Page 51 of The Night Before Christmas
‘That’s fine, my dear, of course. Well, don’t tell anyone I said this, but you can probably go in if you like. No one will stop you.’ She waved her arms again in the direction of the gates and turned to go.
‘Thank you!’ said Felicity, feeling an irrational desire to beg her to stay.
Don’t leave me alone with The House.
But the older lady had already waved her hand in farewell and was trotting along the road away from Le Manoir at a surprising lick.
Felicity turned back towards the entrance. Did she dare go in? Was it really allowed? She peered around her as if the police might be lurking nearby. If they even need police on Guernsey. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any beyond the one solitary individual at the airport. Maybe he was the only onefor the whole island, which would make the odds of her getting caught, well, pretty low.
Felicity walked up and put her hand on the cold iron gate. It opened easily under her hand, but she wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad. With a deep breath, she slipped between them and began a slow walk along the driveway.
Up close, it was a mess. What had appeared as gleaming white walls from the pathway were really cracked and crumbling in more than a few places, and lumps of broken plaster and tiles littered the gravel sweep in front of the door.
Her chest felt squeezed with pain even though she had so few memories of how it had once looked on the outside. She’d never really seen any photographs and it was hard to believe this was the place she spent her early childhood. The place she lived when all had been well with the world. Virtually impossible, really, to believe it had ever belonged to her family.
The large Georgian front door was covered in badly faded and peeling pink paint, and as she ran her hand over it gently a memory stirred. A red front door had been her mother’s dream. A cherry red front door, in fact, bright and glossy. Suddenly she could see them as if they were right in front of her, like a still from a home movie, frozen in time. Dad, paintbrush in hand, kneeling on the cold stone doorstep. Mum, standing over him, hands on hips, face angry. It wasn’t a happy scene, as such, but Felicity smiled with joy.
We looked just like a normal family.Who knew?
She could remember it all now. Her mum had been blathering on at her dad about the front door, over and over again, until he had finally relented and painted it for her oneweekend, getting more on the surrounding stonework than he did on the door. Then her mother had been beside herself with fury that he hadn’t bothered to pay for a professional. And her father, in turn, was so cross at the suggestion that he was incompetent that even more paint went in all the wrong places.
Felicity ran a hand thoughtfully down the door frame, where a hint of red still remained. She pushed on the door, wondering if it would swing open like something out of a spooky gothic horror novel but no, no give at all, and no joy when she turned the grubby brass handle. Instead, she walked a circuit of the house on the outside, peering into the windows as she went. Perhaps it was just her imagination, but there was an air of foreboding lingering around the place somehow, as if Mrs Danvers might appear around the next bend at any moment, scowling.
From what she could make out through the grubby glass, it was in an equally sorry state inside. There were leaves all over the wooden flooring and bits of broken furniture could be seen in every room, where there was furniture at all. Nothing, really, that would indicate it had ever been loved. And yet she supposed her mother and father must have loved it, once. Surely, her father must have been pleased to inherit such an incredible place. She could almost imagine them crossing the threshold for the first time with such excitement, such hope for the future. Back when they were happy. Back when they could tolerate each other.
She walked past what must have been the dining room, and on impulse pressed her face to the glass and tried to remember what their dinners had been like, when they were all together. But all she could remember was that Christmas.Thatdinner. That awful, awful black day. She shook her head hard as if to shake the memory out. It had no place here. It belonged to a different time.
The house today was so peaceful. Felicity gave a deep sigh, closed her eyes and turned her face to the weak January sun. And as she waited, feeling a hint of warmth on her face, something else stirred. She only had a collection of impressions, nothing concrete, but she could sense a more definite image, lurking nearby, just out of her reach, like a dream that fades on waking. Felicity knew better than to try to grab it. Knew that would make it vanish altogether. Instead, she took a breath and tried to relax, to let more of the memory come. A tiny thread of it was just taking shape when a forceful voice cut through her thoughts and she was jolted back to the present.
‘Ah, there you are, my dear.’
The old woman was marching towards her up the drive with unnerving speed, waving her arms. Felicity gave a weak smile. At least now there would be two of them to get caught by the police.
‘My dear, my dear – phew,’ said the woman, stopping to catch her breath and clutching at Felicity’s sleeve. ‘My dear, I asked my husband,and he found something for you.’
‘Oh honestly, you didn’t have to do that,’ said Felicity, although she was intrigued immediately, of course.
The woman waved away her protestations.
‘I knew he’d know more about this place,’ she said, pointing at the house with an elegant finger. Felicity’s face flushed with heat. ‘But, well, when he gave me this, I honestly couldn’t believe it! Look who it is!’
‘Who?’ said Felicity, the possibilities whirling around her head.
‘C’est vous!’ said the woman, thrusting a newspaper clipping into Felicity’s hands. ‘It’s you!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Felicity unfoldedthe paper slowly and gasped.
There, right in the middle of page 3 of theGuernsey Free Press, was a picture of her and Tristan as children, smiling like a pair of Cheshire cats. Standing either side of a very large pig, of all things, and dressed in identical dungarees and sun hats, as if they were twins. The headline read, ‘The sun gets his hat on for the Guernsey Show’ and, underneath the photo, a bland caption. Nothing more than their names and ages in italics.
Felicity’s hands were shaking as she stared at the image. She couldn’t believe she’d never seen this photo before. She touched the spots of glue in the corners of the paper, which were past their best but still tacky.
‘Look at that!’ she gasped. ‘How funny! Wherever did you find this? And how on earth did you know it was me?’
‘It’s the hair.’ She shrugged, then went on, ‘As I said, my husband has lived here a lot longer than me. When I told him you were asking about the house, he got out one of his old scrapbooks. He always said he thought it might come in handy one day. And you haven’t changed a bit. It is Felicity, no?’
‘It is, yes. That’s me there, holding the ice cream. Wow. I can’t believe he still had this.’
