuses were springing to mind.
Suddenly there was a movement. From underneath the table The Master stalked, his eyes fixed on me in a way that was not totally unlike the baleful stare his mistress was giving me. Elegant, despite his bulk, he jumped onto the chair I had been sitting at to work, up onto the table, and then, in an attempt to attract Lady Tanith’s attention, he walked onto the keyboard and strode up and down it, making little chirruping noises.
The keys clattered. More cells filled with random letters.
The cat sat solidly on the space bar and enormous gaps began to appear on the screen as he let out an almost human-sounding yowl, blinked twice at Lady Tanith, and then got up again to butt his head against her still-pointing hand.
I said nothing.
Lady Tanith looked down at the cat, looked at the screen, lowered her arm with a quick stroke over the chocolate-coloured ears and turned on her heel. As she reached the library door, she muttered over her shoulder at me, ‘Don’t leave the machine switched on if you aren’t in the room. He could injure himself.’
I kept my eyes on the cat.
The door closed firmly and I let out a huge breath. ‘Thanks, puss,’ I said, and gave the top of his head a sweep of my palm. ‘Although I’m not sure how you’re meant to injure yourself on flat plastic keys. Maybe she thinks you can Qwert yourself to death.’
Blue eyes blinked at me, and The Master stood up, pushing the full weight of his head into my hand as he stropped up and down a few times against me. The keyboard made a high-pitched note of complaint and I gave the furry bottom a gentle push to clear him from the machine. ‘I owe you.’
With a hefty plop that dipped the floorboards, the cat jumped down off the table, mewed at me in a puff of anchovies, then stalked in a fashion very similar to Lady Tanith, to the door, where I got a ferocious stare until I opened the door to let him out. As soon as the dark tail had swept clear, I closed the door and leaned back against the nearest shelf, hands on my knees and laughing to myself. Great. Now I was indebted to Old Fishbreath, not that he was in a position to hold it over me, of course, but I did feel a little more warmly towards him. He’d certainly saved me from a future of being watched over by Lady Tanith during every working moment, like being observed by a deity with a short temper and a ready hand with the thunderbolts.
I straightened up again and looked towards the window. The curtain that Hugo had pulled down on my first day still lay on the floor, its mate hanging anxiously from tattering fitments alongside, as though attending the difficult birth of more dust. What this room needed, I thought, was a lot more light. How was I supposed to look for anything when the gloom was so thick you had to force your way through it, like wading through chest-deep gravy? I gave the remaining curtain a tug, and it dropped wearily in a sigh of cobwebs and rending velvet over my head, at which point the library door opened again and Hugo appeared. I could see his outline through the worn material, hovering uncertainly in the doorway, then coming in cautiously.
Not knowing what to do, bearing in mind that I’d just broken something that belonged, technically, to him, I stood still for a moment. Saw, filtered through velvet, Hugo suddenly notice this person-sized lump of fabric, and with vague ideas of asking him to help me get it off my head I took a few steps forward, hands held out to keep me from tripping over the pool of material at my feet. Hugo screamed, fell backwards until he was half-crumpled against the door and put his hands over his face.
‘It’s all right.’ I fought my way clear of the curtain. ‘It’s only me.’
Hugo was blanched white with a greenish tinge, still cowering. ‘Andi?’ he asked faintly.
‘Yes. Just pulling down this last curtain so I can actually see. Sorry, did I frighten you?’
He stood up, lowering his hands to put them over his heart. ‘You… you startled me,’ he said, sounding like a small child who’d had a nightmare. ‘I came… Mother said…’ He went even paler. ‘I’m sorry, I think I’m going to be sick,’ he said, wrenching the door open behind him and fleeing through the gap. I heard his footsteps out across the hall and then decreasing in volume as he dashed down the corridor towards the kitchens.
‘Well, that was odd,’ I said to Oswald now as he was the only thing left to talk to, again. ‘Hugo’s always seemed very blasé about the ghosts here. He makes Marie on the landing sound like the most normal thing in the world, but he got scared of what was obviously a person with a curtain over their head?’
Oswald continued his censorious stare, only slightly better illuminated now that the light could come further into the library. He seemed a little disappointed in his grandson, but then I realised that it wasmydisappointment I was seeing reflected in that painted face. Dashing off to vomit from fear had hardly been Hugo’s finest hour and, whilst I was not looking for heroics or any of that ghastly alpha-male behaviour that so many romantic heroes seemed to indulge in, I’d hoped for a little more than screaming and running off in my intended. I hadn’t even looked particularly ghostly. Plus, he knew I was in here, he knew what the curtains looked like. I was hardly a phantom shade in a winding sheet stalking the floor of the library. And, besides, heknewthe house was haunted! What was one more ghost among the hordes that seemed to throng Templewood, like an M R James basket of discarded ideas?
Outside, where the afternoon sun was now far more visible as it was no longer screened by several metres of velvet, I could see my nemesis, the gardener, driving a ride-on lawn mower with what looked like gleeful abandon, along one of the grassy sweeps that led down towards the road. He might be an arse, he might be rude and dismissive, and he might have seen me in transparent nightwear, but he was the only other human within conversational distance. Maybe I could go out there and be contemptuous at him? It would beat wondering about Hugo’s overreaction and why his mother had sent him in here, although the memory of the expression on her face when she thought her cat had been the one to fill in the spreadsheet was giving me warm feelings. Perhaps she’d sent him to apologise?
I tried to imagine Lady Tanith apologising to anyone, and just couldn’t do it. She’d probably sent Hugo to keep an eye on me, to make sure I was dedicating myself to her library rather than disporting myself wantonly, although chance would be a fine thing around here, where there was only Hugo to disport myself wantonlyat. I drew the line at any of the other contenders, a portrait, a cat and a housekeeper of such intense malevolence that Mrs Danvers would have conceded precedence.
No. I needed a real person. Even if they were on the horizon and carving random shapes in the grass with a mower, exposure to anyone who wasn’t part of this insane household would make me feel better. I could just watch him garden for a bit, at least until I forgot about Hugo’s screaming attack and his mother’s accusations. Fresh air was what I needed. Fresh air, smell some flowers, get some exercise and clear the extra dust from my lungs. Normality.
I opened the library window and climbed out.
