Page 52 of Happily Ever After
The Master blinked, eyes sapphire in the darkness. He looked reproachful and for a second I wondered if he was reproving me for not being upfront with Hugo so I turned my back on him.If this were a book,I thought,what would I do?I typed in another entry, but I was working on automatic pilot. If this had been one of my novels, greedily consumed by lamplight whilst sitting on the floor in a corner of the bus, what would the heroine do?
Narratively speaking, she’d face up to Lady Tanith, wouldn’t she? Sit her down, have a conversation. Lay out the diaries and tell her that she knew about the stalking of Oswald, and let Lady Tanith have her character arc, whereby she came to realise she had been at fault. Lady Tanith would come to her senses, agree to therapy for her childhood trauma, apologise to Hugo for keeping him a prisoner here, all in the name of Oswald’s memory, they’d embrace and… fade to The End.
I ran the scene through in my head but couldn’t find a part that didn’t end in someone screaming. No. Life wasn’t like the books. Books assumed that people would be rational, that they would behave in accordance with the narrative. Books didn’t allow for the messiness of human nature and life had an inbuilt hatred for narrative causality.
I was buggered.
21
THORNFIELD HALL – JANE EYRE, CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Mrs Compton limped into the dining room, scraped up our empty plates with an immense amount of noise, and eyeballed Hugo and me.
‘Her Ladyship has gone up,’ she said. ‘And I’m going home. My legs is awful.’
‘Of course, Mrs Compton,’ Hugo said evenly. ‘Good night.’
‘She said to tell you, “no hanky-panky”.’ Mrs Compton’s focus switched to me and her stare could have drilled through granite. I smiled, as blandly as I could, although half of me wanted to swing at her with the soup ladle.
‘I promise you there will be no hanky of the panky kind, or otherwise.’ Hugo smiled too, more warmly than I thought the statement deserved, but then he’d grown up with Mrs Compton and probably didn’t notice her rudeness any more.
‘Well, then.’
A bit more ostentatious limping and then she and the crockery rattled their way out of the dining room and Hugo burst out laughing. ‘I think she and Mother assume we’re locking ourselves away in the Yellow Room to, err…’
I remembered some of Mrs Compton’s more prejudicial side-remarks to me. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s what they think we’re up to. Is that better, or worse than what we’re really doing?’
‘Infinitely preferable.’ Hugo pushed his chair back. ‘So, I’ll meet you in there in, what, twenty minutes?’
I finished my coffee. ‘Yep. I just need to shower. All the dust from the library gets in my hair.’
Hugo grinned and left the room. He was probably going up for a solo prowl around his collection before I arrived, but I really did need a shower. The Master, ever attendant at my side, blew into his fur, one leg cocked into the air.
‘And you can’t come,’ I told him sternly.
One eye solemnly regarded me over his own hip.
‘You’re not allowed in the Yellow Room. Fur on velvet is a dreadful thing, look at the sofa in the library.’
The athletic stare continued.
‘I’m going to shut you in here, so you don’t sit outside the door and shout to come in.’ I put down my cup. ‘I’ll let you out to come up with me when I go to bed, all right?’
The Master straightened, looked at me down his aristocratic dark nose, and twitched an ear.
‘I’m taking that as acquiescence then.’ I stood up. ‘You really can be a dreadful nuisance sometimes. But it’s warm in here and you can sit on the window seat. I’ll see you later.’
Before the cat could jump up and try to squeeze out of the door with me, I fled through the gap and closed it firmly. Mrs Compton wouldn’t be back in, she’d be taking her leg home, firm in her belief that we didn’t know that tonight was Bingo night down in the town, so she’d clear the cups tomorrow morning. Somehow, I didn’t think that even a full house would sweeten her general demeanour.
I showered, checked that the diaries were safe, tucked inside their Sainsbury’s bag amid my clothing, and went to the Yellow Room to meet Hugo.
It was dark outside and the gentle light from the lamp he had set up on the floor glowed appealingly. I felt another momentary pang that this couldn’t be my life. Would it really have been so dreadful? Then the moon, full and netted among the branches of the trees, shone over the grounds and I remembered Jay kissing me and knew that I would rather have him, the mud, learning to prune and plant and a gardener’s cottage than this whole estate and a lifetime’s worth of costume design.
‘Right.’ Hugo was oscillating with anticipation, the newly arrived package in his hand. ‘Shall we open this?’
‘You open it,’ I said. ‘I’m going to pour some wine.’
I leaned back on the floor pillows that stood in for furniture in here and waited for Hugo to appear from behind the screen in the corner.
